Chapter VII: Part 7

Cromwell's campaign (1640-1650) showed how easily a good general with an efficient army might conquer Ireland. Resistance in the field was soon at an end; the starving-out policy of Carew and Mountjoy was employed against the guerrillas, and the soldiers were furnished with scythes to cut down the green corn. Bibles were also regularly served out to them. Oliver's severe conduct at Drogheda and elsewhere is not morally defensible, but such methods were common in the wars of the period, and much may be urged in his favour. Strict discipline was maintained, soldiers being hanged for stealing chickens; faith was always kept; and short, sharp action was more merciful in the long run than a milder but less effective policy. Cromwell's civil policy, to use Macaulay's words, was "able, straightforward, and cruel." He thinned the disaffected population by allowing foreign enlistment, and 40,000 are said to have been thus got rid of. Already Irish Catholics of good family had learned to offer their swords to foreign princes. In Spain, France and the Empire they often rose to the distinction which they were denied at home. About 9000 persons were sent to the West Indies, practically into slavery. Thus, and by the long war, the population was reduced to some 850,000, of whom 150,000 were English and Scots. Then came the transplantation beyond the Shannon. The Irish Catholic gentry were removed bodily with their servants and such tenants as consented to follow them, and with what remained of their cattle. They suffered dreadful hardships. To exclude foreign influences, a belt of 1 m. was reserved to soldiers on the coast from Sligo to the Shannon, but the idea was not fully carried out. The derelict property in the other provinces was divided between adventurers who had advanced money and soldiers who had fought in Ireland. Many of the latter sold their claims to officers or speculators, who were thus enabled to form estates. The majority of Irish labourers stayed to work under the settlers, and the country gradually became peaceful and prosperous. Some fighting Catholics haunted woods and hills under the name of tories, afterwards given in derision to a great party, and were hunted down with as little compunction as the wolves to which they were compared. Measures of great severity were taken against Roman Catholic priests; but it is said that Cromwell had great numbers in his pay, and that they kept him well informed. All classes of Protestants were tolerated, and Jeremy Taylor preached unmolested. Commercial equality being given to Ireland, the woollen trade at once revived, and a shipping interest sprang up. A legislative union was also effected, and Irish members attended at Westminster.

Charles II. (1660-1685).

Charles II. was bound in honour to do something for such Irish Catholics as were innocent of the massacres of 1641, and the claims were not scrutinized too severely. It was found impossible to displace the Cromwellians, but they were shorn of about one-third of their lands. When the Caroline settlement was complete it was found that the great rebellion had resulted in reducing the Catholic share of the fertile parts of Ireland from two-thirds to one-third. Ormonde, whose wife had been allowed by Cromwell's clemency to make him some remittances from the wreck of his estate, was largely and deservedly rewarded. A revenue of L30,000 was settled on the king, in consideration of which Ireland was in 1663 excluded from the benefit of the Navigation Act, and her nascent shipping interest ruined. In 1666 the importation of Irish cattle and horses into England was forbidden, the value of the former at once falling five-fold, of the latter twenty-fold. Dead meat, butter and cheese were also excluded, yet peace brought a certain prosperity. The woollen manufacture grew and flourished, and Macaulay is probably warranted in saying that under Charles II. Ireland was a pleasanter place of residence than it has been before or since. But it was pleasant only for those who conformed to the state religion. Roman Catholicism was tolerated, or rather connived at; but its professors were subject to frequent alarms, and to great severities during the ascendancy of Titus Oates. Bramhall became primate, and his hand was heavy against the Ulster Presbyterians. Jeremy Taylor began a persecution which stopped the influx of Scots into Ireland. Deprived of the means of teaching, the Independents and other sectaries soon disappeared. In a military colony women were scarce, and the "Ironsides" had married natives. Roman Catholicism held its own. The Quakers became numerous during this reign, and their peaceful industry was most useful. They venerate as their founder William Edmundson (1627-1712), a Westmorland man who had borne arms for the Parliament, and who settled in Antrim in 1652.

James II. (1685-1689).

The duke of Ormonde was lord-lieutenant at the death of Charles II. At seventy-five his brain was as clear as ever, and James saw that he was no fit tool for his purpose. "See, gentlemen," said the old chief, lifting his glass at a military dinner-party, "they say at court I am old and doting. But my hand is steady, nor doth my heart fail.... To the king's health." Calculating on his loyal subservience, James appointed his brother-in-law, Lord Clarendon, to succeed Ormonde. Monmouth's enterprise made no stir, but gave an excuse for disarming the Protestant militia. The tories at once emerged from their hiding-places, and Clarendon found Ireland in a ferment. It was now the turn of the Protestants to feel persecution. Richard Talbot, one of the few survivors of Drogheda, governed the king's Irish policy, while the lord-lieutenant was kept in the dark. Finally Talbot, created earl of Tyrconnel, himself received the sword of state. Protestants were weeded out of the army, Protestant officers in particular being superseded by idle Catholics of gentle blood, where they could be found, and in any case by Catholics. Bigotry rather than religion was Tyrconnel's ruling passion, and he filled up offices with Catholics independently of character. Sir Alexander Fitton, a man convicted of forgery, became chancellor, and but three Protestant judges were left on the bench. The outlawries growing out of the affairs of 1641 were reversed as quickly as possible. Protestant corporations were dissolved by "quo warrantos"; but James was still Englishman enough to refuse an Irish parliament, which might repeal Poyning's Act and the Act of Settlement.

William III.

At the close of 1688 James was a fugitive in France. By this time Londonderry and Enniskillen had closed their gates, and the final struggle had begun. In March 1689 James reached Ireland with some French troops, and summoned a parliament which repealed the Act of Settlement. The estates of absentees were vested in the crown, and, as only two months law was given, this was nearly equivalent to confiscating the property of all Protestants. Between 2000 and 3000 Protestants were attainted by name, and moreover the act was not published. The appalling list may be read in the _State of the Protestants_ by William King, archbishop of Dublin, one of many divines converted by the logic of events to believe in the lawfulness of resistance. Interesting details may be gleaned from Edmundson's _Diary_. The dispossessed Protestants escaped by sea or flocked into Ulster, where a gallant stand was made. The glories of Londonderry and Enniskillen will live as long as the English language. The Irish cause produced one great achievement--the defence of Limerick, and one great leader--Patrick Sarsfield. The Roman Catholic Celts aided by France were entirely beaten, the Protestant colonists aided by England were entirely victorious at the battle of the Boyne, on the 1st of July 1690; and at the battle of Aughrim on the 12th of July 1691. Even the siege of Limerick showed the irreconcilable divisions which had nullified the efforts of 1641. Hugh Baldearg O'Donnell, last of Irish chiefs, sold his services to William for L500 a year. But it was their king that condemned the Irish to hopeless failure. He called them cowards, whereas the cowardice was really his own, and he deserted them in their utmost need. They repaid him with the opprobrious nickname of "Sheemas-a-Cacagh," or dirty James.

Irish rhetoric commonly styles Limerick "the city of the violated treaty." The articles of capitulation (Oct. 3, 1691) may be read in Thomas Leland's _History of Ireland_ (1773) or in F. P. Plowden's _History of Ireland_ (1809); from the first their interpretation was disputed. Hopes of religious liberty were held out, but were not fulfilled. Lords Justices Porter and Coningsby promised to do their utmost to obtain a parliamentary ratification, but the Irish parliament would not be persuaded. There was a paragraph in the original draft which would have protected the property of the great majority of Roman Catholics, but this was left out in the articles actually signed. William thought the omission accidental, but this is hardly possible. At all events he ratified the treaty in the sense most favourable to the Catholics, while the Irish parliament adhered to the letter of the document. Perhaps no breach of faith was intended, but the sorrowful fact remains that the modern settlement of Ireland has the appearance of resting on a broken promise. More than 1,000,000 Irish acres were forfeited, and, though some part returned to Catholic owners, the Catholic interest in the land was further diminished. William III. was the most liberally minded man in his dominions; but the necessities of his position, such is the awful penalty of greatness, forced him into intolerance against his will, and he promised to discourage the Irish woollen trade. His manner of disposing of the Irish forfeitures was inexcusable. The lands were resumed by the English parliament, less perhaps from a sense of justice than from a desire to humiliate the deliverer of England, and were resold to the highest bidder. Nevertheless it became the fashion to reward nameless English services at the expense of Ireland. Pensions and sinecures which would not bear the light in England were charged on the Irish establishment, and even bishoprics were given away on the same principle. The tremendous uproar raised by Swift about Wood's halfpence was heightened by the fact that Wood shared his profits with the duchess of Kendal, the mistress of George I.

Penal laws.

From the first the victorious colonists determined to make another 1641 impossible, and the English government failed to moderate their severity. In 1708 Swift declared that the Papists were politically as inconsiderable as the women and children. In despair of effecting anything at home, the young and strong enlisted in foreign armies, and the almost incredible number of 450,000 are said to have emigrated for this purpose between 1691 and 1745. This and the hatred felt towards James II. prevented any rising in 1715 or 1745. The panic-stricken severity of minorities is proverbial, but it is not to be forgotten that the Irish Protestants had been turned out of house and home twice within fifty years. The restrictions on Irish commerce provoked Locke's friend William Molyneux (1656-1698) to write his famous plea for legislative independence (1698). Much of the learning contained in it now seems obsolete, but the question is less an antiquarian one than he supposed. Later events have shown that a mother country must have supreme authority, or must relax the tie with self-governing colonies merely into a close alliance. In the case of Ireland the latter plan has always been impossible. In 1703 the Irish parliament begged for a legislative union, but as that would have involved at least partial free trade the English monopolists prevented it. By Poynings's law (see above) England had control of all Irish legislation, and was therefore an accomplice in the penal laws. These provided that no Papist might teach a school or any child but his own, or send children abroad, the burden of proof lying on the accused, and the decision being left to magistrates without a jury. Mixed marriages were forbidden between persons of property, and the children might be forcibly brought up Protestants. A Catholic could not be a guardian, and all wards in chancery were brought up Protestants. The Protestant eldest son of a Catholic landed proprietor might make his father tenant for life and secure his own inheritance. Among Catholic children land went in compulsory gavelkind. Catholics could not take longer leases than thirty-one years at two-thirds of a rack rent; they were even required to conform within six months of an inheritance accruing, on pain of being ousted by the next Protestant heir. Priests from abroad were banished, and their return declared treason. All priests were required to register and to remain in their own parishes, and informers were to be rewarded at the expense of the Catholic inhabitants. No Catholic was allowed arms, two justices being empowered to search; and if he had a good horse any Protestant might claim it on tendering L5.

These laws were of course systematically evaded. The property of Roman Catholics was often preserved through Protestant trustees, and it is understood that faith was generally kept. Yet the attrition if slow was sure, and by the end of the century the proportion of land belonging to Roman Catholics was probably not more than one-tenth of the whole. We can see now that if the remaining Roman Catholic landlords had been encouraged they would have done much to reconcile the masses to the settlement. Individuals are seldom as bad as corporations, and the very men who made the laws against priests practically shielded them. The penal laws put a premium on hypocrisy, and many conformed only to preserve their property or to enable them to take office. Proselytizing schools, though supported by public grants, entirely failed.

Commercial restraints.

The restraints placed by English commercial jealousy on Irish trade destroyed manufacturing industry in the south and west (see the section _Economics_ above). Driven by the Caroline legislation against cattle into breeding sheep, Irish graziers produced the best wool in Europe. Forbidden to export it, or to work it up profitably at home, they took to smuggling, for which the indented coast gave great facilities. The enormous profits of the contraband trade with France enabled Ireland to purchase English goods to an extent greater than her whole lawful traffic. The moral effect was disastrous. The religious penal code it was thought meritorious to evade; the commercial penal code was ostentatiously defied; and both tended to make Ireland the least law-abiding country in Europe. The account of the smugglers is the most interesting and perhaps the most valuable part of J. A. Froude's work in Ireland, and should be compared with the Irish and Scottish chapters of Lecky's _History_.

Ulster prosperous.

When William III. promised to depress the Irish woollen trade, he promised to do all he could for Irish linen. England did not fulfil the second promise; still the Ulster weavers were not crushed, and their industry flourished. Some Huguenot refugees, headed by Louis Crommelin (1652-1727), were established by William III. at Lisburn, and founded the manufacturing prosperity of Ulster. Other Huguenots attempted other industries, but commercial restraints brought them to nought. The peculiar character of the flax business has prevented it from crossing the mountains which bound the northern province. Wool was the natural staple of the south.

Dissenters.

The Scottish Presbyterians who defended Londonderry were treated little better than the Irish Catholics who besieged it--the sacramental test of 1704 being the work of the English council rather than of the Irish parliament. In 1715 the Irish House of Commons resolved that any one who should prosecute a Presbyterian for accepting a commission in the army without taking the test was an enemy to the king and to the Protestant interest. Acts of indemnity were regularly passed throughout the reign of George II., and until 1780, when the Test Act was repealed. A bare toleration had been granted in 1720. Various abuses, especially forced labour on roads which were often private jobs, caused the Oakboy Insurrection in 1764. Eight years later the Steelboys rose against the exactions of absentee landlords, who often turned out Protestant yeomen to get a higher rent from Roman Catholic cottiers. The dispossessed men carried to America an undying hatred of England which had much to say to the American revolution, and that again reacted on Ireland. Lawless Protestant associations, called Peep o' Day Boys, terrorized the north and were the progenitors of the Orangemen (1789). Out of the rival "defenders" Ribbonism in part sprung, and the United Irishmen drew from both sources (1791).

Poverty of the peasantry.

The Ulster peasants were never as badly off as those of the south and west. Writers the most unlike each other--Swift and Hugh Boulter, George Berkeley and George Stone, Arthur Young and Dr Thomas Campbell--all tell the same tale. Towards the end of the 17th century Raleigh's fatal gift had already become the food of the people. When Sir Stephen Rice (1637-1715), chief baron of the Irish exchequer, went to London in 1688 to urge the Catholic claims on James II., the hostile populace escorted him in mock state with potatoes stuck on poles. Had manufactures been given fair play in Ireland, population might have preserved some relation to capital. As it was, land became almost the only property, and the necessity of producing wool for smuggling kept the country in grass. The poor squatted where they could, receiving starvation wages, and paying exorbitant rents for their cabins, partly with their own labour. Unable to rise, the wretched people multiplied on their potato plots with perfect recklessness. During the famine which began in the winter of 1739 one-fifth of the population is supposed to have perished; yet it is hardly noticed in literature, and seems not to have touched the conscience of that English public which in 1755 subscribed L100,000 for the sufferers by the Lisbon earthquake. As might be expected where men were allowed to smuggle and forbidden to work, redress was sought in illegal combinations and secret societies. The dreaded name of Whiteboy was first heard in 1761; and agrarian crime has never since been long absent. Since the Union we have had the Threshers, the Terry Alts, the Molly Maguires, the Rockites, and many others. Poverty has been the real cause of all these disturbances, which were often aggravated by the existence of factions profoundly indicative of barbarism. Communism, cupidity, scoundrelism of all kinds have contributed to every disturbance. The tendency shown to screen the worst criminals is sometimes the result of sympathy, but more often of fear. The cruelties which have generally accompanied Whiteboyism is common to servile insurrections all over the world. No wonder if Irish landlords were formerly tyrannical, for they were in the position of slave-owners. The steady application of modern principles, by extending legal protection to all, has altered the slavish character of the oppressed Irish. The cruelty has not quite died out, but it is much rarer than formerly; and, generally speaking, the worst agrarianism has of late years been seen in the districts which retain most of the old features.

The medieval colony in Ireland was profoundly modified by the pressure of the surrounding tribes. While partially adopting their laws and customs, the descendants of the conquerors often spoke the language of the natives, and in so doing nearly lost their own. The _Book of Howth_ and many documents composed in the Pale during the 16th century show this clearly. Those who settled in Ireland after 1641 were in a very different mood. They hated, feared and despised the Irish, and took pride in preserving their pure English speech. Molyneux and Petty, who founded the Royal Society of Dublin in 1683, were equally Englishmen, though the former was born in Ireland. Swift and Berkeley did not consider themselves Irishmen at all. Burke and Goldsmith, coming later, though they might not call themselves Englishmen, were not less free from provincialism. It would be hard to name four other men who, within the same period, used Shakespeare's language with equal grace and force. They were all educated at Trinity College, Dublin. The Sheridans were men of Irish race, but with the religion they adopted the literary tone of the dominant caste, which was small and exclusive, with the virtues and the vices of an aristocracy. Systematic infringement of English copyright was discreditable in itself, but sure evidence of an appetite for reading. "The bookseller's property," says Gibbon of his first volume, "was twice invaded by the pirates of Dublin." The oratory of the day was of a high order, and incursions into the wide field of pamphlet literature often repay the student. Handel was appreciated in Dublin at a time when it was still the fashion to decry him in London. The public buildings of the Irish capital have great architectural merit, and private houses still preserve much evidence of a refined taste. Angelica Kauffmann worked long in Ireland; James Barry and Sir Martin Archer Shee were of Irish birth; and on the whole, considering the small number of educated inhabitants, it must be admitted that the Ireland of Flood and Grattan was intellectually fertile.

Struggle for independence.

The volunteers (see FLOOD, HENRY) extorted partial free trade (1779), but manufacturing traditions had perished, and common experience shows how hard these are to recover. The demand for union was succeeded by a craving for independence. Poynings's law was repealed, and in 1782, in Grattan's opinion, Ireland was at last a nation. The ensuing period of eighteen years is the best known in Irish history. The quarrel and reconciliation of Flood and Grattan (q.v.), the kindly patriotism of Lord Charlemont, the eloquence, the devotion, the corruption, are household words. (Details will be found in the biographical articles on these and other men of the period.) In the parliament of 1784, out of 300 members 82 formed the regular opposition, of whom 30 were the nominees of Whig potentates and 52 were really elected. The majority contained 29 members considered independent, 44 who expected to be bought, 44 placemen, 12 sitting for regular government boroughs, and 12 who were supposed to support the government on public grounds. The remaining seats were proprietary, and were let to government for valuable consideration. The House of Lords, composed largely of borough mongers and controlled by political bishops, was even less independent. Only Protestant freeholders had votes, which encouraged leases for lives, about the worst kind of tenure, and the object of each proprietor was to control as many votes as possible. The necessity of finding Protestants checked subdivision for a time, but in 1793 the Roman Catholics received the franchise, and it became usual to make leases in common, so that each lessee should have a freehold interest of 40s. The landlord indeed had little choice, for his importance depended on the poll-book. Salaries, sinecures, even commissions in the army were reserved for those who contributed to the return of some local magnate.

Dependence on the potato.

But no political cause swelled the population as much as the potato. Introduced by Raleigh in 1610, the cultivation of this important tuber developed with extraordinary rapidity. The Elizabethan wars were most injurious to industry, for men will not sow unless they hope to reap, and the very essence of military policy had been to deprive a recalcitrant people of the means of living. The Mantuan peasant was grieved at the notion of his harvest being gathered by barbarian soldiers, and the Irishman could not be better pleased to see his destroyed. There was no security for any one, and every one was tempted to live from hand to mouth. The decade of anarchy which followed 1641 stimulated this tendency fearfully. The labour of one man could plant potatoes enough to feed forty, and they could neither be destroyed nor carried away easily. When Petty wrote, early in Charles II.'s reign, this demoralizing esculent was already the national food. Potatoes cannot be kept very long, but there was no attempt to keep them at all; they were left in the ground, and dug as required. A frost which penetrated deep caused the famine of 1739. Even with the modern system of storing in pits the potato does not last through the summer, and the "meal months"--June, July and August--always brought great hardship. The danger increased as the growing population pressed ever harder upon the available land. Between 1831 and 1842 there were six seasons of dearth, approaching in some places to famine.

The population increased from 2,845,932 in 1785 to 5,356,594 in 1803. They married and were given in marriage. Wise men foresaw the deluge, but people who were already half-starved every summer did not think their case could well be worse. In 1845 the population had swelled to 8,295,061, the greater part of whom depended on the potato only. There was no margin, and when the "precarious exotic" failed an awful famine was the result.

Great public and private efforts were made to meet the case, and relief works were undertaken, on which, in March 1847, 734,000 persons, representing a family aggregate of not less than 3,000,000, were employed. It was found that labour and exposure were not good for half-starved men. The jobbing was frightful, and is probably inseparable from wholesale operations of this kind. The policy of the government was accordingly changed, and the task of feeding a whole people was undertaken. More than 3,000,000 rations, generally cooked, were at one time distributed, but no exertions could altogether avert death in a country where the usual machinery for carrying, distributing and preparing food was almost entirely wanting. From 200,000 to 300,000 perished of starvation or of fever caused by insufficient food. An exodus followed which, necessary as it was, caused dreadful hardship, and among the Roman Catholic Irish in America Fenianism took its rise. One good result of the famine was thoroughly to awaken Englishmen to their duty towards Ireland. Since then, purse-strings have been even too readily untied at the call of Irish distress.

Rebellion of 1798.

Great brutalities disgraced the rebellion of 1798, but the people had suffered much and had French examples before them. The real originator of the movement was Theobald Wolfe Tone (q.v.), whose proffered services were rejected by Pitt, and who founded the United Irishmen. His Parisian adventures detailed by himself are most interesting, and his tomb is still the object of an annual pilgrimage. Tone was a Protestant, but he had imbibed socialist ideas, and hated the priests whose influence counteracted his own. In Wexford, where the insurrection went farthest, the ablest leaders were priests, but they acted against the policy of their church.

Union of Great Britain and Ireland.

Catholic Emancipation.

Repeal agitation.

The inevitable union followed (1st January 1801). From this period the history of Ireland naturally becomes intermingled with English politics (see ENGLISH HISTORY), and much of the detail will also be found in the biographical articles on prominent Irishmen and other politicians. Pitt had some time before (1785) offered a commercial partnership, which had been rejected on the ground that it involved the ultimate right of England to tax Ireland. He was not less liberally inclined in religious matters, but George III. stood in the way, and like William III. the minister would not risk his imperial designs. Carried in great measure by means as corrupt as those by which the constitution of '82 had been worked, the union earned no gratitude. But it was a political necessity, and Grattan never gave his countrymen worse advice than when he urged them to "keep knocking at the union." The advice has, however, been taken. Robert Emmet's insurrection (1803) was the first emphatic protest. Then came the struggle for emancipation. It was proposed to couple the boon with a veto on the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops. It was the ghost of the old question of investitures. The remnant of the Roman Catholic aristocracy would have granted it; even Pius VII. was not invincibly opposed to it; but Daniel O'Connell took the lead against it. Under his guidance the Catholic association became a formidable body. At last the priests gained control of the elections; the victor of Waterloo was obliged to confess that the king's government could no longer be carried on, and Catholic emancipation had to be granted in 1829. The tithe war followed, and this most oppressive of all taxes was unfortunately commuted (1838) only in deference to clamour and violence. The repeal agitation was unsuccessful, but let us not be extreme to mark the faults of O'Connell's later years. He doubtless believed in repeal at first; probably he ceased to believe in it, but he was already deeply committed, and had abandoned a lucrative profession for politics. With some help from Father Mathew he kept the monster meetings in order, and his constant denunciations of lawless violence distinguish him from his imitators. His trial took place in 1844. There is a sympathetic sketch of O'Connell's career in Lecky's _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_ (1871); Sir Thomas Wyse's _Historical Sketch of the late Catholic Association_ (1829) gives the best account of the religious struggle, and much may be learned from W. J. Fitzpatrick's _Life of Bishop Doyle_ (1880).

The national system of education introduced in 1833 was the real recantation of intolerant opinions, but the economic state of Ireland was fearful. The famine, emigration and the new poor law nearly got rid of starvation, but the people never became frankly loyal, feeling that they owed more to their own importunity and to their own misfortunes than to the wisdom of their rulers. The literary efforts of young Ireland eventuated in another rebellion (1848); a revolutionary wave could not roll over Europe without touching the unlucky island. After the failure of that outbreak there was peace until the close of the American civil war released a number of adventurers trained to the use of arms and filled with hatred to England.

Already in 1858 the discovery of the Phoenix conspiracy had shown that the policy of John Mitchel (1815-1875) and his associates was not forgotten. John O'Mahony, one of the men of '48, organized a formidable secret society in America, which his historical studies led him to call the Fenian brotherhood (see FENIANS).

The Fenian movement disclosed much discontent, and was attended by criminal outrages in England. The disestablishment of the Irish Church, the privileged position of which had long been condemned by public opinion, was then decreed (1869) and the land question was next taken in hand (1870). These reforms did not, however, put an end to Irish agitation. The Home Rule party which demanded the restoration of a separate Irish parliament, showed increased activity, and the general election of 1874 gave it a strong representation at Westminster, where one section of the party developed into the "obstructionists" (see the articles on ISAAC BUTT and C. S. PARNELL).

Isaac Butt, who died in May 1879, led a parliamentary party of fifty-four, but the Conservatives were strong enough to outvote them and the Liberals together. His procedure was essentially lawyer-like, for he respected the House of Commons and dreaded revolutionary violence. His death left the field clear for younger and bolder men. William Shaw succeeded him as chairman of the Irish party in Parliament; but after the election of 1880, Parnell, who had the Land League at his back, ousted him by 23 votes to 18.

The Land League.

The Land Law of 1860, known as Deasy's Act, had been based on the principle that every tenancy rested on contract either expressed or implied. The act of 1870, admitting the divergence between theory and practice, protected the tenants' improvements and provided compensation for disturbance within certain limits, but not where the ejectment was for non-payment of rent. In good times this worked well enough, but foreign competition began to tell, and 1879 was the worst of several bad seasons. A succession of wet summers told against all farmers, and in mountainous districts it was difficult to dry the turf on which the people depended for fuel. A famine was feared, and in the west there was much real distress. The Land League, of which Michael Davitt (q.v.) was the founder, originated in Mayo in August, and at a meeting in Dublin in October the organization was extended to all Ireland, with Parnell as president. The country was thickly covered with branches before the end of the year, and in December Parnell went to America to collect money. He was absent just three months, visiting over sixty cities and towns; and 200,000 dollars were subscribed. Parnell had to conciliate the Clan-na-Gael and the Fenians generally, both in Ireland and America, while abstaining from action which would make his parliamentary position untenable. He did not deny that he would like an armed rebellion, but acknowledged that it was an impossibility. Speaking at Cincinnati on the 23rd of February 1880, he declared that the first thing necessary was to undermine English power by destroying the Irish landlords. Ireland might thus become independent. "And let us not forget," he added, "that that is the ultimate goal at which all we Irishmen aim. None of us, whether we be in America or in Ireland, or wherever we may be, will be satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which keeps Ireland bound to England." At Galway in October of the same year he said that he "would not have taken off his coat" to help the tenant farmers had he not known that that was the way to legislative independence. Fenianism and agrarianism, essentially different as they are, might be worked to the same end.

Boycotting.

To meet the partial failure of the potatoes in Connaught and Donegal, very large sums were subscribed and administered by two committees, one under the duchess of Marlborough and the other under the lord mayor of Dublin. When Lord Beaconsfield appealed to the country in March 1880, he reminded the country in a letter to the viceroy, the duke of Marlborough, that there was a party in Ireland "attempting to sever the constitutional tie which unites it to Great Britain in that bond which has favoured the power and prosperity of both," and that such an agitation might in the end be "scarcely less disastrous than pestilence and famine." But the general election did not turn mainly upon Ireland, and the result gave Gladstone a majority of 50 over Conservatives and Home Rulers combined. Earl Cowper became lord-lieutenant, with W. E. Forster (q.v.) as chief secretary, and Parnell remained chairman of his own party in parliament. The Compensation for Disturbance Bill, even where the ejectment was for non-payment of rent, passed the House of Commons, but the Lords threw it out, and this has often been represented as the great cause of future trouble. Probably it made little real difference, for the extreme party in Ireland were resolved to stop at nothing. It is not easy to defend the principle that a landlord who has already lost his rent should also have to pay the defaulter before getting a new tenant or deriving a profit from the farm by working it himself. Speaking at Ennis on the 19th of September, Parnell told the people to punish a man for taking a farm from which another had been evicted "by isolating him from his kind as if he was a leper of old." The advice was at once taken and its scope largely extended. For refusing to receive rents at figures fixed by the tenants, Captain Boycott (1832-1897), Lord Erne's agent in Mayo, was severely "boycotted," the name of the first victim being given to the new system. His servants were forced to leave him, his crops were left unsaved, even the post and telegraph were interfered with. The Ulster Orangemen resolved to get in the crops, and to go in armed force sufficient for the purpose. The government allowed 50 of them to go under the protection of about 900 soldiers. The cost seemed great, but the work was done and the law vindicated. In Cork William Bence-Jones (1812-1882) was attacked. The men in the service of the steam-packet companies refused to put his cattle on board, and they were eventually smuggled across the Channel in small lots. Several associations were formed which had more or less success against the League, and at last a direct attack was made. Parnell with four other members of parliament and the chief officers of the Land League were indicted for conspiracy in the Queen's Bench. No means of intimidating the jurors was neglected, and in the then state of public feeling a verdict was hardly to be expected. On the 25th of January 1881 the jury disagreed, and Parnell became stronger than ever.

Then followed a reign of terror which lasted for years. No one was safe, and private spite worked freely in the name of freedom. The system originated by Parnell's Ennis speech became an all-devouring tyranny. In the House of Commons, on the 24th of May 1882, Gladstone said that boycotting required a sanction like every other creed, and that the sanction which alone made it effective "is the murder which is not to be denounced." The following description by a resident in Munster was published in _The Times_ of the 5th of November 1885: "Boycotting means that a peaceable subject of the queen is denied food and drink, and that he is ruined in his business; that his cattle are unsaleable at fairs; that the smith will not shoe his horse, nor the carpenter mend his cart; that old friends pass him by on the other side, making the sign of the cross; that his children are hooted at the village school; that he sits apart like an outcast in his usual place of public worship: all for doing nothing but what the law says he has a perfect right to do. I know of a man who is afraid to visit his own son. A trader who is even suspected of dealing with such a victim of tyranny may be ruined by the mere imputation; his customers shun him from fear, and he is obliged to get a character from some notorious leaguer. Membership of the National League is, in many cases, as necessary a protection as ever was a certificate of civism under Robespierre. The real Jacobins are few, but the masses groan and submit." Medicine was refused by a shopkeeper even for the sick child of a boycotted person. A clergyman was threatened for visiting a parishioner who was under the ban of the League. Sometimes no one could be found to dig a grave. The League interfered in every relation of life, and the mere fact of not belonging to it was often severely punished. "The people," says the report of the Cowper Commission, "are more afraid of boycotting, which depends for its success on the probability of outrage, than they are of the judgments of the courts of justice. This unwritten law in some districts is supreme."

Coercion.

The session of parliament of 1881 was chiefly occupied with Ireland. "With fatal and painful precision," Gladstone told the House of Commons on the 28th of January, "the steps of crime dogged the steps of the Land League," and the first thing was to restore the supremacy of the law. In 1871 there had been an agrarian war in Westmeath, and an act had been passed authorizing the arrest of suspected persons and their detention without trial. The ringleaders disappeared and the county became quiet again. It was now proposed to do the same thing for the whole of Ireland, the power of detention to continue until the 30th of September 1882. Parnell cared nothing for the dignity of the House of Commons. His leading idea was that no concession could be got from England by fair means, and he made himself as disagreeable as possible. Parliamentary forms were used with great success to obstruct parliamentary action. The "Coercion Bill" was introduced on the 24th of January 1881. There was a sitting of 22 hours and another of 41 hours, and on the 2nd of February the debate was closured by the Speaker on his own responsibility and the bill read a first time. The Speaker's action was approved by the House generally, but acrimonious debates were raised by Irish members. Parnell and 35 of his colleagues were suspended, and the bill became law on the 2nd of March, but not before great and permanent changes were made in parliamentary procedure. An Arms Bill, which excited the same sort of opposition, was also passed into law.

Land Act, 1881.

Kilmainham "Treaty."

That a Land Act should be passed was a foregone conclusion as soon as the result of the general election was known. There were many drafts and plans which never saw the light, but it was at last resolved to adopt the policy known as the "Three F's"--free sale, fixity of tenure and fair rents. By the first tenants at will were empowered to sell their occupation interests, the landlord retaining a right of pre-emption. By the second the tenant was secured from eviction except for non-payment of rent. By the third the tenant was given the right to have a "fair rent" fixed by a newly formed Land Commission Court, the element of competition being entirely excluded. There were several exceptions and qualifying clauses, but most of them have been swept away by later acts. The act of 1881 can scarcely be said to have worked well or smoothly, but it is not easy to see how any sort of settlement could have been reached without accepting the principle of having the rent fixed by a third party. Drastic as the bill was, Parnell refused to be a party to it, and on the second reading, which was carried by 352 to 176, he walked out of the House with 35 of his followers. When the bill became law in August he could not prevent the tenants from using it, but he did what he could to discourage them in order to please his American paymasters, who repudiated all parliamentary remedies. In September a convention was held in Dublin, and Parnell reported its action to the American Land League: "Resolutions were adopted for national self-government, the unconditional liberation of the land for the people, tenants not to use the rent-fixing clauses of the Land Act, but follow old Land League lines, and rely on the old methods to reach justice. The executive of the League is empowered to select test cases, in order that tenants in surrounding districts may realize, by the results of cases decided, the hollowness of the act" (Barry O'Brien, _Life of C. S. Parnell_, i. 306). His organ _United Ireland_ declared that the new courts must be cowed into giving satisfactory decisions. The League, however, could not prevent the farmers from using the fair-rent clauses. It was more successful in preventing free sale, maintaining the doctrine that, rent or no rent, no evictions were to be allowed. At the first sitting of the Land Commission in Dublin the crier, perhaps by accident, declared "the court of the Land League to be open." Speaking at Leeds on the 7th of October, Gladstone said "the resources of civilization were not exhausted," adding that Parnell "stood between the living and the dead, not like Aaron to stay the plague, but to spread the plague." Two days later Parnell called the prime minister a "masquerading knight-errant," ready to oppress the unarmed, but submissive to the Boers as soon as he found "that they were able to shoot straighter than his own soldiers." Four days after this Parnell was arrested under the Coercion Act and lodged in Kilmainham gaol. The Land League having retorted by ordering the tenants to pay no rent, it was declared illegal, and suppressed by proclamation. Parnell is said to have disapproved of the no-rent manifesto, as also Mr John Dillon, who was in Kilmainham with him, but both of them signed it (ib. i. 319). At Liverpool on the 27th of October Gladstone described Parnell and his party as "marching through rapine to the disintegration and dismemberment of the empire." In 1881, 4439 agrarian outrages were reported; nothing attracted more attention in England than the cruel mutilations of cattle, which became very frequent. The Ladies' Land League tried to carry on the work of the suppressed organization and there was even an attempt at a Children's League. Sex had no effect in softening the prevalent style of oratory, but the government thought it better to take no notice. The imprisonment of suspects under the Coercion Act had not the expected result, and outrages were incessant, the agitation being supported by constant supplies of money from America. Gladstone resolved on a complete change of policy. It was decided to check evictions by an Arrears Bill, and the three imprisoned members of parliament--Messrs Parnell, Dillon and O'Kelly--were released on the 2nd of May 1882, against the wishes of the Irish government. This was known as the Kilmainham Treaty. Lord Cowper and Forster at once resigned, and were succeeded by Lord Spencer and Lord Frederick Cavendish, who entered Dublin on the 6th of May.

Phoenix Park murders.

That same evening Lord Frederick and the permanent under-secretary Thomas Henry Burke were murdered in the Phoenix Park in broad daylight. The weapons were amputating knives imported for the purpose. The assassins drove rapidly away; no one, not even those who saw the deed from a distance, knew what had been done. A Dublin tradesman named Field, who had been a juror in a murder trial, was attacked by the same gang and stabbed in many places. He escaped with life, though with shattered health, and it was the identification of the man who drove his assailants' car that afterwards led to the discovery of the whole conspiracy. The clue was obtained by a private examination of suspected persons under the powers given by the Crimes Act. To obtain convictions the evidence of an informer was wanted, and the person selected was James Carey, a member of the Dublin Corporation and a chief contriver of the murders. He swore that they had been ordered immediately after the appearance of an article in the _Freeman's Journal_ which declared that a "clean sweep" should be made of Dublin Castle officials. The evidence disclosed the fact that several abortive attempts had been previously made to murder Forster. Out of twenty persons, subsequently arraigned, five were hanged, and others sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Carey embarked for South Africa in the following July, and was murdered on board ship by Patrick O'Donnell, who was brought to England, convicted, and hanged on the 17th of December 1883.

National League.

Dynamite.

Labourers Act.

Mr (afterwards Sir) G. O. Trevelyan had been appointed chief secretary in May 1882, and in July the Crimes Prevention Act was passed for three years on lines indicated by Lord Cowper. In the first six months of the year 2597 agrarian outrages were reported, and in the last six months 836. They fell to 834 in 1883, and to 744 in 1884. The Arrears Bill also became law. Money enough was advanced out of the surplus property of the Irish Church to pay for tenants of holdings under L30 one year's rent upon all arrears accruing before November 1880, giving them a clear receipt to that date on condition of their paying another year themselves; of the many reasons against the measure the most important was that it was a concession to agrarian violence. But the same could be and was said of the Land Act of 1881. That had been passed, and it was probably impossible to make it work at all smoothly without checking evictions by dealing with old arrears. The Irish National League was, however, founded in October to take up the work of the defunct Land League, and the country continued to be disturbed. The law was paralysed, for no jury could be trusted to convict even on the clearest evidence, and the National League branches assumed judicial functions. Men were openly tried all over the country for disobeying the revolutionary decrees, and private spite was often the cause of their being accused. "Tenants," to quote the Cowper Commission again, "who have paid even the judicial rents have been summoned to appear before self-constituted tribunals, and if they failed to do so, or on appearing failed to satisfy those tribunals, have been fined or boycotted." In February 1883 Mr Trevelyan gave an account of his stewardship at Hawick, and said that all law-abiding Irishmen, whether Conservative or Liberal, were on one side, while on the other were those who "planned and executed the Galway and Dublin murders, the boycotting and firing into houses, the mutilation of cattle and intimidation of every sort." In this year the campaign of outrage in Ireland was reinforced by one of dynamite in Great Britain. The home secretary, Sir W. Harcourt, brought in an Explosives Bill on the 9th of April, which was passed through all its stages in one day and received the royal assent on the next. The dynamiters were for the most part Irish-Americans, who for obvious reasons generally spared Ireland, but one land-agent's house in Kerry was shaken to its foundations in November 1884. At Belfast in the preceding June Lord Spencer, who afterwards became a Home Ruler, had announced that the secret conspirators would "not terrify the English nation." On the 22nd of February 1883 Forster made his great attack on Parnell in the House of Commons, accusing him of moral complicity with Irish crime. A detailed answer was never attempted, and public attention was soon drawn to the trial of the "Invincibles" who contrived the Phoenix Park murders. On the 11th of December Parnell received a present of L37,000 from his followers in Ireland. The tribute, as it was called, was raised in spite of a papal prohibition. As a complement to the Land Act and Arrears Act, boards of guardians were this year empowered to build labourers' cottages with money borrowed on the security of the rates and repayable out of them. Half an acre of land went with the cottage, and by a later act this was unwisely extended to one acre. That the labourers had been badly housed was evident, and there was little chance of improvement by private capitalists, for cottage property is not remunerative. But the working of the Labourers Acts was very costly, cottages being often assigned to people who were not agricultural labourers at all. In many districts the building was quite overdone, and the rent obtainable being far less than enough to recoup the guardians, the system operated as out-door relief for the able-bodied and as a rate in aid of wages.

Ashbourne Act.

Home Rule Bill, 1886.