Irish Nationality

by Alice Stopford Green

CHAPTER X[ToC]

RULE OF THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT

1640-1750

The aim which English kings had set before them for the last four hundred years seemed now fulfilled. The land was theirs, and the dominion. But the victory turned to dust and ashes in their hands. The "royal inheritance" of so many hopes had practically disappeared; for if the feudal system which was to give the king the land of Ireland had destroyed the tribal system, it was itself dead; decaying and intolerable in England, it could no longer be made to serve in Ireland. Henry's dream of a royal army from Ireland, "a sword and flay" at the king's use against his subjects in Great Britain, perished; Charles I did indeed propose to use the Irish fighting-men to smite into obedience England and Scotland, but no king of England tried that experiment again. James II looked to Ireland, as in Henry's scheme, for a safe place of refuge to fly to in danger; that, again, no king of England tried a second time. As for the king's revenues and profits, the dream of so many centuries, that too vanished: confiscations old and new which the English parliament allowed the Crown for Irish government left the king none the richer, and after 1692 no longer sufficed even for Irish expenses. The title of "King of Ireland" which Henry VIII had proclaimed in his own right with such high hopes, bred out of its original deception other deceptions deeper and blacker than the first. The sovereign saw his absolute tyranny gradually taken out of his hands by the parliament and middle class for their own benefit; the rule of the king was passing, the rule of the English parliament had begun.

Thus past history was as it were wiped out. Everything in Ireland was to be new. The social order was now neither feudal nor tribal, nor anything known before. Other methods had been set up, without custom, tradition, or law behind them. There were two new classes, English planters and Irish toilers. No old ties bound them, and no new charities. "From the Anglo-Irish no man of special sanctity as yet is known to have sprung," observed a Gael of that day. Ancient patrimony had fallen. The new aristocracy was that of the strong hand and the exploiter's greed. Ordinary restraints of civilised societies were not yet born in this pushing commercial throng, where the scum of Great Britain, broken men or men flying from the law, hastened—"hoping to be without fear of man's justice in a land where there was nothing, or but little as yet, of the fear of God." Ireland was left absolutely without guides or representatives. There were no natural leaders of the country among the new men, each fighting for his own hand; the English government permitted none among the Irish.

England too was being made new, with much turmoil and confusion—an England where kings were yielding to parliaments, and parliaments were being subdued to the rising commercial classes. The idea of a separate royal power and profit had disappeared and instead of it had come the rule and profit of the parliament of England, and of her noble-men, ecclesiastics, and traders in general.

This new rule marked the first revolution in the English government of Ireland which had happened since Henry II sat in his Dublin palace. By the ancient constitution assured by compacts and grants since English laws were first brought into that country, Ireland was united to the Crown of England as a free and distinct kingdom, with the right of holding parliaments subject only to the king and his privy council; statutes of the English parliament had not force of law there until they had been re-enacted in Ireland—which indeed was necessary by the very theory of parliaments, for there were no Irish representatives in the English Houses. Of its mere will the parliament of England now took to itself authority to make laws for Ireland in as free and uncontrolled a manner as if no Irish parliament existed. The new ruling classes had neither experience nor training. Regardless of any legal technicalities they simply usurped a power unlimited and despotic over a confused and shattered Ireland. Now was seen the full evil of government from over-sea, where before a foreign tribunal, sitting at a distance, ignorant and prejudiced, the subject people had no voice; they could dispute no lie, and could affirm no truth.

This despotism grew up regardless of any theory of law or constitution. The intention was unchanged—the taking of all Irish land, the rooting out of the old race from the country. Adventurers were tempted by Irish wealth; what had once been widely diffused among the Irish tribes was gathered into the hands of a few aliens, who ruthlessly wasted the land for their own great enrichment. Enormous profits fell to planters, who could get three times as much gain from an Irish as from an English estate by a fierce exploiting of the natural resources of the island and of its cheap outlawed labour. Forests of oak were hastily destroyed for quick profits; woods were cut down for charcoal to smelt the iron which was carried down the rivers in cunning Irish boats, and what had cost £10 in labour and transport sold at £17 in London. The last furnace was put out in Kerry when the last wood had been destroyed. Where the English adventurer passed he left the land as naked as if a forest fire had swept over the country.

For the exploiter's rage, for the waster's madness, more land was constantly needed. Three provinces had been largely planted by 1620—one still remained. By a prodigious fraud James I, and after him Charles I in violation of his solemn promise, proposed to extirpate the Irish from Connacht. The maddened people were driven to arms in 1641. The London parliament which had just opened the quarrel with the king which was to end in his beheading, seized their opportunity in Ireland. Instantly London City, and a House of Commons consisting mainly of Puritan adventurers, joined in speculations to buy up "traitors' lands," openly sold in London at £100 for a thousand acres in Ulster or for six hundred in Munster, and so on in every province. It was a cheap bargain, the value of forfeited lands being calculated by parliament later at £2,500 for a thousand acres. The more rebels the more forfeitures, and every device of law and fraud was used to fling the whole people into the war, either in fact or in name, and so destroy the claim of the whole of them to their lands. "Wild Irishmen," the English said to one another, "had nothing but the human form to show that they were men." Letters were forged and printed in England, purporting to give Irish news; discountenanced by parliament, they still mark the first experiment to appeal in this way to London on the Irish question. Parliament did its utmost to make the contest a war of extermination: it ended, in fact, in the death of little less than half the population.