Present Irish Questions Part 2

Gladstone's Home Rule Bill of 1893; it would be less illogical, possibly not more disastrous. But I must be permitted to doubt whether these sages understand what their project certainly involves; this, indeed, seems to be rather in the nature of a device to angle for Nationalist votes, without scruple, and then to propose a plan which England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales have never asked for, and which England and Scotland, at least, would indignantly reject. This scheme is pure Federalism, in the proper sense of the word; let us briefly consider what this means from the very nature of the case. England, Scotland, Ireland, and, I a.s.sume, Wales would form separate States; they would have separate Legislatures and Executives to manage their local affairs, separate local forces, separate Courts of Justice; they would be, essentially, separate countries. The Imperial Parliament and its Executive would be the only link between them; there would be an Imperial army, and navy, and Imperial tribunals; but the Imperial Parliament and its Executive would only have jurisdiction over Imperial affairs, and would be only the head of the separate States as respects Foreign Powers. But as it would be difficult in the extreme, under these conditions, to distinguish local from Imperial affairs, an arbiter of some kind, armed with sufficient powers, would be necessary to say what affairs were local and what Imperial, and decisively to p.r.o.nounce on the subject, on the innumerable occasions when the question would arise; and it would be necessary, too, that there should be some means, perhaps a Referendum to a popular vote, to effect any const.i.tutional change, to reform or to abolish the Const.i.tution itself. This scheme obviously would be complex, intricate, and difficult to carry into effect; it would be a huge system of divided, and probably conflicting, powers, not easy to reconcile with each other; for this, and other reasons, it would require a formal Const.i.tution reduced to writing, and setting forth, under distinct heads or articles, the conditions of the Federation that had been established, the spheres of the authority of the separate States, and the sphere of the authority of the Imperial Council. Is it possible to suppose that the Parliament of the United Kingdom would ever break up this ancient and undivided Monarchy; would tamely surrender its sovereign rights, and would subst.i.tute a new-fangled fabric of this kind for the venerable and unwritten const.i.tution of these realms--a majestic temple that has grown up in silence; and that the British people, at all events, would not rise up in wrath at the very thought of such a change?

For Federalism 'amounts to a proposal for changing the whole const.i.tution of the United Kingdom. It is, in fact, the most "revolutionary" proposal, if the word "revolutionary" be used in its strict sense, which has ever been submitted to an English Parliament. The abolition of the House of Lords, the disestablishment of the Church, the abolition of the Monarchy, might leave the English Const.i.tution far less essentially changed than would the adoption of Federalism.'[32]

It should be observed, too, with respect to this subject, that the conditions, under which Federalism would have a chance of success, would be absolutely wanting in the present instance. England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales have long been moulded into a single sovereign State, and united under a supreme Monarchy; no Federation, I venture to a.s.sert, has been formed out of communities that have had a government of this kind.

Federations, in fact, have almost always grown out of an a.s.sociation of existing States, which desire to remain separate, and yet to be a nation for some purposes; they have not been evolved out of the fragments of one State artificially rent asunder. Again, Federalism requires that no single State should be enormously more powerful than the other partners; there must be something like equality between the different States;[33] it is unnecessary to remark that England has tenfold the resources and strength of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; and, in truth, would annihilate the Federation were her will really crossed, and break through the arbitrary limitations imposed on her. Suppose, for example, that England had set her heart on a great foreign war, and had the support of her own Parliament; does any one suppose that, if she were outvoted, by deputies from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, in the Imperial Council, even though backed by their own Parliaments, the people of England would submit to be thwarted in this way; was Samson bound by the withs of the Philistines?

Something like this, indeed, was seen in the great Civil War; the result was the subjugation of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and the complete ascendency of England, under Cromwell; an attempt to federalise the Three Kingdoms might lead to a similar issue. Let us a.s.sume, however, that, through some evil stroke of destiny, Federalism were made the const.i.tution of these realms, and that this strange arrangement could be made to work even for a few years; the inevitable consequences, from the nature of the case, would follow. The omnipotence of the Imperial Parliament, the mainstay of the Empire, would be gone; so would the omnipotence of the Imperial Executive Government, the best security for justice and for equal liberties. Their powers would be parcelled out and subdivided; they would not survive anywhere in their complete fulness; they would be distributed in fractions between separate States, and would be transformed and impaired in the process; real Imperial unity and sovereignty could have no existence. General national weakness would be the probable result, leading, perhaps, to despotism within a short time; for Federalism is essentially weak; I have no sympathy with Jacobin France, but the Committee of Public Safety rightly put Federalism down, when they were engaged in their death-struggle with Europe; and Napoleon--perhaps the ablest ruler of the nineteenth century--approved of their conduct. But weakness would not be the only consequence; the dissemination of different powers would certainly produce disputes and conflicts between the Federal and the State authorities; above all, the very existence of separate States and of a Federal Government would divide allegiance, and powerfully tend to disruption, as was seen in the great Civil War in America. As regards Ireland, the establishment of 'Home Rule all round' would necessarily be attended by all the evils inseparable from Mr. Gladstone's schemes; but Federalism, having been thus made manifest, would probably increase, and in some sense justify, the alienation of Ireland from the other parts of these kingdoms.

Home Rule, therefore, whatever the form it may a.s.sume, would be, it is my firm conviction, incompatible with the welfare of the Three Kingdoms, injurious to Great Britain, a curse to Ireland. In the peculiar circ.u.mstances which exist in Ireland, and to which I have adverted before, separation, I believe, would be an expedient less disastrous than Home Rule of any description, this involving the creation of an Irish Parliament, and of an Irish Executive, which would be its instrument. Home Rule, in fact, gloss it over as you please, has been forced to the front by an Irish faction, hostile to a man to the existence of British rule in Ireland, and depending on Fenianism in the United States; this party would be all-powerful in an Irish Parliament; and Home Rule would be made the means to a ruinous and disgraceful end. Thousands of Irishmen, indeed, honestly think Home Rule would do their country good, and have little or nothing to do with this bad conspiracy; this too, doubtless, is the case with the followers of Mr. Gladstone; but Home Rule is an Irish Nationalist movement, and Irish Nationalist movements are dangerous to the safety of the State. The Union, therefore, must be maintained in the interest of Great Britain and Ireland alike; and the Union is an international settlement that has endured for a century. But no candid student of Irish history, no impartial observer of Irish affairs, from 1800 to the present time, can deny that the Union has been in many respects a failure. It has been an incident, perhaps a result, of the Union, that Presbyterian Ireland, rebellious from 1795 to 1798, has, we have seen, become attached to the British connection, and is now devotedly attached to England. The power of the Imperial Parliament and of its Executive have kept lawlessness and disorder down in Ireland, and has restrained the evil pa.s.sions of Irish factions more than was ever the case under the rule of the Irish Parliament. The Imperial Parliament, too, has accomplished reforms in Ireland, if often unwise, in the main beneficent; and, under the Imperial Executive, justice in Ireland has been administered, for many years, in a very different way from that which was seen a century ago; its tribunals are perfectly free and impartial. But the Union was, in itself, a bad half measure, tainted with iniquity and false promises; it did gross wrong to Catholic Ireland; the evil consequences are felt to this hour.

The Union has not fulfilled the sanguine hopes of Pitt; Ireland, as I have pointed out, is far more behind Great Britain in wealth than she was sixty years ago; she is perhaps the poorest country in Europe at the door of the richest. The Union, too, has not reconciled the feuds of religion and race in Ireland; they are as marked as they were a century ago, if not attended with such deeds of violence; above all, the Union has not made the chief part of the Irish community attached to England, as Pitt confidently predicted would certainly happen. Nor can it be denied that the Irish reforms of the Imperial Parliament have too often been ill-designed and faulty, especially, as we shall see, as regards the land; and they have unfortunately, in many instances, been concessions to agitation and dangerous social movements, and have been effected too late to do real good. The administration of Ireland reveals the same defects; it has been marked by good intentions, which, sometimes, have proved gross mistakes; and notably it has, over and over again, been s.h.i.+fty, vacillating, without principle, and showing a curious disregard of sound Irish opinion.

Unquestionably, too, Ireland has, on many occasions, to the indignation of true-hearted Irishmen, been made the mere plaything of British faction, with the worst results to her best interests; this has been perhaps the most pernicious incident that has followed the Union; and in the immense revolution which has transformed Ireland, within the last hundred years, the effects that may be traced to the Union have by no means been wholly on the side of good.

These evil consequences cannot be really questioned; it is very advisable to consider their causes, and if possible to see how they can be removed or lessened. They are partly to be ascribed to the fact that Great Britain and Ireland are countries differing from each other in most important respects, and standing, so to speak, on different planes of existence; this alone makes British rule in Ireland difficult, and perplexes and embarra.s.ses British statesmen. They are partly due to defects in the English national character, essentially just in intention, and even generous, but with no sympathy with races of a character unlike its own, self-a.s.serting, obstinate, sometimes rude and offensive; this has had marked and evil effects in the affairs of Ireland. They are largely to be attributed to the nature of Irish administration, seldom consistent, and changing with party changes: British statesmen appear at the Castle; rule for a few years; and then depart and give place to successors, who probably carry out a very different policy. They are largely due to the nature of the representation of Ireland, notably of late years; the Nationalist party--and the same remark applies, in some degree, to the 'Tail' of O'Connell--have shown such an aversion to England, have used such seditious and even criminal language, have been so extravagant and wild in their demands, and have been such a dangerous element in the House of Commons, that Englishmen and Scotchmen turn away from Irish questions with disgust, and Ireland unfortunately has often been the sufferer. But the most important of these causes, one which may be traced throughout Irish history, and has been scarcely less evident since the Union, has been the strange but signal ignorance of Irish affairs--of all, in a word, that relates to Ireland--which has been but too characteristic of the British people, and, in a lesser degree, of many British statesmen. This capital fault aroused the _saeva indignatio_, of Swift; it was exposed by Grattan, O'Connell, even by Lord Clare; it was condemned in severe but thoughtful language by Burke; it has been conspicuous during the events of the last twenty years.[34] The resulting mischiefs have been numerous and grave in the extreme; can nothing be done to mitigate these and to make them less, consistently with maintaining the Union in its full completeness? I, for one, have long thought that much could be effected were the Imperial Parliament occasionally to hold its sessions in Dublin, and to govern Ireland directly, so to speak, on the spot. This very measure was proposed by many distinguished Irishmen, during the agitation for Repeal in 1843-44; it was made the subject of an eloquent eulogy by Sheil at O'Connell's trial; it was seriously entertained by the Whig opposition of the day, as we know from a remarkable letter of Lord Waveney. This policy unfortunately pa.s.sed out of sight; but even now, I believe, it would do the greatest good in Ireland. It would be something that the proposed change would cause the wealth of England and Scotland largely to flow into a poor country; that Irish absenteeism would be diminished; that Ireland would become, more than she is now, an attractive place of resort to the traveller. But it would be far more that the presence of the Imperial Parliament in College Green would necessarily largely remove the ignorance of Irish affairs I have just referred to; it would make English and Scotch members familiar with the requirements, the feelings, the wishes of Irishmen; as has happily been said, it would render our Irish legislation and administration 'racy of the Irish soil.'

And probably more than any other expedient, it would exorcise the weak phantom of Home Rule by bringing Irishmen in contact with the majesty of the Sovereign a.s.sembly of the British Empire. I shall not comment on the petty inconveniences the scheme might cause; really they are not worthy of serious attention.

The occasional presence of Royalty, too, in Ireland, as was made manifest during the late Queen's visit, unquestionably would have beneficent results. It would gratify a sentiment of Celtic nature, always attached to persons rather than to inst.i.tutions and laws, and especially attached to rulers and chiefs, which, in Ireland, has been scarcely gratified before; it would spread far and wide a happy and good influence; it would certainly improve the social life of Ireland, and add something to her scanty material wealth. The maintenance of the Union, however, is the first requirement of a sound Irish and Imperial policy; one means of strengthening that fundamental law of these realms, consistently with strict const.i.tutional justice, nay, if const.i.tutional wrong is not to continue, has long been apparent to impartial minds. The over-representation of Ireland, in the House of Commons, is a flagrant anomaly, acknowledged for years; as I have remarked, it was largely expected that this important subject would have been taken up before this by Lord Salisbury's Government, and have been settled in the Parliament of 1895-1900. Taking the test of population alone, Ireland has, compared to England, Wales, and Scotland, an excess of twenty-three members; taking the test of population and property combined, she has an excess probably of from thirty to forty. I am willing to allow that, in this matter, we ought not to follow arithmetic only; Ireland, a poor country, far away from Westminster, may have a claim to a representation somewhat more numerous than mere figures would give her. But can anything be more unjust, nay, absurd, than that Ireland should have one hundred and three members, and that the world of London, with a population about the same as that of Ireland, and probably possessing tenfold wealth, should have little more than half that number? This excessive representation must be reduced, and Irish Nationalists cannot here appeal to the Union; the Union did not save the Established Church of Ireland, secured by the Treaty in emphatic terms; and the Union must not be wrested to work gross injustice.

The anomaly can be only removed by a large scheme for the redistribution of seats, founded on sound const.i.tutional principles; and should this become law, as I confidently hope will be one of the achievements of the existing Parliament, the Union will acquire a new security, for the Nationalist vote in the House of Commons would be greatly reduced, and the Irish Unionist vote would be greatly increased. A very few figures will prove this: the rural populations of the Unionist counties of Antrim and Down are upwards of four hundred and thirty thousand souls; the rural populations of the Home Rule counties of Kildare, Kilkenny, King's, Longford, Wicklow, and Louth have a population less than three hundred and ninety-eight thousand;[35] yet Antrim and Down have only eight members, the other six counties have no less than twelve. The same disparity runs through all the Irish counties; in the boroughs of Ireland it is even more visible. Protestant and Unionist Ireland, in a word, has probably fifteen or sixteen members too few; Catholic and anti-Unionist Ireland fifteen or sixteen too many; it is high time this plain wrong should be redressed; it is unnecessary to point out how this would strengthen the Union. And what probably is not less important, it would make the representation of Ireland, not, what it is now, an utterly false index of Irish opinion, but a reasonably fair and trustworthy index; were the Irish representation cut down to eighty members, the Nationalists would probably command not more than fifty seats; the Unionists would command about thirty; and this, taking all things into account, would be a proportion approaching what is just. The 'doing' of right, in this matter, has been too long deferred; loyal Ireland feels strongly upon the subject; the reform would be altogether in the interest of the State.

CHAPTER III

THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND--SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND TO THE YEAR 1870

Great importance in the history of Ireland of the conditions of land tenure--The ancient Celtic land system and its characteristics--The Norman conquest of Ireland--Norman feudalism in the Irish land--The policy of Henry VII., and especially of Henry VIII.--The era of the conquest and confiscation of the Irish land--The possessions of the O'Connors of Offaly wrested from them--Forfeiture of the domains of Shane O'Neill, and of the Earl of Desmond--Attempts at colonisation--All Ireland made s.h.i.+re land--The extinction of the old Celtic land system--The Plantation of Ulster--Progress of confiscation during the reigns of the two first Stuarts--The Civil War--Immense confiscations made by Cromwell--His scheme of colonisation a failure--The era of confiscation closes after the battle of the Boyne and the fall of Limerick--The Penal Code of Ireland--Its fatal effects on the Irish land--Dismal period in Irish landed relations--Gradual improvement--The period described by Arthur Young--Evil traces of the past remain--Whiteboyism and agrarian disorder--State of Irish landed relations up to the rebellion of 1798, and after the Union--Over-population and the results--Distress after the Peace--State of Irish landed relations up to 1844--The Report of the Devon Commission--The Famine and its effects on the Irish land--The Enc.u.mbered Estates Acts--State of Irish landed relations from 1848 to 1868.

The fortunes of many communities, it has truly been said, have been decisively affected by the conditions of the owners.h.i.+p and the occupation of the soil. The social, even the political, life of modern Europe has been, in a great measure, moulded by the land tenures that have grown out of the feudal system; I need only refer to the history of England, of France, and of Germany. This remark, however, especially applies to the events that make up the annals of Ireland; that long and unhappy tale of misfortunes and errors is intimately a.s.sociated, all through, with the land, and with the relations connected with it. Modern research has shown how grotesque and mischievous was the ignorance of the Tudor lawyers and statesmen, who described the ancient organisation of the Irish land as a medley of barbarian and pernicious usages; it was an archaic and imperfect specimen of the feudal system, with differences indeed, but marked with its essential features. Norman feudalism, lawless and ill-ordered, was for centuries, after the first Conquest, placed beside this primitive form of society, in parts of a country not half subdued; the results were seen in incessant strife and discord, and in social anarchy, which prevented civilisation growing up. The Irishry had well-nigh driven the Englishry into the sea, when Henry VII. tried to make his authority felt in Ireland; his successor, partly a Celt in blood, and a real statesman, devised a n.o.ble scheme for bringing an ill-governed dependency within the domain of order and law, by planting an Anglo-Norman and native aristocracy in the soil, subject to a strong monarchy that would have protected the community as a whole. Most unfortunately the policy of Henry VIII. was not carried out; in the great conflict of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, Ireland was drawn into a long struggle with England, and was repeatedly made a place of arms for her foes; an era of savage conquest, accomplished piecemeal, with ruthless confiscation following in its train, was protracted during nearly a century and a half; and at the close of the reign of William III., nine-tenths probably of the land of Ireland had been wrested from its former possessors, and the old Celtic land system had been destroyed by the sword and by law. Race and religion made this position of affairs much worse; the age of Protestant ascendency in Ireland began; in infinitely the greatest part of the island the land was parcelled out among a caste of owners distinct in blood and faith from the children of the soil, and lording it over an oppressed peasantry; and the system was propped up by a code of cruel laws, which maintained and, so to speak, stereotyped these evil divisions. The lines of the land system of Ireland were thus finally laid down; a variety of economic and social causes increased and deepened their extreme harshness; and though they have gradually been softened, and are now all but effaced, their traces and the results are still to be seen. The last thirty years have witnessed repeated attempts to effect radical changes in the modes of the owners.h.i.+p and the occupation of the land in Ireland; they have wrought a revolution in Irish landed relations, and have well-nigh turned them upside down; but the consequences have a.s.suredly not been fortunate. The land system of Ireland has been made a chaos of economic disorder, of dissensions of cla.s.s, of legalised wrong, absolutely incompatible with social progress and the general welfare.

I must glance, for an instant, at the distinctive features of the land system of Ireland in the Celtic age, for despite the effects of confiscation and conquest, faint traces of it may still be seen, and have a kind of influence.[36] As was the case in all communities of the Aryan stem, the land originally was largely held in collective owners.h.i.+p; but agriculture developed individual owners.h.i.+p by degrees, though less so in Ireland than in more progressive countries. The people were settled on the soil in tribes, clans, and septs, these being the larger and the smaller units; the modes of the tenure of the land, misinterpreted by Elizabethan sages, differed widely from each other, but revealed the traditions of old patriarchal usage and power, especially in their canons of descent and succession. The feudalisation of the land, as it has been significantly called, a process which took place in nearly the whole of Europe, was also witnessed in Ireland, to a certain extent; but this was not so complete and strongly marked as in France and England. The land, nevertheless, was, throughout the island, held ultimately from a supreme monarch; it was divided, under him, among families of princely chiefs, who ruled vast tracts with scarcely controlled authority; inferior chiefs were subject to these; the organisation of the land had much in common with the organisation of the Anglo-Norman manor, and with the position of the Lord Paramount of every manor, the head of the English State. The Irish kings and chiefs had lands in demesne; they had a landed and a personal _n.o.blesse_; the territories they ruled were held by cla.s.ses strongly resembling the free tenants, the villeins, and the serfs of the feudal system. All this, however, was not as perfectly defined as it was in lands feudalised to a higher degree; and though the Davieses and Spensers were wholly in error in representing the dependents of the Irish kings and chiefs as little better than a horde of fighting men and slaves, Ireland never fully possessed the liberties feudalism secured. The Ceile of substance, who had lands of his own, seems to have been in an inferior position to the English freeholder; the Saer stock and Daer stock tenants held their lands by a tenure like that of the metayers of France; the Fuidhirs were kept in complete subjection, and had not even the rights of the villein. The land, too, was still largely held in collective owners.h.i.+p; in its occupation this is even now seen in backward and poor districts; and, curiously enough, distinctions were drawn between what was a 'fair' and a 'rack rent,' words still common in the mouth of the Irish peasant, and to which recent legislation has given its sanction.

As in the case of most lands where anything resembling feudalism prevailed, with the single exception of England, under her strong Monarchy, Ireland in these circ.u.mstances was torn by continual discord, increased by the recurring struggles with the Dane. The Celtic kings and chiefs, nevertheless, were beloved by their people; the land system fell in with Celtic tribal ideas and sentiments. I pa.s.s over the incidents of the first Norman Conquest; in the course of time, an Anglo-Norman colony was established, within a Pale ever-varying in extent, and held parts of the country under feudal conditions, the remaining, and by far the greatest, parts being left in the possession of the Celtic kings and princes. Anglo-Norman feudalism, however, was completely different, in Ireland, from what it was in England; it was not subject to vigorous kingly rule; it was confined within comparatively small limits. In these circ.u.mstances the Pale fell into the hands of a few leading and great families; these, as had been largely the case in Scotland, formed a domineering and oppressive _n.o.blesse_, continually engaged in quarrels between themselves, and in petty wars with the Celtic chiefs, and completely superior to the royal power in England. The Geraldines, the Butlers, the De Burghs, and other great houses, had no law but their own wills in their vast lords.h.i.+ps; their exactions and tyranny became a byword; their lives were spent in savage feudal strife, and in 'hostings against the Irish enemy.' Strange to say, too, these scions of a mighty conquering race fell under the spell of the Celtic genius, and, as it was said, 'became more Irish than the Irish themselves; they were at least largely a.s.similated to a Celtic model, and they adopted many of the usages of the Celt. It was not much otherwise in the Celtic region outside the Pale; the Irish chiefs often blended in marriage with the Anglo-Norman settlers; but they were continually at war with them, and with each other. Under these conditions, feudalism, in its best aspects, could take no root, in the land, in Ireland; and there is much reason to believe that the archaic Irish land system was gradually changed and almost broken up, the power of the kings and chiefs being greatly increased, and the position of their dependents being made essentially worse. It is obvious that in a land, a scene of such disorder and misrule, civilisation and all that the word implies could not exist; Ireland was probably more barbarous at the close of the fifteenth century than she had been when she first saw Henry of Anjou. The Pale had been restricted within ever-narrowing bounds; generations of colonising 'Englishry' had entered the country, and had left it in angry despair; the 'Irishry' had encroached on their conqueror's domain; the work of Strongbow and Fitzstephen appeared to be undone. Especially it was observed that nothing like a middle cla.s.s, even then the best element in the social life of England, had been able to develop itself in Ireland, and that the humbler cla.s.ses were always in a state of wretchedness, ground down by exaction, and exposed to incessant wrongs of all kinds. 'What common folk of all the world'--these were the words of a State paper of the age--'is so poor, so feeble, so evil be seen in town and field, so greatly oppressed and trodden underfoot, fares so evil, with so great misery, and with so wretched a life, as the common folk of Ireland?'

Henry VII. strengthened the authority of the Crown in Ireland; the Viceroyalty of Poynings marks an epoch in her chequered annals; but the conduct of the king was s.h.i.+fting and weak; the land fell under the control of the great House of Kildare; the Irishry were driven back, but in no sense subdued. Surrey, the victor of Flodden, intreated Henry VIII. to make the country his own by sheer force of arms; but his master refused in striking language; and proposed a scheme for bringing Ireland under the control of the Monarchy, for encouraging civilisation and promoting order, the wisest that has ever suggested itself to a British statesman. He made several of 'the degenerate' Norman _n.o.blesse_ peers; he extended the same dignity to several Irish chiefs; he a.s.sembled representatives of Ireland in a Parliament composed of both races; he appointed commissioners to go through the country and to punish crime; above all--and this deserves special notice--he tried to conciliate the Celtic community by bringing their usages within the cognisance of the law, and giving them effectual legal sanction; and he condemned the attempts being already made to force laws on them peculiar to England. Had this enlightened policy been steadily pursued, the history of Ireland would have run a wholly different course; but destiny, that has played so sinister a part in Irish affairs, interfered to thwart the admirable designs of the king. The great Geraldine rebellion broke out, supported by irregular Celtic risings; from this time forward, during five generations of man, the era of cruel but intermittent conquest, accompanied by wholesale confiscation, set in. The powerful tribe of the O'Connors of Offaly, closely a.s.sociated with the fallen House of Kildare, was the first to feel the weight of the arm of England; its territories were forcibly overrun and annexed, given the name of the King's and the Queen's Counties, and peopled with a colony of settlers from England. Celtic Ireland ere long was brought into the conflict between Elizabeth and Philip II., the representatives of the faiths that were dividing Christendom; the princely chief, Shane O'Neill, fell a victim to the English conquerors, though their quarrel with him was not wholly one of seeking the a.s.sistance of a foreign enemy; his vast domains were, also, in part forfeited, in part handed over to a puppet of English power. The frightful Desmond rebellion followed; it was directly encouraged by the Pope and by Spain; after a protracted struggle approaching a real civil war, the immense lords.h.i.+ps of the great Geraldine House were confiscated, and granted to a colony of English blood. Tyrone, the real successor of his kinsman, Shane O'Neill, a soldier and statesman of no ordinary parts, seeing, as he bitterly said, that his 'lands were marked down by the spoiler,' endeavoured, not without partial success, to combine a great Irish League against England; he entered into an alliance with Spain; a Spanish army landed on the southern coast of Munster; after a long and sanguinary contest, Tyrone yielded, but his resistance had been so formidable that he was allowed to retain his possessions.

The subjugation of a large part of Ireland, in the Elizabethan wars, was marked by incidents of a most atrocious character. The Government had no regular army to act in the field; it was compelled largely to rely on armed levies of the Englishry, and on bodies of the Irishry attached to the conqueror's standards; for in this, as in nearly all instances throughout their history, the Irish Celts were at feud with each other; Celtic Ireland was a house divided against itself. The queen, it has been written, 'ruled over blood and ashes,' when Mountjoy sheathed his victorious sword; the memory of this period still lives in Irish tradition. A season of exhaustion and repose ensued after James I. had ascended the throne; but the time, in the phrase of Tacitus, had an evil aspect in peace itself. The Pale had long before this been effaced; conquest and confiscation had spread over nearly the whole island; the domination of England was felt almost everywhere. As the result, the whole of Ireland was made s.h.i.+re land; the old Celtic land system, which still widely prevailed, was swept away by decisions of the Anglican Courts of Justice; it was declared to be 'a lewd and not law-worthy thing;' all the Irish land was subjected to English modes of tenure; they were imposed on a people which detested these gifts of the stranger; innumerable tribal rights were destroyed. Ere long the work of confiscation began again; the domains of Tyrone and of his kinsman O'Donnell were p.r.o.nounced forfeited for reasons that have never been ascertained; the Crown was placed in possession of nearly six counties of Ulster. Up to this time the settlements of English colonists, which had been made in Ireland by Tudor conquest, had failed; the colonists had been almost lost in the midst of the Irishry, who hemmed them around. This immense confiscation was, however, in part successful; it was carried out on comparatively enlightened principles; it has produced the famous Plantation of Ulster; and this, with other settlements in the counties of Antrim and Down, has established, in a large part of the northern province of Ireland, a hardy and thriving community, in the main, of Scottish blood. Confiscation, nevertheless, did not stop here; 'the ravages of war,' in Burke's language, were 'carried on amidst seeming peace;' enormous tracts were torn from their former owners on pretexts usually of the flimsiest kind, and were flung to Court favourites, to jobbing speculators, to greedy adventurers of the baser sort. By this time three-fourths probably of the soil of Ireland had pa.s.sed into the hands of a new race of possessors; the descendants of Anglo-Norman n.o.bles and of the Celtic princes had been sufferers well-nigh in the same proportion. At last Strafford marked out the whole province of Connaught, for what has been called 'his majestic rapine;' this and other innumerable acts of spoliation and wrong unquestionably were the paramount cause of the great Celtic rising of 1641. Another and soon to be a most potent element of evils and troubles had already begun to make its sinister presence felt in Ireland. In the great religious schism of the sixteenth century, England had become Protestant, Ireland had remained Catholic, and each had taken opposite sides in the conflict that followed; though the Elizabethan wars were rather struggles of race than of faith. But as conquest and confiscation progressed in Ireland, the Anglican Church, a scion of the Norman Church of the Pale, was erected on the ruins of its Celtic Catholic rival; the land more and more became possessed by settlers alien in creed from the old owners, and from the vanquished children of the soil; and harsh laws had begun to deepen the distinctions between them. Nevertheless, though its signs had in some measure appeared, the era of Protestant ascendency and Catholic subjection had not been developed in Ireland, as yet, in its worst aspects.

The wild Celtic rising of 1641 was followed by a rising of the old Englishry of the Pale--the descendants of the first Anglo-Norman settlers; both movements were probably encouraged from France; though widely different, they ran into each other. The great Civil War was now running its course in England; Ireland, for the most part, took the side of the king; the majority of Englishmen were certainly on the side of the Parliament. I cannot retrace the scenes of the contest in Ireland; after a fierce and protracted struggle, in which an envoy of the Pope became the representative of an ill-united Irish League; in which Preston and Ormond led the forces of the Pale, and Owen Roe O'Neill was at the head of the Irish Celts,--the whole island was subjugated by the sword of Cromwell, as it never had been subjugated before. Drogheda and Wexford are names of woe in the annals of Ireland; but the conquest of the Protector, ruthless as it was, was not so cruel as that of the Elizabethan soldiers; if deeply stained with blood, it was rapid and completely decisive. The colony in Ulster had begun to flourish; Cromwell designed a scheme for the colonisation of the vanquished country more thorough and extensive than any which had been designed before. Three-fourths of Ireland had been in arms against the Parliament; that a.s.sembly had made grants by antic.i.p.ation of Irish forfeited lands to 'adventurers' who had advanced it moneys; an opportunity for immense confiscations had arisen; the Protector was not slow to take advantage of it; his Puritan fanaticism, his hatred of the Irish people, especially of its 'idolatrous Papists,' his strong English and religious sympathies, united to confirm him in his purpose.

The forfeited lands in four of the Irish counties were appropriated to the Commonwealth and its uses; those in eighteen were to be granted to the 'adventurers' and the soldiery of the late conquest; those in seven were to be allotted to the army in England. The grants were to be either free, or to be purchased at nominal prices; the owners, who had lost their lands, were to be deported to Connaught--'h.e.l.l' was the alternative, the tradition runs--and 'Courts of Claims,' as they were called, were to be set up, to adjudicate on the conduct of those who were to be dispossessed--they were to be subjected to a test which scarcely one could satisfy--and practically to measure confiscation out under the pretence of law. By these means Cromwell calculated that some forty thousand colonists, of English blood and of the Puritan faith, would be poured into the millions of acres which the sword had placed in the hands of his Government; these would form a prosperous settlement loyal to England; would keep rebellion in Ireland for ever down; and would regenerate a land taken from a race akin to the Amalekites of old. As a foretaste of the new and glorious order of things, Sir William Petty, a very able man, remarkably skilful in feathering his own nest, made a cadastral survey of Ireland, which still remains.

Cromwell's scheme of confiscation was thoroughly carried out, spite of much angry wrangling between the Puritan warriors. The remains of the defeated Irish armies went, in thousands, into exile in foreign lands; they were the heralds of the renowned soldiery who, for a century and a half, were deadly, but honourable foes of the British name. The rule of the Protector in Ireland was stern but enforced peace; Ireland was prostrate in the exhaustion of despair; there is much proof that, under the Cromwellian settlement, the country made a kind of material progress.

But Cromwell's great scheme of colonisation failed, as such schemes had failed in many instances before; a large majority of the 'adventurers' and the soldiers sold their possessions, usually for a mere nothing: many 'degenerated' like the old Norman families, and, won over by the spells 'of the daughters of Heth,' had, in one or two generations, become 'mere Irish.' The ultimate result of the Cromwellian conquest was to establish in Ireland three or four thousand owners of the soil, of English blood and Puritan leanings, without the support of inferior dependents, in the midst of a vanquished population hostile in race and faith; the sentiments thus engendered have never died out; to this day 'a Cromwellian landlord' is a name of reproach in Catholic Ireland. At the Restoration hope for a moment revived in the hearts of the ruined owners, who had been dispossessed by Cromwell, and of whom hundreds had fought for the Crown; but this was dashed by the perfidy of Charles II. and his courtiers; the Cromwellian forfeitures were, in the main, confirmed; large tracts were given back to favourites of the Stuarts, but thousands of beggared families lost their estates for ever through a policy of cruel baseness and wrong. Ireland remained quiescent for nearly thirty years; she even prospered under the wise rule of Ormond--one of the n.o.blest figures in her unhappy history; but the bitter memories of the past lived in the conquered people, though, as has repeatedly been seen in a Celtic race, they were treasured in silence, and caused little apparent trouble. James II. ascended the throne in 1685; he had a great opportunity to mitigate many of the wrongs of Ireland; he might have removed some of the evils of the Cromwellian conquest, and have effected changes in the settlement of the land, which, at least, would have done partial justice. But the unfortunate king was a bigot, and, in no sense, a statesman; like his father he tried the desperate policy of making use of Ireland in his designs against English liberties; he sent Tyrconnell to Dublin, and, in a few months, revolution had broken out through the country; English and Protestant Ireland was well-nigh trampled underfoot; Catholic and Celtic Ireland rose up in a wild hope of revenge. I cannot even glance at the stirring events that followed; the descendants of ruined barons of the Pale and of Celtic princes driven from their lands and their homes, joined in a great effort to raise a large armed force; the rising almost a.s.sumed a national aspect; but after the Boyne and the fall of Limerick, it was finally quelled by William III. The process of confiscation was once more renewed; thousands of acres were taken forcibly from those who had resisted in the field, and were handed over to a new race of colonists belonging to the blood and the creed of the victors; and the shameful violation of a solemn Treaty made all that was cruel in spoliation worse.

The era of conquest in Ireland and of confiscation by force--an agony prolonged for a century and a half--was brought to an end in the reign of William III. This is not the place to examine the question on which side, as between England and Ireland, the balance of the wrongs that were done inclines; but if much that is cruel and shameful is to be laid to the charge of England, Ireland, it cannot be forgotten, crossed her path repeatedly in an age of grave national perils and troubles, and, moreover, wrecked her own cause by her wretched dissensions. The Irish land had now nearly all fallen into the hands of a caste of owners, of English and Scottish descent, and in faith Protestant, divided from a people of Catholic occupiers for the most part of the Irish race; wide lines of demarcation had been drawn between them; and there was no middle cla.s.s to bridge over the gulf. In a part of Ulster alone where the proprietors and the holders of the soil were largely of the same religion and blood, was there the promise of a more auspicious order of things; even here causes of disunion were not wanting. Nor were these the only vices and dangers of a land system which has scarcely had a parallel. Enormous tracts had been bestowed on owners who never saw their estates; absenteeism existed to an immense extent; their lands, too, had, in thousands of instances, been underlet to a cla.s.s of intermediate owners, who were to form a body of most oppressive landlords. In addition, the representatives of numbers of ruined families still vegetated on the domains which had been their own; the few families which had escaped from the spoilers, were held in reverence by the peasantry around; elements of disorder and trouble continued to fester. The destruction, too, of the old Celtic modes of land tenure, and the subst.i.tution of the English system, had unjustly annihilated tribal rights wholesale; the free, and other dependents of the Irish chiefs, had sunk into the position of mere tenants at will, that is, at the mercy of foreign and often unknown masters. One of the worst, if not the most apparent evil, of the gigantic confiscations which had taken place, and on which the land system had, so to speak, been founded, was that the respect which attaches to the ancient owners.h.i.+p of land, and which forms, perhaps, its surest support, could hardly exist in any part of Ireland; the disastrous consequences may be traced to the present hour.

Landlords, with t.i.tles of yesterday, won by the sword, could not feel the interest in their estates and in the inhabitants on them, naturally felt by owners of gentle and ancient descent; the land which, as has been said, had been flung like a fox to ravening hounds, could not attract to it happy and peaceful memories; the very Government had learned to think it could deal with the land as it pleased, and treated the rights gained by confiscation with contempt. Prescription, the strongest cement of property, had no place in this ill-compacted land system.[37]

The era of Protestant ascendency bringing Catholic subjection with it, had now set in for many years in Ireland; its evils were aggravated by harsh divisions of race, and by more than a century of bitter memories; its effects were more conspicuous in the land than in other social relations.

This unnatural and calamitous position of affairs might, however, have been replaced ere long by a better order of things, had it not been artificially maintained and made enduring by legislation unexampled for its far-reaching cruelty. I cannot attempt to describe the Penal Code of Ireland; in the emphatic words of Burke, 'it was a complete system, full of coherence and consistency; well digested and well composed in all its parts; it was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debas.e.m.e.nt in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.'[38] The objects of these execrable laws were threefold: to exclude the Irish Catholic whether of Anglo-Irish or Celtic descent--misfortune had well-nigh effaced the distinction--from every office of trust in the State, from every profession, almost from every walk of life; to persecute and proscribe the Catholic Church of Ireland, and to place its priesthood under a humiliating ban, and finally to ruin and degrade the few remaining Catholic owners of the soil; to prevent the Irish Catholic from acquiring any real interest in it; and, above all, to keep the Catholic peasantry in a condition of thraldom.[39]

The Code was only too successful in compa.s.sing its ends; I pa.s.s from its operation as regards the two first, to point out how it sought to attain the third, and how its provisions affected the Irish land and the manifold relations connected with it. The estate of the Irish Catholic owner was not to follow the ordinary courses of descent; it was 'to gavel,' and to be divided among many persons; this was for the avowed purpose of making 'the landed property of Papists crumble away, and disappear.' The Irish Catholic owner was subjected to cruel enactments that literally set his household against him; his wife and children were bribed to become his foes; law sate at his hearth to make his existence wretched. The Irish Catholic, too, was forbidden to acquire land by purchase or even to possess an inc.u.mbrance on it; as far as possible the owners.h.i.+p of land was strictly confined to the Protestant caste. But the wrong that, in its consequences at least, was perhaps the worst, was that the Catholic occupier of the Irish soil could not obtain anything like an advantageous tenure; he could not have a lease for a period beyond thirty-one years, and this, too, at an excessive rent; and, in the great ma.s.s of instances, he was a serf holding merely at will.

The forty years that succeeded the death of William III. are certainly the most mournful period in Irish history. The memories of conquest and confiscation were still fresh; the Penal Code kept Catholic Ireland in its chains; society was fas.h.i.+oned on the type of the domination of a cla.s.s, separated from a whole community in race and faith. Nothing was left undone to perpetuate this evil order of things; the Irish Parliament was a mere oligarchy of the sons of the colonists of Elizabeth, Cromwell, and William, apart from a few leading men in Ulster; its legislation for the vanquished race was barbarous; Lords-Lieutenant spoke of the Irish Catholics as of 'the common enemy;' a 'Papist was presumed not to exist'

in the Irish Courts of Justice. Meanwhile the penal laws were relentlessly carried out for years; the Irish Catholic was placed under a universal ban; the Catholic Church of Ireland lay, as it were, in the valley of the shadow of death. But the direst consequences appeared in the land, and in the social life of the landed cla.s.ses; these were most calamitous and have still left their traces. Many of the few Catholic owners abandoned their estates, and carried their swords into foreign lands, where some rose to well-deserved eminence; a small number conformed to the dominant faith in order to exist in comparative peace at home; the majority clung to their lands and bowed their heads to oppression. The Protestant lords of the soil were what their antecedents and the law had made them; they were long a harsh and exacting order of men, filled with bigotry and the pride of a conquering race; they regarded the inferiors they ruled as pariahs and helots. But, as usually happens, when society is in an unnatural state, they did not prosper amidst the ruins around them; their lands were kept on a kind of pernicious mortmain, as they could not mortgage or sell them freely; absenteeism with all its mischiefs greatly increased; and middleman tenures largely multiplied, subjecting the peasantry to a detestable breed of landlords, Protestants and of English descent, like their superiors, but much worse tyrants. As for the ma.s.s of the Catholic occupiers of the soil, they were kept down in the lowest state of serfdom; but mult.i.tudes found their way into foreign armies; 'the wild geese,' as they were pathetically called, flew to Austria and, above all, to France, where, in the ranks of the celebrated Irish Brigade--'ever and everywhere'

true to the Bourbon lilies--they won renown at Dettingen, Fontenoy, and other fields of fame. The aspect of Ireland bore too faithful witness to the misery engendered in this evil order of things. The country was still covered with the wrecks of the late wars; the habitations, even of the Protestant gentry, were squalid and mean; the towns were, in many instances, sinking into decay; the peasantry were huddled together into villages of huts; the traveller roamed through vast wastes of unfenced pasturage, evidences of a land almost left in a state of nature. Hideous famines were of repeated occurrence; one, that of 1739-41, swept the population away in tens of thousands; the Irish Parliament characteristically did nothing to help the sufferers; it met the emergency by strengthening the means to enforce the payment of rent. The miserable condition of Ireland was made worse by the legislation of the British Parliament, which treated the country as a conquered colony; and, true to the principles of the mercantile system, impeded or prevented the growth of several Irish industries. This was, of course, most injurious to the Protestant settlers; but these were held down by the ruling power; as was finely said, 'they knelt to England on the necks of their countrymen.' The state of things in the colonised parts of Ulster was somewhat better; but the Scottish and Presbyterian population of this corner of Ireland had not a few causes of serious complaint.[40]

In the next generation a great but gradual change pa.s.sed over the state of the Irish community. The Penal Code was not in letter relaxed; but the evil spirit which had conceived it lost much of its force. The men who had fought at the Boyne and at Aghrim had pa.s.sed away; the human conscience, moved by the influences of the eighteenth century, revolted from the barbarous legislation of a half-fanatical age. The Irish Catholics slowly began to make themselves felt in the State; many ama.s.sed large fortunes in foreign commerce; shut out as they still were by law from almost every profession and office, they made their way into the medical calling, and especially at the Bar, where their disabilities were evaded or ignored.

The Catholic Church was no longer proscribed; its wors.h.i.+p, indeed, was still carried on under degrading conditions; but its priesthood were permitted to perform their sacred functions in peace; its dignitaries were even countenanced by the men in power at the Castle. This great social change was conspicuously seen in the land; landed relations were markedly improved, and partly transformed. The Catholic owners were permitted to hold their estates free from the cruel vexations of the past; they began to live on terms of friends.h.i.+p with the Protestant caste; legal fictions annulled the laws which had made their lives wretched; their lands were, in many instances, held by the Protestant gentry on secret trusts; and these, though contrary to law, were, as a rule, most honourably fulfilled.

The princ.i.p.al, however, and most decisive change appeared in the position and the sentiments of the Protestant lords of the soil. As time rolled on, and threw its kindly growths over the settlement of confiscation and the sword, these men began to feel that Ireland was their country and home; they became, to a certain extent, Irishmen; they felt sympathy, by degrees, with the conquered serfs in their midst. This feeling was strengthened by the tyrannous selfishness of the British Parliament, which treated Ireland as if she were its footstool, and of the official cla.s.s, nearly all Englishmen, who lorded it over the land they despised; an 'Irish interest' grew up in the Parliament at College Green, composed very largely of the Protestant landlords; this became patriotic, in a certain sense, and a protector of the scanty rights of Ireland. As social order, too, was seldom disturbed, the wealth of the country had considerably increased; the gentry acquired a greater interest in their estates, and became more and more attached to them; absenteeism, as the result, perceptibly lessened; and middleman tenures, though still prevalent, diminished remarkably in the more progressive counties. The deep lines of demarcation which kept apart the owners and the occupiers of the soil were thus to a certain extent bridged over; the Irish landlord, especially if resident, became a kindlier superior than his fathers had been; the Irish peasant became less a stranger to him.

The evidences of this better order of things became manifest on the face of the country. Agriculture, though still backward, made real progress; the breeds of farming animals greatly improved; the huge breadths of pasturage had a less deserted aspect. The country towns had generally advanced; the land had been opened by good roads; the means of locomotion had been largely multiplied. The rental of Ireland had doubled within living memory; in some counties, indeed, it was nearly as high as it is now; the land was at a price of more years' purchase than it is at the close of the nineteenth century. It was at this period that the great country houses of Ireland were built, and their vast demesnes laid out; the wages of labour were low, but had distinctly risen; the peasant hind, Arthur Young tells us, in point of food and clothing, was as well off as his fellow in England. The land was largely parcelled out into considerable farms; but small holdings were on the increase; and the cottar system, in the course of time to become a source of manifold evils, was not yet a cause of much mischief; the pressure of population on the soil was not severely felt. Many of the great landlords, too, were excellent men; they ruled the country well, and greatly improved their estates; in numberless instances they had won the hearts of dependents, who regarded them as kind masters. Yet the picture was not without a dark side; this land system still had evil, nay, repulsive, features. Except in the best part of Ulster the deep divisions of race and faith continued to be profoundly marked; the Penal Code had made these, to a great extent, indelible. There was still much oppression and exaction in landed relations; the cla.s.s of small landlords and the cla.s.s of middlemen were too generally tyrannical and harsh; complaints of over-renting were not infrequent; and if the great landlords, as a rule, were not severe superiors, many were extravagant, addicted to excess, and reckless duellists; they bore a strong resemblance to the seigneurie of the old French Monarchy. The peasantry, too, remained serfs, illiterate, ignorant, and superst.i.tious; the good feelings they often had for their lords had too much of the submissiveness of the slave; and virtuous as their women ordinarily were, they too generally yielded to the l.u.s.ts of their masters. The habitations, besides, of this population were still wretched; if their lot had a.s.suredly become better, it was often hard, above all, degraded. They had begun to feel more acutely the ills they suffered; in many counties they had banded themselves together into lawless leagues, to protect themselves and to resist authority. These a.s.sociations, known by the general name of Whiteboys--perhaps taken from the Camisards of the Cevennes--had as their objects the preservation of rights of commonage, the extinction of t.i.thes, and the reduction of rents; they may be traced back to the great confiscations of the past; they were held together by secret leaders and pa.s.swords; and they often kept whole districts in a state of terror. A Draconic Code was directed against them; though often put down they have risen to life again; Ireland has never since been completely free from them; their influence still is distinctly apparent. a.s.sociations of somewhat a similar kind, known as Steelboys and Oakboys, were formed even in the good parts of Ulster; but they were much less dangerous and were not permanent. It is a characteristic of Whiteboyism, as it has ever since been called, that it has always had a political side, and lends itself to revolutionary movements against government itself.[41]

Though Protestant ascendency was still supreme at this period, the confiscations of the past had not been forgotten; they were treasured in the minds of the descendants of the old Catholic families, and of the population among which they lived. The extinction, too, of the tribal Irish tenures, had, we have seen, been a cause of grievous wrongs; this was a tradition, also, handed down from father to son, and was still fresh in the remembrance of a whole race. The land system, though to outward seeming secure, nevertheless rested on unstable foundations, as was to appear in the course of time; another element of disturbance was being formed, which ultimately was to have immense force. Under the modes of land tenure, which prevailed in England, since the system of small holdings had been broken up, the land had generally been laid out in large farms; partly from this circ.u.mstance, and partly owing to custom, the charge of making permanent improvements of the land had almost everywhere devolved on the owner of the soil; a tenant, who rented a farm, took it, so to speak, equipped with the buildings and other things of the kind that were suitable to it. But in Ireland, partly because small farms were numerous, and partly because the custom had never grown up--the history of the past fully accounts for this--the permanent improvements were very seldom made by the landlord; the tenant, who held land, had to add, as it were, its plant to it; he had to do much that gave it any real value. As the inevitable result, the Irish occupier of the soil felt that he had acquired a concurrent right in it; this, if the improvements were solid and lasting, might almost amount to a partial joint-owners.h.i.+p, at least give him, in equity, a real hold on the land. But a right of this kind was not recognised by the law, founded as this was upon notions of English tenure; it was liable to be destroyed should the tenant be dispossessed; and as the tenure of the immense majority of the occupiers of the soil in Ireland was either at will, or for a short term at a high rent, this right, essentially of a quasi-proprietary kind, was made precarious, and had no legal protection. With the prescience of genius, Burke perceived the evils that might grow out of this state of things, though, as yet, these were not much felt; he saw that it discouraged improvement of almost every kind; especially he saw that the denial of legal sanction to the rights in the land a tenant might have, and the fact that his tenure was short and uncertain, might become a source of grave wrong, and of far-reaching discontent. In a word, he detected an economic vice in the land system of Ireland which, in the long run, was to do great mischief; and curiously enough he indicated the remedies that ought to be applied, and pointed out the true principles of a reform of Irish land tenure. It would have been well had British statesmen adopted these; his simple, just, and statesmanlike plan puts to shame the ill-designed and unsuccessful attempts that have been made to recast the Irish land system of late years, and the false, reckless, and socialistic theories at present current on this important subject.[42]

I must pa.s.s over even the main events of the history of Ireland, after this period, up to the close of the eighteenth century. The 'Irish interest,' mainly composed of the great landed gentry, and turning to account the American War, compelled the Parliament at Westminster to relax many of the commercial restraints on Ireland, and to concede her a partial free trade; under the guidance of the ill.u.s.trious Grattan it obtained legislative independence for the Irish Parliament. At the same time the Penal Code was largely repealed; the Irish Catholic was permitted to acquire the owners.h.i.+p of the soil; before long he received the electoral franchise, though he was still excluded from the Irish Houses of Lords and Commons. In these circ.u.mstances, Ireland made real material and social progress; the wealth of the country rapidly increased; the Protestant and Catholic upper cla.s.ses began to unite in marriage; a commercial middle cla.s.s, if still very weak, grew up. Ireland seemed about to enter a happier era; yet there were drawbacks to this partial welfare, especially as regards the land system. Middleman tenures were becoming much less frequent; absenteeism was markedly on the decline; but partly owing to their contact with the Parliament in College Green, and to the brilliant social life it created in Dublin, the landed gentry became more extravagant than their fathers had been; they began to raise their rents and to enc.u.mber their estates; over-renting became more common than befo