A Short History of England, Ireland and Scotland

by Mary Platt Parmele

A SHORT HISTORY OF IRELAND.

The history of prehistoric Ireland as told in ancient chronicles, easily proves the Irish to be the oldest nation in Europe, mingling their story with those not alone of Egypt, Troy, Greece, and Rome, but with that of Noah and the antediluvian world. Who was the Lady Cæsair, who fled with her household to Ireland from the coming deluge after being refused shelter by Noah? and who Nemehd, the next colonist from the East, who heads the royal procession of one hundred and eighteen kings? and who, above all, is Milesius, who comes fresh from the lingual disaster at Shinar, the divinely appointed ruler, bringing with him his Egyptian wife Scota (Pharaoh's daughter) and her son Gael? and who that other son Heber, whose name was given to the original lingua humana (the Hebrew), in honor of his efforts to prevent the blasphemous building of Babel? For what do these shadowy figures stand, looming out of formless mist and chaos, and bestowing their names as imperishable memorials?—Scotia, Scots, Gaelic,—the word Gaelic in its true significance including Ireland and Scotland. Even the name Fenian takes on a venerable dignity when we learn that Fenius, the Scythian King, and father of Milesius, established the first university—a sort of school of languages—for the study of the seventy-two new varieties of human speech, appointing seventy-two wise men to master this new and troublesome branch of human knowledge! We are told that Heber and Heremon, the sons of Milesius, finally divided the island between them, and then, after the fashion of Romulus, Heber drove the factious Heremon over the sea into the land of the Picts, and reigned alone over the Scots in Ireland.

The sober truth seems to be that Ireland, at a very early period, was known to the Greeks as Ierne (from which comes Erin), and later to the Romans as Hibernia. At a very remote time it seems to have been colonized by Greek and other Eastern peoples, who left a deep impress upon the Celtic race already inhabiting the island; but an impress upon the mind, not the life, of the Celts, for no vestige of Greek or other civilization, except in language and in ideals, has ever been found in Ireland. The only archæological remains are cromlechs, which tell of a Druidical worship, and the round towers, belonging to a much later period, whose purpose is only conjectured.

Ireland's Aryan parentage is plainly indicated in its primitive social organization and system of laws. The family was the social unit, and the clan or sept was only a larger family. Pre-Christian Ireland was divided into five septs: Munster, Connaught, Ulster, Leinster, and Meath. Each of these tribal divisions was governed by a chief or king, who was the head of the clan (or family). Among these, the chief-king, or Ard Reagh, resided at Tara in Meath, and received allegiance from the other four, with no jurisdiction, however, over the internal affairs of the other kingdoms. There was a perpetual strife between the clans. Outside of one's own tribal limits was the enemy's country. The business of life was marauding and plundering, and the greatest hero was he who could accomplish these things by deeds of the greatest daring.

All alike lived under a simple code of laws administered by a hereditary class of jurists called Brehons. All offences were punishable by a system of fines called erics. The land was owned by the clan. Primogeniture was unknown, and the succession to the office of chief was determined by the clan, which had power to select any one within the family lines as Tanist or successor. This in "Brehon Law" is known as the "law of Tanistry," and was closely interwoven with the later history of Ireland. But the class more exalted than kings or brehons was the Bards. These were inspired singers, before whom Brehons quailed and kings meekly bowed their heads.

During the Roman occupation of Britain in which that country was Christianized, pagan Ireland heard nothing of the new evangel almost at her door. But in 432, after Britain had relapsed into paganism, St. Patrick came into the darkened isle. If ever Pentecostal fires descended upon a nation it was in those sixty years during which one saintly man transformed a people from brutish paganism to Christianity, and converted Ireland into the torch-bearer and nourisher of intellectual and spiritual life, so that as the gothic night was settling upon Europe, the centre of illumination seemed to be passing from Rome to Ireland. Their missionaries were in Britain, Germany, Gaul; and students from Charlemagne's dominions, and the sons of kings from other lands, flocked to those stone monasteries, the remains of which are still to be seen upon the Irish coast, and which were then the acknowledged centres of learning in Europe. It was not until late in the ninth century that Ireland played a truly great part in European history. Rome became jealous of these fiery Christians; they had never worn her yoke, and concerned themselves little about the Pope. They had their own views about the shape of the tonsure, and also their own time for celebrating Easter, which was heretical and contumacious, and there began a struggle between Roman and Western Christianity. The passion for art and letters which accompanied this spiritual birth makes this, indeed, a Golden Age. But the painting of missals, and study of Greek poetry and philosophy, brought no change in the life of the people. It was for the learned, and a subject for just pride in retrospect. But the Christianized septs fought each other as before, and life was no less wild and disordered than it had always been.

In the eighth century the first viking appeared. It was then that a master-spirit arose, a man of the clan of O'Brien—Brian Boru. He drove out the Danes, usurped the place of Chief-King, and reigned in the Halls of Tara for a few years, then left his land to lapse once more into a chaos of fighting clans. But it was Dermot, the King of Leinster, whose fatal quarrel led to the subjugation of the land to England. The Irish epic, like that of Troy, has its Paris and Helen. If that fierce old man had not fallen in love with the wife of the Lord of Brefny and carried her away, there might have been a different story to tell. The injured husband made war upon him, in which the Chief-King took part, and so hot was it made for the wife-stealer, that he offered to place Leinster at the feet of Henry II. in return for assistance. A party of adventurous barons, led by Strongbow, the Earl of Pembroke, rushed to Dermot's rescue, defeated the Chief-King, drove the Danes out of Dublin, which they had founded, and took possession of that city themselves. Henry II. followed up the unauthorized raid of his barons with a well-equipped army, which he himself led, landing upon the Irish coast in 1171.

The conquest was soon complete, and Henry proceeded to organize his new territory, dividing it into counties, and setting up law-courts at Dublin, which was chosen as the Seat of his Lord-Deputy. The system of English law was established for the use of the Norman barons and English settlers, the natives being allowed to live under their old system of Brehon laws. Henry gave huge grants of land with feudal rights to his barons, then returned to his own troubled kingdom, leaving them to establish their claims and settle accounts with the Irish chieftains as best they could. The sword was the argument used on both sides, and a conflict between the brehon and feudal systems had commenced which still continues in Ireland. If Henry had expected to convert Irishmen into Englishmen, he had miscalculated; it was the reverse which happened—the Norman-English were slowly but surely converted into Irishmen, and two elements were thereafter side by side, the Old Irish and the Anglo-Irish, who, however antagonistic, had always a certain community of interest which drew them together in great emergencies.

It is an easy task to describe a storm which has one centre. But how is one to describe the confused play of forces in a cyclone which has centres within centres? Irish chieftains at war with Irish chieftains, jealous Norman barons with Norman barons, all at the same time in deadly struggle with O'Neills, O'Connells, and O'Briens, who would never cease to fight for the territory which had been torn from them; and yet each and all of these ready in a desperate crisis to combine for the preservation of Ireland. In this chaos the territorial barons were the framework of the structure. The grants bestowed by Henry II. had created, in fact, a group of small principalities. These were called Palatinates, and the power of the Lords Palatine was almost without limit. Each was a king in his own little kingdom—could make war upon his neighbors, and recruit his army from his own vassals. It was the Geraldines who played the most historic part among these Palatines, the houses of Kildare and Desmond both being branches of this famous Norman family, which was always in high favor with the English sovereign, and always at war with the rival house of Ormond, the next most powerful Anglo-Norman family, descended from Thomas à Becket. These barons, or "Lords of the Pale," were, of course, supposed to be the intermediaries for the King's authority. But the Geraldines seem to have found plenty of time to build up their own fortunes, and as peace with their neighbors was sometimes more conducive to that pursuit, alliances with native chiefs and marriages with their daughters had in time made of them pretty good Irishmen.

But our main purpose is not to follow the fortunes of these picturesque and romantic robbers who considered all Ireland their legitimate prey, but rather those of the hapless native population, dispossessed of their homes, hiding in forests and morasses, and whom it was the policy of the English Government to efface in their own country. These pages will tell of many efforts to compel loyalty, but not one effort to win the loyalty of the Irish people is recorded in history! No race in the world is more susceptible to kindness and more easily reached by personal influences, and there are none of whom a passionate loyalty is more characteristic. What might have been the effect of a policy of kindness instead of exasperation, we can only guess. But we can all see plainly enough the disastrous results which have come from pouring vitriol upon open wounds, and from treating a nation as if they were not only intruders but outlaws in their own land.

Listen to the Statutes of Kilkenny, passed by an obedient Parliament at a time when Edward III. was depending upon sinewy, clean-limbed young Irishmen to fight his battles in France and help him to win Crécy. (Which they did.) These are some of the provisions of the statute: Marriage between English and Irish is punishable by death in most terrible form. It is high treason to give horses, goods, or weapons of any sort to the Irish. War with the natives is binding upon good colonists. To speak the language of the country is a penal offence, and the killing of an Irishman is not to be reckoned as a crime.

But in spite of the ferocity of her purpose, England grew lax. She had great wars on her hands, and more important interests to look after. Things were left to the Geraldines, and to the Irish Parliament, which was controlled by the Lords of the Pale. Intermarriages, against which horrible penalties had once been enforced, had become frequent, and many dispossessed chiefs, notably the O'Neills, had recovered their own lands. So, when Henry VII. came to the throne, although the Norman banners had for three centuries floated over Ireland, the English territory, "the Pale," was really reduced to a small area about Dublin.

Henry VII. determined to change all this. Sir Edward Poynings came charged with a mission, and Parliament passed an Act called Poynings Act, by which English laws were made operative in Ireland as in England. When Henry VIII. succeeded his father, the astute Wolsey soon doubted the fidelity of the Geraldines. Of what use were the Statutes of Kilkenny and the Poynings Act, when the ruling Anglo-Irish house acted as if they did not exist! He planned their downfall. The great Earl of Kildare was summoned to London, and six of the doomed house were beheaded in the Tower. The Reformation had given a new aspect to the troubles in Ireland. Henry's attack upon the Church drew together the native Irish and the Anglo-Irish. The struggle had been hitherto only one over territory, between these naturally hostile classes; now they were drawn together by a common peril to their Church, and when, in 1560, Queen Elizabeth had passed the famous Act of Uniformity, making the Protestant liturgy compulsory, the exasperation had reached an acute stage, and the sense of former wrongs was intensified by this new oppression. Ireland was filled with hatred and burning with desire for vengeance, and there was one proud family in Ulster, the O'Neills, which was preparing to defy all England. They scornfully threw away the title "Earl of Tyrone," bestowed upon the head of their house by Henry VIII,, and declared that by virtue of the old Irish law of Tanistry, Shane O'Neill was King of Ulster! It was a test case of the validity of Irish or English laws. "Shane the Proud," the King of Ulster, at the invitation of Elizabeth, appeared with his wild followers at her Court, wearing their saffron shirts and battle-axes. The tactful Queen patched up a peace with her rival, and then made sure that his head should in a few weeks adorn the walls of Dublin Castle. His forfeited kingdom was thickly planted with English and Scotch settlers, who, when they tried to settle, were usually killed by the O'Neills. The only thing to be done was to exterminate this troublesome tribe. This grew into the larger purpose of extirpating the whole of the obnoxious native population. The Geraldines were not all dead, and this atrocious plan led to the famous Geraldine League, and that to the Desmond Rebellion. The league which was to be the avenger of centuries of wrong, was a Catholic one. The Earl of Desmond had long been in communication with Rome and with Spain, enlisting their sympathies for their co-religionists in Ireland. A recent event helped to steel the hearts of the natives against pity should they succeed. A rising in Connaught had, at the suggestion of Sir Francis Crosby, been put down in the following way. The chiefs and their kinsmen, four hundred in number, were invited to a banquet in the fort of Mullaghmast. But one man escaped alive from that feast of death! One hundred and eighty from the clan of O'Moore alone were slaughtered. It was "Rory O'Moore" who did not attend the banquet, who kept alive the memory of the awful event for many a year by his battle-cry, "Remember Mullaghmast!" Now the long-impending battle was on, with a Geraldine for a standard-bearer. But it was in vain. Another Earl of Kildare perished in the Tower, and another Desmond head was sent there as a warning against disloyalty! Those who escaped the slaughter fell by the executioner, and the remnant, hiding from both, perished by famine. But Munster was "pacified." The enormous Desmond estate, a hundred miles in territory, was confiscated and planted with settlers who would undertake the doubtful task of settling.

The smothered fires next broke out in Ulster—the brilliant Earl of Tyrone headed the rebellion bearing his name, with Spain as an ally. The Queen sent the Earl of Essex to crush Tyrone. His failure to crush or even to check the great leader, and his extraordinary conduct in consenting to an armistice at the moment when he might have compelled a surrender, brought such a reprimand from the furious Queen that he rushed back to England, and to his death. Another and more successful leader came—Mountjoy. The rebellion was put down, its leader exiled, and his estate, comprising six entire counties, was confiscated, planted with Scotch settlers, and Ulster, too, was "pacified."

The reign of Charles I. revived hope in Ireland. He wanted money, and when Strafford came bearing profuse promises of religious and civil liberty, and the righting of wrongs, a grateful Parliament at once voted the £100,000 demanded for the immediate use of the Crown, also 10,000 foot and 1,000 horse for his use in the impending revolution, which was soon precipitated by the attempt of Charles and Laud to force the liturgy of the Established Church upon the people in Scotland. Between the Scotch Presbyterians and the Irish Catholics there was the bitterest hatred engendered during the long strife between the natives and the Scotch settlers. So the King's cause was Ireland's cause, his enemies were her enemies, and his triumph would also be hers. The day of liberation seemed at hand. The Lords of the Pale were in constant communication with the King and ready to co-operate with him in his designs upon Scotland. Such was the situation when Charles, under the pressure of his need of money, summoned the Parliament (1641)—the famous Long Parliament—which was destined to sit for twenty eventful years.

Well would it be for Ireland if it could blot out the memory of that year (1641) and the horrid event it recalls. The story briefly told is that a plot, having for its end a general forcible exodus of the hated settlers, was discovered and defeated, when a disappointed and infuriated horde of armed men spent their rage upon a community of Scotch settlers in Armagh and Tyrone, whom they massacred with horrible barbarities.

There is no reason to believe this deed was premeditated; but it occurred, and was atrocious in details and appalling in magnitude. There can be no justification for massacre at any time; but if there were no background of cruelty for this particular one, it would stand out blacker even than it does upon the pages of history. There were many massacres behind it—massacres committed not to avenge wrongs, but to accomplish them! The massacre of Protestants by Irish Catholics is in itself no more hideous than the massacre of Irish Catholics by Protestants. And was it strange that in their first chance at retaliation, this half-civilized people treated their oppressors as their oppressors had many, many times treated them? Could anything else have been expected? especially when we learn that the Scotch Presbyterians in Tyrone and Armagh immediately retaliated by murdering thirty Irish Catholic families who were in no way implicated in the horror!

Strafford's head had fallen in the first days of the Long Parliament; then Archbishop Laud met the same fate, and finally the execution of Charles I. at Whitehall, in 1649, put an end to the dreams of liberation. Almost the first thing to occupy the attention of Cromwell was the settling of accounts with the Catholic rebels in Ireland, who had for years been intriguing with the traitor King and were even now plotting with the Pope's nuncio, Rinucini, for the return of the exiled Prince Charles.

It required six years and 600,000 lives for Cromwell to inflict proper punishment upon Ireland for these offences and the massacre of 1641; or rather, to prepare for the punishment which was now to begin, and for which we shall search history in vain for a parallel! The heroic Cromwellian scheme—which was carried out to the letter—was this: The entire native population were, before May 1, 1654, to depart in a body for Connaught, there to inhabit a small reservation in a desolate tract between the Shannon and the sea, of which it was said by one of the commissioners engaged in this business, "there was not wood enough to burn, water enough to drown, nor earth enough to bury a man." They must not go within two miles of the river, nor four miles of the sea, a cordon of soldiers being permanently stationed with orders to shoot anyone who overstepped such limits. Any Irish who after the date named were found east of the appointed line were to suffer death. Resistance was hopeless. We hear of wild pleas for time, for a brief delay to collect a few comforts, and make some provision for food and shelter. But at the beating of the drum and blast of the trumpet, and urged on by bayonets, the tide of wretched humanity flowed into Connaught, delicately nurtured ladies and children, the infirm, the sick, the high and the low, peer and peasant, sharing alike the vast sentence of banishment and starvation. The fate of others was even worse, many thousands, ladies, children, people of all ranks, had for various reasons been left behind. Wholesale executions of so great a number of helpless beings were impossible, so they were sold in batches and shipped, most of them to the West Indies and to the newly acquired island of Jamaica, to be heard of never more; while of the sturdier remnant left, a few fled into exile in other lands, and the rest to the woods, there to lead lives of wild brigandage, hiding like wolves in caves and clefts of rocks, with a price upon their heads!

Of the two crimes, the Cromwellian settlement and the massacre of 1641, it seems to the writer of this that Cromwell's is the heavier burden for the conscience of a nation to carry! Who can wonder that the Irish did not love England, and that the task of governing a people so estranged has been a difficult one for English statesmanship ever since?

But the extinction of a nation requires time, even when accomplished by measures so admirable as those employed in the Cromwellian settlement. In 1660 Charles II. was on his father's throne, and we hear of hopes revived, and the expectation that the awful suffering endured for the father would be rewarded by his son. The land of the exiles in Connaught had been bestowed by Cromwell upon his followers. But quick to discern the turn in the tide, these men had helped to bring the exiled Prince Charles back to his throne. They expected reward, not punishment! Like many another successful candidate, Charles was embarrassed by obligations to his friends; besides, he must not offend the anti-Catholic sentiment in England, which since the massacre of 1641 had become a passion. The matter of the land was finally adjudicated; such Irish as could clear themselves of complicity with the Papal Nuncio and of certain other serious offences, of which almost all were guilty, might have their possessions restored to them. So a small portion of the land came back to its owners, and the Duke of Ormond, a stanch Protestant, was created Viceroy.

Although nominally a Protestant, to the pleasure-loving Charles the religion of his kingdom was the very smallest concern. So, more from indifference than indulgence, things became easier for the Irish Catholics, and exiles began to return. The Protestants, both English and Irish, were alarmed. With the massacre ever before them, they believed the only safety for Protestants was in keeping the Irish papists in a condition of absolute helplessness. There was a smouldering mass of apprehension which needed only a spark to convert it into a blaze. The murder of Sir Edward Bery Godfrey, a magistrate, afforded this spark. Titus Gates, the most worthless scoundrel in all England, had recently made a sworn statement before this gentleman to the effect that a plot existed for the murder of the King in order to place his Catholic brother on the throne, to be followed by a general massacre of Protestants, the burning of London, and an invasion of Ireland by the French. When Sir Edward was found dead upon a hill-side, men's minds leaped to the conclusion that the carnival of blood had begun. An insane panic set in. Nothing short of death would satisfy the popular frenzy. The Roman Catholic Archbishop, Dr. Plunkett, a man revered and beloved even by Protestants, was dragged to London, and for complicity in a French plot which never existed, and for aiding a French invasion which had never been contemplated, was hanged, drawn, and quartered. Innocent victims were torn from their homes, fifteen sent to the gallows, and 2,000 languished in prisons, while a suite of apartments at Whitehall and £600 a year was bestowed upon Gates, who was greeted as the saviour of his country! In two years more Gates was driven from his apartment at Whitehall for calling the heir to the throne a traitor, was found guilty of perjury, and sentenced to be pilloried, flogged, and imprisoned for life. And so ended the famous "Popish Plot" of 1678.

In 1685 Charles II. died, and was succeeded by his brother, James II. It was precisely because this ignominious reign was so disastrous to England, that it was a period of brief triumph for Ireland. That country was the corner-stone for the political structure which James had long contemplated. It was the stronghold for the Catholicism which he intended should become the religion of his kingdom. The Duke of Ormond was deposed, and a Catholic filled the office of Viceroy in Ireland. At last their turn had come, and no time was lost. An Irish Parliament was summoned, in which there were just six Protestants. All the things of which they had dreamed for years were accomplished. The Poynings Act was repealed. Irish disabilities were removed. The Irish proprietors dispossessed by the Act of Settlement had their lands restored to them. All Protestants, under terrible penalties, were ordered to give up their arms before a certain day. 'Men' only recently with a price upon their heads were now officers in the King's service, and were quartering their soldiers upon the estates of the Protestants. There was a general exodus of the Protestants, some fleeing to England and others into the North, where they finally entrenched themselves in the cities of Enniskillen and Londonderry, winning for that last-named city imperishable fame by their heroic defence during a siege which lasted one hundred and five days.

In the meantime it had become evident in England that the safety of the kingdom demanded the expulsion of James. His son-in-law, William of Orange, accepted an invitation to come and share the English throne with his wife Mary. The fugitive King found a refuge with his friend and co-conspirator, Louis XIV., and from France continued to direct the revolutionary movements in Ireland, which he intended to use as a stepping-stone to his kingdom.

But for Catholic Ireland all these over-turnings meant only a realization of the long-prayed-for event, a separation from England, a kingdom of their own, with the Catholic James to reign over them. When he arrived with his fleet and his French officers and munitions of war, provided by Louis XIV., he was embraced with tears of rapturous joy. Their "Deliverer" had come! He passed under triumphal arches and over flower-strewn roads on his way to Dublin Castle. But almost before these flowers had faded, James had met the army of William, the "Battle of the Boyne" had been fought and lost (1690), and as fast as the winds would carry him he had fled back to France.

As the city of Londonderry had been the last refuge for the Protestants in the North, it was in the city of Limerick that the Irish Catholics made their last stand in the South. And the two names stand for companion acts of valor and heroism. Saarsfield's magnificent defence of the latter city after the flight of the King and during the terrible siege by William's army under Ginkel, is the one luminous spot in the whole campaign of disaster and defeat. With the surrender of Limerick the end had come. Their "Deliverer" was again a fugitive in France, and Ireland was face to face with an austere Protestant King, once more to be called to account and to receive punishment for her crimes.

By the famous Articles of Limerick the terms of the surrender, wrung by Saarsfield's valor from the English commander, were more favorable than could have been expected. These were a full pardon, and a restoration of the rights enjoyed by the Catholics under Charles II. The army, with its officers, was to go into exile, and they might choose either the service of William in England, or enroll themselves in the service of France, Spain, or other European countries. The latter was the choice of all except a very few; and when the heart-rending separation was over, wives and mothers clinging in despair to the retreating vessels, the last act in the Great Rebellion of 1690 was finished.

Of course the Poynings law was restored, the recent Acts repealed, and a new period had commenced for Ireland; a period of quiet, but a quiet not unlike that of the graveyard, the sort of quiet which makes the wounded and exhausted animal cease to struggle with his captors. For a whole century we are to hear of no more revolts, risings, or rebellions. There was nothing left to revolt. Nothing left to rise! The bone and sinew of the nation had gone to fight under strange banners upon foreign battle-fields, so there was left a nation of non-combatants, with spirit broken and hope extinguished, and grown so pathetically patient, that we hear not a single remonstrance as William's cold-blooded decrees, known as the "Penal Code," are placed in operation. These enactments were not blood-thirsty, not sanguinary, like those of former reigns, but just a deliberate process apparently designed to convert the Irish into a nation of outcasts, by destroying every germ of ambition and drying up every spring which is the source of self-respecting manhood.

Here are a few of the provisions of the famous, or infamous, code: No Papist could acquire or dispose of property; nor could he own a horse of the value of more than £5; and any Protestant offering that sum for a horse he must accept it. He might not practise any learned profession, nor teach a school, nor send his children to school at home or abroad. Every barrister, clerk, and attorney must take a solemn oath not for any purpose to employ persons belonging to that religious faith. The discovery of any weapon rendered its Catholic owner liable to fines, whipping, the pillory, and imprisonment. He could not inherit, or even receive property as a gift from Protestants. The oldest son of a Catholic, by embracing the Protestant faith, became the heir-at-law to the whole estate of his father, who was reduced to the position of life-tenant; and any child by the same Act might be taken away from its father and a portion of his property assigned to it; while it was the privilege of the wife who apostatized, to be freed from her husband, and to have assigned to her a proportion of his property.

The not unnatural result of these last-named enactments was that many were driven to feigned conversions in order to keep their families from starvation. It is said that when old Lady Thomond was reproached for having bartered her soul by professing the Protestant faith, her quick retort was, "Is it not better that one old woman should burn, than that all of the Thomonds should be beggars?"

More details are unnecessary after saying that by a decision of Lord Chancellor Bowes and Chief-Justice Robinson it was declared that "the law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic," while the English Bishop at Meath declared from his pulpit, "We are not bound to keep faith with papists." And it must be remembered that the people placed under this monstrous system of wrong and degradation were not a handful, whom the welfare of a community required should be dealt with severely, they were a large majority of the population, a nation dwelling in their own country, where, by a Parliament supposed to be their own, they were governed by a minority of aliens.

In this time of "Protestant ascendancy," as it is called, there were, of course, only Protestants in the Parliament. They had all the authority, they alone were competent to vote; they were the privileged and upper class; an Irish papist, whatever his rank, being the social inferior of his Protestant neighbor. But let it not be supposed that the Irish Protestants were on that account happy! They had been planted in that land as a breakwater against the native Irish flood, but for all that, England had no idea of permitting them to build up a dangerous prosperity in Ireland. The theory governing English statesmanship was that that country must be kept helpless; and to that end it must be kept poor. During the reign of Charles II. the importing of Irish cattle into England had been forbidden. The effects of this prohibition, so ruinous at first, were at last offset by the discovery that sheep might be made a greater source of profit at home, than when shipped to England. There was an increasing demand in Europe for Irish wool, and skilled manufacturers of woollen goods from abroad had come and started factories, thus giving employment to thousands of people.

When it was realized in England that a profitable Irish industry had actually been established, there was a panic. The traders demanded legislative protection from Irish competition, which came in this form. In 1699 an Act was passed prohibiting the export of Irish woollen goods, not alone to England, but to all other countries. The factories were closed. The manufacturers left the country, never to return, and a whole population was thrown out of employment. A tide of emigration then commenced which has never ceased; such as could, fleeing from the inevitable famine which in a land always so perilously near starvation must surely come.

There was no market now for the wool which the factories would have consumed. At home it brought 5d. a pound, but in France a half crown! The long, deeply indented coast-line was well adapted for smuggling. French vessels were hovering about, waiting an opportunity to get it; the people were hungry, and might be hungrier, for there was a famine in the land! Is it strange that they were converted into law-breakers, and that wool was packed in caves all along the coast; and that a vast contraband trade carried on by stealth, took the place of a legitimate one which was made impossible?

So it became apparent that any efforts to establish profitable enterprises in Ireland would be put down with a strong hand. The colonists who had been placed there by England felt bitterly at finding themselves thus involved in the pre-determined ruin of the country with which they had identified their own fortunes. Their love of the parent-country waned, some even turning to and adopting the persecuted creed. The voice of the native people, utterly stifled, was never heard in Parliament, and struggles which occurred there were between Protestants and Protestants; between those who did, and those who did not, uphold the policy of the Government. Such was the condition which remained practically unchanged until the middle of the eighteenth century; a small discontented upper class, chiefly aliens; below them the peasantry, the mass of the people, whose benumbed faculties and empty minds had two passions to stir their murky depths—love for their religion, and hatred of England.

The first voice raised in support of the constitutional rights of Ireland was that of William Molyneux, an Irish gentleman and scholar, a philosopher, and the intimate friend of Locke. In the latter part of the seventeenth century he issued a pamphlet which in the gentlest terms called attention to the fact that the laws and liberties of England which had been granted to Ireland five hundred years before had been invaded, in that the rights of their Parliament, a body which should be sacred and inviolable everywhere, had been abolished. Nothing could have been milder than this presentation of a well-known fact; but it raised a furious storm. The constitutional rights of Ireland! Was the man mad? The book was denounced in Parliament as libellous and seditious, and was destroyed by the common hangman. Then Dean Swift, half-Irishman and more than half-Englishman, an ardent High-Churchman and a vehement anti-papist, published a satirical pamphlet called "A Modest Proposal," in which he suggests that the children of the Irish peasants should be reared for food, and the choicest ones reserved for the landlords, who having already devoured the substance of the fathers, had the best right to feast upon their children. This was made the more pungent because it came from a man who so far from being an Irish patriot, was an English Tory. He cared little for Ireland or its people, but he hated tyranny and injustice; and was stirred to a fierce wrath at what he himself witnessed while Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Then it was that with tremendous scorn he hurled those shafts of biting wit and satire, which struck deeper than the cogent reasoning of the gentle and philosophic Molyneux.

So the spell of silence was broken, and there began to form a small patriotic party in Parliament, which in 1760 was led by Henry Flood, from Kilkenny. A day was dawning after the long night; and when in 1775 Henry Grattan's more powerful personality was joined with Flood's, then that brief day had reached its highest noon. Next to that of Edmund Burke, Grattan's is the greatest name on the roll of native-born Irishmen. Happy was that country in having such an advocate and guide at the critical period when the American colonies were throwing off the yoke of English tyranny. The wrongs suffered by the English colonies in America were trifling compared with those endured by that other English colony in Ireland. If ever there was a time to press upon England the necessity for loosening their shackles it was now, when their battle was being fought across the sea. Every argument in support of the independence of America applied with equal force to the legislative independence of Ireland. It was Grattan who at this momentous time guided the course of events. A Protestant, yet possessing the entire confidence of the Catholics; an uncompromising patriot, yet commanding the respect and admiration of the English Government; inflexibly opposed to Catholic exclusion and the ascendancy of a Protestant minority, and as inflexibly opposed to any act of violence, he was determined to obtain redress—but to obtain it only by means of the strictest constitutional methods. It was upon the constitutionality of their claims that he threw all the energy of the movement growing out of the American war. His personal sympathies were with the struggling colonists; yet he voted for men and money to sustain the English cause. Equal rights bestowed upon Catholics, who were in large majority, would transfer to them the power; yet he, a Protestant, passionately advocated a removal of the disabilities of four-fifths of the people. It was in this spirit of wise moderation and even-handed justice that Grattan took the tangled web of the Irish cause out of the hands of the more impetuous Flood; his eloquence and his moving appeals keeping two objects steadily in view—the independence of the Irish Parliament, and the removal of the fetters from Irish trade.

Times had changed since Molyneux's gentle remonstrance, when Grattan's famous Declaration of Rights was being supported by eighteen counties, and still more changed when at last, in 1782, an Irish House of Commons marched in a body to present to the Lord Lieutenant their address demanding freedom of commerce and manufacture.

An unlooked-for train of events had given new weight to this demand. England had realized the necessity of protecting Ireland from a possible invasion growing out of the American war. So it was determined that a body of militia should be levied, in which only Protestants should be enrolled. The attempt to raise the men or the money in Ireland was a failure, and while defenceless, the country was thrown into a panic by the descent of Paul Jones, the American naval hero, upon Belfast and other points on the coast. The citizens of Belfast enrolled themselves for their own defence. Other towns followed, and the contagion spread with such rapidity that in a short time there was in existence a volunteer force of 60,000 men.

Dismayed at the swiftness of the movement, England hesitated; but how could she deny her colony the right of self-defence? They were given the arms which had been intended for the Protestant militia. And so, when the House of Commons marched in a body to the Lord Lieutenant, and presented their address to the Crown, it had 60,000 armed men behind it!

The Viceroy wrote to England that unless the trade restrictions were removed, he would not answer for the consequences. Lord North had enough to do with one rebellion on his hands; and, besides, George III. might have need of some of those 60,000 soldiers before he got through with America. So the Prime Minister yielded. The first victory was gained, and the other quickly followed. American independence was acknowledged; England was in no mood to defy another colony with rebellion in its heart. The Poynings Act once more, and now for all time, was repealed, and the Irish Parliament was a free and independent body. Grateful for this partial emancipation, it voted £100,000 to Grattan.

But this legislative triumph did not feed the people. It was only the seed out of which future prosperity was to grow. A vague expectation of instant relief was bitterly disappointed when it was found instead that they were sinking deeper every day in the hopeless abyss of poverty and degradation. There had come into existence an organization called the "White Boys," with no political or religious purpose, simply a fraternity of wretchedness; beings made desperate by want, standing ready to commit any violence which offered relief. At the same time an irritation born of misery brought the Protestants and Catholics in the North into fierce collision; and the germ of the future Orange societies appeared.

These small storm-centres were all soon to be drawn into a larger one. In 1791 the "Society of United Irishmen" was formed at Belfast. It was merely a patriotic attempt to sink minor differences in an organization in which all could join. With the rising of the general tide of misery it changed in character, and fell into the control of a band of restless spirits led by Wolfe Tone, who maintained that since constitutional reforms had failed, force must be their resort. He sent agents to Paris, and the new French republic consented to assist in an attempt to establish a republic in Ireland.

When the year 1798 closed, there had been another unsuccessful rebellion. Ferocity had been met by ferocity, and Wolfe Tone and Edward Fitzgerald (a Geraldine) had perished in the ruin of the structure they had wildly built. Flood and Grattan had stood aloof from this miserable undertaking. It was now eighteen years since the constitutional triumph which had proved so barren. England was in stern mood. Pitt had long believed that the effacement of the Irish Parliament and a legislative union of the two countries was the only solution. The Irish Protestants were shown the benefits of the protection this would afford them, while the bait offered to the Catholics was emancipation, the removal of disabilities which it was intimated would quickly follow. But no one was won to the cause, Grattan, in the most impassioned way protesting against it, and the measure was defeated. Then followed the darkest page in the chapter.

It is well known that large amounts of money were paid to the owners of eighty-five doubtful boroughs—boroughs which would be effaced by the union—that peerages and baronetcies were generously distributed, and that shortly after, the measure was again brought up and carried! So by the Act of Union, 1800, the Irish Parliament had ceased to exist, and the two countries were politically merged. It is certain that the union was hateful to the Irish people, and that it was tainted by the suspicion of dishonorable methods, which one hundred years have failed to disprove. It may have been the best thing possible, under the circumstances, for Ireland; but to the Irish patriots it seemed a crowning act of oppression accomplished by treachery.

You cannot combine oil and water by pouring them into one glass. The union was not a union. The natures of the two races were utterly hostile. Centuries of cruel wrong and outrage had accentuated every undesirable trait in the Irish people. A nature simple, confiding, spontaneous, and impulsive, had become suspicious, explosive, and dangerous. Pugnacity had grown into ferocity. A joyous, light-hearted, and engaging people had become a sullen and vindictive one; famine, misery, and ignorance had put their stamp of degradation upon the peasantry, the majority of the people. Intermarriage, so savagely interdicted for centuries, was the only thing which could ever have fused two such contrasting races. Such a fusion might have benefited both, in giving a wholesome solidity to the Irish, while the stolid English would have been enriched by the fascinating traits and the native genius of their brilliant neighbors. But the opportunity had been lost; and enlightened English statesmanship is still seeking for a plan which will convert an unnatural and artificial union into a real one.

The delusive promises of the relief which was to come with union were not fulfilled. Catholics remained under the same monstrous ban as before, and things were practically unchanged. Young Robert Emmett's abortive attempt to seize Dublin Castle in 1803 intensified conditions, but did not alter them. The pathetic story of his capture while seeking a parting interview with Sarah Curran, to whom he was engaged, and his death by hanging the following morning, is one of the smaller tragedies in the greater one; and the death of Sarah from a broken heart, soon after, is the subject of Moore's well-known lines.

The most colossal figure in the story of Ireland had now appeared. Daniel O'Connell, unlike the other great leaders, was a Catholic. In the language of another, "he was the incarnation of the Irish nation." All that they were, he was, on a majestic scale. His whole tremendous weight was thrown into the subject of Catholic emancipation; and, although a giant in eloquence and in power, it took him just twenty-nine years to accomplish it. In the year 1829, even Wellington, that incarnation of British conservatism, bent his head before the storm, and there was a full and unqualified removal of Catholic disabilities. O'Connell was not content; he did not pause. The tithe-system, that most odious of oppressions, must go. A starving nation compelled to support in its own land a Church it considered blasphemous! A standing army kept in their land to wring this tribute from them at the point of the bayonet! Think of a people on the brink of the greatest famine Europe has ever known, being in arrears a million and a quarter of pounds for tithes for an Established Church they did not want! Is it strange that Sydney Smith said no abuse as great could be found in Timbuctoo? Is it a wonder that there was always disorder and violence from a chronic tithe-war in Ireland, which it is said has cost a million of lives? But in 1839, in the second year of Queen Victoria's reign, Parliament gave relief, in the following ingenious way. The burden was placed upon the land; the landlord must pay the tithe, not the people! The exasperation which followed took a form with which we are all more or less familiar. With the increase in rents which, of course, ensued, there commenced an anti-rent agitation which has never ceased. A repeal of the Union was the only remedy, and to this O'Connell devoted all his energies.

In 1845, in one black night, a blight fell upon the potato-crop. Carlyle says "a famine presupposes much." What must be the economic condition of a people when there is only one such frail barrier between them and starvation! The famine was the hideous child of centuries. There is no need to dwell upon its details. Its name expresses all the horror of those two years, when Europe and America strove in vain to relieve the famishing nation, even those who had food, dying, it is said, from the mental anguish produced by witnessing so much suffering which they could not assuage. The great O'Connell himself died of a broken heart in beholding this national tragedy. When it was over, Ireland had lost two millions of its population. Thousands had perished and thousands more had emigrated from the doomed land to America, there to keep alive, in the hearts of their children, the memory of their wrongs.

Out of this wreck and ruin there arose the party of "Young Ireland," led, with more or less wisdom, by Mitchell, Smith O'Brien (descended from Brian Boru), Dillon, and Meagher. Mitchell was soon transported, and later O'Brien and Meagher were under sentence of death, which was afterward commuted, Meagher surviving to lay down his life for the North in the civil war in America. It is not strange that these men were driven to futile insurrections, maddened as they were by the sight of their countrymen, not yet emerged from the horrors of famine, forced in droves out of the shelter of their miserable cabins, for non-payment of rent. It has been told in foregoing pages how it came about that absentee English landlords owned a great part of Ireland. From this had arisen the custom of subletting; and when it is known that sometimes four people stood between the tenant and the landlord, it will be realized how difficult it was to place responsibility, to do justice, or to show mercy in such an iniquitous system. It was the system, not the landlord, that was vicious. Eviction has done as much as famine to depopulate Ireland. It has driven millions of Irishmen into America; and the cruelty and even ferocity with which it has been carried out cannot be overstated. Whatever the weather, for the sick, or even for the dying, there was no pity. Out they must go; and to make sure that they would not return, the cabin was unroofed! And then, if the wretched being died under the stars by the road-side, he might, in the words of Mitchell, "lift his dying eyes and thank God that he perished under the best constitution in the world!"

At the close of the American civil war it was believed by Irishmen that the strained relations between England and America would lead to open conflict. An organization named Fenians (after the ancient Feni) formed a plan for a rising in Ireland, which was to be simultaneous with a raid into Canada by way of America.

The United States Government took vigorous action in the matter of the Canadian raid, and the failure of this and of other violent attempts at home put an end to the least creditable of all such organizations.

It was in 1869 that Mr. Gladstone realized his long-cherished plan for the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland. The generations which had hoped and striven for this had passed away, and in the Ireland which remained, there was scarcely spirit enough left to rejoice over anything. The words Home Rule were the only ones with power to arouse hope. With the Liberal Party on their side, this seemed possible of attainment. In 1875 Charles Parnell entered the House of Commons and became the leader of a Home Rule Party. But the question of evictions, of which there had been 10,000 in four years, became so pressing, that he organized a National Land League, which had for its object the relief of present distress, and the substitution of peasant-proprietorship for the existing landlord system; an agrarian scheme, or dream, to which Mr. Parnell devoted the rest of his life. Mr. Parnell's weapons were parliamentary. He introduced an obstructive method in legislation which caused extreme irritation and finally antagonism between the Liberal Party and his own. This, together with the unfounded suspicion of complicity in the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, in 1882, militated against Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Act, which was defeated in 1886; and the cause awaited another champion.

But while the door bearing the alluring words "Home Rule" still remains rigidly closed, another has unexpectedly opened. One of the first subjects to engage the attention of King Edward VII. after his accession was the settlement of the Irish agrarian question which that practical Monarch recognized as the most essential to the pacification of his Irish subjects. This has resulted in an ingeniously devised system of peasant-proprietorship, which is made possible by Government aid, in money and credit. The New Land Act, embodying this result, went into effect November 1, 1903, whereby tenants, sub-tenants, or people who are not tenants may purchase land in small lots and hold it as their own, by the payment of a small annual rental which applies to the purchase. It is impossible to give here the complicated details which insure this result with benefit to landlord, tenant, and also to the Government itself. But a remedy seems to have been found which accomplishes all this; and the condition, more demoralizing to Irish life and character than any other, has been removed. With the sense of peace and permanence, and even of dignity, which comes from proprietorship it is hoped a new day is dawning for the peasantry of that unhappy country.

It has been Ireland's misfortune to be geographically allied to one of the greatest European Powers. She has been fighting for centuries against the "despotism of fact." She has never once loosened the grasp fastened upon her in 1171; never had control of her capital city, which, built by the Northmen, has been the home of her political masters ever since. Of course everyone knows that when the English Government solemnly doubts the capacity of the Irish people for Home Rule, its solicitude is for England, not Ireland.

Francis Meagher, when on trial for his life, said: "If I have committed a crime, it is because I have read the history of Ireland!" One need not be an Irish patriot to be in rebellion against the English rule in that land; and no Protestant can read without shame and indignation the crimes which have been committed in the name of his Church.

But, in view of the small results of more than eight centuries of resistance, would it not be wise for the Irish people to abandon the fight against the "despotism of fact," to give up the attitude of a conquered people with rebellion in their hearts? Is not this the right moment, when England is manifesting a desire to be more just, for Ireland, deeply injured although she is, to accept the olive branch, and call a truce?