Life of Daniel O'Connell, the liberator

Preface

J I) T is strange, but none tlie less true, that the majority of Englishmen know far less about, the real state of Ireland than they do about the state of continental countries. The result of this ignorance is an intellectual disability to appreciate a character like O'Connell's. We believe this ignorance arises from one cause, and from one cause only: it is impossible to form a correct judgment on any subject when the will is biassed by prejudice, and the incorrectness of the judgment will be proportioned to the extent of the prejudice.

It has been our one special object throughout the present work to quote from English authorities for proof of all assertions made regarding English misgovernment of Ireland. Irishmen do not 'need such corroborative evidence ; but as we believe that this work will circulate as largely as other historical works by the present writer amongsi Englishmen of the upper classes, we offer them, in proof of our assertions, such evidence as they can scarcely set aside.

We are very far from wishing to add strife to strife ; but the elements of discord, which have stirred the waves of popular opinion for some eight hundred years and more, are slowly abating. It is true, indeed, that the gibbet and the triangle are no longer used to silence the cries of an oppressed nation, but Ireland is not spared the lash of the tongue, even by those whose position, as rulers of a kingdom which is said to be " united," should suggest a wiser, if not a more paternal course.

The prejudice which prevents the calm and dispassionate consideration of Irish affairs and Irish character is the result, in some cases at least, of culpable ignorance. And yet, uufc .tunately for the national credit, and still more unfortunately for the national peace, those who are most ignorant are not un frequently the most confident of the correctness of their conclusions. As an evidence of this prejudice, warping the opinions of a highly intellectual mind, I quote the following extract from the conclusion of Mr Lecky's essay on O'Connell, in his work on " The Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland " : —

"When to tin- great services he rendered to his country we oppose

the sectarian ami class warfare that resulted from his policy, the fearful elements of discord he evoked, and which he alone could in some degree control, it may he questioned whether his life was a blessing or a curse to Ireland."

The most cursory acquaintance with the history of Ireland during- O'Connell's long and chequered career would surely prove the incorrectness of such a conclusion. No man was ever more opposed to "sectarian" warfare than O'Connell ; and, indeed, Mr Lecky admits this himself in the earlier part of his essay, where he says —

" With the exception of his advocacy of Repeal, no part of his Irish policy injured him so much in the eyes of the English people as the opinions he hazarded about the Church ; but judged by the light of the events of our own day, they will be pronounced very reasonable and very moderate."

How entirely true this statement is with regard to O'Connell's public career is well known, and the present work affords evidence. His moderation was the result of principle, since in his private correspondence he expresses himself as he did in public. When his religion was attacked he defended it with the vigour of a man who had a definite creed to uphold, but certainly no " sectarian warfare " resulted from his policy. Class warfare had existed in Ireland too long, and that which pre-existed certainly could not " result " from a future cause. That he " evoked discord " can only be said of him in the sense in which it may be said that a man provokes a quarrel when he is obliged to fight for his rights. It would be quite as correct to assert that Tell evoked discord in Switzerland when he roused up the Switzers to resist a tyrannical oppressor.

Mr Lecky concludes by doubting whether O'Connell's life was a blessing or a curse to Ireland, and yet we think

PREFACE.

Mr Lecky would scarcely deny that O'Connell obtained emancipation for Ireland, and that emancipation was an act of justice. It is thus that prejudice leads Englishmen of the highest intellectual calibre to write, to think, and to speak of Ireland.

There are two evils caused and fostered by this prejudice. Conclusions are drawn on false premises, and, of necessity, acts follow which are more than injudicious. The Irish are admitted to be an intelligent race, even by their worst enemies ; they cannot fail to see the injustice which is done to them day after day by educated Englishmen ; and they cannot fail to feel, and to feel keenly, that their misfortunes, to use a mild expression, which are not their own fault, are made a subject of ridicule by those whose first object, whose first duty, should have been to alleviate them.

In the limits of a preface it is impossible to do more than to indicate subjects for consideration in connection with the work to which the preface is prefixed. We can, therefore, only give Mr Lecky's incorrect estimate of O'CounelPs character as a sample of the opinion of educated Englishmen. Having done so, we descend a little lower in the intellectual scale, and emote Mr Lowe's recent observations on Irish fisheries, as an example, and a most painful one, of the flippancy with which Irish grievances are treated, not only by some educated Englishmen, but by men who, in virtue of their office, should be anxious to promote m

PREFACE.

kindly feelings between Great Britain and Ireland, even should they not be bound by their position as members of Government to do acts of justice.

One of the great outcries of the day is, that politics and religion should be treated as separate questions. We shall have a few words to say on this subject presently; but we presume no Christian man will deny the duty of practising Christian charity in public life, or will deny that the circumstances of our birth were not under our own control. Mr Lowe might have been born a poor Claddagh fisherman ; instead of holding the reins of government and receiving the freedom of boroughs, he might have been toiling along the wild Atlantic coast for a bare subsistence for wife and child. He might have been the victim of a God-sent famine, which left hearth and home utterly desolate ; he might have lost his little all in that year of misery and anguish, which is perhaps the only Irish calamity which no man has ever dared to charge on the Irish themselves. He might have been unwilling to beg ; he might have had an honest pride, which kept him from the workhouse ; he might have loved his home, wretched as it was, and his sea-girt island, poor as she is, too well to emigrate to the great Irish empire in the West, where an honest clay's wage can be had for an honest day's labour. In his trouble he might have gone to his parish priest — the poor man's only friend — and prayed him, for God's great love, to help him to the means of getting an honest living, however humble. The priest would have replied, " I cannot help you ; the gentlemen who govern the country will not help you. The troubles of poor fellows like yourself used to be called sentimental grievances, there is another name for them now — they are called 'amusing grievances.' The Scotch fisheries are well protected by English gun-boats, and well assisted by the English Government; but you are only a poor Irish fisherman. You have at least a choice : emigrate, if you can get the money; if you cannot, go to the workhouse."

The Claddagh fisherman would have asked the reason of this strange inhumanity ; and it would not have added to his affection for English government to be told that the gentleman who found Irish misery so amusing admitted that he did not exactly understand what had caused it; that he believed the bad harvests had ruined the Irish iisheries; though, indeed, he did not think that could have been the reason ; that, in fact, he knew very little about it, though it certainly was his business to know ; and that all he seemed quite sure of was, that it was " amusing."

The Claddagh fisherman, some few weeks after, might have seen — for Irishmen are all great readers — an old newspaper, in which he would have found the following extract, taken from a speech made by a Cabinet Minister at Glasgow, when he received the freedom of the city; a cursory perusal of it would at once explain the priest's mean ins

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PREFACE.

" I will now enter on my last topic. I have made it last, because it is a little more amusing than those that preceded it. It is that Ireland has another grievance. (Laughter.) That grievance is this — the fisheries of Ireland have very much declined. I cannot say exactly why, but it is perhaps the reason given in a committee of the House of Commons, that they had given up the fisheries because they were so much discouraged by bad harvests. (Great laughter.) I don't think that could have been the reason, but, whatever is the reason, they come and ask me to lend them money on personal security — (renewed laughter) — the security of the fishermen and that of the priests, to lend money for nets and boats to resume these fisheries. Well, I said to them I was not in the habit of lending money in that way, and so the matter came to an end, and they assured' me that if they had home rule it would be done at once. (Applause.)"

He would have observed that the gentleman concluded his speech with this quotation : —

" Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust."

And it might have occurred to him that a quotation from an older writer than Shakespeare would have suited his side of the question better. Has it not been written —

" The just showeth mercy, and shall give."

This habit of meeting Irish complaiuts with contempt, was reprobated again and again by O'Connell, and yet it still continues. Even if the Irishmen was still an " enemy," it would be unmanly to ridicule his misfortunes, when those misfortunes are, at least to a considerable

PREFA CE.

degree, the fault of his rulers. Such ridicule reflects most on him who uses it.

It is indeed scarcely possible to take up any work, whether of fact or of fiction, in which Ireland is mentioned, without finding this spirit of ridicule ; and sometimes its bitterness is more than a joke. At the present time an autobiography is dragging out its slow length in the pages of Fraser's Magazine, the sole object of which appears to be to throw contempt on Ireland and the Irish ; and the suggestion is made for the hundredth time, to try depopulation, and rather to " populate the land with Chinese and reaping-machines, with monkeys, or any other animal but the Celt." The plan of populating Ireland with beasts has been partly tried, and does not seem to have given as much satisfaction to the proposers as they expected. How a country could be populated with " reaping-machines," is an enigma we do not pretend to solve. The plan of extermination was tried on a very large scale, and with very great success, in the year of grace 1(154; but the results were contrary to expectation. A work has been written by an Irish gentleman, in which he gives statistics of the grand transplantation scheme which was then tried. The accounts are taken fr* m no doubtful source, they are compiled from State-papers. But the result was, that when English soldiers were transplanted to Ireland, they were not at all more disposed to submit quietly to injustice, than the " Irish enemy " whom they had displaced.

A plantation of Chinese and reaping-machines would probably prove a failure a' so.

But there is a yet deeper depth to which some Englishmen descend when they write or speak of Ireland. The pages of Preiser's Magazine are defiled by the suggestion to " abolish juries, burn the Habeas Corpus, and erect a factory in the Lower Castle Yard for spinning halters and cat-o'-uine-tails." The suggestion may be intended as a joke ; we suspect it is so couched to hide an earnestness of which the writer has the grace, as yet, to be a little ashamed. But if gentlemen write such jokes, they must recollect that those to whom they would not give that- name will write such things in earnest, and probably support their degradation of our common humanity by quoting higher authority. It is not long since a letter went the round of the provincial papers in England and Scotland, in which it was suggested, not that a cat-'o'- nine-tails should be made, but that it should be used wherever an outrage was committed in Ireland, the parish priest to be the victim, because he was supposed to lie cognisant of the offender through the confessional, and unwilling to give him up to justice. Are we returning to the dark ages? The suggestion of deeds of blood and brutality is the first step towards their accomplishment when opportunity offers.

But there is yet another class in England who do not suggest such measures for the pacification of Ireland xvi P HE FACE.

either in joke of in fact, but who seem, nevertheless, to consider that good advice is the one thing which Ireland requires. And this advice sometimes emanates precisely from those very persons who, for various reasons, are the very last individuals who should offer it.

We take the opinions expressed by a recent article in the Contemporary Review as a sample. It may he said that opinions expressed in reviews, magazines, and newspapers are but the expression of an individual mind; but this is very far from being the case. Those who write are persons who, either from circumstances or capability, express the opinions which others entertain. The greater number of people, both educated and uneducated, confine their reading to such books or serials as express their own sentiments on religion or politics. Publishers and editors cater for the taste of their public. No doubt in many instances opinion is influenced by writers, but it is rarely formed by them.

It might be supposed that Irish gentlemen were capable of taking care of their educational interests, and that if they required advice, they would scarcely seek it from a gentleman, however accomplished, who has changed his religion more than once. But as the advice has been given, we may consider it briefly as an expression of English opinion on an important subject.

From the day on which O'Conuell obtained freedom of education for Irish gentlemen to the present hour, a certain party, and a large party, of English gentlemen have tried to fetter that freedom as far as it was possible for them to do so. In 0' Council's private correspondence with Dr Macflale, he reiterates his opinion that the education of Irish gentlemen should be confided to the clergy of their Church. If Irish gentlemen wish for such education, is it not a grave interference with the liberty of the subject to forbid it to them.

In Mr Capes' article also, it 'may be remarked, in passing, that, while it is entirely free from the sarcastic spirit which disgraces so many English comments on Irish affairs, there is nevertheless a de haut en has tone — a quiet conscious superiority. It is taken for granted that the Irish gentleman belongs to an inferior race, and that " we," the people of England, are free to deny or grant, as in our wisdom we think fit, with but scant reference to the wishes of the inferior being.

The Irish gentlemen is treated throughout as a person who should submit with thankfulness to the regulations made by the superior wisdom of his English master. The Irish peasant is treated as part knave and part fool, and as altogether incapable of the exercise of even ordinary reason.

Of the hundreds who have read Mr Capes' article in the Contemporary Review, few indeed will have read his long and scholarly Preface to the " Life of St Frances of Rome," published in the year 1855. In the Preface he wrote thus of the Catholic clergy, at the conclusion of an exhaustive defence of miracles : —

" Whether the Catholic religion is true or false, it is beyond the limits of credibility that its ruling principle can be one of intentional deception. . . . The Catholic system must have fallen to pieces a hundred times over, if its chief ruler and his subordinates were mere tricksters, playing upon the credulity of a fanatical and besotted world."

On the subject of miracles he argues forcibly; first, against the Protestant opinion that Catholics are fools, and then, against the -Protestant opinion that Catholics are all knaves. " If," he says, " we are sincere in our faith, it is impossible to suppose us willing to be imposed on." "Writing of the lives of Saints, he says : —

" Thus, too, I am myself engaged in a similar work, either laughing in my sleeve at the credu ity on which I practise, or submitting from sheer intellectual incompetence to be the tool of some wily Jesuit, who enjoins the unhallowed task."

AVe leave Mr Capes to select either horn of the dilemma. Perhaps) he may appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober; but under any circumstances he should refrain, in common consistency, from offering his advice to Irish gentlemen.

When English gentlemen have quite decided what religious belief they really consider true — when they have decided whether they will believe in one creed, in three creeds, or in none — then, but not until then, should they offer any suggestion, or interfere with Irish gentlemen in the choice of a religion, or of educational guides.

The struggle is a hopeless one. It will be better to abaudon it, and to have peace. Irishmen only ask for justice. They do not want more ; they will not be satisfied with less. All through his long and stormy life O'Connell was breasting the waves of English injustice. The truth may be evaded, it may be denied ; but it is still truth. Day after day, week after week, year after year, he asked only for justice. It was granted, at least iu a measure ; yet, for all that, much more remains to be granted. If Englishmen would take pains to study Irish history, if they would make themselves acquainted with a life like O'Connell's, if they would calmly consider why he agitated, and for what he agitated, the future both of England and Ireland would be happier.

But, in order to effect this desirable end, two things are necessary : first, that the student should divest himself, as far as possible, of insular prejudice ; and, secondly, that he should make himself acquainted with the facts of Irish history, not from the narratives of those who have distorted it to suit their own ends, but by weighing the statements of the oppressed as well as those of the oppressor.

This view of the subject was ably treated in the North British Review for October 1869. It is well remarked that —

" Those who are not resolved to be misled by a fragmentary literature, should diverge from the beaten path to seek its complement, so that whatever judgment they may form at last may be formed after they have heard both sides."

PREFACE.

The habit of forming conclusions from the evidence of one party only, above all when that party is the one complained of, is neither wire or philosophical. It has done more to deepen and widen the gulf of bitterness between England and Ireland, than all the suspensions of the Habeas Corpus^ or all the promulgations of Insurrection Acts.

The Irish naturally suppose that educated Englishmen have been at some pains to understand their real condition, and when they find the facts of that state denied or ridiculed, they can only conclude that the denial or the ridicule has been the result of bitter prejudice, and an irradicable hatred. The lower class of Irish do not know, they would, perhaps, scarcely believe, that so many English gentlemen are so ignorant of the country to which they give so much good advice.

We doubt if even English premiers take pains to know the condition of Ireland as it is. Mr Gladstone may read the Times for information ; but the Times will not tell of landlord oppression or tenant wrong, unless some flagrant case comes before the public, which is forgotten almost as soon as it is read. He may read the Telegraph for sympathy; but a ministerial organ is not likely to trouble the ministerial conscience with reproof. He may read the Standard to learn Conservative opinion ; he will find his Irish policy roughly handled, but he will know well that this is done chiefly from political motives.

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PREFACE. xxi

What statesman ever troubles himself to read the Freeman's Journal, or the Telegraph, or the Irishman, or the Cork Examiner or Herald, or the Northern Star, or the people's papers in Deny and Galway and Waterford and Clonmel ? And descending lower in the social scale, the ignorance increases ; the mass of middle class Englishmen know nothing of the state of Ireland, except through the grossest misrepresentation. "What wonder, then, that the countries are '"united" only in name, and that the severance of this union is demanded by those who are hopeless of being understood!

We can here but draw attention to this subject, earnestly hoping that our efforts may not be in vain. There are thousands of honest, earnest, true-hearted English gentlemen, tradesmen, and mechanics, who would be as indignant as the Irish themselves if they could really understand the causes of Irish poverty, and consequently of Irish discontent. We have not space here to enter into details on this subject; but, as we have throughout this work given English opinion on Irish affairs, well knowing that Irish opinion would not be credited by some of our readers, we give briefly now some English statements on the causes of Irish discontent.

The Irish are taunted and reproached, I must say cruelly, with their poverty ; yet, until the passing of the recent Laud Bill, they were not allowed even a chance of bettering their condition. They were to make bricks, they were cried out against as idle, yet never a straw were they allowed; nay, if they even attempted to find straw it was taken from them.

Enough of Irish history is known in England to prove that the unhappy Irish peasant was not allowed to till the soil for himself, or even to practise any trade until the close of the last century. Every industrial resource was sternly forbidden ; how then could capital accumulate in the country? Sir John Davis said the state of the bond slave was better than the state of the Irish peasant, " for the bond slave was fed by his lord, but here the lord was fed by his bond slave."

But it may be said, all this has passed away. We must nut lay thifc flattering unction to our souls — no mistake could be more fatal — and yet no mistake is more frequent. English gentlemen, with the best intentions, will express themselves utterly disgusted with Ireland, and will fling aside all thought of doing her justice, because, as they say, they have clone so much, and she still complains. They have disestablished the Protestant Church in Ireland, but they cannot pardon us for saying that this disestablishment has not bettered the condition of the poor or middle classes one iota. Irishmen, too, cannot but know that that justice was done rather as a peace-offering at the shrine of public opinion than as special kindness to them. We are far from wishing to hear of the disestablishment of t lie Protestant Church in England; but if it does not dis-

T5u integrate itself from utter inability to cohere in almost every point of doctrine, those who note the signs of the times on the political horizon, are freely predicting its speedy dissolution by Act of Parliament.

The recent Land Bill has done a certain, or, perhaps it would be more correct to say, an uncertain amount of good in Ireland. But how much more needs to be done, is best known to those who have personal acquaintance with the miserable state of the Irish peasantry. There are absentee landlords, who own thousands of acres of Irish land, whose one sole object seems to be to get the most rent they can from their half-starving tenantry. They may speak well, they may write well, they may enter cordially into every philanthropic scheme, except such as touch their own interests. Yet these men are pointed out as model landlords, because they visit their estates once, perhaps, in two or three years, for two or three weeks, because, at the order of an agent, whom the unhappy- tenant dare not disobey, costly rejoicings are made for the visit ; but the landlord does not hear, and the agent does not care for, the ''curses, not loud but deep," which precede and accompany the demonstration.

Even if no other evil were done thereby, the withdrawal of thousands a year from the country, which is spent in a distant land, is in itself a most grievous injustice. It is a natural law, that if you take crops from land you must pay nature back with interest. This natural law holds good in political economy as much as in physical science. Men may not defy the divinely-imposed conditions of nature, or if they do, they know the penalty ; but they do defy it when the penalty does not fall upon themselves. Again, the tiller of the land is the only trader who does not receive consideration in case of loss or failure. In some rare instances — and how rare they are Irish tenants best can tell — some consideration is made for bad weather and cattle plague, or other providential calamities; but, for the most part, there is no such consideration. The rent is demanded equally, be the crop more or less, and the unhappy tiller of the soil, who has already lived on almost famine fare, must only live on less.

No country can prosper unless those who till the soil are permitted a sufficient remuneration for their labour, to enable them, in their turn, to encourage manufacturers. Chinese and reaping-machines might support absentee landlords in affluence, but they could not raise any country in the social scale.

If English gentlemen can forget their manhood, and degrade their nationality, by attempting anything like a wholesale depopulation of Ireland, they would hear, not " Whisper in your ear, John Bull," but a thunder of indignation, which would soon break out into thunder of another kind. It is too late in the nineteenth century for such folly ; aud as the folly is impractical, it would be

Letter for the self-respect of those who utter it if they would keep silence for the future.

Taunts like" Mr Lowe's, and insults such as have disgraced the pages of more than oue English magazine, do more to widen the breach between England and Ireland, do more to increase expressions of Irish discontent, do more to make rebels, than the speeches of the wildest Fenian, or the leaders of the Irishman or Nation.

To honest Englishmen who wish to know the true state of Ireland, we say, Read the Irish local papers. You will find that even at the present day the most cruel and capricious evictions are taking place: and yon will find that whole tracts of land are reclaimed by honest and industrious peasants, only to have their rents raised as a reward for their labour. You will find, as the able writer of the article on the Literature of the Land Question in Ireland has said, " Opinions may vary as to points of policy suggested by the popular writers, and as to the gravity and bearing of particular statemeuts ; but it is clear that a thorough understanding of the Irish question cannot be obtained without a knowledge of the existence of this literature, and a careful study of it." In this article also the writer fully exposes the dealings of two agents, both magistrates.

If Irish evidence will be accepted, we would refer to the statements of the " Meath Tenant Defence Association," as published in the Drogheda Argus, and signed by the Very

Rev. John Nicolls, P.P.Y.G., and his curate, the Rev. P. Kenny, CO., published in the month of February 1872.

By law, the Irish are free to choose and practise their own religion, yet there is an increasing attempt, on the part of English writers at least, to deprive them of that liberty. If it were possible to find any individual who could look at the whole question, and consider both sides, his judgment would surely be that, until English gentlemen claimed personal or Divine infallibility of belief, they should not interfere with the belief of others. If the Catholic is aggressive in his religion, he is at least consistent. He believes in the Divine origin of his Church, and therefore he obeys her commands, and does his best to induce those who are without the fold to enter into it. The Divine origin of the Catholic Church may be denied; but granted a man believes in it, there is no inconsistency, logical or otherwise, in his acting on his belief. With the Protestant, whether he protests for a State Church or no Church, for three creeds or for none, the case is entirely different. Believing that all men are left to choose their religion, and not being able to deny that such choice leads to the selection of the most opposite forms of belief, he should, in common consistency, leave the Catholic to follow the dictates of his conscience, without even so much as verbal molestation.