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and I hope gentlemen who have been so hot on this occasion will reflect that the best manner in which I can show my sense of the obligation conferred on me is to repeat the words at which they have taken offence. I say if Ireland seeks to quarrel with England she is a besotted nation. I say she has not the means of trading with any nation on earth without the assistance of Great Britain, and I wish every man and every child through Ireland to hear me when I say it. I say Ireland cannot exist one hour without the support of Great Britain. When the people recover their senses, and awaken from the delusion and frenzy into which thay have been misled, if the benefits of this Bill are then within their reach, they will grasp at them. In my mind we have taken a millstone from Mr. Pitt's neck and hung it about our

own.

"I love the Irish nation too well to insult her. Her solid interests are too near my heart, and therefore I will not flatter her. When she forgets her real situation I will remind her of it. I never will insult her, but I will speak to her freely of her faults, because I have no interest in flattering her; and without regard to the gentleman's heat, or to his interruption, to which I can listen with great coolness, I shall on all occasions freely deliver my opinions to this assembly."

"1

Truer words had never been spoken in the Irish or any other Parliament, and in proportion to the truth of the language was Ireland's hatred of it. Curran insulted Fitzgibbon so grossly on his sitting down, that, according to the rules of the time, a duel had to follow.2 In the division the Government majority 1 Irish Debates, August 15, 1785.

2 The particulars of Curran's expressions are not preserved in the De

was reduced even lower than before, and the Secretary announced that the Bill would not be pressed further.

Ireland was of course in ecstasies. Out of every county came addresses of congratulation from the grand juries. Dublin was illuminated. Non-importation agreements - the now invariable resource when England was to be punished-were adopted universally. The populace was so excited with alternate exultation and rage, that the peace of the city was only preserved by patrols of soldiers. The repression of the national sentiment by these rude means was a fresh injury. The Duke of Rutland, on appearing in the theatre, was received with the Volunteers' March. He was mobbed on leaving it, and narrowly escaped personal injury.

bates. They were too discreditable, both to him and to the House which endured them. In the field, Curran fired first, and missed. Fitzgibbon was said to have aimed at him steadily; perhaps to make sure of doing him no serious harm. He also missed, and then left the ground. "It was not your fault, Mr. Attorney, if you missed me," Curran called after him. "You were deliberate enough."

CHAPTER II.

WHITEBOYS, HIGH AND LOW.

SECTION I.

THE Irish Parliament was lashing itself into madness over ideal grievances. The peasantry caught the contagion, and burst into similar fury over grievances which unhappily were only too real.

To escape the return of periodic rebellions, British authority had established in Ireland two institutions whose function was to control anarchy and to reclaim ignorance. It had established a ruling class and a teaching class, a landed gentry and a Protestant clergy of the Anglican Communion.

The landlords had been endowed with the soil which had been taken forcibly from the natural owners. The clergy had passed into possession of the ancient estates of the Church of Ireland, and of the tithes, which, inasmuch as nine tenths of the cultivators of the soil were either Catholics or Presbyterians, were wrung from the earnings of the poor of an alien faith, who were burdened besides with the maintenance of their own priests and ministers. The least that could have been expected from persons so favorably conditioned would have been an endeavor to fulfil the ends of their existence. The great persons of the Protestant laity and spirituality had contended, with individual exceptions, in a dishonorable rivalry

of neglect. The risings of the Whiteboys, the Oak Boys, and the Hearts of Steel, might have recalled the gentry to the memory of their obligations. They had used the resources of the Government to drive these poor wretches into exile or submission; and while they were themselves agitating for what they called the liberties of their country, their own land had grown daily more heavy over the victims of their oppression. Half-drowned already in extravagance, they had burdened more deeply their embarrassed estates in the Volunteer insanity. Their resource was to squeeze once more their miserable tenantry. In 1785, they had raised the rents of the potato gardens in the south and west to five and six pounds an acre. Their functions as magistrates were a jest. Duels were fought daily either by themselves or their sons under their eyes. Men and boys fought and killed each other, and there was no punishment. Young girls, children of the few industrious men of business who had saved money, were still carried off and ravished and forced into marriage. The magistrates looked on with folded hands, and gentlemen of conscience and honor were at length driven to form organizations of their own independent of the law, to protect their families from these infernal outrages.1 Their houses swarmed with younger brothers or cousins too proud to work, who called themselves gentlemen, and were entitled therefore to shoot or be

1 "Ireland," says Arthur Young in 1776, "is the only country in Europe where associations among men of fortune are necessary for apprehending ravishers. It is scarcely credible how many young women, even of late years, have been carried off and ravished, in order, as they have generally fortunes, to gain the appearance of a voluntary marriage. These actions are not committed by the class I am describing, but they are by them acquitted." Tour in Ireland, vol. ii.

shot,1 who spent their time loafing in the stables or kennels, breaking horses, or gambling on the racecourses, or lounging in the tawdry profusion of the family mansion or castle. Supported by these modern Kerne, the landlord of an estate inhabited by Catholics was a despot who knew no law but his own will.2 Resistance he punished with a cane or a horsewhip. "The justices of the peace," says Arthur Young, "are the very worst class in the kingdom." Lawless themselves, they had an affinity for their own kind. Offenders of all kinds found in them their natural protectors, and like the chiefs whom they succeeded, they sheltered themselves from the vengeance of their peasant tenants by the arm of their ruffian dependents.

Had Grattan been a true friend of Ireland, instead of clamoring for an absurd independence, he would have set himself to recall the gentry of Ireland to a recollection of the word "duty." He would have appealed to the loyal and the worthy. He would have called on England to send back the absentees, and England could not have refused. Here was work for a very Hercules; a labor worthy of a place beside the memorable twelve. To have achieved it

1 "A tradesman has not a right to the point of honor. You may refuse his challenge." Tour in Ireland, vol. ii.

2 Sir Jonah Barrington tells an anecdote of an event in his own family, which he cannot be supposed to have invented. "His grandmother, an O'Brien, had an 'antipathy' to a neighbor, a Mr. Dennis Bodkin. One day, at the midday dinner, she launched into abuse of Dennis, concluding that she wished the fellow's ears were cut off.' At supper that evening the old butler, Ned Regan, laid a snuffbox on the table before his mistress. She opened it, and there dropped out a pair of bloody ears. On a cry of horror rising, Regan said coolly, 'Sure, my lady, you wished Dennis Bodkin's ears were cut off, so I told old Gahagan, the gamekeeper, and he took a few boys with him, and brought them back, and I hope you are plased, my lady.'" Memoirs of My Own Time, vol. i. p. 46.

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