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A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 OF 
 
 IRISH HISTORY, 
 
A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 OF 
 
 IRISH HISTORY 
 
 BY 
 
 R. BARRY O'BRIEN 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 The Life of Charles Stewart ParneW ' ' The Life of Lord Russell 
 of Ktllowen" "Thomas Dritmniond" &^c. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND, M.P. 
 
 ISBISTER & CO., Ltd. 
 15 and r6, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London. 
 
PREFATORY. 
 
 The story of the " Hundred Years " (covering 
 the period between 1800 and 1900) revised, 
 and slightly enlarged, was originally delivered 
 as a lecture before the Irish Literary Society, 
 London. An Appendix has been added. 
 
 R. BARRY O'BRIEN. 
 April 11 thy 1902. 
 
'k'i^ 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 My Dear O'Brien,— 
 
 You have done good work in 
 drawing attention to the relations between 
 England and Ireland during the last een-; 
 tury. So far as I am aware, there is no 
 history of that period, and Englishmen 
 are perhaps less familiar with it than with 
 any other period of Irish history. Each 
 generation of Englishmen have comforted 
 themselves with the reflection that they 
 were righteous men, though their ancestors 
 governed Ireland infamously. No English- 
 man justifies the government of Ireland in 
 
iO A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 the sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth 
 century, and even the Englishman of the 
 latter part of the nineteenth century con- 
 demns the government of the men of the 
 earlier part But the truth is, no genera- 
 tion of Englishmen can plume themselves 
 on their administration of Irish affairs. 
 Ignorance and ineptitude are the charac- 
 teristics of the English rulers of Ireland of 
 every generation ; yet Englishmen talk 
 of Irish ingratitude and sneer at Irish griev- 
 ances. '' What does Ireland now want ?" 
 Pitt asked Grattan, in 1794, and '^ What 
 does Ireland now want ? " is the stock ques- 
 tion of English statesmen of the twentieth 
 century. Englishmen constantly forget 
 that they are the original wrong-doers, and 
 that they have never acted so as to obliter- 
 ate the memory of their misdeeds. English- 
 men love national independence, but they 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, I I 
 
 cannot conceive how other people should 
 have this feeling too. A little girl was 
 asked in a London school the other day 
 what was the date of the Conquest of 
 Ireland, and she answered, " the Conquest 
 of Ireland began in 1169, and it is going 
 on still." All English attempts to recon- 
 cile the Irish people to the English connec- 
 tion have failed. The reason for this is 
 not far to seek. Your narrative alone 
 makes it abundantly clear. When the 
 Union was carried, and when a new era 
 opened in the government of Ireland, 
 England had a long score of misdeeds to 
 wipe out ; and how did she set to work ? 
 Were I to draw an indictment against 
 English rule in Ireland I think I should con- 
 tine myself to the nineteenth century. At a 
 time of war and conquest you expect rough 
 work, though it never must be forgotten 
 
12 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 that the foreign invader is the original 
 wrong-doer, and that whatever excuse may 
 be offered for the excesses of a people 
 rightly struggling to be free, no excuse 
 can be offered for the foreign trespasser 
 who comes to rob and destroy. But the 
 qualities of the conqueror can best be 
 judged when his conduct is tested by the 
 work of ruling the conquered people. And 
 how do the English rulers of Ireland in the 
 nineteenth century stand the test ? English- 
 men are shocked when other nations do 
 not take them at their word. An English- 
 man thinks that his promise should be 
 accepted without suspicion, that the whole 
 world ought to rely on the benevolence and 
 wisdom of John Bull. 
 
 But what is the story which Irishmen 
 have to tell of the benevolence and 
 wisdom of their English rulers in the 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 1 1, 
 
 yj 
 
 nineteenth century? First, Englishmen 
 opened the Union Era by treachery and 
 falsehood. England promised emanci- 
 pation to the Catholics as the price of the 
 Union, and that promise was shamefully 
 broken. Twenty-eight years passed before 
 the Catholics were emancipated, and then 
 how was emancipation carried ? The 
 wrong-doer may obliterate the memory of 
 the wrong by some act of generosity, or 
 even of tardy justice, magnanimously 
 done. But was there anything generous, 
 anything magnanimous, in the concession 
 of Catholic Emancipation ? *' I am one of 
 those," said the Duke of Wellington, in 
 introducing the Emancipation Bill in the 
 House of Lords, *' who have probably 
 spent a longer period of my life engaged 
 in war than most men, and principally in 
 civil war, and I must say this, that if I 
 
14 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 could avoid by any sacrifice whatever, even 
 one month of civil war in the country to 
 which I was attached, I would sacrifice my 
 life in order to do it, yet, my lords, this is 
 the resource to which we must have 
 looked — these are the means we must 
 have applied to put an end to this state of 
 things, if we had not made the option of 
 bringing- forward the measure for which I 
 say I am responsible." But when we say 
 that England did tardy justice, and did it 
 grudgingly, did it in a mean and craven 
 spirit, we have not disposed of the case. 
 Having passed some measure of justice — 
 some inadequate measure of justice — she 
 proceeded immediately to make it a dead- 
 letter. Most important in this respect are 
 the words you quote from Mr. Lecky — so 
 important, indeed, are these words, as 
 showing the character of the English rule 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 15 
 
 of Ireland during the past century, and 
 as showing the bad faith of the English 
 Government, that I cannot help trans- 
 cribing them here. 
 
 *'In 1833 — fc)ur years after Catholic 
 Emancipation — there was not in Ireland a 
 single Catholic judge or stipendiary magis- 
 trate. All the high sheriffs, with one 
 exception, the overwhelming majority of 
 the unpaid magistrates, and of the grand 
 jurors, the four inspectors-general, and the 
 thirty-two sub-inspectors of police, were 
 Protestant. The chief towns were in the 
 hands of narrow, corrupt, and, for the 
 most part, intensely bigoted corporations. 
 Even in a Whig Government not a single 
 Irishman had a seat in the Cabinet. For 
 many years promotion had been steadily 
 withheld from those who advocated Catho- 
 lic Emancipation, and the majority of the 
 
1 6 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 people thus found their bitterest enemies in 
 the foremost places." 
 
 "Trust us,'- Englishmen say, "and all 
 will be right." The answer to this is, 
 ''What have you done in Ireland ?" 
 
 You have conceded through fear, marred 
 your concessions in the granting, and 
 refused to carry them out in a fair and 
 generous spirit. 
 
 What a ghastly story is the story of 
 the Tithe War. Cromwell was a ruthless 
 conqueror. His massacres at Drogheda 
 and Wexford are among the infamies of 
 history ; and yet those infamies almost 
 pale before this mean, petty, squalid 
 struggle I think it was Grattan who 
 said, *' To find a worse Government than 
 the Government of the English in Ireland, 
 you must go to Hell for your policy, and to 
 Bedlam for your discretion." It must be 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 17 
 
 confessed that a more perfect illustration of 
 the policy of Hell and Bedlam combined, 
 than the Tithe War affords, can scarcely be 
 conceived. The excuse given for Crom- 
 well is that his were rough times. But 
 what are we to say of the Tithe War which 
 took place in the years of grace 1 8 30- 1835? 
 And what a miserable compromise 
 ended this ghastly conflict. Bad faith, 
 foolish legislation, criminal legislation, 
 are, in the main, the marks of English 
 rule in Ireland during almost the whole of 
 the nineteenth century. The English 
 people have no conception that between 
 1829 and 1869 i^^<^ great measure of justice 
 was passed for Ireland. With the excep- 
 tion of the Melbourne Administration, 
 1 835- 1 84 1 (which, let it be remembered, 
 was kept in office by the Irish Vote), 
 everything that happened served only to 
 
1 8 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 keep alive the original feeling of hatred 
 and distrust between the two peoples. 
 O'Connell suspended the demand for 
 Repeal, during the Government of Lord 
 Melbourne, to give the Union a fair trial. 
 O'Connell kept faith with the Government, 
 but the Government failed to carry any 
 effective remedial measures for Ireland. 
 On the failure of the Melbourne Adminis- 
 tration, O'Connell once more raised the 
 Standard of Repeal. What Englishmen 
 do not understand is, that, the failure of the 
 Melbourne Administration was the turning 
 point in the relations of England and 
 Ireland in the nineteenth century. The 
 great Repeal Movement of 1 841- 1846 
 rooted the idea of an Irish Parliament in 
 the mind and heart of the Irish nation, 
 and that idea will never be eradicated. 
 Another fact which Englishmen do not 
 
OF IRISH HIS TOR F. 19 
 
 understand is that between 1846 and 1869 
 the Irish question went backwards instead 
 of forwards. The administration in 
 Ireland, during the Government of Lord 
 Melbourne, was calculated to reconcile the 
 people to English rule, though the 
 Government itself was unable to pass 
 good laws for the country. But English 
 administration as well as English legis- 
 lation between 1846 and 1869 was calcu- 
 lated to make the name of England 
 more detested than ever. This is a 
 vital fact. Assuredly, it needs no 
 argument to prove, that, a conqueror must 
 proceed steadily, if not rapidly, in the work 
 of well-doing if he is ever to reconcile the 
 conquered to his rule. But the English 
 conqueror in Ireland has not proceeded 
 steadily in a career of well-doing. Quite 
 the contrary ; and the meanness of his rule 
 
20 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 in the nineteenth century has only served 
 to add contempt to the hatred which his 
 brutality in previous centuries inspired. 
 The calamity of the Famine, and the terrible 
 loss of population which it caused, was fol- 
 lowed by stupid misgovernment. Nothing 
 was done to reform the land system which 
 Irishmen then knew, and which EnofHsh- 
 men now know, was the curse of the 
 country. The country was allowed to 
 bleed almost to death because a'* foreign" 
 Government (to use the language of Mr. 
 Chamberlain) declined to pass the 
 measures, which the people of the country 
 knew, and said were necessary for its salva- 
 tion. It is impossible not to smile at the 
 simplicity of Englishmen when they offer, 
 as a compensation for the loss of national 
 independence, the blessings of English 
 rule ; practically urging that Englishmen 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 2 1 
 
 know better how to rule any people on the 
 face of the earth than the people them- 
 selves. 
 
 In 1 860- 1 866 the Irish Land Question 
 stood in a worse position than in 1S35, 
 1845, o^ 1S52. Thomas Drummond 
 understood the Irish Land Question, and 
 urged reform. In 1843 Sir Robert Peel 
 appointed the Devon Commission. In 1 845 
 the Commission reported in favour of 
 legislation, and even Lord Stanley intro- 
 duced a Bill in 1845 ^^ carry out the 
 recommendations of the Commission. In 
 1852 another Tory Government tried to 
 carry measures of land reform. All these 
 efforts failed. At last reform came in 
 Church and land in 1869 and 1870, and 
 how were these reforms carried ? What 
 claim do they establish for the gratitude 
 of Ireland to the English Parliament. 
 
22 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 Fenianism disestablished the Church 
 and carried the Land Act. *' The 
 Imperial Parliament/' wrote Mr. Lecky, in 
 1 87 1, " exercises for Ireland legislative 
 functions but it is almost powerless upon 
 public opinion. It allays no discontent 
 and attracts no affection." No wonder; for 
 its practice has been to concede with re- 
 luctance, and to oppress without hesi- 
 tation. "It is powerless upon public 
 opinion." Naturally ; for its aim habitu- 
 ally has been to suppress public opinion 
 until the passions of the people have been 
 aroused, and Ministers have been swept 
 off their feet by a storm of indignation 
 and disloyalty. 
 
 Let it be borne in mind that up to 1869 
 — always excepting the Melbourne Ad- 
 ministration — not one single act was done 
 by the English Parliament which was 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, 23 
 
 calculated to obliterate the memory of 
 past wrongs, and to give the Irish people 
 confidence in English statesmanship. 
 And what has been done since? The 
 Land Act of 1870 was a hopeless failure. 
 Mr. Gladstone was under the impression 
 that the Church Act, and the Land Act of 
 1870 had settled the Irish question. 
 In your *' Life of Parnell " you report Mr. 
 Gladstone as saying : *' I do not think that 
 Mr. Parnell or Irish matters much engaged 
 my attention until we came back to 
 government in 1880. You see we thought 
 the Irish question was settled. There was 
 the Church Act, and the Land Act, and 
 there was a time of peace and prosperity, 
 and I frankly confess that we did not give 
 so much attention to Ireland as we 
 ought to have done. Then you know 
 there was distress and trouble, and the 
 
24 A HUNDRED lYEARS 
 
 Irish question came again to the front." 
 Nothing can show more clearly the incom- 
 petence of English statesmen to under- 
 stand the Irish question than that Mr. 
 Gladstone, who had done more for Ireland 
 than any other English statesman, should 
 have believed he had settled the Irish 
 question for all time, when, in point of fact, 
 his Acts of 1869 and 1870 were unsettling 
 Acts, and only the beginning of an era of 
 reform. Yet Mr. Gladstone believed that 
 it was both beginning and end. Despite 
 the efforts made by Isaac Butt and other 
 Irish members between 1871 and 1876 
 nothing was done in the direction of land re- 
 form until the Land League came. Is there 
 any honest Englishman who, looking the 
 question fairly in the face, will assert that 
 the English Parliament has any claim to the 
 gratitude of Irishmen ? One thing is per- 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, 25 
 
 fectly clear, viz., that in the words of Mr. 
 Lecky the English Parliament still fails to 
 " allay discontent or to attract affection." 
 Assuredly if ever there was a case that 
 required consideration in view of these 
 facts, it is the demand of the Irish people, 
 that, with this record before the world, 
 they should be allowed to do, what it has 
 been demonstrated the English Parlia- 
 ment cannot do, viz., to govern Ireland 
 in accordance with Irish public opinion. 
 Despite the educational propaganda 
 carried on by Mr. Gladstone between 1886 
 and 1893, it is much to be feared that not 
 only the bulk of Englishmen, but many 
 English statesmen, do not yet clearly 
 understand the nature of the Irish demand, 
 or the grounds on which it rests. I venture 
 to say that there are many even intelligent 
 Englishmen who do not know that there 
 
2 6 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 ever was a Parliament in Ireland ; while the 
 number who are aware that the old Irish Par- 
 liament was almost coeval, and actually co- 
 ordinate with the English Parliament, might 
 be counted on the fingers of one's hand. 
 
 The first Irish Parliament was held 
 in the reign of Edward I., in 1295. 
 The earliest Irish statutes date from 1310. 
 From 1295 to 1495 ^^^ Irish Parliament 
 was free from the control of the English 
 Parliament. No law made in England 
 was binding in Ireland. It w^as in nowise 
 necessary for the English Parliament to 
 ratify the Irish statutes. In 1495 ^^ ^^^^ 
 attempt at any innovation was made. 
 Poynings' law was passed. It provided 
 (i) that all Acts hitherto passed in 
 England should be binding in Ireland : 
 (2) that no Parliament should hereafter be 
 summoned in Ireland until the Viceroy 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 27 
 
 had obtained the King's Licence to hold 
 it: (3) that the heads of bills to be intro- 
 duced in the Irish Parliament should be 
 first submitted to the English Privy 
 Council : (4) that the consent of King and 
 Privy Council should be obtained before 
 such bills were introduced. It will be seen, 
 that, servile as this Parliament was, it did 
 not surrender its independence ; it did not 
 recognise England's right to make laws 
 for Ireland. 
 
 It recognised the right of the King of 
 England, who was also the King of Ireland, 
 to exercise jurisdiction over Irish legisla- 
 tion as he did over English legislation, and 
 it adopted English Acts previously passed. 
 That was all. It still preserved co-ordinate 
 authority, and this remained the state of 
 things until the reign of George I. Then 
 an Act was passed in 17 19 which provided 
 
2 8 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 that "the King's Majesty, by and with 
 the advice and consent of the lords and 
 commons of Great Britain, had, hath, 
 and of right ought to have, full power 
 and authority to make laws to bind the 
 people and the Kingdom of Ireland." 
 This Act was an usurpation of the rights 
 of the Irish Parliament. "It is true in- 
 deed," says Swift, "that within the me- 
 mory of man the English Parliaments 
 have sometimes assumed the power of 
 binding this kingdom by laws enacted 
 there. Nevertheless, by the laws of God, 
 of nature, and of nations, and of your 
 country, you are and you ought to be as 
 free a people as your brethren of England." 
 The ''freedom" of the Irish Parliament was 
 finally established in 1782. Then the 
 Irish Volunteers, with arms in their hands, 
 forced England to repeal the Act of 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, 
 
 George I., and to re-establish the legis- 
 lative independence of their country. 
 "Be it enacted," so ran the English Act of 
 the 23 George 3rd, chap. 28, " that the 
 right claimed by the people of Ireland to be 
 bound only by laws enacted by His Majesty 
 and the Parliament of that Kingdom in all 
 cases whatsoever, and to have all actions 
 and suits at law and in equity which may 
 be instituted in that Kingdom, decided in 
 His Majesty's Courts therein finally and 
 without appeal thence, shall be and is here- 
 by declared and ascertained for ever, and 
 shall at no time hereafter be questioned or 
 questionable." Despite this solemn 
 declaration, the Irish Parliament was 
 destroyed in 1800 by force and fraud, and 
 another chapter was added to the story of 
 English falsehood and treachery in the 
 history of Ireland. Ireland never ceased 
 
30 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 to protest against the Act of Union. 
 O'Connell demanded its repeal. His 
 agitation was put down by force. It was 
 the old story so well told by Swift in his 
 own day. '' The love and torrent of 
 power prevailed. Indeed the arguments on 
 both sides were invincible. For in reason, 
 all government without the consent of the 
 governed is the very definition of slavery ; 
 but in fact, eleven men well armed will 
 certainly subdue a single man in his shirt." 
 In 1870 Isaac Butt made a new de- 
 parture. While fully recognising and 
 asserting Ireland's right to legislative 
 independence, he proposed yielding to 
 political exigencies, a compromise by 
 which an Irish Parliament and an Irish 
 Executive should be established for the 
 management of Irish affairs, reserving to 
 the Imperial Parliament the control of 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 3 i 
 
 Imperial affairs. Parnell took up the 
 question where Butt had left it, and in 
 1886 Mr. Gladstone offered the Irish 
 members a ''Statutory" Parliament, 
 practically on the lines laid down by Butt. 
 This compromise was accepted by the 
 Irish members, and by the bulk of the 
 Liberal Party, but it was defeated in the 
 House of Commons, and Mr. Gladstone's 
 Ministry was destroyed. 
 
 On coming back to power in 1892, he 
 returned to the subject, and in 1893 
 carried through the House of Commons 
 another Home Rule Bill. This Bill was 
 rejected by the House of Lords, and 
 dropped. As the question of Home Rule 
 stood in 1895 (when Lord Rosebery, who 
 had succeeded Mr. Gladstone as Home 
 Rule Prime Minister, left office) it stands 
 still. It has been recently brought to the 
 
32 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 front by the combination of two extra- 
 ordinary causes : (i) The action of the 
 Government, who, since the passing of the 
 Irish Local Government Act, have been 
 drawing nearer to Home Rule without 
 apparently knowing it, and (2) by the 
 action of Lord Rosebery, who, since he 
 left his lonely furrow, has been backing 
 out of Home Rule without, let us hope, 
 apparently knowing it either. The ad- 
 vance of the Government has given heart 
 to the Nationalists, and the retreat of Lord 
 Rosebery has, for very shame, revived the 
 Gladstone tradition, and recalled the best 
 memories of Liberalism. 
 
 The Irish members have one advantage 
 over English parties. They know their 
 own minds. They know what they want. 
 The present Government is in a state of 
 bewilderment in Ireland. His Majesty's 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 33 
 
 Opposition is in a state of bewilderment 
 everywhere. Ireland has faith neither in 
 Government nor in Opposition. She is 
 watching the political situation in England 
 with keenness, and she will not fail, when 
 the opportunity offers, to turn it to good 
 account. 
 
 The Government have slipped their old 
 moorings in Ireland. They have aban- 
 doned their old friends, and their old 
 principles, and they have found no new 
 ones. They have given up the garrison ; 
 but they have not won the Nationalists. 
 They have created universal distrust. 
 The landlords do not believe in them. 
 The tenants do not believe in them. The 
 Catholics do not believe in them. The 
 Protestants do not believe in them. 
 They are estranging the English interest 
 without conciliating the Irish. Neverthe- 
 
34 -4 HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 less, they are floundering into Home Rule 
 without knowing it ; and before long they 
 will find themselves brought face to face 
 with the issue — a Crown colony or an Irish 
 Parliament. The grotesque farce of giving 
 Ireland "Constitutional" government, and 
 insisting on ruling the country in defiance 
 of the declared wishes of three-fourths of 
 the Parliamentary representatives of the 
 people, must be brought to an end 
 one way or the other. Apart from 
 anything else, the Local Government Act, 
 which has destroyed the power of the land- 
 lord oligarchy, and thrown the administra- 
 tion of counties and boroughs into the 
 hands of the democracy, makes this inevit- 
 able. 
 
 His Majesty's Opposition is still rent by 
 schism. It is the home of faction. Lord 
 Rosebery is the genius of disorder and 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 35 
 
 anarchy. He is a statesman of phrases ; 
 and his phrases will be the death of the 
 Liberal party, if they are not the death of 
 himself. The "predominant partner" has 
 been succeeded by ''definite separation," 
 and the last state of Lord Rosebery is 
 worse than the first, 
 
 A speech made by Lord Rosebery in 
 Glasgow in 1887 lies before me. I am 
 tempted to take some extracts from it. 
 
 First he says : — 
 
 '^ I am not one of those who underrate, 
 as you know, questions of foreign or 
 colonial or domestic policy, but there is 
 only one question before the country now, 
 and till that is settled there will be no 
 other question disposed of. (Loud cheers.) 
 No red herring, across whatever path it 
 may be drawn, can distract the scent. No 
 human being, I venture to say, can post- 
 
36 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 pone the question. I saw it stated the 
 other day that Mr. Gladstone — (cheers) — 
 if he would only postpone the Irish ques- 
 tion for this Parliament, might reunite the 
 Liberal party. I have seen that sentiment 
 expressed more than once. Now, I am 
 one of those few remaining people in Scot- 
 land — (laughter) — who cling to that effete 
 prejudice which is soon to die out, which is 
 called Gladstonian Liberalism. (Cheers.) 
 Moreover, I am one of those who have an 
 almost unlimited belief in Mr. Gladstone's 
 capacity. (Cheers.) But Mr. Gladstone 
 is human ; and even if he were more super- 
 human than he appears to be, it is not in 
 Mr. Gladstone's power to postpone the 
 Irish question." 
 
 I take another extract : — 
 
 " I am told that it is reported in Scot- 
 land that Burns, if he had lived^laughter) 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, 37 
 
 — would have been a Liberal Unionist. 
 (Great laughter.) Heaven save the mark! 
 (Laughter.) I know that he wrote an 
 * Ode to the Tree of Liberty,' but I have 
 re-read it in vain to discover any allusion 
 to that particular section of our party. 
 (Laughter) I cannot speak confidently 
 either as to Burns, because he died nearly 
 a hundred years ago, and in a hundred 
 years he might have changed his opinions 
 very materially — (laughter) — but I can 
 speak confidently of the policy of Charles 
 James Fox, who boasted, not that he had 
 given, as we wished to give, a Legislature 
 to Ireland for the purposes of its domestic 
 affairs, but boasted that he had given inde- 
 pendence to Ireland, and boasted it as the 
 creed of his party. (Hear^ hear.) I can 
 speak confidently of Mr. Burke, who re- 
 joiced when he heard that announcement 
 
38 A HUNDRED FEARS 
 
 of Mr. Fox with regard to independence, 
 and said that it was the happiest day of 
 his life. I can speak confidently of Lord 
 Grey, the passer of the first Reform Bill, 
 who, supported by Sheridan and Tierney, 
 fought the Union Act inch by inch. I 
 can speak confidently of Mr. Grattan, by 
 appealing to every speech he ever delivered 
 in his life. (Cheers.) Now, I want to 
 know, gentlemen — Were these heretics 
 and renegades as we are? Were they 
 sharers of the same ignominy that we 
 labour under ? Why, are the dissident 
 Liberals Whigs? Were these not Whigs? 
 Are the dissentient Radicals Radicals ? 
 Were these not Radicals ? And yet, 
 gentlemen, precisely because we follow 
 these great men^ — these apostolic fathers 
 of the Liberal party — (cheers) — it is be- 
 cause we follow them that Mr. Gladstone 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 39 
 
 is gibbeted as a reckless old man, and we 
 as a tail of dupes and fools who are idiotic 
 enough to follow him." (Laughter.) 
 
 I shall take yet a third extract. He is 
 speaking of Grattan's Parliament, and he 
 says: — 
 
 " But in 1782 the Irish seized the oppor- 
 tunity of England's weakness, an oppor- 
 tunity which, under those circumstances, you 
 could hardly expect them to deny them- 
 selves. (Hear, hear.) They took the 
 opportunity of England's weakness, and 
 took what they wanted, which was a sub- 
 stantive Parliament, Now, I know it is a 
 fashion to run down that Parliament, 
 which is popularly known as Grattan's 
 Parliament — a Parliament that lasted for 
 eighteen years in Ireland. It had indeed 
 many defects. It was a purely Protestant 
 Parliament, and therefore represented only 
 
40 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 a section of the population. It was largely 
 controlled by Peers. It was to some 
 extent corrupt. But it had two great 
 merits. In the first place, it was what the 
 Irish people wanted, (Cheers.) There is 
 no principle, gentlemen, which seems so 
 simple, but which seems somehow to need 
 so much instilling into some of our greatest 
 statesmen, as the fact that the potato that 
 one knows and likes is better than the 
 truffle that one neither knows nor likes. 
 And, therefore, when you wish to give a 
 benefit to a nation, it is better to give 
 something that it likes and understands, 
 rather than something that it neither likes 
 nor understands, (Cheers.) The second 
 merit of that Irish Parliament was this, 
 that in the time of war it was the staunch 
 ally of the British Government — (cheers)~~a 
 staunch ally, and not a source of weakness." 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 41 
 
 So much for Lord Rosebery in 1887. 
 But at Liverpool the other day he uttered 
 this sentence : 
 
 *' If Ireland were loyal, I would gladly 
 giNQ her the privileges of the other self- 
 governing colonies/' 
 
 ^' If Ireland were loyal." Why, in 1887, 
 as we have just seen, Lord Rosebery 
 showed that Grattan's Parliament was 
 granted when Ireland was disloyal, and 
 that Ireland became loyal afterwards. But 
 that is not all. In the same speech, he 
 referred to the disloyalty of the Irish in 
 1884, and to their alliance with Irish 
 American revolutionists, and then he 
 added: "And my belief is that if you 
 had accepted our propositions last year — 
 those propositions which in some form or 
 another are so sure to become law~v 
 (cheers) — within a few years you would 
 
42 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 have found that the Irish resented inter- 
 ference as much from New York as they 
 always have from London." (Cheers.) 
 
 Now, I ask Lord Rosebery, were the 
 Irish more loyal when he became a Home 
 Ruler than they are now ? 
 
 Have Irish agitators of the present day 
 made stronger declarations than Parnell 
 made the very year of Lord Rosebery' s 
 conversion ? Speaking at Cork in January, 
 1885, the Irish Leader said : — 
 
 '' We cannot ask for less than the 
 restitution of Grattan's Parliament with 
 its important privileges and far-reaching 
 constitution. We cannot, under the British 
 constitution, ask for more than the resti- 
 tution of Grattan's Parliament. But no 
 man has a right to fix the boundary 
 of the march of a nation. No man has a 
 right to say ' thus far shalt thou go and 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, 43 
 
 no further ' ; and we have never attempted 
 to apply the ne plus ultra to the progress of 
 Ireland's nationalhood, and we never 
 shall." This speech was made in the 
 beginning of 1885. 
 
 Before the end of 1885 Lord Rosebery 
 had become a Home Ruler, and in the 
 Glasgow speech of 1887 he gave expres- 
 sion to this sentiment: "This Irish 
 demand for Home Rule, for a Parliament 
 only recently stolen from them, sanctified 
 by the authority of great names, and 
 affirmed by the voice of the nation, must 
 be examined with a view to concession." 
 
 Let me further ask Lord Rosebery, is 
 the state of Ireland more disturbed at the 
 present moment than it was in 1887, the 
 year before Lord Rosebery' s conversion ? 
 Let Lord Rosebery point to any period in 
 Irish history when he considers that the Irish 
 
44 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 were loyal, and then let him say what 
 great Act of justice was passed at that 
 period. Why did Lord Rosebery become 
 a Home Ruler in 1885 ? Did he then 
 consider Irishmen capable of managing- 
 their own affairs? Did he think that an 
 Irish Parliament could be established 
 without danger to the Empire? If yes, 
 then why does he not stand to his guns 
 like a man ? If no, then what confidence 
 can the people of England place in a 
 statesman who asked them to surrender to 
 the Irish in 1886 and 1893, and who 
 now says that Irishmen are not to be 
 trusted ? Is Lord Rosebery to be trusted? 
 That, I fancy, is the question which many 
 English electors will ask when Lord 
 Rosebery, who was a Home Rule Prime 
 Minister in 1894, asks to be returned to 
 power as a Unionist Prime Minister in, say, 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 45 
 
 1904. Lord Rosebery seems to be shocked 
 because I have used the words " legislative 
 independence," but Mr. Gladstone, in 
 introducing- the Home Rule Bill in 1886, 
 described the Parliament about to be 
 created as "a practically independent 
 body," and emphasised this description by 
 repeating; "yes, practically independent in 
 the regular exercise of its statutory func- 
 tions," 
 
 Let us clear our minds of cant on this 
 subject. Lord Rosebery says, that if 
 Irishmen were loyal, he would give them a 
 colonial Parliament. Now I say to Lord 
 Rosebery that if any British Minister will 
 offer to the Irish people such a constitu- 
 tion as exists in the Colon}^ of Victoria, 
 the Irish people will take it, not because 
 they feel it is the complete measure of 
 justice to which Lord Rosebery himself 
 
46 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 showed that they were entitled, but because 
 they are prepared now, as they were pre- 
 pared in the days of Butt and Parnell, to 
 accept a compromise ; and this I say, 
 without minimising, in the least degree, 
 Parnell's declaration that, "no man has a 
 right to hx the boundary to the march of a 
 nation." Our position is perfectly clear. 
 We desire to have the management of our 
 own affairs. These affairs have been grossly 
 mismanaged by England, not only to the 
 injury of Ireland, but to the injury of 
 England itself. For the management of 
 our own affairs we demand an Irish Parlia- 
 ment and an Irish Executive. No mere 
 system of local government will satisfy 
 the aspirations of the Irish people. They 
 desire national government. " The senti- 
 ment of nationality," says Mr. Lecky (whose 
 books have made many Home Rulers), 
 
OF IRISH HISIORY. A,l 
 
 'Mies at the root of Irish discontent." 
 That sentiment, which Englishmen insist 
 on ignoring-, must be gratified if Irishmen 
 are ever to enter willingly into a common- 
 wealth with England. As Mr. Gladstone 
 said, Irishmen must have " practical inde- 
 pendence " in the management of their own 
 affairs. The Irish Executive must be 
 responsible only to the Irish Parliament, as 
 the Victorian Executive is responsible only 
 to the Parliament of Victoria, and the Irish 
 Parliament must be left practically as 
 unfettered in its acts as is the Victorian 
 Parliament. 
 
 We all know that what Parliament g-ives 
 Parliament can take away. But the true 
 supremacy of the English Parliament does 
 not rest merely on the law of constitution. 
 It rests on the physical power of England 
 — on the English Army and the English 
 
4B A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 Navy, and on the great wealth and vast 
 population of the English Empire. By the 
 law of the constitution, England could not 
 destroy Grattan's Parliament, and Grattan's 
 Parliament could not destroy itself. Never- 
 theless it was destroyed, and English 
 supremacy — not the supremacy of the law 
 but the supremacy of force — prevailed. 
 Let us approach this question as honest 
 men and as business men. The partner- 
 ship between England and Ireland up to 
 the present has been unsatisfactory to both 
 parties. Despite the concessions of the 
 past sixty years, the Irish are now more 
 bent than ever upon securing the establish- 
 ment of an Irish Parliament. The House 
 of Commons accepted this principle in 
 1893, and in all the General Elections 
 which have taken place since, the numbers 
 of the Irish Nationalists have remained 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 49 
 
 unreduced. Whatever Lord Rosebery may 
 think, or hope, he will never hold office, 
 as a Liberal Prime Minister, except by 
 Irish help. Let Lord Rosebery remember 
 that it was in the power of Irishmen to 
 turn out every Liberal Government (with 
 a single exception) that held office since 
 the first Reform Ministry; that is to say, 
 the Irish Liberals and Nationalists between 
 1835 and 1895 (with the exception of the 
 Ministry of 1880) could, by voting with 
 the Tories on any given question, put an 
 end to any Liberal Ministry, and the Irish 
 possess that power now more fully than 
 ever. Therefore, as a matter of expediency 
 Lord Rosebery will find it more to his 
 interest to remain true to the principles 
 which he professed in 1886 and 1893. 
 As for the Tory leaders, they must know 
 thoroughly well that Home Rule cannot 
 
50 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 be killed either by kindness or by harsh- 
 ness. Let them combine with the Liberals 
 to end the present unsatisfactory situation. 
 Let the principle of an Irish Parliament be 
 accepted. Let the English Party Leaders, 
 as Mr, Gladstone suggested long ago, try 
 to close the Irish controversy by a scheme 
 in which the national aspirations of the 
 Irish people will be no less considered than 
 the interests of the English Commonwealth. 
 Hoping that your stor}^ of the '' hundred 
 3^ears " will have a wide circulation, 
 
 I remain, my dear O'Brien, 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 Zth April, 1902. J. E. Redmond. 
 
 / n 
 
 A 
 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 5 I 
 
 A HUNDRED YEARS OF IRISH 
 HISTORY. 
 
 It is not my intention to dwell upon the 
 great event with which the century opened. 
 I shall not re-tell the story of the Union. 
 It is an old story, an unsavoury story. 
 But there are two points on which I must 
 just touch at the outset. 
 
 First, in 1782, as you all know, the 
 legislative independence of Ireland was 
 established by the Irish Volunteers — by 
 60,000 men with arms in their hands. ^* 
 England then promised that the right of 
 the Irish Parliament to make laws for the 
 Irish people should never again be '* ques- 
 tioned or questionable. ' ' ^ The exact words 
 
 * The figures in the text refer to notes in the Appendix at 
 the end of the volume. 
 
52 A HUNDRED FEARS 
 
 of the Act of Parliament ran : '' Be it 
 enacted that the right claimed by the 
 people of Ireland to be bound only by laws 
 enacted by His Majesty and the Parlia- 
 ment of that Kingdom in all cases what- 
 soever, and to have all actions and suits 
 of law and in equity, which may be insti- 
 tuted in that Kingdom, decided in His 
 Majesty's Courts therein finally and with- 
 out any appeal thence, shall be, and is 
 hereby declared to be, established and 
 ascertained for ever, and shall at no 
 time hereafter be questioned or question- 
 able." And yet, within eighteen years, 
 England's promise was broken; the Act 
 was violated; and the Irish Parliament 
 destroyed. 
 
 As England made promises in 1782, so 
 she made promises in 1800. The path of 
 English rule in Ireland is strewn with 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. t^'}^ 
 
 promises — broken promises. In 1800 she 
 said in effect to the Catholics: Support the 
 Union, and you shall be immediately 
 emancipated.^ She said to the Protestants: 
 Support the Union and your Church shall 
 be for ever upheld. Both promises were 
 broken. Catholics and Protestants were 
 alike deceived and betrayed. 
 
 The Catholics were betrayed on the 
 instant. No attempt was even made to 
 emancipate them. Faith was kept with 
 the Protestants for sixty-nine years.^ Then 
 they too were abandoned, and their Church 
 was overthrown. 
 
 I shall pass over Emmet's insurrection ; 
 for, if I may say so, it belongs, in a sense, 
 rather to the eighteenth than to the nine- 
 teenth century. It Avas the last flicker of 
 the fire of 1798. It was, as you know, 
 quickly put out. But Emmet proved 
 
54 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 himself worthy of his United Irish breth- 
 ren. He died for the faith that was in 
 him. 
 
 And now I come to my subject proper 
 — the history of Ireland during her legis- 
 lative union with England — " the union," 
 said Lord Byron, "of the shark with its 
 prey." 
 
 At the beginning of the century, the 
 population of Ireland, roughly speaking, 
 was about 5,000,000. Of these 5,000,000, 
 4,000,000 were Catholics, 600,000 were 
 Protestant Episcopalians, and 400,000 
 were Presbyterians or members of other 
 Protestant denominations, but mainly, in 
 fact almost entirely, Presbyterians. 
 
 Let us consider the condition of this 
 population, politically, religiously, socially, 
 and economically. 
 
 First politically. Politically, all positions 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 55 
 
 of power and emolument were in the hands 
 of the 600,000 Protestant Episcopalians, 
 The 4,000,000 Catholics had no more to 
 do with the government of the country, 
 than a community of mice might have to 
 do with the government of the cats. By 
 law they were excluded from Parliament, 
 from the Judicial Bench, from the Vice- 
 royalty, from the rank of King's Counsel, 
 and from other important positions; in 
 practice, they were excluded from every- 
 thing. I will explain. Under the in- 
 fluence of the Volunteer movement many 
 of the penal laws had been repealed 
 between 1778 and 1793. Thus, Catholics 
 had been allowed to hold landed property, 
 to hear Mass, to keep schools ; and they 
 were admitted to the Bar up to the rank 
 of King's Counsel. Finally, in 1793, 
 they were admitted to the elective fran- 
 
S^ A HUNDRED FEARS 
 
 chlse, to the Grand Jury, to the Municipal 
 Corporations, and to Dublin University. 
 
 Bear in mind that those things were 
 done by an Irish Protestant Landlord Par- 
 liament ; and remember that, in the one 
 year 1793, more was done by that Parlia- 
 ment for the Irish Catholics than was done 
 for them by the English Parliament during 
 the first quarter of the last century. 
 Writing of these reforms, Mr. Lecky says : 
 " The time when the Irish Parliament was 
 most persecuting, and the Irish Protestants 
 were most fanatical, was the time when the 
 first was absolutely subservient to foreign 
 control, and when the latter considered 
 themselves merely a garrison in an enemy's 
 country. No sooner had a national spirit 
 arisen among the Protestants than the 
 spirit of sectarianism declined." 
 
 So it was ; the wave of nationality which 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. SI 
 
 swept over the country between 1778 and 
 1793 broke down the barriers of intolerance 
 and persecution. But though certain 
 offices were thrown open, by law, to the 
 Catholics, no Catholic appointments were, 
 in fact, made ; and so it was that at the 
 beginning of the century the Catholics had 
 really no voice in the government of their 
 country. 
 
 I pass to the question of religion. The 
 Church of the 600,000 Protestant Episco- 
 palians was established and endowed. It 
 was the Church of the State. The Church 
 of the 4,000,000 Catholics was supported 
 by voluntary contributions. It was the 
 Church of the people. It was ignored by 
 the State. I shall say no more on this 
 subject now. When I come to the Tithe 
 war I shall have to return to it. 
 
 The story of Irish education is among 
 
58 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 the most disgraceful chapters in the 
 history of English dominion in Ireland. 
 For centuries the education of the Pro- 
 testant minority had been helped by the 
 Government. The education of the Catholic 
 majority had been proscribed or neglected. 
 The Protestants had their schools and 
 colleges ; there were the Diocesan Free 
 Schools of Elizabeth, the Royal Free 
 Schools of James I. and Charles I., 
 the Erasmus Smith Schools, and, above 
 all, the famous, or infamous Charter 
 Schools — institutions which John Howard, 
 the philanthropist, described as "a dis- 
 grace to Protestantism, a disgrace to 
 all society": yet, founded in 1733, they 
 were supported by Parliamentary grants 
 up to 1832. Then, of course, the Pro- 
 testants had their University, Trinity Col- 
 lege, while to this hour the Catholics of 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 59 
 
 Ireland have no University. Catholic 
 Ireland must not have a Catholic Uni- 
 versity, because it would offend the con- 
 science of Protestant England. 
 
 I next pass to the economical condition 
 of the people. In Ireland the great in- 
 dustry — almost the only industry — is the 
 land. It is the trade of Ireland. How 
 England destroyed the manufactures of 
 Ireland, thus throwing the people wholly 
 on the land, you know. The land, then, 
 being the one vital industry, it is un- 
 necessary for me to say how much the 
 material well-being of the people de- 
 pended upon the circumstances under 
 which it was held — under which it was 
 worked. As a result of English dominion, 
 the land of Ireland was, in the main, 
 owned by Protestants ; it was, in the 
 main, cultivated by Catholics. I do not 
 
6o A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 want to say anything harsh of Irish land- 
 lords. It is not my wish to say anything 
 harsh of any section of my fellow-country- 
 men. Some time ago the phrase — ** the 
 union of hearts " — was much in vogue. 
 The "union of hearts " which I desire is a 
 union of Irishmen of all classes and of all 
 creeds, from the north to the south, from 
 the east to the west ; landlords and tenants, 
 Catholics and Protestants, Orange and 
 Green ; and I look to this union as the 
 surest way of bringing about the national 
 regeneration of our country. I will only 
 add, that the Irish landlords were, in no 
 small degree, the victims of a bad 
 system — a system which had been intro- 
 duced by England, and upheld by English 
 bayonets. 
 
 What was this system ? The landlords 
 let the land — perhaps a strip of bog, 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, 6 1 
 
 barren, wild, dreary. The tenant reclaimed 
 the bog; built, fenced, drained, did all 
 that had to be done. 
 
 " In Ireland," said Lord Donoughmore, 
 *' landlords have been in the habit of letting 
 land, not farms" — a very happ)^ descrip- 
 tion of the Irish landlord system. Well, 
 the tenant converted the 'Mand " into a 
 *' farm." "It was the tenants," said Mr. 
 Nassau Senior, " who made the barony of 
 Ferney, which was originally worth ^3,000 
 a year, worth ;/J"50,ooo a year." And 
 what was the case in Ferney was the case 
 in many another barony in Ireland. 
 
 When the tenant had done these things, 
 had made the land tenantable, the rent 
 was raised. He could not pay the in- 
 creased rental — he had spent himself on 
 the land ; he needed time to recoup him- 
 self for his outlay and labour. He got no 
 
2 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 time : when he failed to pay he was evicted 
 — flung on the roadside, to starve, to die. 
 He took refuge in a Ribbon Lodge, told 
 the story of his wrong, and prayed for 
 vengeance on the man whom he called a 
 tyrant and oppressor. Too often his 
 prayer was heard, and vengeance was 
 wreaked on the landlord or agent, and 
 sometimes on both. That, in brief, is the 
 dismal story of landlord and tenant in 
 Ireland. Lest you may think that I am 
 exaggerating, let me quote the words of 
 an Englishman on the subject. 
 
 " The treaty," says Mr. Nassau Senior, 
 "between landlord and tenant in Ireland 
 is not a calm bargain in which the tenant, 
 having offered what he thinks the land 
 worth, cares little whether his offer be 
 accepted or not ; it is a struggle, like the 
 struggle to buy bread in a besieged town. 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 63 
 
 or to buy water in an African caravan." 
 Let me quote another Englishman: 
 " In Ireland," says Lord Normanby, "the 
 landlord has a monopoly of the means of 
 existence, and has a power for enforcing 
 his bargains which does not exist else- 
 where — the power of starvation." 
 
 These are remarkable words, and give a 
 graphic picture of the deplorable condition 
 of things in Ireland down to a very recent 
 date. 
 
 In this country you hear much of Irish 
 outrages, — of Irish agrarian outrages, — 
 but nothing of the causes of these outrages. 
 Let me quote for you the words of an 
 English member of Parliament on the 
 subject. Mr. Poulet Scrope wrote to Sir 
 Robert Peel, in 1844: 
 
 " But for a salutary dread of the White- 
 boy Association, ejectments would desolate 
 
64 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 Ireland, and decimate her population. 
 Yes ! the Whiteboy system is the only 
 check on the ejectment system ; and 
 weighing one against the other, horror 
 against horror, and crime against crime, 
 it is perhaps the lesser evil of the two."'^ 
 But despite the "Whiteboy system," the 
 " ejectment system " did '' desolate 
 Ireland," and '' decimate her population." 
 
 ''Ireland," said Mr. Bright, *' is a land 
 of evictions — a word which, I suspect, is 
 scarcely known in any other civilised 
 country." And again, "Ireland is a 
 country from which thousands have been 
 driven by the will of the landlords and the 
 power of the law." 
 
 But Englishmen sometimes tell us that, 
 after all, these things were done by Irish- 
 men — by Irish landlords. As soon as 
 England had made up her mind to abandon 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. (yt^ 
 
 the Irish landlords she did not spare them. 
 But what says Mr. Bright on this question 
 of the culpability of the Government or 
 of the landlords? "If Ireland were a 
 thousand miles away," he says, *'all 
 would be changed ; justice would be done, 
 or the landlords would be exterminated by 
 the vengeance of the people." Just so ; it 
 was the Government of England that 
 stood between the people of Ireland and 
 justice. If the bayonets of England were 
 not behind the landlords, they would have 
 done justice to the people long ago. 
 
 I have said that the ejectment system 
 decimated the people. " In Ireland," says 
 Mr. Gladstone, ''there has been an 
 enormous involuntary emigration." Be- 
 tween 183 1 and 1864 3,097,415 people 
 left Ireland for the United States of 
 America. The press of England rejoiced 
 
66 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 over this exodus. Let me quote the 
 Saturday Review^ the organ of the cul- 
 tured classes: ''The Lion of St. Jarlath 
 (John, Archbishop of Tuam) surveys with 
 an envious eye the Irish exodus, and sighs 
 over the departing demons of assassination 
 and murder. So complete is the rush of 
 departing marauders whose lives were 
 profitably occupied in shooting Protestants 
 from behind a hedge that silence reigns 
 over the vast solitude of Ireland." These 
 are the taunts to which we have been 
 habitually subjected by the English press 
 and by English politicians. '' The 
 complaints of the Irish," says Mr. Bright, 
 ''have been met— complaints of their 
 sufferings have been met— often by 
 denial, often by contempt, often by 
 insult." And yet John Bull— simple- 
 minded, honest, bluff John Bull — is 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, 67 
 
 amazed because we do not love him. 
 And what has been the history of these 
 *' marauders," of these "assassins," and 
 "murderers," in other lands. Between 
 1 83 1 and 1864 these "criminals" sent home 
 from the United States alone, not less a 
 sum than £ 1 3 ,000,000 sterling. ' ' In every 
 colony of the empire," says Joseph Kay, 
 " and among the motley multitudes of the 
 United States, the Irish are distinguished 
 by their energy, their industry, and their 
 success." But while Irishmen were 
 successful in other lands, at home 
 the masses of the people were almost con- 
 stantly on the verge of pauperism. 
 
 I cannot detain you by quoting authorities 
 — if I had the time I could quote them in abun- 
 dance — to prove this statement. One quota- 
 tion , a famous quotation , I shall give, because 
 it is representative. It is from Gustave de 
 
68 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 Beaumont's book on Ireland, "^ published in 
 1 836, and I giveit because, though the words 
 were written in 1836, they might have been 
 re- written in 1846, in 1856, in 1866, ay, 
 and in 1876. Here is the quotation : 
 
 " To see Ireland happy you must care- 
 fully select your point of view ; look for 
 some narrow, isolated spot and shut your 
 eyes to all objects that surround it, but 
 wretched Ireland, on the contrary, bursts 
 upon your view everywhere. I have seen 
 the Indian in his forests and the negro in 
 his chains, and thought, as I contemplated 
 their miserable condition, that I saw the 
 very extreme of human wretchedness ; but 
 I did not then know the condition of un- 
 fortunate Ireland." 
 
 I now come to the second part of my 
 lecture — the history of the efforts which 
 
 * " Ireland — Social, Political, and Religious," 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 69 
 
 were made to reform the condition of 
 things which I have described. First I 
 take the question of Catholic Emancipa- 
 tion. It is impossible for me to tell this 
 story in detail. I shall have to pass over 
 many points of interest, and even of im- 
 portance, but the chief features of the 
 story are these. In 1800, as I have said, 
 the English Minister, Mr. Pitt, practically 
 promised Emancipation. In 1805 the 
 Catholics asked Mr. Pitt to present a peti- 
 tion to Parliament in support of their claims. 
 He refused to have anything to do with it, 
 or with them. Another great Englishman, 
 however, Mr. Fox, did present the petition 
 to the House of Commons, but it was 
 rejected with scorn. From that time 
 forward the struggle went on. Irishmen, 
 and even some Englishmen, appealed 
 again and again to the reason and 
 
70 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 justice of the English nation ; but in 
 vain. Grattan, Henry Parnell, Canning, 
 Castlereagh, Plunket, were the foremost 
 champions of the Catholic cause ; but they 
 spoke to deaf ears and hardened hearts. 
 The state of the Catholic Question in 
 England right up to 1828 may be gathered 
 from the following quotations. In 1823 
 Sir William Freemantle, a member of the 
 House of Commons, wrote to the Duke of 
 Buckingham : " As for our Catholic 
 Question, it is gone to the Devil." 
 
 Sir Spencer Walpole— one of the ablest 
 and fairest of English historians — writing 
 of the year 1824, says : " The most hope- 
 ful politicians were beginning to despair 
 of effecting the emancipation of the Roman 
 Catholics." 
 
 In 1825 the Duke of York said in the 
 House of Lords : "I will resist the Catho- 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 7 I 
 
 lie claims, whatever may be my situation 
 in life. So help me God ! " 
 
 And this royal blockhead represented 
 the public opinion of England. His 
 speech, we are told, was printed in letters 
 of gold, and circulated throughout the 
 country. Writing of the year 1827, Sir 
 George Cornewall Lewis says : 
 
 '' At this moment the breach between 
 Great Britain and Ireland was wider than 
 at any time since the Union ; and the pros- 
 pect of a tranquil settlement seemed more 
 remote than ever. Ireland was becoming 
 stubborn, insulting and disaffected ; Great 
 Britain more intolerant, active, and oppres- 
 sive." 
 
 The one great man who led the opposi- 
 tion of the English people to the Catholic 
 claims was Sir R. Peel — the model En owlish 
 statesman of the nineteenth century. Let 
 
72 A HUNDRED FEARS 
 
 US see what were the reasons on which he 
 founded his resistance to the Catholic 
 demands. In 1827 he said in the House 
 of Commons : *' I cannot consent to widen 
 the door to the Roman Catholics. I 
 cannot consent to give them civil rights 
 and privileges equal to those possessed by 
 their Protestant fellow-countrymen." 
 
 And pray why ? What, think you, were 
 the reasons which Sir Robert Peel gave 
 for refusing to give the Catholics " equal 
 rights " with their Protestant fellow- 
 countrymen ? 
 
 Because, he said, in effect — and the argu- 
 ment is extremely interesting, taken in con- 
 nection with what is now going on in 
 another part of the world— because '' there 
 are 4,000,000 Catholics to 800,000 Protes- 
 tants " (these were Peel's figures), and, 
 therefore, if "equal rights" be given 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 73 
 
 to the Catholics, they will have a '* pre- 
 ponderating " influence in the State. ^ 
 And what were these 4,000,000 Catho- 
 lics whom Sir Robert Peel would not 
 admit to " equal rights " with their Protes- 
 tant fellow-countrymen ? They were not 
 the settlers of an hour; they were not 
 financial mushrooms ; they had not rushed 
 into the country to work gold mines, and 
 bolt with the profits ; they were, on the 
 contrary, the representatives of the old 
 race, and the old religion — men whose 
 fathers had owned the land before the 
 shadow of an Anglo-Saxon had darkened 
 it — yet, forsooth, they were not to have a 
 voice in the government of the nation lest 
 they might exercise — a ^' preponderating " 
 influence. 
 
 But what was happening in Ireland, 
 while this fooling was going on in England ? 
 
74 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 Daniel O'Connell had appeared on the 
 scene. In 1824 he founded the Catholic 
 Association. The people rushed into it. It 
 spread all over the land. It became, in 
 truth, a provisional government, more 
 powerful than the Government of England.^ 
 The country was drifting into rebellion.^ 
 Not only was the whole civil population 
 south of the Boyne disaffected, but the 
 Catholic soldiers in the English army 
 could not be trusted. '' Three-fourths of 
 the soldiers of Ireland," said The Times, 
 '* are Catholics. Even the greater part of 
 the Highland regiments belong to Ireland, 
 and have been inoculated with the feelings 
 of those among whom they live.'* 
 
 So it was, the Irish soldiers could not be 
 trusted. O'Connell himself tells us how, 
 as he walked through the streets of Ennis 
 in i828~soldiers lining the way — a young 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 75 
 
 sergeant stepped out of the ranks, and 
 coming- up to him, said, " I know that I 
 have broken discipline, I know that I shall 
 be punished, but I care not what may 
 happen, I shall grasp the hand of the 
 father of my country." 
 
 In Waterford the Irish soldiers flung 
 their caps in the air, and cheered for 
 O'Connell. '* If we are asked to fire on 
 the people," they said, '' we know what 
 we will do ; there are two ways of firing : 
 we can fire into the people, and we can fire 
 over them. We know the way we will 
 fire." In Limerick an Irish res^iment 
 attacked an English regiment, and a 
 fierce encounter ensued. 
 
 But perhaps I can give the best idea of 
 the state of panic which prevailed, when I 
 say that an " army " of not less than 5,500 
 men — horse, foot, and artillery — *'occu- 
 
76 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 pied *' Clare during the great election 
 of 1828. The result of the election is well 
 known. O'Connell stood in opposition 
 to Peel's nominee ; and was elected by 
 an overwhelming majority. Then the 
 Government surrendered. In June, 1828, 
 Peel had re-affirmed his determination 
 never to surrender. In July the Clare elec- 
 tion took place.^ In February, 1829, Peel 
 introduced a Bill for the Emancipation of 
 the Catholics — for their admission to Parlia- 
 ment, and to all civil and military offices, 
 except the posts of Regent, of Lord Chan- 
 cellor, and of Irish Viceroy. The reasons 
 which the English Minister gave for this 
 change of front are highly interesting. *Tn 
 the course of the last six months," he 
 said, " England, being at peace with 
 the whole world, has had five-sixths of 
 the infantry force of the United King- 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 77 
 
 dom occupied in maintaining the peace 
 and in police duties in Ireland. I con- 
 sider the state of things which requires 
 such an application of military force much 
 worse than open rebellion. If this be the 
 state of things at present, let me implore 
 of you to consider what would be the con- 
 dition of England in the event of war. 
 Can we forget in reviewing the state of 
 Ireland what happened in 1782?" A 
 more remarkable reason for doing a bare 
 act of justice has rarely been given. It 
 comes to this, that Peel, in effect, tells the 
 Irish people that the best way to get jus- 
 tice from England is to bring about such 
 a condition of things as will result in lock- 
 ing up the military forces of England in 
 Ireland, and so paralysing English opera- 
 tions in the event of war in other parts of 
 the world. 
 
78 A HUNDRED FEARS 
 
 But I am not done with Emancipation 
 yet. When O'Connell was elected for 
 Clare, Peel's first thought was, apparent- 
 ly, — not to yield — but to devise some 
 means by which it would be impossible 
 in the future for any Catholic to become 
 even a candidate for a Parliamentary 
 election. He seems to have proposed 
 to the Cabinet that a law should be 
 passed obliging the candidates to take, 
 before the election, the oaths which the 
 successful candidate was obliged to take 
 after election, prior to his admission to 
 Parliament, By such means, he argued, 
 the repetition of what happened in Clare 
 would be avoided. But the Cabinet would 
 not accept the proposal, owing to the 
 "public inconvenience which would be 
 caused by keeping Parliament sitting until 
 the point was disposed of."^^ The injus- 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 79 
 
 tice, the meanness, of the proposal seems 
 never to have occurred to this enlightened 
 English statesman. But worse things 
 remain to be told about this "conces- 
 sion" of Catholic Emancipation. 
 
 O'Connell had been elected by the 40s. 
 freeholders. "I have polled all the 
 gentry, and all the ^50 householders — the 
 gentry to a man," wrote O'ConnelFs 
 opponent. But the 40s. freeholders rallied 
 to the agitator. These freeholders had 
 been allowed to exercise the franchise so 
 long as they had voted at the bidding of 
 the landlords. But at the Clare election, 
 under the influence of O' Connell, they revol- 
 ted. They defied the landlords and flung 
 themselves upon the side of their country. 
 For this act they were punished. They 
 were disfranchised on the instant.^^ 
 
 One more point. The Catholic Relief 
 
8o A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 Act was so framed that O'Connell was 
 obliged to go back to Clare and seek re- 
 election. That is the story of Catholic 
 Emancipation ; and I venture to say that 
 a meaner story, a more disgraceful story, 
 has seldom been told. 
 
 "What you refuse," said Henry 
 Grattan, " refuse decently ; what you give, 
 give graciously." Emancipation was 
 neither' refused decently, nor given gra- 
 ciously. 
 
 I next turn to the subject of education. 
 In 1 83 1 the National Schools were estab- 
 lished. The Irish people— Catholic and 
 Protestant — wanted a system of denomina- 
 tional education, but the English people 
 would not tolerate such a system. Ireland 
 was to get not what Ireland wanted, but 
 what England wished ; and a system of 
 mixed education was founded. A Board 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 8 1 
 
 was formed to control the system. This 
 Board consisted of four Protestants and 
 two Catholics, in a country where Catho- 
 lics were to Protestants as four to one. 
 That was not all. The real management 
 of the system was placed in the hands of 
 two men — an English Protestant Epis- 
 copalian and a Scotch Presbyterian — 
 Archbishop Whately and Mr. Carlile. 
 Both set themselves to work to anglicise 
 the youth of the country. The books 
 were prepared with this view, and some 
 extracts from them are worth giving. 
 
 In one of the books we find this state- 
 ment about Ireland : ** On the east of 
 Ireland is England, where the Queen 
 lives ; many people who live in Ireland 
 were born in England, and we speak the 
 same language, and are called the same 
 nation." 
 
82 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 Let us see how, in another book, Scot- 
 land was dealt with: " Edward the First 
 annexed the Principality of Wales to his 
 kingdom, a.d. 1283. ^^^ afterwards at- 
 tempted to do the same with Scotland, 
 but was successfully resisted, particularly 
 by Sir William Wallace. This celebrated 
 patriot drove his troops out of the king- 
 dom. He was ultimately taken and basely 
 executed by Edward, and a new effort 
 projected to subdue the Scots. But before 
 the army of Edward entered Scotland he 
 died, leaving his crown and enterprise to 
 his son, Edward II. This prince followed 
 up the intention of his father, but was 
 defeated at Bannockburn, and thus the 
 independence of the Scots was estab- 
 lished." 
 
 It was allowable for Irish youths to 
 speak of Sir William Wallace as a *'cele- 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, 83 
 
 brated patriot," to think with pride on the 
 struggle of the Scots for independence ; 
 but it would have been treason to mention 
 the names of Art McMurrough or Hugh 
 O'Neil, to tell how Sarsfield fought or 
 Emmet died. Lines on the " Irish Harp," 
 by Miss Balfour, Campbell's poem, ** The 
 Harper," and Scott's lines, ''Breathes 
 there a man" were suppressed by Arch- 
 bishop Whately. But His Grace wrote the 
 following hymn instead : 
 
 " I thank the goodness and the grace 
 That on my birth have smiled, 
 And made me in these Christian days 
 A happy EngUsh child." 
 
 I must say, as a matter of bare justice, 
 that the government of the English in 
 Ireland has not been all tragedy : it has 
 sometimes been grotesque farce. Well, 
 
84 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 the national schools of Ireland have, in 
 defiance of the Government and by the 
 will of the people, been converted into 
 denominational institutions, and such they 
 are to-day. A History of Ireland — Mr. 
 Joyce's admirable little book — is now used, 
 but, I believe, only as a *' reading book." 
 The children, as I understand, are not 
 taught history out of it* — an absurd, but a 
 very characteristic limitation. England 
 has never known how to do the right thing, 
 in the right way, and at the right time. 
 
 In 1832 the first Irish Reform Bill 
 was passed. Like so many measures of 
 Irish "Reform" it was a sham. ** Re- 
 store the Forty Shilling Freeholders," 
 said O'Connell, in effect, "if you mean to 
 give a full and fair parliamentary franchise 
 to I reland. ' ' But the Government would do 
 
 * So I was told in a school I \dsited in 1900. 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, 85 
 
 nothing of the kind. *' You have a Forty 
 Shilling Freehold franchise in England/' 
 said the Irish leader. '' We had a 
 Forty Shilling Freehold franchise in Ireland 
 up to 1829, when you took it away. 
 Restore it, assimilate the English and 
 Irish franchises, and we will accept your 
 Bill." But the Government would not 
 yield. The opinion of Irishmen about 
 Ireland was not worth having. '* The 
 common notion,'* said Lord Campbell, 
 '' prevailing among Liberals in England 
 is that Ireland is wholly incapable of 
 law and liberty, and must be governed 
 by the sword." It would have been 
 more honest to govern her by the 
 *' sword " than to deceive the people 
 by fraudulent ''concessions." The Irish 
 Reform Act of 1832 starved the Irish 
 representation, so much so, that, in 
 
86 A HUNDRED FEARS 
 
 1850, Mr. Bright said, that, ''the repre- 
 sentation of Ireland was virtually extin- 
 guished."^"^ 
 
 It was not until 1884 that the English 
 and Irish franchises were assimilated — 
 that the Irish people got a fair chance of 
 making their voices heard with effect at 
 Parliamentary elections. 
 
 And now we come to the year 1833. 
 What was the condition of Ireland then ? 
 Let Mr. Lecky answer. "In 1833 — four 
 years after Emancipation — there was not 
 in Ireland a single Catholic judge or 
 stipendiary magistrate. All the high 
 sheriffs, the overwhelming majority of the 
 unpaid magistrates and of the grand- 
 jurors, the five inspectors-general, and the 
 thirty-two sub-inspectors of the police, 
 were Protestants. The chief towns were 
 in the hands of narrow^ corrupt, and for 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 8 7 
 
 the most part intensely bigoted corpora- 
 tions. For many years promotion had 
 been steadily withheld from those who ad- 
 vocated Catholic Emancipation, and the 
 majority of the people thus found their 
 bitterest enemies in the foremost places." 
 I pass to the Tithe War. In 
 1830-35, the population of Ireland was 
 7,943,940 ; of this number there were 
 6,427,712 Catholics, 642,356 Protestant 
 Episcopalians, and 852,064 Presbyterians. 
 The revenues of the State Church— the 
 Church of the 800,000 Protestant Episco- 
 palians — were made up in this way ; 
 Church lands, endowments. Church cess, 
 tithes. ^^ The Church cess was a rate levied 
 for the repairs of the churches. A com- 
 mittee was appointed to strike this rate. 
 On the committee there was not a single 
 Catholic, while almost all the ratepayers 
 
88 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 were Catholics. Here is a precious 
 example for you of that vital English 
 principle ; *' no taxation without re- 
 presentation." The vast majority of tithe- 
 payers were, of course, Catholics. Thus, 
 the unfortunate Irish peasant, in addition 
 to supporting the religion in which he 
 believed, was obliged to pay rents to 
 *' absentee" landlords, and tithes to the 
 ministers of an *' alien " Church.^* 
 
 I remember once hearing a story of an 
 inn in England which displayed a sign 
 showing the figures of a parson, a soldier, 
 and a farmer ; underneath was the scroll : 
 the parson said, *' I pray for all"; 
 the soldier said, ** I fight for all"; 
 and the farmer said, *' I pay for all." 
 The unfortunate Irish peasant paid for all. 
 
 And what was this peasant ? The poorest 
 of the poor. " What are the generality of 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 89 
 
 the tithe-payers ? " Dean Blakeley, the 
 Protestant Dean of Achonry, was asked 
 before a committee of the House of 
 Commons in 1832. He answered, "They 
 are generally very poor; so poor that 
 they cannot in some districts provide 
 places of worship for themselves." 
 
 *' On an Irish Sabbath morning,'* said 
 the just and generous Sydney Smith, " the 
 bell of a neat parish church summons to 
 worship only the parson, and an occasion- 
 ally conforming clerk ; while, two hundred 
 yards off, a thousand Catholics are huddled 
 together in a miserable hovel, and pelted 
 by all the storms of heaven." 
 
 But perhaps the best notion which you 
 can get of the extraordinary position of 
 the English Church in Ireland may be 
 gathered from a passage in the Greville 
 Memoirs^ which I shall read. ** Lord 
 
90 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 Duncannon," says Mr. Greville, "talked 
 much of the Irish Church, and of the 
 abominations that had been going on even 
 under his own eyes. One case he 
 mentioned, of a man whom he knows, who 
 holds a living of ^i,ooo a year close to 
 Bessborough. There is no house, no 
 church, and there are no Protestants in 
 the parish. He went there to be inducted, 
 and dined with Duncannon at Bessborough 
 the day after. Duncannon asked him how 
 he had managed the necessary form, and 
 he said he had been obliged to borrow the 
 clerk and three Protestants from a neigh- 
 bouring parish, and had read the morning 
 and evening service to them within the 
 ruined walls of an old abbey, and signed a 
 certificate that he had complied with the 
 forms prescribed bylaw." 
 
 I might produce much evidence to prove 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 9 1 
 
 the scandalous position of the English 
 State Church in Ireland, but the above 
 extract will suffice. ^'^ Well, in 1830 the 
 Irish peasant declared war against the Tithe 
 system. Dr. Doyle sounded the tocsin in 
 a famous sentence: "Let your hatred of 
 tithes," he said, '' be as great as your love 
 of justice." 
 
 The first encounter of the campaign was 
 at Gralgue-na-Managh. In the parish of 
 Gralgue there were 5,000 Catholics and — 
 63 Protestants. The parson demanded 
 tithes of the priest, the priest refused to 
 pay. The parson seized his horse, and 
 then the whole parish struck against tithes. 
 A little army was poured into the district 
 to seize the cattle of the peasants. There 
 was a force of 350 police, supported by a 
 troop of dragoons, and a detachment of the 
 I St Fusiliers — making in all 600 men. 
 
92 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 Well, these men stopped in the parish for 
 two months ; but the peasants by a series 
 of clever strategical movements kept the 
 cattle out of sight all the time, so that at 
 the end of the two months the ** English 
 army" marched away without having 
 captured so much as a pig. At New- 
 town Barry there was an encounter 
 between peasants and yeomanry. The 
 peasants tried to prevent the sale of 
 cattle seized for tithe. The yeomanry 
 were called out and ordered to fire on the 
 people. Twelve peasants were killed, and 
 twenty wounded. 
 
 At Thurles there was another encounter 
 between peasants and police, when more 
 peasants were shot down. 
 
 And then came the " battle " of Carrick- 
 shock. The peasants met the police hand 
 to hand, and foot to foot. There was a 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, 93 
 
 fierce fight which lasted for over an hour. 
 The chief of the police was killed. The 
 leader of the peasants — an old '98 man — 
 was killed. But the police force was com- 
 pletely routed, leaving many of their men 
 dead upon the field. Before the fight at 
 Carrickshock, O'Connell begged of the 
 Government to stay the collection of tithes. 
 ** You have," he said, ** appointed a com- 
 mittee to enquire into the whole subject. 
 Stay your hand until the committee 
 reports.'' ** No," said the Government, 
 **the law must be maintained." But 
 within four and- twenty hours after the 
 ** disaster" of Carrickshock, orders were 
 sent throughout the land to stop the 
 collection of tithes everywhere. How true 
 is the statement of John Bright, *' nothing 
 has been done for Ireland unless under 
 the influence of terror," 
 
94 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 At Doon, in the county of Limerick — 
 where the population was: Catholics 5,000, 
 Protestant i — the parson demanded tithes 
 of the priest ; the priest refused to pay. 
 His cow was seized and put up for sale. 
 Never, I venture to say, was a cow put up 
 for sale under such extraordinary circum- 
 stances. There was upon the field — 
 keeping the ground as the saying is — a 
 strong police force, a troop of 12th 
 Lancers, five companies of the 92nd High- 
 landers, and two pieces of artillery ; and 
 the cream of the joke is that the cow was 
 not sold after all. 
 
 At the same place some time afterwards 
 thirteen cows were put up for sale. The 
 cows were escorted to the scene of action 
 by the 5th Foot and the 92nd Highlanders. 
 But not one of the thirteen was sold. 
 
 At Wallstown there was an encounter 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 95 
 
 between peasants and police and soldiers. 
 The police were supported by the 92nd 
 Highlanders and the 14th Foot, all under 
 the command of three magistrates, two 
 generals, and one admiral ; the wonder 
 is that the Naval Brigade was not on the 
 spot too. The peasants stoutly resisted 
 the efforts of the authorities to value their 
 crops. A hand to hand fight ensued ; and 
 the peasants were not dispersed until the 
 14th Foot fired upon them, killing four 
 and wounding many. It is only just to 
 the officer in charge of the 14th Foot, 
 — Lieutenant Grierson — to say that he re- 
 fused again and again to fire until over- 
 borne by his superiors. 
 
 At Rathkeeran soon afterwards there 
 was another *' battle." The peasants 
 were led by a young girl, Catherine Foley. 
 They came into collision with the police ; 
 
96 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 the police fired, then Catherine Foley put 
 herself at the head of her people and 
 shouted, " Now at them, boys, before they 
 have time to load again,'' and the peasants 
 flung themselves upon their foes. There 
 was a fierce and deadly fight, the police 
 charging with the bayonet and the peas- 
 ants meeting the assault with pitchfork, 
 stick and slane. The fight was still raging 
 when the 70th Regiment arrived upon the 
 field and fired into the peasants, killing 
 twelve and wounding many. Among the 
 slain was Catherine Foley, shot full in the 
 face. 
 
 Other encounters continued to take 
 place until at length came the fight at 
 Rathcormac in 1834. At Rathcormac a 
 widow — a Catholic of course — owed 40s. 
 tithe, and the parson came to collect the 
 money, escorted by the 29th Regiment 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 97 
 
 and the 4th Royal Irish Dragoons. Once 
 more the peasants made a gallant stand. 
 '* I never " said one of the English 
 officers present, '' saw such determined 
 bravery as was shown by the people on 
 that day." While it was a question of 
 hand to hand fighting, the peasants held 
 their ground ; but, being without firearms, 
 they had to yield to powder and ball. 
 The soldiers fired upon them, with the 
 result that there were over fifty casualties, 
 killed or wounded. 
 
 That in brief — for I have not told the 
 half of it — is the story — the infamous 
 story — of the Tithe War. '* The moment," 
 says Sydney Smith, '* the very name of 
 Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to 
 bid adieu to common feeling, to common 
 prudence, and to common sense, and to 
 act with the barbarity of tyrants, and 
 fatuity of idiots." 
 
98 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 It is sometimes said; '* If Catholics were 
 oppressed in Ireland, Catholics were op- 
 pressed in England too." Yes, but the cases 
 are very different, '' In England, " said 
 O'Connell, " the Catholics are a sect, in 
 Ireland they are a nation." 
 
 Mr. Bright has dealt with the point too. 
 ''But" he says, *'some others say that 
 there is no ground of complaint because 
 the laws and institutions of Ireland are, 
 in the main, the same as the laws and in- 
 stitutions of England and Scotland. They 
 say, for example, that, if there be an 
 Established Church in Ireland, there is 
 one in England and one in Scotland, and 
 that Nonconformists are very numerous 
 both in England and Scotland ; but they 
 seem to forget this, that the Church in 
 England, or the Church in Scotland, is 
 not in any sense a foreign Church." In 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 99 
 
 these sentences Mr. Bright has gone to 
 the root of the whole matter. We all 
 know that Protestants have been per- 
 secuted in Catholic countries and that 
 Catholics have been persecuted in Pro- 
 testant countries. But the Irish case 
 stands outside all other cases in this re- 
 markable way. In all other cases you 
 have had a comparatively insignificant 
 minority oppressed by an overwhelming 
 majority — I do not justify the fact, I simply 
 state it — but Ireland is, I believe, the only 
 country in Europe where you have had an 
 overwhelming majority — the whole nation, 
 as O'Connell said — oppressed by an insig- 
 nificant minority. And why do we find 
 this unparalleled state of things ? Simply 
 because behind the minority in Ireland 
 is the immense power of a foreign Empire. 
 That is the bottom fact all the time in the 
 
lOO A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 Irish case, — the rule of the ** foreigner.'' 
 ** I do not believe," says Mr. Chamberlain 
 so late as the year 1885, ** that the great 
 majority of Englishmen have the slightest 
 conception of the system under which this 
 free nation attempts to rule the sister 
 country. It is a system which is founded 
 on the bayonets of 30,000 soldiers en- 
 camped permanently as in a hostile 
 country. It is a system as completely 
 centralised and bureaucratic as that 
 with which Russia governs Poland, or 
 as that which prevailed in Venice under 
 the Austrian rule. An Irishman at this 
 moment cannot move a step — he cannot 
 lift a finger in any parochial, municipal, 
 or educational work without being con- 
 fronted with, interfered with, controlled by, 
 an English official, appointed by a foreign 
 Government." 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. lOI 
 
 I pass on. 
 
 It is generally supposed that the Tithe 
 War came to an end in 1838, when the 
 Tithe Commutation Act was passed. This 
 is not so. The Tithe War was stopped, 
 in 1835, by ^^^ of the noblest men that 
 ever lived, Thomas Drummond. Drum- 
 mond stands apart from all the English 
 rulers of Ireland. He knew the country, 
 he loved the people, he felt the cause of 
 the nation. When he came to Ireland in 
 1835 he found the soil drenched with 
 blood. Yes, England has made rivers of 
 blood in Ireland which still flow between 
 the two nations. Drummond practically 
 struck down the hand of the *' foreigner." 
 It is only a man moved by the strongest 
 sense of justice, and possessing a will of 
 iron, that could do the things he did. He 
 said in effect to the Church: '* Yes, the 
 
I02 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 law says you shall have your tithes. Take 
 them. The law does not say that I am to 
 collect them for you. Take your tithes, 
 have your pound of flesh. But if you shed 
 one drop of Catholic blood you shall 
 answer to me." Drummond refused to 
 send a single policeman or soldier to 
 collect tithes ; and as the tithes could not 
 be collected without such aid, they were 
 scarcely collected at all. Finally, in 1838 
 the Tithe Commutation Act was passed. 
 It was a sham. " [By this Act,] " says 
 Mr. Joyce in his admirable Concise History 
 of Ireland^ "the tithes were put on the 
 landlord instead of the tenant. But the 
 tenant had to pay still, for the landlord 
 added the tithes to the rent." 
 
 The Government of Lord Melbourne, 
 kept in office by O'Connell and inspired 
 by Drummond, tried to rule justly. 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 103 
 
 O'Connell made an alliance with them. 
 He said in effect, '' I will suspend the 
 demand for the Repeal of the Union while 
 you are in office in order to see if it is 
 possible for any English Ministry to do 
 justice to the Irish people/' 
 
 The Melbourne Government did its best. 
 It was certainly kept in office by the Irish 
 vote ; nevertheless, I believe that Lord 
 Melbourne and his colleagues were sin- 
 cerely anxious to do justice to Ireland for 
 justice's sake. But the Government was a 
 deplorable failure. Its measures were 
 wrecked by the House of Lords, and the 
 '* predominant partner" backed the House 
 of Lords. Let me mention one of the 
 remedial measures of the Melbourne Min- 
 istry. In 1840 the municipal corporations 
 of Ireland were reformed. At that time 
 there were sixty-eight of those bodies in 
 
104 ^ HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 existence. How were they reformed, do you 
 think ? Fifty-eight out of the sixty-eight 
 were destroyed and a restricted franchise 
 was given to the remaining ten. No wonder 
 that even an English historian— Sir Erskine 
 May — should have described this measure 
 as '' virtually a scheme of municipal dis- 
 franchisement." Sir Boyle Roche once 
 said, in the Irish House of Commons, that 
 he was prepared to " destroy the whole of 
 the constitution to preserve the remainder." 
 Well, the Melbourne Government de- 
 stroyed almost the whole of the Irish 
 municipal corporations to preserve the 
 remainder. 
 
 On the fall of the Government, in 1841, 
 and the accession of Peel to office, 
 O'Connell once more unfurled the banner 
 of Repeal. 
 
 ** I have tried an experiment," he said, 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, 1 05 
 
 *' I suspended the demand for Repeal to 
 see if it was possible even for a friendly 
 English Government to do justice to 
 Ireland. It is not possible. The only 
 remedy is Repeal of the Union." I cannot 
 go into the details of this great movement ; 
 it would take a lecture to itself. I may say, 
 however, in the words of Sir Gavan Duffy, 
 that O'Connell's case rested on two main 
 propositions: — 
 
 1. " Ireland was fit for legislative 
 independence in position, population, 
 and natural advantages. Five indepen- 
 dent Kingdoms in Europe possessed less 
 territory or people ; and her station in 
 the Atlantic, between the old world and the 
 new, designed her to be the entrepot of both, 
 if the watchful jealousy of England had not 
 rendered her natural advantages nugatory. 
 
 2. ^' She was entitled to legislative 
 
 H 
 
J06 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 independence; the Parliament of Ireland 
 was as ancient as the Parliament of 
 England, and had not derived its existence 
 from any Charter of the British Crown, 
 but sprung out of the natural rights of 
 freemen. Its independence, long claimed, 
 was finally recognised and confirmed by 
 solemn compact between the two nations in 
 1782; that compact has since been shame- 
 fully violated, indeed, but no statute of limi- 
 tation ran against the rights of a nation."^ 
 The Repeal movement was, of course, 
 thoroughly constitutional. " Give us 
 back," said O'Connell, " the Parliament 
 of which you robbed us forty years 
 ago, and we will close the account." 
 "There is nothing so safe," said John 
 Bright, "as public meetings." The 
 Repeal movement was a movement of 
 
 * Youu" Iriland. 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 107 
 
 public meetings. Everything was done in 
 the light of open day. And yet how was 
 O'Connell treated for making a demand, 
 mark you, practically the same as that 
 made by Mr. Gladstone in our own day ? 
 He was indicted for seditious conspiracy. 
 It looks like a joke that O'Connell, 
 who did all things in the open, 
 should have been indicted for conspiracy. 
 It is, however, a grave fact. And how 
 was he tried? O'ConnelFs trial was 
 the scandal of the age. " The most 
 eminent Catholic in the Empire," says Sir 
 Gavan Duffy, *' a man whose name was 
 familiar to every Catholic in the world, 
 was placed upon his trial in the Catholic me- 
 tropolis of a Catholic country before four 
 judges and twelvejurors, among whom there 
 was not a single Catholic." Of course, 
 O'Connell was found guilty and sent to gaol. 
 
I08 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 But the infamy of the trialwas too much even 
 for the English House of Lords. The convic- 
 tion was quashed, the trial was condemned 
 as " a mockery, a delusion and a snare,'' 
 and O'Connell was set free. But the Repeal 
 movement was put down by brute force. 
 
 Out of the Repeal movement sprang the 
 Young Ireland movement. I cannot go 
 into the history of that movement either. 
 I refer you again to Sir Gavan Duffy's 
 books. Young Ireland^ Four Years of Irish 
 History^ The Life of Thomas Davis. The 
 "Young Irelanders " began as constitu- 
 tional agitators. Their demand, like 
 O'Connell's, was simply for the restora- 
 tion of the Irish Parliament. But they 
 gradually drifted into revolution, and the 
 rising of 1848 was the result. 
 
 But before '48 came, the work of the 
 Young Irelanders was done. In their 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. lOg 
 
 famous organ — The Nation — they revived 
 the memory and the teachings of Wolfe 
 Tone ; and the seed they sowed blossomed 
 into fruit in the Fenian organisation. 
 Young Ireland was the child of Re- 
 peal ; Fenianism was the child of Young 
 Ireland. 
 
 The rising of '48 was, as you know, 
 quickly put down ; but the spirit of the 
 nation — though a terrible famine had swept 
 over the land, decimating the people — 
 remained unsubdued. I will not linger 
 over the ghastly story of this famine, nor 
 of the incapacity shown by the Govern- 
 ment in dealing with it, nor of the horrible 
 evictions by which it was followed. I will 
 only say, that three years after the famine 
 the population of Ireland, which three 
 years before the famine was over eight 
 millions, sank to six millions and a-half. 
 
no A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 In 1850, an agitation for the reform 
 of the Land Laws was set on foot by 
 Gavan Duffy, Frederick Lucas, George 
 Henry Moore. Enough has never been 
 made of the criminality of the English 
 Parliament in neglecting all appeals to 
 amend the Irish Land Laws. The very 
 life of the country depended on a good 
 system of Land Laws ; and yet successive 
 Governments turned a deaf ear to all 
 appeals and remonstrances in behalf of 
 the people. 
 
 In 1843. 9- Royal Commission — the 
 Devon Commission — had been appointed 
 to inquire into the whole subject. In 1845 
 the Commission reported, condemning the 
 existing system, and urging the legislature 
 to take steps for giving the tenant security 
 of tenure. But nothing was done. Be- 
 tween 1845 and 1870 Bill after Bill was 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 1 1 r 
 
 introduced for the purpose of giving effect 
 to the recommendations of the Devon 
 Commission, and of regulating the relations 
 between landlord and tenant in such a way 
 as would secure the proper cultivation of 
 the soil, and so save the people from 
 chronic poverty, and the country from 
 chronic outrage. But not one single 
 measure of reform todk its place in the 
 Statute book. Nay, more, in i860 a Bill 
 was passed, which, ignoring the recom- 
 mendation of the Devon Commission, 
 made the position of the unfortunate 
 tenant worse than it had been before ;^ 
 and Lord Palmerston thought that he had 
 disposed of the Irish Land Question for all 
 time by the flippant remark, "• that tenant 
 right was landlord wrong." But while 
 English Ministers were sitting with folded 
 arms, viewing the people of Ireland with 
 
112 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 contempt, and scornfully rejecting the mode- 
 rate appeals of constitutional agitators, a 
 great Irish movement was going on under- 
 ground. In 1858, the Fenian organisation 
 — an organisation which aimed at the 
 separation of Ireland from England — was 
 founded by James Stephens and John 
 O'Mahony. It grew rapidly in Ireland 
 and America. As Mr. Gladstone said, 
 "Its root was in Ireland, its branches in 
 the United States." 
 
 In 1865, Fenianism burst like a bolt 
 from the blue. Fenian leaders were 
 arrested, the Habeas Corpus Act was 
 suspended, troops were poured into the 
 country, ships were sent to guard the 
 coast, the Government was thrown into a 
 state of alarm and panic. Let me give 
 you the substance of a speech made by 
 John Francis Maguire in the House of 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 1 1 3 
 
 Commons in 1868 to show that I do not 
 exaggerate. 
 
 Mr. Maguire, in moving a resolution on 
 the state of Ireland, said the country pre- 
 sented the aspect of a nation on the eve 
 of a great struggle. It was occupied by 
 a powerful army *'such as we might 
 expect to see in Poland under Russian 
 rule." Its cities and towns were strongly 
 garrisoned, its barracks were filled to 
 overflowing, and detachments of horse and 
 foot were quartered in districts where the 
 face of a soldier had never been seen 
 before. Even the police barracks had been 
 converted into "semi-fortresses," with 
 '* stanchions, iron shutters, iron doors, and 
 loop-holed masonry." Formidable fleets 
 lay in the principal harbours, open boats 
 were to be found in the rivers and remote 
 creeks, and swift cruisers kept watch and 
 
 *<=\ 
 
114 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 ward round the coast. The gaols were 
 filled with political prisoners, and " con- 
 stitutional liberty was on a par with 
 that enjoyed by the subjects of the 
 Emperor of Morocco, or the King of 
 Abyssinia." 
 
 Well, the result of this state of things 
 was that public attention in England came 
 at length to be riveted on Ireland, and 
 the English State Church was dis- 
 established, and the Land Act of 1870 
 passed. I say deliberately, that, Ireland 
 owes these two measures to the Fenian 
 organisation, and I shall prove the state- 
 ment up to the hilt. 
 
 First, if I may say so, I will give nega- 
 tive proof When Mr. Gladstone intro- 
 duced his famous Church resolution, in 
 1868, 100 out of 105 Irish members took 
 part in the division. Well, how many do 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 1 1 5 
 
 you think voted for the resolution ? Fifty- 
 five ; and forty-five voted against. ^*^ 
 
 Well, I need not tell you that the 
 English public would not care three rows 
 of pins for an Irish majority of ten. This 
 is what I call negative proof. I now shall 
 give you positive proof ^' I shall call dis- 
 tinguished authorities. First and fore- 
 most I shall take Mr. Gladstone himself. 
 Here is what he said : "It has only been 
 since the termination of the American war, 
 and the appearance of Fenianism, that the 
 mind of this country has been greatly 
 turned to the consideration of Irish 
 affairs." 
 
 Again in the House of Commons in 
 April, 1868, in reply to Mr. Hardy, Mr. 
 Gladstone said : '^ The right hon. gentle- 
 man says, ' Why did you not deal with 
 the Irish Church in 1866, when you 
 
Il6 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 asked for the suspension of the Habeas 
 Corpus Act ? ' My answer is, for a per- 
 fectly plain and simple reason. In the 
 first place, circumstances were not ripe 
 then as they are now. Circumstances, I 
 repeat, were not ripe, in so far as we did not 
 then know so much as we know now with 
 respect to the intensity of Fenianism." 
 
 I now take a more remarkable state- 
 ment still. In 1879, exactly ten years 
 after the event, when Mr. Gladstone had 
 abundant time for reflection and considera- 
 tion, he used these words, addressing a 
 meeting at Dalkeith : — '^ What happened 
 in the case of the Irish Church ? That 
 down to the year 1865, ^-nd the dissolution 
 of that year, the whole question of the 
 Irish Church was dead; nobody cared 
 about it, nobody paid attention to it in 
 England. Circumstances occurred which 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, . 117 
 
 drew the attention of the people to the 
 Irish Church. I said myself, in 1865, and 
 I believed, that it was out of the range of 
 practical politics. When it came to this 
 — that a great gaol in the heart of the 
 metropolis was broken open under cir- 
 cumstances which drew the attention of 
 the English people to the state of Ireland, 
 and when in Manchester a policeman was 
 murdered in the execution of his duty, at 
 once the whole country became alive to 
 Irish questions, and the question of the 
 Irish Church revived. It came within the 
 range of practical politics." '^ 
 
 But it is sometimes said, ** That was 
 only Mr. Gladstone." Other authorities, 
 however, may be cited. I shall quote 
 Lord Dufferin. 
 
 *' I entirely agree," says Lord Dufferin, 
 
 * These occurrences were occasioned by attempts to 
 release Fenian prisoners. 
 
Il8 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 *' with the noble Earl [Granville], and 
 with the late Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 
 [Lord Kimberley], that the attention of this 
 country and the conscience of England 
 with respect to this question [the Church], 
 were much stimulated, if not altogether 
 awakened, by the fact of Fenianism." 
 
 I will quote Lord Derby. Writing in the 
 Nineteenth Century^ in 1881, he says: — '*A 
 few desperate men, applauded by the 
 whole body of the Irish people for their 
 daring, showed England what Irish feel- 
 ing really was, made plain to us the depth 
 of a discontent whose existence we had 
 scarcely suspected, and the rest followed 
 of course. "^^ 
 
 No wonder that Lord John Russell, 
 surveying the whole history of Ireland, 
 should have said: '*Your oppressions 
 have taught the Irish to hate, your con- 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, 1 1 9 
 
 cessions to brave you. You have exhibited 
 to them how.scanty was the stream of your 
 bounty, and how full the tribute of your 
 fear/' 
 
 Well, the Land Act of 1870, which pur- 
 ported to secure to the tenant, on eviction, 
 compensation for his improvements, and in 
 certain cases for disturbance, was a failure. 
 Before the Act was passed, Mr. Glad- 
 stone said that " notices to quit fell like 
 snow-flakes" on the tenants. After the Act 
 was passed "notices to quit 'continued' 
 to fall like snow-flakes" still. 
 
 The measure failed utterly — as many 
 Irish members warned the Government it 
 would fail — in its main purpose, viz,, to 
 prevent arbitrary evictions and the exac- 
 tion of exorbitant rents. A fresh appeal 
 was made to Parliament to take up the 
 unfinished work and carry it through 
 
I20 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 successfully to the end. But Parliament 
 treated these appeals with characteristic 
 contempt. Between 1870 and 1880 Bill 
 after Bill was introduced by moderate 
 constitutional agitators, for the purpose of 
 giving the tenant the fixity of tenure which 
 the Act of 1870 had failed to secure. But 
 all these Bills were ignominiously rejected. 
 Irishmen were regarded as the most 
 unreasonable and unaccountable beings in 
 the world, because they again approached 
 Parliament for further measures of re- 
 dress. Then Charles Stewart Parnell and 
 the Land League came. I do not want to 
 say much about the Land League agita- 
 tion. I am rather getting on to dangerous 
 ground. But I will say this, a more law- 
 less, a more violent, organisation has 
 scarcely ever existed in any country. And 
 I will supplement that statement by 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, I 2 1 
 
 another. If it had not been violent and 
 lawless it would not have succeeded. An 
 Irishman once said, that, the only chance 
 you had of making an impression on 
 an English minister, where Ireland was 
 concerned, was by coming to him 
 with the head of a landlord in one hand, 
 or the tail of a cow in the other. That 
 was how the Land League came, 
 and the Land League triumphed. In 
 1 88 1 the Government surrendered at dis- 
 cretion, and another Land Act was 
 carried amidst scenes of lawlessness, 
 violence, anarchy, outrage, panic and 
 alarm scarcely paralleled even in the 
 troubled history of Ireland. This measure 
 — a great revolutionary measure — under- 
 mined the power of the landlords. It set 
 up courts to fix rents, to stand between 
 landlord and tenant, and see that justice 
 
122 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 was done. It also facilitated the pur- 
 chase of their farms by tenants, and, 
 altogether, marked a departure in the 
 social, and economical history of the 
 country, favourable, in the highest degree, 
 to the interests of the cultivators of the 
 soil. 
 
 I have said that there would have been 
 no Land Act had there been no Land 
 League. I will once more cite unques- 
 tionable authorities in support of my state- 
 ment. 
 
 *' I must make one admission," said 
 Mr. Gladstone, " and that is that without 
 the Land League the Act of 1881 would 
 not at this moment be on the Statute 
 book." 
 
 ''Fixity of tenure," said Lord Derby, 
 " has been the direct result of two causes 
 — Irish outrage and Parliamentary obstruc- 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 1^3 
 
 tion. The Irish know it as well as we. 
 Not all the influence and eloquence of 
 Mr. Gladstone would have prevailed on 
 the English House of Commons to do 
 what has been done in the matter of Irish 
 tenant right, if the answer to all objections 
 had not been ready : ' How else are we to 
 govern Ireland ? ' " 
 
 It is said by our most impartial judges 
 and rulers that we Irish are an " unreason- 
 able people." We were forsooth ''un- 
 reasonable" when we demanded Catholic 
 Emancipation, Educational Reform, Tithe 
 Reform, Church Reform, and above all 
 Land Reform. Yet our " unreasonable" 
 demands have been granted under the 
 pressure of our '* unreasonable " methods ; 
 and lives there an Englishman who will now 
 condemn as ''unreasonable" a single one 
 of the measures which have been placed 
 
124 A HUNDRED FEARS 
 
 on the Statute book by the energy and per- 
 severance of Irishmen?* 
 
 I must pass quickly over the remaining 
 subjects. 
 
 In 1870 the Home Rule movement — a 
 movement for the establishment of an 
 Irish Parliament and an Irish Executive for 
 the management of Irish affairs, reserv- 
 ing to the Imperial Parliament the control 
 of Imperial affairs— was founded by Isaac 
 Butt In Ireland, the movement grew 
 rapidly ; in England, slowly. At the 
 General Election of 1874, Ireland sent 
 59 Home Rulers to the English Parlia- 
 ment. Butt did not, at this time, demand 
 Home Rule point blank from the English 
 Minister ; he asked only for an inquiry, but 
 the Minister would not grant an inquiry. 
 
 * Another Land Act was passed in 1885, and another in 1887. 
 The impetus given to Land Reform by the Land League move- 
 ment has never been checked. 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 1 2 5 
 
 Butt framed a ''pledge" which every 
 candidate for an English constituency 
 was bound to take before obtaining the 
 Irish vote. This ^'pledge" ran: ''To 
 vote for the appointment of a Select 
 Committee to inquire into and report upon 
 the motive, extent, and grounds of the 
 demand made by a large proportion of the 
 Irish people for the restoration to Ireland 
 of an Irish Parliament with power to 
 control the internal affairs of the country," 
 Between 1874 and 1877 there were only 
 eight English Home Rulers in Parliament.* 
 In April, 1877, there was an election at 
 Salford. The story of the Salford election 
 is little known ; it ought to be well known, 
 for it throws a curious light on the progress 
 
 * Mr. Barran (Leeds), Mr. Jacob Bright (Manchester), Mr. 
 Greenley (Sunderland), Mr. Hibbert (Oldham), Sir Wilfred 
 Lawson (Carlisle), Mr. Macdonald (Stafford) Mr. R. N. 
 Philips (Bury), Mr. Cowen (Newcastle). With the exception 
 of Carlisle, the Irish were a power in all these constituencies. 
 
126 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 of Home Rule in England. Mr. Joseph 
 Kay, Q.C., a Liberal of wide sympathies, 
 possessing a knowledge of Ireland, and 
 holding advanced views on the question of 
 Land Reform, stood for Salford, and 
 agreed to take the " pledge." He was 
 not a Home Ruler. But he said in effect ; 
 *' let uSj at least, inquire into the subject ; 
 let us hear the Irish case ; let us find out 
 what are the grievances of Ireland, and try, 
 if we can, to remove them without granting 
 Home Rule." Kay was an honest man, 
 and wished to know the truth of the 
 situation. But the Liberal wire pullers 
 thought only of winning the seat — without 
 the ''pledge" if possible, but with it if 
 necessary. The following extracts from 
 letters written at the time by influential 
 Liberals are interesting and instructive. 
 Thus, one Liberal writes from the House of 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 127 
 
 Commons : — '' I have had a conversation 
 this evening about the Home Rulers. It is 
 most essential that the promise to vote for 
 Mr. Butt's motion [the ''pledge"] should 
 be given cheerfully [by Mr. Kay], and at 
 once, as both Mr. Butt and Lord Francis 
 Ccnyngham assure me that such a promise 
 will secure the cordial and thorough 
 support of the Irish voters, and, without 
 such promise, whatever else is said, many 
 will abstain, and may possibly, under 
 Bishop Vaughan's influence, go to the 
 other side." Another Liberal wrote : — " I 
 
 have had a long talk with S and J 
 
 to-day. They are both against any promise 
 to the Irish faction, but I feel a promise 
 will be necessary if we are to wiji^ Ulti- 
 mately S and J agreed that it was 
 
 ''necessary" for Mr. Kay to make the 
 "promise" in order to "win." J- 
 
128 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 wrote; ''I understand that the Irish vote 
 is so large, that it would be necessary for 
 the Liberal candidate to support Mr. 
 Butt's motion for an inquiry on the subject 
 of Home Rule. Of course, I do not know 
 Mr. Kay's views, but I have no doubt 
 that this difficulty can be overcome." 
 Later on, another Liberal wrote disposing- 
 oi the whole difficulty in the following 
 masterly fashion ; " I think Kay should go 
 in for the inquiry into Home Rule. I got 
 that up with Mr. Butt at the Manchester 
 election, and the Tory, Mr. Powell, swal- 
 lowed it. If it will get the Catholic vote 
 I think Mr. Kay should swallow it 
 too. It means nothing, and I got it up 
 with Mr. Butt for that very reason.'' 
 There is a Machiavellian touch about this 
 epistle which is magnificent. Mr. Kay 
 carried out his original intention of 
 promising to vote for Butt's motion. But 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 129 
 
 he lost the election. Then the Liberals 
 were scandalised, and ascribed his defeat 
 to ''Home Rule crotchets," practically 
 making him, who had played the game 
 honestly, responsible. *' London and 
 other newspapers at a distance," 
 wrote a Salford supporter of Mr. Kay, 
 *'may attribute the defeat to the con- 
 cession to Home Rule. . . . How is it 
 that this burning zeal for putting down 
 Home Rule crotchets on the part of the 
 Liberal newspapers, did not manifest itself 
 when a Liberal Home Ruler was elected 
 for Manchester ? Verily, nothing suc- 
 ceeds like success." And so it was; 
 the question of Home Rule in England 
 was a question of expediency pure and 
 simple. But soon events began to move 
 rapidly. 
 
 In 1875 Charles Stewart Parnell had 
 entered Parliament. In 1879 he was a power 
 
130 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 in the country. He combined all the dis- 
 affected in Ireland, and all the Irish revo- 
 lutionists in America in one solid compact 
 *'army of rebellion.'* It is scarcely an 
 exaggeration to say that his very name 
 soon became a '* terror" in the councils of 
 English Statesmen. At the General Elec- 
 tion of 1880 Ireland returned 60 Home 
 Rulers against 44 Unionists. Between 
 1880 and 1885 a storm of revolution 
 broke over the land. Parnell defied 
 the Government, and roused the people 
 to furious resistance to the law. The 
 Habeas Corpus Act was practically 
 suspended. Irish Nationalists were flung 
 Into jail. Dynamite plots, and rumours 
 of dynamite plots, filled the air. There 
 was an epidemic of outrages. The Irish 
 Parliamentary Party were. In the words 
 of the English Minister, practically 
 ''steeped to the lips in treason." It was 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 1 3 1 
 
 in these circumstances that a sweeping 
 measure of Land Reform was granted in 
 1 88 1, and Household Suffrage extended 
 to Ireland in 1884. 
 
 In 1885, there was another General 
 Election. Eighty-six Irish Home Rulers 
 were returned. Several seats were captured 
 in Ulster. Donegal returned four Home 
 Rulers, Cavan two, Monaghan two, Fer- 
 managh two, Londonderry one, Tyrone 
 three, Armagh one, Down one. The 
 stronghold of the ** English garrison" 
 had been stormed, and citadel after citadel 
 fell at the assaults of the Nationalists. 
 
 The upshot of the election in the three 
 kingdoms, and in the principality of 
 Wales, was that the Irish held the 
 balance between English parties.* No 
 government could be formed without Irish 
 aid. Then Mr. Gladstone became a 
 
 * Liberals, 335 ; Tories, 249 ; Irish Home Rulers, 86, 
 
132 A HUNDRED FEARS 
 
 Home Ruler, and he carried the bulk of 
 the Liberal Party into the Home Rule 
 ranks with him. Parnell had out-ma- 
 noeuvred the Liberal leader, and the Tory 
 leader, apparently, only escaped by the skin 
 of his teeth.* In 1886 Mr. Gladstone, 
 then Prime Minister of England, intro- 
 duced a Home Rule Bill — a Bill for the 
 establishment of an Irish Parliament — 
 but it was defeated by a combination 
 of Tories and dissentient Liberals, and 
 the Government of was overthrown. ^^ 
 I care not to dwell upon the circum- 
 stances under which Mr. Gladstone be- 
 came a Home Ruler. But I do wish to 
 remind you of the splendid fight v/hich he 
 made for Ireland between 1886 and 1893. 
 Few Irishmen ever threw themselves into 
 
 * Lord Carnarvon, the Tory Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, had 
 approached Pamell before the adhesion of the Liberal Party. — 
 See Life of Pariull. 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY, 1 3 3 
 
 the Irish cause with more earnestness, more 
 energy, and more determination to stand 
 or fall by that cause, than did this magni- 
 ficent old man during the closing years of 
 his remarkable life. Let that fact never 
 be forgotten. 
 
 In 1892 Mr Gladstone was once more 
 Prime Minister of England. In 1893 he 
 introduced another Home Rule Bill, and 
 carried it through the House of Commons 
 by the Irish vote. But it was defeated in 
 the Lords and abandoned. In 1894 Mr. 
 Gladstone retired from public life, and 
 Home Rule, so far as England was con- 
 cerned, disappeared, for the moment, with 
 him. But the end is not yet. 
 
 I shall not go into the story of the fall 
 of Parnell, and of all that has happened 
 since. I have, indeed, perhaps brought 
 this lecture far too much up to date as it is. 
 
134 -4 HUNDRED YEARS. 
 
 And yet I am tempted to mention, and 
 only to mention one more "concession" 
 before I sit down — the Local Government 
 Act of 1898 — a great revolutionary measure 
 which has annihilated the power of the 
 ''English garrison" in Ireland, and 
 thrown the local administration of 
 the country into the hands of the 
 people/^ 
 
 And now I must close this lecture. I 
 will leave it to you to sum up the gains 
 and losses of the century. Gains — sub- 
 stantial gains — there unquestionably have 
 been. Political disabilities have been 
 almost entirely swept away, religious in- 
 equalities have been almost entirely 
 removed ; the condition of the cultivators 
 of the soil has been greatly improved ; 
 and Parliamentary franchises have been 
 granted, which, I will not say enable the 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 1 3 5 
 
 Irish people to make their voices heard in 
 the English Parliament, for I don't know 
 that that would do much good, but which 
 enable Irishmen to make themselves 
 troublesome in the English House of Com- 
 mons, and that may do very much good. 
 
 Against these gains there are losses to 
 be set, or, perhaps, I ought rather to say, 
 there is one great loss to be set; the 
 decline — the terrible decline — in the popu- 
 lation of the country. In 1848 the popu- 
 lation of Ireland was 8,000,000. In 1889 
 it was 4,700,000; this is altogether a 
 phenomenal condition of things. I do not 
 know that there is anything like it in the 
 history of Europe during the last hundred 
 years. And while our population has been 
 going down, our taxes have been going 
 up. I state, upon the authority of Mr. 
 Gladstone, that while the " civil charges" 
 
136 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 in Great Britain, with a population of more 
 than 30,000,000, are %s. per head, the 
 " civil charges " in Ireland, with a popu- 
 lation of 4,700,000, are 165., exactly 
 double. The disappearance of the Irish 
 people from Ireland has been asubject of joy 
 to the English press. " In a short time," 
 once wrote The Times, "a Catholic Celt will 
 be as rare on the banks of the Shannon as a 
 Red Indian on the shores of Manhattan." 
 
 Well, Catholic Celts are yet to be seen 
 on the banks of the Shannon, and for that 
 matter on the banks of the Thames too ; 
 and if the Irish Celt has replaced the Red 
 Indian on the shores of Manhattan, Eng- 
 land has not been a gainer by the change. 
 This emigration from Ireland has not been 
 all loss. Every man who leaves Ireland is 
 not lost to Ireland. 
 
 Irishmen are no doubt scattered all over 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. 137 
 
 the world. I know not how many millions 
 of Irish there are in the United States. 
 Well, wherever those men are they do 
 not forget Ireland. During the struggles 
 of the past twenty or thirty years the 
 Irish in America have helped the Irish 
 at home financially and politically, and 
 it is in no small measure owing to their help 
 that the efforts of Ireland have been so often 
 crowned with success. I had a conversa- 
 tion with a local politician in Belfast last 
 autumn. He was a Nationalist and a 
 Catholic ; though perhaps a Catholic first. 
 We talked about the war, which had just 
 broken out. I asked him what side he 
 was on, "Well," he said, "I think I am 
 on the side of England. After all, we are 
 too rough on the English. We denounce 
 them too much. They have done some 
 good." '' What good ? " said I. '' Well," 
 
138 A HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 said he, "' they have scattered the Irish 
 people all over the world, and wherever 
 the Irish go they carry the Catholic religion 
 with them. So that, after all, I think 
 England is doing the work of God though 
 she doesn't know it." 
 
 Well, that is a view — an original view — 
 and I give it. I had also a conversation 
 with a distinguished English statesman. 
 We talked about Home Rule. He 
 summed up the argument by saying with 
 much cheerfulness : '' Well, one thing will 
 settle the question, your population won't 
 last. It is decreasing, and it will continue 
 to decrease;" and he smiled benevolently 
 all over the room. 
 
 He, too, found consolation in the fact 
 that the Irish were going with a venge- 
 ance. Well, he may be doomed to dis- 
 appointment. Some day, perhaps, the 
 
OF IRISH HISTORY. r 3 9 
 
 Irish may come back with a vengeance. 
 I, at all events, do not take a gloomy view 
 of the future. I have faith in my race. I 
 believe that the qualities which have pre- 
 served the Irish Celt, under oppressions 
 and persecutions scarcely paralleled in the 
 history of any other civilised country, will 
 preserve him to the end.^^ 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Note I. 
 
 {See -page 51.) 
 
 "[In 1778] the Mayor of Belfast called upon the 
 Government to place a garrison in that town to 
 protect it against the French, and was informed that 
 half a troop of dismounted cavalry and half a troop 
 of invalids were all that could be spared to defend 
 the commercial capital of Ireland. Then arose one 
 of those movements of enthusiasm that occur two 
 or three times in the history of a nation. The cry 
 to arms passed through the land, and was speedily 
 responded to by all parties, and by all creeds. Be- 
 ginning among the Protestants of the north, the 
 movement soon spread, though in a less degree, to 
 other parts of the island, and the war of religions 
 and of castes that had so long divided the people, 
 vanished as a dream, the inertness produced by 
 centuries of oppression was speedily forgotten, and 
 replaced by the consciousness of recovered strength. 
 From Howth to Connemara, from the Giant's 
 Causeway to Cape Clear, the spirit of enthusiasm 
 had passed, and the creation of an army had begun. 
 The military authorities who could not defend the 
 country could not refuse to arm those who had arisen 
 to supply their place. Though the population of 
 Ireland was little more than half of what it is at 
 
APPENDIX. 141 
 
 present [1871], 60,000 men soon assembled, dis- 
 ciplined and appointed as a regular army, fired by 
 the strongest enthusiasm, and moving as a single 
 man." — Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, pp. 
 79-80. 
 
 Note II. 
 
 {See page 51.) 
 
 " The Government at length yielded. The 
 Duke of Portland was sent over as Lord Lieutenant, 
 with permission to concede the required boon. At the 
 last moment an effort was made to procure a delay, 
 but Grattan refused to grant it; and on the i6th of 
 April, 1782, amid an outburst of almost unparalleled 
 enthusiasm, the declaration of independence was 
 brought forward. On that day a large body of the 
 Volunteers were drawn up in front of the old Parlia- 
 ment House of Ireland. Far as the eye could stretch 
 the morning sun glanced upon their weapons and 
 upon their flags; and it was through their parted 
 ranks that Grattan passed to move the emancipation 
 of his country. . . . Doubtless on that day many 
 minds reverted to the long night of oppression and 
 crime through which Ireland had struggled towards 
 that conception which had been as the pillar of fire 
 on her path. But now at last the promised land 
 seemed reached. The blessings of independence 
 were reconciled with the blessings of connection; 
 and in an emancipated Parliament the patriot saw 
 the guarantee of the future prosperity of his country, 
 and the Shekinah of liberty in the land." — Ihid., 
 pp. 112, 113. 
 
142 APPENDIX. 
 
 Note III. 
 {See page 53.) 
 
 " We have seen that it had been the first wish 
 of Pitt and Dundas in England and of Cornwallis 
 in Ireland to make Catholic emancipation a part of 
 the Union; and when this cause was found to be 
 impracticable, there is good reason to believe that 
 Canning recommended Pitt to drop the Union until 
 a period arrived when it would be possible to carry 
 the two measures concurrently. Wiser advice was 
 probably never given, but it was not followed, and 
 a Protestant Union was carried, with an under- 
 standing that when it was accomplished the Ministry 
 would introduce the measure of Catholic emanci- 
 pation into an Imperial Parliament. It was this 
 persuasion or understanding that secured the neu- 
 trality and acquiescence of the greater part of the 
 Irish Catholics, without which, in the opinion of the 
 best judges, the Union could never have been 
 carried." — Lecky, History of Ireland in the 'Eigh- 
 teenth Century, vol. v., pp. 428, 429. 
 
 " I cannot leave [the Catholics] as I found them. 
 I have raised no unauthorised expectations, and I 
 have acted throughout with the sanction of the 
 Cabinet." — Lord Cornwallis, Cornwallis Corres- 
 pondence, vol. iii., p. 238. 
 
 Note IV. 
 {See page 53.) 
 The 5th Article of the Act of Union provided : 
 
APPENDIX, 143 
 
 " That the Churches of England and Ireland as now 
 by law established be united into one Protestant 
 Episcopal Church, to be called the United Church 
 of England and Ireland; and the doctrine, worship, 
 discipline, and government of the said United 
 Church shall be, and shall remain in full force for 
 ever, as the same are now by law established for 
 the Church of England, and the continuance and 
 preservation of the said United Church, as the 
 Established Church of England and Ireland, shall 
 be deemed, and taken to be an essential and funda- 
 mental part of the Union." 
 
 Note V. 
 
 {See -page 64.) 
 
 Poulet Scrope, M.P., wrote to Sir R. Peel in 
 1844:— 
 
 " Though God gave the land of Ireland to the 
 people of Ireland — to the many — the law has given 
 it unconditionally to the few. Even in the best of 
 times, if the landlord refuses to any peasant the hold- 
 ing of a plot of land, if other starving wretches out- 
 bid his offer for the patch of soil whose possession is 
 as necessary to his existence as the air he breathes — 
 if sickness or misfortune prevent his punctual pay- 
 ment of the enormous rent he has promised, and he 
 and his family are ejected (by the cheap and sum- 
 mary process which landlord-made law provides) 
 from his cabin which sheltered him from his birth 
 and his fathers before him — what remains? He 
 
144 APPENDIX, 
 
 must die ! The law, at least, says so. The law al- 
 lows him no other alternative. He may contrive to 
 prolong a precarious existence on the charity of his 
 poor neighbours (as he asks in vain from the rich), 
 or he may take by force or stealth what is necessary 
 to preserve life. But the law does not recognise 
 these means of living; on the contrary, the law for- 
 bids them. The law says, if he cannot rent land or 
 obtain work, he shall starve. This is the real wrong 
 — this is the giant grievance — this is the most crying, 
 the most urgent of the just complaints of the Irish 
 people. And it is against this state of the law that 
 they combine in their Whiteboy associations — asso- 
 ciations that will never be put down until the law 
 extends that protection to the lives of the poor, 
 which it now lavishes almost exclusively on the pro- 
 perty of the rich. And who will say that the 
 peasantry ought not in the state of the law to com- 
 bine for their mutual protection? Is there no point 
 of oppression at which resistance to the law becomes 
 a duty? We have the recent authority of the head 
 of the law for the principle — a principle as old as it 
 is true — that allegiance is only due where protection 
 is afforded; and where the law refuses its protec- 
 tion it cannot claim allegiance. Does the law, then, 
 protect the Irish peasant ? Not from starvation. It 
 does not protect him from being thrust out of his 
 home and little holding into absolute destitution, to 
 perish on the highways of famine, or to waste away 
 in those abodes of filth, misery, and disease in the 
 suburbs of the towns, which Dr. Doyle so faithfully 
 describes as the ordinary refuge and dying place of 
 
APPENDIX. 145 
 
 the ejected cottier and his family. It does not pre- 
 serve him from being visited by this fate at the com- 
 mand of an absentee landlord, who may desire to 
 clear his property of some of the human incum- 
 brances Avhom God has brought into being upon it. 
 
 " The law affords the Irish peasant no protection 
 from so horrible a fate. Hundreds are at present 
 exposed to it. Millions know they are liable to it. 
 Can the law justly require their allegiance ? Can we 
 expect them, willingly to pay it? No. The peasantry 
 of Ireland feel that the law places their lives at the 
 mercy of the few^ whom it invests with sovereign 
 power over the land of their native country, with 
 power to sweep them at will off its surface. They 
 feel that the continuance of the system of clearing 
 estates, which has been for so many years in pro- 
 gress, is a question of life and death to them. And 
 therefore do they combine against it? Therefore it 
 is — however little minds may wonder at the past — 
 that they show no more repugnance to the shedding 
 of blood in open day, in the presence of assenting 
 thousands, in the execution of the sentences of self- 
 organised tribunals, looked upon by them as the sole 
 safeguard of their lives, than does a soldier hired to 
 fight for his country's safety in the field of battle. 
 It is to their own Whiteboy law that their allegiance 
 is considered due. 
 
 " They look alone to the secret tribunals, to their 
 own establishment, for the protection which the law 
 of the Imperial Parliament denies them, and they 
 obtain it ! Let those who know Ireland deny the 
 fact if they can. The peasantry of Ireland do more 
 
146 APPENDIX, 
 
 or less ubtain from the Whiteboy association that 
 essential i^rotection to their existence which the es- 
 tablished law of the country refuses to afford. The 
 Whiteboy system is the practical and efficient check 
 upon the ejectment system. It cannot be denied that 
 but for the salutary terror inspired by the Whiteboys, 
 the clearance of estates would proceed with a 
 rapidity and to an extent that must occasion the 
 most horrible sufferings to hundreds of thousands of 
 the ejected tenantry. Some landlords have bowels 
 of compassion, and might hesitate so to employ the 
 fearful power with which the law has unconditionally 
 armed them for the improvement of their property. 
 Many, the majority perhaps, would not be stayed by 
 such scruples. It is easy to satisfy the mind of an 
 interested party that what the law allows to be done 
 cannot be wrong — that what appears necessary for 
 the preservation of property must be right. May 
 they not do as they will with their own ? Yes. But 
 for the salutary dread of the Whiteboy associations 
 ejectments would desolate Ireland and decimate her 
 population, casting forth thousands of families like 
 noxious weeds rooted out of the soil on which they 
 have hitherto grown, perhaps too luxuriantly, and 
 flung away to perish on the roadsides. Yes, the 
 Whiteboy system is the only check on the ejectment 
 system, and, weighing one against the other — horror 
 against horror and crime against crime — it is per- 
 haps the lesser evil of the two — a necessary evil in 
 the present state of the law in Ireland — a mitigation 
 of the otherwise intolerable slavery, which the law of 
 the land enforces, of the Irish peasant to the Irish 
 
APPENDIX, 147 
 
 landlord. The Whiteboy system will never be put 
 down until the Legislature establishes a law for the 
 end it aims at — that, namely, of protecting the lives 
 of the Irish peasantry and securing to them the 
 means of living by their industry." 
 
 " That the difference between England and Ire- 
 land in regard to the carelessness of human life 
 arises not so much from the nature of the people as 
 from the difference of the circumstances in which 
 they are placed, appears from the fact that when 
 in England the opinion of a large body has been in 
 favour of atrocious crime, atrocious crimes have been 
 committed. Of this the outrages perpetrated by 
 the trades unions afford a sufficient proof. The 
 murder of Mr. Ashton, in Cheshire, by two men, who 
 were hired by the trades union, and received ten 
 pounds for killing him, is equal in atrocity 
 to almost any Irish murder; and the rick 
 burnings in the South and East of England 
 show how far a system of deliberate crime w^ill 
 spread when there is a real grievance to justify 
 it." — Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Irish Disturb- 
 ances, pp. 301, 302. 
 
 " The first thing that ever called my attention to 
 the state of Ireland was the reading an account of 
 one of these outrages. I thought of it for a moment, 
 but the truth struck me at once, and all I have seen 
 since confirms it. When the law refuses its duty, 
 when Government denies the right of the people, 
 when competition is so fierce for the little land which 
 the monopolists grant to cultivation in Ireland, when, 
 
148 APPENDIX. 
 
 in fact, millions are scrambling for the potato — these 
 people are driven back from the law, and from the 
 usages of civilisation, to that which is termed the 
 law of nature, and if not of the strongest, the laws of 
 the vindictive; and in this case the people of Ire- 
 land believe, to my certain knowledge, that it is only 
 by these acts of vengeance periodically committed 
 that they can hold in suspense the arm of the pro- 
 prietor, of the landlord, and the agent, who, in too 
 many cases, would, if he dared, exterminate them. 
 Don't let us disguise it from ourselves, there is a war 
 between landlord and tenant — a war as fierce and 
 relentless as though it was carried on by force of 
 arms." — John Bright quoted in Kay's Social Con- 
 dition of the European People. 
 
 " A gallant general, Sir Hussey Vivian, has ex- 
 pressed his amazement at the indifference to crime, 
 and the insensibility of conscience to the guilt of 
 murder which he regards as a characteristic of the 
 disturbances prevailing in Ireland. This peculiar and 
 abominable characteristic he confessed himself in- 
 capable to understand or explain. It has, however, 
 an explanation, and but one. The atrocities com- 
 mitted in these disturbances are not, as they have been 
 called, ' driftless and desultory ' ; they are incidents 
 in a systematic war — a war which is wasting the 
 country by slow combustion ; or they are the punish- 
 ments inflicted by competent and acknowledged 
 authority. Conscience is no more concerned in them 
 than in the case of a public execution, or in the 
 crowning charge at Waterloo. What to the un- 
 
APPENDIX. 149 
 
 instructed seem assassinations or perjuries, are to the 
 organised peasantr}^ in Ireland no more than success- 
 ful of ambuscades and military strategems." — Rev. 
 Mortimer O'Sullivan (a protestant clergyman) of 
 Trinity College, Dublin. 
 
 Note VI. 
 {See -page 73.) 
 
 Extracts from Sir Robert Peel's speeches or letters 
 on the Catholic question between 1812 and 1829: — 
 
 1812. 
 
 " Will they tell us where we are to stop ? Will 
 they assure us that they will not ask tO' be admitted 
 to power without those oaths which are deemed 
 necessary to bind every other class of subjects? It 
 is true that we are told we have already given Catho- 
 lics the reality of power in the elective franchise; 
 and that, having given the reaUty, it is foolish to 
 refuse the semblance. But to this I say, that it never 
 was foreseen by the parties who framed those mea- 
 sures that such an argument could have been raised 
 upon them ; or that, instead of Catholics being satis- 
 fied with those boons for their own value, they 
 should consider them only as the grounds for further 
 claims and more extended pretensions." 
 
 1813. 
 
 " I protest against the principle of this Bill, 
 because it confers upon those who admit an external 
 jurisdiction the right of legislating in all matters 
 
150 APPENDIX. 
 
 connected with the Church of England. ... If 
 the Protestants exceeded the Roman Cathohcs in 
 number I should have much less objection. But 
 it is impossible to consider that the Catholics so 
 greatly preponderate, without feeling alarm at the 
 consequences of such unlimited concession. We 
 cannot close our eyes to the fact that differences 
 of religion have existed in Ireland for a protracted 
 period, and that this is an experiment to try whether 
 those religions cannot be placed on the same footing. 
 How can we hope, under such circum- 
 stances, when it is admitted that there are 4,000,000 
 of Catholics to 800,000 Protestants, to maintain 
 the Protestant ascendency? This is a point which, 
 I think, we ought well to consider." 
 
 1817. 
 
 " You tell us that the Roman Catholics of Ireland 
 are advancing in wealth and education, and that as 
 you remove the disabilities under which they labour, 
 their advance will be more rapid, and they will be- 
 come more influential in the State. Do you then 
 mean, bo7id fide, to give them in Ireland the practical 
 advantages of the eligibility you propose to confer 
 on them? Do you mean to give them that fair 
 proportion of political power to which their numbers, 
 \vealth, talents, and education will entitle them ? If 
 you do, can you believe that they will, or can, remain 
 contented with the limits which you assign to 
 them ? " 
 
 1823. 
 
 " By what right are imputations of such a nature 
 
APPENDIX. I 5 I 
 
 cast upon me? With what variation from principle 
 can I at any time be charged? From the earliest 
 period of my political life — caring nothing for the 
 opinion of my friends, caring nothing for the opinion 
 of the people — I have uniformly and undeviatingly 
 opposed the concessions to the Catholics. 
 For my own part, I protest that I would rather 
 submit to eternal exclusion from office (and perhaps 
 I should consider that no very great sacrifice) than 
 consent to hold power by the compromise, or any- 
 thing approaching to the compromise, of an opinion." 
 
 1825. 
 
 " I am afraid of a powerful internal party in this 
 country, of whom great numbers are dissatisfied, as 
 they must be, wdth our principles of religion; and I 
 can never think that they can be fit to enact laws 
 respecting the established faith. My belief is, that 
 after they have obtained the privileges which they 
 seek, they will not cease in their endeavours, but 
 will struggle for the pre-eminence of their religion." 
 
 1827. 
 
 " I have felt that I have no choice but to state 
 with firmness, though I trust without asperity, the 
 principles which my reason dictates, and which my 
 honour and conscience compel me to maintain. The 
 influence of some great names have lately been lost 
 to the cause which I support; but I have never 
 adopted my opinions either from deference to high 
 station, or that which may more fairly be expected 
 
152 APPENDIX. 
 
 to impress me — high abihty. Keen as the feelings 
 of regret must be with which the loss of those asso- 
 ciates in feeling is recollected, it is still a matter of 
 consolation to me that I have now an opportunity of 
 showing my adherence to those tenets which I 
 formerly espoused — of showing that, if my opinions 
 are unpopular, I stand by them still, when the 
 influence and authority that may have given them 
 currency is gone; and when it is impossible, I 
 believe, that in the mind of any human being T can 
 stand suspected of pursuing my principles with any 
 view to favour or personal aggrandisement. 
 
 " I cannot consent to widen the door of political 
 power to Roman Catholics. I cannot consent to 
 give them civil rights and privileges equal to those 
 possessed by their Protestant countrymen; because, 
 after taking the most deliberate view I am able to 
 take of the relation which the Roman Catholics bear 
 to the rest of the community, I am persuaded that 
 the removal of their disabilities would be attended 
 by a danger to the Protestant religion against 
 which it would be impossible to find any security 
 equal to that of our present Protestant Constitu- 
 tion." 
 
 1828 (June). 
 
 " As the hon. baronet (Sir F. Burdett) has ex- 
 pressed a hope that the present administration will 
 take up this question next session, and introduce 
 some measure for its settlement; lest any miscon- 
 ception should go abroad respecting my sentiments, 
 I am' anxious to say a word upon this point for 
 
APPENDIX. 153 
 
 myself, and for myself alone. Under the consti- 
 tution of the present Government, each individual 
 member of it is at liberty to entertain and support 
 his own opinions regarding this question. Con- 
 ceiving, then, that it is only necessary for me to 
 state my own individual opinion on the subject, I 
 refer the hon. baronet and the House to the declara- 
 tions which I have repeatedly made respecting it, 
 when, speaking as an individual member of the 
 Government, as I am at liberty to do, I have ex- 
 plained my own sentiments on the question. To 
 that declaration and to those opinions I still adhere, 
 and I conceive that, in saying so, I have said enough 
 to satisfy the House that my sentiments upon the 
 question remain unaltered." 
 
 So spoke the Tory Minister in June, 1828. In 
 February, 1829, he introduced a Bill for the emanci- 
 pation olthe Catholics. He justified this change of 
 front in a remarkable letter to the Protestant Bishop 
 of Limerick : — 
 
 1829 (February). 
 
 " In the course of the last six months, England, 
 being at peace with the whole world, has had five- 
 sixths of the infantry force of the United Kingdom 
 occupied in maintaining the peace and in police 
 duties in Ireland. I consider the state of things 
 which requires such an application of military force 
 much worse than open rebellion. 
 
 " There has been established an intimate union 
 between the Roman Catholic laity and the Roman 
 Catholic priesthood; in consequence of that union 
 the representation of the counties of Waterford, 
 
 L 
 
154 APPENDIX, 
 
 Monaghan, Clare and Louth has been wrested from 
 the hands of the natural aristocracy of those 
 counties; and if the present state of things is to 
 continue, if parties in Parliament are to remain so 
 nicely balanced that each can paralyse the other, 
 that one can prevent concession, the other can pre- 
 vent restraint and control, we must make up our 
 minds to see sixty or seventy Radicals sent from 
 Ireland when a general election shall take place. 
 
 " The state of society in Ireland will soon become 
 perfectly incompatible with trial by jury in any 
 political cases. The Roman Catholics have dis- 
 covered their strength in respect to the elective 
 franchise. Let us beware that we do not teach 
 them how easy it will be to paralyse the Govern- 
 ment and the law unless we are prepared to sub- 
 stitute some other system of criminal jurisprudence 
 for the present system. 
 
 " If this be the state of things at present, let me 
 implore you to consider what would be the condition 
 of England in the event of war. 
 
 " Would an English Parliament tolerate for one 
 moment a state of things in Ireland which would 
 compel the appropriation of half her military force 
 to protect, or rather to control, that exposed part of 
 the Empire ? 
 
 " Can we forget, in reviewing the history of Ire- 
 land, what happened in 1782, what happened in 
 1793 ? It is easy to blame the concessions that were 
 then made; but they were not made without an 
 intimate conviction of their absolute necessity in 
 order to prevent greater dangers. 
 
APPENDIX. 155 
 
 -9 
 
 " My firm impression is that unless an united 
 Government takes the whole condition of Ireland into 
 its consideration, and attempts to settle the Catho- 
 lic question, we must be prepared for the necessity 
 of settling it at some future period in a manner 
 neither safe to Protestant establishments, nor con- 
 sistent with the dignity of the Crown of England." 
 
 Note VII. 
 
 {See page 74.) 
 
 7. " The avowed objects of the great Catholic Asso- 
 ciation were to promote religious education, to ascer- 
 tain the numerical strength of the different religions, 
 and to answer the charges against the Roman Catho- 
 lics embodied in the hostile petitions. It also recom- 
 mended petitions (unconnected with the Society) 
 from every parish, and aggregate meetings in every 
 county. The real object was to form a gigantic sys- 
 tem of organisation ramifying over the entire country, 
 and directed in every parish by the priests for the 
 purpose of petitioning, and in every other way agi- 
 tating in favour of emancipation. The Catholic 
 Rent was instituted at this time, and it formed at 
 once a powerful instrument of cohesion, and a faith- 
 ful barometer of the popular feeling. . , Very 
 soon the importance of the new Society became 
 manifest. Almost the whole priesthood of Ireland 
 were actively engaged in its service, and it threat- 
 ened to overawe every other authority in the land." — 
 Leaders of Piihlic pinion in Ireland, pp. 236, 237. 
 
156 APPENDIX, 
 
 Canning described the Catholic Association 
 thus : — 
 
 " Self elected, self constituted, self assembled, self 
 adjourned, acknowledging no superior, tolerating no 
 equal, interfering in all stages with the administra- 
 tion of justice, levying contributions, and discharg- 
 ing all the functions of regular government, it ob- 
 tained a complete mastery and control over the 
 masses of the Irish people." — Canning in the House 
 of Commons in 1825. 
 
 Note VIII. 
 {See page 74.) 
 
 8. " If you glance at the history of Ireland during 
 the last ten years, you will find that agitation really 
 means something short of rebellion; that, and no 
 other, is the exact meaning of the word. It is to 
 place the country in that state in which its govern- 
 ment is utterly impracticable, except by means of an 
 overawing military force." — The Duke of Wellington, 
 in the House of Lords in May, 1829. 
 
 Note IX. 
 {See page 76.) 
 
 9. " On the accession of the Wellington Ministry to 
 power the Catholic Association passed a resolution 
 to the effect that, they would oppose with their 
 whole energy any Irish member who consented to 
 accept office under it. . . Mr. Fitzgerald, the 
 member for Clare, accepted the office of President of 
 
APPENDIX. 157 
 
 the Board of Trade, and was consequently obliged to 
 go to his constituents for re-election. . . O'Con- 
 nell adopted the bold resolution [of opposing him]. 
 The excitement at this announcement rose at once 
 to fever heat. It extended over every part 
 of Ireland and penetrated every class of 
 Society. The whole mass of the Roman Catholics 
 prepared to support him, and the vast system 
 of organisation which he had framed acted effec- 
 tually in every direction. . . After two or three 
 days' polling the victory was decided, and Mr. Fitz- 
 gerald withdrew from the contest." — Lecky, Leaders 
 of Public Opinion in Ireland, pp. 243, 247. 
 
 " Ireland was now on the verge of revolution. The 
 whole mass of the people had been organised like a 
 regular army, and taught to act with the most perfect 
 unanimity. Adopting a suggestion of Shell, they 
 were accustomed to assemble in every part of the 
 country on the same day, and scarcely an adult 
 Catholic abstained from the movement. In 1828 it 
 was computed that in a single day twO' thousand 
 meetings were held. In the same year Lord Angle- 
 sey [the Lord Lieutenant] had written to Sir Robert 
 Peel, stating that the priests were working most 
 effectually on the Catholics of the army, that it was 
 reported that many of these were ill-disposed, and 
 that it was important to remove the deoots of recruits 
 and supply their place by English or Scotch men. 
 The contagion of the movement had thoroughly in- 
 fected the whole population. If concession had not 
 been made, almost every Catholic county would have 
 
15S APPENDIX. 
 
 followed the example of Clare; and the Ministers, 
 feeling further resistance to be hopeless, brought in 
 the Emancipation Bill, confessedly because to with- 
 hold it would be to kindle a rebellion that would 
 extend over the length and breadth of the land." — 
 I hid., pp. 247, 248. 
 
 Note X. 
 
 {See page 78.) 
 
 10. " We had some conversation — I mean in the 
 Cabinet — on the questions arising out of Mr. 
 O'Connell's return. The return is not objectionable 
 in point of form, and it has been notified in the 
 Gazette. I apprehend it to be quite clear that Mr. 
 O'Connell cannot possibly take his seat as a member 
 of Parliament. He will have no opportunity of 
 making any harangue. If he appears, the Speaker will 
 desire him to take the oaths desired by law, and if 
 he declines to take them, will treat him as a stranger 
 and intruder, and listen to nothing that he has to say. 
 . But I apprehend the refusal to take the 
 oaths would not disqualify him from again present- 
 ing himself to the electors of Clare, nor would it 
 invalidate a second return by the Sheriff, The effec- 
 tual remedy against such a return would be to pass 
 a law enabling the same oaths that are to be taken 
 at the table of the House to be tendered to a candi- 
 date previously to the election, and thus to disqualify 
 the man who cannot be a member of Parliament 
 from being a candidate. There is nothing unreason- 
 able in this; but our impression, after the discussion 
 
APPENDIX. 159 
 
 in Cabinet of yesterday, was that more public incon- 
 venience would arise from keeping Parliament sitting 
 until the case of Mr, O'Connell could be 
 finally and effectually disposed of, than from ad- 
 hering, for the present, at least, to the ordinary 
 course pursued in respect to the return of a member 
 of Parliament." — Sir Robert Peel to Lord Anglesey, 
 July 13, 1828, PeeVs Memoii's, vol. i., pp. 143, 144. 
 
 Note XI. 
 {See page 79.) 
 
 11. ''The forty-shilling freeholders were first 
 elected for electioneering purposes. As long as they 
 allowed themselves to be driven to the hustings like 
 sheep to the shambles without a will of their own all 
 was well j not a murmur was heard. But the moment 
 these poor people found out the value of their tenure, 
 the moment they exercised their power constitution- 
 ally, that instant they are swept out of political 
 existence." — Lord Anglesey, quoted by Sir Spencer 
 Walpole in his History of England. 
 
 Note XIL 
 {See page 86.) 
 
 12. The franchises proposed by O'Connell 
 were : — 
 
 40s. freeholders. 
 ;£5 freeholders. 
 ;£io leaseholders. 
 
i6o APPENDIX. 
 
 Those carried by Ministers were : — 
 
 ;£io freeholders. 
 ;2£2o leaseholders. 
 
 ^lo leaseholders. 
 
 " This measure [the Irish Reform Bill] was the 
 least successful of the three great Reform Acts of 
 1832. Complaints were immediately made of the 
 restricted franchises which it had created; and the 
 number of electors registered proved much less than 
 had been anticipated." — May, History of England. 
 
 " The House well remembered that by the Reform 
 Act a ten pounds franchise Avas conferred on Ireland, 
 and the general opinion at the time of passing the 
 measure was that under that franchise a very exten- 
 sive constituency would be created in Ireland. This 
 expectation has entirely failed." — Sir William Somer- 
 viile (Irish Secretary), in the House of Commons in 
 1844. 
 
 " Your lordships are not aware of the extent of the 
 inequality which prevails between the franchise in 
 Ireland and England. If you take the population of 
 Great Britain, including Wales, in round numbers at 
 18,000,000, and the population of Ireland in 
 round numbers at 8,000,000, you will find the pro- 
 portion of the population between the two countries 
 as 25^ to I. But the number of electors in England 
 is 820,000, while the number of electors in Ireland 
 is only 100,000. There is, therefore, a proportion 
 of 8^ electors to i between the two countries, with 
 a population of 2% to i." — The Marquess of 
 Normanby, in the House of Lords in 1844. 
 
APPENDIX. l6l 
 
 Note XIII. 
 {See page 87.) 
 
 13. " The mere existence of this Church proves 
 that there is in human institutions a degree of selfish- 
 ness and folly to which it is impossible to ascribe a 
 limit." — Gustave de Beaumont, Ireland, vol. ii., 
 p. 201. 
 
 " The Irish Establishment is an anomaly un- 
 paralleled in the Christian Universe." — Archdeacon 
 Glover, answer to a letter of Dean Pellew, May 16, 
 
 1833- 
 
 " This Church is in Ireland the Church of the 
 stranger, the badge of conquest, the personification 
 of centuries of tyranny." — John Lemoinne, in the 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, July, 1843. 
 
 Note XIV. 
 {See page 88.) 
 
 14. "I want to see a public man come forward 
 and say what the Irish question is. One says it is 
 a physical question; another a spiritual. Now it is 
 the absence of aristocracy; then the absence of 
 railways. It is the Pope one day, and potatoes the 
 next. A dense population in extreme distress in- 
 habit an island where there is an Established Church 
 which is not their Church; and a territorial aris- 
 tocracy, the richest of whom live in a distant capital. 
 Thus they have a starving population, an absentee 
 aristocracy, and an alien Church." — Disraeli in the 
 House of Commons, February 13, 1844. 
 
1 62 APPENDIX, 
 
 Note XV. 
 {See page iii.) 
 
 15. "The object and intended effect of this Act 
 [i860] was to substitute in the relation of landlord 
 and tenant, for the just and equitable principles of 
 common law, or custom, the hard commercial prin- 
 ciple of contract, and to render any right of the 
 tenant, either as to duration of tenancy or compen- 
 sation, dependent on express or implied contract." 
 — Finlason, Land Tenure. 
 
 " The Devon Commission had reported, that the 
 tenant by reason of the tenure between him and his 
 landlord Avas entitled to compensation for all im- 
 provements honestly made. . . . [But] if the Act of 
 i860 had been successful it would have destroyed 
 any claim of the tenant for future improvements, 
 unless in accordance with some contract express or 
 implied. The Act, however, proved nugatory." — - 
 IMd. 
 
 Note XVI. 
 (See page 115.) 
 
 16. In the division on Mr. Gladstone's motion for a 
 Committee of the whole House to consider the Acts 
 relating to the Established Church in Ireland, the 
 Irish members voted thus : — 
 
 For. 
 
 Leinster . . . . 23 
 
 Munster . . . . 22 
 
 Connaught ... 10 
 
 Ulster .... o 
 
 55 i 45 
 
 Against. 
 
 
 Leinster . 
 
 12 
 
 Munster . . . 
 
 I 
 
 Connaught . 
 
 • 3 
 
 Ulster . . . 
 
 . 29 
 
APPENDIX. 163 
 
 In 1843, Mr. Ward, in the House of Commons, 
 moved an address to the Crown, declaring " that the 
 laws which regulate the present distribution of 
 Church property in Ireland are not conformable to 
 reason, or to the practice of any Christian country." 
 The Irish Secretary (Lord Elliot) opposed the 
 motion, saying that the " compact entered into at 
 the Union " should be kept ; added that he could 
 see no difference between " the existence of a Protes- 
 tant Establishment and a Protestant Sovereign," and 
 that as long as the latter " must profess one of the 
 two creeds," the " two religious persuasions could not 
 be placed on a footing of perfect equality." The 
 House was counted out. 
 
 In 1844 Mr. Ward moved for a Committee of the 
 whole House to consider " the present state of the 
 temporalities of the Church of Ireland." Lord 
 Elliot again opposed the motion, saying that, " any 
 attempt to alienate any portion of the revenues of 
 the Church, and to apply it^ to other than Church 
 purposes, would be unjust and inexpedient." Sir 
 James Graham said : " For my part, I can only 
 repeat that the attempt — I will not say to subvert 
 the Church, for that might be disallowed — ^but to 
 take a large portion of its revenues either for 
 Roman Catholic endowments, or for secular pur- 
 poses, is forbidden by justice, forbidden by the 
 compact entered into by the united Parliament, and 
 forbidden by the sanction of the highest moral 
 obligations." Mr. Vv^ard's motion was defeated by 
 274 against 179 votes. 
 
 In 1846 Sir James Graham declared that he was 
 " opposed to any policy destructive [of the Church], 
 
1 64 APPENDIX. 
 
 and Lord John Russell said that he " had never held 
 the opinion that the Irish Church ought to be 
 destroyed, though it needed reform." In 1847 
 the Ministers of the day once more declared 
 that they had no intention of legislating on the 
 subject. 
 
 In 1849 a motion for a Committee to inquire 
 into the Establishment was rejected by 170 to 103 
 votes. 
 
 In 1854 a proposal to suspend 395 benefices 
 where the Church population was very small was 
 opposed by the Government as " wholly uncalled 
 for," and rejected by 117 to 31 votes. 
 
 In 1865 a debate on a motion, " that in the 
 opinion of this House the present position of the 
 Irish Church Establishment is unsatisfactory, and 
 calls for the early attention of Her Majesty's 
 Government," was adjourned, and never resumed. 
 On this occasion. Sir George Grey, the Home Secre- 
 tary, declared that " no practical grievance existed," 
 and that " in attempting to redress the theoretical 
 grievance, a great shock would be given to our laws 
 and institutions." 
 
 In 1866 the debate on a motion declaring "that 
 the position of the Established Church in Ireland 
 is a just cause of dissatisfaction, and urgently de- 
 mands the consideration of Parliament," was 
 adjourned, and never resumed. The Irish Secre- 
 tary, Mr. Chichester Fortescue, opposed the motion, 
 not " on grounds of abstract justice," but " upon 
 considerations of common sense, possibility, time, 
 circumstance." 
 
APPENDIX. 165 
 
 In 1867 the Fenian "rising" came, and in 1869 
 the Church was disestabHshed. 
 
 Note XVII. 
 
 {See page 118.) 
 
 17. " The Fenian movement agitated Ireland from 
 1864 to 1867, producing among other results the 
 Clerkenwell explosion. Mr. Gladstone's statement 
 as to the effect of this and similar attempts on the 
 public mind of England, though too significant to be 
 ignored, is too famihar to be repeated. I have too 
 often heard that speech censured as unwise; to me 
 it has always seemed a gain that the exact and naked 
 truth should be spoken though at the cost of some 
 unpleasant criticism. . . . Few persons will now re- 
 gret the disendowment of the Irish Church, or the 
 passing of the Land Act of 1870; but it is re- 
 grettable that, for the third time in less than a 
 century, agitation, accompanied with violence, should 
 have been shown to be the most effective instru- 
 ment for redressing whatever Irishmen may be pleased 
 to consider their wrongs." — Lord Derby in the 
 Nineteenth Century, October, 1881. 
 
 Note XVIII. 
 {See page 132.) 
 
 18. On April 8th, 1886, Mr. Gladstone introduced 
 his Home Rule Bill. He proposed to establish an 
 Irish Parliament, and an Irish Executive for the 
 management of Irish affairs, reserving to the Im- 
 
t66 appendix. 
 
 perial Parliament the following subjects : The cro^Yn, 
 peace or war, the army, navy, militia, volunteers, 
 defence, etc., foreign and colonial relations, dignities, 
 titles of honour, treason, trade, post office, coinage. 
 Besides these exceptions, the Irish Parliament was 
 forbidden to make any laws respecting {inter alia) 
 the endowment of religion, or in restraint of edu- 
 cational freedom, or relating to the customs or 
 excise. The Dublin Metropolitan Police were to 
 remain under Imperial control for two years, and the 
 Royal Irish Constabulary for an indefinite period; 
 but eventually all the Irish police were to be handed 
 over to the Irish Parliament. Ireland's contribution 
 to the Imperial revenue was to be in the proportion 
 of one-fifteenth to the whole. All constitutional 
 questions relating to the powers of the Irish Parlia- 
 ment were to be submitted to the Judicial Committee 
 of the English Privy Council. The Irish members 
 were to be excluded from the Imperial Parliament." 
 
 Note XIX. 
 (See page 134.) 
 
 19. " The Local Government [Ireland] Bill was to 
 extend to that country, with certain modifications, 
 the system of local self government enjoyed by 
 England and Scotland. The Bill might be briefly 
 described as one to set up County Councils, Urban 
 District Councils, Rural District Councils, and 
 Boards of Guardians, as the various local authori- 
 ties, but not Parish Councils^ as they were not 
 
APPENDIX, i()^ 
 
 needed. All four sets of authorities were to be 
 elected by ballot every three years, on a broadly 
 democratic franchise, identical with the Parliamen- 
 tary franchise, except that it went further by in- 
 cluding Peers and women. The County Councils 
 (and among them were six County boroughs, being 
 those of Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, London- 
 derry, and Waterford), were to take over the fiscal 
 and administrative duties of the Grand Juries, but 
 not their work in connection with the administration 
 of criminal law, nor in the matter of dealing with 
 compensation for injuries, which last duty was to be 
 handed over to the County Courts. The District 
 Councils were to take over the work of the baronial 
 authorities. There were to be no aldermen on the 
 Councils, nor any ministers of religion, nor ex-officio 
 m.embers, except that the chairmen of Rural Dis- 
 trict Councils might sit on the County Councils. 
 The Councils would deal with the maintenance and 
 construction of roads, with the care of lunatics, and 
 with a number of other local government details, 
 and might have additional work imposed on them 
 by orders in council; but such orders were to be 
 laid before Parliament, and might be upset by either 
 House in the usual way. The poor law would be 
 administered by Boards of Guardians, and in cases 
 of exceptional distress, the County Council might 
 authorise the Guardians to extend the amount of 
 out-relief granted, but the County Council would 
 have to bear a certain portion of the additional ex- 
 penditure, and the Guardians would have a check 
 put upon possible extravagance by having the rates 
 
1 68 APPENDIX. 
 
 spread over the whole of the union to which they 
 belonged. As to finance, Ireland was to benefit by 
 the provision made by Parliament for the relief of 
 agricultural land, and her agricultural grant, 
 amounting to ;£73o,ooo a year, would be allotted 
 to her out of the Imperial Exchequer, and would 
 relieve the occupier from the payment of half the 
 county cess, and the owner from the payment of 
 half the poor rate, the only portion of the rate that 
 he was actually paying. In addition to this Ireland 
 would have handed over to her the proceeds of the 
 local license duties, amounting to ;^20o,ooo a year; 
 but, as the burden she had to pay at present for 
 the matters to which this grant applied amounted 
 to ;£244,ooo a year, the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer would grant an additional sum of ;£ 7 9,000, 
 so that there would be excess for the local authori- 
 ties of ;£35,ooo over liabilities." — Annual Register, 
 1898, pp. 34, 35. 
 
 Note XX. 
 
 {See page 139.) 
 
 20. " It is upon a people, or at least upon upper 
 and middle classes, basking in this fool's paradise 
 [of believing that everything was going on happily in 
 Ireland] that Fenianism has burst, like a clap of 
 thunder in a clear sky, unlooked-for and unin- 
 telligible, and has found them utterly unprepared 
 to meet it, to deal with it. The disaffection 
 which they flattered themselves had been 
 cured, suddenly shows itself more intense, more 
 
APPENDIX. 169 
 
 violent, more unscrupulous, and more universal 
 than ever. The population is divided between 
 those who wish success to Fenianism, and 
 those who, though disapproving its means and 
 perhaps its ends, sympathise with embittered 
 feelings. Repressed by force in Ireland itself, the 
 rebellion visits us in our own homes, scattering 
 death among those who have given no provocation 
 but that of being English born. So deadly is the 
 hatred, that it will run all risks merely to do us 
 harm, with little or no prospect of any consequent 
 good to itself. Our rulers are helpless to deal with 
 this new outburst of enmity, because they are un- 
 able to see that anything ofi their part has given 
 cause for it. They are brought face to face with 
 a spirit which will as little tolerate what we think 
 our good government as our bad, and they have not 
 been trained to manage problems of that difficulty. 
 But, though their statesmanship is at fault, their 
 conscience is at ease, because the rebellion, they 
 think, is not one of grievance or suffering; it is a 
 rebellion for an idea — the idea of nationality. Alas 
 for the self-complacent ignorance of irresponsible 
 rulers, be they monarchs, classes, or nations. If 
 there is anything sadder than the calamity itself, it 
 is the unmistakeable sincerity and good faith with 
 which numbers of Englishmen confess themselves 
 incapable of comprehending it. They know not 
 that the disaffection which neither has nor needs 
 any other motive than aversion to the rulers, is the 
 climax to a long growth of disaffection arising from 
 causes that might have been removed. What seems 
 
 M 
 
1 70 APPENDIX, 
 
 to them the causelessness of the Irish repugnance 
 to our rule is the proof that they have almost let 
 pass the last opportunity they are ever likely to 
 have of setting it right. They have allowed what 
 once was indignation against particular wrongs to 
 harden into a passionate determination to be no 
 longer ruled on any terms by those to whom they 
 ascribe all their evils. Rebellions are never really 
 unconquerable until they have become rebellions for 
 an idea. Revolt against practical ill-usage may be 
 quelled by concessions; but \yait till all practical 
 grievances have merged in the demand for inde- 
 pendence, and there is no knowing that any con- 
 cession, short of independence, will appease the 
 quarrel. 
 
 '' But what, it will be asked, is the provocation 
 that England is giving to Ireland, now that she has 
 left off crushing her commerce and persecuting her 
 religion? What harm to Ireland does England 
 intend or knowingly inflict? What good, that she 
 knows how to give, would she not willingly bestow? 
 Unhappily, her offence is precisely that she does 
 not know, and is so well contented with not know- 
 ing, that Irishmen who are not hostile to her are 
 coming to believe that she will not and cannot 
 learn. 
 
 " Calm men . . . who disapprove of Fenianism, 
 and of all that the Fenians are doing, and who have 
 no preference for separation itself, are expressing a 
 deliberate conviction with the English nation 
 cannot see or understand what laws or institutions 
 are necessary for a state of Societv and civilisation 
 
APPENDIX. iji 
 
 like tha-t of Ireland. The English people ought to 
 :ask themselves, seriously and without prejudice, 
 Avhat is it that gives sober men this opinion of them, 
 and endeavour to remove it, or humbly to confess 
 that it is true, and fulfil the only duty which re- 
 mains performable by them on that supposition, that 
 of withdrawing from the attempt. 
 
 " That this desperate form of disaffection, which 
 >does not demand to be better governed, which asks us 
 for no benefit, no redress of grievances, not even 
 any reparation for injuries, but simply to take our- 
 selves off and rid the country of our presence — that 
 this revolt of mere nationality has been so long in 
 coming proves that it might have been prevented 
 from coming at all. More than a generation has 
 elapsed since we renounced the desire to govern 
 Ireland for the English; if at that epoch we had- 
 begun to know how to govern her for herself, the 
 two nations would by this time have been one. 
 Eut we neither knew, nor knew that we did not 
 know. V/e had got a set of institutions of our own, 
 which we thought suited us — whose imperfections 
 we were, at any rate, used to; we, or our ruling 
 •classes, thought that there could be no boon to any 
 country equal to that of imparting these institutions 
 to her, and as none of their benefits were any longer 
 withheld from Ireland, Ireland, it seemed, could 
 have nothing more to desire. What was not too 
 bad for us,^ must be good enough for Ireland, or if 
 not, Ireland, or the nature of things, was alone in 
 fault. 
 
 It is always a most difficult task which a people 
 
172 APPENDIX. 
 
 assumes when it attempts to govern, either in the 
 way of incorporation, or as a dependency, another 
 people very unlike itself. But whoever reflects on 
 the constitution of society in these two countries,^ 
 with any sufficient knowledge of the states of society 
 which exist elsewhere, will be driven, however,, 
 immediately to the conclusion that there is probably 
 no other nation of the civilised world which, if the 
 task of governing Ireland had happened to devolve 
 on it, would not have shown itself more capable of 
 that work than England has hitherto done. The 
 reasons are these : First, there is no other civilised 
 nation which is so conceited of its own institutions, and 
 of all its modes of public action as England is ; and 
 secondly, there is no other civilised nation which is- 
 so far apart from Ireland in the character of its^ 
 history, or so unlike it in the whole constitution of 
 its social economy; and none, therefore which, if 
 it applies to Ireland the modes of thinking and 
 maxims of government which have grown up within 
 itself, is so certain to go wrong." — John Stuart Mill,. 
 England and Ireland. 
 
 PRINTED BY H. VIRTUE AND COMPANY, LTD., 294, CITY ROAD, LONDON, B.C. 
 
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