M o ' ^ 
 
 IRELAND. 
 
 PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF THE PRESENT 
 HORRID DISTRESS IN THAT COUNTRY, FOR THE INFORMATION OF 
 
 THE AMERICAN PUBLIC. 
 
 
 If those who are connected with 
 Ireland by birth or parentage were 
 the only parties in this country to 
 whom the present appeal, on behalf 
 of the suffering poor in the former 
 land, is addressed, the following 
 statement should never see the light. 
 The writer, in that case, would deem 
 it superfluous and uncalled for. As 
 an Irishman, acutely jealous of the 
 national honor of his native land, he 
 cannot feel otherwise than humilia- 
 ted at every appeal to outside charity 
 in that behalf. True, indeed, there 
 are misfortunes, social as well as 
 natural and national as well as indi- 
 vidual, which may decently appeal 
 without a blush to the generous sym- 
 pathies of our common humanity, 
 and not appeal in vain ; but such 
 invariably come before the world 
 thoroughly understood in their in- 
 evitable or irreproachable causes. 
 To bring the case of Ireland into 
 this category among strangers is the 
 sole object of the present lucubra- 
 tion. It must, consequently, be an 
 inquiry into causes. 
 
 To say, that the immediate cause 
 of the horrid physical want and 
 misery which now so generally pre- 
 vail among the laboring population 
 of Ireland, in particular throughout 
 the entire length of the western sea- 
 board, is the persistent failure of the 
 
 timely rain during the last three 
 years, covers but a mere patch of 
 the extensive argumentative ground 
 which this broad and complicated 
 question necessarily occupies. • This 
 single fact of three successive crop • 
 failures merely argues, that the ful 
 and thorough solution of the ques- 
 tion before us involves a natural • 
 history, as well as a political or so • 
 cial, demonstration. Chronic dis- 
 tress, stereotyped physical wretch - 
 edness has been the normal condi • 
 tion of the Irish peasantry for cen- 
 turies — a fact which inevitably altei s 
 the venue of responsibility from God 
 to man, and in the presence of which 
 the natural-history attribution, as 
 the full explication of the problem 
 is, in our estimation, little short of 
 polite blasphemy. It is something 
 like shooting off one of a man’s two 
 legs and then saddling the entire 
 blame on the overburdened crutch 
 which happens to let him down i tx 
 the mire by bending or breaking. 
 
 But let us put the full issue as 
 candidly as the most iuquisitive, the 
 most logical or the most captious 
 could wish, so that thero can be no 
 possibility of cavil on that head. It 
 is obvious that God or man, or both, 
 are to blame for the sickening social 
 phenomenon we are about to inve 
 tigate. In other words, either (1) 
 
are too circumscribed for the popu- 
 lation, or (2) the soil is wholly or 
 partially cursed with sterility, or 
 (3) the climate is invested with a 
 veto over the gifts of nature and in- 
 dustry, or (4) the inhabitants are 
 too lazy to work, or (5) they have 
 not sufficient work to do, or (6) the 
 remuneration of labor in that land 
 is miserably inadequate, or (7) the 
 people are improvident, or (8) they 
 are robbed of the fruits of industry 
 and economy by excessive taxation, 
 exorbitant rents, insecurity of tenure 
 or otherwise by unjust laws and an 
 unfriendly executive. Inevitably, 
 the solution we seek is to be found 
 in the alternatives just put, taken in- 
 dividually or collectively. 
 
 AREA AND POPULATION. 
 
 1. According to two independent 
 official surveys of Ireland, its super- 
 ficial extent has been differently 
 stated at 31,874 and 32,512 square 
 miles, or about 21,000,000 of acres— 
 an area considerably more extensive 
 than the kingdom of Bavaria or the 
 kingdom of Sardinia, before the late 
 appropriations, once and a half as 
 large as the kingdom of Denmark or 
 the kingdom of Greece, more than 
 double the size of the Swiss Repub- 
 lic, two and a half times the area of 
 Holland or Hanover, nearly three 
 times the superficies of Belgium, and 
 more than four times that of Wur- 
 temberg or Saxony, all kingdoms. 
 In short, there are sixteen sovereign 
 states in Europe (not counting the 
 smaller republics and principalities), 
 not one of which is equal to Ireland 
 either in superficial or agricultural 
 extent. On this side of the Atlantic 
 Vermont, and still less Maryland, is 
 
 and if Rhode Island, Delaware, Con- 
 necticut, Massachusetts, Hew Jersey 
 and Hew Hampshire were all put 
 together , they would make a territory 
 little larger. Take these six sover- 
 eign states and reduce their peoples, 
 by any means natural or political, to 
 the starving condition of Ireland, 
 and see how the world would be 
 shocked! In 1840 the aggregate 
 population of these six states barely 
 amounted to 2,000,000. At the same 
 date the Poor-Law Commissioners 
 reported 2,385,000 people as depend- 
 ing, for 30 weeks in the year, on 
 charity in Ireland ! ! Will it be said 
 that the population was supernu- 
 merary by that precise number. 
 Very well, they have been got rid of 
 with a vengeance, along with a hu- 
 man “tilly” of 35,581 into the bar- 
 gain : population of Ireland per the 
 census of 1841 — 8,175,124 ; popula- 
 tion by that of 1861 — 5,764,543, a re- 
 duction in the interval of 2,410,- 
 581 ! ! Let us now sing halleluias 
 for human souls so summarily swept 
 from the face of their native land. 
 It was all the fault of Almighty God, 
 who put upon the soil so many 
 mouths more than it could feed. 
 They are gone, and Ireland is happy. 
 All that remains now is to explain 
 the little puzzle — that in 1840 and 
 ’41, when so many hundred thousand 
 depended on the charity of their 
 neighbors, no appeal to foreign sym- 
 pathy disturbed people’s rest at this 
 or any other side of the Atlantic, on 
 behalf of those wretched millions ; 
 while now that they are cut down 
 like grass before the scythe — 
 
 “Hark ! the lute, 
 
 “The lyre, the timbrel 
 
 Yes, in the spoiler’s connubial halls, 
 
$ 
 
 4 
 
 r.; 
 
 ik 
 
 ra’s” still hangs its broken strings 
 upon the crumbling walls, as the 
 wail of the banshee from within 
 moans through the “rents of ruin” 
 
 “Wo, wo, hast thou bled 
 
 “And hast thou still to bleed,” Hibernia 1 
 
 T wenty-three years ago McOullogh 
 wrote — “There can be no question, 
 “ that it [this ‘wonderful density of 
 “population in Ireland’], is the im- 
 “ mediate cause of the abject poverty 
 “and depressed condition of the 
 “great bulk of the people.” A pal- 
 pable calumny against the Author 
 of nature, for it is an obvious physi- 
 cal law, that what nature is capable 
 of producing nature is capable of 
 sustaining ; and at this hour more 
 than one European, not to say Asia- 
 tic state, has a larger population in 
 proportion to territory than Ireland 
 has ever had. Cowper, advocating 
 the cause of the brute creation, in- 
 sists, that not even the “creeping 
 vermin, loathsome to the sight,” 
 should be tread upon where God 
 placed them , 
 
 “Who having formed, designed them an abode.” 
 
 One hundred years ago this same, 
 identical problem of Irish distress 
 demanded solution, when the popu- 
 lation was computed, as stated by 
 McOullogh himself ( Un. Gaz.), at 
 only 2,544,276 — not one-lialf of what 
 it is at the present hour, and not 
 one-third of what it was on the day 
 he penned that obvious blasphemy. 
 Go back another century and never 
 since, not even during the famine of 
 1846 and ’7, was the spectre of na- 
 tional wo so ghastly as during the 
 latter half of the 17th century, when 
 Cromwell had left the people at 
 1,000,000! It is a historical fact, 
 that thousands during that period 
 were reduced to the bestial necessity 
 
 of supporting existence by eating 
 the wild roots and herbs of the field, 
 such as “pig-nuts,” boiled nettles, wa- 
 ter-cresses, “saddle-grass,” “hurts” 
 (hurtleberries), and a certain spe- 
 cies of seaweed. While collecting 
 this last on the rocks of the western 
 coast a few weeks ^go, a poor girl 
 venturing out too far (as we learn 
 by exchanges just come to hand), 
 was swept away by the tide and 
 lost. 
 
 We venture to affirm that there is 
 infinitely more and keener distress 
 in Ireland at this hour than there 
 was twenty-three years ago. Does 
 it follow, therefore, that the super- 
 numerary population of that island 
 is to be still counted by the million ? 
 As this is the logical inference see 
 what it comes to. Massachusetts 
 has a population even now of 1,231,- 
 066, with an area of 7,800 square 
 miles — just one-fourth that of Ire- 
 land. Ceteris paribus, were that state 
 as large as Erin, it would support, 
 as it does now, four times that num- 
 ber of people and still afford plenty 
 room for immigration. The king- 
 dom of Wurtemberg, with an area 
 of 7,568 square miles, supports 1,- 
 785,952 people. Wore the kingdom 
 of Wurtemberg only four times its 
 present agricultural limits, its natu- 
 ral population ought to be over 
 seven millions. Holland, including 
 Luxemburg, covers 13,890 square 
 miles, sustaining 3,521,416 souls. 
 Were Holland as large as Ireland, 
 the same ratio would give it a com- 
 fortable population of about nine 
 millions. Take Belgium, with its 
 11,313 square miles and its 4,671,187 
 human beings — here is a population 
 of twelve or thirteen 7nillions for a 
 country as large and as fertile as 
 
4 
 
 Ireland, while the supernumerary 
 theory would reduce the legitimate 
 census of the latter to about three 
 millions ! 
 
 CHARACTER OP THE LAND AND QUALITY 
 OP THE SOIL. 
 
 2. But it may be justly remarked : 
 Sir, you seem to forget that territo- 
 rial extent does not cover your as- 
 sumption, unless your spade or your 
 ploughshare can turn up more or 
 less of soil upon every foot of it. 
 Yery true ; and having treated of the 
 quantity we now examine the quality 
 of that territorial superficies. The 
 Ordnance survey of Ireland deter- 
 mined 2,833,000 acres of bog, 630,825 
 acres of water, 374,482 of plantation, 
 42,925 under towns, and 1,672 of 
 mountain heights computed from a 
 base line of 1,000 feet above low wa- 
 ter. It is quite common in Ireland 
 to cultivate the gently-rounded hills 
 and the more rugged mountain bases 
 to a height of one thousand feet above 
 the level of the sea, or 800 above 
 the great central limestone Plain. 
 Making every acre of deduction from 
 the arable area on account of bog and 
 mountain and strand and forest and 
 lake and river and town and high- 
 way and rocky upland and un tillable 
 lowland, there was still left for the 
 husbandman in 1850 the precise ag- 
 ricultural surface of 14,802,581 acres. 
 And this productive surface is being 
 added to every year by the drainage 
 and reclamation of the bogs. In ten 
 years from 1841 to 1851 no less than 
 1,338,281 acres of waste land were 
 brought under the domain of the 
 plough in Ireland. It is twelve years 
 since this latter date, and we may 
 reasonably conclude, that the arable 
 superficies is now little short, if not 
 
 over, 16,000,000. Twenty- three year® 
 ago, when McCullagh wrote, about 
 one-eighth of Ireland was a bog; at 
 the same time we have his authority 
 for it, that one-fifth of Belgium was 
 a forest — a much larger proportion 
 of unappropriated surface. Of the 6,- 
 295,685 acres of waste land in Ireland 
 twenty-three years ago, Dr. Kane> 
 the highest chemical and industrial 
 authority on the subject, estimated 
 4,600,000 as available for agriculture 
 — a prediction which is fast approach- 
 ing verification, through the inde- 
 fatigable energy of the wiry, labo- 
 rious, but cruelly requited peasantry. 
 Under these circumstances we de- 
 cline to give here the county per 
 centage of arable land. These data 
 maybe found in the present writer’s 
 Geography, page sixty-three. They 
 were true or nearly so some twenty 
 years ago, but are now almost obso- 
 lete. Even then only four counties 
 out of the entire thirty-two were un- 
 der 50, while all the rest ascended 
 from 55 to 94 per cent of arable sur- 
 face. 
 
 A word now as to the productive 
 capacity of the Irish soil. The whole 
 interior (about four-fifths) of the is- 
 land is comparatively a level plain 
 and, perhaps, five-sixths of the latter 
 absolutely such. Here is to be seen 
 on every side some of the richest soil 
 in Europe, It rests upon limestone 
 throughout almost its entire periph- 
 ery — one radical secret of its exu- 
 berant fertility. Around the sea- 
 board, in the mountain valleys, the 
 land is fully as good ; but much of 
 the upland soil in these quarters is 
 thin and apparently poor, yet aston- 
 ishingly productive. Of this very 
 soil an eminent English writer on 
 agriculture, Edward Wakefield, thus 
 

 speaks, in his elaborate work on the 
 industrial resources of Ireland: “I 
 “ have seen bullocks of the weight of 
 “ 180 stone rapidly fattening on land 
 “ incapable of receiving the print of 
 “ a horse’s foot, even in the wettest 
 “ seasons, and where there were not 
 “ many inches of soil.” This appa- 
 rently paradoxical affirmation comes 
 from one of the most deliberate and 
 modest writers we have ever read. 
 We, ourselves, acknowledge misgiv- 
 ing of its literal verity as to the 
 “horse’s foot in the wettest season 
 but we can testify, from our own 
 personal experience, that the writer 
 stands upon the truth if he does not 
 hold it in his hand. A still more 
 famous English authority on agri- 
 culture was the celebrated Arthur 
 Young who says, that on McGrilli- 
 cuddy’s Eeeks in Kerry (the highest 
 mountains in Ireland), “ sheep fatten 
 “ better than in the lowlands.” “ In 
 “ fact, the mountains of Ireland are 
 “ the principal nurseries for those 
 “ numerous herds of bullocks and 
 “ cows which are fattened ©r fed on 
 “ the luxuriant lowlands, and almost 
 “ the only nurseries for those that 
 “ are exported to England.” Of re- 
 claimed bog the same authority says : 
 “ No meadows are equal to those gained 
 “ by improving a bog, they are of a 
 “ value which scarce any lands rise to .” 
 Of the Irish soil generally he thus 
 speaks professionally : “If I was to 
 “ name the characteristics of an ex- 
 “ cellent soil I should say, that upon 
 “ which you may fatten an ox and 
 “ feed off a crop of turnips — little or 
 “ no such soil in England, yet it is 
 “ not uncommon in Ireland.” Com- 
 paring the two islands: “Natural 
 “ fertility, acre for acre over the two 
 “ kingdoms, is certainly in favor of 
 
 “Ireland.” “Some places,” says 
 Wakefield, “ exhibit the richest loam 
 “ that I ever saw turned up with a 
 “ plough.” And here is the deliber- 
 ate tread of ponderous McCullogh 
 ipproaching the same subject : “ Ire- 
 ‘ land has no stiff clay soils, such as 
 ‘ those of Essex, Hants, Oxford, etc., 
 
 ‘ nor any chalk soil, as those of Hert- 
 ‘ ford, Wilts and Sussex. Sandy soils 
 ‘ are also rare. Loam, resting on a 
 “ sub-stratum of limestone, predomi- 
 nates in Ireland, and, though often 
 “ shallow, it is almost everywhere 
 “ very fertile. A large part of Lime- 
 “ rick, Tipperary, Eoscommon, Meath 
 “ and Longford, consists of deep, fine, 
 
 “ friable loam, and is, perhaps, not 
 “ surpassed by any land in Europe. 
 
 “ It is not permanently injured by 
 “ the bad system of culture to which 
 “ it is subjected, and, if kept clean, 
 “ will yield an almost interminable 
 “ series of corn crops ; and, how bad 
 “ soever the order in which it is laid 
 “ down to grass, it is in no long time 
 “ covered with the finest pasture. 
 “ The deep, rich grazing lands on 
 “ the banks of the Shannon and Fer- 
 “ gus are not surpassed by the best 
 “ in Licolnshire, [England.] A good 
 “judge of such matters, Arthur 
 “Young, contends that, acre for 
 “ acre, the soil of Ireland is superior 
 “ to that of England ; though, as the 
 “ proportion of waste land in the 
 “ former is much greater than in the 
 “ latter country, we incline to think 
 “ this an exaggerated statement. 
 “ But, had Mr. Young confined his 
 “ remark to the cultivatable land in 
 “ both countries, it would have been 
 quite correct. In fact, if we deduct 
 the bogs and mountains, we believe 
 that Ireland is about the richest 
 country , in respect of soil, in Europe, 
 
6 
 
 11 As a grazing country, she is 'probably 
 “ superior to any other, and, certainly, 
 “ is surpassed by none." 
 
 We put it now to any candid man, 
 having these stubborn facts before 
 his mind, to say if it is or is not a 
 species of blasphemy to lay at the 
 door of the Author of nature the pe- 
 riodical-famishing, by sheer hunger, 
 of tens of thousands in that land of 
 their birth — tens of thousands to 
 whom in the order of nature and in 
 the order of social arrangements is di- 
 rectly committed the cultivation and 
 development of that same bountiful 
 soil." And this, be it remembered, 
 while tens of thousands within that 
 land and out of it, looking to Eng- 
 land as their mother country, fester 
 in luxury upon the fruits of that same 
 soil, without having, for one hour of 
 their lives, lent a hand or foot to its 
 development ! No wonder that a 
 pious and unobtrusive priest of God, 
 witnessing this sublime outrage 
 against eternal and social justice, 
 should have, a few months ago, in a 
 paroxysm of indignation, stepped 
 out from the sacred sanctuary and 
 told his famishing flock to calculate 
 well how much of the produce of 
 their farms was necessary to sustain 
 their families till the coming harvest, 
 and to defend that to their last gasp 
 against all the power of the privi- 
 leged classes attempting to despoil 
 them of it under the usual legalized 
 pretexts. 
 
 CLIMATE. 
 
 3. On the subject of climate, as 
 another physical department of our 
 topif), w r e at once acknowledge that 
 the natural “shoe pinches.” Not 
 that the alternations of heat or cold 
 ever run into the extreme in that 
 
 exceedingly temperate and salubri- 
 ous atmosphere ; not that the great 
 quantity of saturated soil, in the 
 shape of peat and flow-bog, was ever 
 known to affect human or animal 
 health otherwise than sanatorily as 
 a positive antiseptic ; not that the 
 prevailing winds have been ever the 
 couriers of a message from God in 
 any angry sense peculiar to the 
 Island of Saints ; not even (contrary 
 to a prevailing opinion), that the 
 quantity of rain which annually keeps 
 up that perpetual verdure which, 
 from the remotest date of Irish his- 
 tory, has characterized that territory 
 as proverbially and pre-eminently 
 “Emerald,” possesses any unap- 
 proached superiority either for vol- 
 ume or force ; — the climatic draw- 
 back to which we allude is the. fre- 
 quency and inopportunity , rather than 
 the quantity, of the atmospheric ir- 
 rigation. This is the great defect, 
 indeed the only defect, of the Irish 
 climate. The atmosphere is very 
 frequently saturated with moisture 
 when and where not a single drop 
 of rain falls for hours before or after 
 the phenomenon. The surrounding 
 ocean, the numerous lakes, bogs and 
 rivers, in conjunction with the ma- 
 chinery of the winds, expose the 
 mystery. Who has ever known 84 
 inches of rain to fall during one year 
 in any one locality of Ireland ? as Dr. 
 Patterson tells us frequently hap- 
 pens in the west of England, for in- 
 stance at Keswick in Cumberland, 
 where the minimum annual fall is 
 equal to the maximum of Ireland. 
 We believe our recollection of Dr. 
 Kane (whose famous work is not 
 at hand), does not mislead us when 
 we state, that the maximum annual 
 fall of rain in Ireland is 36 inches. 
 
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 Edward Wakefield, an Englishman, 
 who wrote on Ireland about 1809, 
 in two heavy quarto volumes, credits 
 the statement of John Leslie Foster, 
 that “three times as much rain falls 
 “ in Lombardy as in Ireland.” (p. 
 212, vol. 1.) Further on he says, 
 “Mr. Young (another English au- 
 thority), gives, as a convincing 
 “proof that the climate of Ireland 
 “ is far moister than that of Eng- 
 “ land, the amazing tendency of the 
 “ soil to produce grass ; and he 
 “ speaks of instances of turnip land 
 “ and stubble left without ploughing 
 “which yielded the next summer a 
 “ full crop of hay, facts, he observes, 
 “of which we have no idea in Eng- 
 “ land.” Both these writers regard 
 this excessive moisture as inimical 
 to the wheat crop; and this we 
 know ourselves to be a just infer- 
 ence, more particularly in the moun- 
 tain districts, for, as a general rule 
 all over the world, mountain dis- 
 tricts are more subject to rain and 
 atmospheric moisture than the level 
 plain. Here is one important phy- 
 sical secret of the present distress in 
 the west of Ireland, which is both 
 more mountainous and more ex- 
 posed to the vapors of the Atlantic 
 than any other quarter of the island. 
 We state an officially ascertained 
 fact when we say, that “ six-sevenths 
 of all the bog in that country lie in 
 a broken belt across the center of 
 the island out to the very rocks of 
 the Connaught coast, and fully two- 
 thirds of this large evaporating su- 
 perficies lie west of the Shannon. 
 Couple this with the other fact, that 
 one county of that western Province 
 contains more water, in the shape of 
 lakes, than the twelve counties which 
 constitute the eastern Province of 
 
 Leinster ! Here is a vast extent of 
 internal evaporation which unques- 
 tionably aggravates the otherwise 
 superabundant moisture of this re- 
 gion, as already accounted for. Ful- 
 ly three-sevenths of Connaught is at 
 present occupied by mountain, bog 
 and lake ! And as Kerry and Don- 
 egal, indeed we may include Clare 
 and Sligo, are territories of this iden- 
 tical description, the poor, struggling 
 husbandman has much to contend 
 with, physically as well as politi- 
 cally, throughout the whole western 
 seaboard from Gantry Bay to Lough 
 Swilly ; notwithstanding that the 
 population in this latitude is pro- 
 portionately thin, not, we venture to 
 affirm, one-half of that which the 
 remaining four-sevenths of arable 
 land is capable of supporting in com- 
 fort. True, indeed, these mountains 
 are covered with sheep and cattle 
 and goats and swine; these' bogs af- 
 ford abundance of fuel of the best 
 description and are largely reclaim- 
 able; while the lakes abound with 
 fish and contribute one fascinating 
 element to the exquisite scenery for 
 which this entire region is so justly 
 celebrated. But in what year of our 
 Lord did ninety-nine per cent, of 
 the peasantry ever taste a morsel of 
 this beef and mutton and pork? 
 Dare they throw a hook and line 
 into a lake or river without the per- 
 mission of the landlord? And to 
 whom belong these broad acres of 
 peat and who has the extensive 
 means to reclaim them ? Thus, be- 
 tween the hostility of the laws, the 
 life-and- death power of the land- 
 lords, and the accidents of nature, 
 the people groan under a bondage 
 little less physically grinding and 
 degrading, and only morally more 
 
8 
 
 tolerable, than that of the African 
 wretch on this continent. 
 
 IS IT THE FAULT OF THE PEOPLE ? 
 
 4 & 7. In a military sense it is — 
 in an industrial sense most certainly 
 not : the former, for there is no 
 moral or religious impediment to 
 the kicking of a midnight or noon- 
 day robber out of your house ; the 
 latter, for reasons which we proceed 
 to state. 
 
 There happens to have dropped 
 on the hospitable floor of this broad 
 land a little sprinknng from the 
 population watering-pot of Ireland. 
 We leave it to the American people 
 to say, if the Irish in this country 
 be, as a general rule, too lazy to 
 work. They, as well as every other 
 race, have their ethnological and ac- 
 quired faults, but is this of indolence 
 one? Answer, ye 5,000 miles of 
 canal, through all the geological im- 
 pediments of American topography. 
 Answer, ye 25,900 miles of rail-road, 
 through mountain and moor, through 
 brake and forest, through bridged 
 ravine and tunneled rock. Answer, 
 ye navigable rivers thousands of 
 miles long, the veins and arteries of 
 this gigantic body-politic, by what 
 hands is the commercial stomach 
 crammed which supply your chyle ? 
 Answer, ye thousands of wharfs and 
 levees along their courses, where the 
 porterage of a continent is tumbled 
 on and off day and night. Answer, 
 ye seaports of two oceans, whose are 
 the hands which first receive the , 
 3,000,000 tons which the nations of 
 the earth float to your doors; and 
 whose hands are the last to touch 
 and pelt across the world the other 
 three millions as the quid pro quo f ' 
 Answer, ye 2,200 iron factories, ye 
 
 : 39,000 workers in wool and ye 92,- 
 000 laborers on cotton within this 
 single community. Answer, ye 1,- 
 440,000 farms and ye 118,457,600 
 acres of prairie and forest transform- 
 ed into kitchen-gardens by the magic 
 wand of the spade. Answer, ye le- 
 gions on the Rappahannock, the 
 Mississippi, the Cumberland, the Po- 
 tomac and the Blackwater, who 
 among ye laugh at horrors 
 
 “And move to death with military glee” ? 
 
 Answer, Bull Run, Lexington, Car- 
 nifex Ferry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, 
 Island Ten, "Winchester, Chicahom- 
 any, Antietam, Iuka, Corinth Black- 
 water, Perryville, Murfreesboro’ and 
 slaughter-pen Fredericksburg, where 
 one-half of Meagher’s Brigade are 
 still encamped under the sod ! An- 
 swer, ye ocean and river navies, ye 
 transports, iron-clads and all ye 
 other “bulwarks on the brine.” Ex- 
 plain, ye foreign exchanges the full 
 significance of the following puzzle : 
 
 1848, $2,208,000 
 
 1849, 2,592,000 
 
 1850, 4,593,600 
 
 1851, 4,752,000 
 
 1852, 6,739,200 
 
 Here is the enormous sum in five 
 years of $20,884,800 sent to one soli- 
 tary island of Europe from hewers 
 of wood and drawers of water on 
 this side of the Atlantic, who had 
 landed here some years before flying 
 from starvation. Twenty millions 
 eight hundred and eighty-four thou- 
 sand eight hundred dollars in five 
 years ! ! “Do you know the sum the 
 “ poor emigrants send to Ireland 
 “ every year ?” asks a pious French 
 priest, Rev. Aristides Pierard of St. 
 Andrew’s, Hew York ( Homage to 
 Ireland, p. 20.) “You would scarce! 
 

 believe it. It is prodigious. 5,- 
 “ 000,000 dollars ! As for me, 1 have 
 “ never seen such a thing in this world." 
 In reviewing your work some weeks 
 ago, dear Father Pierard, we took 
 exception to your “every year,” as 
 we dearly love exact truth, and w T e 
 then supplied you with the precise 
 sums, in pounds sterling, as we took 
 them from no hearsay or Irish brag- 
 gadocio, but from an official English 
 “blue book,” the “Thirteenth Gen- 
 eral Report of the Colonial Land and 
 Emigration Commissioners,” pub- 
 lished in 1853 ; and some of our co- 
 
 » 
 
 temporaries copied our correction 
 without giving us credit. Here are 
 the exact figures of the blue book, in 
 British currency, which we have 
 carefully turned into American dol- 
 lars above : £460,000 in 1848, £540,- 
 000 in ’49, £957,000 in ’50, £990,000 
 in ’51, £1,404,000 in ’52 ! Nor does 
 the Report forget to remark, that 
 the sums stated do not include one 
 shilling sent by hand or private 
 means, of which the amount must 
 have been considerable. Thanks be 
 to God, that out of the liar’s and 
 spoiler’s own mouth we can dash to 
 smithereens the cal umnious pyramid of 
 six centuries. 
 
 Here is an extract from the Liver- 
 pool Journal of February, the 9th, 
 1856 : “What must be the industry 
 “ and what the thrift and what the 
 “ self-denial of poor navvies and ar- 
 “ tizans to freight across the Atlan- 
 “ tic from 1847 to 1852, both included, 
 “ the enormous number of two liun- 
 “ dred and twenty thousand of their 
 “ countrymen [the Irish people] 
 “ every year for those six years, the 
 “ aggregate exceeding the entire 
 “population of Norway and nearly 
 “ equal to that of all British Ame- 
 
 rica !” We believe this statement 
 needs qualification: the 220,000 in- 
 clude many who paid their own way, 
 owing to their own thrift and indus- 
 try at home ; and that number was 
 •the average not the ipso-facto annual 
 emigration of those six years. The 
 entire emigration for that period 
 from Ireland, according to the Gen- 
 eral Report already referred to, was, 
 in round numbers, 1,320,000, the one- 
 sixth of which gives the above num- 
 ber precisely. How beautifully this 
 fact corresponds with that of the 
 twenty-one millions of dollars al- 
 ready particularized ! 
 
 We ask again the full signifi- 
 cance of this huge fact. Hoes it not 
 cover completely the two imputa- 
 tions marked “4” and “7” in our 
 premises — the one referring to in- 
 dustry, the other to economy ? Does 
 it not speak, besides, of a big heart, 
 a determined purpose, a persistent 
 assiduity, a sublime sense of respon- 
 sibility, the most exalted patriotism 
 and the purest spirit of self-sacrifice ? 
 — a virtue which keeps the mass of 
 Irishmen poorer than they other- 
 wise would be at home and abroad. 
 The Irish come here emphatically 
 and incomparably the poorest class 
 of immigrants, and they will remain, 
 as a matter of course, the poorest for 
 generations. In the race of life a 
 good start is all-important. Impetus 
 is the only positive element in mo- 
 mentum. Even in a vacuum there 
 can be no motion without it. With 
 it friction is annihilated, its lead and 
 iron are imponderable, and granite 
 walls open to let its couriers pass. 
 Society is a ladder in climbing which 
 it is no easy matter to pass the man 
 before you ; and if the man behind 
 has to carry, besides, the inconve- 
 
nient weight of a big heart, it is sure 
 to “keep his head under.” By toil- 
 ing and moiling and self-abnegation 
 he rises in time to the dignity of 
 twenty or fifty dollars, with which 
 he has no sooner shaken hands than 
 he parts, to “bring over” some dear 
 one whose shadow on the floor is the 
 sunshine of heaven to his heart. 
 Thus, he deliberately breaks the up- 
 per rung under his weary feet to find 
 himself at the foot of the ladder once 
 more — but this time with a little 
 lulus under his arm or his grey-hair- 
 ed Anchises on his back : 
 
 Latos humeros, subjectaque colla, 
 
 Veste super fulvique insternor pelleleonis, 
 Succedoque oneri; dextrse se parvus lulus 
 Implicuitsequiturquepatremnonpassibus asquis: 
 Pone subit conjux. Ferimur per opaca locorum. 
 
 Sketch now the grotesque group in 
 ail the relief of light and shade — see 
 it curls the lip of ridicule, but see, 
 too, it moistens the eye of virtue — 
 the cockney grins contempt, but the 
 angels of God drop tears of sympathy 
 and approbation. 
 
 Oh, it is a great calumny to say 
 those people are not industrious, peo- 
 ple who have scattered themselves 
 over the whole civilized globe in 
 quest of employment, over all Eng- 
 land, over all Scotland, over all Can- 
 ada, over all colonized Australia, 
 over all these thirty-three sovereign 
 States. Not one Catholic nation in 
 Europe where they are not to be met 
 with in more or less numbers, more 
 particularly in France, Spain and 
 Austria. “Never,” said Arch -Duke 
 Charles of Austria to Colonel O’Shea, 
 who commanded 3,000 Austrians at 
 the great Battle of Wagram, “Never 
 “ was the House of Austria better 
 “ officered, than when possessing so 
 “ many Irish, of whom, at one time , 
 
 “ upwards of thirty were generals.” 
 
 (Wakefield, vol. 2, p. 573). France 
 at one time had 20,000 Irish, com- 
 manded by their own Irish officers 
 in one phalanx of her army. (See 
 O’Conner’s, O’Callaghan’s andD’Al- 
 tan’s Military Memoirs of the Irish 
 in the service of France). 
 
 ANOTHER BIG FACT IN THE SAME 
 DIRECTION. 
 
 It may not be generally known in 
 this country that whole ship loads of 
 laborers from the west of Ireland 
 cross the Irish Sea twice every year , 
 with the punctuality of the autumnal 
 equinox. They go to cut down and 
 save the English harvest, and they 
 come back in a few weeks to save 
 their own ! And it is an uncolored 
 fact, that before the Dublin and Mul- 
 lingar rail-road was opened for tran- 
 sit, some twelve or fourteen years 
 ago, the entire journey of these in- 
 defatigable thousands, from the At- 
 lantic sea-board to Dublin and from 
 Liverpool throughout central and 
 southern England, was trudged on 
 foot ! The Channel voyage to Liver- 
 pool or Holyhead used to be made 
 on open decks, exposed to the surf of 
 the sea and the cataracts of heaven ; 
 while the exported cattle and horses 
 were under cover in the same ves- 
 sel ! This we have seen with our 
 own eyes and can attest on oath.* 
 Owing to the greater moisture of the 
 Irish climate, the harvest under its 
 
 * On July 1st, 1856, the writer of this passed 
 from Dublin to Holyhead in the steamer Hiber- 
 nia. Some 600 Irish laborers bound for the Eng- 
 lish agricultural districts sailed in the same ves- 
 sel on that single trip. The night was cold, wet 
 and windy, and the boat shipped sea more than 
 once during the passage. Yet these hardy sons 
 of toil and frolic sang and laughed and cracked 
 jokes all night, their numbers keeping them 
 warm, though drenched with rain and surf. 
 Their only covering was the pelting clouds, 
 while the cargo of cattle in the stern (English 
 purchase, mind), was cost'v housed! On the 
 
check is later than that of England 
 by several weeks ; and owing to the 
 extensive claims on the labor market 
 of artificial industry in the latter 
 country, the English crops would rot 
 in the fields if the human deficiency 
 thus created was not supplied from 
 England’s draw-farm in the Atlantic. 
 By the very convenient institution 
 of -famine, which she sows and culti- 
 vates on that farm, England gets not 
 only her battles fought but her crops 
 cut. It is all a stock-in-trade busi- 
 ness which she will not suffer to de- 
 cline, if legislation can help it. And 
 the greater the misery the less boun- 
 ty for military, naval and agricul- 
 tural recruits. 
 
 We ask now, do the annals of toil 
 record anything parallel to these ex • 
 traordinary efforts to live ? So much 
 for the industry of these poor people ; 
 and as to their economy , we do sin- 
 cerely believe that no American, 
 apart from the experience which 
 
 memorial on the subject to Sir George Grey, 
 Secretary of State for the Home Department, to 
 which the following was the full reply : 
 
 “ Downing-street, London, ) 
 
 10 July, 1856. ) 
 
 “Sir, — The object stated in your letter of the 
 7th instant appears to my Lords to be a very 
 laudable one; but they are not of opinion that it 
 falls within the province of administration as- 
 signed to this Department. 
 
 “I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient 
 servant, Harry Chester. 
 
 “John H. Greene, Esq., Soho-Str., Liverpool.” 
 
 This unsatisfactory reply provoked on the 18th 
 a still longer and more emphatic letter than the 
 first, in which it way stated, on government au- 
 thority, that the enr’ mous number of 50,000 be- 
 longed to this nomadic class, and that they were 
 thus treated worse than the brute twice every 
 year. In a few weeks (towards the end of Au- 
 gust) the streets of Liverpool were placarded 
 with a “Notice to Irish agricultural laborers” in 
 these words : 
 
 “The City of Dublin Steam Packet Company’s 
 vessels have now shrouded covering for the great- 
 er protection of passengers on deck 1” 
 
 “Thank God” was our silent ejaculation, as we 
 noted down the words, preserved with the other 
 documents till this hour, and till this hour a syl- 
 lable of what is hrVe exposed has not been pub- 
 
 the present unhappy troubles have 
 created, can form a just conception 
 of it, without drawing upon a crea- 
 tive imagination. These thousands 
 return home with every penny they 
 have earned, minus only that for 
 transit and a dry crust. Here is 
 economy of time and economy of 
 means — of time, in turning the in- 
 terval between the two harvests to 
 
 such wonderful account ; and of 
 means, in the wretched stinginess 
 which they perpetrate upon their 
 own animal needs, with money in 
 their pockets. 
 
 “The pinching economy frequently prac- 
 tised by the peasants and farmers, and the 
 quantity of money they have been thus able 
 to hoard up in secret, is well known to all 
 those who have studied their cameleon-like 
 modes of life, and have accurately noted 
 their diversities. These accumulations have 
 been kept untouched for years together, even 
 at periods when the miserable economists 
 have actually been in want of food. There 
 are some curious particulars respecting this 
 habit of saving money, and of the extent to 
 which it has for many years proceeded, scat- 
 tered through the Parliamentary Reports on 
 Banking in Ireland.” 
 
 Very true to a certain degree, Mr. 
 Gr. L. Smyth (vol. 3, p. 29), but your 
 “Ireland” of 1843 is not the Ireland 
 
 of 1863. Two famines have inter- 
 vened, and if it be possible to “live 
 volumes in a day,” libraries have 
 been actualized since you penned 
 that testimony. The “pinching 
 economy” indeed exists, but where 
 is your “quantity of money?” Even 
 in your day, as Mrs. Nicholson, a re- 
 spectable American witness, most 
 
 ruthfully attests, a stranger may 
 ravel from Cape Clear to the G-i ants’ 
 )auseway without hunger or thirst 
 >r one penny in his pocket. Did 
 reu ever dream that in two years 
 rom the date of your laborious work 
 ,he “unbounded hospitality” which, 
 rom the remotest neriod of that peo- 
 
pie’s history, was, perhaps, their most 
 prominent characteristic, should dis- 
 appear like a mist from the face of 
 the land ? And now like an honest 
 man tell the whole truth — whence 
 this pinching anxiety to put a little 
 bulk in the stocking under the thatch ? 
 Is it not, before God, to save the roots 
 of the lowly roof-tree from the mid- 
 dleman’s crow-bar? — in the candid 
 words of M‘Cullogh, “the anxiety of 
 “ the peasantry to procure the means of 
 “ paying their rent , though at the ex- 
 “ pense of their comforts .” (Am. ed. 
 vol. 2, p. 36). “No, Paddy darlin, 
 you musn’t take one penny out of 
 that stockin to-day nor to-morrow 
 either, if every one of us, except the 
 child on my breast, wint to bed with- 
 out our supper. You earned it hard 
 and sure, for that matter, we all 
 earned it hard, as well as you, and 
 God and his blessed Mother be 
 praised, so long as it’s there safe 
 and sound our mind will be asy, so 
 it will, and there’s no fear, this year 
 at all events, that the ckilder will be 
 turned out on the road.” We refer 
 the reader to Mrs. Hall for the full 
 scene. If he has any taste for the 
 ludicrous it will make him laugh; 
 and if one particle of pathos be in 
 his soul, it will make him weep. But 
 first let him hear the answer of Geo. 
 Lewis Smyth (p. 19) : 
 
 course of the year, shut up their cabins and 
 beg their way to the harvest fields of Eng- 
 land, where, by undertaking the most labo- 
 rious work, sleeping in the open air, and 
 eating only the coarsest food, they save up 
 as much money as will suffice to pay the 
 rent of their cabin on their return to it, and 
 then are fain to starve through the remainder 
 of the year.” 
 
 Precisely identical is the testimony 
 of the Chambers of Edinburgh : 
 
 “ “ During the hay and corn harvests of Eng- 
 land and Scotland, the service of the Irish 
 laborers are very important. They are gen- 
 erally sober, well-conducted, and inoffen- 
 sive ; laboring hard and living hard, that 
 they may bring their earnings home to pay 
 the rent of their little farm or dwelling. A 
 spalpeen , or harvest-man, carries home from 
 four to eight or ten pounds; to do which, 
 he is contented, while away, almost to starve 
 himself." 
 
 Volumes might be filled with such 
 testimony from ancient as well as 
 modern writers, men of unquestion- 
 able candor, impartiality and knowl- 
 edge of what they say. And who 
 are they who assert that the Irish 
 are naturally indolent and improvi- 
 dent ? We fearlessly assert and chal- 
 lenge refutation, that they belong to 
 one or other or both of these two 
 juntos : the hop-step-and-jump tour- 
 ists, like Sir Francis Head with his 
 miserable vest-pocket “Six Weeks in 
 Ireland,” and the personal or politi- 
 cal enemies of the Irish people, such 
 as Cambrensis, Spenser, Clarendon 
 and company. More than one of 
 these came in for some hard knocks 
 
 “ What is his cabin ? — Mud ! His food? — 
 A single vegetable! His enjoyments? — 
 Little superior to those of the animal whom 
 necessity has made his associate ! Yet how 
 quick is his intelligence; how apt his capa- 
 city; how refined his wit; how warm his 
 affections ; how constant his attachments ; 
 how patient and untiring his industry. 
 Are these the characteristics of a bad mem- 
 ber of society ? What shall we say of the 
 toiling multitudes, who, unable to wrest from 
 their poor strips of land in the counties of 
 Kerry, Clare, Galway and Mayo, as many 
 potatoes as will sustain existence during the 
 
 during the civil wars — June lachrymce. 
 Cambrensis, himself an ecclesiastic, 
 had been severely dealt with by the 
 Irish clergy for having countenanced 
 the Strong-bowniam Invasion in sup- 
 port of a ruffian and an adulterer. 
 Hence those well known lines of 
 Moore — 
 
 On our side is virtue and Erin 
 On theirs is the Saxon and guilt. 
 
 enser, the 
 
 poet. 
 
 was another of 
 
 
 f 
 
 4 
 
 ■S 
 
 A 
 
13 
 
 4 
 
 -A 
 
 * 
 
 > 
 
 the invaders at a later date. He 
 came over as secretary to the vice- 
 roy, Lord Grey, and was grandly 
 provided for on the banks and braes 
 of the lovely Aubeg in the county 
 Cork, and the finest quarter of con- 
 fiscated Desmond. Here he com- 
 posed his celebrated “Faerie Queen,” 
 but from which the coward had to 
 fly with his life. He returned to 
 England and abused the Irish in all 
 the moods and tenses of his barbar- 
 ous Anglo-Saxon, because they would 
 not submit to be plundered with im- 
 punity. If we recollect rightly it 
 was a motto of the Desmond branch 
 of the Fitzgeralds, “Memo me leees- 
 sat impunitate” ; and they stood up 
 to it while a foot of ground was left 
 to fight upon. Lord Clarendon was 
 a still more interested partizan, whose 
 falsehoods are ably exposed by Carey 
 in his “Yindicise Hibernicse” (p p. 
 48, 49, 192, &c.) What honest search- 
 er for truth will credit such literary 
 attorneys, notoriously paid advo- 
 cates, in direct contravention of such 
 painstaking and voluminous investi- 
 gators as Arthur Young, Thomas 
 Newenham, Edward Wakefield, J. 
 R. M‘Cullogh, William and Robert 
 Chambers, the Railway, the Poor- 
 Inquiry, and the Devon Commission- 
 ers, sent out officially by the English 
 Government itself? 
 
 LABOR AND ITS REWARD. 
 
 To dwell on the two points num- 
 bered “5” and “6” in our hypothe- 
 sis, after what has been said in the 
 last chapter, would be a waste of 
 time and space. That, owing to 
 causes which it will be the province 
 of our next section to identify, in- 
 dustry stands unrewarded in Ire- 
 land, either bv steady employment 
 
 or just remuneration, is too obvious, 
 from the facts stated, to need fur- 
 ther demonstration. All we pro- 
 pose, therefore, in this place, is to 
 give the reader a just conception of 
 that fact, as regards its degree in re- 
 lation to the individual and its ex- 
 tent as respects the whole popula- 
 tion. Here is an extract from the 
 Report of the Land Commission pre- 
 sided over by Lord Devon, and pre- 
 sented to the two Houses of Parlia- 
 ment in 1845. This document main- 
 ly consists of solemn depositions, af- 
 firmed on oath. The witness before 
 us is an agricultural laborer named 
 Michael Sullivan. The more de- 
 tailed quotation of the questions and 
 answers, is precluded by our limits : 
 
 4 
 
 “Under whom do you hold your house? 
 Under a farmer called Daniel Regan ; just 
 a house and an acre of ground. 
 
 “What do you pay for it? £3; £2 for 
 the acre and £1 for the house. 
 
 “Have you the acre always in the same 
 place ? The acre I have this year I can 
 not have it next year ; he will have it him- 
 self. I must manure another acre , and 
 without friends I could not live. 
 
 “Have you constant employment ? No. 
 But whenever he wishes to call me he gives 
 me 6d. a day and my diet; and then at 
 other times I go down into the country and 
 earn £1 or 30s. 
 
 “What family have you ? Five children, 
 the oldest 12 years — seven of us to be sup- 
 ported. 
 
 “What is your general food ? Nothing 
 at all hut dry potatoes. Not a drop of 
 milk. I would think myself middling hap- 
 py if I could give the children that. The 
 farmers in the same district, except one out 
 of 100, cannot drink a pint of sour milk 
 among five in family from about Christmas 
 until about the l?th of March or so; and 
 then generally they are forced to sell their 
 sour milk to meet the rent or pawn their 
 clothes. 
 
 “Have you a pig ? Yes. He must be 
 kept in some part of the house in a corner. 
 
 I might make room outside for the pig, if 
 1 was sure of the house for a second year ; 
 but I do not mean to go to the trouble, and 
 many the same as me do not do so, not be- 
 ing sure of the house for a second year." 
 
14 — 
 
 There is the whole case in a nut- 
 shell and upon oath. There is the 
 toil without industry, the industry 
 without reward, the improving of 
 the soil and the improved soil taken 
 away every year, . the insecurity of 
 tenure, the pinching economy, the 
 selling of the necessaries of life to 
 meet the rent, the straining to pay 
 it faithfully, the migratory trudgings 
 in quest of work, the faithful return 
 to wife and children, the compelled 
 ■uncleanliness, as respects the pig, 
 and the compelled indolence which 
 will not huild him a mansion out- 
 side. Oh, ye superficial theorists, ye 
 hop -step -and -jump philosophers, ye 
 flying investigators, ye six- weeks 
 tourists, ye one-eyed Heads, may 
 God forgive ye for all your ignor- 
 ance or for all your lies ! 
 
 “Men will improve themselves,” 
 says Mr. Dewar, writing on the 
 same subject, “if the circumstances 
 in which they are placed furnish a 
 stimulus to that improvement ; they 
 will also acquire wealth, if their in- 
 dustry be rewarded and its effects 
 enjoyed.” — “ A nation is made up of 
 individuals, and as every individual 
 will exert himself in proportion to 
 the stimulus which he has to exer- 
 tion, so will a whole nation be in- 
 dustrious. in proportion as it has en- 
 couragement to industry.” 
 
 What Michael Sullivan says here 
 of Daniel Eegan, the Daniel Regans 
 have to say of the Hawardens, the 
 Trenches and the Plunkets. The 
 poor cottier is ground by the farmer, 
 because the farmer is ground by the 
 middleman upon whom the lord of 
 the soil, rioting in luxury or de- 
 bauchery. in London or Paris, on 
 the Rhine or on the Danube, keeps 
 
 Smyth affirms (p. 20) that the mem- 
 bers of this poor tenant’s class “ are 
 to be counted not by thousands but 
 by millions.” As the assertion stands 
 without proof, we beg to supply it. 
 At the time referred to, according to 
 the census of 1841, there were in 
 Ireland 310,436 very small farms of 
 from 1 to 5 acres each ; and of hold- 
 ings under 1 acre there were 685,309. 
 Here are 995,745 very poor land ten- 
 ants, and allowing to each any do- 
 mestic responsibility you please, as 
 respects wife and children, father 
 and mother, how literally true it is, 
 that the members of Michael Sulli- 
 van’s class “are to be counted by 
 millions” ! And where is the won- 
 der, when according to the same 
 census nearly seven-eighths of the 
 population, precisely 7,039,659, de- 
 pended for subsistence on agricul- 
 ture ! See Thom’s (Dublin) Al- 
 manac, an official authority, for any 
 year from ’41 to ’51. Having gone 
 from province to province, from 
 county to county and town to town, 
 having heard all the testimony of 
 landlords as well as of tenants, and 
 placed every word of it on record, 
 the Devon Commissioners, every one 
 of them an Irish landlord, placed on 
 the same record their own solemn 
 and unanimous conclusion. The read- 
 er cannot but be curious to know it. 
 Here it is, that he may judge for 
 himself how far Michael Sullivan is 
 to be regarded as a representative 
 man, and how far his testimony on 
 oath is to be credited : 
 
 “The agricultural laborers of Ireland 
 suffer the greatest privations and hardships 
 — they depend upon precarious and casual 
 employment for subsistence — they are badly 
 housed, badly fed, badly clothed and badly 
 paid for their labors — it would be impossi- 
 ble to describe adequately the sufferings 
 
 
 i 
 
 
ers and their families in most parts of the 
 country endure — in many districts their 
 only food is the potato, their beverage 
 water — their cabins are seldom a protection 
 against the weather — a bed or a blanket is 
 a rare luxury — nearly in all, their pig and 
 their manure heap consitute their only 
 property — a large proportion of the entire 
 population comes within the designation of 
 agricultural laborers, and endure sufferings 
 greater than the people of any other country 
 in Europe have to sustain. * * * It would 
 be impossible for language to convey an 
 idea of the state of distress to which the 
 ejected tenantry have been reduced, or of 
 the disease, misery, and even vice which 
 they have propagated in the towns wherein 
 they have settled ; so that not only they 
 who have been ejected have been rendered 
 miserable, but they have carried with them 
 and propagated their misery wherever they 
 have dwelt.” 
 
 When a parliamentary court of 
 Irish landlords thus testifies against 
 their own class, how overwhelming 
 must have been the testimony on 
 the side of the oppressed ! 
 
 Nor is this testimony one iota more 
 trustworthy or respectable than that 
 of Wakefield, whose great pains to 
 ascertain the truth in this matter, 
 have left behind a record fully as 
 ponderous and nearly as minute as 
 that of the Land Commission. The 
 fact that he preceded Lord Devon by 
 an interval of thirty-six years, is very 
 much to the purpose, as showing that 
 the present state of Ireland is an un- 
 mitigated bequest of the horrid past. 
 The array of facts presented by this 
 laborious investigator, from every 
 section of the country with all the cor- 
 roborative circumstances of names 
 and places and dates, puts us to our 
 wit’s end to determine what to select 
 or where to commence. In this 
 dilemma let us simply follow his own 
 arrangement. From Yolume 1 we 
 take the following, the captions and 
 italics are our own : 
 
 EXACTING THE SAME RENT TWICE ! 
 
 ^^^^^^mouths^redi^^enerall^ive^n 
 
 tbe rents, wbicb is called ‘ the banging gale.’ 
 This is one of the great levers of oppression 
 by which the lower classes are kept in a 
 kind of perpetual bondage, for as every 
 family almost holds some portion of land, 
 and owes half a year’s rent, which a land- 
 lord can exact in a moment ; this debt hangs 
 over their heads like a load, and keeps them 
 in a continual state of anxiety and terror. 
 If the rent is not paid, the cattle are driven 
 to the pound, and if suffered to remain there 
 a certain number of days, they are sold. 
 This 1 have frequently seen done after the 
 occupying tenant had paid his rent to the 
 middle-man , who had failed to pay it to the 
 head landlord l ! The numerous instances 
 of distress occasioned by this severity , which 
 every one who has resided in Ireland must 
 have witnessed, are truly deplorable; and I 
 believe them to be one of the chief causes 
 of those frequent risings of the people, un- 
 der various denominations, which at differ- 
 ent times have disturbed the internal tran- 
 quility of the country, and been attended 
 with atrocities shocking to humanity and 
 disgraceful to the empire. Though few 
 leases contain clauses by which the tenant 
 is bound to cultivate the ground in a par- 
 ticular manner, there are some which oblige 
 him, when called upon, to labor for his land- 
 lord at an inferior rate of wages. The 
 common price in these cases is eight pence 
 a day, in some instances only six-pence ; 
 and in consequence of the service required 
 by this clause being neglected, I have seen 
 a poor man’s cattle taken from his door, 
 and driven away without the least expres- 
 sion of feeling or regret. If a peasant con- 
 sents to the introduction of such a clause 
 into his lease, and he binds himself to work 
 for his landlord when required, at a fixed 
 rate of wages, which is always low, can any 
 one be surprised that the Irish are re- 
 proached with idleness , or that they should 
 perform ivork , under such circumstances , 
 in a careless and slovenly manner ? Can 
 men who hold leases on conditions so de- 
 grading, be considered as living in any other 
 state than that of slavery ?” (pp. 244 & ’5.) 
 
 WHOLESALE EXPULSION OF CATHOLICS TO 
 MAKE ROOM FOR PROTESTANTS ! 
 
 “At the same time he works for his land- 
 lord at the small wages of 5 d. per day; but 
 when he comes to settle, he receives noth- 
 ing, as the food of his few sheep is set off 
 against what he charges for labor. In this 
 manner the poor cotter must toil without 
 end ; while his family eats up the produce 
 of the small spot of land he has hired. This 
 is called by the lower classes of the Irish 
 ‘working for a dead horse;’ that is to say, 
 getting in debt. Happening to dine at Cork 
 with Dr. Moylan the Catholic Bishop, he re- 
 
 i 
 
 
16 
 
 iated to me the following circumstance in 
 regard to some townlands belonging to the 
 Duke of Devonshire ; — These lands were oc- 
 cupied by two hundred families, and on the 
 expiration of their leases the Duke’s agents, 
 wishing to substitute Protestants in the room 
 of Catholics, refused to renew them. The 
 occupiers finding that they were likely to 
 be deprived of their possessions, drew up a 
 memorial of the case, which Dr. Moylan 
 presented to the Right Honorable Henry 
 Elliot, who transmitted it to General Wal- 
 pole. But what was the result ? It was 
 returned to the very agent, whose conduct 
 was censured : and this gentleman, a zealous 
 friend, no doubt, to the Established Church, 
 disregarding the claims of the Catholics, 
 introduced Protestants in their stead ; but 
 interest, which often assumes the appear- 
 ance of liberality, and in many cases impels 
 men to do what they otherwise would not, 
 induced the new tenants to enter into treaty 
 with the old ones, and the latter obtained 
 leases of their former lands at a small rack 
 rent ; but with this difference in their situa- 
 tion, that they were now sub-tenants, under 
 persons who were middle-men.” (pp. 253 
 & ’4.) 
 
 LEVYING BLACK MAIL OP TEN GUINEAS PER 
 ACRE ! 
 
 “Since I was last in Ireland I have learn- 
 ed, not without considerable regret, a cir- 
 cumstance in regard to the conduct of the 
 owner of one of the best estates in that 
 country, which, as it cannot be doubted, for 
 I have it from the best authority, ought to 
 be publicly known from one end of the Bri- 
 tish empire to the other. As soon as the 
 proprietor came of age, his agent sent no- 
 tice to all the tenants whose leases were ex- 
 pired, that there could be no renewal for 
 them unless each consented to pay a fine of 
 ten guineas per acre ! But this was not 
 all : — to those in possession of leases a 
 thseat was held out, that unless they surren- 
 dered their leases , paid the required fine, 
 and took out new ones, a mark would be 
 placed against their names in the rental 
 book, and not only they, but their heirs and 
 families , would be forever excluded from 
 any benefit of a renewal. Can words be 
 found sufficiently strong to characterize this 
 unparalleled exaction ? Was it any thing 
 else than levying a tax of ten guineas per 
 acre nearly in the same manner as the au- 
 tocrat of Russia would order a new impost 
 by an imperial ukase ? Those who can 
 stoop to be the advocates of despotism, or 
 to vindicate oppression, may, perhaps, tell 
 me that the cases are widely different, and 
 that the tenants were not obliged to submit 
 to so unjust a demand. But the estate to 
 ^1. I allude extends over ».n, mile, of 
 
 country, and a refusal on their part would 
 have been sealing an act of expatriation. 
 They had no alternative — they could only 
 comply ; and thus the hard-earned savings 
 of many years’ labor were wrested from the 
 hands of industry, to be employed, perhaps, 
 for the worst of purposes — to be spent at the 
 gaming table— to pamper luxury — or to 
 gratify the vitiated taste of profligacy and 
 dissipation. It was the apparent act of the 
 numerous agents who infest the estate; but 
 the plan must have been known to, and ap- 
 proved by the owner.” (pp. 256 & ’7. 
 
 FRIGHTFUL RENTS. 
 
 “Dec. 14th. Marlfield. — Passed Thom- 
 astown, the residence of Lord Landaff, who 
 possesses an unbounded influence in the 
 county of Tipperary. In this neighborhood 
 I met with some instances of high rent, 
 which appeared to me remarkable, and 
 which the reader perhaps will hardly credit: 
 
 Mr. Sparrow let a piece of land consisting 
 of twenty-five acres, without a habitation 
 upon it, at the rate of twelve guineas per 
 acre, and another of 105 acres, situated at 
 the distance of a mile and a half, at six 
 guineas an acre. Near Clonmell a farm has 
 been let, on account of local convenience, 
 so high as fourteen guineas per acre ; and 
 Sir Thomas Fitzgerald receives for six 
 acres, near Cashel, the same extravagant 
 rent.”* (p. 277.) 
 
 THE VERY POULTRY TAKEN. 
 
 “Within Mr. Carew’s recollection, many 
 large estates in this county were occupied 
 only by cotter tenants, whose industry was 
 barely sufficient to procure them subsistence. 
 They were permitted to reside on the estate, 
 on condition of their laboring for their 
 landlord , and rearing poultry for the use 
 of his table. The uninhabited part of the ’ 
 land was overrun with furze, and employed 
 as pasture for his horses and cows, which 
 were here turned out loose, and permitted 
 to roam about in search of food.” (p. 282.) 
 
 RACK-RENTS AND DESPOTISM. 
 
 “I shall now suppose another case, that a 
 middle-man, such as one of those who abound 
 in every town of Ireland, obtains the lease 
 of this land, by what means is at present of 
 no importance, and that this person takes 
 it without the least intention of ever laying 
 out upon it a single shilling, or of occupy- 
 ing an acre of it. This man relets it at a 
 considerable rack rent, and whatever suc- 
 cess attends the occupiers, the whole fruit 
 of their labor finds its way into the pockets 
 of this petty despot. There are various 
 
 ” The guinea (now superseded by the eover* 
 
 l 
 
 V 
 
 A 
 
 * 
 
 [ 
 
 T 
 
 f 
 
 r- 
 
17 
 
 y i 
 
 
 ways by which persons of this description 
 have it in their power to ruin and destroy 
 the real tenantry of an estate ; such as that 
 of binding them by an oath to pay their 
 rent on a certain day , or to drive their cat- 
 tle to the pound, and it is extremely difficult 
 to counteract this system, (p. 287.) 
 
 “ I must observe, also, that the most bare- 
 faced bribery and corruption are practised 
 by this class of people, without the least 
 sense of fear or of shame. I have known 
 instances where the first question asked, on 
 a person applying for a lease, ‘And how 
 much do you propose to give to myself?’ — 
 Wives, daughters, k m , all re- 
 
 ceive money, and the same infamous sys- 
 tem prevails even among some resident 
 landlords, who suffering themselves to be 
 guided by that influence which, if I may be 
 allowed to compare small things with great, 
 has so often proved destructive to states, 
 turn out the best and most improving ten- 
 ant to make room for some artful and de- 
 signing knave , who has slipped into the 
 hands of the agent , or into those of some 
 part of Ms family , according to circum- 
 stances , twenty , thirty , forty , or even sixty 
 guineas. Nay, I have known instances 
 where the tenants, after feeing the agent in 
 this manner , could not get his lease exe- 
 cuted without having recourse to the pro- 
 prietor s lady , who was to be moved only 
 by weighty arguments of the same kind, 
 and to whom it was necessary for the fleeced 
 tenant to present a similar fee before he 
 could succeed in his application, (p. 297 
 & ’8.) 
 
 REDUCED TO BANKRUPTS. 
 
 “It is well known that tenants have been 
 dispossessed contrary to every principle of 
 justice or humanity , in consequence of not 
 coming up to the agent's price; and in- 
 stances have been related of others, who, 
 rather than lose their farm, have sold their 
 all to purchase the agent's good-will , and 
 by this extortion , have been reduced to the 
 state of bankrupts." (p. 300.) 
 
 He quotes his countryman and 
 predecessor, Arthur Young, who vis- 
 ited Ireland, with the same object, 
 about 1775 : 
 
 “ My own observation, however, was suffi- 
 cient to convince me, that what has been 
 said respecting absentee proprietors, by a 
 very able writer on economical and agricul- 
 tural subjects, is strictly agreeable to truth, 
 and worthy of the most serious considera- 
 tion. ‘ It is not the simple amount of the 
 rental being remitted into another country, 
 but the damp on all sorts of improvements. 
 
 and the total want of countenance and en- 
 couragement which the lower tenantry la- 
 bor under. The landlord, at such a great 
 distance, is out of the way of all complaints, 
 or, which is the same thing, of examining 
 into or remedying evils ; miseries, of which 
 he can see nothing, and probably hear as 
 little of, can make no impression. All that 
 is required of the agent is to be punctual in 
 his remittances, and as to the other people 
 who pay him, they are too often welcome to 
 go to the d — , provided their rents could 
 be paid from his territories. This is the 
 general picture.' ” (p.279.) 
 
 He reverses the picture to show 
 what these poor, hard-worked, op- 
 pressed and plundered people have 
 the ability and inclination to do, 
 when treated fairly : 
 
 “When at Mr. Stewart’s, at the Ards, in 
 Donegal, I found that he paid his laborers 
 in money every Saturday night. He was 
 the only man in the county , perhaps, who 
 thought of it, and the difference which it 
 produced was undoubtedly striking. I was 
 there in company with Sir William Rowley, 
 his son, and his brother, the Rev. Joshua 
 Rowley; and I remember we were all filled 
 with astonishment long before we got within 
 the walls of his domain, at the appearance 
 of everything around us ; being unable to 
 discover what magical power could effect so 
 speedy, and so uncommon a difference as 
 we observed not only in the looks of the 
 people, but in their habitations, and what- 
 ever else belonged to them. We, however, 
 soon found that the spell was ready 
 
 MONEY, and REGULAR WEEKLY PAYMENTS. 
 
 I found Dr. Dudley at Killown, employed 
 in the same manner as I had often seen him 
 at Bradwell, in Essex ; giving work to the 
 poor, and encouraging their honest indus- 
 try. His little farm had the appearance of 
 an ant-hill : payments were made every 
 week in money; people came to work for 
 him from a great distance, in every direc- 
 tion ; and I observed, that though a Pro- 
 testant clergyman, surrounded by Catholics, 
 he seemed to possess as much popularity in 
 Wexford as he had enjoyed in Essex. But 
 it was not obtained by suffering the people 
 to work for him without payment. He took 
 me out to see his workmen, and I shall not 
 easily forget an expression he made use of 
 ; on that occasion ; it deserves to be recorded, 
 and may afford a useful lesson to those who 
 are too apt to judge from prejudice : ‘ Wake- 
 field, look at these poor fellows, and honest- 
 ly acknowledge that an Irishman can work; 
 but bear this in mind, that he is paid every 
 Saturday night.'" (pp. 512 & ’13.) 
 
A large space of Volume II. is de- 
 moted to the religious bearings of the 
 question. As the preceding excerpts 
 have already exceeded our limits, it 
 must suffice to refer the reader to 
 the two hundred and ten pages 
 quarto, from 453 to 663, devoted to 
 this department of his topic, where- 
 in he shows that the Established 
 Church in Ireland has always been 
 a political lever and an engine of 
 oppression to the Catholics. He 
 dwells on the unparalleled injustice 
 •of compelling Catholics, who have a 
 priesthood of their own to support, 
 to hand over the tenth part of the 
 produce of their poor industry to 
 maintain, in “luxury” and “idle- 
 ness,” a ministry whose teachings 
 they believe to be false and whose 
 services they most cordially repudi- 
 ate. He shows how tithes of agist- 
 ment (tithes on pasture lands and 
 uncultivated grounds), were abol- 
 ished, in order to exempt the land- 
 lords from the payment of this tax 
 for the support of their own clergy ! 
 (p. 484). He describes the scenes 
 of wailing and lamentation, of riot 
 and bloodshed, of arsony and deso- 
 lation, produced by the forcible car- 
 rying off of the crops and the im- 
 pounding of cattle, horses and swine 
 belonging to Catholics, for inability, 
 neglect or disinclination to pay with 
 punctuality this cruel exaction. He 
 calculates that fully seven-eighths of 
 the rectoral tithes in the Province 
 of Connaught and elsewhere, be- 
 longed to laymen ! He shows how 
 the Presbyterians of Ulster resisted 
 this injustice, and how gently this 
 resistance was met ; while in the 
 Catholic south and west, the only 
 cow of the poor widow used to be 
 
 at public cant to liquidate this cruel 
 imposition to the last farthing ! He 
 asserts the well-known fact, that any 
 Protestant might have compelled any 
 Catholic to dismount from his horse 
 and hand it over to the aggressor on 
 the presentation of a five pound note, 
 no matter what the value of the 
 horse might have been ! Such was 
 the statute law of Ireland ; so it was 
 useless, he affirms, for the Catholic 
 to take his grievances into a court 
 of justice ! And then he exclaims in 
 astonishment: “ Yet still the Catho- 
 “ lies are reproached with poverty ; a 
 “ circumstance which is not to he im- 
 U puted to them, hut to those who in 
 “ their folly thought it good policy to 
 “ drive their wealthy brethren into ex - 
 “ He and to impose on those who 
 “ remained those cruel, restrictions 
 “ which deprived them of every incite- 
 “ merit to industry and destroyed the 
 “ hopes and power of promotion." 
 (p. 654.) 
 
 There is the testimony of a stran- 
 ger in Ireland, an Englishman and 
 a Protestant ! And every word of 
 it is corroborated by M’Oullogh, a 
 witness of the same unquestionable 
 class, whose work is a universally 
 recognized text-book on every sub- 
 ject of which it treats. Mr. Grif- 
 fiths, the government engineer and 
 the highest authority on Irish land- 
 valuation, computed the tithes of 
 Ireland j)aid to Church of England 
 ministers at “£821,214” per annum, 
 about four millions of dollars yearly , 
 exacted mainly from the poor Cath- 
 olic tillers of the soil ! ! “Yet the 
 Catholics are reproached with pov- 
 erty” ! In 1838 the tithe system was 
 changed from a direct to an indirect 
 tax upon the soil, to be collected 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 * 
 
 * 
 
 k 
 
 4 » 
 
 f 
 
 m 
 
19 
 
 4 
 
 M 
 
 landlord, under the plausible sobri- 
 quet of “ rent- charge.” 
 
 ISTo wonder that the Irish people 
 are “ scantily supplied with potatoes, 
 clothed with rags, famished with 
 cold in their comfortless habitations ; 
 nor can they, though sober , frugal and 
 laborious which from my own knowl- 
 edge 1 assert , provide against infirm- 
 ity and old age.”* 
 
 The walls of our little fabric have 
 already exceeded the height (sixteen 
 pages octavo) originally intended for 
 the ridge of the roof ; yet our pile of 
 collected materials seems untouched. 
 Let it go. Our humble aspirations 
 are gratified if, when done, we shall 
 have built a good, sound, thatched 
 cottage which will not leak. 
 
 LAWS AND GOVERNMENT. 
 
 “Inevitably, the solution we seek is to be 
 found in the (eight) alternatives just put, taken 
 individually or collectively.” — Our hypothesis, 
 
 p. 2. 
 
 8. Inevitably, therefore, if that 
 solution has not been found and 
 cannot be found, as we have en- 
 deavored to show, in the seven ne- 
 cessaria loca already examined, it 
 must be predicated of the eighth : 
 quod erat demonstrandum. If this 
 be not a fair syllogism, then we do 
 not care to know what logic is. 
 There are hundreds of theorems in 
 the pure and applied mathematics, 
 which admit of no direct demonstra- 
 tion ; as there are thousands in the 
 speculative sciences, whose direct 
 and indirect illustrations put to- 
 gether are less conclusive than that 
 now arrived at: namely, that no 
 human ingenuity can torture a sat- 
 isfactory explanation of the horrid 
 
 * Carey (Vindicias Hibernicse, p. 505), credits 
 this testimony to Wakefield ; but on referring to 
 the latter we discover, that he merely quotes it 
 
 social phenomena into which we are 
 inquiring, out of the geographical, 
 climatic, and ethnological circum- 
 stances of Ireland — a fact which 
 points inevitably and infallibly to 
 the laws and government of the 
 country. That no writer has ever 
 yet attempted to prove the contrary, 
 without failure and exposure, which 
 we affirm, is another illustration of 
 that theorem, as holding an impreg- 
 nable position among accepted 
 truths. And with all diffidence of 
 our poor ability to generate a light 
 for the full recognition of any fact 
 in nature or society, we hereby defy 
 any living being to remove us from 
 this position, this position being a 
 truth. We might rest here, and be 
 done, having proved catagorically 
 all we undertook in this relation ; 
 but, unlike so many axioms of sci- 
 ence, our proposition admits of direct 
 as well as indirect demonstration. 
 
 THE PROOF DIRECT AND POSITIVE. 
 
 In the following ways, as the ap- 
 pended references attest , successive 
 English governments have reduced 
 the people of Ireland to their present 
 wretched pass. 1. At the outset and 
 up to the reign of George the Sec- 
 ond, by the wholesale slaughter of 
 men, women and children — -a simple 
 fact which no English historian can 
 deny. 2. By reducing whole dis- 
 
 In proof of the first two of these allegations,, 
 we Tefer the reader to almost any history of Ire- 
 land, even the hostile records of Spenser, Lor- 
 lace. Hollinshed, Cox and others of that anti- 
 Irish stamp. Here is a sample of our testimony 
 from Spenser, the poet, whose hostility to Ire- 
 land has been already spoken of, and who ur- 
 gently pressed upon the English Government 
 to reduce the Irish by laying waste the crops, 
 so that they might “quietly consume themselves 
 and devour one another." “ The proofe whereof, 
 he continues. ‘‘I saw sufficiently m these late 
 i - warres of Munster 5 for notwithstanding that 
 “ the same was a most rich and plentiful coun- 
 “ try, full of corn and cattle, that ) ou would hav e 
 
 ^houehUhey^houkMi^^keer^bl^^tand 
 
20 
 
 tricts to a desert, employing fire and 
 sword in the cutting down of the 
 growing crops and the conflagra- 
 tion of homesteads. 3. By treach- 
 ery, inviting the native chiefs, whom 
 the English armies could not other- 
 wise catch or subdue, to council, to 
 hospitality and even to matrimonial 
 alliance, and then strangling them, 
 in cold blood, at the conciliatory 
 
 “ long, yet in one yeare and a Tialfe they were 
 “ brought to such wvetchednesse as that any stony 
 “ heart would have rued the same. Out of every 
 “ corner of the woods and glynnes they came 
 “creeping forth upon their handes, for their 
 “ legges could not leave them; they looked like 
 “ anatomies of death; they spoke like ghosts cry- 
 “ ing out of their graves ; they did eat the dead 
 “ carrions , happy where they could find them, yea 
 
 and one another soone after in so much as the 
 “ very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of 
 l ’ their graves , and if they found a plot of water 
 “ eresses or shamrocks , there they flocked as to a 
 “ feast for the time ; yet not able long to continue 
 “ there withall , that in short space there were none 
 “ almost left , and a most populous and plentiful 
 <£ country suddainly left voyde of man undleast." 
 — “View of the State of Ireland by Edmund 
 Spenser, page 165. 
 
 Holiinshed, whose politest nickname for the 
 Irish was “vile rebels,” thus describes the march 
 of the English soldiery through another district : 
 “ As they went they drove the whole country be- 
 u fore them into the ventrie, and by that means 
 “ they preyed and took all the cattle in the coun- 
 “ try to the number of 8,000 kine, besides horses, 
 “garrons, sheep and goats; and all such peo- 
 u ple as they met they did without mercy put 
 “ to the sword ; by these means the whole country 
 1 having no cattle or kine they were driven to siieh 
 “ extremities, that for want of victuals, they were 
 “ Either to die and perish for famine or to die un- 
 “ der the sivord. The soldiers likewise in the 
 “camp were so hot upon the spur and so eager 
 “ upon the vile rebels, that that day they spared 
 “ neither man,ivoman nor child, but all luas corn- 
 committed to the sword." — Holiinshed, Chroni- 
 cles, vol. vi., p. 427, 430, &c., &c., &c. 
 
 Cox, another historical enemy of the native 
 Irish, says that the English army “marched into 
 Desmond (Cork and Kerry) ivithoui opposition, 
 burning arid spoiling all as they went — they burned 
 the country till the 23d of July .■ — Hibernia Angli- 
 cana, by Richard Cox, published in London, 
 1689, pp. 201, 211, &c., &c., &c. 
 
 Moryson, the English historian, says “thou- 
 sands perished by famine and every road and dis- 
 trict was encumbered by their unburied carcasses .” 
 See, also, Curry’s Civil Wars ; see Leland’s 
 History of Ireland, in particular. The time re- 
 ferred to in the above extracts, is that of the 16th 
 and 17th centuries. 
 
 3. In proof of the third allegation, see the me- 
 morial to Queen Elizabeth, copied in full by 
 Plowden (Historical View), vol. i, App. p. 26. 
 See Perrot, one of the English governors in Ire- 
 
 board ! 4. By noon-day and whole- 
 sale robbery, driving out the native 
 proprietors at the point of the bay- 
 onet and then seizing on all they 
 possessed — lands, bouses, live-stock 
 and furniture. 5. By legal chica- 
 nery and trick, goading the native 
 princes into physical resistance, and 
 then confiscating their estates as 
 “rebels.” 6. By hypocrisy and sub- 
 terfuge, affecting a disposition to be 
 just, profering to renew the old he- 
 reditary titles, if only the right of 
 the English crown to renew them 
 were conceded, and then, the con- 
 cession being given, confiscating the 
 estates on the pretext that the ori- 
 ginal titles were “defective.” 7. By 
 the “mockery, delusion and snare” 
 of trial by jury, when imprisonment 
 and ruinous fine stared the jurors in 
 the face if they refused to confiscate, 
 while the very lands in question 
 were waiting for them as reward, if 
 
 4. This charge is already proved ; besides, 
 it is not denied by anybody. 
 
 5. This trickery was reduced to a regular sys- 
 tem. It provoked the great civil war of 1641, 
 and it was the deep-laid plan for creating a pre- 
 text to abolish the constitution of 1782, under 
 which Ireland prospered so rapidly for eighteen 
 years. The trick succeeded every time. By it 
 nearly “ nine-tenths ” of all the land in Ireland, 
 according to M’Cullogh, was confiscated to Eng- 
 lisg, Scotch and Anglo-Irish Protestants, and by 
 ft, provoking the Rebellion of ’98, the Act of 
 Union was advocated and finally carried, not- 
 withstanding the “forever” of the Act of ’82. 
 See Leland on the administrations of Strafford, 
 Wandesford, Parsons and Borlace. 
 
 6. Leland, vol. ii, pp. 547, ’8 and ’9, vol. iff, p 
 15. Carte’s Life of Ormond, vol. 1. pp. 27 and 
 47, vol. iff, p. 137. Stafford, vol. 1, p. 339, et 
 infra. 
 
 7. See the Impeachment of Strafford, the vice- 
 roy, for these and other outrages for which he 
 lost his head, though protesting that he had ac- 
 ted under instructions from the king! On the 
 26th of May, 1636, a Galway jury for not finding 
 for the crown, in a case of confiscation, was 
 fined £4,000 each (an enormous sum in those 
 days), and crammed into jail besides. The 
 Sheriff was also mulct to the tune of £1,000. 
 “It will excite the horror of the reader to learn, 
 that Wentworth actually levied above £40,009 
 sterling on the sheriffs and jurors— equal to 
 nearly a million of dollars at the present valua- 
 
 if 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 j] 
 
 •m 
 
 . 
 
 * 
 
 ! 
 
 V 
 
21 
 
 # 
 
 I 
 
 
 [ 
 
 [ 
 
 t 
 
 <\n 
 
 f 
 
 7 
 
 they found for the crown. 8. By 
 regal and viceregal perfidy, in the 
 abrogation of treaties “signed, sealed 
 and delivered,” and the violation of 
 the most solemn private contracts. 
 9. By Poyning’s Paws, passed in the 
 reign of Henry VII., which reduced 
 the Irish legislature to the level of a 
 mere privy council ; and by the ab- 
 solutism of James the First, in the 
 wholesale creation of * c rotten bor- 
 oughs” for the swamping of that 
 legislature. 10. By the enactment 
 of that infamous body of laws against 
 liberty of conscience, known through- 
 out Christendom as “The Penal 
 
 and commerce. 14. By statute law 
 against life and liberty, which pun- 
 ished with instant death , at the hands 
 of any private citizen , the Irishman 
 who killed an Englishman, but which 
 punished only with a fine, after trial , 
 the Englishman who took the life of 
 an Irishman ! 15. By the Act of 
 
 Union, passed in the year 1800, when 
 no Catholic could sit in either house of 
 Parliament in Ireland or England — 
 passed, too, by the most barefaced 
 bribery and corruption, thus abro- 
 gating by foul means the u final" in- 
 ternational settlement of 1782 — one 
 of the most deliberative and solemn 
 
 Code,” which has no parallel in the 
 history of legislation, the world over. 
 11. By statute law making it a penal 
 Offense to impart education to an 
 Irish Catholic. 1.2. By statute law 
 against Irish manufactures. 13. By 
 statute law against Irish trade 
 
 8. Notice the perfidy of Charles I and his 
 Deputy, Strafford, respecting the “Graces”, cer- 
 tain acts of justice to Irish proprietors, for which 
 they agreed to give the king £150,000. He 
 pocketed the money but refused the stipulated 
 equivalent ! Witness the violation of the solemn 
 Treaty of Limerick between King William and 
 the Irish Catholics fighting for James II, in vio- 
 lation of which every one of the following twenty- 
 four Acts of the Penal Code toas deliberately 
 
 assed ! We have never yet met one English 
 istorian or writer of repute to deny or even to 
 palliate this gross breach of international faith; 
 it was, says M’Cullogh, “most shamefully bro- 
 ken.” — TJni. Gaz., p. 41, vol. ii. The bribery- 
 violation of the great ’82 compact, differs from 
 the last about as much as a swindler, who takes 
 advantage of your confidence, differs from the 
 highway robber, who manfully knocks you down 
 while looking into your face. 
 
 9. Yes, and by the sale of peerages at a later 
 date. Hear Grattan in the Irish House of Com- 
 mons : “A member stands up and asserts that 
 peerages have been sold. Sir, I am that man. 
 Go into a committee, and if 1 do not, establish my 
 charge, degrade me — let me no longer enjoy the 
 character of an honest man. 1 rish my reputa- 
 tion on establishing the fact.” At the same place 
 and time he charged the attorney-general with 
 having openly threatened to spend half a million 
 sterling to secure, in plainer language to bribe, 
 a majority in the House. 
 
 11. The 7th of William III, c. 4, and the 19‘h 
 of George II, c. 7: the former forbade Catholic 
 education at home, the latter abroad. 
 
 12 & 13. See the main text above tnw«-cAs the 
 
 legislative treaties ever enacted be- 
 tween two nations. By this Union 
 Act a legislature was literally pur- 
 chased and a nation “sold” : as if a 
 deputy had power to exceed the in- 
 structions of his principal to the 
 utter ruin of his principal ; as if any 
 legislature could commit suicide 
 against the known will of the peo- 
 ple ; precisely as if the Legislature 
 of Ohio passed an Act, handing over, 
 for all time to come , the domestic leg- 
 islation of this State to the two 
 Houses at Washington ! Such, liter- 
 ally, was the Act of Union between 
 England and Ireland, which thus, 
 for the first time in history, empow- 
 ers English, Scotch and Welsh re- 
 presentatives and peers to legislate 
 
 14. Leland, vol. 1, p. 329. 
 
 15. Under the pretext of respecting vested in- 
 terests, hundreds of thousands of pounds, 
 amounting > 0 - millions of dollars, were openly 
 P id for parliamentary votes in favor of the Union 
 Bill destroying the Irish Legislature. £15,000, 
 equal to $75,000 at the present time, was a com- 
 mon sum for a single Irish vote I And will it be 
 credited that, when the measure was thus car- 
 ried, the Irish people were compelled to foot the 
 bill I ! — to pay for their own degradation and im- 
 poverishment I ! Respecting the last sentence 
 in this allegation, out of 658 members in the 
 British House of Commons only 105 are from 
 Ireland. The Irish members are thus rendered 
 impotent either to prevent a bad measure or to 
 
22 
 
 for a country which they may have 
 never seen ! 16. By thus aggrava- 
 
 tingthe long historic absentee griev- 
 ance, compelling Irish peers and 
 commoners to spend their mcney in 
 London, to the impoverishment of 
 the Irish capital and the discourage- 
 ment of trade and industry at home. 
 17. By taxing the Irish people for 
 the payment of the annual interest 
 on the frightful national debt of 
 Great Britain, which in 1801, when 
 the Act of Union came into force, 
 amounted to £486,849,000 ! not one 
 penny of which did Ireland owe, 
 having had her own separate na- 
 tional debt of only £28,544,000. In 
 17 years from that date the two 
 debts were put together; and ever 
 since Ireland has to pay the annual 
 interest on both ! What a disinter- 
 ested partnership is that which says 
 — I’ll assume your debt of 28, if you 
 adopt mine of 486 ! 18. By appro- 
 
 priating to British purposes the 
 lion’s share of the separate and ex- 
 clusive revenue of Ireland, which 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 figures at about £5,000,000 per an- 
 num, but which Mr. Billon of Dub- 
 lin fixes at “ over £7,500,000” in 1861 
 — by monopolizing, too, the vast 
 sum of Irish absentee rents, esti- 
 mated by the best authorities at 
 £4,000,000, annually! Turn these 
 pounds to dollars, and here are be- 
 tween forty and fifty millions extract- 
 ed every year from the sweat of toil- 
 worn labor in Ireland — all but a 
 mere fraction spent out of the coun- 
 try ! By monopolizing, moreover, 
 all the great public contracts, as 
 ship -building at the dockyards, gun- 
 making, ammunition -making, cloth- 
 making, shoe-making, hat-making, 
 
 of 100,000 men and all the fleets of 
 the imperial navy : a poor, half-em- 
 ployed people keeping a rich one in 
 steady employment! 19. By, in the 
 next place, administrative partiality 
 and injustice, which studiously ex- 
 clude Irishmen, more especially 
 Catholics, irrespective of the high- 
 est qualifications, from all but the 
 most miserably requited positions, 
 legislative, executive and judicial, 
 at home and abroad — what a long 
 consistency, this having been one of 
 the conditions imposed by James the 
 First on the Plantation of Ulster ! 
 20. By taxation without representa- 
 tion, the overwhelming majority of 
 the people having, up to this hour, no 
 voice in the election of the three bo- 
 dies which tax them ; namely, the 
 Parliament, the municipal corpora- 
 tions and the grand juries. 21. By 
 the fishery and game laws. Wo 
 have ourselves, “ many a time and 
 oft,” seen poor laborers convicted at 
 petty-sessions and quarter-sessions 
 for throwing a line and hook into 
 the river before their Own doors! 
 The Act, 10th of William III., chap- 
 ter 8, excluded Irish Catholics from 
 even the menial situation of game- 
 keeper. 22. By that unparalleled 
 outrage, condemned by the foremost 
 men of every political class in Eng- 
 land, of compelling a Catholic peo- 
 
 16,17,18,19,20. All these charges are too 
 notoriously true to be further enlarged upon, 
 even if our space permitted, which it does not. 
 
 22. Among those are some of the foremost 
 British statesmen of our own day, for instance: 
 Lord Brougham, Lord Macaulay, Lord John 
 Russell, Lord Campbell, Lord Grey, Sir George 
 Grey, &c. “Of all the institutions now existing 
 in the civilized world, the Established Church 
 of Ireland is the most utterly absurd and inde- 
 fensible.” — Macaulay. “ I believe the Protestant 
 Church in Ireland to be one of the most mis* 
 schievous institutions in existence. Can there 
 be any wonder that the Roman Catholics are dis- 
 contented ?” — Campbell. “It is the foulest prac- 
 tical abuse that ever existed in any civilized 
 
 i 
 
 \ 
 
 
23 
 
 pie to support a Protestant minis- 
 try. A Catholic establishment in 
 England, says Wakefield (supra), 
 would not be a greater anomaly than 
 is the Church of England Establish- 
 ment in Ireland * 23. Lastly, and 
 this is the paramount physical griev- 
 ance of Ireland at the present hour, 
 by the grinding land-laws, which 
 have handed over the entire agri- 
 cultural population of the country 
 to the tender mercies of the lords of 
 the soil, their middlemen, agents 
 and satraps, a sample of whose 
 crushing despotism has been given 
 in the last chapter. 
 
 Such is the frightful catalogue of 
 wrongs under which millions of peo- 
 ple, in one geographically distinct 
 nation of Europe, have groaned for 
 hundreds of years, and under which, 
 directly or indirectly, they groan 
 still ! 
 
 Here is a fragment of the Penal 
 Code, every individual Act of which 
 was a direct violation of the solemn 
 Treaty of Limerick ! They excluded 
 Irish Catholics from the private as 
 well as public profession and prac- 
 tice of their religion, from education, 
 from the profession of the law, from 
 intermarriage with Protestants, from 
 the magistracy, from municipal cor- 
 porations, and from .all hope of rising 
 to any civic position — all passed be- 
 tween the seventh year of William 
 the Third and the twenty-ninth of 
 George the Second : 
 
 * Here is a fact worth notice. In 1834 out of 
 the entire population of Ireland only 853,160 
 souls belonged to the Church of England — in 
 1861 the number fell to 691,872 ! — and this as 
 the final result of all the robberies and spolia- 
 tions to support it for three hundred years ! 
 
 23. “ The law authorizes the landlord, in the 
 event of the bankruptcy of a middleman to whom 
 the occupiers had paid their rents, to come upon 
 the latter and to force them, to pay their rents 
 over again to him /” — M’Cullogh, p. 34, vol. ii, a 
 complete endorsement of Wakefield’s testimony 
 
 - 
 
 7th of William III, chapter 4. 
 
 7th of William III, 
 
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 5. 
 
 9th of William III, 
 
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 1. 
 
 9th of William III, 
 
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 3. 
 
 10th of William III, 
 
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 8. 
 
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 8th of Anne, 
 
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 5. 
 
 7th of George II, 
 
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 13th of George II, 
 
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 6. 
 
 ^19th of George II, 
 
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 7. 
 
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 11. 
 
 19th of George II, 
 
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 12. 
 
 21st of George II, 
 
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 10. 
 
 23rd of George H, 
 
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 10. 
 
 23rd of George H, 
 
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 14. 
 
 29 th of George II, 
 
 u 
 
 5>. 
 
 Twenty-four penal 
 
 enactments 
 
 against the Irish people in sixty 
 years ! ! By the first of these edu- 
 cation was prohibited to Catholics from 
 one end of Ireland to the other. Ho 
 Catholic could be a school- master, 
 and no Catholic parent could have 
 acted in that capacity, except by 
 stealth, to his own children ! By the 
 second Catholics were forbidden from 
 bearing arms, and restrictions were 
 imposed on the binding of Catholic 
 youth as apprentices. Here is a de- 
 liberate act of parliament against in- 
 dustry. By the third Catholic priests 
 were expelled from their native land 
 for ever. By the fourth intermarriage 
 between Catholics and Protestants 
 was rendered illegal, if not impossi- 
 ble. By the fifth even the humble 
 situation of game-keeper was inter- 
 
sixth excluded the upper classes of 
 Catholics from practice at the bar. 
 In short, every class of Irishmen pro- 
 fessing the religion of Alfred the 
 Great and the Magna Oharta Barons, 
 was proscribed— all consigned to ig- 
 norance and poverty in the land of 
 their birth ! “Yet,” in the words of 
 Wakefield, “the Catholics are re- 
 proached with poverty !” As Burke 
 beautifully expresses it, “To render 
 humanity fit to be insulted, it was 
 fit that it should be degraded.” 
 
 Nor was this all. Six other penal 
 enactments were in force prior to 
 any of the above. One of those ex- 
 acted a fine of one shilling for every 
 omission, on the part of a Catholic, to 
 attend a Protestant church on a Sun- 
 day ! — a full third of an Irish labor- 
 er’s weekly wages at the standard, 
 6d. per day! And it is often less. 
 Here were thirds as well as tithes ! 
 Has the world ever witnessed such 
 adherence to principle on the part of 
 an entire nation? For the Irish 
 paid the fines or submitted to dis- 
 traint or went to jail, sooner than 
 tesselate the floor of a Protestant 
 temple with the portraiture of a 
 Catholic shadow. 
 
 Among the enactments against 
 
 Irish trade and commerce were the 
 12th, 15th, 22d and 23d of Charles 
 II, with the 10th and 11th of Wil- 
 liam III — the first with the two last 
 strangled the woolen manufacture of 
 Ireland, the others throttled the im- 
 port and export trade of Ireland 
 generally!! Header, God is our wit- 
 ness, that we are writing no fiction, 
 but plain historical facts, which you 
 will find in JDobb, Wallace and others 
 on Irish trade. Is it fiction, that 
 both Houses of the English Parlia- 
 ment, in broad daylight and before 
 the auditory of the civil universe, im- 
 plored William III. to take the wool- 
 en manufacture of Ireland out of the 
 way of the English article, as the 
 former was excluding the latter from 
 the foreign and colonial markets? 
 Is it fiction, that all the chalk in 
 English geology cannot blot this 
 sentence in William’s response from 
 the black pages of English history? — 
 “My Lords and Gentlemen, 1 shall 
 do all that in me lies to discourage the 
 woolen manufacture of Ireland 1 /” He 
 kept his word, as the above two statu- 
 tory records of the fact attest ! That 
 once flourishing branch of Irish in- 
 dustry is long since dead and buried ! 
 
 We are done. We have written to an emergency. Emergencies give 
 no notice. When a house is on fire, when a child is thrown overboard, 
 when a ship springs a leak and the pumps will not work, one does not 
 wait to wash his face or to put on fine linen. If we help to quench the 
 fire, to rescue the child, to caulk the auger hole or even to saddle the right 
 horse with the villainy, please excuse our shirt collar. 
 
 JOHN H. GREENE. 
 
 Cincinnati , Ohio, June 1, 1863.