Handbook of Home Rule: Being Articles on the Irish Question — The ''Unionist'' Case for Home Rule by R. Barry O'Brien, pt 2

Mr. Lecky's account of these "penal laws" is upon the whole, I think, the best that has been written.

"The last great Protestant ruler of England was William III.

, who is identified in Ireland with the humiliation of the Boyne, with the destruction of Irish trade, and with the broken Treaty of Limerick.

The ceaseless exertions of the extreme Protestant party have made him more odious in the eyes of the people than he deserves to be; for he was personally far more tolerant than the great majority of his contemporaries, and the penal code was chiefly enacted under his successors.

It required, indeed, four or five reigns to elaborate a system so ingeniously contrived to demoralize, to degrade, and to impoverish the people of Ireland.

By this code the Roman Catholics were absolutely excluded from the Parliament, from the magistracy, from the corporations, from the bench, and from the bar.

They could not vote at Parliamentary elections or at vestries; they could not act as constables, or sheriffs, or jurymen, or serve in the army or navy, or become solicitors, or even hold the positions of gamekeeper or watchman.

Schools were established to bring up their children as Protestants; and if they refused to avail themselves of these, they were deliberately assigned to hopeless ignorance, being excluded from the university, and debarred, under crushing penalties, from acting as schoolmasters, as ushers, or as private tutors, or from sending their children abroad to obtain the instruction they were refused at home.

They could not marry Protestants, and if such a marriage were celebrated it was annulled by law, and the priest who officiated might be hung.

They could not buy land, or inherit or receive it as a gift from Protestants, or hold life-annuities, or leases for more than thirty-one years, or any lease on such terms that the profits of the land exceeded one-third of the rent.

If any Catholic leaseholder by his industry so increased his profits that they exceeded this proportion, and did not immediately make a corresponding increase in his payments, any Protestant who gave the information could enter into possession of his farm.

If any Catholic had secretly purchased either his old forfeited estate, or any other land, any Protestant who informed against him might become the proprietor.

The few Catholic landowners who remained were deprived of the right which all other classes possessed of bequeathing their lands as they pleased.

If their sons continued Catholics, it was divided equally between them.

If, however, the eldest son consented to apostatize, the estate was settled upon him, the father from that hour became only a life-tenant, and lost all power of selling, mortgaging, or otherwise disposing of it.

If the wife of a Catholic abandoned the religion of her husband, she was immediately free from his control, and the Chancellor was empowered to assign to her a certain proportion of her husband's property.

If any child, however young, professed itself a Protestant, it was at once taken from the father's care, and the Chancellor could oblige the father to declare upon oath the value of his property, both real and personal, and could assign for the present maintenance and future portion of the converted child such proportion of that property as the court might decree.

No Catholic could be guardian either to his own children or to those of another person; and therefore a Catholic who died while his children were minors had the bitterness of reflecting upon his death-bed that they must pass into the care of Protestants.

An annuity of from twenty to forty pounds was provided as a bribe for every priest who would become a Protestant.

To convert a Protestant to Catholicism was a capital offence.

In every walk of life the Catholic was pursued by persecution or restriction.

Except in the linen trade, he could not have more than two apprentices.

He could not possess a horse of the value of more than five pounds, and any Protestant, on giving him five pounds, could take his horse.

He was compelled to pay double to the militia.

He was forbidden, except under particular conditions, to live in Galway or Limerick.

In case of war with a Catholic power, the Catholics were obliged to reimburse the damage done by the enemy's privateers.

The Legislature, it is true, did not venture absolutely to suppress their worship, but it existed only by a doubtful connivance--stigmatized as if it were a species of licensed prostitution, and subject to conditions which, if they had been enforced, would have rendered its continuance impossible.

An old law which prohibited it, and another which enjoined attendance at the Anglican worship, remained unrepealed, and might at any time be revived; and the former was, in fact, enforced during the Scotch rebellion of 1715. The parish priests, who alone were allowed to officiate, were compelled to be registered, and were forbidden to keep curates or to officiate anywhere except in their own parishes.

The chapels might not have bells or steeples.

No crosses might be publicly erected.

Pilgrimages to the holy wells were forbidden.

Not only all monks and friars, but also all Catholic archbishops, bishops, deacons, and other dignitaries, were ordered by a certain day to leave the country; and if after that date they were found in Ireland they were liable to be first imprisoned and then banished; and if after that banishment they returned to discharge their duty in their dioceses, they were liable to the punishment of death.

To facilitate the discovery of offences against the code, two justices of the peace might at any time compel any Catholic of eighteen years of age to declare when and where he last heard Mass, what persons were present, and who officiated; and if he refused to give evidence they might imprison him for twelve months, or until he paid a fine of twenty pounds.

Any one who harboured ecclesiastics from beyond the seas was subject to fines which for the third offence amounted to confiscation of all his goods.

A graduated scale of rewards was offered for the discovery of Catholic bishops, priests, and schoolmasters; and a resolution of the House of Commons pronounced 'the prosecuting and informing against Papists' 'an honourable service to the Government.'

"Such were the principal articles of this famous code--a code which Burke truly described as 'well digested and well disposed in all its parts; a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.'

"[31] The effects of these laws Mr. Lecky has described thus: "The economical and moral effects of the penal laws were, however, profoundly disastrous.

The productive energies of the nation were fatally diminished.

Almost all Catholics of energy and talent who refused to abandon their faith emigrated to foreign lands.

The relation of classes was permanently vitiated; for almost all the proprietary of the country belonged to one religion, while the great majority of their tenants were of another.

The Catholics, excluded from almost every possibility of eminence, deprived of their natural leaders, and consigned by the Legislature to utter ignorance, soon sank into the condition of broken and dispirited helots.

A total absence of industrial virtues, a cowering and abject deference to authority, a recklessness about the future, a love of secret illegal combinations, became general among them.

Above all, they learned to regard law as merely the expression of force, and its moral weight was utterly destroyed.

For the greater part of a century, the main object of the Legislature was to extirpate a religion by the encouragement of the worst, and the punishment of some of the best qualities of our nature.

Its rewards were reserved for the informer, for the hypocrite, for the undutiful son, or for the faithless wife.

Its penalties were directed against religious constancy and the honest discharge of ecclesiastical duty.

"It would, indeed, be scarcely possible to conceive a more infamous system of legal tyranny than that which in the middle of the eighteenth century crushed every class and almost every interest in Ireland."

[32] But laws were not only passed against the native race and the national religion.

Measures were taken to destroy the industries of the country, and to involve natives and colonists, Protestants and Catholics, in common ruin.

Mr. Lecky shall tell the story.

"The commercial and industrial condition of the country was, if possible, more deplorable than its political condition, and was the result of a series of English measures which for deliberate and selfish tyranny could hardly be surpassed.

Until the reign of Charles II.

the Irish shared the commercial privileges of the English; but as the island had not been really conquered till the reign of Elizabeth, and as its people were till then scarcely removed from barbarism, the progress was necessarily slow.

In the early Stuart reigns, however, comparative repose and good government were followed by a sudden rush of prosperity.

The land was chiefly pasture, for which it was admirably adapted; the export of live cattle to England was carried on upon a large scale, and it became a chief source of Irish wealth.

The English landowners, however, took the alarm.

They complained that Irish rivalry in the cattle market was reducing English rents; and accordingly, by an Act which was first passed in 1663, and was made perpetual in 1666, the importation of cattle into England was forbidden.

"The effect of a measure of this kind, levelled at the principal article of the commerce of the nation, was necessarily most disastrous.

The profound modification which it introduced into the course of Irish industry was sufficiently shown by the estimate of Sir W. Petty, who declares that before the statute three-fourths of the trade of Ireland was with England, but not one-fourth of it since that time.

In the very year when this Bill was passed another measure was taken not less fatal to the interest of the country.

In the first Navigation Act, Ireland was placed on the same terms as England; but in the Act as amended in 1663 she was omitted, and was thus deprived of the whole Colonial trade.

With the exception of a very few specified articles no European merchandise could be imported into the British Colonies except directly from England, in ships built in England, and manned chiefly by English sailors.

No articles, with a few exceptions, could be brought from the Colonies to Europe without being first unladen in England.

In 1670 this exclusion of Ireland was confirmed, and in 1696 it was rendered more stringent, for it was enacted that no goods of any sort could be imported directly from the Colonies to Ireland.

It will be remembered that at this time the chief British Colonies were those of America, and that Ireland, by her geographical position, was naturally of all countries most fitted for the American trade.

"As far, then, as the Colonial trade was concerned, Ireland at this time gained nothing whatever by her connection with England.

To other countries, however, her ports were still open, and in time of peace a foreign commerce was unrestricted.

When forbidden to export their cattle to England, the Irish turned their land chiefly into sheep-walks, and proceeded energetically to manufacture the wool.

Some faint traces of this manufacture may be detected from an early period, and Lord Strafford, when governing Ireland, had mentioned it with a characteristic comment.

Speaking of the Irish he says, 'There was little or no manufactures amongst them, but some small beginnings towards a cloth trade, which I had and so should still discourage all I could, unless otherwise directed by His Majesty and their Lordships.

It might be feared that they would beat us out of the trade itself by underselling us, which they were able to do.'

With the exception, however, of an abortive effort by this governor, the Irish wool manufacture was in no degree impeded, and was indeed mentioned with special favour in many Acts of Parliament; and it was in a great degree on the faith of this long-continued legislative sanction that it was so greatly expanded.

The poverty of Ireland, the low state of civilization of a large proportion of its inhabitants, the effects of the civil wars which had so recently convulsed it, and the exclusion of its products from the English Colonies, were doubtless great obstacles to manufacturing enterprise; but, on the other hand, Irish wool was very good, living was cheaper, taxes were lighter than in England, a spirit of real industrial energy began to pervade the country, and a considerable number of English manufacturers came over to colonize it.

There appeared for a time every probability that the Irish would become an industrial nation, and, had manufactures arisen, their whole social, political, and economical condition would have been changed.

But English jealousy again interposed.

By an Act of crushing and unprecedented severity, which was introduced in 1698 and carried in 1699, the export of the Irish woollen manufactures, not only to England, but also to all other countries, was absolutely forbidden.

"The effects of this measure were terrible almost beyond conception.

The main industry of the country was at a blow completely and irretrievably annihilated.

A vast population was thrown into a condition of utter destitution.

Several thousands of manufacturers left the country, and carried their skill and enterprise to Germany, France, and Spain.

The western and southern districts of Ireland are said to have been nearly depopulated.

Emigration to America began on a large scale, and the blow was so severe that long after, a kind of chronic famine prevailed."

[33] Mr. Lecky relates with pride how the penal code was relaxed, and the commercial restrictions were removed, while the Irish Parliament, essentially a Protestant and landlord body, still existed, and shows how the cause of Catholic Emancipation was retarded by the Union.

"The Relief Bill of '93 naturally suggests a consideration of the question so often agitated in Ireland, whether the Union was really a benefit to the Roman Catholic cause.

It has been argued that Catholic Emancipation was an impossibility as long as the Irish Parliament lasted; for in a country where the great majority were Roman Catholics, it would be folly to expect the members of the dominant creed to surrender a monopoly on which their ascendency depended.

The arguments against this view are, I believe, overwhelming.

The injustice of the disqualification was far more striking before the Union than after it.

In the one case, the Roman Catholics were excluded from the Parliament of a nation of which they were the great majority; in the other, they were excluded from the Parliament of an empire in which they were a small minority.

Grattan, Plunket, Curran, Burrowes, and Ponsonby were the great supporters of Catholic Emancipation, and the great opponents of the Union.

Clare and Duigenan were the two great opponents of emancipation, and the great supporters of the Union.

At a time when scarcely any public opinion existed in Ireland, when the Roman Catholics were nearly quiescent, and when the leaning of Government was generally liberal, the Irish Protestants admitted their fellow-subjects to the magistracy, to the jury-box, and to the franchise.

By this last measure they gave them an amount of political power which necessarily implied complete emancipation.

Even if no leader of genius had arisen in the Roman Catholic ranks, and if no spirit of enthusiasm had animated their councils, the influence possessed by a body who formed three fourths of the population, who were rapidly rising in wealth, and who could send their representatives to Parliament, would have been sufficient to ensure their triumph.

If the Irish Legislature had continued, it would have been found impossible to resist the demand for reform; and every reform, by diminishing the overgrown power of a few Protestant landholders, would have increased that of the Roman Catholics.

The concession accorded in 1793 was, in fact, far greater and more important than that accorded in 1829, and it placed the Roman Catholics, in a great measure, above the mercy of Protestants.

But this was not all.

The sympathies of the Protestants were being rapidly enlisted in their behalf.

The generation to which Charlemont and Flood belonged had passed away, and all the leading intellects of the country, almost all the Opposition, and several conspicuous members of the Government, were warmly in favour of emancipation.

The rancour which at present exists between the members of the two creeds appears then to have been almost unknown, and the real obstacle to emancipation was not the feelings of the people, but the policy of the Government.

The Bar may be considered on most subjects a very fair exponent of the educated opinion of the nation; and Wolf Tone observed, in 1792, that it was almost unanimous in favour of the Catholics; and it is not without importance, as showing the tendencies of the rising generation, that a large body of the students of Dublin University in 1795 presented an address to Grattan, thanking him for his labours in the cause.

The Roman Catholics were rapidly gaining the public opinion of Ireland, when the Union arrayed against them another public opinion which was deeply prejudiced against their faith, and almost entirely removed from their influence.

Compare the twenty years before the Union with the twenty years that followed it, and the change is sufficiently manifest.

There can scarcely be a question that if Lord Fitzwilliam had remained in office the Irish Parliament would readily have given emancipation.

In the United Parliament for many years it was obstinately rejected, and if O'Connell had never arisen it would probably never have been granted unqualified by the veto.

In 1828 when the question was brought forward in Parliament, sixty-one out of ninety-three Irish members, forty-five out of sixty-one Irish county members, voted in its favour.

Year after year Grattan and Plunket brought forward the case of their fellow-countrymen with an eloquence and a perseverance worthy of their great cause; but year after year they were defeated.

It was not till the great tribune had arisen, till he had moulded his co-religionists into one compact and threatening mass, and had brought the country to the verge of revolution, that the tardy boon was conceded.

Eloquence and argument proved alike unavailing when unaccompanied by menace, and Catholic Emancipation was confessedly granted because to withhold it would be to produce a rebellion."

[34] Many people will think that this is a sufficiently weighty condemnation of the Union, but what follows is a still graver reflection on that untoward measure.

"In truth the harmonious co-operation of Ireland with England depends much less upon the framework of the institutions of the former country than upon the dispositions of its people and upon the classes who guide its political life.

With a warm and loyal attachment to the connection pervading the nation, the largest amount of self-government might be safely conceded, and the most defective political arrangement might prove innocuous.

This is the true cement of nations, and no change, however plausible in theory, can be really advantageous which contributes to diminish it.

Theorists may argue that it would be better for Ireland to become in every respect a province of England; they may contend that a union of Legislatures, accompanied by a corresponding fusion of characters and identification of hopes, interests, and desires, would strengthen the empire; but as a matter of fact this was not what was effected in 1800. The measure of Pitt centralized, but it did not unite, or rather, by uniting the Legislatures it divided the nations.

In a country where the sentiment of nationality was as intense as in any part of Europe, it destroyed the national Legislature contrary to the manifest wish of the people, and by means so corrupt, treacherous, and shameful that they are never likely to be forgotten.

In a country where, owing to the religious difference, it was peculiarly necessary that a vigorous lay public opinion should be fostered to dilute or restrain the sectarian spirit, it suppressed the centre and organ of political life, directed the energies of the community into the channels of sectarianism, drove its humours inwards, and thus began a perversion of public opinion which has almost destroyed the elements of political progress.

In a country where the people have always been singularly destitute of self-reliance, and at the same time eminently faithful to their leaders, it withdrew the guidance of affairs from the hands of the resident gentry, and, by breaking their power, prepared the ascendency of the demagogue or the rebel.

In two plain ways it was dangerous to the connection: it incalculably increased the aggregate disloyalty of the people, and it destroyed the political supremacy of the class that is most attached to the connection.

The Irish Parliament, with all its faults, was an eminently loyal body.

The Irish people through the eighteenth century, in spite of great provocations, were on the whole a loyal people till the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and even then a few very moderate measures of reform might have reclaimed them.

Burke, in his _Letters on a Regicide Peace_, when reviewing the elements of strength on which England could confide in her struggle with revolutionary France, placed in the very first rank the co-operation of Ireland.

At the present day, it is to be feared that most impartial men would regard Ireland, in the event of a great European war, rather as a source of weakness than of strength.

More than seventy years have passed since the boasted measure of Pitt, and it is unfortunately incontestable that the lower orders in Ireland are as hostile to the system of government under which they live as the Hungarian people have ever been to Austrian, or the Roman to Papal rule; that Irish disloyalty is multiplying enemies of England wherever the English tongue is spoken;

and that the national sentiment runs so strongly that multitudes of Irish Catholics look back with deep affection to the Irish Parliament, although no Catholic could sit within its walls, and although it was only during the last seven years of its independent existence that Catholics could vote for its members.

Among the opponents of the Union were many of the most loyal, as well as nearly all the ablest men in Ireland; and Lord Charlemont, who died shortly before the measure was consummated, summed up the feelings of many in the emphatic sentence with which he protested against it.

'It would more than any other measure,' he said, 'contribute to the separation of two countries the perpetual connection of which is one of the warmest wishes of my heart.'

"In fact, the Union of 1800 was not only a great crime, but was also, like most crimes, a great blunder.

The manner in which it was carried was not only morally scandalous; it also entirely vitiated it as a work of statesmanship.

No great political measure can be rationally judged upon its abstract merits, and without considering the character and the wishes of the people for whom it is intended.

It is now idle to discuss what might have been the effect of a Union if it had been carried before 1782, when the Parliament was still unemancipated; if it had been the result of a spontaneous movement of public opinion; if it had been accompanied by the emancipation of the Catholics.

Carried as it was prematurely, in defiance of the national sentiment of the people and of the protests of the unbribed talent of the country, it has deranged the whole course of political development, driven a large proportion of the people into sullen disloyalty, and almost destroyed healthy public opinion.

In comparing the abundance of political talent in Ireland during the last century with the striking absence of it at present, something no doubt may be attributed to the absence of protection for literary property in Ireland in the former period, which may have directed an unusual portion of the national talent to politics, and something to the Colonial and Indian careers which have of late years been thrown open to competition; but when all due allowances have been made for these, the contrast is sufficiently impressive.

Few impartial men can doubt that the tone of political life and the standard of political talent have been lowered, while sectarian animosity has been greatly increased, and the extent to which Fenian principles have permeated the people is a melancholy comment upon the prophesies that the Union would put an end to disloyalty in Ireland."

[35] Mr. Lecky's views as to what ought to have been done in 1800 deserve to be set forth.

"While, however, the Irish policy of Pitt appears to be both morally and politically deserving of almost unmitigated condemnation, I cannot agree with those who believe that the arrangement of 1782 could have been permanent.

The Irish Parliament would doubtless have been in time reformed, but it would have soon found its situation intolerable.

Imperial policy must necessarily have been settled by the Imperial Parliament, in which Ireland had no voice; and, unlike Canada or Australia, Ireland is profoundly affected by every change of Imperial policy.

Connection with England was of overwhelming importance to the lesser country, while the tie uniting them would have been found degrading by one nation and inconvenient to the other.

Under such circumstances a Union of some kind was inevitable.

It was simply a question of time, and must have been demanded by Irish opinion.

At the same time, it would not, I think, have been such a Union as that of 1800. The conditions of Irish and English politics are so extremely different, and the reasons for preserving in Ireland a local centre of political life are so powerful, that it is probable a Federal Union would have been preferred.

Under such a system the Irish Parliament would have continued to exist, but would have been restricted to purely local subjects, while an Imperial Parliament, in which Irish representatives sat, would have directed the policy of the empire."

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