A Short History of England, Ireland and Scotland Part 12

The not unnatural result of these last-named enactments was that many were driven to feigned conversions in order to keep their families from starvation. It is said that when old Lady Th.o.m.ond was reproached for having bartered her soul by professing the Protestant faith, her quick retort was, "Is it not better that one old woman should burn, than that all of the Th.o.m.onds should be beggars?"

More details are unnecessary after saying that by a decision of Lord Chancellor Bowes and Chief-Justice Robinson it was declared that "the law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman {227} Catholic," while the English Bishop at Meath declared from his pulpit, "We are not bound to keep faith with papists." And it must be remembered that the people placed under this monstrous system of wrong and degradation were not a handful, whom the welfare of a community required should be dealt with severely, they were a large majority of the population, a nation dwelling in their own country, where, by a Parliament supposed to be their own, they were governed by a minority of aliens.

In this time of "Protestant ascendancy," as it is called, there were, of course, only Protestants in the Parliament. They had all the authority, they alone were competent to vote; they were the privileged and upper cla.s.s; an Irish papist, whatever his rank, being the social inferior of his Protestant neighbor. But let it not be supposed that the Irish Protestants were on that account happy! They had been planted in that land as a breakwater against the native Irish flood, but for all that, England had no idea of permitting them to build up a dangerous prosperity in Ireland. The theory governing English statesmans.h.i.+p was that that {228} country must be kept helpless; and to that end it must be kept poor. During the reign of Charles II. the importing of Irish cattle into England had been forbidden. The effects of this prohibition, so ruinous at first, were at last offset by the discovery that sheep might be made a greater source of profit at home, than when s.h.i.+pped to England. There was an increasing demand in Europe for Irish wool, and skilled manufacturers of woollen goods from abroad had come and started factories, thus giving employment to thousands of people.

When it was realized in England that a profitable Irish industry had actually been established, there was a panic. The traders demanded legislative protection from Irish compet.i.tion, which came in this form.

In 1699 an Act was pa.s.sed prohibiting the export of Irish woollen goods, not alone to England, but to all other countries. The factories were closed. The manufacturers left the country, never to return, and a whole population was thrown out of employment. A tide of emigration then commenced which has never ceased; such as could, fleeing from the inevitable famine which in a land always {229} so perilously near starvation must surely come.

There was no market now for the wool which the factories would have consumed. At home it brought 5d. a pound, but in France a half crown!

The long, deeply indented coast-line was well adapted for smuggling.

French vessels were hovering about, waiting an opportunity to get it; the people were hungry, and might be hungrier, for there was a famine in the land! Is it strange that they were converted into law-breakers, and that wool was packed in caves all along the coast; and that a vast contraband trade carried on by stealth, took the place of a legitimate one which was made impossible?

So it became apparent that any efforts to establish profitable enterprises in Ireland would be put down with a strong hand. The colonists who had been placed there by England felt bitterly at finding themselves thus involved in the pre-determined ruin of the country with which they had identified their own fortunes. Their love of the parent-country waned, some even turning to and adopting the persecuted creed. The voice of {230} the native people, utterly stifled, was never heard in Parliament, and struggles which occurred there were between Protestants and Protestants; between those who did, and those who did not, uphold the policy of the Government. Such was the condition which remained practically unchanged until the middle of the eighteenth century; a small discontented upper cla.s.s, chiefly aliens; below them the peasantry, the ma.s.s of the people, whose benumbed faculties and empty minds had two pa.s.sions to stir their murky depths--love for their religion, and hatred of England.

The first voice raised in support of the const.i.tutional rights of Ireland was that of William Molyneux, an Irish gentleman and scholar, a philosopher, and the intimate friend of Locke. In the latter part of the seventeenth century he issued a pamphlet which in the gentlest terms called attention to the fact that the laws and liberties of England which had been granted to Ireland five hundred years before had been invaded, in that the rights of their Parliament, a body which should be sacred and inviolable everywhere, had been abolished.

Nothing could have been milder than this {231} presentation of a well-known fact; but it raised a furious storm. The const.i.tutional rights of Ireland! Was the man mad? The book was denounced in Parliament as libellous and seditious, and was destroyed by the common hangman. Then Dean Swift, half-Irishman and more than half-Englishman, an ardent High-Churchman and a vehement anti-papist, published a satirical pamphlet called "A Modest Proposal," in which he suggests that the children of the Irish peasants should be reared for food, and the choicest ones reserved for the landlords, who having already devoured the substance of the fathers, had the best right to feast upon their children. This was made the more pungent because it came from a man who so far from being an Irish patriot, was an English Tory. He cared little for Ireland or its people, but he hated tyranny and injustice; and was stirred to a fierce wrath at what he himself witnessed while Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Then it was that with tremendous scorn he hurled those shafts of biting wit and satire, which struck deeper than the cogent reasoning of the gentle and philosophic Molyneux.

{232}

So the spell of silence was broken, and there began to form a small patriotic party in Parliament, which in 1760 was led by Henry Flood, from Kilkenny. A day was dawning after the long night; and when in 1775 Henry Grattan's more powerful personality was joined with Flood's, then that brief day had reached its highest noon. Next to that of Edmund Burke, Grattan's is the greatest name on the roll of native-born Irishmen. Happy was that country in having such an advocate and guide at the critical period when the American colonies were throwing off the yoke of English tyranny. The wrongs suffered by the English colonies in America were trifling compared with those endured by that other English colony in Ireland. If ever there was a time to press upon England the necessity for loosening their shackles it was now, when their battle was being fought across the sea. Every argument in support of the independence of America applied with equal force to the legislative independence of Ireland. It was Grattan who at this momentous time guided the course of events. A Protestant, yet possessing the entire confidence of the Catholics; {233} an uncompromising patriot, yet commanding the respect and admiration of the English Government; inflexibly opposed to Catholic exclusion and the ascendancy of a Protestant minority, and as inflexibly opposed to any act of violence, he was determined to obtain redress--but to obtain it only by means of the strictest const.i.tutional methods. It was upon the _const.i.tutionality_ of their claims that he threw all the energy of the movement growing out of the American war. His personal sympathies were with the struggling colonists; yet he voted for men and money to sustain the English cause. Equal rights bestowed upon Catholics, who were in large majority, would transfer to them the power; yet he, a Protestant, pa.s.sionately advocated a removal of the disabilities of four-fifths of the people. It was in this spirit of wise moderation and even-handed justice that Grattan took the tangled web of the Irish cause out of the hands of the more impetuous Flood; his eloquence and his moving appeals keeping two objects steadily in view--the independence of the Irish Parliament, and the removal of the fetters from Irish trade.

{234}

Times had changed since Molyneux's gentle remonstrance, when Grattan's famous Declaration of Rights was being supported by eighteen counties, and still more changed when at last, in 1782, an Irish House of Commons marched in a body to present to the Lord Lieutenant their address demanding freedom of commerce and manufacture.

An unlooked-for train of events had given new weight to this demand.

England had realized the necessity of protecting Ireland from a possible invasion growing out of the American war. So it was determined that a body of militia should be levied, in which only Protestants should be enrolled. The attempt to raise the men or the money in Ireland was a failure, and while defenceless, the country was thrown into a panic by the descent of Paul Jones, the American naval hero, upon Belfast and other points on the coast. The citizens of Belfast enrolled themselves for their own defence. Other towns followed, and the contagion spread with such rapidity that in a short time there was in existence a volunteer force of 60,000 men.

Dismayed at the swiftness of the movement, England hesitated; but how could she {235} deny her colony the right of self-defence? They were given the arms which had been intended for the Protestant militia. And so, when the House of Commons marched in a body to the Lord Lieutenant, and presented their address to the Crown, it had 60,000 armed men behind it!

The Viceroy wrote to England that unless the trade restrictions were removed, he would not answer for the consequences. Lord North had enough to do with one rebellion on his hands; and, besides, George III.

might have need of some of those 60,000 soldiers before he got through with America. So the Prime Minister yielded. The first victory was gained, and the other quickly followed. American independence was acknowledged; England was in no mood to defy another colony with rebellion in its heart. The Poynings Act once more, and now for all time, was repealed, and the Irish Parliament was a free and independent body. Grateful for this partial emanc.i.p.ation, it voted 100,000 to Grattan.

But this legislative triumph did not feed the people. It was only the seed out of which future prosperity was to grow. A vague expectation of instant relief was {236} bitterly disappointed when it was found instead that they were sinking deeper every day in the hopeless abyss of poverty and degradation. There had come into existence an organization called the "White Boys," with no political or religious purpose, simply a fraternity of wretchedness; beings made desperate by want, standing ready to commit any violence which offered relief. At the same time an irritation born of misery brought the Protestants and Catholics in the North into fierce collision; and the germ of the future Orange societies appeared.

These small storm-centres were all soon to be drawn into a larger one.

In 1791 the "Society of United Irishmen" was formed at Belfast. It was merely a patriotic attempt to sink minor differences in an organization in which all could join. With the rising of the general tide of misery it changed in character, and fell into the control of a band of restless spirits led by Wolfe Tone, who maintained that since const.i.tutional reforms had failed, force must be their resort. He sent agents to Paris, and the new French republic consented to a.s.sist in an attempt to establish a republic in Ireland.

{237}

When the year 1798 closed, there had been another unsuccessful rebellion. Ferocity had been met by ferocity, and Wolfe Tone and Edward Fitzgerald (a Geraldine) had perished in the ruin of the structure they had wildly built. Flood and Grattan had stood aloof from this miserable undertaking. It was now eighteen years since the const.i.tutional triumph which had proved so barren. England was in stern mood. Pitt had long believed that the effacement of the Irish Parliament and a legislative union of the two countries was the only solution. The Irish Protestants were shown the benefits of the protection this would afford them, while the bait offered to the Catholics was emanc.i.p.ation, the removal of disabilities which it was intimated would quickly follow. But no one was won to the cause, Grattan, in the most impa.s.sioned way protesting against it, and the measure was defeated. Then followed the darkest page in the chapter.

It is well known that large amounts of money were paid to the owners of eighty-five doubtful boroughs--boroughs which would be effaced by the union--that peerages and {238} baronetcies were generously distributed, and that shortly after, the measure was again brought up and carried!

So by the Act of Union, 1800, the Irish Parliament had ceased to exist, and the two countries were politically merged. It is certain that the union was hateful to the Irish people, and that it was tainted by the suspicion of dishonorable methods, which one hundred years have failed to disprove. It may have been the best thing possible, under the circ.u.mstances, for Ireland; but to the Irish patriots it seemed a crowning act of oppression accomplished by treachery.

You cannot combine oil and water by pouring them into one gla.s.s. The union was not a union. The natures of the two races were utterly hostile. Centuries of cruel wrong and outrage had accentuated every undesirable trait in the Irish people. A nature simple, confiding, spontaneous, and impulsive, had become suspicious, explosive, and dangerous. Pugnacity had grown into ferocity. A joyous, light-hearted, and engaging people had become a sullen and vindictive one; famine, misery, and ignorance had put their stamp of degradation {239} upon the peasantry, the majority of the people. Intermarriage, so savagely interdicted for centuries, was the only thing which could ever have fused two such contrasting races. Such a fusion might have benefited both, in giving a wholesome solidity to the Irish, while the stolid English would have been enriched by the fascinating traits and the native genius of their brilliant neighbors. But the opportunity had been lost; and enlightened English statesmans.h.i.+p is still seeking for a plan which will convert an unnatural and artificial union into a real one.

The delusive promises of the relief which was to come with union were not fulfilled. Catholics remained under the same monstrous ban as before, and things were practically unchanged. Young Robert Emmett's abortive attempt to seize Dublin Castle in 1803 intensified conditions, but did not alter them. The pathetic story of his capture while seeking a parting interview with Sarah Curran, to whom he was engaged, and his death by hanging the following morning, is one of the smaller tragedies in the greater one; and the death of Sarah {240} from a broken heart, soon after, is the subject of Moore's well-known lines.

The most colossal figure in the story of Ireland had now appeared.

Daniel O'Connell, unlike the other great leaders, was a Catholic. In the language of another, "he was the incarnation of the Irish nation."

All that they were, he was, on a majestic scale. His whole tremendous weight was thrown into the subject of Catholic emanc.i.p.ation; and, although a giant in eloquence and in power, it took him just twenty-nine years to accomplish it. In the year 1829, even Wellington, that incarnation of British conservatism, bent his head before the storm, and there was a full and unqualified removal of Catholic disabilities. O'Connell was not content; he did not pause. The t.i.the-system, that most odious of oppressions, must go. A starving nation compelled to support in its own land a Church it considered blasphemous! A standing army kept in their land to wring this tribute from them at the point of the bayonet! Think of a people on the brink of the greatest famine Europe has ever known, being in arrears a million and a quarter of pounds for t.i.thes {241} for an Established Church they did not want! Is it strange that Sydney Smith said no abuse as great could be found in Timbuctoo? Is it a wonder that there was always disorder and violence from a chronic t.i.the-war in Ireland, which it is said has cost a million of lives? But in 1839, in the second year of Queen Victoria's reign, Parliament gave relief, in the following ingenious way. The burden was placed upon the _land_; the landlord must pay the t.i.the, not the people! The exasperation which followed took a form with which we are all more or less familiar. With the increase in rents which, of course, ensued, there commenced an anti-rent agitation which has never ceased. A repeal of the Union was the only remedy, and to this O'Connell devoted all his energies.

In 1845, in one black night, a blight fell upon the potato-crop.

Carlyle says "a famine presupposes much." What must be the economic condition of a people when there is only one such frail barrier between them and starvation! The famine was the hideous child of centuries.

There is no need to dwell upon its details. Its name expresses all the horror of those two years, when Europe and {242} America strove in vain to relieve the famis.h.i.+ng nation, even those who had food, dying, it is said, from the mental anguish produced by witnessing so much suffering which they could not a.s.suage. The great O'Connell himself died of a broken heart in beholding this national tragedy. When it was over, Ireland had lost two millions of its population. Thousands had perished and thousands more had emigrated from the doomed land to America, there to keep alive, in the hearts of their children, the memory of their wrongs.

Out of this wreck and ruin there arose the party of "Young Ireland,"

led, with more or less wisdom, by Mitch.e.l.l, Smith O'Brien (descended from Brian Boru), Dillon, and Meagher. Mitch.e.l.l was soon transported, and later O'Brien and Meagher were under sentence of death, which was afterward commuted, Meagher surviving to lay down his life for the North in the civil war in America. It is not strange that these men were driven to futile insurrections, maddened as they were by the sight of their countrymen, not yet emerged from the horrors of famine, forced in droves out of the shelter of their {243} miserable cabins, for non-payment of rent. It has been told in foregoing pages how it came about that absentee English landlords owned a great part of Ireland.

From this had arisen the custom of subletting; and when it is known that sometimes four people stood between the tenant and the landlord, it will be realized how difficult it was to place responsibility, to do justice, or to show mercy in such an iniquitous system. It was the system, not the landlord, that was vicious. Eviction has done as much as famine to depopulate Ireland. It has driven millions of Irishmen into America; and the cruelty and even ferocity with which it has been carried out cannot be overstated. Whatever the weather, for the sick, or even for the dying, there was no pity. Out they must go; and to make sure that they would not return, the cabin was unroofed! And then, if the wretched being died under the stars by the road-side, he might, in the words of Mitch.e.l.l, "lift his dying eyes and thank G.o.d that he perished under the best const.i.tution in the world!"

At the close of the American civil war it was believed by Irishmen that the strained {244} relations between England and America would lead to open conflict. An organization named Fenians (after the ancient Feni) formed a plan for a rising in Ireland, which was to be simultaneous with a raid into Canada by way of America.

The United States Government took vigorous action in the matter of the Canadian raid, and the failure of this and of other violent attempts at home put an end to the least creditable of all such organizations.

It was in 1869 that Mr. Gladstone realized his long-cherished plan for the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland. The generations which had hoped and striven for this had pa.s.sed away, and in the Ireland which remained, there was scarcely spirit enough left to rejoice over anything. The words Home Rule were the only ones with power to arouse hope. With the Liberal Party on their side, this seemed possible of attainment. In 1875 Charles Parnell entered the House of Commons and became the leader of a Home Rule Party. But the question of evictions, of which there had been 10,000 in four years, became so pressing, that he organized a National Land League, which {245} had for its object the relief of present distress, and the subst.i.tution of peasant-proprietors.h.i.+p for the existing landlord system; an agrarian scheme, or dream, to which Mr. Parnell devoted the rest of his life.

Mr. Parnell's weapons were parliamentary. He introduced an obstructive method in legislation which caused extreme irritation and finally antagonism between the Liberal Party and his own. This, together with the unfounded suspicion of complicity in the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, in 1882, militated against Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Act, which was defeated in 1886; and the cause awaited another champion.

But while the door bearing the alluring words "Home Rule" still remains rigidly closed, another has unexpectedly opened. One of the first subjects to engage the attention of King Edward VII. after his accession was the settlement of the Irish agrarian question which that practical Monarch recognized as the most essential to the pacification of his Irish subjects. This has {246} resulted in an ingeniously devised system of peasant-proprietors.h.i.+p, which is made possible by Government aid, in money and credit. The New Land Act, embodying this result, went into effect November 1, 1903, whereby tenants, sub-tenants, or people who are not tenants may purchase land in small lots and hold it as _their own_, by the payment of a small annual rental which applies to the purchase. It is impossible to give here the complicated details which insure this result with benefit to landlord, tenant, and also to the Government itself. But a remedy seems to have been found which accomplishes all this; and the condition, more demoralizing to Irish life and character than any other, has been removed. With the sense of peace and permanence, and even of dignity, which comes from proprietors.h.i.+p it is hoped a new day is dawning for the peasantry of that unhappy country.

It has been Ireland's misfortune to be geographically allied to one of the greatest {247} European Powers. She has been fighting for centuries against the "despotism of fact." She has never once loosened the grasp fastened upon her in 1171; never had control of her capital city, which, built by the Northmen, has been the home of her political masters ever since. Of course everyone knows that when the English Government solemnly doubts the capacity of the Irish people for Home Rule, its solicitude is for England, not Ireland.

Francis Meagher, when on trial for his life, said: "If I have committed a crime, it is because I have read the history of Ireland!" One need not be an Irish patriot to be in rebellion against the English rule in that land; and no Protestant can read without shame and indignation the crimes which have been committed in the name of his Church.

But, in view of the small results of more than eight centuries of resistance, would it not be wise for the Irish people to abandon the fight against the "despotism of fact," {248} to give up the att.i.tude of a conquered people with rebellion in their hearts? Is not this the right moment, when England is manifesting a desire to be more just, for Ireland, deeply injured although she is, to accept the olive branch, and call a truce?

{249}

A SHORT HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.

The northern extremity of the British Isles, bristling with mountains and with its ragged coast-line deeply fringed by the sea, told in advance the character of its people. Scotland is the child of the mountains; and in spite of all that has been done to change their native character, the word Caledonia still invokes the same picturesque, liberty-loving race which in the first century, under the name of Picts, defied Agricola and his Roman legions, and the wall they had builded. If they have borrowed their name from Ireland, if they have used the speech and consented to wear the political yoke of the Anglo-Saxon, they have accepted these things only as convenient garments for a proud Scottish nationality, which has defied all efforts to change its essential character.

About four centuries after the Roman invasion, a colony of Scots (Irish) migrated to {250} the opposite coast, under Fergus, and set up their little kingdom in Argyles.h.i.+re, taking with them, perhaps, the sacred "Stone of Destiny" upon which a long line of Irish kings had been crowned, and which tradition a.s.serts was "Jacob's Pillow." The Picts and the Irish Scots were both of the Celtic race, and if they fought, it was as brothers do, ready in an instant to embrace and make common cause, which they first did against the Romans. A common enemy is the surest healer of domestic feuds, and there were many of these to bring together the two Celtic branches dwelling on the same soil after the fifth century. Then came the more peaceful fusion through a common religious faith. St. Columba had been preceded by St. Nimian. But it was the Irish saint from Donegal who did for the Picts what St. Patrick had done for the Irish Scots. In the history of the Church there has never been an awakening of purer spiritual ardor than that which irradiated from Columba's monastery at Iona.

Why the Irish Scots, occupying only a small bit of territory, should have fastened their name upon the land of their adoption {251} is not known. Perhaps it was the magic of that Stone of Destiny! The Picts had the political centre of their kingdom at Scone, on the river Tay.

It was in 844 that Kenneth M'Alpin made war upon the Irish Scots, the little kingdom in Argyle was merged with that of the Picts, and by the eleventh century the latter name had disappeared and the name Scotland was applied to the whole country. In the two centuries following this union there were four reigns, in which wars between hostile clans were diversified by wars with invading Danes, and with the Angles near the border, with whom there was a chronic struggle, caused by aggressions upon both sides. Malcolm II. succeeded in defeating the Angles on the Tweed, seized Lothian, incorporated this bit of old England with his own kingdom, then died, in 1034, leaving his throne to his grandson, Duncan. There was the same play of fierce ambitions upon this small stage as on larger ones. Scottish thanes strove to undermine and supplant other thanes, just as Norman barons and Scotch-English earls would do later, and as in other lands and at all times, the dream of aspiring, intriguing n.o.bles {252} was by some happy chance to s.n.a.t.c.h the crown and reign at Scone.

Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, was by birth nearest to the supreme prize. His wife, whose "undaunted mettle" we all know, had royal blood in her veins. We also know how the poison of ambition worked in the once guiltless soul of the thane after the prophecy of the "Weird Sisters" had commenced its fulfilment. The story was quaintly told a century before Shakespeare lived, in a history of Scotland by Boece.

The book was written in Latin, and in the sixteenth century was translated into the Scottish vernacular. It tells of the meeting between Macbeth, Banquo, and the "Weird Sisters." "The first of thaim said, 'Hale, Thane of Glammis!' the secound said, 'Hale, Thane of Cawder!' and the thrid said, 'Hale, King of Scotland!' Then Banquo said, 'How is it ye gaif to my companyeon not onlie landis and gret rentis, bot Kingdomes, and gevis me nocht?' To which they reply, 'Thoucht he happin to be ane King, nane of his blude sall eftir him succeid. Be contrar, thow sail nevir be King, bot of the sal c.u.m mony Kingis, quhilkis {253} sall rejose the Croun of Scotland!' Then they evanist out of sicht." This seems to have amused the two friends and "Fur sam time Banquho wald call Makbeth 'King of Scottis' for derisioun; and he on the samin maner wald call Banquho 'the fader of mony Kingis!' Yit, not long efter, it hapnit that the Thane of Cawder was disinherist and forfalt.i.t of his landis for certane crimes; and his landis wer gevin be King Duncane to Makbeth. It hapnit in the nixt nicht that Banquho and Makbeth were sportand togiddir at thair supper,"

and Banquo reminded his friend that there remained only the Crown to complete the prophecy. Whereupon, "he began to covat the crown." And then Duncan named his young son Malcolm as his heir, "Quhilk wes gret displeseir to Makbeth; for it maid plane derogatioun to the thrid weird," promising him the Crown. "Nochtheless, he thocht, gif Duncane war slane, he had maist richt to the Croun, be the old lawis of King Fergus (law of tanistry), becaus he wer nerest of blude thair to," the text of the old law being, "Quhen young children wer unabil to govern, the nerrest of thair blude sail regne." Then, {254} when his wife "calland him oft times, febil cowart, sen he durst not a.s.sail ye thing with manheid and enrage, quhilk is offert to him be benivolence of fortoun," then, so tempted and so goaded, "Makbeth fand sufficient opportunite, and slew King Duncane, the VII yeir of his regne, and his body was buryit in Elgin, and efter tane up and brocht to Colmekill, quhare it remanis yit, amang the uthir Kingis: fra our Redemption.

MXLVI yeris."

The story told in these quaint words was, without any doubt, read by Shakespeare, and in the alembic of his imagination grew into the immortal play. Touched by his genius, the names Dunsinnane and Birnam, lying close to Scone, are luminous points on the map, upon which the eye loves to linger. The incidents may not be authentic. We are told they are not. But Macbeth certainly slew Duncan and was King of Scotland, and finally met his Nemesis at Dunsinnane, near Birnam Wood, where Malcolm III., called Canmore, avenged his father's death, slew the usurper, and was crowned king at Scone, 1054.

The historic point selected by Shakespeare {255} has an important significance of a different sort. It was the dividing line between the old and the new. Macbeth's reign marks the close of the Celtic period.

With the advent of Malcolm III., there commenced that infusion of Teutonic political ideals which was destined at last to merge the Anglo-Saxon and the Scottish Celt into one political organism.