"But the fact (as stated by King) is impossible: conceive the absurdity; an act of parliament issmuggled, where? through two houses of lords and commons; of whom were they composed? of catholics crowded with protestants; though Leland, upon the authority of King, says there were but fourteenrealprotestants. Well, what did these two houses do? They voted and passed asecretact of attainder of 2,500 protestants, which was to lie-by privately in petto, to be brought forwardat a proper time; unknown, unheard of, by all the protestant part of the kingdom, tillpeacewas restored: and that, according to King, was to be deemedthe proper timefor a renewal ofwaranddevastation, by its publication and execution, and the secret was to be closely kept from nearly 3,000 persons by the whole house of commons; by fifty-six peers, including primate Boyle, Barry lord Barrymore, Angier lord Longford, Forbes, the incomparable lord Granard (of whom more in my next continuation), Parsons lord Ross, Dopping bp. of Meath, Otway bp. of Ossory, Wetenhal bishop of Cork, Digby bishop of Limerick, Bermingham lord Athenry, St. Lawrence lord Howth, Mallon lord Glenmallon, Hamilton lord Strabane, all protestants and many of them presbyterians, or rather puritans. It was kept close from 3,000 persons by all the privy council; by all the clerks of parliament who engross and tack together bills, it was to be kept an entire secret from all the protestants without doors, by all the protestants within the gates of parliament; and this probable, wise politic expectation was entertainedby those Catholic peers and representatives, who through the cloud of war, passion, and uncertainty, could exercise the more than human moderation in solemnly prescribing the narrow bounds of thirty-eight years to all enquirers after titles under the revived court of claims: by those peers and representatives, whose patriotism, political knowledge, and comprehensive minds instructed themto declare the independence of the realm, the freedom of irish trade, and the inestimable value of a marine.—Good God, that any man, woman I mean, after suchacknowledged, uncontroverted documentsof the wisdom and reach of mind of that parliament, could be induced to credit and to advance the forgeries of a vicar of Bray under a persecuting protestant administration,for the wicked purpose of calumniating their memory, and defeating the efforts of their posterity for freedom...."A secret conspiracyby way of statuteagainst the lives of near three thousand people, appears in itself impracticable and fabulous; but that it should have been agitatedin open parliament, and in the hearing of the protestant members, and yet expected to have been kept a secret from the protestants,by these protestant members, is childish and ridiculous.—In that parliament sat the venerable lord Granard, a protestant, anda constant adherent and companionof King James in Ireland—'This excellent nobleman had married a lady of presbyterian principles; was protector of the northern puritans; had humanely secreted their teachers from those severities which in England proved both odious and impolitic; and had gained them an annual pension of £500 from government.'—(Leland, vol. 3, p. 490). 'It was this lord Granard to whom the assembled protestants of Ulster, by colonel Hamilton of Tullymore, who was sent to Dublin for the sole purpose, unanimously offered the command of their armed association, from their confidence in his protestant principles; but he told Mr. Hamiltonthat he had lived loyal all his life, and would not depart from it in his old age; and he was resolved that no man should write rebel upon his gravestone.'—(Lesley's "Reply," pp. 79, 80.) ... Is it then likely that this man would be privy to a general protestant proscription, and not reveal it?—and it is probable that such asecret conspiracy by way of statutecould pass the houses of commons, and lords, the privy council, and finally the king, and that it never should come to the knowledge of a peer of parliament, a favourite of the court, a resident in Dublin, and every day attendant in his place in the upper house?"
"But the fact (as stated by King) is impossible: conceive the absurdity; an act of parliament issmuggled, where? through two houses of lords and commons; of whom were they composed? of catholics crowded with protestants; though Leland, upon the authority of King, says there were but fourteenrealprotestants. Well, what did these two houses do? They voted and passed asecretact of attainder of 2,500 protestants, which was to lie-by privately in petto, to be brought forwardat a proper time; unknown, unheard of, by all the protestant part of the kingdom, tillpeacewas restored: and that, according to King, was to be deemedthe proper timefor a renewal ofwaranddevastation, by its publication and execution, and the secret was to be closely kept from nearly 3,000 persons by the whole house of commons; by fifty-six peers, including primate Boyle, Barry lord Barrymore, Angier lord Longford, Forbes, the incomparable lord Granard (of whom more in my next continuation), Parsons lord Ross, Dopping bp. of Meath, Otway bp. of Ossory, Wetenhal bishop of Cork, Digby bishop of Limerick, Bermingham lord Athenry, St. Lawrence lord Howth, Mallon lord Glenmallon, Hamilton lord Strabane, all protestants and many of them presbyterians, or rather puritans. It was kept close from 3,000 persons by all the privy council; by all the clerks of parliament who engross and tack together bills, it was to be kept an entire secret from all the protestants without doors, by all the protestants within the gates of parliament; and this probable, wise politic expectation was entertainedby those Catholic peers and representatives, who through the cloud of war, passion, and uncertainty, could exercise the more than human moderation in solemnly prescribing the narrow bounds of thirty-eight years to all enquirers after titles under the revived court of claims: by those peers and representatives, whose patriotism, political knowledge, and comprehensive minds instructed themto declare the independence of the realm, the freedom of irish trade, and the inestimable value of a marine.—Good God, that any man, woman I mean, after suchacknowledged, uncontroverted documentsof the wisdom and reach of mind of that parliament, could be induced to credit and to advance the forgeries of a vicar of Bray under a persecuting protestant administration,for the wicked purpose of calumniating their memory, and defeating the efforts of their posterity for freedom....
"A secret conspiracyby way of statuteagainst the lives of near three thousand people, appears in itself impracticable and fabulous; but that it should have been agitatedin open parliament, and in the hearing of the protestant members, and yet expected to have been kept a secret from the protestants,by these protestant members, is childish and ridiculous.—In that parliament sat the venerable lord Granard, a protestant, anda constant adherent and companionof King James in Ireland—'This excellent nobleman had married a lady of presbyterian principles; was protector of the northern puritans; had humanely secreted their teachers from those severities which in England proved both odious and impolitic; and had gained them an annual pension of £500 from government.'—(Leland, vol. 3, p. 490). 'It was this lord Granard to whom the assembled protestants of Ulster, by colonel Hamilton of Tullymore, who was sent to Dublin for the sole purpose, unanimously offered the command of their armed association, from their confidence in his protestant principles; but he told Mr. Hamiltonthat he had lived loyal all his life, and would not depart from it in his old age; and he was resolved that no man should write rebel upon his gravestone.'—(Lesley's "Reply," pp. 79, 80.) ... Is it then likely that this man would be privy to a general protestant proscription, and not reveal it?—and it is probable that such asecret conspiracy by way of statutecould pass the houses of commons, and lords, the privy council, and finally the king, and that it never should come to the knowledge of a peer of parliament, a favourite of the court, a resident in Dublin, and every day attendant in his place in the upper house?"
The intrinsic improbability is well proved here, and would suffice to show King's falsehood as to the secrecy of the act; but if further proof were needed, the authorities which prove the authenticity of the act utterly disprove the secrecy alleged by King. The act is well described, in the London Gazette of July 1 to 4, 1689, and the names are given in print, in a pamphlet licensed in London, the 2nd day of the year 1690 (March 26th, old style).
Jones's statement as to the destruction of all papers relating to that parliament having been ordered, under a penalty of £500 and incapacity from office, is certain, and we give the clause in our note;[28]but this clause was not enacted till 1695, and, therefore, could not have affected the acts of 1689, when King wrote in 1690.
Moreover, we cannot find any trace of Richard Darling (who professedly made the "copia vera" for King) as clerk in the office of the Master of the Rolls, or in any office, in 1690. A Richard Darling was appointed secretary to the commissioners for the inspection of forfeitures, by patent dated 1st of June, 5 William III. (1693)
There certainly are grounds for supposing that some great jugglery, either as to the clauses or names in the act, was perpetrated by this well-paid and unscrupulous Williamite. The temptation to fabricate as much of the act (clauses or names) as possible was immense. The want of scruple to commit any fraud is plain upon King's whole book. The likelihood of discovery alone would deter him. Probably every family who had a near relative in the "list" would be secured to William's interest, and no part of King's work could have helped more than this act to make that book what Burnet called it, "the best fitted tosettlethe minds" of the people of England, of any of the books published on the Revolution.
The preamble states truly the rebellion of the northerns to dethrone their legitimate king, and bring in the Prince of Orange; and that the insurgents, though offered full pardon in repeated proclamations, still continued in rebellion. It enacts that certain persons therein named, who had "notoriously joyned in the said rebellion andinvasion," or been slain in rebellion, should be attainted of high treason, and suffer its penalties,unless before the 10th of August following(i.e., at least seven weeks from the passing of the act) they came and stood their trial for treason, according to law, when, if otherwise acquitted, the Act should not harm them. The number of persons in this clause vary in the different lists from 1,270 to 1,296.
It cannot be questioned that the persons hereconditionallyattainted were in arms to dethrone the hereditary sovereign, supported, as he was, by a regularly elected parliament, by a large army, by foreign alliances, and by the good-will of five-sixths of the people of Ireland. King he wasde jureandde facto, and they sought to dethrone him, and to put a foreign prince on the throne. If ever there were rebels, they were.
As to their creed, there is no allusion to it. Roman Catholic and Protestant persons occur through the lists with common penalties denounced against both; but neither creed is named in it.
We do not say whether those attainted were right or wrong in their rebellion: but the certainty that they were rebels according to the law, constitution, and custom of this and most other nations, justified the Irish parliament in treating them as such; and should make all who sympathise withtheserebels pause ere they condemn every other party on whom law or defeat have fixed that name. Yet even this attaint is butconditional; the parties had over seven weeks to surrender and take their trial, and the king could, at any time, for over four months after, grant them a pardon both as to persons and property—a pardon which, whether we consider his necessities and policy, his habitual leniency, or the repeated attempts to win back his rebellious subjects by the offer of free pardon, we believe he would have refused to few. This, too, is certain, that ithas never been even alleged that one single person suffered death under this much talked of Act. Of the constitutional character of the Act, more presently.
The second article attaints persons who had absented themselves "since or shortly before" the 5th November, 1688, unless they return before the 1st of September, that is, in about ten weeks. Staying in England certainly looked like adhesion to the invader, yet the mere difficulty of coming over during the war should surely have been considered.
The third attaint is of persons absent before (some time probably before) 5th November, 1688, unless they return before the 1st October, that is, within about fourteen weeks.
Moreover, a certain number of the persons named in this conditional attaint are excepted from it specially, by a following clause, unless the king should go to England (their usual residence) before 1st October, 1689, and that after his arrival they should neglect to signify their loyalty to the satisfaction of his Majesty.
Yet Harris and "The List" licensed 26th March, 1690, have the audacity toaddthese English residents and make another list of attainted persons,instead of deductingthem from the list under clause 3.
With similar want of faith, both these writers make out a fifth list of attaints of the persons explicitly not attainted, but whoserentsare forfeited by sec. 8, so long as they continue absentees. Thus, two out of the five lists, by adding which Harris makes up his 2,461 attaints, are not lists of attainders at all, and one of them should be rather deducted from one of the three lists of real attaints. Harris has under this exception for English residents 547 names (though printed 647 in totting), and were we to deduct these and the fifth list of 85 persons, his number of attaints would fall to 1,829; though he himself confesses that there must be some small drawback for persons attainted twice under different descriptions; and though his own totting, without removing either the fourth or fifth list, is only 2,461, yet in his text he says, "about 2,600" were attainted.
Yet Harris and "The List" pamphlet, which give the names in schedules, were more likely to misplace the lists than King, and he certainly did so in reference to the fourth list.
Yet even in this many are attainted twice over.
Harris's second list and "The List's" third list, each of 79 names, should be under title 4, namely, English residents, containing 59 in King. Harris's third list of 454 names should be second, namely, Absentees since 5th November, containing in King 455, and in "The List" 480 names. Harris's fourth list of 547, and "The List's" fourth list of 528 names, should go to No. 3 in King, containing only 197 names, viz., of persons absent before 5th November. Without making these corrections, we would have the conditional attaints, under clauses 1, 2, and 3, amount in "The List" to 1,311, in Harris to 1,282, and in King to 1,873. But if we make these corrections, King's will remain at 1,873, Harris's rise to 2,218, and "The List" to 2,209.
It would, we think, puzzle La Place to calculate the probability of any particular name being authentic amid this wilderness of inaccuracies.
The fifth class of 85 persons are, as we said,not attainted at all. The 8th section declares them to be absent from nonage, infirmity, etc., and denounces no penalty against their persons, but "it being much to the weakening and impoverishing of this Realm, that any of the Rents or Profits of the Lands, Tenements, of Hereditaments thereof should be sent into or spent in any other place beyond the seas, but that the same should be kept and employed within the Realm for the better support and defence thereof," it vests the properties of these absentees in the King, until such time as these absentees return and apply by petition to the Chancery or Exchequer for their restoration. Harder penalties for absenteeism were enacted repeatedly before, and considering the necessities of Ireland in that awful struggle, this provision seems just, mild, and proper.
By the fourth section, all the goods and properties ofallthe first four classes of absentees were also vested in the King till their return, acquittal, pardon or discharge. By the 5th and 6th sections, remainders and reversions to innocent persons after any estate for lives forfeited by the Act, are saved and preserved, provided (by the 7th section) claims to them are made within 60 days after the first sitting of the Court of Claims under the Act. But remainders in settlements, of which the uses could be changed, or where the lands were "plantation" lands, etc., were not saved. Whether such a Court of Claims ever sat is at least doubtful.
By the 9th and 11th sections, the rights and incumbrances of non-forfeiting persons over the forfeited estates are saved, provided (by section 12) their claims are made, as in case of remainder-men, etc.
The 10th section makes void Lord Strafford's abominable "offices," or confiscations of Connaught, Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary, and confirms the titles of the right owners, as if these offices had not been found.
The 13th section repeals a private act for conferring vast estates on Lord Albemarle out of the forfeitures on the Restoration.
The remaining clauses, except the last, have nothing to do with the Attainders. They are subsidiary to the Act repealing the Acts of Settlement and Explanation. They reprize ancient proprietors, who had bought or taken leases of their own estates from the owners under the Settlement Acts.
The 17th section provides for the completion of the Down or Strafford Survey, and for the reduction of excessive quit rents. In this section the phrase occurs, "their Majesties," but this is probably a mistake in printing, though a crotchety reasoner might find in it a doubt of the authenticity of the Act.
The 21st and last section provides that any of the persons attainted "who shall return to their duty and loyalty" may be pardoned by royal warrant, provided that such pardon be issued "before the first day of November next, otherwise the pardon to be of no effect."
CHAPTER VII.
CONCLUSION.
Let us now run our eyes ever the deeds of the Feis or parliament of 1689. It came into power at the end of a half century of which the beginning was a civil and religious, social and proprietal persecution, combining all the atrocities to which Ireland had been alternatively subject for four centuries and a half. Of this, the next stage was a partial insurrection, rendered universal by a bloody and rapacious government. The next stage was a war, in which civil and religious quarrels were so fiendishly combined that it could not end while there was any one to fight with; in which the royalist dignitaries were the cruelest foes of the royalist armies and people, and in which the services done by cool and patriot soldiers were rendered useless by factious theologians. The next stage was conquest, slaughter, exile, confiscation, and the repose of solitude or of slavery. The next was a Restoration which gave back its worst prerogatives to the crown, but gave the restorers and royalists only a skirt of their properties. Then came a struggle for proprietal justice and religious toleration, met by an infamous conspiracy of the deceptious aristocracy and the fanatic people of England, to blast the characters of the Irish, and decimate the men; and lastly, a king, who strained his prerogative to do them justice, is driven from England by a Dutchman, supported by blue guards, black guards, and flaming lies, and is forced to throw himself on the generosity and prudence of Ireland.
A faction existed who raised a civil war in every province; and in every province, save one, it was suppressed; but in that one it continued, and the sails of an invading fleet already flap in the Channel breeze when this parliament is summoned.
How difficult was their position! How could they act as freemen, without appearing ungenerous to a refugee and benefactor king? How guard their nationality, without quarrelling with him or alienating England from him? How could they do that proprietal justice and grant that religious liberty for which the country had been struggling? How check civil war—how sustain a war by the resources of a distracted country? Yet all this the Irish parliament did, and more too; for they established the principal parts of a code needful for thepermanentliberty and prosperity of Ireland.
Take up the list of acts passed in their session of seventy-two days and run over them. They begin by recognising their lawful king who had thrown himself among them. They pledge themselves to him against his powerful foe. Knowing full well the struggle that was before them, and that lukewarm and malcontent agents might ruin them, they tossed aside those official claims, which in times of peace and safety should be sacred.
But their next act deserves more notice. It must not be forgotten that Molyneux's "Case of Ireland," which the parliaments of England and Ireland first burnt, and ended by declaring and enacting as sound law, was published in 1699, just ten years after this parliament of James's. Doubtless the antique rights of the native Irish, the comparative independence of the Pale, the arguments of Darcy, the memory of the council of Kilkenny, might suggest to Molyneux those principles of independence, which one of his cast of mind would hardly reach by general reasoning. But why go so far back, and to so much less apt precedents? Here, in the parliament of 1689, was a law made declaring Ireland to be and to have always been a "distinct kingdom" from England; "always governed by his majesty and his predecessors according to the ancient customs, laws, and statutes thereof, and that the parliament of Ireland, and thatalone, could make laws to bind this kingdom;" and expressly enacting and declaring that no law save such as the Irish parliament might make should bind Ireland. And this act prohibited all English jurisdiction in Ireland, and all appeals to the English peers or to any other court out of Ireland. Is not this the whole argument of Molyneux, the hope of Swift and Lucas, the attempt of Flood, the achievement of Grattan and the Volunteers? Is not this an epitome of the Protestant patriot attempts, from the Revolution to the Dungannon Convention? Is not this the soul of '82? Surely, if it be, as it is, just to track the stream of liberation back to Molyneux, we should not stop there; but when we find that a parliament which sat only ten years before his book was published, which must have been a daily subject of conversation—as it certainly was of written polemics—during those ten years; when we find this upper fountain so obviously streaming into the thought of Molyneux, should we not associate the parliament of 1689 with that of 1782, and place Nagle and Rice and its other ruling spirits along with Flood and Grattan in our gratitude?
Moreover, the lords and commons expressly repealed Poyning's law, and passed a bill creating Irish Inns of Court, and abolishing the rules for keeping terms in London. But the king rejected these. We are to this day without this benefit which the senate of '89 tried to give us; and the future advocates and judges of Ireland are hauled off to a foreign and dissolute capital to go through an idle and expensive ceremony, term after term, as an essential to being allowed to practise in the courts of this their native kingdom.
The Act (c. 4.) for restoring the ancient gentry to their possessions, we have already canvassed. It were monstrous to suppose the parliament ought to have respected the thirty-eight years' usurpation of savage invaders, and to have overlooked the rights of the national chieftains, the plundered proprietors who lived, and whose families lived, to claim their rights. The care with which purchasers and incumbrancers were to be reprized we have already noticed; yet we cannot but repeat our regret that the bill of the Lords (which left the adventurers of Cromwell a moiety of their usurpations) did not pass.
Naturally related to this are the Acts, c. 24, for vesting attainted absentees' goods in the King, and c. 30, attainting a number of insurgents. We have already shown from King, that the Whigs had taken good care of the two things forfeited—their chattels, which they had sent to them, without opposition, during the month of March, and their persons, which they put under the guard of the gallant insurgents of Derry and Fermanagh, or in the keeping of William and the charity of England. How poorly they were treated then in England may be guessed at by the choice men of the impoverished defenders of Derry having been left without money, aye, or even clothing or food in the streets of London.
We heartily censure this Attainder Act. It wasthemistake of the Irish Parliament. It bound up the hearts and interests of those who were named in it, and of their children, in William's success. It could not be enforced: they were absent. It could not be terrible till victory sanctioned it, and then it would be needless and cruel to execute. Yet, let us judge the men rightly. James had been hunted out of England by lies, treachery, bigotry, cabal, and a Dutch invader, for having attempted to grant religious liberty, by his prerogative. Those attainted were, nine out of ten, in arms against him and their country. They had been repeatedly offered free pardon. Just before the Act was brought in, a free pardon, excepting only ten persons, was offered, yet few of the insurgents came in; and James, instead of forbidding quarter, or hanging his prisoners, or any other of the acts of rigour usual in hereditary governments down to our own time, consented to an Act requiring the chief persons of the insurrection to come, in periods specified, and amply long enough, to stand their trials. Certain it is, as we said before, that though many of these were or became prisoners, none were executed. The Act was a dead letter; and considering the principles of the time, surely the Act was not wonderful.
In order, then, to judge them better, let us see what the other side—the immaculate Whigs, who assailed the Irish—did when they were in power. Of anything previous to the Revolution—of the treachery and blood, by law and without law, under the Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts, and the Commonwealth—'tis needless to speak. But let us see what their neighbours, the Williamites, did.
The Irish Attainder Act was not brought in till the end of June. Now, this is of great value, for the dates of the last papers on Ireland, laid before the English Commons, having been 10th June, 1689, they, on the 20th June, "Resolved, that leave be given to bring in a Bill to attaint of high treason certain persons who are now in Ireland, or any other parts beyond the seas, adhearing to their Majesties' enemies, and shall not return into England by a certain day."[29]
The very next entry is—"A Bill for the attainting certain persons of high treason, was read the first time." "Resolved,that the Bill be read a second time."
Here was a bill to attaint persons beyond seas in another kingdom where William had never been acknowledged—where James was welcomed by nine men out of ten—from whence, so far from being able to procure evidence or allow defence, they could but by accident get intelligence and reports once in some months. It is not here pretended that the attainted were habitual residents in England. The bill passed the second reading, and was committeed, June 22nd, with an instruction to the committee, "That they insert into the bill such other of the persons as were this daynamed in the house, as they shall find cause."
Again, on the 24th—"Ordered, that it be an instruction to the committee, to whom the bill for attainting certain persons is referred, that they prepare and bring in a clause for theimmediateseizing the estates of such persons who areorshall be proved to be in arms with the late King James in Ireland, or in his service in France." On the 29th is another instruction to "prepare and bring in a clause that the estates of the persons who are now in rebellion (!) in Ireland be applied to the relief of the Irish Protestants fled into this realm; and also to declare all the proceedings of the pretended parliament and courts of justice, now held in Ireland, to be null and void;" the committee "to sitde die in diem, till the bill be finished."
Up to this time they could not have known that any attainder act had been brought in in Ireland. On the 9th July, Sergeant Trenchard reported, "That the committee hadproof" (we shall presently see of what kind) "ofseveral otherpersons being in Ireland in arms with King James, and therefore had agreed their names should be inserted in the bill." "Ordered, that the bill, so amended, be engrossed." On the 11th July the bill passed, insertingAugust, 1689, instead of August next, and inserting some Christian names.
The bill reached the Lords.
Upon the 24th July a message was sent to the Lords urging the despatch of the bill. On the 2nd August, at a conference, the Lords required to knowon what evidencethe names were introduced as being in Ireland, "for, upon their best inquiry, they say they cannot learn some of them have been there—they instanced the Lord Hunsden." On the 3rd of August, Mr. Sergeant Trenchard acquaints the house that the names of those who gave evidence at the bar of the house touching the persons who are named in the bill of attainder, being in Ireland, were Bazill Purefoy and William Dalton; and those at the committee, to whom the bill was referred, were William Watts and Math. Gun; four persons, two and two giving the whole evidence for the attainder of those who stood by King James in Ireland! This report was handed to the Lords on the 5th August.
On the 20th August the Lords returned the bill, with some amendments, leaving out Lord Hunsden and four or five more, and inserting a few others; and upon this day the parliament was prorogued.
Again, on the 30th October, a bill was ordered to attaint all such persons as were in rebellion against their Majesties. On the 26th November, certain members were ordered to prepare a bill attainting all who had been in arms against William and Mary, since14th February, 1688-9, or any time since, and all whohave been, or shall be,aiding, assisting, or abettingthem. On the 10th December the bill was reported and read a first time, and the committee ordered to bring in a bill for sale of the estates forfeited thereby.
On the 4th April, 1690, another bill was ordered, and was read 22nd April.
Again, on 22nd October, another attainder and confiscation bill was brought and passed the Commons on the 23rd December.
Wearied at length by unsuccessful bills, which the better or more interested feeling of the Lords, or the policy of the King, perpetually defeated, they abandoned any further attainder bills, and merely advertized for money on the forfeited lands in Ireland.
The attainders incourtmight satisfy them. The commissioners of forfeitures, under 10 William III., c. 9, reported to the Commons on the 15th of December, 1699, that the persons outlawed for treason in Ireland since the 13th of February, 1688-9, on account of the late rebellion, were 3,921 in number. It was abominable for James's parliament to attaint conditionally the rebels against the old king, but reasonable for the Whigs to attaint about double the number absolutely, for never having recognized the new king! These 3,921 had properties, says the report, to the amount of 1,060,792plantationacres, worth £211,623 a year, and worth in money, £2,685,130, "besides the several denominations in the said several counties to which no number of acres can be added, by reason of the imperfection of the surveys not here valued." Of these 3,921, there were 491 restored under the first commission on the articles of Galway and Limerick; and 792 under the second commission, having joint properties of 233,106 acres, worth £55,763 a year, or £724,923 purchase, leaving 2,638 persons having 827,686 acres, worth £155,859 a year, or £1,960,206. Yet the fees were monstrous, says the commissioners, in these Courts of Claims, £5 being the register's fees for evenenteringa claim. William restored property to the amount of 74,733 acres, worth £20,066 per annum, or £260,863 in all, which would leave as absolutely forfeited property 752,953 acres, worth £135,793 a year, and £1,699,343 in all; and even were we to deduct in proportion, which we ought not, as those pardoned were chiefly the very wealthy few, there would remain over 2,400 persons attained by office, after deducting all who carved out their acquittal with shot and sword, and all whom the tenderness or wisdom of the king pardoned.
The commissioners state that £300,000 worth of chattels were seized, not included in the above estimate; nor were 297 houses in Dublin, 26 in Cork, 226 elsewhere, mills, chief rents, £60,000 worth of woods, etc., in it.
Most of these properties had been given away freely by William. Amongst his grants they specify all King James's estates, over 95,000 acres, worth £25,995 a year, to Mrs. Elizabeth Villiers, Countess of Orkney. She was William's favourite mistress. James, to his honour be it spoken, had thrown these estates into the general fund for reprisal of the injured Irish.
Here, then, is certainly not a justification of the Parliament of 1689, in passing the Attainder Act, but evidence from the journals of the English Parliament and the reports of their commissioners, that they tried to do worse than the Irish Parliament (under far greater excuses) are accused of having done, and that the actual amount of punishmentinflictedby the Williamite courts in Ireland far exceeded what the Irish Parliament of 1689 hadconditionally threatened.
The next Acts as a class are c. 9, repealing ministers' money act; c. 12, granting perfect liberty of conscience to men of all creeds; c. 13, directing Roman Catholics to pay their tithes to their own priests; c. 14, on Ulster poundage; c. 15, appointing those tithes to theparishpriests, and recognising as a Roman Catholic prelate no one but him whom the king under privy signet and sign manual should signify and recognize as such. All these acts went to create religious equality, certainly not the voluntary system; neither party approved of it then; but to make the Protestant support his own minister, and the Roman Catholic his own, without violation of conscience, or a shadow of supremacy. The low salaries (£100 to £200 a year) of the Roman Catholic prelates, and their exclusion from Parliament, were in the same moderate spirit.
Again, this Parliament introduced the Statute of Frauds (which, having been set aside, was not adopted until the 7th William III.); Acts for relief of poor debtors, for the speedy recovery of wages, and for ratifying wills and deeds by persons out of possession.
Chapter 21, forbidding the importation of foreign coals, was designed to render this country independent of English trade. At that time the bogs were larger and the people fewer. Their opinion that this importation which "hindered the industry of several poor people and labourers who might have employed themselves" in supplying the cities, etc., with turf, reminds us of Mr. Laing's most able notice in his "Norway" of the immense employment to men, women, and children, by the cutting of firewood; and what a powerful means this is of doing that which is as important as the production of wealth, the diffusion of it without any great inequality through all classes. Part of c. 29, encouraging trade, laying heavy import duties on English goods, and giving privileges to Irish ships over foreign, especially over English, was the result of sound, practical patriotism. It was necessary to guard our trade, manufactures, and shipping against the rivalry of a near, rich, and aspiring neighbour, that would crush them in their cradles. It was wise to raise the energies of infant adventure by favour, and not trust it in a reckless competition. The example, too, of all countries which had reared up commerce by their own favour and their neighbours' surrender of trade, would have justified them.
Besides the schools for the Navy under c. 29, c. 16 deals also with schools. We have not the latter Act; but, considering James's known zeal for education, his foundation of the Kilkenny college, and the spirit of the provision in c. 29, we may guess the liberality of the other. One of the most distinguished of our living historians has told us that he remembered having seen evidence that this Act established a school for general (national) education in every parish in Ireland.
C. 10, the Act of Supply; c. 25, Martial Law, and this Act, c. 29, were a code of defence. The supply was proportioned to their abilities: every exertion was made, and all efforts were needed. Plowden puts the effect of this c. 29 not ill:—
"Although James were averse from passing the acts I have already mentioned, he probably encouraged another which passedfor the advance and improvement of trade and for encouragement and increase of shipping and navigation, which purported to throw open to Ireland a free and immediate trade with all our plantations and colonies; to promote ship-building, by remitting to the owners of Irish-built vessels large proportions of the duties of custom and excise, encourage seamen by exempting them for ten years from taxes, and allowing them the freedom of any city or seaport they should chuse to reside in, and improve the Irish navy by establishing free schools for teaching and instructing in the mathematics and the art of navigation, in Dublin, Belfast, Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and Galway. If James looked up to any probability of maintaining his ground in Ireland he must have been sensible of the necessity of an Irish navy. No man was better qualified to judge of the utility of such institutions than this prince. He was an able seaman, fond of his profession; and to his industry and talent does the British navy owe many of its best signals and regulations. The firmness, resolution and enterprise which had distinguished him, whilst Duke of York, as a sea officer, abandoned him when king, both in the cabinet and the field."
"Although James were averse from passing the acts I have already mentioned, he probably encouraged another which passedfor the advance and improvement of trade and for encouragement and increase of shipping and navigation, which purported to throw open to Ireland a free and immediate trade with all our plantations and colonies; to promote ship-building, by remitting to the owners of Irish-built vessels large proportions of the duties of custom and excise, encourage seamen by exempting them for ten years from taxes, and allowing them the freedom of any city or seaport they should chuse to reside in, and improve the Irish navy by establishing free schools for teaching and instructing in the mathematics and the art of navigation, in Dublin, Belfast, Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and Galway. If James looked up to any probability of maintaining his ground in Ireland he must have been sensible of the necessity of an Irish navy. No man was better qualified to judge of the utility of such institutions than this prince. He was an able seaman, fond of his profession; and to his industry and talent does the British navy owe many of its best signals and regulations. The firmness, resolution and enterprise which had distinguished him, whilst Duke of York, as a sea officer, abandoned him when king, both in the cabinet and the field."
Thus, then, this Parliament exercised less severity than any of its time; it established liberty of conscience and equality of creeds; it proscribed no man for his religion—the word Protestant does not occur in any Act—(though, while it sat, the Westminster Convention was not only thundering out insults against "popery," but exciting William to persecute it, and laying the foundation of the penal code); it introduced many laws of great practical value in the business of society; it removed the disabilities of the natives, the scars of old fetters; it was generous to the king, yet carried its own opinions out against his where they differed; it, finally—and what should win the remembrance and veneration of Irishmen through all time—it boldly announced our national independence, in words which Molyneux shouted on to Swift, and Swift to Lucas, and Lucas to Flood, and Flood and Grattan redoubling the cry; Dungannon church rang, and Ireland was again a nation. Yet something it said escaped the hearing or surpassed the vigour of the last century; it said, "Irish commerce fostered," and it was faintly heard, but it said, "an Irish navy to shield our coasts," and it said, "an Irish army to scathe the invaders," and Grattan neglected both, and our coast had no guardian, and our desecrated fields knew no avenger.
We have printed the king's speech at the opening of this eventful parliament, the titles ofallits Acts, and all the statutes summarized in full detail which we could in any way procure—sufficient, we think, with the scattered notices of the chief members, to make the working of this Parliament plain. We are conscious of many defects in our information and way of treating the subject; but we commenced by avowing that we were not professors but students of Irish history; trying to come at some clear understanding on a most important part of it, communicating our difficulties and offering our solutions, as they occurred to us, in hopes that some of our countrymen would take up the same study, and do as much or more than we have done, and possibly that one of those accomplished historians, of which Ireland now has a few, would take the helm from us, and guide the ship himself.
We have no reason to suppose that we succeeded in either object; yet we cling to the belief that, owing to us, some few persons will for the future be found who will not allow the calumnies against our noble old Parliament of 1689 to pass uncontradicted. It might have been better, but this is well.
MEANS AND AIDS TO SELF-EDUCATION.
"What good were it for me to manufacture perfect iron while my own breast is full of dross? What would it stead me to put properties of land in order, while I am at variance with myself? To speak it in a word: the cultivation of my individual self, here as I am, has from my youth upwards been constantly though dimly my wish and my purpose.""Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of the beautiful and perfect; that every one should study to nourish in his mind the faculty of feeling these things by every method in his power. For no man can bear to be entirely deprived of such enjoyments; it is only because they are not used to taste of what is excellent, that the generality of people take delight in silly and insipid things, provided they be new. For this reason, he would add, 'one ought at least every day to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.'"—Goethe.
"What good were it for me to manufacture perfect iron while my own breast is full of dross? What would it stead me to put properties of land in order, while I am at variance with myself? To speak it in a word: the cultivation of my individual self, here as I am, has from my youth upwards been constantly though dimly my wish and my purpose."
"Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of the beautiful and perfect; that every one should study to nourish in his mind the faculty of feeling these things by every method in his power. For no man can bear to be entirely deprived of such enjoyments; it is only because they are not used to taste of what is excellent, that the generality of people take delight in silly and insipid things, provided they be new. For this reason, he would add, 'one ought at least every day to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.'"—Goethe.
We have been often asked by certain of the Temperance Societies to give them some advice on Self-Education. Lately we promised one of these bodies to write some hints as to how the members of it could use their association for their mental improvement.
We said, and say again, that the Temperance Societies can be made use of by the people for their instruction as well as pleasure. Assemblies of any kind are not thebestplaces either for study or invention. Home or solitude are better—home is the great teacher. In domestic business we learn mechanical skill, the nature of those material bodies with which we have most to deal in life—we learn labour by example and by kindly precepts—we learn (in a prudent home) decorum, cleanliness, order—in a virtuous home we learn more than these: we learn reverence for the old, affection without passion, truth, piety, and justice. These are the greatest things man can know. Having these he is well; without them attainments of wealth or talent are of little worth. Home is the great teacher; and its teaching passes down in honest homes from generation to generation, and neither the generation that gives, nor the generation that takes it, lays down plans for bringing it to pass.
Again, to come to designed learning. We learn arts and professions by apprenticeships, that is, much after the fashion we learned walking, or stitching, or fire-making, or love-making at home—by example, precept, and practice combined. Apprentices at anything, from ditching, basket-work, or watch-making, to merchant-trading, legislation, or surgery, submit either to a nominal or an actual apprenticeship. They see other men do these things, they desire to do the same, and they learn to do so by watchinghow, andwhen, and asking, or guessingwhyeach part of the business is done; and as fast as they know, or are supposed to know, any one part, whether it be sloping the ditch, or totting the accounts, or dressing the limb, they begin to do that, and, being directed when they fail, they learn at last to do it well, and are thereby prepared to attempt some other or harder part of the business.
Thus it is by experience—or trying to do, and often doing a thing—combined with teaching or seeing, and being told how and why other people more experienced do that thing, that most of the practical business of life is learned.
In some trades, formal apprenticeship and planned teaching exist as little as in ordinary home-teaching. Few men are of set purpose taught to dig; and just as few are taught to legislate.
Where formal teaching is usual, as in what are called learned professions, and in delicate trades, fewer men know anything of these businesses. Those who learn them at all do so exactly and fully, but commonly practise them in a formal and technical way, and invent and improve them little. In those occupations which most men take up casually—as book-writing, digging, singing, and legislation, and the like—there is much less exact knowledge, less form, more originality and progress, and more of the public know something about them in an unprofessional way.
The Caste system of India, Egypt, and Ancient Ireland carried out the formal apprenticeship plan to its full extent. The United States of America have very little of it. Modern Europe is between the two, as she has in most things abolished caste or hereditary professions (kings and nobles excepted), but has, in many things, retained exact apprenticeships.
Marriage, and the bringing up of children, the employment of dependants, travel, and daily sights and society, are our chief teachers of morals, sentiment, taste, prudence and manners. Mechanical and literary skill of all sorts, and most accomplishments, are usually picked up in this same way.
We have said all this lest our less-instructed readers should fall into a mistake common to all beginners in study, that books, and schooling, and lectures, are the chief teachers in life; whereas most of the things we learn here are learned from the experience of home, and of the practical parts of our trades and amusements.
We pray our humbler friends to think long and often on this.
But let them not suppose we undervalue or wish them to neglect other kinds of teaching; on the contrary, they should mark how much the influences of home, and business, and society, are affected by the quantity and sort of their scholarship.
Home life is obviously enough affected by education. Where the parents read and write, the children learn to do so too, early in life and with little trouble; where they know something of their religious creed they give its rites a higher meaning than mere forms; where they know the history of the country well, every field, every old tower or arch is a subject of amusement, of fine old stories, and fine young hopes; where they know the nature of other people and countries, their own country and people become texts to be commented on, and likewise supply a living comment on those peculiarities of which they have read.
Again, where the members of a family can read aloud, or play, or sing, they have a well of pleasant thoughts and good feelings which can hardly be dried or frozen up; and so of other things.
And in the trades and professions of life, to study in books the objects, customs, and rules of that trade or profession to which you are going saves time, enables you to improve your practice of it, and makes you less dependent on the teaching of other practitioners, who are often interested in delaying you.
In these, and a thousand ways besides, study and science produce the best effects upon the practical parts of life.
Besides, thefirstbusiness of life is the improvement of one's own heart and mind. The study of the thoughts and deeds of great men, the laws of human, and animal, and vegetable, and lifeless nature, the principles of fine and mechanical arts, and of morals, society, and religion—all directly give us nobler and greater desires, more wide and generous judgments, and more refined pleasures.
Learning in this latter sense may be got either at home or at school, by solitary study, or in associations. Homelearningdepends, of course, on the knowledge, good sense, and leisure of the parents. The German Jean Paul, the American Emerson, and others of an inferior sort, have written deep and fruitful truths on bringing up and teaching at home. Yet, considering its importance, it has not been sufficiently studied. Upon schools much has been written. Almost all the private schools in this country are bad. They merely cram the memories of pupils with facts or words, without developing their judgment, taste, or invention, or teaching them theapplicationof any knowledge. Besides, the things taught are commonly those least worth learning. This is especially true of the middle and richer classes. Instead of being taught the nature, products, and history, first of their own, and then of other countries, they are buried in classical frivolities, languages which they never master, and manners and races which they cannot appreciate. Instead of being disciplined to think exactly, to speak and write accurately, they are crammed with rules and taught to repeat forms by rote.
The National Schools are a vast improvement on anything hitherto in this country, but still they have great faults. From the miserably small grant the teachers are badly paid, and, therefore, hastily and meagrely educated.
The maps, drawing, and musical instruments, museums and scientific apparatus, which should be in every school, are mostly wanting altogether. The books, also, are defective.
The information has the worst fault of the French system: it is too exclusively on physical science and natural history. Fancy aNationalSchool which teaches the children no more of the state and history of Ireland than of Belgium or Japan! We have spoken to pupils, nay, to masters of theNationalSchools, who were ignorant of the physical character of every part of Ireland except their native villages—who knew not how the people lived, or died, or sported, or fought—who had never heard of Tara, Clontarf, Limerick, or Dungannon—to whom the O'Neills and Sarsfields, the Swifts and Sternes, the Grattans and Barrys, our generals, statesmen, authors, orators, and artists, were alike and utterly unknown! Even the hedge schools kept up something of the romance, history, and music of the country.
Until theNationalSchools fall under national control, the people must takediligent care to procure books on the history, men, language, music, and manners of Ireland for their children. These schools are very good so far as they go, and the children should be sent to them; but they are notnational, they do not use the Irish language, nor teach anything peculiarly Irish.
As to solitary study, lists of books, pictures, and maps can alone be given; and to do this usefully would exceed our space at present.
As it is, we find that we have no more room and have not said a word on what we proposed to write—namely, Self-Education through the Temperance Societies.
We do not regret having wandered from our professed subject, as, if treated exclusively, it might lead men into errors which no afterthought could cure.
What we chiefly desire is to set the people on making out plans for their own and their children's education. Thinking cannot be done by deputy—they must think for themselves.
THE HISTORY OF IRELAND.
Something has been done to rescue Ireland from the reproach that she was a wailing and ignorant slave.
Brag as we like, the reproach was not undeserved, nor is it quite removed.
She is still a serf-nation, but she is struggling wisely and patiently, and is ready to struggle, with all the energy her advisers think politic, for liberty. She has ceased to wail—she is beginning to make up a record of English crime and Irish suffering, in order to explain the past, justify the present, and caution the future. She begins to study the past—not to acquire a beggar's eloquence in petition, but a hero's wrath in strife. She no longer tears and parades her wounds to win her smiter's mercy; and now she should look upon her breast and say:—"That wound makes me distrust, and this makes me guard, and they all will make me steadier to resist, or, if all else fails, fiercer to avenge."
Thus will Ireland do naturally and honourably.
Our spirit has increased—our liberty is not far off.
But to make our spirit lasting and wise as it is bold—to make our liberty an inheritance for our children, and a charter for our prosperity—we must study as well as strive, and learn as well as feel.
If we attempt to govern ourselves without statesmanship—to be a nation without a knowledge of the country's history, and of the propensities to good and ill of the people—or to fight without generalship, we will fail in policy, society, and war. These—all these things—we, people of Ireland, must know if we would be a free, strong nation. A mockery of Irish independence is not what we want. The bauble of a powerless parliament does not lure us. We are not children. The office of supplying England with recruits, artizans, and corn, under the benign interpositions of an Irish Grand Jury,shallnot be our destiny. By our deep conviction—by the power of mind over the people, we say, No!
We are true to our colour, "the green," and true to our watchword, "Ireland for the Irish." We want to win Ireland and keep it. If we win it, we will not lose it nor give it away to a bribing, a bullying, or a flattering minister. But, to be able to keep it, and use it, and govern it, the men of Ireland must know what it is, what it was, and what it can be made. They must study her history, perfectly know her present state, physical and moral—and train themselves up by science, poetry, music, industry, skill, and by all the studies and accomplishments of peace and war.
If Ireland were in national health, her history would be familiar by books, pictures, statuary, and music to every cabin and shop in the land—her resources as an agricultural, manufacturing, and trading people would be equally known—and every young man would be trained, and every grown man able to defend her coast, her plains, her towns, and her hills—not with his right arm merely, but by his disciplined habits and military accomplishments. These are the pillars of independence.
Academies of art, institutes of science, colleges of literature, schools and camps of war, are a nation's means for teaching itself strength, and winning safety and honour; and when we are a nation, please God, we shall have them all. Till then we must work for ourselves. So far as we can study music in societies, art in schools, literature in institutes, science in our colleges, or soldiership in theory, we are bound as good citizens to learn. Where these are denied by power, or unattainable by clubbing the resources of neighbours, we must try and study for ourselves. We must visit museums and antiquities, and study, and buy, and assist books of history to know what the country and people were, how they fell, how they suffered, and how they arose again. We must read books of statistics—and let us pause to regret that there is no work on the statistics of Ireland except the scarce lithograph of Moreau, the papers in the second Report of the Railway Commission, and the chapters inM'Culloch's Statistics of the British Empire—the Repeal Association ought to have a handbook first, and then an elaborate and vast account of Ireland's statistics brought out.
To resume, we must read such statistics as we have, and try and get better; and we must get the best maps of the country—the Ordnance and County Index Maps, price 2s.6d.each, and the Railway Map, price £1—into our Mechanics' Institutes, Temperance Reading-rooms, and schools. We must, in making our journeys of business and pleasure, observe and ask for the nature and amount of the agriculture, commerce, and manufactures of the place we are in, and its shape, population, scenery, antiquities, arts, music, dress, and capabilities for improvement. A large portion of our people travel a great deal within Ireland, and often return with no knowledge, save of the inns they slept in and the traders they dealt with.
We must give our children in schools the best knowledge of science, art, and literary elements possible. And at home they should see and hear as much of national pictures, music, poetry, and military science as possible.
And finally, we must keep our own souls, and try, by teaching and example, to lift up the souls of all our family and neighbours to that pitch of industry, courage, information, and wisdom necessary to enable an enslaved, dark, and starving people to become free, and rich, and rational.
Well, as to this National History—L'Abbé MacGeoghegan published a history of Ireland, in French, in 3 volumes, quarto, dedicated to the Irish Brigade. Writing in France he was free from the English censorship; writing for "The Brigade," he avoided the impudence of Huguenot historians. The sneers of the Deist Voltaire, and the lies of the Catholic Cambrensis, receive a sharp chastisement in his preface, and a full answer in his text. He was a man of the most varied acquirements and an elegant writer. More full references and the correction of a few errors of detail would render his book more satisfactory to the professor of history, but for the student it is the best in the world. He is graphic, easy, and Irish. He is not a bigot, but apparently a genuine Catholic. His information as to the numbers of troops, and other facts of our Irish battles, is superior to any other general historian's; and they who know it well need not blush, as most Irishmen must now, at their ignorance of Irish history.
But the Association for liberating Ireland has offered a prize for a new history of the country, and given ample time for preparation.
Let no man postpone the preparation who hopes the prize. An original and highly-finished work is what is demanded, and for the composition of such a work the time affords no leisure.
Few persons, we suppose, hitherto quite ignorant of Irish history, will compete; but we would not discourage even these. There is neither in theory nor fact any limit to the possible achievements of genius and energy. Some of the greatest works in existence were written rapidly, and many an old book-worm fails where a young book-thrasher succeeds.
Let us now consider some of the qualities which should belong to this history.
It should, in the first place, be written from the original authorities.We have some notion of giving a set of papers on these authorities, but there are reasons against such a course, and we counsel no man to rely on us—every one on himself; besides, such a historian should rather make himself able to teach us than need to learn from us.
However, no one can now be at a loss to know what these authorities are. A list of the choicest of them is printed on the back of the Volunteer's card for this year, and was also printed in theNation.[30]These authorities are not enough for a historian. The materials, since the Revolution especially, exist mainly in pamphlets, and even for the time previous only the leading authorities are in the list. The list is not faulty in this, as it was meant for learners, not teachers; but anyone using these authorities will readily learn from them what the others are, and can so track out for himself.
There are, however, three tracts specially on the subject of Irish writers. First is Bishop Nicholson's "Irish Historical Library." It gives accounts of numerous writers, but is wretchedly meagre. In Harris's "Hibernica" is a short tract on the same subject; and in Harris's edition of Ware's works an ample treatise onIrish Writers. This treatise is most valuable, but must be read with caution, as Ware was slightly, and Harris enormously, prejudiced against the native Irish and against the later Catholic writers. The criticisms of Harris, indeed, on all books relative to the Religious Wars are partial and deceptious; but we repeat that the work is of great value.
The only more recent work on the subject is a volume written by Edward O'Reilly, for the Iberno-Celtic Society, on the Native Irish Poets: an interesting work, and containing morsels invaluable to a picturesque historian.
By the way, we may hope that the studies for this prize history will be fruitful for historical ballads.
Too many of the original works can only be bought at an expense beyond the means of most of those likely to compete. For instance, Harris's "Ware," "Fynes Moryson," and "The State Papers of Henry the Eighth," are very dear. The works of the Archæological Society can only be got by a member. The price of O'Connor's "Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres" is eighteen guineas; and yet, in it alone the annals of Tigernach, Boyle, Innisfallen, and the early part of the "Four Masters" are to be found. The great majority of the books, however, are tolerably cheap; some of the dearer books might be got by combination among several persons, and afterwards given to the Repeal Reading-rooms.
However, persons resident in, or able to visit Dublin, Cork, or Belfast, can study all, even the scarcest of these works, without any real difficulty.
As to the qualities of such a history, they have been concisely enough intimated by the Committee.
It is to beA History. One of the most absurd pieces of cant going is that against history, because it is full of wars, and kings, and usurpers, and mobs. History describes, and is meant to describe,forces, not proprieties—the mights, the acted realities of men, bad and good—their historical importance depending on their mightiness, not their holiness. Let us by all means have, then, a "graphic" narrative of what was, not a set of moral disquisitions on what ought to have been.
Yet the man who would keep chronicling the dry events would miss writing a history. He must fathom the social condition of the peasantry, the townsmen, the middle-classes, the nobles, and the clergy (Christian or Pagan), in each period—how they fed, dressed, armed, and housed themselves. He must exhibit the nature of the government, the manners, the administration of law, the state of useful and fine arts, of commerce, of foreign relations. He must let us see the decay and rise of great principles and conditions—till we look on a tottering sovereignty, a rising creed, an incipient war, as distinctly as, by turning to the highway, we can see the old man, the vigorous youth, or the infant child. He must paint—the council robed in its hall—the priest in his temple—the conspirator—the outlaw—the judge—the general—the martyr. The arms must clash and shine with genuine, not romantic, likeness; and the brigades or clans join battle, or divide in flight, before the reader's thought. Above all, a historian should be able to seize on character, not vaguely eulogising nor cursing; but feeling and expressing the pressure of a great mind on his time, and on after-times.
Such things may be done partly in disquisitions, as in Michelet's "France"; but they must now be done in narrative; and nowhere, not even in Livy, is there a finer specimen of how all these things may be done by narrative than in Augustine Thierry's "Norman Conquest" and "Merovingian Scenes." The only danger to be avoided in dealing with so long a period in Thierry's way is the continuing to attach importance to a once great influence, when it has sunk to be an exceptive power. He who thinks it possible to dash off a profoundly coloured and shaded narrative like this of Thierry's will find himself bitterly wrong. Even a great philosophical view may much more easily be extemporised than this lasting and finished image of past times.
The greatest vice in such a work would be bigotry—bigotry of race or creed. We know a descendant of a great Milesian family who supports the Union, because he thinks the descendants of the Anglo-Irish—his ancestors' foes—would mainly rule Ireland, were she independent. The opposite rage against the older races is still more usual. A religious bigot is altogether unfit, incurably unfit, for such a task; and the writer of such an Irish history must feel a love for all sects, a philosophical eye to the merits and demerits of all, and a solemn and haughty impartiality in speaking of all.
Need we say that a history, wherein glowing oratory appeared in place of historical painting, bold assertion instead of justified portraiture, flattery to the living instead of justice to the dead, clever plunder of other compilers instead of original research, or a cramped and scholastic instead of an idiomatic, "clear and graphic" style, would deserve rejection, and would, we cannot doubt, obtain it.
To give such a history to Ireland as is now sought will be a proud and illustrious deed. Such a work would have no passing influence, though its first political effect would be enormous; it would be read by every class and side; for there is no readable book on the subject; it would people our streets, and glens, and castles, and abbeys, and coasts with a hundred generations besides our own; it would clear up the grounds of our quarrels, and prepare reconciliation; it wouldunconsciouslymake us recognise the causes of our weakness; it would give us great examples of men and of events, and materially influence our destiny.
Shall we get such a history? Think, reader! has God given you the soul and perseverance to create this marvel?
ANCIENT IRELAND.
There was once civilisation in Ireland. We never were very eminent, to be sure, for manufactures in metal, our houses were simple, our very palaces rude, our furniture scanty, our saffron shirts not often changed, and our foreign trade small. Yet was Ireland civilised. Strange thing! says someone whose ideas of civilisation are identical with carpets and cut-glass, fine masonry, and the steam engine; yet 'tis true. For there was a time when learning was endowed by the rich and honoured by the poor, and taught all over our country. Not only did thousands of natives frequent our schools and colleges, but men of every rank came here from the Continent to study under the professors and system of Ireland, and we need not go beyond the testimonies of English antiquaries, from Bede to Camden, that these schools were regarded as the first in Europe. Ireland was equally remarkable for piety. In the Pagan times it was regarded as a sanctuary of the Magian or Druid creed. From the fifth century it became equally illustrious in Christendom. Without going into the disputed question of whether the Irish church was or was not independent of Rome, it is certain that Italy did not send out more apostles from the fifth to the ninth centuries than Ireland, and we find their names and achievements remembered through the Continent.
Of two names which Hallam thinks worth rescuing from the darkness of the dark ages, one is the Irish metaphysician, John Erigena. In a recent communication to the "Association" we had Bavarians acknowledging the Irish St. Killian as the apostle of their country.
Yet what, beyond a catalogue of names and a few marked events, do even the educated Irish know of the heroic pagans or the holy Christians of Old Ireland? These men have left libraries of biography, religion, philosophy, natural history, topography, history, and romance. Theycannot all be worthless; yet, except the few volumes given us by the Archæological Society, which of their works have any of us read?
It is also certain that we possessed written laws with extensive and minute comments and reported decisions. These Brehon laws have been foully misrepresented by Sir John Davies. Their tenures were the gavelkind once prevalent over most of the world. The land belonged to the clan, and on the death of a clansman his share was re-apportioned according to the number and wants of his family. The system of erics or fines for offences has existed amongst every people from the Hebrews downwards, nor can anyone, knowing the multitude of crimes now punishable by fines or damages, think the people of this empire justified in calling the ancient Irish barbarous because they extended the system. There is in these laws, so far as they are known, minuteness and equity; and what is a better test of their goodness we learn from Sir John Davies himself, and from the still abler Baron Finglass, that the people reverenced, obeyed, and clung to these laws, though to decide by or obey them was a high crime by England's code. Moreover, the Norman and Saxon settlers hastened to adopt these Irish laws, and used them more resolutely, if possible, than the Irish themselves.
Orderliness and hospitality were peculiarly cultivated. Public caravansarais were built for travellers in every district, and we have what would almost be legal evidence of the grant of vast tracts of land for the supply of provisions for these houses of hospitality. The private hospitality of the chiefs was equally marked; nor was it quite rude. Ceremony was united with great freedom of intercourse, age, and learning, and rank, and virtue were respected, and these men, whose cookery was probably as coarse as that of Homer's heroes, had around their board harpers and bards who sang poetry as gallant and fiery, though not so grand, as the Homeric ballad-singers, and flung off a music which Greece never rivalled.
Shall a people, pious, hospitable, and brave, faithful observers of family ties, cultivators of learning, music, and poetry, be called less than civilised because mechanical arts were rude and "comfort" despised by them?
Scattered through the country in MS. are hundreds of books wherein the laws and achievements, the genealogies and possessions, the creeds and manners and poetry of these our predecessors in Ireland are set down. Their music lives in the traditional airs of every valley.
Yetmechanical civilisation, more cruel than time, is trying to exterminate them, and, therefore, it becomes us all who do not wish to lose the heritage of centuries, nor to feel ourselves living among nameless ruins, when we might have an ancestral home—it becomes all who love learning, poetry, or music, or are curious of human progress, to aid in or originate a series of efforts to save all that remains of the past.
It becomes them to lose no opportunity of instilling into the minds of their neighbours, whether they be corporators or peasants, that it is a brutal, mean, and sacrilegious thing to turn a castle, a church, a tomb, or a mound into a quarry or a gravel pit, or to break the least morsel of sculpture, or to take any old coin or ornament they may find to a jeweller, so long as there is an Irish Academy in Dublin to pay for it or accept it.
Before the year is out we hope to seeA Society for The Preservation of Irish Musicestablished in Dublin, under the joint patronage of the leading men of all politics, with branches in the provincial towns for the collection and diffusion of Irish airs.[31]
An effort—a great and decided one—must be made to have the Irish Academy so endowed out of the revenues of Ireland that it may beA National School of Irish History and Literature and a Museum of Irish Antiquitieson the largest scale. In fact, the Academy should be a secular Irish College, with professors of our old language, literature, history, antiquities, and topography; with suitable schools, lecture-rooms, and museums.
HISTORICAL MONUMENTS OF IRELAND.
We were a little struck the other day in taking up a new book by Merimée to see after his name the title of "Inspector-General of the Historical Monuments of France." So then France, with the feeding, clothing, protecting, and humouring of thirty-six million people to attend to, has leisure to employ a Board and Inspector, and money to pay them for looking after the Historical Monuments of France, lest the Bayeux tapestry, which chronicles the conquest of England, or the Amphitheatre of Nimes, which marks the sojourn of the Romans, suffer any detriment.
And has Ireland no monuments of her history to guard; has she no tables of stone, no pictures, no temples, no weapons? Are there no Brehon's chairs on her hills to tell more clearly than Vallancey or Davies how justice was administered here? Do not you meet the Druid's altar and the Gueber's tower in every barony almost, and the Ogham stones in many a sequestered spot, and shall we spend time and money to see, to guard, or to decipher Indian topes, and Tuscan graves, and Egyptian hieroglyphics, and shall every nation in Europe shelter and study the remains of what it once was, even as one guards the tomb of a parent, and shall Ireland let all go to ruin?
We have seen pigs housed in the piled friezes of a broken church, cows stabled in the palaces of the Desmonds, and corn threshed on the floor of abbeys, and the sheep and the tearing wind tenant the corridors of Aileach.
Daily are more and more of our crosses broken, of our tombs effaced, of our abbeys shattered, of our castles torn down, of our cairns sacrilegiously pierced, of our urns broken up, and of our coins melted down. All classes, creeds and politics are to blame in this. The peasant lugs down a pillar for his sty, the farmer for his gate, the priest for his chapel, the minister for his glebe. A mill-stream runs through Lord Moore's Castle,[32]and the Commissioners of Galway have shaken and threatened to remove the Warden's house—that fine stone chronicle of Galway heroism.
How our children will despise us all for this! Why shall we seek for histories, why make museums, why study the manners of the dead, when we foully neglect or barbarously spoil their homes, their castles, their temples, their colleges, their courts, their graves? He who tramples on the past does not create for the future. The same ignorant and vagabond spirit which made him a destructive prohibits him from creating for posterity.
Does not a man, by examining a few castles and arms, know more of the peaceful and warrior life of the dead nobles and gentry of our island than from a library of books; and yet a man is stamped as unlettered and rude if he does not know and value such knowledge. Ware'sAntiquities, and Archdall, speak not half so clearly the taste, the habits, the everyday customs of the monks, as Adare Monastery,[33]for the fine preservation of which we owe so much to Lord Dunraven.
The state of civilisation among our Scotic or Milesian, or Norman, or Danish sires, is better seen from the Museum of the Irish Academy, and from a few raths, keeps, and old coast towns, than from all the prints and historical novels we have. An old castle in Kilkenny, a house in Galway give us a peep at the arts, the intercourse, the creed, the indoor and some of the outdoor ways of the gentry of the one, and of the merchants of the other, clearer than Scott could, were he to write, or Cattermole were he to paint, for forty years.
We cannot expect Government to do anything so honourable and liberal as to imitate the example of France, and pay men to describe and save these remains of dead ages. But we do ask it of the clergy, Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenting, if they would secure the character of men of education and taste—we call upon the gentry, if they have any pride of blood, and on the people, if they reverence Old Ireland, to spare and guard every remnant of antiquity. We ask them to find other quarries than churches, abbeys, castles and cairns—to bring rusted arms to a collector and coins to a museum, and not to iron or goldsmiths, and to take care that others do the like. We talk much of Old Ireland, and plunder and ruin all that remains of it—we neglect its language, fiddle with its ruins, and spoil its monuments.[34]