STATE OF IRELAND.
This year witnessed the disaffection of all parties in Ireland. Towards the conclusion of the preceding year a systematic opposition to tithes had been organised, and the repeal of the union had been openly advocated. Ministers, doubtless, conceived that the reform bill would conciliate both the agitators and their followers; but in this they were mistaken. The reform bill, indeed, gave rise to new sources of discontent. The Protestants lost all confidence therefrom in the government; and they very naturally felt inclined to have recourse, for means of defence, to the same instruments which the Catholics used against them. They were surrounded by Catholic bands, inclined to pillage and murder, and it was no wonder that they felt irritated by a measure which appeared to give licence to the lawless. A meeting of Protestant noblemen and gentlemen, held in Dublin, put forth a manifesto, enumerating the various grievances of which they thought themselves entitled to complain, and calling upon all their brethren to be vigilant and true to their own interests. The example of this assembly was followed in many parts of the country, and addresses were voted by numerous meetings to the king. In one of these addresses dissatisfaction and alarm was expressed at the spirit that appeared to influence the councils and direct the measures of the Irish government. Unconstitutional and mischievous associations, it was stated, had been suffered to be formed and continued, the efforts of which were directed to usurp the power of government, and destroy the civil and religious institutions of the country; and these associations, instead of being suppressed, were allowed to take place even in the metropolis, while the instigators of them were rewarded with favour and confidence. This address also expressed strong opinions on the reform bill. It would transfer, it was said, to the Catholics and Catholic clergy an overwhelming influence in the representation; that the boroughs, whose franchise was to be taken from the Protestant corporations and transferred to a larger constituency, had been incorporated for the express purpose of maintaining, by a Protestant constituency, the connexion between the two countries; and that the measure in progress could have no other effect than to vest the dominion of Ireland in the Catholics. On the other hand, the reform bill did not give satisfaction to the Catholics; it gave much, but it did not give all that they desired, or all that was necessary to the completion of their schemes. Their object was ascendancy. Popery could not retain its glories in Ireland, or the Protestant church be destroyed, so long as their fate depended on a Protestant parliament. The union must be repealed; and unless Ireland sent into the house of commons a large body of Catholic repealers, there was no chance of such a consummation. Hence it was that Mr. O’Connell attacked the Irish bill with such bitterness; it did not make a larger addition to the representatives of Ireland, and it did not sink the qualification to a scale sufficiently low to ensure the return of all repealers to the reformed parliament. These “defects of the bill,” therefore, supplied the demagogues with new sources of agitation. The people were told that this pretended reform was an insult; that they had received only a small portion of the justice that was due to them; and that they must still offer unyielding opposition to a government which granted only a part of their demands.
Meanwhile the tithe question became & fruitful source of discontent and bloodshed. A petition was entrusted to Mr. O’Connell to the house of commons against the Protestant church, which, while it announced in plain language their own wishes, gave direct encouragement to violence and outrage. The different counties, in fact, from the agitation of the demagogues, presented one scene of growing lawlessness and crime. The king’s speech was even made to foster this spirit of insubordination. It had recommended the consideration of the tithe question in parliament; and the Irish Catholics construed this into a condemnation of the tax. Looking upon the tithes, therefore, as already denounced by the king and the parliament, they thought they were justified in resisting the payment of them. Everyman refused to pay; and threats, arson, and murder, were directed against all who in any way connected themselves with the payment, or collection of tithes, whether as clergyman, proctor, policeman, or payer. Recourse was even had to intimidation by public proclamation; chapel doors were desecrated by placards threatening death and destruction to all who should pay tithes. Thus instructed at the very sanctuary where peace alone should have been taught, the ignorant and misguided peasantry everywhere committed acts of violence and outrage. The premises of the tithe-payer were reduced to ashes, and his cattle were houghed, or scattered over the country, or, as in Carlow, hunted over precipices. Moreover, scarcely a week elapsed in which a proctor, or a process-server, or a constable, or a tithe-payer, were not murdered. An archdeacon of Cashel was even murdered in broad daylight, while several persons who were ploughing in the field where the act was committed, either would not, or dared not interfere. Neither life nor property were safe; and in the beginning of February the Irish government found it necessary to have recourse to the peace-preservation act, and to proclaim certain baronies in the county of Tipperary to be in a state of disturbance. This, however, had no effect; large bodies of men everywhere openly defied the law, and roamed about the county, compelling landlords to sign obligations to reduce their rents, and to pay no tithes. They even compelled some farmers to give up their farms and their houses, and, in some instances, they committed the most atrocious cruelties. An end was put not only to the payment of tithe, but to the payment of rent; and the terror which prevailed on every hand acted as a shield to the offenders. In fact, it was considered a crime to be connected with any attempt to execute the law against the insurgents, and to betray any activity in preserving order was to become a marked man; such a man was sure of being made the victim of open violence, or secret assassination. Such an extensive combination had been entered into to resist the payment of tithes, and to protect all who might be implicated, that the ends of justice could not be attained. Jurors were in danger of losing property and life; and at Kilkenny the attorney-general even found it necessary to delay the trials.
Government, as the year advanced, filled the disturbed districts with troops and an augmented constabulary force; but no approach was made to the restoration of order. The magistrates of the county of Kilkenny made an unanimous application to the Irish government for stronger measures to meet the crisis; but the lord-lieutenant stated in his answer, that, from circumstances which had taken place, he had no expectation left of any appeal to the law under the existing excitement proving effectual. He sent, indeed, into that county three additional stipendiary magistrates, and one hundred additional policemen; but this was ineffectual: crime still prevailed, and resistance was successfully made to the payment of tithes. In the meantime, the agitators and their political unions, while they affected to deplore the perpetration of the outrages which were every day occurring, did not cease to address to their countrymen the same exciting language in which they had hitherto indulged, and to devise new schemes and combinations for open resistance to the law. It was quite evident, indeed, that they were at the bottom of all the mischief that was afloat. It is true, they did not recommend openly murder and arson, and that they preached passive resistance; but they called upon every man to refuse payment of tithes, and in that call was involved disobedience to the laws. Dublin was the seat of most of the mischief going forward. From thence the agitators continued to describe Ireland to its inhabitants as the slave of England, and to denounce the existence of tithe. The remedy of the tithe-owner was distraint; but in a few instances only could a sale be carried into effect, and the clergy were at length compelled to give up all attempts to enforce their rights, the more especially as the arrears, if the measures proposed by ministers were carried, would become debts due to government. Where-ever a sale was effected, all those connected with it were objects of vengeance. Thus, in Kildare, a farmer who had purchased some distrained cattle, was obliged to throw up his farm and leave the country. The opposition against the payment of tithe was directed against the government as well as the clergy. Its intention was to drive ministers, if possible, to recommend and enforce their abolition, by rendering the recovery of them impracticable. Anti-tithe meetings were held in every part of Ireland, and the greater part of the country was involved in one huge conspiracy. During the year government seemed to think it time to try whether the law could not reach the tumultuous assemblies of the conspirators. A circular was addressed to the Irish magistracy, directing them to disperse all meetings collected in such numbers as to produce alarm and endanger peace, as distinguished by banners, inscriptions, or emblems, which tended to disturbance, or to throw contumely on the law. This circular was denounced by Mr. O’Connell as illegal, though he advised that it should be obeyed. Several large meetings were dispersed by the military, headed by a magistrate; but where the meeting was strictly parochial, no opposition was offered to their proceedings. It was this spirit of lawlessness which gave rise to the Irish tithe-bill of this session. The passing of that bill neither mitigated the discord which everywhere prevailed, nor diminished the crimes which that discord produced. The people had been taught to demand as their right, and to expect as a concession, the annihilation of tithe; but they found that the crown, by the Irish tithe-bill, had become creditor instead of the clergymen. They had now, therefore, to struggle with the crown. Proceedings were adopted by the law-officers of government to enforce payment of arrears, and at the same time it was resolved to try the power of the law against the ringleaders of the “anti-tithe meetings.” A great number of persons were apprehended on the charge of conspiracy, and of holding illegal assemblies. Some of these on their trials were convicted, and others, on the advice of O’Connell, pleaded guilty, and they were fined and imprisoned; but they were looked upon as martyrs, and the penalties which they were suffering were noted down as another unpardonable injury committed against Ireland by the English government and the Protestant church. The law, however, was not equally successful when directed against the more atrocious crimes of arson and murder, which had been committed in the southern counties. Life was not safe in those parts, and jurors and witnesses alike dreaded the execution of a duty which might involve a sentence of death upon themselves. Rather than attend, they paid the fine for absence; or if they attended, they were afraid to convict, even in the most atrocious cases. The law-officers were, in fact, compelled to give up the prosecutions in despair, and murder remained unavenged. In celebration of this triumph over law and justice, the county of Kilkenny blazed with bonfires, announcing to the world that the guilty had escaped punishment. As for the “acquitting jurors,” they were greeted with the popular applause; and because they allowed murder to be committed with impunity, the peasantry hastened in crowds to their fields in harvest-time, and reaped their fields for nothing. Crime, therefore, prospered; and the tale of murder was repeatedly told in the newspapers of the day, while the perpetrators thereof escaped the punishment due to their crimes. Yet no lament was raised by the political guides of Ireland over murdered landholders and clergymen; it appeared to be, in their sight, a just revenge. At the same time a long wail of woe was heard throughout the country, if it happened that any of the resisting peasantry were killed by the military in the performance of their duties in securing the tithe. Four were thus killed in the county of Cork, and others wounded, the military being compelled to fire in self-defence; and Mr. O ‘Connell immediately sent forth a letter to the reformers of Great Britain, invoking vengeance. And yet this man, who could deplore the fate of violators of the laws, could not find any cause for lament in the deaths of the many clergymen and laymen who had been slain by the infuriated peasantry. He could not find it in his heart to deplore the fact that the blood of peaceful, respectable, and virtuous citizens, had been shed on Irish ground; but he could palliate the conduct of their murderers, and by his agitation virtually sanction the foul crime.