Ireland: Social, Political, and Religious; edited by W. C. Taylor

Preface

. The opinions of an enlightened foreigner, uncon nected with the political parties that divide the na tion, are always replete with valuable instruction to a people. " To see ourselves as others see us," is as difficult, and at the same time as useful, for societies as for individuals ; but to no country is such an as pect of its condition so likely to be of service as Ireland, for in no other part of the world have all circumstances, small and great, connected with the moral, social, and political condition of the country, been so studiously and so grossly misrepresented. The Translator need only mention M. de Beaumont's works on the United States to prove his competency as a political observer ; and the extraordinary success which the present work has already had on the Con tinent, is evidence that his testimony respecting Ire land will guide the opinions of a great part of Europe.

There are some who affect to disregard the opinions which foreigners form of the domestic economy of our empire ; "the snail," says the Gentoo proverb, " sees

PREFACE.

. nothing beyond its shell, and believes it the finest palace in the universe ;" but though such reckless ness may be felt or affected by ardent partisans in Ireland, it is not likely that a similar course will be pursued in England. The political supremacy of the British Empire rests so much on public opinion for its support, that nothing by which that opinion may be changed or modified can be neglected with ini punity. M. de Beaumont designed his work exclusively for continental readers, and therefore, on many points, entered into long and minute explanations respecting the details of British law and administration, which are unnecessary for English readers, and have there fore been omitted. This is the only liberty which the translator has taken with the text, unless the consequent modifications of the division of the mat ter be deemed changes that ought to be acknowledged.

It was originally designed to add notes and illus trations to the body of the work on the same scale as those appended to the Introduction, but this de sign has been relinquished to prevent the work from being identified with any of the parties to which the discussions have given rise, and to keep intact its most characteristic and important feature, — its being the record of opinions formed by an enlightened statesman, whose views arc obviously beyond all sus picion of being warped by prejudice or passion. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. Page Historical Introduction ..... 1 First Epoch — From 1 1 69 to 1 535 .... 3 Chap. I. ... . . . ii Sect. I. Political Condition of Ireland in the twelfth century . .... 8 2. The still recent invasion of the Danes . 1 1 3. Influence of the Court of Rome . , 13 Chap. II.

Sect. 1. Political condition of the Irish an obstacle to the Conquest .... 16 2. Second obstacle to the completion of the Conquest : the relation of the Auglo-Norman conquerors to England, and of England to them . ' . . . i SO 3. Third obstacle to the Conquest : the condition imposed on the natives by the conquerors 34 Second Epoch — From i535to 1690. Chap. I. Religious wars .... 41 Sect. 1. Hovr, when England became Protestant, it must have desired that Ireland should become so likewise .... VI CONTENTS. 2. Of the causes that prevented Ir*1aml from becoming Protestant ... 46 3. How England rendered Ireland Protestant — Protestant Colonisation — Elizabeth and James I. . . . . 55 4. Protestant Colonisation — Charles I. . 61 5. Civil War — the Republic — Cromwell . 66 6. The Restoration of Charles II. . . 85 Third Epoch— From 1688 to 1755.

Chap. I. Legal Persecution . . I no Chap. II. The Penal Laws . . . 115 Special character of the penal laws . 121 Another special character of the penal laws . 1 35 Legal persecution beyond the limits of law . 137 Persecutions continued when passions ceased 142 Which of the penal laws were executed, which not 145 The Whiteboys . . . 149 Fourth Epoch— From 1776 to 1829. Revival and enfranchisement of Ireland . . 166 Chap. I. Effects of American Independence on Ireland 169 Sect. 1. First Reform of the Penal Laws, 1778 . 174 2. Second Effect of American Independence on Ireland, (1778 to 1779.) The Irish Volunteers .... 175 3. Independence of the Trisb Parliament . 181 4. Legal Consequences of t^e Declaration of Irish Independence . . .183 5. Abolition of certain Penal Laws. Consequences of the Declaration of Parliamentary Independence . . . 194 6, Continuation of the Volunteer Movement.

Con vention of 1783 . . . 197 7. Corruption 01 the Iri.ih Parliament . 200 8. Is a servile Parliament of any use 1 . 209 Chap. II. The French Revolution — Its Effects in Ireland 217 Sect. 1. 1789 . . . .in. 2 Other Effects of the French Revolution. Abolition of Penal Laws . . 2i7 3. — Other consequences of the French Revolution — Reaction . . . CONTENTS. VII 4. French Invasion of Ireland. Insurrection of 1798 . . . .232 Consequences of the Insurrection of 1798. The Union .... 240 Constitutional and Political Effect of the Union 243 Chap. III. Catholic Emancipation in 1829 . . 245 IRELAND, SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND RELIGIOUS. Chap. I. External appearance of Ireland. Misery of its Inhabitants ..... 249 Chap. II. A bad Aristocracy is the primary cause of all the evils of Ireland. — The faults of this Aristocracy are, that it is English and Protestant . 276 Sect. 1.

Civil Consequences . . . 287 Subsect. 1. Extreme misery of the farmers — Accumulation of the population on the soil — Absen teeism—Middlemen — Rack-rents — Want of sympathy between land and tenant ib. Subsect. 2. Competition for land — W'hiteboyism — Social evils — Inutility of coercive measures —Terror in the country — Disappearance of landlords and capital . . 297 Sect. 2. Political consequences . . 313 Subsect. 1. The State . . .317 Hatred of the people to the Laws . 329 A public accuser wanting in Ireland 330 Unanimity of the jury in Ireland . 333 Legal functionaries peculiar to Ireland 335 Subsect. 2. The county . . . 338 338 3. .Municipal corporations . . 345 4. The parish . . . 350 Judicial authority . . dominion of the English in Ireland, from their invasion of the country in 1169, to the close of the last century, has been nothing but a tyranny.

During the three first centuries they covered Ireland with deeds of violence, the object of which was the completion of the conquest. The wars of conquest had not ended when those of religion began. England having, in the sixteenth century, renounced the Catholic for the Protestant faith, wished to convert Ireland to the new creed she had adopted, and finding the Irish rebels to her wishes undertook to constrain them ; hence the obstinate struggles, the sanguinary col lisions, and the terrible catastrophes which lasted more than a century. When tbe wars which the Irish maintained for VOL. I. B defence of their religion and country terminated, English oppression did not cease. Seeing that the Irish preserved their religious faith in spite of the violence employed to make them abandon it, England attempted to attain the same end by other means.

She had discovered the inutility of force, and she tried corruption. Hence a persecution less barbarous, but not less cruel, more immoral, perhaps, because it assumed the semblance and supported itself by law, which continued nearly a hundred years. 1 This persecution ceased, not because England brought it to a close, but because Ireland would endure it no longer. One day Ireland undertook to shake off the English yoke, and commenced a struggle for independence, sometimes fatal, more frequently prosperous, which has lasted to our days. The history of the English dominion in Ireland may be regarded under four principal points of view. The first embraces the long convulsions of the conquest, from the reign of Henry II. to that of Henry VIII. Tbe second comprehends the religious drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; it begins with the Reformation, or Henry VIII., and ends with the Revolution, or William HISTORICAL II TRODUCTION.

The third comprises the period of legal persecution, extending from the battle of the Boyne, in 1690, to the early part of the reign of George III. The fourth, which may be considered as the new era of Ireland, because it is that from which the awakening of the country to liberty dates, has for its starting-point the independence of the American colonies, and for its most remarkable feature in cotemporary history, Catholic Emancipation, in 1829. The author is about to cast a rapid glance over those four epochs. These pictures of the past are absolutely necessary for the right understanding of the present. FIRST EPOCH. From 1169 to 1535.

Chapter I

In 1156, a bull of Pope Adrian IV. bestowed the kingdom of Ireland on Henry II., King of England.* * Mac Geoghegan, vol. i. p. 460 ; Sir R. Musgrave's Irish Re bellion, p. 3 ; Thierry's Norman Conquest, vol. iii. p. 12. B This bull proves, that even at this epoch Henry II. had extended his views to Ireland, whose sovereignty he obtained from the power which then disposed of empires. Adrian IV. was an Englishman by birth, and, doubtless, he felt sympathies for his native land, of which Henry knew how to take advantage. We read in Hanmer's Chronicle, " Anno 1160^ the king (Henry II.) cast in his minde to conquer Ireland ; he sawe that it was commodious for him, considered that they were but a rude and savage people."" * It was not until twelve years after that the Anglo-Normans invaded Ireland, and the Chronicles give us the following account of the occasion.

" Dermot, king of Leinster, having carried off the wife of O'Rourke, king of Meath, the latter complained to O'Connor, titular monarch of all Ireland, who instantly embraced the cause of the outraged monarch, and expelled the author of the wrong from his kingdom. Dermot, in his despair, went to seek aid from the English king. Henry II., gladly embracing the opportunity of accomplish ing a design which he had long projected, promised to do Dermot justice. " In a short time, Fitz-Stephen, and afterwards Hanmer's Chronicle, p. 215 ; Ancient Irish Histories, vol. Sttongbow Earl of Pembroke, landed in Ireland with a numerous suite of Norman knights. " Nevertheless, scarcely had Dermot introduced the strangers into his country, when, perceiving that he would not be restored to the possession of his states, he endeavoured to persuade Fitz-Stephen to return.

But Fitz-Stephen replied, ' What is it you ask ? We have abandoned our dear friends and our beloved country ; we have burned our ships, we have no notion of flight ; we have already periled our lives in fight, and, come what may, we are destined to live or die with you.' " * Dermot did not recover his crown, and the English remained in Ireland. They remained there, but not without encoun tering endless opposition ; for if their invasion was singularly easy, the completion of the conquest was a work of extraordinary difficulty. The first invasion took place in 1169, and, according to the most authentic accounts, we must go down to the reign of James L, in 1603, to find the completion of the conquest. Thus, during more than four centuries, the English only exercised disputed dominion over Ireland.

The spectacle afforded by the native Irish and the Anglo-Normans, struggling to preserve their * Hanmer's Chron., vol. ii. p. 230. country, the others to subdue it, must be interesting to all, but especially to Frenchmen. These native Irish assailed, in their savage but haughty independence, all belonging to the same Celtic race, from which the Gauls, our ancestors, are descended. And those Normans who invaded them left France in the preceding century. Their names are sufficient to reveal their origin — Raymond le Gros, Walter de Lacy, John de Courcy, Richard de Netterville, aud a thousand others of the same sound.* But the history of such distant times would ex ceed the limits of this introduction. The author's design, in the sketch he offers of this first epoch, (from 1169 to 1535,) is merely to give the reader some notions of the people invaded by the Normans ; he is also anxious to point out the causes which rendered the invasion easy, and the conquest difficult.

It is not rare to find it alleged by English writers, that at the epoch of the conquest, Ireland contained a wretched, vile, and degraded population ; an alle gation probably inspired by the desire of imputing the misfortunes and corruption of this people to causes anterior to the English conquest. It is, * Mac Geoghegan, vol. ii. pp. 3 — 6 ; Hardiman's Galway, pp. 9—11. however, certain that nothing in the cotemporary records justifies such an assertion. " Such," says Campion, " is the character of the Irish; they are religious, sincere, violent in love and anger, compassionate and full of energy in misfortune, vain and superstitious to excess ; good horsemen, passionately fond of war, charitable and hospitable beyond expression . . . They have acute minds, are desirous of instruction, and learn easily what they wish to study ; they are persevering in lalwur,"* &c. " When Robert Fitz-Stephen and the brave knights of Britain invaded Ireland," says Hanmer, " they did not find cowards, but valiant men, brave both as horse and foot."f " The bodies and minds of the people," says Sir John Davis, at a late period, " are endowed with extraordinary abilities of nature." % Now, how has it happened that this noble popu lation has been surprised by a handful of adventurers ?

And how, thus invaded, has it for centu ries resisted conquest, — too feeble to repulse its enemy, sufficiently strong in its reverses never to submit — equally incapable of enduring or shaking off the yoke — enduring the stranger in its territory * Campion, p. 20. + Hanmer's Chron., vol. ii. p. 228. X Sir John Davis'a Discovery of Causes, &c, p. 2. without ever losing the hope of his expulsion? How did it happen that these two populations, the one conquering and the other conquered,— the latter sometimes subdued, sometimes in rebellion, — the former always superior without being master — have lived together in a state of warfare for centuries, — either in a state of fierce warfare without one annihilating the ether, or in a state of peace without mutual union. Three principal causes facilitated the Anglo- Norman invasion of Ireland ; first, the social and political condition of Ireland in the twelfth cen tury; second, the still recent fact of the Danish invasion ; and third, the influence of the eourt of Rome.

Sect. I. — Political Condition of Ireland in the twelfth century. In the twelfth century the political organisation of Ireland was such that its social forces, infinitely divided, could be held together by no common bond. The four provinces, Leinster, Ulster, Munster, and Connaught, had each a separate king.* In truth, these four kings recognised one of their number as monarch of all Ireland, but his * There was a fifth king in Meath. — Tr. supremacy was more nominal than real ; besides, none of the four provinces having the privilege of conferring on its monarch the power of ruling over the rest, violent quarrels arose at the death of every sovereign, each of the four equal kings claiming the vacant monarchy.* The same elements of discord and anarchy which incessantly divided the four provinces externally, were also to be found in their internal condition.

For, as beneath the same monarch were placed kings who were his equals, though subordinate to him, so beneath the king of each province was an infinity of secondary kings and princes, who were also as equal, as independent, and as divided as their immediate superiors.-)- This fractional divi sion of the social forces did not stop there. After the petty principalities came a multitude of clans, tribes, and families, all separated from each other, not only independent among themselves, but held by the feeblest ties to the sovereignty within whose sphere they were comprised.! Besides the in herent weakness arising from this indefinite sub- * Leland, vol. i. The two great families which disputed the supremacy, at the time of the contest, were the O'Connors and Hy Nials, or O'Neills. Dermot was a partisan of the latter, and hence Roderic O'Connor eagerly seized the first pretext for his expulsion.— Tr. f Leland, vol. i. p. 11.

X Gordon's History of Ireland, vol. i. p. 31. B division of public powers, there was in such a political state another source of exhaustion and ruin ; to wit, the perpetual struggles which arose from this great number of equivocal sovereignties, of rights destitute of sanction, of authorities, rivals in fact, though nominally subordinate one to the other, and which incessantly produced opposing pretensions which could only be decided by war.* The chiefs of clans presented, within the narrow limits of their authority, the same spectacle of discord and anarchy as the petty princes above them, in less restricted bounds, and as the kings of the provinces in the wider circle of their power. It may be easily conceived, that a country where the social forces were thus mutilated, and had no point of contact, save for mutual destruction, was of all countries the most favourable for the invasion of a conqueror.

However powerful those forces might have been, collected in a mass, each of them was annihilated in isolation. Such was the state of Ireland at the epoch of the Anglo-Norman con quest. * In the list of one hundred and seventy-eight monarehs of the Milesian line, enumerated by Irish historians, only forty-seven died natural deaths ; — seventy-one were slain in battle, and sixty murdered. — Tr. Sect. II. — The still recent Invasion of the Danes. Ireland, which has suffered so cruelly from con quest, was the last of the European countries conquered. At the time when the savage nations of the north sought countries to invade, Ireland, separated from them by two seas and one large island, long escaped their notice ; the Romans dis dained it, the barbarians knew it not. Gaul and England had been each stained by three invasions, while the soil of Ireland remained intact.

Still, about the middle of the ninth century, the Danes, a people issuing from the forests of Scandinavia, landed in Ireland ; they occupied a part of it with out much difficulty ; but the opposition to them became vigorous and obstinate. After a series of sanguinary combats, and alternations of victory and defeat, these stern conquerors abandoned the hope of founding an empire in the heart of the country, and limited themselves to the occupation of some points on the south and east coast of Ireland.* Dublin, formerly Dyvelin, Wexford, aud Waterford, are Danish cities, t Thus, the * Under Zurgesius, the Danes for a brief space established their authority over the whole of Ireland. — Tr. t A little before the Anglo-Norman invasion, the Danes these cities declined the jurisdiction of the Irish prelates, and placed themselves under the see of Canterbury, Irish, who had been sufficiently strong to check the Danes in their invasion, were too feeble to expel them completely ; and at tlie moment when the Anglo-Normans came into Ireland, the Danes remained masters of all the east coast of Ireland, lived in a sort of tacit peace with the Irish, who were contented to see their conquerors confined to a narrow space, with the understood condition that they would not pass its limits.

However this may be, these struggles, maintained for three centuries, had exhausted the country, and increased the weakness of the body politic, already so great.* The presence of the Danes on the Irish soil at this epoch diminished, for another reason, the strength of Ireland. The Anglo-Normans landed precisely in that portion of the country which was occupied by the Danes ; consequently the Danes had to sustain the first shock of the Norman invasion. Now, it is impossible to imagine a more un fortunate circumstance for a country menaced by invaders. On one side the Danes, defending against the Normans a precarious and contested posses sion, could not display the zeal and devotion of a people summoned to the defence of their coun- * So weak were the Irish, that the king of the Isle of Man attempted the conquest of their country. — Tr. try.* On the other side, the Irish, seeing the Anglo-Normans engaged with the Danes, their first assailants, fluctuated between the terror which the new conquerors inspired, and the satisfaction with which they beheld the destruction of an <enemy established in their territory.

All these circumstances united, sufficiently show how Ireland, both social and political, must have been weak in resisting the Anglo-Norman in vasion. Sect. III. — Influence of the Court of Rome. The third cause favourable to the invasion was, the influence, then all-powerful, of the court of Rome, which gave Ireland to the conquerors. It was the time of the temporal and spiritual supremacy of the popes, the rivals of kings, the tribunes of the people in the middle ages ; it was the time in which, when the most powerful prince resisted the court of Rome, tbe successor of St. Peter deposed him from his throne, and found the people submit to his decrees. At this time Ireland was eminent for its piety and sanctity amongst * The Danes were at first disposed to receive the Normans as fellow-countrymen, but the conduct of Fitz-Stephen in Wexford drove them to resistance. — Tr. the most Christian nations.

Its priests were at the head of political as well as religious society.* In this country, where the social powers were feeble, uncertain, and ill defined, there was no fixed and invariable rule but that of religion, — no undisputed authority common to all but that of the priests I find, in 1160, ten years before the Conquest, the Archbishop of Armagh regulating, as supreme arbiter, the quarrels of several Irish kings, between whom he alone could restore harmony. I Now, this clergy, supreme in Ireland, had for a quarter of a century been subject to the church of Rome.§ It was under such circumstances that Henry II. came to Ireland. He offered himself as a prince, the friend of peace and justice, who came not to strip the Irish of their rights, but to ensure their tranquil enjoyment of them; when he departs, he will leave their political power to the great, their domains to the proprietors, their spiritual authority to the priests, their country, their laws, and their institutions, to all.

He only wants one thing, the title of Lord of Ireland, and he will * Mac Geoghegan, vol. i. p. 454. t Gordon, vol. i.p. 105. X Mac Geoghegan, vol. i. p. 462. § The papal authority was for the first time formally recomised at the synod of Kells, a.d. 1152. — Tr. only avail himself of it to promote religion and morality ;* and he claims not this great mission as his own ; he has received it from Pope Adrian IV. and Pope Alexander III. ; he seizes Ireland, not to satisfy ambition, but to obey the papal bulls. Religious Ireland, which at this period recognised the authority of the Romish church, could not receive harshly a monarch who presented himself to her with so solemn a mandate as that of the sove reign pontiff. Thus, all the great dignitaries of the Catholic church in Ireland were seen to pro claim the rights of the king of England. + It may well be conceived how this moral assistance of the clergy, the most powerful that could be directed against Ireland, must have protected an invasion already favoured by so many other causes.

Thus the social and political condition of the Irish, — the presence of the Danes in the midst of them, — their very religion, — all these causes com bine to explain the facility with which the Anglo- Normans gained a footing in Ireland. • Lingard, vol. ii. p. 205. + The sovereignty of Ireland was solemnly granted Henry II. at the council of Cashel, over which the papal legate, Christian bishop of Lismore, presided. The only Irish prelate absent wi3 Gelasius, Archbishop of Armagh, but he subsequently came to Dublin, and publicly gave his full assent to the proceedings of his brethren. — Tr.

Chapter II

We are now to inquire how, when the invasion was made without difficulty, the conquest could not be completed without perils continually re newed for centuries. This fact is also explained by three principal reasons; the first equally derived from the political condition of the Irish ; the second, from the relations between the Anglo-Normans and England ; the third, from the condition to which the natives were reduced by the conquerors. Sect. 1. — Political condition of the Irish an obstacle to the Conquest. I have just said that the indefinite division of the social forces in a country singularly faci litate an invasion; I shall add, that nothing is more adverse than this fractional partition to the permanent establishment of the victor in the con quered country. That which is, in the first in stance, a source of weakness for the invaded country, becomes, in the second, the principal cause of its strength.

In the same proportion as HISTORICAL MOTKODUCTiON. 17 it is difficult for the people resisting the invasion to unite suddenly all its divided elements of action ; in the same proportion it is difficult for the con queror to subdue, after invasion, this multitude of partial forces, spread here and there over a wide extent of territory, all of which bring to the struggle the same tribute of resistance, from the very fact of their being independent of each other. It may be reasonably said, that a country in which the central power is strong, is at once the most difficult to invade, and that which after in vasion presents the fewest difficulties to the con queror. All the forces of the nation being assembled on a single point, offer a powerful con dition of success, which once having failed, leaves the country without, defence.

It is just the con trary in a country where the national force is not concentrated ; it is easy to invade, and difficult to conquer. This is distinctly seen in the first ages of our (French) history. The conquests of the men of the north, which so terribly succeeded each other, were only terminated when a power, feeble in its centre, but strong in its parts, was consti tuted in the land. Since the establishment of feudality in Europe, there have been several invasions, but there have been no conquests. The Irish possessed very imperfect notions of the feudal system ; but the division and dispersion of the public power over the country, which is one of the characters of that system, belonged equally to their social state. This is the reason why the Danes so easily landed in Ireland, and yet could never establish themselves in the heart of the country.

On the arrival of the Anglo-Normans, the same cause produced the same effects. I believe that this social condition of the Irish injured the Anglo-Normans in the conquest of the country more than it served tliem in the invasion. For reasons already explained, they easily con quered a part of Ireland, but for several centuries they made vain efforts to complete their conquest Down to Elizabeth's reign, the conquered part never exceeded a third of all Ireland, and was often less. It was called the Pale, on account of the palisades or fortifications with which its borders were sometimes surrounded. The Pale wa9 composed of part of Leinster and the south of Munster: sometimes a victory gained over the Irish tribes, sometimes a clever treaty concluded with one of their princes, extended the bounds of the Pale, which, on the other hand, were narrowed after every reverse of the Anglo-Normans.

The conquerors often endeavoured to aggrandize the Pale by invasions in Ulster and Connaught but they were regularly repulsed during four centuries. Even in that part of the island which we call the Pale, their power did not cease to be contested during these four centuries, and history displays to us an uninterrupted series of Irish rebellions, bursting out sometimes at one point and sometimes at another, leaving to the conquerors not a single moment of repose or security.* The Anglo-Normans were thus stopped short in their progress ; the great interest of the Irish was to expel them from the space they occupied. But we shall soon see that the same cause which, after having aided the invasion of the Normans, ehecked their conquests, must have assisted them to pre serve what they had acquired.

In fact, scarcely had they reached Ireland, when the Anglo-Normans established themselves as feudal lords in all the places of which they were masters, f The native Irish and the Anglo- Norman colony were then nearly balanced both in strength and weakness. When the Anglo-Normans wished to extend their conquests, they found scattered here and there among the native Irish an infinity of obstacles arising from their political condition ; when, after having repulsed and discouraged their enemies, the Irish undertook to expel them from the countries form ing the Pale, the weakness attached to the frac tional character of their forces re-appeared ; and * Geoghegan, vol. ii. p. 74—232. + Ibid., vol. ii. p. 26. HISTORICAL £ THTROrDUenOSy having become in their tarn invaders of their con querors, they failed before the Anglo-Normans, who, besides the advantage of resisting -aggression, feeble, because they were divided, opposed to the Irish the same dispersion of social strength which is so powerful to resist an invasion.