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THOMAS DAVIS
Selections from his Prose and Poetry
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY T. W. ROLLESTON, M.A.
NEW YORK:
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Library of Irish Literature
_General Editors_: ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES, M.A.
WILLIAM MAGENNIS, M.A. DOUGLAS HYDE, LL.D.
(Dublin).
1. Thomas Davis. Selections from his Prose and Poetry.
Edited by T. W. ROLLESTON, M.A. (Dublin).
2. Wild Sports of the West. W. H. MAXWELL.
Edited by THE EARL OF DUNRAVEN.
3. Legends of Saints and Sinners from the Irish.
Edited by DOUGLAS HYDE, LL.D. (Dublin).
4. Humours of Irish Life.
Edited by CHARLES L. GRAVES, M.A. (Oxon).
5. Irish Orators and Oratory.
Edited by T. M. KETTLE, National University of Ireland.
6. The Book of Irish Poetry.
Edited by ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES, M.A. (Dublin).
Other Volumes in Preparation. Each Crown 8vo. Cloth,
with Frontispiece net $1.00
INTRODUCTION.
In the present edition of Thomas Davis it is designed to offer a
selection of his writings more fully representative than has hitherto
appeared in one volume. The book opens with the best of his historical
studies--his masterly vindication of the much-maligned Irish Parliament
of James II.[1] Next follows a selection of his literary, historical
and political articles from _The Nation_ and other sources, and,
finally, we present a selection from his poems, containing, it is
hoped, everything of high and permanent value which he wrote in that
medium. The "Address to the Historical Society" and the essay on
"Udalism and Feudalism," which were reprinted in the edition of Davis's
Prose Writings published by Walter Scott in 1890, are here omitted--the
former because it seemed possible to fill with more valuable and mature
work the space it would have taken, and the latter because the cause
which it was written to support has in our day been practically won;
Udalism will inevitably be the universal type of land-tenure in
Ireland, and the real problem which we have before us is not how to win
but how to make use of the institution, a matter with which Davis, in
this essay, does not concern himself.
The life of Thomas Davis has been written by his friend and colleague,
Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, and an excellent abridgment of it appears as a
volume in the "New Irish Library." In the latter easily available form
it may be hoped that there are few Irishmen who have not made
themselves acquainted with it. It is not, therefore, necessary to deal
with it here in much detail. Davis was born in Mallow on October 14th,
1814. His father, who came of a family originally Welsh, but long
settled in Buckinghamshire, had been a surgeon in the Royal Artillery.
His mother, Mary Atkins, came of a Cromwellian family settled in the
County Cork. It does not seem an altogether hopeful kind of ancestry
for an Irish Nationalist, and his family were, as a matter of fact,
altogether of the other way of thinking. But the fact that his
great-grandmother, on the maternal side, was a daughter of The
O'Sullivan Beare may have had a counteracting influence, if not through
the physical channel of heredity, at least through the poet's
imagination. As a child, Davis was delicate in health, sensitive,
dreamy, awkward, and passed for a dunce. It was not until he had
entered Trinity College that the passion for study possessed him. This
passion had manifestly been kindled, in the first instance, by the
flame of patriotism, but how and when he first came to break loose from
the traditional politics of his family we have no means of knowing,
unless a gleam of light is thrown on the matter by a saying of his from
a speech at Conciliation Hall:--"I was brought up in a mixed seminary,[2]
where I learned to know, and knowing to love, my countrymen."
At the University he sought no academic distinctions, but read
omnivorously. History, philosophy, economics, and ethics were the
subjects into which he flung himself with ardour, and which, in after
days, he was continually seeking to turn to the uses of his country. By
the time he had left College and was called to the Bar (1837) he had
disciplined himself by thought and study, and was a very different
being from the dreamy and backward youth described for us by the candid
friends of his schooldays. A dreamer, indeed, he always was, but he had
learned from Bishop Butler, whom he reverenced profoundly and spoke of
as "the Copernicus of ethics," that there is no practice more fatal to
moral strength than dreaming divorced from action. Some concrete act,
some definite thing to be done, was now always in his mind, but always,
it may be added, as the realisation of some principle arrived at by
serious and accurate thinking. He had acquired clear convictions, his
powers of application were enormous, he had a boundless fertility of
invention, and was manifestly marked out as a leader of men. It is
interesting to go through the pages of Davis's Essays and to note how
many of his practical suggestions for work to be done in Ireland have
been taken up with success, especially in the direction of music and
poetry, of the Gaelic language, and of the study of Irish archaeology
and the protection of its remains. But a new Davis would mark with
keener interest the many tasks which yet remain to be taken in hand.
His connection with the Bar was little more than nominal; from the
beginning, the serious work of his life seemed destined to be
journalism. After some experiments in various directions, he, with
Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon, during a walk in the Phoenix Park in
the spring of 1842, decided to establish a new weekly journal, to be
entitled, on Davis's suggestion, _The Nation_. Its purpose, which it
was afterwards to fulfil so nobly, was admirably expressed in its
motto, taken from a saying of Stephen Woulfe: "To create and foster
public opinion in Ireland, and to make it racy of the soil." Davis's
was the suggestion of making national poems and ballads a prominent
feature of the journal--the feature by which it became best known and
did, perhaps, its most impressive, if not its most valuable, work. His
"Lament for Owen Roe," which appeared in the sixth number, worked in
Ireland like an electric shock, and woke a sleeping faculty to life and
action. Henceforth Davis's public life was bound up with the _Nation_.
Into this channel he threw all his powers. What kind of influence he
exerted from that post of vantage the pages of this book will tell.
Davis was naturally a member of O'Connell's Repeal Association, but
took no prominent part in its proceedings, except on one momentous
occasion on which we must dwell for a while. The debate was on the
subject of Peel's Bill for the establishment of a large scheme of
non-sectarian education in Ireland. Of this measure Sir Charles Duffy
writes:--
"A majority of the Catholic Bishops approved of the general design,
objecting to certain details. All the barristers and country
gentlemen in the Association, and the middle class generally,
supported it. To Davis it was like the unhoped-for realization of a
dream. To educate the young men of the middle class and of both
races, and to educate them together, that prejudice and bigotry
might be killed in the bud, was one of the projects nearest his
heart. It would strengthen the soul of Ireland with knowledge, he
said, and knit the creeds in liberal and trusting friendship."[3]
But O'Connell, though he had previously favoured the principle of mixed
education, now saw a chance of flinging down a challenge to the "Young
Irelanders" from a vantage-ground of immense tactical value. He threw
his whole weight against the proposal, taunted and interrupted its
supporters, and seemed determined at any cost to wreck the measure on
which such high hopes had been set. The emotion which Davis felt, and
which caused him to burst into tears in the midst of the debate, seemed
to some of his friends at the time over-strained. But he was not the
first strong man from whom public calamities have drawn tears; and
assuredly if ever there were cause for tears, Davis had reason to shed
them then. More, perhaps, than any man present, he realised the fateful
nature of the decision which was being made. He knew that one of the
governing facts about Irish public life is the existence in the country
of two races who remain life-long strangers to each other. Catholic and
Protestant present to each other a familiar front, but behind the
surface of each is a dark background which in later life, when
associations, and often prejudices, have been formed, the other can
rarely penetrate and rarely wishes to do so. It was Davis's belief that
if the young people of Ireland were to be permanently segregated from
childhood to manhood in different schools, different universities,
where early friendships, the most intimate and familiar of any, could
never be made, and ideas never interchanged except through public
controversy, the barrier between the two Irish races would be
infinitely difficult to break down, and no scheme of Irish government
could be conceived which would not seem like a triumph to one of them
and bondage to the other. The views of the Young Irelanders did not
prevail, and Ireland as a nation has paid the penalty for two
generations, and will probably pay it for many a day to come. It may,
of course, be argued that religious interests are paramount, and that
these are incompatible with a scheme of mixed education. This is not
the place to debate such a question, nor can anyone quarrel with a
decision arrived at on such grounds. But let it be arrived at with a
clear understanding of the certain consequences, and let it be admitted
that when Davis saw the wreck of the scheme for united education he
felt truly that a long and perhaps, for many generations, irretrievable
step was being taken away from the road to nationhood.
But after this despondent reflection, let us cheer ourselves by setting
the proud and moving words with which Duffy concludes his account of
the transactions in the _Life of Davis_:--
"I have not tacked to any transaction in this narrative the moral
which it suggests; the thoughtful reader prefers to draw his own
conclusions. But for once I ask those to whom this book is
dedicated to note the conduct of Catholic young men in a mortal
contest. The hereditary leader of the people, sure to be backed by
the whole force of the unreflecting masses, and supported on this
occasion by the bulk of the national clergy--a man of genius, an
historic man wielding an authority made august by a life's
services, a solemn moral authority with which it is ridiculous to
compare the purely political influence of anyone who has succeeded
him as a tribune of the people--was against Thomas Davis, and able,
no one doubted, to overwhelm him and his sympathisers in political
ruin. A public career might be closed for all of us; our journal
might be extinguished; we were already denounced as intriguers and
infidels; it was quite certain that, by-and-by, we would be
described as hirelings of the Castle. But Davis was right; and of
all his associates, not one man flinched from his side--not one
man. A crisis bringing character to a sharper test has never arisen
in our history, nor can ever arise; and the conduct of these men,
it seems to me, is some guarantee how their successors would act in
any similar emergency."
The year 1845 was loaded with disaster for Ireland. It saw the defeat
of the Education scheme; it saw the advancing shadow of the awful
calamity in which the Repeal movement, the Young Irelanders, and
everything of hope and promise that lived and moved in Ireland were to
perish--and it saw the death of Thomas Davis.
He had had an attack of scarlet fever, from which he seemed to be
recovering, but a relapse took place--owing, perhaps, to incautious
exposure before his strength had returned--and, in the early dawn of
September 15th, he passed away in his mother's house. The years of his
life were thirty-one; his public life had lasted but for three. His
funeral was marked by an extraordinary outburst of grief and affection,
which was shared by men of all creeds, all classes, all political camps
in Ireland.
No mourning, indeed, could be too deep for the withdrawal at such a
moment of such a leader from the task to which he had consecrated his
life. That task was far more than the winning of political independence
for his country. Davis united in himself, in a degree which has never
been known before or since, the spirit of two great originators in
Irish history--the spirit of Swift and the spirit of Berkeley--of
Swift, the champion of his country against foreign oppression; of
Berkeley, who bade her turn her thoughts inward, who summoned her to
cultivate the faculties and use the liberties she already possessed for
the development of her resources and the strengthening of her national
character. Davis's best and most original work was educative rather
than aggressive. He often wrote, as Duffy says, "in a tone of strict
and haughty discipline designed to make the people fit to use and fit
to enjoy liberty." No one recognised more fully than he the
regenerative value of political forms, but his ideal was never that of
a millennium to be won by Act of Parliament--he was ever on the watch
for some opportunity to remind his countrymen of the indispensable need
of self-discipline and self-reliance, of toil, of veracity, of justice
and fairness towards opponents. No one ever said sharper and sterner
things to the Irish people--witness his articles on "Scolding Mobs," on
"Moral Force," and on the attack upon one of the jurors who had
convicted O'Connell at the State Trial.[4] But Davis could utter hard
things without wounding, for, when all is said, the dominant temper of
the man was love. That, and that alone, was at the very centre of his
being, and by that influence everything that came from him was
irradiated and warmed. He had, as an Irish patriot, unwavering faith,
unquenchable hope; he had also, and above all, the charity which gave
to every other faculty and attainment the supreme, the most enduring
grace.
T. W. ROLLESTON.
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[1] This work, with the inclusion of the full text of the more
important of the Acts of the Parliament of James II., and with an
Introduction by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, was reprinted from the
_Dublin Monthly Magazine_ of 1843 by Mr. Fisher Unwin in 1891
as the first volume of the 'New Irish Library.' It is now out of
print.
[2] Mr. Mongan's School on Lower Mount Street.
[3] "Life of Davis," p. 286.
[4] "Life of Davis," pp. 218, 219.
I. The Irish Parliament of James II.
PREFACE.
This enquiry is designed to rescue eminent men and worthy acts from
calumnies which were founded on the ignorance and falsehoods of the Old
Whigs, who never felt secure until they had destroyed the character as
well as the liberty of Ireland.
Irish oppression never could rely on mere physical force for any length
of time. Our enormous military resources, and the large proportion of
"fighting men," or men who love fighting, among our people, prohibit
it. It was ever necessary to divide us by circulating extravagant
stories of our crimes and our disasters, in order to poison the wells
of brotherly love and patriotism in our hearts, that so many of us
might range ourselves under the banner of our oppressor.
Calumny lives chiefly on the past and future; it corrupts history and
croaks dark prophecies. Never, from TYRCONNELL'S rally down to
O'CONNELL'S revival of the Emancipation struggle--never, from the
summons of the Dungannon Convention to the Corporation Debate on
Repeal, has a single bold course been proposed for Ireland, that folly,
disorder, and disgrace has not been foreboded. Never has any great deed
been done here that the alien Government did not, as soon as the facts
became historical, endeavour to blacken the honour of the statesmen,
the wisdom of the legislators, or the valour of the soldiers who
achieved it.
One of the favourite texts of these apostles of misrule was the Irish
Government in King JAMES'S time. "There's a specimen," they said, "of
what an Irish Government would be--unruly, rash, rapacious, and
bloody." But the King, Lords, and Commons of 1689, when looked at
honestly, present a sight to make us proud and hopeful for Ireland.
Attached as they were to their King, their first act was for Ireland.
They declared that the English Parliament had not, and never had, any
right to legislate for Ireland, and that none, save the King and
Parliament of Ireland, could make laws to bind Ireland.
In 1698, just nine years after, while the acts of this great Senate
were fresh, Molyneux published his _case of Ireland_, that case which
Swift argued, and Lucas urged, and Flood and Grattan, at the head of
70,000 Volunteers, carried, and England ratified against her will.
Thus, then, the idea of 1782 is to be found full grown in 1689. The
pedigree of our freedom is a century older than we thought, and Ireland
has another Parliament to be proud of.
That Parliament, too, established religious equality. It anticipated
more than 1782. The voluntary system had no supporters then, and that
patriot Senate did the next best thing: they left the tithes of the
Protestant People to the Protestant Minister, and of the Catholic
People to the Catholic Priest. Pensions not exceeding L200 a year were
given to the Catholic Bishops. And no Protestant Prelates were deprived
of stipend or honour--they held their incomes, and they sat in the
Parliament. They enforced perfect liberty of conscience; nor is there
an Act of theirs which could inform one ignorant of Irish faction to
what creed the majority belonged. Thus for its moderation and charity
this Parliament is an honour and an example to the country.
While on the one hand they restored the estates plundered by the
Cromwellians thirty-six years before, and gave compensation to all
innocent persons--while they strained every nerve to exclude the
English from our trade, and to secure it to the Irish--while they
introduced the Statute of Frauds, and many other sound laws, and thus
showed their zeal for the peaceful and permanent welfare of the People,
they were not unfit to grapple with the great military crisis. They
voted large supplies; they endeavoured to make a war-navy; the leading
members allowed nothing but their Parliamentary duties to interfere
with their recruiting, arming, and training of troops. They were no
timorous pedants, who shook and made homilies when sabres flashed and
cannon roared. Our greatest soldiers, M'Carthy and Tyrconnell, and,
indeed, most of the Colonels of the Irish regiments, sat in Lords or
Commons;--not that the Crown brought in stipendiary soldiers, but that
the Senate were fearless patriots, who were ready to fight as well as
to plan for Ireland. Theirs was no qualified preference for freedom if
it were lightly won--they did not prefer 'Bondage with ease to
strenuous liberty.'
Let us then add 1689 to our memory; and when a Pantheon or Valhalla is
piled up to commemorate the names and guard the effigies of the great
and good, the bright and burning genius, the haughty and faithful
hearts, and the victorious hands of Ireland, let not the men of that
time--that time of glory and misfortune--that time of which Limerick's
two sieges typify the clear and dark sides--defiance and defeat of the
Saxon in one, trust in the Saxon and ruin on the other--let not the
legislators or soldiers of that great epoch be forgotten.
Thomas Davis.
July, 1843.
CHAPTER I.
A RETROSPECT.
How far the Parliament which sat in Dublin in 1689 was right or wrong
has been much disputed. As the history of it becomes more accurately
and generally known, the grounds of this dispute will be cleared.
Nor is it of trifling interest to determine whether a Parliament, which
not only exercised great influence at the time, but furnished the
enactors of the Penal Laws with excuses, and the achievers of the
Revolution of 1782 with principles and a precedent, was the good or
evil thing it has been called.
The writers commonly quoted against it are, Archbishop King, Harris,
Leland; those in its favour, Leslie, Curry, Plowden, and Jones.[5] Of
all these writers, King and Lesley are alone original authorities.
Harris copies King, and Leland copies Harris, and Plowden, Curry, and
Jones rely chiefly on Lesley. Neither Harris, Leland, nor Curry adds
anything to our knowledge of the time. King (notwithstanding, as we
shall show hereafter, his disregard of truth) is valuable as a
contemporary of high rank; Lesley, also a contemporary, and of
unblemished character, is still more valuable. Plowden is a fair and
sagacious commentator; Jones, a subtle and suggestive critic on those
times.
If, in addition, the reader will consult such authorities as the
Letters of Lord Lieutenant Tyrconnell;[6] the Memoirs[7] of James the
Second by himself; _Histoire de la Revolution par Mazure_;[8] and
the pamphlets quoted in this publication, and the notes to it, he will
be in a fair way towards mastering this difficult question.
After all, that Parliament must be judged by its own conduct. If its
acts were unjust, bigoted, and rash, no excuse can save it from
condemnation. If, on the other hand, it acted with firmness and loyalty
towards its king--if it did much to secure the rights, the prosperity,
and the honour of the nation--if, in a country where property had been
turned upside down a few years before, it strove to do justice to the
many, with the least possible injury to the few--if, in a country torn
with religious quarrels, it endeavoured to secure liberty of conscience
without alienating the ultra zealous--and, finally, if in a country in
imminent danger from a powerful invader and numerous traitors, it was
more intent on raising resources and checking treason than would become
a parliament sitting in peace and safety, let us, while confessing its
fallibility, attend to its difficulties, and do honour to its vigour
and intelligence.
Before we mention the composition of the Parliament, it will be right
to run over some of the chief dates and facts which brought about the
state of things that led to its being summoned. Most Irishmen
(ourselves among the number) are only beginners at Irish history, and
cannot too often repeat the elements: still the beginning has been
made. It is no pedantry which leads one to the English invasion for the
tap-root of the transactions of the seventeenth century.
Four hundred years of rapacious war and wild resistance had made each
believe all things ill of the other; and when England changed her creed
in the sixteenth century it became certain that Ireland would adhere to
hers at all risks. Accordingly, the reigns of the latter, and
especially of the last of the Tudors, witnessed unceasing war, in which
an appetite for conquest was inflamed by bigotry on the English side,
while the native, who had been left unaided to defend his home, was now
stimulated by foreign counsels, as well as by his own feelings, to
guard his altar and his conscience too.
James the First found Ireland half conquered by the sword; he completed
the work by treachery, and the fee of five-sixths of Ulster rewarded
the "energy" of the British. The proceedings of Strafford added large
districts in the other provinces to the English possessions. Still, in
all these cases, as in the Munster settlement under Elizabeth, the bulk
of the population remained on the soil. To leave the land was to die.
They clung to it amid sufferings too shocking to dwell on;[9] they
clung to it under such a serfhood as made the rapacity of their
conquerors interested in retaining them on the soil. They clung to it
from necessity and from love. They multiplied on it with the rapidity
of the reckless. Yet they retained hope, the hope of restitution and
vengeance. The mad ferocity of Parsons and Borlace hastened the
outbreak of 1641. That insurrection gave back to the native his
property and his freedom, but compelled him to fight for it--first,
against the loyalists; next, against the traitors; and lastly, against
the republicans. After a struggle of ten years, distinguished by the
ability of the Council of Kilkenny, and the bravery of Owen Roe and his
followers, the Irish sunk under the abilities and hosts of Cromwell.
Those who felt his sway might well have envied the men who conquered
and died in the breach of Clonmel, or fell vanquished or betrayed at
Letterkenny and Drogheda. During the insurrection of 1641, the royal
government, at once timid and tyrannical, united with the sordid
capitalists of London to plunder the Irish of their lands and liberty,
if not to exterminate them.[10] In order to effect this, a system of
unparalleled lying was set afoot against the natives of this kingdom.
The violence which naturally attended the sudden resumption of property
by an ignorant, excited, and deeply wronged people, was magnified into
a national propensity to throat-cutting. Exaggerations the most
barefaced were received throughout England. Deaths, which the
English-minded Protestant, the Rev. Mr. Warner, has ascertained to have
been under 12,000--reckoning deaths from hardships along with those by
the sword--were rated in England at 150,000, and by John Milton at
616,000.[11] No wonder the English nation looked upon us as bloody
savages; and no wonder they looked approvingly at the massacres and
confiscations of the Lord Protector. But the Irish deemed they were
free from crime in resuming by force of arms the land which arms had
taken from them; they regarded the bloodshed of '41 as a deplorable
result of English oppression; they fought with the hearts of resolved
patriots till 1651.
The restoration of the Stuarts was hailed as the restoration of their
rights. They were woefully disappointed. A compromise was made between
the legitimists and the republicans; the former were to resume their
rank, the latter to retain their plunder, Ireland was disregarded. The
mockery of the Court of Claims restored less than one-third of the
Irish lands. While in 1641 the Roman Catholics possessed two-thirds of
Ireland, in 1680 they had but one-fifth[12]. Besides, the new
possessors were of an opposite creed, and fortified themselves by Penal
Laws. Under such circumstances the aim of most men would be much the
same, namely, to take the first opportunity of regaining their
property, their national independence, and religious freedom. With
reference to their legislation on the two latter points, doubts may be
entertained how much should be complained of; and even those who
condemn that on the first, should remember that "the re-adjustment of
all private rights, after so entire a destruction of their landmarks,
could only be effected by the coarse process of general rules[13]."
Let us now run over a few dates, till we come to the event which gave
the Irish this opportunity. On the 6th of February, 1685, Charles the
Second died in the secret profession of the Roman Catholic faith, and
his brother, James Stuart, Duke of York, succeeded him.
James the Second came to his throne with much of what usually wins
popular favour. He united in his person the blood of the Tudor,
Plantagenet, and Saxon kings of England, while his Scottish descent
came through every king of Scotland, and found its spring in the Irish
Dalriad chief, who, embarking from Ulster, overran Albany. In addition,
James had morals better than those of his rank and time, as much
intellect as most kings, and the reputation acquired from his naval
administration, graced as it was by sea-fights in which no ship was
earlier in action than James's, and by at least one great victory--that
over Opdam--fought near Yarmouth, on the 3rd June, 1665.
Yet the difference of his creed from that of his English subjects blew
these popular recollections to shivers. He tried to enforce, first,
toleration; and, secondly, perfect religious equality, and intended,
as many thought, the destruction of that equality, by substituting a
Roman Catholic for a Protestant supremacy; and the means he used for
this purpose were such as the English Parliament had pronounced
unconstitutional. He impeached the corporate charters by _quo
warranto_, brought to trial before judges whom he influenced, as all
his predecessors had done. He invaded the customs of the universities,
as having a legal right to do so. He suspended the penal laws, and
punished those who disobeyed his liberal but unpopular proclamations.
Some noble zealots, the Russells and Sidneys, crossed his path in vain;
but a few bold caballers, the Danbys, the Shaftesburys, and Churchills,
by urging him to despotic acts, and the people to resistance, brought
on a crisis; when, availing themselves of it, they called in a foreign
army and drove out James, and swore he had abdicated; expelled the
Prince of Wales, and falsely called him bastard; made terms with
William, that he should have the crown and privy purse, and they the
actual government; and ended by calling their selfish and hypocritical
work, "a popular and glorious revolution."
It is needless to follow up James's quarrel with the university of
Oxford, and his unsuccessful prosecution of the seven Bishops on the
29th of June, 1688, who, emboldened by the prospect of a revolution,
refused to read his proclamation of indulgence. From the day of their
acquittal, James was lost. Letters were circulated throughout
England[14] and Ireland, declaring the young Prince of Wales (who was
born 10th June) spurious, and containing many other falsehoods, so as
to shake men's souls with rumours, and arouse popular prejudices. The
army was tampered with; the nobles and clergy were in treaty with
Holland. James not only refused to retract his policy till it was too
late; but refused, too, the offer of Louis to send him French troops.
Similar means had been used by and against him in Ireland. Tyrconnell,
who had replaced Clarendon as Lord Lieutenant in 1686, got in the
charters of the corporations, reconstructed the army, and used every
means of giving the Roman Catholics that share in the government of
this country to which their numbers entitled them. And, on the other
hand, the Protestant nobles joined the English conspiracy, and adopted
the English plan of false plots and forged letters.
At length, on 4th November, 1688, Prince William landed at Torbay with
15,000 veterans. James attempted to bear up, but his nearest and
dearest, his relatives and his favourites, deserted him in the hour of
his need. It seems not excessive to say that there never was a
revolution in which so much ingratitude, selfishness, and meanness were
displayed. There is not one great genius or untainted character eminent
in it. Yet it succeeded. On the 18th of December, William entered
London; on the 23rd, James sailed for France; and in the February
following the English convention declared he had _abdicated_.
These dates are, as Plowden remarks, important; for though James's
flight, on the 23rd of December, was the legal pretence for
insurrection in the summer of 1689, yet negotiations had been going on
with Holland through 1687 and 1688,[15] and the Northern Irish formed
themselves into military corps, and attacked the soldiers of the crown
before Enniskillen, on the _first week_ in December; and on the 7th
December the gates of Derry were shut in the face of the king's
troops,[16] facts which should be remembered in judging the loyalty of
the two parties.
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[5] King's "State of the Protestants." Harris's "Life of King
William," folio, Dublin, 1749, book 8. Leland's "History of
Ireland," vol. 3, book 6, chaps. 5 and 6. Lesley's "Answer to
King's State of the Protestants," London, 1692. Curry's "Review of
the Civil Wars of Ireland." Plowden's "Historical Review of
Ireland; also History of Ireland," vol. i., c. 9. Jones's "Reply to
an anonymous writer from Belfast, signed Portia," Dublin, 1792.
[6] Thorpe's MSS.
[7] London, 2 vols. 4to, edited by Rev. J. Clarke.
[8] Paris, 1825, 3 vols. 8vo.
[9] Spenser's "View"; Fynes Moryson's "Itinerary"; Captain Lee's
"Memoir"; Harris's "Letters"; and Carte's "Ormonde."
[10] See the proofs of this collected in Carey's "Vindiciae
Hibernicae."
[11] Milton's "Eikonoclastes"; Warner's "History of the Rebellion";
Carey's "Vindiciae"; and Pamphlets, Libraries of Trinity College and
the Dublin Society.
[12] Sir W. Petty's "Political Anatomy of Ireland"; Lawrence's
"Interest of Ireland"; "Curry's Review"; "Carte's Life and Letters
of Ormonde," &c.
[13] Hallam's "Constitutional History," v. 3, p. 588, 3rd edition.
[14] Speke's "Memoirs."
[15] See the Declaration of Union, dated 21st March, 1688, in the
Appendix to Walker's "Account of the Siege of Derry."
[16] These acts were done in good faith by the people, instigated
by the devices of the nobles. A letter, now admitted to have been
forged, was dispersed by Lord Mount Alexander, announcing the
design of the Roman Catholics to murder the Protestants.
CHAPTER II.
ORIGIN AND CHARACTER OF THE PARLIAMENT.--THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
James landed at Kinsale, 12th March, 1689, about a month after the
election of William and Mary by the English convention. He entered
Dublin in state on the 24th March, accompanied by D'Avaux, as
Ambassador from France, and a splendid court. His first act was to
issue five proclamations--the first, requiring the return and aid of
his Irish absentee subjects; the second, urging upon the local
authorities the suppression of robberies and violence which had
increased in this unsettled state of affairs; the third, encouraging
the bringing provisions for his army; the fourth, creating a currency
of such metal as he had, conceiving it preferable to a paper currency
(a gold or silver currency was out of his power, for of the two
millions promised him by France, he only got L150,000); the fifth
proclamation summoned a parliament for the 7th May, 1689.
James also issued a proclamation promising liberty of conscience,
justice and protection[17] to all; and, after receiving many
congratulatory addresses, set out for Derry to press the blockade. On
the 29th April he returned to Dublin. On the 7th May Ireland possessed
a complete and independent government. Leaving the castle, over which
floated the national flag, James proceeded in full procession to the
King's Inns, where the Parliament sat, and the Commons having assembled
at the bar of the Peers, James entered, "with Robe and Crown," and
addressed the Commons in a speech full of manliness and dignity. At the
close of the speech, the Chancellor of Ireland, Lord Gosworth, directed
the Commons to retire and make choice of a Speaker. In half an hour the
Commons returned and presented Sir Richard Nagle as their Speaker, a
man of great endowments and high character. The Speaker was accepted,
and the Houses adjourned.
The peers who sat in this parliament amounted to fifty-four. Among
these fifty-four were six dignitaries of the Protestant Church, one
duke, ten earls, sixteen viscounts, and twenty-one barons. It contained
the oldest families of the country--O'Brien and DeCourcy, MacCarty and
Bermingham, De Burgo and Maguire, Butler and Fitzpatrick. The bishops
of Meath, Cork, Ossory, Limerick, and Waterford, and the Protestant
names of Aungier, Le Poer, and Forbes sat with the representatives of
the great Roman Catholic houses of Plunket, Barnewell, Dillon, and
Nugent. Nor were some fresher honours wanting; Talbot and Mountcashel
were the darlings of the people, the trust of the soldiery, the themes
of bards.
King's impeachment of this parliament is amusing enough. His first
charge is, that if the House were full, the majority would have been
Protestant. Now, if the majority preferred acting as insurgents under
the Prince of Orange, to attending to their duties in the Irish house
of peers, it was their own fault. Certain it is, the most violent might
safely have attended, for the earls of Granard and Longford and the
bishop of Meath not only attended, but carried on a bold and systematic
opposition. And so far was the House from resenting this, that they
committed the sheriff of Dublin to prison for billeting an officer at
the bishop of Meath's. Yet the bishop had not merely resisted their
favourite repeal of the Settlement, but, in doing so, had stigmatized
their fathers and some of themselves as murderous rebels.
King's next charge is, that the attainders of many peers were reversed
to admit them. Now this is unsupported evidence against fact, and
simply a falsehood. Then he complains of the new creations. They were
just _five_ in number; and of these five, two were great legal
dignitaries--the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland; the
third was Colonel MacCarty, of the princely family of Desmond, and a
distinguished soldier with a great following; the others, Brown, Lord
Kenmare; and Bourke, Lord Bofin (son of Lord Clanricarde), men of high
position in their counties.
Fitton, Lord Gosworth, occupied the woolsack. That he was a man of
capacity, if not of character, may be fairly presumed from his party
having put him in so important an office in such trying times.[18] He
certainly had neither faction nor following to bring with him. Nor was
he treated by his party below what his rank entitled him to. The
appointments in his court were not interfered with: his decrees were
not impeached, and in the council he sat above even Herbert, the Lord
Chancellor of England. Yet, King describes this man as "detected of
forgery," one who was brought from gaol to the woolsack--one who had
not appeared in any court--a stranger to the kingdom, the laws, and the
practice and rules of court;--one who made constant needless references
to the Masters to disguise his ignorance, and who was brought into
power, first, because he was "a convert papist, that is, a renegade to
his country and his religion;" and, secondly, because he would enable
the Irish to recover their estates by countenancing "forgeries and
perjuries," which last, continues the veracious archbishop, he nearly
effected, without putting them to the trouble of repealing the Acts of
Settlement. King staggers from the assertion that Fitton denied justice
to Protestants, into saying it was got from him with difficulty.
Thomas Nugent, Baron Riverstown, second son of the Earl of Westmeath,
was chosen chairman of committees. King, who is the only authority at
present accessible to us, states that Nugent had been "out" in 1641,
but considering that he did not die till 1715, he must have been a mere
boy in '41, if born at all; and, at any rate, as his family, including
his grandfather, Lord Delvin (first Earl of Westmeath), and his father,
carried arms against the Irish up to 1648, and suffered severely, it is
most improbable that he was, as a child, in the opposite ranks.
The Irish had never ceased to agitate against the Acts of Settlement
and Explanation. Thus Sir Nicholas Plunket had done legal battle
against the first, till an express resolution excluded him by name from
appearing at the bar of the council. Then Colonel Talbot (Tyrconnell)
led the opposition effort for their repeal or mild administration. In
1686, Sir Richard Nagle went to England, as agent of the Irish, to seek
their repeal. But the greatest effort was made in 1688. Nugent and Rice
were sent expressly to London to press the repeal. Rice is said to have
shown great tact and eloquence, but Nugent to have been rash and
confused. Certain it is, they were unsuccessful with the council, and
were brutally insulted by the London mob, set on by the very decent
chiefs of the Williamite party.
Of the eighteen prelates, ten were Englishmen, one Welsh, and only
seven Irish. Several had been chaplains to the different lords
lieutenant. Eleven out of the eighteen were in England during the
session. Of these, some were habitual absentees, such as Thomas
Hackett, bishop of Down, deprived in 1691 by Williamite commissioners
for an absence of twenty years. Others had got leave of absence during
'87 and '88. Some, like Archbishop John Vesey of Tuam, and Bishop
Richard Tennison of Killala, fled in good earnest, and accepted
lecturerships and cures in London.
There was one man among them who deserves more notice, Anthony Dopping,
lord bishop of Meath. He was born in Dublin, 28th March, 1643, and died
24th April, 1697. He was educated in St. Patrick's schools, and won his
fellowship in T.C.D. in 1662, being only 19 years old. He led the
opposition in the parliament of '89 with great vigour and pertinacity.
He resisted all the principal measures, and procured great changes in
some of them, as appears by "The Journal." He had a fearless character
and ready tongue. He continued a leader of the Ultras after the battle
of the Boyne, and quarrelled with the government. King William, finding
how slowly the Irish war proceeded, had prepared and sent to Ireland a
proclamation conceding the demands of the Roman Catholics, granting
them perfect religious liberty, right of admission to all offices, and
an establishment for their clergy.[19] While this was with the printers
in Dublin, news came of the danger of Limerick. The proclamation was
suppressed by the Lords Justices, who hastened to the camp, "to hold
the Irish to as hard terms as possible. This they did effectually."
Still these "hard terms" were too lenient for the Ultras, who roared
against the treaty of Limerick, and demanded its abrogation. On the
Sunday after the Lords Justices had returned, full of joy at having
tricked the Irish into so much harder terms than William had directed
them to offer, they attended Christ Church, and the bishop of Meath
preached a sermon, whose whole object was to urge the breaking of the
treaty of Limerick, contending (says Harris, in his Irish Writers in
Ware, p. 215) that "peace ought not to be kept with a people so
perfidious." The Justices, and the Williamite or moderate party, were
enraged at this. The bishop of Kildare was directed to preach in Christ
Church on the following Sunday in favour of the treaty; and he obtained
the place in the privy council from which the bishop of Meath was
expelled; but ultimately the party of the latter triumphed, and enacted
the penal laws.
The list of the Lords Temporal has been made out with great care, from
all the authorities accessible.
Ireland had then but two dukes, Tyrconnell and Ormond. Ormond possessed
the enormous spoils acquired by his grandfather from the Irish, and was
therefore largely interested in the success of the English party. He,
of course, did not attend. His huge territory and its regal privileges
were taken from him by a special act.
Considering the position he occupied, the materials on the life of
Tyrconnell are most unsatisfactory. Richard Talbot was a cadet of the
Irish branch of the Shrewsbury family, and numbered in his ancestors
the first names in English history. His father was Sir William Talbot,
a distinguished Irish lawyer, and his brother, Peter Talbot, was R.C.
Archbishop of Dublin, and was murdered there by tedious imprisonment on
a false charge in 1680. He was a lad of sixteen when Cromwell sacked
Drogheda in September 1649, and he doubtless brought from its bloody
ashes no feeling in favour of the Saxon. He was all his life engaged in
the service of the Irish and of James. He was attached to the Duke of
York's suite from the Restoration, and was taken prisoner by the Dutch,
on board the Catharine, in the naval action at Solebay, 29th May,
1672.[20] After the Acts of Settlement and Explanation were passed, he
acted as agent for the Irish Roman Catholics, urging their claims with
all the influence his rank, abilities, and fortune[21] could command.
His zeal got him into frequent dangers; he was sent to the Tower in
1661 and 1671 for having challenged the Duke of Ormond, and the English
Commons presented an address in 1671, praying his dismissal from all
public employments. He was selected by James, both from personal trust
and popularity, to communicate with the Irish; and though Clarendon was
first sent as Lord Lieutenant in '85, Tyrconnell had the independent
management of the army,[22] and replaced Clarendon in 1686.
Sarsfield, who was at the head of "the French party," and most of the
great Irish officers, thought him undecided, hardly bold enough, and
with a selfish leaning towards England. Of his selfishness we have now
a better proof than they had, a proof that _might_ have abated his
master's eulogy, given further on. We say _might_, for _possibly_
Tyrconnell was in communication with James as to the French offers.
"It is now ascertained that, doubtful of the king's success in the
struggle for restoring popery in England, he had made secret
overtures to some of the French agents, for casting off all
connection with that kingdom in case of James's death, and, with
the aid of Louis, placing the crown of Ireland on his own head. M.
Mazure has brought this remarkable fact to light. Bonrepos, a
French emissary in England, was authorised by his court to proceed
in a negociation with Tyrconnell for the separation of the two
islands, in case that a Protestant should succeed to the crown of
England. He had accordingly a private interview with a confidential
agent of the Lord Lieutenant at Chester in the month of October,
1687. Tyrconnell undertook that in less than a year everything
should be prepared."[23]
Tyrconnell was made Baron Talbotstown, Viscount Baltinglass, and Earl
of Tyrconnell in 1686, and Duke and Marquis, 30th March, 1689.
From his coming to Ireland, he worked hard for his master and his
countrymen. He gradually substituted Jacobite soldiers for the
Oliverians, who till then filled the ranks. He increased the army
largely, and lent the king 3,000 men in '88. Mischief was done to
James's cause by this employment of Irish troops in England. He was
active in calling in the corporation charters, and was exposed to much
calumny on account of it. The means, doubtless, were indefensible (for
the change should have been effected by act of Parliament, as it has at
length been in our times), but the end was to put the corporations into
the hands of the Irish people. And even in those new corporations,
one-third of the burgesses were of English descent and Protestant
faith; but this moderation is attempted to be shaved away by the
Williamites, who insist that most of these Protestants were Quakers,
whom they describe as a savage rabble, originally founded by the
Jesuits[24]--with what injustice we need hardly say. James describes
him "as a man of good abilities and clear courage, and one who for many
years had a true attachment to his majesty's person and interest."[25]
Lord Clanrickarde represented the Mac William _Uachdar_, one of the two
great branches of the De Burgos, who usurped the chieftaincy on the
death of the Earl of Ulster in the year 1333. His father was the great
Lord Clanrickarde, who held Connaught in peace and loyalty, from 1641
to 1650; when the troops for which he had negotiated with the Duke of
Lorraine not arriving, he too yielded to the storm.
Mac Donnel Lord Antrim, also the representative of a great house (the
Lord of the Isles), was equally dependant on his predecessor for
notoriety. His elder brother, the Marquis and Earl of Antrim, played a
notorious and powerful part on the Irish side, in the war, from 1642 up
to 1650. This Earl Alexander also commanded an Irish regiment during
the same war. He was within the treaty of Limerick, and saved his rank
and fortune.
Lords Longford and Granard were Williamites in fact. This does not
follow from their having acted so vigorously in the opposition in 1689,
but from their having joined William openly the year after. Lord
Granard had been offered the command of the Williamites of Ulster in
1688, and on his refusal, Lord Mount Alexander was appointed.
Among the earls, one naturally looks for the two famous names of Taaffe
and Lucan. But Taaffe was then on an embassy to the emperor, and
Patrick Sarsfield was not made Earl of Lucan till after. Indeed his
patent is not entered in the rolls, from which 'tis probable he was not
titled till after the battle of the Boyne.
Viscount Iveagh held Drogheda at the battle of the Boyne, and was
induced to surrender it by William's ruffianly and unmilitary threat of
"no quarter."
Lord Clare was father to the famous Lord Clare, whose regiment was the
glory of the Irish Brigade, and who was killed at Ramillies in 1706. He
was descended from Connor O'Brian, third earl of Thomond.
Lord Mountcashel, by his rapidity and skill, completely broke the
Munster insurgents, and made that province, till then considered the
stronghold of the English, James's best help. To him was intrusted the
Bill repealing the Settlement in the Commons, where he sat as member
for the county of Cork till that Bill passed the Commons, when he was
called to the Upper House as Lord Mountcashel.
Lord Kinsale represented the famous John De Courcy, Earl of Ulster, and
had the blood of Charlemagne in his veins. He served as
Lieutenant-Colonel to Lord Lucan. His attainder under William was
reversed, and he appeared at court, where he enforced the privilege
peculiar to his family of remaining covered in the king's presence.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[17] See as to this, Melfort's letter to Pottinger, the sovereign
of Belfast; "History of Belfast," pp. 72-3; Lesley _proves_, on
Williamite authority, that the Protestants were worse treated by
William's army than by James's. See Dr. Gorges in Lesley's
Appendix.
[18] He was appointed in 1686 (see Appendix B). T. W. R.
[19] In July, 1691, William had offered these terms: 1st. The free
public exercise of the Roman Catholic Religion. 2nd. Half the
churches in the kingdom. 3rd. Half the employments, civil and
military, if they pleased. 4th. Half their properties, as held
prior to Cromwell's conquest. The terms were at once refused. The
suppressed proclamation doubtless offered at least as much.
(Harris's "William," and Plowden, b. 2.)
[20] Rawdon Papers, p. 253.
[21] Anthony Hamilton, in his "Memoirs of Grammont," exaggerates
this to L40,000 a year, and attributes Miss Jennings' affection to
its attractions. But besides that, by his statement, Tyrconnell had
been a rival of Grammont with Miss Hamilton, there is enough in
Grammont to account for it otherwise. Hamilton, an Irishman, and a
Jacobite, seems to have sympathised with Tyrconnell. He describes
him as "one of the largest and most powerful looking men in
England," "with a brilliant and handsome appearance, and something
of nobility, not to say haughtiness in his manners." He mentions
circumstances, showing him bold, free, amorous, and, strange for a
courtier, punctual in payment of debts. Yet this man, so full of
refinement, and so trained, is described by King as addressing the
Irish Privy Council thus:--"I have put the sword into your hands,
and God damn you all if ever you part with it."
[22] Clarendon's "State Letters," vol. i. and the Diary.
[23] Hallam's "Constitutional History," v. iii., p. 530.
[24] State Tracts, Will. III.'s reign, H. R.'s App. to Cox.
[25] "Memoirs of James II.," by the Rev. ---- Clarke, Chaplain to
George IV. These memoirs seem to have been copies of memoirs
written under James II.'s inspection, and deposited in the Scotch
College in Paris. The originals perished at the French Revolution,
and their copies came to Rome, from whence they were procured for
the English government in 1805. See Mr. Clarke's preface, and
Guizot's preface to his translation of them in the "Memoires de la
Revolution."
CHAPTER III.
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
The number of members in the Commons, as the complement was made up
under the monstrous charters of James I., Charles I., and Charles II.,
far outdoing in their unconstitutional nature any of the stretchings of
prerogative in the reign of James II., amounted to 300. The number
actually returned was 224. Of the deficiencies, no less than 28 were
caused by the places being the seats of the war.
The character of this assembly must be chiefly judged by its acts, and
we shall presently resume the consideration of them; but there are some
things in the composition of the Commons whereby their character has
been judged.
They have been denounced by King: but before we examine his statements,
let us inquire who he was, lest we underrate or overrate his testimony;
lest we unjustly require proof, in addition to the witness of a
thoroughly pure and wise man; or, what is more dangerous, lest we
remain content with the unconfirmed statements of a bigot or knave.
William King was the son of James King, a miller, who, in order to
avoid taking the Solemn League and Covenant, removed from the North of
Scotland, and settled in Antrim, where William was born, 1st of May,
1650. (See Harris's "Ware," Bishops of Derry.) He was educated at
Dungannon, was a sizar, "_native_," and schoolmaster in T.C.D., and was
ordained in 1673. Parker, archbishop of Tuam, gave him a heap of
livings, and on being translated to Dublin, procured the Chancellorship
of St. Patrick's for King in 1679. This he held during the Revolution.
He was imprisoned in 1689 on suspicion, but after some months was
released, through the influence of Herbert and Tyrconnell, and
notwithstanding C. J. Nugent's opposition. Immediately on his release
he wrote his "State of the Protestants of Ireland," printed in London,
_cum privilegio_, at the chief Williamite printer's. It was written and
published while the war in Ireland was at its height, and when it was
sought at any price to check the Jacobite feeling then beginning to
revive in England, by running down the conduct of the Irish, James's
most formidable supporters. Moreover, King had been imprisoned (justly
or unjustly) by James's council, and he obtained the bishopric of Derry
from William, on the 25th of January, 1690 (old style), namely, within
thirty-eight weeks before the publication of his book, which was
printed, _cum privilegio_, 15th of October, 1691. Whether the bishopric
was the wages of the book, or the book revenge for the imprisonment, we
shall not say; but surely King must have had marvellous virtue to write
impartially, in excited and reckless times, for so demoralized a party
as the English Whigs, when he wrote of transactions yet incomplete, of
which there was a perilous stake not only for him but for his friends,
and when, of the parties at issue, one gave him a gaol and the other a
mitre.
There is scarcely a section in his book that does not abound with the
most superlative charges, put in the coarsest language. All the
calumnies as to 1641, which are now confessed to be false, are gospel
truths in his book. He never gives an exact authority for any of his
graver charges, and his appendix is a valuable reply to his text.
When, in addition to these external probabilites and intrinsic
evidences of falsehood, we add that, immediately on its publication,
Lesley wrote an answer to it, denying its main statements as mere lies,
and that his book was never replied to, we will not be in a hurry to
adopt any statement of King's.
But in order to see the force of this last objection to King's
credibility, something must be known of Lesley.
Charles Lesley, son of the bishop of Clogher, is chiefly known for his
very able controversial writings against Deists, Catholics, and
Dissenters. He was a law-student till 1680, when he took orders; and in
1687 became chancellor of Connor. When, in 1688, James appointed a
Roman Catholic sheriff for Monaghan, Mr. Lesley, being then sick with
gout, had himself carried to the courthouse, and induced the
magistrates to commit the sheriff. In fact, it appears from Harris
("Life of William," p. 216, and "Writers of Ireland," pp. 282-6), that
Lesley was notorious for his conversions of Roman Catholics, and his
stern hostility to Tyrconnell's government. Lesley refused to take the
oath of supremacy after the Revolution, and thereby lost all chance of
promotion in the Church. He was looked on as the head of the nonjurors,
and died in March, 1721-2, at Glaslough, universally respected.
Such being Mr. Lesley's character, so able, so upright, so zealously
Protestant, he, in 1692, wrote an answer to King's "State," in which he
accuses King of the basest personal hypocrisy and charges him with
having in his book written gross, abominable, and notorious falsehoods,
and this he _proves_ in several instances, and in many more renders it
highly probable. King died 8th May, 1729, leaving Lesley's book
altogether unreplied to.
Here then was that man--bishop of Derry for eleven years and archbishop
of Dublin for twenty-seven years--remaining silent under a charge of
deliberate and interested falsehood, and that charge made by no
unworthy man, but by one of his own country, neighbourhood, and
creed--by one of acknowledged virtue, high position, and vast
abilities.
Nor is this all; Lesley's book was not only unanswered; it was watched
and attempted to be stopped, and when published, was instantly ordered
to be suppressed, as were all other publications in favour of the Irish
or of King James.
The reader is now in a position to judge of the credibility of any
assertion of King's, when unsupported by other authority.
King's gravest charges are in the following passage:--
"These members of the House of Commons are elected either by
freeholders of counties, or the freemen of the corporations; and I
have already showed how king James wrested these out of the hands
of Protestants, and put them into Popish hands in the new
constitution of corporations, by which the freemen and freeholders
of cities or boroughs, to whom the election of burgesses originally
belongs, are excluded, and the election put into the hands of a
small number of men named by the king, and removable at his
pleasure. The Protestant freeholders, if they had been in the
kingdom, were much more than the papist freeholders, but now being
gone, though many counties could not make a jury, as appeared at
the intended trial of Mr. Price and other Protestants at Wicklow,
who could not be tried for want of freeholders--yet, notwithstanding
the paucity of these, they made a shift to return knights of the
shire. The common way of election was thus:--The Earl of
Tyrconnell, together with the writ for election, commonly sent a
letter, recommending the persons he designed should be chosen; the
sheriff or mayor being his creature, on receipt of this, called so
many of the freeholders of a county or burgesses of a corporation
together, as he thought fit, and without making any noise, made the
return. It was easier to do this in boroughs--because, by their new
charters, the electors were not above twelve or thirteen, and in
the greatest cities but twenty-four; and commonly, not half of
these in the place. The method of the Sheriff's proceeding was the
same; the number of Popish freeholders being very small, sometimes
not a dozen in a county, it was easier to give notice to them to
appear, so that the Protestants either did not know of the election
or durst not appear at it."
First let us see about the boroughs. King, in his section on the
corporations, states in terms that "they" (the Protestants) "thought it
reasonable to keep these (corporate towns) in their own hands, as being
the foundation of the legislative power, and therefore secluded
papists," etc. The purport, therefore, of King's objection to the new
constitution under King James's charters was the admission of Roman
Catholics. Religious equality was sinful in his eyes.
The means used by James to change the corporations, namely bringing
_quo warrantos_ in the Exchequer against them, and employing all the
niceties of a confused law to quash them, we have before condemned. In
doing so, he had the precedents of the reigns called most constitutional
by English historians, and those not old, but during his brother's
reign; nor can anyone who has looked into Brady's treatise on Boroughs
doubt that there was plenty of "law" in favour of James's conduct.[26]
But still public policy and public opinion in England were against
these _quo warrantos_, and in Ireland they were only approved of by
those who were to be benefited by them.
But the means being thus improper, the use made by James of this power
can hardly be complained of. The Roman Catholics were then about
900,000, the Protestants, over 300,000. James, it is confessed, allowed
one-third of the corporations to be Protestant, though they were
little, if at all, more than one-fourth of the population. This will
appear no great injustice in our times, although some of these
Protestants may, as it has been alleged, have been "Quakers."
It must also be remembered that those proceedings were begun not by
James but by Charles; that the corporations were, with some show of
law, conceived to have been forfeited during the Irish war, or the
Cromwellian rule; and that being offered renewals on terms, they
refused; whereupon the _quo warrantos_ were brought and decided before
the regular tribunals during the earlier and middle part of James's
reign. On the 24th September, 1687, James issued his Royal Letter (to
be found in Harris's Appendix, pp. 4 to 6), commanding the renewal of
the charters. By these renewals, the first members of the corporations
were to be named by the lord lieutenant, but they were afterwards to
be elected by the corporations themselves. There certainly are
_non-obstante_ and non-resistance clauses ordered to be inserted, in
the prerogative spirit of that day, which were justly complained of.
With reference to the number of burgesses, King's statement that the
number of electors was usually twelve or thirteen, and in the greatest
cities but twenty-four, is untrue. Most of the Irish boroughs were
certainly reduced to these numbers under the liberal Hanoverian
government, but not so under James. The members' names are given in
full in Harris's Appendix, and from those it appears that no
corporation had so few as twelve electors. Only five, viz.--Dungannon,
Ennis, St. Johnstown (in Longford), Belturbet, and Athboy, were as low
as thirteen; twenty-three, viz.--Tuam, Kildare, Cavan, Galway, Callan,
Newborough, Carlingford, Gowran, Carysfort, Boyle, Roscommon, Athy,
Strabane, Middletown, Newry, Philipstown, Banagher, Castlebar, Fethard,
Blessington, Charleville, Thomastown, and Baltimore, varied from
fourteen to twenty-four; most of the rest varied from thirty to forty.
Dublin had seventy-three; Cork, sixty-one; Clonmel, forty-six; Cashel,
forty-two; Drogheda, fifty-seven; Kilkenny, sixty-one; Limerick,
sixty-five; Waterford, forty-nine; Youghal, forty-six; Wexford,
fifty-three, and Derry, sixty-four. This is a striking proof of the
little reliance to be placed on King's positive statements.
Harris, a hostile authority, gives the names and generally the
additions of the members of each corporation, and the majority are
merchants, respectable traders, engineers, or gentlemen. Moreover, in
such towns as our local knowledge extends to, the names are those of
the best families, not being zealous Williamites. As to the counties,
King relies upon a pamphlet published in London in 1689, setting out
great grievances in the title page, and disproving them in the body of
the tract.
If many Protestant freeholders had fled to England, who was to
blame?--Most assuredly, my Lord Mount Alexander and the rest of the
right noble and honourable suborners, devisers, and propagators of
forged letters and infamous reports, whereby they frightened the
Protestants, in order to take advantage of their terror for their own
selfish ends. The exposure of these devices by the publication of
"Speke's Memoirs," by the confessed forgery of the Dromore letter,
etc., have thrown the chief blame of the Protestant desertion off the
shoulders of those Protestants, off the shoulders, too, of the Irish
government, and have brought it crushingly upon the aristocratic cabal,
who alone profited by the revolution, as they alone caused it.
In the absence of other testimony, we must take, with similar allowances,
the story of Tyrconnell "_commonly_" sending an unconstitutional letter
to influence the election. But how very good these Jacobite sheriffs
and mayors were to let King into the secret, in 1691, when their
destiny was uncertain! That such gossip was current is likely, but for
a historian to assert on such authority is scandalous.
King asserts that the unrepresented boroughs were "_about twenty-nine_."
Now, there were but _eighteen_ boroughs unrestored; but King helps out
the falsehood by inserting places--Thurles, Tipperary, Arklow, and
Birr--which _never_ had members before or since, by _creating_ a
_second_ town of Kells, by transferring St. Johnstown in Longford which
returned members, to St. Johnstown in Donegal, which was a seat of war,
and by other tricks equally discreditable to his honesty and
intelligence.
The towns unrestored _could_ not have sent members to James's
parliament, and it was apparently doubted whether they ought to have
done so to William's in '92.
Against the Commons actually elected the charge is that only six
Protestants were elected. In the very section containing the charge it
is much qualified by other statements. "Thus," he says, "one Gerard
Dillon, Sergeant-at-Law, a most furious Papist, was Recorder of Dublin,
and he stood to be chosen one of the burgesses for the city, but could
not prevail, because he had purchased a considerable estate under the
Act of Settlement, and they feared lest this might engage him to defend
it;" and therefore they chose Sir Michael Creagh and Terence Dermot,
their Senior Aldermen, showing pretty clearly that the good citizens of
Dublin set little value on the "furious Popery" of Prime Sergeant
Dillon, in comparison with their property plundered by the Act of
Settlement.
The election for Trinity College is worthy of notice. We have it set
out in flaming paragraphs how horribly the College was used, worse than
any other borough, "Popish Fellows" being intruded. "In the house they
placed a Popish garrison, turned the chapel into a magazine, and many
of the chambers into prisons for Protestants." (King, p. 220, Ed.
1744.) Yet, _miraculous_ to say, in the heart of this "Popish
garrison," the "turned-out Vice-Provost, Fellows, and Scholars" met,
and elected two most bold, notable, and Protestant Williamites.
If this election could take place in Dublin, under the very nose of the
Government, and in a corporation in which the king had unquestioned
control, one will hesitate about the compulsion or exclusion in other
places.
Besides Sir John Meade and Mr. Joseph Coghlan, the members for the
College, there "were four more Protestants returned, of whose behaviour
I can give no account," says King. Pity he does not give the names.
If we were to allow a similar error in King's account of the creed of
the elected, that we have proved in his lists of the borough electors,
it would raise the number of Protestants in the house to about
fourteen.
Allowing then for the Protestants in arms against the Government--out
of the country, or within the seat of war--the disproportion between
their representatives and the Roman Catholics will lessen greatly.
One thing more is worth noticing in the Commons, and that is a sort of
sept representation. Thus we see O'Neills in Antrim, Tyrone, and
Armagh; Magennises in Down; O'Reillys in Cavan; Martins, Blakes,
Kirwans, Dalys, Bourkes for Connaught; MacCarthys, O'Briens, O'Donovans
for Cork and Clare; Farrells for Longford; Graces, Purcells, Butlers,
Welshs, Fitzgeralds for Tipperary, Kilkenny, Kildare, etc.; O'Tooles,
Byrnes, and Eustaces for Wicklow; MacMahons for Monaghan; Nugents,
Bellews, Talbots, etc., for North Leinster.
Sir Richard Nagle, the Speaker, was the descendant of an old Norman
family (said to be the same as the Nangles) settled in Cork. His
paternal castle, Carrignancurra, is on the edge of a steep rock, over
the meadows of the Blackwater, half-a-dozen miles below Mallow. It is
now the property of the Foot family, and here may still be seen the
mouldering ruin where that subtle lawyer first learned to plan.
Peacefully now look the long oak-clad cliffs on the happy river.
Nagle had obtained a splendid reputation at the Irish Bar. "He had been
educated among the Jesuits, and designed for a clergyman," says King,
"but afterwards betook himself to the study of the law, in which he
arrived to a good perfection." Harris, likewise, calls him "an artful
lawyer of great parts." Tyrconnell valued him rightly, and brought him
to England with him in the autumn of 1686. His reputation seems to have
been great, for it seems the lords interested in the Settlement Act,
"on being informed of Nagle's arrival, were so transported with rage
that they would have had him immediately sent out of London."
He was knighted, and made attorney-general in 1687; and on James's
arrival, March, 1688-9, he was made secretary of state. He is said, we
know not how truly, to have drafted the Commons' bill for the repeal of
the Settlement.
Let us mention some of the members.--Nagle's colleague in Cork was
Colonel MacCarty, afterwards Lord Mountcashel. Miles de Courcy,
afterwards Lord Kinsale, MacCarty Reagh, who finally settled in France.
His descendant, Count MacCarty Reagh, was notable for having one of the
finest libraries in Europe, which was sold after the Revolution.
The Rt. Hon. Simon Lutteral raised a dragoon regiment for James, and
afterwards commanded the Queen's regiment of infantry in the Brigade.
He was father to Colonel Henry Lutteral, accused of having betrayed the
passage of the Shannon at Limerick; and though Harris throws doubt on
this particular act of treason, his correspondence and rewards from
William seem sufficient proof and confirmation of his guilt.
Lally of Tullendaly, member for Tuam, was the representative of the
O'Lallys, an old Irish sept. His brother, John Gerard Lally, settled in
France, and married a sister to Dillon, "_colonel proprietaire_" in the
Brigade, and was Colonel commanding in this illustrious regiment. Sir
Gerard was father to the famous Count Thomas Lally Tollendal, who,
after having served from the age of twelve to sixty-four in every
quarter of the globe, from Barcelona to Dettingen, and from Fontenoy to
Pondicherry, was beheaded on the 9th of May, 1766. The Marquis De Lally
Tollendal, a distinguished lawyer and statesman of the Bourbonist
party, and writer of the life of Strafford, and many other works, was a
grand-nephew to James Lally, the member for Tuam in '89.
Colonel Roger Mac Elligot, who commanded Lord Clancarty's regiment (the
12th infantry) in the Brigade, was member for Ardfert.
Limerick.--Sir John Fitzgerald was "_col. propr._" of the regiment of
Limerick (8th infantry) in the Brigade.
Oliver O'Gara, member for Tulske, was Lieutenant-Colonel of the guards
under Colonel Dorrington.
Hugh Mac Mahon, Gordon O'Nials Lieutenant-Colonel, was member for
Monaghan.
The Right Hon. Nicholas Purcell, member for Tipperary, was a Privy
Councillor early in James's reign. His family were Barons of Loughmoe,
and of great consideration in those parts.
The first bill introduced into the Lords was on the 8th of May--that
for the recognition of the king--and the same day committees of
grievance were appointed.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[26] Hallam ("Constitutional History," chaps. 13 and 14) contains
enough to show the uncertainty of the law. Throughout these, as in
all parts of his work, he is a jealous Williamite and a bigoted
Whig. His treatment of Curry has been justly censured by Mr. Wyse,
in his valuable "History of the Catholic Association," vol. i.,
pp. 36-7.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SESSION.
It is needless for us to track the parliament through the debates of
the session, which lasted till the 20th July. The few acts (thirty-five),
passed in two months, received full and earnest discussion; committees
and counsel were heard on many of them (the Acts for repealing the
Settlement in particular), and this parliament refused even to adjourn
during any holiday.
We trust our readers will deal like searchers for truth, not like
polemics, with these documents, and with the history of these times.
But, above all, let them not approach the subject unless it be in a
spirit enlightened by philosophy and warmed by charity. Thus studied,
this time, which has been the armoury of faction, may become the temple
of reconciliation. The descendant of the Williamite ought to sympathise
with the urgent patriotism and loyalty of the parliament, rather than
dwell on its errors, or on the sufferings which civil war inflicted on
his forefathers. The heir of the Jacobite may well be proud of such
countrymen as the Inniskilliners and the 'Prentice Boys of Derry. Both
must deplore that the falsehoods, corruption, and forgeries of English
aristocrats, the imprudence of an English king, and the fickleness of
the English people placed the noble cavalry which slew Schomberg, and
all but beat William's immense masses at the Boyne, in opposition to
the stout men of Butler's-bridge and Cavan. What had not the defenders
of Derry and Limerick, the heroes of Athlone, Inniskillen, and Aughrim
done, had they cordially joined against the alien? Let the Roman
Catholics, crushed by the Penal Code, let the Protestants, impoverished
and insulted by England, till, musket in hand and with banners
displayed, they forced their rights from her in '82--let both look
narrowly at the causes of those intestine feuds, which have prostrated
both in turn before the stranger, and see whether much may not be said
for both sides, and whether half of what each calls crime in the other
is not his own distrust or his neighbour's ignorance. Knowledge,
Charity, and Patriotism are the only powers which can loose this
Prometheus-land. Let us seek them daily in our own hearts and
conversation.
The Acts and other official documents of James's Parliament were
ordered by William's Parliament to be burned, and became extremely
scarce. In 1740 they were printed in Dublin by Ebenezer Rider, and from
that collection we propose to reprint the most important of them, as
the best and most solid answer to misrepresentation.
The Parliament which passed those Acts was the first and the last which
ever sat in Ireland since the English invasion, possessed of national
authority, and complete in all its parts. The king, by law and in
fact--the king who, by his Scottish descent, his creed, and his
misfortunes, was dear (mistakenly or not) to the majority of the then
people of Ireland--presided in person over that Parliament. The peerage
consisted of the best blood, Milesian and Norman, of great wealth and
of various creeds. The Commons represented the Irish septs, the Danish
towns, and the Anglo-Irish counties and boroughs. No Parliament of
equal rank, from King to Commons, sat here since; none sat here before
or since so national in composition and conduct.
Standing between two dynasties--endangering the one, and almost
rescuing the other--acting for a nation entirely unchained then for the
first time in 500 years--this Parliament and its Acts _ought_ to
possess the very greatest interest for the historian and the patriot.
This was the speech with which his Majesty opened the Session:--
_My Lords and Gentlemen_,
The Exemplary Loyalty which this Nation hath expressed to me, at a
time when _others_ of my _Subjects undutifully misbehaved
themselves to me, or so basely deserted me_: And your seconding my
Deputy, as you did, in His Firm and Resolute asserting my Right, in
preserving this Kingdom for me, and putting it in a Posture of
Defence; made me resolve to come to you, and to venture my life
with you, in the defence of your Liberties and my Own Right. And to
my great Satisfaction I have not only found you ready to serve me,
but that your Courage has equalled your Zeal.
I have always been for Liberty of Conscience, and against invading
any Man's Property; having still in my Mind that Saying in Holy
Writ, _Do as you would be done to, for that is the Law and the
Prophets_.
_It was this Liberty of Conscience I gave, which my Enemies both
Abroad and at Home dreaded; especially when they saw that I was
resolved to have it Established by Law in all my Dominions, and
made them set themselves up against me_, though for different
Reasons. Seeing that if I had once settled it, _My people_ (_in
the Opinion of the One_) would have been too happy; and I (_in the
Opinion of the Other_) too great.
_This Argument was made use of_, to persuade their own People
to joyn with them, and to many of my Subjects to use me as they
have done. But nothing shall ever persuade me to change my Mind as
to that; and wheresoever I am the Master, I design (God willing) to
Establish it by Law; and have no other Test or Distinction but that
of Loyalty.
I expect your Concurrence in so Christian a Work, and in making
Laws against Prophaneness and all Sorts of Debauchery.
I shall also most readily consent to the making such Good and
Wholesome Laws as may be for the general Good of the Nation, the
Improvement of Trade, and the relieving of such as have been
injured by the late _Acts of Settlement_, as far forth as may
be consistent with Reason, Justice, and the Publick Good of my
People.
And as I shall do my Part to make you Happy and Rich, I make no
Doubt of your Assistance; by enabling me to oppose the unjust
Designs of my Enemies, and to make this Nation flourish.
And to encourage you the more to it, you know with what Ardour and
Generosity and Kindness the Most Christian King gave a secure
retreat to the Queen, my Son, and Myself, when we were forced out
of _England_, and came to seek for Protection and Safety in his
Dominions; how he embraced my Interest, and gave me such Supplies
of all Sorts as enabled me to come to you; which, without his
obliging Assistance, I could not have done: _This he did_ at a Time
when he had so many and so considerable Enemies to deal with: _and
you see still continues to do_.
I shall conclude as I have begun, and assure you I am as sensible
as you can desire of the signal Loyalty you have expressed to me;
and shall make it my chief study (as it always has been) to make
you and all my Subjects happy.
These were the Acts of that memorable parliament.
CHAPTER I.
An Act of Recognition.
CHAPTER II.
An Act for Annulling and making Void all Patents of Officers for Life,
or during good Behaviour.
CHAPTER III.
An Act declaring, That the Parliament of England cannot bind Ireland
[and] against Writs of Error and Appeals, to be brought for Removing
Judgments, Decrees, and Sentences given in Ireland, into England.
CHAPTER IV.
An Act for Repealing the Acts of Settlement, and Explanation,
Resolution of Doubts and all Grants, Patents and Certificates, pursuant
to them or any of them. [This Act will be dealt with separately in the
next chapter.]
CHAPTER V.
An Act for punishing of persons who bring in counterfeit Coin of
foreign Realms being current in this Realm, or counterfeit the same
within this Realm, or wash, clip, file, or lighten the same.
CHAPTER VI.
An Act for taking off all Incapacities on the Natives of this Kingdom.
CHAPTER VII.
An Act for taking away the Benefits of the Clergy in certain Cases of
Felony in this Kingdom for two Years.
CHAPTER VIII.
An Act to continue two Acts made to prevent Delays in Execution; and to
prevent Arrests of Judgments and Superseding Executions.
CHAPTER IX.
An Act for Repealing a Statute, Entituled, An Act for Provision of
Ministers in Cities and Corporate Towns, and making the Church of St.
Andrews in the Suburbs of [the city of] Dublin Presentative for ever.
CHAPTER X.
An Act of Supply for his Majesty for the Support of his Army.
[The Act of Supply begins by giving good reasons for the making of it;
namely, that the army cost far more than the king's revenue, and that
that army was rendered necessary from the invasion of Ireland by the
English rebels. It next grants the king L20,000 a month, to be raised
by a land-tax, and this sum it distributes on the different counties
and counties of towns, according to their abilities. The rebellious
counties of Fermanagh and Derry are taxed just as lightly as if they
were loyal. The names of the commissioners are, beyond doubt, those of
the first men in their respective counties. The rank of the country was
as palpably on James's side as was the populace.
The clauses regarding the tenants are remarkably clear and liberal:
"For as much," it says, "as it would be hard that the tenants should
bear _any_ proportion of the said sum, considering that it is very
difficult for the tenant to pay his rent in these distracted times," it
goes on to provide that the tax shall, in the first instance, be paid
by the occupier, but that, where land is let at its value, he shall be
ALLOWED THE WHOLE OF THE TAX OUT OF HIS RENT, notwithstanding any
contract to the contrary; and that where the land was let at _half_ its
value _or less_, then, and then only, should the tenant pay a share
(half) of the tax. Thus not only rack-rented farms, but all let at any
rent, no matter how little, over half the value, were free of this tax.
Where, in distracted or quiet times, since, has a parliament of
landlords in England or Ireland acted with equal liberality?
The L20,000 a month hereby granted was altogether insufficient for the
war; and James, urged by the military exigency, which did not tolerate
the delay of calling a parliament when Schomberg threatened the
capital, issued a commission on the 10th April, 1690, to raise L20,000
a month additional; yet so far was even this from meeting his wants,
that we find by one of Tyrconnell's letters to the queen (quoted in
Thorpe's catalogue for 1836), that in the spring of 1689, James's
expenses were L100,000 a month. Those who have censured this additional
levy and the brass coinage were jealous of what was done towards
fighting the battle of Ireland, or forgot that levies by the crown and
alterations of the coin had been practised by every government in
Europe.]
CHAPTER XI.
An Act for Repealing the Act for keeping and celebrating the 23rd of
_October_ as an Anniversary Thanksgiving in this Kingdom.
CHAPTER XII.
An Act for Liberty of Conscience, and Repealing such Acts or Clauses in
any Act of Parliament which are inconsistent with the same.
An Act concerning Tythes and other Ecclesiastical Duties.
_Acts XIII. and XV. provide for the payment of tithes by Protestants
to the Protestant Church and by Catholics to the Catholic Church._
CHAPTER XIV.
An Act regulating Tythes, and other Ecclesiastical Duties in the
Province of _Ulster_.
CHAPTER XVI.
An Act for Repealing the Act for real Union and Division of Parishes,
and concerning Churches, Free-Schools and Exchanges.
CHAPTER XVII.
An Act for Relief and Release of poor distressed Prisoners for Debts.
CHAPTER XVIII.
An Act for the Repealing an Act, Entituled, An Act for Confirmation of
Letters Patent Granted to his Grace James Duke of Ormond.
[The list of estates granted to Ormond, under the settlement at the
restoration, occupies a page and a half of Cox's Magazine. To reduce
him to his hereditary principalities (for they were no less) which he
held in 1641, was no great grievance, and that was the object of this
Act.]
CHAPTER XIX.
An Act for Encouragement of Strangers and others to inhabit and plant
in the Kingdom of _Ireland_.
CHAPTER XX.
An Act for Prevention of Frauds and Perjuries.
CHAPTER XXI.
An Act for Prohibiting the Importation of English, Scotch, or Welch
Coals into this Kingdom.
CHAPTER XXII.
An Act for ratifying and confirming Deeds and Settlements and last
Wills and Testaments of Persons out of Possession.
CHAPTER XXIII.
An Act for the speedy Recovering of Servants' Wages.
CHAPTER XXIV.
An Act for Forfeiting and Vesting in His Majesty the Goods of
Absentees.
CHAPTER XXV.
An Act concerning Martial Law.
CHAPTER XXVI.
An Act for Punishment of Waste committed on Lands restorable to old
Proprietors.
CHAPTER XXVII.
An Act to enable his Majesty to regulate the Duties of Foreign
Commodities.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
An Act for the better settling Intestates' Estates.
CHAPTER XXIX.
An Act for the Advance and Improvement of Trade, and for Encouragement
and increase of Shipping, and Navigation.
CHAPTER XXX.
An Act for the Attainder of Divers Rebels, and for the Preserving the
Interest of Loyal Subjects.--(Dealt with in our sixth chapter.)
CHAPTER XXXI.
An Act for granting and confirming unto the Duke of _Tyrconnel_, Lands
and Tenements to the Value of L15,000 _per annum_.
CHAPTER XXXII.
An Act for securing the Water-Course for the Castle and City of
_Dublin_.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
An Act for relieving Dame _Anna Yolanda Sarracourt_, alias _Duval_, and
her Daughter.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
An Act for securing Iron-works and Land thereunto belonging, on Sir
_Henry Waddington_, Knight, at a certain Rate.
CHAPTER XXXV.
An Act for Reversal of the Attainder of _William Ryan_ of _Bally Ryan_
in the County of _Tipperary_, Esq.; and for restoring him to his Blood,
corrupted by the said Attainder.
CHAPTER V.
REPEAL OF THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT.
It appears from the Journal of the proceedings of the parliament, and
from many other authorities, that no act of the Irish Parliament of
1689 received such full consideration as the following. Two bills were
brought in for the purpose of repealing the acts of settlement--that
into the House of Lords, on May 13, by Chief Justice Nugent; that into
the House of Commons by Lord Riverstown and Colonel MacCarthy.
Committees sat to inquire into the effects of the bills; many memorials
were read and considered; counsel were heard, both generally on the
bills and on their effects on individuals; the debates were long, and
it was not till after several conferences between the two houses that
the act passed. The act was deliberately and maturely considered.
The titles and some of the effects of the acts of settlement are given
in the preamble to the following statute. The effect of those acts of
settlement had been, in a great degree, to confirm the unprincipled
distribution of Irish property, made by Cromwell's government, amongst
those who had served it best, or, what meant nearly the same thing, who
had most injured the Irish. The acts of settlement gave legality to a
revolution which transferred the lands of the natives to military
colonists. The repeal of those acts, within 24 years after they passed,
and within about 37 years after that revolution took place, cannot
excite much surprise. The _one-third_ of their holdings (which the
Cromwellian soldiers were obliged by the acts of the settlement to give
up) could not have made a fund to reprize those who had been ousted
from the entire. However, the giving up of that one-third was not
strictly enforced, and the stock resulting was wasted by commissioners,
and distributed as the applicants had interest at court, not as they
had title to the lands. Thus, Lord Ormond got some HUNDRED THOUSAND
acres; albeit he had done more substantial injury to the Irish, and to
the royalist cause in which they foolishly embarked, than any of the
parliamentarians, from Coote to Ireton. Under such circumstances, we
are not exaggerating the effect of the acts of settlement, passed after
the Restoration, in saying, that they confirmed by law the Cromwellian
robbery. The testimony of all the credible writers of the time goes to
the same effect. Indeed, the repeal of the acts of settlement would
have been against the interests of the natives, if they had received
justice from those acts. This, in itself, is sufficient to prove how
much hardship they had caused. The repeal of those acts by the Irish,
as soon as they were in power, seems natural, considering how great and
how recent was the injury they inflicted. Still, as we said, 24 years
had passed since those acts had become law. Many persons had got
possession of properties under that law, and many of those properties
had, doubtless, been sold, leased, subdivided, improved, and
incumbered, upon the faith of that law. It might be urged that persons
interested by such means in these properties had become so with full
knowledge that they had been acquired by violence and injustice, and
that the original owners and their families were in existence, ready
and resolved to take their first opportunity of regaining their rights.
Such reasoning fixes all who had advanced money, made purchases, or
become in any wise interested under the acts of settlement, with such
injustice and imprudence as to diminish their claim for compensation
upon the repeal of those acts. But it only diminished, it did not
destroy that claim. All those persons reposed some confidence in the
security of the then existing government; and many of them found a
justification for the Cromwellian conquest, in the conduct of the
Irish, as the well-sustained falsehoods of the English describe it.
For these reasons, Chief Justice Keating prepared a long memorial,
which Forbes, Lord Granard, presented to the king, during the
discussions on the bills, in May, 1689, setting forth the claims of
those who came in under the acts of settlement, as incumbrancers,
purchasers, tenants, by marriage, etc. This memorial is dishonestly
represented by the Whig writers, as directed against the repeal
altogether; but any one who reads it (which he can do in the appendix
to Harris's life of William) will find that it is an argument in favour
of the classes described in the last sentence. From the long and
careful clauses in the following act, for the reprisal and compensation
of those classes, we must infer that Keating's memorial produced its
intended effect. However, these clauses require to be carefully
examined, to see whether they carry out this principle of compensation
fairly and impartially. The character of this parliament for moderation
depends greatly on their doings in this respect.
We now come to a second class, the Irish who, having been given the
alternative of "Hell or Connaught" (as a certain bishop was of Heaven
or Dungarvan), preferred the latter, and were located on the lands of
the Connaught people. This class would generally come in for their old
holdings in the other provinces, and required no compensation; but the
distribution, under this act, of the incumbrances, etc., between them
and the owners of their former and present lands, seems lawyer-like and
reasonable.
The next great class are the "adventurers," those who got lands during
the Commonwealth, and whose holdings were confirmed by the settlement.
Their claim was boldly and ably urged by Anthony Dopping, bishop of
Meath. His speech on the Repeal Bill is given in King's appendix, and
is worth reading. He bases their claim upon the supposition of the
Irish having been bloody rebels, rightly punished by the giving of
their lands to their loyal conquerors. His speech gives the genuine
opinion of the English at the time. The preamble to the following act,
and that to the Commons' bill, give the Irish view of the war. These
documents deny that the bulk of the Irish were engaged in the
conspiracy of 1641; and the denial is true, although it is also true
that more than a "few indigent persons" engaged in it, as is plain from
Lord Maguire's narrative; and although it might have more become this
Irish parliament to proclaim the absolute justice of the rising of
1641, on account of the sufferings of all ranks of Irish, in property
and in political and religious rights; while they might have lamented
that English atrocities had led to a cruel retaliation, though one
infinitely less than it has been represented. However, the parliament,
probably from delicacy to the king, based the rights of the Irish upon
the peace of 1684, and the Restoration as restoring them to their
loyalty, and to the properties possessed in 1641.
Most fair inquirers will allow the justice of this restoration of the
Irish; but will lament that the act before us contains no provision for
the families of those adventurers, who, however guilty when they came
into the country, had been in it for from thirty to forty years, and
had time and some citizenship in their favour. There had been sound
policy in that too, but it was not done; and though the open hostility
of most of those adventurers to the government--though the wants and
urgency of the old proprietors, added to a lively recollection of the
horrors which thronged about their advent, may be urged in favour of
leaving them to work out their own livelihood by hard industry, or to
return to England, we cannot be quite reconciled to the wisdom of the
course. Yet, let any one who finds himself eager to condemn the Irish
Parliament on this account read over the facts that led to it, namely:
the conquest of Leinster before the Reformation; the settlements of
Munster and Ulster, under Elizabeth and James; the governments of
Strafford, and Parsons, and Borlace; Cromwell's and Ireton's conquest;
the effects of the acts of settlement, and the false-plot reign of
Charles II.; let them, we say, read these, and be at least moderate in
censuring the Parliament of 1689.
_The Preamble to the Act of Repeal of the Acts of Settlement and
Explanation, etc., as it passed the House of Commons._[27]
Whereas the Ambition and Avarice of the Lords Justices ruling over this
your Kingdom, in 1641, did engage them to gather a malignant Party and
Cabal of the then Privy Council contrary to their sworn Faith and
natural Allegiance, in a secret Intelligence and traitorous
Combination, with the Puritan Sectaries in the Realm of _Great
Britain_, against their lawful and undoubted Sovereign, his Peace,
Crown, and Dignity, the Malice of which made it soon manifest in the
Nature and Tendency of their Proceedings; their untimely Prorogations
of a loyal unanimous Parliament, and thereby making void, and
disappointing the Effects of many seasonable Votes, Bills, and
Addresses which, passed into Laws, had certainly secured the Peace and
Tranquility of this Kingdom, by binding to his Majesty the Hearts of
his _Irish_ Subjects, as well by the Tyes of Affection and Gratitude,
as Duty and Allegiance there. The said Lords Justices traitorously
disbanding his Majesty's well assured Catholick Forces, when his Person
and Monarchy were exposed to the said Rebel Sectaries, then marching in
hostile Arms to dispoil him of his Power, Dominion, and Life; their
immediate calling into the Place and Stead of those his Majesty's
faithful disbanded Forces, a formidable Body of disciplined Troops
allied and confederated in Cause, Nation and Principles with those
Rebel Sectaries; their unwarrantable Entertainment of those Troops in
this Kingdom, to the draining of his Majesty's Treasury, and Terror of
his Catholick Subjects, then openly menaced by them the aforesaid Lords
Justices with a Massacre and total Extirpation, their bloody
Prosecution of that Menace, in the Slaughter of many innocent Persons,
thereby affrighting and compelling others in despair of Protection,
from their Government, to unite and take Arms for their necessary
Defence, and Preservation of their Lives; their unpardonable
Prevarication from his Majesty's Orders to them, in retrenching the
Time by him graciously given to his Subjects so compelled into Arms of
returning to their Duty; and stinting the General Pardon to such only
as had no Freehold Estates to make Forfeitures of; their pernicious
Arts in way-laying, exchanging and wickedly depriving all Intercourse
by Letters, Expresses, and other Communications and Privity betwixt
your said Royal Father and his much abused People; their insolent and
barbarous Application of Racks and other Engines of Torture to Sir
_John Read_, his then Majesty's sworn menial Servant, and that upon
their own conscience Suspicions of his being intrusted with the too
just Complaints of the persecuted Catholick aforesaid; their diabolical
Malice and Craft, in essaying by Promises and Threats, to draw from
him, the said _Read_, in his Torments, a false and impious Accusation
of his Master and Sovereign as being the Author and Promoter of the
then Commotion, so manifestly procured, and by themselves industriously
spread.
And whereas a late eminent Minister of State, for parallel Causes and
Ends, pursuing the Steps of the aforesaid Lords Justices, hath by his
Interest and Power, cherished and supported a Fanatical Republican
Party, which heretofore opposed, put to flight, and chased out of this
your Kingdom of _Ireland_, the Royal Authority lodged in his Person,
and to transfer the calamitous Consequences of his fatal Conduct from
himself, upon your trusty _Roman_ Catholick Subjects, to the Breach of
publick Faith solemnly given and proclaimed in the Name of our late
Sovereign, interposed betwixt them and his late Majesty's general
Indulgence and Pardon, and wrought their Exclusion from that Indemnity
in their Estates, which by the said publick Faith is specially provided
for, and since hath been extended to the most bloody and execrable
Traitors, few only excepted by Name in all your Realms and Dominions.
And further, to exclude from all Relief, and even Access of Admittance
to Justice, to your said _Irish_ Catholick People, and to secure to
himself and his Posterity, his vast Share of their Spoils; he the said
eminent Minister did against your sacred Brother's Royal Promise and
Sanction aforesaid, advise and persuade his late Majesty to give, and
accordingly obtained his Royal Assent to two several Acts. The one
intituled, _An Act for the better Execution of his Majesty's gracious
Declaration for the Settlement of this Kingdom of_ Ireland, _and
Satisfaction of the several Interests of Adventurers, Soldiers, and
other his Majesty's Subjects there_. Which Act was so passed at a
Parliament held in this Kingdom, in the 14th and 15th Years of his
Reign. And the other, An Act intituled, _An Act of Explanation_, etc.
Which Act was passed in a Session of the Parliament held in this
Kingdom, in the 17th and 18th Years of his Reign, most of the Members
thereof being such, as forcibly possessed themselves of the Estates of
your Catholic subjects in this Kingdom, and were convened together for
the sole special Purpose of creating and granting to themselves and
their Heirs, the Estates and Inheritances of this your Kingdom of
_Ireland_, upon a scandalous, false Hypothesis, imputing the traitorous
Design of some desperate, indigent Persons to seize your Majesty's
Castle of _Dublin_, on the 23rd of _October_, 1641, to an universal
Conspiracy of your Catholick Subjects, and applying the Estates and
Persons thereby presumed to have forfeited, to the Use and Benefit of
that Regicide Army, which brought that Kingdom from its due Subjection
and Obedience to his Majesty, under the Peak and Tyranny of a bloody
Usurper. An Act unnatural, or rather viperously destroying his late
Majesty's gracious Declaration, from whence it had Birth, and its
Clauses, Restorations and Uses, inverting the very fundamental Laws, as
well of your Majesty's, as all other Christian Governments. An Act
limiting and confining the Administration of Justice to a certain Term
or Period of Time, and confirming the Patrimony of Innocents unheard,
to the most exquisite Traytors, that now stand convict on Record; the
Assigns and Trustees, even of the then deceased _Oliver Cromwell_
himself, for whose Arrears, as General of the Regicide Army, special
Provision is made at the Suit of his Pensioners. Now in regard the Acts
above mentioned do in a florid and specious Preamble, contrary to the
known Truth in Fact, comprehend all your Majesty's _Roman_ Catholick
Subjects of _Ireland_, in the Guilt of those few indigent Persons
aforesaid, and on that Supposition alone, by the Clause immediately
subsequent to that Preamble, vest all their Estates in his late
Majesty, as a Royal Trustee, to the principal Use of those who deposed
and murthered your Royal Father, and their lawful Sovereign. And
furthermore, to the Ends that the Articles and Conditions granted in
the Year 1648, by Authority from your Majesty's Royal Brother, then
lodged in the Marquess of _Ormond_, may be duly fulfilled and made good
to your Majesty's present _Irish_ Catholick Subjects, in all their
Parts and Intentions, and that the several Properties and Estates in
this Kingdom may be settled in their antient Foundations, as they were
on the 21st of _October_, 1641. And that all Persons may acquiesce and
rejoyce under an impartial Distribution of Justice, and sit peaceably
down under his own Vine or Patrimony, to the abolishing all Distinction
of Parties, Countries and Religions, and settling a perpetual Union and
Concord of Duty, Affection, and Loyalty to your Majesty's Person and
Government in the Hearts of your Subjects, Be it enacted, etc.
[Here follows the Act of Repeal.]
---------------------------------------------------------------
[27] This Preamble is James II.'s own writing, as appears by "The
Journal."
CHAPTER VI.
THE ACT OF ATTAINDER.
CHAPTER XXX.
_An Act for the attainder of various rebels, and for preserving the
interests of loyal subjects._
The authenticity of this Act as printed by Archbishop King has been
questioned, especially by William Todd Jones in 1793. But we believe
its authenticity cannot be successfully contested. Lesley, in his
"Reply" to King, makes no attempt to disprove its existence, but, on
the contrary, alludes to it and applauds James for having opposed it.
King, however, asserts that the Act was kept a secret; and that the
persons attainted, or their friends, could not obtain a copy of it. For
this Jones answers:--
"But the fact (as stated by King) is impossible: conceive the
absurdity; an act of parliament is _smuggled_, where? through two
houses of lords and commons; of whom were they composed? of
catholics crowded with protestants; though Leland, upon the
authority of King, says there were but fourteen _real_ protestants.
Well, what did these two houses do? They voted and passed a
_secret_ act of attainder of 2,500 protestants, which was to lie-by
privately in petto, to be brought forward _at a proper time_;
unknown, unheard of, by all the protestant part of the kingdom,
till _peace_ was restored: and that, according to King, was to be
deemed _the proper time_ for a renewal of _war_ and _devastation_,
by its publication and execution, and the secret was to be closely
kept from nearly 3,000 persons by the whole house of commons; by
fifty-six peers, including primate Boyle, Barry lord Barrymore,
Angier lord Longford, Forbes, the incomparable lord Granard (of
whom more in my next continuation), Parsons lord Ross, Dopping bp.
of Meath, Otway bp. of Ossory, Wetenhal bishop of Cork, Digby
bishop of Limerick, Bermingham lord Athenry, St. Lawrence lord
Howth, Mallon lord Glenmallon, Hamilton lord Strabane, all
protestants and many of them presbyterians, or rather puritans. It
was kept close from 3,000 persons by all the privy council; by all
the clerks of parliament who engross and tack together bills, it
was to be kept an entire secret from all the protestants without
doors, by all the protestants within the gates of parliament; and
this probable, wise politic expectation was entertained _by those
Catholic peers and representatives_, who through the cloud of war,
passion, and uncertainty, could exercise the more than human
moderation in solemnly prescribing the narrow bounds of
thirty-eight years to all enquirers after titles under the revived
court of claims: by those peers and representatives, whose
patriotism, political knowledge, and comprehensive minds instructed
them TO DECLARE THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE REALM, THE FREEDOM OF IRISH
TRADE, AND THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF A MARINE.--Good God, that any
man, woman I mean, after such ACKNOWLEDGED, UNCONTROVERTED
DOCUMENTS of the wisdom and reach of mind of that parliament, could
be induced to credit and to advance the forgeries of a vicar of
Bray under a persecuting protestant administration, FOR THE WICKED
PURPOSE OF CALUMNIATING THEIR MEMORY, AND DEFEATING THE EFFORTS OF
THEIR POSTERITY FOR FREEDOM....
"A secret conspiracy BY WAY OF STATUTE against the lives of near
three thousand people, appears in itself impracticable and
fabulous; but that it should have been agitated IN OPEN PARLIAMENT,
and in the hearing of the protestant members, and yet expected to
have been kept a secret from the protestants, _by these protestant
members_, is childish and ridiculous.--In that parliament sat the
venerable lord Granard, a protestant, and _a constant adherent and
companion_ of King James in Ireland--'This excellent nobleman had
married a lady of presbyterian principles; was protector of the
northern puritans; had humanely secreted their teachers from those
severities which in England proved both odious and impolitic; and
had gained them an annual pension of L500 from government.'--(Leland,
vol. 3, p. 490). 'It was this lord Granard to whom the assembled
protestants of Ulster, by colonel Hamilton of Tullymore, who was
sent to Dublin for the sole purpose, unanimously offered the
command of their armed association, from their confidence in his
protestant principles; but he told Mr. Hamilton THAT HE HAD LIVED
LOYAL ALL HIS LIFE, AND WOULD NOT DEPART FROM IT IN HIS OLD AGE;
AND HE WAS RESOLVED THAT NO MAN SHOULD WRITE REBEL UPON HIS
GRAVESTONE.'--(Lesley's "Reply," pp. 79, 80.) ... Is it then likely
that this man would be privy to a general protestant proscription,
and not reveal it?--and it is probable that such a SECRET
CONSPIRACY BY WAY OF STATUTE could pass the houses of commons, and
lords, the privy council, and finally the king, and that it never
should come to the knowledge of a peer of parliament, a favourite
of the court, a resident in Dublin, and every day attendant in his
place in the upper house?"
The intrinsic improbability is well proved here, and would suffice to
show King's falsehood as to the secrecy of the act; but if further
proof were needed, the authorities which prove the authenticity of the
act utterly disprove the secrecy alleged by King. The act is well
described, in the London Gazette of July 1 to 4, 1689, and the names
are given in print, in a pamphlet licensed in London, the 2nd day of
the year 1690 (March 26th, old style).
Jones's statement as to the destruction of all papers relating to that
parliament having been ordered, under a penalty of L500 and incapacity
from office, is certain, and we give the clause in our note;[28] but
this clause was not enacted till 1695, and, therefore, could not have
affected the acts of 1689, when King wrote in 1690.
Moreover, we cannot find any trace of Richard Darling (who professedly
made the "_copia vera_" for King) as clerk in the office of the Master
of the Rolls, or in any office, in 1690. A Richard Darling was
appointed secretary to the commissioners for the inspection of
forfeitures, by patent dated 1st of June, 5 William III. (1693)
There certainly are grounds for supposing that some great jugglery,
either as to the clauses or names in the act, was perpetrated by this
well-paid and unscrupulous Williamite. The temptation to fabricate as
much of the act (clauses or names) as possible was immense. The want of
scruple to commit any fraud is plain upon King's whole book. The
likelihood of discovery alone would deter him. Probably every family
who had a near relative in the "list" would be secured to William's
interest, and no part of King's work could have helped more than this
act to make that book what Burnet called it, "the best fitted to
_settle_ the minds" of the people of England, of any of the books
published on the Revolution.
The preamble states truly the rebellion of the northerns to dethrone
their legitimate king, and bring in the Prince of Orange; and that the
insurgents, though offered full pardon in repeated proclamations, still
continued in rebellion. It enacts that certain persons therein named,
who had "notoriously joyned in the said rebellion and _invasion_," or
been slain in rebellion, should be attainted of high treason, and
suffer its penalties, _unless before the 10th of August following_
(_i.e._, at least seven weeks from the passing of the act) they came
and stood their trial for treason, according to law, when, if otherwise
acquitted, the Act should not harm them. The number of persons in this
clause vary in the different lists from 1,270 to 1,296.
It cannot be questioned that the persons here _conditionally_ attainted
were in arms to dethrone the hereditary sovereign, supported, as he
was, by a regularly elected parliament, by a large army, by foreign
alliances, and by the good-will of five-sixths of the people of
Ireland. King he was _de jure_ and _de facto_, and they sought to
dethrone him, and to put a foreign prince on the throne. If ever there
were rebels, they were.
As to their creed, there is no allusion to it. Roman Catholic and
Protestant persons occur through the lists with common penalties
denounced against both; but neither creed is named in it.
We do not say whether those attainted were right or wrong in their
rebellion: but the certainty that they were rebels according to the
law, constitution, and custom of this and most other nations, justified
the Irish parliament in treating them as such; and should make all who
sympathise with _these_ rebels pause ere they condemn every other party
on whom law or defeat have fixed that name. Yet even this attaint is
but _conditional_; the parties had over seven weeks to surrender and
take their trial, and the king could, at any time, for over four months
after, grant them a pardon both as to persons and property--a pardon
which, whether we consider his necessities and policy, his habitual
leniency, or the repeated attempts to win back his rebellious subjects
by the offer of free pardon, we believe he would have refused to few.
This, too, is certain, that it _has never been even alleged that one
single person suffered death under this much talked of Act_. Of the
constitutional character of the Act, more presently.
The second article attaints persons who had absented themselves "since
or shortly before" the 5th November, 1688, unless they return before
the 1st of September, that is, in about ten weeks. Staying in England
certainly looked like adhesion to the invader, yet the mere difficulty
of coming over during the war should surely have been considered.
The third attaint is of persons absent before (some time probably
before) 5th November, 1688, unless they return before the 1st October,
that is, within about fourteen weeks.
Moreover, a certain number of the persons named in this conditional
attaint are excepted from it specially, by a following clause, unless
the king should go to England (their usual residence) before 1st
October, 1689, and that after his arrival they should neglect to
signify their loyalty to the satisfaction of his Majesty.
Yet Harris and "The List" licensed 26th March, 1690, have the audacity
to _add_ these English residents and make another list of attainted
persons, _instead of deducting_ them from the list under clause 3.
With similar want of faith, both these writers make out a fifth list of
attaints of the persons explicitly not attainted, but whose _rents_ are
forfeited by sec. 8, so long as they continue absentees. Thus, two out
of the five lists, by adding which Harris makes up his 2,461 attaints,
are not lists of attainders at all, and one of them should be rather
deducted from one of the three lists of real attaints. Harris has under
this exception for English residents 547 names (though printed 647 in
totting), and were we to deduct these and the fifth list of 85 persons,
his number of attaints would fall to 1,829; though he himself confesses
that there must be some small drawback for persons attainted twice
under different descriptions; and though his own totting, without
removing either the fourth or fifth list, is only 2,461, yet in his
text he says, "about 2,600" were attainted.
Yet Harris and "The List" pamphlet, which give the names in schedules,
were more likely to misplace the lists than King, and he certainly did
so in reference to the fourth list.
Names.
King's first list, like the rest, contains 1,280
His second 455
And his third 197
------
1,932
And deducting the names in list 4 59
------
King's list falls to 1,873
Yet even in this many are attainted twice over.
Harris's second list and "The List's" third list, each of 79 names,
should be under title 4, namely, English residents, containing 59 in
King. Harris's third list of 454 names should be second, namely,
Absentees since 5th November, containing in King 455, and in "The List"
480 names. Harris's fourth list of 547, and "The List's" fourth list of
528 names, should go to No. 3 in King, containing only 197 names, viz.,
of persons absent before 5th November. Without making these
corrections, we would have the conditional attaints, under clauses 1,
2, and 3, amount in "The List" to 1,311, in Harris to 1,282, and in
King to 1,873. But if we make these corrections, King's will remain at
1,873, Harris's rise to 2,218, and "The List" to 2,209.
It would, we think, puzzle La Place to calculate the probability of any
particular name being authentic amid this wilderness of inaccuracies.
The fifth class of 85 persons are, as we said, _not attainted at all_.
The 8th section declares them to be absent from nonage, infirmity,
etc., and denounces no penalty against their persons, but "it being
much to the weakening and impoverishing of this Realm, that any of the
Rents or Profits of the Lands, Tenements, of Hereditaments thereof
should be sent into or spent in any other place beyond the seas, but
that the same should be kept and employed within the Realm for the
better support and defence thereof," it vests the properties of these
absentees in the King, until such time as these absentees return and
apply by petition to the Chancery or Exchequer for their restoration.
Harder penalties for absenteeism were enacted repeatedly before, and
considering the necessities of Ireland in that awful struggle, this
provision seems just, mild, and proper.
By the fourth section, all the goods and properties of _all_ the
first four classes of absentees were also vested in the King till their
return, acquittal, pardon or discharge. By the 5th and 6th sections,
remainders and reversions to innocent persons after any estate for
lives forfeited by the Act, are saved and preserved, provided (by the
7th section) claims to them are made within 60 days after the first
sitting of the Court of Claims under the Act. But remainders in
settlements, of which the uses could be changed, or where the lands
were "plantation" lands, etc., were not saved. Whether such a Court of
Claims ever sat is at least doubtful.
By the 9th and 11th sections, the rights and incumbrances of
non-forfeiting persons over the forfeited estates are saved, provided
(by section 12) their claims are made, as in case of remainder-men,
etc.
The 10th section makes void Lord Strafford's abominable "offices," or
confiscations of Connaught, Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary, and
confirms the titles of the right owners, as if these offices had not
been found.
The 13th section repeals a private act for conferring vast estates on
Lord Albemarle out of the forfeitures on the Restoration.
The remaining clauses, except the last, have nothing to do with the
Attainders. They are subsidiary to the Act repealing the Acts of
Settlement and Explanation. They reprize ancient proprietors, who had
bought or taken leases of their own estates from the owners under the
Settlement Acts.
The 17th section provides for the completion of the Down or Strafford
Survey, and for the reduction of excessive quit rents. In this section
the phrase occurs, "their Majesties," but this is probably a mistake in
printing, though a crotchety reasoner might find in it a doubt of the
authenticity of the Act.
The 21st and last section provides that any of the persons attainted
"who shall return to their duty and loyalty" may be pardoned by royal
warrant, provided that such pardon be issued "before the first day of
November next, otherwise the pardon to be of no effect."
---------------------------------------------------------------
[28] The clause for the destruction of the Records of the
parliament of 1689, is in an act annulling the attainders and all
acts of 1689.
"Be it enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty, by and with
the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal and
commons in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority
of the same, That all and every the acts, or pretended acts, and
the rolls whereon the said acts or pretended acts, and every of
them, are recorded or engrossed, and all proceedings of what nature
or kind soever had, made, done, or passed by the said persons
lately so assembled at Dublin, pretending to be or calling
themselves by the name of a Parliament, and also all writs issued
in order to the calling of the said pretended Parliament, and
returned into any office in this kingdom, and there remaining, and
all the journals of the said pretended Parliament, and other books
or writings in any wise relating thereunto, or to the holding
thereof, shall, by the officers or persons in whose custody the
same are, be brought before the lord deputy, or other chief
governour or governours of this kingdom for the time being, at such
time as the lord deputy, or other chief governour or governours for
the time being shall appoint, at the council chamber in Dublin, and
there shall be publicly and openly cancelled and utterly destroyed:
and in case any officer or person in whose hands or custody the
said acts and rolls or proceedings, or any of them, do or shall
remain, shall wilfully neglect or refuse to produce the same, to
the intent that the same may be cancelled and destroyed, according
to the true intent of this act, every such person and officer shall
be, and is hereby adjudged and declared to be from thenceforth
incapable of any office or employment whatsoever, and shall forfeit
and pay the sum of five hundred pounds, one-half thereof to his
Majesty, and the other half to such person or persons that shall
sue for the same by any action of debt, bill, plaint, or
information, in any court of record whatsoever."--7 _Will. III.
Ir. c. 1._
"_It is possible_ an outline of some such bill might have been
prepared by one of those hot-headed people of whom James had too
many in his councils either for his safety or for his reputation,
and they were chiefly ENGLISH; and that such draft of a bill having
been laid before _parliament_, that wise, patriotic and sagacious
_body_ did ameliorate and reduce it into 'the statute for the
revival of the court of claims'; a law so unparalleled from its
moderation in its review of forfeitures, by going back to
_Cromwell's debentures exclusively_; a period of only thirty-eight
years anterior to the date of their then sitting.
"Such a _draft of a bill_, like our own protestant bill for the
castration of Romish priests, _which did pass_ here but was
cushioned in England,[1] or like the _threat of a bill for
levelling popish chapels_, which I myself heard made when I sat in
the house of commons, such a draft of a bill, I say, might have
been found among the baggage of the Duke of Tyrconnel, of Sir
Richard Nagle, or of the unfortunate sovereign himself, for Burnet
acquaints us, That all Tyrconnel's papers were taken in the camp;
and those of James were found in Dublin." (Burnet's "Own Times,"
Vol. 2nd, p. 30).
[1] This is not quite correct. The penalty in the Bill, as it
passed the Irish House of Commons, was branding on the cheek.
In sending the Bill on to England the Irish Privy Council
substituted castration. The English Government restored the
original penalty. The Bill ultimately fell through, but not, it
would seem, on this point. See Lecky, "History of England,"
Vol. I., ch. ii.--T. W. R.
CHAPTER VII.
CONCLUSION.
Let us now run our eyes ever the deeds of the Feis or parliament of
1689. It came into power at the end of a half century of which the
beginning was a civil and religious, social and proprietal persecution,
combining all the atrocities to which Ireland had been alternatively
subject for four centuries and a half. Of this, the next stage was a
partial insurrection, rendered universal by a bloody and rapacious
government. The next stage was a war, in which civil and religious
quarrels were so fiendishly combined that it could not end while there
was any one to fight with; in which the royalist dignitaries were the
cruelest foes of the royalist armies and people, and in which the
services done by cool and patriot soldiers were rendered useless by
factious theologians. The next stage was conquest, slaughter, exile,
confiscation, and the repose of solitude or of slavery. The next was a
Restoration which gave back its worst prerogatives to the crown, but
gave the restorers and royalists only a skirt of their properties. Then
came a struggle for proprietal justice and religious toleration, met by
an infamous conspiracy of the deceptious aristocracy and the fanatic
people of England, to blast the characters of the Irish, and decimate
the men; and lastly, a king, who strained his prerogative to do them
justice, is driven from England by a Dutchman, supported by blue
guards, black guards, and flaming lies, and is forced to throw himself
on the generosity and prudence of Ireland.
A faction existed who raised a civil war in every province; and in
every province, save one, it was suppressed; but in that one it
continued, and the sails of an invading fleet already flap in the
Channel breeze when this parliament is summoned.
How difficult was their position! How could they act as freemen,
without appearing ungenerous to a refugee and benefactor king? How
guard their nationality, without quarrelling with him or alienating
England from him? How could they do that proprietal justice and grant
that religious liberty for which the country had been struggling? How
check civil war--how sustain a war by the resources of a distracted
country? Yet all this the Irish parliament did, and more too; for they
established the principal parts of a code needful for the _permanent_
liberty and prosperity of Ireland.
Take up the list of acts passed in their session of seventy-two days
and run over them. They begin by recognising their lawful king who had
thrown himself among them. They pledge themselves to him against his
powerful foe. Knowing full well the struggle that was before them, and
that lukewarm and malcontent agents might ruin them, they tossed aside
those official claims, which in times of peace and safety should be
sacred.
But their next act deserves more notice. It must not be forgotten that
Molyneux's "Case of Ireland," which the parliaments of England and
Ireland first burnt, and ended by declaring and enacting as sound law,
was published in 1699, just ten years after this parliament of James's.
Doubtless the antique rights of the native Irish, the comparative
independence of the Pale, the arguments of Darcy, the memory of the
council of Kilkenny, might suggest to Molyneux those principles of
independence, which one of his cast of mind would hardly reach by
general reasoning. But why go so far back, and to so much less apt
precedents? Here, in the parliament of 1689, was a law made declaring
Ireland to be and to have always been a "distinct kingdom" from
England; "always governed by his majesty and his predecessors according
to the ancient customs, laws, and statutes thereof, and that the
parliament of Ireland, and that _alone_, could make laws to bind this
kingdom;" and expressly enacting and declaring that no law save such as
the Irish parliament might make should bind Ireland. And this act
prohibited all English jurisdiction in Ireland, and all appeals to the
English peers or to any other court out of Ireland. Is not this the
whole argument of Molyneux, the hope of Swift and Lucas, the attempt of
Flood, the achievement of Grattan and the Volunteers? Is not this an
epitome of the Protestant patriot attempts, from the Revolution to the
Dungannon Convention? Is not this the soul of '82? Surely, if it be, as
it is, just to track the stream of liberation back to Molyneux, we
should not stop there; but when we find that a parliament which sat
only ten years before his book was published, which must have been a
daily subject of conversation--as it certainly was of written
polemics--during those ten years; when we find this upper fountain so
obviously streaming into the thought of Molyneux, should we not
associate the parliament of 1689 with that of 1782, and place Nagle and
Rice and its other ruling spirits along with Flood and Grattan in our
gratitude?
Moreover, the lords and commons expressly repealed Poyning's law, and
passed a bill creating Irish Inns of Court, and abolishing the rules
for keeping terms in London. But the king rejected these. We are to
this day without this benefit which the senate of '89 tried to give us;
and the future advocates and judges of Ireland are hauled off to a
foreign and dissolute capital to go through an idle and expensive
ceremony, term after term, as an essential to being allowed to practise
in the courts of this their native kingdom.
The Act (c. 4.) for restoring the ancient gentry to their possessions,
we have already canvassed. It were monstrous to suppose the parliament
ought to have respected the thirty-eight years' usurpation of savage
invaders, and to have overlooked the rights of the national chieftains,
the plundered proprietors who lived, and whose families lived, to claim
their rights. The care with which purchasers and incumbrancers were to
be reprized we have already noticed; yet we cannot but repeat our
regret that the bill of the Lords (which left the adventurers of
Cromwell a moiety of their usurpations) did not pass.
Naturally related to this are the Acts, c. 24, for vesting attainted
absentees' goods in the King, and c. 30, attainting a number of
insurgents. We have already shown from King, that the Whigs had taken
good care of the two things forfeited--their chattels, which they had
sent to them, without opposition, during the month of March, and their
persons, which they put under the guard of the gallant insurgents of
Derry and Fermanagh, or in the keeping of William and the charity of
England. How poorly they were treated then in England may be guessed at
by the choice men of the impoverished defenders of Derry having been
left without money, aye, or even clothing or food in the streets of
London.
We heartily censure this Attainder Act. It was _the_ mistake of the
Irish Parliament. It bound up the hearts and interests of those who
were named in it, and of their children, in William's success. It could
not be enforced: they were absent. It could not be terrible till
victory sanctioned it, and then it would be needless and cruel to
execute. Yet, let us judge the men rightly. James had been hunted out
of England by lies, treachery, bigotry, cabal, and a Dutch invader, for
having attempted to grant religious liberty, by his prerogative. Those
attainted were, nine out of ten, in arms against him and their country.
They had been repeatedly offered free pardon. Just before the Act was
brought in, a free pardon, excepting only ten persons, was offered, yet
few of the insurgents came in; and James, instead of forbidding
quarter, or hanging his prisoners, or any other of the acts of rigour
usual in hereditary governments down to our own time, consented to an
Act requiring the chief persons of the insurrection to come, in periods
specified, and amply long enough, to stand their trials. Certain it is,
as we said before, that though many of these were or became prisoners,
none were executed. The Act was a dead letter; and considering the
principles of the time, surely the Act was not wonderful.
In order, then, to judge them better, let us see what the other
side--the immaculate Whigs, who assailed the Irish--did when they were
in power. Of anything previous to the Revolution--of the treachery and
blood, by law and without law, under the Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts,
and the Commonwealth--'tis needless to speak. But let us see what their
neighbours, the Williamites, did.
The Irish Attainder Act was not brought in till the end of June. Now,
this is of great value, for the dates of the last papers on Ireland,
laid before the English Commons, having been 10th June, 1689, they, on
the 20th June, "_Resolved_, that leave be given to bring in a Bill to
attaint of high treason certain persons who are now in Ireland, or any
other parts beyond the seas, adhearing to their Majesties' enemies, and
shall not return into England by a certain day."[29]
The very next entry is--"A Bill for the attainting certain persons of
high treason, was read the first time." "_Resolved,_ that the Bill be
read a second time."
Here was a bill to attaint persons beyond seas in another kingdom where
William had never been acknowledged--where James was welcomed by nine
men out of ten--from whence, so far from being able to procure evidence
or allow defence, they could but by accident get intelligence and
reports once in some months. It is not here pretended that the
attainted were habitual residents in England. The bill passed the
second reading, and was committeed, June 22nd, with an instruction to
the committee, "That they insert into the bill such other of the
persons as were this day _named in the house_, as they shall find
cause."
Again, on the 24th--"_Ordered_, that it be an instruction to the
committee, to whom the bill for attainting certain persons is referred,
that they prepare and bring in a clause for the _immediate_ seizing the
estates of such persons who are _or_ shall be proved to be in arms with
the late King James in Ireland, or in his service in France." On the
29th is another instruction to "prepare and bring in a clause that the
estates of the persons who are now in rebellion (!) in Ireland be
applied to the relief of the Irish Protestants fled into this realm;
and also to declare all the proceedings of the pretended parliament and
courts of justice, now held in Ireland, to be null and void;" the
committee "to sit _de die in diem_, till the bill be finished."
Up to this time they could not have known that any attainder act had
been brought in in Ireland. On the 9th July, Sergeant Trenchard
reported, "That the committee had _proof_" (we shall presently see of
what kind) "of _several other_ persons being in Ireland in arms with
King James, and therefore had agreed their names should be inserted in
the bill." "Ordered, that the bill, so amended, be engrossed." On the
11th July the bill passed, inserting _August_, 1689, instead of August
next, and inserting some Christian names.
The bill reached the Lords.
Upon the 24th July a message was sent to the Lords urging the despatch
of the bill. On the 2nd August, at a conference, the Lords required to
know _on what evidence_ the names were introduced as being in Ireland,
"for, upon their best inquiry, they say they cannot learn some of them
have been there--they instanced the Lord Hunsden." On the 3rd of
August, Mr. Sergeant Trenchard acquaints the house that the names of
those who gave evidence at the bar of the house touching the persons
who are named in the bill of attainder, being in Ireland, were Bazill
Purefoy and William Dalton; and those at the committee, to whom the
bill was referred, were William Watts and Math. Gun; four persons, two
and two giving the whole evidence for the attainder of those who stood
by King James in Ireland! This report was handed to the Lords on the
5th August.
On the 20th August the Lords returned the bill, with some amendments,
leaving out Lord Hunsden and four or five more, and inserting a few
others; and upon this day the parliament was prorogued.
Again, on the 30th October, a bill was ordered to attaint all such
persons as were in rebellion against their Majesties. On the 26th
November, certain members were ordered to prepare a bill attainting all
who had been in arms against William and Mary, since _14th February_,
1688-9, or any time since, and all who _have been_, or shall be,
_aiding, assisting, or abetting_ them. On the 10th December the bill
was reported and read a first time, and the committee ordered to bring
in a bill for sale of the estates forfeited thereby.
On the 4th April, 1690, another bill was ordered, and was read 22nd
April.
Again, on 22nd October, another attainder and confiscation bill was
brought and passed the Commons on the 23rd December.
Wearied at length by unsuccessful bills, which the better or more
interested feeling of the Lords, or the policy of the King, perpetually
defeated, they abandoned any further attainder bills, and merely
advertized for money on the forfeited lands in Ireland.
The attainders in _court_ might satisfy them. The commissioners of
forfeitures, under 10 William III., c. 9, reported to the Commons on
the 15th of December, 1699, that the persons outlawed for treason in
Ireland since the 13th of February, 1688-9, on account of the late
rebellion, were 3,921 in number. It was abominable for James's
parliament to attaint conditionally the rebels against the old king,
but reasonable for the Whigs to attaint about double the number
absolutely, for never having recognized the new king! These 3,921 had
properties, says the report, to the amount of 1,060,792 _plantation_
acres, worth L211,623 a year, and worth in money, L2,685,130, "besides
the several denominations in the said several counties to which no
number of acres can be added, by reason of the imperfection of the
surveys not here valued." Of these 3,921, there were 491 restored under
the first commission on the articles of Galway and Limerick; and 792
under the second commission, having joint properties of 233,106 acres,
worth L55,763 a year, or L724,923 purchase, leaving 2,638 persons
having 827,686 acres, worth L155,859 a year, or L1,960,206. Yet the
fees were monstrous, says the commissioners, in these Courts of Claims,
L5 being the register's fees for even _entering_ a claim. William
restored property to the amount of 74,733 acres, worth L20,066 per
annum, or L260,863 in all, which would leave as absolutely forfeited
property 752,953 acres, worth L135,793 a year, and L1,699,343 in all;
and even were we to deduct in proportion, which we ought not, as those
pardoned were chiefly the very wealthy few, there would remain over
2,400 persons attained by office, after deducting all who carved out
their acquittal with shot and sword, and all whom the tenderness or
wisdom of the king pardoned.
The commissioners state that L300,000 worth of chattels were seized,
not included in the above estimate; nor were 297 houses in Dublin, 26
in Cork, 226 elsewhere, mills, chief rents, L60,000 worth of woods,
etc., in it.
Most of these properties had been given away freely by William. Amongst
his grants they specify all King James's estates, over 95,000 acres,
worth L25,995 a year, to Mrs. Elizabeth Villiers, Countess of Orkney.
She was William's favourite mistress. James, to his honour be it
spoken, had thrown these estates into the general fund for reprisal of
the injured Irish.
Here, then, is certainly not a justification of the Parliament of 1689,
in passing the Attainder Act, but evidence from the journals of the
English Parliament and the reports of their commissioners, that they
tried to do worse than the Irish Parliament (under far greater excuses)
are accused of having done, and that the actual amount of punishment
_inflicted_ by the Williamite courts in Ireland far exceeded what the
Irish Parliament of 1689 had _conditionally threatened_.
The next Acts as a class are c. 9, repealing ministers' money act; c.
12, granting perfect liberty of conscience to men of all creeds; c. 13,
directing Roman Catholics to pay their tithes to their own priests; c.
14, on Ulster poundage; c. 15, appointing those tithes to the _parish_
priests, and recognising as a Roman Catholic prelate no one but him
whom the king under privy signet and sign manual should signify and
recognize as such. All these acts went to create religious equality,
certainly not the voluntary system; neither party approved of it then;
but to make the Protestant support his own minister, and the Roman
Catholic his own, without violation of conscience, or a shadow of
supremacy. The low salaries (L100 to L200 a year) of the Roman Catholic
prelates, and their exclusion from Parliament, were in the same
moderate spirit.
Again, this Parliament introduced the Statute of Frauds (which, having
been set aside, was not adopted until the 7th William III.); Acts for
relief of poor debtors, for the speedy recovery of wages, and for
ratifying wills and deeds by persons out of possession.
Chapter 21, forbidding the importation of foreign coals, was designed
to render this country independent of English trade. At that time the
bogs were larger and the people fewer. Their opinion that this
importation which "hindered the industry of several poor people and
labourers who might have employed themselves" in supplying the cities,
etc., with turf, reminds us of Mr. Laing's most able notice in his
"Norway" of the immense employment to men, women, and children, by the
cutting of firewood; and what a powerful means this is of doing that
which is as important as the production of wealth, the diffusion of it
without any great inequality through all classes. Part of c. 29,
encouraging trade, laying heavy import duties on English goods, and
giving privileges to Irish ships over foreign, especially over English,
was the result of sound, practical patriotism. It was necessary to
guard our trade, manufactures, and shipping against the rivalry of a
near, rich, and aspiring neighbour, that would crush them in their
cradles. It was wise to raise the energies of infant adventure by
favour, and not trust it in a reckless competition. The example, too,
of all countries which had reared up commerce by their own favour and
their neighbours' surrender of trade, would have justified them.
Besides the schools for the Navy under c. 29, c. 16 deals also with
schools. We have not the latter Act; but, considering James's known
zeal for education, his foundation of the Kilkenny college, and the
spirit of the provision in c. 29, we may guess the liberality of the
other. One of the most distinguished of our living historians has told
us that he remembered having seen evidence that this Act established a
school for general (national) education in every parish in Ireland.
C. 10, the Act of Supply; c. 25, Martial Law, and this Act, c. 29, were
a code of defence. The supply was proportioned to their abilities:
every exertion was made, and all efforts were needed. Plowden puts the
effect of this c. 29 not ill:--
"Although James were averse from passing the acts I have already
mentioned, he probably encouraged another which passed _for the
advance and improvement of trade and for encouragement and increase
of shipping and navigation_, which purported to throw open to
Ireland a free and immediate trade with all our plantations and
colonies; to promote ship-building, by remitting to the owners of
Irish-built vessels large proportions of the duties of custom and
excise, encourage seamen by exempting them for ten years from
taxes, and allowing them the freedom of any city or seaport they
should chuse to reside in, and improve the Irish navy by
establishing free schools for teaching and instructing in the
mathematics and the art of navigation, in Dublin, Belfast,
Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and Galway. If James looked up to any
probability of maintaining his ground in Ireland he must have been
sensible of the necessity of an Irish navy. No man was better
qualified to judge of the utility of such institutions than this
prince. He was an able seaman, fond of his profession; and to his
industry and talent does the British navy owe many of its best
signals and regulations. The firmness, resolution and enterprise
which had distinguished him, whilst Duke of York, as a sea officer,
abandoned him when king, both in the cabinet and the field."
Thus, then, this Parliament exercised less severity than any of its
time; it established liberty of conscience and equality of creeds; it
proscribed no man for his religion--the word Protestant does not occur
in any Act--(though, while it sat, the Westminster Convention was not
only thundering out insults against "popery," but exciting William to
persecute it, and laying the foundation of the penal code); it
introduced many laws of great practical value in the business of
society; it removed the disabilities of the natives, the scars of old
fetters; it was generous to the king, yet carried its own opinions out
against his where they differed; it, finally--and what should win the
remembrance and veneration of Irishmen through all time--it boldly
announced our national independence, in words which Molyneux shouted on
to Swift, and Swift to Lucas, and Lucas to Flood, and Flood and Grattan
redoubling the cry; Dungannon church rang, and Ireland was again a
nation. Yet something it said escaped the hearing or surpassed the
vigour of the last century; it said, "Irish commerce fostered," and it
was faintly heard, but it said, "an Irish navy to shield our coasts,"
and it said, "an Irish army to scathe the invaders," and Grattan
neglected both, and our coast had no guardian, and our desecrated
fields knew no avenger.
We have printed the king's speech at the opening of this eventful
parliament, the titles of _all_ its Acts, and all the statutes
summarized in full detail which we could in any way procure--sufficient,
we think, with the scattered notices of the chief members, to make the
working of this Parliament plain. We are conscious of many defects in
our information and way of treating the subject; but we commenced by
avowing that we were not professors but students of Irish history;
trying to come at some clear understanding on a most important part of
it, communicating our difficulties and offering our solutions, as they
occurred to us, in hopes that some of our countrymen would take up the
same study, and do as much or more than we have done, and possibly that
one of those accomplished historians, of which Ireland now has a few,
would take the helm from us, and guide the ship himself.
We have no reason to suppose that we succeeded in either object; yet we
cling to the belief that, owing to us, some few persons will for the
future be found who will not allow the calumnies against our noble old
Parliament of 1689 to pass uncontradicted. It might have been better,
but this is well.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[29] The dates about the time of this revolution are most
important. On the 10th October, 1688, William issued an address,
dated at the Hague, and another from the same place, dated 24th
October, intended to counterwork James's retractations. He landed
at Torbay, November 5th, arrived in London December 17th. Some Whig
Lords signed an association, dated December 19th, pledging
themselves to stand by the prince, and avenge him if he should
perish. December 23rd, William issued the letter calling the
members of Charles II.'s parliament, the mayor, aldermen, and 50
councillors of London. December 26th they met, called on the prince
to assume the government and issue letters for a convention, and
they signed the association of the Whig Lords. They presented their
address 27th December, it was received December 28th, and then this
little club broke up. December 29th William issued letters for a
convention, which met 22nd January, 1688-9, finally agreed on their
declaration against James and his family, and for William and Mary,
12th February; and these, king and queen, were proclaimed 13th
February, 1688-9. February 19th, a Bill was brought in to call the
convention a parliament; it passed, and received royal assent 23rd
February. By this the lords and gentlemen who met 22nd January were
named the two houses of parliament, and the acts of this
convention-parliament were to date from 13th February. This hybrid
sat till 20th August, and having passed the Attainder Act was
adjourned to 20th September, and then 19th October, 1689. This
second session lasted till 27th January, 1689-90, when it was
stopped by a prorogation to the 2nd April; but before that day it
was dissolved, and a parliament summoned by writ, which met 20th
March, 1689, and as a first law, passed an act ratifying the
proceedings of the convention.
II. Literary and Historical Essays.
MEANS AND AIDS TO SELF-EDUCATION.
"What good were it for me to manufacture perfect iron while my own
breast is full of dross? What would it stead me to put properties
of land in order, while I am at variance with myself? To speak it
in a word: the cultivation of my individual self, here as I am, has
from my youth upwards been constantly though dimly my wish and my
purpose."
"Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest;
the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of
the beautiful and perfect; that every one should study to nourish
in his mind the faculty of feeling these things by every method in
his power. For no man can bear to be entirely deprived of such
enjoyments; it is only because they are not used to taste of what
is excellent, that the generality of people take delight in silly
and insipid things, provided they be new. For this reason, he would
add, 'one ought at least every day to hear a little song, read a
good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a
few reasonable words.'"--_Goethe._
We have been often asked by certain of the Temperance Societies to give
them some advice on Self-Education. Lately we promised one of these
bodies to write some hints as to how the members of it could use their
association for their mental improvement.
We said, and say again, that the Temperance Societies can be made use
of by the people for their instruction as well as pleasure. Assemblies
of any kind are not the _best_ places either for study or invention.
Home or solitude are better--home is the great teacher. In domestic
business we learn mechanical skill, the nature of those material bodies
with which we have most to deal in life--we learn labour by example and
by kindly precepts--we learn (in a prudent home) decorum, cleanliness,
order--in a virtuous home we learn more than these: we learn reverence
for the old, affection without passion, truth, piety, and justice.
These are the greatest things man can know. Having these he is well;
without them attainments of wealth or talent are of little worth. Home
is the great teacher; and its teaching passes down in honest homes from
generation to generation, and neither the generation that gives, nor
the generation that takes it, lays down plans for bringing it to pass.
Again, to come to designed learning. We learn arts and professions by
apprenticeships, that is, much after the fashion we learned walking, or
stitching, or fire-making, or love-making at home--by example, precept,
and practice combined. Apprentices at anything, from ditching,
basket-work, or watch-making, to merchant-trading, legislation, or
surgery, submit either to a nominal or an actual apprenticeship. They
see other men do these things, they desire to do the same, and they
learn to do so by watching _how_, and _when_, and asking, or guessing
_why_ each part of the business is done; and as fast as they know, or
are supposed to know, any one part, whether it be sloping the ditch, or
totting the accounts, or dressing the limb, they begin to do that, and,
being directed when they fail, they learn at last to do it well, and
are thereby prepared to attempt some other or harder part of the
business.
Thus it is by experience--or trying to do, and often doing a
thing--combined with teaching or seeing, and being told how and why
other people more experienced do that thing, that most of the practical
business of life is learned.
In some trades, formal apprenticeship and planned teaching exist as
little as in ordinary home-teaching. Few men are of set purpose taught
to dig; and just as few are taught to legislate.
Where formal teaching is usual, as in what are called learned
professions, and in delicate trades, fewer men know anything of these
businesses. Those who learn them at all do so exactly and fully, but
commonly practise them in a formal and technical way, and invent and
improve them little. In those occupations which most men take up
casually--as book-writing, digging, singing, and legislation, and the
like--there is much less exact knowledge, less form, more originality
and progress, and more of the public know something about them in an
unprofessional way.
The Caste system of India, Egypt, and Ancient Ireland carried out the
formal apprenticeship plan to its full extent. The United States of
America have very little of it. Modern Europe is between the two, as
she has in most things abolished caste or hereditary professions (kings
and nobles excepted), but has, in many things, retained exact
apprenticeships.
Marriage, and the bringing up of children, the employment of
dependants, travel, and daily sights and society, are our chief
teachers of morals, sentiment, taste, prudence and manners. Mechanical
and literary skill of all sorts, and most accomplishments, are usually
picked up in this same way.
We have said all this lest our less-instructed readers should fall into
a mistake common to all beginners in study, that books, and schooling,
and lectures, are the chief teachers in life; whereas most of the
things we learn here are learned from the experience of home, and of
the practical parts of our trades and amusements.
We pray our humbler friends to think long and often on this.
But let them not suppose we undervalue or wish them to neglect other
kinds of teaching; on the contrary, they should mark how much the
influences of home, and business, and society, are affected by the
quantity and sort of their scholarship.
Home life is obviously enough affected by education. Where the parents
read and write, the children learn to do so too, early in life and with
little trouble; where they know something of their religious creed they
give its rites a higher meaning than mere forms; where they know the
history of the country well, every field, every old tower or arch is a
subject of amusement, of fine old stories, and fine young hopes; where
they know the nature of other people and countries, their own country
and people become texts to be commented on, and likewise supply a
living comment on those peculiarities of which they have read.
Again, where the members of a family can read aloud, or play, or sing,
they have a well of pleasant thoughts and good feelings which can
hardly be dried or frozen up; and so of other things.
And in the trades and professions of life, to study in books the
objects, customs, and rules of that trade or profession to which you
are going saves time, enables you to improve your practice of it, and
makes you less dependent on the teaching of other practitioners, who
are often interested in delaying you.
In these, and a thousand ways besides, study and science produce the
best effects upon the practical parts of life.
Besides, the _first_ business of life is the improvement of one's
own heart and mind. The study of the thoughts and deeds of great men,
the laws of human, and animal, and vegetable, and lifeless nature, the
principles of fine and mechanical arts, and of morals, society, and
religion--all directly give us nobler and greater desires, more wide
and generous judgments, and more refined pleasures.
Learning in this latter sense may be got either at home or at school,
by solitary study, or in associations. Home _learning_ depends, of
course, on the knowledge, good sense, and leisure of the parents. The
German Jean Paul, the American Emerson, and others of an inferior sort,
have written deep and fruitful truths on bringing up and teaching at
home. Yet, considering its importance, it has not been sufficiently
studied. Upon schools much has been written. Almost all the private
schools in this country are bad. They merely cram the memories of
pupils with facts or words, without developing their judgment, taste,
or invention, or teaching them the _application_ of any knowledge.
Besides, the things taught are commonly those least worth learning.
This is especially true of the middle and richer classes. Instead of
being taught the nature, products, and history, first of their own, and
then of other countries, they are buried in classical frivolities,
languages which they never master, and manners and races which they
cannot appreciate. Instead of being disciplined to think exactly, to
speak and write accurately, they are crammed with rules and taught to
repeat forms by rote.
The National Schools are a vast improvement on anything hitherto in
this country, but still they have great faults. From the miserably
small grant the teachers are badly paid, and, therefore, hastily and
meagrely educated.
The maps, drawing, and musical instruments, museums and scientific
apparatus, which should be in every school, are mostly wanting
altogether. The books, also, are defective.
The information has the worst fault of the French system: it is too
exclusively on physical science and natural history. Fancy a _National_
School which teaches the children no more of the state and history of
Ireland than of Belgium or Japan! We have spoken to pupils, nay, to
masters of the _National_ Schools, who were ignorant of the physical
character of every part of Ireland except their native villages--who
knew not how the people lived, or died, or sported, or fought--who had
never heard of Tara, Clontarf, Limerick, or Dungannon--to whom the
O'Neills and Sarsfields, the Swifts and Sternes, the Grattans and
Barrys, our generals, statesmen, authors, orators, and artists, were
alike and utterly unknown! Even the hedge schools kept up something of
the romance, history, and music of the country.
Until the _National_ Schools fall under national control, the people
must take _diligent care to procure books on the history, men,
language, music, and manners of Ireland for their children_. These
schools are very good so far as they go, and the children should be
sent to them; but they are not _national_, they do not use the Irish
language, nor teach anything peculiarly Irish.
As to solitary study, lists of books, pictures, and maps can alone be
given; and to do this usefully would exceed our space at present.
As it is, we find that we have no more room and have not said a word on
what we proposed to write--namely, Self-Education through the
Temperance Societies.
We do not regret having wandered from our professed subject, as, if
treated exclusively, it might lead men into errors which no
afterthought could cure.
What we chiefly desire is to set the people on making out plans for
their own and their children's education. Thinking cannot be done by
deputy--they must think for themselves.
THE HISTORY OF IRELAND.
Something has been done to rescue Ireland from the reproach that she
was a wailing and ignorant slave.
Brag as we like, the reproach was not undeserved, nor is it quite
removed.
She is still a serf-nation, but she is struggling wisely and patiently,
and is ready to struggle, with all the energy her advisers think
politic, for liberty. She has ceased to wail--she is beginning to make
up a record of English crime and Irish suffering, in order to explain
the past, justify the present, and caution the future. She begins to
study the past--not to acquire a beggar's eloquence in petition, but a
hero's wrath in strife. She no longer tears and parades her wounds to
win her smiter's mercy; and now she should look upon her breast and
say:--"That wound makes me distrust, and this makes me guard, and they
all will make me steadier to resist, or, if all else fails, fiercer to
avenge."
Thus will Ireland do naturally and honourably.
Our spirit has increased--our liberty is not far off.
But to make our spirit lasting and wise as it is bold--to make our
liberty an inheritance for our children, and a charter for our
prosperity--we must study as well as strive, and learn as well as feel.
If we attempt to govern ourselves without statesmanship--to be a nation
without a knowledge of the country's history, and of the propensities
to good and ill of the people--or to fight without generalship, we will
fail in policy, society, and war. These--all these things--we, people
of Ireland, must know if we would be a free, strong nation. A mockery
of Irish independence is not what we want. The bauble of a powerless
parliament does not lure us. We are not children. The office of
supplying England with recruits, artizans, and corn, under the benign
interpositions of an Irish Grand Jury, _shall_ not be our destiny. By
our deep conviction--by the power of mind over the people, we say, No!
We are true to our colour, "the green," and true to our watchword,
"Ireland for the Irish." We want to win Ireland and keep it. If we win
it, we will not lose it nor give it away to a bribing, a bullying, or a
flattering minister. But, to be able to keep it, and use it, and govern
it, the men of Ireland must know what it is, what it was, and what it
can be made. They must study her history, perfectly know her present
state, physical and moral--and train themselves up by science, poetry,
music, industry, skill, and by all the studies and accomplishments of
peace and war.
If Ireland were in national health, her history would be familiar by
books, pictures, statuary, and music to every cabin and shop in the
land--her resources as an agricultural, manufacturing, and trading
people would be equally known--and every young man would be trained,
and every grown man able to defend her coast, her plains, her towns,
and her hills--not with his right arm merely, but by his disciplined
habits and military accomplishments. These are the pillars of
independence.
Academies of art, institutes of science, colleges of literature,
schools and camps of war, are a nation's means for teaching itself
strength, and winning safety and honour; and when we are a nation,
please God, we shall have them all. Till then we must work for
ourselves. So far as we can study music in societies, art in schools,
literature in institutes, science in our colleges, or soldiership in
theory, we are bound as good citizens to learn. Where these are denied
by power, or unattainable by clubbing the resources of neighbours, we
must try and study for ourselves. We must visit museums and
antiquities, and study, and buy, and assist books of history to know
what the country and people were, how they fell, how they suffered, and
how they arose again. We must read books of statistics--and let us
pause to regret that there is no work on the statistics of Ireland
except the scarce lithograph of Moreau, the papers in the second Report
of the Railway Commission, and the chapters in _M'Culloch's Statistics
of the British Empire_--the Repeal Association ought to have a handbook
first, and then an elaborate and vast account of Ireland's statistics
brought out.
To resume, we must read such statistics as we have, and try and get
better; and we must get the best maps of the country--the Ordnance and
County Index Maps, price 2_s._ 6_d._ each, and the Railway Map, price
L1--into our Mechanics' Institutes, Temperance Reading-rooms, and
schools. We must, in making our journeys of business and pleasure,
observe and ask for the nature and amount of the agriculture, commerce,
and manufactures of the place we are in, and its shape, population,
scenery, antiquities, arts, music, dress, and capabilities for
improvement. A large portion of our people travel a great deal within
Ireland, and often return with no knowledge, save of the inns they
slept in and the traders they dealt with.
We must give our children in schools the best knowledge of science,
art, and literary elements possible. And at home they should see and
hear as much of national pictures, music, poetry, and military science
as possible.
And finally, we must keep our own souls, and try, by teaching and
example, to lift up the souls of all our family and neighbours to that
pitch of industry, courage, information, and wisdom necessary to enable
an enslaved, dark, and starving people to become free, and rich, and
rational.
Well, as to this National History--L'Abbe MacGeoghegan published a
history of Ireland, in French, in 3 volumes, quarto, dedicated to the
Irish Brigade. Writing in France he was free from the English
censorship; writing for "The Brigade," he avoided the impudence of
Huguenot historians. The sneers of the Deist Voltaire, and the lies of
the Catholic Cambrensis, receive a sharp chastisement in his preface,
and a full answer in his text. He was a man of the most varied
acquirements and an elegant writer. More full references and the
correction of a few errors of detail would render his book more
satisfactory to the professor of history, but for the student it is the
best in the world. He is graphic, easy, and Irish. He is not a bigot,
but apparently a genuine Catholic. His information as to the numbers of
troops, and other facts of our Irish battles, is superior to any other
general historian's; and they who know it well need not blush, as most
Irishmen must now, at their ignorance of Irish history.
But the Association for liberating Ireland has offered a prize for a
new history of the country, and given ample time for preparation.
Let no man postpone the preparation who hopes the prize. An original
and highly-finished work is what is demanded, and for the composition
of such a work the time affords no leisure.
Few persons, we suppose, hitherto quite ignorant of Irish history, will
compete; but we would not discourage even these. There is neither in
theory nor fact any limit to the possible achievements of genius and
energy. Some of the greatest works in existence were written rapidly,
and many an old book-worm fails where a young book-thrasher succeeds.
Let us now consider some of the qualities which should belong to this
history.
_It should, in the first place, be written from the original
authorities._ We have some notion of giving a set of papers on these
authorities, but there are reasons against such a course, and we
counsel no man to rely on us--every one on himself; besides, such a
historian should rather make himself able to teach us than need to
learn from us.
However, no one can now be at a loss to know what these authorities
are. A list of the choicest of them is printed on the back of the
Volunteer's card for this year, and was also printed in the
_Nation_.[30] These authorities are not enough for a historian. The
materials, since the Revolution especially, exist mainly in pamphlets,
and even for the time previous only the leading authorities are in the
list. The list is not faulty in this, as it was meant for learners, not
teachers; but anyone using these authorities will readily learn from
them what the others are, and can so track out for himself.
There are, however, three tracts specially on the subject of Irish
writers. First is Bishop Nicholson's "Irish Historical Library." It
gives accounts of numerous writers, but is wretchedly meagre. In
Harris's "Hibernica" is a short tract on the same subject; and in
Harris's edition of Ware's works an ample treatise on _Irish Writers_.
This treatise is most valuable, but must be read with caution, as Ware
was slightly, and Harris enormously, prejudiced against the native
Irish and against the later Catholic writers. The criticisms of Harris,
indeed, on all books relative to the Religious Wars are partial and
deceptious; but we repeat that the work is of great value.
The only more recent work on the subject is a volume written by Edward
O'Reilly, for the Iberno-Celtic Society, on the Native Irish Poets: an
interesting work, and containing morsels invaluable to a picturesque
historian.
By the way, we may hope that the studies for this prize history will be
fruitful for historical ballads.
Too many of the original works can only be bought at an expense beyond
the means of most of those likely to compete. For instance, Harris's
"Ware," "Fynes Moryson," and "The State Papers of Henry the Eighth,"
are very dear. The works of the Archaeological Society can only be got
by a member. The price of O'Connor's "Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores
Veteres" is eighteen guineas; and yet, in it alone the annals of
Tigernach, Boyle, Innisfallen, and the early part of the "Four Masters"
are to be found. The great majority of the books, however, are
tolerably cheap; some of the dearer books might be got by combination
among several persons, and afterwards given to the Repeal
Reading-rooms.
However, persons resident in, or able to visit Dublin, Cork, or
Belfast, can study all, even the scarcest of these works, without any
real difficulty.
As to the qualities of such a history, they have been concisely enough
intimated by the Committee.
It is to be A HISTORY. One of the most absurd pieces of cant going is
that against history, because it is full of wars, and kings, and
usurpers, and mobs. History describes, and is meant to describe,
_forces_, not proprieties--the mights, the acted realities of men, bad
and good--their historical importance depending on their mightiness,
not their holiness. Let us by all means have, then, a "graphic"
narrative of what was, not a set of moral disquisitions on what ought
to have been.
Yet the man who would keep chronicling the dry events would miss
writing a history. He must fathom the social condition of the
peasantry, the townsmen, the middle-classes, the nobles, and the clergy
(Christian or Pagan), in each period--how they fed, dressed, armed, and
housed themselves. He must exhibit the nature of the government, the
manners, the administration of law, the state of useful and fine arts,
of commerce, of foreign relations. He must let us see the decay and
rise of great principles and conditions--till we look on a tottering
sovereignty, a rising creed, an incipient war, as distinctly as, by
turning to the highway, we can see the old man, the vigorous youth, or
the infant child. He must paint--the council robed in its hall--the
priest in his temple--the conspirator--the outlaw--the judge--the
general--the martyr. The arms must clash and shine with genuine, not
romantic, likeness; and the brigades or clans join battle, or divide in
flight, before the reader's thought. Above all, a historian should be
able to seize on character, not vaguely eulogising nor cursing; but
feeling and expressing the pressure of a great mind on his time, and on
after-times.
Such things may be done partly in disquisitions, as in Michelet's
"France"; but they must now be done in narrative; and nowhere, not even
in Livy, is there a finer specimen of how all these things may be done
by narrative than in Augustine Thierry's "Norman Conquest" and
"Merovingian Scenes." The only danger to be avoided in dealing with so
long a period in Thierry's way is the continuing to attach importance
to a once great influence, when it has sunk to be an exceptive power.
He who thinks it possible to dash off a profoundly coloured and shaded
narrative like this of Thierry's will find himself bitterly wrong. Even
a great philosophical view may much more easily be extemporised than
this lasting and finished image of past times.
The greatest vice in such a work would be bigotry--bigotry of race or
creed. We know a descendant of a great Milesian family who supports the
Union, because he thinks the descendants of the Anglo-Irish--his
ancestors' foes--would mainly rule Ireland, were she independent. The
opposite rage against the older races is still more usual. A religious
bigot is altogether unfit, incurably unfit, for such a task; and the
writer of such an Irish history must feel a love for all sects, a
philosophical eye to the merits and demerits of all, and a solemn and
haughty impartiality in speaking of all.
Need we say that a history, wherein glowing oratory appeared in place
of historical painting, bold assertion instead of justified
portraiture, flattery to the living instead of justice to the dead,
clever plunder of other compilers instead of original research, or a
cramped and scholastic instead of an idiomatic, "clear and graphic"
style, would deserve rejection, and would, we cannot doubt, obtain it.
To give such a history to Ireland as is now sought will be a proud and
illustrious deed. Such a work would have no passing influence, though
its first political effect would be enormous; it would be read by every
class and side; for there is no readable book on the subject; it would
people our streets, and glens, and castles, and abbeys, and coasts with
a hundred generations besides our own; it would clear up the grounds of
our quarrels, and prepare reconciliation; it would _unconsciously_
make us recognise the causes of our weakness; it would give us great
examples of men and of events, and materially influence our destiny.
Shall we get such a history? Think, reader! has God given you the soul
and perseverance to create this marvel?
---------------------------------------------------------------
[30] The following is the list of books given as the present
sources of history:--
SOME OF THE ORIGINAL SOURCES OF IRISH HISTORY.
ANCIENT IRISH TIMES.
Annals of Tigernach, abbot of Clonmacnoise, from A.D. 200 to his
death, 1188, partly compiled from writers of the eighth, seventh,
and sixth centuries.
Lives of St. Patrick, St. Columbanus, etc.
Annals of the Four Masters, from the earliest times to 1616.
Other Annals, such as those of Innisfallen, Ulster, Boyle, etc.
Publications of the Irish Archaeological Society, Danish and
Icelandic Annals.
ENGLISH INVASION AND THE PALE.
Gerald de Barri, surnamed Cambrensis, "Topography" and "Conquest of
Ireland." Four Masters, Tracts in Harris's Hibernica. Campion's,
Hanmer's, Marlborough's, Camden's, Holingshed's, Stanihurst's, and
Ware's Histories. Hardiman's Statutes of Kilkenny.
Henry VIII. and Elizabeth.--Harris's Ware. O'Sullivan's Catholic
History. Four Masters. Spencer's View. Sir G. Carew's Pacata
Hibernia. State Papers, Temp. H. VIII. Fynes Moryson's Itinerary.
James I.--Harris's Hibernica. Sir John Davies' Tracts.
Charles I.--Strafford's Letters. Carte's Life of Ormond. Lodge's
Desiderata. Clarendon's Rebellion. Tichborne's Drogheda. State
Trials. Rinuccini's Letters. Pamphlets. Castlehaven's Memoirs.
Clanrickarde's Memoirs. Peter Walsh. Sir J. Temple.
Charles II.--Lord Orrery's Letters. Essex's Letters.
James II. and William III.--King's State of Protestants, and
Lesley's Answer. The Green Book. Statutes of James's Parliament, in
Dublin Magazine, 1843. Clarendon's Letters. Rawdon Papers. Tracts.
Molyneux's Case of Ireland.
George I. and II.--Swift's Life. Lucas's Tracts. Howard's Cases
under Popery Laws. O'Leary's Tracts. Boulter's Letters.
O'Connor's and Parnell's Irish Catholics. Foreman on "The Brigade."
George III.--Grattan's and Curran's Speeches and Lives--Memoirs of
Charlemont. Wilson's Volunteers. Barrington's Rise and Fall. Wolfe
Tone's Memoirs. Moore's Fitzgerald. Wyse's Catholic Association.
Madden's United Irishmen. Hay, Teeling, etc., on '98. Tracts.
MacNevin's State Trials. O'Connell's and Sheil's Speeches.
Plowden's History.
Compilations.--Moore. M'Geoghegan. Curry's Civil Wars. Carey's
Vindiciae. O'Connell's Ireland. Leland.
Current Authorities.--The Acts of Parliament. Lords' and Commons'
Journals and Debates. Lynch's Legal Institutions.
Antiquities, Dress, Arms.--Royal Irish Academy's Transactions and
Museum. Walker's Irish Bards. British Costume, in Library of
Entertaining Knowledge.
ANCIENT IRELAND.
There was once civilisation in Ireland. We never were very eminent, to
be sure, for manufactures in metal, our houses were simple, our very
palaces rude, our furniture scanty, our saffron shirts not often
changed, and our foreign trade small. Yet was Ireland civilised.
Strange thing! says someone whose ideas of civilisation are identical
with carpets and cut-glass, fine masonry, and the steam engine; yet
'tis true. For there was a time when learning was endowed by the rich
and honoured by the poor, and taught all over our country. Not only did
thousands of natives frequent our schools and colleges, but men of
every rank came here from the Continent to study under the professors
and system of Ireland, and we need not go beyond the testimonies of
English antiquaries, from Bede to Camden, that these schools were
regarded as the first in Europe. Ireland was equally remarkable for
piety. In the Pagan times it was regarded as a sanctuary of the Magian
or Druid creed. From the fifth century it became equally illustrious in
Christendom. Without going into the disputed question of whether the
Irish church was or was not independent of Rome, it is certain that
Italy did not send out more apostles from the fifth to the ninth
centuries than Ireland, and we find their names and achievements
remembered through the Continent.
Of two names which Hallam thinks worth rescuing from the darkness of
the dark ages, one is the Irish metaphysician, John Erigena. In a
recent communication to the "Association" we had Bavarians
acknowledging the Irish St. Killian as the apostle of their country.
Yet what, beyond a catalogue of names and a few marked events, do even
the educated Irish know of the heroic pagans or the holy Christians of
Old Ireland? These men have left libraries of biography, religion,
philosophy, natural history, topography, history, and romance. They
_cannot all be worthless_; yet, except the few volumes given us by
the Archaeological Society, which of their works have any of us read?
It is also certain that we possessed written laws with extensive and
minute comments and reported decisions. These Brehon laws have been
foully misrepresented by Sir John Davies. Their tenures were the
gavelkind once prevalent over most of the world. The land belonged to
the clan, and on the death of a clansman his share was re-apportioned
according to the number and wants of his family. The system of erics or
fines for offences has existed amongst every people from the Hebrews
downwards, nor can anyone, knowing the multitude of crimes now
punishable by fines or damages, think the people of this empire
justified in calling the ancient Irish barbarous because they extended
the system. There is in these laws, so far as they are known,
minuteness and equity; and what is a better test of their goodness we
learn from Sir John Davies himself, and from the still abler Baron
Finglass, that the people reverenced, obeyed, and clung to these laws,
though to decide by or obey them was a high crime by England's code.
Moreover, the Norman and Saxon settlers hastened to adopt these Irish
laws, and used them more resolutely, if possible, than the Irish
themselves.
Orderliness and hospitality were peculiarly cultivated. Public
caravansarais were built for travellers in every district, and we have
what would almost be legal evidence of the grant of vast tracts of land
for the supply of provisions for these houses of hospitality. The
private hospitality of the chiefs was equally marked; nor was it quite
rude. Ceremony was united with great freedom of intercourse, age, and
learning, and rank, and virtue were respected, and these men, whose
cookery was probably as coarse as that of Homer's heroes, had around
their board harpers and bards who sang poetry as gallant and fiery,
though not so grand, as the Homeric ballad-singers, and flung off a
music which Greece never rivalled.
Shall a people, pious, hospitable, and brave, faithful observers of
family ties, cultivators of learning, music, and poetry, be called less
than civilised because mechanical arts were rude and "comfort" despised
by them?
Scattered through the country in MS. are hundreds of books wherein the
laws and achievements, the genealogies and possessions, the creeds and
manners and poetry of these our predecessors in Ireland are set down.
Their music lives in the traditional airs of every valley.
Yet _mechanical civilisation_, more cruel than time, is trying to
exterminate them, and, therefore, it becomes us all who do not wish to
lose the heritage of centuries, nor to feel ourselves living among
nameless ruins, when we might have an ancestral home--it becomes all
who love learning, poetry, or music, or are curious of human progress,
to aid in or originate a series of efforts to save all that remains of
the past.
It becomes them to lose no opportunity of instilling into the minds of
their neighbours, whether they be corporators or peasants, that it is a
brutal, mean, and sacrilegious thing to turn a castle, a church, a
tomb, or a mound into a quarry or a gravel pit, or to break the least
morsel of sculpture, or to take any old coin or ornament they may find
to a jeweller, so long as there is an Irish Academy in Dublin to pay
for it or accept it.
Before the year is out we hope to see A SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF
IRISH MUSIC established in Dublin, under the joint patronage of the
leading men of all politics, with branches in the provincial towns for
the collection and diffusion of Irish airs.[31]
An effort--a great and decided one--must be made to have the Irish
Academy so endowed out of the revenues of Ireland that it may be A
NATIONAL SCHOOL OF IRISH HISTORY AND LITERATURE AND A MUSEUM OF IRISH
ANTIQUITIES on the largest scale. In fact, the Academy should be a
secular Irish College, with professors of our old language, literature,
history, antiquities, and topography; with suitable schools,
lecture-rooms, and museums.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[31] Like many of the suggestions of Thomas Davis this has borne
fruit. In our own day the Irish Folk Song Society (20 Hanover
Square, London, W.) as well as the Feis Ceoil and the Gaelic League
have done invaluable work in the direction indicated.--[Ed.]
HISTORICAL MONUMENTS OF IRELAND.
We were a little struck the other day in taking up a new book by
Merimee to see after his name the title of "Inspector-General of the
Historical Monuments of France." So then France, with the feeding,
clothing, protecting, and humouring of thirty-six million people to
attend to, has leisure to employ a Board and Inspector, and money to
pay them for looking after the Historical Monuments of France, lest the
Bayeux tapestry, which chronicles the conquest of England, or the
Amphitheatre of Nimes, which marks the sojourn of the Romans, suffer
any detriment.
And has Ireland no monuments of her history to guard; has she no tables
of stone, no pictures, no temples, no weapons? Are there no Brehon's
chairs on her hills to tell more clearly than Vallancey or Davies how
justice was administered here? Do not you meet the Druid's altar and
the Gueber's tower in every barony almost, and the Ogham stones in many
a sequestered spot, and shall we spend time and money to see, to guard,
or to decipher Indian topes, and Tuscan graves, and Egyptian
hieroglyphics, and shall every nation in Europe shelter and study the
remains of what it once was, even as one guards the tomb of a parent,
and shall Ireland let all go to ruin?
We have seen pigs housed in the piled friezes of a broken church, cows
stabled in the palaces of the Desmonds, and corn threshed on the floor
of abbeys, and the sheep and the tearing wind tenant the corridors of
Aileach.
Daily are more and more of our crosses broken, of our tombs effaced, of
our abbeys shattered, of our castles torn down, of our cairns
sacrilegiously pierced, of our urns broken up, and of our coins melted
down. All classes, creeds and politics are to blame in this. The
peasant lugs down a pillar for his sty, the farmer for his gate, the
priest for his chapel, the minister for his glebe. A mill-stream runs
through Lord Moore's Castle,[32] and the Commissioners of Galway have
shaken and threatened to remove the Warden's house--that fine stone
chronicle of Galway heroism.
How our children will despise us all for this! Why shall we seek for
histories, why make museums, why study the manners of the dead, when we
foully neglect or barbarously spoil their homes, their castles, their
temples, their colleges, their courts, their graves? He who tramples on
the past does not create for the future. The same ignorant and vagabond
spirit which made him a destructive prohibits him from creating for
posterity.
Does not a man, by examining a few castles and arms, know more of the
peaceful and warrior life of the dead nobles and gentry of our island
than from a library of books; and yet a man is stamped as unlettered
and rude if he does not know and value such knowledge. Ware's
_Antiquities_, and Archdall, speak not half so clearly the taste, the
habits, the everyday customs of the monks, as Adare Monastery,[33] for
the fine preservation of which we owe so much to Lord Dunraven.
The state of civilisation among our Scotic or Milesian, or Norman, or
Danish sires, is better seen from the Museum of the Irish Academy, and
from a few raths, keeps, and old coast towns, than from all the prints
and historical novels we have. An old castle in Kilkenny, a house in
Galway give us a peep at the arts, the intercourse, the creed, the
indoor and some of the outdoor ways of the gentry of the one, and of
the merchants of the other, clearer than Scott could, were he to write,
or Cattermole were he to paint, for forty years.
We cannot expect Government to do anything so honourable and liberal as
to imitate the example of France, and pay men to describe and save
these remains of dead ages. But we do ask it of the clergy, Protestant,
Catholic, and Dissenting, if they would secure the character of men of
education and taste--we call upon the gentry, if they have any pride of
blood, and on the people, if they reverence Old Ireland, to spare and
guard every remnant of antiquity. We ask them to find other quarries
than churches, abbeys, castles and cairns--to bring rusted arms to a
collector and coins to a museum, and not to iron or goldsmiths, and to
take care that others do the like. We talk much of Old Ireland, and
plunder and ruin all that remains of it--we neglect its language,
fiddle with its ruins, and spoil its monuments.[34]
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[32] Mellifont, founded in 1142 by O'Carroll, King of
Oriel.--C.P.M.
[33] See _Irish Franciscan Monasteries_, by C.P.M., C.C.
[34] Again we note that, though late in the day, Davis's appeal has
been answered, and most of the important ancient monuments of the
country placed under official protection. The real need now is for
scientific exploration of the ancient sites.--[Ed.]
IRISH ANTIQUITIES.
There is on the north (the left) bank of the Boyne, between Drogheda
and Slane, a pile compared to which, in age, the Oldbridge obelisk is a
thing of yesterday, and compared to which, in lasting interest, the
Cathedrals of Dublin would be trivial. It is the Temple of Grange.
History is too young to have noted its origin--Archaeology knows not its
time. It is a legacy from a forgotten ancestor, to prove that he, too,
had art and religion. It may have marked the tomb of a hero who freed,
or an invader who subdued--a Brian or a Strongbow. But whether or not a
hero's or a saint's bones consecrated it at first, this is plain--it is
a temple of nigh two thousand years, perfect as when the last Pagan
sacrificed within it.[35]
It is a thing to be proud of, as a proof of Ireland's antiquity, to be
guarded as an illustration of her early creed and arts. It is one of a
thousand muniments of our old nationality which a national government
would keep safe.
What, then, will be the reader's surprise and anger to hear that some
people having legal power or corrupt influence in Meath are getting, or
have got, _a presentment for a road to run right through the Temple
of Grange_!
We do not know their names, nor, if the design be at once given up, as
in deference to public opinion it must finally be, shall we take the
trouble to find them out. But if they persist in this brutal outrage
against so precious a landmark of Irish history and civilisation, then
we frankly say if the law will not reach them public opinion shall, and
they shall bitterly repent the desecration. These men who design, and
those who consent to the act, may be Liberals or Tories, Protestants or
Catholics, but beyond a doubt they are tasteless blockheads--poor
devils without reverence or education--men, who, as Wordsworth says--
"Would peep and botanise
Upon their mothers' graves."
All over Europe the governments, the aristocracies, and the people have
been combining to discover, gain, and guard every monument of what
their dead countrymen had done or been. France has a permanent
commission charged to watch over her antiquities. She annually spends
more in publishing books, maps, and models, in filling her museums and
shielding her monuments from the iron clutch of time, than all the
roads in Leinster cost. It is only on time she needs to keep watch. A
French peasant would blush to meet his neighbour had he levelled a
Gaulish tomb, crammed the fair moulding of an abbey into his wall, or
sold to a crucible the coins which tell that a Julius, a Charlemagne,
or a Philip Augustus swayed his native land. And so it is everywhere.
Republican Switzerland, despotic Austria, Prussia and Norway, Bavaria
and Greece are all equally precious of everything that exhibits the
architecture, sculpture, rites, dress, or manners of their
ancestors--nay, each little commune would guard with arms these local
proofs that they were not men of yesterday. And why should not Ireland
be as precious of its ruins, its manuscripts, its antique vases, coins,
and ornaments, as these French and German men--nay, as the English, for
they, too, do not grudge princely grants to their museums and
restoration funds.
This island has been for centuries either in part or altogether a
province. Now and then above the mist we see the whirl of Sarsfield's
sword, the red battle-hand of O'Neill, and the points of O'Connor's
spears; but 'tis a view through eight hundred years to recognise the
Sunburst on a field of liberating victory. Reckoning back from
Clontarf, our history grows ennobled (like that of a decayed house),
and we see Lismore and Armagh centres of European learning; we see our
missionaries seizing and taming the conquerors of Europe, and, farther
still, rises the wizard pomp of Eman and Tara--the palace of the Irish
Pentarchy. And are we the people to whom the English (whose fathers
were painted savages when Tyre and Sidon traded with this land) can
address reproaches for our rudeness and irreverence? So it seems. The
_Athenaeum_ says:--
"It is much to be regretted that the society lately established in
England, having for its object the preservation of British
antiquities, did not extend its design over those of the sister
island, which are daily becoming fewer and fewer in number. That
the gold ornaments which are so frequently found in various parts
of Ireland should be melted down for the sake of the very pure gold
of which they are composed, is scarcely surprising; but that carved
stones and even immense druidical remains should be destroyed is,
indeed, greatly to be lamented. At one of the late meetings of the
Royal Irish Academy a communication was made of the intention of
the proprietor of the estate at New Grange to destroy that most
gigantic relic of druidical times, which has justly been termed the
Irish pyramid, merely because its vast size 'cumbereth the ground.'
At Mellifont a modern cornmill of large size has been built out of
the stones of the beautiful monastic buildings, some of which still
adorn that charming spot. At Monasterboice, the churchyard of which
contains one of the finest of the round towers, are the ruins of
two of the little ancient stone Irish churches, and three most
elaborately carved stone crosses, eighteen or twenty feet high. The
churchyard itself is overrun with weeds, the sanctity of the place
being its only safeguard. At Clonmacnoise, where, some forty years
ago, several hundred inscriptions in the ancient Irish character
were to be seen upon the gravestones, scarcely a dozen (and they
the least interesting) are now to be found--the large flat stones
on which they were carved forming excellent slabs for doorways, the
copings of walls, etc.! It was the discovery of some of these
carved stones in such a situation which had the effect of directing
the attention of Mr. Petrie (then an artist in search of the
picturesque, but now one of the most enlightened and conscientious
of the Irish antiquaries) to the study of antiquities; and it is
upon the careful series of drawings made by him that future
antiquarians must rely for very much of ancient architectural
detail now destroyed. As to Glendalough, it is so much a holiday
place for the Dubliners that it is no wonder everything portable
has disappeared. Two or three of the seven churches are levelled to
the ground--all the characteristic carvings described by Ledwich,
and which were '_quite unique in Ireland_,' are gone. Some were
removed and used as keystones for the arches of Derrybawn bridge.
Part of the churchyard has been cleared of its gravestones, and
forms a famous place, where the villagers play at ball against the
old walls of the church. The little church, called 'St. Kevin's
Kitchen,' is given up to the sheep, and the font lies in one
corner, and is used for the vilest purposes. The abbey church is
choked up with trees and brambles, and being a little out of the
way a very few of the carved stones still remain there, two of the
most interesting of which I found used as coping-stones to the wall
which surrounds it. The connection between the ancient churches of
Ireland and the North of England renders the preservation of the
Irish antiquities especially interesting to the English
antiquarian; and it is with the hope of drawing attention to the
destruction of those ancient Irish monuments that I have written
these few lines. The Irish themselves are, unfortunately, so
engrossed with political and religious controversies, that it can
scarcely be hoped that single-handed they will be roused to the
rescue even of these evidences of their former national greatness.
Besides, a great obstacle exists against any interference with the
religious antiquities of the country, from the strong feelings
entertained by the people on the subject, although _practically_,
as we have seen, of so little weight. Let us hope that the public
attention directed to these objects will have a beneficial result
and ensure a greater share of 'justice to Ireland'; for will it be
believed that the only establishment in Ireland for the propagation
and diffusion of scientific and antiquarian knowledge--the Royal
Irish Academy--receives annually the munificent sum of L300 from
the Government! And yet, notwithstanding this pittance, the members
of that society have made a step in the right direction by the
purchase of the late Dean of St. Patrick's Irish Archaeological
Collection, of which a fine series of drawings is now being made at
the expense of the Academy, and of which they would, doubtless,
allow copies to be made, so as to obtain a return of a portion of
the expense to which they are now subjected. Small, moreover, as
the collection is, it forms a striking contrast with our own
_National_ Museum, which, rich in foreign antiquities, is almost
without a single object of native archaeological interest, if we
except the series of English and Anglo-Saxon coins and MSS."
The Catholic clergy were long and naturally the guardians of our
antiquities, and many of their archaeological works testify their
prodigious learning. Of late, too, the honourable and wise reverence
brought back to England has reached the Irish Protestant clergy, and
they no longer make antiquity a reproach, or make the maxims of the
iconoclast part of their creed.
Is it extravagant to speculate on the possibility of the Episcopalian,
Catholic, and Presbyterian clergy joining in an Antiquarian Society to
preserve our ecclesiastical remains--our churches, our abbeys, our
crosses, and our fathers' tombs, from fellows like the Meath
road-makers? It would be a politic and a noble emulation of the sects,
restoring the temples wherein their sires worshipped for their children
to pray in. There's hardly a barony wherein we could not find an old
parish or abbey church, capable of being restored to its former beauty
and convenience at a less expense than some beastly barn is run up, as
if to prove and confirm the fact that we have little art, learning, or
imagination.
Nor do we see why some of these hundreds of half-spoiled buildings
might not be used for civil purposes--as almshouses, schools,
lecture-rooms, town-halls. It would always add another grace to an
institution to have its home venerable with age and restored to beauty.
We have seen men of all creeds join the Archaeological Society to
preserve and revive our ancient literature. Why may we not see, even
without waiting for the aid of an Irish Parliament, an Antiquarian
Society, equally embracing the chief civilians and divines, and
charging itself with the duties performed in France by the Commission
of Antiquities and Monuments?
The Irish antiquarians of the last century did much good. They called
attention to the history and manners of our predecessors which we had
forgotten. They gave a pedigree to nationhood, and created a faith that
Ireland could and should be great again by magnifying what she had
been. They excited the noblest passions--veneration, love of glory,
beauty, and virtue. They awoke men's fancy by their gorgeous pictures
of the past, and imagination strove to surpass them by its creations.
They believed what they wrote, and thus their wildest stories sank into
men's minds. To the exertions of Walker, O'Halloran, Vallancey, and a
few other Irish academicians in the last century, we owe almost all the
Irish knowledge possessed by our upper classes till very lately. It was
small, but it was enough to give a dreamy renown to ancient Ireland;
and if it did nothing else, it smoothed the reception of Bunting's
music, and identified Moore's poetry with his native country.
While, therefore, we at once concede that Vallancey was a bad scholar,
O'Halloran a credulous historian, and Walker a shallow antiquarian, we
claim for them gratitude and attachment, and protest, once for all,
against the indiscriminate abuse of them now going in our educated
circles.
But no one should lie down under the belief that these were the deep
and exact men their contemporaries thought them. They were not patient
nor laborious. They were very graceful, very fanciful, and often very
wrong in their statements and their guesses. How often they avoided
painful research by gay guessing we are only now learning. O'Halloran
and Keatinge have told us bardic romances with the same tone as true
chronicles. Vallancey twisted language, towers, and traditions into his
wicker-work theory of Pagan Ireland; and Walker built great facts and
great blunders, granite blocks and rotten wood, into his antiquarian
edifices. One of the commonest errors, attributing immense antiquity,
oriental origin, and everything noble in Ireland to the Milesians,
originated with these men; or, rather, was transferred from the
adulatory songs of clan-bards to grave stories. Now, it is quite
certain that several races flourished here before the Milesians, and
that everything oriental, and much that was famous in Ireland, belonged
to some of these elder races, and not to the Scoti or Milesians.
Premising this much of warning and defence as to the men who first made
anything of ancient Ireland known to the mixed nation of modern
Ireland, we turn with pure pleasure to their successors, the
antiquarians and historians of our own time.
We liked for awhile bounding from tussuck to tussuck, or resting on a
green esker in the domain of the old academicians of Grattan's time;
but 'tis pleasanter, after all, to tread the firm ground of our own
archaeologists.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[35] The reader who wishes to know what modern archaeology has to
say of this great tumulus may be referred to Mr. George Coffey's
"Newgrange," published by Hodges, Figgis & Co., 1912. It dates from
about 1,000 years earlier than Davis supposed.
THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND.[36]
Accustomed from boyhood to regard these towers as revelations of a
gorgeous but otherwise undefined antiquity--dazzled by oriental
analogies--finding a refuge in their primeval greatness from the
meanness or the misfortunes of our middle ages, we clung to the belief
of their Pagan origin.
In fancy we had seen the white-robed Druid tend the holy fire in their
lower chambers--had measured with the Tyrian-taught astronomer the
length of their shadows--and had almost knelt to the elemental worship
with nobles whose robes had the dye of the Levant, and sailors whose
cheeks were brown with an Egyptian sun, and soldiers whose bronze arms
clashed as the trumpets from the tower-top said that the sun had risen.
What wonder that we had resented the attempt to cure us of so sweet a
frenzy?
We plead guilty to having opened Mr. Petrie's work strongly bigoted
against his conclusion.
On the other hand, we could not forget the authority of the book. Its
author we knew was familiar beyond almost any other with the
country--had not left one glen unsearched, not one island untrod; had
brought with him the information of a life of antiquarian study, a
graceful and exact pencil, and feelings equally national and lofty. We
knew also that he had the aid of the best Celtic scholars alive in the
progress of his work. The long time taken in its preparation ensured
maturity; and the honest men who had criticised it, and the adventurers
who had stolen from it enough to make false reputations, equally
testified to its merits.
Yet, we repeat, we jealously watched for flaws in Mr. Petrie's
reasoning; exulted as he set down the extracts from his opponents, in
the hope that he would fail in answering them, and at last surrendered
with a sullen despair.
Looking now more calmly at the discussion, we are grateful to Mr.
Petrie for having driven away an idle fancy. In its stead he has given
us new and unlooked-for trophies, and more solid information on Irish
antiquities than any of his predecessors. We may be well content to
hand over the Round Towers to Christians of the sixth or the tenth
century, when we find that these Christians were really eminent in
knowledge as well as piety, had arched churches by the side of these
_campanilia_, gave an alphabet to the Saxons, and hospitality and
learning to the students of all western Europe--and the more readily,
as we got in exchange _proofs_ of a Pagan race having a Pelasgic
architecture, and the arms and ornaments of a powerful and cultivated
people.
The volume before us contains two parts of Mr. Petrie's essay. The
first part is an examination of the false theories of the origin of
these towers. The second is an account not only of what he thinks their
real origin, but of every kind of early ecclesiastical structure in
Ireland. The third part will contain a historical and descriptive
account of every ecclesiastical building in Ireland of a date prior to
the Anglo-Norman invasion of which remains now exist. The work is
crowded with illustrations drawn with wonderful accuracy, and engraved
in a style which proves that Mr. O'Hanlon, the engraver, has become so
proficient as hardly to have a superior in wood-cutting.
We shall for the present limit ourselves to the first part of the work
on the
"ERRONEOUS THEORIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ORIGIN AND USES OF THE ROUND
TOWERS."
The first refutation is of the
"THEORY OF THE DANISH ORIGIN OF THE TOWERS."
John Lynch, in his _Cambrensis Eversus_, says that the Danes are
reported (_dicuntur_) to have first erected the Round Towers as
_watch_-towers, but that the Christian Irish changed them into _clock_
or bell-towers. Peter Walsh[37] repeated and exaggerated the statement;
and Ledwich, the West British antiquary of last century, combined it
with lies enough to settle his character, though not that of the
towers. The only person, at once explicit and honest, who supported
this Danish theory was Dr. Molyneux. His arguments are that all stone
buildings, and, indeed, all evidences of mechanical civilisation, in
Ireland were Danish; that some traditions attributed the Round Towers
to them; that they had fit models in the monuments of their own
country; and that the word by which he says the native Irish call them,
viz., "Clogachd," comes from the Teutonic root, clugga, a bell. These
arguments are easily answered.
The Danes, so far from introducing stone architecture, found it
flourishing in Ireland, and burned and ruined our finest buildings, and
destroyed mechanical and every kind of civilisation wherever their
ravages extended--doing thus in Ireland precisely as they did in France
and England, as all annals (their own included) testify. Tradition does
not describe the towers as Danish watch-towers, but as Christian
belfries. The upright stones and the little barrows, not twelve feet
high, of Denmark, could neither give models nor skill to the Danes.
They had much ampler possession of England and Scotland, and permanent
possession of Normandy, but never a Round Tower did they erect there;
and, finally, the native Irish name for a Round Tower is _cloic-theach_,
from _teach_, a house, and _cloc_, the Irish word used for a bell in
Irish works before "the Germans or Saxons had churches or bells," and
before the Danes had ever sent a war-ship into our seas.
We pass readily from this ridiculous hypothesis with the remark that
the gossip which attributes to the Danes our lofty monumental pyramids
and cairns, our Druid altars, our dry stone caisils or keeps, and our
raths or fortified enclosures for the homes or cattle of our chiefs, is
equally and utterly unfounded; and is partly to be accounted for from
the name of power and terror which these barbarians left behind, and
partly from ignorant persons confounding them with the most illustrous
and civilised of the Irish races--the Danaans.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[36] _The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_, vol. xx.
Dublin: Hodges & Smith, Grafton Street.
[37] A turbulent and learned Franciscan friar who figured in the
Confederation of Kilkenny.--C.P.M.
THEORY OF THE EASTERN ORIGIN OF THE ROUND TOWERS.
Among the middle and upper classes in Ireland the Round Towers are
regarded as one of the results of an intimate connection between
Ireland and the East, and are spoken of as either--1, Fire Temples; 2,
Stations from whence Druid festivals were announced; 3, Sun-dials
(gnomons) and astronomical observatories; 4, Buddhist or Phallic
temples, or two or more of these uses are attributed to them at the
same time.
Mr. Petrie states that the theory of the Phoenician or Indo-Scythic
origin of these towers was stated for the first time so recently as
1772 by General Vallancey, in his "Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish
Language," and was re-asserted by him in many different and contradictory
forms in his _Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis_, published at intervals
in the following years.
It may be well to premise who
GENERAL CHARLES VALLANCEY
was. His family were from Berry, in France; their name Le Brun, called
De Valencia, from their estate of that name. General Vallancey was born
in Flanders, but was educated at Eton College. When a captain in the
12th Royal Infantry he was attached to the engineer department in
Ireland, published a book on Field Engineering in 1756, and commenced a
survey of Ireland. During this he picked up something of the Irish
language, and is said to have studied it under Morris O'Gorman, clerk
of Mary's Lane Chapel. He died in his house, Lower Mount Street, 18th
August, 1812, aged 82 years.
His _Collectanea_, and his discourses in the Royal Irish Academy, of
which he was an original member, spread far and wide his oriental
theories. He was an amiable and plausible man, but of little learning,
little industry, great boldness, and no scruples; and while he
certainly stimulated men's feelings towards Irish antiquities, he has
left us a reproducing swarm of falsehood, of which Mr. Petrie has
happily begun the destruction. Perhaps nothing gave Vallancey's follies
more popularity than the opposition of the Rev. Edward Ledwich, whose
_Antiquities of Ireland_ is a mass of falsehoods, disparaging to the
people and the country.
FIRE TEMPLES.
Vallancey's first analogy is plausible. The Irish Druids honoured the
elements and kept up sacred fires, and at a particular day in the year
all the fires in the kingdom were put out, and had to be re-lighted
from the Arch-Druid's fire. A similar creed and custom existed among
the Parsees or Guebres of Persia, and he takes the resemblance to prove
connection and identity of creed and civilisation. From this he
immediately concludes the Round Towers to be Fire Temples. Now there is
no evidence that the Irish Pagans had sacred fires, except in open
spaces (on the hilltops), and, therefore, none of course that they had
them in towers round or square; but Vallancey falls back on the
_alleged existence of Round Towers in the East similar to ours, and
on etymology_.
Here is a specimen of his etymologies. The Hebrew word _gadul_
signifies _great_, and thence a tower; the Irish name for a round
tower, _cloghad_, is from this _gadul_ or _gad_, and _clogh_, a
_stone_: and the Druids called every place of worship _cloghad_. To
which it is answered--_gadul_ is not _gad_--_clogh_, a _stone_, is not
_cloch_, a _bell_. The Irish word for a Round Tower is _cloich-theach_,
or bell-house, and there is no proof that the Druids called _any_ place
of worship _cloghad_.
Vallancey's guesses are numerous, and nearly all childish, and we shall
quote some finishing specimens, with Mr. Petrie's answers:--
"This is another characteristic example of Vallancey's mode of
quoting authorities: he first makes O'Brien say that _Cuilceach_
becomes corruptly _Claiceach_, and then that the word _seems_ to be
corrupted _Clogtheach_. But O'Brien does not say that _Cuilceach_
is corruptly _Claiceach_, nor has he the word _Culkak_ or
_Claiceach_ in his book; neither does he say that _Cuilceach seems_
to be a corruption of _Clog-theach_, but states positively that it
is so. The following are the passages which Vallancey has so
misquoted and garbled--
"'CUILCEACH, a steeple, cuilceach Cluan-umba, Cloyne steeple--this
word _is_ a corruption of Clog-theach.
"'CLOIG-THEACH, a steeple, a belfry; _corrupte_ Cuilg-theach.'
"Our author next tells us that another name for the Round Towers is
_Sibheit_, _Sithbeit_, and _Sithbein_, and for this he refers us to
O'Brien's and Shaw's Lexicons; but this quotation is equally false
with those I have already exposed, for the words _Sibheit_ and
_Sithbeit_ are not to be found in either of the works referred to.
The word _Sithbhe_ is indeed given in both Lexicons, but explained
a city, not a round tower. The word _Sithbhein_ is also given in
both, but explained a fort, a turret, and the real meaning of the
word as still understood in many parts of Ireland is a fairy-hill,
or hill of the fairies, and is applied to a green round hill
crowned by a small sepulchral mound.
"He next tells us that _Caiceach_, the last name he finds for the
Round Towers, is supposed by the Glossarists to be compounded of
_cai_, a house, and _teach_, a house, an explanation which, he
playfully adds, is tautology with a witness. But where did he find
authority for the word _Caiceach_? I answer, nowhere; and the
tautology he speaks of was either a creation or a blunder of his
own. It is evident to me that the Glossarist to whom he refers is
no other than his favourite Cormac; but the latter makes no such
blunder, as will appear from the passage which our author obviously
refers to--
"'_Cai i. teach unde dicitur ceard cha i. teach cearda; creas cha
i. teach cumang._'
"'_Cai, i.e._, a house; _unde dicitur ceard-cha, i.e._, the house
of the artificer; _creas-cha, i.e._, a narrow house.'"
The reader has probably now had enough of Vallancey's etymology, but it
is right to add that Mr. Petrie goes through every hint of such proof
given by the General, and disposes of them with greater facility.
The next person disposed of is Mr. Beauford, who derives the name of
our Round Towers from _Tlacht--earth_; asserts that the foundations of
temples for Vestal fire exist in Rath-na-Emhain, and other places (poor
devil!)--that the Persian Magi overran the world in the time of the
great Constantine, introducing Round Towers in place of the Vestal
mounds into Ireland, combining their fire-worship with our
Druidism--and that the present towers were built in imitation of the
Magian Towers. This is all, as Mr. Petrie says, pure fallacy, without a
particle of authority; but we should think "_twelfth_" is a misprint
for "_seventh_" in the early part of Beauford's passage, and,
therefore, that the last clause of Mr. Petrie's censure is undeserved.
This Beauford is not to be confounded with Miss Beaufort. She, too,
paganises the towers by aggravating some misstatements of Mason's
_Parochial Survey_; but her errors are not worth notice, except the
assertion that the Psalters of Tara and Cashel allege that the towers
were for keeping the sacred fire. These Psalters are believed to have
perished, and any mention of sacred fires in the glossary of Cormac
M'Cullenan, the supposed compiler of the Psalter of Cashel, is adverse
to their being in towers. He says:--
"_Belltane, i.e., bil tene, i.e., tene bil, i.e._, the goodly fire,
_i.e._, two goodly fires, which the Druids were used to make, with
great incantations on them, and they used to bring the cattle
between them against the diseases of each year."
Another MS. says:--
"_Beltaine, i.e., Bel-dine; Bel_ was the name of an idol; it was on
it (_i.e._, the festival) that a couple of the young of every
cattle were exhibited as in the possession of _Bel; unde Beldine_.
Or, _Beltine, i.e., Bil-tine, i.e._, the goodly fire, _i.e._, two
goodly fires, which the Druids were used to make with great
incantations, and they were used to drive the cattle between them
against the diseases of each year."
Mr. Petrie continues:--
"It may be remarked that remnants of this ancient custom, in
perhaps a modified form, still exist in the May-fires lighted in
the streets and suburbs of Dublin, and also in the fires lighted on
St. John's Eve in all other parts of Ireland. The _Tinne Eigin_ of
the Highlands, of which Dr. Martin gives the following account, is
probably a remnant of it also, but there is no instance of such
fires being lighted in towers or houses of any description:--
"'The inhabitants here (Isle of Skye) did also make use of a fire
called _Tin Egin_ (_i.e._), a forced Fire, or Fire of necessity,
which they used as an Antidote against the _Plague_ or _Murrain_ in
cattle; and it was performed thus: All the fires in the Parish were
extinguish'd, and eighty-one marry'd men, being thought the
necessary number for effecting this Design, took two great Planks
of Wood, and nine of 'em were employed by turns, who by their
repeated Efforts rubb'd one of the Planks against the other until
the Heat thereof produced Fire; and from this forc'd Fire each
Family is supplied with new Fire, which is no sooner kindled than a
pot full of water is quickly set on it, and afterwards sprinkled
upon the people infected with the Plague, or upon cattle that have
the Murrain. And this, they all say, they find successful by
experience.'--_Description of the Western Islands of Scotland_
(second edition), p. 113.
"As authority for Miss Beaufort's second assertion, relative to the
Tower of Thlachtga, etc., we are referred to the _Psalter of Tara_,
by Comerford (p. 41), cited in the _Parochial Survey_ (vol. iii.,
p. 320); and certainly in the latter work we do find a passage in
nearly the same words which Miss Beaufort uses. But if the lady had
herself referred to Comerford's little work, she would have
discovered that the author of the article in the _Parochial Survey_
had in reality no authority for his assertions, and had attempted a
gross imposition on the credulity of his readers."
Mr. D'Alton relies much on a passage in _Cambrensis_, wherein he says
that the fishermen on Lough Neagh (a lake certainly formed by an
inundation in the first century, A.D. 62) point to such towers under
the lake; but this only shows they were considered old in Cambrensis's
time (King John's), for Cambrensis calls them _turres ecclesiasticas_
(a Christian appellation); and the fishermen of every lake have such
idle traditions from the tall objects they are familiar with; and the
steeples of Antrim, etc., were handy to the Loch n-Eathac men.
One of the authorities quoted by all the Paganists is from the _Ulster
Annals_ at the year 448. It is--"Kl. Jenair. Anno Domini cccc.xlº.viiiº.
ingenti terrae motu per loca varia imminente, plurimi urbis auguste muri
recenti adhuc reaedificatione constructi, cum l.vii. turribus
conruerunt." This was made to mean that part of the wall of Armagh,
with fifty-seven Round Towers, fell in an earthquake in 448, whereas
the passage turns out to be a quotation from "Marcellinus"[38] of the
fall of part of the defences of Constantinople--"Urbis Augustae!"
References to towers in Irish annals are quoted by Mr. D'Alton; but
they turn out to be written about the Cyclopean Forts, or low stone
raths, such as we find at Aileach, etc.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[38] Author of the _Life of Thucydides_.--C.P.M.
CELESTIAL INDEXES.
Dr. Charles O'Connor, of Stowe, is the chief supporter of the
astronomical theory. One of his arguments is founded on the mistaken
reading of the word "_turaghun_" (which he derives from _tur_, a tower,
and _aghan_, or _adhan_, the kindling of flame), instead of
"_truaghan_," an ascetic. The only other authority of his which we have
not noticed is the passage in the _Ulster Annals_, at the year 995, in
which it is said that certain Fidhnemead were burned by lightning at
Armagh. He translates the word celestial indexes, and paraphrases it
Round Towers, and all because _fiadh_ means witness, and _neimhedh_,
heavenly or sacred, the real meaning being holy wood, or wood of the
sanctuary, from _fidh_, a wood, and _neimhedh_, holy, as is proved by a
pile of _exact_ authorities.
Dr. Lanigan, in his ecclesiastical history, and Moore, in his general
history, repeat the arguments which we have mentioned. They also bring
objections against the alleged Christian origin, which we hold over;
but it is plain that nothing prevailed more with them than the alleged
resemblance of these towers to certain oriental buildings. Assuredly if
there were a close likeness between the Irish Round Towers and oriental
fire temples of proved antiquity, it would be an argument for identity
of use; and though direct testimony from our annals would come in and
show that the present towers were built as Christian belfries from the
sixth to the tenth centuries, the resemblance would at least indicate
that the belfries had been built after the model of Pagan fire towers
previously existing here. But "rotundos of above thirty feet in
diameter" in Persia, Turkish minarets of the tenth or fourteenth
centuries, and undated turrets in India, which Lord Valentia thought
like our Round Towers, give no _such_ resemblance. We shall look
anxiously for exact measurements and datas of oriental buildings
resembling Round Towers, and weigh the evidence which may be offered to
show that there were any Pagan models for the latter in Ireland or in
Asia.
Mr. Windele, of Cork, besides using all the previously-mentioned
arguments for the Paganism of these towers, finds another in the
supposed resemblance to THE NURRAGGIS OF SARDINIA, which are tombs or
temples formed in that island, and attributed to the Phoenicians. But,
alas, for the theory, they have turned out to be "as broad as they're
long." A square building, 57 feet in each side, with bee-hive towers at
each angle, and a centre bee-hive tower reaching to 45 or 65 feet high,
with stone stairs, is sadly unlike a Round Tower!
The most recent theory is that the Round Towers are
HERO-MONUMENTS.
Mr. Windele and the South Munster Antiquarian Society started this, Sir
William Betham sanctioned it, and several rash gentlemen dug under
towers to prove it. At Cashel, Kinsale, etc., they satisfied themselves
that there were no sepulchres or bones ever under the towers, but in
some other places they took the rubbish bones casually thrown into the
towers, and in two cases the chance underlying of ancient
burying-grounds, as proofs of this notion. But Mr. Petrie settles for
this idea by showing that there is no such use of the Round Towers
mentioned in our annals, and also by the following most interesting
account of the cemeteries and monuments of all the races of Pagan
Irish:--
HISTORY OF THE CEMETERIES.
"A great king of great judgments assumed the sovereignty of Erin,
_i.e._, Cormac, son of Art, son of Conn of the Hundred Battles.
Erin was prosperous in his time, because just judgments were
distributed throughout it by him; so that no one durst attempt to
wound a man in Erin during the short jubilee of seven years; for
Cormac had the faith of the one true God, according to the law; for
he said that he would not adore stones, or trees, but that he would
adore Him who had made them, and who had power over all the
elements, _i.e._, the one powerful God who created the elements; in
Him he would believe. And he was the third person who had believed
in Erin before the arrival of St. Patrick. Conchobor MacNessa, to
whom Altus had told concerning the crucifixion of Christ, _was the
first_; Morann, the son of Cairbre Cinncait (who was surnamed Mac
Main), was the second person; and Cormac was the third; and it is
probable that others followed on their track in this belief.
"Where Cormac held his court was at Tara, in imitation of the kings
who preceded him, until his eye was destroyed by Engus
Gaibhuaiphnech, the son of Eochaidh Finn Futhairt: but afterwards
he resided at Acaill (the hill on which Serin Colaim Cille is at
this day), and at Cenannas (Kells), and at the house of Cletech;
for it was not lawful that a king with a _personal_ blemish
should reside at Tara. In the second year after the injuring of his
eye he came by his death at the house of Cletech, the bone of a
salmon having stuck in his throat. And he (Cormac) told his people
not to bury him at Brugh (because it was a cemetery of Idolaters),
for he did not worship the same God as any of those interred at
Brugh; but to bury him at Ros-na-righ, with his face to the east.
He afterwards died, and his servants of trust held a council, and
came to the resolution of burying him at Brugh, the place where the
kings of Tara, his predecessors, were buried. The body of the king
was afterwards thrice raised to be carried to Brugh, but the Boyne
swelled up thrice, so that they could not come; so that they
observed that it was 'violating the judgment of a prince' to break
through this testament of the king, and they afterwards dug his
grave at Ros-na-righ, as he himself had ordered.
"These were the chief cemeteries of Erin before the Faith (_i.e._,
before the introduction of Christianity), viz., Cruachu, Brugh,
Tailltin, Luachair, Ailbe, Oenach Ailbe, Oenach Culi, Oenach
Colmain, Temhair Erann.
"Oenach Cruachan, in the first place, it was there the race of
Heremon (_i.e._, the kings of Tara) were used to bury until the
time of Cremhthann, the son of Lughaidh Riabh-n-derg (who was the
first king of them that was interred at Brugh), viz., Cobhlhach
Coelbregh, and Labhraidh Loingsech, and Eocho Fedhlech with his
three sons (_i.e._, the three Fidhemhna--_i.e._, Bres, Nar, and
Lothoe), and Eocho Airemh, Lughaidh Riabh-n-derg, the six daughters
of Eocho Fedhlech (_i.e._, Medhbh, and Clothru, Muresc, and
Drebrin, Mugain, and Ele), and Adill Mac Mada with his seven
brothers (_i.e._, Cet, Anlon, Doche, _et ceteri_), and all the
kings _down_ to Cremhthann (these were all buried at Cruachan). Why
was it not at Brugh that the kings (of the race of Cobhthach down
to Crimthann) were interred? Not difficult; because the two
provinces which the race of Heremon possessed were the province of
Gailian (_i.e._, the province of Leinster), and the province of
Olnecmacht (_i.e._, the province of Connaught). In the first place,
the province of Gailian was occupied by the race of Labhraidh
Loingsech, and the province of Connaught was the peculiar
inheritance of the race of Cobhtach Coelbregh; wherefore it
(_i.e._, the province of Connaught) was given to Medhbh before
every other province. (The reason that the government of this land
was given to Medhbh is because there was none of the race of
Eochaidh fit to receive it but herself, for Lughaidh was not fit
for action at the time.) And whenever, therefore, the monarchy of
Erin was enjoyed by any of the descendants of Cobhthach Coelbregh,
the province of Connaught was his _ruidles_ (_i.e._, his native
principality). And for this reason they were interred at Oenach na
Cruachna. But they were interred at Brugh from the time of
Crimthann (Niadh-nar) to the time of Loeghaire, the son of Niall,
except three persons, namely, Art, the son of Conn, and Cormac, the
son of Art, and Niall of the Nine Hostages.
"We have already mentioned the cause for which Cormac was not
interred there. The reason why Art was not interred there is
because he 'believed,' the day before the battle of Muccramma was
fought, and he predicted the Faith (_i.e._, that Christianity would
prevail in Erin), and he said that his own grave would be at Dumha
Dergluachra, where Treoit [Trevet] is at this day, as he mentioned
in a poem which he composed--viz., _Cain do denna den_ (_i.e._, a
poem which Art composed, the beginning of which is _Cain do denna
den_, etc.). When his (Art's) body was afterwards carried eastwards
to Dumha Dergluachra, if all the men of Erin were drawing it
thence, they could not, so that he was interred in that place
because there was a Catholic church to be afterwards at the place
where he was interred (_i.e._, Treoit _hodie_). because the truth
and the Faith had been revealed to him through his regal
righteousness.
"Where Niall was interred was at Ochain, whence the hill was called
Ochain, _i.e._, _Och Caine_, _i.e._, from the sighing and
lamentation which the men of Erin made in lamenting Niall.
"Conaire More was interred at Magh Feci in Bregia (_i.e._, at Fert
Conaire); however, some say that it was Conaire Carpraige was
interred there, and not Conaire Mor, and that Conaire Mor was the
third king who was interred at Tara--viz., Conaire, Loeghaire, and
* * *
"At Tailltin the kings of Ulster were used to bury--viz., Ollamh
Fodhla, with his descendants down to Conchobhar, who wished that he
should be carried to a place between Slea and the sea, with his
face to the east, on account of the Faith which he had embraced.
"The nobles of the Tuatha De Danann were used to bury at Brugh
(_i.e._, the Dagda with his three sons; also Lughaidh and Oe, and
Ollam, and Ogma, and Etan, the Poetess, and Corpre, the son of
Etan), and Cremhthann followed them because his wife Nar was of the
Tuatha Dea, and it was she solicited him that he should adopt Brugh
as a burial-place for himself and his descendants, and this was the
cause that they did not bury at Cruachan.
"The Lagenians (_i.e._, Cathair with his race and the kings who
were before them) were buried at Oenach Ailbhe. The Clann Dedad
(_i.e._, the race of Conaire and Erna) at Temhair Erann; the men of
Munster (_i.e._, the Dergthene) at Oenach Culi, and Oenach Colmain;
and the Connacians at Cruachan."
ANCHORITE TOWERS.
Because Simon Stylites lived in a domicile, sized "scarce two cubits,"
_on_ a pillar sixty feet high, and because other anchorites lived on
pillars and in cells, Dean Richardson suggested that the Irish Round
Towers were for hermits; and was supported by Walter Harris, Dr.
Milner, Dr. King, etc. The _cloch angcoire_, or hermit's stone, quoted
in aid of this fancy, turns out to be a narrow cell; and so much for
the hermits!
The confusion of
TOURS AND TOWERS
is a stupid pun or a vulgar pronunciation in English; but in Irish gave
rise to the antiquarian theory of Dr. Smith, who, in his _History of
Cork_, concludes that the Round Towers were penitential prisons,
because the Irish word for a penitential round or journey is _turas_!
THE PHALLIC THEORY
never had any support but poor Henry O'Brien's enthusiastic ignorance
and the caricaturing pen of his illustrator.
We have now done with the theories of these towers, which Mr. Petrie
has shown, past doubt, to be either positively false or quite unproved.
His own opinion is that they were used--1, as belfries; 2, as keeps, or
houses of shelter for the clergy and their treasures; and 3, as
watch-towers and beacons; and into his evidence for this opinion we
shall go at a future day, thanking him at present for having displaced
a heap of incongruous, though agreeable, fancies, and given us the
learned, the most exact, and the most important work ever published on
the antiquities of the Ancient Irish Nation.
THE IRISH BRIGADE.
When valour becomes a reproach, when patriotism is thought a prejudice,
and when a soldier's sword is a sign of shame, the Irish Brigade will
be forgotten or despised.
The Irish are a military people--strong, nimble, and hardy, fond of
adventure, irascible, brotherly, and generous--they have all the
qualities that tempt men to war and make them good soldiers. Dazzled by
their great fame on the Continent, and hearing of their insular wars
chiefly through the interested lies of England, Voltaire expressed his
wonder that a nation which had behaved so gallantly abroad had "always
fought badly at home." It would have been most wonderful.
It may be conceded that the Irish performed more illustrious actions on
the Continent. They fought with the advantages of French discipline and
equipment; they fought as soldiers, with the rights of war, not
"rebels, with halters round their necks"; they fought by the side of
great rivals and amid the gaze of Europe.
In the most of their domestic wars they appeared as divided clans or
abrupt insurgents; they were exposed to the treachery of a more
instructed, of an unscrupulous and a compact enemy; they had neither
discipline, nor generalship, nor arms; their victories were those of a
mob; their defeats were followed by extermination.
We speak of their ordinary contests with England from the time of
Roderick O'Connor to that of '98. Occasionally they had more
opportunities, and their great qualities for war appeared. In Hugh (or,
rather Aodh) O'Neill they found a leader who only wanted material
resources to have made them an independent nation. Cautious, as became
the heir of so long a strife, he spent years in acquiring military
knowledge and nursing up his clan into the kernel for a nation; crafty
as Bacon and Cecil, and every other man of his time, he learned war in
Elizabeth's armies, and got help from her store-houses. When the
discontent of the Pale, religious tyranny, and the intrigues and
hostility of Spain and Rome against England gave him an opening, he put
his ordered clan into action, stormed the neighbouring garrisons,
struck terror into his hereditary foes, and gave hope to all patriots;
but finding that his ranks were too few for battle, he negotiated
successfully for peace, but unavailingly for freedom; his grievances
and designs remained, and he retired to repeat the same policy, till,
after repeated guerillas and truces, he was strong enough to proclaim
alliance with Spain and war with England, and to defeat and slay every
deputy that assailed him, till at last he marched from the triumph of
Beal-an-ath Buidhe[39] (where Marshal Bagenal and his army perished) to
hold an almost royal court at Munster, and to reduce the Pale to the
limits it had formed in the Wars of the Roses; and even when the
neglect of Spain, the genius of Mountjoy, the resources and intrigues
of England, and the exhaustion and divisions of Ireland had rendered
success hopeless, the Irish under O'Ruarc, O'Sullivan, and O'Doherty
vindicated their military character.
From that period they, whose foreign services, since Dathi's time, had
been limited to supplying feudatories to the English kings, began to
fight under the flags of England's enemies in every corner of Europe.
The artifices of the Stuarts regained them, and in the reign of Charles
the First they were extensively enlisted for the English allies and for
the crown; but it was under the guidance of another O'Neill, and for
Ireland,[40] they again exhibited the qualities which had sustained
Tyrone. The battle of Benburb affords as great a proof of Irish
soldiership as Fontenoy.
But it was when, with a formal government and in a regular war, they
encountered the Dutch invader, they showed the full prowess of the
Irish; and at the Boyne, Limerick, Athlone, and Aughrim, in victory or
defeat, and always against _immensely superior numbers and armaments_,
proved that they fought well at home.
Since the day when Sarsfield sailed the Irish have never had an
opportunity of refuting the calumny of England which Voltaire accepted.
In '98 they met enormous forces resting on all the magazines of
England; they had no officers; their leaders, however brave, neither
knew how to organise, provision, station, or manoeuvre troops--their
arms were casual--their ignorance profound--their intemperance
unrestrainable. If they put English supremacy in peril (and had Arklow
or Ballinahinch been attacked with skill, that supremacy was gone),
they did so by mere valour.
It is, therefore, on the Continent that one must chiefly look for Irish
trophies. It is a pious and noble search; but he who pursues it had
need to guard against the error we have noticed in Voltaire, of
disparaging Irish soldiership at home.
The materials for the history of the Irish Brigade are fast
accumulating. We have before us the _Military History of the Irish
Nation_, by the late Matthew O'Conor. He was a barrister, but studied
military subjects (as became a gentleman and a citizen), peculiarly
interested himself in the achievements of his countrymen, and prepared
materials for a history of them. He died, leaving his work unfinished,
yet, happily sufficiently advanced to offer a continuous narrative of
Irish internal wars, from Hugh O'Neill to Sarsfield, and of their
foreign services up to the Peace of Utrecht, in 1711. The style of the
work is earnest and glowing, full of patriotism and liberality; but Mr.
O'Conor was no blind partisan, and he neither hides the occasional
excesses of the Irish, nor disparages their opponents. His descriptions
of battles are very superior to what one ordinarily meets in the works
of civilians, and any one reading them with a military atlas will be
gratified and instructed.
The value of the work is vastly augmented by the appendix, which is a
memoir of the Brigade, written in French, in 1749, and including the
War Office orders, and all the changes in organisation, numbers, and
pay of the Brigade to that date. This memoir is authenticated thus:--
"His Excellency, the Duke of Feltre, Minister of War, was so kind
as to communicate to me the original memoir above cited, of which
this is a perfect copy, which I attest.
"DE MONTMORENCY MORRES (Herve),
"Adjutant-Commandant, Colonel.
"Paris, 1st September, 1813."
To give any account of the details of Mr. O'Conor's book we should
abridge it, and an abridgment of a military history is a catalogue of
names. It contains accounts of Hugh O'Neill's campaigns and of the wars
of William and James in Ireland. It describes (certainly a new chapter
in our knowledge) the services of the Irish in the Low Countries and
France during the religious wars in Henri Quatre's time, and the
hitherto equally unknown actions abroad during Charles the Second's
exile and reign.
The wars of Mountcashel's (the old) Brigade in 1690-91, under St. Ruth
in Savoy, occupy many interesting pages, and the first campaigns of the
New Brigade, with the death of Sarsfield and Mountcashel, are carefully
narrated. The largest part of the work is occupied with the wars of the
Spanish succession, and contains minute narratives of the battles and
sieges of Cremona, Spire, Luzzaca, Blenheim, Cassano, Ramilies,
Almanza, Alcira, Malplaquet, and Denain, with the actions of the Irish
in them.
Here are great materials for our future History of Ireland.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[39] See Mitchel's _Life of Hugh O'Neill_, and Meehan's _Flight of
the Earls_. Dublin: Duffy & Sons.
[40] Owen Roe, who defeated Monro, 1646.
THE SPEECHES OF GRATTAN.[41]
Of the long line of Protestant patriots Grattan is the first in genius,
and first in services. He had a more fervid and more Irish nature than
Swift or Flood, and he accomplished what Swift hardly dreamed, and
Flood failed in--an Irish constitution. He had immeasurably more
imagination than Tone; and though he was far behind the great Founder
of the United Irishmen in organising power, he surpassed him in
inspiration. The statues of all shall be in our forums, and examples of
all in our hearts, but that of Grattan shall be pre-eminent. The
stubborn and advancing energy of Swift and Flood may teach us to bear
up against wrong; the principles of Tone may end in liberation; but the
splendid nationality of Grattan shall glorify us in every condition.
The speeches of Grattan were collected and his memoirs written by his
son. The latter is an accessible and an invaluable account of his life;
but the speeches were out of print, not purchasable under five or six
guineas, and then were unmanageably numerous for any but a professed
politician. Mr. Madden's volume gives for a trifle all Grattan's most
valuable speeches, with a memoir sufficient to explain the man and the
orator.
On the speeches of Grattan here published we have little to say. They
are the finest specimens of imaginative eloquence in the English, or in
any, language. There is not much pathos, and no humour in them, and in
these respects Grattan is far less of an Irishman, and of an orator
too, than Curran; but a philosophy, penetrating constitutions for their
warnings, and human nature for its guides--a statesman's (as
distinguished from an antiquarian's) use of history--a passionate scorn
and invective for the base, tyrannical, and unjust--a fiery and copious
zeal for liberty and for Ireland, and a diction and cadence almost
lyrical, made Grattan the sudden achiever of a Revolution, and will
make him for ever one of the very elements of Ireland.
No other orator is so uniformly animated. No other orator has
brightened the depths of political philosophy with such vivid and
lasting light. No writer in the language except Shakespeare has so
sublime and suggestive a diction. His force and vehemence are
amazing--far beyond Chatham, far beyond Fox, far beyond any orator we
can recall.
To the student of oratory Grattan's speeches are dangerously
suggestive, overpowering spirits that will not leave when bid. Yet,
with all this terrible potency, who would not bask in his genius, even
at the hazard of having his light for ever in your eyes. The brave
student will rather exult in his effulgence--not to rob, not to mimic
it--but to catch its inspiration, and then go on his way resolved to
create a glory of his own which, however small, being genuine, shall
not pale within its sphere.
To give a _just_ idea of Grattan's rush and splendour to anyone not
familiar with his speeches is impossible; but _some_ glimmer may be
got by one reading the extracts we shall add here. We shall take them
at random, as we open the pages in the book, and leave the reader,
untaught in our great orator, to judge, if chance is certain of finding
such gems, what would not judicious care discover! Let him use that
care again and again.
"Sir, we may hope to dazzle with illumination, and we may sicken
with addresses, but the public imagination will never rest, nor
will her heart be well at ease; never! so long as the parliament of
England exercises or claims a legislation over this country: so
long as this shall be the case, that very free trade, otherwise a
perpetual attachment, will be the cause of new discontent; it will
create a pride to feel the indignity of bondage; it will furnish a
strength to bite your chain, and the liberty withheld will poison
the good communicated.
"The British minister mistakes the Irish character; had he intended
to make Ireland a slave he should have kept her a beggar; there is
no middle policy; win her heart by the restoration of her right, or
cut off the nation's right hand; greatly emancipate, or
fundamentally destroy. We may talk plausibly to England, but so
long as she exercises a power to bind this country, so long are the
nations in a state of war; the claims of the one go against the
liberty of the other, and the sentiments of the latter go to oppose
those claims to the last drop of her blood. The English opposition,
therefore, are right; mere trade will not satisfy Ireland--they
judge of us by other great nations, by the nation whose political
life has been a struggle for liberty; they judge of us with a true
knowledge and just deference for our character: that a country
enlightened as Ireland, chartered as Ireland, armed as Ireland and
injured as Ireland, will be satisfied with nothing less than
liberty.
"Impracticable! impracticable! impracticable! a zealous divine will
say; any alteration is beyond the power and wisdom of parliament;
above the faculties of man to make adequate provision for 900
clergymen who despise riches. Were it to raise a new tax for their
provision, or for that of a body less holy, how easy the task! how
various the means! but when the proposal is to diminish a tax
already established, an impossibility glares us in the face, of a
measure so contrary to our practices both in church and state."
We were wrong in saying there was no humour in Grattan. Here is a
passage humorous enough, but it is scornful, rhetorical humour:--
"It does not affect the doctrine of our religion; it does not alter
the church establishment; it does not affect the constitution of
episcopacy. The modus does not even alter the mode of their
provision, it only limits the quantum, and limits it on principles
much less severe than that charity which they preach, or that
abstinence which they inculcate. Is this innovation?--as if the
Protestant religion was to be propagated in Ireland, like the
influence of a minister, by bribery; or like the influence of a
county candidate, by money; or like the cause of a potwalloping
canvasser, by the weight of the purse; as if Christ could not
prevail over the earth unless Mammon took him by the hand. Am I to
understand that if you give the parson 12s. in the acre for
potatoes and 10s. for wheat, the Protestant religion is safe on its
rock? But if you reduce him to 6s. the acre for potatoes and wheat,
then Jupiter shakes the heavens with his thunder, Neptune rakes up
the deep with his trident, and Pluto leaps from his throne! See the
curate--he rises at six to morning prayers; he leaves company at
six for evening prayer; he baptises, he marries, he churches, he
buries, he follows with pious offices his fellow creature from the
cradle to the grave; for what immense income! what riches to reward
these inestimable services? (Do not depend on the penury of the
laity, let his own order value his deserts.) L50 a year! L50! for
praying, for christening, for marrying, for churching, for burying,
for following with Christian offices his fellow-creature from
cradle to grave; so frugal a thing is devotion, so cheap religion,
so easy the terms on which man may worship his Maker, and so small
the income, in the opinion of ecclesiastics, sufficient for the
duties of a clergyman, as far as he is connected at all with the
Christian religion.
* * * * *
"By this trade of parliament the King is absolute; his will is
signified by both houses of parliament, who are now as much an
instrument in his hand as a bayonet in the hands of a regiment.
Like a regiment we have our adjutant, who sends to the infirmary
for the old and to the brothel for the young, and men thus carted,
as it were, into this house, to vote for the minister, are called
the representatives of the people! Suppose General Washington to
ring his bell, and order his servants out of livery to take their
seats in Congress--you can apply this instance.
"It is not life but the condition of living--the slave is not so
likely to complain of the want of property as the proprietor of the
want of privilege. The human mind is progressive--the child does
not look back to the parent that gave him being, nor the proprietor
to the people that gave him the power of acquisition, but both look
forward--the one to provide for the comforts of life, and the other
to obtain all the privileges of property."
But we have fallen on one of his most marvellous passages, and we give
it entire:--
"I will put this question to my country; I will suppose her at the
bar, and I will ask her, Will you fight for a Union as you would
for a constitution? Will you fight for that Lords and that Commons
who, in the last century, took away your trade, and, in the
present, your constitution, as for that King, Lords, and Commons
who have restored both? Well, the minister has destroyed this
constitution; to destroy is easy. The edifices of the mind, like
the fabrics of marble, require an age to build, but ask only
minutes to precipitate; and as the fall of both is an effort of no
time, so neither is it a business of any strength--a pick-axe and a
common labourer will do the one--a little lawyer, a little pimp, a
wicked minister the other.
"The Constitution, which, with more or less violence, has been the
inheritance of this country for six hundred years--that _modus
tenendi parliamentum_, which lasted and outlasted of Plantagenet
the wars, of Tudor the violence, and of Stuart the systematic
falsehood--the condition of our connection--yes, the constitution
he destroys is one of the pillars of the British Empire. He may
walk round it and round it, and the more he contemplates the more
must he admire it--such a one as had cost England of money millions
and of blood a deluge, cheaply and nobly expended--whose
restoration had cost Ireland her noblest efforts, and was the
habitation of her loyalty--we are accustomed to behold the kings of
these countries in the keeping of parliament--I say of her loyalty
as well as of her liberty, where she had hung up the sword of the
Volunteer--her temple of fame as well as of freedom--where she had
seated herself, as she vainly thought, in modest security and in a
long repose.
"I have done with the pile which the minister batters, I come to
the Babel which he builds; and as he throws down without a
principle, so does he construct without a foundation. This fabric
he calls a Union, and to this, his fabric, there are two striking
objections--first it is no Union; it is not an identification of
people, for it excludes the Catholics; secondly, it is a
consolidation of the Irish legislatures--that is to say, a merger
of the Irish parliament, and incurs every objection to a Union,
without obtaining the only object which a Union professes; it is an
extinction of the constitution, and an exclusion of the people.
Well! he has overlooked the people as he has overlooked the sea. I
say he excludes the Catholics, and he destroys their best chance of
admission--the relative consequence. Thus he reasons, that
hereafter, in course of time (he does not say when), if they behave
themselves (he does not say how), they may see their subjects
submitted to a course of discussion (he does not say with what
result or determination); and as the ground for this inane period,
in which he promises nothing, and in which, if he did promise much,
at so remote a period he could perform nothing, unless he, like the
evil he has accomplished, be immortal. For this inane sentence, in
which he can scarcely be said to deceive the Catholic, or suffer
the Catholic to deceive himself, he exhibits no other ground than
the physical inanity of the Catholic body accomplished by a Union,
which, as it destroys the relative importance of Ireland, so it
destroys the relative proportion of the Catholic inhabitants, and
thus they become admissible, because they cease to be anything.
Hence, according to him, their brilliant expectation: 'You were,'
say his advocates, and so imports his argument, 'before the Union
as three to one, you will be by the Union as one to four.' Thus he
founds their hopes of political power on the extinction of physical
consequence, and makes the inanity of their body and the nonentity
of their country the pillars of their future ambition."
We now return to the memoir by Mr. Madden. It is not the details of a
life meagre for want of space, and confused for want of principles, as
most little biographies are; it is an estimate--a profound one--of
Grattan's original nature, of the influences which acted on him from
youth to manhood, of his purposes, his principles, and his influence on
Ireland.
Henry Grattan was twenty-nine years of age when he entered on politics,
and in seven years he was the triumphant leader of a people free and
victorious after hereditary bondage. He entered parliament educated in
the meta-physical and political philosophy of the time, injured by its
cold and epigrammatic verse and its artificial tastes--familiar with
every form of aristocratic life from Kilkenny to London--familiar, too,
with Chatham's oratory and principles, and with Flood's views and
example. He came when there were great forces rushing through the
land--eloquence, love of liberty, thirst for commerce, hatred of
English oppression, impatience, glory, and, above all, a military
array. He combined these elements and used them to achieve the
Revolution of '82. Be he for ever honoured!
Mr. Madden defends him against Flood on the question of Simple Repeal.
Here is his reasoning:--
"It is an easy thing now to dispose of the idle question of simple
repeal. In truth, there was nothing whatever deserving of attention
in the point raised by Mr. Flood. The security for the continuance
of Irish freedom did not depend upon an English act of parliament.
It was by Irish _will_ and not at English pleasure that the new
constitution was to be supported. The transaction between the
countries was of a high political nature, and it was to be judged by
political reason, and by statesmanlike computation, and not by the
petty technicalities of the court of law. The revolution of 1782, as
carried by Ireland, and assented to by England (in repealing the 6th
George the First), was a political compact--proposed by one country,
and acknowledged by the other in the face of Europe; it was not (as
Mr. Flood and his partisans construed the transaction) of the nature
of municipal right, to be enforced or annulled by mere judicial
exposition."
This is unanswerable, but Grattan should have gone further. The
Revolution was effected mainly by the Volunteers, whom he had inspired;
arms could alone have preserved the constitution. Flood was wrong in
setting value on one form--Grattan in relying on any; but both before
and after '82 Flood seems to have had glimpses that the question was
one of might, as well as of right, and that national laws could not
last under such an alien army.
Taken as military representatives, the Convention at the Rotunda was
even more valuable than as a civic display. Mr. Madden censures Grattan
for having been an elaborate neutral during these Reform dissensions;
but that the result of _such_ neutrality ruined the Convention
proves a comparative want of power in Flood, who could have governed
that Convention in spite of the rascally English and the feeble Irish
Whigs. Oh, had Tone been in that council!
In describing Grattan's early and enthusiastic and ceaseless advocacy
of Catholic liberty, Mr. Madden has a just subject for unmixed eulogy.
Let no one imagine that the interest of these Emancipation speeches has
died with the achievement of what they pleaded for; they will ever
remain divinest protests against the vice and impolicy of religious
ascendency, of sectarian bitterness, and of bigot separation.
For this admirable beginning of the design of giving Ireland its most
glorious achievement--the speeches of its orators--to contemplate, the
country should be grateful; but if there can be anything better for it
to hear than can be had in Grattan's speeches, it is such language as
this from his eloquent editor:--
"Reader! if you be an Irish Protestant, and entertain harsh
prejudices against your Catholic countrymen, study the works and
life of Grattan--learn from him--for none can teach you better how
to purify your nature from bigotry. Learn from him to look upon all
your countrymen with a loving heart--to be tolerant of infirmities
caused by their unhappy history--and, like Grattan, earnestly
sympathise with all that is brave and generous in their character.
"Reader! if you be an Irish Catholic, and that you confound the
Protestant religion with tyranny, learn from Grattan that it is
possible to be a Protestant and have a heart for Ireland and its
people. Think that the brightest age of Ireland was when Grattan--a
steady Protestant--raised it to proud eminence; think also that in
the hour of his triumph he did not forget the state of your
oppressed fathers, but laboured through his virtuous life that both
you and your children should enjoy unshackled liberty of
conscience.
"But reader! whether you be Protestant or Catholic, or whatever be
your party, you will do well as an Irishman to ponder upon the
spirit and principles which governed the public and private life of
Grattan. Learn from him how to regard your countrymen of all
denominations. Observe, as he did, how very much that is excellent
belongs to both the great parties into which Ireland is divided. If
(as some do) you entertain dispiriting views of Ireland, recollect
that any country containing such elements as those which roused the
genius of Grattan never need despair. _Sursum corda_. Be not
disheartened.
"Go--go--my countrymen--and, within your social sphere, carry into
practice those moral principles which Grattan so eloquently taught,
and which he so remarkably enforced by his well-spent life. He will
teach you to avoid hating men on account of their religious
professions or hereditary descent. From him you will learn
principles which, if carried out, would generate a new state of
society in Ireland."
---------------------------------------------------------------
[41] "The Select Speeches of the Right Hon. Henry Grattan. To which
is added his Letter on the Union, with a Commentary on his Career
and Character." By Daniel Owen Madden, Esq., of the Inner Temple.
Dublin: James Duffy, 1845. 8vo, pp. 534.
MEMORIALS OF WEXFORD.
'Twixt Croghan-Kinshela and Hook Head, 'twixt Carnsore and Mount
Leinster, there is as good a mass of men as ever sustained a state by
honest franchises, by peace, virtue, and intelligent industry; and as
stout a mass as ever tramped through a stubborn battle. There is a
county where we might seek more of stormy romance, and there is a
county where prospers a shrewder economy, but no county in Ireland is
fitter for freedom than Wexford.
They are a peculiar people--these Wexford men. Their blood is for the
most part English and Welsh, though mixed with the Danish and Gaelic,
yet they are Irish in thought and feeling. They are a Catholic people,
yet on excellent terms with their Protestant landlords. Outrages are
unknown, for though the rents are high enough, they are not unbearable
by a people so industrious and skilled in farming.
Go to the fair and you will meet honest dealing, and a look that heeds
no lordling's frown--for the Wexford men have neither the base bend nor
the baser craft of slaves. Go to the hustings, and you will see open
and honest voting; no man shrinking or crying for concealment, or
extorting a bribe under the name of "his expenses." Go to their farms
and you will see a snug homestead, kept clean, prettily sheltered (much
what you'd see in Down); more green crops than even in Ulster; the
National School and the Repeal Reading-room well filled, and every
religious duty regarded.
Wexford is not all it might be, or all that, with more education and
the life-hope of nationality, it will be--there is something to blame
and something to lament, here a vice sustained, and there a misfortune
lazily borne; yet, take it for all in all, it is the most prosperous,
it is the pattern county of the South; and when we see it coming
forward in a mass to renew its demand for native government, it is an
omen that the spirit of the people outlives quarrels and jealousies,
and that it has a rude vitality which will wear out its oppressors.
Nor are we indifferent to the memories of Wexford. It owes much of its
peace and prosperity to the war it sustained. It rose in '98 with
little organisation against intolerable wrong; and though it was
finally beaten by superior forces, it taught its aristocracy and the
government a lesson not easily forgotten--a lesson that popular anger
could strike hard as well as sigh deeply; and that it was better to
conciliate than provoke those who even for an hour had felt their
strength. The red rain made Wexford's harvest grow. Theirs was no
treacherous assassination--theirs no stupid riot--theirs no pale
mutiny. They rose in mass and swept the country by sheer force.
Nor in their sinking fortunes is there anything to blush at.
Scullabogue was not burned by the fighting men.
Yet nowhere did the copper sun of that July burn upon a more
heart-piercing sight than a rebel camp. Scattered on a hill-top, or
screened in a gap, were the grey-coated thousands, their memories mad
at burned cabins, and military whips, and hanged friends; their hopes
dimmed by partial defeat; their eyes lurid with care; their brows full
of gloomy resignation. Some have short guns which the stern of a boat
might bear, but which press through the shoulder of a marching man; and
others have light fowling-pieces, with dandy locks--troublesome and
dangerous toys. Most have pikes, stout weapons, too; and though some
swell to hand-spikes, and others thin to knives, yet, for all that,
fatal are they to dragoon or musketeer if they can meet him in a rush;
but how shall they do so? The gunsmen have only a little powder in
scraps of paper or bags, and their balls are few and rarely fit. They
have no potatoes ripe, and they have no bread--their food is the worn
cattle they have crowded there, and which the first skirmish may rend
from them. There are women and children seeking shelter, seeking those
they love; and there are leaders busier, feebler, less knowing, less
resolved than the women and the children.
Great hearts! how faithful ye are! How ye bristled up when the foe came
on, how ye set your teeth to die as his shells and round-shot fell
steadily; and with how firm a cheer ye dashed at him, if he gave you
any chance at all of a grapple! From the wild burst with which ye
triumphed at Oulart Hill, down to the faint gasp wherewith the last of
your last column died in the corn-fields of Meath, there is nothing to
shame your valour, your faith, or your patriotism. You wanted arms, and
you wanted leaders. Had you had them, you would have guarded a green
flag in Dublin Castle a week after you beat Walpole. Isolated,
unorganised, unofficered, half-armed, girt by a swarm of foes, you
ceased to fight, but you neither betrayed nor repented. Your sons need
not fear to speak of Ninety-eight.
You, people of Wexford, almost all Repealers, are the sons of the men
of '98; prosperous and many, will you only shout for Repeal, and line
roads and tie boughs for a holiday? Or will you press your
organisation, work at your education, and increase your political
power, so that your leaders may know and act on the knowledge that,
come what may, there is trust in Wexford?
THE HISTORY OF TO-DAY.
From 1793 to 1829--for thirty-six years--the Irish Catholics struggled
for Emancipation. _That_ Emancipation was but admission to the
Bench, the Inner Bar, and Parliament. It was won by self-denial,
genius, vast and sustained labours, and, lastly, by the sacrifice of
the forty-shilling freeholders--the poor veterans of the war--and by
submission to insulting oaths; yet it was cheaply bought. Not so
cheaply, perchance, as if won by the sword; for on it were expended
more treasures, more griefs, more intellect, more passion, more of all
which makes life welcome, than had been needed for war; still it was
cheaply bought, and Ireland has glorified herself, and will through
ages triumph in the victory of '29.
Yet what was Emancipation compared to Repeal?
The one put a silken badge on a few members of one profession; the
other would give to all professions and all trades the rank and riches
which resident proprietors, domestic legislation, and flourishing
commerce infallibly create.
Emancipation made it possible for Catholics to sit on the judgment
seat; but it left a foreign administration, which has excluded them,
save in two or three cases, where over-topping eminence made the
acceptance of a Judgeship no promotion; and it left the local
Judges--those with whom the people have to deal--as partial, ignorant,
bigoted as ever; while Repeal would give us an Irish code and
Irish-hearted Judges in every Court, from the Chancery to the Petty
Sessions.
Emancipation dignified a dozen Catholics with a senatorial name in a
foreign and hostile Legislature. Repeal would give us a Senate, a
Militia, an Administration, all our own.
The Penal Code, as it existed since 1793, insulted the faith of the
Catholics, restrained their liberties, and violated the public Treaty
of Limerick. The Union has destroyed our manufactures, prohibits our
flag, prevents our commerce, drains our rental, crushes our genius,
makes our taxation a tribute, our representation a shadow, our name a
by-word. It were nobler to strive for Repeal than to get Emancipation.
Four years ago the form of Repeal agitation began--two years ago, its
reality. Have we not cause to be proud of the labours of these two
years? If life be counted, not by the rising of suns, or the idle
turning of machinery, but by the growth of the will, and the progress
of thoughts and passions in the soul, we Irishmen have spent an age
since we raised our first cry for liberty. Consider what we were then,
and what we have done since. We had a People unorganised--disgusted
with a Whig alliance--beaten in a dishonourable struggle to sustain a
faction--ignorant of each other's will--without books, without song,
without leaders (save one), without purposes, without strength, without
hope. The Corn Exchange was the faint copy of the Catholic Association,
with a few enthusiasts, a few loungers, and a few correspondents.
Opposite to us was the great Conservative party, with a majority
exceeding our whole representation, united, flushed, led by the
craftiest of living statesmen, and the ablest of living generals. Oh,
how disheartening it was then, when, day by day, we found prophecy and
exhortation, lay and labour, flung idly before a distracted People! May
we never pass through that icy ordeal again!
How different now! The People are united under the greatest system of
organisation ever attempted in any country. They send in, by their
Collectors, Wardens, and Inspectors, to the central office of Ireland,
the contributions needed to carry on the Registration of Voters, the
public meetings, the publications, the law expenses, and the
organisation of the Association; and that in turn carries on
registries, holds meetings, opens reading-rooms, sends newspapers, and
books, and political instructions, back through the same channel; so
that the Central Committee knows the state of every parish, and every
parish receives the teaching and obeys the will of the Central
Committee.
The Whig Alliance has melted, like ice before the sun, and the strong
souls of our people will never again serve the purposes of a faction.
The Conservative party, without union and without principle, is
breaking up. Its English section is dividing into the tools of
expediency and the pioneers of a New Generation--its Irish section into
Castle Hacks and National Conservatives.
Meantime, how much have the Irish people gained and done? They have
received and grown rich under torrents of thought. Song and sermon and
music, speech and pamphlet, novel and history, essay and map and
picture, have made the dull thoughtful and the thoughtful studious, and
will make the studious wise and powerful. They have begun a system of
self-teaching in their reading-rooms. If they carry it we shall, before
two years, have in every parish men able to manufacture, to trade, and
to farm--men acquainted with all that Ireland was, is, and should
be--men able to serve The Irish Nation in peace and war.
In the teeth, too, of the Government we held our meetings. They are not
for this time, but they were right well in their own time. They showed
our physical force to the Continent, to ourselves, to America, to our
rulers. They showed that the people would come and go rapidly,
silently, and at bidding, in numbers enough to recruit a dozen armies.
These are literal facts. Any one monster meeting could have offered
little resistance in the open country to a regular army, but it
contained the materials--the numbers, intelligence, and obedience--of a
conquering host. Whenever the impression of their power grows faint we
shall revive them again.
The toleration of these meetings was the result of fear; the
prosecution of their chiefs sprung from greater fear. That prosecution
was begun audaciously, was carried on meanly and with virulence, and
ended with a charge and a verdict which disgraced the law. An illegal
imprisonment afforded glorious proof that the people could refrain from
violence under the worst temptation; that their leaders were firm; and,
better than all, that had these leaders been shot, not prisoned, their
successors were ready. Such an imprisonment served Ireland more than an
acquittal, for it tried her more; and then came the day of triumph,
when the reluctant constitution liberated our chiefs and branded our
oppressors.
This is a history of two years never surpassed in importance and
honour. This is a history which our sons shall pant over and envy. This
is a history which pledges us to perseverance. This is a history which
guarantees success.
Energy, patience, generosity, skill, tolerance, enthusiasm created and
decked the agitation. The world attended us with its thoughts and
prayers. The graceful genius of Italy and the profound intellect of
Germany paused to wish us well. The fiery heart of France tolerated our
unarmed effort, and proffered its aid. America sent us money, thought,
love--she made herself a part of Ireland in her passions and her
organisation. From London to the wildest settlement which throbs in the
tropics or shivers nigh the Pole, the empire of our misruler was shaken
by our effort. To all earth we proclaimed our wrongs. To man and God we
made oath that we would never cease to strive till an Irish nation
stood supreme on this island. The genius which roused and organised us,
the energy which laboured, the wisdom that taught, the manhood which
rose up, the patience which obeyed, the faith which swore, and the
valour that strained for action, are here still, experienced,
recruited, resolute.
The future shall realise the promise of the past.
THE RESOURCES OF IRELAND.[42]
Bishop Berkeley put, as a query, could the Irish live and prosper if a
brazen wall surrounded their island? The question has been often and
vaguely replied to.
Dr. Kane has at length answered it, and proved the affirmative.
Confining himself strictly to the _land_ of our island (for he does not
enter on the subjects of fisheries and foreign commerce), he has proved
that we possess _physical_ elements for every important art. Not that
he sat down to prove this. Taste, duty, industry, and genius prompted
and enabled him gradually to acquire a knowledge of the physical
products and powers of Ireland, and his mastery of chemical and
mechanical science enabled him to see how these could be used.
Thus qualified, he tried, in the lecture-room of the Dublin Society, to
communicate his knowledge to the public. He was as successful as any
man lecturing on subjects requiring accurate details could be; and now
he has given, in the volume before us, all his lectures, and much more.
He then is no party pamphleteer, pandering to the national vanity; but
a philosopher, who garnered up his knowledge soberly and surely, and
now gives us the result of his studies. There was undoubtedly a good
deal of information on the subjects treated of by Dr. Kane scattered
through our topographical works and parliamentary reports, but that
information is, for the most part, vague, unapplied, and not tested by
science. Dr. Kane's work is full, clear, scientific, exact in stating
places, extent, prices, and every other working detail, and is a manual
of the whole subject.
In such interlaced subjects as industrial resources we must be content
with practical classifications.
Dr. Kane proceeds in the following order:--First, he considers the
_mechanical_ powers of the country--viz., its fuel and its water
powers. Secondly, its _mineral_ resources--its iron, copper, lead,
sulphur, marble, slates, etc. Thirdly, the agriculture of the country
in its first function--the raising of food, and the modes of cropping,
manuring, draining, and stacking. Fourthly, agriculture in its
secondary use, as furnishing staples for the manufacture of woollens,
linens, starch, sugar, spirits, etc. Fifthly, the modes of carrying
internal trade by roads, canals, and railways. Sixthly, the cost and
condition of skilled and unskilled labour in Ireland. Seventhly, our
state as to capital. And he closes by some earnest and profound
thoughts on the need of industrial education in Ireland.
Now, let us ask the reader what he knows upon any or all of these
subjects; and whether he ought, as a citizen, or a man of education, or
a man of business, to be ignorant of them? Such ignorance as exists
here must be got rid of, or our cry of "Ireland for the Irish" will be
a whine or a brag, and will be despised as it deserves. We must know
Ireland from its history to its minerals, from its tillage to its
antiquities, before we shall be an Irish nation, able to rescue and
keep the country. And if we are too idle, too dull, or too capricious
to learn the arts of strength, wealth, and liberty, let us not murmur
at being slaves.
For the present we shall confine ourselves to the subjects of the
mechanical powers and minerals of Ireland, as treated by Dr. Kane.
The first difference between manufactures now and in _any_ former
time is the substitution of machines for the hands of man. It may
indeed be questioned whether the increased strength over matter thus
given to man compensates for the ill effects of forcing people to work
in crowds; of destroying small and pampering large capitalists, of
lessening the distribution of wealth even by the very means which
increases its production.
We sincerely lament, with Lord Wharncliffe, the loss of domestic
manufactures; we would prefer one housewife skilled in the distaff and
the dairy--home-bred, and home-taught, and home-faithful--to a factory
full of creatures who live amid the eternal roll, and clash, and
glimmer of spindles and rollers, watching with aching eyes the thousand
twirls and capable of but one act--tying the broken threads. We abhor
that state; we prefer the life of the old times, or of modern Norway.
But, situated as we are, so near a strong enemy, and in the new highway
from Europe to America, it may be doubted whether we can retain our
simple domestic life. There is but one chance for it. If the Prussian
Tenure Code be introduced, and the people turned into small
proprietors, there is much, perhaps every, hope of retaining our
homestead habits; and such a population need fear no enemy.
If this do not come to pass, we must make the best of our state, join
our chief towns with railways, put quays to our harbours, mills on our
rivers, turbines on our coasts, and under restrictions and with
guarantees set the steam engine to work at our flax, wool, and
minerals.
The two great mechanical powers are fire and water. Ireland is nobly
endowed with both.
We do not possess as ample fields of flaming coal as Britain; but even
of that we have large quantities, which can be raised at about the same
rate at which English coal can be landed on our coast.
The chief seats of flaming coal in Ireland are to the west of Lough
Allen, in Connaught, and around Dungannon, in Tyrone. There is a small
district of it in Antrim.
The stone coal, or anthracite, which, having little gas, does not
blaze, and, having much sulphur, is disagreeable in a room, and has
been thought unfit for smelting, is found--first, in the Kilkenny
district, between the Nore and Barrow; secondly, from Freshford to
Cashel; and thirdly, in the great Munster coal country, cropping up in
every barony of Clare, Limerick, Cork, and Kerry. By the use of vapour
with it, the anthracite appears to be freed from all its defects as a
smelting and engine coal, and being a much more pure and powerful fuel
than the flaming coal, there seems no reason to doubt that in it we
have a manufacturing power that would supply us for generations.
Our bogs have not been done justice to. The use of turf in a damp state
turns it into an inferior fuel. Dried under cover, or broken up and
dried under pressure, it is more economical, because far more
efficient. It is used now in the Shannon steamers, and its use is
increasing in mills. For some purposes it is peculiarly good--thus, for
the finer ironworks, turf and turf-charcoal are even better than wood,
and Dr. Kane shows that the precious Baltic iron, for which from L15 to
L35 per ton is given, could be equalled by Irish iron smelted by Irish
turf for six guineas per ton.
Dr. Kane proves that the cost of fuel, even if greater in Ireland, by
no means precludes us from competing with England; he does so by
showing that the cost of fuel in English factories is only from 1 to
1-1/2 per cent., while in Ireland it would be only 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 per
cent., a difference greatly overbalanced by our cheaper labour--labour
being over 33 per cent. of the whole expense of a factory.
Here is the analysis of the cost of producing cotton in England in
1830:--
Cotton wool L8,244,693 or per cent. 26.27
Wages 10,419,000 " 33.16
Interest on capital 3,400,000 " 10.84
Coals 339,680 " 1.08
Rent, taxes, insurance,
other charges, and profit 8,935,320 " 28.65
---------- ------
L31,338,693 100.00
In water-power we are still better off. Dr. Kane calculates the rain
which falls on Ireland in a year at over 100 billion cubic yards; and
of this he supposes two-thirds to pass off in evaporation, leaving
one-third, equal to nearly a million and a half of horse-power, to
reach the sea. His calculations of the water-power of the Shannon and
other rivers are most interesting. The elements, of course, are the
observed fall of rain by the gauge in the district, and the area of the
catchment (or drainage) basins of each river and its tributaries. The
chief objection to water-power is its irregularity. To remedy this he
proposes to do what has increased the water-power on the Bann
five-fold, and has made the wealth of Greenock--namely, to make
mill-lakes by damming up valleys, and thus controlling and equalising
the supply of water, and letting none go waste. His calculations of the
relative merits of undershot, overshot, breast, and turbine wheels are
most valuable, especially of the last, which is a late and successful
French contrivance, acting by pressure. He proposes to use the turbine
in coast mills, the tide being the motive-power; and, strange as it
sounds, the experiments seem to decide in favour of this plan.
"The turbine was invented by M. Fourneyron. Coals being abundant,
the steam engine is invented in England; coals being scarce, the
water-pressure engine and the turbine are invented in France. It is
thus the physical condition of each country directs its mechanical
genius. The turbine is a horizontal wheel furnished with curved
float-boards, on which the water presses from a cylinder which is
suspended over the wheel, and the base of which is divided by
curved partitions, that the water may be directed in issuing, so as
to produce upon the curved float-boards of the wheel its greatest
effect. The best curvature to be given to the fixed partitions and
to the float-boards is a delicate problem, but practically it has
been completely solved. The construction of the machine is simple,
its parts not liable to go out of order; and as the action of the
water is by pressure, the force is under the most favourable
circumstances for being utilised.
"The effective economy of the turbine appears to equal that of the
overshot wheel. But the economy in the turbine is accompanied by
some conditions which render it peculiarly valuable. In a
water-wheel you cannot have great economy of power without very
slow motion, and hence where high velocity is required at the
working point, a train of mechanism is necessary, which causes a
material loss of force. Now, in the turbine the greatest economy is
accompanied by rapid motion, and hence the connected machinery may
be rendered much less complex. In the turbine also a change in the
height of the head of water alters only the power of the machine in
that proportion, but the whole quantity of water is economised to
the same degree. Thus if a turbine be working with a force of ten
horses, and that its supply of water be suddenly doubled, it
becomes of twenty horse-power; if the supply be reduced to
one-half, it still works five horse-power; whilst such sudden and
extreme change would altogether disarrange water-wheels, which can
only be constructed for the minimum, and allow the overplus to go
to waste."
Our own predilection being in favour of water-power--as cheaper,
healthier, and more fit for Ireland than steam--gave the following
peculiar interest in our eyes:--
"I have noticed at such length the question of the cost of fuel and
of steam power, not from my own opinion of its ultimate importance,
but that we might at once break down that barrier to all active
exertion which indolent ignorance constantly retreats behind. The
cry of 'What can we do? consider England's coal-mines,' is answered
by showing that we have available fuel enough. The lament that
coals are so dear with us and so cheap in England, is, I trust, set
at rest by the evidence of how little influential the price of fuel
is. However, there are other sources of power besides coals; there
are other motive-powers than steam. Of the 83,000 horse-power
employed to give motion to mills in England, 21,000, even in the
coal districts, are not moved by fire, but by water. The force of
gravity in falling water can spin and weave as well as the
elasticity of steam; and in this power we are not deficient. It is
necessary to study its circumstances in detail, and I shall
therefore next proceed to discuss the condition of Ireland with
regard to water-power."
Dr. Kane proves that we have at Arigna an _inexhaustible_ supply
of the richest iron ore, with coals to smelt it, lime to flux it, and
infusible sand-stone and fire-clay to make furnaces of on the spot. Yet
not a pig or bar is made there now. He also gives in great detail the
extent, analysis, costs of working, and every other leading fact as to
the copper mines of Wicklow, Knockmahon, and Allihies; the lead, gold,
and sulphur mines of Wicklow; the silver mines of Ballylichey, and
details of the building materials and marbles.
He is everywhere precise in his industrial and scientific statements,
and beautifully clear in his style and arrangement.
Why, then, are we a poor province? Dr. Kane quotes Forbes, Quetelet,
etc., to prove the physical strength of our people. He might have
quoted every officer who commanded them to prove their courage and
endurance; nor is there much doubt expressed even by their enemies of
their being quick and inventive. Their soil is productive--the rivers
and harbours good--their fishing _opportunities_ great--so is their
means of making internal communications across their great central
plains. We have immense water and considerable fire power; and, besides
the minerals necessary for the arts of peace, we are better supplied
than almost any country with the finer sorts of iron, charcoal, and
sulphur, wherewith war is now carried on. Why is it, with these means
of amassing and guarding wealth, that we are so poor and paltry? Dr.
Kane thinks we are so from want of industrial education. He is partly
right. The remote causes were repeated foreign invasion, forfeiture,
and tyrannous laws. Ignorance, disunion, self-distrust, quick
credulity, and caprice were the weaknesses engendered in us by
misfortune and misgovernment; and they were then the allies of
oppression; for, had we been willing, we had long ago been rich and
free. Knowledge is now within our reach if we work steadily; and
strength of character will grow upon us by every month of perseverance
and steadiness in politics, trade, and literature.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[42] _The Industrial Resources of Ireland_, by Robert Kane, M.D.,
Secretary to the Council of the Royal Irish Academy, Professor of
Natural Philosophy to the Royal Dublin Society, and of Chemistry to
the Apothecaries' Hall of Ireland. Dublin: Hodges & Smith, 21
College Green.
THE VALUATION OF IRELAND.
The Committee of 1824 was but meagrely supplied with evidence as to
foreign surveys. They begin that subject with a notice of the Survey of
England, made by order of William the Conqueror, and called the
Doomsday Book. That book took six years to execute, and is most
admirably analysed by Thierry.
The following is their summary account of some modern surveys:--
"In France the great territorial survey or _cadastre_ has been in
progress for many years. It was first suggested in 1763, and after
an interval of thirty years, during which no progress was made, it
was renewed by the government of that day, and individuals of the
highest scientific reputation, MM. Lagrange, Laplace, and Delambre,
were consulted with respect to the best mode of carrying into
effect the intention of government. Subsequent events suspended any
effectual operations in the French _cadastre_ till the year 1802,
when a school of topographical engineering was organised. The
operations now in progress were fully commenced in 1808. The
principle adopted is the formation of a central commission acting
in conjunction with the local authorities; the classification of
lands, according to an ascertained value, is made by three resident
proprietors of land in each district, selected by the municipal
council, and by the chief officer of revenue. 'In the course of
thirteen years, one-third only of each department had been
surveyed, having cost the state L120,000 per annum. At the rate at
which it is carried on, it may be computed as likely to require for
its completion a total sum of L4,680,000, or an acreable charge of
8-3/4d.' The delay of the work, as well as the increase of expense,
seem to have been the result of the minuteness of the survey, which
extends to every district field--a minuteness which, for many
reasons, your committee consider both unnecessary and inexpedient
to be sought for in the proposed Survey of Ireland.
"The survey of Bavaria is of modern date, but of equal minuteness.
It is commenced by a primary triangulation, and principal and
verification bases; it is carried on to a second triangulation,
with very accurate instruments, so as to determine 'all the
principal points; the filling up the interior is completed by a
peculiar species of plane table; and in order to do away with the
inaccuracies of the common chain, the triangulation is carried down
on paper to the most minute corners of fields.' _The map is laid
down on a scale of twelve inches to the mile, or
one-five-thousandth part of the real size; and as it contains all
that is required in the most precise survey of property, it is used
in the purchase and sale of real estates._
"The cadastre of Savoy and Piedmont began in 1729, and is stated to
have at once afforded the government the means of apportioning
justly all the territorial contributions, and to have put an end to
litigations between individuals, by ascertaining, satisfactorily,
the bounds of properties.
"The Neapolitan survey under Visconti, and that of the United
States under Heslar, are both stated to be in progress; but your
committee have not had the means of ascertaining on what principles
they are conducted."
The committee adopted a scale for the maps of six inches to a statute
mile, believing, apparently with justice, that a six-inch scale map, if
perfectly well executed, would be minute enough for buyers and sellers
of land, especially as the larger holdings are generally townlands, the
bounds of which they meant to include. And, wherever a greater scale
was needed, the pentagraph afforded a sufficiently accurate plan of
forming maps to it. They, in another point, _proposed_ to differ from
the Bavarian Survey, in omitting field boundaries, as requiring too
much time and expense; but they stated that barony, parish, and
townland boundaries were essential to the utility of the maps. They
also seemed to think that for private purposes their utility would much
depend on their being accompanied, as the Bavarian maps were, by a
memoir of the number of families, houses, size, and description of
farms, and a valuation. And for this purpose they printed all the
forms. The valuation still goes on of the townlands, and classes of
soil in each. The Statistical Memoir has, unfortunately, been stopped,
and no survey or valuation of farms, or holdings as such, has been
attempted. We would _now_ only recall attention to the design of the
Committee of 1824 on the subject.
They proposed to leave the whole Survey to the Board of Ordnance, and
the Valuation to Civil Engineers.
The Valuation has been regulated by a series of Acts of Parliament, and
we shall speak of it presently.
The Survey commenced in 1826, and has gone on under the superintendence
of Colonel Colby, and the local control of Captain Larcom.
The following has been its progress:--First, a base line of about five
miles was measured on the flat shore of Lough Foyle, and from thence
triangular measurements were made by the theodolite and over the whole
country, and all the chief points of mountain, coast, etc.,
ascertained. How accurately this was done has been proved by an
astronomical measurement of the distance from Dublin to Armagh (about
seventy miles), which only differed four feet from the distance
calculated by the Ordnance triangles.
Having completed these large triangles, a detailed survey of the
baronies, parishes, and townlands of each county followed. The field
books were sent to the central station at Mountjoy, and sketched,
engraved on copper, and printed there. The first county published was
Derry, in 1833, and now the townland survey is finished, and all the
counties have now been engraved and issued, except Limerick, Kerry, and
Cork.
The Survey has also engraved a map of Dublin City on the enormous scale
of five feet to a statute mile. This map represents the shape and space
occupied by every house, garden, yard, and pump in Dublin. It contains
antiquarian lettering. Every house, too, is numbered on the map. One of
its sheets, representing the space from Trinity College to the Castle,
is on sale, as we trust the rest of it will be.
Two other sets of maps remain to be executed. First--maps of the towns
of Ireland, on a scale of five feet to a mile. Whatever may be said in
reply to Sir Denham Norrey's demand for a survey of holdings in rural
districts does not apply to the case of towns, and we, therefore, trust
that the holdings will be marked and separately valued in towns.
The other work is a general _shaded_ map of Ireland, on a scale of one
inch to the statute mile. At present, as we elsewhere remarked, the
only tolerable shaded map of Ireland is that of the Railway Commission,
which is on a scale of one inch to four statute miles. Captain Larcom
proposes, and the Commission on the Ordnance Memoir recommend, that
contour lines should be the skeleton of the shading. If this plan be
adopted the publication cannot be for some years; but the shading will
have the accuracy of machine-work instead of mere hand skill. Contours
are lines representing series of levels through a country, and are
inestimable for draining, road-making, and military movements. But
though easily explained to the eye, we doubt our ability to teach their
meaning by words only.
To return to the townland or six-inch survey. The names were corrected
by Messrs. Petrie, O'Donovan, and Curry, from every source accessible
in _Ireland_. Its maps contain the county, barony, parish, townland,
and glebe boundaries, names and acreage; names and representations of
all cities, towns, demesnes, farms, ruins, collieries, forges,
limekilns, tanneries, bleach-greens, wells, etc., etc.; also of all
roads, rivers, canals, bridges, locks, weirs, bogs, ruins, churches,
chapels; they have also the number of feet of every little swell of
land, and a mark for every cabin.
Of course these maps run to an immense number. Thus, for the county of
Galway there are 137 double folio sheets, and for the small county of
Dublin, 28. Where less than half the sheet is covered with engraving
(as occurs towards the edges of a county) the sheet is sold,
uncoloured, for 2_s._ 6_d._; where more than half is covered the price
is 5_s._
In order to enable you to find any sheet so as to know the bearings of
its ground on any other, there is printed for each county an index map,
representing the whole county on one sheet. This sheet is on a small
scale (from one to three miles to an inch), but contains in smaller
type the baronies and parishes, roads, rivers, demesnes, and most of
the information of general interest. This index map is divided by lines
into as many oblong spaces as there are maps of the six-inch scale, and
the spaces are numbered to correspond with the six-inch map. On the
sides of the index maps are tables of the acreage of the baronies and
parishes; and examples of the sort of marks and type used for each
class of subjects in the _six-inch_ maps. Uncoloured, the index map,
representing a whole county, is sold for 2_s._ 6_d._
Whenever those maps are re-engraved, the Irish words will, we trust, be
spelled in an Irish and civilised orthography, and not barbarously, as
at present.
It was proposed to print for each county one or more volumes,
containing the history of the district and its antiquities, the
numbers, and past and present state and occupations of the people, the
state of its agriculture, manufactures, mines, and fisheries, and what
means of extending these existed in the county, and its natural
history, including geology, zoology, etc. All this was done for the
town of Derry, much to the service and satisfaction of its people. All
this ought to be _as fully_ done for Armagh, Dublin, Cork, and every
other part of Ireland.
The commissioners recommend that the geology of Ireland (and we would
add natural history generally) should be investigated and published,
not by the topographical surveyors nor in counties, but by a special
board, and for the whole of Ireland; and they are right, for our
plants, rocks, and animals are not within civil or even obvious
topographical boundaries, and we have plenty of Irishmen qualified to
execute it. They also advise that the statistics should be entrusted to
a statistical staff, to be permanently kept up in Ireland. This staff
would take the census every ten years, and would in the intervals
between the beginning and ending of each census have plenty of
statistical business to do for parliament (Irish or Imperial) and for
public departments. If we are ever to have a registry of births, deaths
(with the circumstances of each case), and marriages, some such staff
will be essential to inspect the registry, and work up information from
it. But the history, antiquities, and industrial resources, the
commissioners recommend to have published in county volumes. They are
too solicitous about keeping such volumes to small dimensions; but the
rest of their plans are admirable.
The value of this to Ireland, whether she be a nation or a province,
cannot be overrated. From the farmer and mechanic to the philosopher,
general, and statesman, the benefit will extend, and yet so careless or
so hostile are ministers that they have not conceded it, and so feeble
by dulness or disunion are Irishmen and Irish members, that they cannot
extort even this.
We now come to the last branch of the subject--
THE VALUATION.
The Committee of 1824 recommended only principles of Valuation. They
were three, viz.:--
"Sec. 1. A fixed and uniform principle of valuation applicable
throughout the whole work, and enabling the valuation not only of
townlands, but that of counties to be compared by one common
measure. Sec. 2. A central authority, under the appointment of
government, for direction and superintendence, and for the
generalisation of the returns made in detail. Sec. 3. Local
assistance, regularly organised, furnishing information on the
spot, and forming a check for the protection of private rights."
Accordingly, on the 5th of July, 1825, an Act was passed requiring, in
the first instance, the entry in all the grand jury records of the
names and contents of all parishes, manors, townlands, and other
divisions, and the proportionate assessments. It then went on to
authorise the Lord Lieutenant to appoint surveyors to be paid out of
the Consolidated Fund. These surveyors were empowered to require the
attendance of cess collectors and other inhabitants, and with their
help to examine, and ascertain, and mark the "reputed boundaries of all
and every or any barony, half barony, townland parish, or other
division or denomination of land," howsoever called. The Act also
inflicted penalties on persons removing or injuring any post, stone, or
other mark made by the surveyors; but we believe there has been no
occasion to enforce these clauses, the good sense and good feeling of
the people being ample securities against such wanton crime. Such
survey was not to affect the rights of owners; yet from it lay an
appeal to the Quarter Sessions.
This, as we see, relates to _civil boundaries_, not _valuations_.
In May, 1820, another Act was passed directing the Ordnance officers to
send copies of their maps, as fast as finished, to the Lord Lieutenant,
who was to appoint "_one_ Commissioner of Valuation for _any_
counties"; and to give notice of such appointment to the grand jury of
every such county. Each grand jury was then to appoint an Appeal
Committee for each barony, and a Committee of Revision for the whole
county. This Commission of Valuation was then to appoint from three to
nine fit valuators in the county, who, after trial by the Commissioner,
were to go in parties of three and examine all parts of their district,
and value such portion of it, and set down such valuation in a parish
field book, according to the following average prices:--
"SCALE OF PRICES.
Wheat, at the general average price of 10s. per cwt., of 112 lbs.
Oats, at the general average price of 6s. per cwt., of 112 lbs.
Barley, at the general average price of 7s. per cwt., of 112 lbs.
Potatoes, at the general average price of 1s. 7d. per cwt., of
112 lbs.
Butter, at the general average price of 69s. per cwt., of 112 lbs.
Beef, at the general average price of 33s. per cwt., of 112 lbs.
Mutton, at the general average price of 34s. 6d. per cwt., of
112 lbs.
Pork, at the general average price of 25s. 6d. per cwt., of
112 lbs."
That is, having examined each tract--say a hill, a valley, an inch, a
reclaimed bit, and by digging and looking at the soil, they were to
consider what crop it could best produce, considering its soil,
elevation, nearness to markets, and then estimating crops at the
foregoing rate, they were to say how much per acre the tract was, in
their opinion, worth.
From this Parish Field Book the Commissioner was to make out a table of
the parishes and townlands, etc., in each barony, specifying the
average and total value of houses in such sub-divisions, and to forward
it to the high constable, who was to post copies thereof. A vestry of
twenty-pound freeholders and twenty-shilling cesspayers was to be
called in each parish to consider the table. If they did not appeal,
the table was to stand confirmed; if they did appeal, the grand jury
committee of appeal, with the valuation commissioner as chairman, were
to decide upon the appeal; but if the assessor were dissatisfied, the
appeal was to go to the committee of revision. The same committee were
then to revise the _proportionate_ liabilities of _baronies_, subject
to an appeal to the Queen's Bench. The valuation so settled was to be
published in the _Dublin Gazette_, and thenceforward all _grand jury_
and _parish_ rates and cesses were to be levied in the _proportions_
thereby fixed. But no land theretofore exempt from any rate was thereby
made liable. The expenses were to be advanced from the consolidated
fund, and repaid by presentment from the county.
It made the _proportionate_ values of parishes and townlands, pending
the baronial survey and the baronial valuation, to bind after revision
and publication in some newspaper circulating in the county; but
_within three years_ there was to be a second revision, after which
they were to be published in the _Dublin Gazette_, etc., and be final
as to the _proportions_ of all parish or grand jury rates to be paid by
all baronies, parishes, and townlands. It also directed the annexation
of detached bits to the counties respectively surrounding them, and it
likewise provided for the _use_ of the valuation maps and field books
in applotting the grand jury cess charged on the holders of lands, but
such valuation to be merely a guide and not final. From the varying
size and value of holdings this caution was essential.
Under this last Act the valuation has been continued, as every reader
of the country papers must have seen by Mr. Griffith's Notices, and is
now complete in twenty counties, forward in six, begun in two, and not
yet begun in Cork, Kerry, Limerick, or Dublin.
Mr. Griffith's instructions are clear and full, and we strongly
recommend the study of them, and an adherence to their forms and
classifications, to valuators of all private and public properties, so
far as they go. He appointed two classes of valuators--Ordinary
Valuators to make the first valuation all over each county, and Check
Valuators to re-value patches in every district, to test the accuracy
of the ordinary valuators.
The ordinary valuator was to have two copies of the Townland (or
6-inch) Survey. Taking a sheet with him into the district represented
on it, he was to examine the quality of the soil in lots of from fifty
to thirty acres, or still smaller bits, to mark the bounds of each lot
on the survey map, and to enter in his field book the value thereof,
with all the special circumstances specially stated. The examination
was to include digging to ascertain the depth of the soil and the
nature of the subsoil. All land was to be valued at its agricultural
worth, supposing it liberally set, leaving out the value of timber,
turf, etc. Reductions were to be made for elevation above the sea,
steepness, exposure to bad winds, patchiness of soil, bad fences, and
bad roads. Additions were to be made for neighbourhood of limestone,
turf, sea, or other manure, roads, good climate and shelter, nearness
to towns.
The following classification of soils was recommended:--
"ARRANGEMENT OF SOILS.
All soils may be arranged under four heads, each representing the
characteristic ingredients, as--1. Argillaceous, or clayey; 2.
Silicious, or sandy; 3. Calcareous, or limy; 4. Peaty.
For practical purposes it will be desirable to sub-divide each of
these classes:--
Thus argillaceous soils may be divided into three varieties,
viz.--clay, clay loam, and argillaceous alluvial.
Of silicious soils there are four varieties, viz.--sandy, gravelly,
slaty, and rocky.
Of calcareous soils we have three varieties, viz.--limestone,
limestone gravel, and marl.
Of peat soils two varieties, viz.--moor, and peat or bog.
In describing in the field book the different qualities of soils,
the following explanatory words may be used as occasion may
require:--
_Stiff_--Where a soil contains a large proportion, say one-half, or
even more, of tenacious clay, it is called stiff. In dry weather
this kind of soil cracks and opens, and has a tendency to form into
large and hard lumps, particularly if ploughed in wet weather.
_Friable_--Where the soil is loose and open, as is generally the
case in sandy, gravelly, and moory lands.
_Strong_--Where a soil contains a considerable portion of clay, and
has some tendency to form into clods or lumps, it may be called
strong.
_Deep_--Where the soil exceeds ten inches in depth the term deep
may be applied.
_Shallow_--Where the depth of the soil is less than eight inches.
_Dry_--Where the soil is friable, and the subsoil porous (if there
be no springs), the term dry should be used.
_Wet_--Where the soil or subsoil is very tenacious, or where
springs are numerous.
_Sharp_--Where there is a moderate proportion of gravel, or small
stones.
_Fine or Soft_--Where the soil contains no gravel, but is chiefly
composed of very fine sand, or soft, light earth without gravel.
_Cold_--Where the soil rests on a tenacious clay subsoil, and has a
tendency when in pasture to produce rushes and other aquatic
plants.
_Sandy or Gravelly_--Where there is a large proportion of sand or
gravel through the soil.
_Slaty_--Where the slaty substratum is much intermixed with the
soil.
_Worn_--Where the soil has been a long time under cultivation,
without rest or manure.
_Poor_--Where the land is naturally of bad quality.
_Hungry_--Where the soil contains a considerable portion of gravel,
or coarse sand, resting on a gravelly subsoil; on such land manure
does not produce the usual effect.
The _colours of soils_ may also be introduced, as brown, yellow,
blue, grey, red, black, etc.
Also, where applicable, the words steep, level, shrubby, rocky,
exposed, etc., may be used."
Lists of market prices were sent with the field books, and the amounts
then reduced to a uniform rate, which Mr. Griffith fixed at 2_s._ 6_d._
per pound over the prices of produce mentioned in the Act.
Rules were also given for valuation of houses, but we must refer to Mr.
Griffith's work for them.
COMMERCIAL HISTORY OF IRELAND.
While the Irish were excluded from English law and intercourse, England
imposed no restrictions on our trade. The Pale spent its time tilling
and fighting, and it was more sure of its bellyful of blows than of
bread. It had nothing to sell; why tax its trade? The slight commerce
of Dublin was needful to the comforts of the Norman Court in Dublin
Castle. Why should _it_ be taxed? The market of Kilkenny was guarded by
the spears of the Butlers, and from Sligo to Cork the chiefs and towns
of Munster and Connaught--the Burkes, O'Loghlens, O'Sullivans, Galway,
Dingle, and Dunboy--carried on a trade with Spain, and piracy of war
against England. How _could they_ be taxed?
Commercial taxes, too, in those days were hard to be enforced, and more
resembled toll to a robber than contribution to the state. Every great
river and pass in Europe, from the Rhine and the Alps to Berwick and
the Blackwater, was affectionately watched by royal and noble castles
at their narrowest points, and the barge anchored and the caravan
halted to be robbed, or, as the receivers called it, to be taxed.
At last the Pale was stretched round Ireland by art and force. Solitude
and peace were in our plains; but the armed colonist settled in it, and
the native came down from his hills as a tenant or a squatter, and a
kind of prosperity arose.
Protestant and Catholic, native and colonist, had the same
interest--namely, to turn this waste into a garden. They had not, nor
could they have had, other things to export than Sydney or Canada have
now--cattle, butter, hides, and wool. They had hardly corn enough for
themselves; but pasture was plenty, and cows and their hides, sheep and
their fleeces, were equally so. The natives had always been obliged to
prepare their own clothing, and therefore every creaght and digger knew
how to dress wool and skins, and they had found out, or preserved from
a more civilised time, dyes which, to this day, are superior to any
others. Small quantities of woollen goods were exported, but our
assertion holds good that in our war-times there was no manufacture for
export worth naming.
Black Tom Wentworth, the ablest of despots, came here 210 years ago,
and found "small beginnings towards a clothing trade." He at once
resolved to discourage it. He wrote so to the king on July 25th, 1636,
and he was a man true to his enmities. "But," said he, "I'll give them
a linen manufacture instead." Now, the Irish had raised flax and made
and dyed linen from time immemorial. The saffron-coloured linen shirt
was as national as the cloak and birred; so that Strafford rather
introduced the linen manufacture among the new settlers than among the
Irish. Certainly he encouraged it, by sending Irishmen to learn in
Brabant, and by bringing French and Flemings to work in Ireland.
Charles the Second, doubtless to punish us for our most unwise loyalty
to him and his father, assented to a series of Acts prohibiting the
export of Irish wool, cattle, etc., to England or her colonies, and
prohibiting the _direct_ importation of several colonial products
into Ireland. The chief Acts are 12 Charles, c. 4; 15 Charles, c. 7;
and 22 and 23 Charles, c. 26. Thus were the value of land in Ireland,
the revenue, and trade, and manufactures of Ireland--Protestant and
Catholic--stricken by England.
Perhaps we ought to be grateful, though not to England, for these Acts.
They plundered our pockets, but they guarded our souls from being
anglicised. To France and Spain the produce was sent, and the woollen
manufacture continued to increase.
England got alarmed, for Ireland was getting rich. The English lords
addressed King William, stating that "the growth and increase of the
woollen manufacture in Ireland had long been, and would be _ever_,
looked upon with great jealousy by his English subjects, and praying
him, by very strict laws, totally to prohibit and suppress the same."
The Commons said likewise; and William answered comfortably:--"I shall
do all that in me lies to discourage the woollen manufacture in
Ireland, and to encourage the linen manufacture there, and to promote
the trade of England."
He was as good as his word, and even whipped and humbugged the
unfortunate Irish Parliament to pass an Act, putting twenty per cent.
duty on broad and ten per cent. on narrow cloths--
"But it did not satisfy the English parliament, where a perpetual
law was made, prohibiting from the 20th of June, 1699, the
exportation from Ireland of all goods made or mixed with wool,
except to England and Wales, and with the licence of the
commissioners of the revenue; duties had been before laid on the
importation into England equal to a prohibition, therefore this Act
has operated as a total prohibition of the exportation."
There was nothing left but to send the wool raw to England; to smuggle
it and cloths to France and Spain, or to leave the land unstocked. The
first was worst. The export to England declined, smuggling prospered,
"wild geese" for the Brigade and woollen goods were run in exchange for
claret, brandy, and silks; but not much land was left waste. Our silks,
cottons, malt, beer, and almost every other article was similarly
prohibited. Striped linens were taxed thirty per cent., many other
kinds of linen were also interfered with, and twenty-four embargoes in
nineteen years straitened our foreign provision trade. Thus England
kept her pledge of wrath, and broke her promise of service to Ireland.
A vigorous system of smuggling induced her to relax in some points, and
the cannon of the Volunteers blew away the code.
By the Union we were so drained of money, and absentee rents and taxes,
and of spirit in every way, that she no longer needs a prohibitory code
to prevent our competing with her in any market, Irish or foreign. The
Union is prohibition enough, and that England says she will maintain.
Whether it be now possible to create home manufactures, in the old
sense of the word--that is, manufactures made in the homes of the
workers--is doubted.
In favour of such a thing, if it be possible, the arguments are
numberless. Such work is a source of ingenuity and enjoyment in the
cabin of the peasant; it rather fills up time that would be otherwise
idled than takes from other work. Our peasants' wives and daughters
could clothe themselves and their families by the winter night work,
even as those of Norway do, if the peasants possessed the little
estates that Norway's peasants do. Clothes manufactured by hand-work
are more lasting, comfortable, and handsome, and are more natural and
national than factory goods. Besides, there is the strongest of all
reasons in this, that the factory system seems everywhere a poison to
virtue and happiness.
Some invention, which should bring the might of machinery in a
wholesome and cheap form to the cabin, seems the only solution of the
difficulty.
The hazards of the factory system, however, should be encountered, were
it sure to feed our starving millions; but this is dubious.
A Native Parliament can alone judge or act usefully on this momentous
subject. An absentee tax and a resident government, and the progress of
public industry and education, would enable an Irish Parliament to
create vast manufactures here by protecting duties in the first
instance, and to maintain them by our general prosperity, or it could
rely on its own adjustment of landed property as sufficient to put the
people above the need of hazarding purity or content by embarking in
great manufactures.
A peasant proprietary could have wealth enough to import wrought goods,
or taste and firmness enough to prefer home-made manufactures.
But these are questions for other years. We wish the reader to take our
word for nothing, but to consult the writers on Irish trade:--Laurence's
_Interest of Ireland_ (1682); Browne's _Tracts_ (1728); Dobbs on
"Trade" (1729); Hutchinson's _Commercial Restraints_ (1779); Sheffield
on "Irish Trade" (1785); Wallace on "Irish Trade" (1798); the various
"Parliamentary Reports," and the very able articles on the same subject
in the _Citizen_.
Do not be alarmed at the list, reader; a month's study would carry you
through all but the Reports, and it would be well spent. But if you
still shrink, you can ease your conscience by reading Mr. John
O'Connell's Report on "The Commercial Injustices," just issued by the
Repeal Association. It is an elaborate, learned, and most useful tract.
NATIONAL ART.
No one doubts that if he sees a place or an action he knows more of it
than if it had been described to him by a witness. The dullest man, who
"put on his best attire" to welcome Caesar, had a better notion of life
in Rome than our ablest artist or antiquary.
Were painting, then, but a coloured chronicle, telling us facts by the
eye instead of the ear, it would demand the Statesman's care and the
People's love. It would preserve for us faces we worshipped, and the
forms of men who led and instructed us. It would remind us, and teach
our children, not only how these men looked, but, to some extent, what
they were, for nature is consistent, and she has indexed her labours.
It would carry down a pictorial history of our houses, arts, costume,
and manners to other times, and show the dweller in a remote isle the
appearance of countries and races of his cotemporaries.
As a register of _facts--as a portrayer of men, singly, or
assembled--and as a depicter of actual scenery, art is biography,
history, and topography taught through the eye.
So far as it can express facts, it is superior to writing; and nothing
but the scarcity of _faithful_ artists, or the stupidity of the
public, prevents us from having our pictorial libraries of men and
places. There are some classes of scenes--as where continuous action is
to be expressed--in which sculpture quite fails, and painting is but a
shadowy narrator.
But this, after all, though the most obvious and easy use of Painting
and Sculpture, is far indeed from being their highest end.
Art is a regenerator as well as a copyist. As the historian, who
composes a history out of various materials, differs from a newspaper
reporter, who sets down what he sees--as Plutarch differs from Mr.
Grant, and the Abbe Barthelemy from the last traveller in India--so do
the Historical Painter, the Landscape composer (such as Claude or
Poussin) differ from the most faithful Portrait, Landscape, or Scene
Drawer.
The Painter who is a master of composition makes his pencil cotemporary
with all times and ubiquitous. Keeping strictly to nature and fact,
Romulus sits for him and Paul preaches. He makes Attila charge, and
Mohammed exhort, and Ephesus blaze when he likes. He tries not rashly,
but by years of study of men's character, and dress, and deeds, to make
them and their acts come as in a vision before him. Having thus got a
design, he attempts to realise the vision on his canvas. He pays the
most minute attention to truth in his drawing, shading, and colouring,
and by imitating the force of nature in his composition, all the clouds
that ever floated by him, "the lights of other days," and the forms of
the dead, or the stranger, hover over him.
But Art in its higher stage is more than this. It is a creator. Great
as Herodotus and Thierry are, Homer and Beranger are greater. The ideal
has resources beyond the actual. It is infinite, and Art is
indefinitely powerful. The Apollo is more than noble, and the Hercules
mightier than man. The Moses of Michael Angelo is no likeness of the
inspired law-giver, nor of any other that ever lived, and Raphael's
Madonnas are not the faces of women. As Reynolds says, "the effect of
the capital works of Michael Angelo is that the observer feels his
whole frame enlarged." It is creation, it is representing beings and
things different from our nature, but true to their own. In this
self-consistency is the only nature requisite in works purely
imaginative. Lear is true to his nature, and so are Mephistopheles, and
Prometheus, and Achilles; but they are not true to human nature; they
are beings created by the poets' minds, and true to _their_ laws
of being. There is no commoner blunder in men, who are themselves mere
critics, never creators, than to require consistency to the nature of
us and our world in the works of poet or painter.
To create a mass of great pictures, statues, and buildings is of the
same sort of ennoblement to a people as to create great poems or
histories, or make great codes, or win great battles. The next best,
though far inferior, blessing and power is to inherit such works and
achievements. The lowest stage of all is neither to possess nor to
create them.
Ireland has had some great Painters--Barry and Forde, for example, and
many of inferior but great excellence; and now she boasts high
names--Maclise, Hogan, and Mulready. But their works were seldom done
for Ireland, and are rarely known in it. Our portrait and landscape
Painters paint foreign men and scenes; and, at all events, the Irish
people do not see, possess, nor receive knowledge from their works.
Irish history has supplied no subjects for our greatest Artists; and
though, as we repeat, Ireland possessed a Forde and Barry, creative
Painters of the highest order, the pictures of the latter are mostly
abroad; those of the former unseen and unknown. Alas! that they are so
few.
To collect into, and make known, and publish in Ireland the best works
of our living and dead Artists is one of the steps towards procuring
for Ireland a recognised National Art. And this is essential to our
civilisation and renown. The other is by giving education to students
and rewards to Artists, to make many of this generation true
representers, some of them great illustrators and composers, and,
perchance, to facilitate the creation of some great spirit.
Something has been done--more remains.
There are schools in Dublin and Cork. But why are those so neglected
and imperfect? and why are not similar or better institutions in
Belfast, Derry, Galway, Waterford, and Kilkenny? Why is there not a
decent collection of casts anywhere but in Cork, and why are they in a
garret there? And why have we no gallery of Irishmen's, or any other
men's, pictures in Ireland?
The Art Union has done a great deal. It has helped to support in
Ireland artists who should otherwise have starved or emigrated; it has
dispersed one (when, oh when, will it disperse another?) fine print of
a fine Irish picture through the country, and to some extent interested
as well as instructed thousands. Yet it could, and we believe will, do
much more. It ought to have Corresponding Committees in the principal
towns to preserve and rub up old schools of art and foster new ones,
and it might by art and historical libraries, and by other ways, help
the cause. We speak as friends, and suggest not as critics, for it has
done good service.
The Repeal Association, too, in offering prizes for pictures and
sculptures of Irish historical subjects, has taken its proper place as
the patron of nationality in art; and its rewards for Building Designs
may promote the comfort and taste of the people, and the reputation of
the country. If artists will examine the rules by which the pictures,
statues, and plates remain their property, they will find the prizes
not so small as they might at first appear. Nor should they, from
interest or just pride, be indifferent to the popularity and fame of
success on national subjects, and with a People's Prizes to be
contended for. If those who are not Repealers will treat the
Association's design kindly and candidly, and if the Repealers will act
in art upon principles of justice and conciliation, we shall not only
advance national art, but gain another field of common exertion.
The Cork School of Art owes its existence to many causes.
The intense, genial, and Irish character of the people, the southern
warmth and variety of clime, with its effects on animal and vegetable
beings, are the natural causes.
The accident of Barry's birth there, and his great fame, excited the
ambition of the young artists. An Irishman and a Corkman had gone out
from them, and amazed men by the grandeur and originality of his works
of art. He had thrown the whole of the English painters into
insignificance, for who would compare the luscious commonplace of the
Stuart painters, or the melodramatic reality of Hogarth, or the
imitative beauty of Reynolds, or the clumsy strength of West, with the
overbearing grandeur of his works?
But the _present_ glories of Cork, Maclise and Hogan, the greater,
but buried might of Forde, and the rich promise which we know is
springing there now, are mainly owing to another cause; and that is,
that Cork possesses a gallery of the finest casts in the world.
These casts are not very many--117 only; but they are perfect, they are
the first from Canova's moulds, and embrace the greatest works of Greek
art. They are ill-placed in a dim and dirty room--more shame to the
rich men of Cork for leaving them so--but there they are, and there
studied Forde, and Maclise, and the rest, until they learned to draw
better than any moderns, except Cornelius and his living brethren.
In the countries where art is permanent there are great
collections--Tuscany and Rome, for example. But, as we have said
before, the highest service done by success in art is not in the
possession but in the creation of great works, the spirit, labour,
sagacity, and instruction needed by the artists to succeed, and flung
out by them on their country like rain from sunny clouds.
Indeed, there is some danger of a traditionary mediocrity following
after a great epoch in art. Superstition of style, technical rules in
composition, and all the pedantry of art, too often fill up the ranks
vacated by veteran genius, and of this there are examples enough in
Flanders, Spain, and even Italy. The schools may, and often do, make
men scholastic and ungenial, and art remains an instructor and refiner,
but creates no more.
Ireland, fortunately or unfortunately, has everything to do yet. We
have had great artists--we have not their works--we own the nativity of
great living artists--they live on the Tiber and the Thames. Our
capital has no school of art--no facilities for acquiring it.
To be sure, there are rooms open in the Dublin Society, and they have
not been useless, that is all. But a student here cannot learn anatomy,
save at the same expense as a surgical student. He has no great works
of art before him, no Pantheon, no Valhalla, not even a good museum or
gallery.
We think it may be laid down as unalterably true that a student should
never draw from a flat surface. He learns nothing by drawing from the
lines of another man--he only mimics. Better for him to draw chairs and
tables, bottles and glasses, rubbish, potatoes, cabins, or kitchen
utensils, than draw from the lines laid down by other men.
Of those forms of nature which the student can originally consult--the
sea, the sky, the earth--we would counsel him to draw from them in the
first learning; for though he ought afterwards to analyse and mature
his style by the study of works of art, from the first sketches to the
finished picture, yet, by beginning with nature and his own
suggestions, he will acquire a genuine and original style, superior to
the finest imitation; and it is hard to acquire a master's skill
without his manner.
Were all men cast in a divine mould of strength and straightness and
gallant bearing, and all women proportioned, graceful, and fair, the
artist would need no gallery, at least to begin his studies with. He
would have to persuade or snatch his models in daily life. Even then,
as art creates greater and simpler combinations than ever exist in
fact, he should finally study before the superhuman works of his
predecessors.
But he has about him here an indifferently-made, ordinary, not very
clean, nor picturesquely-clad people; though, doubtless, if they had
the feeding, the dress, and the education (for mind beautifies the
body) of the Greeks, they would not be inferior, for the Irish
structure is of the noblest order.
To give him a multitude of fine natural models, to say nothing of ideal
works, it is necessary to make a gallery of statues or casts. The
statues will come in good time, and we hope, and are sure, that
Ireland, a nation, will have a national gallery, combining the greatest
works of the Celtic and Teutonic races. But at present the most that
can be done is to form a gallery.
Our readers will be glad to hear that this great boon is about to be
given to Irish Art. A society for the formation of a gallery of casts
in Dublin has been founded.
It embraces men of every rank, class, creed, politics, and calling,
thus forming another of those sanctuaries, now multiplying in Ireland,
where one is safe from the polemic and the partisan.
Its purpose is to purchase casts of all the greatest works of Greece,
Egypt, Etruria, ancient Rome, and Europe in the middle ages. This will
embrace a sufficient variety of types, both natural and ideal, to
prevent imitation, and will avoid the debateable ground of modern art.
Wherever they can afford it the society will buy moulds, in order to
assist provincial galleries, and therefore the provinces are
immediately interested in its support.
When a few of these casts are got together, and a proper gallery
procured, the public will be admitted to see, and artists to study,
them without any charge. The annual subscription is but ten shillings,
the object being to interest as many as possible in its support.
It has been suggested to us by an artist that Trinity College ought to
establish a gallery and museum containing casts of all the ancient
statues, models of their buildings, civil and military, and a
collection of their implements of art, trade, and domestic life. A
nobler institution, a more vivid and productive commentary on the
classics, could not be. But if the Board will not do this of
themselves, we trust they will see the propriety of assisting this
public gallery, and procuring, therefore, special privileges for the
students in using it.
But no matter what persons in authority may do or neglect, we trust the
public--for the sake of their own pleasure, their children's profit,
and Ireland's honour--will give it their instant and full support.
HINTS FOR IRISH HISTORICAL PAINTINGS.
National art is conversant with national subjects. We have Irish
artists, but no Irish, no national art. This ought not to continue; it
is injurious to the artists, and disgraceful to the country. The
following historical subjects were loosely jotted down by a friend.
Doubtless, a more just selection could be made by students noting down
fit subjects for painting and sculpture, as they read. We shall be
happy to print any suggestions on the subject--our own are, as we call
them, mere hints with loose references to the authors or books which
suggested them. For any good painting, the marked figures must be few,
the action obvious, the costume, arms, architecture, postures
historically exact, and the manners, appearance, and rank of the
characters strictly studied and observed. The grouping and drawing
require great truth and vigour. A similar set of subjects illustrating
social life could be got from the Poor Report, Carleton's, Banim's, or
Griffin's stories, or, better still, from observation.
The references are vague, but perhaps sufficient.
The Landing of the Milesians.--Keating, Moore's Melodies.
Ollamh Fodhla Presenting his Laws to his People. Keating's,
Moore's, and O'Halloran's Histories of Ireland.--Walker's Irish
Dress and Arms, and Vallancey's Collectanea.
Nial and his Nine Hostages.--Moore, Keating.
A Druid's Augury.--Moore, O'Halloran, Keating.
A Chief Riding out of his Fort.--Griffin's Invasion, Walker, Moore.
The Oak of Kildare.--Moore.
The Burial of King Dathy in the Alps, his thinned troops laying
stones on his grave.--M'Geoghegan, "Histoire de l'Irlande" (French
edition), Invasion, Walker, Moore.
St. Patrick brought before the Druids at Tara.--Moore and his
Authorities.
The First Landing of the Danes.--See Invasion, Moore, etc.
The Death of Turgesius.--Keating, Moore.
Ceallachan tied to the Mast.--Keating.
Murkertach Returning to Aileach.--Archaeological Society's Tracts.
Brian Reconnoitring the Danes before Clontarf.
The Last of the Danes Escaping to his Ship.
O'Ruare's Return.--Keating, Moore's Melodies.
Raymond Le Gros Leaving his Bride.--Moore.
Roderick in Conference with the Normans.--Moore, M'Geoghegan.
Donald O'Brien Setting Fire to Limerick.--M'Geoghegan.
Donald O'Brien Visiting Holycross.--M'Geoghegan.
O'Brien, O'Connor, and M'Carthy making Peace to attack the
Normans.--M'Geoghegan, Moore.
The Same Three Victorious at the Battle of Thurles.--Moore and
O'Conor's Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores.
Irish Chiefs leaving Prince John.--Moore, etc.
M'Murrough and Gloster.--Harris's Hibernica, p. 53.
Crowning of Edward Bruce.--Leland, Grace's Annals, etc.
Edgecombe Vainly Trying to Overawe Kildare.--Harris's Hibernica.
Kildare "On the Necks of the Butlers."--Leland.
Shane O'Neill at Elizabeth's Court.--Leland.
Lord Sydney Entertained by Shane O'Neill.
The Battle of the Red Coats.--O'Sullivan's Catholic History.
Hugh O'Neill Victor in Single Combat at Clontibret.--Fynes Moryson,
O'Sullivan, M'Geoghegan.
The Corleius.--Dymmok's Treatise, Archaeological Society's Tracts.
Maguire and St. Leger in Single Combat.--M'Geoghegan.
O'Sullivan Crossing the Shannon.--Pacata Hibernia.
O'Dogherty Receiving the Insolent Message of the Governor of
Derry.--M'Geoghegan.
The Brehon before the English Judges.--Davis's Letter to Lord
Salisbury.
Ormond Refusing to give up his Sword.--Carte's Life of Ormond.
Good Lookers-on.--Strafford's Letters.
Owen Conolly before the Privy Council, 1641.--Carey's Vindiciae.
The Battle of Julianstown.--Temple's Rebellion, and Tichbourne's
Drogheda.
Owen Roe Organising the Creaghts.--Carte, and also Belling and
O'Neill in the Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica.
The Council of Kilkenny.--Carte.
The Breach of Clonmel.--Do.
Smoking Out the Irish.--Ludlow's Memoirs.
Burning Them.--Castlehaven's Memoirs.
Nagle before the Privy Council.--Harris's William.
James's Entry into Dublin.--Dublin Magazine for March, 1843.
The Bridge of Athlone.--Green Book and Authorities.
St. Ruth's Death.--Do.
The Embarkation from Limerick.--Do.
Cremona.--Cox's Magazine.
Fontenoy.--Do.
Sir S. Rice Pleading against the Violation of the Treaty of
Limerick.--Staunton's Collection of Tracts on Ireland.
Molyneux's Book burned.
Liberty Boys Reading a Drapier's Letter.--Mason's St. Patrick's
Cathedral.
Lucas Surrounded by Dublin Citizens in his Shop.
Grattan Moving Liberty.--Memoirs.
Flood Apostrophising Corruption.--Barrington.
Dungannon Convention.--Wilson, Barrington.
Curran Cross-Examining Armstrong.--Memoirs.
Curran Pleading before the Council in Alderman James's Case.
Tone's First Society.--See his Memoirs.
The Belfast Club.--Madden's U. I., Second Series, vol. i.
Tone, Emmet, and Keogh in the Rathfarnham Garden.
Tone and Carnot.--Tone's Memoirs.
Battle of Oulart.--Hay, Teeling, etc.
First Meeting of the Catholic Association.
O'Connell Speaking in a Munster Chapel.--Wyse's Association.
The Clare Hustings.--Proposal of O'Connell.
The Dublin Corporation Speech.
Father Mathew Administering the Pledge in a Munster County.
Conciliation.--Orange and Green.
The Lifting of the Irish Flags of a National Fleet and Army.
OUR NATIONAL LANGUAGE.
Men are ever valued most for peculiar and original qualities. A man who
can only talk commonplace, and act according to routine, has little
weight. To speak, look, and do what your own soul from its depths
orders you are credentials of greatness which all men understand and
acknowledge. Such a man's dictum has more influence than the reasoning
of an imitative or commonplace man. He fills his circle with
confidence. He is self-possessed, firm, accurate, and daring. Such men
are the pioneers of civilisation and the rulers of the human heart.
Why should not nations be judged thus? Is not a full indulgence of its
natural tendencies essential to a _people's_ greatness? Force the
manners, dress, language, and constitution of Russia, or Italy, or
Norway, or America, and you instantly stunt and distort the whole mind
of either people.
The language, which grows up with a people, is conformed to their
organs, descriptive of their climate, constitution, and manners,
mingled inseparably with their history and their soil, fitted beyond
any other language to express their prevalent thoughts in the most
natural and efficient way.
To impose another language on such a people is to send their history
adrift among the accidents of translation--'tis to tear their identity
from all places--'tis to substitute arbitrary signs for picturesque and
suggestive names--'tis to cut off the entail of feeling, and separate
the people from their forefathers by a deep gulf--'tis to corrupt their
very organs, and abridge their power of expression.
The language of a nation's youth is the only easy and full speech for
its manhood and for its age. And when the language of its cradle goes,
itself craves a tomb.
What business has a Russian for the rippling language of Italy or
India? How could a Greek distort his organs and his soul to speak Dutch
upon the sides of the Hymettus, or the beach of Salamis, or on the
waste where once was Sparta? And is it befitting the fiery,
delicate-organed Celt to abandon his beautiful tongue, docile and
spirited as an Arab, "sweet as music, strong as the wave"--is it
befitting in him to abandon this wild, liquid speech for the mongrel of
a hundred breeds called English, which, powerful though it be, creaks
and bangs about the Celt who tries to use it?
We lately met a glorious thought in the "Triads of Mochmed," printed in
one of the Welsh codes by the Record Commission: "There are three
things without which there is no country--common language, common
judicature, and co-tillage land--for without these a country cannot
support itself in peace and social union."
A people without a language of its own is only half a nation. A nation
should guard its language more than its territories--'tis a surer
barrier, and more important frontier, than fortress or river.
And in good times it has ever been thought so. Who had dared to propose
the adoption of Persian or Egyptian in Greece--how had Pericles
thundered at the barbarian? How had Cato scourged from the forum him
who would have given the Attic or Gallic speech to men of Rome? How
proudly and how nobly Germany stopped "the incipient creeping" progress
of French! And no sooner had she succeeded than her genius, which had
tossed in a hot trance, sprung up fresh and triumphant.
Had Pyrrhus quelled Italy, or Xerxes subdued Greece for a time long
enough to impose new languages, where had been the literature which
gives a pedigree to human genius? Even liberty recovered had been
sickly and insecure without the language with which it had hunted in
the woods, worshipped at the fruit-strewn altar, debated on the
council-hill, and shouted in the battle-charge.
There is a fine song of the Fusians, which describes
"Language linked to liberty."
To lose your native tongue, and learn that of an alien, is the worst
badge of conquest--it is the chain on the soul. To have lost entirely
the national language is death; the fetter has worn through. So long as
the Saxon held to his German speech he could hope to resume his land
from the Norman; now, if he is to be free and locally governed, he must
build himself a new home. There is hope for Scotland--strong hope for
Wales--sure hope for Hungary. The speech of the alien is not universal
in the one; is gallantly held at bay in the other; is nearly expelled
from the third.
How unnatural--how corrupting 'tis for us, three-fourths of whom are of
Celtic blood, to speak a medley of Teutonic dialects! If we add the
Celtic Scots, who came back here from the thirteenth to the seventeenth
centuries, and the Celtic Welsh, who colonised many parts of Wexford
and other Leinster counties, to the Celts who never left Ireland,
probably five-sixths, or more, of us are Celts. What business have we
with the Norman-Sassenagh?
Nor let any doubt these proportions because of the number of English
_names_ in Ireland. With a politic cruelty the English of the Pale
passed an Act (3 Edw. IV., c. 3) compelling every Irishman within
English jurisdiction "to go like to one Englishman in apparel, and
shaving off his beard above the mouth," "and shall take to him an
English sirname of one town, as Sutton, Chester, Trym, Skryne, Corke,
Kinsale; or colour, as White, Blacke, Browne; or art or science, as
Smith or Carpenter; or office, as Cook, Butler; and that he and his
issue shall use this name, under pain of forfeiting his goods yearly."
And just as this Parliament before the Reformation, so did another
after the Reformation. By the 28th Henry VIII., c. 15, the dress and
language of the Irish were insolently described as barbarous by the
minions of that ruffian king, and were utterly forbidden and abolished
under many penalties and incapacities. These laws are still in force;
but whether the Archaeological Society, including Peel and O'Connell,
will be prosecuted seems doubtful.
There was, also, 'tis to be feared, an adoption of English names,
during some periods, from fashion, fear, or meanness. Some of our best
Irish names, too, have been so mangled as to require some scholarship
to identify them. For these and many more reasons the members of the
Celtic race here are immensely greater than at first appears.
But this is not all; for even the Saxon and Norman colonists,
notwithstanding these laws, melted down into the Irish, and adopted all
their ways and language. For centuries upon centuries Irish was spoken
by men of all bloods in Ireland, and English was unknown, save to a few
citizens and nobles of the Pale. 'Tis only within a very late period
that the majority of the people learned English.
But, it will be asked, how can the language be restored now?
We shall answer this partly by saying that, through the labours of the
Archaeological and many lesser societies, it _is_ being revived rapidly.
We shall consider this question of the possibility of reviving it more
at length some other day.
Nothing can make us believe that it is natural or honourable for the
Irish to speak the speech of the alien, the invader, the Sassenagh
tyrant, and to abandon the language of our kings and heroes. What! give
up the tongue of Ollamh Fodhla and Brian Boru, the tongue of M'Carty,
and the O'Nials, the tongue of Sarsfield's, Curran's, Mathew's, and
O'Connell's boyhood, for that of Strafford and Poynings, Sussex, Kirk,
and Cromwell!
No! oh, no! the "brighter days shall surely come," and the green flag
shall wave on our towers, and the sweet old language be heard once more
in college, mart, and senate.
But even should the effort to save it as the national language fail, by
the attempt we will rescue its old literature, and hand down to our
descendants proofs that we had a language as fit for love, and war, and
business, and pleasure, as the world ever knew, and that we had not the
spirit and nationality to preserve it!
Had Swift known Irish he would have sowed its seed by the side of that
nationality which he planted, and the close of the last century would
have seen the one as flourishing as the other. Had Ireland used Irish
in 1782, would it not have impeded England's re-conquest of us? But
'tis not yet too late.
For _you_, if the mixed speech called English was laid with
sweetmeats on your child's tongue, English is the best speech of
manhood. And yet, rather, in that case you are unfortunate. The hills,
and lakes, and rivers, the forts and castles, the churches and
parishes, the baronies and counties around you, have all Irish
names--names which describe the nature of the scenery or ground, the
name of founder, or chief, or priest, or the leading fact in the
history of the place. To you these are names hard to pronounce, and
without meaning.
And yet it were well for you to know them. That knowledge would be a
topography, and a history, and romance, walking by your side, and
helping your discourse. Meath tells it flatness, Clonmel the abundant
riches of its valley, Fermanagh is the land of the Lakes, Tyrone the
country of Owen, Kilkenny the Church of St. Canice, Dunmore the great
fort, Athenry the Ford of the Kings, Dunleary the Fort of O'Leary; and
the Phoenix Park, instead of taking its name from a fable, recognises
as christener the "sweet water" which yet springs near the east gate.[43]
All the names of our airs and songs are Irish, and we every day are as
puzzled and ingeniously wrong about them as the man who, when asked for
the air, "I am asleep, and don't waken me," called it "Tommy M'Cullagh
made boots for me."
The bulk of our history and poetry are written in Irish, and shall we,
who learn Italian, and Latin, and Greek, to read Dante, Livy, and Homer
in the original--shall we be content with ignorance or a translation of
Irish?
The want of modern scientific words in Irish is undeniable, and
doubtless we should adopt the existing names into our language. The
Germans have done the same thing, and no one calls German mongrel on
that account. Most of these names are clumsy and extravagant; and are
almost all derived from Greek or Latin, and cut as foreign a figure in
French and English as they would in Irish. Once Irish was recognised as
a language to be learned as much as French or Italian, our dictionaries
would fill up and our vocabularies ramify, to suit all the wants of
life and conversation.
These objections are ingenious refinements, however, rarely thought of
till after the other and great objection has been answered.
The usual objection to attempting the revival of Irish is, that it
could not succeed.
If an attempt were made to introduce Irish, either through the national
schools, or the courts of law, into the eastern side of the island, it
would certainly fail, and the reaction might extinguish it altogether.
But no one contemplates this save as a dream of what may happen a
hundred years hence. It is quite another thing to say, as we do, that
the Irish language should be cherished, taught, and esteemed, and that
it can be preserved and gradually extended.
What we seek is, that the people of the upper classes should have their
children taught the language which explains our names of persons or
places, our older history, and our music, and which is spoken in the
majority of our counties, rather than Italian, German, or French. It
would be more useful in life, more serviceable to the taste and genius
of young people, and a more flexible accomplishment for an Irish man or
woman to speak, sign, and write Irish than French.
At present the middle classes think it a sign of vulgarity to speak
Irish--the children are everywhere taught English, and English alone in
schools--and, what is worse, they are urged by rewards and punishments
to speak it at home, for English is the language of their masters. Now,
we think the example and exertions of the upper classes would be
sufficient to set the opposite and better fashion of preferring Irish;
and, even as a matter of taste, we think them bound to do so. And we
ask it of the pride, the patriotism, and the hearts of our farmers and
shopkeepers, will they try to drive out of their children's minds the
native language of almost every great man we had, from Brian Boru to
O'Connell--will they meanly sacrifice the language which names their
hills, and towns, and music, to the tongue of the stranger?
About half the people west of a line drawn from Derry to Waterford
speak Irish habitually, and in some of the mountain tracts east of that
line it is still common. Simply requiring the teachers of the national
schools in these Irish-speaking districts to know Irish, and supplying
them with Irish translations of the school books, would guard the
language where it now exists, and prevent it from being swept away by
the English tongue, as the Red Americans have been by the English race
from New York to New Orleans.
The example of the upper classes would extend and develop a modern
Irish literature, and the hearty support they have given to the
Archaeological Society makes us hope that they will have sense and
spirit to do so.
But the establishment of a newspaper partly or wholly Irish would be
the most rapid and sure way of serving the language. The Irish-speaking
man would find, in his native tongue, the political news and general
information he has now to seek in English; and the English-speaking
man, having Irish frequently before him in so attractive a form, would
be tempted to learn its characters, and, by-and-by, its meaning.
These newspapers in many languages are now to be found everywhere but
here. In South America many of these papers are Spanish and English, or
French; in North America, French and English; in Northern Italy, German
and Italian; in Denmark and Holland, German is used in addition to the
native tongue; in Alsace and Switzerland, French and German; in Poland,
German, French, and Sclavonic; in Turkey, French and Turkish; in
Hungary, Magyar, Sclavonic, and German; and the little Canton of Grison
uses three languages in its press. With the exception of Hungary, the
secondary language is, in all cases, spoken by fewer persons than the
Irish-speaking people of Ireland, and while they everywhere tolerate
and use one language as a medium of commerce, they cherish the other as
the vehicle of history, the wings of song, the soil of their genius,
and a mark and guard of nationality.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[43] 'Bright water' is the true rendering: Could Davis have been
thinking of _binn uisge_, and supposing that _binn_ meant sweet in
taste as well as in sound?--[Ed.]
INSTITUTIONS OF DUBLIN.
Judged by the _Directory_, Dublin is nobly supplied with institutions
for the promotion of Literature, Science, and Art; and, judged by its
men, there is mind enough here to make these institutions prosper, and
instruct and raise the country. Yet their performances are far short of
these promises, and the causes for ill-success are easily found. We
believe these causes could be almost as easily removed.
In the first place, we have too many of these institutions. Stingy
grants from Government and the general poverty of the people render
economy a matter of the first consequence; yet we find these societies
maintaining a number of separate establishments, at a great expense of
rent and salaries.
The consequence, of course, is that none of them flourish as they
ought--museums, meetings, lectures, libraries, and exhibitions are all
frittered away, and nothing is done so well as it might be. Moreover,
from the want of any arrangement and order, the same men are dragged
from one society to another--few men do much, because all are forced to
attempt so many things.
But 'tis better to examine this in detail, and in doing so we may as
well give some leading facts as to the chief of these bodies. Take, for
example, as a beginning, the
INSTITUTIONS FOR THE PROMOTION OF FINE ARTS.
And first there is the Hibernian Academy. It was founded in 1823,
received a present of its house in Abbey Street, and some books and
casts, from Francis Johnston, a Dublin architect, and has the miserable
income of L300 a year from the Treasury. It has a drawing-school, with
a few casts, no pictures, bad accommodation, and professors whose pay
is nearly nominal.
It undoubtedly has some men of great ability and attainments, and some
who have neither; but what can be done without funds, statues, or
pictures? To aggravate its difficulties, the Dublin Society has another
art school, still worse off as to casts, and equally deficient in
pictures. As a place of instruction in the designing of patterns for
manufactures and the like, the Dublin Society school has worked well;
and many of the best-paid controllers of design in the English
manufactories were educated there; but as a school of fine arts it does
little; and no wonder. Another branch of the Hibernian Academy's
operations is its annual exhibition of pictures. These exhibitions
attract crowds who would never otherwise see a painting, promote
thought on art, and procure patronage for artists. In this, too, the
Hibernian Academy has recently found a rival in the Society of Irish
Artists, established in 1842, which has an annual exhibition in College
Street, and pays the expenses of the exhibition out of the admission
fees, as does the Hibernian Academy. We are not attaching blame to the
Society of Irish Artists in noticing the fact of its rivalry.
There are three other bodies devoted to the encouragement of art. One
of these is the Art Union, founded in 1840, and maintained entirely by
subscriptions to its lottery. It distributes fine engravings from Irish
pictures among all its members, and pictures and statues, bought in the
exhibitions of the Hibernian Academy, and of the Society of Irish
Artists, among its prize-holders; and it gives premiums for the works
of native or resident artists. Its operation is as a patron of art;
and, in order to get funds for this purpose, and also to secure
superior works and a higher competition, it extends its purchases to
the best foreign works exhibited here. It has no collection, and has
merely an office in College Street--in fact, its best permanent
possession is its unwearied secretary. The Society of Ancient Art was
established last year for the formation of a public gallery of casts
from classical and mediaeval statues, and ultimately for purposes of
direct teaching by lectures, etc. It obtained some funds by
subscription; but under the expectation, 'tis said, of a public grant,
has done nothing. Lastly, there is the "Institute of Irish Architects,"
founded in 1839 "for the general advancement of civil architecture, for
promoting and facilitating the acquirement of a knowledge of the
various arts and sciences connected therewith, for the formation of a
library and museum," etc.
To us it is very plain that here are too many institutions, and that
the efficiency of all suffers materially from their want of connection
and arrangement. Some, at least, might be amalgamated with great
advantage, or rather all, except the Art Union. That is only a club of
purchasers, and any attempt materially to change its nature would peril
its funds. Some such plan as the following would accomplish all that is
vainly attempted now. Let the Government be pressed to give L2,000 a
year, if the public supply L1,000 a year. Let this income go to a new
Hibernian Academy--the present Hibernian Academy, Artists' Society,
Society of Ancient Art, the Art Schools of the Dublin Society, and the
Institute of Irish Architects being merged in it. This merger could be
easily secured through the inducements secured by the charter, and by
accommodation, salaries, and utility of the new body. The present
property of these bodies, with some moderate grant, would suffice for
the purchase of a space of ground ample for the schools, museums,
library, lecture-room, and yards of such an institution.
At the head of it should be a small body governing and accounting for
its finances, but _no person_ should be a governing member of more than
one of its sections. These sections should be for Statuary, Painting,
Architecture, and Design Drawing. Each of these sections should have
its own Gallery and its own Practice Rooms; but one Library and one
public Lecture Room would suffice for the entire. The architectural
section would also need some open space for its experiments and its
larger specimens. A present of copies of the British Museum casts,
along with the fund of the Ancient Art Society, would originate a Cast
Gallery, and a few good pictures could be bought as a commencement of a
National Gallery of Painting, leaving the economy of the managers and
the liberality of the public gradually to fill up. Collections of
native works in canvas and marble, and architectural models, could be
soon and cheaply procured. The Art Library of the Dublin Society added
to that of the Hibernian Academy would need few additions to make it
sufficient for the new body.
Such an Institute ought not to employ any but the best teachers and
lecturers. It should encourage proficiency by rewards that would
instruct the proficient; it should apply itself to cataloguing,
preserving, and making known all the works of art in the country; give
prizes for artistical works; publish its lectures and transactions;
issue engravings of the most instructive works of art; and hold evening
meetings, to which ladies would be admitted. It should allow at least
L400 a year for the support of free pupils. In connection with its
drawing and modelling schools should be a professorship of anatomy, or,
what were better, some arrangement might be made with the College of
Surgeons, or some such body, for courses of instruction for its pupils.
The training for its pupils in sculpture, painting, and design should
include the study of ancient and modern costumes, zoology, and of
vegetable and geological forms. For this purpose books should not be so
much relied on as lectures in gardens, museums, and during student
excursions. Of course the architectural pupils should be required to
answer at a preliminary examination in mathematics, and should receive
special instruction in the building materials, action of climate, etc.,
in Ireland.
Were the buildings standing, and the society chartered judiciously, the
sum we have mentioned would be sufficient. Four professors at from L200
to L300 a year each, four assistants at L100 a year each, a librarian
at the same rate, with payments for extra instruction in anatomy, etc.,
etc., and for porters, premiums, and so forth, would not exceed L2,000
a year. So that if L400 were expended on free pupils, there would
remain L600 a year for the purchase of works for the galleries.
At present there is much waste of money, great annoyance and loss of
time to the supporters of these institutions, and marvellously little
benefit to art. The plan we have proposed would be economical both of
time and money; but, what is of more worth, it would give us, what we
have not now, a National Gallery of Statuary and Painting--good
Exhibition Rooms for works of art--business-like Lecturers and
Lectures--great public excitement about art--and, finally, a great
National Academy.
If anyone has a better plan, let him say it; we have told ours. At all
events, some great change is needed, and there can be no fitter time
than this for it.
In any community it is desirable to have Literary Institutions, as well
classified as legal offices, and as free from counteraction; but it is
especially desirable here now. Our literary class is small, and its
duties measureless. The diseased suction of London--the absence of
gentry, offices, and Legislature--the heart-sickness that is on every
thoughtful man without a country--the want of a large, educated, and
therefore book-buying class--and (it must be confessed) the depression
and distrust produced by rash experiments and paltry failure, have left
us with few men for a great work. Probably the great remedy is the
restoration of our Parliament--bringing back, as it would, the
aristocracy and the public offices, giving society and support to
Writers and Artists, and giving them a country's praise to move and a
country's glory to reward them.
But one of the very means of attaining nationality is securing some
portion of that literary force which would gush abundantly from it;
and, therefore, consider it how you will, it is important to increase
and economise the exertions of the literary class in Ireland. Yet the
reverse is done. Institutions are multiplied instead of those being
made efficient which exist; and men talk as proudly of the new
"Teach-'em-everything-in-no-time-Society" as if its natty laws were a
library, its desk a laboratory and a museum, and its members fresh
labourers, when all they have done is to waste the time of persons who
had business, and to delude those who had none, into the belief that
they were doing good. Ephemeral things! which die not without
mischief--they have wasted hours and days of strong men in spinning
sand, and leave depression growing from their tombs.
It is a really useful deed to rescue from dissipation, or from idle
reading, or from mammon-hunting, one strong, passionate man or boy, and
to set him to work investigating, arranging, teaching. It is an honest
task to shame the 'broidered youth from meditation on waistcoats and
the display of polka steps into manly pursuits. It is an angel's
mission (oftenest the work of love) to startle a sleeping and
unconscious genius into the spring and victory of a roused lion. But it
is worse than useless to establish new associations and orders without
well considering first whether the same machinery do not already exist
and rust for want of the very energy and skill which you need too.
There is a bridge in a field near Blarney Castle where water never ran.
It was built "at the expense of the county." These men build their
mills close as houses in a capital, taking no thought for the stream to
turn them.
We have already censured this in some detail with reference to
societies for the promotion of the Fine Arts, and have urged the
formation, out of all these fiddling, clashing bodies, of some one
great institution for the promotion of Painting, Sculpture, and
Architecture, with a Museum, a Library, a Gallery, and Lecturers,
governed by professional minds, great enough to be known and regarded
by the people, and popular and strong enough to secure Government
support.
Similar defects exist everywhere. Take the Dublin Society for example.
Nothing can be more heterogeneous than its objects. We are far from
denying its utility. That utility is immense, the institution is
native, of old standing (it was founded in 1731), national, and, when
it wanted support, our pen was not idle in its behalf.
But we believe its utility greatly diminished by its attempting too
many things, and especially by including objects more fitly belonging
to other institutions; and on the opposite side it is maimed, by the
interference of other bodies, in its natural functions. The Dublin
Society was founded for the promotion of husbandry and other useful
arts. Its labours to serve agriculture have been repeated and
extensive, though not always judicious. It has also endeavoured to
promote manufactures. It has gardens and museums fitter for scientific
than practical instruction, admirable lecturers, a library most
generously opened, a drawing-school of the largest purposes and of
equivocal success, and various minor branches.
The Irish Academy has some of this fault. It endeavours to unite
antiquarianism and abstract science. Its meetings are alternately
entertained with mathematics and history, and its transactions are
equally comprehensive. We yield to none in anxiety for the promotion of
antiquarian studies; we think the public and the government disgraced
by the slight support given to the Academy. We are not a little proud
of the honour and strength given to our country by the science of
MacCullagh, Hamilton, and Lloyd; but we protest against the attempt to
mix the armoury of the ancient Irish, or the Celtic dialects, or the
essay on Round Towers, with trigonometry and the calculus, whether in a
lecture-room or a book.
Let us just set down, as we find them, some of the Literary and
Scientific Institutions. There are the Royal Dublin Society, the Royal
Irish Academy (we wish these royalties were dropped--no one minds
them), the Irish Archaeological Society, the Royal Zoological Society,
the Geological Society, the Dublin Natural History Society, the Dublin
Philosophical Society, the Royal Agricultural Society, etc., etc. Now,
we take it that these bodies might be usefully reduced to three, and if
three moderate government grants were made under conditions rewarding
such a classification, we doubt not it would instantly be made.
In the first place, we would divorce from the Irish Academy the
scientific department, requiring Trinity College to form some voluntary
organisation for the purpose. To this non-collegiate philosophers
should be admitted, and, thus disencumbered, we would devote the
Academy to antiquities and literature--incorporate with it the
Archaeological Society--transfer to it all the antiques (of which it had
not duplicates) in Trinity College, the Dublin Society, etc., and
enlarge its museums and meeting-room. Its section of "polite
literature" has long been a name--it should be made real. There would
be nothing inconvenient or strange in finding in its lecture-rooms or
transactions the antiquities and literature of Ireland, diversified by
general historical, critical, and aesthetical researches.
The Dublin Society would reasonably divide into two sections. One, for
the promotion of husbandry, might be aggrandised by tempting the
Agricultural Society to join it, and should have a permanent museum, an
extensive farm, premiums, shows, publications, and special lecturers.
The second section, for the encouragement of manufactures, should have
its museum, workshops, and experiment ground (the last, perhaps, as the
agricultural farm), and its special lecturers. The library might well
be joint, and managed by a joint committee, having separate funds. The
general lecturers on chemistry and other such subjects might be paid in
common. The drawing school (save that for pattern and machine drawing)
might be transferred to the Art Institution; and the botanic garden and
museum of minerals to a third body we propose.
This third body we would form from a union of the Zoological, the
Geological, the Natural History, and all other such societies, and
endow it with the Botanic and Zoological Gardens--give it rooms for a
general and for a specially Irish museum, and for lecture-rooms in
town, and supply it with a small fund to pay lecturers, who should go
through the provinces.
We are firmly convinced that this re-arrangement of the Institutions of
Dublin is quite practicable, would diminish unproductive expenses,
economise the time, and condense the purposes of our literary,
scientific, and artistical men, and increase enormously the use of the
institutions to the public.
Of course the whole plan will be laughed at as fanciful and improbable;
we think it easy, and we think it will be done.
IRELAND'S PEOPLE, LORDS, GENTRY, COMMONALTY.
When we are considering a country's resources and its fitness for a
peculiar destiny, its people are not to be overlooked. How much they
think, how much they work, what are their passions, as well as their
habits, what are their hopes and what their history, suggest inquiries
as well worth envious investigation as even the inside of a refugee's
letter.
And there is much in Ireland of that character--much that makes her
superior to slavery, and much that renders her inferior to freedom.
Her inhabitants are composed of Irish nobles, Irish gentry, and the
Irish people. Each has an interest in the independence of their
country, each a share in her disgrace. Upon each, too, there devolves a
separate duty in this crisis of her fate. They all have
responsibilities; but the infamy of failing in them is not alike in
all.
The nobles are the highest class. They have most to guard. In every
other country they are the champions of patriotism. They feel there is
no honour for them separate from their fatherland. Its freedom, its
dignity, its integrity, are as their own. They strive for it, legislate
for it, guard it, fight for it. Their names, their titles, their very
pride are of it.
In Ireland they are its disgrace. They were first to sell and would be
last to redeem it. Treachery to it is daubed on many an escutcheon in
its heraldry. It is the only nation where slaves have been ennobled for
contributing to its degradation.
It is a foul thing this--dignity emanating from the throne to gild the
filthy mass of national treason that forms the man's part of many an
Irish lord.
We do not include in this the whole Irish peerage. God forbid. There
are several of them not thus ignoble. Many of them worked, struggled,
sacrificed for Ireland. Many of them were true to her in the darkest
times.
They were her chiefs, her ornaments, her sentinels, her safeguards.
Alas! that they, too, should have shrunk from their position, and left
their duties to humbler, but bolder and better men.
Look at their station in the State. Is it not one of unequivocal shame?
They enjoy the half-mendicant privilege of voting for a representative
of their order, in the House of Lords, some twice or thrice in their
lives. One Irish peer represents about a dozen others of his class, and
thus, in his multiplex capacity, he is admitted into fellowship with
the English nobility. The borrowed plumes, the delegated authority of
so many of his equals, raise him to a half-admitted equality with an
English nobleman. And, although thus deprived of their inheritance of
dignity, they are not allowed even the privilege of a commoner. An
Irish lord cannot sit in the House of Commons for an Irish county or
city, nor can he vote for an Irish member.
But an Irish lord can represent an English constituency. The
distinction is a strange one--unintelligible to us in any sense but one
of national humiliation. We understand it thus--an Irish lord is too
mean in his own person, and by virtue of his Irish title, to rank with
the British peerage. He can only qualify for that honour by uniting in
his the suffrages and titles of ten or twelve others. But--flattering
distinction!--he is above the rank of an Irish commoner, nor is he
permitted to sully his name with the privileges of that order.
And--unspeakable dignity!--he may take his stand with a British mob.
There is no position to match this in shame. There is no guilt so
despicable as dozing in it without a blush or an effort, or even a
dream for independence. When all else are alive to indignity, and
working in the way of honour and liberty, they alone, whom it would
best become to be earliest and most earnest in the strife, sink back
replete with dishonour.
Of those, or their descendants, who, at the time of the Union, sold
their country and the high places they filled in her councils and in
her glory, for the promise of a foreign title, which has not been
redeemed, the shame and the mortification have been perhaps too great
to admit of any hope in regard to them. Their trust was sacred--their
honour unsuspected. The stake they guarded above life they betrayed
then for a false bauble; and it is no wonder if they think their infamy
irredeemable and eternal.
We know not but it is. There are many, however, not in that category.
They struggled at fearful odds, and every risk, against the fate of
their country. They strove when hope had left them. Wherefore do they
stand apart now, when she is again erect, and righteous, and daring?
Have they despaired for her greatness, because of the infidelity of
those to whom she had too blindly trusted?
The time is gone when she could be betrayed. This one result is already
guaranteed by recent teaching. We may not be yet thoroughly instructed
in the wisdom and the virtue necessary for the independent maintenance
of self-government; but we have mastered thus much of national
knowledge that we cannot be betrayed. There is no assurance every
nation gave which we have not given, or may not give, that our present
struggle shall end in triumph or in national death.
The writers of _The Nation_ have never concealed the defects or
flattered the good qualities of their countrymen. They have told them
in good faith that they wanted many an attribute of a free people, and
that the true way to command happiness and liberty was by learning the
arts and practising the culture that fitted men for their enjoyment.
Nor was it until we saw them thus learning and thus practising that our
faith became perfect, and that we felt entitled to say to all men, here
is a strife in which it will be stainless glory to be even defeated. It
is one in which the Irish nobility have the first interest and the
first stake in their individual capacities.
As they would be the most honoured and benefited by national success,
they are the guiltiest in opposing or being indifferent to national
patriotism.
Of the Irish gentry there is not much to be said. They are divisible
into two classes--the one consists of the old Norman race commingled
with the Catholic gentlemen who either have been able to maintain their
patrimonies, or who have risen into affluence by their own industry;
the other, the descendants of Cromwell's or William's successful
soldiery.
This last is the most anti-Irish of all. They feel no personal
debasement in the dishonour of the country. Old prejudices, a barbarous
law, a sense of insecurity in the possessions they know were obtained
by plunder, combine to sink them into the mischievous and unholy belief
that it is their interest as well as their duty to degrade, and wrong,
and beggar the Irish people.
There are among them men fired by enthusiasm, men fed by fanaticism,
men influenced by sordidness; but, as a whole, they are earnest
thinkers and stern actors. There is a virtue in their unscrupulousness.
They speak, and act, and dare as men. There is a principle in their
unprincipledness. Their belief is a harsh and turbulent one, but they
profess it in a manly fashion.
We like them better than the other section of the same class. These
last are but sneaking echoes of the other's views. They are coward
patriots and criminal dandies. But they ought to be different from what
they are. We wish them so. We want their aid now--for the country, for
themselves, for all. Would that they understood the truth, that they
thought justly, and acted uprightly. They are wanted, one and all. Why
conceal it--they are obstacles in our way, shadows on our path.
These are called the representatives of the property of the country.
They are against the national cause, and therefore it is said that all
the wealth of Ireland is opposed to the Repeal of the Union.
It is an ignorant and a false boast.
The people of the country are its wealth. They till its soil, raise its
produce, ply its trade. They serve, sustain, support, save it. They
supply its armies--they are its farmers, its merchants, its tradesmen,
its artists, all that enrich and adorn it.
And, after all, each of them has a patrimony to spend, the honourable
earning of his sweat, or his intellect, or his industry, or his genius.
Taking them on an average, they must, to live, spend at least L5 each
by the year. Multiply it by seven millions, and see what it comes to.
Thirty-five millions annually--compare with that the rental of Ireland;
compare with it the wealth of the aristocracy spent in Ireland, and are
they not as nothing?
But a more important comparison may be made of the strength, the
fortitude, the patience, the bravery of those, the enrichers of the
country, with the meanness in mind and courage of those who are opposed
to them.
It is the last we shall suggest. It is sufficient for our purpose. To
those who do not think it of the highest value we have nothing to say.
THE STATE OF THE PEASANTRY.
In a climate soft as a mother's smile, on a soil fruitful as God's
love, the Irish peasant mourns.
He is not unconsoled. Faith in the joys of another world, heightened by
his woe in this, give him hours when he serenely looks down on the
torments that encircle him--the moon on a troubled sky. Domestic love,
almost morbid from external suffering, prevents him from becoming a
fanatic or a misanthrope, and reconciles him to life. Sometimes he
forgets all, and springs into a desperate glee or a scathing anger; and
latterly another feeling--the hope of better days--and another
exertion--the effort for redress--have shared his soul with religion,
love, mirth, and vengeance.
His consolations are those of a spirit--his misery includes all
physical sufferings, and many that strike the soul, not the senses.
Consider his griefs! They begin in the cradle--they end in the grave.
Suckled by a breast that is supplied from unwholesome or insufficient
food, and that is fevered with anxiety--reeking with the smoke of an
almost chimneyless cabin--assailed by wind and rain when the weather
rages--breathing, when it is calm, the exhalations of a rotten roof, of
clay walls, and of manure, which gives his only chance of food--he is
apt to perish in his infancy.
Or he survives all this (happy if he have escaped from gnawing scrofula
or familiar fever), and in the same cabin, with rags instead of his
mother's breast, and lumpers instead of his mother's milk, he spends
his childhood.
Advancing youth brings him labour, and manhood increases it; but youth
and manhood leave his roof rotten, his chimney one hole, his window
another, his clothes rags (at best muffled by a holiday _cotamore_)--his
furniture, a pot, a table, a few hay chairs and rickety stools--his
food, lumpers and water--his bedding, straw and a coverlet--his
enemies, the landlord, the tax-gatherer, and the law--his consolation,
the priest and his wife--his hope on earth, agitation--his hope
hereafter, the Lord God!
For such an existence his toil is hard--and so much the better--it
calms and occupies his mind; but bitter is his feeling that the toil
which gains for him this nauseous and scanty livelihood heaps dainties
and gay wines on the table of his distant landlord, clothes his
children or his harem in satin, lodges them in marble halls, and brings
all the arts of luxury to solicit their senses--bitter to him to feel
that this green land, which he loves and his landlord scorns, is
ravished by him of her fruits to pamper that landlord; twice bitter for
him to see his wife, with weariness in her breast of love, to see half
his little brood torn by the claws of want to undeserved graves, and to
know that to those who survive him he can only leave the inheritance to
which he was heir; and thrice bitter to him that even his hovel has not
the security of the wild beast's den--that Squalidness, and Hunger, and
Disease are insufficient guardians of his home--and that the puff of
the landlord's or the agent's breath may blow him off the land where he
has lived, and send him and his to a dyke, or to prolong wretchedness
in some desperate kennel in the next town, till the strong wings of
Death--unopposed lord of such suburb--bear them away.
Aristocracy of Ireland, will ye do nothing?--will ye do nothing for
fear? The body who best know Ireland--the body that keep Ireland within
the law--the Repeal Committee--declare that unless some great change
take place an agrarian war may ensue! Do ye know what that is, and how
it would come? The rapid multiplication of outrages, increased violence
by magistrates, collisions between the people and the police, coercive
laws and military force, the violation of houses, the suspension of
industry--the conflux of discontent, pillage, massacre, war--the gentry
shattered, the peasantry conquered and decimated, or victorious and
ruined (for who could rule them?)--there is an agrarian insurrection!
May Heaven guard us from it!--may the fear be vain!
We set aside the fear! Forget it! Think of the long, long patience of
the people--their toils supporting you--their virtues shaming
you--their huts, their hunger, their disease.
To whomsoever God had given a heart less cold than stone, these truths
must cry day and night. Oh! how they cross us like _Banshees when
we would range free on the mountain--how, as we walk in the evening
light amid flowers, they startle us from rest of mind! Ye nobles! whose
houses are as gorgeous as the mote's (who dwelleth in the sunbeam)--ye
strong and haughty squires--ye dames exuberant with tingling blood--ye
maidens, whom not splendour has yet spoiled, will ye not think of the
poor?--will ye not shudder in your couches to think how rain, wind, and
smoke dwell with the blanketless peasant?--will ye not turn from the
sumptuous board to look at those hard-won meals of black and slimy
roots on which man, woman, and child feed year after year?--will ye
never try to banish wringing hunger and ghastly disease from the home
of such piety and love?--will ye not give back its dance to the
village--its mountain play to boyhood--its serene hopes to manhood?
Will ye do nothing for pity--nothing for love? Will ye leave a foreign
Parliament to mitigate--will ye leave a native Parliament, gained in
your despite, to redress these miseries--will ye for ever abdicate the
duty and the joy of making the poor comfortable, and the peasant
attached and happy? Do--if so you prefer; but know that if you do, you
are a doomed race. Once more, Aristocracy of Ireland, we warn and
entreat you to consider the State of the Peasantry, and to save them
with your own hands.
HABITS AND CHARACTER OF THE PEASANTRY.[44]
There are (thank God!) four hundred thousand Irish children in the
National Schools. A few years, and _they will be the People of
Ireland--the farmers of its lands, the conductors of its traffic, the
adepts in its arts. How utterly unlike _that Ireland will be to the
Ireland of the Penal Laws, of the Volunteers, of the Union, or of the
Emancipation?
Well may Carleton say that we are in a transition state. The knowledge,
the customs, the superstitions, the hopes of the People are entirely
changing. There is neither use nor reason in lamenting what we must
infallibly lose. Our course is an open and a great one, and will try us
severely; but, be it well or ill, we cannot resemble our fathers. No
conceivable effort will get the people, twenty years hence, to regard
the Fairies but as a beautiful fiction to be cherished, not believed
in, and not a few real and human characters are perishing as fast as
the Fairies.
Let us be content to have the past chronicled wherever it cannot be
preserved.
Much may be saved--the Gaelic language and the music of the past may be
handed uncorrupted to the future; but whatever may be the substitutes,
the Fairies and the Banshees, the Poor Scholar and the Ribbonman, the
Orange Lodge, the Illicit Still, and the Faction Fight are vanishing
into history, and unless this generation paints them no other will know
what they were.
It is chiefly in this way we value the work before us. In it Carleton
is the historian of the peasantry rather than a dramatist. The fiddler
and piper, the seanachie and seer, the match-maker and dancing-master,
and a hundred characters beside are here brought before you, moving,
acting, playing, plotting, and gossiping! You are never wearied by an
inventory of wardrobes, as in short English descriptive fictions; yet
you see how every one is dressed; you hear the honey brogue of the
maiden, and the downy voice of the child, the managed accents of
flattery or traffic, the shrill tones of woman's fretting, and the
troubled gush of man's anger. The moory upland and the corn slopes, the
glen where the rocks jut through mantling heather, and bright brooks
gurgle amid the scented banks of wild herbs, the shivering cabin and
the rudely-lighted farm-house are as plain in Carleton's pages as if he
used canvas and colours with a skill varying from Wilson and Poussin to
Teniers and Wilkie.
But even in these sketches his power of external description is not his
greatest merit. Born and bred among the people--full of their animal
vehemence--skilled in their sports--as credulous and headlong in
boyhood, and as fitful and varied in manhood, as the wildest--he had
felt with them, and must ever sympathise with them. Endowed with the
highest dramatic genius, he has represented their love and generosity,
their wrath and negligence, their crimes and virtues, as a hearty
peasant--not a note-taking critic.
In others of his works he has created ideal characters that give him a
higher rank as a poet (some of them not surpassed by even Shakespeare
for originality, grandeur, and distinctness); but here he is a genuine
Seanachie, and brings you to dance and wake, to wedding and
christening--makes you romp with the girls, and race with the
boys--tremble at the ghosts, and frolic with the fairies of the whole
parish.
Come what change there may over Ireland, in these _Tales and Sketches_
the peasantry of the past hundred years can be for ever lived with.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[44] _Tales and Sketches illustrating the Irish Peasantry._ By
William Carleton. James Duffy, Dublin, 1845. 1 vol., 8vo., pp. 393.
IRISH SCENERY.
We no more see why Irish people should not visit the Continent than why
Germans or Frenchmen ought not to visit Ireland; but there is a
difference between them. A German rarely comes here who has not
trampled the heath of Tyrol, studied the museums of Dresden and the
frescoes of Munich, and shouted defiance on the bank of the Rhine; and
what Frenchman who has not seen the vineyards of Provence and the
bocages of Brittany, and the snows of Jura and the Pyrenees, ever drove
on an Irish jingle? But our nobles and country gentlemen, our
merchants, lawyers, and doctors--and what's worse, their wives and
daughters--penetrate Britain and the Continent without ever trying
whether they could not defy in Ireland the _ennui_ before which they
run over seas and mountains.
The cause of this, as of most of our grievances, was misgovernment,
producing poverty, discomfort, ignorance, and misrepresentation. The
people were ignorant and in rags, their houses miserable, the roads and
hotels shocking; we had no banks, few coaches, and, to crown all, the
English declared the people to be rude and turbulent, which they were
not, as well as drunken and poor, which they assuredly were. An Irish
landlord who had ill-treated his own tenants felt a conscientious dread
of all frieze-coats; others adopted his prejudices, and a people who
never were rude or unjust to strangers were considered unsafe to travel
amongst.
Most of these causes are removed. The people are sober, and are rapidly
advancing to knowledge, their political exertions and dignity have
broken away much of the prejudices against them, and a man passing
through any part of Ireland expects to find woeful poverty and strong
discontent, but he does not fear the abduction of his wife, or attempts
to assassinate him on every lonely road. The coaches, cars, and roads,
too, have become excellent, and the hotels are sufficient for any
reasonable traveller. One very marked discouragement to travelling was
the want of information; the maps were little daubs, and the
guide-books were few and inaccurate. As to maps we are now splendidly
off. The Railway Commissioners' Map of Ireland, aided by the Ordnance
Index Map of any county where a visitor makes a long stay, are ample.
We have got a good general guide-book in Fraser, but it could not hold
a twentieth of the information necessary to a leisurely tourist; nor,
till the Ordnance Memoir is out, shall we have thorough hand-books to
our counties. Meantime, let us not burn the little guides to Antrim,
Wicklow, and Killarney, though they are desperately dull and
inexact--let us not altogether prohibit Mrs. Hall's gossip, though she
knows less about our Celtic people than the Malays; and let us be even
thankful for Mr. O'Flanagan's volume of the Munster Blackwater (though
it is printed in London) for his valuable stories, for his minute,
picturesque, and full topography, for his antiquarian and historic
details, though he blunders into making Alaster M'Donnell a Scotchman,
and for his hearty love of the scenery and people he has undertaken to
guide us through.
And now, reader, in this fine soft summer, when the heather is
blooming, and the sky laughing and crying like a hysterical bride, full
of love, where will ye go--through your own land or a stranger's? If
you stay at home you can choose your own scenery, and have something to
see in the summer, and talk of in the winter, that will make your
friends from the Alps and Apennines respectful to you.
Did you propose to study economies among the metayers of Tuscany or the
artisans of Belgium, postpone the trip till the summer of '45 or '46,
when you may have the passport of an Irish office to get you a welcome,
and seek for the state of the linen weavers in the soft hamlets of
Ulster--compare the cattle herds of Meath with the safe little holdings
of Down and the well-found farms of Tipperary, or investigate the
statistics of our fisheries along the rivers and lakes and shores of
our island.
Had a strong desire come upon you to toil over the glacier, whose
centre froze when Adam courted Eve, or walk amid the brigand passes of
Italy or Spain--do not fancy that absolute size makes mountain
grandeur, or romance--to a mind full of passion and love of strength
(and with such only do the mountain spirits walk) the passes of
Glenmalure and Barnesmore are deep as Chamouni, and Carn Tual and
Slieve Donard are as near the lightning as Mount Blanc.
To the picture-hunter we can offer little, though Vandyke's finest
portrait is in Kilkenny, and there is no county without some
collection; but for the lover of living or sculptured forms--for the
artist, the antiquarian, and the natural philosopher, we have more than
five summers could exhaust. Every one can see the strength of outline,
the vigour of colour, and the effective grouping in every fair, and
wake, and chapel, and hurling-ground, from Donegal to Waterford, though
it may take the pen of Griffin or the pencil of Burton to represent
them. An Irishman, if he took the pains, would surely find something
not inferior in interest to Cologne or the Alhambra in study of the
monumental effigies which mat the floors of Jerpoint and Adare, or the
cross in a hundred consecrated grounds from Kells to Clonmacnoise--of
the round towers which spring in every barony--of the architectural
perfection of Holycross and Clare-Galway, and the strange fellowship of
every order in Athassel, or of the military keeps and earthen pyramids
and cairns, which tell of the wars of recent and the piety of distant
centuries. The Entomology, Botany, and Geology of Ireland are not half
explored; the structure and distinctions of its races are but just
attracting the eyes of philosophers from Mr. Wilde's tract, and the
country is actually full of airs never noted, history never written,
superstitions and romances never rescued from tradition; and why should
Irishmen go blundering in foreign researches when so much remains to be
done here, and when to do it would be more easy, more honourable, and
more useful?
In many kinds of scenery we can challenge comparison. Europe has no
lake so dreamily beautiful as Killarney; no bays where the boldness of
Norway unites with the colouring of Naples, as in Bantry; and you might
coast the world without finding cliffs so vast and so terrible as
Achill and Slieve League. Glorious, too, as the Rhine is, we doubt if
its warmest admirers would exclude from rivalry the Nore and the
Blackwater, if they had seen the tall cliffs, and the twisted slopes,
and the ruined aisles, and glancing mountains, and feudal castles
through which you boat up from Youghal to Mallow, or glide down from
Thomastown to Waterford harbour. Hear what Inglis says of this
Avondhu:--
"We have had descents of the Danube, and descents of the Rhine, and
the Rhone, and of many other rivers; but we have not in print, as
far as I know, any descent of the Blackwater; and yet, with all
these descents of foreign rivers in my recollection, _I think the
descent of the Blackwater not surpassed by any of them._ A detail
of all that is seen in gliding down the Blackwater from Cappoquin
to Youghal would fill a long chapter. There is every combination
that can be produced by the elements that enter into the
picturesque and the beautiful--deep shades, bold rocks, verdant
slopes, with the triumphs of art superadded, and made visible in
magnificent houses and beautiful villas with their decorated lawns
and pleasure grounds."
And now, reader, if these kaleidoscope glimpses we have given you have
made you doubt between a summer in Ireland and one abroad, give your
country "the benefit of the doubt," as the lawyers say, and boat on our
lake or dive into our glens and ruins, wonder at the basalt coast of
Antrim, and soften your heart between the banks of the Blackwater.
IRISH MUSIC AND POETRY.
No enemy speaks slightingly of Irish Music, and no friend need fear to
boast of it. It is without a rival.
Its antique war-tunes, such as those of O'Byrne, O'Donnell, Alestrom,
and Brian Boru, stream and crash upon the ear like the warriors of a
hundred glens meeting; and you are borne with them to battle, and they
and you charge and struggle amid cries and battle-axes and stinging
arrows. Did ever a wail make man's marrow quiver, and fill his nostrils
with the breath of the grave, like the ululu of the north or the
wirrasthrue of Munster? Stately are their slow, and recklessly splendid
their quick marches, their "Boyne Water," and "Sios agus sios liom,"
their "Michael Hoy," and "Gallant Tipperary." The Irish jigs and
planxties are not only the best dancing tunes, but the finest quick
marches in the world. Some of them would cure a paralytic and make the
marble-legged prince in the _Arabian Nights_ charge like a Fag-an-Bealach
boy. The hunter joins in every leap and yelp of the "Fox Chase"; the
historian hears the moan of the penal days in "Drimindhu," and sees the
embarkation of the Wild Geese in "Limerick's Lamentation"; and ask the
lover if his breath do not come and go with "Savourneen Deelish" and
"Lough Sheelin."
Varied and noble as our music is, the English-speaking people in
Ireland have been gradually losing their knowledge of it, and a number
of foreign tunes--paltry scented things from Italy, lively trifles from
Scotland, and German opera cries--are heard in our concerts, and what
is worse, from our Temperance bands. Yet we never doubted that "The
Sight Entrancing," or "The Memory of the Dead," would satisfy even the
most spoiled of our fashionables better than anything Balfe or Rossini
ever wrote; and, as it is, "Tow-row-row" is better than _poteen_ to the
teetotalers, wearied with overtures and insulted by "British
Grenadiers" and "Rule Brittannia."
A reprint of _Moore's Melodies_ on lower keys, and at _much_ lower
prices, would probably restore the sentimental music of Ireland to its
natural supremacy. There are in Bunting but two good sets of
words--"The Bonny Cuckoo," and poor Campbell's "Exile's of Erin." These
and a few of Lover's and Mahony's songs can alone compete with Moore.
But, save one or two by Lysaght and Drennan, almost all the Irish
political songs are too desponding or weak to content a people marching
to independence as proudly as if they had never been slaves.
The popularity and immense circulation of the _Spirit of the Nation_
proved that it represented the hopes and passions of the Irish people.
This looks like vanity; but as a corporation so numerous as the
contributors to that volume cannot blush, we shall say our say. For
instance, who did not admire "The Memory of the Dead"? The very Stamp
officers were galvanised by it, and the Attorney-General was repeatedly
urged to sing it for the jury. He refused--he had no music to sing it
to. We pitied and forgave him; but we vowed to leave him no such excuse
next time. If these songs were half so good as people called them, they
deserved to flow from a million throats to as noble music as ever
O'Neill or O'Connor heard.
Some of them were written to, and some freely combined with, old and
suitable airs. These we resolved to have printed with the music,
certain that, thus, the music would be given back to a people who had
been ungratefully neglecting it, and the words carried into circles
where they were still unknown.
Others of these poems, indeed the best of them, had no antetypes in our
ancient music. New music was, therefore, to be sought for them. Not on
their account only was it to be sought. We hoped they would be the
means of calling out and making known a contemporary music fresh with
the spirit of the time, and rooted in the country.
Since Carolan's death there had been no addition to the store. Not that
we were without composers, but those we have do not compose Irish-like
music, nor for Ireland. Their rewards are from a foreign public--their
fame, we fear, will suffer from alienage. Balfe is very sweet, and
Rooke very emphatic, but not one passion or association in Ireland's
heart would answer to their songs.
Fortunately there was one among us (perchance his example may light us
to others) who can smite upon our harp like a master, and make it sigh
with Irish memories, and speak sternly with Ireland's resolve. To him,
to his patriotism, to his genius, and, we may selfishly add, to his
friendship, we owe our ability now to give to Ireland music fit for
"The Memory of the Dead" and the "Hymn of Freedom," and whatever else
was marked out by popularity for such care as his.
In former editions of the _Spirit_[45] we had thrown in carelessly
several inferior verses and some positive trash, and neither paper nor
printing was any great honour to the Dublin press. Every improvement in
the power of the most enterprising publisher in Ireland has been made,
and every fault, within our reach or his, cured--and whether as the
first publication of original airs, as a selection of ancient music, or
as a specimen of what the Dublin press can do, in printing, paper, or
cheapness, we urge the public to support this work of Mr. James
Duffy's--and, in a pecuniary way, it is his altogether.
We had hoped to have added a recommendation to the first number of this
work, besides whatever attraction may lie in its music, its ballads, or
its mechanical beauty.
An artist, whom we shall not describe or he would be known,[46] sketched
a cover and title for it. The idea, composition, and drawing of that
design were such as Flaxman might have been proud of. It is a monument
to bardic power, to patriotism, to our music and our history. There is
at least as much poetry in it as in the best verses in the work it
illustrates. If it do nothing else, it will show our Irish artists that
refinement and strength, passion and dignity, are as practicable in
Irish as in German painting; and the lesson was needed sorely. But if
it lead him who drew it to see that our history and hopes present fit
forms to embody the highest feelings of beauty, wisdom, truth, and
glory in, irrespective of party politics, then, indeed, we shall have
served our country when we induced our gifted friend to condescend to
sketching a title-page. We need not describe that design now, as it
will appear on the cover of the second number, and on the title-page of
the finished volume.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[45] A splendid edition of this work, greatly enlarged, and printed
in The Irish Exhibition Buildings, was issued by Messrs. Duffy and
Sons, September, 1882.
[46] The artist referred to was Sir Frederick Burton. [Ed.]
BALLAD POETRY OF IRELAND.
How slow we have all been in coming to understand the meaning of Irish
Nationality!
Some, dazzled by visions of pagan splendour, and the pretensions of
pedigree, and won by the passions and romance of the olden races,
continued to speak in the nineteenth century of an Irish nation as they
might have done in the tenth. They forgot the English Pale, the Ulster
Settlement, and the filtered colonisation of men and ideas. A Celtic
kingdom with the old names and the old language, without the old
quarrels, was their hope; and though they would not repeat O'Neill's
comment as he passed Barrett's castle on his march to Kinsale, and
heard it belonged to a Strongbownian, that "he hated the Norman churl
as if he came yesterday"; yet they quietly assumed that the Norman and
Saxon elements would disappear under the Gaelic genius like the tracks
of cavalry under a fresh crop.
The Nationality of Swift and Grattan was equally partial. They saw that
the government and laws of the settlers had extended to the
island--that Donegal and Kerry were in the Pale; they heard the English
tongue in Dublin, and London opinions in Dublin--they mistook Ireland
for a colony wronged, and great enough to be a nation.
A lower form of nationhood was before the minds of those who saw in it
nothing but a parliament in College Green. They had not erred in
judging, for they had not tried to estimate the moral elements and
tendencies of the country. They were as narrow bigots to the
omnipotency of an institution as any Cockney Radical. Could they, by
any accumulation of English stupidity and Irish laziness, have got
possession of an Irish government, they would soon have distressed
every one by their laws, whom they had not provoked by their
administration, or disgusted by their dulness.
Far healthier, with all its defects, was the idea of those who saw in
Scotland a perfect model--who longed for a literary and artistic
nationality--who prized the oratory of Grattan and Curran, the novels
of Griffin and Carleton, the pictures of Maclise and Burton, the
ancient music, as much as any, and far more than most, of the political
nationalists, but who regarded political independence as a dangerous
dream. Unknowingly they fostered it. Their writings, their patronage,
their talk was of Ireland; yet it hardly occurred to them that the
ideal would flow into the practical, or that they, with their dread of
agitation, were forwarding a revolution.
At last we are beginning to see what we are, and what is our destiny.
Our duty arises where our knowledge begins. The elements of Irish
nationality are not only combining--in fact, they are growing confluent
in our minds. Such nationality as merits a good man's help and wakens a
true man's ambition--such nationality as could stand against internal
faction and foreign intrigue--such nationality as would make the Irish
hearth happy and the Irish name illustrious, is becoming understood. It
must contain and represent the races of Ireland. It must not be Celtic,
it must not be Saxon--it must be Irish. The Brehon law and the maxims
of Westminster, the cloudy and lightning genius of the Gael, the placid
strength of the Sasanach, the marshalling insight of the Norman--a
literature which shall exhibit in combination the passions and idioms
of all, and which shall equally express our mind in its romantic, its
religious, its forensic, and its practical tendencies--finally, a
native government, which shall know and rule by the might and right of
all; yet yield to the arrogance of none--these are components of
_such_ a nationality.
But what have these things to do with the "Ballad Poetry of Ireland"?
Much every way. It is the result of the elements we have named--it is
compounded of all; and never was there a book fitter to advance that
perfect nationality to which Ireland begins to aspire. That a country
is without national poetry proves its hopeless dulness or its utter
provincialism. National poetry is the very flowering of the soul--the
greatest evidence of its health, the greatest excellence of its beauty.
Its melody is balsam to the senses. It is the playfellow of childhood
ripens into the companion of his manhood, consoles his age. It presents
the most dramatic events, the largest characters, the most impressive
scenes, and the deepest passions in the language most familiar to us.
It shows us magnified, and ennobles our hearts, our intellects, our
country, and our countrymen--binds us to the land by its condensed and
gem-like history, to the future by examples and by aspirations. It
solaces us in travel, fires us in action, prompts our invention, sheds
a grace beyond the power of luxury round our homes, is the recognised
envoy of our minds among all mankind and to all time.
In possessing the powers and elements of a glorious nationality, we
owned the sources of a national poetry. In the combination and joint
development of the latter we find a pledge and a help to that of the
former.
This book of Mr. Duffy's,[47] true as it is to the wants of the time, is
not fortuitous. He has prefaced his admirable collection by an
Introduction, which proves his full consciousness of the worth of his
task, and proves equally his ability to execute it. In a space too
short for the most impatient to run by he has accurately investigated
the sources of Irish Ballad Poetry, vividly defined the qualities of
each, and laboured with perfect success to show that all naturally
combine towards one great end, as the brooks to a river, which marches
on clear, deep, and single, though they be wild, and shallow, and
turbid, flowing from unlike regions, and meeting after countless
windings.
Mr. Duffy maps out three main forces which unequally contribute to an
Irish Ballad Poetry.
The _first_ consists of the Gaelic ballads. True to the vehemence and
tendencies of the Celtic people, and representing equally their
vagueness and extravagance during slavish times, they nevertheless
remain locked from the middle and upper classes generally, and from the
peasantry of more than half Ireland, in an unknown language. Many of
them have been translated by rhymers--few indeed by poets. The editor
of the volume before us has brought into one house nearly all the
poetical translations from the Irish, and thus finely justifies the
ballad literature of the Gael from its calumnious friend:--
"With a few exceptions, all the translations we are acquainted
with, in addition to having abundance of minor faults, are
eminently un-Irish. They seem to have been made by persons to whom
one of the languages was not familiar. Many of them were
confessedly versified from prose translations, and are mere English
poems, without a tinge of the colour or character of the country.
Others, translated by sound Irish scholars, are bald and literal;
the writers sometimes wanting a facility of versification,
sometimes a mastery over the English language. The Irish scholars
of the last century were too exclusively national to study the
foreign tongue with the care essential to master its metrical
resources; and the flexible and weighty language which they had not
learned to wield hung heavily on them,
'Like Saul's plate armour on the shepherd boy,
Encumbering, and _not_ arming them.'
If it were just to estimate our bardic poetry by the specimens we
have received in this manner, it could not be rated highly. But it
would manifestly be most unjust. Noble and touching, and often
subtle and profound thoughts, which no translation could entirely
spoil, shine through the poverty of the style, and vindicate the
character of the originals. Like the costly arms and ornaments
found in our bogs, they are substantial witnesses of a distinct
civilisation; and their credit is no more diminished by the rubbish
in which they chance to be found than the authenticity of the
ancient _torques_ and _skians_ by their embedment in the mud.
When the entire collection of our Irish Percy--James Hardiman--shall
have been given to a public (and soon may such a one come) that can
relish them in their native dress, they will be entitled to
undisputed precedence in our national minstrelsy."
About a dozen of the ballads in the volume are derived from the Irish.
It is only in this way that Clarence Mangan (a name to which Mr. Duffy
does just honour) contributes to the volume. There are four
translations by him, exhibiting eminently his perfect mastery of
versification--his flexibility of passion, from loneliest grief to the
maddest humour. One of these, "The Lament for O'Neil and O'Donnell," is
the strongest, though it will not be the most popular, ballad in the
work.
Callanan's and Ferguson's translations, if not so daringly versified,
are simpler and more Irish in idiom.
Most, indeed, of Callanan's successful ballads are translations, and
well entitle him to what he passionately prays for--a minstrel of free
Erin to come to his grave,
"And plant a wild wreath from the banks of the river
O'er the heart and the harp that are sleeping for ever."
But we are wrong in speaking of Mr. Ferguson's translations in
precisely the same way. His "Wicklow War Song" is condensed,
epigrammatic, and crashing, as anything we know of, except the "Pibroch
of Donnil Dhu."
The _second_ source is--the common people's ballads. Most of these
"make no pretence to being true to Ireland, but only being true to the
_purlieus_ of Cork and Dublin"; yet now and then one meets a fine burst
of passion, and oftener a racy idiom. The "Drimin Dhu," "The Blackbird,"
"Peggy Bawn," "Irish Molly," "Willy Reilly," and the "Fair of
Turloughmore," are the specimens given here. Of these "Willy Reilly"
(an old and worthy favourite in Ulster, it seems, but quite unknown
elsewhere) is the best; but it is too long to quote, and we must limit
ourselves to the noble opening verse of "Turloughmore"--
"'Come, tell me, dearest mother, what makes my father stay,
Or what can be the reason that he's so long away?'
Oh! 'hold your tongue, my darling son, your tears do grieve me
sore;
I fear he has been murdered in the fair of Turloughmore.'"
The _third_ and principal source consists of the Anglo-Irish ballads,
written during the last twenty or thirty years.
Of this highest class, he who contributes most and, to our mind, best
is Mr. Ferguson. We have already spoken of his translations--his
original ballads are better. There is nothing in this volume--nothing
in _Percy's Relics_, or the _Border Minstrelsy_, to surpass,
perhaps to equal, "Willy Gilliland." It is as natural in structure as
"Kinmont Willie," as vigorous as "Otterbourne," and as complete as
"Lochinvar." Leaving his Irish idiom, we get in the "Forester's
Complaint" as harmonious versification, and in the "Forging of the
Anchor" as vigorous thoughts, mounted on bounding words, as anywhere in
the English literature.
We must quote some stray verses from "Willy Gilliland":--
"Up in the mountain solitudes, and in a rebel ring,
He has worshipped God upon the hill, in spite of church and king;
And sealed his treason with his blood on Bothwell bridge he hath;
So he must fly his father's land, or he must die the death;
For comely Claverhouse has come along with grim Dalzell,
And his smoking roof tree testifies they've done their errand well.
* * * * * * * * * *
"His blithe work done, upon a bank the outlaw rested now,
And laid the basket from his back, the bonnet from his brow;
And there, his hand upon the Book, his knee upon the sod,
He filled the lonely valley with the gladsome word of God;
And for a persecuted kirk, and for her martyrs dear,
And against a godless church and king he spoke up loud and clear.
* * * * * * * * * *
"'My bonny mare! I've ridden you when Claver'se rode behind,
And from the thumbscrew and the boot you bore me like the wind;
And while I have the life you saved, on your sleek flank, I swear,
Episcopalian rowel shall never ruffle hair!
Though sword to wield they've left me none--yet Wallace wight I wis,
Good battle did, on Irvine side, wi' waur weapon than this.'--
"His fishing-rod with both his hands he gripped it as he spoke,
And, where the butt and top were spliced, in pieces twain he broke;
The limber top he cast away, with all its gear abroad,
But, grasping the tough hickory butt, with spike of iron shod,
He ground the sharp spear to a point; then pulled his bonnet down,
And, meditating black revenge, set forth for Carrick town."
The only ballad equally racy is "The Croppy Boy," by some anonymous but
most promising writer.
Griffin's "Gille Machree"--of another class--is perfect--"striking on
the heart," as Mr. Duffy finely says, "like the cry of a woman"; but
his "Orange and Green," and his "Bridal of Malahide," belong to the
same class, and suffer by comparison, with Mr. Ferguson's ballads.
Banim's greatest ballad, the "Soggarth Aroon," possesses even deeper
tenderness and more perfect Irish idiom than anything in the volume.
Among the Collection are Colonel Blacker's famous Orange ballad,
"Oliver's Advice" ("Put your trust in God, my boys, but keep your
powder dry"), and two versions of the "Boyne Water." The latter and
older one, given in the appendix, is by far the finest, and contains
two unrivalled stanzas:--
"Both foot and horse they marched on, intending them to batter, But
the brave Duke Schomberg he was shot as he crossed over the water.
When that King William he observed the brave Duke Schomberg
falling, He rein'd his horse, with a heavy heart, on the
Enniskilleners calling; 'What will you do for me, brave boys? see
yonder men retreating, Our enemies encouraged are--and English
drums are beating'; He says 'My boys, feel no dismay at the losing
of one commander, For God shall be our King this day, and I'll be
general under.'"
Nor less welcome is the comment:--
"Some of the Ulster ballads, of a restricted and provincial spirit,
having less in common with Ireland than with Scotland; two or three
Orange ballads, altogether ferocious or foreign in their tendencies
(preaching murder, or deifying an alien), will be no less valuable
to the patriot or the poet on this account. They echo faithfully
the sentiments of a strong, vehement, and indomitable body of
Irishmen, who may come to battle for their country better than they
ever battled for prejudices or their bigotries. At all events, to
know what they love and believe is a precious knowledge."
On the language of most of the ballads Mr. Duffy says:--
"Many of them, and generally the best, are just as essentially
Irish as if they were written in Gaelic. They could have grown
among no other people, perhaps under no other sky or scenery. To an
Englishman, to any Irishman educated out of the country, or to a
dreamer asleep to impressions of scenery and character, they would
be achievements as impossible as the Swedish _Skalds_ or the
_Arabian Nights_. They are as Irish as Ossian or Carolan, and
unconsciously reproduce the spirit of those poets better than any
translator can hope to do. They revive and perpetuate the vehement
native songs that gladdened the halls of our princes in their
triumphs, and wailed over their ruined hopes or murdered bodies. In
everything but language, and almost in language, they are
identical. That strange tenacity of the Celtic race, which makes a
description of their habits and propensities when Caesar was still a
Proconsul in Gaul true in essentials of the Irish people to this
day, has enabled them to infuse the ancient and hereditary spirit
of the country into all that is genuine of our modern poetry. And
even the language grew almost Irish. The soul of the country,
stammering its passionate grief and hatred in a strange tongue,
loved still to utter them in its old familiar idioms and cadences.
Uttering them, perhaps, with more piercing earnestness, because of
the impediment; and winning out of the very difficulty a grace and
a triumph."
How often have we wished for such a companion as this volume! Worse
than meeting unclean beds, or drenching mists, or Cockney opinions, was
it to have to take the mountains with a book of Scottish ballads. They
were glorious, to be sure, but they were not ours--they had not the
brown of the climate on their cheek, they spoke of places afar, and
ways which are not our country's ways, and hopes which were not
Ireland's, and their tongue was not that we first made sport and love
with. Yet how mountaineer without ballads any more than without a
shillelagh? No; we took the Scots ballads, and felt our souls rubbing
away with envy and alienage amid their attractions; but now, Brighid,
be praised! we can have all Irish thoughts on Irish hills, true to them
as the music, or the wind, or the sky.
Happy boys! who may grow up with such ballads in your memories. Happy
men! who will find your hearts not only doubtful but joyous in serving
and sacrificing for the country you thus learned in childhood to love.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[47] _Ballad Poetry of Ireland_,--Library of Ireland, No. II.
A BALLAD HISTORY OF IRELAND.
Of course the first _object_ of the work we project[48] will be to make
Irish History familiar to the minds, pleasant to the ears, dear to the
passions, and powerful over the taste and conduct of the Irish people
in times to come. More _events_ could be put into a prose history.
Exact dates, subtle plots, minute connections and motives rarely appear
in Ballads, and for these ends the worst prose history is superior to
the best ballad series; but these are not the highest ends of history.
To hallow or accurse the scenes of glory and honour, or of shame and
sorrow; to give to the imagination the arms, and homes, and senates,
and battles of other days; to rouse, and soften, and strengthen, and
enlarge us with the passions of great periods; to lead us into love of
self-denial, of justice, of beauty, of valour, of generous life and
proud death; and to set up in our souls the memory of great men, who
shall then be as models and judges of our actions--these are the
highest duties of history, and these are best taught by a Ballad
History.
A Ballad History is welcome to childhood, from its rhymes, its high
colouring, and its aptness to memory. As we grow into boyhood, the
violent passions, the vague hopes, the romantic sorrow of patriot
ballads are in tune with our fitful and luxuriant feelings. In manhood
we prize the condensed narrative, the grave firmness, the critical art,
and the political sway of ballads. And in old age they are doubly dear;
the companions and reminders of our life, the toys and teachers of our
children and grand-children. Every generation finds its account in
them. They pass from mouth to mouth like salutations; and even the
minds which lose their words are under their influence, as one can
recall the starry heavens who cannot revive the form of a single
constellation.
In olden times all ballads were made to music, and the minstrel sang
them to his harp or screamed them in recitative. Thus they reached
farther, were welcomer guests in feast and camp, and were better
preserved. We shall have more to say on this in speaking of our
proposed song collection. Printing so multiplies copies of ballads, and
intercourse is so general, that there is less need of this adaptation
to music now. Moreover, it may be disputed whether the dramatic effect
in the more solemn ballads is not injured by lyrical forms. In such
streaming exhortations and laments as we find in the Greek choruses and
in the adjurations and caoines of the Irish, the breaks and parallel
repetitions of a song might lower the passion. Were we free to do so,
we could point out instances in the _Spirit of the Nation_ in which the
rejection of song-forms seems to have been essential to the awfulness
of the occasion.
In pure narratives and in the gayer and more splendid, though less
stern ballads, the song-forms and adaptation to music are clear gains.
In the Scotch ballads this is usual, in the English rare. We look in
vain through Southey's admirable ballads--"Mary the Maid of the Inn,"
"Jaspar," "Inchcape Rock," "Bishop Hatto," "King Henry V. and the
Hermit of Dreux"--for either burden, chorus, or adaptation to music. In
the "Battle of Blenheim" there is, however, an occasional burden line;
and in the smashing "March to Moscow" there is a great chorusing about--
"Morbleu! Parbleu!
What a pleasant excursion to Moscow."
Coleridge has some skilful repetitions and exquisite versification in
his "Ancient Mariner," "Genevieve," "Alice du Clos," but nowhere a
systematic burden. Campbell has no burdens in his finest lyric ballads,
though the subjects were fitted for them. The burden of the "Exile of
Erin" belongs very doubtfully to him.
Macaulay's best ballad, the "Battle of Ivry," is greatly aided by the
even burden line; but he has not repeated the experiment, though he,
too, makes much use of repeating lines in his Roman Lays and other
ballads.
While, then, we counsel burdens in Historical Ballads, we would
recognise excepted cases where they may be injurious, and treat them as
in _no case_ essential to perfect ballad success. In songs, we would
almost always insist either on a chorus, verse, or a burden of some
sort. A burden need not be at the end of the verse; but may, with quite
equal success, be at the beginning or in the body of it, as may be seen
in the Scotch Ballads, and in some of those in the _Spirit of the
Nation_.
The old Scotch and English ballads, and Lockhart's translations from
the Spanish, are mostly composed in one metre, though written down in
either of two ways. Macaulay's Roman Lays and "Ivry" are in this metre.
Take an example from the last:--
"Press where ye see my white plume shine, amid the ranks of war,
And be your Oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre."
In the old ballads this would be printed in four lines, of eight
syllables and six alternately, and rhyming only alternately, thus:--
"Press where ye see my white plume shine,
Amid the ranks of war,
And be your Oriflamme to-day
The helmet of Navarre."
So Macaulay himself prints this metre in some of his Roman Lays.
But the student should rather avoid than seek this metre. The uniform
old beat of eight and six is apt to fall monotonously on the ear, and
some of the most startling effects are lost in it. In the _Spirit of
the Nation_ the student will find many other ballad metres. Campbell's
metres, though new and glorious things, are terrible traps to
imitation, and should be warily used. The German ballads, and, still
more, Mr. Mangan's translations of them, contain great variety of new
and safe, though difficult, metres. Next in frequency to the
fourteen-syllable line is that in eleven syllables, such as "Mary
Ambree" and "Lochinvar"; and for a rolling brave ballad 'tis a fine
metre. The metre of fifteen syllables with double rhymes, (or accents)
in the middle, and that of thirteen, with double rhymes at the end, is
tolerably frequent, and the metre used by Father Prout, in his noble
translation of "Duke D'Alencon," is admirable, and easier than it
seems. By the way, what a grand burden runs through that ballad:--
"Fools! to believe the sword could give to the children of the Rhine,
Our Gallic fields--the land that yields the Olive and the Vine!"
The syllables are as in the common metre, but it has thrice the rhymes.
We have seen great materials wasted in a struggle with a crotchety
metre; therefore, though we counsel the invention of metres, we would
add that unless a metre come out racily and appropriately in the first
couple of verses, it should be abandoned, and some of those easily
marked metres taken up.
A historical ballad will commonly be narrative in its form, but not
necessarily so. A hymn of exultation--a call to a council, an army, or
a people--a prophecy--a lament--or a dramatic scene (as in Lochiel),
may give as much of event, costume, character, and even scenery as a
mere narration. The varieties of form are infinite, and it argues lack
of force in a writer to keep always to mere narration, though when
exact events are to be told that may be the best mode.
One of the essential qualities of a good historical ballad is truth. To
pervert history--to violate nature, in order to make a fine clatter,
has been the aim in too many of the ballads sent us. He who goes to
write a historical ballad should master the main facts of the time, and
state them truly. It may be well for those perhaps either not to study
or to half-forget minute circumstances until after his ballad is
drafted out, lest he write a chronicle, not a ballad; but he will do
well, ere he suffers it to leave his study, to reconsider the facts of
the time or man, or act of which he writes, and see if he cannot add
force to his statements, an antique grace to his phrases, and colour to
his language.
Truth and appropriateness in ballads require great knowledge and taste.
To write an Irish historical ballad, one should know the events which
he would describe, and know them not merely from an isolated study of
his subject, but from old familiarity, which shall have associated them
with his tastes and passions, and connected them with other parts of
history. How miserable a thing is to put forward a piece of vehement
declamation and vague description, which might be uttered of any event,
or by the man of any time, as a historical ballad. We have had battle
ballads sent us that would be as characteristic of Marathon or Waterloo
as of Clontarf--laments that might have been uttered by a German or a
Hindu--and romances equally true to love all the world over.
Such historical study extends not merely to the events. A ballad writer
should try to find the voice, colour, stature, passions, and peculiar
faculties of his hero--the arms, furniture, and dress of the congress,
or the champions, or the troops he tells of--the rites wherewith the
youth were married--the dead interred, and God worshipped; and the
architecture--previous history and pursuits (and, therefore, probable
ideas and phrases) of the men he describes.
Many of these things he will get in books. He should shun compilations,
and take up original journals, letters, state papers, statutes, and
cotemporary fictions and narratives as much as possible. Let him not
much mind Leland or Curry (after he has run over them), but work like
fury at the Archaeological Society's books--at Harris's Hibernica, at
Lodge's Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, at Strafford's Pacata, Spencer's
View, Giraldus's Narrative, Fynes Moryson's Itinerary, the Ormond
Papers, the State Papers of Henry the Eighth, Stafford's and Cromwell's
and Rinuccini's Letters, and the correspondence and journals, from
Donald O'Neill's letter to the Pope down to Wolfe Tone's glorious
memoirs.
In the songs, and even their names, many a fine hint can be got; and he
is not likely to be a perfect Balladist of Ireland who has not felt to
tears and laughter the deathless passions of Irish music.
We have condemned compilations; but the ballad student may well labour
at Ware's Antiquities. He will find in the History of British Costume,
published by the Useful Knowledge Society, and in the illustrated work
now in progress called Old England, but beyond all other books, in the
historical works of Thierry, most valuable materials. Nothing, not even
the Border Minstrelsy, Percy's Relics, the Jacobite Ballads, or the
Archaeological Tracts, can be of such service as a repeated study of the
Norman Conquest, the Ten Years' Study, and the Merovingian Times of
Augustine Thierry.
We know he has rashly stated some events on insufficient authority, and
drawn conclusions beyond the warrant of his promises; but there is more
deep dramatic skill, more picturesque and coloured scenery, more
distinct and characteristic grouping, and more lively faith to the look
and spirit of the men and times and feelings of which he writes, in
Thierry, than in any other historian that ever lived. He has almost an
intuition in favour of liberty, and his vindication of the "men of '98"
out of the slanderous pages of Musgrave is a miracle of historical
skill and depth of judgment.
In the Irish Academy in Dublin there is a collection (now arranged and
rapidly increasing) of ancient arms and utensils. Private collections
exist in many provincial towns, especially in Ulster. Indeed, we know
an Orange painter in a northern village who has a finer collection of
Irish antiquities than all of the Munster cities put together. Accurate
observation of, and discussion on, such collections will be of vast
service to a writer of historical Ballads.
Topography is also essential to a ballad, or to any Historian. This is
not only necessary to save a writer from such gross blunder as we met
the other day in Wharton's Ballad, called "The Grave of King Arthur,"
where he talks of "the steeps of rough Kildare," but to give accuracy
and force to both general references and local description.
Ireland must be known to her Ballad Historians, not by flat, but by
shaded maps, and topographical and scenic descriptions; not by maps of
to-day only, but by maps (such as Ortelius and the maps in the State
Papers) of Ireland in time past; and, finally, it must be known by the
_eye_. A man who has not raced on our hills, panted on our mountains,
waded our rivers in drought and flood, pierced our passes, skirted our
coast, noted our old towns, and learned the shape and colour of ground
and tree and sky, is not master of all a Balladist's art. Scott knew
Scotland thus, and, moreover, he seems never to have laid a scene in a
place that he had not studied closely and alone.
What we have heretofore advised relates to the Structure, Truth, and
Colouring of ballads; but there is something more needed to raise a
ballad above the beautiful--it must have Force. Strong passions, daring
invention, vivid sympathy for great acts--these are the result of one's
whole life and nature. Into the temper and training of "A Poet," we do
not presume to speak. Few have spoken wisely of them. Emerson, in his
recent essay, has spoken like an angel on the mission of "The Poet."
Ambition for pure power (not applause); passionate sympathy with the
good, and strong, and beautiful; insight into nature, and such loving
mastery over its secrets as a husband hath over a wife's mind, are the
surest tests of one "called" by destiny to tell to men the past,
present, and future, in words so perfect that generations shall feel
and remember.
We merely meant to give some "Hints on the Properties of Historical
Ballads"--they will be idle save to him who has the mind of a Poet.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[48] A "Ballad History of Ireland."
THE SONGS OF IRELAND.[49]
There are great gaps in Irish song to be filled up. This is true even
of the songs of the Irish-speaking people. Many of the short snatches
preserved among them from olden times are sweet and noble; but the bulk
of the songs are very defective. Most of those hitherto in use were
composed during the last century, and therefore their structure is
irregular, their grief slavish and despairing, their joy reckless and
bombastic, their religion bitter and sectarian, their politics Jacobite
and concealed by extravagant and tiresome allegory. Ignorance,
disorder, and every kind of oppression weakened and darkened the lyric
genius of Ireland. Even these, such as they are, diminish daily in the
country, and a lower class comes in. We have before us a number of the
ballads now printed at Cork, in Irish, and English and Irish mixed.
They are little above the street ballads in the English tongue. If
Hardiman's and Daly's collections be fair specimens (as we believe they
are) of the Irish Jacobite songs, we should not care to have more than
a few of them given to the people; but, perhaps, there may be twenty,
which, if printed clearly in slips, would sell as ballads in the Irish
districts.
Assuming that the morsels given in O'Reilly's catalogue of Irish
writers do not exaggerate the merits of the older bards, their works
would supply numberless pastoral, love, joy, wailing, and war songs. A
popular editor of these could condense them into three or four verses
each--cut them so as exactly to suit the airs, preserve the local and
broad historical allusions, but remove the clumsy ornaments and
exaggerations. This is what Ramsay, Burns, and Cunningham did with the
Lowland Scotch songs, and thus made them what they are--the best in
Europe. This need not prevent complete editions of these songs in
learned books; but such books are for libraries, not cabins.
There is one want, however, in _all_ the Irish songs--it is of strictly
national lyrics. They are national in form and colour, but clannish in
opinion. In fact, from Brian's death, there was no thought of an Irish
nation, save when some great event, like Aodh O'Neill's march to
Munster, or Owen Roe's victory at Beinnburb, flashed and vanished.
These songs celebrate M'Carthy or O'More, O'Connor or O'Neill--_his_
prowess, _his_ following, _his_ hospitality; but they cry down his
Irish or "more than Irish" neighbour as fiercely as they do the foreign
oppressor. True it is, you will find amid the flight of minstrels one
bolder than the rest, who mourns for the time when the Milesians
swayed, and tells that "a soul has come into Eire," and summons all the
Milesian tribes to battle for Ireland. But even in the seventeenth
century, when the footing of the Norman and Saxon in Ireland was as
sure as that of the once-invading Milesians themselves, we find the cry
purely to the older Irish races, and the bounds of the nation made, not
by the island, but by genealogy.
We may remark, in passing, that on no hypothesis did these same
Milesians form more than the aristocracy of ancient Ireland--a class--a
race of conquerors.
Dr. MacHale has made a noble attempt to supply this deficiency by his
translation of Moore into Irish; but we are told that the language of
his translation is too literary, and that the people do not relish
these songs. A stronger reason for their failure (if in so short a time
their fate can be judged) is, that the originals want the idiom and
colour of the country, and are too subtle in thought. This remark does
not apply to Moore's love songs, not to some, at least, of his
political lyrics, and we cannot doubt that, if translated into
vernacular Irish, and printed as ballads, they would succeed. For the
present nothing better can be done than to paraphrase the _Songs of the
Nation_ into racy and musical Irish; though a time may come when
someone born amid the Irish tongue, reared amid Gaelic associations,
instructed in the state of modern Ireland, and filled with passion and
prophecy, shall sing the union and destiny of all the races settled on
Irish ground, till the vales of Munster and the cliffs of Connaught
ring with the words of Nationality.
But whatever may be done by translation and editing for the songs of
the Irish-speaking race, those of our English-speaking countrymen are
to be written. Moore, Griffin, Banim, and Callanan have written plenty
of songs. Those of Moore have reached the drawing rooms; but what do
the People know even of his? Buy a ballad in any street in Ireland,
from the metropolis to the village, and you will find in it, perhaps,
some humour, some tenderness, and some sweetness of sound; but you will
certainly find bombast, or slander, or coarseness, united in all cases
with false rhythm, false rhyme, conceited imagery, black paper, and
blotted printing. A high class of ballads would do immense good--the
present race demean and mislead the people as much as they stimulate
them; for the sale of these ballads is immense, and printers in Dublin,
Drogheda, Cork, and Belfast live by their sale exclusively. Were an
enterprising man to issue the choice songs of Drennan, Griffin, Moore,
on good paper, and well printed, he would make a fortune of "halfpenny
ballads."
The Anglo-Irish songs, though most of the last century, are generally
indecent or factious. The cadets of the Munster Protestants, living
like garrison soldiers, drinking, racing, and dancing, wrote the one
class. The clergy of the Ulster Presbyterians wrote the other. "The
Rakes of Mallow" and "The Protestant Boys" are choice specimens of the
two classes--vigorous, and musical, and Irish, no doubt, but surely not
fit for this generation.
Great opportunities came with the Volunteers and United Irishmen, but
the men were wanting. We have but one good Volunteer song. It was
written by Lysaght, after that illustrious militia was dissolved.
Drennan's "Wake of William Orr" is not a song; but he gave the United
Men the only good song they had--"When Erin First Rose." In "Paddy's
Resource," the text-book of the men who were "up," there is but one
tolerable song--"God Save the Rights of Man;" nor, looking beyond
these, can we think of anything of a high class but "The Sean Bhean
Bhochd," "The Wearing of the Green," Lysaght's "Island," and Reynolds'
"Erin-go-bragh," if it be his.
Two of Lady Morgan's songs, "Savournah Dilis" and "Kate Kearney," have
certainly gone through all classes; and perhaps we might add a little
to these exceptions; but it is a sad fact that most of the few good
songs we have described are scarce, and are never printed in a ballad
shape.
There is plenty, then, for the present race of Irish lyrists to do.
They have a great heritage in the national music. It has every
excellence and every variety. It is not needful for a writer of our
songs to be a musician, though he will certainly gain much accuracy and
save much labour to others and himself by being so. Moore is a musician
of great attainments, and Burns used to compose his songs when going
over, and over, and over the tune with or without words. But constantly
listening to the playing of Irish airs will enable any man with a
tolerable ear, and otherwise qualified, to write words to them.
Here, we would give two cautions. First--that the airs in Moore's
Melodies are very corrupt, and should never be used for the study of
Irish music. This is even more true of Lover's tunes. There is no need
of using them, for Bunting's and Holden's collections are cheaper, and
contain pure settings. Secondly--that as there are hundreds of the
finest airs to which no English words have been written, and as the
effect of a song is greatly increased by having one set of words always
joined with one tune, our versifiers should carefully avoid the airs to
which Moore, Griffin, or any other Irishman has written even moderately
good words.
In endeavouring to learn an air for the purpose of writing words to it,
the first care should, of course, be to get at its character--as gay,
hopeful, loving, sentimental, lively, hesitating, woeful, despairing,
resolute, fiery, or variable. Many Irish airs take a different
character when played fast or slow, lightly or strongly; but there is
some one mode of playing which is best of all, and the character
expressed by it must determine the character of the words. For nothing
can be worse than a gay song to calm music, or massive words to a
delicate air; in all cases _the tune must suggest, and will suggest, to
the lyrist the sentiment of the words_.
The tune will, of course, fix the number of lines in a verse.
Frequently the number and order of the lines can be varied. Three
rhymes and a fall, or couplets, or alternate rhymes, may answer the
same set of notes; or rhymes, if too numerous, may be got rid of by
making one long, instead of two short lines. Where the same notes come
with emphasis at the ends of musical phrases, the words should rhyme,
in order to secure the full effect. The doubling two lines into one is
most convenient where the first has accents on both the last syllables,
for you thus escape the necessity of double rhyming. In the softer airs
the effect of this is rather agreeable than otherwise.
Talking of double rhymes, they are peculiarly fitted for strong
political and didactic songs, for the abstract and political words in
English are chiefly of Latin origin, of considerable length and
gravity, and have double accents. The more familiar English words
(which best suit most songs) contain few doubly-accented terminations,
and are, therefore, little fitted for double rhyming.
Expletive syllables in the beginning of lines where the tune is sharp
and gay are often an improvement, but they should never follow a double
rhyme.
In strong and firm tunes, having a syllable for every note is a
perfection, though one hard to be attained without harshness, from the
crowd of consonants in English. With soft tunes, on the other hand, it
is commonly better to have in most lines two or more light notes to one
syllable, so that the words may be dwelt on and softly sounded; but
where and how must be determined by the taste of the writer.
The sound of the air will always show the current of thought, its
pauses and changes; and a nice attention and bold sympathy with these
properties of a tune is necessary to lyrical success.
A great advantage, too, of writing for existing airs is the variety of
metres thus gained, and the naturally greater variety of thought and
expression thus suggested.
We have spoken, in reference to Ballads, of the use of Choruses and
Burdens, and said that we thought there were some Ballads which were
injured by them; but all songs, save (perhaps) those of desperate
sorrow, gain by burden lines and choruses. They are almost universal in
the Native Irish and Lowland Scotch. Beranger has employed them in most
of his songs, and Moore in many of his. A chorus should, of course,
contain the very spirit of the song--bounding, if it be gay; fierce, if
it be bold; doting, if it loves. Merely repeating one verse between, or
at the head or tail of another, is not putting a chorus; it must be
_the_ verse which beats the best on your ear, and has the most echo in
your heart. So, too, of burdens; they are not made merely by bringing
in the same words in like places. They must be marked words forcibly
brought in.
Irish choruses have often a glorious effect in English songs, nor need
anyone familiar with the peasantry, or with Edward O'Reilly's Irish
Writers, published as the first part of the _Transactions of the
Iberno-Celtic Society_ be at any loss for them.
These are some of the minutiae of song-writing, which we note for the
consideration of our young writers, leaving them to add to or modify
these, according to their observation.
Of course, different men and different moods will produce various
classes of songs. We shall have places for all, Songs for the Street
and Field require simple words, bold, strong imagery, plain, deep
passions (love, patriotism, conciliation, glory, indignation, resolve),
daring humour, broad narrative, highest morals. In songs for the
wealthier classes, greater subtlety, remoter allusion, less obvious
idiom and construction, will be tolerable, though in all cases we think
simplicity and heartiness needful to the perfect success of a song.
If men able to write will fling themselves gallantly and faithfully on
the work we have here plotted for them, we shall soon have Fair and
Theatre, Concert and Drawing-room, Road and Shop, echoing with Songs
bringing home Love, Courage, and Patriotism to every heart.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[49] This essay, together with another of less value, was reprinted
from _The Nation_ by M. J. Barry as an introduction to his "Songs
of Ireland" 1845. [Ed.]
INFLUENCES OF EDUCATION.
"Educate, that you may be free." We are most anxious to get the quiet,
strong-minded People who are scattered through the country to see the
force of this great truth; and we therefore ask them to listen soberly
to us for a few minutes, and when they have done to think and talk
again and again over what we say.
If Ireland had all the elements of a nation, she might, and surely
would, at once assume the forms of one, and proclaim her independence.
Wherein does she now differ from Prussia? She has a strong and compact
territory, girt by the sea; Prussia's lands are open and flat, and
flung loosely through Europe, without mountain or river, breed or
tongue, to bound them. Ireland has a military population equal to the
recruitment of, and a produce able to pay, a first-rate army. Her
harbours, her soil, and her fisheries are not surpassed in Europe.
Wherein, we ask again, does Ireland now differ from Prussia? Why can
Prussia wave her flag among the proudest in Europe, while Ireland is a
farm?
It is not in the name of a kingdom, nor in the formalities of
independence. We could assume them to-morrow--we could assume them with
better warrants from history and nature than Prussia holds; but the
result of such assumption would perchance be a miserable defeat.
The difference is in Knowledge. Were the offices of Prussia abolished
to-morrow--her colleges and schools levelled--her troops disarmed and
disbanded, she would within six months regain her whole civil and
military institutions. Ireland has been struggling for years, and may
have to struggle many more, to acquire liberty to form institutions.
Whence is the difference? Knowledge!
The Prussians could, at a week's notice, have their central offices at
full work in any village in the kingdom, so exactly known are their
statistics, and so general is official skill. Minds make
administration--all the desks, and ledgers, and powers of Downing
Street or the Castle would be handed in vain to the ignorants of ----
any untaught district in Ireland. The Prussians could open their
collegiate classes and their professional and elementary schools as
fast as the order therefor, from any authority recognised by the
People, reached town after town--we can hardly in ten years get a few
schools open for our people, craving for knowledge as they are. The
Prussians could re-arm their glorious militia in a month, and
re-organise it in three days; for the mechanical arts are very
generally known, military science is familiar to most of the wealthier
men, discipline and a soldier's skill are universal. If we had been
offered arms to defend Ireland by Lord Heytesbury, as the Volunteers
were by Lord Buckinghamshire, we would have had to seek for officers
and drill-sergeants--though probably we could more rapidly advance in
arms than anything else, from the military taste and aptness for war of
the Irish People.
Would it not be better for us to be like the Prussians than as we
are--better to have religious squabbles unknown, education universal,
the People fed, and clad, and housed, and independent as becomes men;
the army patriotic and strong; the public offices ably administered;
the nation honoured and powerful? Are not these to be desired and
sought by Protestant and Catholic? Are not these things _to be done_,
if we are good and brave men? And is it not _plain_, from what we have
said, that the reason for our not being all that Prussia is, and
something more, is ignorance--want of civil and military and general
knowledge amongst all classes?
This ignorance has not been our fault, but our misfortune. It was the
interest of our ruler to keep us ignorant, that we might be weak; and
she did so--first by laws, prohibiting education; then by refusing any
provision for it; next, by perverting it into an engine of bigotry; and
now, by giving it in a stunted, partial, anti-national way. Practice is
the great teacher, and the possession of independence is the natural
and best way for a People to learn all that pertains to freedom and
happiness. Our greatest voluntary efforts, aided by the amplest
provincial institutions, would teach us less in a century than we would
learn in five years of Liberty.
In insisting on education we do not argue against the value of
_immediate independence_. _That would be our best teacher._ An Irish
Government and a national ambition would be to our minds as soft rains
and rich sun to a growing crop. But we insist on education for the
People, whether we get it from the Government or give it to themselves
as a round-about, and yet the only, means of getting strength enough to
gain freedom.
Do our readers understand this? Is what we have said _clear_ to _you_,
reader!--whether you are a shopkeeper or a lawyer, a farmer or a
doctor? If not, read it over again, for it is your own fault if it be
not clear. If you now know our meaning, you must feel that it is your
duty to your family and to yourself, to your country and to God, to
_act_ upon it, to go and remove some of that ignorance which makes you
and your neighbours weak, and therefore makes Ireland a poor province.
All of us have much to learn, but some of us have much to teach.
To those who, from superior energy and ability, can teach the People,
we now address ourselves.
We have often before and shall often again repeat, that the majority of
our population can neither read nor write, and therefore that from the
small minority must come those fitted to be of any civil or military
use beyond the lowest rank. The People may be and are honest, brave,
and intelligent; but a man could as well dig with his hands as govern,
or teach, or lead without the elements of Knowledge.
This however, is a defect which time and the National Schools must
cure; and the duty of the class to which we speak is to urge the
establishment of such Schools, the attendance of the children at them,
and occasionally to observe and report, either directly or through the
Press, whether the admirable rules of the Board are attended to. In
most cases, too, the expenditure of a pound-note and a little time and
advice would give the children of a school that instruction in national
history and in statistics so shamefully omitted by the Board. Reader!
will you do this?
Then of the three hundred Repeal Reading-rooms we know that some, and
fear that many, are ill-managed, have few or no books, and are mere
gossiping-rooms. Such a room is useless; such a room is a disgrace to
its members and their educated neighbours. The expense having been gone
to of getting a room, it only remains for the members to establish
fixed rules, and they will be supplied with the Association Reports
(political reading enough for them), and it will be the plain duty of
the Repeal Wardens to bring to such a room the newspapers supplied by
the Association. If such a body continue and give proofs of being in
earnest, the Repeal Association will aid it by gifts of books, maps,
etc., and thus a library, the centre of knowledge and nursery of useful
and strong minds, will be made in that district. So miserably off is
the country for books, that we have it before us on some authority that
there are _ten counties in Ireland without a single book-seller in
them_. We blush for the fact; it is a disgrace to us; but we must have
no lying or flinching. There is the hard fact; let us face it like men
who are able for a difficulty--not as children putting their heads
under the clothes when there is danger. Reader! cannot you do something
to remedy this great, this disabling misery of Ireland? Will not you
_now_ try to get up a Repeal Reading-room, and when one is established
get for it good rules, books from the Association, and make it a centre
of thought and power?
These are but some of the ways in which such service can be done by the
more for the less educated. They have other duties often pointed out by
us. They can sustain and advance the different societies for promoting
agriculture, manufactures, art, and literature in Dublin and the
country. They can set on foot and guide the establishment of Temperance
Bands, and Mechanics' Institutes, and Mutual Instruction Societies.
They can give advice and facilities for improvement to young men of
promise; and they can make their circles studious, refined, and
ambitious, instead of being, like too many in Ireland, ignorant,
coarse, and lazy. The cheapness of books is now such that even Irish
poverty is no excuse for Irish ignorance--that ignorance which
prostrates us before England. We must help ourselves, and therefore we
must educate ourselves.
FOREIGN TRAVEL.
We lately strove to induce our wealthier countrymen to explore Ireland
before they left her shores in search of the beautiful and curious. We
bid the economist search our towns and farms, our decayed manufactures,
and improving tillage. Waving our shillelagh, we shouted the cragsman
to Glenmalure and Carn Tual, and Achill and Slieve League. Manuscript
in hand, we pointed the antiquary to the hundred abbeys of North
Munster, the castles of the Pale, the palaces and sepulchres of
Dunalin, Aileach, Rath Croghan, and Loughcrew, and we whispered to our
countrywomen that the sun rose grandly on Adragool, that the moon was
soft on Lough Erne ("The Rural Venice"), and that the Nore and
Blackwater ran by castled crags like their sweet voices over old songs.
But there are some who had not waited for our call, but had dutifully
grown up amid the sights and sounds of Ireland, and knew the yellow
fields of Tipperary, and the crash of Moher's wave, and the basalt
barriers of Antrim, and the moan or frown of Wexford over the graves of
'98, and there are others not yet sufficiently educated to prize home
excellence. To such, then, and to all our brethren and sisters going
abroad, we have to say a friendly word.
We shall presume them to have visited London, Woolwich, the factories
of Lancashire and Warwick, and to have seen the Cumberland lakes, and
therefore to have seen all worth seeing in England, and that they are
bound for somewhere else. For a pedestrian not rich there is Wales--the
soft vales of the far North and South Clwyd, and the Wye and Llanrwst,
and the central mountain groups of Snowdon, and still finer of Cader
Idris. But if he go there we pray him not to return without having
heard and, so far as he could, noted down a few airs from the harp and
cruit, collected specimens of the plants and minerals of Wales for the
museum (existing or to be) of his native town, studied the statistics
of their great iron works or their little home-weaving; nor, if he has
had the sense and spirit to take a Welsh and an Irish vocabulary,
without some observations on the disputed analogy of the two languages,
and how far it exists in general terms, as it certainly does in names
of places. By the way, we warn him that he will know little of the
peasantry, and come home in the dark about Rebecca, unless he can speak
Welsh. The Welsh have been truer to their language than we were to
ours; their clergy ministered in it; their people refused their tongues
to the Saxon as if 'twere poison; and even their nobles, though tempted
by England, welcomed the bard who lamented the defeat of Rhuddlan, and
gloried in the frequent triumphs of Glendower.
But let us rather classify pursuits than countries.
We want the Irish who go abroad to bring something back besides the
weary tale of the Louvre and Munich, and the cliffs of the Rhine, and
the soft airs of Italy. We have heard of a patriot adventurer who
carried a handful of his native soil through the world. We want our
friends to carry a purpose for Ireland in their hearts, to study other
lands wisely, and to bring back all knowledge for the sustenance and
decoration of their dear home.
How pleasantly and profitably for the traveller this can be done. There
is no taste but may be interested, no capacity but can be matched, no
country but can be made tributary to our own. The historian, the
linguist, the farmer, the economist, the musician, the statesman, and
the man of science can equally augment their pleasure and make it
minister to Ireland.
Is a man curious upon our language? He can (not unread in Neilson, nor
unaccompanied by O'Reilly's Dictionary) trace how far the Celtic words
mixed in the classical French, or in the patois of Bretagne or Gascony,
coincide with the Irish; he can search in the mountains of North Spain,
whether in proper names or country words there be any analogy to the
Gaelic of the opposite coast of Ireland.
The proper names are the most permanent, and if there be any truth in
Sir William Betham's theories, the names of many a hill and stream in
Tuscany, North Africa, and Syria ought to be traceable to an Irish
root. Nor need this language-search be limited to the south. Beginning
at the Isle of Man, up by Cumberland (the kingdom of Strath Clyde),
through Scotland, Denmark, Norway, to Ireland, the constant intercourse
in trade and war with Ireland, and in many instances the early
occupation by a Celtic race, must have left indelible marks in the
local names, if not the traditions, of the country. To the tourist in
France we particularly recommend a close study of the _History of the
Gauls_, by Amadeus Thierry.
The student of our ecclesiastical history, whether he hold with Dr.
Smiles that the Irish Church was independent, or with Dr. Miley, that
it paid allegiance to Rome, may delight in following the tracks of the
Irish saints, from Iona of the Culdees to Luxieu and Boia (founded by
Columbanus), and St. Gall, founded by an Irishman of that name. Rumold
can be heard of in Mechlin, Albhuin in Saxony, Kilian in Bavaria,
Fursey in Peronne, and in far Tarentum the traveller will find more
than one trace of the reformer of that city--the Irishman, St.
Cathaldus. We cannot suppose that any man will stray from Stackallen,
or Maynooth at least, without keeping this purpose in mind, nor would
it misbecome a divine from that Trinity College of which Ussher was a
first Fellow.
Our military history could also receive much illustration from Irish
travellers going with some previous knowledge and studying the
traditions and ground, and using the libraries in the neighbourhood of
those places where Irishmen fought. Not to go back to the Irish who (if
we believe O'Halloran) stormed the Roman Capital as the allies of
Brennus of Gaul, nor insisting upon too minute a search for that Alpine
valley where, says MacGeoghegan, they still have a tradition of Dathy's
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