Absenteeism

"Absenteeism" by Lady Morgan is a political treatise written in the early 19th century. The work argues that Ireland’s absentee landlordism is less a primary cause of misery than a symptom of long-standing misgovernment, religious disabilities, and colonial policy, and contends that true remedy lies in justice—especially Catholic Emancipation—and in a resident, responsible aristocracy. The opening of the treatise sets its stance plainly: in a dedication to Charles Brownlow, courage on the Catholic question is praised as the key to ending absenteeism, and the preface decries English ignorance that mistakes secondary grievances for root causes. The author insists that “bad government” has drained capital, industry, and security from Ireland, making absence an effect, not the cause, of distress. She defines “absentee” as uniquely Irish in usage, rebuts the claim that it is “without a remedy,” and launches a sweeping historical sketch to show how conquest, confiscation, and policy fostered it—from Dermot MacMurrough and absentee Norman barons, through Tudor manipulation and the emblematic ordeal of the Earl of Kildare, to Elizabeth’s courtly lures that ensnared chiefs like Shane O’Neil and O’Rourke. The narrative follows the brutal pacification under Mountjoy, the Stuarts’ flattery that made voluntary absences fashionable, and the Williamite confiscations that briefly anchored new proprietors at home. It then highlights an 18th‑century flowering under resident gentry—parliamentary vigor, a lively press, music, theatre, and salons—culminating in Lord Chesterfield’s conciliatory viceroyalty during the Jacobite crisis.

Absenteeism, by Lady Sydney Morgan. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #78814.