Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent Part 47

"Many thanks, sweet Eliza--oh! that I could say my frail Eliza; but I shall be able to say so yet, I trust; I shall be able to say so.'

"'G.o.d forbid,' she replied. 'This is not for you, Mr. M'Slime--I certainly will give you no more this night. But Bob here is a favorite of mine. Bob, you will see Mr. M'Slime home?'

"'In all piety and truth, I shall see that burning and s.h.i.+ning light home,' returned Bob; 'in the meantime I will thank you for the loan of a lanthorn; the night is one of most unchristian darkness.'

"Solomon had now reclined his head upon the table as if for sleep, which he very probably would have indulged in, despite of all opposition; but just at this moment his horse, car, and servant most opportunely arrived, and with the aid of Bob, succeeded in getting him away, much against his own inclination; for it would appear by his language that he had no intention whatsoever of departing, if left to himself.

"'I shall not go,' said he; 'it is permitted to me to sojourn here this night. Where is Eliza? Oh! Eliza, my darling--these precious little frailties.'

"'Bring the little hypocrite home out of this,' said she, with a good deal of indignation; for, in truth, the worthy saint uttered the last words in so significant a voice, with such a confidential crow, as might have thrown out intimations not quite favorable to her sense of propriety on the occasion. He was literally forced out, therefore; but not until he had made several efforts to grasp Eliza's hand, and to get his arm around her.

"'She's a sweet creature--a delightful dove; but too innocent.

Oh! Eliza, these precious little frailties!--these precious little frailties!'

"'It's a shame,' said Eliza, 'and a scandal to see any man making such pretensions to religion, in such a state.'

"'In all piety and truth,' said Bob, 'I say he's a burning and a s.h.i.+ning light!'

"' King James he pitched his tents between Their lines for to retire,' &c., &c.

"And so they departed, very much to the satisfaction of Eliza and Boots, who were both obliged to sit up until his departure, although fatigued with a long day's hard and incessant labor. I also retired to my pillow, where I lay for a considerable time reflecting on the occurrences of the night, and the ease with which an ingenious hypocrite may turn the forms, but not the spirit of religion, to the worst and most iniquitous purpose."

And thus far our friend, Mr. Easel, whom we leave to follow up his examinations into the state of the Castle c.u.mber property, and its management, hoping that discoveries and disclosures may at some future day be of service to the tenantry on that fine estate, as well as to the country at large. In the meantime, we beg our readers to accompany us to the scene of many an act of gross corruption, where jobs, and jobbing, and selfishness in their worst shapes, aided by knavery, fraud, bigotry, party rancor, personal hate, and revenge long cherished--where active loyalty and high political Protestantism, a.s.suming the name of religion, and all the other pa.s.sions and prejudices that have been suffered to scourge the country so long--have often been in full operation, without check, restraint, or any wholesome responsibility, that might, or could, or ought to have protected the property of the people from rapine, and their persons from oppression. The scene we allude to is the Grand Jury Room of Castle c.u.mber.

CHAPTER XXI.--Darby's Piety Rewarded

--A Protestant Charger, with his Precious Burthen--A Disaffected Hack supporting a Pillar of the Church--A Political and Religious Discussion in a Friendly Way

The a.s.sizes had now arrived, and the Grand Panel of the county met once more to transact their fiscal and criminal business. We omit the grand entry of the Judges, escorted, as they were, by a large military guard, and the _posse comitatus_ of the county, not omitting to mention a goodly and imposing array of the gentry and squirearchy of the immediate and surrounding districts, many of Whom were pranked out in all the grandeur of their Orange robes. As, however, we are only yet upon our way there, we beg you to direct your attention to two gentlemen dressed in black, and mounted each in a peculiar and characteristic manner.

One of them is a large, bloated, but rather handsome, and decidedly aristocratic looking man, with a vermilion face, mounted upon a splendid charger, whose blood and action must have been trained to that kind of subdued but elegant bearing that would seem to indicate, upon the part of the animal, a consciousness that he too owed a duty to the Church and Const.i.tution, and had a just right to come within the category of a staunch and loyal Protestant horse, as being entrusted with the life, virtues, and dignity of no less a person than the Rev. Phineas Lucre--all of which are now on his back a.s.sembled, as they always are, in that reverend gentleman's precious person. Here we account at once for the animal's cautious sobriety of step, and pride and dignity of action, together with his devoted attachment to the Church and Const.i.tution by which he lived, and owing to which he wore a coat quite as sleek, but by no means so black as his master's. The gentleman by whom he appears to be accompanied, much--if we can judge by their motions--against his will, seems to be quite as strongly contrasted to him, as the rough undressed hack upon which he is mounted is to the sanctified and aristocratic nag that is honored by bearing the Rev.

Phineas Lucre. The hack in question is, nevertheless, a stout and desperate looking varmint, with a red vindictive eye, moving, ill-tempered ears, and a tail that seems to be the seat of intellect, if a person is to take its quick and furious whisking as being given in reply to Mr. Lucre's observations, or by way of corroboration of the truth uttered by the huge and able-bodied individual who is astride of him. That individual is no other than the Rev. Father M'Cabe, who is dressed in a coat and waistcoat of coa.r.s.e black broadcloth, somewhat worse for the wear, a pair of black breeches, deprived of their original gloss, and a pair of boots well greased with honest hog's lard--the fact being, that the wonderful discovery of Day and Martin had not then come to light. Mr. M'Cabe has clearly an unsettled and dissatisfied seat, and does not sit his horse with the ease and dignity of his companion. In fact, he feels that matters are not proceeding as he could wish, neither does the hack at all appear to bear cordiality or affection to the state which keeps him on such short commons. They are, by no means, either of them in a state of peace or patience with the powers that be, and when the priest, at the conclusion of every sentence, gives the garran an angry dash of the spurs, as much as to say, was not that observation right, no man could mistake the venomous spirit in which the tail is whisked, and the head shaken, in reply.

It is scarcely necessary to say that either Mr. Lucre or Mr. M'Cabe were at all upon terms of intimacy. Mr. M'Cabe considered Mr. Lucre as a wealthy epicure, fat and heretical; whilst Mr. Lucre looked upon Father McCabe as vulgar and idolatrous. It was impossible, in fact, that with such an opinion of each other, they could for a moment agree in anything, or meet as men qualified by the virtues of their station to discharge on any one duty in common. On the day in question, Mr. Lucre was riding towards Castle c.u.mber, with the pious intention of getting Darby O'Drive's appointment to the under jailors.h.i.+p confirmed. This was one motive, but there was another still stronger, which was, to have an interview with the leading men of the Grand Jury, for the purpose of getting a new road run past his Glebe House, in the first place, and, in the next, to secure a good job for himself, as a magistrate. At all events he was proceeding towards Castle c.u.mber, apparently engaged in the contemplation of some important subject, but whether it was the new road to his glebe, or the old one to heaven, is beyond our penetration to determine. Be this as it may, such was his abstraction, that he noticed not the Rev. Father M'Cabe, who had ridden for some time along with him, until that gentleman thought proper to break the ice of ceremony, and address him.

"Sir, your most obedient," said the priest; "excuse my freedom--I am the Rev. Mr. M'Cabe, Catholic Curate of Castle c.u.mber; but as I reside in the parish it is very possible you don't know me."

Mr. Lucre felt much hurt at the insinuation thrown out against his long absence from the parish and replied:--

"I do not, sir, in the least regret our want of intimacy. The character of your ministry in the parish is such, that he who can congratulate himself on not being acquainted with you has something to boast of.

Excuse me, sir, but I beg to a.s.sure you, that I am not at all solicitous of the honor of your company."

"Touching my ministry," said the priest, "which it pleases you to condemn, I'd have you to know, that I will teach my people how to resist oppression so long as I am able to teach them anything. I will not allow them to remain tame drudges under burthens that make you and such as you as fat and proud as Lucifer."

"I request you will be good enough, sir, to take some other way," said Mr. Lucre; "you are a rude and vulgar person whom I neither know nor wish to know. The pike and torch, sir, are congenial weapons to such a mind as yours; I do beg you will take some other way, and not continue to annoy me any longer."

"This way, man alive--"

"Man alive! To whom do you address such, a term?" said Mr. Lucre; "I really have never met so very vulgar a person; I am quite sickened, upon my honor. Man alive!! I trust I shall soon get rid of you."

"This way, man alive," responded the priest, "is as free to me, in spite of corrupt jobs and grand juries, as it is to you or any other tyrant, whether spiritual or temporal. If there are turbulence and disturbances in this parish, it is because bad laws, unjustly administered, drive the people, first, into poverty, and then into resistance. And, sir, you are not to tell me, for I will not believe it, that a bad law, dishonestly and partially administered, is not to be resisted by every legal means."

"Do you call noon-day murder, midnight a.s.sa.s.sination, and incendiarism, legal? Do you call schooling the people into rebellion, and familiarizing them with crime, legal? All this may be allegiance to your pope, but it deserves a halter from the king and laws, of England."

"The king and laws of England, sir, have ever been more liberal of halters to the Irish Catholics, than they have been of either common justice or fair play. What do the Catholic people get, or have ever got, from you and such as you, in return for the luxury which you draw, without thanks, from their sweat and labor, but gaols, and chains, and scourges, and halters. Hanging, and transportations, triangles, and drumhead verdicts, are admirable means to conciliate the Catholic people of Ireland."

"The Catholic people of Ireland may thank you, and such red hot intemperate men as you, for the hangings, and transportations which the violated laws of the country justly awarded them."

"And have you, sir, who wring the blood and sweat out of them, the audacity to use such language to me? Did not your English kings and your English laws make education a crime, and did you not then most inhumanly and cruelly punish us for the offences which want of education occasioned?"

"Yes; because you made such knowledge as you then acquired, the vehicle, as you are doing now, of spreading abroad disaffection against Church and State, and of disturbing the peace of the country."

"Because, proud parson, when the people become enlightened by education, they insist, and will insist upon their rights, and refuse to be pressed to death by such a bloated and blood-sucking incubus as your Established Church."

"If this be true, then, upon your own showing, you ought to be favorable to education among the people; but that, we know you are not. You have no schools; and you will not suffer us, who are willing, to educate them for you."

"Certainly not, we have no notion to sit tamely by and see you, and such as you, instil your own principles into our flocks. But in talking of education, in what state, let me ask you, is your own church in this blessed year of 1804, with all her wealth and splendor at her back? I tell you, sir, in every district where the population is equal, we can show two Catholic schools for your one. When you impute our poverty, sir, as a reluctance to educate our people, you utter a libel against the Catholic priesthood of Ireland for which you deserve to be prosecuted in a court of justice, and nailed snugly to the pillory afterwards."

"Nailed snugly to the pillory! I never felt myself so much degraded as by this conversation with you."

"Sir, the Catholic priesthood have always been at their duty at the bed of sickness, and sorrow, and death, among the poor and afflicted; where you, who live by their hard and slavish labor, have never been known to show your red nose."

"Red nose--ha--ha--dear me, how well bred, how admirably accomplished, and how finely polished. Red nose!"

"Faith, you did well to correct me, it is only a mulberry. Wasn't your Irish Establishment in a blessed torpor--dying like a plethoric parson after his venison or turtle, until ould Jack Wesley roused it? Then, indeed, when you saw your flocks running to barns and hedges after the black caps, and the high-cheeked disciples of sanct.i.ty and strong dinners--you yawned, rubbed your eyes, stroked your dewlaps, and waddled off to fight in your own defence against the long-winded invaders of your rounds and sirloins. Where was your love of education before that shock, my worthy Bible man? Faith, I'm peppering you!"

"Sir, if I could have antic.i.p.ated such very vulgar insolence, I would have taken some other way. Why obtrude yourself thus upon me? I trust you have no notion of personal Violence?"

"Wesley nudged you."

"Nudged us! I do not understand your slang at all, my good sir. Those who are taken from the ditch to the college, and sent back from the college with the crust of their original prejudices hardened upon them, are not those from whom educated men are to expect refinement or good manners."

"From the ditch! We are taken from humble life, proud parson, to the college; and it is better to enter college from the simplicity of humble life, than to enter the church with the rank savor of fas.h.i.+onable profligacy strong upon us. Not a bad preparation for a carnal establishment, where every temptation is presented to glut every pa.s.sion."

"You forget, sir, what a system of abomination your church was before the light of the Reformation came upon her; and what a mockery of religion she is to this day."

"Whatever I may forget, I cannot but remember the mockery of religion presented by your proud and bloated Bishops who roll in wealth, indolence, and sensuality; robbing the poor, whilst they themselves go to h--l worth hundreds of thousands. I cannot forget that your church is a market for venal and t.i.tled slaves, who are bought by the minister of the day to uphold his party--that it is a carca.s.s thrown to the wolfish, sons and brothers of the English and Irish aristocracy--and that its bishops and dignitaries exceed in pride, violence of temper, and insolence of deportment, any other cla.s.s of persons in society. Sure they have their chaplains to pray for them--but my soul to glory--those that pray by proxy will go to heaven by proxy--and so they ought.

Eh--faith I'm peppering you."

"_De te fabula narratur_. Don't you live by praying for others? What are your ma.s.ses?"

"Fabula, why, a fibula for your fabula, man alive. What is your new fangled creed, but a fabula from the beginning?"