—great and small alike, from Englishmen, from Scotchmen, and from Irishmen, to Americans, to Frenchmen, to Russians, to Poles, to Prussians, and to Germans. Sir, I come now to the reformed House of Commons; and as one who was a party to that great measure, I cannot but feel a deep interest in its success, and more especially in that portion of it which extended the franchise to the largest and the most respectable body in the kingdom—I mean the landed tenantry of England; and deeply should I regret should any large proportion of those members who have been sent to Parliament to represent them in this House, prove to be the men to bring lasting dishonour upon themselves, their constituencies, and this House, by an act of tergiversation so gross as to be altogether unprecedented in the annals of any reformed or unreformed House of Commons. Sir, lastly, I come to the “proud aristocracy.” We are a proud aristocracy, but if we are proud, it is that we are proud in the chastity of our honour. If we assisted in ‘41 in turning the Whigs out of office, because we did not consider a fixed duty of eight shillings a quarter on foreign corn a sufficient protection, it was with honesty of purpose and in single-mindedness we did so; and as we were not before the fact, we will not be accomplices after the fact in the fraud by which the Whig ministers were expelled from power. If we are a proud aristocracy, we are proud of our honour, inasmuch as we never have been guilty, and never can be guilty, of double-dealing with the farmers of England—of swindling our opponents, deceiving our friends, or betraying our constituents.’
The division was called. The West-India interest, notwithstanding the amendment was moved by the member for Bristol, deserted the Protectionists. Deaf to the appeals, and the remonstrances, and the warnings of Lord George, one of their leading members replied, with a smile of triumphant content, that ‘they had made a satisfactory arrangement for themselves.’ How satisfactory did the West-Indians find it four months subsequently? All the shipping interest deserted the land. They were for everything free, except navigation; there was no danger of that being interfered with; ‘it rested on quite distinct grounds—national grounds.’ They were warned, but they smiled in derisive self-complacency. Lord George Bentinck lived to have the West-India interest and the shipping interest on their knees to him, to defend their perilled or to restore their ruined fortunes; and with characteristic generosity and proud consistency, he undertook the task, and sacrificed his life in the attempt.
Notwithstanding these terrible defalcations, when the numbers were announced, at nearly four o’clock in the morning, the majority had not reached those three magical figures supposed necessary, under the circumstances, to success. In a house of five hundred and eighty-one members present, the amendment of the Protectionists was defeated only by ninety-seven; and two hundred and forty-two gentlemen, in spite of desertion, difficulty, and defeat, still maintained the ‘chastity of their honour.’
CHAPTER III.
The Irish Question
IN THE meantime, besides the prolonged and unforeseen resistance of the Protectionists, there were other and unexpected causes at work which equally, or perhaps even more powerfully tended to the fulfilment of the scheme of delay, which Lord George Bentinck had recommended his friends to adopt and encourage.
In the latter months of the year 1845, there broke out in some of the counties of Ireland one of those series of outrages which have hitherto periodically occurred in districts of that country. Assassination and crimes of violence were rife: men on the queen’s highway were shot from behind hedges, or suddenly torn from their horses and beaten to death with clubs; houses were visited in the night by bodies of men, masked and armed—their owners dragged from their beds, and, in the presence of their wives and children, maimed and mutilated; the administration of unlawful oaths, with circumstances of terror, indicated the existence of secret confederations, whose fell intents, profusely and ostentatiously announced by threatening letters, were frequently and savagely perpetrated.
These barbarous distempers had their origin in the tenure of land in Ireland, and in the modes of its occupation. A combination of causes, political, social, and economical, had for more than a century unduly stimulated the population of a country which had no considerable resources except in the soil. That soil had become divided into minute allotments, held by a pauper tenantry, at exorbitant rents, of a class of middlemen, themselves necessitous, and who were mere traders in land. A fierce competition raged amid the squalid multitude for these strips of earth which were their sole means of existence. To regulate this fatal rivalry, and restrain this emulation of despair, the peasantry, enrolled in secret societies, found refuge in an inexorable code. He who supplanted another in the occupation of the soil was doomed by an occult tribunal, from which there was no appeal, to a terrible retribution. His house was visited in the night by whitefeet and ribbonmen—his doom was communicated to him, by the post, in letters, signed by Terry Alt, or Molly M’Guire, or he was suddenly shot, like a dog, by the orders of Captain Rock. Yet even these violent inflictions rather punished than prevented the conduct against which they were directed. The Irish peasant had to choose between starving and assassination. If, in deference to an anonymous mandate, he relinquished his holding, he and those who depended on him were outcasts and wanderers; if he retained or accepted it, his life might be the forfeit, but subsistence was secured; and in poor and lawless countries, the means of living are more valued than life. Those who have treated of the agrarian crimes of Ireland have remarked, that the facility with which these outrages have been committed has only been equalled by the difficulty of punishing them. A murder, perpetrated at noonday, in the sight of many persons, cannot be proved in a court of justice. The spectators are never witnesses; and it has been inferred from this, that the outrage is national, and that the heart of the populace is with the criminal. But though a chief landlord, or a stipendiary magistrate, may occasionally be sacrificed, the great majority of victims are furnished by the humblest class. Not sympathy, but terror, seals the lip and clouds the eye of the bystander. And this is proved by the fact that while those who have suffered have almost always publicly declared that they were unable to recognize their assailants, and believed them to be strangers, they have frequently, in confidence, furnished the police with the names of the guilty.
Thus, there is this remarkable characteristic of the agrarian anarchy of Ireland which marks it out from all similar conditions of other countries: it is a war of the poor against the poor.