Chapter III: Part 3

Those feelings, whether founded or erroneous, were by no means unnatural; and the government, on its part, has never been slow to encourage and strengthen them. The greater portion of the absentee property had fallen to the lot of its English possessors, by fraud or violence, by legal quibbling or by open proscriptions; and under the most favourable circumstances, the cultivators of that soil, which on the general principles of right and justice they imagined still to be their own property, must naturally have regarded with a jealous eye the foreign intruders. But in a country so poor as Ireland, so divested of all other means of making money beyond the cultivation of the soil, this annual exportation of excessive and burthensome rents could not fail to be viewed with great discontent.[76] In England at the present day, if all the landed proprietors were to export themselves to the Continent, and to spend their rents in its various capitals, their absence would scarcely be felt, amidst the multiplied resources of commercial activity. Wherever the lord of the soil abandoned his dwelling, an East India Nabob, a money-broker, or a merchant, would stand forth ready to occupy his station, and rule over his domains; and the sums expended abroad, would rapidly find their way home, in increased demands for the products of English industry. On the other hand, the _nouveaux riches_, divested of hereditary pretensions and feudal prejudices, and more deeply instructed in the true principles of political economy, would afford less opposition to the reception and diffusion of the lessons of experience; and would therefore be the more acceptable to the labouring classes, than those who, trammelled in the prejudices of hereditary consequence, obstinately stand still in knowledge, while all around them is moving in advance. In Ireland, however, it has always been otherwise. Land has been ever the only instrument of industry, and rent the only source of accumulated capital. The landed proprietors, together with their immediate dependants, the members of the learned professions, have long formed exclusively the educated classes; and their expenditure has produced the only stimulus which existed, to excite the petty commerce and circumscribed industry, which in the country towns of Ireland support half-a-dozen shopkeepers; who, dignified with the name of merchants, fill the municipal offices and send representatives to Parliament. When, therefore, these favourites of fortune, the landed proprietors, expatriate themselves, their mansions are left silent and desolate; and none remains behind to employ the tenantry, to spread illumination, or to distribute justice, but agents, middle men, and the clergy, whose _ex parte_ notions of right and wrong, whose different creed and opposed pecuniary interests wholly unfit them for the civil duties which are thus devolved upon them.

With such reasons for the unpopularity of absenteeism, the interests of government in the prevalence of such a prejudice strongly conspire. When the wretched condition of the country is made matter of general declamation, the minister calls for specific abuses; and when a specific abuse is dragged to daylight, and remedies are loudly demanded, absenteeism is made a ready skreen to conceal the incapacity or unwillingness to redress of the governing faction. Tithe abuses are met by the charge of excessive rents and absentee consumption; corruption of the magistracy is defended by the absence of independent justices of the peace; and whatever is the evil to be averted, whatever the malpractice to be reformed, the Absentees are the ready scapegoats for every delinquent, and the plausible pretext for every forbearance.

Absenteeship, however, always founded in bad government, becomes ruinous only as it co-operates with other and mightier evils proceeding from the same cause. In a well-ordered community the number and influence of those who eat the bread of idleness and enjoy the means of expatriation, can never bear an overwhelming proportion to that of the industrious citizens chained down to a spot by the habits and the necessities of their laborious lives. Wherever this relative proportion is materially deranged, there will be found much to alter in existing institutions. In such a condition of things, a restraining tax is as futile as it is unjust. Government exists but to protect property; and any law which restrains the owner’s right of spending his money where he pleases, operates a violence, which the most urgent necessity alone could justify. On the other hand, to expect that a pecuniary mulct, of any amount short of an absolute seizure of the entire rental, would keep those at home, whom a sense of injustice, of insecurity, and of the absence of educated and liberal intercourse (of all that makes life endurable and wealth enjoyable) drives into exile, is to be utterly ignorant of human nature, and of the habits and feelings of the aristocratical part of the community.

To the pause which followed the commotions of 1745, succeeded an event which belonged not to _one_ country or _one_ age, but to the great history of mankind and to ages yet unborn! an event, which though it has produced the most extraordinary and wide-spreading consequences on the social condition, has not yet half worked out its mighty and incalculable effects. The American Revolution,--the greatest explosion that ever shook the complicated fabric of political abuses, the boldest step which civilization has yet made _en avant_,--was felt in its reverberations throughout all Europe; and even Ireland, remote, isolated, and oppressed Ireland, returned some vibration to the shock! England, amidst the host of ills which assailed her at this, the most awful crisis of her history, already beheld the children of the land she had so long oppressed, bursting their bonds and hailing with their wonted “ten thousand welcomes,”[77] the hope of emancipation, which came to them from the greatest and freest region of the earth. It was then that a British minister, worked upon by his fears, or driven by his necessities, granted a reluctant boon, for the purpose of winning back the affections of an alienated people, whose co-operation he wanted, and whose desertion he had but too just a cause to apprehend. It was then that he admitted the Irish to rights for which during past ages they had sued in vain; and flattered those with eulogies to whom he had hitherto denied justice. It was not, therefore, wonderful, though it was new, that when an Irish member in the British senate ventured to observe, that “Ireland was the chief dependence of the British crown, and that it behoved England to admit the Irish nation to the privileges of British citizens,” there was not one dissentient voice to deny the fact, or oppose the proposition;[78] and the bills which then passed the Parliament for the relief of the Catholics, and for the opening of the Irish trade, produced the usual effects of kindness on the human heart. From that moment America promised, and Franklin wrote in vain. “If,” says that patriotic philosopher,--the patriot of humanity, and the philosopher of common sense!--in his celebrated letter to the people of Ireland, “If the government whom you at home acknowledge, does not, in conformity to its own interests, take off and remove every restraint on your trade, commerce, and manufacture, I am charged to assure you that means will be found to establish your freedom in the fullest and freest manner; and as it is the ardent wish of America to promote, as far as her other engagements will permit, a reciprocal commercial intercourse with you, I can assure you that they will seek every means to establish and maintain it.”

But Ireland had not recourse to a foreign power to reclaim her rights. She placed her cause in the hands of her resident gentry: she committed it in the senate to a Grattan, and in the field to a Charlemont! The restrictions on trade, which America offered to break, were removed by the exertions of Irish patriotism, supported by that force, which is alone constitutional, a national militia! It was at this eventful epoch of Irish regeneration, that the combined exercise of those native energies to which, in a moment of exigency, a brave and unhappy people never fail to resort, produced that bulwark of national independence, the IRISH VOLUNTEERS; and a whole people, with arms in their hands, and liberty in their hearts, stood forth the protectors of their native land, which an unnatural government had thus exposed to danger and seduction. Even England looked on with respect and gratitude at the efforts of the devoted and loyal Irish, who, forgetful of all past injuries, came forward no less in her cause than their own;[79] and when the Irish volunteers presented themselves to the admiration of the empire, organised into a compact and disciplined body, under their illustrious chief the Earl of Charlemont, (whose name ever falls like light upon the page it illustrates,) it was declared in the British senate, by one whose words were then deemed as _prophet’s breathings_, “that this great event resembled, intrinsically and substantially, the glorious Revolution of England in 1688!”

This event, however, so glorious for the fame, and so profitable to the interests and independence of Ireland, never could have occurred, if the majority of the gentry, with their spirit, their wealth, their influence, and their education, had not been a resident gentry! and if there is one illuminated page in the dark story of Ireland’s misery! one pause in her sufferings! it belongs to this proud and blessed moment, when her people and their chiefs were armed, morally and physically, in her defence; when her senate resounded to an eloquence as pure and patriotic as the Forum ever echoed; when the private society of the capital became proverbial for its wit and festivity; and when all tended to, if it did not reach, the term of national prosperity and national glory.

But alas! this moment of promise and splendour was transient as a dream, and the bright effulgence of Irish patriotism, brilliant as the midnight meteor, was as suddenly succeeded by a midnight darkness. Causes on which it is now beside the purpose to dwell, paralysed the virtues, and marred the hopes of the honest and the brave. Engines were put into play, and agents into activity, to destroy or to sap the foundations of national independence. Corruption and injustice recommenced their suicidal career; the rebellion and the Union were got up, and succeeded beyond the hopes of their authors; and from that epoch every evil which can afflict humanity and degrade a nation has gathered to a foul and purulent head; every sad succeeding year has been marked by some new step towards social disorganization and national extinction.

“Scarcely had the law passed ratifying that great mischief--the Union--(says one of the ablest, and what is yet more, one of the honestest and most uncompromising writers on Irish affairs, of the present or of any age) when Absenteeism, the predominant calamity of Ireland, was fearfully accelerated. The chief proprietors fled from the metropolis, as from an invading army; and the country affording neither interest nor expectation, they expatriated themselves in shame, in disgust, in anguish, in despair. A category of evils beset the land.--Those who had entertained fair hopes soon found their prospects darken, and a long night close the transient day. To infatuation succeeded self-torment. A chief Judge died of a broken heart because he had participated in that signal treachery--another Judge asked pardon of God and his country, for sanctioning it with his vote. Pitt, the machinist, perished amidst the misfortunes of the Empire--and Castlereagh, in his pride and power, became his own executioner. The noble delinquents and their race perish together. Twenty-four Irish peerages have become extinct since the Union in January, 1801, exclusive of Peerages under a superior title, but continued in an inferior honour--and while I write, another of the noble order which stands between the prerogative and the people, as hounds between the huntsman and the hare, is extinguished. Thus nature takes vengeance on the exalted traitors to their country. The Union cannot subsist--Sin and Death have fixed their peremptory seal of doom upon it. Not all the vices of Ferdinand to his parentage and family and country--not all the deeds of the magnanimous Allies and the Holy Alliance to Spain, Germany, and Italy--no, not the repeated partitions of Poland by the Royal Robbers, the Austrian, and Frederic, and Catherine, equalled altogether the dreadful sum of sinning by the English Ministry, in preparing, prosecuting, and accomplishing that sad catastrophe--the Incorporate Union of Ireland with Great Britain.”--_Ensor’s Address to the People of Ireland._

Previously to the Act of Union, Absenteeism, though encouraged by the geographical position of the country, and promoted by some inveterate habits derived from ancient abuse, was principally confined, among the native Irish, to a few individuals whose ill understood vanity tempted them to seek for a consequence abroad, which is ever denied to the unconnected stranger, a consequence which no extravagant expense can purchase. With a few exceptions, therefore, the malady was confined to the great English proprietors of forfeited estates, whose numbers must in the progress of events have been diminished, by the dissipations inseparable from unbounded wealth, and the growth of commercial and manufactural fortunes. It might, in some cases, indeed, be both a vice, and a ridicule, in the absent; but had the nation in other respects been well used and well governed, it would have been of no serious evil to those who remained at home. But the Act of Union, whatever may be its other operations, meritorious or vicious, at once converted a local disease into a national pestilence. The centre of business and of pleasure, the mart of promotion, and the fountain of favour, were by this one fatal act at once removed into a foreign land; ambition, avarice, dissipation and refinement, all combined to seduce the upper classes into a desertion of their homes and country: and as each succeeding ornament of the Irish capital abandoned his hotel, as each influential landlord quitted his castle in the country, or his house in the city, a new race of vulgar upstarts, of uneducated and capricious despots, usurped their place, spreading a barbarous _morgue_ over the once elegant society of the metropolis, and banishing peace and security from the mountain and the plain.

Many whom temptation could not hitherto seduce from home, were now forced by fear to fly; and every passion, every motive combined to drive from the happy land, all those who were possessed of the means of flight. It is in vain that patriotism struggles and conscience arrests the departing step of those who yet linger behind in painful vacillation. Self-preservation must and will in the end prevail. Whatever is educated, whatever is tasteful, whatever is liberal, will too probably fly a land, where the insolence of official rank supplies the amenity of an admitted aristocracy, and where vulgar wealth, acquired by political subserviency, and too frequently unaccompanied by knowledge, holds talent at arms’ length, and rejects wit from its coteries as dangerous to its own dull supremacy and hostile to the repose of its own “_fat contented ignorance_.” Philanthropists, disgusted with the perpetual spectacle of hopeless wretchedness and irredeemable despair, will seek relief by flying the misery they cannot mitigate; the enlightened and the liberal will turn with horror from the country where laws of exception have been adopted into the permanent code, and where necessitated violence is only met by judicial severity and legal murder. The landholder, wearied by his contests with the clergy, and intimidated by the armed and masked opposition of his tenantry, will be contented to purchase repose by abandoning at once the soil and its produce, to the proctors, the police-men and their chiefs. The _sbirri_ of Ireland will alone find in a land, thus every way accursed, the elements congenial to their existence, as the reptiles and insects subsist in that putrefaction, which spreads disease and death among the nobler animals.

In the present political prospect of Ireland, the eye of philosophy and philanthrophy turns on every side in search of a principle of regeneration, and turns in vain. On every side a circle of recurrent cause and effect, like the mystic emblem of the Egyptians, points to an eternity of woe, and to endless cycles of misgovernment and resistance. As long as the actual system continues, (as long as every cause is forced to concur in rendering Ireland uninhabitable,) so long will it be impossible to organize any plan for civilizing, tranquillizing, and enriching the country. It is an empty and an idle boast in the British House of Commons, that it devotes its successive nights to the debating Irish affairs, so long as the religious division of the people and the proconsular government founded upon that division are to be recognized as sound policy or Christian charity. The half measures which have hitherto been adopted, far from proving beneficial, and composing the contentions of hostile factions, have served only to increase discontent and disarm inquiry.[80] Nor can the ministers be entitled to any praise for generosity who dare not, in the first place, be just. In spite, therefore, of all their professions of zeal and compassion for the national distress; in spite of all their parliamentary tamperings with the national abuses, they must still remain answerable for the greater part of the absenteeship which they strenuously hold up as the giant ill, over which they have no controul, and for the existence of which they imagine themselves not responsible.

The grand principle of “_divide et impera_” has produced both the religious question and the question between landlords and tenants, which are the hinges on which all the misfortunes of Ireland turn. To commence the work of regeneration in earnest, that principle must be fairly and honestly abandoned: when this is done, and not before, absenteeship, with every other evil which has grown out of the monstrous anarchical system, that has so long subsisted, will gradually disappear; and proprietors in Ireland, as in other countries, will inhabit their country, when their country becomes inhabitable.--“_Ubi bene, ibi patria_” is a maxim not altogether unreasonable; and, surely, if in any circumstances it is entitled to toleration, it is in that land where the greater the patriotism and virtue, the less chance is there of social comfort and rational happiness. To the absentees themselves we would willingly appeal with every invocation that can bind the conscience or awaken the heart. But the appeal were worse than idle, it would in fact be injurious, by pointing to effects and disengaging the attention from causes. In the present condition of affairs, absenteeism is a necessitated evil!! In the absentees it is less a crime than a misfortune; and with respect to the government it is so far from being a justification of its acts, that it has become a pregnant and a pointed conclusion of its ignorance of all sound principle, or its heartless indifference to all those interests which the unhappy destiny of “_the most unhappy country under heaven_,” has committed to its charge.

THE END.

LONDON:
IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND.

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FOOTNOTES:

Footnote 1:

Irish potentates were then as plenty “as Munster potatoes.” “Ils se
coudoyoient,” as in the _salle des rois_ of Napoleon. Irish saints
were equally numerous; but, if the scandalous chronicles of the times
be worthy of credit, the social order of that day was not the better
for the circumstance. While King Mac Murrogh was running away with
Queen O’Rourke, wife of O’Rory, King of Breffny, who was on a
pilgrimage to St. Patrick’s purgatory, his son was undergoing the
operation of having those eyes put out, which had looked too tenderly
on the Queen of Ossory. The gallantries of these Macs and O’s from the
earliest ages to the present day, recall the answer of the French
Silvester Daggerwood to his manager, who asked his line of parts,
“_Chacun s’en tienne au metier de ses pères; je sais que dans notre
famille, nous sommes tous amoureux de père en fils_.”

Footnote 2:

King Mac Turtell was King of Dublin, and held his kingdom by tribute
from the King of Leinster. “Not far from Dublin,” says the admirable
Maurice Regan, historiographer to Mac Murrogh,--“not far from Dublin
there lived an Irish king named Gillemohalmoghe.” Of the territories
of this prince, Michael’s lane in Dublin formed a part. It is called
in the black book of Christchurch, Gillemohalmoghe. As there is some
reason to suppose that the kingdom extended as far as Swords, Sir
Compton Domville may be regarded as the modern representative of the
Gillemohalmoghe dynasty.

Footnote 3:

Child’s Discourse upon Trade.--“No inconsiderable portion of the
entire of Ireland has been confiscated twice, and perhaps thrice, in
the course of a century.”--_Lord Clare’s Speech on the Union._

The causes of absenteeship are, in fact, coeval with the first steps
of English power in this country. “Those that were adventurers,” says
Temple, “in the first conquests, and such others of the English nation
as came over afterwards, took possession by former grants of the whole
kingdom, and _drove the Irish_ in a manner out of all habitable parts
of it, and settled themselves in all the plains and fertile places of
the country, especially in the chief towns, ports, and sea-coasts. It
was no capital offence to kill any of the rest of the Irish; the law
did neither protect their life nor revenge their death.”--_History of
Irish Rebellion._ Here is the starting-post of absenteeism, pointed
out by an English minister and historian.

Footnote 4:

The signatures of Magna Charta evince that the nobility of those
times, like Pierrot in the farce, were “_un peu brouillés avec
l’Alphabet_;” but the spirit which founded that great arch of British
freedom, was well worth all the namby-pamby acquirements of all the
modern nobles who ever presided over archæology, (or, as Walpole calls
it, “old woman’s logic,”) flirted with the muses, and combined to give
tracts to England, or rose-trees to the starving peasantry of
Connaught and Munster.

Footnote 5:

Henry II. obliged the Earl Strongbow to return to Ireland, “being
likely for his own wealth and assurance to procure all possible means
of bridling and annoying the Irish.” In the time of Edward III.
military emigration seems to have been considerable. The Irish robbers
did good service at Cressy.

Footnote 6:

The Irish were always ready for a little commotion at home or abroad;
“Great was the credit of the Geraldines ever when the House of York
prospered, and likewise the Butlers thryved under the bloud of
Lancaster.” It was this disposition towards the House of York, which
caused the temporary success of Perkin Warbeck in Ireland. The
unfortunate Duke of Clarence, who was drowned in a butt of Malmsey,
was born in Ireland during the lieutenancy of his father, the Duke of
York. His godfathers were the Earls of Ormond and Desmond. Whether
this Irish origin will serve to explain the peculiarity of his
destiny, I cannot say; but the residence of a York in Dublin may in
part account for the popularity of the faction in that city.
Shakspeare probably alludes to this personage in Henry VI.

“Please it your grace to be advertised
The Duke of York is newly come from Ireland,
And with a puissant and mighty power
Of Gallowglasses and stout Kernes
Is marching hitherward in proud array.”

Footnote 7:

The English reader is not to suppose that these _blanc-mangers_ of the
poor Irish were such as are to be had at the Verys or Beauvilliers.
The Irish white meates were curds and whey, the only provisions which
men whose lives were “in wandering spent and care” could obtain. The
Irish then lived like Arabs, a prey of cattle being the subject of
their fiercest contests.

Footnote 8:

Had they made the country endurable to live in, they would have done
what all the penal laws that ever have been framed can never
affect--they would have kept the Irish at home. At the time when Henry
VIII. was framing his “act of absencie” for preventing the increase of
the absentees the state of the country in which they _were by law_
obliged to live, is thus described by Spenser;--“Notwithstanding that
the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and
cattle, (Munster more particularly is here speken of,) yet in one year
and a half (during the war carried on against the Earl of Desmond for
the purpose of forfeiting his estates) the natives were brought to
such wretchedness, as that any stoney heart would rue the same. Out of
every corner of the woods and glyns they came creeping forth upon
their hands, for their legs could not bear them, they looked like
anatomies of death, they shoke like ghosts crying out of their graves,
they did eat the dead carrion, happy when they could find them; yea,
and one another soon after, inasmuch as the very carcasses they spared
not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of
water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the
time, yet not able to continue them withal, that in short space there
was none almost left; and a most populous and plentiful country
suddenly left void of man and beast.”--_State of Ireland_, 1581.

Footnote 9:

English antiquaries have been much puzzled to determine the identity
of this “more than celestial Geraldine.” “Who she was,” says Walpole,
“we are not directly told.” Surrey himself mentions some particulars
of her, but not her name. The editor of the last edition of Surrey’s
Poems, in some short notes on his life, says, “that she was the
greatest beauty of her time, and maid of honour to Queen Catharine;
but I think I have very nearly discovered who this fair person was,
&c. &c. &c. I am inclined to think her poetical appellation was her
real name, as every one of the circumstances tally.” The elegant
antiquary then devotes three pages to prove the probability that Lady
Elizabeth, daughter of the Earl of Kildare, was the Geraldine of Lord
Surrey. Warton adopts this supposition, and compliments the biographer
on having, with the most happy segacity, solved the difficulties of
“this little enigmatical ode.”--_History of English Poets._ There was,
however, a much shorter way of solving the difficulties, namely, the
consultation of Irish authors for an historical incident respecting
one of the most illustrious Irish families. Campion, who had probably
many a time and oft seen the “fair Geraldine,” with his usual quaint
simplicity says, “The Fitzgerald family is touched in the Sonnet of
Surrey made upon Kildare’s sister, now Lady Clinton;”

From Tuscane came my ladyes worthy race,
Faire Florence was sometime her ancient seate;
The western isle, whose plaisant shore doth face
Wilde Cambre’s cliffes, did give her lively heate.”

The ode goes on as follows;--

Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast,
Her sire an earle, her dame of prince’s blood;
From tender years in Britain she doth rest
With kinges childe, while she tasteth costly food.
Honsdon did first present her to mine yeen,
Bright is her hue, and Geraldine her hight,

&c. &c. &c.

This fair and celebrated Irish absentee, after having sent her
illustrious lover to Italy “to defend her beautie by an open
challenge,” in which he was victorious, married the Earl of
Clinton:--a most unsentimental conclusion to a most romantic story.

Footnote 10:

“A false muttering flew about that his execution was intended.”

Footnote 11:

“Soon after,” says Campion, “was the house of the Geraldines attaynted
by Parliament, and all of the name busily trayned out for feare of new
commotions. But Thomas Leurces, late Bishop of Kildare, schoolemaster
to a younger brother, Gerald Fitzgerald, the Earle that now liveth,
secretly stole away with the childe, first into Scotland, then into
France, and misdoubting the French, into Italy; where Cardinall Pole,
his neare kinsman preserved him till the raigne of Edward the Sixt,
with whom hee entred into high favour, and obtayned of him his olde
inheritance of Meinothe.”

Footnote 12:

The various epithets applied to these retrogradations on the scale of
civilization are very amusing. Between the “mere and uncivil Irish,”
and the “English Lords of the Pale,” were the “English Lords beginning
to wax Irish;” “degenerating,” “becoming mere Irish,” and ending by
being “very wilde Irish,” &c. &c.

Footnote 13:

O’Sullivan Beare, one of the bravest and noblest chiefs of Kerry, and
Lord of part of the paradise of Killarney, in writing to the Spanish
minister an account of his sufferings at this period, urges him “to
the speedy sending of a ship to receive him, his wife, and children,
to save them from the hands of his most merciless enemies: Making
choice (he pathetically adds) rather to forsake my ancient
inheritance, friends, followers, and goods, than any way trust to
their graceless pardon or promise.”--_Pacata Hibernia._ Here was
absenteeship in the sixteenth century!!

Footnote 14:

Elizabeth frequently discovered that her Deputies were carrying the
joke too far. On the occasion of the wanton massacre of Smerwick, “The
queen (says the Bishop of Chichester) was not _pleased_ at the
_manner_ of this execution, and was hardly _after_ drawn to admit any
excuse of the slaughter committed.” The “_manner_” was curious
enough,--“It was concluded that only the leaders should be saved, (the
leaders were Spanish officers,) the rest slain, and _all the Irish_
hanged up: which was presently put into execution, to the great
disliking of the queen, who detested the slaughter of such as yielded
themselves.”--_Baker’s Chronicle._

Footnote 15:

“The Queen was assured,” says Leland, speaking of the inhuman rigour
of Lord Deputy Gray, “that he tyrannized with such barbarity, that
little was left in Ireland for her Majesty to reign over but ashes and
dead carcases.”--_Hist. of Ireland_, v. ii. p. 227.--Here are reasons
for absenteeship quite as cogent as any which can be advanced in the
present day.

Footnote 16:

The credulity of the Irish has ever been their ruin. Some English
officers having assured certain Irish chiefs that, upon surrendering
themselves to the government, they would obtain their pardon; those
chiefs (says Leland) “embraced the counsel, submitted, and consented
to attend the Lord Deputy St. Leger to Ireland. But here the only
favour granted them was, that they were not brought to immediate
execution. They were committed to prison, their lands declared
forfeit, and granted to those on whose counsel they had
surrendered.”--_Hist. of Ireland_, v. ii.

Footnote 17:

“Then came the Irishmen of valiant hearts,
And active limbs, and personages tall.”

_Sir J. Harrington’s Translation of Orlando Furioso._

Footnote 18:

Apology, p. 58.

Footnote 19:

_Si je ne vous mange pas en oiseau, je vous mangerai en souris._
“Other times,” they say, “bring other manners;” and it is not
impossible that men, restrained by the _manners of our own times_, may
avail themselves of the circumstance of their enforced moderation, to
reproach the writer who thus recalls a fact disreputable to the
English government, with _ripping up old sores_. The fact, however, is
“germane to the matter;” for it was such forfeitures that sowed the
first seeds of that permanent absenteeism which modern ministers
affect to deplore: and it was these flagrant violations of common
justice, that first nurtured the lawless disposition in the peasantry,
which is made an excuse for the suspension of all constitutional
rights, and which is most unjustly charged on the Catholic religion.
Besides, as long as the system is continued, which withholds
emancipation, and gives over the land to the tyranny and plunder of
churchmen and their inherents, the “ripping up old sores” is both
useful and justifiable.

Footnote 20:

The only crime of which O’Rourke could be accused, was his having
received some shipwrecked Spaniards under his roof,--men, says
O’Connor, whom the most hardened barbarity could scarcely consider as
enemies. It is remarkable that O’Rourke previously to his execution
was denied a priest of his own persuasion. But Miles Macgrath, the
converted archbishop of Cashel, was sent to prevail on him to conform.
“No,” said O’Rourke firmly, “but do you remember the dignity from
which you have fallen; return to the ancient Church, and learn from my
fortitude the lesson you should have taught me, and which you ought to
have been the last to disavow.”

If there is a shadow of truth in this wild story of Leitrim, and if
Rourke did not betray the lady, he deserves canonization. Essex,
however, who shared the same fate, preserved the same honourable
secrecy; and the purity of the Virgin Queen remains intact.

Footnote 21:

The ruins of O’Rourke’s castle still exist. They are sublimely
situated on a rock that hangs and frowns over a rapid river, near
Manor Hamilton, in the county of Leitrim. A few trees are scattered
immediately about the castle, and around are heathy mountains rising
to the clouds. “O’Rourke’s noble feast” has been rendered immortal by
the translation of Dean Swift.

Footnote 22:

O’Connor Sligo resided some time in the court of Elizabeth, where he
was flattered up to his bent, though not into a permanent
absenteeship. He returned to Ireland in 1596, after obtaining a grant
to secure him in the possession of his own property; in gratitude for
which “he was extremely active in her (the Queen’s) favour, and gained
back, partly by menace and partly by cunning, many of the revolted
clans.” The celebrated O’Donnel of Tirconnel, hearing of O’Connor’s
desertion from the common cause, marched with an army to bring him to
obedience: and, in spite of the assistance of Sir Conyers Clifford and
Lord Mayo, he ravaged and destroyed O’Connor’s country.

Footnote 23:

This youth was the only son of the Earl of Desmond, already mentioned.
He had been detained a prisoner in the Tower from his infancy as a
pledge for his father’s loyalty. He was afterwards sent to Ireland as
a state engine to play off against another Geraldine who had made
claims to the forfeited Palatinate; but after he had fretted his hour
on the bloody stage of his own country, he was brought back to
England, and lingering at court for a few months in hopeless
despondency, he died in the prime of his youth, of a broken
heart.--_See_ _Pacata Hibernia_.

Footnote 24:

Upon two occasions the Earl saved a large party of English from
destruction. Macguire, chief of Fermanagh, had given the Lord Deputy
three hundred cows to free his country from a sheriff; “after which
bargain, the sheriff, one Willis, was let loose upon Fermanagh,
leading about some hundreds of women and boys, with a guard of one
hundred men, all living upon the spoils of the country.” Macguire,
having driven this model of a modern Irish police into a church, was
about to put them to the sword, when the Earl of Tyrone interposed his
authority. This same Willis was again rescued by Tyrone from an
insurrection occasioned by similar circumstances in the O’Donnel’s
country.--_See_ _Memorial to Queen Elizabeth_.

Footnote 25:

The “Irish masque,” got up to compliment the absentees at the English
court, is either a bitter satire, or a disgusting picture of the state
of Irish society at that epoch. “The King being seated (says _the
programme_) in expectation, out ran a fellow attired as a citizen,
after him three or four footmen, Denis, Donnel, Dermoch, and Patrick,”
the object of whose visit to London was not like that of many of the
Denises and Patricks of the present day, to become either _porters_,
or _reporters_, as the chances determined; but simply, as Donnel
observes, ‘to see King Yamish,’ for which purpose ‘they had travelled
a great way miles,’ having got the start of their lords or chiefs who
had come over on the same loyal errand.

_Der._ I’ fayt, tere ish very much phoyt stick here stirring to night.
He takes ush for no shquires I tinke.

_Pat._ No; he tinksh not ve be imbasheters.

_Der._ No, fayt, I tinke sho too. But tish marriage bring over a
doshen of our besht mashters to be merry, perht tee shweet faish, an’t
be; and daunsh a fading at te vedding.

_Den._ But tey vere leeke to daunsh naked, and pleash ty majesty; for
tey villanous vild Irish sheas have casht away all ter fine cloysh, as
many ash cosht a towsand cowes and garrans, I warrant tee.

_Der._ And te prishe of a cashtell or two upon teyr backs.

_Don._ And tey tell ty majesty, tey have ner a great fish now, nor a
shea moynshter to save teyr cloyth alive now.

_Pat._ Nor a devoish vit a clowd to fesh’hem out o’ te bottom o’ te
vayter.

_Der._ But tey musht eene come and daunsh in teyr mantles now; and
show tee how tey can foot te fading and te fadow, and te phip a’
Dunboyne, I trow.

_Don._ I pree dee now, let not ty sweet faysh ladies make a mock on’
him, and scorn to daunsht vit ’hem now, becash tey be poor.

_Pat._ Tey drink no bonny clabber, i’ fayt now.

_Don._ It ish better ten usquebaugh to daunsh vit Patrick.

_Pat._ By my fater’s hand, tey vill daunsh very vell.

_Der._ Ay, by St. Patrick, vill tey; for tey be nimble men.

_Den._ And vill leap ash light, be creesh save me, ash he tat veares
te biggest fethur in ty court, King Yamish.

_Der._ For all tey have no good vindsh to blow tem heter, nor
elementsh to preserve hem.

_Don._ Nor all te four cornersh o’ te world to creep out on.

_Pat._ But tine own kingdomes.

_Don._ Tey be honesht men.

_Pat._ And goot men; tine own shubshects.

_Der._ Tou hast very good shubshects in Ireland.

_Den._ A great goot many, o’ great good shubshects.

_Don._ Tat love ty mayesty heartily.

_Den._ And vill run t’rough fire and vater for tee over te bog and te
bannoke, be te graish o’ Got and graish o’ King.

_Der._ By Got tey will fight for tee, King Yamish, and for my mistiesh
tere.

_Den._ And my little maishter. Paish, paish, now room for our
mayshter.--Then the gentlemen dance forth a dance in their Irish
mantles to a solemn music of harps, which done, the footmen fall to
speak again.”

Footnote 26:

Borlase asserts that in 1650, ten years before the Restoration, 1700
died of the plague in Dublin alone; this horrible infliction was
peculiar to those “picturesque times,” which describe so well, and
which, it is a mark of literary loyalty to admire and eulogize.

“Sir, nothing against antiquity, I pray you,
I must not hear ill of antiquity.”--_B. Jonson._

Footnote 27:

The most noted beauties of the Court of Charles the Second, Lady
Barbara Villars, (Duchess of Cleveland,) the Countess of Chesterfield,
(a Butler,) the Lady Kildare, introduced by St. Evremont into his
pleasant little poem of “The Basset Table,”[28] the Countess de
Grammont, and many others, were Irish women. The delightful author of
“Mémoires de Grammont,” Anthony Hamilton, was himself an Irishman,[29]
and a branch of the illustrious house of Hamilton, which obtained from
James the First such princely possessions in the North of Ireland, and
which is still represented by the Marquis of Abercorn. The
Fitzmaurices, (Muskerry,) the O’Briens, the Butlers, the Talbots, are
names noted in the fasti of Whitehall at this period. With respect to
the Talbots, however, it is but fair to observe that the elder branch
of this ancient and patriotic family always remained permanently
resident in their splendid castle and domain of Malahide, as their
worthy representative the Member for the county of Dublin continues to
do in the present day; though the younger branch, the Lords of Carton
(now the seat of the Duke of Leinster) were prime favourites at
Whitehall, and boon companions of both Charles and James. “The Dick
Talbot” of that day, whom Charles would fain have set at odds with the
Duke of Ormonde, brought no additional rays to the original splendour,
when he added a ducal coronet to its less perishable honours. This
Colonel Richard Talbot (afterwards Duke of Tirconnel) was sent to the
Tower for having challenged the Duke of Ormonde with duplicity of
conduct with respect to the Irish Catholics, whose agent Colonel
Talbot then was. Ormonde, believing the better part of valour to be
discretion, fought shy, instead of fighting Talbot; and when rallied
on this circumstance by the King, petulantly demanded, “Is it then
your Majesty’s pleasure that at this time of day I should put off my
doublet to fight duels with Dick Talbot?”

Footnote 28:

Vous ne me parlez pas de Madame de Kildare,
I never saw personne avoir meilleure air.

Footnote 29:

His mother, the beautiful Lady Maria Butler, was daughter to the Duke
of Ormonde.

Footnote 30:

It is farther particularly notable that James, the friend and
correspondent of Pope Clement VIII. and the special protector of the
Irish Catholics, first established in Ireland a Protestant ascendancy
in parliament, in obedience to the advice of the Lord Deputy
Chichester. With the inconsistency which ever accompanies a want of
principle, he occasionally amused himself at the expense of the very
people he affected to favour. When Chichester made King James a
present of a beautiful horse, his Majesty asked him if it were an
Irish horse: on being answered in the affirmative, the King swore his
favourite oath, “Then it must be a Papist,” for he verily believed
that all things produced in Ireland were Papists, even the very
animals themselves.

Footnote 31:

None benefited more largely by these “plots of rebellion” than the
house of Ormonde. “His Grace (says Lord Anglesey in his letter to the
Earl of Castlehaven) his Grace (the Duke of Ormonde) and his family,
by the forfeiture and punishment of the Irish, were the greatest
gainers in the kingdom, and had added to their inheritance vast scopes
of land, and a revenue three times greater than his paternal estate,
as it was before the Rebellion, and most of his increase was out of
their estates who adhered to the peace of 1648, or served under His
Majesty’s ensigns abroad.” In the anonymous and curious pamphlet “The
Unkind Deserter,” it is asserted that the Ormonde estate was but
7000_l._ per annum before the civil wars in Ireland, and that in 1674
it was close upon 100,000_l._ a year; which increase arose from the
King’s grants to him “of other men’s estates,” &c. &c. &c. The history
of the last Rebellion in 1798, and of the Union, would furnish many
anecdotes of a similar increase of the wealth of Irish families; not
indeed by forfeitures, (for the mode had passed,) but by intriguing
and bullying the government out of every place at its disposal, from a
mitre to a cornetcy of dragoons,--by the wholesale and retail sale of
the country: (a vote upon a single stage of a question has been hired,
like a job-carriage, by the night;) by corrupt dabbling in every
species of public work; in short, by every disgraceful practice of the
fraudulent tradesman, the scheming adventurer, and the sturdy
mendicant. The philosopher Kirwan was wont to quote a calculation he
had made, that the money spent on carrying the Union, would have built
a bridge from Howth to Holyhead.

Footnote 32:

In James the Second’s reign some of the measures were calculated to be
of the greatest service to Ireland, and emanated from a wise and
discreet minister, formerly attached to the Protestant interest, the
second Earl of Clarendon. His instructions announced the intentions of
the legislature, or at least of the King, to introduce Catholics into
the corporations, and invest them with magistracies and judicial
offices; and he gave his opinion in favour of the legality of the
measure, though contrary to an Act of Elizabeth. But the greatest evil
which can occur to a reformation, is to have it undertaken by men of
small capacity; as their best intentions are ever marred by their
petulance and dullness. The folly with which James hurried on a
change, and the injudiciousness of some of the proposed measures,
caused his own ruin, and that of the unhappy country he made the
principal scene of his egregious weakness and incapacity.

Footnote 33:

The Irish army under Tirconnel and Sarsfield made a most vigorous
resistance against a superior and well-disciplined force; and
Limerick, the last hold, was surrendered upon terms from which it
appears that none more esteemed their valour and fidelity than King
William himself.

Footnote 34:

When James, after his flight from the battle of the Boyne, arrived in
Dublin, he had the ingratitude and ungraciousness to reflect upon the
cowardice of the Irish. He reached the Castle late at night, and was
met at its gates by the Lady Lieutenant, the beautiful Duchess of
Tirconnel, “La belle Jennings” of Grammont’s Memoirs. In return for
the sympathizing respect which marked her reception, the King is said
to have sarcastically complimented her upon the “alertness of her
husband’s countrymen.” The high-spirited beauty replied, “In that,
however, your Majesty has had the advantage of them all.” The King, in
fact, was among the first to arrive in the capital with the news of
his own defeat.

Footnote 35:

They were estimated at the annual sum of two hundred and eleven
thousand six hundred pounds.

Footnote 36:

Letter to Sir H. Langrish.

Footnote 37:

Of this intolerance William stands in a great measure acquitted. His
known liberality subjected him to the suspicions of the party who
forged the penal statutes for Ireland, and who accused him of
infidelity, because he was unwilling to become a persecutor. When left
to act for himself, he exhibited a wisdom, wanting in the measures of
those to whom he was occasionally obliged to submit. In his
instructions to the commissioners in Scotland, dated 1689, he says
expressly, “You are to pass an act establishing that church government
which is most agreeable to the inclinations of the people.”

Footnote 38:

To favour the English manufacturer, the exportation of the staple
commodity and manufacture of Ireland (wool) was prohibited on pain of
confiscation, imprisonment, and transportation!! It would be difficult
to say whether the infamy or the absurdity of such legislation is the
greatest; and indignation at the avarice of the lawgivers, is so
largely mixed with contempt for their blind ignorance, that the pen
pauses in its vituperation of measures which were so obviously their
own punishment. Be it however remarked “_en passant_,” that the
framers of these laws were the aristocracy of England, the most
educated and moral people then in existence; a striking proof of the
perfect inadequacy of abstract principles of right and wrong to the
good government of conduct. Force, and force alone, too generally
makes right, in opinion, as well as in fact; and where the power to
abuse exists, the will to injure and the sophistry to justify the
injury, will never long be wanting.

Footnote 39:

“Have they any wit in their compositions? (says Spenser in speaking of
the poetry of the Irish in his day.) Yea, truly, I have caused divers
of them to be translated unto me, that I might understand them; and
surely they savoured of sweet wit and good invention, sprinkled with
some pretty flowers of their natural device, which gave good grace and
comeliness to them.”

Footnote 40:

“Oh wretched condition of our loved compatriots, the remains of a once
happy people, steeped in blood and drenched in slaughter! Vain is your
struggle for liberty, hapless crew of a bark long tempest-tossed, and
now cast away forever. What! are we not wrecked on our own shores, and
prisoners to the Saxons? Is not the sentence passed and our excision
foredoomed? How are ye fallen from the ancient glories of your native
land! Power degraded into weakness, beauty to deformity, freedom into
slavery, and the song of triumph into elegies of despair. Nial, of the
nine hostages, look not down upon us, lest thou blush for thy captive
Gadhelians. Conn, of the hundred battles, sleep in thy grass-grown
tomb, nor upbraid our defeats with thy victories.”--_Oran_ (or song)
_of Ognive, the family bard of the last of the O’Neils._

Footnote 41:

Boyle, Berkeley, King, Dodwell, Leslie, Toland, Clayton, (Bishop of
Clogher,) Molyneux, (the friend of Locke the philosopher and champion
of Irish independence,) Helsham, Robinson, Macbride, Sullivan,
Hutchinson, Abernethy, Harris, Keating, Leland, Kirwan, Young, (Bishop
of Clonfert,) &c. &c.

Footnote 42:

Even so far back as the reign of James the First, Ireland began to
furnish her quota to the English drama. But from the middle of the
seventeenth century to something more than the middle of the
eighteenth, she produced almost all the best dramatic writers on the
British stage: Congreve, Howard, Southerne, Steele, Farquhar,
Phillips, Kelly, Jones, Orrery, (Earl of,) Tate, Concanen, Dobbs,
Bickerstaff, Brook, Centlivre, Griffiths, Jephson, Murphy, Macklin,
O’Hara, West, Goldsmith, Sheridan, &c. &c. And among the actors,
Wilks, Quin, Sheridan, Barry, Mossop, Macklin, Havard, O’Brien, Brown,
Woffington, Clive, Fitzhenry, &c.

Footnote 43:

Denham, Parnell, Swift, Sterne, Burke, Goldsmith, the Sheridans; to
whom may be added Molesworth, Millar, Wood, Webb, Pilkington, Johnson
(Chrysal), &c. &c. Even the women no longer deemed it the exclusive
purpose of their being

“To suckle fools and chronicle small-beer;”

and the elegant and witty productions of Mesdames Millar, Pilkington,
Centlivre, Grierson, Griffiths, Sheridan, Barker, Brook, contributed
to the general stock of national literature.

Footnote 44:

Jervas, (Pope’s Raphael,) Bindon, Roberts the landscape-painter,
Barrett, &c.

Footnote 45:

Miss Brook, the elegant translator and composer of the “Relics of
Ancient Irish Poetry.”

Footnote 46:

The Lord Mayo, of the early part of the eighteenth century, here
alluded to, was a model of the genuine Irish resident nobleman, living
in his rural palace, surrounded by his family, his bards, and
musicians. One of these, “his retainer,” David Murphy, composed an
Irish Ode of some celebrity, called “Tiagherna Mhaigho,” the “Lord of
Mayo,” which another of his retainers, O’Keeneghan, set to music. This
Carolan was wont to play at night in the hall of the Burkes, on his
harp. It happened that during Carolan’s last visit to Lord Mayo,
Geminiani arrived from Italy by special invitation from the amateur
Earl; and his Italian music completely usurped the attention of the
Ladies Susan and Bridget Burke, of whose praise Carolan was especially
jealous, and he frankly complained to his noble host of this neglect.
Lord Mayo, rallying the bard on his feelings, concluded by telling
him, that when he should produce the same music as Geminiani, he would
meet with the same attention. On this Carolan proposed a wager, that
he on his harp would follow the Italian in any piece of his
composition, but that Geminiani should not follow him through an Irish
planxty: the wager was accepted by the Italian, and won by the Irish
bard.

Footnote 47:

The O’Connors of Ballingar, the favourite residence of Carolan.

Footnote 48:

“In the year 1740, the sublime genius of Handel roused our feelings
from the lethargy into which they had fallen.”--_Memoirs of the Irish
Bards._

Banished from London by the intrigues of a party, Handel[49] fled to
Ireland, where, with his friend Dubourg, the violin of his age, he was
received with rapture. His first public exhibition in Dublin was the
Messiah, which he performed for the benefit of the city prisons.
Whoever had the happiness of knowing the late Richard Kirwan, the
Irish philosopher, may judge of the enthusiasm of the travelled Irish
gentlemen for Italian music, and the vogue which Piccini obtained
through their means.

Footnote 49:

Pope alludes to this banishment of Handel in his Dunciad:

“Strong in new arms, lo! Giant Handel stands
Like bold Briareus with his hundred hands,--&c. &c. &c.
Arrest him, Goddess, or you sleep no more:
She heard, and drove him to Hibernia’s shore.”

Footnote 50:

St. Bridget was accustomed to pray under the shade of an oak, a
circumstance which has given its name to an Irish county, Cil doire,
the cell of the oak (Kildare.)

Footnote 51:

“Concerts were the favourite amusement in the houses of the nobility
and gentry, and musical societies were formed in all the great
towns.”--_Memoirs of Irish Bards._

Footnote 52:

The Philharmonic Society gave up its subscriptions towards building
the hospital in Townsend-street, 1753.

Footnote 53:

“Italian singers were invited over, and the fair dames of Ireland
learned to expire at an opera.”--_History of Irish Music._

Footnote 54:

Barry, Sheridan, Mossop, Diggs, Daly, Crawford, and others of a more
modern date, were all gentlemen of family, and members of the Irish
University. They lived with their own class, and some of them went to
court. The intimacy of Sheridan with successive lords lieutenant is
recorded in the life of his celebrated wife, written and recently
published by their accomplished grand-daughter.

Footnote 55:

If a desire for luxuries and refinements is in all classes the natural
check to excessive population, and to the degradation of the species,
that check is wholly wanting in Ireland. Not only the peasant, but the
tradesman sees no attainable object of enjoyment in the possession of
a class just above himself in ease and comfort, which might stimulate
his ambition. The connecting link between the rich and the poor is
wanting; for middlemen are no refiners of manners. As a familiar
illustration, let the reader imagine that, except in towns of the
first class, few vegetables beyond a cabbage or a potatoe are to be
found in the market. There is absolutely no demand for such _luxuries_
to repay the culture.

Footnote 56:

One of these rooms painted in fresco and highly decorated, remains, or
did remain a few years back, in Fishamble-street.

Footnote 57:

Marino, Frescati, Marli, Sanssouci, Tivoli, Bellevue, Maritimo, &c.
are curious monuments of the manners and feelings of the Irish
nobility of the eighteenth century.

Footnote 58: