and we could look back upon the great task of earth, and say, ‘It is finished!’
“A life of Religion, in which the delight in God’s presence, the reverence for His moral attributes, the desire to obey His Will, and the consciousness of His everlasting love, had grown continually clearer and stronger, and of which Prayer, deepest and intensest, had been the very heart and nucleus, till we had found God drawing ever nearer to us as we drew near to him, and vouchsafing to us a communion the bliss of which no human speech may ever tell; the dawning of that day of adoration which shall grow brighter and brighter still while all the clusters of the suns fade out and die.
“And turning from our own destiny, from the endless career opened to our Benevolence, our Personal Virtue, and our Piety, we take in a yet broader view, and behold the whole universe of God mapped out in one stupendous Plan of Love. In the abyss of the past eternity we see the Creator for ever designing and for ever accomplishing the supremest end at which infinite Justice and Goodness could aim, and absolute Wisdom and Power bring to pass. For this end, for the Virtue of all finite Intelligences, we behold Him building up millions of starry abodes and peopling them with immortal spirits clothed in the garbs of flesh, and endowed with that moral freedom whose bestowal was the highest boon of Omnipotence. As ages of millenniums roll away, we see a double progress working through all the realms of space; a progress of each race and of each individual. Slowly and securely, though with many an apparent retrogression, does each world-family become better, wiser, nobler, happier. Slowly and securely, though with many a grievous backsliding, each living soul grows up to Virtue. Nor pauses that awful march for a moment, even in the death of the being or the cataclysm of the world. Over all Death and Change reigns that Almighty changeless will which has decreed the holiness and happiness of every spirit He hath made. Through the gates of the grave, and on the ruins of worlds, shall those spirits climb, higher and yet higher through the infinite ages, nearer and yet nearer to Goodness and to God.”
CHAPTER
VI.
IRELAND IN THE FORTIES.
THE PEASANTRY.
The prominence which Irish grievances have taken of late years in English politics has caused me often to review with fresh eyes the state of the country as it existed in my childhood and youth, when, of course, both the good and evil of it appeared to me to be part of the order of nature itself.
I will first speak of the condition of the working classes, then of the gentry and clergy.
I had considerable opportunities for many years of hearing and seeing all that was going on in our neighbourhood, which was in the district known as “Fingal” (the White Strangers’ land), having been once the territory of the Danes. Fingal extends along the sea-coast between Dublin and Drogheda, and our part lay exactly between Malahide and Rush. My father, and at a later time my eldest brother, were indefatigable as magistrates, Poor law Guardians and landlords, in their efforts to relieve the wants and improve the condition of the people; and it fell on me naturally, as the only active woman of the family, to play the part of Lady Bountiful on a rather large scale. There was my father’s own small village of Donabate in the first place, claiming my attention; and beyond it a larger straggling collection of mud cabins named “Balisk”; the landlord of which, Lord Trimleston, was an absentee, and the village a centre of fever and misery. In Donabate there was never any real distress. In every house there were wage-earners or pensioners enough to keep the wolf from the door. Only when sickness came was there need for extra food, wine, and so on. The wages of a field-labourer were, at that time, about 8s. a week; of course without keep. His diet consisted of oatmeal porridge, wheaten griddle-bread, potatoes and abundance of buttermilk. The potatoes, before the Famine, were delicious tubers. Many of the best kinds disappeared at that time (notably I recall the “Black Bangers”), and the Irish housewife cooked them in a manner which no English or French Cordon Bleu can approach. I remember constantly seeing little girls bringing the mid-day dinners to their fathers, who sat in summer under the trees, and in winter in a comfortable room in our stable-yard, with fire and tables and chairs. The cloth which carried the dinner being removed there appeared a plate of “smiling” potatoes (i.e., with cracked and peeling skins) and in the midst a well of about a sixth of a pound of butter. Along with the plate of potatoes was a big jug of milk, and a hunch of griddle-bread. On this food the men worked in summer from six (or earlier, if mowing was to be done) till breakfast, and from thence till one o’clock. After an hour’s dinner the great bell tolled again, and work went on till 6. In winter there was no cessation of work from 8 a.m. till 5 p.m., when it ended. Of course these long hours of labour in the fields, without the modern interruptions, were immensely valuable on the farm. I do not think I err in saying that my father had thirty per cent. more profitable labour from his men for 8s. a week, than is now to be had from labourers at 16s.; at all events where I live here, in Wales. It is fair to note that beside their wages my father’s men, and also the old women whose daughters (eight in number) worked in the shrubberies and other light work all the year round, were allowed each the grazing of a cow on his pastures, and were able to get coal from the ships he chartered every winter from Whitehaven for 11s. a ton, drawn to the village by his horses. At Christmas an ox was divided among them, and generally also a good quantity of frieze for the coats of the men, and for the capes of the eight “Amazons.”
I cannot say what amount of genuine loyalty really existed among our people at that time. Outwardly, it appeared they were happy and contented, though, in talking to the old people, one never failed to hear lamentations for the “good old times” of the past generations. In those times, as we knew very well, nothing like the care we gave to the wants of the working classes was so much as dreamed of by our forefathers. But they kept open house, where all comers were welcome to eat and drink in the servants’ hall when they came up on any pretext; and this kind of hospitality has ever been a supreme merit in Celtic eyes. Some readers will remember that the famous chieftainess, Grana Uaile, invading Howth in one of her piratical expeditions in the “spacious times of great Elizabeth,” found the gates of the ancient castle of the St. Lawrences, closed, though it was dinner-time! Indignant at this breach of decency, Grana Uaile kidnapped the heir of the lordly house and carried him to her robbers’ fortress in Connaught, whence she only released him in subsequent years on the solemn engagement of the Lords of Howth always to dine with the doors of Howth Castle wide open. I believe it is not more than 50 years, if so much, since this practice was abolished.
I think the only act of “tyranny” with which I was charged when I kept my father’s house, and which provoked violent recalcitration, was when I gave orders that men coming from our mountains to Newbridge on business with “the Master” should be served with largest platefuls of meat and jugs of beer, but should not be left in the servants’ hall en tête-à-tête with whole rounds and sirloins of beef, of which no account could afterwards be obtained!
Of course, the poor labourer in Ireland at that time after the failure of the potatoes, who had no allowances, and had many young children unable to earn anything for themselves, was cruelly tightly placed. I shall copy here a calculation which I took down in a note-book, still in my possession, after sifting enquiries concerning prices at our village shops, in, or about, the year 1845:—