# Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775/After Limerick

AFTER LIMERICK
By ALICE EFFIE MURRAY, D.Sc.
After Limerick
1691—1774.
The period with which this paper has to deal is the saddest of the many sad periods of Irish history. Throughout the prevailing note is one of gloom; there is little relief in the way of brilliant figures or dramatic situations. It is all one long tale of wrong-doing; wrong-doing by the English, or wrong-doing by the Protestant ascendancy. For this three quarters of a century the history of Ireland is little more than a history of political dependence, commercial restrictions, administrative corruption, and religious persecution. We see at work a long train of causes blighting the prosperity, crushing the genius, and degrading the character of the Irish people, and we realize clearly all those forces which were inevitably leading them into a hatred of England and distrust of the law.
From one point of view the revolution of 1689 may be regarded as the final conquest of Ireland by the English. It was, from the standpoint of the Irish, not a struggle between two dynasties, ​or between loyalists and rebels, but the last desperate fight between two hostile races and religions. Legally speaking the Irish were supporting their lawful sovereign; practically they were striking a blow for their country's freedom. But the attempt, like all others, failed, and Ireland had again to yield to the superior force of England.
Now, this final conquest of Ireland gave to England an unique opportunity. It was in her power to lead Ireland forward in the path of English culture and civilization, to unite into one nation the two races of English and Irish, to develop the wealth of Ireland, and make her people loyal supporters of the empire. Perhaps such a policy on the part of England was too much to expect at such a time of bigotry and race hatred, when all the most evil passions in men's natures had just been awakened. Certainly it was not the policy pursued by England, and for the whole of this period Ireland was treated partly as a conquered country, partly as a colonial dependency. Her industry and commerce were suppressed and hampered in the interests of English manufacturers; her finances were manipulated in order to put as much as possible into the pockets of Englishmen; the most lucrative posts in the Irish Government, Church, and Army, ​were given to Englishmen who lived most of their lives out of Ireland; in fact, Ireland was regarded as the happy hunting-ground of English adventurers and courtiers, of king's favourites, and all sorts of scandalous persons, of every Englishman who had come to the end of his resources and wanted a lift in life. Never had any country a more complete control over the destinies of another than had England over the destinies of Ireland during the greater part of the eighteenth century. The confiscations of Irish land which disorganised all social conditions, the commercial legislation which ruined Ireland's chance of becoming a rich industrial nation, the financial corruption and misapplication of patronage, were all the direct work of the English Parliament or of the English Government. It is true that the blame of the Penal Laws rests in the first instance on the Irish Parliament, but this Parliament, after 1691, was wholly subservient to England; it was merely an institution for registering the edicts of the English Privy Council, and can, therefore, not be regarded as having pursued any independent policy. The resources of Ireland, both in her land and in the characteristics of her people, were great. That they were nearly completely wasted was due to a long series of causes produced in the first instance by ​English policy and aggravated by the peculiar conditions which prevailed in Ireland. And England's policy besides being extremely disastrous to Ireland, was certainly not beneficial to herself. In the years following the revolution she lost her best chance of drawing the two kingdoms more closely together in sympathy and interest, and the chance once gone never came back.
But the whole policy of England towards Ireland after 1691 can naturally not be judged from a modern standpoint; it can only be judged in the light of the prevailing theories and ideas of the age. It was a period of intense class and national egotism; it was a time when the interests of the mass of the people were sacrificed as a matter of course to the desires of the ruling class and the interests of subordinate parts of an empire to those of the centre; it was a period when religious toleration was still regarded as impracticable. Now, in restricting Irish trade and industry, England only followed the example of every European country which possessed dependencies, and in spite of constitutional theories Ireland was to all intents and purposes a dependency. After the Restoration both Ireland and Scotland had come to be looked upon in the same light as the new possessions in America. ​They were regarded from that time as colonies, at least from a commercial point of view, and the theory which regulated the economic relations which should exist between a mother country and her colonies was applied to them. This theory was the absolute subserviency of the colony to the mother country; the dependency was simply looked upon as an estate to be worked for the advantage of its possessor. No colony was allowed to supply the mother country with manufactured goods, but only with raw products and precious metals. It must not trade with foreign countries, but only with the mother country. In so far, indeed, as the trade of the colonies did not conflict with that of the mother country, it was to be encouraged, as on the whole tending towards the general wealth; but directly the interests of the colonies conflicted with those of the mother country they were to be put on one side. And in general interests did conflict, and the colonies suffered.
But after the revolution the general theoretical reasons for interfering with Irish trade and industry were reinforced by special reasons only applicable to Ireland, and due to the difficulties and dangers with which England was confronted at that time. If we are to understand the history of Ireland after 1691, we must look at the ​situation in which England found herself. At this time England was engaged in a great military struggle with France, and it was to her of the utmost importance that her available sources of revenue should not be impaired. Ireland was a country of comparatively small industrial development, and to English statesmen it did not seem particularly harsh to endeavour to direct her trade and industry into those channels in which they could not interfere with the existing industries in the mother country. Industries were being fostered in England to get wealth; this wealth was needed to fight France and the forces of Catholicism. And after all we need only consider the history of Europe during the years directly succeeding the revolution in order to understand this dislike and suspicion of Roman Catholicism.
But there were still further reasons for interfering in Ireland. It was not only jealousy of Ireland which influenced the English legislature and English statesmen in their policy; it was partly also jealousy and fear of the English Crown. To the Englishmen of that day experience seemed to show that Irish prosperity was dangerous to English liberty. Under Strafford in the reign of Charles I., and under Ormond in the reign of James II., something had been done to ​develop the existing resources of Ireland, and each time the King had been able to raise forces and supplies in the country with which he had tried to stamp out the constitutional rights of England. One difficulty was that Ireland was a separate kingdom and that the English Parliament had legally no direct authority over her. Another difficulty was that the greater part of the Irish revenue was vested in the King and his successors for ever, and completely out of the control of both the English and the Irish Parliaments. Any increase in Irish wealth necessitated an increase in the King's hereditary revenue, and therefore rendered him more independent of the English legislature. It was all this which made England nervously anxious to restrict Irish resources in all those directions which might even indirectly interfere with the growth of English power.
The religion of the mass of the Irish people naturally complicated matters still further and gave England fresh political reasons for interfering in Ireland. There was always a curious fear haunting the legislature that the Irish Catholics might support the Pretender, and this fear continued to exist long after the reasons for it had died away. English statesmen deliberately set themselves to hunt down and persecute all ​those who professed the religion of their forefathers, mainly because this religion seemed to them fraught with all sorts of political dangers and to be a source of treason and disaffection. As for the Irish Protestants, England felt no particular jealousy towards them, for they were as zealous in their support of the new dynasty and the new order of things as any Englishman in England. And so the task which English statesmen professedly set themselves after the revolution was to foster the Protestant interest in Ireland in all those directions in which it did not interfere with the wealth and power of England. This task, however, was never really set about in earnest, and it was not long before the interests of the Irish Protestants were lost sight of almost as completely as those of the Irish Catholics had already been, and Ireland was administered solely in the interests of England herself.
Now, these views of contemporary Englishmen give us a simple enough explanation of the peculiar policy adopted by England towards Ireland during this period. The general theoretical reasons which led England to place restrictions not only on the trade of Ireland, but also on that of Scotland and the American colonies were reinforced by special political and religious reasons ​only applicable to the policy of England towards Ireland. And it was undoubtedly Ireland which suffered most of all from the policy of the age, for her peculiar situation, geographical, industrial, and political, made her liable to be greatly affected by English commercial legislation. Scotland had an independent Parliament which made itself so troublesome that England was glad to procure a union. The American colonies had huge industrial resources, which no amount of restrictive statutes could ever counteract, while the fact that their economic development proceeded on lines mainly different from those of England shielded them to some extent from the jealous fears of English traders. But matters were otherwise in Ireland. The unfortunate island lay near to the English coast, and her industrial resources were very similar to those of England. Nearly every occupation which could be successfully pursued in Ireland seemed to be one also suited to England, and, therefore, one in which the English Government and people would brook no competition. Just because Ireland's economic resources were so similar to those of England, the theories and ideas of the age prevented her from developing them. And at the same time the weakness of her Parliament hindered her from retaliating by ​means of laying heavy duties on English goods imported into the country. The Irish legislature was now, as has been said, entirely dependent on England, and its strength had been greatly weakened by the exclusion of the Catholics. It was, therefore, an alien rule in the midst of an alien population, for it consisted only of representatives of the ruling caste. And in addition, the English Parliament did not scruple to pass laws affecting Ireland, although the legality of such laws was very doubtful.
Such were the general and special causes which made Ireland feel so keenly the practical results of the commercial ideas of the age. But the consequent poverty and backwardness of the country were intensified by glaring financial abuses and political corruption, while the Penal Laws crushed the life out of the people and drove their natural leaders into exile. The whole policy of England, whether commercial, political, or religious, aimed at keeping Ireland poor, divided, and humiliated. The financial policy pursued towards Ireland by England was even more short-sighted than her commercial policy, and it had not the same important reasons to justify it. As for the religious policy of persecuting the Irish Catholics, it seems to have been prompted in the first instance by political rather ​than religious reasons. But the political reasons, if they ever indeed existed, soon disappeared, and the laws remained. At the same time England, from her own standpoint, acted foolishly by splitting the Protestant body, through refusing to tolerate any but one form of Protestantism.
The condition of Ireland after 1691 was, of course, miserable in the extreme. All the evils of oppression and tyranny, which had existed in the country after the Cromwellian wars again sprang into life. The Articles of Limerick had held out some hopes of treating the Catholics fairly, and William seems to have been possessed of a genuine spirit of toleration. But English prejudice and the fears of the more recent Protestant colonists in Ireland proved too strong for him, and from 1695 to 1710 the English Parliament and the ascendancy party in the English legislature were busy in creating and elaborating their Penal Laws against the Catholics. Most of the Roman Catholic gentry who had kept their estates after the Act of Settlement, or who had been reinstated by James II., were dispossessed, while the few who were allowed to retain their lands were stripped of all political and many civil rights, and left completely at the mercy of their Protestant enemies. The result was that ​much of the best blood and the most energetic spirits of the nation went into voluntary exile. Those native Irish or Anglo-Irish Catholics who remained in the country could hardly feel much loyalty towards the English Crown. To them, smarting with indignation at the loss of their lands, embittered by years of savage warfare, the English Crown could seem nothing more than a shadowy supporter of the English colonists who now appeared to have the unhappy country at their mercy. There were, in fact, two nations in Ireland, one with all the wealth and political power, the other poor and humiliated, without rights or privileges or freedom of conscience.
But rapidly ensuing events showed that the Irish Protestants were to gain little from their position of seeming authority, and it was not long before they, as well as the Catholics, were to feel the heavy hand of England crushing out their prosperity. With her accustomed capacity for recuperation, Ireland began, industrially speaking, to recover extremely rapidly from the effects of the revolutionary war. The years 1696, 1697, and 1698, were comparatively prosperous, and this new prosperity was partly due to the growth of an Irish woollen manufacture. English weavers had lately emigrated to Ireland, tempted ​by the cheapness of living and labour, and had set up improved woollen manufactures. So, not only the coarser Irish stuffs were made, but all sorts of cloth. The industry spread greatly among the Irish Protestants, and to a smaller extent among the Catholics. In 1698 the woollen manufacture gave work to 12,000 Protestant families in Dublin, and 30,000 over the rest of the country, while we know from petitions presented to the Irish Parliament that the Catholics had one third of the industry in their hands. Altogether Ireland for the first time possessed a fairly flourishing industry. A foreign trade in woollen goods was establishing itself; there was no earthly reason why Ireland like England before her, should not grow rich by means of this industry. Time would give the necessary skill and capital for extending it on a large scale. Irish wool was capable of any increase, and was at this time equal to the best Leicestershire or Northamptonshire wool. But just at this point in the development of the industry, the jealous fears of English traders began to be aroused. Petitions were sent up from various woollen manufacturers to the English Parliament stating that their trade would be ruined unless the woollen industry in Ireland were suppressed, and expressing a fear that it would soon be ​impossible for them to get enough raw wool for their own purposes from Ireland. In consequence of these petitions the Irish Parliament was made to pass an Act imposing very heavy duties on the exportation of woollen manufactures from Ireland. But this Irish Act of 1698 proved to be merely a preliminary step in the process of crushing out Ireland’s woollen industry. England wished to shut out Ireland completely and finally from foreign markets, and she believed that nothing short of actual prohibition would do this. So in 1699 the English Parliament passed its first great Act restricting Ireland’s foreign trade. This Act prohibited perpetually the exportation from Ireland of all goods made or mixed with wool, except to England or Wales with the license of the Commissioners of the revenue. But as the duties equal to a prohibition which had been laid by a previous English Act on the importation of Irish woollen goods were retained, Ireland had no outlet whatever for her woollen manufactures. She was absolutely restricted to her home trade, and when we consider that English woollen goods were allowed into the country on payment of a small duty, and that the poverty of Ireland prevented the growth of a large home demand for any but the very coarsest stuffs; when we also consider that restrictions ​on the exportation of any article must discourage its manufacture for home uses, we are able to realise the full extent of the injury inflicted on Ireland by this policy. England, indeed, herself suffered from the measure, for it produced two results both injurious to herself. The first was a large clandestine exportation of Irish raw wool to France and other countries, the one thing English legislation had for years been trying to prevent. The other result was the emigration of Irish weavers to the Continent. Irish Protestant weavers did much to establish new woollen manufactures in Germany and Holland, and were even welcomed by Louis XIV., while the Catholic weavers settled in Spain. Almost immediately after this time England began to find herself rivalled in her staple industry by foreign nations, for these countries could now get an indefinite quantity of good Irish wool which hitherto they had badly needed, and they were also being taught new methods of manufacture by Insh weavers.
But although the interference of England with the Irish woollen trade proved injurious to herself, it proved much more injurious to Ireland. The emigration of so many skilled artisans was a real disadvantage to the country. The English Act of 1699 did not destroy the Irish woollen ​industry, for the Irish managed to supply the greater part of their own wants all through the eighteenth century. But it did ruin for ever Ireland’s chance of becoming rich through a great woollen manufacture. Once the foreign trade was lost there was little encouragement to make the better kinds of cloth. There was little demand for them in Ireland, and what demand there was could be met by English manufacturers who had easy access to the Irish markets while secure in their own from all Irish industry. So Irish manufacturers devoted themselves to making coarse stuffs such as were used by the majority of the people. Their skill naturally declined, the profits of the manufacturers were small owing to the poverty of the country, and as time went on the quality of Irish wool inevitably deteriorated. When the Irish were once more allowed, at the end of 1779, to export their woollen manufactures, it was found that Irish wool instead of being equal to English wool, was only capable of being made up into the very coarsest stuffs. In 1780 Ireland found it impossible to start at the point at which she had left off in 1698. Foreign markets did not offer the old advantages; there was little skill among Irish weavers, and little more capital employed in the industry. Like the Dutch two centuries ​previously, the Irish having once lost their foreign trade, could not regain it.
The severe restrictions placed by England on the Irish woollen manufacture proved, perhaps, more disastrous to Ireland than any one of the other and numerous restraints placed on Irish trade and industry. But when we take all these other restrictions together, they form such an appalling summary of restrictive legislation that it becomes almost a matter of surprise how Ireland managed to preserve any industrial life at all. In her commercial policy towards Ireland England aimed at securing herself from all Irish rivalry in foreign and Plantation markets, at excluding all Irish manufacturers from her own market, and at obtaining for herself a monopoly of sale in the Irish market. Her policy with regard to the Irish glass manufacture well shows these aims. In the middle of George the Second's reign Ireland was forbidden to export her glass to any country whatever, and at the same time she was prohibited from importing any glass not of British manufacture. Great Britain thus destroyed the Irish export trade in glass while securing for herself a monopoly of sale in the Irish market. The Irish brewing industry was also crushed by English legislation. The English exported beer and malt in large ​quantities to Ireland on payment of the usual small Irish duty of ten per cent., while they prevented the Irish from exporting beer or malt to them by means of import duties equal to a prohibition. In another way, too, England took care that Irish breweries should not compete with British. Hops could not very well be grown in Ireland, for they were too uncertain a crop for the small capitalist who engaged in farming. The British Act which laid down that no hops should be imported into Ireland except from Great Britain, in British ships, and being of British growth, left Ireland at the mercy of the British hop growers for one of the necessaries of life. In many other ways Irish manufacturers were left at the mercy of England for their raw material, and forced to pay higher prices than they need otherwise have done. Again, restraints were placed on every Irish industry which might possibly compete with the corresponding British industry, and indeed on those industries which could not possibly enter into such a competition. By these means the Irish cotton and silk industries dwindled and decayed no less than the woollen and glass manufactures. In other cases England tried to secure exclusively for herself Irish raw materials by forbidding Ireland to export such materials, or by discouraging the ​working up of them at home. Finally, the Navigation Laws, shut Ireland off from direct trade with the English Plantations. These laws checked the growth of Irish shipping and placed the Irish carrying trade in the hands of British traders. Always only English wealth was considered; that of Ireland was a matter of indifference to English statesmen as long as they were able to get sufficient contributions from her people towards the expenses of England's wars. England only wanted raw material from Ireland, and, with the single exception of some kinds of linen, discouraged the importation of all Irish manufactures, while taking care that the Irish markets should be open to all British goods.
This restrictive policy of England in regard to Irish trade and industry fell in the first instance more heavily upon the Irish Protestants than upon the Catholics. In the years directly succeeding the revolution the greater part of the trade of the country was in the hands of the Protestants, for the Catholics were too poverty-stricken and miserable to be capable of much industrial enterprise. But later on things changed. Many of the more well-to-do Catholics took to trade, debarred as they were by the Penal Laws from making any profit out of land, while the rapid and continuous emigration of the ​Protestants from the North naturally threw the industry of the country more into Catholic hands. Both Protestants and Catholics were in fact injured by English commercial policy, and this policy left in Ireland marks which the lapse of well over a century have not effaced.
During the whole of this period Ireland was exceedingly poor, and this poverty was put down by contemporaries to two causes; first of all to the commercial restrictions which have just been mentioned; secondly, to the financial abuses which existed in the country. If we add to these the action of the Penal Laws, which discouraged all thrift and industry and brought the people into violent antagonism to the law, we have the chief causes which made the Ireland of the eighteenth century what she was.
From the beginning of the century the revenue of Ireland fell and remained very low for a considerable time. This was due to a decrease in the yield from customs and excise, the result, of course, of England's commercial legislation. In consequence, the Irish Government was in continual financial difficulties. On certain occasions the Government was nearly bankrupt, and from 1715 the national debt began to be an important feature in the national finances. It is true that according to our modern ideas this debt was very ​small indeed, but it was looked upon with horror by the Irish Parliament of the day, and that this should have been so goes some way to prove the country's poverty. The sums raised in taxes in Ireland were certainly small as far as actual amounts went, and compared with the large sums which were being paid by British taxpayers, but they seem to have been as much as could reasonably have been got from the Irish people. But we have of course to look beyond the actual money raised and into the whole question of Irish administration and expenditure if we wish to see whether Ireland was lightly or heavily taxed. A great part of the Irish revenue went in salaries and pensions to persons who hardly ever set foot in Ireland, while the vicious habit of keeping all remunerative posts in the Government, Church, and Army in the hands of Englishmen, many of whom were absentees, acted like a huge tax on the Irish people. A great part of the money paid by Ireland went to uses which corrupted and degraded the country. The financial abuses of the eighteenth century in the shape of pensions to King's favourites and sinecure offices of all kinds, ground the people down by unnecesary taxes, or taxes which might have been spent for useful purposes, and they perverted the morals of the upper class of Irishmen.
​All through the eighteenth century the pension list swelled, and whenever the King wished to give a pension to a particularly scandalous person he granted it on the Irish establishment, well knowing that the Irish Parliament could do little, while the English legislature would never have allowed such pensions to be placed on the English establishment. During the first half of the century many Irish offices were in deputation, and Archbishop King tells us that a regiment was often commanded by a lieutenant, all superior officers being absent in England. An immense number of Irish offices were given to English politicians, most of them absolute sinecures. In the Irish Church matters were no better. Every Lord Primate during the eighteenth century was an Englishman, the majority of the bishops were also Englishmen, while all the most lucrative benefices were given to Englishmen as a matter of course. Every English bishop who came over to Ireland had friends or relations to be provided for. Archbishop King, who was an Irishman, and one of the few patriotic and enlightened Protestant churchmen of the day, was loud in his denunciations of this policy. "The Bishop of Derry," he writes in 1725, "since his translation to that See, has given about £2000 in Benefices to his English Friends and Relations, Lord ​Primate hath had two Livings vacant since his translation, one he has given of £200 a year to one of the Walton Blacks, whom he since ordained Priest, and the other to one Mr. Blennerhasset, whom they commonly call an Hottentot … the Bishop of Waterford has not only given all Livings of value in his Gift to his Brothers and Relations, but likewise his Vicar-Generalship and Registry, tho' none of them reside in the kingdom."
This scandalous state of affairs was the natural consequence of giving the high offices of the Irish Church to Englishmen. Many persons thought that this policy was necessary for the peace of Ireland in order to secure a preponderance of English influence in the House of Lords. But it had a ruinous effect on the Irish Church, for it rendered it absolutely anti-national. Many of the bishops were absentees, and were persons who would never have been tolerated in England. Digby, who was Bishop of Elphin from 1691-1700, owed his promotion to his great skill in water colours, "by which," we are told, "he recommended himself to men in power and to ladies and so was early made a Bishop." Pooley, who was Bishop of Raphoe from 1702 to 1712, only resided eighteen months out of the whole of these ten years. Fitzgerald, who was ​Bishop of Clontarf for more than thirty years was for a long time an imbecile, and his diocese was scandalously managed by a young woman of twenty, whom he had married. Many of the Irish prelates doffed their ecclesiastical character and seem to have been chiefly distinguished for their great drinking powers. "A true Irish bishop," said Archbishop Boulter, with fine irony, "has nothing more to do than to eat, drink, grow fat, rich, and die."
And so the Irish Protestants, no less than the Irish Catholics, were excluded from the highest offices in the service of their country, and in consequence gentlemen were in great distress what to do with their sons. The curse of absenteeism, which lay heavily upon Ireland was thus intensified. Those Englishmen who held sinecure offices in Ireland were absentees as a matter of course, while many of those who held important Irish posts lived in England during a great part of their term of office. But as time went on, more and more of the Irish Protestant gentry became absentees. It was difficult for an Irishman to rise to a high position in the service of Government, and so the position of the Irish landlord possessed little attraction. The evils of absenteeism can hardly be exaggerated. It was a tremendous drain to a poor country to have ​at least one-third of its total rental sent away to England; but there were worse evils than this. The Irish landlord who went to England let his land at a long lease to a large tenant, and this man raised his landlord's rent and a profit to himself by means of subletting. The tenants were thus under a man of inferior stamp, who had no direct interest in the soil, and whose uncompromising Protestantism was not softened and fined down by education and culture. As the demand for land increased and its profits rose, the head tenant often became an absentee himself and sublet his whole tenancy at an increased rent. This process continued until there were often two or three people between the landlord and the occupier of the soil.
Several times the Irish Parliament tried to check absenteeism by imposing a tax on the pensions, rents, or profits of employment of persons residing in England and drawing their money from Ireland. But these efforts were generally defeated or rendered nugatory by English influence. It was a great misfortune for Ireland during this period that the Irish Parliament was so dependent on England. The system of government by a weak Parliament and powerful ministers with the whole force of patronage at their disposal could have resulted in nothing but ​financial corruption and abuse. In England, where the House of Commons was really powerful, it was often hard enough to resist the influence of the Crown and ministers; in Ireland it was impossible. Very often, indeed, the Irish Commons made a good fight, and on a few occasions they made themselves so tiresome that Government thought it wiser policy to retire from its position. But, as a rule, the direct efforts of the Irish Commons to thwart Government were unsuccessful, and they had to submit to see the pension list swell and the most lucrative offices given to Englishmen resident in England. The Irish Parliament had to content itself with interfering indirectly whenever it seemed possible to obtain an advantage, and it is certain that the terrible abuses connected with expenditure would have been still more widespread, had it not been for this policy of the legislature. It is hardly necessary to observe that during the first part of this period, the members of the Irish House of Commons were not always animated with a sense of patriotism; but they were animated with a sense of the humiliation of their position and with a rapidly growing resentment at their want of financial control. Later on this feeling of patriotism came, and when we reflect on the constitution of ​the Irish Parliament—how it represented an extremely small minority of the Irish people, how it was cut off from the mass of the people by the great gulf of religion, and how over one half of its members were nominated by individual borough owners—it is a real matter of surprise that anything like a feeling of nationality should have arisen, and that the Irish Parliament should even faintly have reflected public opinion. That this should have been the case was directly due to English financial and administrative policy, which was resented bitterly by the whole body of the Protestant gentry. The members of this class who still lived in Ireland were not all directly touched by the restrictions placed on Irish trade and industry, but they were all touched by the fact that they could not get profitable employments for themselves or their sons, while they objected strongly to seeing the taxes they paid going into the pockets of disreputable persons of both sexes. It was this misguided policy on the part of England which did so much to foster the new national spirit among the Protestant gentry, a spirit voiced for the first time by Molyneux, taken up in his satirical and narrow way by Swift, and emphasised by Lucas, until in the last quarter of the eighteenth century patriotic Protestants were ​nearly as completely alienated from England as were their Catholic fellow-subjects. Through community of grievances Irish Protestants and Catholics began to be drawn more closely together. Towards the end of the century we see a disinclination on the part of the Protestants to enforce the Penal Laws, and it must be remembered that it was an Irish Protestant Parliament which took the first steps towards alleviating the condition of the Catholics. The time was soon to come when the whole Irish people, regardless of race and creed, were to unite together in resistance to English oppression and spoliation.
But of the whole body of Irish Protestants it was the Ulster Presbyterians who suffered most. There is no doubt that the restraints on Irish commerce and industry affected this class more than any other. From the very beginning of the eighteenth century, after the restrictions on the woollen trade, there was a great and continuous emigration of Protestants from the North of Ireland to America and the West Indies. The sturdy Protestant settlers of Ulster simply refused to submit to the new conditions of living in the country, and preferred emigration. Between 1725 and 1728 alone 4,200 men, women, and children were shipped off to the West Indies, over 3,000 of them going in the summer of ​1728. There had been three successive bad harvests, and in consequence great distress everywhere. The scarcity and high price of corn was felt more especially in Ulster where the standard of comfort was higher, and this helped forward the tide of emigration. Many of the Presbyterians who emigrated to the West Indies were shipwrecked or died of famine when they landed. Those who went to the American colonies fared better. They generally landed in Pennsylvania. and from there some of them migrated to Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. The refusal to tolerate any but the Episcopalian form of worship supplied another powerful motive in urging these Ulster Presbyterians to leave their country and emigrate to America. The Irish Dissenters were shut off from all political rights. In the Anti-Popery Bill of 1704 the sacramental test was inserted, and this, of course, excluded the Dissenters as well as the Catholics from municipal office. In 1713 the provisions of the Schism Act were extended to Ireland, and so no Dissenter could be a schoolmaster, while the Toleration Act, which was passed in England in 16089, allowing freedom of worship to Dissenters, was never extended to Ireland. The Presbyterians formed the bulk of the Ulster settlers; they were the most thrifty and industrious of the ​Protestants, and had they been allowed, might have done much to increase the material wealth of the country, and would have been a real support to the English Government. But the shortsighted policy of England shut them out from all civil and municipal offices, hampered their trade and industry, and refused to allow them freedom of worship. It was one thing to refuse to tolerate Dissent in England; it was quite another to refuse to do so in Ireland, where any splitting of the Protestant body was a source of serious political danger to England. By her refusal to tolerate any but one form of Protestantism, England drove the most energetic and enterprising of the Protestants into exile, she prevented the growth of a large and wealthy Protestant population, and she made the Presbyterians hate English rule. It was these ScotchIrish from Ulster who settled principally in the New England States, as well as in the southern colonies, who, later on, proved to be the very life and soul of the American struggle for liberty.
Still, great as were the injuries inflicted on the Irish Dissenters, they were as nothing compared to the sufferings endured by the Irish Catholics. The consequence was that from 1691 all through the first half of the eighteenth century, Catholic Ireland underwent a steady process of depletion. ​The 14,000 Irish soldiers who surrendered at Limerick formed the nucleus of the famous Irish Brigade in the service of France, and after the Penal Laws were enacted in all their severity great numbers of Catholic gentry left their country in despair to serve in the armies of France, Spain, and the Empire. A great part of the energy and ability of Catholic Ireland were employed in foreign lands. We are told by the Abbé McGeoghegan that between 1691 and 1745, when the famous battle of Fontenoy took place, no less than 450,000 Irishmen fell in action in the service of France.. Spain had five Irish regiments, and as late as 1760 there was one in the service of Naples. The Austrian army was crowded with Irish officers and soldiers. Between the Revolution and the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle there was scarcely a siege or a battle in Europe in which Irish troops did not take a part, and there was hardly a Catholic country in which Irishmen did not hold high posts. At Fontenoy the Irish formed the greater part of the column whose final charge broke the English ranks. It was the Irish troops who saved Cremona from surrender when it was surprised by Eugene. Sarsfield fought at Steinkirk, and finished his splendid career in the arms of victory at Landen. Irish troops shared the French ​disasters at Blenheim, Ramilles, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet. Browne, an Irishman, was one of the ablest generals in the Austrian service; several of the Dillons attained high rank in the French army; Maguire, Lacy, Nugent, and O'Donnell were all prominent generals in the Austrian service, while the names of many Spanish generals attest the Irish nationality of their owners. It is in the military history of Europe that we get the true history of the Irish Catholic gentry, and that we see those brilliant figures and events which are so conspicuously lacking in the history of the Irish Catholics in their own country. The Catholic gentry who remained at home became impoverished and disheartened by religious persecution. The Catholics, as a body, suffered more from the Penal Laws than from anything else. The Penal Code educated the Irish into a hatred of England and the law, robbed them of their natural leaders, denied them education, position, and fame, and tried to deny them industrial pursuits and wealth. At the same time these Laws prevented amalgamation with the Protestants, and reduced the bulk of the Irish people to a depth of ignorance and poverty which has seldom been equalled. and probably never surpassed.
Two Acts in 1695 inaugurated the Penal ​era, one "An Act for the better securing the Government by disarming Papists," the other "An Act to restrain Foreign Education." By the former Act every Papist was bound before the 1st of March next following to deliver up all arms to a justice of the peace or some other proper authority. People suspected of concealing arms could be searched and examined on oath, and all persons who refused to deliver up their arms, or who resisted search or examination were liable to heavy penalties; a heavy fine or imprisonment for the first offence, and "præmunire" for the second. Any Papist exercising the trade of gunmaker was liable to a penalty of £20, and any gunmaker employing a Popish apprentice was liable to a similar penalty. Another section of the Act provided that no Papist should keep any horse over 45 in value. Any Protestant who discovered that a Papist kept such a horse, could go before two justices and swear to his discovery on oath. He might then go with a constable to search for the horse in daytime, and was at liberty to break open doors in case of opposition. If he found the horse he was free to purchase it on paying five guineas to its owner. Any Papist who concealed a horse over the value of £5 was liable to be imprisoned for three months and to pay a fine ​equal to three times the real value of the horse. Papists were held to be all persons who refused to take the prescribed oaths of Allegiance and Abjuration, and Declaration against Transubstantiation.
The second Act laid down that anyone who went himself or sent anyone beyond the sea to be trained up in Popery, or who sent over money for the support of any religious house and was convicted thereof, should be deprived of all civil rights. It was further enacted that no Papist should teach in a school publicly, or teach in private houses except the children of the family, under a penalty of £20 and three months' imprisonment for each offence.
Two other Acts of the Irish Parliament during this same year, although not under the head of the Popery Acts, may be cited as showing the feeling of the ascendancy towards the poorer Catholics, and the growing spirit of religious persecution. The first of these Acts was aimed at the holy days of the national Church, for it laid down that all hired labourers or servants who refused to work for the usual wages on any day other than one of those appointed by the Act to be kept holy, should be fined two shillings, and if they could not pay this fine they were to be publicly whipped. The other Act was "An ​Act for the better observation of the Lord's Day, commonly called Sunday," and it was aimed at suppressing the old sports and pastimes of the people on Sundays. Hurling, football, cudgells, and other pastimes on the Sabbath were forbidden under a penalty of twelve pence, or two hours in the stocks. These two Acts were suggested by the same spirit as prompted the Penal Laws proper, and they infringed in the same way the personal and religious liberty of the people.
During the next few years the Penal Code received its most important additions. So far the Articles of Limerick had only been partially repudiated; now they were to be set aside altogether. The Articles had provided that Papists should enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as were consistent with the laws of the kingdom, or as they did enjoy in the reign of Charles II. But now, in 1697, an Act was passed for banishing all Papists exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and all regulars of the Popish clergy out of Ireland. The idea of this Act was to keep out all the religious orders and sanction only the secular priests. These secular priests were in time expected to die out, for, as no bishops were to be allowed to remain in the country, or to come into it, no new priests could ​be consecrated. Such an Act, although it might succeed in England and Wales, as indeed it eventually did, could never be successful in Ireland, where circumstances were utterly different, and later on the Act had to be extended and elaborated in the hopes of making it more effective.
In the same year an Act was passed to prevent Protestants intermarrying with Papists. Any Protestant woman being heir to or possessed of any estate in land, or possessed of £500 of personal property, who married without a certificate from the proper authority to the effect that her husband was known to be a Protestant, was to be held dead in law, and her property was to go to the next of Protestant kin. A Protestant marrying a Popish wife without a certificate, was deemed a Papist, and lost all his civil rights.
The next year, 1698, an Act was passed to prevent Papists being solicitors. No one could act as a solicitor without taking the prescribed oaths; if he did he was liable to a fine of £100 to the prosecution, and to the loss of certain civil rights. In 1699 the English Parliament passed one of the most savage Acts in the Penal Code, and the era of priest-hunting began. The Act provided that any Catholic bishop or priest ​convicted of saying Mass, taking or keeping a school, or exercising any religious function was guilty of "præmunire," and therefore liable to perpetual imprisonment; £1000 reward was offered for the apprehension of persons guilty of such acts.. No Papist was allowed to purchase land, to send his children to be educated abroad, er to refuse a proper maintenance to any of his children who might become Protestant.
In Anne's reign the Penal Code was greatly elaborated. The Act for banishing priests and preventing them coming from abroad was extended to secular priests, and persons harbouring, concealing, or relieving ecclesiastics were made liable to the penalties of the Act. At the same time a Bill was passed for registering the Popish clergy. All secular priests were bound to go before a magistrate, register their names, and take out a license. They had to give two sureties to be of good behaviour and not to move to another part of the country. The penalty for infringing the Act was imprisonment pending transportation. Had these Acts been carried out in all their verbal severity, the Catholic priesthood of Ireland would have died out in the course of a generation.
But the chief measure of this session of 1703 was the famous "Act to prevent the growth of ​Popery," in the first instance the work of the English Privy Council. The reasons given for introducing this Bill were that too great leniency and moderation had been shown in executing the Penal Laws, and that emissaries from the Church of Rome were seducing Protestants from their faith. In consequence, one of the principles of the new Act was to make the seducing of a Protestant from his faith a crime both in the seducer and the seduced. Further, the Foreign Education Act was made more severe; Catholic parents were compelled by law to make proper provision for their Protestant children; it was laid down that no land which had ever been in the possession of a Protestant, or which should hereafter come into the possession of a Protestant, should ever be owned by a Papist. In the case of a Catholic possessing real or personal property, and all his children being Catholic, the estate was to be divided equally among all the children; but if the eldest son should conform within twelve months after the death of his father, or if under age, twelve months after coming of age, he might take the estate as heir at law. This Act was extended in 1709, and made rather more severe, and a proclamation ordered all registered priests to ​take the Abjuration oath before March 25th, 1710, under pain of "præmunire."
The Penal Code was now practically complete, and the Irish House of Commons passed a Resolution that persecuting and informing against Papists was an honourable service to the Government. Surely it would be difficult to find in all the annals of history as demoralising a code of laws as this Irish Penal Code. In other European countries religious persecution may have been more ferocious, but in Ireland, where the motive for persecution was, on the whole, rather political than religious, the Penal Laws were more subtly degrading, and more injurious to the national character than the more bloodthirsty enactments of France and Spain against the Protestants. Families were divided against families, brothers against brothers, sons became the enemies of their own fathers. The trade of informer became an honourable and lucrative one and flourished exceedingly. An entire Catholic nation was required by an alien power to give up the faith of its forefathers, drive out its ministers of religion, and become hypocrites and liars under pain of perpetual poverty, if not of perpetual imprisonment. Needless to say, no laws which aimed at the coercion of an entire nation could ever be enforced in all their verbal ​severity; but the prosecution of the laws was severe enough to bring to the forefront the worst qualities of the Irish character, and they made the lives of the Irish people miserable in the extreme.
Fortunately, after the first quarter of the eighteenth century persecution became less intense. The whole Catholic population offered a passive resistance, and the priests defied the law with extraordinary courage. Many immigrated to Ireland in spite of the risk they ran of perpetual imprisonment. As priest-hunting became slightly less energetic, a few Mass houses were built, but Mass was generally celebrated in a barn, or still more frequently in the open air under some tree. A great Catholic organization in fact existed in defiance of the law. After 1744 the condition of the Catholic Church slowly improved, for the Viceroy, Chesterfield, discouraged all direct attempts to interfere with its worship. The consequence was that Ireland remained absolutely quiet when England and Scotland were convulsed with civil war, and this fact, combined with the downfall of the Stuart cause at Culloden and the growth of a spirit of toleration among the Irish Protestants, led very slowly to religious liberty. The Church had been steadily advancing through persecution, ​but this very persecution had led to an opposition between law and religion. The Penal Code rendered it impossible to raise up in Ireland an instinctive reverence for law, and by thoroughly alienating the people from the Government, made the Catholic Church the centre of their affections. A certain freedom of conscience was the first boon to be slowly given to the Irish Catholics. But their material position did not improve until after 1775, when Grattan began to champion their cause. Continued emigration had swept away the flower of the Catholic youth, and in 1739 we are told that not twenty Papists in Ireland possessed £1,000 a year in land, while those possessed of land of a less yearly value were proportionately few. The only prosperous class among the Irish Catholics was a class of merchants and traders in the towns, which had sprung into existence before the middle of the eighteenth century. The action of the Penal Laws in prohibiting Catholics from taking land on long leases or on profitable tenures, encouraged the more enterprising Catholic farmers to take to trade. Catholic merchants seem to have almost entirely conducted the provision trade, and some grew rich in this way. But, of course, this class was naturally very small. Above them were the impoverished ​gentry, below them the mass of the Irish Catholics.
The condition of the Irish peasants during this period could hardly have been more miserable. The commercial policy of England did not directly injure them, but by checking the industrial development of Ireland, it injured them indirectly by tying them down in all their misery to the land and closing all means of escape. And but a scanty living could be got out of the land at this time by the Irish peasant. The great provision trade of the eighteenth century may have enriched individuals, but the peasantry suffered rather than gained by the conditions under which the staple trade of the country was carried on. This provision trade had begun to develop after the Restoration as a result of English commercial legislation, and it continued to flourish partly because pasture farming was particularly suited to Ireland, partly because the English Corn Laws rendered corn growing in Ireland absolutely unprofitable. During the whole of this period with which we are concerned there was a tendency in Ireland to turn large tracts of land into pasture, and side by side with this increase of pasture there went a decrease of tillage. This reckless turning of land into pasture led to many years of terrible famine, when ​the small portion of the country given over to supply, or when conditions in England prevented that country from exporting its usual amount of corn to Ireland. The small supply of corn led to very high prices in those days of localised markets, and gradually the mass of the people began to depend more and more on potatoes as their staple food. When the potato plots failed, as they frequently did, the people died by thousands, as they had nothing upon which to fall back. The famines of 1740 and 1741 were the most fearful on record In a curious pamphlet written at that time called "The Groans of Ireland," we are given a terrible description of it. "Want and misery," the author says, "are in every face, the rich unable to relieve the poor, the roads spread with dead and dying bodies, mankind the colour of the docks and nettles they fed on." Whole villages were depopulated, and thousands of people perished, some from actual starvation, others from disease brought on by unwholesome food.
There is no doubt that the system of exporting such vast quantities of provisions necessarily lowered the standard of living among the people. Archbishop King tells us that the entire profit of the provision trade went to the landlords and a few merchants "the rest being fed like ​Beasts, while those few engross the fat of the Land." Few tenants were needed at the large grazing and dairy farms, and the result of the continual turning of land into pasture was the gradual eviction of numbers of the peasantry from their holdings. The mass of the Irish people became cottiers because they could not gain a livelihood as agricultural labourers, while the industrial restrictions which lay heavy upon the country prevented them gaining a livelihood by trade. Entire villages were sometimes turned adrift, and we are told that in travelling from Dublin to Dundalk through a country esteemed the most fruitful in the kingdom, a man would see no improvements of any kind, no houses fit for gentlemen, no farmers' houses, few fields of corn, nothing but a bare face of nature with a few wretched cottages scattered about, three or four miles apart. The evictions which took place in 1761 were especially numerous and were the direct cause of the rise of the Whiteboy movement, the beginning of Irish agrarian crime. We get vivid descriptions of the condition of the people from the letters and writings of such men as Archbishop King, Primate Boulter, Skelton, Swift, and Berkeley, no less than from various English gentlemen who travelled through Ireland at this time, and were horrified at the condition ​of the peasant. Archbishop King combats the idea, prevalent among the Protestant gentry, that the poverty of the people was due to their laziness and unwillingness to work. He writes that in his opinion it is much more due to "the cruelty of the landlords who rack their tenants so that they can neither render to God, to the publick, or their children what is due to them; and when I enquire (he goes on) how they came into that condition, the answer is, the Landlord came and took away all I had for his rent, and on inquiry I generally find it is so. I am persuaded neither the Peasants of France nor the Common Turks live so miserably as the Ter Tenants in Ireland … The Ter Tenants often hold from the fourth, who screws and sucks them to death, here is the originall of the Beggary of Ireland." Later on King writes that "one half of the people of Ireland eat neither bread nor flesh for one half of the year, nor wear shoes or stockins," and that the hogs and calves in England lived better than they. In 1720 he writes: "The cry of the whole people is loud for bread, God knows what will be the consequence, many are starved and I am afraid many more will." Unlike the peasant proprietor or the mediæval serf, the Irish peasant had no permanent interest in the soil and no security of ​tenure. Unlike the English farmer, he was not a capitalist investing his money in the land. He simply found the land the only thing between him and starvation, and so he would promise any rent. The landlords did nothing to improve the land. The peasants built their own houses, their ditches, and their hedges, and when they had done all this they were liable to be evicted at any moment if the landlord took it into his head to turn his land into pasture. The peasants were half starved and without education, ground down by rackrents, tithes, and their own Church dues, until they had hardly the skin of a potato to subsist on. Bishop Berkeley asks in his famous queries, "Whether there be upon earth any Christian or civilised people so beggarly, wretched, and destitute as the common Irish?" All contemporaries were agreed that there was only one answer to this question, but as long as the great majority of the landlords were absentees little could be done. The system of middlemen resulted in the people being screwed to death while the landlord got no more rent. There was no such thing as a poor law in the country, and when people were destitute they died of starvation unless they were supported by private charity. But King tells us that little could be done in Ireland in that way, because ​every class in the kingdom was impoverished. The landlords could not get their rents, the shopkeepers could not get paid for their goods, and the merchants could get no profit. The only section of the Irish population who were comparatively prosperous were the occupiers of the great grazing farms and the merchants who managed the provision trade. The linen manufacture for a long time made little progress in spite of the partial encouragement held out by England. After the middle of the century, however, it progressed fairly well and gave employment to a considerable number of people. But it was largely concentrated in the North, though not to such an extent as at the present day, and it was mainly in Protestant hands. There were various small local industries scattered over the country and, especially in the South, spinning wool into yarn was a large subsidiary employment. But, speaking broadly, the mass of the Irish people were dependent on the land, and we can realise clearly what this meant when we reflect that until after 1773 the greater part of cultivated land in Ireland was under pasture. We all know that ghastly piece of irony of Swift on how to utilize the children of poor people so that they would be a benefit rather than a burden to their parents, and poor ​as Ireland is at the present day, not even the lowest section of her population is sunk in the dreadful misery which prevailed among the Irish poor in Swift's time.
And even domestic happiness was not left to the Catholics, the one consolation their life might have afforded them. One of the objects of the Penal Laws was to keep in ignorance four-fifths of the child population of Ireland, unless they chose to avail themselves of the Protestant charter schools. The society which managed these schools proposed to Catholic parents to take their starving children between the ages of six and ten, to feed, clothe, and lodge them gratuitously, to give them a free education and an industrial training, to apprentice the boys and get the girls situations. But the condition was that the children were to be educated as Protestants and that they were never to communicate with their parents. At first children were sent to the charter schools in times of famine and general distress and then in better times taken away. So a law was made providing that once a child was in one of those schools he could not be withdrawn. Children were always sent to schools in a different province from that in which their parents lived, and the society were empowered to take up children between the ages of ​five and twelve found begging, and such children once taken up could never be seen again by their parents. It was these laws concerning the education of their children which were resented most bitterly by the Irish Catholics. The laws interfered with the domestic happiness of the people, and they were regarded by them as the most insidious and poisonous form of bribery. In spite of the terrible poverty of the people and the passion for knowledge which has always distinguished them, they preferred as a rule to starve themselves to a still greater extent than to ensure some relief by allowing the State to provide for their children under the conditions offered. Love for their faith was more strongly rooted than even hatred of seeing their children suffer; and the extraordinary way in which, in spite of everything, they managed to maintain their hedge schools, says a great deal for their inherent love of learning. The result was that. after a few years of partial or apparent success, the charter schools declined, as children were not sent. In 1757 a petition was sent up to the Irish Parliament stating that children could not be got to fill the schools. It was thought that it would be easier to induce mothers to leave their children in infancy, and so a nursery was set up in Dublin and one in each of the provinces. This ​plan succeeded somewhat in its object, but it was an exceedingly wicked one. As for the schools, they never seem to have contained more than two thousand pupils, most of them picked up by the society in a state of destitution. There was a custom of exchanging the children in the Dublin and Cork nurseries, so as to prevent Catholic parents from seeing their babies. It was complained that there was often some collusion between the mothers and the people employed to find nurses in the parishes, the mothers contriving to get themselves chosen as nurses of their own children. It was thought that the system of exchanging the children would prevent this collusion. But the long journey on rough carts between Dublin and Cork killed or injured large numbers of young children, and it was this stern determination to sever all ties between parents and children which supplied another powerful motive for hatred of the Government. There were terrible abuses too in connection with the charter schools. They were ill managed from the very first, and left in the hands of dishonest and disreputable jobbers. On the whole the charter schools were the most contemptible and demoralising form of coercion ever inflicted on the Irish people. In any case they could never have been successful in their aim of ​building up a large Protestant population. Even the children in the schools, young as they were, seem to have known how to bear hardship and punishment for the sake of their religion. An eyewitness stated that often on Fridays and fast days children would not take their broth, prepared as it was with meat, and how it had to be poured down their throats against their will. Indeed there was practically no conversion to the Protestant religion among the lower class of Catholics. Persecution only drew the Irish more closely to the Catholic Church; it created close ties between them and their priests. All this was bound to be the result of persecution in a country where the particular form of religion practised was particularly suited to the character and temperament of the people.
And so, this period from the Revolution to 1774 is sad reading. It was a time of wholesale coercion, coercion applied to every side of the national life. England held Ireland in the hollow of her hand, and she exercised all the privileges of brute force, softened by no feeling of humanity or sympathy with the wretched people whom she had taken upon herself to govern. The whole relation which existed between England and Ireland at this time is probably unique in history, and the persecution of ​the Irish Catholics by England can only be compared with the persecution of the people of the Low Countries by Spain. In both cases the persecution was conducted by an alien power, and therefore rendered doubly bitter to the victims. But the Irish people were far more terribly helpless, concerted resistance was impossible, and nothing could be done until English misgovernment had succeeded in alienating the Irish Protestants, so that they, as well as the Catholics, were ready to unite in the struggle for freedom.
From 1775 the whole history of Ireland was to change completely, and for one brief period we see something like an Irish nation. For the first time in her history England was to be confronted with a united Ireland, strong in her determination to win her just rights, and carried along on a wave of patriotic enthusiasm such as seldom happens twice in a nation's life. But nothing of this took place until Grattan and other patriots appeared on the scene ready to champion the cause of the Catholics, and making it their aim to cure the religious feud of a century and to unite all classes and sections in Ireland into one nation inspired with nothing but a great love for their country. In the history before 1775 we see nothing of this. It is true ​that towards the end of the period we may see the faint beginnings of a new national spirit, a spirit raised not as in other countries, by common traditions and a common history, but one aroused by the unwise policy of England. But the beginning was faint and could come to nothing until a great leader appeared and until England's difficulties made Ireland's opportunity. No Irishman can read the history of his country from 1691-1775 without a feeling that is almost akin to horror. But these dreary annals form very instructive reading for the man of to-day who would wish to understand modern Ireland. It is always unjustifiable to blame England in any treatment of Irish history. She was, after all, the conquering nation, and the age was not an age of humanity or toleration. Still the fact must be looked squarely in the face that it was under English rule that the Irish people underwent sufferings hardly paralleled in history. And yet Englishmen were surprised and horrified at the disloyalty of the Irish in '98!
It is indeed impossible for any sane person to read the history of Ireland during this period without feeling how different the material condition of Ireland might even now be had English policy only been different. Ireland has suffered from the ideas of the past more than any other ​European nation. When once we allow, and surely we are bound to do so, that the present condition of a nation is the result of its past history, it cannot be a matter of surprise that modern England and modern Ireland are so different in all that makes for material comfort and progress. The present condition of England is the result of centuries of steady progress. Her people have always had leaders to guide them, her laws have generally been in accordance with the moral feeling of the community, in no direction has her material development been checked. But Ireland at the present day is the result of centuries of oppression and neglect. She has been robbed of her natural leaders, for more than a century the law of the land was in direct opposition to the religion of the people, the development of the country has been checked on all sides. But this is forgotten by those persons who insist that the troubles of Ireland are due to the temperament and religion of her people, and who do not realise that the character of a people must form itself according to the circumstances that surround them.
* ↑ (a) The author of a quaint pamphlet, entitled: The Interest of England as it stands with Relation to the Trade of Ireland Considered (London, 1698, Brit. Mus.), says that he would like to set up the following inscription in the "Parliament House" in Ireland:— "Let us always remember that this Island is a Colony; that England is our Mother Country; that we are ever to expect Protection from her in the Possession of our Lands; which we are to cultivate and improve for our own subsistence and advantage, but not to Trade to or with any other Nation without her Permission; and that 'tis our incumbent Duty to pay Obedience to all such Laws as she shall enact concerning Us." (Page 23.) (b) "That all Colonies or Plantations do endamage their Mother-Kingdoms, whereof the Trades of such Plantations are not confined by severe Laws and good Executions of these Laws, to the Mother-Kingdom."—Sir Joshua Child, New Discourse on Trade, page 179. London, 1694. (c) "The Crown of England has annexed to it many Dependencies, where Labour is cheaper, the People hardier, easier to feed and freer from Taxes, than any of our Neighbours; these, like so many sponges, … must be employed to suck up Treasures from the Ocean, in order to squeeze them out again into the Grand Receptacle of all the Riches of her Dependencies, Great Britain. These must, I say, be employed to manage those Branches of Trade, which we, by reason of an immense Wealth, an increasing Luxury, and an over-bearing Debt, are at present under a necessity to let Strangers run away with."—Seasonable Remarks on Trade. (London, 1729. Brit. Mus.)
* ↑ O'Connor, History of the Irish Catholics, p. 149.
* ↑ Irish Commons Journal, II., 1., 247-8.
* ↑ A Petition of the Sergemakers, Clothiers, Fullers, and others concerned in the woollen manufacture of Taunton, in Devon, was read before the English House of Commons on January 8th, 1697, setting forth: "That by Reason of the Great' Growth of the Woollen Manufactures in Ireland, the Great Demands they have for the Same from Holland, New England, and other Parts, which used to be supplied by England; the vast numbers of our Workmen that go thither; the Cheapness of Wool and Provisions there, and the Decay of Trade here; they are able to undersell the Petitioners at least 20 per cent."—Commons Journal (Engl.), vol. xii., page 37. A Petition of the makers of Serges at Ashburton in Devon, presented a petition on January 26th, 1697, setting forth: "That the making of Serges is the main Support of many People in those Parts, which has Great Discouragements by reason that Trade is set up in Ireland."—Commons Journal (Engl.), vol. x11., page 64. "The Merchants, Clothiers, Fullers, and divers other Trades of Tiverton in Devon, stated: "That during the late Rebellion in Ireland, many of the Poor of that Kingdom fled into the West of England, where they were put to work in the Woollen Manufacture and learned that Trade; and since the Reduction of Ireland endeavours are used to set up those Manufactures there; which if suffered will not only endanger the Loss of that Trade to England, but will also lower the Price of Land and Wool here: and praying, That care may be taken to preserve the Trade of the Woollen Manufactures entire to this Kingdom."—Commons Journal (Engl.), vol. xii. pp. 63-4.
* ↑ 10 Wil, III., c. 5 (Irish).
* ↑ 10 & 11 Will. III., c. 10 (Eng.)
* ↑ 12 Charles II., c. 4; confirmed by 11 Geo. I., c. 7.
* ↑ On all this see specially Benjamin Ward, The State of the Woollen Manufacturers Considered [Lond., 1731] (Halliday Collection of Pamphlets, Royal Irish Academy); The Case of the Woollen Manufacturers of Great Britain in relation to the Trade with France [Lond., 1713]; Argument upon the Woollen Manufacture of Great Britain [Lond. 1737]. "Stopping the Door upon Ireland is only helping in the Cuckoo and has only served to open and enlarge that Trade in Foreign Countries by driving Great Numbers of our Weavers to France and other Places, where they have set up the same trade, and thereby have done England much more Prejudice than if they had stai'd at Home and were allowed to export their Woollen Manufactures."—Prior, Observations on the Trade of Ireland, page 10. (London, 1729.)
* ↑ "(a) . . It seems a little odde that the cheapness of necessarys for life, and goodness of materialls for making all manner of cloth shou'd be made an argument ag'st allowing us to make any, which to me sounds as if one should say to his child, you have a good stomach and here is plenty of meal and very good; therefore you shall not eat a bit."—Letter from the Bishop of Derry (afterwards Archbishop King) to Mr. Annesley. June 15th, 1698. (King MSS., Trin. Coll., Dublin.) "I see no remedy … but to allow us to transport nothing, and so I was told near 6 years ago by a great man in the House of Commons y$^t$ we shou'd be allowed to eat our potatoes, but shou'd not look at y$^e$ sea, though in time perhaps we may be forbid y$^e$ use of y$^m$ as hindering our taking off some commoditys from England."— Letter from Same to the Bishop of Killaloo. May 13th, 1698. (King MSS.) "Let me know whether there be any design of passing a Bill against the use of stirabout and flummery for breakfasts in Ireland, for such a law would be a great hardship on the poor people in the North of Ireland, the reason of the Surmise is because if they were hindered from these, it might very much advantage the Jamaica merchants' trade in London, and help them much in vending their chocolate, if the poor people were obliged to use that instead of stirabout."—Archbishop King to Lord Southwell, December 4th, 1719. (King MSS.) (The Bill was suggested, but was fortunately never actually brought in.)
* ↑ By 19 Geo. II., c. 12, sect. 14 (Brit.).
* ↑ By 10 Geo. III., c. 12 (Brit.)
* ↑ 9 Anne, c. 12 (Brit.).
* ↑ 12 Ch. II., c. 18 (Eng.); 15) Ch. Sie (Eng.); 22 & 23 Ch. II., c. 26 (Eng,), continued and extended by subsequent Acts.
* ↑ i.e., Plain linen cloth. Stamped, striped, checked, and dyed linens were excluded from the British markets. Che Irish linen industry only met with a partial encouragement. Only coarse white and brown linens could be exported to the Plantations (by 3 and 4 Anne, c. 8 (Engl.)), and the bounties granted in 1743 on the exportation of British and Irish linens from Great Britain were confined in the case of Ireland to coarse plain linens of an inferior quality. Irish linens, when chequered, striped, painted or dyed, had to pay a prohibitive duty when imported into Great Britain (by 10 Anne c. 19 (Brit.), continued by subsequent Acts), and could not be exported at all to the colonies, while the bounty granted by Great Britain on the exportation of all these sorts of linens when of British manufacture, to Africa, America, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Minorca, or the East Indies (by 10 Geo. III., c, 38 (Brit.) enabled the British to monopolise the trade in all but plain linen cloth. Ireland was also forbidden to grant bounties on the exportation of her sail cloth (by 23 Geo. II., c. 33 (Brit.)), and as Great Britain at the same time granted bounties on the exportation of her own hempen manufactures to foreign countries, the colonies, and even to Ireland, the Irish sailcloth and canvass manufactures, which had prospered greatly during the first half of the eighteenth century, sank into decay. In spite of these discouragements, however, the Irish linen manufacture made enormous progress all through the eighteenth century.
* ↑ King to Mr. 'Addison, July 7th, 1717 (King MSS., Trin. Coll., Dubl.).
* ↑ They were famous Hampshire deer stealers of the day.
* ↑ "I told you in my last that since my L L was named to the Government about 18 Thousand pounds annual rent have been given in benefices, employments, and places to strangers, and not 500 li to any in Ireland; but I find I was mistaken, for I find there have been above 20,000 li dispersed that way. I understand several have not yet come to my knowledge. There are several vacancysnow in project to the value of some Thousands, and I hear Strangers are already named for them."—Letter from Archbishop King to Edward Southwell, Esq., December 29th, 1725 (King MSS.) " … the people of this kingdom are in effect excluded out of the Church, from the Revenue, from the Bench, from the Army, and all considerable offices, all which are in effect maintained by the Publick money or that of the kingdom, … and to say the truth, Gent, are in great distress what to do with their sons, all these ways of providing for them being shut up against them."'—Letter from Same to Sir Hans Stone, November 16th, 1725. (King MSS.)
* ↑ Archbishop Boulter’s Letters, I., 141.
* ↑ For all this see Perry, History of the Church of Ireland.
* ↑ Boulter’s Letters, I., 261.
* ↑ Burke, Settlements in America, II. 209-210.
* ↑ Histoire d‘Irlande, III., 575. For all this see O’Callaghan, History of the Irish Brigade in the Service of France; O’Conor, Military History of the Irish; Forman, Courage of the Irish Nation.
* ↑ 7 Will. III., c. 5 (Irish).
* ↑ 7 Will. III., c. 4 (Irish).
* ↑ 7 Will. III., c. 14 (Irish).
* ↑ 7 Will. III., c. 17 (Irish).
* ↑ 9 Will. III., c. 1.
* ↑ 9 Will., c. 3 (Irish).
* ↑ 10 Will. III., c. 3 (Irish).
* ↑ 77 Will. III., c. 4 (Eng.).
* ↑ 2 Anne, c. 7 (Irish).
* ↑ 2 Anne, c. 7 (Irish).
* ↑ 2 Anne, c. g (Irish).
* ↑ Irish Commons Journal, March 17th, 1704.
* ↑ Halliday Collection of Pamphlets.
* ↑ Skelton, Works, V., 352.
* ↑ King to Mr. Nicholson, Dec. 20th, 1712
* ↑ "The poor are sunk to the lowest degree of
* ↑ King to Mr. Nicholson, Dec. 20, 1712
* ↑ King to the Lord Bishop of Carlisle, Feb.
* ↑ King to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
* ↑ Tithes were only levied on corn, potatoes, flax and meadow. Thus they fell chiefly on the poor, while the owners of the great grazing farms were exempt. The greatest grievance was connected with the manner in which the tithe was collected. If a cottier or farmer, "or his half-naked wife and children should inadvertently dig two or three beds of their early potatoes, without leaving the tithe or tenth spade undug, the tithe farmers immediately threatened to sue him for subtraction of tithe, to avoid which they were frequently obliged to take their tithes at his valuation. The tithe farmer frequently left his tenth part of his potato garden undug until very late in the season, in order to prevent the farmer sowing his winter corn in time, and thereby force them to take his tithe; for there was no specific time allowed for removing the tithe of potatoes, and a reasonable time (an expression often made use of) is vague and uncertain. Again, if the poor farmer should fail to take up his bond on the day it became due, he was obliged to give the tithe-farmer his own price for that year's tithe. The tithe-farmer often kept the peasants bound from year to year in this manner for several years successively, and obliged them to give for their tithes whatever he thought proper to ask."—A Letter from a Munster Layman of the Established Church to his friend in Dublin on the disturbances in the South. (Dublin, 1787.)