“Whoever will examine these episodes with impartiality may easily convince himself that their connection with religion has, in most cases, been superficial. Religious cries have been sometimes raised, religious enthusiasm has been often appealed to in the agony of the struggle; but the real causes have been conflicts of races and classes, the struggle of a nationality against annihilation, the invasion of property in land, or the pressure of extreme poverty. Amongst the Catholics, at least, religious intolerance has not been a prevailing vice, and those who have studied closely the history and character of the Irish people can hardly fail to be struck with the deep respect for sincere religion in every form which they have commonly evinced.... In spite of the fearful calamities that followed the Reformation, it is a memorable fact that not a single Protestant suffered for his religion in Ireland during all the period of the Marian persecution in England. The treatment of Bedell during the outbreak of 1641, and the Act establishing liberty of conscience passed by the Irish Parliament of 1689 in the full flush of the brief Catholic ascendency under James II., exhibit very remarkably this aspect of the Irish character.”
Referring to that Catholic Parliament of Ireland, he says (Vol. I., p. 117):
“The members of the House of Commons were almost all new men, completely inexperienced in public business, and animated by the resentment of bitter wrongs. Many of them were sons of some of the 3,000 proprietors who, without trial and without compensation, had been deprived by the Act of Settlement of the estates of their ancestors. To all of them the confiscations of Ulster, the fraud of Strafford, the long train of calamities were recent and vivid events. Old men were still living who might have remembered them all, and there was probably scarcely a man in the Irish Parliament of 1689 who had not been deeply injured by them in his fortunes or his family. It will hardly appear surprising to candid men that a Parliament so constituted, and called [pg 435] together amidst the excitement of a civil war, should have displayed much violence, much disregard for vested interests. Its measures, indeed, were not all criminal. By one Act, which was far in advance of the age, it established perfect religious liberty in Ireland, &c.”
From that time till our own the Catholics of Ireland have had little opportunity of showing whether they were tolerant or otherwise. During the long and dreary meantime the problem before them was not what sort of civil life they should live, but whether or how they could manage to live at all.
So late as 1759, Lord Chancellor Bowes, in giving judgment in a famous trial in Dublin, declared that “The law did not suppose a papist to exist in Ireland.” I have no desire to recall the story of how toleration fared in Ireland down to recent times. It is not necessary, and it is a disagreeable recollection. He would be very bold or very credulous who would think of doubting or denying what that history has been. I take up “Thom's Almanac” of half a century ago, and I find that so late as that time the public offices were occupied almost exclusively by non-Catholics, from the Lord-Lieutenancy down to the Clerkship of Petty Sessions; and I think that it was so down to the office of the rural process-server. How did it come to pass that Catholics were kept outside, and that non-Catholics got within? Surely not that Catholics willingly yielded all public positions to their neighbours! The arrangement was therefore made by the other side. And what was the reason of that monopoly? Surely not that no Catholic was capable of any civil position except that of paying rates and taxes to the Crown and rent to the landlord. The exclusion was clearly the political penalty which Catholicism had to pay for its principles; the monopoly was the political premium which was awarded to those of the other side.
The Catholics of Ireland have been gradually working their way towards civil equality. But every step has been disputed. Every claim for civil equality made by those who formed the vast majority of the population and who bore the burden of civil duties was met with a charge of intolerance, and with a protest against intruding religion into the affairs of civil life. That is to say, those who had already secured for themselves political and social privileges through religious exclusiveness raised the cry of religious exclusiveness against the vast majority of the population for claiming their just share of civil rights as they bore their share of civil duties. Catholics had either to remain resigned to their condition, or to protest against their faith being made a bar between them and civil justice. In doing so they have not sought to intrude religion into purely civil affairs; they rather have sought to extrude religious intolerance which, having taken up its abode, slammed the door in their face. Thus when Catholics claimed their civil rights it was called religious exclusiveness; when their neighbours were privileged by religious exclusiveness it was called civil rights.
(II) Catholic Tolerance in Practice.
Just a century ago Wm. Parnell, an Irish Protestant who knew Irish Catholics and their history well, wrote that “The Irish Roman Catholics are the only sect that ever resumed power without exercising vengeance.” Let us see if he was a true prophet as well as a true historian. When he wrote his “Historical Apology of the Irish Catholics” they were helpless, and almost hopeless. During the past eighty years they have been gradually regaining instalments of their [pg 437] civil rights. Their numerical strength could, in nearly every corner of the country, use those rights which they already have as an instrument wherewith to avenge the past. Have they, in fact, used their power thus?
For the sake of saving space I pass over Government and other such nominations. A better test of tolerance and intolerance is to be found in the statistics of public appointments to responsible positions which are elective. We get in that way a better key to the popular feeling.