Chapter XII

1832.

The first reformed Parliament--Steam communication with
India--State of Ireland--Lawless behaviour--Malversation of
justice--O'Connell and the Trades' Political Union--Crime in
Ireland.

On August 16th the King in person prorogued Parliament, and on December 3rd it was dissolved, by proclamation, and the country was plunged into all the turmoil of a General Election. This was to be the first reformed Parliament, and all sorts of evils arising from its democratic tendencies were prophesied. But it turned out better than was expected. It was reserved to our later days for the title of Member of Parliament to be turned almost into a byword and reproach; and some of the persons who sat in the parliament of 1892-5 would not have been tolerated, nor could their speeches and remarks have been delivered. True, there was not a prize-fighter in that parliament, as there was in the first reformed one, but John Gully, the member for Pontefract, was respectable after his kind. From a butcher boy he became a pugilist, and William IV., as Duke of Clarence, witnessed his first fight, in 1805, with the "Game Chicken." Then he turned a publican, and retired from the ring in 1808. He then became a betting man and owner of racehorses, was a temporary royal page at the coronation of George IV., made a lot of money in his profession, bought Ackworth Park, near Pontefract, which little pocket borough he sat for from December 10, 1832 to July 17, 1837.

Worthy of note is it that an iron steam vessel, built for the East India Company, and intended to be employed as a towing vessel on the Ganges, was taken on a trial trip, on October 13th, down the Thames, having the chairman and several members of the court of directors of the Hon. East India Company on board. This, certainly, was in advance of the times, and one can scarcely believe that the same body of men could sanction the following letter, within a month afterwards:--

"East India House, November 8th.

SIR,

I have laid before the Court of Directors of the East India
Company your letter of the 25th October, on the subject of
communication by means of steam vessels between England and
India, by the Mediterranean and the Red Sea; and, in reply, I am
commanded to inform you that the Court, after a long and careful
consideration of the subject, have been convinced that no
advantage commensurate with the expense, as far as past
experiments have shown, can arise from the establishment of steam
packets on that line."

Ireland had not improved during the last twelve months; resistance to the payment of tithes had become open and systematic, and the question of the Repeal of the Union was openly advocated. Notices were scattered all over the country bidding the people to refrain from paying tithes, and threatening the police, should they interfere, with a similar fate to their brethren at Knocktopher, which has already been described. Says the _Annual Register_--

"Nor were these merely empty denunciations. The house and the
barn-yard of the tithepayer were reduced to ashes; his cattle
were houghed, or scattered all over the country; or, as happened
in the County of Carlow, hunted over precipices. There was no
mode of destroying property which ingenuity could invent, or
reckless daring perpetrate, but was called into exercise.
Scarcely a week elapsed which did not announce the cold-blooded
murder of a proctor, or a process server, or a constable, or of
some poor countryman who had thought himself bound to obey the
law, and to pay his debts.

"An archdeacon in the neighbourhood of Cashel was in treaty with
his parishioners for a commutation of his tithes. They could not
agree on the yearly sum which he ought to receive. They
surrounded him in sight of his own house, in broad daylight, and
beat his head to pieces with stones. Several persons were
ploughing in the field in which he was murdered, but either would
not or dared not interfere. Whoever connected himself, in any
manner of way, with the collection of tithe, had not one single
hour's security for his property or his life. In the beginning of
February the Irish Government found it necessary to have recourse
to the "Peace Preservation Act," and proclaim certain baronies in
the County of Tipperary to be in a state of disturbance.

"But a proclamation imposed no check on the outrages of men who
now deserved, from the openness of their attacks, the name of
insurgents. In the County of Westmeath, a body of two hundred of
them assaulted and attempted to disarm a sergeant's guard, and a
party of police stationed within a mile of a considerable town.
In the County of Donegal, they marched about in military array,
armed with guns, scythes, and pikes, compelling landlords to
sign obligations to reduce their rents, and to pay no tithe. In
Kilkenny, their deeds were even still more atrocious. They not
only made domiciliary visits to compel the surrender of arms, but
accompanied their lawlessness with unrelenting personal violence,
and they perpetrated these enormities in the open face of day. A
large body divided itself into smaller detachments. The latter
took different directions to search the houses of farmers and
proprietors; and, when their work was finished, they again
united, at the sound of their horn, to renew their labours on the
following day.

"In one instance they cruelly abused a farmer and his wife,
because they would not give up their daughter. They then searched
the house, found the young woman, who had concealed herself, and
carried her off. A farm had been standing unoccupied because, on
account of some unpopularity attached to its owner, no tenant
would venture to take it. A tenant at last had entered upon it; a
new house was built for him. He was immediately visited by these
Irish legislators, and compelled, on pain of death, to give up
his farm and his house. A farmer having refused to surrender a
pair of pistols to a body of these wretches, they dragged him to
the hearth, raked down the fire upon his feet, and continued this
torture until their object was accomplished.

"An end was put, not merely to the payment of tithe, but to the
payment of rent. A tenant ejected for non-payment was sure to
have his revenge. If a new tenant entered, he had only to expect
that his property would be committed to the flames, or he himself
shot. The terror which was thus universally propagated went far
to secure immunity to the offenders. To be connected with any
attempt to execute the law against murderers, incendiaries, or
robbers, was itself a high crime. To betray any activity in
preserving order, was to become a marked man; to become a marked
man was to be made the victim of open violence or hidden
assassination.

"The parties accused of the murder of a process server and a
captain of police, at the end of the preceding year, were brought
to trial at the Kilkenny Assizes in March. But, after the assizes
began, the Attorney-General found it necessary to delay the
trials. He stated that there was such an extensive combination
throughout the country to resist the payment of tithes, and to
protect all who might be implicated, that the ends of justice
could not be attained. A juror had objected to serve on the
ground that, if he gave a verdict 'against the people,' his life
and property would be in danger. The witnesses, too, were either
under the same intimidation, or were, themselves, members of the
illegal combinations....

"The Government at length seemed to think it time to try whether
the law could not reach the tumultuary assemblies of the
anti-tithe men and the ringleaders who collected them. The
Vice-Lieutenant of the county of Kilkenny was dismissed from his
office. A circular was addressed to the magistracy by the Irish
Government, directing them to disperse all meetings collected in
such numbers as to produce alarm and endanger the public peace,
or distinguished by banners, inscriptions, or emblems which
tended to disturbance, or throw contumely on the law. O'Connell
denounced this circular as illegal, and expressed his hope that a
reformed Parliament would not hesitate to receive an impeachment
of the Irish Government founded upon it; but still he gave his
advice that it should be obeyed. In consequence of these
instructions, various large meetings were dispersed by the
military, headed by a magistrate; but, where the meeting was
strictly parochial, and quietly gone about, no opposition was
offered to their petitioning against tithe and church cess.

"At the same time, a number of those persons of the better class,
who had played the principal part at meetings where a combined
scheme of disobedience was preached up, were arrested and held to
bail, on a charge of misdemeanour. Among them were two of
O'Connell's familiars, the president and vice-president of the
Trades' Political Union. The Grand Jury found true bills against
them, on the 4th of August, for having conspired, 'unlawfully,'
to oppose and resist the payment of tithes, and to frustrate the
remedies provided by law for the recovery of tithes, and for
soliciting and conspiring to procure the King's subjects to hold
no intercourse with any persons who should pay tithes.

"Following the example of O'Connell, when he was in a similar
predicament, they set their wits to work to gain time. Costello
took advantage of his legal privilege, to traverse to the next
Commission; the others pleaded in abatement, that some of the
Grand Jurors who had found the bills, were not seised of
freeholds in the County of Dublin. A number of arrests took
place, at the same time, in the county of Tipperary. Among the
persons held to bail was Lord Galway, who had filled the chair at
an anti-tithe meeting held in the neighbourhood of Clonmel....

"Before the end of the year they were brought to trial, and the
majority of them, after a few convictions had taken place,
pleaded guilty to the indictments. They pleaded guilty, even by
the advice of O'Connell himself, their great leader in politics
and law, under whose immediate patronage the holding of these
meetings, and the denunciations which they thundered forth, had
been conducted. Two of his most noisy retainers, the president
and vice-president of the Trades' Political Union, were convicted
at Dublin, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment. Their
defence was that, in the course they had taken regarding tithes,
they were only following the example of ministers and of the
people of England, in regard to rotten boroughs, and they thought
they had been aiding the Ministry in their efforts to abolish
tithes. A number of similar convictions took place in the
counties of Cork and Tipperary. The punishments inflicted were
fines and imprisonment. The criminals were looked upon as
martyrs, and the penalties which they were suffering were set
down as another unpardonable injury committed against Ireland, by
the English Government and Protestant Church."

Crime, however, continued unchecked. The clergyman of Borrisokane, in the county of Tipperary, having found it necessary to seize and sell some cattle belonging to refractory debtors, the combination prevented an auctioneer from acting and purchasers from bidding. The cattle were offered back to the owners at the low price bid for them, but this was scornfully refused. They must have blood, the more especially as the attendance of the military at the sale had prevented violence there. A driver, accompanied by a son of the clergyman, conducted the cattle to a neighbouring fair. On the public road, and in the broad daylight, the non-payers of tithes murdered the driver; and, although his companion did survive, it was only by mistake--they left him for dead upon the highway. Another clergyman was shot dead on his own lawn, while overlooking the labours of his servants.

But, occasionally, these gentlemen got the worst. To secure the tithes, certain proceedings were necessary in surveying and valuing. The persons engaged in performing these duties everywhere required the protection of the military. In the beginning of September, proceedings of this kind were to be adopted in the parish of Wallstown, county Cork; the peasantry assembled to resist; they attacked the military; the latter had to fire in self-defence, and four of the peasantry were killed, and several others wounded.

Again, a party of armed police being engaged in this duty, in a parish in Kilkenny, in the beginning of October, the police were compelled to fire, and two persons were killed. But these are enough horrors for one year.

The accompanying illustrations give a dinner, two ball, and a walking dress; also some modes of hair dressing which were in vogue in this year.