Ireland's cause in England's Parliament

Preface

npO win with a minority is surely the highest •^ achievement of a parliamentary party. It means an appeal to the nobler elements of the opposition. It is more than victory: it is conversion.

For seven centuries, Ireland has fought England physically, — a fight of incredible courage, for the odds were hopeless : five to thirty in number, five to a thousand in wealth and organization. Weight conquered ; and every century and every year added a new chain to the vanquished.

But as soon as Ireland lays down the pike and takes up the word, her advance begins. She could not reach her enemy's heart with a sword : she captures her soul with an argument.

The progress of the Irish Parliamentary party in the English House of Commons is a study for

VI PREFACE.

all minorities. It is a story of profound interest to readers not akin to the Celt. It promises to be the first radical national reform by legislation, without revolution, of European history.

The story of this movement and party is told by the proper hand when Justin McCarthy is the historian. He is part of it, and a large part. He is the vice-president of the Irish Parliamentary party, and he has the trained quality of the objective seer: so that his word, always dispassionate and considerate, has double and lasting value.

JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.

Contents

CHAPTER pAGE

I. What is Ireland's Cause? i

II. How Ireland lost her Parliament 17

Chapter I

what is Ireland's cause?

THE title which I have chosen for this book has at least the advantage of expressing with precision and with sufficient fulness my own idea as to the nature of the task I am undertaking. My desire is to make clear to Americans what is the distinct national cause which the Irish parliamentary party represent in the English Parliament, and why Ireland should have a national cause to plead there. I desire to describe the methods her representatives have adopted in order to accomplish that success, which is now already, to all appearance, within measurable distance, to quote Mr. Gladstone's famous expression. I desire to describe the forces of opposition to the Irish cause, as well as the forces that are friendly to it.

I have been in the struggle, and I know the men. In that sense I have a story to tell. Eight years ago, I ventured to say to the House of Commons, that before very long the question of Home Rule would make and unmake ministries, and that, when it came to that, the cause of Home Rule would be virtually won. It has come to that now. The cause of Home Rule makes and unmakes ministries ; it will make and unmake ministries until Home Rule is won.

In the mean time, it may interest Americans to hear the story of the Irish movement told by one who has marched in the ranks, who has shouldered a musket or trailed a pike in the cause of Home Rule. What is Home Rule ? What is the demand that the Irish representatives, speaking in the name and with the authority of the people of Ireland, are presenting to the Imperial Parliament at Westminster ? Do we ask for any thing new ; any thing unprecedented ; any thing exceptional ; any thing unreasonable in principle, or likely to be dangerous in its operation to the welfare of the empire ? No, we ask for nothing of the kind. Some English newspapers write, even still, as if the proposal for a Home Rule system for Ireland was an audacious innovation. But it is not an innovation ; it would be simply a restoration. Some English public men talk even still, as if the union of the English and Irish Parliaments into one organization were at least as old as the flood. But the Act of Union is, in the historical sense, a thing of the day before yesterday. The Act of Union came into force on the first day in the first year of the present century. Up to that time, and almost since the beginning of England's connection with Ireland, Ireland had always her Irish Parliament sitting in Dublin, to administer the affairs and see to the national interests of the country. Undoubtedly the Irish Parliament was at various stages of its existence, very unlike in its conditions to what we now in America and in England would regard as a national assembly. It was not representative in the modern sense, or in the true sense ; and it was wretchedly dependent on the Crown, or on that council which was the mere instrument of the Crown. Still it was a Parliament, and asserted its authority when it could. So long ago as 1372, there was a conflict of authority between the English Parliament and the Irish. The English Parliament insisted that Ireland must raise a larger sum to meet the charges of Irish administration. The King summoned the Irish Parliament over to England to debate on the disputed question. The Irish

Parliament replied by a declaration, that they were in no wise bound to send a delegation to England ; but that nevertheless, as it was the King's wish, they would do so, specially reserving all their own rights, and of course, among the rest, the right to grant or refuse the additional subsidy asked of them.

Poynings' Act, as it is called, the Act which was projected and carried in 1494, by Sir Edward Poynings, deputy-governor of Ireland, reduced the Irish Parliament to a certain degree of dependency on the Crown, and the advisers of the Crown in England, and on the English Parliament. In other words, Sir Edward Poynings obtained the passing of legislation which decreed that an Irish Parliament should not be summoned until the principles of any measures intended to be submitted to such Irish Parliament had been submitted to the English Government and approved of by them. Poynings' Act also extended to Ireland any legislation passed for England by the English Parliament. Undoubtedly Poynings' Act, or Acts, reduced the power of the Irish Parliament so much as to make it little better than a mere recording agency of the will of the English sovereign. But it will have to be borne in mind, that at that time the English Parliament itself was hardly anything better than a mere recording agency of the will of the English sovereign. The English Parliament sometimes chafed at the yoke, and so too did the Parliament of Ireland. In March, 1720, an Act was passed to settle a conflict of authority between the two Parliaments. A measure was introduced by the English Government, the preamble of which declared that "attempts have lately been made to shake off the subjection of Ireland unto and dependence upon the imperial crown of this realm, which will be of dangerous consequence to Great Britain and Ireland."

The meaning of this portentous preamble was, that the Irish House of Lords persisted in assuming the right to act as the final court of appeal, "to examine, correct, and amend the judgments and decrees of the courts of justice in the kingdom of Ireland." The bill declared that the Irish House of Lords had no such right, and that the right now entirely belonged to the House of Lords in England. The Act was passed, of course, in the English Parliament. But a great English peer, the Duke of Leeds, recorded his protest against it, on the ground, among many others, that this " taking-away of the jurisdiction of the Lords' House in Ireland may be a means to disquiet the lords there, and disappoint the King's affairs." I dwell on these facts to show that for centuries there was a distinct Irish Parliament, endowed with authority of some sort, to manage the affairs of Ireland. Of course it is a fact, that during the greater part of its history it was simply a Parliament of English Protestants settled in Ireland, and having no manner of sympathy with the vast majority of the Irish people. But it is also a fact, that the sympathies of the Irish people, whenever they had an opportunity of showing them, were with the Irish Parliament, and were for upholding its authority against the English Parliament, simply because it was the Irish Parliament ; because, at least, it was called the Irish Parliament ; because it recognized in name, if only in name, the existence of an Ireland which was entitled to a national Parliament.

Of course it did not represent the Irish people. But neither did the English Parliament at that time, or for long after, represent the English people. The English Parliament was, until a time very near to our own, absolutely dependent on the personal will and even the personal caprice of the sovereign. Queen Victoria is positively the first really constitutional sovereign who ever sat on the throne of Great Britain. As the English Parliament kept advancing step by step in independence, the Irish Parliament kept advancing too ; and I shall show presently, that,

WHAT IS IRELAND'S CAUSE? J

on at least one great question of civil liberty, the Irish Parliament, with all its faults, was about a quarter of a century ahead of the Parliament at Westminster. At all events, I have said quite enough to impress on the mind of American readers the fact, that, during many centuries, Ireland had a distinct and separate Parliament of her own. It may be asked, Why tell us all this ? Is it not written down in history ? Yes, it is written down in history ; but we do not all of us read and remember every thing that is written down in history, especially in the history of Ireland. Lest my American readers should think I am unreasonably disparaging their degree of familiarity with all the facts of Irish history, let me tell them of something that happened during a recent debate on the Irish question in the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone was making a speech ; and in its course he referred to something done by the Irish Parliament before 1782, — the year when Poynings' Act was repealed, and the independence of the Irish Parliament was restored. A law official of the present government, a man of eloquence and capacity, interrupted Gladstone with the words, " There was no Irish Parliament before 1782." Mr. Gladstone paused like one thunder-striken. " Does the honorable and learned gentleman," he asked in amazement, " really mean to deny that there was an Irish Parliament before 1782?" — " Certainly I do," was the confident and complacent answer. I believe the honorable and learned gentleman was speaking in full sincerity.

I believe he honestly did not know that there ever was an Irish Parliament before the days of Grattan and the volunteers. Why should he know ? How should he know ? Of course he was not likely to read Irish history or Irish newspapers. His predecessor in the same office, actually, under a liberal government, once declared in the House of Commons, with look of lordly contempt, that he never read Irish newspapers. Why, then, should the solicitor -general under a Tory government be expected to know that there was an Irish Parliament before 1782? Were not the only London newspapers which he was likely to read, telling him and the world every day that the cry for an Irish Parliament was a cry for an audacious innovation to which Englishmen of to-day could never listen, and of which Englishmen in the happier yesterday had never heard ? I was talking lately to an English lady, wife of an eminent London physician, and she surprised me by telling me that she had become a complete convert to the cause of Home Rule. I was delighted to hear it. " Do you know," she asked, "why I have become converted?" I did not know. " Because," she told me, " I have read, for the first time in my life, the history of Ireland." — "I wish," I said, "you would get your husband to read it too." She laughed, and said, " Oh, I have tried to get him, but he won't : he says it might convert him, and in his position it would not suit him to be a Home Ruler." For it is as well to tell the American public at once, that a man who makes his living in any way out of the aristocratic classes in England, would find it much to his disadvantage to be a Home Ruler or a sympathizer with the Irish national cause. As long as he can say he knows nothing about it, he is safe. Thus he can reconcile his conscience and his position. The man who does not want to be a Home Ruler must not read Irish history. That may be taken as an axiom.

This demand for Home Rule, then, is not a novelty. An Irish Parliament, whatever it might be, would not be an innovation. I suppose I may take it that these two facts at least are beyond dispute. I come, then, to another consideration. Is there any thing unreasonable in asking for a Home Rule system for Ireland ? The empire of Queen Victoria is for the most part an agglomeration of home-ruled communi-

IO IRELAND'S CAUSE.

ties. The Canadian Dominion and Provinces, the Australian and Australasian colonies, are governed by themselves. The South-African colonies have their representative systems and their Home Rule. These colonies, it may be said, are too far away from England to be of any danger to her, should a turbulent spirit ever arise. I should say that, in the instance of Canada at least, the distance from England greatly increases the danger, as was felt pretty keenly in English political circles during the progress of the dispute about the "Alabama" claims. However, let that pass, and let us take the instance of communities that are not far away from England. Take the Channel Islands, within gunshot almost of the English shore. The Channel Islands are peopled by a French population ; French is the official language of the legislatures, of the courts of law, of the royal court. Yet these French populations are allowed to manage their own affairs. We never hear any thing about them in Westminster ; we never hear any thing about them, for the good reason that they are allowed to manage their own affairs. Take the little Isle of Man, the holiday place of Manchester and Liverpool excursionists. The Isle of Man has not only a Home Rule system, but it is a system absolutely different in every way from any thing

WHA T IS IRELAND 'S CA USE ? II

known in England or the great English colonies. The little island is allowed to manage its affairs after its own fashion, in accordance with its own traditions. We never hear any thing about the Isle of Man in the Imperial Parliament. If, then, there are so many Home Rule communities already under the English Crown, what reason is there on the face of things why one other Home Rule community should not be added to the number? In every one of these Home Rule communities, Home Rule has either kept up, or created for the first time, prosperity, peace, and content. There is not one single example of Home Rule of a genuine kind working the other way. But the claim of Ireland is much stronger than the claim of Canada, for instance. When Home Rule was demanded for Canada, it was undoubtedly an innovation and an experiment. It might have been asked — it was very often asked — of Canada and Canada's advocates, " Why do you cry out for this new thing ? Why do you call upon us to make this rash experiment ? " But this question cannot be asked of the representatives of Ireland. They ask for no new thing : they ask that the old condition of things shall be restored ; they ask that Ireland shall have its own again. The system has worked for good, and nothing but good, wherever it has been tried. But in other places it was undoubtedly an innovation ; in Ireland's case it will be merely a restoration.

I need hardly go about to prove elaborately that the Home Rule system has worked well in the great English colonies ; but I may say something about Canada. What was the condition of Canada ? The same antagonisms of race and of creed were found in Canada that people lament and bewail in Ireland Canada, like Ireland, was governed virtually from Westminster. The governor-general's offices were for Canada what Dublin Castle is for Ireland. What was the consequence ? The French Canadian detested the English and the Scotch Canadian ; the Catholic hated the Protestant, and the Protestant hated the Catholic. All were agreed on one point, and one point only, — detestation of the centralized system of government. Lower Canada went into rebellion ; Upper Canada went into rebellion. The English Government struck a rare stroke of good luck. They sent out as com missioner, to restore Canada to order, a statesman and a man of genius, Lord Durham. Lord Durham's name has been curiously forgotten in our time. His work survives him, however, and the prosperity of the Dominion of Canada is his monument. I can hardly forgive the people of Quebec for having changed the name of "Durham Terrace" to "Dufferin Terrace." Lord Dufferin is a man of great ability, varied accomplishments, and charming manners, and he did a great deal for Quebec. I dare say he would be a much more agreeable man to dine with than the hot-tempered and overbearing Lord Durham. But Lord Durham was a man of genius, and the Dominion of Canada is the trophy of his genius. Lord Durham saw that there was but one remedy for the ills of Canada, and that remedy was Home Rule. He saw that the only possible way of governing a country in which there are different races, different religions, different habits, and different traditions, is on the principle of what we may call, for lack of any better expression, the federal system of government. He laid the foundation of that system in the Canada of his time, and his scheme provided for the expansion of the system into the Canada of our time. He found Canada distracted by intestine dissensions and hatreds, unprosperous, retrograding, in bitter enmity with the parent country, a source of weakness, and even of shame, to England. What is Canada now ? A peaceful and prosperous country, growing and expanding in resources and in strength every day, a country which never gives England a moment's trouble. If England could only, at any time within the last ten or a dozen years, have sent us in Ireland a Lord Durham ! If only she had the Lord Durham to send ! Lord Caernarvon might have been a Lord Durham — only he was not. " What's impossible can't be, and very seldom comes to pass." I fully believe that Lord Caernarvon had all the good-will, all the warm wish, to be the Lord Durham of Ireland. But even if he wanted nothing else, he wanted the imperial, the imperious mind of Lord Durham.

It is a curious study now to read the debates in Parliament on the proposals of Lord Durham. The objections made by opponents of the schemes might be quoted word for word as speeches made by Conservatives or secessionist-Liberals against Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule scheme. If we adopt Lord Durham's plan, we shall leave the loyal minority at the mercy of the disloyal majority; we shall leave our Protestant co-religionists at the mercy of Catholic bigotry. It will mean, it is meant to mean, the separation of Canada from England. The really respectable and intelligent people of Canada are all against it ; only the sedition-mongers are in favor of it. It is not really a Canadian movement at all ; it is a movement fostered and kept up altogether by supplies of money from the United States. The enemies of England are doing it all, and Lord Durham is only the tool of the enemies of England. Lord Durham's official title was Lord High Commissioner. The "Times" of that day — very like in fairness and intelligence to the "Times" of this day — used to make it a practice to call him "the Lord High Seditioner." Glancing at some of those old leading articles, I thought lately how wonderfully like they are to the attacks which the "Times" makes every day on Mr. Gladstone. I almost felt like Vivian Grey, when, as he is talking with the mediatized Prince of Turriparva over the prince's schemes and plans and ambitions, his mind goes back to the far-distant days when he talked over the same kind of thing, under different conditions, with the English Marquis of Carabas, and found it all silly and weary, and provocative of sleep ; and he thinks within himself, that, after all, time is nothing, and that, from the Marquis of Carabas to the Prince of Turriparva, there is not the transit of a moment. From the " Times " denouncing

Lord Durham, to the " Times " denouncing Mr. Gladstone, there is no distance to be traversed ; it is the same thing. A Rip Van Winkle who had fallen asleep while the " Times " was droning over the pacificator of Canada, might well believe it was just the same old drone still going on, if he happened to wake up at a right moment, and hear the "Times" droning over Mr. Gladstone. Little Lord Durham recks now what the " Times " said then ; little need has Mr. Gladstone to reck, even now, what the "Times" says of him.

Chapter II. How Ireland Lost Her Parliament

HOW, then, did Ireland come to lose her national Parliament? What was the crime, or series of crimes, which that Parliament committed, and which rendered necessary its sudden extinction ? The story is an old one now. It has often been told, yet it will bear telling once again. Perhaps it cannot be told too often for the purpose of impressing on the minds of stranger readers the full force and meaning of the claim which Ireland has upon England for the restoration of her national Parliament. The British Philistine idea is just this : " Ireland had a Parliament for a few, a very few, years; and the Irish Parliament managed things so badly,— getting up frightful rebellions among its other fantasies of wickedness, — that, for the sake of Ireland itself, the wicked Irish Parliament had to be abolished, and Ireland brought under the saving shelter of the imperial Parliament at Westminster." Let me, in a few words, now tell the story as authentic history tells it. We shall see then whether it was through any fault of her own, that Ireland lost her national Parliament. We shall see whether the cause of her losing it does not strengthen immensely her claim for its restoration. We shall see whether the Irish Parliament, with all its faults, was not fighting the battle of religious liberty, the battle of civilization, against the English sovereign and his minister. The Irish Parliament was extinguished because its leaders were men more enlightened than George the Third ; because they, Protestant as well as he, stood up for that cause of Catholic emancipation which he was determined to crush.

The Irish Parliament, as I have said, was not an independent Parliament in our modern sense of the word. It was not, even after the repeal of Poynings' Act, independent in that modern sense. Neither was it representative, according to our ideas of representation. It made laws for a country, five-sixths of whose population then, as now, belonged to the Roman-Catholic Church. But a Catholic could not be a member of the Irish Parliament. More than that, a Catholic could not give a vote for the election of a member of the Irish Parliament. The Irish

HOW IK ELAND LOST HER PARLIAMENT. 1 9

Parliament, therefore, could no more be said to represent the Irish people than a South-Carolina Legislature in the days before the civil war could be said to represent the slave population of the State. Yet so national in spirit were the leaders and the best men of that Irish Parliament, that, although responsible to no single Catholic voter, — for there was no Catholic voter, — the first use these Protestant gentlemen made of the increased independence of the Parliament was to endeavor to carry legislative measures for the emancipation of their Catholic fellow-subjects. The leaders of the movement had a hard struggle for a while. The Irish Parliament was made up for the most part of landlords and lawyers, and the majority represented the ascendancy of race and of creed. Still Grattan and his friends were able to accomplish a reform, which at least enabled Catholics to vote for the election of members of the House of Commons. This was not enough for Grattan. He and his friends were determined that the chains of the Catholic should not " clank o'er his rags."

In the mean time an association had been formed in Ireland which afterwards became famous in Ireland's history, and the original objects of which have been more constantly and systematically misrepresented than those of any other political organization of which I have read. I am speaking of the Society of United Irishmen. The Society of United Irishmen was founded in 1791 by Theobald Wolfe Tone. Wolfe Tone was a Protestant patriot, a man of genius and indomitable spirit and rich mental resource. He founded the Society of United Irishmen for the purpose of obtaining Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform in Ireland. Tone's great grievance was that there was no national government in Ireland ; that the country was ruled " by Englishmen and the servants of Englishmen," whose sole object was to advance the interests of England at the expense of those of Ireland. The Irish Parliament was mainly elected by a number of pocket boroughs, and rotten boroughs, and constituencies dependent on some great peer or other territorial magnate. Tone's policy was to unite all true Irishmen against this system ; and it was by his urgent advice that the new association took no account in its title of any thing sectarian, and merely styled itself a Society of United Irishmen. Tone became secretary of a Catholic association, for the purpose of obtaining relief from penal disqualification for the Catholics. He had worked so gallantly and zealously in the Catholic cause, that the Catholics were only too glad to make him, a Protestant, secretary of their distinctive association.

The Society of United Irishmen was composed mainly of young Protestants, — men, for the most part, of talents, education, and social position. Men like Thomas Addis Emmet and Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Hamilton Rowan belonged to it. Many wealthy merchants and bankers belonged to it. We know all about it now. We can study its proceedings and its records, its resolutions, its appeals to the Sovereign, its petitions to Parliament. We know that its objects were peaceful, loyal, patriotic, constitutional. We know that its aim was, as set out in its own pledge, to " endeavor to promote a brotherhood of affection and union among Irishmen of every religious persuasion," with the object of procuring "a full, equal, and adequate representation of all the people of Ireland in Parliament." For this full and equal and adequate representation, the first thing needful was the abolition of religious disqualification ; the next thing, a comprehensive measure of parliamentary reform. Such was the object of the Society of United Irishmen at the beginning, and for many years of its subsequent existence. It was a constitutional association altogether, — peaceful in its professions, peaceful in its aims. I hasten to anticipate a possible criticism by at once admitting that there were writers even then who denounced the United Irishmen as men of treasonable purpose. For these critics argued, as George the Third argued : " You must be disloyal to the Constitution and to the Sovereign, if you seek to have the Catholics emancipated. You must contemplate civil war ; because you must know that England will never consent to grant Catholic emancipation unless you can conquer her in a civil war. Therefore, no matter what your protestations of loyalty, you must be disloyal. If you were to swear yourself black in the face, that you are only for measures of peace, you must, all the same, be conspiring for war." We hear this sort of argument in England just now, a good deal ; and we can appreciate it. Those who employed it at that time employed it not only against Wolfe Tone, but against Grattan as well. " Henry Grattan must know," they said, " that he is allying himself with men whose policy will conduct them to civil war, to rebellion ; therefore he is a rebel." Grattan never, as a matter of fact, was a member of the Society of United Irishmen ; but that did not count for much with his opponents. Gladstone was never a member of the National League.

HOW IRELAND LOST ILER PARLIAMENT. 23

The unquestionable fact, however, — unquestionable by any one who knows any thing of the history of the times, — is, that the Society of United Irishmen was in the beginning, and through all its existence down to a certain event of which I shall presently tell, a peaceful, constitutional association, laboring for noble objects by pacific means. In truth, the United Irishmen were fully convinced that they were walking the straight way to a complete and a peaceful success. All the patriotism of Ireland was with them ; the best and loftiest intellect of England was with them. Their cause was making illustrious converts every day. Grattan himself, — what was he but a convert to the principle of Catholic emancipation ? He entered public life as its opponent, he soon became its warmest and most powerful friend. In January, 1795, the hopes of the United Irishmen seemed confirmed to the full ; their success seemed to be proclaimed by the appointment of Lord Fitzwilliam as viceroy of Ireland.