Part 13

But laws were not only passed against the native race and the national religion. Measures were taken to destroy the industries of the country, and to involve natives and colonists, Protestants and Catholics, in common ruin. Mr. Lecky shall tell the story.

"The commercial and industrial condition of the country was, if possible, more deplorable than its political condition, and was the result of a series of English measures which for deliberate and selfish tyranny could hardly be surpassed. Until the reign of Charles II. the Irish shared the commercial privileges of the English; but as the island had not been really conquered till the reign of Elizabeth, and as its people were till then scarcely removed from barbarism, the progress was necessarily slow. In the early Stuart reigns, however, comparative repose and good government were followed by a sudden rush of prosperity. The land was chiefly pasture, for which it was admirably adapted; the export of live cattle to England was carried on upon a large scale, and it became a chief source of Irish wealth. The English landowners, however, took the alarm. They complained that Irish rivalry in the cattle market was reducing English rents; and accordingly, by an Act which was first passed in 1663, and was made perpetual in 1666, the importation of cattle into England was forbidden.

"The effect of a measure of this kind, levelled at the principal article of the commerce of the nation, was necessarily most disastrous. The profound modification which it introduced into the course of Irish industry was sufficiently shown by the estimate of Sir W. Petty, who declares that before the statute three-fourths of the trade of Ireland was with England, but not one-fourth of it since that time. In the very year when this Bill was passed another measure was taken not less fatal to the interest of the country. In the first Navigation Act, Ireland was placed on the same terms as England; but in the Act as amended in 1663 she was omitted, and was thus deprived of the whole Colonial trade. With the exception of a very few specified articles no European merchandise could be imported into the British Colonies except directly from England, in ships built in England, and manned chiefly by English sailors. No articles, with a few exceptions, could be brought from the Colonies to Europe without being first unladen in England. In 1670 this exclusion of Ireland was confirmed, and in 1696 it was rendered more stringent, for it was enacted that no goods of any sort could be imported directly from the Colonies to Ireland. It will be remembered that at this time the chief British Colonies were those of America, and that Ireland, by her geographical position, was naturally of all countries most fitted for the American trade.

"As far, then, as the Colonial trade was concerned, Ireland at this time gained nothing whatever by her connection with England. To other countries, however, her ports were still open, and in time of peace a foreign commerce was unrestricted. When forbidden to export their cattle to England, the Irish turned their land chiefly into sheep-walks, and proceeded energetically to manufacture the wool. Some faint traces of this manufacture may be detected from an early period, and Lord Strafford, when governing Ireland, had mentioned it with a characteristic comment. Speaking of the Irish he says, 'There was little or no manufactures amongst them, but some small beginnings towards a cloth trade, which I had and so should still discourage all I could, unless otherwise directed by His Majesty and their Lordships. It might be feared that they would beat us out of the trade itself by underselling us, which they were able to do.' With the exception, however, of an abortive effort by this governor, the Irish wool manufacture was in no degree impeded, and was indeed mentioned with special favour in many Acts of Parliament; and it was in a great degree on the faith of this long-continued legislative sanction that it was so greatly expanded. The poverty of Ireland, the low state of civilization of a large proportion of its inhabitants, the effects of the civil wars which had so recently convulsed it, and the exclusion of its products from the English Colonies, were doubtless great obstacles to manufacturing enterprise; but, on the other hand, Irish wool was very good, living was cheaper, taxes were lighter than in England, a spirit of real industrial energy began to pervade the country, and a considerable number of English manufacturers came over to colonize it. There appeared for a time every probability that the Irish would become an industrial nation, and, had manufactures arisen, their whole social, political, and economical condition would have been changed. But English jealousy again interposed. By an Act of crushing and unprecedented severity, which was introduced in 1698 and carried in 1699, the export of the Irish woollen manufactures, not only to England, but also to all other countries, was absolutely forbidden.

"The effects of this measure were terrible almost beyond conception. The main industry of the country was at a blow completely and irretrievably annihilated. A vast population was thrown into a condition of utter destitution. Several thousands of manufacturers left the country, and carried their skill and enterprise to Germany, France, and Spain. The western and southern districts of Ireland are said to have been nearly depopulated. Emigration to America began on a large scale, and the blow was so severe that long after, a kind of chronic famine prevailed."

Mr. Lecky relates with pride how the penal code was relaxed, and the commercial restrictions were removed, while the Irish Parliament, essentially a Protestant and landlord body, still existed, and shows how the cause of Catholic Emancipation was retarded by the Union.

"The Relief Bill of '93 naturally suggests a consideration of the question so often agitated in Ireland, whether the Union was really a benefit to the Roman Catholic cause. It has been argued that Catholic Emancipation was an impossibility as long as the Irish Parliament lasted; for in a country where the great majority were Roman Catholics, it would be folly to expect the members of the dominant creed to surrender a monopoly on which their ascendency depended. The arguments against this view are, I believe, overwhelming. The injustice of the disqualification was far more striking before the Union than after it. In the one case, the Roman Catholics were excluded from the Parliament of a nation of which they were the great majority; in the other, they were excluded from the Parliament of an empire in which they were a small minority. Grattan, Plunket, Curran, Burrowes, and Ponsonby were the great supporters of Catholic Emancipation, and the great opponents of the Union. Clare and Duigenan were the two great opponents of emancipation, and the great supporters of the Union. At a time when scarcely any public opinion existed in Ireland, when the Roman Catholics were nearly quiescent, and when the leaning of Government was generally liberal, the Irish Protestants admitted their fellow-subjects to the magistracy, to the jury-box, and to the franchise. By this last measure they gave them an amount of political power which necessarily implied complete emancipation. Even if no leader of genius had arisen in the Roman Catholic ranks, and if no spirit of enthusiasm had animated their councils, the influence possessed by a body who formed three fourths of the population, who were rapidly rising in wealth, and who could send their representatives to Parliament, would have been sufficient to ensure their triumph. If the Irish Legislature had continued, it would have been found impossible to resist the demand for reform; and every reform, by diminishing the overgrown power of a few Protestant landholders, would have increased that of the Roman Catholics. The concession accorded in 1793 was, in fact, far greater and more important than that accorded in 1829, and it placed the Roman Catholics, in a great measure, above the mercy of Protestants. But this was not all. The sympathies of the Protestants were being rapidly enlisted in their behalf. The generation to which Charlemont and Flood belonged had passed away, and all the leading intellects of the country, almost all the Opposition, and several conspicuous members of the Government, were warmly in favour of emancipation. The rancour which at present exists between the members of the two creeds appears then to have been almost unknown, and the real obstacle to emancipation was not the feelings of the people, but the policy of the Government. The Bar may be considered on most subjects a very fair exponent of the educated opinion of the nation; and Wolf Tone observed, in 1792, that it was almost unanimous in favour of the Catholics; and it is not without importance, as showing the tendencies of the rising generation, that a large body of the students of Dublin University in 1795 presented an address to Grattan, thanking him for his labours in the cause. The Roman Catholics were rapidly gaining the public opinion of Ireland, when the Union arrayed against them another public opinion which was deeply prejudiced against their faith, and almost entirely removed from their influence. Compare the twenty years before the Union with the twenty years that followed it, and the change is sufficiently manifest. There can scarcely be a question that if Lord Fitzwilliam had remained in office the Irish Parliament would readily have given emancipation. In the United Parliament for many years it was obstinately rejected, and if O'Connell had never arisen it would probably never have been granted unqualified by the veto. In 1828 when the question was brought forward in Parliament, sixty-one out of ninety-three Irish members, forty-five out of sixty-one Irish county members, voted in its favour. Year after year Grattan and Plunket brought forward the case of their fellow-countrymen with an eloquence and a perseverance worthy of their great cause; but year after year they were defeated. It was not till the great tribune had arisen, till he had moulded his co-religionists into one compact and threatening mass, and had brought the country to the verge of revolution, that the tardy boon was conceded. Eloquence and argument proved alike unavailing when unaccompanied by menace, and Catholic Emancipation was confessedly granted because to withhold it would be to produce a rebellion."

Many people will think that this is a sufficiently weighty condemnation of the Union, but what follows is a still graver reflection on that untoward measure.

"In truth the harmonious co-operation of Ireland with England depends much less upon the framework of the institutions of the former country than upon the dispositions of its people and upon the classes who guide its political life. With a warm and loyal attachment to the connection pervading the nation, the largest amount of self-government might be safely conceded, and the most defective political arrangement might prove innocuous. This is the true cement of nations, and no change, however plausible in theory, can be really advantageous which contributes to diminish it. Theorists may argue that it would be better for Ireland to become in every respect a province of England; they may contend that a union of Legislatures, accompanied by a corresponding fusion of characters and identification of hopes, interests, and desires, would strengthen the empire; but as a matter of fact this was not what was effected in 1800. The measure of Pitt centralized, but it did not unite, or rather, by uniting the Legislatures it divided the nations. In a country where the sentiment of nationality was as intense as in any part of Europe, it destroyed the national Legislature contrary to the manifest wish of the people, and by means so corrupt, treacherous, and shameful that they are never likely to be forgotten. In a country where, owing to the religious difference, it was peculiarly necessary that a vigorous lay public opinion should be fostered to dilute or restrain the sectarian spirit, it suppressed the centre and organ of political life, directed the energies of the community into the channels of sectarianism, drove its humours inwards, and thus began a perversion of public opinion which has almost destroyed the elements of political progress. In a country where the people have always been singularly destitute of self-reliance, and at the same time eminently faithful to their leaders, it withdrew the guidance of affairs from the hands of the resident gentry, and, by breaking their power, prepared the ascendency of the demagogue or the rebel. In two plain ways it was dangerous to the connection: it incalculably increased the aggregate disloyalty of the people, and it destroyed the political supremacy of the class that is most attached to the connection. The Irish Parliament, with all its faults, was an eminently loyal body. The Irish people through the eighteenth century, in spite of great provocations, were on the whole a loyal people till the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and even then a few very moderate measures of reform might have reclaimed them. Burke, in his Letters on a Regicide Peace, when reviewing the elements of strength on which England could confide in her struggle with revolutionary France, placed in the very first rank the co-operation of Ireland. At the present day, it is to be feared that most impartial men would regard Ireland, in the event of a great European war, rather as a source of weakness than of strength. More than seventy years have passed since the boasted measure of Pitt, and it is unfortunately incontestable that the lower orders in Ireland are as hostile to the system of government under which they live as the Hungarian people have ever been to Austrian, or the Roman to Papal rule; that Irish disloyalty is multiplying enemies of England wherever the English tongue is spoken; and that the national sentiment runs so strongly that multitudes of Irish Catholics look back with deep affection to the Irish Parliament, although no Catholic could sit within its walls, and although it was only during the last seven years of its independent existence that Catholics could vote for its members. Among the opponents of the Union were many of the most loyal, as well as nearly all the ablest men in Ireland; and Lord Charlemont, who died shortly before the measure was consummated, summed up the feelings of many in the emphatic sentence with which he protested against it. 'It would more than any other measure,' he said, 'contribute to the separation of two countries the perpetual connection of which is one of the warmest wishes of my heart.'

"In fact, the Union of 1800 was not only a great crime, but was also, like most crimes, a great blunder. The manner in which it was carried was not only morally scandalous; it also entirely vitiated it as a work of statesmanship. No great political measure can be rationally judged upon its abstract merits, and without considering the character and the wishes of the people for whom it is intended. It is now idle to discuss what might have been the effect of a Union if it had been carried before 1782, when the Parliament was still unemancipated; if it had been the result of a spontaneous movement of public opinion; if it had been accompanied by the emancipation of the Catholics. Carried as it was prematurely, in defiance of the national sentiment of the people and of the protests of the unbribed talent of the country, it has deranged the whole course of political development, driven a large proportion of the people into sullen disloyalty, and almost destroyed healthy public opinion. In comparing the abundance of political talent in Ireland during the last century with the striking absence of it at present, something no doubt may be attributed to the absence of protection for literary property in Ireland in the former period, which may have directed an unusual portion of the national talent to politics, and something to the Colonial and Indian careers which have of late years been thrown open to competition; but when all due allowances have been made for these, the contrast is sufficiently impressive. Few impartial men can doubt that the tone of political life and the standard of political talent have been lowered, while sectarian animosity has been greatly increased, and the extent to which Fenian principles have permeated the people is a melancholy comment upon the prophesies that the Union would put an end to disloyalty in Ireland."

Mr. Lecky's views as to what ought to have been done in 1800 deserve to be set forth.

"While, however, the Irish policy of Pitt appears to be both morally and politically deserving of almost unmitigated condemnation, I cannot agree with those who believe that the arrangement of 1782 could have been permanent. The Irish Parliament would doubtless have been in time reformed, but it would have soon found its situation intolerable. Imperial policy must necessarily have been settled by the Imperial Parliament, in which Ireland had no voice; and, unlike Canada or Australia, Ireland is profoundly affected by every change of Imperial policy. Connection with England was of overwhelming importance to the lesser country, while the tie uniting them would have been found degrading by one nation and inconvenient to the other. Under such circumstances a Union of some kind was inevitable. It was simply a question of time, and must have been demanded by Irish opinion. At the same time, it would not, I think, have been such a Union as that of 1800. The conditions of Irish and English politics are so extremely different, and the reasons for preserving in Ireland a local centre of political life are so powerful, that it is probable a Federal Union would have been preferred. Under such a system the Irish Parliament would have continued to exist, but would have been restricted to purely local subjects, while an Imperial Parliament, in which Irish representatives sat, would have directed the policy of the empire."

MR. GOLDWIN SMITH.

None of the recent opponents of Home Rule have written against that policy with more brilliance and epigrammatic keenness than Mr. Goldwin Smith. But no one has stated with more force the facts and considerations which, operating on men's mind for years past, have made the Liberal party Home Rulers now. His coup d'oeil remains the most pointed indictment ever drawn from the historical annals of Ireland against the English methods of governing that country. Twenty years ago he anticipated the advice recently given by Mr. Gladstone. In 1867 he wrote:--

"I have myself sought and found in the study of Irish history the explanation of the paradox, that a people with so many gifts, so amiable, naturally so submissive to rulers, and everywhere but in their own country industrious, are in their own country bywords of idleness, lawlessness, disaffection, and agrarian crime." He explains the paradox thus: "But it is difficult to distinguish the faults of the Irish from their misfortunes. It has been well said of their past industrial character and history,--'We were reckless, ignorant, improvident, drunken, and idle. We were idle, for we had nothing to do; we were reckless, for we had no hope; we were ignorant, for learning was denied us; we were improvident, for we had no future; we were drunken, for we sought to forget our misery. That time has passed away for ever.' No part of this defence is probably more true than that which connects the drunkenness of the Irish people with their misery. Drunkenness is, generally speaking, the vice of despair; and it springs from the despair of the Irish peasant as rankly as from that of his English fellow. The sums of money which have lately been transmitted by Irish emigrants to their friends in Ireland seem a conclusive answer to much loose denunciation of the national character, both in a moral and an industrial point of view.... There seems no good reason for believing that the Irish Kelts are averse to labour, provided they be placed, as people of all races require to be placed, for two or three generations in circumstances favourable to industry." He shows that the Irish have not been so placed. "Still more does justice require that allowance should be made on historical grounds for the failings of the Irish people. If they are wanting in industry, in regard for the rights of property, in reverence for the law, history furnishes a full explanation of their defects, without supposing in them any inherent depravity, or even any inherent weakness. They have never had the advantage of the training through which other nations have passed in their gradual rise from barbarism to civilization. The progress of the Irish people was arrested at almost a primitive stage, and a series of calamities, following close upon each other, have prevented it from ever fairly resuming its course. The pressure of overwhelming misery has now been reduced; government has become mild and just; the civilizing agency of education has been introduced; the upper classes are rapidly returning to their duty, and the natural effect is at once seen in the improved character of the people. Statesmen are bound to be well acquainted with the historical sources of the evil with which they have to deal, especially when those evils are of such a nature as, at first aspect, to imply depravity in a nation. There are still speakers and writers who seem to think that the Irish are incurably vicious, because the accumulated effects of so many centuries cannot be removed at once by a wave of the legislator's wand. Some still believe, or affect to believe, that the very air of the island is destructive of the characters and understandings of all who breathe it."

Elsewhere he adds, referring to the land system:

"How many centuries of a widely different training have the English people gone through in order to acquire their boasted love of law."

Of the "training" through which the Irish went, he says--

"The existing settlement of land in Ireland, whether dating from the confiscations of the Stuarts, or from those of Cromwell, rests on a proscription three or four times as long as that on which the settlement of land rests over a considerable part of France. It may, therefore, be considered as placed upon discussion in the estimation of all sane men; and, this being the case, it is safe to observe that no inherent want of respect for property is shown by the Irish people if a proprietorship which had its origin within historical memory in flagrant wrong is less sacred in their eyes than it would be if it had its origin in immemorial right."

The character which he gives of Irish landlordism deserves to be quoted:

"The Cromwellian landowners soon lost their religious character, while they retained all the hardness of the fanatic and the feelings of Puritan conquerors towards a conquered Catholic people. 'I have eaten with them,' said one, 'drunk with them, fought with them; but I never prayed with them.' Their descendants became, probably, the very worst upper class with which a country was ever afflicted. The habits of the Irish gentry grew beyond measure brutal and reckless, and the coarseness of their debaucheries would have disgusted the crew of Comus. Their drunkenness, their blasphemy, their ferocious duelling, left the squires of England far behind. If there was a grotesque side to their vices which mingles laughter with our reprobation, this did not render their influence less pestilent to the community of which the motive of destiny had made them social chiefs. Fortunately, their recklessness was sure, in the end, to work, to a certain extent, its own cure; and in the background of their swinish and uproarious drinking-bouts, the Encumbered Estates Act rises to our view."

Mr. Goldwin Smith deals with agrarian crime thus:

"The atrocities perpetrated by the Whiteboys, especially in the earlier period of agrarianism (for they afterwards grew somewhat less inhuman), are such as to make the flesh creep. No language can be too strong in speaking of the horrors of such a state of society. But it would be unjust to confound these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or to suppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either on the part of those who commit them, or on the part of the people who connive at and favour their commission. In the districts where agrarian conspiracy and outrage were most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was very small. In Munster, in 1833, out of 973 crimes, 627 were Whiteboy, or agrarian, and even of the remainder, many, being crimes of violence, were probably committed from the same motive.

"In plain truth, the secret tribunals which administered the Whiteboy code were to the people the organs of a wild law of social morality by which, on the whole, the interest of the peasant was protected. They were not regular tribunals; neither were the secret tribunals of Germany in the Middle Ages, the existence of which, and the submission of the people to their jurisdiction, implied the presence of much violence, but not of much depravity, considering the wildness of the times. The Whiteboys 'found in their favour already existing a general and settled hatred of the law among the great body of the peasantry.' We have seen how much the law, and the ministers of the law, had done to deserve the peasant's love. We have seen, too, in what successive guises property had presented itself to his mind: first as open rapine; then as robbery carried on through the roguish technicalities of an alien code; finally as legalized and systematic oppression. Was it possible that he should have formed so affectionate a reverence either for law or property as would be proof against the pressure of starvation?" "A people cannot be expected to love and reverence oppression because it is consigned to the statute-book, and called law."

These extracts are taken from Irish History and Irish Character, which was published in 1861. But in 1867 Mr. Goldwin Smith wrote a series of letters to the Daily News, which were republished in 1868 under the title of The Irish Question; and these letters form, perhaps, the most statesmanlike and far-seeing pronouncement that has ever been made on the Irish difficulty.

In the preface Mr. Goldwin Smith begins:

"The Irish legislation of the last forty years, notwithstanding the adoption of some remedial measures, has failed through the indifference of Parliament to the sentiments of Irishmen; and the harshness of English public opinion has embittered the effects on Irish feeling of the indifference of Parliament. Occasionally a serious effort has been made by an English statesman to induce Parliament to approach Irish questions in that spirit of sympathy, and with that anxious desire to be just, without which a Parliament in London cannot legislate wisely for Ireland. Such efforts have hitherto met with no response; is it too much to hope that it will be otherwise in the year now opening?"

The only comment I shall make on these words is: they were penned more than half a century after Mr. Pitt's Union, which was to shower down blessings on the Irish people.