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 glassJames II. (1685-1689).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 Protestants were weeded out of the army, Protestant officers in particular being superseded by idle Catholics of gentle blood, where they could be found, and in any case by Catholics.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.
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 In March 1689 James reached Ireland with some French troops, and summoned a parliament which repealed the Act of Settlement.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 theState of the Protestantsby 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’sDiary. 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 victoriousWilliam III.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 £500 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’sHistory of Ireland(1773) or in F. P. Plowden’sHistory 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.
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 penalPenal laws.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 thanthirty-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 £5.
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.
The restraints placed by English commercial jealousy on Irish trade destroyed manufacturing industry in the south and west (see the sectionEconomicsabove). Driven by the Caroline legislation against cattle into breedingCommercial restraints.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’sHistory.
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.Ulster prosperous.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.
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.Dissenters.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).
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—allPoverty of the peasantry.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 £100,000 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. TheBook of Howthand 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 namefour othermen 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.
The volunteers (seeFlood, 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 cravingStruggle for independence.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.
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 injuriousDependence on the potato.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.
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 servicesRebellion of 1798.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.
The inevitable union followed (1st January 1801). From this period the history of Ireland naturally becomes intermingled with English politics (seeEnglish History), and much of the detail will also be found in the biographicalUnion of Great Britain and Ireland.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. RobertCatholic Emancipation.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 wasRepeal agitation.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’sLeaders of Public Opinion in Ireland(1871); Sir Thomas Wyse’sHistorical Sketch of the late Catholic Association(1829) gives the best account of the religious struggle, and much may be learned from W. J. Fitzpatrick’sLife 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 (seeFenians).
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 onIsaac ButtandC. 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 fieldclear 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 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,The Land League.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.
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 itBoycotting.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 inThe Timesof 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.”
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 LandCoercion.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 Februarythe 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.
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 policyLand Act, 1881.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 organUnited Irelanddeclared 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 KilmainhamKilmainham “Treaty.”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.
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 drovePhoenix Park murders.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 theFreeman’s Journalwhich 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.
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 yearNational League.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 £30 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 andfiring into houses, the mutilation of cattle and intimidation of every sort.” In this year the campaign of outrage in IrelandDynamite.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 £37,000 from his followers in Ireland. The tribute, as it was called, was raised in spite of a papal prohibition. As a complementLabourers Act.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.
The Explosives Act, strong as it was, did not at once effect its object. In February 1884 there was a plot to blow up four London railway stations by means of clockwork infernal machines containing dynamite, brought from America. Three Irish-Americans were convicted, of whom one, John Daly, who was sentenced to penal servitude for life, lived to be mayor of Limerick in 1899. In January 1885 Parnell visited Thurles, where he gave a remarkable proof of his power by breaking down local opposition to his candidate for Tipperary. In April the prince and princess of Wales visited Ireland. At Dublin they were well received, and at Belfast enthusiastically, but there were hostile demonstrations at Mallow and Cork. In May it was intended to renew the Crimes Prevention Act, but before that was done the government was beaten on a financial question by 264 to 252, Parnell and 39 of his followers voting with the Conservatives. The Crimes Prevention Act expired on the 12th of July, and the want of it was at once felt. The number of agrarian outrages reported in the first six months of the year was 373; in the last six months they rose to 543, and the number of persons boycotted was almost trebled. Lord Salisbury came into office, with Lord Carnarvon as lord-lieutenant and Sir W. Hart Dyke as chief secretary. The lord-lieutenant had an interview with Parnell, of which very conflicting accounts were given, but the Irish leader issued a manifesto advising his friends to vote against the Liberals as oppressors and coercionists, who promised everything and did nothing. The constitutional Liberal party in Ireland was in fact annihilated by the extension of the franchise to agricultural labourers and very small farmers. The most important Irish measure ofAshbourne Act.the session was the Ashbourne Act, by which £5,000,000 was allotted on the security of the land for the creation of an occupying proprietary. Later the same sum was again granted, and there was still a good deal unexpended when the larger measure of 1891 became law. In December 1885, when the general election was over, an anonymous scheme of Home Rule appeared in some newspapers, and in spite of disclaimers it was at once believed that Gladstone had made up his mind to surrender. In October 1884, only fourteen months before, he had told political friends that he had a sneaking regard for Parnell, and that Home Rule might be a matter for serious consideration within ten years (Sir A. West’sRecollections, 1899, ii. 206). The shortening of the time was perhaps accounted for by the fact that the new House of Commons consisted of 331 Liberals, 249 Conservatives, 86 Home Rulers and Independents, Parnell thus holding the balance of parties. In Ireland there had been 66 elections contested, and out of 451,000 voters 93,000 were illiterates. Such were the constituencies to whom it was proposed to hand Ireland over. On the 26th of January 1886 the government were defeated by a combination of Liberal and Nationalists on an issue not directly connected with Ireland, and their resignationHome Rule Bill, 1886.immediately followed. Gladstone became prime minister, with Lord Aberdeen as lord-lieutenant and Mr John Morley as chief secretary. Lord Hartington and Mr Goschen were not included in this administration. In February Parnell again showed his power by forcing Captain O’Shea upon the unwilling electors of Galway. He introduced a Land Bill to relieve tenants from legal process if they paid half their rent, and foretold disorder in consequence of its rejection. In April the Government of Ireland Bill was brought in, Mr Chamberlain (q.v.), Mr Trevelyan and others leaving the ministry. The bill attempted to safeguard British interests, while leaving Ireland at the mercy of the native politicians. Irish members were excluded from the imperial parliament. The local legislature was to consist of two orders sitting and voting together, but with the power of separating on the demand of either order present. The 28 representative peers, with 75 other members having an income of £200, or a capital of £4000, elected for ten years by £25 occupiers, were to constitute the first order. The second was to have 204 members returned for five years by the usual parliamentary electorate. The status of the lord-lieutenant was unalterable by this legislature. Holders of judicial offices and permanent civil servants had the option of retiring with pensions, but the constabulary, whom the Home Rulers had openly threatened to punish when their time came, were to come after an interval under the power of the Irish Parliament. Parnell accepted the bill, but without enthusiasm.
The Government of Ireland Bill gave no protection to landowners, but as the crisis was mainly agrarian, it would have been hardly decent to make no show of considering them. A Land Purchase Bill was accordingly introduced on the 16th of April by the prime minister under “an obligation of honour and policy,” to use his own words. Fifty millions sterling in three years was proposed as payment for what had been officially undervalued at 113 millions. It was assumed that there would be a rush to sell, the choice apparently lying between that and confiscation, and priority was to be decided by lot. The Irish landlords, however, showed no disposition to sell their country, and the Purchase Bill was quickly dropped, though Gladstone had declared the two measures to be inseparable. He reminded the landlords that the “sands were running in the hour-glass,” but this threat had no effect. The Unionists of Ireland had been taken by surprise, and out of Ulster they had no organization capable of opposing the National League and the government combined. Individuals went to England and spoke wherever they could get a hearing, but it was uphill work. In Ulster the Orange lodges were always available, and the large Protestant population made itself felt. Terrible riots took place at Belfast in June, July and August. In October there was an inquiry by a royal commission with Mr Justice Day at its head, and on the report being published in the following January there were fresh riots. Foolish and criminal as these disturbances were, they served to remind the English people that Ireland would not cease to be troublesome under Home Rule. In parliament the Home Rule Bill soon got into rough water; John Bright declared against it. The “dissentient Liberals,” as Gladstone always called them, were not converted by the abandonment of the Purchase Bill, and on the 7th of June 93 of them voted against the second reading,which was lost by 30 votes. A general election followed in July, and 74 Liberal Unionists were returned, forming with the Conservatives a Unionist party, which outnumbered Gladstonians and Parnellites together by over a hundred. Gladstone resigned, and Lord Salisbury became prime minister, with Lord Londonderry as lord-lieutenant and Sir M. Hicks-Beach (afterwards Lord St Aldwyn) as chief secretary.
The political stroke having failed, agrarianism again occupied the ground. The “plan of campaign” was started, against Parnell’s wishes, towards the end of 1886. The gist of this movement was that tenants should offer whatThe “Plan of Campaign.”they were pleased to consider a fair rent, and if it was refused, should pay the money into the hands of a committee. In March 1887 Sir M. Hicks-Beach resigned on account of illness, and Mr Arthur Balfour (q.v.) became chief secretary. The attempt to govern Ireland under what was called “the ordinary law” was necessarily abandoned, and a perpetual Crimes Act was passed which enabled the lord-lieutenant to proclaim disturbed districts and dangerous associations, and substituted trial by magistrates for trial by jury in the case of certain acts of violence. In August the National League was suppressed by proclamation. The conservative instincts of the Vatican were alarmed by the lawless state of Ireland, and an eminent ecclesiastic, Monsignor Persico, arrived in the late summer on a special commission of inquiry. He made no secret of his belief that the establishment of an occupying proprietary was the only lasting cure, but the attitude of the clergy became gradually more moderate. The government passed a bill giving leaseholders the benefit of the act of 1881, and prescribing a temporary reduction upon judicial rents already fixed. This last provision was open to many great and obvious objections, but was more or less justified by the fall in prices which had taken place since 1881.
The steady administration of the Crimes Act by Mr Balfour gradually quieted the country. Parnell had now gained the bulk of the Liberal party, including Lord Spencer (in spite of all that he had said and done) and Sir G. Trevelyan (in spite of his Hawick speech). In the circumstances the best chance for Home Rule was not to stir the land question. Cecil Rhodes, hoping to help imperial federation, gave Parnell £10,000 for the cause. In September 1887 a riot arising out of the “plan of campaign” took place at Mitchelstown. The police fired, and two lives were lost, Mr Henry Labouchere and Mr (afterwards Sir John) Brunner, both members of parliament, being present at the time. The coroner’s jury brought in a verdict against the police, but that was a matter of course, and the government ignored it. A telegram sent by Gladstone a little later, ending with the words “remember Mitchelstown,” created a good deal of feeling, but it did the Home Rulers no good. In October Mr Chamberlain visited Ulster, where he was received with enthusiasm, and delivered several stirring Unionist speeches. In November Lord Hartington and Mr Goschen were in Dublin, and addressed a great loyalist meeting there.
In July 1888 an act was passed appointing a commission, consisting of Sir James Hannen, Mr Justice Day and Mr Justice A. L. Smith, to inquire into certain charges made byThe Timesagainst Parnell and his party. WhatParnell Commission.caused most excitement was the publication byThe Timeson the 15th of May 1887 of afacsimileletter purporting to have been written by Parnell on the 15th of May 1882, nine days after the Phoenix Park murders. The writer of this letter suggested that his open condemnation of the murders had been a matter of expediency, and that Burke deserved his fate. Parnell at once declared that this was a forgery, but he did nothing more at the time. Other alleged incriminating letters followed. The case ofO’Donnellv.Walter, tried before the Lord Chief Justice of England in July 1888, brought matters to a head, and the special commission followed. The proceedings were necessarily of enormous length, and the commissioners did not report until the 13th of February 1890, but the question of the letters was decided just twelve months earlier, Richard Pigott, who shot himself at Madrid, having confessed to the forgeries. A few days later, on the 8th of March 1889, Parnell was entertained at dinner by the Eighty Club, Lords Spencer and Rosebery being present; and he was well received on English platforms when he chose to appear. Yet the special commission shed a flood of light on the agrarian and Nationalist movement in Ireland. Eight members of parliament were pronounced by name to have conspired for the total political separation of the two islands. The whole party were proved to have disseminated newspapers tending to incite to sedition and the commission of crime, to have abstained from denouncing the system of intimidation, and to have compensated persons injured in committing crime. (SeeParnell.)
The conduct of the agrarian war had in the meantime almost passed from Parnell’s hands. The “plan of campaign” was not his work, still less its latest and most remarkable exploit. To punish Mr Smith-Barry (afterwardsNew Tipperary.Lord Barrymore) for his exertions in favour of a brother landlord, his tenants in Tipperary were ordered to give up their holdings. A sum of £50,000 was collected to build “New Tipperary,” and the fine shops and flourishing concerns in the town were deserted to avoid paying small ground-rents. The same course was pursued with the farmers, some of whom had large capitals invested. Mr William O’Brien presided at the inaugural dinner on the 12th of April, and some English M.P.’s were present, but his chief supporter throughout was Father Humphreys. Parnell was invited, but neither came nor answered. No shopkeeper nor farmer had any quarrel with his landlord. “Heretofore,” a tenant wrote inThe Timesin the following December, “people were boycotted for taking farms; I am boycotted for not giving up mine, which I have held for twenty-five years. A neighbour of mine, an Englishman, is undergoing the same treatment, and we alone. We are the only Protestant tenants on the Cashel estate. The remainder of the tenants, about thirty, are clearing everything off their land, and say they will allow themselves to be evicted.” In the end the attack on Mr Smith-Barry completely failed, and he took back his misguided tenants. But the town of Tipperary has not recovered its old prosperity.
The principal Irish measure passed in 1891 was Mr Balfour’s Purchase Act, to extend and modify the operation of the Ashbourne acts. £30,000,000 were provided to convert tenants into proprietors, the instalments paid beingLand purchase.again available, so that all the tenanted land in Ireland might ultimately be passed through if desired. The land itself in one shape or another formed the security, and guaranteed stock was issued which the holder might exchange for consols. The 40th clause of the Land Act of 1896 greatly stimulated the creation of occupying owners in the case of over-incumbered estates, but solvent landlords were not in a hurry to sell. The interests of the tenant were so carefully guarded that the prices obtainable were ruinous to the vendor unless he had other resources. The security of the treasury was also so jealously scrutinized that even the price which the tenant might be willing to pay was often disallowed. Thus the Land Commission really fixed the price of all property, and the last vestige of free contract was obliterated. Compulsory purchase became a popular cry, especially in Ulster. Owners, however, could not with any pretence of justice be forced to sell at ruinous prices, nor tenants be forced to give more than they thought fair. If the state, for purposes of its own, insisted upon expropriating all landlords, it was bound to find the difference, or to enter upon a course of undisguised confiscation. The Purchase Act was not the only one relied on by Mr Balfour. The Light Railways Act, passed by him in 1890, did much to open up some of the poorest parts of the west, and the temporary scarcity of that year was dealt with by relief works.
An action begun by Parnell againstThe Timeswas settled by the payment of a substantial sum. The Nationalist leader seemed to stand higher than ever, but the writ in the divorce proceedings, brought by Captain O’Shea against his wife, withParnell’s downfall.the Irish leader as co-respondent, was hanging over him. Topublic astonishment, when the case came on for trial there was no defence, and on the 17th of November 1890 a decree nisi was granted. Parnell’s subsequent marriage with the respondent before a registrar did him no good with his Roman Catholic supporters. The Irish bishops remained silent, while in England the “Nonconformist conscience” revolted. Three days after the verdict a great meeting was held in the Leinster Hall, Dublin, attended by 25 members of the Irish parliamentary party. The result was an enthusiastic vote of confidence in Parnell, moved by Mr Justin M‘Carthy and seconded by Mr T. M. Healy. Five days later he was unanimously re-elected chairman by his party in parliament, but the meeting was scarcely over when Gladstone’s famous letter to Mr Morley became public. The writer in effect demanded Parnell’s resignation of the leadership as the condition upon which he could continue at the head of the Liberal party. He had to choose between the Nonconformist vote and the Irish leader, and he preferred the former. Next day the secession of the Irish members from their chief began. Long and acrimonious debates followed in committee-room 15, and on the 6th of December Parnell was left in the chair with only 26 supporters. The majority of 45 members—Anti-Parnellites, as they came to be called—went into another room, unanimously deposed him, and elected Mr Justin M‘Carthy in his place. Parnell then began a campaign as hopeless as that of Napoleon after Leipzig. He seized the office ofUnited Irelandin person. The Fenian element was with him, as he admitted, but the clergy were against him, and the odds were too great, especially against a Protestant politician. His candidate in a by-election at Kilkenny was beaten by nearly two to one, and he himself was injured in the eyes by lime being thrown at him. Similar defeats followed at Sligo and Carlow. He went over to France to meet Messrs Dillon and O’Brien, who had not yet taken sides, but nothing was agreed to, and in the end both these former followers went against him. Every Saturday he went from London to Dublin and addressed some Sunday meeting in the country. The last was on the 27th of September. On the 6th of October 1891 he died at Brighton, from the effects of a chill following on overwork and excitement. His funeral at Glasnevin was attended by 200,000 people. At the general election of 1892, however, only 9 Parnellites—the section which under Mr John Redmond remained staunch to his memory—were returned to parliament.
The “Parnellite split,” as it was called, proved fatal to the cause of Home Rule, for the Nationalist party broke up into factions. No one of the sectional leaders commanded general confidence, and personal rivalries were of the bitterest kind. An important result of these quarrels was to stop the supply of American money, without which neither the Land League nor the Home Rule agitation could have been worked. The Unionist party had adopted a policy of local government for Ireland while opposing legislative independence, and a bill was introduced into the House of Commons by Mr Balfour in February 1892. The principle was affirmed by a great majority, but the measure could not then be proceeded with. At the general election in July the Gladstonians and Nationalists together obtained a majority of 40 over Conservatives and Liberal Unionists. Lord Salisbury resigned in August, and was succeeded by Gladstone, with Lord Houghton (afterwards earl of Crewe) as lord-lieutenant and Mr John Morley as chief secretary. The Crimes Act, which had already been relaxed, was altogether suspended, and the proclamation declaring the National League illegal was revoked. The lord-lieutenant, on taking up his quarters in Dublin, refused a loyal address because of its Unionist tone; and in October the government issued a commission, with Mr Justice Mathew as chairman, which had the restoration of the evicted tenants as its avowed object. Two of the commissioners very shortly resigned, and the whole inquiry became somewhat farcical. It was given in evidence that out of £234,431 collected under the plan of campaign only £125,000 had been given to evicted tenants. In February 1893, on the application of the sheriff of Kerry, an order from Dublin Castle, refusing protection, was pronounced illegal in the Queen’s Bench, and persons issuing it were declared liable to criminal prosecution. In the same month GladstoneHome Rule Bill 1893.introduced his second Home Rule Bill, which proposed to retain 80 Irish members in the imperial parliament instead of 103, but they were not to vote on any proceedings expressly confined to Great Britain. On the 8th of April 1886 he had told the House of Commons that it “passed the wit of man” to draw a practical distinction between imperial and non-imperial affairs. On the 20th of July 1888 he informed the same assembly that there was no difficulty in doing so. It had become evident, in the meantime, to numberless Englishmen that the exclusion of the Irish members would mean virtual separation. The plan now proposed met with no greater favour, for a good many English Home Rulers had been mainly actuated all along by the wish to get the Irish members out of their way. The financial provisions of the bill were objected to by the Nationalists as tending to keep Ireland in bondage.
During the year 1892 a vast number of Unionist meetings were held throughout Ireland, the most remarkable being the great Ulster convention in Belfast, and that of the three other provinces in Dublin, on the 14th and 23rd of June. On the 22nd of April 1893, the day after the second reading of the bill, the Albert Hall in London was filled by enthusiastic Unionist delegates from all parts of Ireland. Next day the visitors were entertained by Lord Salisbury at Hatfield, the duke of Devonshire, Mr Balfour, Mr Goschen and Mr Chamberlain being present. Between the second reading and the third on 1st September the government majority fell from 43 to 34. A great part of the bill was closured by what was known as the device of the “gag” without discussion, although it occupied the House of Commons altogether eighty-two nights. It was thrown out by the Lords by 419 to 41, and the country undoubtedly acquiesced in their action. On the 3rd of March 1894 Gladstone resigned, and Lord Rosebery (q.v.) became prime minister. A bill to repeal the Crimes Act of 1887 was read a second time in the Commons by 60, but went no farther. A committee on the Irish Land Acts was closured at the end of July by the casting vote of the chairman, Mr Morley, and the minority refused to join in the report. The bill to restore the evicted tenants, which resulted from the Mathew Commission, was rejected in the Lords by 249 to 30. In March 1895 Mr Morley introduced a Land Bill, but the government majority continued to dwindle. Another Crimes Act Repeal Bill passed the second reading in May by only 222 to 208. In July, however, the government were defeated on the question of the supply of small-arms ammunition. A general election followed, which resulted in a Unionist majority of 150. The Liberal Unionists, whose extinction had once been so confidently foretold, had increased from 46 to 71, and the Parnellites, in spite of the most violent clerical opposition, from 9 to 12. Lord Cadogan became lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and Mr Gerald Balfour—who announced a policy of “killing Home Rule by kindness”—chief secretary.
In the session of 1896 a new Land Act was added to the statute-book. The general effect was to decide most disputed points in favour of the tenants, and to repeal the exceptions made by former acts in the landlord’sLand Act 1896.favour. Dairy farms, to mention only a few of the most important points which had been hitherto excluded, were admitted within the scope of the Land Acts, and purely pastoral holdings of between £50 and £100 were for the first time included. A presumption of law in the tenant’s favour was created as to improvements made since 1850. The 40th clause introduced the principle of compulsory sale to the tenants of estates in the hands of receivers. The tendency of this provision to lower the value of all property was partly, but only partly, neutralized by the firmness of the land judge. The landlords of Ireland, who had made so many sacrifices and worked so hard to return Lord Salisbury to power, felt thatthe measure was hardly what they had a right to expect from a Unionist administration. In their opinion it unsettled the agricultural mind, and encouraged judicial tenants to go to law at the expiration of the first fifteen years’ term instead of bargaining amicably with their landlords.
In the autumn of this year was published the report of the royal commission on the financial relations between England and Ireland. Mr Hugh C. E. Childers was the original chairman of this commission, which was appointedFinancial relations.in 1894 with the object of determining the fiscal contribution of Ireland under Home Rule, and after his death in 1896 The O’Conor Don presided. The report—or rather the collection of minority reports—gave some countenance to those who held that Ireland was overtaxed, and there was a strong agitation on the subject, in which some Irish Unionists joined without perceiving the danger of treating the two islands as “separate entities.” No individual Irishman was taxed on a higher scale than any corresponding citizen of Great Britain. No tax, either on commodities or property, was higher in Ireland than in England. The alleged grievance was, however, exploited to the utmost extent by the Nationalist party. In 1897 a royal commission, with Sir Edward Fry as chairman, was appointed to inquire into the operation of the Land Acts. Voluminous evidence was taken in different parts of Ireland, and the commissioners reported in the following year. The methods and procedure of the Land Commission were much criticized, and many recommendations were made, but no legislation followed. This inquiry proved, what few in Ireland doubted, that the prices paid for occupancy interest or tenant right increased as the landlord’s rent was cut down.
The session of 1898 was largely occupied with the discussion of a bill to establish county and district councils on the lines of the English Act of 1888. The fiscal jurisdiction of grand juries, which had lasted for more than twoLocal Government Act 1898.centuries and a half, was entirely swept away. Local government for Ireland had always been part of the Unionist programme, and the vote on the abortive bill of 1892 had committed parliament to legislation. It may, nevertheless, be doubted whether enough attention was paid to the local peculiarities of Ireland, and whether English precedents were not too closely followed. In Ireland the poor-rate used to be divided between landlord and tenant, except on holdings valued at £4 and under, in which the landlord paid the whole. Councils elected by small farmers were evidently unfit to impose taxes so assessed. The poor-rate and the county cess, which latter was mostly paid by the tenants, were consolidated, and an agricultural grant of £730,000 was voted by parliament in order to relieve both parties. The consolidated rate was now paid by the occupier, who would profit by economy and lose by extravagance. The towns gained nothing by the agricultural grant, but union rating was established for the first time. The net result of the county council elections in the spring of 1899 was to displace, except in some northern counties, nearly all the men who had hitherto done the local business. Nationalist pledges were exacted, and long service as a grand juror was an almost certain bar to election. The Irish gentry, long excluded, as landlords and Unionists, from political life, now felt to a great extent that they had no field for activity in local affairs. The new councils very generally passed resolutions of sympathy with the Boers in the South African war. The one most often adopted, though sometimes rejected as too mild, was that of the Limerick corporation, hoping “that it may end in another Majuba Hill.” Efforts not wholly unsuccessful were made to hinder recruiting in Ireland, and every reverse or repulse of British arms was greeted with Nationalist applause.
The scheme for a Roman Catholic University—of which Mr Arthur Balfour, speaking for himself and not for the government, made himself a prominent champion—was much canvassed in 1899, but it came to nothing. It had not been forgotten that this question wrecked the Liberal party in 1874.
The chief Irish measure of 1899 was an Agricultural and Technical Instruction Act, which established a new department (see the sectionEconomicsabove) with the chief secretary at its head and an elaborate systemBoard of Agriculture.of local committees. Considerable funds were made available, and Mr (afterwards Sir) Horace Plunkett, who as an independent Conservative member had been active in promoting associations for the improvement of Irish methods in this direction, became the first vice-president. The new county councils were generally induced to further attempts at technical instruction and to assist them out of the rates, but progress in this direction was necessarily slow in a country where organized industries have hitherto been so few. In agriculture, and especially in cattle-breeding, improvement was formerly due mainly to the landlords, who had now been deprived by law of much of their power. The gap has been partly filled by the new department, and a good deal has been done. Some experience has been gained not only through the voluntary associations promoted by Sir H. Plunkett, but also from the Congested Districts Board founded under the Land Purchase Act of 1891. This board has power within the districts affected by it to foster agriculture and fisheries, to enlarge holdings, and to buy and hold land. In March 1899 it had from first to last laid out a little more than half a million. The principal source of income was a charge of £41,250 a year upon the Irish Church surplus, but the establishment expenses were paid by parliament.
At the opening of the session in January 1900 there was a formal reconciliation of the Dillonite, Healyite, and Redmondite or Parnellite factions. It was evident from the speeches made on the occasion that there1900.was not much cordiality between the various leaders, but the outward solidarity of the party was calculated to bring in renewed subscriptions both at home and from America. It was publicly agreed that England’s difficulty in South Africa was Ireland’s opportunity, and that all should abstain from supporting an amendment to the address which admitted that the war would have to be fought out. Mr John Redmond was chosen chairman, and the alliance of Nationalists and Gladstonian Liberals was dissolved. The United Irish League, founded in Mayo in 1898 by Mr William O’Brien, had recently become a sort of rival to the parliamentary party, its avowed object being to break up the great grass farms, and its methods resembling those of the old Land League.