The Land-War in Ireland: A History for the Times

by James Godkin

CHAPTER XIV.

ULSTER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Let us, then, endeavour to get rid of the pernicious delusions about race and religion in dealing with this Irish land question. Identity of race and substantial agreement in religion did not prevent the Ulster landlords from uprooting their tenants when they fancied it was their interest to banish them—to substitute grazing for tillage, and cattle for a most industrious and orderly peasantry.

The letters of Primate Boulter contain much valuable information on the state of Ulster in the last century, and furnish apt illustrations of the land question, which, I fancy, will be new and startling to many readers. Boulter was lord primate of Ireland from 1724 to 1738. He was thirteen times one of the lords justices. As an Englishman and a good churchman, he took care of the English interests and of the establishment. The letters were written in confidence to Sir Robert Walpole and other ministers of state, and were evidently not intended for publication. An address 'to the reader' from some friend, states truly that they give among other things an impartial account of 'the distressed state of the kingdom for want of tillage, the vast sums of money sent out of the nation for corn, flour, &c., the dismal calamities thereon, the want of trade and the regulation of the English and other coins, to the very great distress of all the manufacturers,' &c. They show that he was a man of sound judgment, public-spirited, and very moderate and impartial for the times in which he lived. His evidence with regard to the relations of landlord and tenant in Ulster is exceedingly valuable at the present moment. Lord Dufferin could not have read the letters when he wrote his book; otherwise I should think his apology for the landlords of the last century would have been considerably modified.

Primate Boulter repeatedly complained to Walpole, the Duke of Newcastle, and other ministers, that the Ulster farmers were deserting the country in large numbers, emigrating to the United States, then British colonies, to the West Indies, or to any country where they hoped to get the means of living, in many cases binding themselves to work for a number of years as slaves in payment of their passage out. The desire to quit the country of their birth is described by the primate as a mania. Writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1728 he says:—'We are under great trouble here about a frenzy that has taken hold of very great numbers to leave this country for the West Indies, and we are endeavouring to learn what may be the reasons of it, and the proper remedies.' Two or three weeks later he reported to the Duke of Newcastle that for several years past some agents from the colonies in America, and several masters of ships, had gone about the country 'and deluded the people with stories of great plenty and estates to be had for going for in those parts of the world.' During the previous summer more than 3,000 men, women, and children had been shipped for the West Indies. Of these, not more than one in ten were men of substance. The rest hired themselves for their passage, or contracted with masters of ships for four years' servitude, 'selling themselves as servants for their subsistence.' The whole north was in a ferment, people every day engaging one another to go next year to the West Indies. 'The humour,' says the primate, 'has spread like a contagious distemper, and the people will hardly hear anybody that tries to cure them of their madness. The worst is that it affects only Protestants, and reigns chiefly in the North, which is the seat of our linen manufacture.'

As the Protestant people, the descendants of the English and Scotch who had settled in the country in the full assurance that they were building homes for their posterity, were thus deserting those homes in such multitudes, their pastors sent a memorial to the lord lieutenant, setting forth the grievances which they believed to be the cause of the desertion. On this memorial the primate wrote comments to the English Government, and, in doing so, he stated some astounding facts as to the treatment of the people by their landlords. He was a cautious man, thoroughly acquainted with the facts, and writing under a sense of great responsibility. In order to understand some of those facts, we should bear in mind that the landlords had laid down large portions of their estates in pasture, to avoid the payment of tithes, and that this burden was thrown entirely upon the tenants who tilled the land. Now, let my readers mark what the primate states as to their condition. He says:—'If a landlord takes too great a portion of the profits of a farm for his share by way of rent (as the tithe will light on the tenant's share), the tenant will be impoverished; but then it is not the tithe, but the increased rent that undoes the farmer. And, indeed, in this country, where I fear the tenant hardly ever has more than one-third of the profits he makes of his farm for his share, and too often but a fourth, or, perhaps, a fifth part, as the tenant's share is charged with the tithe, his case is, no doubt, hard, but it is plain from what side the hardship arises.' What the gentlemen wanted to be at, according to the primate, was, that they might go on raising their rents, and that the clergy should receive their old payments. He admits, however, that the tenants were sometimes cited to the ecclesiastical courts, and if they failed to appear there, they stood excommunicated; and he adds, 'possibly when a writ de excommunicato capiendo is taken out, and they find they have 7l. or 8l. to pay, they run away, for the greatest part of the occupiers of the land here are so poor, that an extraordinary stroke of 8l. or 10l. falling on them is certain ruin to them.' He further states that, to his own knowledge, many of the clergy had chosen rather to lose their 'small dues' than to be at a certain great expense in getting them, 'and at an uncertainty whether the farmer would not at last run away without paying anything.'

Such was the condition of the Protestants of Ulster during the era of the penal code; and it is a curious fact that it was the Presbyterians and not the Catholics that were forced by the exactions of the Protestant landlords and the clergy to run away from the country which their forefathers had been brought over to civilize. But there was another fact connected with the condition of Ulster which I dare say will be almost incredible to many readers. The tenantry, so cruelly rack-rented and impoverished, were reduced by two or three bad seasons to a state bordering upon famine. There was little or no corn in the province. The primate set on foot a subscription in Dublin, to which he himself contributed very liberally. The object was to buy food to supply the necessities of the north, and to put a stop to 'the great desertion' they had been threatened with. He hoped that the landlords would 'do their part by remitting some arrears, or making some abatement of their rents.' As many of the tenants had eaten the oats they should have sowed their lands with, he expected the landlords would have the good sense to furnish them with seed; if not, a great deal of land would lie waste that year. And where were the provisions got? Partly in Munster, where corn was very cheap and abundant. But the people of Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Clonmel objected to have their provisions sent away, although they were in some places 'as cheap again as in the north; but where dearest, at least one-third part cheaper.' Riotous mobs broke open the store-houses and cellars, setting what price they pleased upon the provisions. And, what between those riots and the prevalence of easterly winds, three weeks elapsed before the 3,000l. worth of oats, oatmeal, and potatoes could be got down to relieve the famishing people of the north, which then seemed black enough, even to its own inhabitants. Hence the humane primate was obliged to write: 'The humour of going to America still continues, and the scarcity of provisions certainly makes many quit us. There are now seven ships at Belfast that are carrying off 1,000 passengers thither, and if we knew how to stop them, as most of them can neither get victuals nor work at home, it would be cruel to do it.'

The Presbyterian clergy suffered greatly from the impoverishment of their people. Several of them who had been receiving a stipend of 50l. a year, had their incomes reduced to less than 15l. In their distress they appealed to the primate, and, staunch churchman as he was, they found in him a kind and earnest advocate. Writing to Sir Robert Walpole, on March 31, 1729, he pleaded for the restoration of 400l. a year, which had been given to the non-conforming clergy of Ireland from the privy purse, in addition to the 1,200l. royal bounty, which, it appears, had been suspended for two years, owing to the death of the late king. 'They are sensible,' said his grace, 'there is nothing due to them, nor do they make any such claim; but as the calamities of this kingdom are at present very great, and by the desertion of many of their people to America, and the poverty of the greatest part of the rest, their contributions, particularly in the north, are very much fallen off, it would be a great instance of his majesty's goodness if he would consider their present distress.' In our own days a Presbyterian minister would be considered to deserve well of his country if he emigrated to America, and took with him as many of the people as he could induce to forsake their native land. But what was the great plea which Primate Boulter urged on the English Minister on behalf of the Presbyterian clergy of his day? It was, that they had exerted their influence to prevent emigration. 'It is,' he said, 'but doing them justice to affirm that they are very well affected to his majesty and his royal family, and by the best enquiries I could make, do their best endeavours to keep their congregations from deserting the country, not more than one or two of the younger ministers having anyways encouraged the humour now prevailing here. And his majesty's goodness in giving them some extraordinary relief on this occasion of their present great distress would undoubtedly make them more active to retain their people here. I cannot help mentioning on this occasion that, what with scarceness of corn in the north, and the loss of all credit there, and by the numbers that go, or talk of going, to America, and with the disturbances in the south, this kingdom is at present in a deplorable condition.'

In a statement previously made to the Bishop of London, the Irish primate earnestly solicited his correspondent to use his influence to prevent the Irish landlords from passing a law to strip the established clergy of their rights with respect to the tithe of agistment. They had entered into a general combination, and formed a stock purse to resist the payment of tithe, except by the poor tenants who tilled the soil, a remarkable contrast to the zeal of the landlords of our own time in defending church property against 'spoliation' by the imperial legislature, and to the liberality with which many of them are now contributing to the Sustentation Fund. How shall we account for the change? Is it that the landlords of the present day are more righteous than their grandfathers? Or is it that the same principle of self-interest which led the proprietors of past times to grind the tenantry and rob the Church, now operates in forms more consistent with piety and humanity, and by its subtle influence illustrates the maxim of the poet—

Self-love and social is the same.

However that may be, the primate contented himself in this letter with a defence of the Church, in which he admitted matters of real grievance, merely alluding to other grievances, 'such as raising the rents unreasonably, the oppression by justices of the peace, seneschals, and other officers in the country.'

From the pictures of the times he presents we should not be surprised at his statement to the Duke of Newcastle, that the people who went to America made great complaints of the oppressions they suffered, and said that those oppressions were one reason of their going. When he went on his visitation, in 1726, he 'met all the roads full of whole families that had left their homes to beg abroad,' having consumed their stock of potatoes two months before the usual time. During the previous year many hundreds had perished of famine. What was the cause of this misery, this desolating process going on over the plains of Ulster? The archbishop accounts for it by stating that many persons had let large tracts of land, from 3,000 to 4,000 acres, which were stocked with cattle, and had no other inhabitants on their land than so many cottiers as were necessary to look after their sheep and black cattle, 'so that, in some of the finest counties, in many places there is neither house nor cornfield to be seen in ten or fifteen miles' travelling, and daily in some counties many gentlemen, as their leases fall into their hands, tie up their tenants from tillage; and this is one of the main causes why so many venture to go into foreign service at the hazard of their lives if taken, because they cannot get land to till at home.'

My readers should remember that the industrious, law-abiding, bible-loving, God-fearing people, who were thus driven by oppression from the fair fields of Ulster, which they had cultivated, and the dwellings which they had erected, to make way for sheep and cattle—because it was supposed by the landlords that sheep and cattle paid better—were the descendants of British settlers who came to the country under a royal guarantee of freeholds and permanent tenures. Let them picture to their minds this fine race of honest, godly people, rack-rented, crushed, evicted, heart-broken—men, women, and children—Protestants, Saxons, cast out to perish as the refuse of the earth, by a set of landed proprietors of their own race and creed; and learn from this most instructive fact that, if any body of men has the power of making laws to promote its own interest, no instincts of humanity, no dictates of religion, no restraints of conscience can be relied upon to keep them from acting with ruthless barbarity, and doing more to ruin their country than a foreign invader could accomplish by letting loose upon it his brutal soldiers. How much more earnestly would Boulter have pleaded with the prime minister of England on behalf of the wretched people of Ulster if he could have foreseen that ere long those Presbyterian emigrants, with the sense of injustice and cruel wrong burning in their hearts, would be found fighting under the banner of American independence—the bravest and fiercest soldiers of freedom which the British troops encountered in the American war. History is continually repeating itself, yet how vainly are its lessons taught! The same legal power of extermination is still possessed by the Irish landlords after sixty-nine years of imperial legislation. Our hardy, industrious people, naturally as well disposed to royalty as any people in the world, are still crowding emigrant ships in all our ports, deserting their country with the same bitter feelings that animated the Ulster men a century ago, hating our Government with a mortal hatred, and ready to fight against it under a foreign flag! We have no Primate Boulter now in the Protestant hierarchy to plead the cause of an unprotected tenantry; but we have the press, which can concentrate upon the subject the irresistible force of public opinion.

As a churchman, Primate Boulter naturally regarded the land question in its bearings on the interests of the Establishment. Writing to Sir Robert Walpole in 1737 he said that he had in vain represented to the landlords that, by destroying the tithe of agistment, they naturally discouraged tillage, lessened the number of people, and raised the price of provisions. By running into cattle they caused the young men to enlist in foreign service for bread, there being no employment for them at home, 'where two or three hands can look after some hundreds of acres stocked with cattle.' And by this means, said the primate, 'a great part of our churches are neglected; in many places five, six, or seven parishes bestowed on one incumbent, who, perhaps, with all his tithes, scarce gets 100l. a year.' But there was at that time a member of the Irish House of Commons who was capable of taking a more enlarged view of the Irish question. This was Mr. Arthur Dobbs, who belonged to an old and honourable Ulster family—the author of a book on the 'North-west Passage to India,' and of a very valuable work on the 'Trade of Great Britain and Ireland.' He was intimately acquainted with the working of the Irish land system, for he had been many years agent of the Hertfort estate, one of the largest in Ireland. There is among Boulter's letters an introduction of Mr. Dobbs to Sir Robert Walpole, recommending him as a person of good sense, who had applied himself to the improvement of trade, and to the making of our colonies in America of more advantage than they had hitherto been. He was afterwards made Governor of North Carolina. I have mentioned these facts in the hope of securing the attention of landlords and statesmen to the following passage from his book accounting for the deplorable condition of the province of Ulster at that time, and the emigration of its industrious and wealth-producing inhabitants. In my humble opinion it furnishes irresistible arguments in favour of a measure which should settle the Irish land question in such a manner that it would speak to the people of Ireland in the words of holy writ: 'And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat.' Mr. Dobbs says:—

'How can a tenant improve his land when he is convinced that, after all his care and toil, his improvements will be overrated, and he will be obliged to shift for himself? Let us place ourselves in his situation and see if we should think it reasonable to improve for another, if those improvements would be the very cause of our being removed from the enjoyment of them. I believe we should not. Industry and improvements go very heavily on when we think we are not to have the property in either. What can be expected, then, from covenants to improve and plant, when the person to do it knows he is to have no property in them? There will be no concern or care taken to preserve them, and they will run to ruin as fast as made or planted. What was it induced so many of the commonalty lately to go to America but high rents, bad seasons, and want of good tenures, or a permanent property in their land? This kept them poor and low, and they scarce had sufficient credit to procure necessaries to subsist or till their ground. They never had anything to store, all was from hand to mouth; so one or two bad crops broke them. Others found their stock dwindling and decaying visibly, and so removed before all was gone, while they had as much left as would pay their passage, and had little more than what would carry them to the American shore.

'This, it may be allowed, was the occasion of the poor farmers going who had their rents lately raised. But it may be objected that was not the reason why rich farmers went, and those who had several years in beneficial leases still unexpired, who sold their bargains and removed with their effects. But it is plain they all went for the same reason; for these last, from daily examples before them, saw the present occupiers dispossessed of their lands at the expiration of their leases, and no preference given to them; so they expected it would soon be their own case, to avoid which, and make the most of the years still unexpired, they sold, and carried their assets with them to procure a settlement in a country where they had reason to expect a permanent property.'

It is a curious fact that sentiments very similar were published by one of Cromwell's officers about a century before. The plea which he put forth for the Irish tenant in the dedication of his work on Ireland to the Protector, has been repeated ever since by the tenants, but repeated in vain: Captain Bligh, the officer alluded to, said: 'The first prejudice is, that if a tenant be at ever so great pains or cost for the improvement of his land, he doth thereby but occasion a greater rack-rent upon himself, or else invests his landlord with his cost and labour gratis, or at least lies at his landlord's mercy for requital; which occasions a neglect of all good husbandry, to his own, the land, the landlord, and the commonwealth's suffering.' Now, this, I humbly conceive, might be removed, if there were a law enacted, by which every landlord should be obliged either to give him reasonable allowance for his clear improvement, or else suffer him or his to enjoy it so much longer or till he hath had a proportionable requital.'

But although Primate Boulter protested against the conduct of the landlords—all Episcopalians—who were ruining the church as well as the country, the established clergy, as a body, were always on the side of the oppressors.

The Test Act placed the Presbyterians, like the Papists, in the position of an inferior race. 'In the city of Londonderry alone, which Presbyterian valour had defended, ten out of twelve aldermen, and twenty out of twenty-four burgesses, were thrust out of the corporation by that act, which placed an odious mark of infamy upon at least one-half the inhabitants of the kingdom.' Presbyterians could not legally keep a common school. The Edinburgh Review says: 'All the settlements, from first to last, had the effect of making the cause of the church and the cause of the landlords really one. During the worst days of landlord oppression it never identified itself with the interests of the people, but uniformly sustained the power and privileges of the landlords.'

It was vain to expect justice from the Irish parliament. The people of Ireland never were governed exclusively, or at all, by her own Sovereign, her own Lords, and her own Commons. Ireland was 'in the custody of England,' just as much before the Union as during the last sixty-seven years. Even during the few brief years of her spasmodic 'independence,' the mass of the nation formed no part of the 'Commons of Ireland.' It was still, as it always had been, a sham parliament—a body representing the colonial aristocracy—acting as undertakers for the Government of England, for whose interest exclusively this island was to be ruled. Provided this result was secured, it did not matter much, at the other side of the Channel, how the Irish people were treated. Indeed, they were not recognised as the people of Ireland, or any part thereof. Even philosophic liberals, like Lord Charlemont, were shocked at the idea of a Papist getting into the Irish House of Commons; and the volunteer system was shattered by this insane animosity of the ruling race against the subject nation. The antipathy was as strong as the antipathy between the whites and the negroes in the West Indies and the United States. Hence the remorseless spirit in which atrocities were perpetrated in 1798. Mr. Daunt has shown that a large proportion of the Irish House of Lords consisted of men who were English to all intents and purposes—many of them by birth, and many by residence, and, no doubt, they always came over with reluctance to what Lord Chancellor Clare called 'our damnable country.' It may be that in some years after the abolition of the Establishment—after some experience of the régime of religious equality—the two races in this island will learn to act together so harmoniously as to give a fair promise that they could be safely trusted with self-legislation. But the 'self' must be one body animated by one spirit; not two bodies, chained together, irritated by the contact, fiercely struggling against one another, eternally reproaching one another about the mutual wrongs of the past, and not unfrequently coming to blows, like implacable duellists shut up in a small room, each determined to kill or be killed. If England were to let go her hold even now, something like this would be the Irish 'situation.' The abiding force of this antipathy, in the full light of Christianity, is awful.

In his 'Life, Letters, and Speeches of Lord Plunket,' the Hon. David Plunket states that, when his grandfather entered the Irish parliament, 'the English Government had nearly abandoned the sham of treating the Irish parliament as an independent legislature; the treasury benches were filled with placemen and pensioners. All efforts tending to reform of parliament or concession to the Catholics had been given up as useless. Grattan and some of his immediate followers had seceded from an assembly too degraded to appreciate their motives, or to be influenced by their example; and whatever remained of independence in the House of Commons ministers still laboured to bring under their control. Scarcely thirty votes appeared in opposition on the most important divisions, while Government could at any time readily whip a majority of 100.'

According to a Government return made in 1784, by Pitt's direction, 116 nomination seats were divided between some 25 proprietors. Lord Shannon returned no less than 16 members, and the great family of Ponsonby returned 14; Lord Hillsborough, 9, the Duke of Leinster, 7, and the Castle itself 12. Eighty-six seats were let out by the owners, in consideration of titles, offices, and pensions. No less than 44 seats were occupied by placemen, 32 by gentlemen who had promises of pensions, 12 by gentlemen who stood out for higher prices from Government. The regular opposition appears to have been limited to 82 votes, of which 30 belonged to Whig nominees, and the rest to the popular party.

It is, then, easy to account for the state of public feeling which Mr. Plunket, with these facts and figures before him, so well describes. He says truly that if it were possible to appeal to the country under these circumstances, the people would not have responded. 'Gloomy and desperate, they had lost all confidence in their parliament, and looked to other quarters for deliverance from the intolerable tyranny under which they suffered. There can be no doubt that this anarchy and disgrace were in a great degree the result of a misgovernment, ancient and recent, which seems to have been always adopted with a view to bring out strongly the worst elements of the Irish character; but it was at that time said, and no doubt believed by the Opposition, that the ministry of the day had deliberately planned and accomplished the disorganisation of the Irish people and their parliament, in order to enable them to carry out their favourite project of the Union.'

Mr. Plunket, after describing the classes of 'representatives' that his grandfather had to deal with in the Irish House of Commons, further says: 'It is true that this corrupt assembly cannot fairly be looked upon as the mirror of national character and national honour. The members of the majority who voted for the Union were not the representatives of the people, but the hired servants of the Minister, for the Parliament had been packed for the purpose.'

Towards the close of the century, however, the French Revolution, the American war, and the volunteer movement, had begun to cause some faint stirring of national life in the inert mass of the Roman Catholic population, which the penal code had 'dis-boned.' Up to this time they were not even thought of in the calculations of politicians. According to Dean Swift, Papists counted no more in politics than the women and children. Macaulay uses a still more contemptuous comparison to express the estimate in which they were held in those times, saying, that their lords and masters would as soon have consulted their poultry and swine on any political question. Nevertheless, during the excitement of the volunteer movement, some of the poor Celts began to raise their heads, and presumed to put the question to the most liberal portion of the ruling race—'Are we not men? Have not we also some rights?' The appeal was responded to in the Irish parliament, and in 1793 the elective franchise was conceded to Roman Catholics. It was the first concession, and the least that could be granted. But the bare proposal excited the utmost indignation in the Tory party, and especially in the Dublin corporation, where the Orange spirit was rampant. That body adopted an address to the Protestants of Ireland, which bears a remarkable resemblance in its spirit and style to addresses lately issued by Protestant Defence Associations. Both speak in the kindest terms of their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, disclaim all intention of depriving them of any advantages they enjoy under our glorious constitution, declaring that their objects are purely defensive, and that they want merely to guard that constitution against the aggressions of the Papacy quite as much for the sake of Roman Catholics as for the sake of Protestants. 'Countrymen and friends,' said the Dublin Tories, seventy-five years ago, 'the firm and manly support which we received from you when we stood forward in defence of the Protestant Ascendancy, deserves our warmest thanks. We hoped that the sense of the Protestants of Ireland, declared upon that occasion, would have convinced our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects that the pursuit of political power was for them a vain pursuit; for, though the liberal and enlightened mind of the Protestant receives pleasure at seeing the Catholic exercise his religion with freedom, enjoy his property in security, and possess the highest degree of personal liberty, yet, experience has taught us that, without the ruin of the Protestant establishment, the Catholic cannot be allowed the smallest influence in the state.'

Those men were as thoroughly convinced as their descendants, who protest against concession to-day, that all our Protestant institutions would go to perdition, if Papists, although then mere serfs, were allowed to vote for members of parliament. They were equally puzzled to know why Roman Catholics were discontented, or what more their masters could reasonably do for them to add to the enviable happiness of their lot. 'We entreat you,' the Dublin corporation said to their Protestant brethren throughout the country—'we entreat you to join with us in using every honest means of persuading the Roman Catholics to rest content with the most perfect toleration of their religion, the fullest security of their property, and the most complete personal liberty; but, by no means, now or hereafter, to attempt any interference in the government of the kingdom, as such interference would be incompatible with the Protestant Ascendancy, which we have resolved with our lives and fortunes to maintain.' Lest any doubt should exist as to what they meant by 'Protestant Ascendancy,' they expressly defined it. They resolved that it consisted in a Protestant King of Ireland; a Protestant Parliament, Protestant electors and Government; Protestant benches of justice; a Protestant hierarchy; the army and the revenue, through all their branches and details, Protestant; and this system supported by a connection with the Protestant realm of Britain.

The power of the political franchise to elevate a degraded people, to convert slaves into men, is exhibited before the eyes of the present generation in the Southern States of America; even where differences of race and colour are most marked, and where the strongest natural antipathies are to be overcome. We may judge from this what must have been the effect of this concession on the Irish Celts. The forty-shilling freeholders very soon became objects of consideration with their landlords, who were anxious to extend their political influence in their respective counties, for the representation of which the great proprietors had many a fierce contest. The abolition of this franchise by the Emancipation Act made that measure a grievance instead of a relief to the peasantry, for the landlords were now as anxious to get rid of the small holders as they had been to increase them so long as they served their political purpose. It was one of the great drawbacks which deprived emancipation of the healing effect it would otherwise have produced. If—as Pitt intended—that measure had formed part of the Union arrangements; if the forty-shilling freeholders had been spared, and the priesthood had been endowed, we should never have had an agitation for repeal or even for the separation of the church from the state. Pitt's plan of the Union included the abolition of Protestant Ascendancy.

Edmund Burke, in one of his letters on Ireland, said: 'A word has been lately struck in the mint of the castle of Dublin. Thence it was conveyed to the Tholsel, or city hall, where having passed the touch of the corporation, so respectably stamped and vouched, it soon became current in parliament, and was carried back by the speaker of the House of Commons, in great pomp, as an offering of homage from whence it came. That word is Ascendancy. The word is not absolutely new.' He then gives its various meanings, and first shows what it does not signify in the new sense. Not influence obtained by love or reverence, or by superior management and dexterity; not an authority derived from wisdom or virtue, promoting the happiness and freedom of the Roman Catholic people; not by flattering them, or by a skilful adaptation to their humours and passions. It means nothing of all these. Burke then shows what it does mean. 'New ascendancy is old mastership. It is neither more nor less than the resolution of one sect of people in Ireland to consider themselves the sole citizens in the commonwealth, and to keep a dominion over the rest, by reducing them to absolute slavery under a military power; and thus fortified in their power, to divide the public estate, which is the result of general contribution, as a military booty, solely among themselves. This ascendancy, by being a Protestant ascendancy, does not better it, from a combination of a note or two more in this anti-harmonic scale. By the use that is frequently made of the term, and the policy that is grafted on it, the name Protestant becomes nothing more or better than the name of a persecuting faction, with a relation of some sort of theological hostility to others, but without any sort of ascertained tenets of its own, upon the ground of which it persecutes other men; for the patrons of this Protestant ascendancy neither do nor can, by anything positive, define or describe what they mean by the word Protestant.... The whole is nothing but pure and perfect malice. It is indeed a perfection in that kind, belonging to beings of a higher order than man, and to them we ought to leave it.... Let three millions of people but abandon all that they and their ancestors have been taught to believe sacred, and to forswear it publicly in terms the most degrading, and nothing more is required of them.... The word Protestant is the charm that locks up in a dungeon of servitude three millions of people.

Every thoughtful reader of the debates in parliament on the state of Ireland, must have been struck with the difference of opinion between the Liberals and the Conservatives, as to the facts of the case. A still more violent difference was presented in the British parliament, in the year 1797, when there were great debates in both houses on the subject, and when the facts were still more glaring, one of them being that the reign of terror established by the Irish Government prevented the press from reporting the maddening atrocities which the ruling faction was daily perpetrating against the mass of the king's subjects. The debate arose in the Lords, on a motion by Lord Moira for an address to the king on the state of Ireland. He described the horrors of which he had been recently a witness, but softened the recital, lest he should shock his hearers too much. Orange loyalty was then licensed and let loose upon the defenceless Roman Catholic population in Ulster. Lord Gosford's description of the scenes of desolation in his own county, Armagh, is well known. He did what he could to prevent the burning of Roman Catholic houses, and the personal injuries inflicted upon the unfortunate inhabitants, while their Orange neighbours chased them out of the country, giving them Cromwell's alternative. But his mercy injured his reputation, and he felt obliged to protest solemnly that he was a loyal man, and that he wished to uphold Protestant ascendancy in Ireland as much as any of his accusers. He only asked that the poor Catholic should be allowed to live in peace. In the debate referred to, Lord Moira declared that ninety-one householders had been banished from one of his own estates; and many of them wounded in their persons. The discontent, he said, was not confined to one sect. He ascribed the state of things to the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, which crushed the hopes of the Catholics, and gave unbounded licence to the yeomanry, who were empowered to act with a vigour beyond the law; to turn out, banish, or kill the king's subjects, on mere suspicion, often prompted by private malice, and having no better warrant than anonymous information. But for all this the Irish parliament and the new reactionary viceroy freely granted acts of indemnity. According to Earl Fitzwilliam 'whole parishes, baronies, and even counties, were declared to be out of the king's peace.'

Mr. Fox brought forward a similar motion in the House of Commons, pleading the cause of justice and humanity in a noble speech, and boldly affirming principles of government for Ireland, which Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Chichester Fortescue, and Mr. Bright are now endeavouring to have carried out by the imperial parliament after seventy years of concession, extorted by three rebellions. Mr. Fox expressed his abhorrence of 'the truly diabolical maxim' of 'Divide el impera,' by which the government of Ireland was conducted. He hoped that the discontent which threatened the separation of Ireland would be dissipated without the necessity of war. 'But now,' he said, 'the extremity of rigour has been tried—the severity of despotism has been let loose—and the Government is driven to that state when the laws are not to be put into execution, but to be superseded.' The motion was seconded by Sir Francis Burdett, who said: 'Whoever has seen Ireland, has seen a country where the fields are desolated, and the prisons overflowing with the victims of oppression—has seen the shocking contrast between a profligate, extravagant Government, and an enslaved and impoverished people.' The motion was rejected by a majority of 136. Lord Moira made a last and an almost despairing appeal on November 22, in the same year. In his speech he said: 'I have seen in that country a marked distinction made between the English and the Irish. I have seen troops that have been sent full of this prejudice, that every inhabitant of that kingdom is a rebel to the British Government. I have seen the most wanton insults practised upon men of all ranks and conditions. I have seen the most grievous oppression exercised, in consequence of a presumption that the person who was the unfortunate object of such oppression was in hostility to the Government; and yet that has been done in a part of the country as quiet and as free from disturbance as the city of London. He who states these things should be prepared with proofs. I am prepared with them.' He then went into a number of horrifying details, and concluded as follows: 'You say that the Irish are insensible to the benefits of the British constitution, and you withhold all these benefits from them. You goad them with harsh and cruel punishments, and a general infliction of insult is thrown upon the kingdom. I have seen, my lords, a conquered country held by military force; but never did I see in any conquered country such a tone of insult as has been adopted by Great Britain towards Ireland. I have made a last effort. I acquit my conscience; I have done my duty.'

In subsequent debates, the following sentiments were uttered by the leading Whig statesmen of the day: 'The treatment of Ireland,' said Mr. Fox, 'was such as to harrow up the soul. It was shocking to think that a nation of brothers was thus to be trampled on like the most remote colony of conquered strangers.... The Irish people have been scourged by the iron hand of oppression, and subjected to the horrors of military execution, and are now in a situation too dreadful for the mind to contemplate without dismay. After the inhuman dragooning and horrible executions, the recital of which makes the blood run cold—after so much military cruelty, not in one, but in almost every part of the country—is it possible for this administration to procure unanimity in Ireland?' On March 22, 1798, the Duke of Bedford moved an address to the king, asking him to change his ministers, and alluding to the state of Ireland, as it was before the breaking out of the Rebellion. He said: 'Were I to enter into a detail of the atrocities which have been committed in Ireland, the picture would appal the stoutest heart. It could be proved that the most shocking cruelties have been perpetrated; but what could be expected if men kept in strict discipline were all at once allowed to give loose to their fury and their passions?'

Lord Holland was persuaded that his majesty's ministers could not tranquillise Ireland even by conciliation. 'How could they conciliate whose concessions are always known to be the concessions of weakness and of fear, and who never granted to the Irish—the most generous people upon earth,—anything without a struggle or resistance?' Lord William Russell, in June following, said: 'A man's loyalty was to be estimated by the desire he testified to imbrue his hands in his brother's blood.' Sheridan asked: 'After being betrayed, duped, insulted—disappointed in their dearest hopes, and again thrown into the hands of the rulers they detested and despised, was it impossible they should feel emotions of indignation? The struggle is not one of partial disaffection, but it is a contest between the people and the Government.' Mr. Tierney said: 'It was certain the people were in arms against the Government, nor was it easy to conceive how—having been scourged, burnt, and massacred—they could have any other feeling than aversion to that Government.'

Every motion on the subject in both houses was rejected by overwhelming majorities. So little impression did the reports of the appalling facts which were of daily occurrence in Ireland make upon that Tory Government, that the speeches of ministers read exactly like the speeches of Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Hardy, Lord Mayo, and Mr. Warren, in the past session. Lord Grenville, the home secretary, professed the most profound respect for the independence of the Irish parliament, and he could not think of interfering in the least with its privileges, however the empire might suffer from its excesses. 'The motion of Lord Moira was not only unnecessary, it was highly mischievous.' He dwelt on the improved state of Ireland, and the tranquillity of the people. If there were partial excesses on the part of the military, they were unavoidable, and could only be deplored. 'He was unable to discern what should alienate the affections of Ireland. For the whole space of thirty years his majesty's Government had been distinguished by the same uniform tenderness of regard, by the same undeviating adherence to the mild principles of a conciliatory system.... If any cruelties had been practised, they must have been resisted by a high-spirited people. Were there no courts of justice? The conduct of the lord lieutenant was highly commendable. The system recommended by Lord Moira would only tend to villify the Irish Government.' Then came the fatal announcement which sounded the death-knell of thousands of the Irish people, and caused the destruction of millions' worth of property. The home secretary said: 'The contrary system must, therefore, be persevered in; and to the spirited exertions of the British military should we owe the preservation of Irish laws, of Irish property, and of Irish lives!'

To this the Marquis of Downshire added 'that he was not afraid of the effects of coercion. Every concession had been made that could be made towards Ireland. Every Catholic was as free as the safety of the state would admit. Were the Catholics to have an equal share in the government with the Protestants, the Government and the country would be lost.'

I will conclude by quoting the remarks of Mr. Fox, referred to above: 'If you do not allay their discontent, there is no way but force to keep them in obedience. Can you convince them by the musket that their principles are false? Can you prove to them by the bayonet that their pretensions are unjust? Can you demonstrate to them by martial law that they enjoy the blessings of a free constitution? No, it is said, but they may be deterred from the prosecution of the objects which you have determined to refuse. But on what is this founded? On the history of Ireland itself? No; for the history of Ireland proves that, though repeatedly subdued, it could not be kept in awe by force; and the late examples will prove the effect which severity may be expected to produce.... I would therefore concede; and if I found I had not conceded enough, I would concede more. I know of no way of governing mankind, but by conciliating them.... My wish is that the whole people of Ireland should have the same principles, the same system, the same operation of government. ... I would have the whole Irish government regulated by Irish notions and Irish prejudices; and I firmly believe, according to an Irish expression, the more she is under Irish government, the more she will be bound to English interests. ... I say, therefore, try conciliation, but do not have recourse to arms.' He warned and implored in vain. The Union had been determined on; and it was thought that it could be effected only after the prostration of civil war, into which, therefore, the unfortunate people were goaded.