Though the people of Erin have been reduced to the sad necessity of forgetting that old proverb of the nation, the spirit which gave rise to it lives in their hearts and is proved by their deeds. What other nation, even the richest and most prosperous, could have accomplished what the world has seen them bring to- pass during this century? The laws which, so long ago, forbade them to be generous, and prohibited them from providing openly for the worship of their God, for the education of their children, for the help of the sick and needy among them, have at last been made inoperative by their oppressors. But, when they were at length left free to follow the freedom and generosity of their hearts, they found—what? In their once beautiful and Christian country, a universal desolation; the blackened ruins of what had been their abbeys, churches, hospitals, and asylums; the very ground on which they stood stolen away from them, and the Protestant establishment in full enjoyment of the revenues of the Catholics. They found every thing in the same state that they had known for centuries. Nothing was restored to them. They were at liberty to spend what they did not possess, since they were as poor as men could be. Every thing had to be done by them toward the reestablishing of their churches, schools, and various asylums, and they had nothing wherewith to do it.
There is no need of going item by item over what they did. The present prosperous state of the Irish Catholic public institutioris— churches, schools, and all—is owing to their poorly-filled pockets. God alone knows how it all came about. We can only see in them the poor of Christ, rich in all gifts, "even alms-deeds most abundant."
It is only too evident that the degradation which the English wished to fasten upon them forever, could not be accomplished even by the measures best adapted to debase a people. The Celtic nature rose superior to the dark designs of the most ingenious opponents, and continued as ever noble, generous, and openhearted. Nevertheless, the sufferings of the victims were at times unutterable; and one of the inevitable effects of such tyrannical measures soon made itself fearfully active and destructive in the shape of those periodical famines which have ever since devastated the island.
In the days of her own possession, there was never mention of famine there. The whole island teemed with the grain of her fields, consumed by a healthy population, and was alive with vast herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. What were the heca- tombs of ancient Greece compared with the thousands of kine prescribed annually by the Book of Rights? Who ever heard of people perishing of want in the midst of abundance such as this? Even during the fiercest wars, waged by clan against clan, we often see the image of death in many shapes, but never that of a large population reduced to roots and grass for food.
When, later on, the wars of the Reformation transformed Munster into a wilderness, and we read for the first time in Irish history of people actually turning green and blue, according to the color of the unwholesome weeds they were driven to devour in order to support life, at least it was in the wake of a terrible war that famine came. It was reserved for the eighteenth century to disclose to us the woful spectacle of a people perishing of starvation in the midst of the profoundest peace, frequently of the greatest plenty, the food produced in abundance by the labor of the inhabitants being sold and sent off to foreign countries to enrich absentee landlords. Nay, those desolating famines at last grew to be periodical, so that every few years people expected one, and it seemed as though Ireland were too barren to produce the barely sufficient supply of food necessary for her scanty population. The people worked arduously and without intermission; the land was rich, the seasons propitious; yet they almost constantly suffered the pangs of hunger, which spread sometimes to wholesale starvation. This was another result of those laws devised by the English colonists to keep down the native population of the island, and prevent it from becoming troublesome and dangerous. Such was the effect of the humane measures taken to preserve the glory of Protestant ascendency, and secure the rights and liberties of a handful of alien masters.
It is proper to describe some of those awful scourges, which have never ceased since, and at sight of which, in our own days, we have too often sickened. For the Emancipation of 1829 was far from removing all the causes of Irish misery. On the 17th of March, 1727, Boulter, the Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, wrote to the Duke of Newcastle: "Since my arrival in this country, the famine has not ceased among the poor people. The dearness of corn last year was such that thousands of families had to quit their dwellings, to seek means of life elsewhere; many hundred perished."
At the same period Swift wrote: "The families of farmers who pay great rents, live in filth and nastiness, on buttermilk and potatoes."
The following is a short and simple description of the famine of 1741, given by an eye-witness, and copied by Matthew O'Connor from a pamphlet entitled "Groans of Ireland," published in the same year:
"Having been absent from this country some years, on my return to it last summer, I found it the most miserable scene of distress that I ever read of in history. Want and misery on every face, the rich unable to relieve the poor, the roads spread with dead and dying bodies; mankind the color of the docks and nettles which they fed on; two or three, sometimes more, on a car, going to the grave for want of bearers to carry them, and many buried only in the fields and ditches where they perished. The universal scarcity was followed by fluxes and malignant fevers, which swept off multitudes of all sorts, so that whole villages were laid waste. If one for every house in the kingdom died—and that is very probable—the loss must be upward of four hundred thousand souls. If only half, a loss too great for this ill-peopled country to bear, as they are mostly working people. When a stranger travels through this country, and beholds its wide, extended, and fertile plains, its great flocks of sheep and black cattle, and all its natural wealth and conveniences for tillage, manufacture, and trade, he must be astonished that such misery and want should be felt by its inhabitants."
At the time these lines were written, the astonishment was sincere, and the answer to the question "How can this be?" seemed impossible; the phenomenon utterly inexplicable. In our own days, when this same picture of woe has been so often presented in the island, the reasons for it are well known; and what seems inexplicable is that, the cause being so clear, and the remedy so simple, the remedy has not yet been thoroughly applied.
In 1756 and 1757, the same scenes were repeated, with the same frightful results. Charles O'Connor, at that time the champion of his much- abused countrymen, wrote thus, in his letter to Dr. Curry, May 21, 1756:
"Two-thirds of the inhabitants are perishing for want of bread; meal is come to eighteen-pence a stone, and, if the poor had money, it would exceed by—I believe—double that sum. Every place is crowded with beggars, who were all house-keepers a fortnight ago, and this is the condition of a country which boasts of its constitution, its laws, and the wisdom of its legislature."
These words, although sweeping enough, and universally applicable, are far from conveying to our minds, to-day, the real picture of the state of the country. When the writer speaks of "meal," it must be understood to mean rye, oats, and, barley; and even this coarse and heavy food being, as he remarks, inaccessible to the poor, potatoes had become the only bread of the country, and the inhabitants were perishing for the want of it.
For the first time in the history of the two nations, the English Government thought of relieving the distress of the people, and to this purpose applied the magnificent sum of twenty thousand pounds. Such was the generous amount granted by a wealthy and prosperous country to procure food for the inhabitants of an island as large as Ireland is known to be. As to effecting any change in the laws, which were really the cause of this unutterable misery, such an idea never entered into the heads of the legislators. Hence it is not surprising to hear that "the distress in the interior of the country revived the frightful image of the miseries of 1741, nor did the calamity cease, until the equilibrium between the population and the means of subsistence was restored by the accumulated waste of famine and pestilence;" that is to say, until all those had been destroyed whom the laws of the time could, as they had been designed to do, destroy.
These details appear calculated only to shock the feelings of the reader, already sufficiently acquainted with the lot of the Irish cottier and laborer, from the beginning of the last century. Nevertheless, we cannot close this part of our subject without giving publicity to the following description of the mass of the Irish population in 1762, by Matthew O'Connor:
"The popery laws had, in the course of half a century, consummated the ruin of the lower orders. Their habitations, visages, dress, and despondency, exhibited the deep distress of a people ruled with the iron sceptre of conquest. The lot of the negro slave, compared with that of the Irish helot, was happiness itself. Both were subject to the capricious cruelty of mercenary task-masters and unfeeling proprietors; but the negro slave was well-fed, well clothed, and comfortably lodged. The Irish peasant was half starved, half naked, and half housed; the canopy of heaven being often the only roof to the mud-built walls of his cabin. The fewness of negroes gave the West India proprietor an interest in the preservation of his slave; a superabundance of helots superseded all interest in the comfort or preservation of an Irish cottier. The code had eradicated every feeling of humanity, and avarice sought to stifle every sense of justice. That avarice was generated by prodigality, the hereditary vice of the Irish gentry, and manifested itself in exorbitant rack-rents wrung from their tenantry, and in the low wages paid for their labor. Since the days of King William, the price of the necessaries of life had trebled, and the day's hire- -fourpence— had continued stationary. The oppression of tithes was little inferior to the tyranny of rack-rents; while the great landholder was nearly exempt from this pressure, a tenth of the produce of the cottier's labor was exacted for the purpose of a religious establishment from which he derived no benefit. . . . The peasant had no resource: not trade or manufactures—they were discouraged; not emigration to France— the vigilance of government precluded foreign enlistment; not emigration to America —his poverty precluded the means. Ireland, the land of his birth, became his prison, where he counted the days of his misery in the deepest despondency."
Is it to be wondered at that conspiracies, secret associations, and insurrections, were the result; or should the wonder be that such commotions were less universal and prolonged?
The craving of hunger is perpetual in Ireland. Multitudes of details from a multitude of different and independent sources might be brought forward to show this.
Duvergier de Hauranne, a Frenchman who visited the island in 1826, writes: "Ireland is the land of anomalies; the most deplorable destitution on the richest of soils. . . . Nowhere does man live in such wretchedness. The Irish peasant is born, suffers, and dies—such is life for him."
In 1836, Dr. Doyle, Bishop of Kildare, being asked what was the state of the population, wrote: "What it has always been; people are perishing as usual."
In 1843, Mr. Thackeray, as little a friend to Ireland as he was a foe to his own country, recounting what he saw in his travels, said that, in the south and west of the island, the traveller had before him the spectacle of a people dying of hunger, and that by millions, in the very richest counties.
There is no need of repeating what has been written of the fearful scourge that swept over the country in 1846 and 1847. The details are too harrowing. At last even the London Times had to acknowledge the cause of these calamities: "The ulcer of Ireland drains the resources of the empire. It was to be expected that it should be so. The people of England have most culpably and foolishly connived at a national iniquity. Without going back beyond the Union (in 1800), and only within the last half-century, it has been notorious all that time that Ireland was the victim of an unexampled social crime. The landlords exercise their rights there with a hand of iron, and deny their duty with a brow of brass. Age, infirmity, sickness, every weakness, is there condemned to death. The whole Irish people is debased by the spectacle and contact of beggars and of those who notoriously die of hunger; and England stupidly winked at this tyranny. We begin now to expiate a long curse of neglect. Such is the law of justice. If we are asked why we have to support half the population of Ireland, the answer lies in the question itself; it is that we have deliberately allowed them to be crushed into a nation of beggars!"
The writers of the Times laid the true cause of that appalling misfortune at the door of the landlords. They would not trace back the origin of the evil beyond 1800: they could not or would not appreciate the Christian heroism displayed by the nation while under the infliction of such a fatal scourge. But it must not be forgotten by all admirers of virtue that, in the midst of a distress which baffles description, many of the victims of famine were at the same time martyrs to honesty and faith. "Come here and let us die together," said a wife to her husband, "rather than touch what belongs to another."
The civil right of acquiring land and enjoying its products has so far been the only one considered by us; and the subject has been entered upon at some length, as agriculture has at all times formed the chief occupation of the Irish people. But the penal laws embraced many other objects; and, as their intent was evidently to debase the people and reduce it to a state of actual slavery and want, other civil rights were equally invaded by their tyrannical provisions.
A portion of the population in all countries devotes itself to the intellectual pursuits necessary for the life of every cultivated nation. Whoever chooses must have the right of devoting his life to the professions of medicine and law, of entering the Church or the army, if his tastes run in any one of those directions. Not so in Catholic Ireland. The oath to be taken by every barrister prevented the Catholic Irishman from devoting his powers to such a purpose. There was only one Church for him, and that one proscribed. In the army not only could he not attain to any rank, but he was not allowed to enter it even as a private, the holding of a musket being prohibited to him. So that, through mere fanatical hatred of every thing Catholic, England deprived herself for a whole century of the services of a people, forming to-day more than half of her army and navy, whose efforts have helped to cover her flag with honor, and whose memorable absence from the English ranks at Fontenoy wrung that bitter expression from the heart of George II. when the victorious tide of the English battle was rolled back by the Irish brigade, "Cursed be the laws which deprive me of such subjects!"
These few words are enough to show that the penal laws were in reality a decree of outlawry against the Irish—stamping them, not as true subjects, but as mere slaves and helots, fit only to be hewers of wood and drawers of water at the bidding of their lords and masters.
But there are mere human rights, inalienable in man, and sacred among all nations, which were trampled upon in that desolated land together with all inferior rights. Such are the rights of worshipping God, of properly educating children, of preserving a just subordination in the family and promoting harmony and happiness among its members. These natural rights were more openly and shamelessly violated, if that were possible, than all others; and this in itself would have made the eighteenth century one of gloom and woe for Irishmen.
It was for their religion chiefly that the Irish had undergone all the calamities and scourges which have been described. Had they only, at the very beginning of the Reformation, bowed to the new dogma of the spiritual supremacy of the English kings; had they a little later accepted the Thirty-nine Articles of Queen Elizabeth; had they, at a subsequent epoch, opined in chorus with the Scotch Presbyterians, and given the Bible as their authority for all kinds of absurdities and atrocities, mental and moral; had they, in a word, as they remarked to Sussex, changed their religion four times in twelve years, they would have escaped the wrath of Henry VIII., the crafty and cruel policy of Elizabeth, the shifty expediency of the Stuarts, the barbarity of the Cromwellian era, and finally the ingenious atrocities of the penal laws.
Even if, in the midst of some of the extremities to which they had been reduced, they had at any time resolved to conform and take the oaths prescribed, all their miseries would have been at an end, and their immediate admission to all the rights and privileges of British citizens secured. From time to time, in individual cases, they witnessed the sudden and magical effect produced by conformity on the part of those who gave up resistance altogether, and who, from whatever motive, bowed to the inevitable conditions on which men were admitted to live peaceably on Irish soil, and to the enjoyment of the blessings of this life; such condition being the abjuration of Catholicity. But so few were found to take advantage of this easy chance forever held out to them, that a man might well wonder at their constancy did he not reflect that they set their duty to God above all things. The fact is patent—they had a conscience, and knew what it meant.
Having then surrendered their all for the sake of their religion, the free exercise of that might at least have been left them; and since the choice lay between the two alternatives of enjoying the natural right of worshipping their God or submitting to all the sacrifices previously mentioned (seemingly the meaning of the various oaths prescribed by law), it can only be looked upon as an additional cruelty to violently deprive them of what they chose to preserve at all cost. But the authors of the statutes did not see the matter in this light. They could not lose such an opportunity of inflicting new tortures on their victims; on the contrary, they would have considered all their labor lost had they not endeavored to coerce the very thing least subject to coercion, the religious feeling of the human soul. Accordingly, the resolution was taken to deprive them of every possible facility for the exercise of their religion, that the fire within might give no sign of its warmth.
True, the Irish Catholics were not, as the Christians under the edicts of old Rome, to be summoned before the public courts and there abjure their religion or die. It is strange that the rulers of Ireland stopped short at this; that they invented nothing in their laws at least equivalent, unless the statutes that compelled every person under fine to be present at Protestant worship on Sundays be interpreted to mean, what it very much resembles, an attempt at coercion of the very soul. Still there was no edict openly proscribing the name of Catholic, and punishing its bearer with death.
But the measures adopted and actually enforced were in reality equivalent, and would more effectually than any pagan edict have produced the same result, if the Irish race had shown the least wavering in their traditional steadiness of purpose.
The first of the measures devised for this end would have been completely efficacious with any other people or race. It was a twofold measure: 1. All bishops, priests, and monks, were to depart from the kingdom, liable to capital punishment should they return. 2. All laymen were to be compelled to assist at the Protestant service every Sunday, under penalty of a fine for each offence: the fine mounting with the repetition of the offence, so that, in the end, it would reach an enormous sum. Only let such a policy as this be persevered in for a quarter of a century in any country on earth except Ireland, and, in that country the Catholic religion will cease to exist.
"The Catholic clergy," says Matthew O'Connor—and the reader will remember he was a witness of what he described— "submitted to their hard destiny with Christian resignation. They repaired to the seaport towns fixed for their embarcation, and took an everlasting farewell of their country and friends, of every thing dear and valuable in this world. Many of them were descending in the vale of years, and must have been anxious to deposit their bones with the ashes of their ancestors; they were now transported to foreign lands, where they would find no fond breast to rely upon, no 'pious tear' to attend their obsequies. Yet their enemies could not deprive them of the consolations of religion: that first-born offspring of Heaven still cheered them in adversity and exile, smoothed the rugged path of death, and closed their last faltering accents with benedictions on their country, and prayers for their persecutors.
"Such as were apprehended after the time limited for deportation, were loaded with irons and imprisoned until transported, to attest, on some foreign shore, the weakness of the government, and the cruelty of their countrymen. Some few, disabled from age and infirmities from emigration, sought shelter in caves, or implored and received the concealment of Protestants, whose humane feelings were superior to their prejudices, and who atoned, in a great degree, by their generous sympathy, for the wanton cruelty of their party.
"The clause inflicting the punishment of death on such as should return from exile was suited only for the sanguinary days of Tiberius or Domitian, and shocked the humanity of an enlightened age. William of Orange, whose necessities compelled him to give his sanction to the clause, would never consent to its execution."
Nevertheless, it was afterward enforced on several occasions, and, during the whole century of penal laws, it not only remained on the statute-book ad terrorem, but whatever clergyman disregarded it could only expect to be treated with its utmost rigor. From Captain South's account, it appears that in 1698 the number of clergy in Ireland consisted of four hundred and ninety- five regulars and eight hundred and ninety-two seculars; and the number of regulars shipped off that year to foreign parts amounted to four hundred and twenty-four—namely, from Dublin, one hundred and fifty-three; from Galway, one hundred and ninety; from Cork, seventy-five; and twenty-six from Waterford.
But such a measure was of too sweeping a character to be carried out to the letter; many of the proscribed priests, seculars for the most part, escaped the pursuit of the government spies, and remained concealed in the country. The bishops had all been obliged to fly; but a few years later, under Anne, several returned, for they knew that, without the exercise of their religious functions, the Catholic religion must have perished; and, in order that they might continue the succession of the priesthood, confirm the children, and encourage the people to stand firm in their faith, they ran the hazard of the gibbet. Of this fact the persecutors soon became aware, and the Commons of Ireland declared openly that "several popish bishops had lately come into the kingdom, and exercised ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the same, and continued the succession of the Romish priesthood by ordaining great numbers of popish clergymen, and that their return was owing to defect in the laws."
To cover this defect, they invented the "registry law." They did not state in express terms their intention of exporting them again, but their object was clearly manifested by the subsequent enactment of 1704. By the registry law "all popish priests then in the kingdom should, at the general quarter sessions in each county, register their places of abode, age, parishes, and time of ordination, the names of the respective bishops who ordained them, and give security for their constant residence in their respective districts, under penalty of imprisonment and transportation, and of being treated as 'high traitors' in case of return."
It is clear that, with the execution of this law, the exertions of the police and of informers would have been superfluous, as the clergy were compelled to act as their own police and inform on themselves. The act, moreover, seems to have been prepared with a view to another bill, which was soon after passed, for total expulsion. It was therefore nothing else than a preliminary measure devised to insure the success of this second act, and prevent the recurrence of the former "defect in the laws."
A new explanatory statute was accordingly drawn up, requiring the clergy to take the oath of abjuration before the 23d of March, 1710, under the penalties of transportation for life, and of high-treason if ever after found in the country. This bill, then, set them the alternative of abandoning either their country or their principles.
At the same time, for the encouragement of informers, the Commons resolved that "the prosecuting and informing against papists was an honorable service." Never before had a like declaration issued from any body in any nation, least of all by legislators, in favor of the confessedly meanest of all occupations; and it is doubtful if the most tyrannical of the Roman Caesars would ever have thought of mentioning the "honorable service" of the delatores whom they employed for the speedy destruction of those whose wealth they coveted. "Genus hominum," says Tacitus, "publico exitio repertum."
While on this subject, it has been remarked that most of the Irish informers amassed wealth by their bills of "discovery," whereas those of the days of Tiberius generally fell victims to their own artifices.
The eagerness for blood-money tracked the clergy to their loneliest retreats, and dragged them thence before persecuting tribunals, by whose sentence they were doomed to perpetual banishment. They must all have finally disappeared from the island, if the people, at last grown indignant at such baseness and cruelty, had not, by the loudness of their execrations, checked the activity of the priest-hunters. Wherever they dared show themselves, they were pelted with stones, and exposed to the summary vengeance of a maddened people.
The detestable "profession" became at last so infamous and unprofitable that foreign Jews were almost the only ones found willing to undertake this "honorable service;" and it is stated in the "Historia Dominicana," that one Garzia, a Portuguese Jew, was the most active of those human blood-hounds, and that, in 1718, he contrived to have seven of the proscribed clergy detected and apprehended.
We cannot speak of the most revolting measure ever intended to be taken against Catholic priests; namely mutilation, so long and with such energy denied by Protestants, who were themselves indignant at the mere mention of it, but now clearly proved by the archives of France, where documents exist showing that the non-enactment of such an infamy was solely due to the severe words of remonstrance sent to England by the Duke of Orleans, regent of France during the minority of Louis XV.
As late as the middle of the century, in 1744, a sudden increase of rigor took place; intentions of conspiracy were ascribed to Catholics as usual, and without any motive whatever, unless it was caused by the sight of some religious houses, which had been quietly and unobtrusively reopened during the few years previous. All at once the government issued a proclamation for "the suppression of monasteries, the apprehension of ecclesiastics, the punishment of magistrates remiss in the execution of the laws, and the encouragement of spies and informers by an increase of reward."
It was a repetition of the old story; a cruel persecution broke out in every part of the island. From the country priests fled to the metropolis, seeking to hide themselves amid the multitude of its citizens. Others fled to mountains and caverns, and the holy sacrifice was again offered up in lone places under the bare heavens, with sentinels to watch for the "prowling of the wolf," and no other outward dignity than that the grandeur of the forest and the rugged mountains gave.
In the cities the Catholics assisted at the celebration of the divine mysteries in stable-yards, garrets, and such obscure places as sheltered them from the pursuit of the magistrates. On one occasion, while the congregation (assembled in an old building) was kneeling to receive the benediction, the floor gave way, and all were buried beneath the ruin; many were killed, the priest among others; some were maimed for life, and remained to the end of their lives monuments of the cruelty of the government. The dead and dying, and the wounded, were carried through the streets on carts; and the sad spectacle at last moved the Protestants themselves to sympathy. The government was compelled to give way, and allow the persecuted Catholics to enjoy without further molestation the private exercise of their religion.
But that this was not a willing concession on the part of the reigning power is manifest enough from the steady, unswerving, contrary policy pursued until that time. It was simply forced to give way to outraged public opinion, then openly opposed throughout Europe to persecution for conscience' sake.
With religion education was also proscribed. Already, under William of Orange, had papist school-masters been forbidden to teach, but the penalty of their disobedience to the law did not go beyond a fine of a few pounds. So that the Irish youth could still, with some precautionary prudence, find teachers of the Greek and Latin languages, of mathematics, history, and geography. In Munster particularly schools and academies of literature flourished; the ardor of the people for the acquirement of knowledge could not be balked by such paltry obstacles as the laws of William III.
But the Irish Parliament under Anne could not rest satisfied with such mild measures. By the "Explanatory Act" of 1710, the school-master in Ireland was subjected to the same punishment as the priest whom he accompanied everywhere. Prison, transportation, death itself, became the reward of teaching. And in proportion as other laws, severer yet, prevented the people from sending their children abroad to be educated, and these laws were renewed occasionally and made more stringent and effective, the result was the total impossibility of Catholic children receiving any education higher than that of the house.
The final result is known to all. The "hedge-school" was established, that being the only way left of imparting elementary knowledge; and it required Irish ingenuity and Irish aptitude for shifts to invent such a system, for system it was, and carry it through for so long a time.
But even the last sanctuary of home was yet to be sacrilegiously invaded; the most sacred of human rights could not be left to the persecuted people, and the strongest bonds of family affection were if possible to be broken asunder. What tyranny had never yet dared attempt in any age or country was to become a law in Ireland; and that holy feeling by which the members of a family are held together, in obedence to one of the most necessary and solemn commandments of God, could not be left undisturbed in the bosom of an Irish child. The father's rule over his children and the honor and love due by the child to its parent, were, in fact, declared by English legislation of no value, and fit subjects for cruel interference, introducing irresistible temptation.
Yes, by the laws enacted in the reign of Anne, the son was to be set against the father, and this for the sake of religion! It was a part of the Irish statutes, and for a long time it took occasional effect, that any son of a Catholic who should turn Protestant at any age, even the tenderest, should alone succeed to the family estate, which from the day of the son's conversion could neither be sold nor charged even with a debt of legacy. From that same day the son was taken from his father's roof and delivered into the custody of some Protestant guardian. No tie, however sacred, no claim, however dear, was respected by those statesmen, who at the very time were the loudest to boast of their love for freedom, while trampling under foot the most indispensable rights of Nature.
The wickedest ingenuity of man could certainly not go beyond this to debase, degrade, and destroy a nation. After unprecedented calamities of former ages, we find millions of men reduced by other men, calling themselves Christians, to a condition of pagan helots, deprived of all rights and treated more barbarously than slaves. And all the while they were allowed, induced, encouraged to put an end to their misery by simply saying one word, taking one oath, "conforming " as the expression had it. Nevertheless they steadily refused to speak that word, to take that oath, to conform; that is to say, to abjure their religion. A few, weak in faith, or carried away by sudden passion, a burst of despair, subscribe to the required oath, assist as demanded at the religious services on Sunday, suddenly rise to distinction, are sure of preserving their wealth, or even enter into sole possession of the family property, to the exclusion of all its other members. But such rare examples, instead of rousing the envy of the rest, excite only their contempt and execration. To them they are henceforth apostates, renegades to their faith, cast out from the bosom of the nation; and their countrymen hug their misery rather than exchange it for honors and wealth purchased by broken honor, lost faith, and cowardly desertion of the cause for which their country was what it was.
While the cowards were so few, and the brave men so many, the latter constituting indeed the whole bulk of the people, they were knit together as a band of brethren, never to be estranged from each other. If any thing is calculated to form a nation, to give it strength, to render it indestructible, imperishable, it is undoubtedly the ordeal through which they passed without shrinking, and out of which they came with one mind, one purpose, animated by one holy feeling, the love of their religion, and the determination to keep it at all hazard.
Yes, at any moment throughout this long century, they might have changed their condition and come out at once to the enjoyment of all the rights dear to men, by what means is best expressed in the few words of Edmund Burke:
"Let three millions of people" (the number of Irishmen at the time he spoke) "but abandon all that they and their ancestors have been taught to believe sacred, and forswear it publicly in terms most degrading, scurrilous, and indecent, for men of integrity and virtue, and abuse the whole of their former lives, and slander the education they have received, and nothing more is required of them. There is no system of folly, or impiety, or blasphemy, or atheism, into which they may not throw themselves, and which they may not profess openly and as a system, consistently with the enjoyment of all the privileges of a free citizen in the happiest constitution in the world."
Thus does the reason of man commend their constancy; but that constancy required something more than human strength. God it was who supported them. He alone could grant power of will strong enough to uphold men plunged for so long a time in such an abyss of wretchedness. To him could they cry out with truth: "It is only owing to Divine mercy that we have not perished;" misericordias Domini, quod non sumus consumpti!
But human reason can better comprehend the effect produced on a vast multitude of people by oppression so unexampled in its severity. An immense development of manhood and self-dependence, an heroic determination to bear every trial for conscience' sake, and a certainty of succeeding, in the long-run, in breaking the heavy chain and casting off the intolerable yoke —such was the effect.
It has been asserted by some authors, who have written on that terrible eighteenth century in Ireland, that the spirit of the people was entirely broken, that there was no energy left among them, and that the imposition of burdens heavier still, were such a thing possible, could scarcely elicit from them even the semblance of remonstrance. It was only natural to think so; but, in our opinion, this is only true of the external despondency under which the people was bowed, but utterly false with respect to a lack of mental energy.
There certainly was no general attempt at insurrection on their part; nor did they take refuge in that last resource of despair— death after a vain vengeance. If the writers referred to would have preferred this last fatal resource of wounded pride, they are right in their estimate of the Irish; but they forget that the victims were Christians, and could lend no ear to a vengeance which is futile and a despair which is forbidden. There was a better course open before them, and they followed it: to resign themselves to the will of a God they believed in and for whom they suffered, and wait patiently for the day of deliverance. It was sure to come; and if those then living were doomed not to see that happy day, they knew that they would leave it as an inheritance to their children.
Those writers would doubtless have been satisfied of the existence of a will among the people, and their conduct would have met with greater approval, had the attempts of some individuals at private revenge been more general and successful; if the bands of Rapparees, White Boys, and others, had wrought more evil upon their oppressors, although they could not prepare them to renew the struggle on a large scale with better prospect of success.
But this could not be; success could never have been reached by such a road, and it was useless to attempt it. At that time, there existed no possibility of the Irish recovering their rights by force. Meanwhile Providence was not forgetful of those who were fighting the braver moral battle of suffering and endurance for their religion. It was preparing the nation for a future life of great purposes, by purifying it in the crucible of affliction, and preserving the people pure and undebased.
Nowhere has the period of calamity been so protracted and so severe. Ireland stands alone in a history of wretchedness of seven centuries' duration. She stands alone, particularly inasmuch as, with her, the affliction has gone on continually increasing until quite recently, unrefreshed by periods of relief and glimpses of bright hope. The sinking spirits of the people, it is true, have been buoyed up from time to time by sanguine expectations; but only to find their expectations crowned with bitter disappointment and sink deeper again in the sea of their afflictions.
Nevertheless, through all that time the Irish continued morally strong, and ready at the right moment to leap into the stature of giants in strength and resolution. How they did so will be seen, and the simplicity of the explanation will be matter for surprise. But it is fitting first to set in the strongest light the assertion that the Irish were really debased by the calamities of that age, that they possessed no self-dependence at a time when that was the only thing left to them.
This view is thus expressed in Godkin's "History of Ireland:" "Too well did the penal code accomplish its dreadful work of debasement on the intellects, morals, and physical condition of a people sinking in degeneracy from age to age, till all manly spirit, all virtuous sense of personal independence and responsibility was nearly extinct, and the very features—vacant, timid, cunning, and unreflective—betrayed the crouching slave within."
And the writer, a well-disposed Protestant, did not see how it could well be otherwise, and took it for granted that every one would admit the truth of his assertions without the slightest hesitation.
For he adds, a little farther on: "Having no rights of franchise- -no legal protection of life or property—disqualified to handle a gun, even as a common soldier or a game-keeper— forbidden to acquire the elements of knowledge at home or abroad—forbidden even to render to God what conscience dictated as his due—what could the Irish be but abject serfs? What nature in their circumstances could have been otherwise? Is it not amazing that any social virtue could have survived such an ordeal—that any seeds of good, any roots of national greatness could have outlived such a long tempestuous winter? "
Still Mr. Godkin was mistaken; the Irish had suffered no "debasement of the intellects, of the morals, not even of the physical condition," notwithstanding the plenitude of causes existing to bring such results about.
Their intellect had been kept in ignorance. Unable to procure instruction for their children, except by stealth and in opposition to the laws, few of them could acquire even the first elements of mental culture. But the intellect of a nation is not necessarily debased on that account. As a general rule, it is true that ignorance begets mental darkness and error, and will often debase the mind and sink the intellectual faculties to the lowest human level. But this happens only to people who, having no religious substratum to rest upon, are left at the mercy of error and delusions. One great thought, at least, was ever present to their minds, and that thought was in itself sufficient to preserve their intellect from being degraded; it was this "Man is nobler than the brute and born to a higher destiny." This truth was deeply engraved in their minds; and in defence of it they battled, and fought, and bled, all down the painful course of their history.
Had the intellect of the nation been really debased, would not their religious principles have been the first things to be thrown overboard? Would they not have adopted unhesitatingly all the tenets successively proposed to them by the various "reformers" of England? What is truth, when there is no mind to receive it? It requires a strong mind indeed to say, "I will suffer every thing, death itself, rather thin repudiate what I know comes from God." It is useless to dwell longer on these considerations. The man who sees not in such an heroic determination proof of a strong and noble mind may be possessed of a great, but to common-sense people it will look like a very limited intelligence.
Mr. Godkin cannot have duly weighed his expressions when he spoke of the debasement of morals among the Irish. It is no hyperbole to speak of the nation as a martyr; a martyr in any sense of the word: to the Christian, a Christian martyr. And yet it is by that fact guilty of immorality, or, as he puts it, debased in morals! The point is not worth arguing. But in contrasting the two nations, the nation debased and the nation that wrought its debasement, we are irresistibly reminded of the words used by Our Lord in reference to John the Baptist, then in prison and liable at any moment to be condemned to death: "What went ye out in the desert to see? A man clothed in soft garments? Lo! they that are clothed in soft garments dwell in the houses of kings."
If we would find a people really debased in morals, we must go to those whose material prosperity breeds corruption and gives to all the means of satisfying their evil passions. The orgies of the Babylonians under their last king, of the effeminate Persians later on, of the Roman patricians during the empire, need no more than mention. The cause of the immorality prevailing at these several epochs is well known, and has been told very plainly by conscientious historians, some of them pagans themselves. But, that a people ground down so long under a yoke of iron, gasping for very breath, yet refusing to surrender its belief and the worship of its God as its countless saints worshipped him, to follow the wild vagaries of sectarians and fanatics, should at the same time be accused of corruption and debasement of its morals, is too much for an historian to assert or a reader to believe.
But, beyond all argument, it has been generally conceded, in spite of prejudices, that the Irish, of all peoples, had been preeminently moral and Christian. No one has dared accuse them of open vice, however they may have been accused of folly. Intemperance is the great foible flung at them by many who, careful to conceal their own failings, are ever, ready to "cast the first stone" at them. It would be well for them to ponder over the rebuke of the Saviour to the accusers of the woman taken in adultery; when perhaps they may think twice before repeating the time-worn accusation.
Coming to the "people sinking in degeneracy from age to age;" if by this is meant that, for a whole century, many of them have suffered the direst want and died of hunger, that scanty food has impressed on many the deep traces of physical suffering and bodily exhaustion, no one will dispute the fact, while the blame of it is thrown where it deserves to be thrown. But it will be a source of astonishment to find that, despite of this, the race has not degenerated even physically; that it is still, perhaps, the strongest race in existence, and that no other European, no Englishman or Teuton, can endure the labor of any ordinary Irishman. In the vast territory of the United States, the public works, canals, roads, railways, huge fabrics, immense manufactories, bear witness to the truth of this statement, and the only explanation that can be satisfactorily given for this strange fact is, that their morals are pure and they do not transmit to their children the seeds of many diseases now universal in a universally corrupt society.
There remains the final accusation of the "very features— vacant, timid, cunning, and unreflective—betraying the crouching slave within."
Granting the truth of this—which we by no means do, every school-geography written by whatever hand attesting the contrary to-day—where would have been the wonder that they, subjected so long to an unbending harshness and never-slumbering tyranny, accustomed to those continual "domiciliary visits" so common in Ireland during the whole of last century, dragged so often before the courts of "justice," to be there insulted, falsely accused, harshly tried and convicted without proof—were obliged to be continually on their guard, to observe a deep reserve, the very opposite to the promptings of their genial nature, to return ambiguous answers, full, by the way, of natural wit and marvellous acuteness? It was the only course left them in their forlorn situation. They pitted their native wit against a wonderfully devised legislation, and often came off the victors. Suppose it were true, was it not natural that, under such a system of unrelaxing oppression and hatred toward them, their faces should be "vacant, timid, cunning, and unreflective, betraying the crouching slave within?"
Could they give back a proud answer, when a proud look was an accusation of rebellion? Are prudence, cunning, and just reserve, vacancy and want of reflection? The man who penned those words should remember the choice of alternatives ever present to the mind of an Irishman, however unjustly suspected or accused—the probability of imprisonment or hanging, of being sent to the workhouse or transported to the "American plantations."
The Irishman must have changed very materially and very rapidly since Mr. Godkin wrote. The features he would stamp upon him might be better applied to the Sussex yokel or the English country boor of whatever county. The generality of travellers strangely disagree with Mr. Godkin. They find the Irishman the type of vivacity, good humor, and wit; and they are right. For, under the weight of such a load of misery, under the ban of so terrible a fate, the moral disposition of the Irishman never changed; his manhood remained intact. To-day, the world attests to the same exuberance of spirits, the same tenacity of purpose, which were ever his. This indeed is wonderful, that this people should have been thus preserved amid so many causes for change and deterioration. Who shall explain this mystery? What had they, all through that age of woe, to give them strength to support their terrible trials, to preserve to them that tenacity which prevented their breaking down altogether? Something there was indeed not left to them, since it was forbidden under the severest penalties; something, nevertheless, to which they clung, in spite of all prohibitions to the contrary.
It was the Mass-Rock, peculiar to the eighteenth century, now known only by tradition, but at that time common throughout the island. The principal of those holy places became so celebrated at the time that, on every barony map of Ireland, numbers of them are to be found marked under the appropriate title of "Corrigan-Affrion"—the mass-rock.
Whenever, in some lonely spot on the mountain, among the crags at its top, or in some secret recess of an unfrequented glen, was found a ledge of rock which might serve the purpose of an altar, cut out as it were by Nature, immediately the place became known to the surrounding neighborhood, but was kept a profound secret from all enemies and persecutors. There on the morning appointed, often before day, a multitude was to be seen kneeling, and a priest standing under the canopy of heaven, amid the profound silence of the holy mysteries. Though the surface of the whole island was dotted with numerous churches, built in days gone by by Catholics, but now profaned, in ruins, or devoted to the worship of heresy, not one of them was allowed to serve for a place where a fraction even of the bulk of the population might adore their God according to the rites approved of by their conscience. Shut off from these temples so long hallowed by sweet remembrance as the spots once occupied by the saints and consecrated to the true worship of their God, this faithful nation was consecrating the while by its prayers, by its blood, and by its tears, other places which in future times should be remembered as the only spots left to them for more than a century wherein to celebrate the divine rites.
This was the only badge of nationality they had preserved, but it was the most sacred, the surest, and the sweetest. Who shall tell of the many prayers that went up thence from devoted minds and hearts, to be received by angels and carried before the throne of God? Who shall say that those prayers were not hearkened to when to-day we see the posterity of those holy worshippers receiving or on the point of receiving the full measure of their desires?
There, indeed, it was that the nation received its new birth; in sorrow and suffering, as its Saviour was born, but for that very reason sacred in the eyes of God and man. Their enemies had sworn complete separation from them, eternal animosity against them; the new nation accepted the challenge, and that complete separation decreed by their enemies was the real means of their salvation and of making them a People.
As has already been observed, the various attempts to make Protestants of them, attempts sometimes cunning and crafty, at others open and cruel, always persevered in, never lost sight of, began to imbue the people with a new feeling of nationality, never experienced before, and constantly increasing in intensity.
This was witnessed under the Tudors. Their infatuation for the Stuart dynasty served the same end, and it may be said that, from all the evils which that attachment brought upon them, burst forth that great recompense of national sentiment which almost compensated them for the terrible calamities which followed in its train. It was under Charles I. that the Confederation of Kilkenny first gave them a real constitution, better adapted for the nation than the old regime of their Ard- Righs.
But it was chiefly under the English Commonwealth, when they were so mercilessly crushed down by Cromwell and his brutal soldiery, when there seemed no earthly hope left them, that the solid union of the old native with the Anglo-Irish families, which had already been attempted—and almost successfull by the Confederation of Kilkenny yet never consummated was finally brought about once for all; their common misery uniting them in the bonds of brotherly affection, blotting out forever their long-standing divisions and antipathies which had never been quite laid aside.
It was thus that the nation was formed and prepared by martyrdom for the glorious resurrection, the greater future kept in store for it by Providence; the people all the while remaining undebased under their crushing evils.
Lastly, the intensity of the suffering produced by the penal laws, during the eighteenth century, linked the nation in closer bonds of union still, and this time gave them a unanimity which became invincible. Their final motto was then adopted, and will stand forever unchanged. In the clan period it was "Our sept and our chieftain;" under the Tudors, "Our religion and our native lords;" under the Stuarts it suddenly became "God and the King; "—it changed once more, never to change again: it was embraced in one word, the name of Him who had never deserted them, who alone stood firm on their side—"Our God!"
By delusive hopes are here meant some of the various schemes in which Irishmen have indulged and still indulge with the view of bettering their country. This chapter will aim at showing that, for the resurrection of Ireland, the reconstruction of her past is impossible; parliamentary independence or "home rule," insufficient, physical force and violent revolution, in conjunction with European radicals particularly, is as unholy as it is impracticable.
The resurrection of the Irish nation began with the end of last century. As, to use their own beautiful expression, "'Tis always the darkest the hour before day," so the gloom had never settled down so darkly over the land, when light began to dawn, and the first symptoms of returning life to flicker over the face of the, to all seeming, dead nation. Its coming has been best described in the "History of the Catholic Association" by Wyse. On reading his account, it is impossible not to be struck with the very small share that men have had in this movement; it was purely a natural process directed by a merciful God. As with all natural processes, it began by an almost imperceptible movement among a few disconnected atoms, which, by seeming accident approaching and coming into contact, begin to form groups, which gather other groups toward them in ever-increasing numbers, thus giving shape to an organism which defines itself after a time, to be finally developed into a strong and healthy being. This process differed essentially from those revolutionary uprisings which have since occurred in other nations, to the total change in the constitution and form of the latter, without any corresponding benefit arising from them.
Before entering upon the full investigation of this uprising, it may be well to dispel some false notions too prevalent, even in our days, among men who are animated with the very best intentions, who wish well to the Irish cause, but who seem to fail in grasp in the right idea of the question. Reconstruction, say they, is impossible-at least as far as the past history of the country goes. Where are her leaders, her chieftains, her nobility? Feudalism broke the clans, persecution put an effectual stop to the labors of genealogists and bards. Where, to-day, are the O'Neill, the O'Brien, the O'Donnell, and the rest? Until new leaders are found, offshoots, if possible, of the old families, more faithful and trustworthy than those who so far have volunteered to guide their countrymen, how is it possible to expect a people such as the Irish have always been, to assume once more a corporate existence, and enjoy a truly national government?
I. That the Irish nobility has disappeared forever may be granted. In giving our reasons for believing in the impossibility of connecting the present with the past through that class, and thus restoring a truly national government, and in strengthening this opinion by what follows, we shall show at the same time that, in that regard, Ireland is on a par with all other nationalities, among whom the aristocratic classes have quite lost the prestige that once belonged to them, and can no longer be said to rule modern nations.
The question of nobility is certainly an important one for the Irish—nay, for all peoples. Up to quite recently, profound thinkers never imagined it possible for a people to enjoy peace and happiness save under the guidance of those then held to be natural guides with aristocratic blood in their veins, who were destined by God himself to rule the masses. We are far from falling in with the fashion, so common nowadays, of deriding those ideas. Men like Joseph de Maistre, who was certainly an upholder of the theory, and who could not suppose a nation to exist without a superior class appointed by Providence to guide those whose blood was less pure, have a right to be listened to with respect, and none of their deliberate opinions should be treated with levity.
And, in truth, no nobility ever existed more worthy of the title, as far as the origin of its power went, than the Irish. Its last days were spent, like those of true heroes, fighting for their country and their God. It is a remarkable fact that they, the truest, were the first of the aristocratic classes to fall. After them, all the aristocracies of Europe, with the exception perhaps of the English, which still exists at least in name, gradually saw their power wrested from them, so that, to-day, it may be said with truth that the "noble" blood has lost its prerogative of rule.
Various are the theories on these superior classes; a few words on some of them may be as appropriate as interesting.
Of all those advanced, Vico's are the least defensible, though they seem to rest on a deep knowledge of antiquity. No Christian can accept his view of a universal savage state of society after the Flood; and his explanation of the origin of aristocratic races, and of the plebeians, their slaves, is purely the work of imagination, however well read in classic lore may have been the author of "Scienza Nuova." To suppose with him that the primeval "nobles" reached the first stage of civilization by inventing language, agriculture, and religion, and by imposing the yoke of servitude on the "brutes" who were not yet possessed of the first characteristics of humanity, is revolting to reason, and contradictory to all sound philosophy and knowledge of history. His aristocracy is a brutal institution which he does well to doom to extinction as soon as the plebs is sufficiently instructed and powerful enough to seize upon the reins of government, before it, in its turn, is brought under by the progressive march of monarchy, with which his system culminates.
The feudal ideas concerning "noble" blood rested on an entirely different basis. The feudal monarch is but the first of the nobles, and the possession of land is the true prerogative and charter of nobility. The inferior classes being excluded from that privilege, are also excluded from all political rights, and are nothing more nor less than the conquered races which were first reduced to slavery. Christianity was the only power which effected a change, and a deep one, in the relations of these two classes to each other; the rigorous application of the system by the Northmen being entirely opposed to the elementary teachings of our holy religion.
From the change thus brought about resulted the Christian idea of aristocratic and monarchical government which had the support of some gifted writers of the last and present centuries. It was in fact a return to the old system realized by Charlemagne in the great empire of which he was the founder—a system whose glorious march was interrupted by the invasion of feudalism in its severest form, which, according to what was before said, came down from Scandinavia in the time of Charlemagne's immediate successors. Under the regime of the noble emperor, the Church, the Aristocracy, and the People, formed three Estates, each with its due share in the government. This mode of administering public affairs became general in Europe, and stood for nearly a thousand years.
But is it the particular form of government necessary for the happiness of a nation, as it was held to be by some powerful minds? If it is, then are we born, indeed, in unhappy times; for the corner-stone of the edifice, the aristocratic idea, has crumbled away, and is apparently gone forever.
Any one, looking at Europe as it stands to-day, must feel constrained to admit that its history for the last hundred years may be summed up in the one phrase: admission of the middle classes of society to the chief seat of government. Russia now makes the solitary exception to this rule; for in England, which seems the most feudal of all nations, the middle classes have attained to a high position, and, through their special representatives, have often taken the chief lead in public affairs, ever since the Revolution of 1688, a lead which is now uncontested. And as individuals of the middle class are often admitted into the ranks of the aristocracy, it would indeed be a hard thing to find purely "noble" blood in the vast majority of aristocratic families now existing in Great Britain.
The history of the gradual decline of what is called the nobility in the various states of Europe would require volumes. In many instances it would certainly be found to have been richly merited, in France particularly, perhaps, where the corruption of that class was one of the chief causes which led to the first French Revolution.
But in Ireland the original idea of nobility was different from that entertained elsewhere; the action of the institution on the people at large was peculiar in its character; and if, in early times, those rude chieftains were often guilty of acts of violence and outrage against religion and morality, they atoned for this by that last long struggle of theirs, so nobly waged in defence of both. But the destruction of the order was final and complete, and seems to have left no hope of resurrection.
In our first chapter, when treating of the clan system, the origin of chieftainship among the Celts was referred back to the family: all the chieftains, or nobles, were each the head of a sept or tribe, which is the nearest approach to a family; all the clansmen were related by blood to the chieftain. The order of nobility among the Celts was therefore natural and not artificial; being neither the result of some conventional understanding nor of brute force. Nature was with them the parent of nobility and chieftainship; and the ennobling, or raising a person by mere human power to the dignity of noble, was unknown to them: a state of things peculiar to the race.
In Vico's system, aristocracy sprang from physical force or skill; consequently, nobility was founded on no natural right, although the author does his best to prove the contrary, chiefly by ascribing to the aristocratic class the discovery or invention of right (jus) which thus becomes a mere derivative of force.
In feudalism, pure and unmixed, after it had penetrated farther south, under the lead of the Scandinavians, nobility was derived from conquest and armed force. It is true that, by this system, the viking, monarch, or sovereign lord, was the one who distributed the territory, won from conquered nations, among his faithful followers, and thus land and its consequence, nobility, were apparently the award of merit; but the merit in question being equivalent to success in battle, it again resolved itself into armed force. In fact, the power of feudalism proper rested in the army; the chief nobles were duces or combats (dukes or counts), the inferior nobles were equites (knights) and milites (men-at-arms). All power and title began and ended with force of arms, which was the only foundation of right: jus captionis et possessionis—the right of taking and of keeping.
Eventually feudal ideas underwent considerable change among the aristocracy of Christendom, by the gradual spread of Christian manners; and the first establishment of nobility by Charlemagne, which was anterior to pure feudalism, afterward revived, and lasted a thousand years. Then it was conferred by the monarch on merit of any kind, and it was understood that those whom superior authority had raised to the dignity had won their title by their deeds, which were sufficient to prove their noble blood, and that they were empowered to transmit the title to their posterity. The idea was a grand one, and gave proof of its vast political and social usefulness in the immense benefits which it brought upon Europe during so many ages. Unfortunately, the inroad of the Scandinavians, following closely on the death of its great founder, introduced feudalism as better known to us, interfered with the institution which Charlemagne had established in such admirable equipoise, and added to it many barbarous adjuncts, which for a long time entered into the idea of nobility itself. Thus the titles of feudal lords were retained—duce, comites, equites, milites—with, all the paraphernalia of brute force which the harsh mind of northern despotism had made divine. Thus was the holding of landed property allowed to the nobles alone; the great mass of the population being composed of men—ascripti glebae— who were incapable from their position of rising in the social scale; so that all were duly impressed with the idea that the mass of the people had been conquered and reduced, if not to slavery, to what greatly resembled it—serfdom. From this order of things arose that fruitful source of all modern revolutions, the division of Europe into two great classes antagonistic to each other and separated by an almost impassable gulf—the lords and the "villeins."
To be sure, the supreme lord had the power to raise even a villein to the rank of noble, after he had proved his superior elevation of mind by heroic achievements; but what superhuman exertions did not those achievements call for; what a concourse of fortuitous circumstances rarely occurring, so as to render almost illusory the hope of rising held out by the feudal theory! The Church alone opened her highest grades to all indiscriminately; and, in her, true merit was really an assurance of advance.
Further details are not needed. The difference between the idea of the nobility entertained in Celtic countries, and that held by the rest of Europe, is already in favor of the former.
For this reason the action of the Irish aristocracy on the people at large was happily altogether free from those causes of irritation so common in feudal countries. A close intimacy and personal devotion naturally existed between the chieftain of a clan and his men—an intimacy manifested by the free manners of the humblest among them, and that ease of social intercourse between all classes of people, which was a matter of so much surprise to the Norman barons at their primitive invasion.
At first sight, the Celtic system appears, in one respect at least, inferior to that which prevailed throughout the rest of Europe: the simple clansmen could never indulge in the hope of attaining to the chieftainship, being naturally excluded from that high office. Only the actual members of the chieftain's own family could hope to succeed him after his death, by election, and take the lead of the sept; thus nobility was entirely exclusive, and regulated by the very laws of Nature. The office was really not transferable, and no degree of exertion, of whatever nature, could win it for any person born out of the one family. But the difference was scarcely one in fact; and we know how illusory, often was that ambition which the system of merit inspired in the man born of an inferior class in other races than the Celtic. The broad assertion, that no man could rise from the condition in which he happened to be born, remains true for nearly all cases.
But, on the other hand, there were motives of ambition besides that of becoming chieftain, or entering on the road thereto, by being admitted into the ranks of the nobility, which lay open to the Celt; and if the desire of a mere clansman to become a chieftain lay within the bounds of possibility, the social state of Celtic countries would have been broken up and become intolerable, and society would have been dissolved into its primitive elements. Two considerations of importance:
The whole of Irish history teaches one lesson, or, rather, impresses one fact: that every member of a clan took as much pride in the sept to which he belonged, and labored as zealously for its head, as he could have done had the advantage turned all to himself. The peculiar features engendered by the system were such that each man identified himself with the whole tribe and particularly with its leader; and this is easily understood, as we see the same sort of feeling existing to-day among families. It is in the very essence of natural ties to merge the individual in the community to which he belongs, as in questions which affect the whole family to merge self in the whole, to forget one's own identity, to be ready for any sacrifice, particularly when the sacrifice is called forth in defence of a beloved parent.
To judge by the ancient annals of Ireland which are accessible, this was undoubtedly the sentiment pervading Celtic clans, and it is easy to conceive how, under such conditions, ambitious thoughts of the chieftainship or nobility could not well enter there. Moreover, we repeat, had such ambitious thoughts been within the compass of realization, the whole system would have been destroyed.
The greatest source of quarrels, feuds, wars, and general calamities among the Irish people, was the insane aspiration among the inferior members of a chieftain's family after supreme power. The institution of Tanist, or heir-apparent, particularly, which was general for all offices, from the highest to the lowest, was a constant source of trouble and contention to septs which, without it, would have remained united and in harmony. Montalembert has well said that it seems as if an incurable fatality accompanied the Irish everywhere, and condemned nearly all the highest among them to have their blood shed either by others or by their own hand, and that few indeed are those renowned chieftains and kings who died quietly in their beds. Their annals are filled throughout with tales of blood; and, when we know of their strong attachment to religion, of their tenderheartedness for women, children, old and feeble men, it is hard to conceive how they came to shed blood so often, and show themselves proof against the simplest claims of humanity.
But the difficulty is sufficiently explained by their own annals and the state of society under which they lived. The Tanistry was the great source of all those evils. The position of a chieftain was so honorable, so influential, and powerful, that all natural sentiments, even those of family affection, were often extinguished by the insane ambition of attaining to it, in those whom Nature had set on the road toward it.
It looks like a contradiction, yet nothing is so well established as their deep affection for their near relatives and the fury engendered against their nearest of kin when allured by the prospect of the chieftainship. What the case might have been, had all the inferior clansmen been influenced by the same motive, one shudders to think. Happily the possibility of such a position was denied them, and thus were they spared all the crime and horrors which it entailed. Let us now turn to the fall of the Irish nobility, in order to see how that fall was final and decisive, leaving little or no room for the hope of their resurrection.
The great wars of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth upon the island often drove some of the Irish chieftains to quit their country for a time; a thing scarcely ever known before, where the Pale was so contracted and the power of the English kings so limited. But those first voyages of Irish lords to foreign countries had generally no other destination than England itself, whither they sometimes repaired to justify themselves in the presence of the sovereign against the imputations of their enemies, or to pay court to him for the purpose of obtaining some coveted object. Occasionally their children were brought up at the English court, either with the view of instilling Protestantism into their artless minds, or to make them friends of England, so that many of them thus became king's or queen's men. In this manner the Irish nobility first came to look out beyond their own country.
When, as events went on, some great family was crushed or nearly so, as were the Kildares by Henry Tudor and the Geraldines by Elizabeth, the outraged nobility began to think of foreign alliances, and cast their eyes abroad over Spain, Belgium, or France, above all toward Rome, which was the centre of their religion, attachment to which was one of their chief crimes, where the Holy Father was ever ready to encourage and receive them with open arms, Thus history tells us of the narrow escape of young Gerald Desmond.
He was still a child of twelve years, and the sole survivor of the historic house of Kildare, when his life was sought after with an eagerness which resembled that of Herod, but the devotion of his clansmen defeated all attempts at his capture. "Alternately the guest of his aunts, married to the daughter of the chief of Offaly and Donegal, the sympathy everywhere felt for him lead to a confederacy between the northern and southern chieftains, which had long been felt wanting, and never could be accomplished. A loose league was formed, including the O'Neills of both branches, O'Donnell, O'Brien, the Earl of Desmond, and the chiefs of Moylurg and Breffni. The child, object of so much natural and chivalrous affection, was harbored for a time in Munster; then transported, through Connaught, into Donegal; and finally, after four years, in which he engaged more the minds of the statesmen than any other individual under the rank of royalty, he was safely landed in France."-(A. M. O'Sullivan.)