The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

Meanwhile the Irish abroad, the exiles, had heard of the movement, and several prominent chieftains came back to take part in the struggle; while those who remained away helped the cause by gaining the aid of the Catholic sovereigns, and sending home all the funds and munitions of war they could procure. Among these, one of the most conspicuous was the learned Luke Wadding, then at Rome engaged in writing his celebrated works, who dispatched money and arms contributed by the Holy Father. John B. Rinuccini, Archbishop of Fermo, sent by the Pope as Nuncio, sailed in the same ship which conveyed those contributions to Ireland.

The Catholic prelates thus originated a free government with nothing revolutionary in its character, but combining some of the forms of the old Irish Feis with the chief features of modern Parliamentary governments. Matthew O'Connor makes the following just observations on this subject in his "Irish Catholics:"

"The duty of obedience to civil government was so deeply impressed on the Catholic mind, at this period, in Ireland, that it degenerated into passive submission. These impressions originated in religious zeal, and were fostered by persecution. The spiritual authority of the clergy was found requisite to soften those notions, and temper them with ideas of the constitutional, social, and Christian right of resistance in self-defence. The nobility and gentry fully concurred in those proceedings of the clergy, and the nation afterward ratified them in a general convention held at Kilkenny, in the subsequent month of October. The national union seemed to be at last cemented by the wishes of all orders, and the interests of all parties."

The fact is, the nation had been brought to life, and took its stand on a new footing. When the general assembly met, in October, eleven bishops and fourteen lay lords formed what may be called the Irish peerage; two hundred and twenty-six commoners represented the large majority of the Irish constituencies; a great lawyer of the day, Patrick Darcy, was elected chancellor; and a Supreme Council of six members from each province constituted what may be called the Executive.

This government, which really ruled Ireland without any interference until Ormond succeeded in breaking it up, was obeyed and acknowledged throughout the land. It undertook and carried out all the functions of its high office, such as the coining of money, appointing circuit-judges, sending ambassadors abroad, and commissioning officers to direct the operations of the national army. Among these latter, one name is sufficient to vouch for their efficiency: that of Owen Roe O'Neill, who had returned, with many others, from the Continent, in the July of that year, and formally, assumed the command of the army of Ulster.

Owen Roe O'Neill was grand-nephew to Hugh of Tyrone. Unknown, even now, to Europe, his name still lives in the memory of his countrymen. "The head of the Hy-Niall race, the descendant of a hundred kings, the inheritor of their virtues, without a taint of their vices, he would have deserved a crown, and, on a larger theatre, would have acquired the title of a hero."—(M. O'Connor.)

Had Charles recognized this government, which proclaimed him king, discharged from office the traitors, Borlase and Parsons, who plotted against him, and not surrendered his authority to Ormond, Ireland would probably have been saved from the horrors impending, and Charles himself from the scaffold. Whatever the issue might have been, the fact remains that the Irish then proved they could establish a solid government of their own, and that it is an altogether erroneous idea to imagine them incapable of governing themselves.

It is impossible to enter here upon the details of the intricate complications which ensued—complications which were chiefly owing to the plots of Ormond; but, it may be stated fearlessly that, the more the history of those times is studied, the more certainly is the "national" party, with the Nuncio Rinuccini for head and director, recognized as the one which, better than any other, could have saved Ireland. At least, no true Irishman will now pretend that the "peace party," headed by Ormond, which was pitted against the "Nuncionists," could bring good to the country; on the contrary, its subsequent misfortunes are to be ascribed directly to it.

To stigmatize it as it deserves, needs no more than to say that among its chief leaders were Ormond, its head and projector, and Murrough O'Brien, of Inchiquin, to this day justly known as Murrough of the burnings. These two men were the product of the "refined policy" of England to kill Catholicism in the higher classes by the operation of one of the laws that governed the oppressed nation—wardship.

Both Inchiquin and Ormond were born of Catholic fathers, and all their relations, during their lives, remained Catholics. But, their fathers dying during the minority of both, the law took their education out of the hands of the nearest kin, to give it to English Protestant wardens, in the name of the king, who was supposed by the law to be their legitimate guardian. This was one of the fruits of feudalism. They were duly brought up by these wardens in the Protestant religion, and received a Protestant education. They grew up, fully impressed with the idea that the country which gave them birth was a barbarous country; the parents to whom they owed their lives were idolaters; and their fellow-countrymen a set of villains, only fitted to become, and forever remain, paupers and slaves.