Hugh Brontë gave out his views with a warmth that betrayed animus arising from personal injury. He was therefore declared to be disloyal, and that at a time when there was danger in disloyalty. About the time Hugh Brontë was enunciating these sentiments the rising of the United Irishmen took place, and the pitched battle of Ballynahinch was fought, in 1798. It has always seemed to me strange that he should have passed through those times in peace, for the “Welsh horse” devastated the country far and wide after the battle, and hundreds of innocent people were shot down like dogs. Besides, William, his second son, was a United Irishman, and present at the battle of Ballynahinch. After the battle he was pursued by cavalry, who fired at him repeatedly, but he led them into a bog and escaped.
Hugh Brontë lived in a secluded glen; but the “Welsh horse” visited his house, and after a short parley with his wife, in which neither understood the other, one of the soldiers struck a light into the thatch. Hugh suddenly appeared and spoke to the Welsh soldiers in Irish, which it was supposed they understood, as being akin to their own language, and they joined heartily with him in extinguishing the flames. They joined still more heartily with Hugh in disposing of his stock of whiskey. The inability of Hugh’s neighbors to communicate with the Welsh may account for the fact that a man well known for such advanced and disloyal views passed safely through those troublous times.
Having completed his negative assertions, or paradoxes, Hugh Brontë proceeded to state his theories, or positive conclusions. He laid it down as an axiom that justice must be at the root of all good government, and he declared emphatically what O’Connell and Agent Townsend have since maintained, that the Irish were the most justice-loving people in the world. He also held that unjust laws were the fruitful source of all the turbulence and crime in Ireland.
Justice, he said, was nothing very grand. It meant simply that every man should have his own by legal right. This definition brought him to his tenant-right theory. In illustration he returned to the story of his ancestral home and the wrongs of his ancestors. He maintained that when his forefathers drained the bog and improved the land they were entitled to every ounce of improvement they had made. The landlord had done nothing for the land. He never went near it, and had never spent one farthing upon it, and he should not have been entitled to confiscate to his own profit the additional value given to it by the labor of another.
He further declared that a just and wise legislature should secure to every man, high and low, the fruits of his own labor, and he maintained that such simple, natural justice would produce confidence in Ireland, and that confidence would beget content and industry, and that a contented and industrious people would soon learn to love both king and country, and make Ireland happy and England strong. Just laws would silence the agitator and the blunderbuss, and range the people on the side of the rulers.
Hugh Brontë preached his revolutionary doctrines of simple justice in the cheerless east wind, but a little seed, carried I know not how, took root in genial soil, and the revolutionary doctrine of “Every man his own,” at which the political parsons used to cry “Anathema,” and the short-sighted politicians used to shout “confiscation,” has become one of the commonplaces of the modern reformation programme of fair play. The doctrine of common honesty enunciated by Hugh Brontë has lately received the approval of 464 Liberal and Conservative governments in what is known as “Tenant-Right,” or “The Ulster Custom.”
And here it is interesting to note that Hugh Brontë was a tenant on the estate of Sharman Crawford, a landlord who first took up the cause of Irish tenant-right, and after spending a long life in its advocacy, bequeathed its defence to his sons and daughters.
Whether Hugh Brontë’s doctrines on the relation of landlord and tenant ever came to the ears of the Crawford family, I know not. I think it is exceedingly probable that they heard of the remarkable man on their estate, and of his stories and theories. The Crawfords were never absentee landlords, and, as men of high Christian character, they always took a personal interest in their tenants, and would not, I believe, have failed to note any special intellectual activity among them. It is certain, however, that the Sharman Crawfords, father and son in succession, spent their lives largely in the propagation of Hugh Brontë’s views, both in the House of Commons and throughout the country, and it seems to me not only probable and possible, but almost certain, that Brontë’s eloquent and passionate arguments, dropped into the justice-loving minds of the Crawfords,[5] may have been the primary seeds of the great agrarian harvest which, with the full sanction of the legislature, is now being reaped by the farmers in Ireland.
In 1833 W. Sharman Crawford published a pamphlet embodying Hugh Brontë’s doctrines, and making suggestions for the good government of Ireland. The pamphlet was republished by Doctor W. H. Dodd, Q. C., in 1892. Councillor Dodd is an old pupil of the Ballynaskeagh school. He received his early education from Mr. McKee, the friend of the Brontës, and he was acquainted, as a student, with Charlotte Brontë’s uncles. The following is his summary of the political portion of the pamphlet: