Part 53 (1/2)
”Confused murmurs again ran through the House; it was visibly affected. Every character in a moment seemed involuntary rus.h.i.+ng to its index--some pale, some flushed, some agitated; there were few countenances to which the heart did not despatch some messenger.
Several members withdrew before the question could be repeated, and an awful momentary silence succeeded their departure. The Speaker rose slowly from that chair which had been the proud source of his honours and of his high character; for a moment he resumed his seat, but the strength of his mind sustained him in his duty, though his struggle was apparent. With that dignity which never failed to signalize his official actions, he held up the Bill for a moment in silence; he looked steadily around him on the last agony of the expiring Parliament. He at length repeated, in an emphatic tone, 'As many as are of opinion that _this Bill_ do pa.s.s, say aye.' The affirmative was languid but indisputable; another momentary pause ensued; again his lips seemed to decline their office; at length, with an eye averted from the object which he hated, he proclaimed, with a subdued voice, 'The Ayes have it.' The fatal sentence was now p.r.o.nounced; for an instant he stood statue-like; then indignantly, and with disgust, flung the Bill upon the table, and sunk into his chair with an exhausted spirit.
”An independent country was thus degraded into a province--Ireland, as a nation, was extinguished.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: LYNCH'S HOUSE, GALWAY.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: SWORDS' CASTLE, COUNTY DUBLIN.]
FOOTNOTES:
[571] _Clergy_.--Barrington says, in his _Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation_, p. 67, the Catholic clergy had every inclination to restrain their flocks within proper limits, and found no difficulty in effecting that object. The first statement is unquestionably true; the second statement is unfortunately disproved by many painful facts.
[572] _Them_.--Vol. ii. p. 93.
[573] _Oath_.--I give authority for these details. In the spring of 1796, three Orangemen swore before a magistrate of Down and Armagh, that the Orangemen frequently met in committees, amongst whom were some members of Parliament, who gave them money, and promised that they should not suffer for any act they might commit, and pledged themselves that they should be provided for by Government. The magistrate informed the Secretary of State, and asked how he should act; but he never received any answer, for further details on this head, see Plowden's _History of the Insurrection_.
[574] _Sermons_.--On the 1st of July, 1795, the Rev. Mr. Monsell, a Protestant clergyman of Portadown, invited his flock to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne by attending church, and preached such a sermon against the Papists that his congregation fell on every Catholic they met going home, beat them cruelly, and finished the day by murdering two farmer's sons, who were quietly at work in a bog.--Mooney's _History of Ireland_, p. 876.
[575] _Indemnity_.--Lord Carhampton sent 1,300 men on board the fleet, on mere suspicion. They demanded a trial in vain. An Act of Indemnity was at once pa.s.sed, to free his Lords.h.i.+p from any unpleasant consequences.
[576] _Remember Orr_.--_Lives and Times of the United Irishmen_, second series, vol. ii. p. 380.
[577] _Sway_.--An important instance of how the memory or tradition of past wrongs excites men to seize the first opportunity of revenge, if not of redress, has occurred in our own times. It is a circ.u.mstance which should be very carefully pondered by statesmen who have the real interest of the whole nation at heart. It is a circ.u.mstance, as a sample of many other similar cases, which should be known to every Englishman who wishes to understand the cause of ”Irish disturbances.” One of the men who was shot by the police during the late Fenian outbreak in Ireland, was a respectable farmer named Peter Crowley. His history tells the motive for which he risked and lost his life. His grandfather had been outlawed in the rebellion of '98. His uncle, Father Peter O'Neill, had been imprisoned and _flogged most barbarously, with circ.u.mstances of peculiar cruelty_, in Cork, in the year 1798. The memory of the insult and injury done to a priest, who was entirely guiltless of the crimes with which he was charged, left a legacy of bitterness and hatred of Saxon rule in the whole family, which, unhappily, religion failed to eradicate. Peter Crowley was a sober, industrious, steady man, and his parish priest, who attended his deathbed, p.r.o.nounced his end ”most happy and edifying.” Three clergymen and a procession of young men, women, and children, scattering flowers before the coffin, and bearing green boughs, attended his remains to the grave. He was mourned as a patriot, who had loved his country, not wisely, but too well; and it was believed that his motive for joining the Fenian ranks was less from a desire of revenge, which would have been sinful, than from a mistaken idea of freeing his country from a repet.i.tion of the cruelties of '98, and from her present grievances.
[578] _Sufferer_.--Plowden, _Hist_. p. 102.
[579] _Sanction_.--His son says: ”His estimate of the people led him to appreciate justly the liveliness of their parts. But while he knew their vices, and the origin of them, he knew that there was in their character much of the generosity and warmth of feeling which made them acutely sensitive when they were treated considerately and kindly. His judgment of the upper cla.s.ses of society, and of the purity and wisdom of the government, was less favorable. He saw that the gentry were imperfectly educated; that they were devoted to the pursuits of pleasure and political intrigue; and that they were ignorant or neglectful of the duties imposed on them as landlords, and as the friends and protectors of those who depended on them for their existence.”--_Memoir of Sir Ralph Abercrombie_, p. 72.
[580] _All_.--Lord Holland says, in his _Memoirs of the Whig Party_: ”The fact is incontestable that the people of Ireland were driven to resistance, which, _possibly_, they meditated before, by the free quarters and excesses of the soldiery, which are not permitted in civilized warfare, even in an enemy's country.” The state prisoners declared the immediate cause of the rising was ”the free quarters, the house-burnings, the tortures, and the military executions.”
[581] _Success_.--The real betrayer of this brave but unfortunate n.o.bleman has only been discovered of late years. Dr. Madden was the first to throw light upon the subject. He discovered the item of 1,000 entered in the _Secret Service Money-book_, as paid to F.H. for the discovery of L.E.F. The F.H. was undoubtedly Francis Higgins, better known as the Sham Squire, whose infamous career has been fully exposed by Mr. Fitzpatrick. In the fourth volume of the _United Irishmen_, p.
579, Dr. Madden still expresses his doubt as to who was the person employed by Higgins as ”setter.” It evidently was some one in the secrets of Lord Edward's party. The infamous betrayer has been at last discovered, in the person of Counsellor Magan, who received at various times large sums of money from Government for his perfidy. See the _Sham Squire_, p. 114. Higgins was buried at Kilbarrack, near Clontarf. In consequence of the revelations of his vileness, which have been lately brought before the public, the tomb was smashed to pieces, and the inscription destroyed. See Mr. Fitzpatrick's _Ireland before the Union_, p. 152.
[582] _Murphy_.--Rev. Mr. Gordon says: ”Some of the soldiers of the Ancient British regiment cut open the dead body of Father Michael Murphy, after the battle of Arklow, took out his heart, roasted his body, and oiled their boots with the grease which dropped from it.”--_History of the Rebellion_, p. 212.
[583] _Suffer.--Annals of Ballitore_, vol. i. p. 227.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII.
The State of Ireland before and after the Union--Advancement of Trade before the Union--Depression after it--Lord Clare and Lord Castlereagh in the English Parliament--The Catholic Question becomes a Ministerial Difficulty--The Veto--The O'Connell Sept--Early Life of Daniel O'Connell--The Doneraile Conspiracy--O'Connell as Leader of the Catholic Party--The Clare Election--O'Connell in the English House of Parliament--Sir Robert Peel--George IV. visits Ireland--Disturbances in Ireland from the Union to the year 1834, and their Causes--Parliamentary Evidence--The ”Second Reformation”--Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation--Emigration, its Causes and Effects--Colonial Policy of England--Statistics of American Trade and Population--Importance of the Irish and Catholic Element in America--Conclusion.
[A.D. 1800-1868.]
It is both a mistake and an injustice to suppose that the page of Irish history closed with the dawn of that summer morning, in the year of grace 1800, when the parliamentary union of Great Britain and Ireland was enacted. I have quoted Sir Jonah Barrington's description of the closing night of the Irish Parliament, because he writes as an eyewitness, and because few could describe its ”last agony” with more touching eloquence and more vivid truthfulness; but I beg leave, in the name of my country, to protest against his conclusion, that ”Ireland, as a nation, was extinguished.” There never was, and we must almost fear there never will be, a moment in the history of our nation, in which her independence was proclaimed more triumphantly or gloriously, than when O'Connell, the n.o.blest and the best of her sons, obtained Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation.
The immediate effects of the dissolution of the Irish Parliament were certainly appalling. The measure was carried on the 7th of June, 1800.
On the 16th of April, 1782, another measure had been carried, to which I must briefly call your attention. That measure was the independence of the Irish Parliament. When it pa.s.sed, Grattan rose once more in the House, and exclaimed: ”Ireland is now a nation! In that new character I hail her, and bowing to her august presence, I say, _Esto perpetua!”_ period of unexampled prosperity followed. The very effects of a reaction from conditions under which commerce was purposely restricted and trade paralyzed by law, to one of comparative freedom, could not fail to produce such a result. If the Parliament had been reformed when it was freed, it is probable that Ireland at this moment would be the most prosperous of nations. But the Parliament was not reformed. The prosperity which followed was rather the effect of reaction, than of any real settlement of the Irish question. The land laws, which unquestionably are _the_ grievance of Ireland, were left untouched, an alien Church was allowed to continue its unjust exactions; and though Ireland was delivered, her chains were not all broken; and those which were, still hung loosely round her, ready for the hand of traitor or of foe. Though nominally freed from English control, the Irish Parliament was not less enslaved by English influence. Perhaps there had never been a period in the history of that nation when bribery was more freely used, when corruption was more predominant. A considerable number of the peers in the Irish House were English by interest and by education; a majority of the members of the Lower House were their creatures. A man who ambitioned a place in Parliament, should conform to the opinions of his patron; the patron was willing to receive a ”compensation” for making his opinions, if he had any, coincide with those of the Government. Many of the members were anxious for preferment for themselves or their friends; the price of preferment was a vote for ministers. The solemn fact of individual responsibility for each individual act, had yet to be understood. Perhaps the lesson has yet to be learned.
One of the first acts of the Irish independent Parliament, was to order the appointment of a committee to inquire into the state of the manufactures of the kingdom, and to ascertain what might be necessary for their improvement. The hearts of the poor, always praying for employment, which had been so long and so cruelly withheld from them, bounded with joy. Pet.i.tions poured in on every side. David Bosquet had erected mills in Dublin for the manufacture of metals; he prayed for help. John and Henry Allen had woollen manufactories in the county Dublin; they prayed for help. Thomas Reilly, iron merchant, of the town of Wicklow, wished to introduce improvements in iron works. James Smith, an Englishman, had cotton manufactories at Balbriggan; he wished to extend them. Anthony Dawson, of Dundrum, near Dublin, had water mills for making tools for all kinds of artisans; this, above all, should be encouraged, now that there was some chance of men having some use for tools. Then there were requests for aid to establish carpet manufactories, linen manufactories, gla.s.s manufactories, &c.; and Robert Burke, Esq., of the county Kildare, prayed for the loan of 40,000 for seven years, that he might establish manufactories at Prosperous. These few samples of pet.i.tions, taken at random from many others, will enable the reader to form some faint idea of the state of depression in which Ireland was kept by the English nation--of the eagerness of the Irish to work if they were only permitted to do so.