LORD NAAS (AFTERWARDS EARL OF MAYO).
The Session of 1867 was not prolific in Irish legislation. Ministers and private members once more made futile attempts to unravel the tangled web of the Land Tenure question. One measure, indeed, of a vigorous and decided character, was rapidly passed, namely, the Act for continuing for three months the suspension of the Habeas Corpus in Ireland. But as to land tenure, Lord Naas, on behalf of the Government, introduced a Bill very early in the Session to promote the improvement of land by tenants. The Bill was founded on the principle of the Lands Improvement Act. There were several kinds of improvements, for the making of which money was advanced under the Lands Improvement Act. These were, thorough draining, the reclamation of waste lands, the removal of old and useless fences, the making of farm roads, and the erection of farmhouses, dwellings, and other buildings. On the Second Reading of Lord Naas’ Bill being moved, a considerable diversity of opinion was exhibited with respect to the tendency and operation of the measure. Several amendments were proposed and discussed at length, and the debate was adjourned. Owing, partly to the pressure occasioned by the Reform debates, and other questions, and partly to a general impression of the futility of attempting to carry a measure of this description, the Bill was dropped.
Another effort was made, with similar results, by the Marquis of Clanricarde, who laid on the table of the House of Lords a Bill for giving facilities for voluntary contracts between landlords and tenants in Ireland. The Bill did not obtain a second reading. A third attempt to deal with the difficulty was made by Sir Colman O’Loghlan, who obtained leave to bring in a Bill, its main object being to encourage the granting of leases, and to discourage tenancies at will. After much controversy this measure was also dropped, and the Irish people read the old moral from these debates, that they must look elsewhere than to Parliament for the redress of their grievances. An effort was now made to raise the Irish Church Question. Sir John Gray, on the 7th of May, moved that the House of Commons on a future day resolve itself into committee to consider the temporalities and privileges of the Established Church in Ireland. This was a motion that was not unattractive to the Whigs, and so Colonel Greville seconded it as a Protestant who, living in Ireland, felt it his duty to protest in the strongest manner against the continuance of an unjust establishment. Sir Frederick Heygate moved the previous question, and then Mr. Gladstone intervened, giving a hint of his coming Irish policy. He found a difficulty in supporting the Resolution, not because he questioned the soundness of it, but because it was an abstract Resolution, and the House ought not to pass it without having a plan for giving effect to it. We might, he contended, support a religious establishment to maintain truth, but we did not support the Irish Protestant establishment for that purpose only, seeing that we also supported the Catholic College of Maynooth. We might maintain an established church because its doctrines were those of the bulk of the people. But that was notoriously not the case in Ireland. We might keep up an established church to supply the poorest class of the community with free and cheap religious teaching. But the Protestant Church in Ireland was the church of the rich. He trusted the time was not far distant when Parliament would take the question of the Irish Church up; and when it did he hoped that “a result would be arrived at which would be a blessing to all.” This speech, coming from the author of the celebrated work in defence of established churches, was listened to with consternation by the Tories. They began to regret that they had “unmuzzled” Mr. Gladstone, to use Palmerston’s phrase, by turning him out of Oxford. The matter was, however, shelved for a time, the “previous question” being carried by a majority of 195 to 183.
That the attack was preconcerted by the Liberal leaders was indicated by the fact that in the House of Lords Earl Russell, on the 24th of June, moved an address to the Queen, praying her to order, by Royal Commission, or otherwise, full information to be procured as to the revenues of the Established Church in Ireland, with a view to their more equitable application for the benefit of the Irish people. Lord Russell hinted that he favoured the application to Ireland of the voluntary principle, and if that were done he would appropriate the property of the Church to educational purposes. Lord Cairns, however, declared that the destruction of the Established Church, whose function it was to teach Christian truth, would be fatal to the landed interest, and to the commerce of Ireland with England. But a motion for an address praying simply for a Royal Commission was agreed to, and the Commission was issued by the Crown in the ensuing autumn. Meantime, as the Times wrote in 1865, Ireland was “being cleared quietly for the interests and luxury of humanity.” And yet not too quietly. The progress of Fenianism, especially in the British Army, was wonderfully rapid. Hundreds of agitators were carrying on their secret propaganda. Scores of Irish-American officers were pouring into Ireland, telling the people that General Sheridan and other hot-headed soldiers of their race in the United States were eager to interfere on their behalf. Early in 1867 sporadic risings of small, half-armed mobs were put down with ease, and in the trials which followed the capital sentence passed on those found guilty was commuted to one of penal servitude, the abstinence of the rebels from wanton outrage giving the Queen a reasonable ground for exercising her prerogative of mercy. But the Fenian organisation had grown to unexpected strength in England, and within a few days after Ministers announced the Bill suspending Habeas Corpus in Ireland (11th of February) a band of men, headed by Irish-American officers, would have surprised and seized the arsenal of Chester Castle, with its 20,000 stand of arms, had not their design been divulged by treachery. In autumn an event occurred which has to this day been the matter of hot controversy between Irishmen and Englishmen. The leadership of the Fenian conspiracy had now passed into the hands of a Colonel Kelly, who succeeded Mr. Stephens. He was returning from a meeting at Manchester with his friend Captain Deasy, and they were both arrested by the police on suspicion of loitering for purposes of burglary. They gave false names, but it was soon discovered who they were. The Fenians of Manchester resolved to rescue them, and on the 18th of September the prison van in which Kelly and Deasy were being conveyed to Salford was attacked by a body of thirty armed men. The horses were shot. The escort ran away, and the Fenians then ordered Police Sergeant Brett, who was on duty inside the van to unlock the door. He refused, and a pistol was fired at the lock, in order to break it. Unfortunately, the bullet struck Brett, who died from the wound. Kelly and Deasy made their escape, and were heard of no more. But in the meantime a crowd had gathered, and had nearly stoned to death William Philip Allen, one of the rescuing party, several of whom, including men called Larkin, Maguire, O’Brien (alias Gould), and Condon (alias Shore), were captured and tried for the murder of Sergeant Brett. They were all sentenced to be hanged, though the evidence against them was somewhat faulty. One of the prisoners (Maguire) was undoubtedly arrested by mistake, and the newspaper reporters who were present at his trial petitioned for his release. On further investigation it was found that the reporters were right, and the man was set free. But three of the prisoners were executed on the 23rd of November, although they protested they had not the remotest idea of hurting Sergeant Brett. “Condon,” writes Mr. T. P. O’Connor, M.P., “in speaking, used a phrase that has become historic: ‘I have nothing,’ he said, in concluding his speech, ‘to regret or to take back. I can only say, ‘God save Ireland.’ His companions advanced to the front of the dock, and, raising their hands, repeated the cry, ‘God save Ireland’”[262]—a phrase that became the shibboleth or watchword of the Irish Nationalist Party. Condon was reprieved because he was an American citizen. Numbers of eminent Englishmen—headed by Mr. John Bright, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Swinburne—endeavoured to get the others reprieved also, but in vain. Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien were hanged on the 23rd of November, and their execution produced a profound impression on the Irish race all over the world. In the towns in Ireland great and solemn funeral processions marched through the streets. Mr. T. D. Sullivan wrote the poem “God save Ireland,” which displaced the National Anthem at Irish political gatherings. “To an Irishman,” writes Mr. O’Connor, “then a youth, living in the country house of his fathers, and deeply immersed in the small concerns of a squire’s daily life, the execution of the Manchester martyrs was a new birth of political convictions. To him, brooding from his early days over the history of his country, this catastrophe came to crystallise impressions into conviction, and to pave the way from dreams to action. It was the execution of Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien that gave Mr. Parnell to the service of Ireland.”[263] But another event happened which made it clear that the Fenian conspiracy was still formidable. One of its leaders, an Irish-American officer named Burke, had been captured and cast into Clerkenwell gaol, and his friends resolved to rescue him. Their agents, on the 13th of December, placed a barrel of gunpowder opposite the exercising ground of the gaol, where General Burke was supposed to be walking at the time. They then blew down the wall. Fortunately for himself, the Government had learned that a rescue was to be attempted, and the General had accordingly been removed to another part of the prison, otherwise he would have been killed. The victims were poor people who lived in the houses opposite the gaol, of whom twelve were killed and one hundred and twenty shockingly injured. An ignorant Fenian named Barrett was convicted of having been implicated in this clumsy plot, and was tried and executed in front of Newgate. This outrage ruined the Fenian organisation, not only in England but in Ireland. Many honest Irishmen, who in a fit of patriotic enthusiasm had joined its ranks, withdrew from a body whose deep and dark designs they saw were apt to be carried out with the stupid brutality that marked the Clerkenwell outrage.
THE QUEEN LAYING THE FOUNDATION STONE OF THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL. (See p. 292.)
But the Fenians were not the only outragemongers who frightened the comfortable classes out of their senses in 1867. The skilled artisans in many cases had employed their trade organisations to coerce by violence masters who refused to yield to the demands of their workmen, and workmen who refused to obey the orders of their Unions. Early in the year a Commission had been appointed to consider the legal position of the Unions, which was most unsatisfactory, and a separate Commission, appointed to investigate outrages which had been perpetrated at Sheffield, made some astounding revelations. They reported that the officials of the Sawgrinders’ Union had hired assassins to maim, murder, or torture people who thwarted the policy of the Union.[264] They reported that similar barbarities were practised by the officials of the Brickmakers’ and Bricklayers’ Unions in Manchester. The country rang with denunciations of the working classes, and “strikes,” such as that of the London tailors, were carried on with unparalleled acrimony. War between “the two nations,” to use Mr. Disraeli’s phrase in “Sybil,” was imminent. It is curious to observe how seldom public writers and speakers on the conflict between Labour and Capital which then raged, took the trouble to ascertain the precise position of the artisans in the struggle. The truth, however, had been told with uncompromising honesty by the Committee of the House of Commons, who in 1821 had reported that outlawry made Trades Unionists lawless. In that year it was true an Act had been passed to legalise workmen’s combinations for improving wages and reducing the hours of labour. But then this Act gave the preference to the word of the master in any dispute between him and his servant, and pedantic judges had made it a dead letter, by ruling that “all combinations in restraint of trade” were criminal. Nor had they stopped here. They roused the wrath of the working classes to white heat in 1867, by ruling in the case of Hornby v. Close that Trades Unions could not even hold property or funds for benevolent purposes. In fact, at that period, the position of the English working man was one of almost servile degradation, and under an extended franchise such a state of things could not last long. On the 5th of March a Conference of Trades Unionists was held in St. Martin’s Hall, London, to protest against the decision in Hornby v. Close, a meeting which was the germ of the great Trades Union Congress, that ultimately became a mighty power in the industrial world.[265]
Early in the year the Queen received with pleasure the intimation that Prince Arthur had passed his military examination in a manner that did him great credit. “I am delighted,” writes the Princess Louis to the Queen on the 13th of January,[266] “to hear of dear Arthur having passed so good an examination. How proud you must be of him! And the good Major,[267] who has spared no pains, I know—how pleased he must be! Arthur has a uniform now, I suppose.” From another passage in a letter of the Princess’s, one gathers that the cloud of melancholy which overhung the Queen’s widowed life was beginning to disappear. “I think,” says the Princess, replying to one of the Queen’s letters on the subject, “I can understand what you must feel. I know well what those first three years were—what fearful sufferings, tearing and uprooting those feelings which had been centred on beloved papa’s existence! It is indeed as you say ‘a mercy’ that after the long storm a lull and calm ensues, though the violent pain which is but the reverse of the violent love seems only to die out with it, and that is likewise better. Yet, beloved mamma, could it be otherwise? There would be no justice or mercy, were the first stage of sorrow to be the perpetual one.” Still, the advancing year brought its own cares to the Royal Family. A Princess was born to the Prince and Princess of Wales on the 20th of February, and though the official announcements stated that both mother and child were doing well, this was by no means the case. The recovery of the Princess was not satisfactory, and the physicians at last had to admit that she was suffering from a peculiarly obstinate rheumatic attack, that sadly undermined her health and strength. The Queen had, as usual, confided her anxieties to her daughter at Darmstadt, who in reply wrote as follows:—“The knowledge of dear sweet Alix’s[268] state makes me too sad. It is hard for them both, and the nursing must be very fatiguing for Mrs. Clarke. I am so distressed about darling Alix that I really have no peace. It may and probably will last long, which is so dreadful.” On the 14th of April the accouchement of the Princess Christian took place, when she was safely delivered of a little Prince, the Queen being in close attendance by her bedside all day.