CHAPTER II.
We arrived at Wexford, the station allotted for our regiment. It had been for some time the head quarters of the rebel army during the disturbances of 1798, and the scenes said to have been acted in and near it during that unfortunate period, being impressed on our minds, we entered the place with strong prejudices against the inhabitants. From a people implicated in what was termed a foul, unnatural rebellion, against a mild and equitable government, what could soldiers expect but treachery and fixed enmity? How were we deceived when we found them the most urbane, good-humoured people we had ever been amongst. This is remarkable, thought I: surely it must have been some strange infatuation, or some galling wrong that goaded these people into rebellion; and when we had been a short time there, I sought a solution of the enigma from a person with whom I had become acquainted, from being billeted in his house, when we first came into the town.
‘In the first place,’ said he, ‘I need not tell you what every body knows, that it was only the Catholics that rebelled. You wonder at them not showing their rebellious spirit: now,’ said he, ‘do you know thereason? they durstn’t. When they had the power, they showed us poor Protestants what they could do. Did you never read or hear of the burning of Scullabogue, the piking on the wooden bridge there beyond, and all the bloody cruelties they committed in every part of Ireland?’
‘I have,’ replied I, ‘and that is the very reason I am surprised at the peaceable temper they now display.’
‘It was driven into them by the lash and the gibbet,’ said he; but if they durst put out their horns, you would soon see them at their old tricks; devil a Protestant but they would pike and throw into the Slaney. Do you think that we could live in safety here an hour, if it was not for the military? God help ye! you think because they put on a smooth face to ye, now when they can’t better themselves, that they are every thing that’s good; but you may take my word for it that every mother’s son of them are perfect Judas’s, and when they look smiling in your face they are wishing for an opportunity to cut your throat. Och, man! does not their priests tell them that they are to keep no faith with heretics?—They talk about emancipating them—by my soul! I would as soon emancipate a roaring lion; if ever that takes place, the reign of bloody Mary would be nothing to what would follow: you would soon see the Pope over here with his inquisition, and not one Protestant they would leave in the country in six months. I hope I will never live to see the day when the Papists will be put on a footing with us: nothing will ever save the poor Protestants but to keep the hold while they have it, and resist the Pope, the Papists, and the devil, up to the knees in blood, as every true orangeman is in duty bound. You should join our orange club, man—sure, two of your officers have joined us.’
I was carried away with this declamation, which he accompanied with violent and emphatic gesture, and really began to think the Catholics the guilty beings that he represented them; still I could not but considerthem miserably situated, when they were alike distrusted and reviled—in arms against the government, or living as peaceable subjects. On more mature deliberation, I did not feel satisfied with the round assertions he had made, and I sought opportunities of mixing with people of the Catholic persuasion. I am sorry to say that those whom my rank in life enabled me to mix with, did not give me very favourable opportunities of judging; they seemed to feel the same rancour against the Protestants, which my friend had evinced against them, without being able to give a very satisfactory reason for it. They had an idea that the Protestants were insolent tyrants, that the Catholics were oppressed and injured by them, and therefore had a right to hate their oppressors.
Some time after this, I became acquainted with a very intelligent Catholic, and anxious to hear what he could say in answer to the assertions of my protestant friend, I several times attempted to lead our conversation to that point, but he seemed to feel averse from the subject.
‘Remember,’ said he to me one day, ‘that it is rather a dangerous thing to express our political opinions in this country. I might,’ said he, in a half joking manner, ‘get heated on the subject, and spout treason; and who knows but you might lodge informations against me, that would get me exhibited in front of the gaol, as an example to my deluded countrymen, or sent to cool my heels in New South Wales. You laugh, but the time is scarcely yet gone by, when your report of my disaffection to the government would have got me elevated to the first lamp post, without either judge or jury. But to show you I place some confidence in you, I will put my neck in your power by repeating my opinion on the subject. Believe me, whatever your friend may have said to the contrary, that the rancour and hatred of Protestants and Catholics, so apparent in this country, does not lie so much in the difference of their creed, as in prejudices artfully engendered and kept alive by political and religiousintrigue, aided no doubt by the ignorance of the people themselves. You are a young man, a native of a happier kingdom, and of a different persuasion, and cannot, therefore enter into the feelings of this oppressed and insulted nation; nor can those who have not felt the legalized tyranny which is practised on us form any idea of what this miserable country has suffered. Victims to political corruption on the one hand, and religious rapacity and bigotry on the other; by the one we are deprived of our rights as men and subjects, and by the other robbed of our means of subsistence, to support in luxury and idleness a church establishment of which we are not members, the clergymen of which in their own persons exercise the office of priest and judge, to whom, if we consider ourselves aggrieved by their extortions, we are obliged to appeal for redress; but this is nothing to the continual dropping torment which we are doomed to endure from our subordinate oppressors, who are to a man what are termed Protestants,—tithe proctors, excisemen, constables, pound keepers, all are Protestants, and contrive at every step to put us in mind of our political bondage; and when we are goaded on by our merciless drivers until we grow frantic, they term the writhings of tortured and insulted nature, rebellion.
‘The rebellion which rendered this county notorious, has been called a rebellion of the Catholics. It is false; it was first begun in the north of Ireland by Protestants—Presbyterians if you will. A grand political scheme was then in agitation,—the withdrawing the semblance of a government from this country. Great opposition was expected. This rebellion, properly managed, would afford a pretext for the measure, and prepare the way for the important change. The conspiracy might have been crushed at the outset; but instead of that, it was allowed to spread its ramifications through the whole island. This it did more rapidly than was at first imagined, and as Samson of old, when deprived of his eyesight, and brought out to make sport for the lords of the Philistines, made adreadful end of their amusement, our rulers ran some danger of being involved in the commotion which ensued.
“Divide to govern,” seems to have been the Machiavelian policy by which this unhappy country has been always ruled. As the only measure to save themselves was to create distrust between those implicated, the Catholics were stigmatized as the movers of the rebellion, and their end to overturn the Protestant religion. This had the desired effect: the Protestants, for their secession from the cause, were invested with the office of hunting us down,—how they performed their task, is in this country too well known. As those who commit wrong are more implacable and unforgiving than those injured, the Protestants have ever since nourished a deadly hatred towards us, and knowing the tenure on which they hold their power, dread that we should ever be placed on a par with them.
Would your countrymen suffer what we have done without trying to shake themselves free of the yoke?—no, they would not. When an attempt was made to saddle Episcopacy upon them, to a man they resisted the attempt; and the consequence was, that, like us, they were hunted as wild beasts, their houses were burned, their property robbed, their women violated, and themselves brought to the torture and the gibbet. They bore it all, animated by a determined spirit, and, aided by good fortune, they triumphed; and now in possession of dear-earned privileges, you look back with pride and exultation on what they achieved. But what is in you esteemed a virtue, is with us a crime. Poor Ireland has not been so fortunate; her efforts to assert her birthright, through the want of unanimity amongst her children, have been unsuccessful, and are still stigmatized as rebellion, while yours are lauded to the skies. Remember, I do not attempt to vindicate the insurrection of that period, which was at best but an insane project, and even had it succeeded, would have produced no permanent advantage to this country.
‘Above all other people, you ought to feel most sympathy for us; but if I mistake not, the measure of our emancipation meets with more virulent opposition in Scotland than in any other place. I repeat it again, that our creeds do not cause the deadly hatred which exists between the Catholic and Protestant in Ireland. See how peaceably they live together in England and Scotland, where they do not feel the irritation which excites us here. Nothing will ever restore our unhappy country to a state of quiet, but removing the disgraceful bonds with which we are weighed down to the earth. An enthusiasm pervades the country to emancipate the West Indian negroes; let them first remove the taint from their own constitution, let them eradicate the plague-spot from themselves, and then, with a clear conscience, they may go on and prosper; until then, their exertions in that cause will appear hypocritical and absurd—But I am talking to you as if you were interested in the matter. I forget that soldiers have nothing to do with politics, and far less soldiers who are here to keep the peace among the wild Irish.’
The conflicting statements here given may serve to give a tolerably correct idea of the state of party feeling in Ireland; at present I refrain from making any observations of my own on the subject.