THE

IRISH QUESTION

JAMES O. PUTNAM

I

O mat , j
1

ADDRESS AT THE
Celebration of Robert Emmett's Day
l AT
BtJPPALO,
March 4, 1886.
BY
JAMES O. PUTNAM.

Of Irish heroes no name awakes a mora
tender feeling than Robert Emmett. His
youth, his romantic love, his leadership of a
forlorn hope, his tragic death, his world'
echoing words before the fatal drop, and
last that command as he touched the thresh -
hold of the Eternities, that no man write his
epitaph until his country had taken her
place among the nations of the earth, have
made of every generous heart a shrine for
his memory. In the present crisis of Ire
land, you, her sons, or descendants of her
sons, have appropriated this anniversary of
his birth to the consideration of that strug
gle which sent Emmett and a long line of
illustrious leaders to the gibbet, which cost
Ireland her short lived independence, and
which for almost a century has kept her
masses impoverished and wretched, with no
feeling toward her conquerer but hate, no
action but revolt. She has been the con
stant victim of the injustice of the British

Government;, sometimes inspired by com
mercial selfishness, sometimes by fear pro
voked by her own policy, sometimes by that
religious intolerance which, whenever or
wherever it appears, is a wicked outrage
upon the rights of man and a wicked viola
tion of those laws which, flowing from the
bosom of God, are the harmonies of the
world. Looking upon the past and the
present of Ireland, I see some things in the
action of her people which cannot be ap
proved, but I adopt the language of the
present Secretary of Ireland. Said John
Morley, in a speech at Newcastle a few
days since, referring to the charge by some
critic, that there was in the Irish nation an
" infernal element " : "I do not believe for
an instant in the presence of any particular
'infernal element' in the Irish nation.
'What the Irish are, our English institu
tions and our English Government have
made them.' "
It is, my friends, an eternal truth that a
nation that sows the wind shall reap the
whirlwind. Sooner or later the Nemesis of
history overtakes national injustice, and
terrible are its revenges.
Your committee honored me with an in
vitation to speak of the rebellion of 1798— its
causes, and the antecedent history which led
up to the outbreak. I said to them, to which
they gave ready assent, that I must speak, if
I spoke at all, from my own standpoint of
historic observation. There is, too, a philo
sophy of history which every student finds
or makes for himself. His temperament, his
habits of thought, his education and bis pre
judices are factors in his mental workshop.
However it came, that philosophy guides, or
should guide, every honest student in bis
studies of revolutionary epochs, and of the
development of institutions and states.
Our brief review will take us over ashes

yet aglow with the fires of religious discord,
but we will invoke the spirit of justice to
guide us. < '
While principles of right are eternal, in
passing judgment upon any given age we
must consider the spirit of that age. Acts
of religious persecution of to-day we would
not judge by the same standard we do of
like acts in an age when religious perse
cution was universal, upon a principle uni
versally accepted. Wholesale judicial mur
ders and confiscations in the civil and reli
gious wars of the sixteenth, seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, if practiced to-day,
would excite the abhorrence and the
protests of the civilized world. We
can here only note the fact, that from the
time of Henry VIII. to the revolution of
1688, Great Britain was a theatre of religious
and dynastic struggles carried on with re
morseless cruelty. Scotland accepted the
Presbyterian faith and system of govern
ment, winning its rights against the Episco
pacy of the Stuarts by as heroic resistance
as history records. Presbyterianism, Inde
pendency, Episcopacy, by turns triumphed
in different parts of the kingdom, and by a
system of intolerance each in turn sought
supremacy. The conflict which ended the
Stuart dynasty made Episcopacy the domi
nant religious element of England and Ire
land. Ireland in all these struggles, often
taking an active part and never disguising
her sympathies, adhered to her ancient faith
as to-day three-fourths adhere, her devotion
to it intensifying, if possible, with the per
secution she endured. Catholic sympathies
were naturally with James II., and were ac
tively in the field in his interests. Catholic
Irishmen felt that with James they could
have freedom of worship; that under Wil
liam their religion would be proscribed —
while the Protestants of Ireland believed

that with William their religion would be
tolerated, while with James on the throne it
would be suppressed. It was morally cer
tain that whichever party won in that last
dynastic struggle would fortify its power
by proscriptive legislation. The Protestants-
won, the Catholics lost. With the victory
of the Boyne began the new Iliad of Ire
land's woes. CONFISCATION OF LANDS.
First, came wholesale confiscation of lands
which had escaped previous confiscation,
transferred to English Protestants. I will
here state that about twelve millions acres
of arable land were under different reigns so
wrested from Catholic proprietors, and to
the present day Ireland's peasantry have
been the victims of a selfish, and for the
most part, absentee landlordism.
Then followed a system of penal statutes
which might drive any people to despair. It is
a sorry picture, but I would not cover it. Let
every cruel page of history be ever blazoned
in letters of living light. They are the buoys
in the currents of history warning the future
of the rocks which have wrecked the for
tunes of peoples and states.
EDMUND BURKE.
I will give you a brief obstract of that-
legislation. I take it from "A Tract on the
Popery Laws," by a Protestant, a member
for many years of the English Parliament,
whose services in behalf of civil and relig
ious liberty would rank him among the fore
most defenders of the rights of man. But
superadded to this, he was the philosophic
statesman not only of his own, but of aU
subsequent time, whose wisdom has been
carefully garnered, and is to-day as it will
be a thousand years hence, the master guide
of statesmen who would govern humanely
and wisely. He was a friend, too, of the-

American colonies, and resisted the policy
of George Third in their contest with his
government, as boldly, as ably, as persist
ently, as he did the policy of the same ob
stinate king in his government of Ireland.
But one name in English history now comes
to your thought— Edmund Burke.
PROTESTANT DEFENDERS.
It is worth your remembering that the
foremost defenders of the rights of Irish
Catholics, who in so defending threw away
«very chance or hope of court favor, were
Protestants. Grattan, Burke, Erskine, Fox,
Sydney Smith, not to speak of many lesser
men, contended for the rights of the Catho
lics of Ireland, in parliament and out of
parliament, 'til death sealed their lips. They
pointed the road, they prepared the way for
Ireland's later political triumph — Catholic
Emancipation. PENAL LEGISLATION.
It was provided by the penal statutes of
William that the eldest son of any Papist
should, immediately on his conformity to
the Church of England, become the propri
etor of any estate of his father. So break
ing down all family government, and
-subjecting parents to the most mercenary
and infamous cupidity of children. .
Any child could compel a father to come
into a Court of Equity, and to confess the
quantity and value of his estate.
If a wife of a Roman Catholic should
change her religion, from that instant she
deprived her husband of all management of
her children, and they were torn forever,
at the earliest age, from his house and fami
ly, and the father taxed for their Protestant
education till they reached the age of eigh
teen years. The same provision as to sepa
ration in case the father changed his relig
ion. A marriage of a Catholic to a Protes
tant was null and void

All Roman Catholics were disabled from
taking or purchasing any lands, or mortgage
on lands or any annuity chargeable upon
lands. There was an exception allowing,
upon terms making it almost valueless, a
lease for thirty-one years.
They were excluded from every office of
Church and State, and from the army and
the law in all its branches. They were pro
hibited from serving even as hackney clerks
in public offices.
For Catholic schoolmasters to teach in a
private family was felony, and all public
schools were closed to them. Outlawry
was the penalty for sending a Catholic child
to another country to be educated. Nothing
could be more effective than those penal
laws, to give over every Catholic family to
the densest ignorance.
The same penal code ordered all Papist
parsons, all orders of monks and friars, and
all priests, not actually in parishes and reg
istered^ be banished from the kingdom, and
if they should return from exile, to be hanged
and drawn and quartered. At the date of
Mr. Burke's tract — which was about 1765—
he says: "Every Papist priest was at that
time liable to the law."
Magistrates were authorized to make dom
iciliary visits by night and by day.
No house was sacred against such intru
sion. This dreary catalogue of schemes to
crush out the heart and spirit of a people by
dooming them to ignorance, to poverty and
robbing them of every consolation of religion
would seem to account for their hate of their
conqueror. They clung to their faith through
every generation. In the language of Burke,
after a century of persecution, " Ireland
was full of penalties and full of Papists."
Schools in the hedges and in other secret
places were established where by stealth a
few acquired from the hunted priests some

rudimentary education. Superadded to
these penal statutes were commercial restric
tions to destroy their trade, similar to those
imposed upon the American colonies. And
of the manufacturing industries little was
left her but the linen trade. Besides, the
tithe system was imposed to support the
Protestant Established Church.
HENRY GRATTAN.
But we must now consider the closing
years of the| 18th century. Ireland was suf
fering from great commercial depression;
\ the Catholic's were restive under all their
disabUities and Protestants were almost
equally discontent with the political
situation, for the English Parliament
then claimed to be supreme, and the Irish
Parliament, from which all Catholics were
excluded, subordinate.
In 1775 appeared in the Irish Parliament
a character destined to be the leader of a
Parliamentary revolution. I refer to Henry
Grattan. REVOLUTION OF 1782.
In 1782 he carried through both Houses of
the Irish Parliament his resolutions and ad
dress to the King, to the effect that the
crown of England was an imperial crown,
but that Ireland was a distinct kingdom
with a Parliament of her own, the sole leg
islature thereof. The resolutions and ad
dress were brought before the English Par
liament, and sustained in a speech of
great power by Fox, who declared that he
would rather see Ireland separated from
the crown of England than kept in subjec
tion by force. Fox was the friend of/ Ira-
land to the end of his life, and the advocate
of every liberal 'measure. The Irish volun
teers, raised at first to protect the country
against French invasion, had become a for
midable power, whose logic of force the
English Government could understand. This

was in the main a Protestant organization,
and backed by this moral power Grattan
threw the gage of parliamentary battle at
the foot of the British throne. It was
Grattan, with an eloquence unsurpassed in
any age of the world, with a power of will
which inspired the timid with courage, the
hesitating with confidence, that appealed
to the national sentiment which had long
slumbered, though not the sleep of death.
It was Grattan that rolled the stone from -
the sepulchre of Irish nationality, and
touched into life its corpse.
True, the independence he then won for
his country he saw sold by the most infa
mous parliament that ever misrepresented
a people. Referring to that new hope of Ireland,
begotten of the revolution of 1782, and to
her discrowning, he uttered that wail of an
expiring nationality: "I sat by its cradle,
I followed its hearse." "Surely," said
Burke, " Great Britain and Ireland ought to
join in a never-fading garland for the head
of Grattan."
The , objective point of Grattan's attack
was an act passed in the sixth year of
George I., to settle a question of rival juris
diction between the House of Lords of
England, and the House of Lords of Ireland,
known as Poyning's act. That act, which
may be said to be the primal cause of
Grattan's movement, declared that "the
Lords spiritual and temporal of the English
Parliament had full power and authority to
make laws and statutes of force and validity
to bind the people of the kingdom of Ire
land." So Ireland was discrowned, and her
sovereignty was never regained until Grat
tan's revolution of 1782.
The English Government, alarmed by the
aggressive attitude of Ireland, repealed the
Poyning act, and so in form restored her
I

ancient independence. By statute, Home
Rule was substituted for foreign domination.
Beginning about 1777 was some legislation
of the English Parliament relaxing some of
the penal statutes I have recited, and a very
kindly feeling was growing up between the
two religious parties. Why did not the Re
volution of '82 which so gave independence
to the Irish Parliament, give satisfaction
and peace? I will give you Grattan's words,
uttered in the English Parliament, in a speech
on the Catholic question in 1805: "It was,"
he said, " because the Irish Government at
that time was an enemy to the repeal and
to the Catholics, and prevented the good ef
fects of that measure. That government,"
he says, in the summer of 1792 " had sent
instructions to the grand juries to enter into
resolutions against the claims of the Catho
lics." It was a case of the promise kept to
the ear and broken to the hope.
Ireland's Parliament could legislate with
out being subjected to review by the En
glish Parliament, but the Parliament was it
self an odious monopoly of power by a
handful of non-Catholics, whose interest it
was to keep their Catholic fellow-citizens
forever under political disability.
' MONOPOLIES.
It was another illustration of the selfish
ness of all monopoly. It exists in party
politics, it is found in commerce, in trade,
in land proprietorship, in the vast corpora
tions which aggregate capital and spread
their net-work of privilege over land and
sea, until the very air we breathe, and the
fertilizing showers, and the genial sunshine,
seem at times controlled by monopolies that
have brains to hatch their systems of exclu-
siveness but no heart to feel,
And here we may take note of another or
ganization which was a principal factor in
the rapidly advancing struggle, that of

10
"THE UNITED IRISHMEN."
They held a meeting in 1783 and appealed to
the Government for correction of abuses
and were indignantly rebelled. Then came
a closer move between Protestants and
Catholics in the same order. In the latter
part of 1791, the organization issued a dec
laration of their objects, to- wit: "To form
a brotherhood of affection, a communion of
rights, and a union of power among Irish
men of every religious persuasion."
What was sought, was a total abolition of
political distinction between Catholics and
Protestants. The Irish Volunteers in 1782
took the same position, insisting upon equal
ity of civil and religious rights. It is to be
remembered that at this time, Catholics
not only could not be elected to the Irish
Parliament, but they had no suffrage, all
political power was in the hands of the
Protestants. So, during the years '90, '91,'92,'93 and '94,
the struggle went on, intensifying in bitter
ness toward the English — and hastening on
the appeal to arms.
TREACHERY OF PITT.
We may at this point take note of an act
of political treachery on the part of the
English Government, which leaves on Pitt,
the Prime Minister, the responsibility of all
the succeeding calamities to unhappy Ire
land. The great question after the revolution of
1782, which gave independence to the Irish
Parliament was Catholic Emancipation and
legislative reform.
In 1784 Pitt sent Lord Fitzwilliam as Lord
Lieutenant to Ireland, a friend of Grattan,
and a well known advocate of Catholic
Emancipation. Pitt had expressed himself
in favor of it. Lord Fitzwilliam was re
ceived with open arms by all parties in Ire
land. The almost universal appeal to the

11
new Lord Lieutenant was for Emancipation.
Religious prejudices and the hates of the
past had given way, for the most part, to a
unity of feeling, and a common sentiment
of justice. Let me here quote his own
words, written after his fatal recall.
His administration "was a time when the
jealousy and alarm which certainly at the
first period pervaded the minds of the Pro
testant body exist no longer — when not one
Protestant corporation, scarcely an individ
ual, has come forward to deprecate and
oppose the indulgence claimed by the higher
order of Catholics— when even some of those
who were most alarmed in 1793, and were
then the most violent opposers, declare the
indulgences now asked to be only the neces
sary consequences of those granted at that
time, and positively essential to secure the
well-being of the two countries." This indi
cates his sympathetic action as Lord Lieu
tenant, 'the Catholics trusted him. Grat
tan obtained leave to bring in an Emancipa
tion bill but with three dissentient voices, a
bill drawn up in concert with Lord Fitz
william. A reform bill was to follow. I
now quote a sentence from Lecky whose
study of this period is eminently judicial.
"It was understood that a reform bill was
to follow, and one of the most important
leaders of the United Irishmen afterward
said that in that case their quarrel with
England would have been at an end. The
whole Catholic population were strung to
the highest pitch of excitement. The Pro
testants were for the most part, enthusiasti
cally loj'al, and the revolutionary Bpirit had
almost subsided, when Pitt suddenly and
peremptorily recalled Lord Fitzwilliam and
made the rebellion which followed inevit
able." Had Pitt then played true as he played
false, to Ireland, Catholic Emancipation

12
which was wrung from the English Govern
ment, almost a half century later, would
have been conceded under Lord Fitz William's
administration, and following that, of necess
ity, a proper Reform bill, and there had
been no rebellion with its long train of
tragic woes, none of that violent agitation
associated with O'Connell and other leaders
which kept Ireland in a, state of seige 'til
Emancipation came in 1829, and instead of
that hate which Ireland has borne to Eng
land, and instead of the religious feuds
which sprang up after Pitt's hostile action,
would have been a grateful loyalty to the
government, and a unity of interest and
feeling throughout the country. I believe
history will hold Pitt and his master George
III. responsible for the rebellion of '98.
THE REBELLION CRUSHED.
The later acts in the drama are familiar.
The breach between the English govern
ment and the people grew wider and wider,
until in '98 Ireland took up arms against
England. She invoked France, she invoked
Holland to her aid. Both promised, but
from one cause and another, both failed her.
Ireland was betrayed by her own children.
The American colonies had their Arnold,
Ireland had her Reynolds. A member of
the order of United Irishmen, he was en
trusted with the confidence of the leaders,
and under the pay of the government from
the beginning, he betrayed them. Two hun
dred thousand dollars was the reward of his
infamy. Some of the leaders were exiled,
some sent to the scaffold, a drumhead court
martial established and the rebellion was
crushed by as cruel a system of tortures and
official and unofficial murders as was ever
devised. A letter of
LORD CORNWALLIS'
who arrived in Ireland June 20th, 1798, as
Lord Lieutenant and Commander-in-Chief

13
of the English forces, addressed to General
Ross, Is of interest in this connection, He
says: "The violence of our friends and their
folly in endeavoring to make it (the rebel
lion) a religious war, added to the ferocity
of our troops, who delight in murder, must
powerfully counteract all plans of concilia
tion. We are engaged in a war of plunder
and massacre. But all this is trifling com
pared to the number of murders committed
by our people without any process of exami
nation." My church as well as yours glori
fied England's court martial gibbets. Sev
eral Presbyterian clergymen so expiated the
crime of patriotism.
Robert Emmett's words addressed to his
judges from his scaffold, were literally true:
"If all the blood you have shed, could be
gathered in one vast reservoir, your Lord
ships might swim in it."
TREASON OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT.
The rebellion crushed, the next measure
was the discrowning of Ireland and her
forced union with England. The corrup
tion by which it was accomplished has, I be
lieve, no parallel in history. Lord Cornwallis
was sent by Pitt to buy up the Irish Parlia
ment. His better nature revolted at the '
mission. On June 8, 1799, he wrote to his
friend, General Ross, as follows: "My oc
cupation is now of the most , unpleasant na
ture, negotiating and jobbing with the most
corrupt people under heaven. I despise and
hate myself every hour for engaging in such
dirty work."
The Irish Parliament consisted of 300
members, many representing rotten
boroughs. The amount paid for their be
trayal of their country, was over six million
dollars. Beside of this, pensions were be
stowed with open hand. Thirty-three new
judgeships were created and bestowed on
members of the Parliament.

14
Corruption, before which the very heav
ens might well turn pale, wrought its work,
and Ireland, bound hand and foot, was de
livered over to English rule, until, in 1829,
fear provoked by agitation forshadowing
revolution, wrung from a Tory government,
Catholic Emancipation. THE PRESENT STRUGGLE.
And now Ireland is engaged in another
struggle, under the lead of a great and his
toric name — Mr. Parnell. Modern society
has been built in strata, as science tells us
the earth was built. One of its strata was
the feudal system. It continued on the con
tinent almost to the close of the eighteenth
century. The world was ready to throw off
the system, but aristocracy who held the
land and claimed to own the people would
not recognize the birth of the new ideas of
the rights of man. Then the people invoked
Revolution. How it crashed its way through
the political systems of the eighteenth cen
tury you know. Feudalism on the con
tinent fell, the serf disappeared, and the era
of the people began. Feudalism dies last
and hardest in Great Britain. For two cen
turies it has demanded of Ireland the pound
of flesh nearest the heart, and has had it.
When I think of the hundreds of thousands of
her peasantry given over to ruin by absen
tee landlordism, their wretched occupants
driven out homeless and hopeless to starve
and die, I do not wonder that Ireland has
called a halt. The , sweat of her peasant
tenantry enriched the soil they tilled, rent
rose like an engulfing tide with every en
richment, and never a brief stay of the in
justice until Gladstone gave to Ireland a
court for readjusting rents.
What is Ireland's remedy and where
centers her hope ? I doubt not were I an
Irishman, I should hope and pray for an in-

15
dependent government — I would, if I could,
retune " The harp that once through Tara's halls
The soul of music shed."
"If I were an Englishman I would give
Ireland relief, but without peril to Imperial
interests. May I tell you how, being an
Anglo-Saxon American, I view the situa
tion? Ideal legislation is impossible, the wise
statesman will seek the practical and at
tainable. With thts principle in view, I
think Ireland should have Home Rule over
purely Irish interests, but so given that no
interest should suffer injustice. The feudal
system should die. The government should
purchase the lands of landlords and sell to
the tenantry upon easy and just terms.
Then Ireland should disband the Orange
and Ribbon and other orders which serve
but to breed religious antagonisms and race
hates, and then Ireland would, I believe, re
new within a single generation her prosper
ity, forget her animosities, and take and
hold her position, the fairest gem of the Em
pire, as she is of the sea. John Morley, the
most liberal of Irish Secretaries, takes sub
stantially the same view.
MR. GLADSTONE.
What English statesman has ever de
veloped so liberal a policy in Irish affairs
as the present prime minister, the leader
of the revolution which is bringing in
the reign of the people in the place
of a selfish aristocracy? Toryism hates
him because his great ability and character
are not cansecrated to fortifying unjust
privileges and solidifying institutions in
compatible with popular liberty. Even her
Majesty, the Queen, honors him with in
tense dislike. She refuses to recognize the
marriage ceremony of his daughter, and

16
makes long journeys to deck with Windsor
flowers the grave of Beaconsfield. Ireland
had friends in Burke and Fox and Grattan
and Sheridan, whose eloquence in her de
fence, recalled the glory of Athens when
Demosthenes thundered against the invad
ing Philip. But to-day, Ireland has a friend
at the head of the present ministry whose
learning, whose ability, whose long life of
public service make him the one peerless
liberal figure in European politics, whose
ruling principle is justwe, who, as he moves
through the rocky channels of legislation
heaves the lead every inch of the way that
he may move securely. Let Ireland trust
him. She has no better friend, none more
able to secure for her, her long delayed jus
tice, than William E. Gladstone.