A Short History of England, Ireland and Scotland

by Mary Platt Parmele

Here are a few of the provisions of the famous, or infamous, code: No Papist could acquire or dispose of property; nor could he own a horse of the value of more than £5; and any Protestant offering that sum for a horse he must accept it. He might not practise any learned profession, nor teach a school, nor send his children to school at home or abroad. Every barrister, clerk, and attorney must take a solemn oath not for any purpose to employ persons belonging to that religious faith. The discovery of any weapon rendered its Catholic owner liable to fines, whipping, the pillory, and imprisonment. He could not inherit, or even receive property as a gift from Protestants. The oldest son of a Catholic, by embracing the Protestant faith, became the heir-at-law to the whole estate of his father, who was reduced to the position of life-tenant; and any child by the same Act might be taken away from its father and a portion of his property assigned to it; while it was the privilege of the wife who apostatized, to be freed from her husband, and to have assigned to her a proportion of his property.

The not unnatural result of these last-named enactments was that many were driven to feigned conversions in order to keep their families from starvation. It is said that when old Lady Thomond was reproached for having bartered her soul by professing the Protestant faith, her quick retort was, "Is it not better that one old woman should burn, than that all of the Thomonds should be beggars?"

More details are unnecessary after saying that by a decision of Lord Chancellor Bowes and Chief-Justice Robinson it was declared that "the law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic," while the English Bishop at Meath declared from his pulpit, "We are not bound to keep faith with papists." And it must be remembered that the people placed under this monstrous system of wrong and degradation were not a handful, whom the welfare of a community required should be dealt with severely, they were a large majority of the population, a nation dwelling in their own country, where, by a Parliament supposed to be their own, they were governed by a minority of aliens.

In this time of "Protestant ascendancy," as it is called, there were, of course, only Protestants in the Parliament. They had all the authority, they alone were competent to vote; they were the privileged and upper class; an Irish papist, whatever his rank, being the social inferior of his Protestant neighbor. But let it not be supposed that the Irish Protestants were on that account happy! They had been planted in that land as a breakwater against the native Irish flood, but for all that, England had no idea of permitting them to build up a dangerous prosperity in Ireland. The theory governing English statesmanship was that that country must be kept helpless; and to that end it must be kept poor. During the reign of Charles II. the importing of Irish cattle into England had been forbidden. The effects of this prohibition, so ruinous at first, were at last offset by the discovery that sheep might be made a greater source of profit at home, than when shipped to England. There was an increasing demand in Europe for Irish wool, and skilled manufacturers of woollen goods from abroad had come and started factories, thus giving employment to thousands of people.

When it was realized in England that a profitable Irish industry had actually been established, there was a panic. The traders demanded legislative protection from Irish competition, which came in this form. In 1699 an Act was passed prohibiting the export of Irish woollen goods, not alone to England, but to all other countries. The factories were closed. The manufacturers left the country, never to return, and a whole population was thrown out of employment. A tide of emigration then commenced which has never ceased; such as could, fleeing from the inevitable famine which in a land always so perilously near starvation must surely come.

There was no market now for the wool which the factories would have consumed. At home it brought 5d. a pound, but in France a half crown! The long, deeply indented coast-line was well adapted for smuggling. French vessels were hovering about, waiting an opportunity to get it; the people were hungry, and might be hungrier, for there was a famine in the land! Is it strange that they were converted into law-breakers, and that wool was packed in caves all along the coast; and that a vast contraband trade carried on by stealth, took the place of a legitimate one which was made impossible?

So it became apparent that any efforts to establish profitable enterprises in Ireland would be put down with a strong hand. The colonists who had been placed there by England felt bitterly at finding themselves thus involved in the pre-determined ruin of the country with which they had identified their own fortunes. Their love of the parent-country waned, some even turning to and adopting the persecuted creed. The voice of the native people, utterly stifled, was never heard in Parliament, and struggles which occurred there were between Protestants and Protestants; between those who did, and those who did not, uphold the policy of the Government. Such was the condition which remained practically unchanged until the middle of the eighteenth century; a small discontented upper class, chiefly aliens; below them the peasantry, the mass of the people, whose benumbed faculties and empty minds had two passions to stir their murky depths—love for their religion, and hatred of England.

The first voice raised in support of the constitutional rights of Ireland was that of William Molyneux, an Irish gentleman and scholar, a philosopher, and the intimate friend of Locke. In the latter part of the seventeenth century he issued a pamphlet which in the gentlest terms called attention to the fact that the laws and liberties of England which had been granted to Ireland five hundred years before had been invaded, in that the rights of their Parliament, a body which should be sacred and inviolable everywhere, had been abolished. Nothing could have been milder than this presentation of a well-known fact; but it raised a furious storm. The constitutional rights of Ireland! Was the man mad? The book was denounced in Parliament as libellous and seditious, and was destroyed by the common hangman. Then Dean Swift, half-Irishman and more than half-Englishman, an ardent High-Churchman and a vehement anti-papist, published a satirical pamphlet called "A Modest Proposal," in which he suggests that the children of the Irish peasants should be reared for food, and the choicest ones reserved for the landlords, who having already devoured the substance of the fathers, had the best right to feast upon their children. This was made the more pungent because it came from a man who so far from being an Irish patriot, was an English Tory. He cared little for Ireland or its people, but he hated tyranny and injustice; and was stirred to a fierce wrath at what he himself witnessed while Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Then it was that with tremendous scorn he hurled those shafts of biting wit and satire, which struck deeper than the cogent reasoning of the gentle and philosophic Molyneux.

So the spell of silence was broken, and there began to form a small patriotic party in Parliament, which in 1760 was led by Henry Flood, from Kilkenny. A day was dawning after the long night; and when in 1775 Henry Grattan's more powerful personality was joined with Flood's, then that brief day had reached its highest noon. Next to that of Edmund Burke, Grattan's is the greatest name on the roll of native-born Irishmen. Happy was that country in having such an advocate and guide at the critical period when the American colonies were throwing off the yoke of English tyranny. The wrongs suffered by the English colonies in America were trifling compared with those endured by that other English colony in Ireland. If ever there was a time to press upon England the necessity for loosening their shackles it was now, when their battle was being fought across the sea. Every argument in support of the independence of America applied with equal force to the legislative independence of Ireland. It was Grattan who at this momentous time guided the course of events. A Protestant, yet possessing the entire confidence of the Catholics; an uncompromising patriot, yet commanding the respect and admiration of the English Government; inflexibly opposed to Catholic exclusion and the ascendancy of a Protestant minority, and as inflexibly opposed to any act of violence, he was determined to obtain redress—but to obtain it only by means of the strictest constitutional methods. It was upon the constitutionality of their claims that he threw all the energy of the movement growing out of the American war. His personal sympathies were with the struggling colonists; yet he voted for men and money to sustain the English cause. Equal rights bestowed upon Catholics, who were in large majority, would transfer to them the power; yet he, a Protestant, passionately advocated a removal of the disabilities of four-fifths of the people. It was in this spirit of wise moderation and even-handed justice that Grattan took the tangled web of the Irish cause out of the hands of the more impetuous Flood; his eloquence and his moving appeals keeping two objects steadily in view—the independence of the Irish Parliament, and the removal of the fetters from Irish trade.