We cannot think that Mr. Gladstone had read this passage when he requested the author to have his pamphlet translated into English; for we cannot believe that he is prepared to lay the misfortunes of Ireland to the influence of the Catholic faith upon her people, and not to the cruelty and misgovernment of England.
The Irish Catholics are reproached with their poverty, when for two hundred years the English government made it a crime for them to own anything. They are taunted with their misery, when for two centuries they lived under a code which placed them outside the pale of humanity; of which Lord Brougham said that it was so ingeniously contrived that an Irish Catholic could not lift up his hand without breaking it; which Edmund Burke denounced as the most proper machine ever invented by the wit of man to disgrace a realm and degrade a people; and of which Montesquieu wrote that it must have been contrived by devils, ought to have been written in blood and registered in hell!
Ireland is found fault with because she is agitated with the spirit of rebellion, when even to think of the wrongs she has suffered makes the blood to boil. Is it astonishing that she should be poor when England, with set purpose, destroyed her commerce and ruined her manufacturing interests, fostering at the same time a policy fatal to agriculture, the aim of which, it would seem, was to force the Irish to emigrate, that the whole island might be turned into a grazing ground for the supply of the English markets?
“What a contrast,” further remarks M. de Laveleye (p. 12), “even in Ireland, between the exclusively Catholic Connaught and Ulster, where Protestantism prevails!”
Mr. Gladstone certainly cannot be surprised at this contrast, nor will he seek its explanation in the baneful influence of the Catholic Church. He at least knows the history of Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland; he has read of the massacres of Drogheda and Wexford; he knows the fate of the eighty thousand Catholic Irishmen whom Cromwell drove into the ports of Munster, and shipped like cattle to the sugar plantations of the Barbadoes, there to be sold as slaves; nor is he ignorant of what was in store for those Irish Catholics who were still left; of how they were driven out of Ulster, Munster, and Leinster across the Shannon into Connaught—that is, into the bogs and wild wastes of the most desolate part of Ireland—there to die of hunger or cold, or to survive as best they might. Five-sixths of the Catholics had perished; the remainder were driven into barren Connaught; the Protestants settled on the rich lands of Ulster, Munster, and Leinster; and now here comes good M. de Laveleye to find that Connaught is poor because it is Catholic, and Ulster is rich because it is Protestant. But we must not forget Scotland.
“Since the Scotch,” says M. de Laveleye, “have embraced the reformed religion, they have outrun even the English.”
We shall take no pains to discover whether or in what respect, or how far the Scotch surpass the English. The meaning of the words which we have just quoted is evidently this: The progress which the Scotch have made during the last three centuries, in wealth and the other elements of material greatness, must be ascribed to the influence of the Protestant religion.
To avoid even the suspicion of unfairness in discussing this part of the subject, we shall quote the words of an author who devoted much time and research to the study of the character and tendencies of Scotch Presbyterianism, and whose deeply-rooted dislike of the Catholic Church is well known:
“To be poor,” says Buckle (History of Civilization, vol. ii. p. 314), describing the doctrines of the Scotch divines of the XVIIth century—“to be poor, dirty, and hungry; to pass through life in misery and to leave it with fear; to be plagued with boils and sores and diseases of every kind; to be always sighing and groaning; to have the face streaming with tears and the chest heaving with sobs; in a word, to suffer constant affliction and to be tormented in all possible ways—to undergo these things was a proof of goodness just as the contrary was a proof of evil. It mattered not what a man liked, the mere fact of his liking it made it sinful. Whatever was natural was wrong. The clergy deprived the people of their holidays, their amusements, their shows, their games, and their sports; they repressed every appearance of joy, they forbade all merriment, they stopped all festivities, they choked up every avenue by which pleasure could enter, and they spread over the country an universal gloom. Then truly did darkness sit on the land. Men in their daily actions and in their every looks became troubled, melancholy, and ascetic. Their countenance soured and was downcast. Not only their opinions, but their gait, their demeanor, their voice, their general aspect, were influenced by that deadly blight which nipped all that was genial and warm. The way of life fell into the sere and yellow leaf; its tints gradually deepened; its bloom faded and passed off; its spring, its freshness, and its beauty were gone; joy and love either disappeared or were forced to hide themselves in obscure corners, until at length the fairest and most endearing parts of our nature, being constantly repressed, ceased to bear fruit and seemed to be withered into perpetual sterility. Thus it was that the national character of the Scotch was in the XVIIth century dwarfed and mutilated.… They [the Scotch divines] sought to destroy not only human pleasures, but human affections. They held that our affections are necessarily connected with our lusts, and that we must therefore wean ourselves from them as earthly vanities. A Christian had no business with love or sympathy. He had his own soul to attend to, and that was enough for him. Let him look to himself. On Sunday, in particular, he must never think of benefiting others; and the Scotch clergy did not hesitate to teach the people that on that day it was sinful to save a vessel in distress, and that it was a proof of religion to leave ship and crew to perish. They might go; none but their wives and children would suffer, and that was nothing in comparison with breaking the Sabbath. So, too did the clergy teach that on no occasion must food or shelter be given to a starving man, unless his opinions were orthodox. What need for him to live? Indeed, they taught that it was a sin to tolerate his notions at all, and that the proper course was to visit him with sharp and immediate punishment. Going yet farther, they broke the domestic ties and set parents against their offspring. They taught the father to smite the unbelieving child, and to slay his own boy sooner than to allow him to propagate error. As if this were not enough, they tried to extirpate another affection, even more sacred and more devoted still. They laid their rude and merciless hands on the holiest passion of which our nature is capable—the love of a mother for her son.… To hear of such things is enough to make one’s blood surge again, and raise a tempest in our inmost nature. But to have seen them, to have lived in the midst of them, and yet not to have rebelled against them, is to us utterly inconceivable, and proves in how complete a thraldom the Scotch were held, and how thoroughly their minds as well as their bodies were enslaved.”