Then came the year 1843—the year of the monster meetings at central and time-honored localities, such as Mallow, Tara, Mullaghmast, and Clontarf, where assembled countless thousands of well-dressed, well-conducted, and unarmed peasantry, to listen to the voice of their champion and his co-laborers, and to demand in peaceful terms the restoration of their filched legislative rights.
The British government was decidedly alarmed, and with good cause. It tried to stem the torrent of popular opinion by the most extravagant distribution of patronage, by landlord intimidation, the denunciations of a venal press, and even by intrigues at the court of Rome; but all to no effect. Rendered desperate, it even projected a general massacre at Clontarf; but this savage project was defeated by the judicious conduct of the repeal leaders. Next it evoked the terrors of the law; for in Ireland, unlike most free or partially free countries, the law has actual terrors for the good, but very little for the wicked. O'Connell and eight of his associates, including his son John, three editors, and two Catholic priests, were arrested, indicted for “conspiracy,” tried, and all, on the 30th of May, 1844, were sentenced to imprisonment, with the exception of F. Tierney, who had died before the trial. The effect on the [pg 063] country was the reverse of what was expected. O'Connell's popularity, if possible, increased, the repealers became more numerous, and several Protestant gentlemen of fortune and influence, who had hitherto held aloof, joined the association. But when three months had elapsed, and the decision of the packed Dublin jury and the rulings of the stipendiary English judges were set aside by the House of Lords, led by Brougham, the enthusiasm of the people knew no bounds.
These indeed were the halcyon days of Ireland. Never were her people so numerous, prosperous, and contented, so full of thankfulness for the present and hope in the future. Of the nine millions of her population, at least two-thirds were active repealers or in sympathy with their cause. No nation, in fact, was ever more unanimous on any public question than were the Irish of the years 1844-5, and never was the country so free from crime of every degree. Much of this enviable condition was to be attributed to the oft-repeated admonition of O'Connell, that “he who commits a crime gives strength to the enemy”; more, perhaps, to the unceasing admonitions and personal presence of the priesthood at the monster gatherings; but most, we think, to the workings of F. Mathew's beneficent projects. It was a fortunate coincidence that the Apostle of Temperance and the great Liberator were contemporaries. For the one teetotaler the first could show, the other could point out an ardent repealer.
But a change was impending that, amid the sunshine and gladness of the hour, was undreamt of—a change that was to spread woe and desolation over the face of the fair island. Famine, gaunt and hideous famine, with her attendants, pestilence and death, was knocking at the door, and would not be denied admittance.
The first symptoms of the failure of the potato crop, then almost exclusively the food of five or six millions of people, appeared as early as 1845, and, though it created much alarm and distress in certain neighborhoods, was not of so widespread a nature as to excite general anxiety till the close of that year and the beginning of the next. O'Connell, the mayors and corporations of the large cities, and many other prominent persons, lay and clerical, having exhausted all the resources of private charity, strenuously but vainly urged on the government the necessity of taking some steps to save the lives of the people. They represented, and truly, that the grain crop alone of the country was sufficient to feed twice the number of inhabitants, and asked that its exportation might be prohibited; that a large portion of the imperial revenue was raised in Ireland, and suggested that a portion of it might be expended there on useful public works, and thus afford employment to the famishing and needy; that a great part of the lands then unproductive might be reclaimed with benefit to the holders, and proposed that the government ought to loan money to the landlords for that purpose, to bear interest, become a first lien on the land, and to be repaid at the expiration of a certain number of years. Their appeals were answered by coercion and arms acts, and by the repeal of the Corn Laws, by which the Irish producer, who was obliged to sell his cereals in English markets in order to pay his rent, found himself undersold by importers from [pg 064] the great grain-producing countries, like Russia and the United States. In truth, England did not want to stay the famine, for it was her best and only ally against the repeal movement; and the “providential visitation,” as it was blasphemously called by her politicians and clerical demagogues, was allowed to take its course. Thus unchecked, the dire destroyer swept on from county to county during the years 1846-7-8-9, till the island, so fair to view in 1844, became almost a deserted graveyard, and its inhabitants who had neither sunk beneath its curse nor fled the country became a nation of paupers. It is now proven by trustworthy statistics that during those five years over one million fled for ever from their homes, and that at least a million and a third perished on their own soil, amid plenty, from want of food and the ravages of the fatal typhus!
No wonder, then, that the great repeal organization drooped, quarrelled, and finally ended a lingering and impotent existence a few years after. The bone and sinew of the land, who had given vitality and strength to its labors, were either far across the Atlantic or rotting in pauper-graves. No wonder, also, that its great founder and chief, overburdened with years, but more by national misfortunes, should have sickened at the sights around him, and, fleeing from the ills he could not cure, should have died on a foreign soil, far from his beloved fatherland.
But though the famine had mortally wounded the repeal movement, its demise was hastened by dissensions among the leaders themselves. In 1846, in a discussion on the expediency of the use of moral force solely as a means of obtaining national redress of grievances, hot and personal remarks fell from the lips of the speakers on both sides; great excitement was created among the audience, and finally O'Brien and many of the ablest and most active of the repeal writers and speakers withdrew, and formed what was called the Confederation or “Young Ireland” party. Though thoroughly honest, high-toned, and brilliant as orators and journalists, the Young Irelanders could never win any appreciable amount of popular support; and though up to February, 1848, when the French Revolution threw Europe into a ferment of excitement, they never contemplated armed resistance, the people generally looked upon them with suspicion, and refused their co-operation. In the summer of that year, however, they did make an attempt at revolution, and, as might have been expected, miserably failed. Thus the “Association” and the “Confederation” disappeared almost at the same time; and now that a quarter of a century has passed, and a new generation has come to the front, we find the principles and aims of the original organization revivified and incorporated into what is called the “Home Rule League.”
In its demands, this association is more moderate than was O'Connell. He wanted repeal of the treaty and act of union, pure and simple, and the restoration of the national legislature as it was in 1782, with the emancipation and other kindred acts superadded. The Home Rulers, if we may judge from the resolutions passed at a very large conference held lately in Dublin, only ask for a parliament to regulate their domestic affairs, leaving to the British imperial Parliament full power and authority over all matters concerning the entire empire, or, in other words, placing Ireland [pg 065] in the same position with regard to the law-making power as that now held by Canada, except the right of Ireland to send a proportional number of members to the imperial assembly. The success of such a scheme in Ireland would naturally lead to the restoration of the old Scotch Parliament, and possibly to imperial representation for Canada and other trans-marine colonies of Great Britain. Hence the widespread interest it has excited throughout the empire.
The objections to the home-rule plan, as far as we can gather them from the English and Tory Irish press—for the politicians have carefully avoided its discussion—are principally three:
I. The confusion and possible conflict of authority which might arise from having two co-ordinate legislative assemblies under the same government.