Part 12 (1/2)
The not unnatural result of these last-named enactments was that many were driven to feigned conversions in order to keep their families from starvation. It is said that when old Lady Th.o.m.ond was reproached for having bartered her soul by professing the Protestant faith, her quick retort was, ”Is it not better that one old woman should burn, than that all of the Th.o.m.onds should be beggars?”
More details are unnecessary after saying that by a decision of Lord Chancellor Bowes and Chief-Justice Robinson it was declared that ”the law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman {227} Catholic,” while the English Bishop at Meath declared from his pulpit, ”We are not bound to keep faith with papists.” And it must be remembered that the people placed under this monstrous system of wrong and degradation were not a handful, whom the welfare of a community required should be dealt with severely, they were a large majority of the population, a nation dwelling in their own country, where, by a Parliament supposed to be their own, they were governed by a minority of aliens.
In this time of ”Protestant ascendancy,” as it is called, there were, of course, only Protestants in the Parliament. They had all the authority, they alone were competent to vote; they were the privileged and upper cla.s.s; an Irish papist, whatever his rank, being the social inferior of his Protestant neighbor. But let it not be supposed that the Irish Protestants were on that account happy! They had been planted in that land as a breakwater against the native Irish flood, but for all that, England had no idea of permitting them to build up a dangerous prosperity in Ireland. The theory governing English statesmans.h.i.+p was that that {228} country must be kept helpless; and to that end it must be kept poor. During the reign of Charles II. the importing of Irish cattle into England had been forbidden. The effects of this prohibition, so ruinous at first, were at last offset by the discovery that sheep might be made a greater source of profit at home, than when s.h.i.+pped to England. There was an increasing demand in Europe for Irish wool, and skilled manufacturers of woollen goods from abroad had come and started factories, thus giving employment to thousands of people.
When it was realized in England that a profitable Irish industry had actually been established, there was a panic. The traders demanded legislative protection from Irish compet.i.tion, which came in this form.
In 1699 an Act was pa.s.sed prohibiting the export of Irish woollen goods, not alone to England, but to all other countries. The factories were closed. The manufacturers left the country, never to return, and a whole population was thrown out of employment. A tide of emigration then commenced which has never ceased; such as could, fleeing from the inevitable famine which in a land always {229} so perilously near starvation must surely come.
There was no market now for the wool which the factories would have consumed. At home it brought 5d. a pound, but in France a half crown!
The long, deeply indented coast-line was well adapted for smuggling.
French vessels were hovering about, waiting an opportunity to get it; the people were hungry, and might be hungrier, for there was a famine in the land! Is it strange that they were converted into law-breakers, and that wool was packed in caves all along the coast; and that a vast contraband trade carried on by stealth, took the place of a legitimate one which was made impossible?
So it became apparent that any efforts to establish profitable enterprises in Ireland would be put down with a strong hand. The colonists who had been placed there by England felt bitterly at finding themselves thus involved in the pre-determined ruin of the country with which they had identified their own fortunes. Their love of the parent-country waned, some even turning to and adopting the persecuted creed. The voice of {230} the native people, utterly stifled, was never heard in Parliament, and struggles which occurred there were between Protestants and Protestants; between those who did, and those who did not, uphold the policy of the Government. Such was the condition which remained practically unchanged until the middle of the eighteenth century; a small discontented upper cla.s.s, chiefly aliens; below them the peasantry, the ma.s.s of the people, whose benumbed faculties and empty minds had two pa.s.sions to stir their murky depths--love for their religion, and hatred of England.
The first voice raised in support of the const.i.tutional rights of Ireland was that of William Molyneux, an Irish gentleman and scholar, a philosopher, and the intimate friend of Locke. In the latter part of the seventeenth century he issued a pamphlet which in the gentlest terms called attention to the fact that the laws and liberties of England which had been granted to Ireland five hundred years before had been invaded, in that the rights of their Parliament, a body which should be sacred and inviolable everywhere, had been abolished.
Nothing could have been milder than this {231} presentation of a well-known fact; but it raised a furious storm. The const.i.tutional rights of Ireland! Was the man mad? The book was denounced in Parliament as libellous and seditious, and was destroyed by the common hangman. Then Dean Swift, half-Irishman and more than half-Englishman, an ardent High-Churchman and a vehement anti-papist, published a satirical pamphlet called ”A Modest Proposal,” in which he suggests that the children of the Irish peasants should be reared for food, and the choicest ones reserved for the landlords, who having already devoured the substance of the fathers, had the best right to feast upon their children. This was made the more pungent because it came from a man who so far from being an Irish patriot, was an English Tory. He cared little for Ireland or its people, but he hated tyranny and injustice; and was stirred to a fierce wrath at what he himself witnessed while Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Then it was that with tremendous scorn he hurled those shafts of biting wit and satire, which struck deeper than the cogent reasoning of the gentle and philosophic Molyneux.
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So the spell of silence was broken, and there began to form a small patriotic party in Parliament, which in 1760 was led by Henry Flood, from Kilkenny. A day was dawning after the long night; and when in 1775 Henry Grattan's more powerful personality was joined with Flood's, then that brief day had reached its highest noon. Next to that of Edmund Burke, Grattan's is the greatest name on the roll of native-born Irishmen. Happy was that country in having such an advocate and guide at the critical period when the American colonies were throwing off the yoke of English tyranny. The wrongs suffered by the English colonies in America were trifling compared with those endured by that other English colony in Ireland. If ever there was a time to press upon England the necessity for loosening their shackles it was now, when their battle was being fought across the sea. Every argument in support of the independence of America applied with equal force to the legislative independence of Ireland. It was Grattan who at this momentous time guided the course of events. A Protestant, yet possessing the entire confidence of the Catholics; {233} an uncompromising patriot, yet commanding the respect and admiration of the English Government; inflexibly opposed to Catholic exclusion and the ascendancy of a Protestant minority, and as inflexibly opposed to any act of violence, he was determined to obtain redress--but to obtain it only by means of the strictest const.i.tutional methods. It was upon the _const.i.tutionality_ of their claims that he threw all the energy of the movement growing out of the American war. His personal sympathies were with the struggling colonists; yet he voted for men and money to sustain the English cause. Equal rights bestowed upon Catholics, who were in large majority, would transfer to them the power; yet he, a Protestant, pa.s.sionately advocated a removal of the disabilities of four-fifths of the people. It was in this spirit of wise moderation and even-handed justice that Grattan took the tangled web of the Irish cause out of the hands of the more impetuous Flood; his eloquence and his moving appeals keeping two objects steadily in view--the independence of the Irish Parliament, and the removal of the fetters from Irish trade.
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Times had changed since Molyneux's gentle remonstrance, when Grattan's famous Declaration of Rights was being supported by eighteen counties, and still more changed when at last, in 1782, an Irish House of Commons marched in a body to present to the Lord Lieutenant their address demanding freedom of commerce and manufacture.
An unlooked-for train of events had given new weight to this demand.
England had realized the necessity of protecting Ireland from a possible invasion growing out of the American war. So it was determined that a body of militia should be levied, in which only Protestants should be enrolled. The attempt to raise the men or the money in Ireland was a failure, and while defenceless, the country was thrown into a panic by the descent of Paul Jones, the American naval hero, upon Belfast and other points on the coast. The citizens of Belfast enrolled themselves for their own defence. Other towns followed, and the contagion spread with such rapidity that in a short time there was in existence a volunteer force of 60,000 men.
Dismayed at the swiftness of the movement, England hesitated; but how could she {235} deny her colony the right of self-defence? They were given the arms which had been intended for the Protestant militia. And so, when the House of Commons marched in a body to the Lord Lieutenant, and presented their address to the Crown, it had 60,000 armed men behind it!
The Viceroy wrote to England that unless the trade restrictions were removed, he would not answer for the consequences. Lord North had enough to do with one rebellion on his hands; and, besides, George III.
might have need of some of those 60,000 soldiers before he got through with America. So the Prime Minister yielded. The first victory was gained, and the other quickly followed. American independence was acknowledged; England was in no mood to defy another colony with rebellion in its heart. The Poynings Act once more, and now for all time, was repealed, and the Irish Parliament was a free and independent body. Grateful for this partial emanc.i.p.ation, it voted 100,000 to Grattan.
But this legislative triumph did not feed the people. It was only the seed out of which future prosperity was to grow. A vague expectation of instant relief was {236} bitterly disappointed when it was found instead that they were sinking deeper every day in the hopeless abyss of poverty and degradation. There had come into existence an organization called the ”White Boys,” with no political or religious purpose, simply a fraternity of wretchedness; beings made desperate by want, standing ready to commit any violence which offered relief. At the same time an irritation born of misery brought the Protestants and Catholics in the North into fierce collision; and the germ of the future Orange societies appeared.
These small storm-centres were all soon to be drawn into a larger one.
In 1791 the ”Society of United Irishmen” was formed at Belfast. It was merely a patriotic attempt to sink minor differences in an organization in which all could join. With the rising of the general tide of misery it changed in character, and fell into the control of a band of restless spirits led by Wolfe Tone, who maintained that since const.i.tutional reforms had failed, force must be their resort. He sent agents to Paris, and the new French republic consented to a.s.sist in an attempt to establish a republic in Ireland.
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When the year 1798 closed, there had been another unsuccessful rebellion. Ferocity had been met by ferocity, and Wolfe Tone and Edward Fitzgerald (a Geraldine) had perished in the ruin of the structure they had wildly built. Flood and Grattan had stood aloof from this miserable undertaking. It was now eighteen years since the const.i.tutional triumph which had proved so barren. England was in stern mood. Pitt had long believed that the effacement of the Irish Parliament and a legislative union of the two countries was the only solution. The Irish Protestants were shown the benefits of the protection this would afford them, while the bait offered to the Catholics was emanc.i.p.ation, the removal of disabilities which it was intimated would quickly follow. But no one was won to the cause, Grattan, in the most impa.s.sioned way protesting against it, and the measure was defeated. Then followed the darkest page in the chapter.
It is well known that large amounts of money were paid to the owners of eighty-five doubtful boroughs--boroughs which would be effaced by the union--that peerages and {238} baronetcies were generously distributed, and that shortly after, the measure was again brought up and carried!
So by the Act of Union, 1800, the Irish Parliament had ceased to exist, and the two countries were politically merged. It is certain that the union was hateful to the Irish people, and that it was tainted by the suspicion of dishonorable methods, which one hundred years have failed to disprove. It may have been the best thing possible, under the circ.u.mstances, for Ireland; but to the Irish patriots it seemed a crowning act of oppression accomplished by treachery.
You cannot combine oil and water by pouring them into one gla.s.s. The union was not a union. The natures of the two races were utterly hostile. Centuries of cruel wrong and outrage had accentuated every undesirable trait in the Irish people. A nature simple, confiding, spontaneous, and impulsive, had become suspicious, explosive, and dangerous. Pugnacity had grown into ferocity. A joyous, light-hearted, and engaging people had become a sullen and vindictive one; famine, misery, and ignorance had put their stamp of degradation {239} upon the peasantry, the majority of the people. Intermarriage, so savagely interdicted for centuries, was the only thing which could ever have fused two such contrasting races. Such a fusion might have benefited both, in giving a wholesome solidity to the Irish, while the stolid English would have been enriched by the fascinating traits and the native genius of their brilliant neighbors. But the opportunity had been lost; and enlightened English statesmans.h.i.+p is still seeking for a plan which will convert an unnatural and artificial union into a real one.
The delusive promises of the relief which was to come with union were not fulfilled. Catholics remained under the same monstrous ban as before, and things were practically unchanged. Young Robert Emmett's abortive attempt to seize Dublin Castle in 1803 intensified conditions, but did not alter them. The pathetic story of his capture while seeking a parting interview with Sarah Curran, to whom he was engaged, and his death by hanging the following morning, is one of the smaller tragedies in the greater one; and the death of Sarah {240} from a broken heart, soon after, is the subject of Moore's well-known lines.
The most colossal figure in the story of Ireland had now appeared.