For the turbulence of the Irish people, the general indolence of the labourers and artisans, and the misery that exists, the writer of the above sketch has causes worthy of the acuteness of Sir James Graham, or some other patent political economist of the aristocracy of England. We need not comment. We have only made the above quotation to show to what a condition Ireland has been reduced, according to the admissions of an aristocratic organ of England, leaving the reader acquainted with the history of English legislation in regard to the unhappy island to make the most natural inferences.
The ecclesiastical system of Ireland has long been denounced as an injury and an insult. As an insult it has no parallel in history. Oppression and robbery in matters connected with religion have been unhappily frequent; but in all other cases the oppressed and robbed have been the minority. That one-tenth of the population of a great country should appropriate to themselves the endowment originally provided for all their countrymen; that, without even condescending to inquire whether there were or were not a congregation of their own persuasion to profit by them, they should seize the revenues of every benefice, should divert them from their previous application, and should hand them over to an incumbent of their own, to be wasted as a sinecure if they were not wanted for the performance of a duty—this is a treatment of which the contumely stings more sharply even than the injustice, enormous as that is. [99]
The tax of a tithe for the support of a church in which they have no faith is a grievance of which Irish Catholics, who compose nine-tenths of the population of Ireland, complain with the greatest reason. Of what benefit to them is a church which they despise? The grand reason for the existence of an established church fails under such circumstances. The episcopal institutions can communicate no religious instruction, because the creed which they sustain is treated with contempt. But where is the use of argument in regard to this point. The Established Church affords many luxurious places for the scions of the aristocracy, and there lies the chief purpose of its existence. The oppressive taxation of Catholics to support a Protestant church will cease with the aristocracy.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MENIAL SLAVES OF GREAT BRITAIN.
The spirit of British institutions is nowhere more plainly and offensively manifested than in the treatment which domestic servants receive. The haughty bearing, the constant display of supreme contempt, and the frequency of downright cruelty on the part of the master or mistress, and the complete abasement and submission of the servant, have been repeatedly subjects of observation, and show clearly that the days of "lord and thrall" are vividly remembered in Great Britain. In Miss Martineau's "Society in America," we find some observations to the point. She says—
"However fascinating to Americans may be the luxury, conversational freedom, and high intellectual cultivation of English society, they cannot fail to be disgusted with the aristocratic insolence which is the vice of the whole. The puerile and barbaric spirit of contempt is scarcely known in America; the English insolence of class to class, of individuals toward each other, is not even conceived of, except in the one highly disgraceful instance of the treatment of people of colour. Nothing in American civilization struck me so forcibly and so pleasurably as the invariable respect paid to man, as man. Nothing since my return to England has given me so much pain as the contrast there. Perhaps no Englishman can become fully aware, without going to America, of the atmosphere of insolence in which he dwells; of the taint of contempt which infects all the intercourses of his world. He cannot imagine how all he can say that is truest and best about the treatment of people of colour in America, is neutralized on the spot by its being understood how the same contempt is spread over the whole of society here, which is there concentrated upon the blacks."
It has been remarked that those who are most submissive as serfs are the most arrogant and tyrannical as lords. In Great Britain, from dukes down to workhouse officials, the truth of this remark is obvious. Each class treats its superior with abject deference, and its inferior with overbearing insolence. The corollary of our quotation from Miss Martineau is that the treatment masters give to their negro slaves in America, in their common intercourse, is what masters give to their servants in Great Britain. In the free States of America a master may command his servant, and if obedience is refused he may deduct from his wages or give him a discharge, but the laws prevent all violence; the man is never forgotten in the servant. Another state of affairs is to be found in Great Britain. The laws are inadequate in their construction and too costly in their administration to protect the poor servant. Should he refuse obedience, or irritate his master in any way, his punishment is just as likely to be kicks and blows as a discharge or a reduction of wages. Englishmen have frequently complained, while doing business in the United States, because they were prevented from striking refractory persons in their employ. In attempting to act out their tyrannical ideas, such employers have been severely chastised by their free, republican servants.