Young Ireland. A fragment of Irish History. Irish People's Edition

Front matter

NOTICES OF THE FIEST EDITION. From The Dublin Review. "The remarkable and romantic career of the author serves to stimulate the curiosity of the public; hut, independently of these advantages, this book contains literary merit of too high an order, and historical matter of too great value, to allow of its being, under an\ circumstances, ignored." From The Freeman's Jouisnal. "Apologia pro Sociis tCeia: So Sir Gavan Duffy might have fitly nimed this book. Suppress. ing himself so far as was at all possible in narrating a history of which he wa3 so great a part, he has devoted unwearied labout a.-..i a literary power which has fev rivals to the task of raising an enduring memorial to hi* old associ- -s, friends, and fellow-workmen; and he has done this with an enthusiasm and freshness of zealous co ..ioa which fill every reader of his work with wonder.

How vivid it all is ! Five-aud-f wenty years ag Jr. Duffy left Ireland, struck down, not only by the catastrophe of 1848, but by a second dis comfit' e — the failure of Ms efforts, in comp"";1 with Frederick Lucas and George Henry Moore, in the cause of the Irish tenant. In the Australian land, to nhich in sad discouragement ho bent his way, he J°->und the career denied to him at home. Fortune, distinction, e:i.!;.:"'ce awaited him. In that land sons and daughters grew around him. A son of his but the other day held a Inyl: position In the late ministry at Melbourne. It might have been well deemed that he had transplanted his whole scif, bis hopes, aspirations, and affections to that new world. But no ; all this career of honour and success scemS hut a pallid phantom in comparison with the memory of the days in which to him and his fellows the day-dawn of a liberated Ireland seemed near its breaking."

From The Nation. "He has treated friend and foe with that impartiality which is one of the best characteristics of a generous and noble mind. Witt a master's hand he has delineated the forms and features of tin. were his earliest adjutants, . . . Assuredly no word painter could give us anything excelling Sir Charles's portrait of Thomas Davis. Its pages abound with facts and incidents." From The IatiaiiMAx. " Their organ came out, and woke the slumbering intellect of the land, like thai I ta wake the sleeping champions of Aileach's cave. No language could too warmly describe the surprise, ihe enthusiasm with which it was received. A million faces brightened as they looked on it ; a million minds were sunlit as they read it. Its influence extended not only over a whole contemporaneous generation! but the voice of the prophet, surviving the organ which delivered it, Bpokj lo coming time, inspired the hearts, and moulded the n.mds of subsequent g. From The Belfast Noiitukiin Wma.

Preface

TO THE FIRST EDITION. I have written this book in the intervals of a busy life, because I believed it was the best and last service I could render to Ireland. It contains a memoir of the public affairs of that country during a period of abnormal political activity ; a period to which may be traced, as to their fountain-head, many of the opinions now universally current among the Irish people. My first aim was to make a new generation familiar with the truthfulness, simplicity and real moderation of the men with whom, it was said, "a new soul came into Ireland." The Young Ireland party, as their enemies in the first instance namod them, and as they came in the end to name themselves, after having been long misrepresented, have in latter time3 been vindicated and applauded more than enough, but they have never, I think been understood.

WThat they aimed to do, and what they accomplished ; their actual motives and their means of action, as disclosed in their private correspondence, aud inter preted by one who shared their counsels, are set down in this book for the first time ; and will be found, I think, worthy of study by statesmen and publicists accustomed to meditate on the ai'airs of Ireland. Another aim, if I may venture to say so, was to appeal to the conscience of the best class of Englishmen. If they should think proper to study, with reasonable pains, the brief period embraced in this narrative, they will have no difficulty, I am persuaded, in understanding a problem which has sometimes perplexed thorn — why Irishmen not deficient in public Bpirit or probity were eager to break away from the Union, or from all connection with England.

At present they see with amazement and dismay a whole people who profess to have no confidence in their equity, who proclaim that they do not expect fair play from them, and who fall into ecstasies of triumph over some disaster abroad or embarrassment at home which endangers or humiliates the Empire ; and they will not take tho obvious means of comprehending this phenomenon. For whoever desires to understand why Ireland is distressed and discontented while England ia prosperous and loyal must assuredly seek tho causes in history : to-day is the child and heir of yesterday. It is easy to comprehend the loathing sensitive Englishman feel in descending into the catacombs of tho Past, and hn lul ling the skeletons and cerements of historic crimes ; but I invite them to look at trans actions which are not remote or ghastly, which happened in their own day, for wliich they cannot altogether evade a personal responsibility, and to consider how far these transactions account for the state of Ireland at riresent.

It is more than a gene-ration since the events occurred wliich I have undertaken to record. A larger experience of mankind, the responsibilities of political office, and leisuro for reflection, have, I trust, enabled me to scrutinise them from a new point of view, and to revise whatever was rash or ungenerous in earlier judgments. I have lived a quarter of a century among Englishmen as their associate, colleague, or competitor, and I would not willingly wound their self-respect. But it would be a waste of life to write such a book as I have attempted, and abate or conceal the truth. I have striven to be fair and

PREFACE.

. temperate, but I have not hidden away anything essential to be disclosed ; and I am con vinced that confusion and disaster will continue to mark the relation between the islands till Englishment confront the facts courageously, and with a determination to discover the springhead from which the discord flows. I have gi\ en the narrative the form of personal recollections, because I speak of proceedings which I have seen and shared ; and I desire to keep before the reader the fact that it is the testimony of an actor in the scenes, who cannot avoid personal sympathies and prejudices. But I have written at the circumference of half the globe from the scene of ac tion, at a time when the chief actors are dead, and when I myself must soon follow them, and have no longer anything to ask or fear from Fortune.

The authorities for facts not within my own knowledge are indicated in she text or the notes. The most important contribution to them was the correspondence addressed to the Editor of the "Nation" by men of various classes and parties during the entire period treated of. To this collection has been added the voluminous correspondence addressed to Smith O'Brien and Thomas Davis, and the scantier correspondence preserved by John Dillon and Thomas MacNevin, entrusted tc me by their respective families ; the papers of Thomas Francis Meagher, which he gave me before leaving Ireland, the correspondence of Davis with Daniel Owen Maddyn — a portion of which Maddyn lent me in hi3 lifetime, the re mainder I received since his death from his nearest relative — and the minutes and corro pondenceof the Irish Confederation, confided to me on the dissolution of that body.

In this narrative O'Connell, while he lived, is necessarily a chief figure. His fame in all civilised countries and the affectionate remembrance in which he is held in Ireland be speak a favourable interpretation of his conduct whenever it is in controversy. But it must not be forgotten that the young men who were for a time in conflict with liim have since been scattered over the world by the blast of adversity, and have everywhere proved themselves to be men of honour and ability— men who were plainly entitled to be heard with patience in the counsels of their country against any adversary. That the narrative may serve the purpose for which it was written, or any useful pur pose, the first condition is that it shall be not only accurate, but just ; aud that it shall not be ungenerous in its justice.

I have aimed to give it this character ; whenever there was question of motives, or of competing policies or of personal reputation, I have not slurred over the difficulty, but have as scrupulously striven to be fair as if I were engaged on a last confession. What I have written is at any rate what I profoundly believe to be true; and time, I trust, will show that it contains little or nothing which any man can gainsay. The thoughtful reader will not fail to note that the narrative at bottom is not the his tory of certain men, but essentially the history of certain principles. Controversy, rather than meditation, is the nursing-mother of popular opinion ; and to the controversies and conflicts which I have undertaken to record may be traced back, for the most part, the opinions which influence the public mind of Ireland at present, or promise to inflence it. in any considerable degree among the generation now entering on public life. London, Oct., 1880.

PREFACE.

TO THE IRISH PEOPLE'S EDITION. This book has had the strange fortune of reaching every class of readers rather than the class for whom it was written — the people of Ireland. It was published in London in 1880 by Messrs Oassell, Petter, Galpin and Co, and ran through several editions in their hands. It waa immediately afterwards published in New York, first by Messrs. Appleton in an authorised edition, by arrangement with the author, and a little later by Mr. Munro of the same city, in a totally unauthorised edition : aud correspondents assured me at the time that it was to be found iu most bookseller's stores, and ou every railway book-stall in the States. Mr. George Robertson of Melbourne published au authorised edition of a convenient size and shape, which had a large circulation in Australia, and a translation -of a portion of it into French was issued in Paris, first in a political Review, and afterwards iu a separate volume, by Messrs. Blenot et Gautier.

But its circulation in Ireland was comparatively small. The London edition was sold at a guinea, and there are few purchasers of books at this price iu Ireland, and none of the other editions were procurable there, or legally admissible to the country under the law of copyright. As it was written for the people of Ireland, and its profitable circulation in other countries was a result I had not counted on, I have arranged to issue au Irish People's Edition, from which I shall receive no profit whatever, in order that it may be sold at the lowest price which will repay the publisher. It contains the sum and result of lifo-loDg ruminations on Irish nffairsi and it is published at an age when my career is so near its close that I may venture to assumo my judgment on the transactions recorded is not disturbed by political passions.

Villa Aimee, Nice, 1883. PossscniPT. — This book has becu the occasion of extensive correspoiidcr.ee with men notable in the past aud the preseut'j but as the new preface is"undergoing revisiou a letter has reached me from an unknown friend in the United Str.tes, which gives me more satisfaction than any which preceded it. It furnishes significant evidence that the chief aim of the Young Irelanders, to make their contemporaries better men as well as better Irishmen, was sometimes effectually attained. " Cincinnati, O., April 17, 1883. " 1 am a pupil of the old Nation. I was seventeen years old when its first number saw the light. Upon the downfall of all our hopes, I came to America in '49. If my life has been clean and useful it is, next to the grace of God, owing to the teaching of the great paper.

" Most certainly, in a secular sense, a higher view of personal dignity, of truthfulness, of proper pride, sprang from its teachings. Now, when 1 am fifty-six years old, 1 rejoice that I have known and studied the lives ofthe great men who gathered round yourself and Davis. In my humble way I have always striven to propagate their teachings, and my children and grandchildren arc familiar with their names and work, and love them dearly. I yesterday got the second volume of jour work, and I sat up until two o'clock devouring it. I was back again amid the scenes of my boyhood, and felt once more the thrill of its passionate purposes. God bless you for this last great and loving labour. It will educate the future. I had ihe pleasure of spending an evening with Mr. A. M. Sullivan during his recent visit to our city, and went over with him, in familiar talk, the beautiful path of youth.

He promised to bear my loving message to you: 'Tell Mr. Duffy,' I said, 'that you found here men who were students ofthe great Nation, and who continue to take its teachings into their hearts for all these long years, and whose recollection of many ofth.m was as vivid as when they first read them.' "JOSEPH P. CARBERY." CONTENTS. Chaptee. »ao« I. How the Repeal Movement began ...... 1 II. How the Movement fared in the beginning, and what O'C'onnell tatig'.it - . 10 III. Its first notable Recruits . . . . - .15 IV. A Bird's-eye View of Irish History ..... .29 V. Teaching of the " Nation " . , . . 5S VI. The Corporation Debate. — The Case of Ireland . . . .72 VII. The awakening of the Country. The Menace of the Government — The Answer of the People . . . . . .78 VIII. The first stroke of the Government, and the counter stroke . . .CO IX.

Young Ireland at yvork. — The Council of Three Hundred . . .1.2 X. A Foreign Policy for Ireland . . . . • . 1 1(3 XI. Muster of the Nation at Tara and Mullaghmast . . - ■• 1-7 XII. The Clontarf Meeting prohibited. — Arrest of the Leaders . . . 102 aSoofc HE. I. How O'Connell was tried ....... Hi II. How he was convicted • . . . . 155 III. What Parliament and English Reformers thought of the Trial. — The Sentence . 166 IV. O'Connell in Gaol. — Xoung Ireland in Conciliation Hall . . . 175 V. The Irish Prisoners before the House of Lords. — Their deliverance . . 188 asoofc III. I. Irish parties after O'Conuell's deliverance ..... 107 II. Recreations of the Young Irelanders ..... 204 III. The Federal Controversy ....... 212 IV. Religious intrigues, at home and abroad ..... 224 V. Peel's concessions to Ireland ...... 230 VI.

The Workshop of Young Ireland . . . . . .240 VII. The Provincial Colleges . . . . . . .249 VIII. The opposition to the Bill . . . . . , . 260 IX. The Vice-Tribunate of John O'Connell . . . , .265 X. The Death of Davis . . . . . . .270

Book I. Chapter

I. HOW THE REPEAL MOVEMENT BEGAN. In the Spring of the year 1840 an event occurred in Ireland charged with grave and far reaching consequences, but which at the time attracted slight notice, chiefly of a mocking or contemptuous sort. Daniel O'Connell had long been tho idol of his country. men ; but popularity is a tide whose ebb though irregular is inevitable, and at this time it ran low with the popular tribune. He had reached the age of decay, being midway between his sixtieth and seventieth year ; his mind had been much disturbed of late by public and private cares, and his career for many years past had not been graced by any conspicuous success. It was under these circumstances that he suddenly invited the Irish nation to unite with him in the formidable task of repealing the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland.

Tho Union, which had lasted for more than a generation, had been" repeatedly assailed before ; first by the party of Protestant Ascendancy, and again and again by the Catholics ; and he proposed that the discontent ofthe nation, wliich slumbered for long intervals but had never become quite extinct, should be awakened once more, and guided to its aim this time by a political Association— an agency wliich had more than once played a decisive part in the recent history of the country. A national demand made by one who was indisputably leader of the great bulk of his nation has seldom been framed under circumstances more unpromising. In political move ments nothing is more embarrassing than a false start, and O'Connell had already mado a false start. Ten years earlier, while his recent triumph in the long contest for Catholic Emancipation surrounded his name with a halo of invincibility, he had made a similar ap peal to the country ; and at the general election of 1832 nearly half the representatives chosen for Ireland were pledged " Repealers," as the advocates of a National Parliament came to be called.* No capacity or services were sufficient to secure the election of a candidate in the larger constituencies who did not share the desire of the country for Self government.

But in two or three years he abandoned this purpose, in order to propose to the English people the alternative of establishing what was called " equal justice," that is to say, laws and an Executive in Ireland as free from deliberate party bias as they were in England and Scotland. At the same time several of the Repeal members relinquished their seats to accept appointments under the system which they had recently been pledged to overthrow. This acceptance of office, however, did not outrage popular feeling as it would have done at a later period. Catholic Emancipation had only recently become law, »nd there was a natural desire to see Catholics occupying places of authority from which they had been excluded since the Revolution of 1088. For a time every appointment of a Catholic was welcomed as a new triumph over Protestant Ascendancy and a new security for the fair administration of law and of the public departments.

But this sentiment suc cumbed in a great degree to the enthusiasm for nationality, and O'Connell seriously dis turbed the confidence even of devoted adherents when he permitted his son and his sons- * The members were 40 out of \05. in-law to exchange the office of popular representative for that of functionary under th* British Government. The mass of the people had not lost faith in him either on this ac count or in consequence of his abrupt change in policy ; they were persuaded that he was doing what he believed best for their interest ; but many of them had utterly lost faith in Repeal of the Union, and regarded tho occasional demand of it merely as a weapon flourished in the face of England to extort other concessions. This was the result of the false start. The period at which he took up the question anew was calculated to deepen such suspicions.

During the latter half of the six years which followed the abandonment of the first Repeal movement O'Connell had been a close Parliamentary ally of the Whig party, vindicating his preference for them by the purer administration of justice and the fairer distribution of patronage which they established in Ireland. As they were plainly about to fall from power in 1840, to make way for the second administration of Sir Robert Peel, the announcement that the Repeal agitation would be immediately renewed was suspected by many to be a device for embarrassing the Conservatives in the interest of the Whigs. And O'Connell himself, though he maintained his authority over the bulk of the people nearly unimpaired, was no longer the formidable tribune of 1832. In the ten years since Emancipation he had paid the progressive tax which envy punctually levies on eminence — in being constantly maligned.

He had been the chief instrument in overthrowing a sectarian (ascendancy which during five generations gave a small minority of the nation all the power and patronage of the State ; and of those who had lost this monopoly many could not forgive him. He had competed successfully with the landed gentry for the political control wliich they had long exercised at elections, and from time to time had menaced their feudal exactions as landowners with Parliamentary scrutiny, and they had come instinctively to hate and resist everything in which lie was concerned. These might be regarded as the natural enemies of a popular tribune, but his natural allies were nearly as ill-prepared for the new movement. He had excited the animosity of the organised trades by denouncing trade combinations, and the enthusiasm of the peasantry was < somewhat abated by constant appeals mado 'to them by his enemies to noto the fait, that though Catholic squires got seats in Parliament, and Catholic barristers got silk gowns and ermine capes, no appreciable benefit had descended on the farm-houses or cabins.

The necessary staff-officers of a national agitation were still more difficult to obtain than the rank and file. His chief associai.es in the Catholic agitation had long ago grown cold and fallen off, and they were replaced by inferior men, or their places left vacant. And his enemies, in the class from which such officers are usually drawn, were constantly augmented by a cuistic criticism on public affairs. Criticism was one of the duties of his position as a national tribune; but in truth he liked the task when the duty was not very clear. That he should be subjected to rancorous reprisals was in the nature of things ; and he often furnished plausible occasion by a strong man's disregard of appearances. Two instances, then quite recent, will illustrate the sort ■of charges which he had to meet, and which, however effectually met, thinned the rank ol gentlemen around him.

Mr. Raphael, ex-sheriff of London, a prosperous Armenian tradesman, whom O'Connell had recommended as a candidate to an Irish county, having lost his seat before a Parlia mentary Committee, charged his patron with having attempted to make money by the election and with having afterwards offered to procure him a baronetcy from the Whig Government as the price of silence on the transaction. A select committee acquitted O'Connelfof having hadaaj pecuniary interest in the electic i; but the controversy created a deep dislike in Ireland "to the system of nominating obscure strangers to be Irish representatives, and to the relations towards an English Cabinet which made it possible to offer a baronetcy as a solatium to the defeated candidate— for of this part of the story, wliich rested on a letter in O'Connell's handwriting, there could be no question.

The popular Press was blind and vehement in its defence of the transaction in all its details, but it was not unusual to hear influential adherents whisper that when the farmers of Carlow were induced to defy their arbitrary landlords at the hustings it ought to have been for some higher purpose than to procure a title for a successful Cockney confectioner.* Tho other incident happened in Ireland, and was more disastrous in its consequences. Tho renewed Repeal movement had been immediately preceded by a political organisation called the Precursor Society — a name which implied that unless equal justice was conceded by- Parliament the society was only the " precursor" to a demand for self-government. Mr. Peter Purcell, an opulent stage-coach proprietor, and a country gentleman of eonlide rable property, who was a conspicuous member of this body, suddenly resigned on the ground that he had in vain endeavoured to persuade O'Connell to allow tho funds of the society to rest in the hands of the Treasurer and Trustees ostensibly appointed to take charge of them, instead of being lodged in a country .branch bank to his personal credit.

Iii truth O'Connell, who was treated on the footing of an absolute sovereign by his immediate political adherents, thought, and was to a large extent justified in thinking, that the funds were subscribed became he asked for them, and were intended to bo spent at his discretion. Had he openly proclaimed and acted on this conviction it is probable that the subscriptions would not have been seriously diminished in amount ; but acting upon it not only without proclaiming it but while publicly repudiating ii, as a calumny had alienated many important supporters, who now either stood coldly apart or had gone with Mr. Pm cell into active opposition. + A more serious difficulty confronted him in the fact that the Catholic Clergy, who had been the local executive of all his past associations, had now special ground for doubt and distrust.

There were nearly three thousand priests in Ireland, an enormous staff, if they could be enlisted in the cause. But it. was extremely doubtful. Nearly tea years earlier O'Connell had placed himself at the head of a movement which suddenly sprang up in the midland counties and rapidly spread o\er three provinces, to abolish tithe ; tithe being an impost levied in a great part off Catholic peasants yvho were not able to afford themselves dwellings or. food fit for human beings, to support a Church whose Bishops accumulated fortunes as colossal in amount and almost as iniquitous in their origin as the fortunes oi Roman proconsuls. The hatred of tithe among the Catholic people was fierce and uuivor- ] sal, and many of the Protestant landowners were not unwilling to encourage this sentiment, | probably regarding the profuse revenues of the Establishment as so much deducted from | their natural right to the entire earnings of their tenantry.

The resistance sptedily became formidable ; the peasantry of Loinster and Munster were pledged in pubko meetings never again to pay the "accursed impost." Cattle seized for tithe arrears could find no pur chasers ; attempts to make seizures were in several cases resisted ; a number of the malcontents vvero shot by the police under circumstances which provoked bitter wrath ; and finally a party of police engaged in a tithe seizure were fallen upon and massacred by the people. The clergy of the Established Church yvero in 3ore distress during this pro tracted struggle, their entire income in some cases haying been suddenly withdrawn. The Government which carried Parliamentary Reform, confident in its great power and popularity, attempted to dispose of the difficulty. An act was passed which authorised a loan of a million for the immediate relief of the clergy, and transferred to the Executive Government the duty of collecting the arrears wliich they claimei.

But to collect the arrears was a task beyond the power even of a popular Government. Jails were soon silled with prisoners arrested for trifling amounts, often not exceeding a shilling ; sometimes not exceeding a penny. But the result of these vigorous measures was not reassuring. The costs of suits were found to exceed in the proportion of two to one the amount of tithe n covered. And the men imprisoned were regarded as martyrs, and some who died . voted public funerals by the Precursor Society, and passed through an entire province followed by mourning crowds from the jail to the grave. A considerable party of English Reformers acknowledged the reasonableness of the Irish movement, and advocated tfw * The BajAael correspondence was Bf read over the latter half of 183C, four years before tat establishment of tlie Repeal Association. t Mr. PurceU's letter 'was rubliahed in January, 183P, and the controversy arising out of it had scare' 'y closed when the Repeal Association was founded.

YOUNG IREIAND. " immediate or gradual disendowment of the Protestant Establishment ; and successive Go-' vernments attempted to settle the question by some method of compromise. Ten bishoprics were suppressed and Church rates were relinquished as an instalment of the justice demanded. At this stage of the contest it is not surprising that to many in Ireland the abolition of tithe seemed certain and near. At length, in 1838, Lord Mel ' bourne carried a measure into law which changed the tithe levied from the occupiers of land into a rent-charge, payable in the first instance by the landowners; that powerful class being rewarded for their acquiescence by au abatement of 25 per cent, of the original amount, and by being empowered to recover their advances from their tenants in the same manner as rent.

To give tithe a new tenure under another name and to compel Catholic landowners to become tithe proctors for the Established Church was not a triumphant termination of a national struggle in which time and money and human life had been prodigally spent ; and as O'Connell had acquiesced in this compromise he was held largely responsible for its odious conditions. Mr. Sharnmn Crawford, a Protestant of liberal fortune and democratic opinions, who had lent his aid in Parliament and the Press to overthrow tho tithe system, went to one of O'CoiineH's meetings in Dublin and charged him, face to sac?, with having sacrificed the interests of Ireland to the convenience of the Whig Government. And Father Davern, a Tipperary priest of rein likable courage and ability, published a scries of trenchant letters, holding him directly responsible for the disappointment of the national hopes.