An Illustrated History of Ireland: from the earliest period. By M. F. C [i.e. Mary F. Cusack.] With historical illustrations by Henry Doyle

Preface

. The history of the different races who form an integral portion of the British Empire, should be one of the most carefully cultivated studies of every member of that nation. To be ignorant of our ora history, is a disgrace ; to be ignorant of the history of those whom we govern, is an injustice. We can neither govern ourselves nor others without a thorough knowledge of peculiarities of disposition which may require restraint, and of peculiarities of temperament which may require development. We must know that water can extin guish fire, before it occurs to us to put out a fire by the use of water. We must know that fire, when properly used, is a beneficent element of nature, and one which can be used to our advantage when properly controlled, before we shall at tempt to avail ourselves of it for a general or a particular benefit.

I believe a time has come when the Irish are more than ever anxious to study their national history. I believe a time has come when the English nation, or at least a majority of the English nation, are willing to read that history without prejudice, and to consider it with impartiality. When first I proposed to write a History of Ireland, at the earnest request of persons to whose opinion I felt bound to defer, I was assured by many that it was useless ; that Irish men did not support Irish literature ; above all, that the Irish clergy were indifferent to it, and to literature in general. I have since ascertained, by personal experience, that this charge is utterly unfounded, though I am free to admit it was made on what appeared to be good authority. It is certainly to be wished that there was a more general love of reading culti-

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. VI vated amongst the Catholics of Ireland, but the deficiency is on a fair way to amendment. As a body, the Irish priesthood may not be devoted to literature; but as a body, un questionably they are devoted — nobly devoted — to the spread of education amongst their people. With regard to Englishmen, I cannot do better than quote the speech of an English member of Parliament, Alderman Salomons, who has just addressed his constituents at Green wich in these words : — " The state of Ireland will, doubtless, be a prominent sub ject of discussion next session. Anyone who sympathizes with distressed nationalities in their struggles, must, when he hears of the existence of a conspiracy in Ireland, similar to those combinations which used to be instituted in Poland in oppo sition to Russian oppression, be deeply humiliated.

Let the grievances of the Irish people be probed, and let them be remedied when their true nature is discovered. Fenianism is rife, not only in Ireland, but also in England, and an armed police required, which is an insult to our liberty. I did not know much of the Irish land question, but I know that measures have been over and over again brought into the House of Commons with a view to its settlement, and over and over again they have been cushioned or silently withdrawn. If the question can be satisfactorily settled, why let it be so, and let us conciliate the people of Ireland by wise and honorable means. The subject of the Irish Church must also be consi dered. I hold in my hand an extract from the report of the commissioner of the Dublin Freeman's Journal, who is now examining the question.

It stated what will be to you almost incredible — namely, that the population of the united dioceses of Cashel, Emly, Waterford, and Lismore is 370,978, and that of those only 13,000 are members of the Estab lished Church, while 340,000 are Roman Catholics. If you had read of this state of things existing in any other country, you would call out loudly against it. Such a condition of things, in which large revenues are devoted, not for the

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. VII good of the many, but the few, if it does not justify Fenianism, certainly does justify a large measure of discontent. I am aware of the difficulties in the way of settling the question, owing to the fear of a collision between Protestants and Catho lics ; but I think Parliament ought to have the power to make the Irish people contented." This speech, I believe, affords a fair idea of the opinion of educated and unprejudiced Englishmen on the Irish question. They do not know much about Irish history : they have heard a great deal about Irish grievances, and they have a vague idea that there is something wrong about the landlords, and something wrong about the ecclesiastical arrangements of the country. I believe a careful study of Irish history is essential to the comprehension of the Irish question; and it is obviously the moral duty of every man who has a voice in the govern ment of the nation, to make himself master of the subject.

I believe there are honest and honorable men in England, who would stand aghast with horror if they thoroughly understood the injustices to which Ireland has been and still is subject. The English, as a nation, profess the most ardent veneration for liberty. To be a patriot, to desire to free one's country, unless, indeed, that country happen to have some very close connexion with their own, is the surest way to obtain ovations and applause. It is said that circumstances alter cases ; they certainly alter opinions, but they do not alter facts. An Englishman applauds and assists insurrection in countries where they profess to have for their object the freedom of the individual or of the nation; he imprisons and stifles it at home, where the motive is precisely similar, and the cause, in the eyes of the insurgents, at least, incomparably more valid.

But I do not wish to raise a vexed question, or to enter on political discussions ; my object in this Preface is simply to bring before the minds of Englishmen that they have a duty to perform towards Ireland ; a duty which they cannot cast aside on others ; a duty which it may be for their interest, as well as for their honour, to fulfil. I wish to draw the

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. VIII attention of Englishmen to those Irish grievances which are generally admitted to exist, and which can only be fully understood by a careful and unprejudiced perusal of Irish history, past and present. Until grievances are thoroughly understood, they are not likely to be thoroughly remedied. While they continue to exist, there can be no real peace in Ireland, and English prosperity must suffer in a degree from Irish disaffection. It is generally admitted by all, except those who are specially interested in the denial, that the Land question and the Church question are the two great subjects which lie at the bottom of the Irish difficulty. The difficulties of the land question com menced in the reign of Henry II. ; the difficulties of the Church question commenced in the reign of Henry VIII.

I shall re quest your attention briefly to the standpoints in Irish history from which we may take a clear view of these subjects. I shall commence with the land question, because I believe it to be the more important of the two, and because I hope to show that the Church question is intimately connected with it. In the reign of Henry II. certain Anglo-Norman nobles came to Ireland, and, partly by force and partly by intermar riages, obtained estates in that country. Their tenure was the tenure of the sword. By the sword they expelled persons whose families had possessed those lands for centuries ; and by the sword they compelled these persons, through poverty, con sequent on loss of property, to take the position of inferiors where they had been masters. You will observe that this first English settlement in Ireland was simply a colonization on a very small scale.

Under such circumstances, if the native popula tion are averse to the colonization, and if the new and the old races do not amalgamate, a settled feeling of aversion, more or less strong, is established on both sides. The natives hate the colonist, because he has done them a grievous injury by taking possession of their lands ; the colonist hates the natives, because they are in his way ; and, if he be possessed of " land hunger," they are an impediment to the gratification of his desires. It should be observed that there is a wide difference between

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. IX colonization and conquest. The Saxons conquered what we may presume to have been the aboriginal inhabitants of Eng land ; the Normans conquered the Saxon : the conquest in both cases was sufficiently complete to amalgamate the races — the interest of the different nationalities became one. The Norman lord scorned the Saxon churl quite as contemptuously as he scorned the Irish Celt ; but there was this very important difference — the interests of the noble and the churl soon be came one ; they worked for the prosperity of their common country. In Ireland, on the contrary, the interests were oppo site. The Norman noble hated the Celt as a people whom he could not subdue, but desired most ardently to dispossess ; the Celt hated the invader as a man most naturally will hate the individual who is just strong enough to keep a wound open by his struggles, and not strong enough to end the suffering by killing the victim.

The land question commenced when Strongbow set his foot on Irish soil ; the land question will remain a disgrace to Eng land, and a source of misery to Ireland, until the whole system inaugurated by Strongbow has been reversed. " At the com mencement of the connexion between England and Ireland," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, " the foundation was inevitably laid for the fatal system of ascendancy — a system under which the dominant party were paid for their services in keeping down rebels by a monopoly of power and emolument, and thereby strongly tempted to take care that there should always be rebels to keep down." There is a fallacy or two in this state ment ; but let it pass. The Irish were not rebels then, certainly, for they were not under English dominion ; but it is something to find English writers expatiating on Irish wrongs; and if they would only act as generously and as boldly as they speak, the Irish question would receive an early and a most happy settlement.

For centuries Ireland was left to the mercy and the selfish ness of colonists. Thus, with each succeeding generation, the feeling of hatred towards the English was intensified with each new act of injustice, and such acts were part of the normal rule a

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. X of the invaders. A Lord Deputy was sent after a time to rule the country. Perhaps a more unfortunate form of government could not have been selected for Ireland. The Lord Deputy knew that he was subject to recall at any moment ; he had neither a personal nor a hereditary interest in the country. He came to make his fortune there, or to increase it. He came to rule for his own benefit, or for the benefit of his nation. The worst of Kings has, at least, an hereditary interest in the ountry which he governs ; the best of Lord Deputies might ly that, if he did not oppress and plunder for himself, other men would do it for themselves ; why, then, should he be the loser, when the people would not be gainers by his loss ? When Parliaments began to be held, and when laws were enacted, every possible arrangement was made to keep the two nations at variance, and to intensify the hostility which already existed.

The clergy were set at variance. Irish priests were for bidden to enter certain monasteries, which were reserved for the use of their English brethren ; Irish ecclesiastics were refused admission to certain church properties in Ireland, that English ecclesiastics might have the benefit of them. Lionel, Duke of Clarence, when Viceroy of Ireland, issued a proclamation, for bidding the " Irish by birth" even to come near his army, until he found that he could not do without soldiers, even should they have the misfortune to be Irish. The Irish and English were forbidden to intermarry several centuries before the same bar was placed against the union of Catholics and Protestants. The last and not the least of the fearful series of injustices enacted, in the name of justice, at the Parliament of Kilkenny, was the statute which denied, which positively refused, the benefit of English law to Irishmen, and equally forbid them to use the Brehon law, which is even now the admiration of jurists, and which had been the law of the land for many centuries.

If law could be said to enact that there should be no law, this was precisely what was done at the memorable Parliament of Kilkenny. If Irishmen had done this, it would have been laughed at as a Hibernicism, or scorned as the basest villainy ;

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. XI but it was the work of Englishmen, and the Irish nation were treated as rebels if they attempted to resist. The confiscation of Church property in the reign of Henry VIII. added a new sting to the land grievance, and introduced a new feature in its injustice. Church property had been used for the benefit of the poor far more than for the benefit of its possessors. It is generally admitted that the monks of the middle ages were the best and most considerate landlords. Thousands of families were now cast upon the mercy of the new proprietors, whose will was their only law ; and a considerable number of persons were deprived of the alms which these religious so freely distributed to the sick and the aged. Poverty multiplied fearfully, and discontent in proportion. You will see, by a careful perusal of this history, that the descendants of the very men who had driven out the original proprietors of Irish estates, were in turn driven out themselves by the next set of colonists.

It was a just retribution, but it was none the less terrible. Banishments and confiscations were the rule by which Irish property was administered. Can you be surprised that the Irish looked on English adventurers as little better than robbers, and treated them as such. If the English Government had made just and equitable land laws for Ireland at or immediately after the Union, all the miseries which have occurred since then might have been prevented. Unfortunately, the men who have to legis late for Ireland are interested in the maintenance of the unjust system ; and there is an old proverb, as true as it is old, about the blindness of those who do not wish to see. Irish landlords, or at least a considerable number of Irish landlords, are quite willing to admit that the existence of the Established Church is a grievance.

Irish Protestant clergymen, who are not possessed by an anti- Popery crotchet — and, thank God, there are few afflicted with that unfortunate disease now — are quite free to admit that it is a grievance for a tenant to be subject to ejection by his landlord, even if he pays his rent punc tually. I believe the majority of Englishmen have not the faintest idea of the way in which the Irish tenant is oppressed, not by

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. XII individuals, for there are many landlords in Ireland devoted to their tenantry, but by a system. There are, however, it cannot be denied, cases of individual oppression, which, if they occurred in any part of Great Britain, and were publicly known, would raise a storm from the Land's End to John o' Groat's house, that would take something more than revolvers to settle. As one of the great objects of studying the history of our own country, is to enable us to understand and to enact such regulations as shall be best suited to the genius of each race and their peculiar circumstances, I believe it to be my duty as an historian, on however humble a scale, not only to show how our present history is affected by the past, but also to give you such a knowledge of our present history as may enable you to judge how much the country is still suffering from present grievances, occasioned by past maladministration.

Englishmen are quite aware that thousands of Irishmen leave their homes every year for a foreign country ; but they have little idea of the cause of this emigration. Englishmen are quite aware that from time to time insurrections break out in Ireland, which seem to them very absurd, if not very wicked ; but they do not know how much grave cause there is for discontent in Ireland. The very able and valuable pamphlets which have been written on these subjects by Mr. Butt and Mr. Levey, and on the Church question by Mr. De Vere, do not reach the English middle classes, or probably even the upper classes, unless their attention is directed to them individually. The details of the suffer ings and ejectments of the Irish peasantry, which are given from time to time in the Irish papers, and principally in the Irish local papers, are never even known across the Channel.

How, then, can the condition of Ireland, or of the Irish people, be estimated as it should ? I believe there is a love of fair play and manly justice in the English nation, which only needs to be excited in order to be brought to act. But ignorance on this subject is not wholly confined to the English. I fear there are many persons, even in Ireland, who are but imperfectly acquainted with the working of their own land laws, if, indeed, what sanctions injustice deserves the name

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. XIII of law. To avoid prolixity, I shall state very briefly the posi tion of an Irish tenant at the present day, and I shall show (1) how this position leads to misery, (2) how misery leads to emigration, and (3) how this injustice recoils upon the heads of the perpetrators by leading to rebellion. First, the position of an Irish tenant is simply this : he is rather worse off than a slave. I speak advisedly. In Russia the proprietors of large estates worked by slaves, are obliged to feed and clothe their slaves ; in Ireland it quite depends on the will of the pro prietor whether he will let his lands to his tenants on terms which will enable them to feed their families on the coarsest food, and to clothe them in the coarsest raiment. If a famine occurs — and in some parts of Ireland famines are of annual occurrence—the landlord is not obliged to do anything for his tenant, but the tenant must pay his rent.

I admit there are humane landlords in Ireland ; but these are questions of fact, not of feeling. It is a most flagrant injustice that Irish landlords should have the power of dispossessing their tenants if they pay their rents. But this is not all ; although the penal laws have been repealed, the power of the landlord over the con science of his tenant is unlimited. It is true he cannot apply bodily torture, except, indeed, the torture of starvation, but he can apply mental torture. It is in the power of an Irish land lord to eject his tenant if he does not vote according to his wishes. A man who has no conscience, has no moral right to vote ; a man who tyrannizes over the conscience of another, should have no legal right. But there is yet a deeper depth. I believe you will be lost in amazement at what is yet to come, and will say, as Mr. Young said of penal laws in the last cen tury, that they were more " fitted for the meridian of Barbary."

You have heard, no doubt, of wholesale evictions ; they are of frequent occurrence in Ireland — sometimes from political motives, because the poor man will not vote with his landlord ; sometimes from religious motives, because the poor man will not worship God according to his landlord's conscience ; sometimes from selfish motives, because his landlord wishes to enlarge his domain, or to graze more cattle. The motive

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. does not matter much to the poor victim. He is flung out upon the roadside; if he is very poor, he may die there, or he may go to the workhouse, but he must not be taken in, even for a time, by any other family on the estate. The Irish Celt, with his warm heart and generous impulses, would, at all risks to himself, take in the poor outcasts, and share his poverty with them; but the landlord could not allow this. The commission of one evil deed necessitates the commission of another. An Irish gentleman, who has no personal interest in land, and is therefore able to look calmly on the question, has been at the pains to collect instances of this tyranny, in his Plea for the Celtic Race. I shall only mention one as a sample. In the year 1851, on an estate which was at the time supposed to be one of the most fairly treated in Ireland, " the agent of the property had given public notice to the tenantry that expulsion from their farms would be the penalty inflicted on them, if they harboured any one not resident on the estate.

The penalty was enforced against a widow, for giving food and shelter to a destitute grandson of twelve years old. The child's mother at one time held a little dwelling, from which she was expelled ; his father was dead. He found a refuge with his grandmother, who was ejected from her farm for harbouring the poor boy." When such things can occur, we should not hear anything more about the Irish having only " sentimental grievances." The poor child was eventually driven from house to house. He stole a shilling and a hen — poor fellow! what else could he be expected to do ? He wandered about, looking in vain for shelter from those who dared not give it. He was expelled with circumstances of peculiar cruelty from one cabin. He was found next morning, cold, stiff, and dead, on the ground outside.

The poor people who had refused him shelter, were tried for their lives. They were found guilty of manslaughter only, in consideration of the agent's order. The agent° was not found guilty of anything, nor even tried. The°landlord was supposed to be a model landlord, and his estates were held up at the very time as models; yet evictions had been fearfully and constantly carried out on them. Mr. Butt has well

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. XV observed : " The rules of the estate are often the most arbitrary and the most sternly enforced upon great estates, the property of men of the highest station, upon which rents are moderate, and no harshness practised to the tenantry, who implicitly submit." Such landlords generally consider emigration the great remedy for the evils of Ireland. They point to their own well-regulated and well-weeded estates ; but they do not tell you all the human suffering it cost to exile those who were turned out to make room for large dairy farms, or all the quiet tyranny exercised over those who still remain. Neither does it occur to them that their successors may raise these moderate rents at a moment's notice; and if their demands are not com plied with, he may eject these "comfortable farmers," without one farthing of compensation for all their improvements and their years of labour.

I have shown how the serfdom of the Irish tenant leads to misery. But the subject is one which would require a volume. No one can understand the depth of Irish misery who has not lived in Ireland, and taken pains to become acquainted with the habits and manner of life of the lower orders. The tenant who is kept at starvation point to pay his landlord's rent, has no means of providing for his family. He cannot encourage trade; his sons cannot get work to do, if they are taught trades. Emigration or the workhouse is the only resource. I think the efforts which are made by the poor in Ireland to get work are absolutely unexampled, and it is a cruel thing that a man who is willing to work should not be able to get it. I know an instance in which a girl belonging to a comparatively respectable family was taken into service, and it was discovered that for years her only food, and the only food of her family, was dry bread, and, as an occasional luxury, weak tea.

So accustomed had she become to this wretched fare, that she actually could not even eat an egg. She and her family have gone to America ; and I have no doubt, after a few years, that the weakened organs will recover their proper tone, with the gradual use of proper food. There is another ingredient in Irish misery which has not

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. XVI met with the consideration it deserves. If the landlord happens to be humane, he may interest himself in the welfare of the families of his tenantry. He may also send a few pounds to them for coals at Christmas, or for clothing ; but such instances are unhappily rare, and the alms given is comparatively nothing. In England the case is precisely the reverse. On this subject I speak from personal knowledge. There is scarcely a little village in England, however poor, where there is not a committee of ladies, assisted by the neighbouring gentry, who distribute coals, blankets, and clothing in winter ; and at all times where there is distress, give bread, tea, and meat. Well may the poor Irish come home discontented after they have been to work in England, and see how differently the poor are treated there.

I admit, and I repeat it again, that there are instances in which the landlord takes an interest in his tenantry, but those instances are exceptions. Many of these gentlemen, who possess the largest tracts of land in Ire land, have also large estates in England, and they seldom, sometimes never, visit their Irish estates. They leave it to their agent. Every application for relief is referred to the agent. The agent, however humane, cannot be expected to have the same interest in the people as a landlord ought to have. The agent is the instrument used to draw out the last farthing from the poor ; he is constantly in collision with them. They naturally dislike him ; and he, not unnaturally, dislikes them. The burden, therefore, of giving that relief to the poor, which they always require in times of sickness, and when they cannot get work, falls almost exclusively upon the priests and the con vents.

Were it not for the exertions made by the priests and nuns throughout Ireland for the support of the poor, and to obtain work for them, and the immense sums of money sent to Ireland, by emigrants, for the support of aged fathers and mothers, I believe the destitution would be something appal ling, and that landlords would find it even more difficult than at present to get the high rents which they demand. Yet, some of these same landlords, getting perhaps £20,000 or £40,000

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. XVII a-year from their Irish estates, will not give the slightest help to establish industrial schools in connexion with convents, or to assist them when they are established, though they are the means of helping their own tenants to pay their rent. There are in Ireland about two hundred conventual establishments. Nearly all of these convents have poor schools, where the poor are taught, either at a most trifling expense, or altogether without charge. The majority of these convents feed and clothe a considerable number of poor children, and many of them have established industrial schools, where a few girls, at least, can earn what will almost support a whole family in comfort. I give the statistics of one convent as a sample of others. I believe there are a few, but perhaps only a very few other places, where the statistics would rise higher ; but there are many convents where the children are fed and clothed, and where work is done on a smaller scale.

If such institutions were encouraged by the landlords much more could be done. The convent to which I allude was founded at the close of the year 1861. There was a national school in the little town (in England it would be called a village), with an attendance of about forty children. The numbers rose rapidly year by year, after the arrival of the nuns, and at present the average daily attendance is just 400. It would be very much higher, were it not for the steady decrease in the population, caused by emigration. The emigration would have been very much greater, had not the parish priest given employment to a considerable number of men, by building a new church, convent, and convent schools. The poorest of the children, and, in Ireland, none but the very poorest will accept such alms, get a breakfast of Indian meal and milk all the' year round.