Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 64 No. 396 October 1848

"The result of experience, therefore, is complete in all its parts. Thrice, during the last two hundred years, have conciliatory measures been tried on the largest scale, and with the most beneficent intention; and thrice have the concessions to the Catholics been followed by a violent and intolerable outbreak of savage ferocity. The two first rebellions were followed by a firm and severe system of coercive government; as long as they continued in force, Ireland was comparatively tranquil, and their relaxation was the signal for the commencement of a state of insubordination which rapidly led to anarchy and revolt. The present revolutionary spirit has been met by a different system. Every thing has been conceded to the demagogues; their demands have been granted, their assemblies allowed, their advice followed, their leaders promoted; and the country in consequence has arrived at a state of anarchy unparalleled in any Christian state.

"What makes the present state of Ireland, and the democratic spirit of its inhabitants, altogether unpardonable is, the extreme indulgence and liberality with which, for the last fifty years, they have been treated by this country. During the whole war, Ireland paid neither income-tax nor assessed taxes; and the sum thus made a present of by England to her people, amounted at the very lowest calculation to £50,000,000 sterling. She shared in the full benefit of the war in consequence of the immense extent of the demand for agricultural produce which its expenditure occasioned, without feeling any of the burdens which neutralised its extension in this country. No poor's rates are levied on her landholders – in other words, they are levied on England and Scotland instead – and this island is in consequence overwhelmed by a mass of indigence created in the neighbouring kingdom, but which British indulgence has relieved them from the necessity of maintaining. The amount of the sums annually paid by the Parliament of Great Britain to objects of charity and utility in Ireland almost exceeds belief, and is at least five times greater than all directed to the same objects in both the other parts of the empire taken together. Yet with all their good deeds, past, present, and to come, Ireland is the most discontented part of the United Kingdom. She is incessantly crying out against her benefactor, and recurring to old oppression rendered necessary by her passions, instead of present benefactions, of which her democratic population have proved themselves unworthy by their ingratitude.

"Notwithstanding all the efforts of her demagogues to distract the country, and counteract all the liberality and beneficence of the English Government, Ireland has advanced with greater rapidity in industry, wealth, and all the real sources of happiness, during the last thirty years, than any other part of the empire. Since the Union, she has made a start both in agricultural and manufacturing industry, quite unparalleled, and much greater than Scotland had made during the first hundred years after her incorporation with the English dominions. It is quite evident that, if the demagogues would let Ireland alone – if the wounds in her political system were not continually kept open, and the passions of the people incessantly inflamed, by her popular leaders, she would become as rich and prosperous as she is populous – that, instead of a source of weakness, she would become a pillar of strength to the united empire – and instead of being overspread with the most wretched and squalid population in Europe, she might eventually boast of the most contented and happy."

So far what we wrote in December 1832. We make no apology for the length of this quotation. So precisely is it applicable to the present time, that were we to write anew on the subject, we should certainly reproduce the same ideas, and probably, in a great degree, make use of the same words. It affords a remarkable proof of the manner in which Ireland has been influenced, in all periods of its history, by the same causes; and of the way in which all its natural advantages have been thrown away, by the indolence and want of energy in its inhabitants, joined to the unhappy extension to it, through British connexion, of the privileges, excitement, and passions, consequent on a free constitution, for which it was unfitted by its character, temperament, and state of social advancement.

Need it be said how precisely the same truths have been illustrated in later times, and, most of all, in the memorable year in which we now write? The melancholy tale is known to all: it is written in characters of fire in England's annals. Such was the state of excitement, anarchy, and licentiousness to which the Irish were brought under the Whig rule, by the combined operation of the Reform mania, and the Repeal agitation, that Lord Grey, albeit the most impassioned opponent of Mr Pitt's preventive policy, was compelled to adopt it; and the celebrated Coercion Bill of 1833 invested Government with extraordinary powers, and for a time superseded, by martial law, in some districts of Ireland, the ordinary administration of justice. The result, as much as the anarchy which had preceded it, demonstrated where the secret of Ireland's ills was to be found, and what was the species of government adapted for its unsettled, impassioned, and semi-barbarous inhabitants.13 Instantly, as if by enchantment, the disorders ceased: midnight fires no longer illuminated the heavens, midnight murders no longer struck terror into the inhabitants. The savage passions of the people, growing out of the civilised license unhappily allowed them under British rule, were rapidly coerced, and, instead of Ireland exhibiting an amount of agrarian outrage and atrocity unprecedented in any Christian land, even her worst provinces returned to their usual, though yet serious and lamentable average.14

The evil days of conciliation and concession, however, soon returned. When Sir R. Peel assumed the helm for a brief period in 1835, he said, that his chief difficulty was Ireland. It was so in truth – not from the difficulties, great as they were, with which the administration of Ireland was surrounded, but from the monstrous delusions on the subject with which the Whigs, then possessed of the chief influence in the state, had imbued the public mind. So feeble was Government under his successors, from 1835 to 1841 – so thoroughly had they drenched the people of Great Britain with the belief that severity of rule was the sole cause of the miseries of Ireland, and that conciliation and concession were their appropriate remedy – that powers the most disastrous, privileges the most undeserved, were bestowed on the Irish people. The very agitators were lauded, flattered, and promoted. O'Connell was offered a seat on the Bench; the whole, or nearly the whole, patronage of the country was surrendered into his hands. The greater part of the police were nominated according to the suggestions of himself or his party; the Orangemen of the north – the bulwark of the throne – were vilified, prosecuted, and discouraged; self-government became the order of the day; municipal reform was conceded; an ignorant, priest-led, half-savage people were intrusted with one of the highest duties of civilised citizens – that of electing their own magistrates. O'Connell, under the new municipal constitution, was elected Lord Mayor of Dublin; a majority, both of the constituency and members of Parliament, ere long became Repealers. The Whig system of governing Ireland, by yielding to its selfish passions and fostering its political vices, received its full development; Whig journals, reviews, and magazines, lauded the policy to the skies, and predicted from its effects the speedy removal of all the evils which had arisen from the Tory system of coercion and repression in the Emerald Isle.

The results were soon apparent. Assured of countenance and support from high quarters – cordially supported by the Popish hierarchy and priesthood – intrenched, beyond the power of assault, in almost all the boroughs – possessed of considerable support or connivance in the rural magistracy – backed, in many parts of the country, by the torch of the incendiary or the firelock of the assassin – wielding at once the delegated powers of Government, the daggers of desperadoes, the enthusiasm of the people, O'Connell proceeded with the step of a conqueror in the work of agitation. The Temperance movement, headed by Father Mathew, came most opportunely to aid its funds, by diverting the vast sums hitherto spent by the people on physical, to support the cause of mental agitation. Seventy temperance bands were soon established to head the temperance clubs; the uniforms of the musicians were so made, that, by being merely turned, they could be converted into the bands of so many regiments; the Rent flourished; whisky-shops were ruined; the grand Intoxicator demolished his inferior competitors; Conciliation Hall boasted of its three thousand pounds a-week! The distilleries were bankrupt. The simple, misled people of England believed that, under the combined influence of political agitation, municipal reform, and suddenly-induced sobriety, Ireland was to be effectually regenerated, and the Celt was at once to leap into the privileges of the Saxon, without going through his seven centuries of painful apprenticement. Monster meetings became general. Assemblages said to consist of eighty or a hundred thousand, and which really contained twenty or thirty thousand persons, were held in the whole south and west of Ireland. Meanwhile industry was paralysed; capital shunned the agitated shores; labour was diverted from the field to the platform; the earnings of the poor were wrenched from them, by priestly influence and the terrors of purgatory, to aid in the great work of dismembering the empire. Instead of attending to their business – instead of working at their lazy-beds or tending their cattle – instead of draining their bogs or reclaiming their wastes, the people were continually kept running about from one monster meeting to another, and taught to believe that they were to look for happiness, not through the labour of their hands, or the sweat of their brows, but in swelling seditious processions, listening to treasonable harangues, and extending the ramifications of a vast and atrocious Ribbon conspiracy throughout Ireland.

Society could not long exist under such a system; but it was long ere the Liberal party saw the error of their ways – when Sir Robert Peel's government, in 1843, at length became convinced that the evil had come to such a height that it could no longer be endured, and that society would be dissolved under its influence. The meeting, accordingly, at Clontarff was proclaimed down; O'Connell was prosecuted, and a conviction obtained. But the Whigs were not long of coming up to the rescue. A majority of three Whig law peers to two Conservative ones – Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham being in the minority – overruled the opinion of the twelve judges of England, and quashed the prosecution. Elated with this victory, agitation resumed its sway in Ireland; but it did so under darker auspices, and with more dangerous ends. Organisation, with a view to insurrection, was now avowedly set on foot; arms were purchased in large quantities; and the Whig Secretary of Ireland had the extreme imprudence to write a letter, which found its way into the public prints, and was soon placarded over Ireland, in which it was stated generally, and without qualification, that every Irishman was entitled to possess and carry arms. Nay, this was made the cheval de bataille between the two parties; and when Sir R. Peel was turned out in July 1846, it was on the question of the bill for prohibiting the possession of arms in Ireland. The Whigs came into power on the basis of the Irish peasantry being entitled to be armed. It covers, like charity, a multitude of sins in Sir R. Peel, that he left office on the same question.

But the laws of nature are more durable in their operation than the revolutions of statesmen. The effects of twenty years' agitation and disorder in Ireland ere long became apparent. The reign of murder, incendiarism, and terror, brought down an awful retribution on its authors. Agriculture, neglected for the more agreeable and gainful trade of agitation or assassination, had fallen into such neglect, that the land, in many parts of the country, had become incapable of bearing grain crops. Nothing would do but lazy-beds, in which often a wretched crop was raised in the centre of the ridge, on a third of the land, while the remaining two-thirds were under water. The potato famine came, in 1846, upon a country thus prepared for such a visitation – wasted by agitation, disgraced by murder, impoverished by the protracted reign of terror. Its effects are well known. Ireland, wholly incapable, from its infatuated system of self-government, of doing any thing for itself, fell entirely as a burden on England. Great part of Scotland was wasted by a similar calamity, and in regions – the West Highlands and Islands – far more sterile and barren than the south and west of Ireland. But Scotland had not been torn by political passions, nor palsied by repeal agitation. Scotland righted itself. It bore the visitation with patience and resignation. It neither sought nor received aid from England. Not a shilling was advanced by the Exchequer to relieve Scotch suffering. Ten millions were given by the nation to relieve that of Ireland: of this immense sum eight millions were borrowed, and remain a lasting charge on Great Britain. Hundreds of thousands, raised from the suffering and won by the labour of England and Scotland, followed in the same direction. In return, the Irish gave us contumely, defiance, and ingratitude. The Nation thundered forth weekly its fiendish vituperation against the people who had saved its countrymen. It was eagerly read by hundreds of thousands who owed their existence to British generosity. The beggar gave place to the bully. Great part of the funds, lavished with misplaced humanity on Irish suffering, was employed in the purchase of arms to destroy their benefactors; and the unparalleled munificence of England to Ireland in 1847, was succeeded by the unparalleled rebellion of Ireland against England in 1848.

He must be blind indeed who cannot read in this rapid summary the real causes of the long-continued misery and distraction of Ireland. It has arisen in a great degree from English connexion, but in a way which the Irish do not perceive, and which they will be the last to admit. It is all owing to a very simple cause – so simple that philosophers have passed it over as too obvious to explain the phenomena, and party-men have rejected it because it afforded no handle for popular declamation, and gave them no fulcrum whereon to rest the lever which was to remove an opposite party from power. It is not owing to the Roman Catholic religion, – for, if so, how have so many Roman Catholic countries been, and still are, great, and powerful, and happy? It is not owing to the confiscation of the land, for confiscation as great followed the establishment of the Normans in England, and the victories of Robert Bruce in Scotland; and yet, in process of time, the ghastly wound was healed in both these countries, and from the united effort of the Britons, Saxons, and North-men, have arisen the glories and wonders of British civilisation. It is not owing to the exclusion, from 1608 to 1829, of the Roman Catholics from Parliament; for, since they were admitted into it, the distractions of Ireland have gone on constantly increasing, and its pauperism and mendicancy have advanced in an accelerated ratio. It is entirely owing to this, – that England has given Ireland institutions and political franchises, for the exercise of which it is wholly disqualified by temperament, habit, and political advancement. We have put edged tools into the hands of children, and we are astonished that they have mangled their limbs. We have emancipated from necessary control the Bedouin or the savage, and we are disappointed he does not exercise his newly-acquired powers with the discretion of an Englishman or an American. We have plunged a youth of sixteen, without control, into the dissipation of London or Paris, and we are surprised he has run riot in excess. Thence it is that all the concessions made to Ireland have instantly and rapidly augmented its political maladies, and that the only intervals of rest, tranquillity, and happiness it has enjoyed for the last two hundred years, have been those in which it has for a brief period been coerced by the wholesome severity of vigorous government. Thence it is that Whig solicitude, fastening on the grievances of Ireland as its battle-field, and winning for the inhabitants privileges for which they are not fitted, has in every instance so grievously augmented its wretchedness and crimes. This is the true key to Irish history. Viewed in this light, it is perfectly clear, intelligible, and consistent with what has occurred in other parts of the world. Without such guidance, its annals exhibit a chaos of contradictions; and Ireland must be considered as a casus singularis– an exception from the principles which elsewhere have ever regulated mankind.

The whole machinery of a free constitution – those institutions under which the Anglo-Saxons have so long flourished on both sides the Atlantic – are utter destruction to the semi-barbarous Celtic race to which they have been extended. Grand juries and petty juries, self-governments, municipalities, county and burgh elections, popular representatives, public meetings, hustings' declarations, platform exaggerations, a licentious press, and all the other attendants on republican or semi-republican institutions, are utterly destructive to the impassioned, priest-ridden, ignorant Celtic tribes in the south and west of Ireland. A paternal despotism is what they require.

We are far from wishing that despotism to be severe – on the contrary, we would have it beneficent and humane in the highest degree – we would have it give to Ireland blessings tenfold greater than it will ever earn for itself in senseless attempts at self-government. We would commence the work by the grant of sixteen millions of British money, to set on foot the chief arteries and railroads of the country! – that grant which, proposed by the patriotic wisdom of Lord George Bentinck, was defeated by the insane resistance of the Irish members themselves.15 We would in every imaginable shape stimulate the industry of Ireland, and aid the efforts of its really patriotic children, to extricate their country from the bottomless gulf into which selfishness, agitation, and the cry for repeal, have plunged it. But we would intrust little of this grant to the distribution of the Irish themselves. We would not again be guilty of the enormous error of committing a magnificent public grant to hands so unfit to direct it, that we know from the highest authority – that of the Lord-lieutenant himself – that great part of the fund was misapplied in private jobbing, and the remainder wasted in making good roads bad ones. We would execute the works by Irish hands, but distribute the funds, and guide the undertakings, by English heads. We would deprive the Irish, till they have shown they are fit to wield its powers, of the whole rights of self-government. We would commence with a rigorous and unflinching administration of justice, executed by courts-martial in cases of insurrection, and by judges without juries in ordinary cases. A powerful police, double its present strength, should give security to witnesses, who, if they desire it, should be provided with an asylum in the colonies at the public expense. "Every thing for the people, and nothing by them," which Napoleon described as the real principle of government at all times, should be applied to Ireland at least during the many years still to run of its national pupilage and minority.

The truth of these principles has been so signally demonstrated by the events of which Ireland has recently, and we lament to say is still, the theatre, that it has at length forced itself on the mind of the English people. Most fortunately, the Whigs being in power themselves, and having the responsibility and duties of government thrown upon them, have at length come to see the matter in its true light. The cry that all is owing to English misrule, is no longer heard in Great Britain. Its utter falsehood has been demonstrated in language too clear to be misunderstood. Even the Liberal journals, who have shown themselves most earnest in promoting the cause of reform and self-government in Great Britain, have come to see how utterly it is misapplied when attempted in Ireland. Hear the Times on this subject, one of the ablest journals which formerly supported the cause of parliamentary and municipal reform, as well in Ireland as in this country.

"The slowly gathering wrath of years has been concentrated to a point. John Bull was – as Jonathan would express it – "properly riled" at the behaviour of his once beloved fondling. He could put up with ingratitude; he could despise insolence; he could treat bravado with contempt. But here was the most wonderful combination of insolence, ingratitude, bravado, and cowardice, that history has recorded. Here were men belching out treason and fire and sword one day, and the next day sneaking between the bulwarks of a cabbage-garden, or through the loopholes of an indictment! For such, and on such, had he been expending, not only money, but care, anxiety, sympathy, and fear. He was fooled in the eyes of the world and his own! The only hope for Ireland is in rest, and a strong Government. Almost every Englishman who has regarded her with solicitude within late years, is convinced that what she and her people require, beyond all things, is discipline. Her gentry require discipline; her middle classes require discipline; her peasantry require discipline. They should altogether be disciplined in a rigid but just system, as the picked Irishmen have been who are distinguished as the best foremen in our factories, and the best non-commissioned officers in our army. Political privileges have been tried and misused; judicial forms have been tried and abused; Saxon institutions have been tried, and found not to harmonise with the Celtic mind. It cannot comprehend them; it does not appreciate them. It arrays liberty against law, and the technicalities of law against its spirit. It wants that moral sense, that instinctive justice and fairness, which have been the soul and the strength of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. This it must be taught by a strong, an irresistible, and, if need be, a coercive authority. Duty must be impressed on it as a habit, and then it will be inanealed with its sympathies. The greatest boon to Ireland would be the rule of a benevolent autocrat, who would punish all classes and all parties alike for a breach of social and civil duties – the landlords for their cruelty, the tenants for their mendacity, the priests for their neglect of their most momentous function. This boon Ireland will not get; but we can force upon her that which comes the nearest to it, the suppression of a vain, vapid, selfish, and suicidal agitation. If we do not do it while we may, we shall rue it with bitterness and humiliation hereafter." —Times, September 1847.

To the same purpose, it is observed in a late number of the Economist, also an able Liberal journal:

"Irish agitation has run its course, and shown its character. It has had 'rope enough' allowed to manifest what are its materials, and what its means – what are the objects it proposes, and of what stuff its leaders are made. It has displayed a mixture of ferocity, levity, and incapacity, which has covered with shame and confusion all its quondam sympathisers and admirers. Demagogism has been stripped naked, and has appeared as what it really is – a low, savage, dishonest enormity – an 'evil that walketh in darkness' – the epidemic malady of Ireland – an enemy which no concessions can conciliate, which no mildness can disarm, and with which, because of its dishonesty, no parley can be held.

"An open rebellion has been crushed at its first outbreak. A number of its leaders and organisers are in prison, and the Government, with a forbearance and adhesion to routine ideas which verges on the simple, and almost approaches the sublime, intrusts their punishment to the slow and uncertain processes of the law – to the courage of Irish juries, and the integrity of Irish witnesses. The Government allows rebels who have appealed to arms, and been worsted in the conflict, to retreat behind the shelter of the law. It is content to meet an armament with an indictment; nay, more, it is content to submit this indictment to the judgment of men, half of whom are in the ranks of the rebel army, and the other half in its power. It may have been well to try this hazardous experiment; but the result of it could not long be doubtful. Accordingly, we find that convictions cannot be obtained. Rebels, whose guilt is as clear as the day, are dismissed from the dock because juries will not agree upon a verdict – and are to be kept safe till March 1849, then to be let loose to recommence their work of mischief with all the increased audacity which impunity cannot fail to generate. They have taken arms against the Government, and the Government will have proved impotent to punish them.