Part 23

The Treaty of Limerick, signed when the army of Sarsfield came to terms with the besiegers, guaranteed equal liberty to all Ireland, without regard to difference of religion. There is no doubt that William of Nassau, scion of a race which had done much for liberty, a house that had felt the bitterness of oppression, would willingly have carried this treaty out in a spirit of fidelity and honor. But he was, helpless. The dominant powers in England and Ireland were too strong for him, and within the next few years the treaty was violated in letter and spirit, and the indigenous population of Ireland was disarmed, deprived of civil rights, reduced to servitude.

It is best, wherever possible, to secure the word of witnesses who cannot be suspected of prejudice or favor. We shall do this, therefore, in describing the condition of Ireland during the eighteenth century. We find the Lord Chancellor of England declaring, during the first half of that period, that "in the eye of the law no Catholic existed in Ireland." The Lord Chief Justice affirms the same doctrine: "It appears plain that the law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic." The law, therefore, as created by England for Ireland, deprived of all civil, religious, intellectual and moral rights four-fifths of the whole population, and gave them over as a lawful prey to the remaining fifth: a band of colonists and adventurers, who favored the policy of the party then dominant in England. This was the condition of the law. We shall see, presently, what was its result on the life of the nation. It should be a warning, for all time, of the dangers which arise when one nation undertakes to govern another. For it must be clearly understood that the Sovreign and Parliament of England believed that in this they stood for honor and righteousness, and had a true insight into the spirit and will of the Most High. It was, indeed, on this superior knowledge of the divine will that they based their whole policy; for what else is the meaning of legal discrimination against the holders of a certain form of faith?

In the second half of the eighteenth century, in 1775, the Congress of the United States sent its sympathy in these words to the people of Ireland: "We know that you are not without your grievances; we sympathize with you in your distress, and we are pleased to find that the design of subjugating us has persuaded the administration to dispense to Ireland some vagrant rays of ministerial sunshine. Even the tender mercies of the government have long been cruel to you. In the rich pastures of Ireland many hungry parasites are fed, and grow strong to labor for her destruction."

Three years later, in 1778, Benjamin Franklin wrote thus to the Irish people: "The misery and distress which your ill-fated country has been so frequently exposed to, and has so often experienced, by such a combination of rapine, treachery and violence as would have disgraced the name of government in the most arbitrary country in the world, has most sincerely affected your friends in America, and has engaged the most serious attention of Congress."

It must be assumed that the men who drew up the Declaration of Independence knew the value of words, and that when they spoke of misery and cruelty, of rapine, treachery and distress, they meant what they said. Franklin's letter brings us to the eve of the Volunteer Movement, of which much has been said in a spirit of warm praise, but which seems to have wrought evil rather than good. This Movement, at first initiated wholly by the Scottish and English colonists and their adherents, was later widened so as to include a certain number of the indigenous population; and an armed force was thus formed, which was able to gain certain legislative favors from England, with the result that a Parliament sitting in Dublin from 1782 to 1799 passed laws with something more resembling justice than Ireland was accustomed to.

But this Parliament was in no sense national or representative. It was wholly composed of the Scottish and English colonists and their friends, and the indigenous population had no voice in its deliberations. It is, therefore, the more honor to Henry Grattan that we find him addressing that Parliament thus: "I will never claim freedom for six hundred thousand of my countrymen while I leave two million or more of them in chains. Give the Catholics of Ireland their civil rights and their franchise; give them the power to return members to the Irish Parliament, and let the nation be represented." At this time, therefore, four-fifths of the nation had neither civil rights nor franchise,--because they differed from the dominant party in England as to the precedence of the disciples of Jesus.

It may be supposed, however, that, even without civil or religious rights, the fate of the people of Ireland was tolerable; that a certain measure of happiness and well-being was theirs, if not by law, at least by grace. The answer to this we shall presently see. The Volunteer Movement, as we saw, included certain elements of the indigenous population. The dominant party in England professed to see in this a grave danger, and determined to ward off that danger by sending an army to Ireland, and quartering troops on the peasants of all suspected districts. We must remember that the peasants, on whom a hostile soldiery was thus quartered, had no civil rights as a safeguard; that the authorities were everywhere bitterly hostile, full of cowardly animosity towards them.

The result we may best describe in the words of the English generals at the head of this army. We find Sir Ralph Abercrombie speaking thus: "The very disgraceful frequency of great crimes and cruelties, and the many complaints of the conduct of the troops in this kingdom--Ireland--has too unfortunately proved the army to be in a state of licentiousness that renders it formidable to everyone except the enemy." Sir Ralph Abercrombie declared himself so frightened and disgusted at the conduct of the soldiers that he threw up his commission, and refused the command of the army.

General Lake, who was sent to take his place, speaks thus: "The state of the country, and its occupation previous to the insurrection, is not to be imagined, except by those who witnessed the atrocities of every description committed by the military,"--and he gives a list of hangings, burnings and murders.

Finally, we have the testimony of another English soldier, Sir William Napier, speaking some years later: "What manner of soldiers were these fellows who were let loose upon the wretched districts, killing, burning and confiscating every man's property? ... We ourselves were young at the time; yet, being connected with the army, we were continually among the soldiers, listening with boyish eagerness to their experiences: and well remember, with horror, to this day, the tales of lust, of bloodshed and pillage, and the recital of their foul actions against the miserable peasantry, which they used to relate."

The insurrection against this misery and violence, which began in May, 1798, and its repression, we may pass over, coming to their political consequences. It is admitted on all hands that the morality and religion of England reached their lowest ebb at this very time; we are, therefore, ready to learn that the Act of Union between England and Ireland, which followed on the heels of this insurrection, was carried by unlimited bribery and corruption. The Parliament of Ireland, as we know, was solely composed of Protestants, the Catholics having neither the right to sit nor the right to vote; so that the ignominy of this universal corruption must be borne by the class of English and Scottish settlers alone.

The curious may read lists of the various bribes paid to secure the passage of the Act of Union in 1800, the total being about six million dollars--a much more considerable sum then than now. And it must be remembered that this entire sum was drawn from the revenues of Ireland, besides the whole cost of an army numbering 125,000 men, which England maintained in Ireland at the time the Act was passed. What the amenities of the last three years of the eighteenth century cost Ireland we may judge from these figures: in 1797, while the hangings, burnings and torturings which brought about the insurrection of the following year were in an early stage, the national debt of Ireland was under $20,000,000; three years later that debt amounted to over $130,000,000. It is profitless to pursue the subject further. We may close it by saying that hardly can we find in history a story more discreditable to our common humanity than the conduct of England towards Ireland during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The French Revolution wrought a salutary change of heart in the governing class in England, for it must in justice be added that the tyranny of this class was as keenly felt by the "lower orders" in England as in Ireland itself. It is fairly certain that only the Reform Bill and the change of sovreigns which shortly followed prevented an insurrection of the peasants and servile classes in England which would have outdone in horrors the French Revolution itself. The Reform Bill was the final surrender of the baronial class in England; a surrender rather apparent than real, however, since most of the political and all the social power in the land still remains in the hands of the same class.

Through the salutary fear which was inspired by the horrors of the French Revolution, and perhaps through a certain moral awakening, the governing classes in England came to a less vicious mind in their dealings with Ireland. They were, therefore, the more ready to respond to the great national movement headed by Daniel O'Connell, with his demand that Irishmen might all equally enjoy civil and political rights, regardless of their form of faith. In 1829, as the result of this great movement, the Catholics were finally relieved of the burden of penal laws which, originally laid on them by the Tudors, were rendered even more irksome and more unjust by Cromwell and William of Nassau,--men in other things esteemed enlightened and lovers of liberty.

Thus the burden of persecution was finally taken away. To those who imposed it, the system of Penal Laws will remain a deep dishonor. But to those who bore that burden it has proved a safeguard of spiritual purity and faith. The religion of the indigenous race in Ireland was saved from the degeneration and corruption which ever besets a wealthy and prosperous church, and which never fails to engender hypocrisy, avarice and ambition. In England, the followers of the Apostles exercise the right to levy a second tax on the produce of all tilled lands, a second burden imposed upon the conquered Saxons. As a result, the leaders of the church live in palaces, while the people, the humbler part of their congregation; have sunk into practical atheism. In France, the reaction against a like state of things brought the church to the verge of destruction, and led the masses to infidelity and materialism. The result to the moral life of the people is too well known to need remark. Not less evil consequences have flowed from the enriching of the church in other lands. That wealth has always carried with it the curse, so prophetically pronounced, against those who trust in riches. For the ministers of religion, in a supreme degree, the love of money has been the root of evil.

We may, therefore, see in the spirituality and unworldliness of the native church in Ireland a result of all the evil and persecution the church suffered during almost three hundred years. From this purification by fire it comes that the people of Ireland are almost singular throughout Christendom in believing sincerely in the religion of gentleness and mercy--the kingdom which is not of this world.

In 1829 the Catholics were at last freed from the galling burdens which had weighed on them since 1537, when they failed to recognize Henry VIII as the representative of God on earth. They were still, however, under the shadow of a grave injustice, which continued to rest on them for many years. When their church lands were confiscated and their faith proscribed by law under the Tudors, a new clergy was overlaid on the country, a clergy which consented to recognize the Tudors and their successors as their spiritual head. As a reward, these new ministers of religion were allowed to levy a second tax on land, exactly as in England; and this tax they continued to collect until their privilege was finally taken away by Gladstone and the English Liberals. Needless to say that through three centuries and more four-fifths of this tax was levied on the indigenous Catholics, in support of what was to them an alien, and for most of the time a persecuting church.

One heavy disability still lay on the whole land. With its partial removal a principle has emerged of such world-wide importance in the present, and even more in the future, that we may well trace its history in detail.

The Normans, as we saw, paid themselves for conquering the Saxons and Angles by assuming a perpetual right to tax their produce; a right still in full force, and forming the very foundation of the ruling class in England. The land tenure thus created was, under the Tudors and the first Stuarts, bodily transferred to Ireland. In Ireland the land had ever been owned by the people, each tribe, as representing a single family, holding a certain area by communal tenure, and electing a chief to protect its territory from aggression. For this elective chieftainship the English law-courts substituted something wholly different: a tenure modeled on the feudal servitude of England. This new principle made the land of the country the property not of the whole people but of a limited and privileged class: the favorites of the ruling power--"hungry parasites" as the Congress of 1775 called them. This "landed" class continued to hold absolute sway until quite recently, and it was this class which succumbed to bribery in 1800, and passed the Act of Legislative Union with England. The clergy of the Established church were little more than the private chaplains of the "landed" class, the two alien bodies supporting each other.

Folly, however, was the child of injustice; for so shortsighted were these hungry parasites that they developed a system of land-laws so bad as to cause universal poverty, and bring a reaction which is steadily sweeping the "landed" class of Ireland to extinction and oblivion. The fundamental principle of these bad land-laws was this: the tenant was compelled to renew his lease from year to year; and whenever, during the year, he had in any way improved the land in his possession,--by draining marshes, by reclaiming waste areas, by adding farm-buildings, the "owner" of the land could demand an enhanced rent, as the condition of renewing the lease. The tenant had to submit to a continually ascending scale of extortion, sanctioned by law and exacted by armed force; or, as an alternative, he had to give up the fruit of his industry without compensation and without redress.

Anything more certain to destroy energy, to cut at the roots of thrift, to undermine all the best qualities of manhood, it would be impossible to imagine. The slave on the plantation could in time purchase his freedom. The tiller of the soil in Ireland found, on the contrary, that the greater his industry, the greater was the sum he had to pay for the right to exercise it. We saw that there never was any pretence of free contract in the feudal land-tenure of England; that there never was any pretence of an honest bargain between farmer and landlord, for their mutual benefit. The tenant paid the landlord for services rendered, not to him, but to his Norman conqueror. So it was, in an even greater degree, in Ireland. There was no pretence at all that tenant and landlord entered into a free contract for their mutual benefit. Nor did either law, custom, religion or opinion require the landlord to make any return to his tenants for the share of the fruit of their toil he annually carried away.

The tiller of the soil, therefore, labored from year to year, through droughts and rains, through heat and cold, facing bad seasons with good. At the end of the year, after hard toil had gathered in the fruit of the harvest, he saw the best part of that fruit legally confiscated by an alien, who would have been speechless with wonder, had it been suggested to him that anything was due from him in return. Nor was that all. This alien was empowered, and by the force of public opinion incited, to exact the greatest possible share of the tiller's produce, and, as we saw, he was entitled to the whole benefit of whatever improvements the tiller of the soil had made; and could--and constantly did--expel the cultivator who was unable or unwilling to pay a higher tax, as the penalty for improving the land.

It may be said that bad as this all was, it was not without a remedy; that the cultivator had the choice of other occupations, and might let the land lie fallow, while its "owner" starved. But this only brings to mind the fact that during the eighteenth century England had legislated with the deliberate intention of destroying the manufactures and shipping of Ireland, and had legislated with success. It should be added that this one measure affected all residents in Ireland equally, whatever faith or race. There was practically no alternative before the cultivator. He had the choice between robbery and starvation.

It would be more than miraculous if this condition of things had not borne its fruit. The result was this: it ceased to be the interest of the cultivator of the land to till it effectively, or to make any improvement whatever, whether by drainage, reclaiming waste land, or building, or by adopting better agricultural methods. In every case, his increase of labor, of foresight and energy, would have met with but one reward: when the time came to renew the lease, he would have been told that his land had doubled in value during the year, and that he must, therefore, pay twice as much for the privilege of tilling it. If he refused, he at once forfeited every claim to the fruit of his own work, the whole of his improvements becoming the property of the land owner.

The cultivators, as an inevitable consequence, lost every incentive to labor, energy, foresight and the moral qualities which are fostered by honestly rewarded work. They worked as little as possible on their farms, and the standard of cultivation steadily declined, while the mode of living grew perpetually worse. If it were intended to reduce a whole population to hopeless poverty, no better or more certain way could be imagined.

The steady lowering of the arts of cultivation, the restriction of crops, the tendency to keep as close as possible to the margin of sustenance, thus zealously fostered, opened the way for the disastrous famine of 1846 and 1847, which marks the beginning of a rapid decline in population,--a decrease which has never since been checked. The inhabitants of Ireland shortly before the famine numbered considerably over eight millions. Since that time, there has been a decrease of about four millions--a thing without parallel in Christendom.

The amendment of the land-laws, which were directly responsible for these evil results, was by no means initiated in consequence of the famine. It was due wholly to a great national agitation, carried out under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, which led to the land-acts of 1881 and 1887. These new laws at last guaranteed to the cultivator the fruit of his toil, and guarded him against arbitrary increase of the tax levied on him by the "owner" of the land. But they did not stop here; they initiated a principle which will finally make the cultivator absolute owner of his land, and abolish the feudal class with their rights of private taxation. This cannot fail to react on England, so that the burdens of the Angles and Saxons will at last be lifted from their shoulders, as a result of the example set them by the Gaels, for generations working persistently, and persistently advancing towards their goal. Nor will the tide thus set in motion spread only to Saxon and Angle; its influence will be felt wherever those who work are deprived unjustly of the fruit of their toil, whether by law or without law. The evils suffered by Ireland will thus be not unavailing; they will rather bring the best of all rewards: a reward to others, of whatever race and in whatever land, who are victims of a like injustice.

The story of Ireland, through many centuries, has thus been told. The rest belongs to the future. We have seen the strong life of the prime bringing forth the virtues of war and peace; we have seen valor and beauty and wisdom come to perfect ripeness in the old pagan world. We have seen that old pagan world transformed by the new teaching of gentleness and mercy, a consciousness, wider, more humane and universal, added from above to the old genius of individual life. With the new teaching came the culture of Rome, and something of the lore of Hellas and Palestine, of Egypt and Chaldea, warmly welcomed and ardently cherished in Ireland at a time when Europe was submerged under barbarian inroads and laid waste by heathen hordes. We have seen the faith and culture thus preserved among our western seas generously shared with the nascent nations who emerged from the pagan invasions; the seeds of intellectual and spiritual life, sown with faith and fervor as far as the Alps and the Danube, springing up with God-given increase, and ripening to an abundant harvest.