Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer

by Charles Sotheran

"Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower,
Even in its tender bud; their influence darts
Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins
Of desolate society. The child,
Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name,
Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts
His baby sword even in a hero's mood.
This infant arm becomes the bloodiest scourge
Of devastated earth: whilst specious names,
Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour,
Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims
Bright reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword
Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood."

In other places he seems to prophetically point out what this generation appears to comprehend—the judiciousness of arbitration—which in the future will be the true panacea for this frightful affliction of humanity.

To the current Irish questions Shelley devoted much of his time, and took up his residence in Dublin, to aid the independence of Ireland, which might, under proper treatment, have been made one of the brightest spots in the British Dominions; but the inhabitants of which, owing to centuries of English misrule and oppression, had, in certain parts, fallen into a condition not much superior to that of those of Central Africa. When we contemplate what Ireland was before the Norman and Saxon had set their feet there, the most prejudiced antagonist of the Celtic race cannot but be astonished at the picture presented to us after their usurpation. When Saxondom was in a state of barbarism, this branch of the Celts was civilized. Aldfred, king of the Northumbrian Saxons, has given us the experiences of a Saxon in Ireland over a thousand years ago. In a poem of his own composing, he tells us that he found "noble, prosperous sages," "learning, wisdom, welcome, and protection," "kings, queens, and royal bards, in every species of poetry well skilled. Happiness, comfort, and pleasure," the people "famed for justice, hospitality, lasting vigor, fame," and "long blooming beauty, hereditary vigor"—and the monarch concludes his really curious account by saying:

"I found in the fair, surfaced Leinster,
From Dublin to Slewmargy,
Long-living men, health, prosperity,
Bravery, hardihood and traffic.

I found from Ara to Gle,
In the rich country of Ossory,
Sweet fruit, strict jurisdiction,
Men of truth, chess-playing.

I found in the great fortress of Meath,
Valor, hospitality, and truth,
Bravery, purity, and mirth—
The protection of all Ireland.

I found the aged of strict morals,
The historians recording truth—
Each good, each benefit that I have sung,
In Ireland I have seen."

Such is the statement of King Aldfred, and the Venerable Bede informs us that in Ireland, Saxons and other foreigners were "hospitably received, entertained and educated, furnished with books," etc., all gratuitously.

Up to the middle of the sixteenth century, I find, after careful study in the Leabhar-Gabhala, the Annals of the Four Masters, of Clonmacnoise, of Loch Cé, and other historical records, the same continued apparent prosperity, but after the English took possession of the larger portion of the country, only the records of anarchy, despotism, and misery. Before the Reformation, or so long as the English settlers remained within the pale, Ireland had been as happy as Ultramontanism would allow, but from the accession of Elizabeth and the consequent attempted enforcement of a new theology, against the wishes of the people, a fearful succession of despotism is revealed. To force Protestantism on the Irish, Catholicism was put down by the most stringent laws—the torture chamber never empty, the scaffold rarely free from executions, the seaports closed, and manufactures forbidden to be exported; "black laws" of a most iniquitous character, exceeding in ingenuity the devices of Tilly or Torquemada, placed on the statute book. The punishment for being a recusant Catholic, or Papist, was death, and it is a known fact that one Protestant commander, Sir William Cole, of Fermanagh, made his soldiers massacre in a short period "seven thousand of the vulgar sort," as Borlase informs us. Elsewhere the English behaved in the same manner, and on the authority of Bishop Moran it is asserted that the Puritans of the North shot down Catholics as wild beasts, and made it their business "to imbrue their swords in the hearts' blood of the male children." Mr. and Mrs. S.C. Hall, in their valuable work on Ireland, state that the possessors of the whole province of Ulster were driven out under pain of mortal punishment from their homes and lands, without roof over their heads, to be pent up in the most barren portion of Connaught, where to pass a certain boundary line was instant death without trial, and where it was commonly said, "There is not wood enough to hang a man, water enough to drown him, nor earth enough to bury him." One hundred thousand Catholics were sold as slaves to the West Indian and North American planters by the public authority of the Cromwellian government. Such was the way these Christians showed their love for their fellow Christians, and can it be wondered that ever since than there has been one continual succession of uprisings in that most unhappy country? As the sinew of Ireland's people in this country were driven by necessity, fleeing from the terrors of starvation and insufficient existence at home, so were the best of the race in the two previous centuries necessitated to fly to the European continent, where we find them enrolled, for instance, in the service of the King of France, and having revenge on their oppressors on the field of Fontenoy. Elsewhere in every country of Europe do we discover them or their descendants in the front ranks, and at the helm of affairs—in Spain, O'Donnell and Prim; in France, Mac Mahon and Lally Tollendal; in Austria, O'Taafe and Maguire.