“Each man ruled his own tribe,But no man ruled Erin.”
“Each man ruled his own tribe,But no man ruled Erin.”
“Each man ruled his own tribe,
But no man ruled Erin.”
And that condition continued for a century and a half, all Ireland being distracted by the rivalries of the several chiefs, the O’Briens, the O’Neills, the O’Connors, and the O’Loughlins.
That part of the battleground lying on the shore of the bay has been built over, and behind it the land has been divided into small country places where the rich men of Dublin spend their idle hours. Their homes are encircled with high fences, and are divided by a maze of roads and lanes concealed by canopies of green foliage that overhangs the walls.
A little farther on are the ruins of a church surrounded by a silent battalion of gravestones. It was the Abbey of Kilbarrack, and one of the tombstones, badly defaced, marks the burial place of Francis Higgins, a detested government spy who betrayed Lord Edward Fitzgerald to the government in the insurrection of 1798. He is known as “The Sham Squire,” because for a time he succeeded in passing himself off as a country gentleman of wealth and was married to a lady of good family. When the fraud was detected he was sent to jail, and she died of shame and mortification. Being boycotted by all honorable men, he became a spy and informer, and popular hatred pursued him to the graveyard, which had to be watched because the people resented his burial in consecrated ground and would have thrown his body into the bay.
The car line follows the curves of the coast down to the shore of the Irish Sea, where a monstrous mass of rocks, covered with heather and rhododendrons and gorse, now as yellow as gold, rises five hundred or six hundred feet, with here and there a dense mass of foliage. It is known as the Hill of Howth, and is considered one of the most picturesque places in Ireland. At its foot is the village of Howth, and on either side are the ruins of ancient strongholds, located so as to command the entrance to the harbor.
The title of the Earl of Howth dates back to 1177, and was bestowed in battle. It has been held honorably by the Lawrence family, one of the oldest in Ireland. They won theirname and their lands by the sword. The founder of the house was Amory Tristam, a Norman adventurer, who followed Strongbow to the conquest of Ireland, and has been immortalized in Wagner’s opera, “Tristam and Isolde.” While Tristam, loyal knight and true, was attending a red-haired Irish princess to her destined husband, the King of Cornwall, they drank by mistake a love potion which bound them forever in a frenzied romance. It ended with Tristam dying in his castle and Isolde coming over the sea to perish like Juliet upon her husband’s lifeless form.
Amory Tristam assumed the name of St. Lawrence, because of a great victory that he won over the Danes on the anniversary of that saint; and Howth Castle has been the seat of the family from the beginning. A long line of overlords lie under the shadow of a ruined old abbey, and the present earl, William Ulick Tristam St. Lawrence, must join them soon, because he is more than eighty years of age. He was a member of parliament in his younger days, succeeded to the earldom in 1874, and until he became too feeble was a famous sport. His son and heir, Thomas Tristam St. Lawrence, is a man of fifty, who married the daughter of Benjamin Lee Guinness, the great brewer of Dublin, and inherited many millions from her father.
Many interesting legends are told of the hill and the Castle of Howth and of events that have occurred during the eight hundred years since it became a center of activity. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the Princess of Connaught, Grace O’Malley, landed at Howth on her return from England and found the gates of the castle closed. The warder refused her entrance because the family were at dinner. Indignant at this breach of hospitality she returned to her ships, and meeting on the way the heir of the house, she picked him up and carried him off to Mayo, where she held him until she had obtained a pledge from the earls of Howth that they would never again close the doors of their castle against hungry travelers. And they have faithfully kept the vow.
The Howth family holds the almost unique distinction in Ireland of perpetual loyalty to the English crown.
Another trolley line runs out to Donnybrook, the scene of the famous fair, which was abolished, however, nearly one hundred years ago, even before the time of Sir Walter Scott’s visit to Ireland in 1825, for he says: “We dined at Walter’s, and in the evening drove to Donnybrook—the scene of the noisy fair which is now dissolved and abolished. It was a charming ride, thick with villas and all the insignia of ease and opulence; in fact, not to be distinguished from the innumerable hosts of jaunting cars plowing the fine road in every direction at a speed apparently most cruel.” Sir Walter’s description holds good to-day. Donnybrook is the most respectable and aristocratic of all the suburbs of Dublin. The tract of land where the cattle fair was formerly held in the fall of each year is still vacant and is used for a pasture. A “merry-go-round,” or a “whirl-about,” as they call it here, was the only diversion that we could find in the silent and orderly surroundings, but every year in August on the adjoining land and reached by parallel roads the Dublin horse show is held, and it is the great event of the season socially, and otherwise. It brings over from London and other parts of England large crowds of fashionable people, it draws the sporting element from every part of the kingdom, and all Ireland is represented.
Donnybrook, originally Dombenach Broc, in Gaelic, is a small but rapid stream, which comes down from the hills of Wicklow and empties into the Bay of Dublin. The cattle-dealers of Ireland for two hundred years used to meet upon its banks for the sale, exchange, and exhibition of animals for eight days in the month of August annually, and drew around them saloon and restaurant keepers, peddlers of every sort, and shopkeepers, who went out from Dublin with stocks of goods and exposed them as a temptation to the men who had sold their cattle and had the money in their pockets. In addition to the tradesmen, itinerant shows gathered to entertain the ranchmen, strolling players, jugglers, Irish bards with harps and songs, bagpipes, and other public entertainers made it their rendezvous. Naturally these attractions called together thelads and the lasses, who flirted, danced to the music, and had a good time generally.
“Donnybrook capers, that bothered the vapors,And drove dull care away.”
“Donnybrook capers, that bothered the vapors,And drove dull care away.”
“Donnybrook capers, that bothered the vapors,
And drove dull care away.”
But the entertainments were not entirely innocent, and the fair finally became such a scene of disorder, thievery, and murder that the authorities were compelled to abolish the annual festivities. It attracted all the toughs and roughs and the desperate characters in Ireland, and the old rhyme says:
“Such crowding and jumbling,And leaping and tumbling,And kissing and grumbling,And drinking and swearing,And stabbing and tearing,And coaxing and snaring,And scrambling and winning,And fighting and flinging,And fiddling and singing.”
“Such crowding and jumbling,And leaping and tumbling,And kissing and grumbling,And drinking and swearing,And stabbing and tearing,And coaxing and snaring,And scrambling and winning,And fighting and flinging,And fiddling and singing.”
“Such crowding and jumbling,
And leaping and tumbling,
And kissing and grumbling,
And drinking and swearing,
And stabbing and tearing,
And coaxing and snaring,
And scrambling and winning,
And fighting and flinging,
And fiddling and singing.”
More misery and madness, more crime and unhappiness, more devilment and debauchery, vice, and treachery was crowded into that little space for a fortnight annually than might have occurred during an entire year in any country of Europe. In those days fighting was a common pastime. But the “broth of a boy” with his “shillelah” of black bog thorn wood, is no longer seen dragging his coat over the ground at Donnybrook and inviting any gentleman present to step on the tail of that garment. Those days, as I say, are over, and Dublin is one of the most orderly cities on earth, except for the drunkenness.
The population of Ireland by the census of 1901 was 4,450,456, a falling off of 248,204 in ten years since the previous census. In 1848, before the great famine, the population was 8,295,000, which shows that it has decreased nearly one-half since that time, during the last sixty years.
The area of Ireland is 20,157,557 acres, including bog and mountain. Of this area only 2,357,530 acres are under the plow, 14,712,849 acres are devoted to hay and pasture, of which it is estimated that 12,000,000 acres could be cultivated to crops. But it is a question whether such a thing would be desirable, considering the great demand and the high price for hay and cattle, beef and mutton. It would give employment to a large number of people if 12,000,000 acres more were plowed and planted, no doubt, but the experts assert that the profits on hay and cattle are larger than on grain and potatoes.
Next to hay, the largest area, something more than 1,000,000 acres, is planted to oats and only 590,000 acres to potatoes, which is surprising when you consider that potatoes are the principal food of the Irish peasant, and, as some one has remarked, “are his food and drink and clothing.”
William F. Bailey, one of the gentlemen intrusted with the work of settling the land question and distributing the population of the island more evenly than at present, estimates that thirty acres of average land in Ireland is necessary to support a family, but the tax returns show that the 20,000,000 acres are divided among 68,716 owners; that is, one person in sixty-four is a landowner, with an average of 300 acres each, counting men, women, and children, although that is not a fair basis of calculation in Ireland, because so many of the young andmiddle-aged people emigrate and leave more than a natural proportion of old men and young children on the island.
The tax returns show that the land in 1907 was actually divided among the 68,716 owners as follows:
The changes in the size of Irish farms has been remarkable. In 1841, 81 per cent of the holdings were less than ten acres. To-day, as you will see by the table, out of 68,000 farms, only 6,892 are of ten acres and less.
The following is a list of Irish landlords who owned more than 30,000 acres each, and the average annual rentals collected from their tenants prior to the passage of the Wyndham Land Act of 1903, which authorizes the purchase with government funds of their estates, and the division into small farms for the tenants who occupied them:
The owners of other large tracts and the persons who own between 10,000 and 30,000 acres are also nearly all noblemen.It would seem that titles of nobility and large estates go together over here. That is the rule in other countries, and is perfectly natural, because a poor man has no use for a title of nobility and a rich man is usually anxious to get one.
A peer has just as much right to own land as anybody, and the complaints heard in Ireland are not on account of the rank or the station of the landlords, but because of their neglect of their interests and their tenants, especially because most of them do not spend the incomes from their estates in making improvements or for the benefit of their own people; they do not spend it in Ireland, but reside in London most of the time and spend the money there, where the people who earn it receive no benefit from it directly or indirectly. It is unnecessary to discuss the evils of large estates. They are too numerous to mention, especially when they are owned by people who live outside of the country. That is the great obstacle to the development of Mexico, where millions of acres in large tracts, granted to Spanish grandees before independence, still remain in the ownership of their descendants, who live in Spain or Paris, and spend the revenues there. It is true, also, of Russia, Poland, Austria, and of many other countries, and to a certain extent of Cuba, where a number of the valuable and productive plantations belong to families who are living in Spain, Paris, or New York, and never even visit them.
A few years ago, by order of Parliament, an investigation was made to ascertain the habits of the large Irish landowners in connection with their estates, and the following table shows the result:
No country ever suffered so much from absentee landlordism as Ireland, and many great estates here have been entirely neglected, or practically abandoned and allowed to go to ruin by the owners who intrusted them to dishonest or incompetent managers and took no interest in their own property. No one can blame the tenants upon such estates for their enmity and resentment toward the proprietors, or condemn them for their refusal to pay rent when they received very little or nothing in return. But the system in Ireland has been very much improved of late years by various acts of parliament, and many people think that the tenants now have the advantage in every respect. Fifty years ago the landlord was the owner and autocrat of the soil and everything that stood upon it. The tenant had no legal rights beyond what was written down in his lease, and when that expired the landlord could raise or lower his rent or drive him off the land at pleasure.
Nearly every one of the peers who has sold his estates in Ireland under the land act has taken the cash and has gone to London to live, and if home rule is ever granted to the Irish people there will be little room left for those who remain. Most of the Irish peers spend the greater part of their time in London. Some of them never come to Ireland at all except for the shooting season or horse show. Several prominent English peers have estates in Ireland inherited from ancestors who have intermarried with the Irish nobility. The Duke of Devonshire, for example, owns one of the largest and finest estates in the kingdom at Lismore, a few miles north of Cork. The late duke, who died in 1907, took a great interest in the property and spent a great deal of time there.
Forcible evictions are things of the past. Several years ago the demands for “The Three Fs”—free sale, fair rent, and fixed tenure—were complied with, and to-day the farms in Ireland are subject to what is called “a dual ownership,” peculiar to this country. No landlord can rob a tenant any longer. Disputes concerning rent are now settled by a tribunal which takes all the circumstances into consideration and decides upon the equities rather than the technicalities of the case. This hasrevolutionized the land system of Ireland, and by a succession of acts of parliament during the past few years the government has gone a great way toward equalizing ownership and creating a nation of peasant proprietors, which, according to their ideas over here, is the ideal condition.
During the last quarter of a century from six thousand to eight thousand farmers have been evicted from farms in Ireland because they refused or were unable or neglected to pay their rent. Some of them have remained in the neighborhood and have squatted where they could, and waited their chance to recover their holdings; others have emigrated to America; others have gone into different parts of Ireland; others have engaged in business of various sorts. Between five thousand and six thousand have already applied for restoration under the Act of 1907, most of them through the agency of the United Irish League. Of these, 1,595 families had been restored up to July, 1908, most of them to the actual farms from which they were expelled, not as tenants, however, for they will never be asked to pay any more rent, but as the owners of the property and improvements, purchased for them by the government, with money to be repaid, not by them unless they choose to do so, but by their posterity in the year 1975, or thereabouts. The only financial obligation imposed upon them is to pay an interest of 3½ per cent upon the purchase money, which has been borrowed by the government upon bonds running for sixty-eight years, at 3 per cent interest. The additional one-half per cent goes into a sinking fund to pay the bonds at maturity.
About 75 per cent of the claims that have been filed under the Evicted Tenants Act have been genuine; the remainder are apparently fraudulent or in doubt, and some of those that have been already allowed are questionable. I heard of a case in which a tenant who was evicted in 1889 for refusal to pay his rent was restored to his old home under rather peculiar circumstances. His misfortunes were voluntary, and due to political reasons rather than from the lack of means, and when he was thrown off his farm he went into business as a cattle broker and became rich. But, in common with his former neighbors,he filed his claims under the act, was restored to his old home, and the generous agents of the estates commission bought a couple of cows, a few sheep, and hogs from his own pastures, paid him for them, and then gave them to him. He is now occupying the place and cultivating it by hired labor, and will be asked to refund the money the government has advanced for him in the year 1975.
In the application of the provisions of the act no distinction is made between those who were evicted because of their poverty and those for political reasons. About one thousand evictions were the result of what is known as the “Plan of Campaign” adopted in 1887, when the National League determined to force the issue and organized a general strike among the farmers against the payment of rent upon certain estates selected because their landlords were habitual absentees, who spent the revenues they derived from their estates outside of Ireland and were oppressive to their tenants and generally offensive. As a rule, the tenants paid half a year’s rent to the agents of the league for a war fund, so far as they were able. Most of them were able to pay, although there was a great deal of suffering and privation among about a thousand families who were thrown out of their homes during one land war which lasted for two or three years. Practically all of them have already been restored to their former farms.
In 1901 another land war was inaugurated, under the direction of Dennis Johnston and John Fitzgibbons of the United Irish League, in Roscommon and neighboring counties, and a large number of tenants who had voluntarily agreed not to pay their rents were thrown off their farms as voluntary martyrs in a campaign which finally resulted in the enactment of the act of 1907, which was prepared and introduced into parliament by George Wyndham, chief secretary for Ireland under the late conservative government. This act authorizes the estates commission having in charge the administration of the Land Act of 1903 to acquire by force if necessary eighty thousand acres of land wherever they consider it expedient, to be sold under mortgages of sixty-eight years at 3½ per centinterest to families who have been evicted from their former homes. The commissioners are required to investigate the claims of those who have been evicted, through their staff of inspectors, and if found genuine to serve notice upon the owner to vacate the farms from which they were evicted within a certain time. The landlord has the right of appeal, but every one of the owners of lands from which tenants were evicted has voluntarily consented to their restoration except the Marquess of Clanricarde, and a Mrs. Lewis who has a large estate in County Galway and has been one of the most vindictive and oppressive of all the landlords. She is a woman of very determined character, and will not even answer letters addressed to her by the officials of the government.
The Marquess of Clanricarde is nearly eighty years old, very eccentric, a miser, dresses very shabbily, lives like a recluse and pays no bills. He has visited his Irish estates but once since he inherited them in 1874, He was in the diplomatic service as a young man during the ’fifties, and at one time was a member of parliament. His name is Hubert George de Burg Canning, Marquess of Clanricarde, Viscount Burke and Baron Dunkellin, and he has several other titles, but has no family—a childless widower.
The Clanricarde estates lie directly west from Dublin in Galway County and were obtained by his ancestor, William FitzAnselm de Burg, the founder of the Burke family, under a grant from Henry I., and he founded the town of Galway. To this day the whole province of Connaught is dotted with the ruined castles of the De Burg family, monuments of four or five centuries of uninterrupted fighting with the O’Neills, the O’Donnells, the O’Flahertys, the O’Connors, and other powerful clans in the early history of Ireland. The battle of Knockdoe, fought in the fourteenth century between an undisciplined horde of native clansmen under the Earl of Clanricarde, was provoked by an insult he offered to his wife. She was the daughter of Gerald Fitzgerald the Great, Earl of Kildare, and her affectionate father in vengeance attacked his son-in-law with a disciplined force loaned him by his neighbors, the lordsof the Pale of Dublin. It is said that eight thousand dead bodies were left upon the field. Those were strenuous days, and the earls of Clanricarde have been reckoned among the fiercest fighters from the time they came over from England in the fourteenth century. Sometimes they have been on one side and sometimes on the other, but like most genuine Irishmen, they have usually been “agin the government,” whatever, policy it represented. There have been several earnest patriots in the line. An old Irish ballad begins with the line, “Glory guards Clanricarde’s grave!” but the present earl is not the one referred to.
The late earl was very popular with his tenants, and so liberal and lenient was he, according to the gossip, that they got into bad habits, and when the present earl came into the property in 1874 he pulled them up very sharply and demanded a prompt and full payment of all their obligations. Being unaccustomed to such stern measures, they were resentful, and a quarrel began which has lasted until now, and Clanricarde, convinced that he has right and justice on his side, has used the mailed hand. There have been more trouble and disturbance upon his estates than upon any other in Ireland. Every one of his tenants has been evicted, and sometimes a succession of them, and their farms have been let to what are called “planters,”—a term used in Ireland to describe families imported from a distance and planted upon land which no person in the neighborhood will rent because the previous tenant has been evicted from it. Every man on the Clanricarde estates is a “planter.” After the passage of the act of 1907 the estates commissioners requested him to sell his entire holding under the act of 1903, but he not only rejected the proposition, but has declined even to discuss the subject, and has maintained that uncompromising attitude from the beginning, an embittered, relentless, vindictive old man.
Portumna Castle, County Galway; the Seat of the Earl of Clanricarde
Portumna Castle, County Galway; the Seat of the Earl of Clanricarde
When the commission undertook to apply the compulsory clause of the Evicted Tenants Act and published the notice in theDublin Gazette, the earl filed a protest. Mr. Justice Wiley of the Lower Court sustained the commission, but the Courtof Appeals, composed of twelve judges, unanimously reversed the decision and decided that the estates commission has no power to forcibly dispossess anybona fide“planter” from land already under lease.
This decision technically justified the position that the earl has taken, and it applies to the estates of Mrs. Lewis also, so that the commissioners cannot go any farther in their work of restoring the evicted tenants upon those two properties. As soon as the decision was rendered a bill was introduced in parliament confiscating the entire Clanricarde estates. It is not expected to pass, but was intended to advertise the situation and create public opinion. The government, however, took the matter promptly in hand, and the Earl of Crewe introduced a bill authorizing the estates commissioners to take by force, after the usual legal proceedings, any occupied land they may think necessary and proper for the restoration of evicted tenants, provided they can obtain the consent of the occupant. This act was passed, and notice was immediately given in theDublin Gazettethat the estates commissioners intend, under the Evicted Tenants Act, to acquire compulsorily upwards of eighteen hundred acres of land on the estate of Lord Clanricarde in County Galway. This means that the owner of the property is to have nothing to say about the matter, but abona fidetenant, who in good faith is occupying a farm from which his predecessor has been evicted, cannot be ejected without his consent. We are familiar with the methods of “persuasion” that have been used for years by the United Irish League and other patriotic organizations, and it is entirely probable that they will prove sufficient in all cases that will arise under this new provision. Therefore, as soon as the proposed act is passed, the tenants upon the Clanricarde estates will be looking for trouble.
The Earl of Clanricarde cannot expect to live a great while longer. He is already an infirm old man and his heir, Lord Sligo of Westport, a nephew, is almost as old as he. Lord Sligo is one of the largest land holders in Ireland. He owns 114,000 acres in the north, which is mostly grazing land, andhis tenants are miserably poor, living in squalid hovels scattered over the estate. He does nothing for them, and exacts the last halfpenny of his rent. His heir, who will soon come into both the Clanricarde and Sligo estates, is his son, Lord Henry Ulick Browne, of whom very little is known. He is fifty-eight years of age and lives at Westport Castle, Westport, Ireland. As he has had the management of much of his father’s property for many years, it is generally believed that he is responsible for the harsh policy that has been followed toward the tenants, and that they can expect no better treatment when he becomes their lawful lord.
The British Parliament has published a return (No. Cd. 4093) covering all the proceedings under the Act of April, 1907, to restore evicted tenants in Ireland; giving particulars in each case in which an evicted tenant, or a person nominated by the estates commissioners to be a personal representative of the deceased evicted tenant, has with the assistance of the commission been reinstated, either by the landlord or by the estates commissioners, or provided with a new parcel of land under the Land Purchase Act.
It is a quarto pamphlet of forty-seven pages, and gives in fine type the names of all the farmers in Ireland who have been evicted since 1876, with the dates of the evictions, the area they formerly occupied, the rent they formerly paid, the arrears of rent due at the time of the eviction, the value of the property, the name of the landlord, the name of the estate, the name of the town and the county, the date of restoration, the price paid by the estates commissioners for each tract, the valuation of the buildings and other improvements on the property, and the compensation given to outgoing tenants who surrender their holdings under the law, to those who were formerly evicted from them.
This report shows that forty tenants have been restored to the Blacker-Douglass estates in Armagh, thirty-two have been restored on the Charlemont estates in the same county; forty-four of those evicted from 1887 to 1889 by Lord Massareene in County Meath have been restored, and thirty-nine on theestate of the Marquess of Lansdowne in Queen’s County. On the estates of Sir G. Brooke, in Waterford, seventy-eight families, evicted in 1887 and 1888, have been restored; twenty-six on the estate of A.L. Tottenham, Leitrim; thirty-four on the Vandaleur estates in Leitrim; thirty on the estates of C.W. Warden in County Kerry; thirty-three on the estates of the Earl of Listowel, and similar numbers elsewhere.
So far as is known, every family in Ireland that has been evicted from a farm during the last fifty years for non-payment of rent, or for political reasons, has been restored wherever they are living, and, if the head of the family at the time of the eviction is dead, his heirs have been placed in possession of the place. And all this has been done by the government at the expense of the taxpayers as a vindication of the policy of the Irish Land League, the United Irish League, and other organizations which have conducted the land wars.
The restoration of the evicted tenants was not voluntary on the part of the British government. It was forced upon the parliament by the Irish agitators. In a debate on this act in the House of Lords, the Marquess of Lansdowne, who had evicted a large number of tenants from his estates, admitted that he and other landlords accepted the proposition with great reluctance, and “only because the government had represented to them very earnestly, indeed, that the measure formed an integral part of a policy of pacification which they desired to bring about in Ireland, and if the landlords took the responsibility of rejecting this particular item, the entire programme was destined to failure. It is on the strength of these representations,” said the Marquess of Lansdowne, “that we ask the House of Lords to agree to the restoration of all Irish tenants who have been evicted at any time for political reasons as well as for failure to pay their rents.”
The members of the National Party in Ireland concede this point cheerfully. They willingly admit that they insisted upon the restoration of all evicted tenants as the first and the most important proposition in the programme of pacification in Ireland, and they agreed with the Marquess of Lansdowne that itwould have been a failure otherwise. It should also be stated that all arrears of rent for which families have been evicted from Irish farms have been cancelled, and the restored tenants have become the actual owners of the land, the houses, and all improvements. Instead of paying rent to a landlord, they become the landlords themselves. The purchase money in every case has been advanced by the government, and is to be repaid by the purchaser in sixty-eight years with interest at three and one quarter per cent per annum. This sum represents two and one-half per cent interest upon bonds issued to raise the funds and three-fourths of one per cent for a sinking fund to meet the bonds at maturity.
Two-thirds and perhaps as many as three-fourths of the Roman Catholic priests in Ireland were educated at the College of Maynooth, which turns out one hundred and fifty or more earnest, zealous, able young clergymen every year, and is the most conspicuous and influential educational institution in Ireland. Comparatively few of the graduates go to the United States. Dr. Hogan, professor of modern languages and literature, explained that nearly all of the Irish priests who emigrated to America were educated at the missionary college of All Hallows, near Dublin, for the United States was until recently counted as a mission field by the holy see and was under the jurisdiction of the prefect of the propaganda of the holy faith at Rome. There are quite a number of Maynooth graduates in America, and during the recent visit of Cardinal Logue they gave a dinner in his honor in New York.
Dr. Hogan took us through the buildings, which are spacious and surround two large quadrangles. They are built of stone, four stories in height, are entirely modern and fitted up with all the conveniences and accessories that belong to an up-to-date institution of learning. The chapel is also modern, built within the present generation and entirely conventional. It is not large enough to accommodate all of the students, and the underclass men attend mass elsewhere.
Beyond the second quadrangle is a campus of seventy acres of lawn and garden and grove, where five hundred young men were engaged in taking their daily supply of fresh air and exercise when we passed through the archway. Almost every kind of game was going on, from croquet to football. Therewere several cricket contests in progress; others were playing at hockey and basketball; others were on the track running, and the lazy ones were lying stretched out on the velvet grass. There are now five hundred and sixty-two students, nearly all of them theologs, and one hundred and twenty graduated in 1908. They come chiefly from Ireland, a few from Irish families in England, a few more from Australia, but at present there is no representative of the United States. When I asked a group of young men how they got along without any Americans, one of them illustrated the quick wit of his race by replying promptly: “We hope never to have them here, sir; they are altogether too smart for us. If they keep on, the Americans will run the world.”
It costs very little to get an education at Maynooth. The fees are small,—$20 for matriculation, $25 for tuition, $150 a year for board, and other small fees for electric light, rent of furniture, etc., which brings the total up to about $225 a year. There are two hundred and seventy scholarships which have been founded by friends of the institution and societies in the different parishes, and they pay an average of $150 a year. There is a fine library with forty thousand volumes, and a gymnasium and everything else that is needed.
The ancient castle of Maynooth, built by the Earl of Kildare in 1427, stands at the gateway of the college, and occupies the site of the original stronghold of the family, built in 1176 by the first Maurice Fitzgerald, who came over with the Strongbow at the time of the Conquest. It has been a ruin since 1647, and a beautiful ruin it is—one of the largest and most picturesque in the kingdom.
Maynooth College County Kildare
Maynooth College County Kildare
Until 1895, when the centenary of Maynooth College was celebrated, six thousand priests and prelates of Irish birth had been educated within the walls of that “mother of love, and of fear and of knowledge, and of holy hope,” as her alumni call her. And now the number exceeds seventy-five hundred. Most of them have been, and those now living are still, doing pastoral work in Ireland, and nearly two thousand of the alumni have gone abroad into the United States, England, Scotland,Australia, South Africa, and other English-speaking countries. During the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century and for several hundred years before Catholic education was prohibited in Ireland, but it was not possible for the British authorities to prevent young men from crossing the sea, and during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a number of Irish colleges were founded in the Peninsula, in France, and in Flanders, and there most of the Irish priests of that long period received their education. It has been often asserted that the Catholic faith might have disappeared in Ireland but for the ardent piety and ambition of these young students, who found the preparation they needed for parish work from the Irish faculties of divinity schools on the Continent. In 1795, at the time Maynooth College was founded, about four hundred young Irishmen were attending such institutions, and in 1808 a printed report names twelve colleges with four hundred and seventy-eight Irish students.
Most of these institutions were in France, and they were closed and desecrated by the French Revolution, which expelled their inmates, profaned their altars, and confiscated their possessions. The Irish bishops, in consequence, found themselves confronted with an alarming situation. The foreign supply of priests was entirely cut off and the laws of Parliament prohibited their education at home. In this extremity they applied to the government, asking permission to found seminaries for educating young men to discharge the duties of Roman Catholic clergymen in the kingdom. William Pitt, then prime minister, was persuaded that it was safer for England to grant this request than to permit the young priests to imbibe the hatred of England and the democratic and revolutionary principles that pervaded society on the Continent. Edmund Burke and Earl Fitzwilliam acted in behalf of the bishops, and the latter was instructed by the prime minister to supervise the establishment of a new institution. Dr. Hussey, confidential agent of the English government in Dublin, was appointed the first president. He is described as a scholar, statesman, diplomatist, and orator; he had a checkered andeventful career; he undertook many things and excelled in them all. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, a preacher of remarkable power, and the intimate friend of such statesmen as Edmund Burke. He had the confidence of William Pitt and was the trusted agent of princes and statesmen. He was a native of County Meath, was educated at the ancient University of Salamanca of Spain, and originally entered a Trappist monastery, but left it shortly after and became chaplain of the Spanish embassy in London. The British government, recognizing his ability and integrity, sent Dr. Hussey on two confidential missions to the court of Spain, and rewarded his success by granting him a liberal pension for life and appointing him as confidential agent of the government in its negotiations with the bishops, and afterward to be president of the first Catholic theological seminary in Ireland. After two years at the head of the institution he was appointed bishop of Waterford, where he remained until his death in 1803.
Instruction was commenced in a private house belonging to an agent of the Duke of Leinster. The foundations of a new building were laid on the 20th of April, 1796, and seven months later it was opened with fifty students on the roll. The Duke of Leinster, although a Protestant, anxious to have the college on his estate, made very liberal terms, and successive generations of the house of Kildare, of which he is the representative, have been not only friendly but generous to the institution.
Everything about the college reminds the student of the famous class of Geraldines. The ancient castle of the Kildares, built by Maurice Fitzgerald the Invader, and enlarged by John, the sixth earl, in the year 1426, stands at the gate, and on either side of the main walk are fine old yew-trees planted more than seven hundred years ago. According to local legends that vain and reckless youth, “Silken Thomas,” sat beneath its spreading branches and played his harp three hundred and seventy-five years ago, on the evening before he started for Dublin to relinquish his trust as temporary viceroy and assault the castle. His five uncles were hanged at Tyburnmainly because they were Catholics. At the fall of the house the sole surviving heir was saved by his tutor, a Catholic priest, who afterward became Bishop of Kildare. Several generations later the earls of Kildare and the dukes of Leinster became Protestants, but they always advocated the emancipation of their Catholic fellow-countrymen, and have always been fair and honorable in their dealings with the institution.
It was a difficult task to get a faculty in those days, as there had not been a Catholic college in Ireland for centuries. But the French Revolution had cast upon the shores of Ireland many competent exiles, who were placed in charge of the various departments, and among the clergy of Ireland were found a sufficient number of scholars to complete the staff of instructors. The Revolution of 1798 broke out two years after the college was opened, and many of the students were stirred by aspirations which caused their expulsion. It was a test that many felt to be very severe; but the faculty were determined to keep faith with the government, and sixteen students were expelled. In 1803, the year of Emmet’s insurrection, there was a good deal of insubordination, which has been described as a “ground swell from the outside agitation.” Six students were expelled, one of whom, Michael Collins, afterward became Bishop of Cloyne.
The original grant of Parliament was $40,000 a year. In 1807 this was increased to $65,000, which was expended in buildings. It was afterwards reduced, and until 1840 was about $50,000. At that time there were four hundred students, who could not be properly accommodated. In 1844 the trustees drew up and forwarded to the government a strong memorial, which was read in the House of Commons by Sir Robert Peel, who declared that such a state of things was discreditable to the nation and that Parliament should either cut Maynooth College adrift altogether, or maintain it in a manner worthy of the state. In the face of resolute opposition of a majority of his own party, he carried through a proposal to give the sum of $30,000 for new buildings and an annual grant of $26,360 for the maintenance of the college. Mr. Gladstone supported the prime minister, Mr. Disraeli, then leader of the opposition, attacking the bill fiercely. Thomas Babington Macaulay and Dr. Whately, the rhetorician, both made eloquent and convincing speeches in its support. In 1869, when the bill to dissolve the relations between the Protestant church in Ireland and the government was passed, Mr. Gladstone, then prime minister, was compelled to treat Maynooth College on the same terms that he gave the Irish Episcopal branch of the Established Church, and the Presbyterian, giving each a sum of money equal to fourteen installments of its annual grants.
The interest upon that sum at three and one-half per cent is not sufficient for the proper support of so large an institution, but the college has had many generous friends, and with economy has been able not only to maintain itself but to strengthen its position, enlarge its facilities, and give its students better accommodations and greater advantages year by year. The several bishops of Ireland have raised funds to endow many scholarships, so that the expenses incidental to student life have been very much reduced for those who are unable to pay the full fee. Nevertheless, there is great anxiety among the trustees and the professors to extend the buildings, add several chairs to the faculty, and obtain more endowments.
Maynooth is the rendezvous of the Catholic hierarchy of Ireland, being conveniently located and accessible to all the bishops. They meet here frequently to discuss ecclesiastical matters and determine upon church policies. His Eminence Cardinal Logue is president of the board of trustees. His Grace the Most Rev. William J. Walsh, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin, is vice-president. The Archbishop of Cashel, the Archbishop of Tuam, and twelve bishops make up the board. The president of the college is the Right Rev. Mgr. Mannix, D.D.; the vice-president is the Very Rev. Thomas P. Gilmartin, D.D., and the deans of the different schools are the Rev. Thomas T. Gilmartin, D.D., Rev. James Macginley, D.D., and the Rev. Patrick Morrisroe.
Religion is a live thing in Ireland, and the Roman Catholic churches are always filled to overflowing at every service with as many men as women, which is unusual in other countries. In Ireland the situation seems to be different, and the congregations are invariably composed about equally of the two sexes. The Church of Ireland is comparatively weak in numbers, and has more houses of worship than it needs, having inherited many of them from the confiscation edicts of the English kings. Naturally they are not so well filled, but the Roman Catholics are compelled to have three or four services every Sunday in order to accommodate the worshipers, and the priest is invariably the most influential man in the parish. He enters directly into the life of his parishioners, the parish boundaries are sharply divided, and his jurisdiction is so well defined that he knows all the sheep and all the goats that belong to his flock, over whom he exercises a parental as well as a spiritual care. They come to him in all their troubles and in their joys. He advises them about social, political, commercial, domestic, and personal as well as spiritual affairs, and is the court of highest resort in all disputes and family matters. No other authority reaches so far or is rooted so deep in the community, and this peculiar relation grows closer with years.
I formed a high opinion of the Irish priesthood from the examples I was able to meet and to know. They impressed me as an unusually high class of men intellectually as well as spiritually, and every one must admire their devotion, their sincerity, and their self-sacrifice. Some of them naturally become dictatorial, for it is often necessary for them to assume an air of authority to preserve discipline in their parishes, but I think that is more or less the rule in other countries and in all denominations. You cannot talk back to a judge or a school-teacher or a parson. And that is undoubtedly the ground for the charge so frequently made that Ireland is “priest ridden.” But the average of intelligence, culture, and efficiency among the Irish priesthood is probably higher than it is in any other country, and their influence is correspondingly greater. There is a great deal of criticism in certain quarters about the activity of the Irish priests in politics and that I found to be largely a misrepresentation. Many of the priests do take an active part in political affairs, but it is entirely a matter of individual taste and inclination, and the proportion is probably no larger than it is among ministers of all denominations in the United States. Those who are well posted on this subject assured me that about one-third of the total number of Catholic priests habitually interest themselves in political affairs, local as well as national; a still larger number take an active part in educational matters, and about one-half of them let politics entirely alone. This is probably a fair estimate and will apply to the clergy of the Church of Ireland and the nonconformist denominations with equal accuracy, although they are much less numerous than the Roman Catholic clergy.
It is always interesting to attend mass at a Roman Catholic church on Sunday in Ireland, particularly in the smaller towns and country parishes, where everybody except those who are too infirm to come out is present in his best clothes, and, no matter how poor he may be, no one passes the man who stands with a box at the entrance without dropping in something, most of them only a penny or a halfpenny, but none without an offering. The appearance of the people, and particularly the women, is in striking contrast to that on week-days, and I am told that this depends very largely upon the priests, many of whom insist that every man, woman, and child shall have a suit of Sunday clothes and “wash up” before coming to the house of God.
The Christian Brothers Educational Order of the Roman Catholic Church of Ireland was organized in Waterford in 1802 by Edmund Rice, a wealthy merchant who lamented the number of neglected boys he saw in the streets and consulted Bishop Hussey, the first president of Maynooth College, as to what he could do to rescue them. Mr. Rice sold his business and opened a free school in his residence while a large building was being erected for his use. The cornerstone was laid June 1, 1802. It was finished the next year, was called Mount Zion, and is still in operation, although very much enlarged. It has been the father house and headquarters of the Irish Christian Brothers from the beginning. Within a few years similar schools were opened in Dungarvan, Limerick, Cork, Dublin, and later in every city and town in Ireland. In 1820 the order was chartered by the Pope, and it has grown until there are now more than one thousand brothers, all engaged in teaching day schools of various standards, from primary instruction up to colleges. They have technical and trade schools, commercial schools, orphanages, and schools for the deaf and dumb and the blind all over the world, in Australia, New Zealand, Africa, India, Gibraltar, and one house in New York. It is independent of the American order of Christian Brothers, which was founded in France in the seventeenth century by St. John Baptiste de la Salle, a French abbé who was canonized by the Pope about four years ago.
In Ireland the Christian Brothers receive no grant from the government, and all their primary schools are free. Tuition is charged at the secondary and technical schools and the remainder of the support comes from legacies, private and public contributions, collections in churches, and other sources.
Edmund Rice died in 1844 at the age of eighty-two, and is buried in Waterford cemetery, with this simple epitaph:
BROTHER EDWARD IGNATIUS RICE,Founder of Christian SchoolsIn Ireland and England.
Carton House, the seat of the earls of Kildare, is on the opposite side of Maynooth from the college. It is the present home of Maurice Fitzgerald, Duke of Leinster, a young man who came of age in March, 1908. He carries more rank and titles than any other person in Ireland, and has more money than any Irishman except Dublin’s titled brewer. He spends much of his time at Carton House, which looks like a Florentine palace, but is completely modernized and fitted up with electric light, telephones, and elevators, and stands upon an eminence in the center of a park inclosed within eight miles of stone wall ten feet high. It is a drive of three miles fromhis front gate to the threshold of his front door, and there are more than thirty miles of macadamized roadway within the demesne. There are hills and dales, twelve lakes, and four waterfalls, one of them thirty-nine feet high. There is a garden of sixty acres laid out in the French style, with fourteen or fifteen fountains and many arbors, kiosks, and pergolas. There are meadows, pastures, vegetable gardens, and fields of oats and other grain, but three-fourths of the park is primeval forest, that has never heard the sound of an axe, and most of the trees are as old as history. I am told that no private park in the world surpasses the grounds of Carton House. Among other curiosities is a cottage built entirely of shells, to commemorate a visit of Queen Victoria, who describes her experiences in “Leaves from Our Life,” and tells of jaunting cars, Irish jigs, and bagpipes. The shell cottage is now used as a museum to contain the family relics.
The young duke has several other residences. One of them is Kilkea Castle, County Kildare, which came into the family in the thirteenth century, with ninety thousand acres of farm land, which has just been sold to his tenants under the Wyndham Land Act for more than $6,000,000. The Duke of Leinster has also disposed of his farming lands in the neighborhood of Maynooth for more than $800,000. The estates commission, which has the responsibility of carrying out the provisions of the land act, has purchased more land from him than from any other landlord, and he has received from them in payment nearly one-fourth of the entire amount of money that has been paid under the act by the government. He has a plain but spacious town house on Dominick Street, Dublin, and Mrs. John W. Mackay now occupies his London residence, 6 Carlton House Terrace, under a long lease. His wealth is estimated at $50,000,000. He is unmarried, and has no attachments so far as known. His accumulation of titles is even greater than his wealth. He is the sixth duke of Leinster, which title dates from 1761, and was bestowed by Queen Anne; he is the twenty-fifth earl of Kildare, which title dates from 1316; and the thirty-first baron of Offlay, a title that has been in thefamily since 1168. He is the premier duke, the premier marquis, the premier earl, and the premier baron; the head of the Irish nobility. And all this rank and responsibility is borne by a frail boy of twenty-one.