Books: Irish Race in the Past and the Present

A >> Aug. J. Thebaud >> Irish Race in the Past and the Present

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57

As Matthew O'Connor rightly says : "The ardent zeal, the
fortitude and calm resignation of the Catholic clergy during
this direful persecution, might stand a comparison with the
constancy of Christians during the first ages of the Church. In
the season of prosperity they may have pushed their pretensions
too far"--this is M. O'Connor's private opinion of the
Confederation of Kilkenny-- "but, in the hour of trial, they
rose superior to human infirmities. . . . Sooner than abandon
their flocks altogether, they fled from the communion of men,
concealed themselves in woods and caverns, from whence they
issued, whenever the pursuit of their enemies abated, to preach
to the people, to comfort them in their afflictions, to
encourage them in their trials;. . . their haunts were objects
of indefatigable search; bloodhounds, the last device of human
cruelty, were employed for the purpose, and the same price was
set on the head of a priest as on that of a wolf."--(Irish
Catholics.)

But, the expectation that the Irish of the lower classes, bereft
of their pastors as well as of the guidance of their chieftains,
would fall a prey to proselytizing ministers, and lose at once
their nationality and their religion, was doomed to meet with
disappointment.

Perhaps the cause more effective than all others in preserving
the Irish nation from disappearing totally, came from a quarter
least expected, or rather the most improbable and wonderful.

No device seemed better calculated to succeed in Protestantizing
Ireland than the decree of Parliament which set forth that not
only the officers, but even the common soldiers of the
parliamentary army should be paid for their services, not in
money, but in land; and that the estates of the old owners
should be parcelled out and distributed among them in payment,
as well as among those who, in England, had furnished funds for
the prosecution of the war. Although many soldiers objected to
this mode of compensation, some selling for a trifle the land
allotted to them and returning to their own country, the great
majority was compelled to rest satisfied with the government
offer, and so resolved to settle down in Ireland and turn
farmers. But a serious difficulty met them: women could not be
induced to abandon their own country and go to dwell in the
sister isle, while the Irish girls, being all Catholics, a
decree of Parliament forbade the soldiers to marry them, unless
they first succeeded in converting them to Protestantism. After
many vain attempts, doubtless, the Cromwellian soldiers soon
found the impossibility of bringing the "refractory" daughters
of Erin to their way of thinking, and could find only one mode
of bridging over the difficulty--to marry them first, without
requiring then to apostatize; and secure their prize after by
swearing that their wives were the most excellent of Protestants.
Thus while perjury became an every-day occurrence, the
victorious army began to be itself vanquished by a powerful
enemy which it had scarcely calculated upon, and was utterly
unprepared to meet, and finally resting from its labors, enjoyed
the sweets of peace and the fat of the land.

But woman, once she feels her power, is exacting, and in course
of time the Cromwellian soldiers found that further sacrifices
still were required of them, which they had never counted upon.
Their wives could, by no persuasion, be induced to speak English,
so that, however it might go against the grain, the husbands
were compelled to learn Irish and speak it habitually as best
they might. Their difficulties began to multiply with their
children, when they found them learning Irish in the cradle,
irresistible in their Irish wit and humor, and lisping the
prayers and reverencing the faith they had learned at their
mothers' knees. So that, from that time to this, the posterity
of Cromwell's "Ironsides," of such of them at least as remained
in Ireland, have been devoted Catholics and ardent Irishmen.

The case was otherwise with the chief officers of the
parliamentary army, who had received large estates and could
easily obtain wives from England. They remained stanch
Protestants, and their children have continued in the religion
received with the estates which came to them from this wholesale
confiscation. But the bulk of the army, instead of helping to
form a Protestant middle class and a Protestant yeomanry, has
really helped to perpetuate the sway of the Catholic religion in
Ireland, and the feeling of nationality so marked to-day. This
very remarkable fact has been well established and very plainly
set forth, a few years ago, by eminent English reviewers.

Meanwhile, Ireland was a prey to all the evils which can afflict
a nation. Pestilence was added to the ravages of war and the
woes of transplantation, and it raged alike among the conquerors
and the conquered. Friar Morrisson's "Threnodia" reads to-day
like an exaggerated lament, the burden of which was drawn from a
vivid imagination. Yet can there be little doubt that it
scarcely presented the whole truth; an exact reproduction of all
the heart-rending scenes then daily enacted in the unfortunate
island would prove a tale as moving as ever harrowed the pitying
heart of a reader.

And all this suffering was the direct consequence of two things--
the attachment of the Irish to the Catholic religion, and their
devotion to the Stuart dynasty. Modern historians, in
considering all the circumstances, express themselves unable to
understand the constancy of this people's affection for a line
of kings from whom they had invariably experienced, not only
neglect, but positive opposition, if not treachery. In their
opinion, only the strangest obliquity of judgment can explain
such infatuation. Some call it stupidity; but the Irish people
have never been taxed with that. Even in the humblest ranks of
life among them, there exists, not only humor, but a keenness of
perception, and at times an extraordinary good sense, which is
quick to detect motives, and find out what is uppermost in the
minds of others.

There is but one reading of the riddle, consistent with the
whole character of the people: they clung to the Stuarts because
they were obedient to the precepts and duties of religion, and
labored under the belief, however mistaken, that from the
Stuarts alone could they hope for any thing like freedom. Their
spiritual rulers had insisted on the duty of sustaining at all
hazard the legitimate authority of the king, and they were
firmly convinced that they could expect from no other a
relaxation of the religious penal statutes imposed on them by
their enemies. The more frequent grew their disappointments in
the measures adopted by the sovereigns on whom they had set
their hopes, the more firmly were they convinced that their
intentions were good, but rendered futile by the men who
surrounded and coerced them.

Religion can alone explain this singular affection of the Irish
people for a race which, in reality, has caused the greatest of
their misfortunes.

The subsequent events of this strange history are in perfect
keeping with those preceding. A few words will suffice to sketch
them.

On the death of Oliver Cromwell, his son Richard, being unable
and indeed unwilling to remain at the head of the English state,
the nation, tired of the iron rule of the Protector, fearful
certainly of anarchy, and preferring the conservative measures
of monarchy to the ever-changing revolutions of a commonwealth,
recalled the son of Charles I. to the throne.

But a kind of bargain had been struck by him with those who
disposed of the crown; and he undertook and promised to disturb
as little as possible the vested interests created by the
revolution, that is to say, he pledged himself to let the
settlement of property remain as he found it. In England that
promise was productive of little mischief to the nation at large,
though fatal to the not very numerous families who had been
deprived of their estates by the Parliament. But, in Ireland, it
was a very different matter; for there the interests of the
whole nation were ousted to make room for these "vested
interests" of proprietors of scarcely ten years' standing.

The Irish nobility and gentry, at first unaware of the existence
of this bargain, were in joyful expectation that right would at
last be done them, as it was for loyalty to the father of the
new king that they had been robbed of all their possessions.
They were soon undeceived. To their surprise, they learned that
the speculators, army-officers, and soldiers already in
possession of their estates, were not to be disturbed, short as
the possession had been; and that only such lands as were yet
unappropriated should be returned to their rightful owners,
provided only they were not papists, or could prove that they
had been "innocent papists."

The consequences of this bargain are clear. The Irish of the old
native race who had been, as now appeared, so foolishly ardent
in their loyalty to the throne, were to be abandoned to the fate
to which Cromwell had consigned them, and could expect to
recover nothing of what they had so nobly lost. So flagrantly
unjust was the whole proceeding, that after a time many
Englishmen even saw the injustice of the decision, and lifted up
their voices in defence of the Irish Catholics who alone could
hope for nothing from the restoration of royalty. To put a stop
to this, the infamous "Oates" fabrication was brought forward,
which destroyed a number of English Catholic families and
stifled the voice of humanity in its efforts to befriend the
Irish race; and so sudden, universal, and lasting, was the
effect of this plot in closing the eyes of all to the claims of
the Irish, that when its chief promoter, Shaftesbury, was
dragged to the Tower and there imprisoned as a miscreant, and
Oates himself suffered a punishment too mild for his villany,
nevertheless no one thought of again taking up the cause of the
Irish natives.

It is almost impossible in these days to realize what has
occupied our attention in this chapter. The unparalleled act of
spoliation by which four-fifths of the Irish nation were
deprived of their property by Cromwell because of their devotion
to Charles I., for the alleged reason that they could not prove
a constant good affection for the English regicide Parliament,
that spoliation was ratified by the son of Charles within a few
years after the rightful owners, who had sacrificed their
property for the sake of his father, had been dispossessed,
while the parliamentarians, who by force of arms had broken down
the power of Charles and enabled the members of the Long
Parliament to try their king and bring him to the block, those
very soldiers and officers were left in possession of their ill-
gotten plunder, at a time when many of the owners were only a
few miles away in Connaught, or even inhabiting the out-houses
of their own mansions, and tilling the soil as menial servants
of Cromwell's troopers.

The case, apparently similar, which occurred in after-years, of
the French emigrant nobility, cannot be compared with the result
of this strange concession of Charles II. In fact, it may be
said that the spoliations of 1792-'93 in France would probably
never have taken place but for the successful example held up to
the eyes of the legislators of the French Republic by the
English Revolution.

As for the share which Charles II. himself bore in the measure,
it is best told by the fact that the work of spoliation was
carried on so vigorously during the reign of the "merry monarch,"
that when a few years later William of Orange came to the
throne there was no land left for him to dispose of among his
followers save the last million of acres. All the rest had been
portioned off. Well might Dr. Madden say: "The whole of Ireland
has been so thoroughly confiscated that the only exception was
that of five or six families of English blood, some of whom had
been attainted in the reign of Henry VIII., but recovered
flourished ever since. Yet did they not refuse the accessory
with the principal. Deluded men they may be called by many; but
people cannot ordinarily understand the high motives which move
men swayed only by the twofold feeling of religion and nationality.

Nothing in our opinion could better prove that the Irish were
really a nation, at the time we speak of, than the remarks just
set forth. When all minds are so unanimous, the wills so ready,
the arms so strong and well prepared to strike together, it must
be admitted that in the whole exists a common feeling, a
national will. Self-government may be wanting; it may have been
suppressed by sheer force and kept under by the most unfavorable
state of affairs, but the nation subsists and cannot fail
ultimately to rise.

In those eventful times shone forth too that characteristic
which has already been remarked upon of a true conservative
spirit and instinctive hatred for every principle which in our
days is called radical and revolutionary. Had there existed in
the Irish disposition the least inclination toward those social
and moral aberrations, productive to-day of so many and such
widespread evils, surely the period of the English Revolution
was the fitting time to call them forth, and turn them from
their steady adherence to right and order into the new channels,
toward which nations were being then hurried, and which would
really have favored for the time being their own efforts for
independence. Then would the Irish have presented to future
historians as stirring an episode of excitement and activity as
was furnished by the English and Scotch at that time, by the
French later on, and which to-day most European nations offer.

The temptation was indeed great. They saw with what success
rebellion was rewarded among the English and Scotch. They
themselves were sure to be stamped as rebels whichever side they
took; and, as was seen, Charles II. allowed his commissioners in
his act of settlement so to style them, and punish them for it--
for supporting the cause of his father against the Parliament.

Would it not have been better for them to have become once, at
least, rebels in true earnest, and reap the same advantage from
rebellion which all around them reaped? Yet did they stand proof
against the demoralizing doctrines of Scotch Covenanter and
English republican. Hume, who was openly adverse to every thing
Irish, is compelled to describe this Catholic people as "loyal
from principle, attached to regal power from religious education,
uniformly opposing popular frenzy, and zealous vindicators of
royal prerogatives."

All this was in perfect accord with their traditional spirit and
historical recollections. Revolutionary doctrines have always
been antagonistic to the Irish mind and heart. This will appear
more fully when recent times come under notice, and it may be a
surprise to some to find that, with the exception of a few
individuals, who in nowise represent the nation, the latest and
favorite theories of the world, not only on religion, science,
and philosophy, but likewise on government and the social state,
have never found open advocates among them. They, so far,
constitute the only nation untouched, as yet, by the blight
which is passing over and withering the life of modern society.
Thus, it may be said that the exiled nobility still rules in
Ireland by the recollection of the past, though there can no
longer exist a hope of reconstructing an ancient order which has
passed away forever. The prerogatives once granted to the
aristocratic classes are now disowned and repudiated on all
sides; in Ireland they would be submitted to with joy tomorrow,
could the actual descendants of the old families only make good
their claims. It must not be forgotten that the Irish nobility,
as a class, deserved well of their country, sacrificed
themselves for it when the time of sacrifice came, and therefore
it is fitting that they should live in the memory of the people
that sees their traces but finds them not. The dream of finding
rulers for the nation from among those who claim to be the
descendants of the old chieftains, is a dream and nothing more;
but, even still to many Irishmen, it is within the compass of
reality, so deeply ingrained is their conservative spirit, and
so completely, in this instance, at least, are they free from
the influx of modern ideas.

The Stuarts, then, were supported by the Irish, not merely from
religious, but also from national motives, inasmuch as that
family was descended from the line of Gaelic kings, and, however
unworthy they themselves may have been, their rights were upheld
and acknowledged against all comers. But, the Stuarts gone,
allegiance was flung to the winds.

The success of Cromwell and his republic was the doom of all
prospects of the reunion of the two islands; and the subsequent
Revolution of 1688, which commenced so soon after the death of
the Protector, left the Irish in the state in which the
struggles of four hundred years with the Plantagenets and Tudors
had placed and left them in relation to their connection with
England--a state of antagonism and mutual repulsion, wherein the
Irish nation, the victim of might, was slowly educated by
misfortune until the time should come for the open
acknowledgment of right.

CHAPTER XII.

A CENTURY OF GLOOM.--THE PENAL LAWS.

William III., of Orange, was inclined to observe, in good faith,
the articles agreed upon at the surrender of Limerick, namely,
to allow the conquered liberty of worship, citizen rights, so
much as remained to them of their property, and the means for
personal safety recognized before the departure of Sarsfield and
his men.

The lords justices even issued a proclamation commanding "all
officers and soldiers of the army and militia, and all other
persons whatsoever, to forbear to do any wrong or injury, or to
use unlawful violence to any of his Majesty's subjects, whether
of the British or Irish nation, without distinction, and that
all persons taking the oath of allegiance, and behaving
themselves according to law, should be deemed subjects under
their Majesties' protection, and be equally entitled to the
benefit of the law."--(Harris, "Life of William.")

This first proclamation not having been generally obeyed,
another was published denouncing "the utmost vengeance of the
law against the offenders;" and the author above quoted adds
that "the satisfaction given to the Irish was a source of
lasting gratitude to the person and government of William."

It is even asserted that, not only did the new monarch thus
ratify the treaty of Limerick, but that "he inserted in the
ratification a clause of the last importance to the Irish, which
had been omitted in the draught signed by the lords justices and
Sarsfield. That clause extended the benefits of the capitulation
to "all such as were under the protection of the Irish army in
the counties of Limerick, Clare, Kerry, Cork, and Mayo. A great
quantity of Catholic property depended on the insertion of this
clause in the ratification, and the English Privy Council
hesitated whether to take advantage of the omission. The honesty
of the king declared it to be a part of the articles."

The final confirmation was issued from Westminster on February
24, 1692, in the name of William and Mary.

But the party which had overcome the honest leanings of James I.,
if he ever had any, and of his son and grandson, was at this
time more powerful than ever, and could not consent to extend
the claims of justice and right to the conquered. This party was
the Ulster colony, which Cromwell's settlement had spread to the
two other provinces of Leinster and Munster, and which was
confirmed in its usurpation by the weakness of the second
Charles. The motives for the bitter animosity which caused it to
set its face against every measure involving the scantiest
justice toward its fellow-countrymen may be summed up in two
words--greed and fanaticism.

Until the time when the first of the Stuarts ascended the
English throne, all the successive spoliations of Ireland, even
the last under Elizabeth, at the end of the Geraldine war, were
made to the advantage of the English nobility. Even the younger
sons of families from Lancashire, Cheshire, and Dorsetshire, who
"planted" Munster after the ruin of the Desmonds, had noble
blood in their veins, and were consequently subject more or less
to the ordinary prejudices of feudal lords. The life of the
agriculturist and grazier was too low down in the social scale
to catch their supercilious glance. The consequence of which was,
that the Catholic tenants of Munster were left undisturbed in
their holdings. Instead of the "dues" exacted by their former
chieftains, they now paid rent to their new lords.

But the rabble let loose on the island by James I. was afflicted
with no such dainty notions as these. To supercilious glances
were substituted eyes keen as the Israelites', for the "main
chance." The new planters, intent only on profit and gain,
thought with the French peasant of an after-date, that, for
landed estate to produce its full value, "there is nothing like
the eye of a master." The Irish peasant was therefore removed
from at least one-half the farms of Ulster, and driven to live
as best he might among the Protestant lords of Munster. And in
order to have an entirely Protestant "plantation," it became
incumbent on the new owners so to frame the legislation as to
deprive the Irish Catholics of any possibility of recovering
their former possessions. Thus, laws were passed declaring null
and void all purchases made by "Irish papists."

Who has not witnessed, at some period in his life, the effect
produced on the people in his neighborhood by one avaricious but
wealthy man, intent only on increasing his property, and
profiting by the slavish labor of the poor under his control?
Who has not detested, in his inmost soul, the grinding tyranny
of the miser gloating over the hard wealth which he has wrung
from the misery and tears of all around him, and who boasts of
the cunning shrewdness, the success of which is only too visible
in the desolation that encircles him? Imagine such scenes
enacted throughout a large territory, beginning with Ulster,
spreading thence to Munster and Connaught, and finally through
the whole island, and we have an exact picture of the effects of
the Protestant "plantation." Each year, almost, of the
seventeenth century witnessed fresh swarms of these foreign
adventurers settling on the island, interrupted in their
operations only by the Confederation of Kilkenny, but
multiplying faster and faster after the destruction of that
truly national government, until at the time now under our
consideration, "Scotch thrift," as it is called, had become the
chief virtue of most of the owners of land--Scotch thrift, which
is but another name for greed.

It were easy to show, by long details, that this great
characteristic of the new "plantation" would suffice to explain
that general and terrible pauperism which has since become the
striking feature of once-happy Ireland. But only a few words can
be allowed.

It is the fanaticism of the new "planters" which will chiefly
occupy our attention. These were composed, first, of the Scotch
Presbyterians of Knox, whom James I. had dispatched, and
afterward of the ranting soldiers and officers of Cromwell's
army, more Jew than Christian, since their mouths were ever
filled with Bible texts of that particular character wherein the
wrath of God is denounced against the impious and cruel tribes
of Palestine. It is doubtful whether the ideas of God and man,
promulgated and spread among the people by Calvin and Knox, have
ever been equalled in evil consequences by the most
superstitious beliefs of ancient pagans. Let us look well at
those teachings. According to them, God is the author of evil:
he issues forth his decrees of election or reprobation,
irrespective of merit or demerit; inflicting eternal torments on
innumerable souls which never could have been saved, and for
whom the Son of God did not die. What any rational being must
consider as the most revolting cruelty and injustice, these men
called acts of pure justice executed by the hand of God. God
saves blindly those whom he saves, and takes them home to his
bosom, though reeking with the unrepented and unexpiated crimes
of their lives--unexpiable, in fact, on the part of man--merely
because they persuade themselves that they are of "the elect."

In that system, man is a mere machine, unendowed with the
slightest symptom of free-will, but inflated with the most
overbearing pride; deeming all others but those of his sect the
necessary objects of the blind wrath of God, cast off and
reprobate from all eternity in the designs of Providence; for
whom "the elect" can feel no more pity or affection than
redeemed men can for the arch-fiend himself, both being alike
redeemless and unredeemed.