XII.—“The Government Of Ireland In The Nineteenth Century”. By R. Barry O'Brien

I

When you speak to Englishmen about English rule in Ireland they say: “Oh! you Irish are always looking back. You always want to talk about the past. You read nothing but ancient history. You never think of all we have done for you in recent years. Come to modern times; forget the past.”

Well, the point is, what are modern times? What date are we to fix for the beginning of good government in Ireland—1800? Scarcely. I do not think that the rankest Tory that ever lived will now attempt to defend English rule in Ireland between 1800 and 1828. In fact, this is what they call ancient history. They will say to you: “Well, of course, we know that the Catholics ought to have been emancipated at the Union, and a great many other things ought to have been done! But what is the good of talking about that now?” The good is, that the lessons of the past are the safeguards of the future. Hence they must be learned.

“Progress,” says Lamennais, “is in a straight line. To find it we must go back to the past.” Let us take [pg 307] the line of “progress” in Ireland throughout the nineteenth century. In 1800 the Irish Parliament was destroyed; the English Parliament took Ireland in hand. A new era was to dawn upon the country. The Catholics were to be emancipated, measures of social and political amelioration were to be passed, peace and prosperity were to reign in the land. Such was the promise of the Union. How was it fulfilled? The Catholics were not emancipated; measures of social amelioration were not carried; but the Statute book was filled with Coercion Acts passed to crush the efforts of the people in their struggle for justice and freedom.

A chronology of Ireland lies before me. Such entries as these meet the eye at every turn.

1800-1801. Insurrection Act, Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, and Martial Law.

1803. Insurrection Act.

1804. Habeas Corpus Suspension Act.

1807-1810. Insurrection Act, Martial Law and Habeas Corpus Suspension Act.

1814. Habeas Corpus Suspension Act.

1814-1818. Insurrection Act.

1822-1824. Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, Insurrection Act.

1825-1828. Act for Suppression of Catholic Association.

Nothing can give a better idea of the character of English Government in Ireland during the first quarter of the century than the mere recital of these Acts. And then when we look at the Statute book for the measures passed to ameliorate the condition of the people, to reconcile them to the loss of their Parliament, and to give them confidence in the English Legislature, what do we find? At the General Election of 1910, a pamphlet was published in the county——. It bore the title—“What Mr. M—— has done for the people of ——” You then turned over the leaves and found every page [pg 308] a blank. So is it with the English Statute book, during the years 1800-1829, as far as measures of justice for Ireland are concerned. Out of a total population of 5,000,000 people at the time of the Union, 4,000,000 were Catholics. These Catholics, representing the old Irish race, were treated as outlanders in their own country. Ireland was governed through the Protestant minority who, (themselves the descendants of English settlers), were, under England, the masters of the land. In 1798, Cornwallis had written to Pitt:

“It has always appeared to me a desperate measure for the British Government to make an irrevocable alliance with a small party in Ireland (which party has derived all its consequence from, and is, in fact, entirely dependent upon the British Government), and to wage eternal war against the Papists.”

The “desperate measure” which Cornwallis deplored, the British Government adopted. In 1802, Lord Redesdale, the Irish Lord Chancellor of the day, wrote: “The Catholics must have no more political power”; and he added: “I have said that this country must be kept for some time as a garrison country—I meant a Protestant garrison.” The policy enunciated by Lord Redesdale was the policy enforced by the English statesmen of the Union. I think it is Lord Acton who says somewhere that nothing stimulates the sentiment of nationality so much as the presence of a foreign ruler. The Irish people saw the hand of the foreign ruler everywhere, and national hatred was naturally intensified and perpetuated.

Besides the question of Catholic emancipation—the question of political freedom—there were many other questions calling for the immediate attention of Parliament. There was the church question, the tithe question, the question of the education of the people, and the eternal land question. The very existence of these [pg 309] questions was ignored by English statesmen. Land was the staple industry of Ireland; yet it was worked under conditions which were fatal to the peace and prosperity of the country. What were the conditions? The landlord let the land—perhaps a strip of bog, barren, wild, dreary. The tenant reclaimed the bog; built, fenced, drained, did all that had to be done. When the tenant had done these things, had made the land tenantable, the rent was raised. He could not pay the increased rental—he had spent himself on the land; he needed time to recoup himself for his outlay and labour. He got no time: when he failed to pay, he was evicted—flung on the roadside, to starve, to die. He took refuge in an Agrarian Secret Society, told the story of his wrong, and prayed for vengeance on the man whom he called a tyrant, and an oppressor. Too often his prayer was heard, and vengeance was wreaked on the landlord, or agent, and sometimes on both.

“The landlord,” says Mr. Froude, “may become a direct oppressor. He may care nothing for the people, and have no object but to squeeze the most that he can out of them fairly or unfairly. The Russian Government has been called despotism, tempered by assassination. In Ireland landlordism was tempered by assassination.... Every circumstance combined in that country to exasperate the relations between landlord and tenant. The landlords were, for the most part, aliens in blood and in religion. They represented conquest and confiscation, and they had gone on from generation to generation with an indifference for the welfare of the people which would not have been tolerated in England or Scotland.”

English statesmen did not understand—did not try to understand—the Irish land question. They believed that force was the best—the only—remedy for agrarian disorders. They did not grasp the essential fact that rack-rents, insecurity of tenure, and the confiscation of the tenants' improvements by the landlords, lay at the root of the trouble, and that legislation to [pg 310] protect the tenant from injustice and oppression was the cure. The result was that the staple industry of the country was paralysed, and periodical famines, and constant outbursts of lawlessness and crime, almost threatened the very existence of society. No stronger argument can be used to prove the incompetence of Englishmen to rule Ireland, than the ignorance and incapacity shown by English statesmen throughout the nineteenth century, in dealing, or rather in refusing to deal, with this vital question of the land.

English statesmen saw nothing wrong in the exclusive establishment and endowment of the Church of the Protestant minority in a Catholic country, nor did they see just cause for complaint because Catholic peasants were forced, at the point of the bayonet, to pay tithes to Protestant parsons. Protestant education was assisted by the State. Nothing was done by the Government for the education of Catholics. Thus for the first twenty-eight years of the century the policy of the English in Ireland was calculated to embitter religious feelings, and to inflame national animosities. When Catholic emancipation (granted under the pressure of a great revolutionary agitation) came in 1829 it did not improve the situation because the people saw in it, not the measure of England's justice, but the measure of her fears.

II

All, then, that happened, between 1800 and 1829, served only to make the chasm which separated the two countries, deeper and wider. What happened between 1829 and 1835? I turn once more to my chronology:

1830. Arms Act.

1831-1832. Stanley's Arms Act.

1833-1834. Grey's Coercion Act.

1834-1835. Grey's Coercion (Continuance) Act amended.

Ireland remained as disaffected and disturbed as ever. Why? Because Catholic Emancipation (delayed for twenty-nine years), was, when carried, practically made a dead letter; the country was still governed, through the Protestant minority, in opposition to the opinions and feelings of the masses of the people; while the incompetence of Parliament to deal with the tithe question, and the land question, led to an agrarian and tithe war, which the Coercion Acts were powerless to stop. In 1831, indeed, Parliament had established the “national” schools, but the scheme was not what the people wanted. Protestants and Catholics alike desired denominational education, but the Government gave them a mixed system. For many years the system was worked (by a board consisting of five Protestants and two Catholics in a country where Catholics were to Protestants as four to one) in an anti-Irish spirit, and it failed, accordingly, to win popular support or confidence. In truth, the people saw in the “national” schools only institutions for anglicising the country. A Scotch Presbyterian practically managed the system. The books, with one exception, were prepared by Englishmen or Scotchmen. Irish history and national poetry were boycotted. Patriotic songs were suppressed. The limit of folly and absurdity was reached when Scott's “Breathes there a man” was replaced in one of the books by these lines:

“I thank the goodness and the grace

That on my birth have smiled,

And made me in these Christian days

A happy English Child.”[148]

In 1832 a worthless Irish Reform Act, under which the representation of the country became “virtually [pg 312] extinguished,”[149] was passed against the protest of the Irish members, all of whose amendments, aiming at making it a genuine measure for the extension of the franchise, were contemptuously rejected. Ignorance and prejudice, the absence of all sense of justice, an utter inability to understand the Irish case, a determination to trample on popular rights and to disregard public opinion—these were the characteristics of English statesmanship in Ireland between 1829 and 1835. Mr. Lecky's account of the manner in which Catholic Emancipation was carried out is worth quoting:

“In 1833—four years after Emancipation—there was not in Ireland a single Catholic judge or stipendiary magistrate. All the high sheriffs, the overwhelming majority of the unpaid magistrates and of the grand jurors, the five inspectors-general, and the thirty-two sub-inspectors of the police, were Protestants. The chief towns were in the hands of narrow, corrupt, and for the most part, intensely bigoted, corporations. For many years promotion had been steadily withheld from those who advocated Catholic Emancipation, and the majority of the people thus found their bitterest enemies in the foremost places.”

No wonder that, Lord Melbourne, in coming into office thirty-five years after the Union, should have found Ireland still a centre of disaffection and disturbance.

III

The Melbourne Ministry was kept in office from 1835 to 1841 by the Irish Vote. O'Connell made a compact—the historic Lichfield House compact—with Ministers. It came to this: They were to introduce remedial measures for Ireland, and he was, meanwhile, to suspend the demand for repeal of the Union. He said to the Irish people:

“I am trying an experiment, I want to see if an English Parliament can do justice to Ireland. I do not think it can, but I mean [pg 313] to give the present Government a chance, and see what they can do. And I will suspend the demand for repeal to give them a fair trial.”

What came of that “fair trial” we shall now see.

The tithe question was the question of the hour. A tithe war had been raging, between 1830 and 1835, distracting the country, and forcing the attention of Parliament to Irish affairs. On March 20th, 1835, the Government of Sir Robert Peel took up the question, and Sir Henry Hardinge, the English Chief Secretary in Ireland, moved a resolution to convert tithes into a rent charge at 75 per cent. of the tithe. O'Connell, in dealing with Hardinge's resolution, said that no measure relating to tithes would be satisfactory which did not contain a clause appropriating the surplus revenues of the established church to purposes of general utility. Subsequently (on April 7th), Lord John Russell moved:

“That it is the opinion of this House that no measure upon the subject of tithes in Ireland can lead to a satisfactory adjustment which does not embody the principle of appropriation.”

This resolution was carried by a majority of twenty-seven. Whereupon the Government of Sir Robert Peel resigned, and Lord Melbourne became Prime Minister, with Lord John Russell as leader of the House of Commons. What was the upshot of the Parliamentary struggle, lasting for three years, over the tithe question? Simply this. In 1838 an Act was passed, converting tithe into a rent charge of 75 per cent. of the tithe, and containing no appropriation clause. Peel had proposed a Bill of the very same kind in 1835. Russell objected to it, insisting on the necessity of an appropriation clause, and proposing the conversion of tithes into a rent charge of 68% of the tithe. Successful (by the Irish vote) in the Commons, but defeated [pg 314] in the Lords, he ultimately abandoned his conversion scheme, flung the appropriation clause to the winds, and passed what was really Peel's measure of 1835. Of course tithes were not abolished. The payment of them was, in the first instance, transferred from the tenants to the landlords, then the landlords added the tithes to the rent, so that the unfortunate tenants were still mulcted in one way, if not in the other.

In 1838, also, the Irish Poor Law was introduced under circumstances thoroughly characteristic of English methods in Ireland: In 1833, a Royal Commission was appointed to consider the subject of Irish destitution in reference to the advisability of establishing “workhouses” to alleviate Irish distress. The Commission consisted chiefly of Irishmen, though the Chairman, Archbishop Whateley, was an Englishman. The Commissioners took three years to consider the subject submitted to them; and, at the end of that time, made a report which, in the light of subsequent events, must be pronounced a statesmanlike document. They said, in effect, that the cure for Irish distress was work, not workhouses. The labouring poor were able-bodied men who only needed employment, and scope for their energies; and should be provided with work which would develop the resources of the country, and remove the causes of poverty. A Vice-regal Poor Law Reform Commission, which reported in 1906, refers to the Report of the Commissioners of 1833, in the following language:

“It will probably surprise most of those who study the condition of Ireland, and who have considered how to improve it, to find that a Commission that sat seventy years ago recommended land drainage and reclamation on modern lines, the provision of labourers' cottages and allotments, the bringing of agricultural instruction to the doors [pg 315] of the peasant, the improvement of land tenure, the transfer of fixed powers from grand juries to county boards, the employment of direct labour on roads by such county boards, the sending of vagrants to colonies to be employed there or to penitentiaries in this country; the closing of public-houses on Sundays, and the prevention of the sale of groceries and intoxicating drink in the same house for consumption on the premises. Such were the recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Condition of the Poorer Classes.”[150]

For the sick and impotent poor the Royal Commission reported practically that relief ought to be afforded by voluntary associations, controlled by State Commissioners, and whose revenues might be strengthened by the imposition of a contributory parochial rate. Emigration, as a temporary expedient, was also recommended in certain cases.

The Report of the Royal Commissioners was laid before Lord John Russell. Lord John Russell flung the Report into the ministerial waste paper basket, and despatched a young Englishman named Nicholls, a member of the English Poor Law Commission, to report afresh on the subject. Mr. Nicholls paid a roving visit to Ireland. The Royal Commission had taken three years to consider the question. Mr. Nicholls disposed of it in six weeks. He, of course, made the report that was expected of him. He recommended the establishment of workhouses. The Government brought in a Workhouse Bill, which was opposed by the Irish Members in committee, and on the third reading, but was carried, nevertheless, by overwhelming majorities.[151]

In concluding this story let me quote the following brief extracts from the Vice-regal Commission of 1903-6:

“I. The poverty of Ireland cannot be adequately dealt with by any Poor Relief Law, such as that of 1838, but by the development of the country's resources, which is, therefore, most strongly urged.

“III. The present workhouse system should be abolished.”

Thus, after the lapse of three-quarters of a century, has the policy of the Irish Commission of 1833 been vindicated, and the policy of the English Parliament condemned.

The Government also took up the question of municipal reform. There were at the time sixty-eight municipalities in Ireland, all in the hands of the Protestant ascendency. It was the policy of O'Connell to preserve all these municipalities and to reform them. The Government tried to carry out his policy, but in vain. Then, in 1836, they carried through the House of Commons, a Bill creating a £10 household suffrage in seven of the largest cities, and a £5 one in the others, but the measure was rejected in the House of Lords which desired the abolition of the Irish municipalities altogether. In 1837 the Bill was again passed through the Commons, and again rejected by the Lords. Peel then proposed, as a compromise—a £10 rating franchise in twelve of the largest towns, and a similar franchise in the smaller, provided the Lord Lieutenant allowed them to be re-incorporated. Lord John Russell consented to this proposal on conditions that the franchise in the small towns—corporations in posse—should be reduced to £5. For two years longer a struggle was carried on between the two parties, mainly over the question of the franchise in the smaller towns (in the event of their being incorporated). Finally, in 1840, the Government gave way all along the line, passing an Act which abolished fifty-eight [pg 317] municipalities, and conferred a £10 franchise on the remaining ten.

The Melbourne Ministry fell in 1841. O'Connell had kept the Government in office for five years. During that time they had passed useful measures for England; but in their Irish legislation they failed utterly. The Tithe Act was a sham, the Poor Law, passed in the teeth of Irish Opposition, was detested in Ireland, and the Municipal Reform Act has well been described by Sir Erskine May “as virtually a scheme of municipal disfranchisement.” When all was over, O'Connell said:

“The experiment which I have tried has proved that an English Parliament cannot do justice to Ireland, and our only hope now is in the Repeal of the Union.”

He then unfurled the banner of repeal, and threw himself heart and soul into the movement.

IV

While the Melbourne Ministry failed utterly in their Irish legislation, the administration of the country by Thomas Drummond (Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, 1835-1840) was eminently successful. Though there were Coercion Acts on the Statute book they were not enforced. Drummond governed according to the ordinary law, and, by meting out even-handed justice to all, won popular support and confidence. However, on the fall of the Ministry, coercion again soon became the order of the day—thus:

1843-1845. Arms Act.

1847. Crime and Outrage Act.

1848-1849. Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, Crime and Outrage Act, Removal of Aliens Act.

Between 1842 and 1845 Ireland rang with the demand for repeal. Great meetings—monster meetings they were called—were held everywhere; and O'Connell, [pg 318] by a series of the most eloquent and vehement speeches ever addressed to public audiences, re-awakened the spirit of nationality and intensified the popular hatred of England. In the days of the Melbourne Ministry his policy was a policy of peace; but the English people would not accept the olive branch. His policy now was a policy of war. His case for repeal rested on two main propositions:

“(1) Ireland was fit for legislative independence in position, population, and natural advantages. Five independent kingdoms in Europe possessed less territory or people; and her station in the Atlantic, between the old world and the new, designed her to be the entrepôt of both, if the watchful jealousy of England had not rendered her natural advantages nugatory.

“(2) She was entitled to legislative independence; the Parliament of Ireland was as ancient as the Parliament of England, and had not derived its existence from any Charter of the British Crown, but sprang out of the natural rights of freedom. Its independence, long claimed, was finally recognised and confirmed by solemn compact between the two nations in 1782; that compact has since been shamefully violated, indeed, but no statute of limitation ran against the right of a nation.”[152]

The Government of Sir Robert Peel put forth its full strength to crush O'Connell, and the repeal movement. In 1844 O'Connell was tried by a packed bench and a packed jury for seditious conspiracy, found guilty, and sent to jail. His trial was one of the most scandalous incidents in the history of British rule in Ireland, during the nineteenth century.

“The most eminent Catholic in the Empire,” says Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, “a man whose name was familiar to every Catholic in the world, was placed upon his trial in the Catholic Metropolis of a Catholic country before four judges and twelve jurors, among whom there was not a single Catholic.”

It is well known that the condemnation of O'Connell by this tribunal was too much even for the House of [pg 319] Lords, which quashed the conviction and set O'Connell free.

In 1847 O'Connell died, and a terrible famine swept over the land decimating the people. Before the famine the population of Ireland was 8,175,124, three years afterwards it had sunk to 6,574,278. But that was not the end. The “Young Ireland” party had sprung out of the repeal movement. The “Young Irelanders” began as constitutional agitators. Like O'Connell himself they simply demanded the repeal of the Union. But they gradually became more extreme, and, ultimately, under the influence of the wave of revolution, which swept over Europe in 1848, drifted into insurrection. The rising of 1848 was quickly put down, and the “Young Ireland” leaders were banished beyond the seas. All seemed lost. Ireland was in despair. Yet the seed, sown by O'Connell and the “Young Irelanders,” took root. The fruit was gathered in our own day. Home Rule sprang out of the one movement, and Fenianism out of the other.

“The spirit of National Independence,” says Mr. Froude, “is like a fire, so long as a spark remains a conflagration can be kindled.”

The fire of nationality burned low during the Melbourne Administration; but rekindled by O'Connell in 1842, and fanned into flame by “Young Ireland,” it was not put out by the misfortunes and disasters in which the first forty-eight years of the Union closed.

V

I have said that land was the staple industry of Ireland. Yet Government after Government failed to realize that the enactment of laws for the protection of the tenant—the protection of his improvements from confiscation by the landlords, protection of himself from [pg 320] rack-rents and arbitrary eviction—were necessary for the prosperity and peace of the country. In 1836 Mr. Sharman Crawford introduced a Bill proposing that the tenant should be entitled, on eviction, to compensation for improvements of a permanent nature made with the landlord's consent; or without his consent, provided that such improvements were, according to the Chairman of Quarter Sessions, necessary for the actual wants of the tenant. This moderate Bill, strongly opposed by the landlords, was read a first time, but it never reached another stage. Parliament having refused to protect the tenants—refused indeed to take the slightest heed of their complaints and grievances—the tenants continued to protect themselves by forming secret societies whose operations struck terror in the land. In 1838 the Under-Secretary, Thomas Drummond, boldly told the Tipperary Magistrates, who cried out for coercion, that landlordism was the cause of agrarian crime, and that remedial legislation, not coercion, was the remedy. He said, in memorable words:

“The Government has been at all times ready to afford the utmost aid in its power to suppress disturbance and crime, and its efforts have been successful so far as regards open violations of the law.... But there are certain classes of crime, originating in other causes which are much more difficult of repression. The utmost exertion of vigilance and precaution cannot always effectually guard against them, and it becomes of importance to consider the causes which have led to a state of society so much to be deplored, with a view to ascertain whether any corrective means are in the immediate power of the Government or the Legislature. When,” he continues, “the character of the great majority of serious outrages occurring in many parts of Ireland, though unhappily most frequent in Tipperary, is considered, it is impossible to doubt that the causes from which they mainly spring are connected with the tenure and occupation of land.

“Property,” he adds, “has its duties as well as its rights; to [pg 321] the neglect of those duties in times past is mainly to be ascribed to that diseased state of society in which such crimes take their rise; and it is not in the enactment or enforcement of statutes of extraordinary severity, but chiefly in the better and more faithful performance of those duties, and the more enlightened and humane exercise of those rights that a permanent remedy for such disorders is to be sought.”

Another fierce outburst of agrarianism in 1842 startled English public opinion, and drew from The Times a memorable condemnation of landlordism. The great English journal wrote:

“With feelings of mingled pain we have witnessed the reappearance of that frightful system of murder and outrage which has so long infested the south of Ireland, and in particular the unhappy County of Tipperary.... The evil has arisen in the general system upon which the occupation of land has been based and conducted, and in the treatment of the occupier by the landlord.... A landlord is not a tradesman; he stands to his tenantry, or he ought to do so, in loco parentis; he is there as well for their good as his own; they are not mere contractors with him, to hold his land as capital, and pay him the full interest, or incur a forfeiture; they are rather agents placed in his hands, and under his care and protection, for the purpose of working the land, and whose natural relation with him cannot be determined except by negligence or ill-conduct.

“If the land be treated as money, and tenantry as borrowers, people may be sure that the landlord will be an usurer. This is generally true, but in Ireland the tenant who is thus treated as though he had been an unfettered party to the original agreement, has not the shadow of the character of a voluntary contractor. It is with him, either to continue in the quarter of an acre which he occupies, or to starve. There is no other alternative. Rack-rent may be misery, but ejectment is ruin.”

At length in 1843 Sir Robert Peel appointed the famous Devon Commission to enquire into the occupation and tenure of land in Ireland. In 1845 the Commission reported that:

“(1) All the improvements in the soil were made by the tenants.

“(2) That these improvements were subjected to confiscation, and were confiscated by the landlord.

“(3) That the outrage system sprang from the ejectment system; and

“(4) That it was necessary for Parliament to intervene to compel the landlord to recoup the tenant on eviction for his outlay on the land.”

The Report of the Devon Commission proved the case of the tenants up to the hilt. What was done?

In May, 1845, Lord Devon declared in the House of Lords that if a Bill were passed giving tenants compensation for improvements made by them in the land “it would much strengthen the industry of the people of Ireland.” In the same year Lord Stanley, in behalf of the Government, introduced a Bill proposing that tenants should be entitled to compensation, on disturbance, for prospective improvements of a permanent nature, made with the consent of the landlord; or, without his consent, provided the improvements had been effected with the authority and approval of a Commissioner of Improvements, to be specially appointed for the purpose. The functions of the Commissioners were to inspect the lands, and to examine and inquire whether they would “bear” improvement; and then, if he thought well of it, to authorise the works contemplated by the tenant and to award, in case of eviction, such measure of compensation as was deemed fair and equitable. This Bill was read a second time, then referred to a Select Committee, and abandoned. In 1846 substantially the same Bill was brought forward by the Government, and read a first time. Then the Government fell and the Bill disappeared. In 1847, Mr. Sharman Crawford brought forward a Bill to extend the Ulster Custom (practically fixity of tenure and free sale) [pg 323] to the rest of Ireland. The Government—a Liberal Government—took no interest in the subject. Crawford spoke to empty benches and the Bill was defeated on the second reading by an overwhelming majority. In 1848 Crawford brought forward his Bill again, and it was again defeated. In the same year the Government brought forward a Bill which was the same as the Government Bill of 1846. It was read a second time, then referred to a Select Committee and heard of no more that session. So far Parliament had done nothing to carry out the recommendations of the Devon Commission—nothing for the protection of the tenants. But in 1849 Lord John Russell passed a Bill for the relief of the landlords—a Bill giving landlords facilities for selling their encumbered estates. This measure is well known as “The Encumbered Estates Act.” Let me quote what Lord Russell of Killowen said about it before the Parnell Commission:

“It is hardly conceivable that a Legislature in which Ireland was represented—imperfectly, it is true—that a Legislature purporting to deal with Ireland should have so misconceived the position as to have passed that Act. For what did it do? It sold the estates of the bankrupt landlords to men with capital, who were mainly jobbers in land, with the accumulated improvements and interests of the tenants, and without the slightest protection against the forfeiture and confiscation of these improvements and interests, at the hands of the proprietor newly acquiring the estate. It was intended, I doubt not, to effect good. It proved a cause of the gravest evil.”

What a mockery of legislation! The Devon Commission had reported in favour of the tenant's claims, and recommended the enactment of laws for his protection. Parliament passed an Act introducing into Ireland a new set of landlords who were worse than the old, and leaving the tenant hopelessly at their mercy.

In 1850 the Irish Secretary of the day brought in a [pg 324] Bill (practically the same as Lord Stanley's Bill of 1845) giving the tenant compensation for improvements. The Bill was read a second time, committed, and dropped. In the same year Sharman Crawford again introduced his “Tenant Right” Bill, but it was never read a second time.

In November, 1852 (when the Irish Parliamentary Party held the balance between English parties),[153] the Tory Government introduced a Bill giving to the tenant compensation for improvements, prospective and retrospective, made by him in the land. The Bill was read a second time without opposition in December and then referred to a Select Committee. When the Whigs came into office in 1853 they took up the measure which, subject to certain alterations, was approved of by the Select Committee. The Bill was finally read a second time in the Lords and then dropped for the session. It was reintroduced in 1854, and read a second time in the Lords; referred to a Select Committee, condemned by the Committee, and lost. Between 1854 and 1860 Land Bill after Land Bill was introduced by the Irish Parliamentary Party for the purpose of giving compensation to tenants for improvements, but all were rejected. Finally (in 1860), imitating the example of 1849, the Whig Government of the day passed a Land Act in the interests of the landlords. Let me describe this Act in the words of Lord Russell of Killowen. “This was an Act passed to help the landlords, and not one passed for the protection of the tenants. It turned the relation between landlord and tenant from relation by tenure into relation by contract;[154] it gave certain facilities in [pg 325] the matter of proceedings in ejectment; it recognized and formulated what had been an existing law in Ireland—going back for a long period—a state of law unknown in this country. I mean the right of ejectment, pure and simple, for non-payment of rent.” The recommendations of the Devon Commission were not only not carried out but were absolutely ignored. Happily however the Act proved a dead letter. “This enactment,” said the Bessborough Commission of 1881, “has produced little or no effect. It may be said to have given utterance to the wishes of the Legislature, that the traditional rights of tenants should cease to exist, rather than to have seriously affected the conditions of their existence.” It was in reference to the Encumbered Estates Act, and this Act, that Mr. Gladstone once exclaimed in the House of Commons: “In our very remedies we have failed.”

In 1866 the Government brought in a Bill to amend the Act of 1860 in the interest of the tenants, but it never became law. The Bill was again brought forward in 1867 and again lost. While every Land Act in the interest of the tenant between 1849 and 1867 was rejected, the Statute book continued to be filled with Coercion Acts. Thus:

1850-1855. Crime and Outrage (Continuance) Act.

1856, 1857. Peace Preservation Act.

1858-1864. Peace Preservation (Continuance) Act.

1865. Peace Preservation (Continuance) Act.

1866-1869 (off and on). Habeas Corpus Suspension Act.

As Parliament treated the land question, so it treated the church question, and every question in which the Irish people were interested. Their complaints, as Bright said, “were met with denial, with contempt, with insult.” Ministers, indeed, slumbered peacefully as if there were no Irish question, until they were rudely [pg 326] awakened in 1867 by the ringing of the “Chapel bell.” Fenianism—a Society founded to sever the connection between England and Ireland—brought Liberals and Tories to their bearings; and under the pressure of that great revolutionary organization (which set Ireland in a blaze), the Church was disestablished in 1869, and the first Land Act (which in the slightest degree served the interests of the tenants) passed in 1870. This Act provided that tenants, when evicted, should receive compensation for improvements, and in certain cases, for disturbance. It also contained clauses for the creation of a peasant proprietary, and recognized and legalized the Ulster custom of tenant right. But the Act was a failure. The peasant proprietary clauses did not work; rack-renting continued, evictions increased, and the general discontent remained the same as ever. In these circumstances the Irish members demanded fresh legislation, and introduced several Bills for this purpose between 1876 and 1881. They were all rejected by overwhelming majorities. Then the Land League came; lawlessness and outrage came; treason and anarchy came; and the Land Act of 1881 was passed in a storm of revolution. The reasons given by Lord Salisbury for not opposing the Bill in the House of Lords are too remarkable, and too little known not to be quoted. He said:

“In view of the prevailing agitation, and having regard to the state of anarchy (in Ireland), I cannot recommend my followers to vote against the second reading of the Bill.”

and in the same speech he added:

“What will be the attitude of the tenant all this time? He, like the landlord, will be looking to the future, but in a very different temper. He knows perfectly well that all he has hitherto got he has [pg 327] not got because he has moved your convictions, but because he has moved your fears.”

“The pivot of the Act of 1881,” to use the language of Mr. Forster, was the “Land Court” established to stand between landlords and tenants, to fix fair or judicial rents. Previously, the landlord was master of the situation. The competition for land placed the tenant at his mercy, and he accordingly fixed the rent at his own pleasure. But henceforth rents were to be fixed by legal tribunals; and while the tenant paid the rent so fixed, he could not be disturbed in his holding for a period of fifteen years. Roughly speaking, the Act changed Irish tenancies from tenancies at will practically to leaseholds, renewable every fifteen years, subject to revision of rent by the Land Courts. It also recognised the tenant's right to sell his holding, and provided facilities for the creation of a peasant proprietary.

But the Land Act of 1881 did not settle the land question. The system of dual ownership which it set up was agreeable neither to landlord nor tenant, and both now combined to demand fresh legislation for the purpose of enabling the tenants to purchase their holdings. The Act had destroyed the prestige of the landlords; they were disgusted with the spectacle of seeing “briefless barristers,” (as the Judges of the Land Courts were called), “rambling about the country” and fixing rents independently of their wishes; their occupation as territorial magnates was gone and they were now willing to dispose of their estates, if only they could obtain good terms. The cry of the tenant always had been the “land for the people,” and they raised that cry now louder than ever. Extraordinary as it may seem the English Tory party took the lead in responding to it. In 1885 the first of a series of Tory [pg 328] Land Purchase Acts was passed. By this measure the state was empowered to advance the whole of the purchase money to tenants who had agreed with their landlords to purchase their holdings; forty-nine years were allowed for repayment of the purchase money, at the rate of 4 per cent. per annum. Between 1885 and 1912 six more Land Purchase Acts were placed on the Statute book. With a single exception, all these Acts were passed by Tories. Therefore the Tories take credit to themselves for the policy of land purchase. But rather the credit belongs to Charles Stewart Parnell and the Land League, who, by the revolution of 1881, not only made land purchase possible, but made it inevitable. I cannot here deal with these Acts in detail[155] but the following table gives a list of them and shows how they have worked. It also mentions other Acts which contain provisions for facilitating the creation of a peasant proprietary.

Act.No. of Purchasers.Amount of Advances.
I.—Irish Church Act, 18696,0571,674,841
II.—Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870877514,536
III.—Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881731240,801
IV.—Land Purchase Acts, 1885, 1887, 1888 and 188925,3679,992,536
V.—Land Purchase Acts, 1891, 189646,80613,633,190
VI.—Irish Land Act, 1903117,01041,293,564
VII.—Evicted Tenants Act, 1907550307,550
VIII.—Irish Land Act, 19091,444422,562
Total198,84268,079,580[156]

Mr. Gladstone once said to me that he was deeply moved by the Parliamentary history of the Irish Land [pg 329] question. It was a subject of the greatest magnitude affecting as it did the life of the country. Yet the Imperial Parliament failed for three quarters of a century to realize the importance and the gravity of the case; and even then did not grapple successfully with it.

“A sad and a discreditable story,” was his comment.

Nowhere, I repeat, can a stronger argument in favour of Home Rule be found than in the history of the Irish Land Question.

VI

There is one fact in connection with the Government of Ireland during the nineteenth century with which, I think, English Statesmen are but imperfectly acquainted, viz., that the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 was an utter failure. It was thought that when Irish Catholics were admitted to the English Parliament all would go well with Ireland. But the Irish Catholic member in the English Parliament was absolutely useless to Ireland; and it was that uselessness which led to the Repeal Agitation, Young Ireland, Fenianism, and the Home Rule movement.

The policy of the English Parliament in truth fostered the idea of Irish nationality. It is, perhaps, within the range of possibility, that good legislation, and good administration might have put out the fire. I know not. But as it was those who made the laws, and those who administered the laws, fed the flame. Every Coercion Act was a nail in the coffin of the Union; and a reminder that the foreigner ruled in the land. When O'Connell was “master of the situation” in 1835, he thought that the opportunity had at length arrived of obtaining important remedial measures for Ireland. We know how his hopes were disappointed. When [pg 330] the Irish Members held the balance between English parties in 1852, they thought that the time had come for securing a beneficial Land Act; but they also were doomed to disappointment.

In fact between 1829 and 1869 the Irish Members failed to place upon the Statute book one single measure for which the Irish people had loudly called; and the measures of 1869 and 1870 were due to Fenianism and not to parliamentary action.

Between 1870 and 1881 the efforts of the Parliamentarians were again marked by failure, and we know, from Mr. Gladstone himself, that, there would have been no Land Act in 1881 if there had been no Land League. In 1884 household suffrage was extended to Ireland. The General Election of 1885 made Parnell “master of the situation.” What was he able to do? He certainly got the Home Rule Bill of 1886 and converted the Liberal party to the cause; but he did not win Home Rule. Between 1892 and 1895 a Liberal Government was once more kept in office by the Irish vote. But though a Home Rule Bill was carried through the Commons in 1893 Home Rule was not won. Finally between 1895 and 1906 Home Rule was thrust into the background by an English majority.

Well might Sir Spencer Walpole have written: “The treatment of Ireland made representative Government in Ireland a fraud. It is absurd to say that a country enjoys representative institutions if its delegates are uniformly out-voted by men of another race.”

While the Irish representation in the Imperial Parliament was a fraud, the English Administration of Ireland was an outrage on national sentiment. After Catholic Emancipation, as before, it was, in the main, based on Protestant Ascendency principles, which meant not Ireland for the Irish, but Ireland for [pg 331] an English faction. As a rule no man in touch with popular feeling was allowed to have a voice in the government of the country. Catholics as Catholics were habitually excluded from office. Since Catholic Emancipation there has not been a Catholic Lord-Lieutenant, nor a Catholic Chief Secretary. There have been 3 Catholic Under-Secretaries. There have been 3 Lord Chancellors. In the High Court of Justice there are 17 Judges; 3 of them are Catholics. There are 21 County Court Judges and Recorders; 8 of them are Catholics. There are 37 County Inspectors of Police; 5 of them are Catholics. There are 202 District Inspectors of Police; 62 of them are Catholics. There are 5,518 ordinary Justices of the Peace; 1,805 of them are believed to be Catholics. There are 68 Privy Councillors; 8 of them are Catholics. And in other offices, through the whole gamut of the administration, the same principle of exclusiveness was observed. Nor was this all. Catholics who were appointed to office, feeling that they were “suspect” as Catholics, only too often, in order to show that their loyalty was above suspicion, became more Protestant than the Protestants, and more English than the English. “We have now captured the Castle,” I heard an Irish Catholic official say, in reference to a Catholic appointment which had recently been made. The retort was obvious. “No, but the Castle has captured you.” In truth, no matter what was the religion of the official, he appeared before the people as the instrument of a foreign government, not as the servant of the Irish nation. Let us remember that it was in the year 1885, not in “ancient times,” that Mr. Chamberlain said in memorable language:

“I do not believe that the great majority of Englishmen have the slightest conception of the system under which this free nation attempts to rule the sister country. It is a system which is founded [pg 332] on the bayonets of 30,000 soldiers encamped permanently as in a hostile country. It is a system as completely centralised and bureaucratic as that with which Russia governs Poland, or as that which prevailed in Venice under the Austrian rule. An Irishman at the moment cannot move a step—he cannot lift a finger in any parochial, municipal, or educational work, without being confronted with, interfered with, controlled by an English official, appointed by a foreign Government, and without a shade or shadow of representative authority.”

It was not until 1898 that popular control in local affairs was established by the County Councils' Act.

Englishmen often say to me: “What an illogical and unreasonable people you Irish are. At the very time when we were showing our determination to do justice to Ireland, when we had disestablished the State Church in 1869, and passed the Land Act of 1870 at that very time, in the very year 1870, you started the Home Rule movement.” Englishmen say many foolish things about Ireland, because they know nothing about Irish history, and indeed give very little serious thought to Irish affairs. The fact that the English State Church was not disestablished for sixty-nine years after the Union, and that an Act for the protection of the tenants and for securing the proper cultivation of the soil was not passed until seventy years after the Union; and that it took constant agitation and incessant outbursts of lawlessness and crime and finally a revolutionary convulsion to accomplish these things, was a sufficient justification for the establishment of the Home Rule movement in 1870. Had the government of Ireland in the nineteenth century been as good as it was bad, still I hope that the Irish people would not have relinquished their national claims—would not have sold their birthright for any mess of porridge; but they did not get the porridge; rather vinegar and gall had been the offering of England to the “sister” [pg 333] isle during sixty-nine years of “Union.” I have said that the seed sown by O'Connell and Young Ireland took root, so did the seed sown by England. Extremes meet. The agitator—the rebel—and the English Government combined to keep the spirit of nationality alive, and to make the demand for Home Rule inevitable and irresistible.

It was on May 19th, 1870, that the Home Rule Association was founded. It was no wonder after seventy years of the Union that failed that the following resolution should have been passed:

“That it is the opinion of this meeting that the true remedy for the evils of Ireland is the establishment of an Irish Parliament with full control over our domestic affairs.”

The objects of the Association were then set forth.

“To obtain for our country the right and privilege of managing our own affairs by a Parliament assembled in Ireland, composed of Her Majesty, the Sovereign, and her successors, and the Lords and Commons of Ireland.

“To secure for that Parliament, under a federal arrangement, the right of legislating for, and regulating all matters relating to the internal affairs of Ireland, and control over Irish resources and expenditure, subject to the obligation of contributing our just proportion of the Imperial expenditure; [leaving to] an Imperial Parliament the power of dealing with all questions affecting the Imperial Crown and Government, legislation regarding the Colonies and other dependencies of the Crown, the relations of the United Empire with foreign States, and all matters appertaining to the defence and stability of the Empire at large....”

At the General Election of 1874, 59 Home Rulers were returned to Parliament. At the election of 1880 the number was increased to 61. At the election of 1885 it was increased to 85, at which figure it stands to-day.

On June 30th, 1874, a motion by Isaac Butt for an enquiry into the subject of Home Rule was defeated [pg 334] in the House of Commons by 458 votes to 61. Nineteen years afterwards a Bill to establish a Parliament and an Executive in Dublin for the management of Irish Affairs was carried through the House of Commons by the Government of Mr. Gladstone. On the retirement of Mr. Gladstone from public life Home Rule received a set back in England, but to-day it holds the field once more.

If the Land Act of 1870 had been a success instead of a failure it could not have checked the flowing tide. It was in 1871 that Mr. Lecky wrote: “The sentiment of nationality lies at the root of Irish discontent.” Ten years earlier Goldwin Smith used the following remarkable language:

“The real root of Irish disaffection is the want of national institutions, of a national capital, of any objects of national reverence and attachment, and, consequently, of anything deserving to be called national life. The greatness of England is nothing to the Irish. Her history is nothing, or worse. The success of Irishmen in London consoles the Irish no more than the success of Italian adventurers in foreign countries (which was very remarkable) consoled the Italian people. The drawing off of Irish talent, in fact, turns to an additional grievance in their mind. Dublin is a modern Tara; a Metropolis from which the glory has departed; and the Vice-Royalty, though it pleases some of the tradesmen, fails altogether to satisfy the people. 'In Ireland we can make no appeal to patriotism; we can have no patriotic sentiments in our school books, no patriotic emblems in our schools, because in Ireland everything patriotic is rebellious.' These were the words uttered in my hearing, not by a complaining demagogue, but by a desponding statesman.”

Between 1861 and 1871 the tide of nationality was rising. Fenianism diverted it in the direction of separation. Isaac Butt brought it back to the channel of legislative autonomy. The failure of the Land Act of 1870, the refusal of Parliament to amend it, the renewal of Coercion, the political excitement caused [pg 335] by Fenianism and the definite demand for Home Rule, swelled the tide and gave it fresh force. All the Land Acts passed between 1881 and 1909 have not changed the current of public feeling. Home Rule has not been killed by kindness.

The class which long refused to remove Irish material grievances, now say, that, since some of those grievances have been remedied, the Irish ought to abandon the demand for Home Rule. John Stuart Mill warned the class in question many years ago that if the removal of material grievances were delayed, the time might come when the fight would be for an idea, and that then the Irish problem would be more formidable than ever. The fight to-day is for an idea—the idea of nationality—and English Unionist statesmen do not apparently understand it:

“Alas for the self-complacent ignorance of irresponsible rulers, be they monarchs, classes, or nations! If there is anything sadder than the calamity itself, it is the unmistakable sincerity and good faith with which numbers of Englishmen confess themselves incapable of comprehending it. They know not that the disaffection which neither has nor needs any other motive than aversion to the rulers, is the climax to a long growth of disaffection arising from causes that might have been removed. What seems to them the causelessness of the Irish repugnance to our rule, is the proof that they have almost let pass the last opportunity they are ever likely to have of setting it right. They have allowed what once was indignation against particular wrongs, to harden into a passionate determination to be no longer ruled on any terms by those to whom they ascribe all their evils.”[157]

Englishmen thoroughly appreciate the idea of nationality except when it applies to Ireland.

Mr. Redmond has been recently censured because he said, in effect, that material prosperity is not everything. Yet what did Mr. Disraeli say in his [pg 336] inaugural address to the University of Glasgow in 1873:

“It is not true that physical happiness is the highest happiness; it is not true that physical happiness is a principle on which you can build up a flourishing and enduring commonwealth. A civilised community must rest on a large realised capital of thought and sentiment; there must be a reserved fund of public morality to draw upon in the exigencies of national life. Society has a soul as well as a body, the traditions of a nation are part of its existence. Its valour and its discipline, its religious faith, its venerable laws, its science and erudition, its poetry, its art, its eloquence and its scholarship, are as much portions of its existence as its agriculture, its commerce, and its engineering skill. Nay, I would go further, I would say that without these qualities, material excellence cannot be attained.”

That is the true doctrine. The spirit of nationality is the spirit of life. Material progress itself springs from national freedom.