Books: Irish Race in the Past and the Present

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

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It took the greater part of a century, from 1607 to 1689, to
effect the almost total disappearance of the Irish nobility. As
Colonel Myles Byrne, in his "Irish at Home and Abroad," says:
"Few facts in history are more surprising than the rapidity and
completeness of the fall of the Irish families stricken down by
the penal laws. Reduced to beggary at once, and with habits
acquired in affluence, surrounded only by contemporaries
similarly crushed, or by the despoilers revelling and rioting in
possession of their forfeited lands, friendless and unpitied,
regarded as 'suspects' from the reasons for discontent so
abundantly furnished them, they seemed struck with stupor, and
utterly incapable of any effort to rise out of the abyss into
which they had been precipitated. Dispirited, heart-broken,
unmanned, they suffered the little personal property left them
to melt away; and, on its exhaustion, were compelled to resort
to the most humiliating means to prolong existence, and to
accept for their helpless offspring the humblest condition which
promised them a maintenance. A 'trade' was the general resort
sought for the son of the chief of a clan, landholder, or
gentleman.

"This gave rise to Swift's observation to Pope: 'If you would
seek the gentry of Ireland, you must look for them on the coal-
quay or in the liberty.'

"Thus, in my youth, 'the Devoy,' the head of one of the most
powerful and distinguished of our septs, was a blacksmith, I
have often seen a mechanic, named James Dungan, who was said to
be a descendant of James Dungan, Earl of Limerick; and 'the
Chevers' (Lord Mount Leinster) was the clerk of Mrs. Byrnes, who
carried on the business of a rope-maker.

"Maddened and embittered by humiliation and suffering,
renouncing all hope of recovering their stolen lands, those
victims of 'bills of discovery,' or of confiscation, burned or
destroyed, or threw aside, as worse than useless, the records of
their former possessions, the proofs of their former
respectability, and seemed, in fact, desirous to efface all
evidence of it. I know one case in which the title-deeds of an
estate were searched for an important occasion, and in which it
appeared that they had been given to tailors to cut into strips
or measures for purposes of their trade.

"A claim was set up to a dormant peerage, and a relation of mine
having been applied to for information in support of it, he said:
'You are positively in remainder; but you are in the condition
of the descendants of many Irish families, whose great
difficulty is to prove who was their grandfather.'"

The reader is naturally struck, when the sudden appearance of
James II. on the island presents to his eyes another Irish army,
and a new Irish nation, fighting again for God and the king, but
with few of the old names among those who then appeared on the
scene. The leaders throughout the three years' struggle, which
decided the ultimate fate of the country, for the most part have
names unknown to Ireland, and unassociated with its former
history, so completely had the aristocracy of the island
perished and disappeared.

It may be well imagined, then, that, after the passage of
another century of woe such as was described in the last chapter,
it would be impossible to reconstruct the genealogies of the
old families who might be entitled to lead the rising generation.
Some few names are still advanced as entitled to the hereditary
honors of once noble families, and thus we still hear of
pretensions to title of "the O'Brien," "the O'Donaghue," and a
few others. That such pretensions are acknowledged by the
generality of the nation, it would be questionable to assert.

To think, then, of reconstructing the Irish nation out of its
former elements, as they once existed, would be an idle dream.
Those elements are dissolved and forever destroyed, and all that
the nation can do with respect to its past is to preserve in
pious remembrance the former race of men who once shed down such
a glory over Irish annals. It was a happy and patriotic thought
of the antiquarian societies of the island to investigate the
old national records; to illustrate, explain, and bring them
before the public in a language intelligible to the present
generation. It is doubtful if in any other country the
aristocracy fell with a heroism and glory so pure and unalloyed.
Among all modern nations, as was said previously, the old class
of noblemen has either passed out of sight, or is fast
disappearing from living history. Ireland, then, does not stand
alone in that respect. She was the first to lose her nobility,
and she lost it more utterly than any other nation. But in the
variety of movements, complications, revolutions, which now go
to form the daily current of events in Europe, where do we find
the nobles regarded as a power, as an element calculated to
restore or even to preserve? The "noblemen" are well enough
satisfied nowadays, if they are not persecuted, proscribed, or
destroyed; if they are enabled to take their stand amid the
crowd of men of inferior rank and share in the affairs of their
country; content to see their names once so exclusively glorious,
set on a par with those of plebeians, to lead the modernized
peoples into the new paths whither they are rapidly drifting.
Nay, so low have the mighty fallen, that even dethroned kings
and princes sometimes ask to be admitted as simple citizens in
the countries which they or their ancestors once ruled.

Here the thought will naturally occur: If the phenomenon is
universal with respect to the position allotted now to men of
"noble blood"--since it is evident that for those nations which
feel no veneration for it a future history is designed, and that
future is to be utterly independent of such an idea--then
Ireland is no worse off than any other country in that regard,
nay, the veneration for noble blood perhaps exists, in its right
sense, now in her bosom alone, and, though no longer available
for any purpose, is still an element of conservatism worthy of
preservation and far from despicable.

Therefore, when we number among false hopes the one entertained
by a few Irishmen whose thoughts still cling fondly to the past,
and who would fain reconstruct it, it is not with the intention
of treating those aspirations slightingly, which we ought to
honor and would share, were there only the faintest possibility
of calling again to life what we cannot but consider passed away
forever.

II. Let us move on to the consideration of our second delusive
hope, one of a much deeper import, which to-day of all others
occupies public attention--a separate Irish Parliament and home-
rule government.

The desire for a separate Irish Parliament is certainly a
national aspiration, it may even be called a right; for the
people of the island can justly complain of being at the mercy
of a rival nation, of which they are supposed to form a part,
and are consequently heavily taxed for the support of it without
any adequate return. The day may not be far distant when this
wish of theirs will have to be complied with, as were so many
other rights once as strenuously denied.

Nevertheless it is our opinion, and we say it advisedly, there
is no reason for believing that this would prove a universal
panacea for Ireland's woes, sure to bring health, happiness, and
prosperity to the nation, uniting in itself all blessings, all
future success, all germs of greatness; nor is there reason to
believe that with it the resurrection of the nation is assured,
as without it, it would remain dead.

To speak still more clearly--the representation of a people by
its deputies being according to modern ideas an element of free
constitution for all nations, and Ireland having for so long a
time enjoyed a privilege very similar to it under her own
national monarchs, our object cannot be understood to depreciate
a political institution which seems to have become a necessity
of the times, owing to the eager aspiration of all minds and
hearts toward it. But we think it a delusion to imagine that, by
its possession, national happiness is necessarily and fully
secured.

Whatever may be the general experience of parliamentary rule,
its record for Ireland is a sad one. The old Feis of the nation
are not here alluded to; they had very little in common with
modern Parliaments, being merely assemblies of the chief heads
of clans, to which were added in Christian times the prelates of
the Church. Neither is the "General Assembly," which was
intrusted with legislative and executive powers by the
Confederation of Kilkenny, alluded to; this could not be
reproduced to-day exactly as it then existed.

The Parliament here meant is such as presents itself at once to
the mind of a man of the nineteenth century, with its members of
both Houses elected by the people, as in America, or those of
the Upper House in the nomination of the crown; its opposing
parties often degenerating into mere factions; its views limited
to material progress, and its aims and aspirations altogether
worldly; deeply imbued with the modern ideas of liberalism, yet
knowing very little, if any thing, of true liberty; often
following the lead of a few talented members, whose real merits
are seldom an index of conscience and sense of right.

Such a liberal institution as this, which, if proposed to-day
for Ireland by the English Government, would be hailed with
unbounded joy by all ranks of people in that country, would
nevertheless be no sure harbinger of happiness to the nation,
and, to repeat what was said above, the record of such an
institution in Ireland is a sad one.

There is no need of entering upon a history of Irish Parliaments.
If an impartial and fair-minded author were to take up such a
work, it might serve to open the eyes of many, and show them
that it is after all better to rely on Divine Providence than on
such an aid to national prosperity.

Dr. Madden, in his "Connection of Ireland with England,"
conclusively shows that the right of a free and independent
Parliament similar to that of England was granted to Ireland by
King John at the very beginning of the "Conquest." Such a
Parliament was granted to the handful of Anglo-Normans, who were
already busy in building their castles for the purpose of
reducing the whole mass of the clans to feudal slavery after
having deprived them of all their free national assemblies and
customs. For nearly four hundred years the Irish Parliaments,
when not completely subjected to English control, as they
finally were by "Poyning's Act," were mere legislative machines
devised for the purpose of subduing, cowing, and finally rooting
out every thing Irish in the land. The language of Sir John
Davies was very clear on this subject.

This being such a well-known fact to-day, it seems strange that
a writer who is so well informed, so acute and discerning, and
so thoroughly Catholic, as Dr. Madden undoubtedly is, should
attach such great importance to the institution of Parliament as
first granted by the English monarchs. They had in their eye
only the small English colony settled on the island, with all
their feudal customs, and no thought of granting liberty to the
mass of the nation. The case of Molyneux, which is so often
quoted and praised by Irish writers, should be set aside and
forgotten by any man animated by a true love for Irish
prosperity. It was merely a revival of the old parties of
English by blood and English by birth, without a single thought
of the rights of Irishmen. It was a case of siding with one
English party against another, both aiming at making Ireland a
colony of England, the while the unfortunate country was crushed
between them, certain in either case to be the victim. The
native race had nothing to say or do in the matter, beyond
assisting at the spectacle of their enemies wrangling among
themselves.

The same remarks will apply to the pamphlets of Dr. Lucas, which
created so much interest at the time, and which Dr. Madden
quotes at such length. Lucas, it will be remembered, was a
violent anti-Catholic, and consequently anti-Irish partisan.

Yet the Catholic Association made all the use they could of the
arguments of Molyneux and Lucas, because these possessed some
vestige of the national spirit, inasmuch as they spoke for
Ireland, whose very name was hated by the opposite party; and at
that time the Association was perfectly right: but matters have
altered since then.

It is certainly strange that, when serious attempts were made by
Henry VIII. to introduce Protestantism into Ireland, not only
were Anglo-Irish Catholics summoned to Parliament, but even
native chieftains also, some of whom spoke nothing but Irish, so
that their speeches required translating.

But, as was previously shown, this was nothing more nor less
than a crafty device to make genuine Irishmen unconsciously
confirm, by what was called their vote, former decrees in which
the Act of Supremacy had been passed; to make it appear that
they had abjured their religion, and were now good Protestants;
and, worse still, to set in the statute-book, as acknowledged by
all, the law of spiritual supremacy vested in the king, of
abjuration of papal authority, of submission to all decrees
passed in England with the purpose of effecting an entire change
in the religion of the nation.

To such vile uses was the machinery of Parliament reduced.
Thenceforth it became an engine for the issuing of decrees of
persecution. Catholic members occasionally appeared in it when a
lull in the execution of the laws occurred, and they could take
their seats without being guilty of apostasy. But, by making
close boroughs of his Protestant colonies, James I. secured,
once for all, the majority of representatives on the side of the
Protestants, and, as a natural consequence, nothing more
grinding, sharp, piercing, and strong, could be imagined than
this engine of law called the Irish Parliament, as it existed
under the Stuarts. "Nothing" would be incorrect: there was
something worse; it came in with the Revolution of 1688, and its
results have been witnessed in a previous chapter.

Owing to the various oaths imposed upon members in the time of
William of Orange, no Catholic could any longer sit in the Irish
Parliament without abjuring his faith. And, thence-forth, the
state institution sitting in Dublin became more than ever a
persecuting and debasing power, intent only on making, altering,
improving, and enforcing laws designed for the complete
degradation of the people.

There came, however, a period of eighteen years, called "the
Rise of the Irish Nation" by Sir Jonah Barrington. It would be a
pleasure to set this down as a real exception to the whole
previous or later history of Ireland; but such pleasure cannot
be indulged in.

At the period referred to France had embraced the cause of the
North American colonies of Great Britain, and the English
vessels were not the only ones upon the seas. Large French
fleets were conveying troops to their new allies, and in 1779
the English Government sent warning to Ireland that American or
French privateers were to be expected on the Irish coast, and no
troops could be dispatched for the protection of the island.
Then arose the great volunteer movement. Every Irishman entitled
to bear arms enrolled himself in some regiment raised with the
ostensible design of opposing a hostile landing, but really
intended by the patriots to force the repeal of Poyning's Act
from England, to obtain for the Parliament in Dublin real
independence of English dictation.

The result is well known. One hundred thousand Irishmen were
soon under arms, who not only took the field as soldiers, and
formed themselves into regiments of infantry, troops of horse,
and artillery, but, strange to say, as citizens, sent delegates
to conventions, and demanded with a loud voice that England
should not only grant free trade to the sister isle, but
likewise invest the Irish Parliament with independent powers.

This political open-air contest lasted two years, and, on the
receipt of the news that the British army had capitulated at
Yorktown, and that the American War had come to a successful
termination on the side of the colonists, the Ulster volunteers
decided to hold a national convention of delegates from every
city in the province. On Friday, February 15, 1782, the meeting
took place at Dungannon, County Tyrone, and there the delegates
swore allegiance to a new and as yet unwritten charter, refusing
to acknowledge "the claim of any body of men, other than the
King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, to make laws to bind this
kingdom."

The same resolution was adopted in successive meetings of
volunteer delegates, municipal corporations, and citizens
generally, all over the island.

The English Government could not resist the pressure. After some
attempt at temporizing and delaying the concession, on April 15,
1782, by the firmness of Grattan and his supporters in the
Dublin House of Commons, the great measure was finally carried
unanimously:

"That the kingdom of Ireland is a distinct kingdom, with a
Parliament of her own, the sole legislature thereof; that there
is no body of men competent to make laws to bind the nation, but
the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, nor any Parliament
which has any authority or power of any sort whatever in this
country, save only the Parliament of Ireland; that we humbly
conceive that in this right the very essence of our liberty
exists, a right which we, on the part of all the people of
Ireland, do claim as their birthright, and which we cannot yield
but with our lives." The italics are our own.

"The news," says Sir Jonah Barrington, "soon spread through the
nation; every city, town, or village, in Ireland blazed with the
emblems of exultation, and resounded with the shouts of triumph."

Within a month the whole had been accepted by the new British
administration. "The visionary and impracticable idea had become
an accomplished fact; the splendid phantom had become a glorious
reality; the heptarchy-the old Irish constitution-had not been
restored; yet Ireland had won complete legislative independence."

Thus does the kind-hearted author of the "Rise and Fall of the
Irish Nation" commemorate the great event. It is a pity that it
so soon ended, as it deserved to end, in smoke; for the
"unanimous vote" of the Dublin House of Commons was not sincere,
but intended to exclude from the benefit of the newly-acquired
liberty the great mass of the people; that is, all Catholics,
without exception.

Already, during the volunteer excitement, Catholics had looked
on at the movement with pleasure and hope that, at least, some
relaxation of the barbarous code enacted against them might
ensue. Unable to take an active part in the movement, the laws
not allowing them to bear arms and enlist, they willingly
brought such muskets as they possessed to give to their
Protestant neighbors. When the final burst of enthusiasm came at
the news that a free and independant Parliament was to meet at
Dublin, surely they were justified in expecting that, at last,
their natural and civil rights might be restored them in an age
so enlightened. They had heard too of the success of the
American colonies in winning those rights for all in their happy
country, beyond the Atlantic; and we may be sure that not a few
of them had heard how, at the conclusion of the War of
Independence, the chief officers of the American army had gone
in state with their French allies to the Catholic Church in
Philadelphia, there to join in thanksgiving to the Almighty,
before a Catholic altar. Moreover, they had Grattan and many of
the volunteers on their side.

The all-comprehensive phrase, too, had been inserted in the
resolution so unanimously carried, and made law by the British
Government: "We humbly conceive that, in this right, the very
essence of our liberty consists, a right which we, on the part
of all the people of Ireland, do claim as their birthright, and
which we cannot yield but with our lives."

Was it possible for the originators and successful promoters of
this great change in the government of the nation to interpret
such a phrase in a restricted sense? Did not the Irish Catholics,
the great bulk of the people, form a part, at least, of "all in
Ireland?" One would imagine so: yet what followed soon after
showed the preposterousness of such an idea.

The new Parliament met; several measures favorable to the trade
and manufactures of the island had been carried; but it was soon
found that the electoral law, as it stood, failed to correspond
with the altered circumstances of the time. The legislative body
was returned by an antiquated electoral system which could not
be said to represent the nation. Boroughs and seats were openly
and literally owned by particular families or private persons;
the voting constituency sometimes not numbering more than a
dozen. As a matter of fact, less than one hundred persons owned
seats or boroughs capable of constituting a majority in the
Commons!

As everywhere else in revolutionary times, the question of
parliamentary reform was not debated in the Parliament only;
every man in the nation, each in his own sphere, took part in
the stormy contest which began to rage all over the island. The
volunteers were still in their glory. Flushed with victory, they
did not cease from their political agitations. In September,
1783, they met once more in convention at Dungannon, the
specific object of which, Dr. Madden tells us, was parliamentary
reform, and they then determined "to hold another grand national
convention of volunteer delegates in Dublin, in the month of
November following."

In that extraordinary assembly, the question of the rights of
Catholics was naturally brought up, and, to his honor be it said,
the Protestant Bishop of Derry proposed to extend the elective
franchise to them.

That some fanatics would oppose this motion was only to be
expected; and it would have caused no surprise to find the
opposition confined to a number of men of inferior station,
still deeply imbued with narrow Protestant ideas. But when the
leaders of the movement for national independence, Lord
Charlemont and Mr. Flood, appeared in the ranks of the
determined opponents of the proposition, it was cause for wonder
indeed. It was chiefly owing to the exertions and influence of
Lord Charlemont that the efforts of the revolution had been
finally turned to the side of freedom; while Flood was a greater
nationalist than Grattan himself, whose eloquence was so
memorable in the last momentous debates of the Irish House of
Commons. Flood carried his patriotism so far as to suspect the
British Government of not being sincere in its concessions, when
Grattan thought that "nothing dishonorable and disgraceful ought
to be supposed in motives until facts render them suspicious."

Nevertheless, it was Charlemont and Flood who stood firm for the
exclusion of Catholics from the franchise demanded for them by a
Protestant bishop; and Flood's plan was the one finally adopted.

In order to make a stronger impression on the public mind, a
number of delegates, who were also members of Parliament,
proceeded, on November 29th, directly from the convention to the
House of Commons, some of them dressed in their volunteer
uniforms, for the purpose of supporting the plan of Mr. Flood to
exclude the Catholics from the franchise.

In the midst of the tumult, the bill of reform failed, seventy-
seven voting for, and one hundred and fifty against it. There
was therefore no change in the Parliament, and Catholics
remained in their old position, in consequence of the blunders
of the chiefs of the volunteer movement for independence.

It is true that, at the same time, the whole volunteer movement
itself fell to the ground. From that moment it dragged on a
doomed life. "One would have thought," says Dr. Madden, "there
was national vigor in it for more than an existence of fifteen
years, and power to effect more than an ephemeral independence
which lasted only eighteen years."

But the Catholics had their eyes opened; they saw that the day
of resurrection was not yet come for them. It was not to be
brought about by any Irish Parliament. So far, therefore, we
were right in stating that the parliamentary record for Ireland
is a sad one. It should be said, however, that, from that time,
many Protestants, like the Bishop of Derry, Grattan, and others,
have always been firm in their demand for freedom to all, and
have remained the stanchest supporters of Catholic rights. What
we have hitherto called James I's Ulster colony, thus was
reduced to the Orange party; and, in that sense, the volunteer
movement was a real and permanent benefit to the country. There
is no need to mention the names of many distinguished Protestants
of our own times, whose whole life has been devoted by act, or
speech, or both, to the service of all. All honor to them!