REMINISCENCES

OF

GRATTAN’S PARLIAMENT

AND

THE IRISH LAND QUESTION.

BY O. C. DALHOUSIE ROSS, M.I.C.E.,

M. ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.

“ There lies beneath the whole of the Irish question that fearful Land .question, “ which has troubled all Administrations in Ireland during the last 100 years, and which “ will not be settled by settling the question of the National Government. . . . How “ do Mr. Morley and the enthusiastic advocates of Home Rule think they can settle “ these Irish land difficulties which have so long been at the root of the Irish question? “ Irish laws could not multiply the number of Irish acres to be distributed among the “ Irish people ; Irish laws could not increase the fertility of the soil. While you may “ attempt to gratify what you may call the political or national aspirations of Ireland, “ you will leave the land still in question—Me land difficulties which arc insoluble by “ any methods which arc at present proposed."—Speech at Newcastle, June 22nd, 1886, of the Right Honourable Georgia G o s c h e n , M.P.

Reprinted from “ Fair-Trade

♦ PUBLISHED BY

GEORGE REVEIRS, GRAYSTOKE PLACE, FETTER LANE, LONDON, E.C. PRICE TWOPENCE. SKETCH MAP OF IRELAND,

Showing the only districts which were represented previous to the X V IItli Century in the Irish Parliament, viz., Dublin and Drogheda, Wexford, Waterford, and Cork. REMINISCENCES OF GRATTAN’S PARLIAMENT

AND THE IRISH LAND QUESTION.

------M------

I n the “ Personal Sketches of his Own Time,” published some sixty years ago by a certain learned knight and Irish judge, a lively account is given of some of the most distinguished members of Grattan’s Parlia­ ment, and of the social condition of Ireland in the days immediately preceding the Union with Great Britain in the year 1800; and some gleanings from that now forgotten publication may be of interest at this moment, whilst serving as a plea for a few observations on the Irish land question. The author was born in the year 1767, and called to the bar in 1788, was elected a member of the Irish Parliament in 1790, voted against the Union in 1799, and in 1803 became a popular candidate for the representation of Dublin in the Imperial Parliament, the first four votes recorded in his favour being those of Grattan, Curran, Ponsonby, and Plunkett, but after a severe and very close contest he was defeated. This ended his political career. Shortly afterwards he was appointed a •judge of the High Court of Admiralty in Ireland, and about a quarter of a century later published his amusing memoirs. He was a Protestant, and until the Union a supporter of the Govern­ ment. The political creed of his family was fixed, he says, by an incident which occurred to his great grandfather, Colonel B------. It will be remembered that on the landing of William of Orange in England in 1688, James II. escaped to France, and from thence in the following year took ship to Ireland, where Lord had gathered 50,000 Catholic soldiers to his standard, and was engaged in the memorable siege of Londonderry. With the assistance of 7000 French troops under the Count de Lauzun, the King maintained his power in Ireland until the battle of the Boyne, July 1st, 1690, at which he looked help­ lessly on, and then once more fled to France. “ Change Kings with us,” an Irish officer replied to an Englishman wrho taunted him with the panic of the Boyne, “ change Kings with us and we will fight you again.” During that short reign of James II. in Ireland those who were not for him were considered to be against him, and were subject to the severities and confiscations usual in civil wars. Among the rest, the ( 4 ) above-mentioned Colonel B ------, being a Protestant and no lover of King James, was ousted from his mansion and estates by one O’Fagan, a Jacobite wig maker and violent partisan, from Ballynakill. The colonel was to be allowed ^ 4 0 a year so long as he behaved himself. However, this worthy only behaved himself for a couple of months, at the end of which time, with a party of his faithful tenants, he surprised the wig-maker, turned him out of the house, and repossessed himself of his mansion and estates. The wig-maker laid his complaint before the authorities, and soon reappeared with a party of soldiers, who demanded entrance to the house, but were refused. Some firing from the windows of the mansion ensued, but it was successfully stormed. Colonel B. was taken prisoner, and conveyed to the drumhead at Raheenduff, tried as a rebel by a certain Cornet McMahon, and in due form ordered to be hanged in an hour. The soldiers had already tied him to the cross bar of his own gate, but just at the moment when the first haul was being given to the rope, a tenant of the estate, Ned Doran, who was a trooper in King James’ army, galloped up, shouting, “ Cut down the colonel, cut down the colonel ! or ye’ll be all hanged yourselves ! I am straight from the Boyne Water; Jammy’s scampered, bad luck to him, and we’re all cut up and kilt altogither ! ” So Cornet McMahon and the soldiers lost no time in getting off, leaving Colonel B. slung fast by the neck to the gate-posts ; but Doran soon cut him down, and the victory of King William at the Boyne Water was ever afterwards celebrated by the tenants, though to a man Papists, with hearty and boisterous rejoicings. On the i st of July the orange lily was sure to garnish every window in the mansion.

E n g l a n d ’s T r o u b l e s, t h e I r i s h m a n ’s O p p o r t u n i t y . In 1782 England was engaged in a life-and-death struggle. She was at war with France and Spain, both in alliance with America ; Holland and the Northern Courts were banded together in an armed neutrality against her; Hyder Ali in the South and the Mahrattas in the West' threatened to destroy her power in India ; and, above all, the disasters in America which a few months before had culminated in the surrender of the army of Cornwallis at York Town, followed by losses in the West Indies and of the Island of Minorca, made it appear as if England were on the brink of ruin. It was then that Ireland turned on her. As Lord Clare explained a few years afterwards, it was “ the received maxim in Ireland not to forego the opportunity of foreign war to press forward Irish claims, and ripen every difference and discontent with the British Government into a ground of permanent and rancorous national hostility.” ■ The Irish took action accordingly.

T h e “ P a r l i a m e n t o f t h e P a l e ”—F i r s t P arliamentary

I n s t i t u t i o n i n I r e l a n d . The Irish Parliament, as it existed before 1782, was a subordinate body in the hands of the Protestant gentry, whose power was qualified and controlled by the British Government through the possession of a number of “ nomination boroughs,” originally created by James I. when ( s ) he gave to Ireland the first Assembly which can with any truth be regarded as a national Parliament ; for the “ seven centuries ” of Irish Parliaments, of which Mr. Gladstone spoke in his recent speeches in the , refer to a very limited body called the “ Parlia­ ment of .” The native kings of Ireland had no Parliaments, and previous to the colonisation of Ulster ( a . d . 1610), only that portion of the island which had been conquered by Strongbow in the 12th century, and subsequently consolidated under settled Government by Henry V II. and Henry V III. (who was the first to assume the title of King of Ireland in the place of the older title of Lord), and which portion comprised little beyond the coast districts of Dublin, Drogheda, Wexford and Waterford, known as the English Colony, or “ English Pale ”—was governed by the Parliament of the Pale under English law. But it was only occasionally summoned, and such was the contempt in which this assembly was held, that even the colonists of the Pale considered it an insult to be summoned to attend its sessions. The complete reduction of the island was effected under Elizabeth, after a difficult and bloody war of seven years, but she died before this reduction was completed, and the capi­ tulation with O’Neill was not signed until after her death by her successor, James I. The whole of the Province of Ulster having then fallen to the conquerors, was confiscated and colonised, and the King— by no means as a limitation, but as an extension of the rights of the population of the island—created new counties, and incorporated as boroughs some of the principal towns occupied by the new settlers, giving them the franchise, or privilege of sending representatives to the Parliament of which he extended the previous limits. This was the origin of the aforesaid “ nomination boroughs.” In the province of Connaught there is not the trace of a claim or any exercise of any Par­ liamentary franchise till late in the reign of Elizabeth ; and in Ulster none till the reign of James I. Some few of the seaports in Munster had been occasionally summoned to send deputies to. the Colonial Par­ liament, but such was the state of the country that they could not make their way to the Pale. In fact, Ireland never had any legislative assembly which could be called a Parliament for the whole of the island until the reign of James I. An Act passed by the Parliament of the Pale sitting at Drogheda in the reign of Henry VII., and known as Poyning’s Act, gave the King’s Privy Council the power of suppressing or altering all Bills after they had been passed by the Irish Parliament, and this restriction occasioned much jealousy and discontent in Ireland.

G r a t t a n ’s D e m a n d s . had entered the Irish House of Commons in 17 7 5 as member for the Borough of Charlemont, and by his great eloquence soon established himself as the parliamentary leader of the popular party. Early in the year 1782 he moved an address to the King setting forth the demands of the people, which wrere :— (1) The repeal of the Statute of 6 George I., which recited and confirmed the subordinate position of ^the Irish Parliament, and gave full power and ( 6 ) authority to the Parliament of Great Britain to make laws and statutes for Ireland. (2) The repeal of Poyning’s Act ; and (3) The limitation of the Mutiny Bill to a period of two years. Grattan maintained (on very questionable grounds) that the King’s sub­ jects in Ireland were entitled as their birthright to be bound by no other legislation than that of the King, Lords, and Commons of his Majesty’s realm in Ireland, and protested against the interposition of any other Parliament in the legislation of the country. A force of Protestant volunteers which had been raised for the defence of the island against a threatened French invasion, and had rapidly grown to 100,000 men, supported these demands. A military ardour had seized all Ireland, and the whole country resolved to free itself for­ ever from English control. All classes entered the ranks, and every cor­ poration, whether civil or military, pledged life and fortune to attain and establish Irish independence. The Irish Parliament refused to grant supplies to the Crown for more than six months— the people passed reso­ lutions to prevent the importation of any British merchandise or manu­ factures ; all English authority or jurisdiction, external or internal, was disavowed, and the judges and magistrates declined to act under British Statutes. The flame spread rapidly and became irresistible.

“G r a t t a n ’s P a r l ia m e n t ” E s t a b l is h e d . The Imperial Government had in fact no means of resisting, for Eng­ land was destitute of any force which she could oppose to the volunteers, and so real was the danger that in a moment of panic their demands were conceded by Lord Rockingham. The independence of Ireland was pronounced from the throne; the distinctness of the Irish nation promulgated in the Government Gazette of London, and Grattan’s triumph was rewarded by a unanimous vote of the Irish Parliament granting him the sum of ^50,000. Thus writes the somewhat satirical judge:— “ Having carried our point with the English, and having proposed to prove our independence by going to war with Portugal about our linens, we com­ pletely set up for ourselves, except that Ireland was bound constitutionally and irrevocably never to have any king but the king of Great Britain. We were now, in fact, regularly in a fighting mood, and being quite in good humour with England, we determined to fight the French, who had threatened to invade us ; our Ballyroan Volunteer infantry, to which I belonged, were amongst the most warlike, and it having been proposed that they should never stop fighting the French till they had flogged every man of them into mincemeat, this magnanimous resolution was adopted with cheers, and was, as usual, sworn to, each hero kissing the muzzle of his musket.” No foreign war was, however, undertaken, and the Irish soon found plenty of occupation for their warlike weapons in fighting among them­ selves. Political partisanship at that time ran high. Grattan, the two Ponsonbys, Curran, Brownlow, Forbes, Bowes, Daly, Connolly, and numerous other respectable members, linked themselves together in the Irish Parliament under the name of Whiggery in a phalanx of opposi­ tion, which not only assailed the Government on every feasible occasion, ( 7 ) but was always proposing measures which under the then existing system were utterly inadmissible. The supporters of the Irish Government were certainly inferior except in patronage to the Opposition, which comprised many men of the greatest ability. Our author entered Parliament in 1790, by which time— “ All the great constitutional questions were supposed to have been arranged, but still the Opposition sought a more radical reform, and they wrangled, in fact, about every trifle.” As long as “ Grattan’s Parliament ” lasted, England and Ireland were simply held together by the fact that the sovereign of the one island was also the sovereign of the other. But the “ Independence of Ireland ” was a mere name for the uncontrolled rule of a few noble families, since the nomination boroughs which James I. created, as before mentioned, with the view of making the Irish Parliament dependent on the Crown, had by this time fallen under the influence of the adjacent landlords, and at the time of the Union more than sixty seats in the Irish House of Commons were in the hands of three families alone—those of Lord Downshire, the Ponsonbys and the Beresfords—whose nominees received pensions, preferments and bribes in hard cash in return for their services, and these were, in fact, the practical governors of the country. The claim of the Catholics to the franchise as a reward for their aid in the late struggle was rejected, and a similar demand of the Presby­ terians, who had formed a good half of the Volunteers, for the removal of their disabilities was equally set aside. “ If ever there was a country unfit to govern itself,” said Lord Hutchinson, “ it is Ireland; a corrupt aristocracy, a ferocious commonalty, a distracted Government, a divided people ! ” It was not until 1792 that the powerful English Minister, Pitt, was able to force on the Irish Parliament measures for the admission of Catholics to the electoral franchise and to civil and military offices within the island ; but from the Parliament itself all Roman Catholics were excluded.

G r a t t a n i n P u b l ic a n d i n P r i v a t e . Our author supplies us with familiar descriptions of some of the most eminent of the members of the Irish Parliament. Of Henry Grattan himself, “ the most illustrious of Irishmen,” and of his marvellous eloquence, he writes in terms of the most enthusiastic praise; his very name operated as a spell to rouse the energies and spirit of his country. No man, he says, possessed the general elements of courage in a higher degree than Mr. Grattan, in whom dwelt a spirit of mild yet impetuous bravery which totally banished all apprehension of danger. Although, however, his eloquence has sometimes been likened to that of Lord Chatham, he had none of the latter’s grace and elegance of delivery, and his personal appearance was anything but distinguished, as appears from the following anecdote:— When Colonel Burr, who had been Vice-president of America, and probably would have been the next President but for his unfortunate ( 8 ) duel with General Hamilton, came to England, he requested the judge to introduce him to Grattan, whom he was excessively anxious to see, and in whom he expected to meet a man whose physical superiority, vigour, and dignity would correspond to his pre-eminence as an orator and as a powerful Irish chief. The Judge thus describes the interview:— “ Accompanied by a Mr. Randolph, of South Carolina, with whom I was very intimate, we went to the house of Mr. Grattan, who was preparing to leave London next day, and having announced ourselves, were informed by the servant that at that moment his master was much occupied on business of consequence, but would receive us in a few minutes. Both the Americans were on the tiptoe of expectation and impatient for the entrance of the Irish Demosthenes. Presently the door opened, and in hopped a small, bent figure, meagre, yellow, and ordinary, wearing one slipper and one shoe, his breeches’ knees loose, his cravat hanging down, his shirt and coat sleeves tucked up high, and an old hat on his head. “ This apparition saluted the strangers very courteously, asked, without any introduction, how long they had been in England, and immediately proceeded to make enquiries about the late General Washington and the revolutionary war. My companions looked at each other, their replies were costive, and they seemed quite impatient to see Mr. Grattan. Randolph was the tallest and most dignified-looking man of the two, grey-haired and well- dressed, and Grattan mistook him for the Vice-president and addressed him accordingly. Randolph at length begged to know if they could shortly have the honour of seeing Mr. Grattan, upon which our host, not doubting but that they knew him, conceived it must be his son James for whom they enquired, and said he believed he had that moment wandered out somewhere to amuse himself. “ This completely disconcerted the Americans, and they were about to make their bow and their exit when I thought it high time to explain, and taking Colonel Burr and Mr. Randolph respectively by the hand, introduced them to the Right Honourable Henry Grattan. “ I never saw people so much embarrassed! Grattan himself, now perceiv­ ing the cause, heartily joined in my merriment. He pulled down his shirt­ sleeves, pulled up his stockings, and in his own irresistible way apologised for the outré figure he cut, assuring them that he had totally overlooked it in his anxiety not to keep them waiting, that he was returning to Ireland next morning, and had been busily packing up his books and papers in a cupboard full of dust and cobwebs ! This incident rendered the interview interesting. The Americans were charmed with- their reception, and, after a protracted visit, retired highly gratified, while Grattan returned again to his books and cobwebs.”

C u r r a n ’s P e r s o n a l C haracteristics . Of Curran he writes that there are very few public men who have been more miserably handled by their biographers, and that none but the intimate friends of his earlier and brighter days, and even among such, those only who had mixed with him in general, as well as in pro­ fessional society, could correctly estimate the inconsistent qualities of that celebrated orator. His imagination was infinite, his fancy bound­ less, his wit indefatigable, and there was scarce any species of talent to which he did not profess some pretension ; but he was not fitted to pursue the niceties of detail. Curran’s person was mean and decrepit ; very slight, very shapeless, with nothing to mark the gentleman about it ; he had spindle limbs, a ( 9 ) shambling gait, one hand imperfect, and a face yellow, furrowed, rather flat, and thoroughly ordinary. Yet his features were the very reverse of disagreeable ; there was something so indescribably dramatic in his eye and the play of his eyebrow, that his visage seemed the index of his mind, and his humour the slave of his will. His very foibles were amusing. Had Curran been a dull, slothful, inanimate being, his talents would not have redeemed his personal defects; but his rapid movements, his fire, his sparkling eye, the fine and varied intonations of his voice, these conspired to give life and energy to every society in which he found himself; and the Judge declares that he had known ladies who, after an hour’s conversation, actually considered Curran a beauty, and preferred his company to that of the finest fellows present. There was such a mingling of greatness and littleness, of sublimity and meanness in his thoughts and language, that cursory observers quitted Curran’s society without understanding anything about him beyond his buoyant spirits and playful wit. But towards the close of his career dark and gloomy tints appeared too conspicuously, poor fellow, for his posthumous reputation, and he gradually sank into a state of listless apathy. At the bar no orator was more capable of producing those irresistible transitions of effect which form the true criterion of forensic eloquence ; but latterly no man became more capable, in private society, of exciting drowsiness by prosing, or disgust by grossness.

S c e n e s i n P a r l ia m e n t —L o r d N o r b u r y. The following scene, which was a personal reminiscence, is descriptive of the period :— ‘‘ Lord Norbury (then Mr. Toler) went circuit as judge the first circuit on which I went as barrister. He continued my friend as warmly as he possibly could be the friend of any one, and I thought he was in earnest. But one evening, coming to the House of Commons, hot from Lord Clare’s (at that time my proclaimed enemy) he attacked me with an after-dinner volubility which hurt and roused me very much. I replied with warmth, and observed that ‘ I could only give him that character which was displayed by his versatility—namely, that he had a hand for every man, and a heart for nobody ’—a sarcasm which I believe stuck to him in all his after life. He returned a very warm answer, gave me a wink, and made his exit from the House ; of course I followed. The Sergeant-at-arms was instantly sent by the Speaker to pursue us with his attendants, and to bring both refractory members back to the House. Toler was caught by the skirts of his coat fastening in a door, and they laid hold of him just as the skirts were tom completely off. I was overtaken, and, as I resisted, was brought like a sack on a man’s shoulders, to the admiration of the mob, and thrown down in the body of the House. The Speaker told us we must both give our honour forthwith that the matter should proceed no further. Toler got up to defend himself, but made a most ludicrous figure, as he then had no skirts to his coat, and Curran put a finishing stroke to the comicality of the scene by gravely saying that ‘ it was the most unparalleled insult ever offered to the House, as it appeared that one honourable member had trim m ed another honourable member’s jacket within these walls and nearly within view of the Speaker.’ I gave my honour, as required, and I think with more good will than Toler ; and if I could forget anything, would willingly have forgotten the whole affair long since.” Lord Norbury had a wonderful readiness of repartee, but possessed ( 10 ) neither classical wit nor genuine sentiment to make it valuable. At one of the first dinners given to the judges and King’s Counsel by Lord Redesdale, as Lord Chancellor of Ireland, his lordship remarked that when he was a lad, cock-fighting was the fashion, and that both ladies and gentlemen went full dressed to the cock-pit, the ladies being in hoops. “ I see now, my lord,” said Toler, “ it was then that the term cock-a- hoop was invented,” at which there was a general laugh, which rather disconcerted the learned Chancellor. He sat for a while silent until skating became a subject of conversation, when, with an air of triumph he said that in his boyhood all danger was avoided, for, before they began to skate they always put blown bladders under their arms, and so, if the ice happened to break they were buoyant and saved. “ Ay, my lord,” said Toler, “ that’s what we callblatherum skate (nonsense) in Ireland.”

P r o m in e n t M e n i n G r a t t a n ’s P a r l ia m e n t . Captain Arthur Wellesley, afterwards the Duke of Wellington, was in 1790 returned to the Irish Parliament as Member for Trim, , a borough under the patronage of his brother, the Earl of Morn- ington. He was then ruddy-faced and juvenile in appearance, and popular enough among the young men of his age and station, but his address was unpolished ; he occasionally spoke in Parliament, but not successfully, and never on important subjects, and evinced no promise of that unparalleled celebrity to which his intrepidity, decision, and great military science subsequently combined to elevate him. Lord Castlereagh also began his career in Grattan’s Parliament. He was the son of Mr. Stewart, a country gentleman, generally accounted to be a very clever man, in the North of Ireland. He was a professed and not very moderate patriot, and at one time carried his ideas of opposi­ tion to the Government exceedingly far, becoming a leading member of the Reform and Liberal societies. His first speech was a motion for a committee to inquire into the representation of the people, with the ulterior object of a reform in Parliament. He made a good speech, and had a majority in the House, and from that time was regarded as a very clever and promising young man. Among the minor lights of Grattan’s Parliament, Sir is one of the best remembered, and certainly he was, without exception, the most celebrated and entertaining perpetrator of bulls. H e was of a respectable Irish family, and in point of appearance a fine, bluff, soldier­ like old gentleman. He had numerous good qualities, and having been long in the Army, his ideas were distinguished by a marked sense of honour and etiquette—of discipline and of bravery. He had a claim to the title of Fermoy, which, however, he never pursued,* and was brother to the famous Tiger Roche, who fought some desperate duel abroad and was near being hanged for it. Sir Boyle was a well-bred man; had been

* This title was, however, revived in 1856, and granted to his grand-nephew, Mr. Edmund Burke Roche. ( II ) appointed gentleman-usher at the Irish Court, and executed the duties of that office to the day of his death to the utmost satisfaction of everyone connected with him. It was said that his wife—a daughter of Sir John Cave, Bart.—who was a bas-bleu, prematurely injured Sir Boyle’s capacity by forcing him to read Gibbon’s “ Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire,” whereat he was so cruelly puzzled, without being in the least interested, that in his cups he often stigmatised the great historian as a low fellow, who ought to have been kicked out of society wherever he was for turning people’s thoughts away from their prayers and their politics, to what the d------1 himself could make neither head nor tail of. By perpetually bragging that Sir John Cave had given him his eldest daughter to wife, he afforded Curran an opportunity of replying, “ Ay, Sir Boyle, and depend upon it, if he had had an older one still, he would have given her to you.” His bulls were logical perversions, and had generally some strong points of good sense about them. On one occasion he was arguing for the Habeas Corpus Suspension Bill in Ireland. “ It would surely be better, Mr. Speaker," said he, “ to give up not only a part, but, if neces­ sary, even the whole of our Constitution, in order to preserve the remainder !” There was never a more sensible blunder than the following, which may be recommended as a motto to gentlemen in the Army. “ The best way,” said Sir Boyle, “ to avoid danger is to meet it plumb.” He had been induced by the Government to fight as hard as possible for the Union, and on one occasion a general titter arose at his florid pic­ ture of the happiness which must proceed from it. “ Gentlemen,” said Sir Boyle, “ may titther, and titther, and titther, and may think it a bad measure, but their heads at present are hot, and will so remain until they grow cool again, and so they can’t decide right now ; but when the day of judgment comes, then honourable gentlemen will be satisfied at this most excellent Union. Sir, there are no Levitical degrees between nations, and on this occasion I can see neither sin nor shame in marry­ ing our ou'fi sister.” It was Sir Boyle Roche who apostrophised the House with the curious inquiry, “ Why should we put ourselves out of our way to do anything for posterity, for what has posterity done for us ?” and hearing the roar of laughter which followed, he was rather puzzled, and conceived that the House had misunderstood him. He therefore begged leave to explain, and assured the House that by posterity he did not at all mean our ancestors, but those who were to come immediately after them. The Irish Catholics had invited the son of Edmund Burke over to Ireland for the purpose of superintending the progress of their Bills of Emancipation in the Irish Parliament, and to defray his expenses a sum of ^2000 was voted. The Bills were introduced and resisted, and young Burke had prepared a petition which was not approved of, even the warmest Catholic supporters declining to present it. He then determined to present it himself, and, in ignorance of Parliamentary rules, attempted to do so, not at the bar, but in the body of the House. Accordingly, he walked into the House with the long roll of parchment under his arm, and had arrived near the treasury bench when a general ( 12 ) cry arose from all sides, “ Privilege! a stranger in the House !” which checked the intruder. The Speaker, in his loud and dignified tones, called out, “ Sergeant-at-arms, do your duty,” and Burke ran towards the bar, where he was met by the sergeant-at-arms with a drawn sworcl; retracing his steps, he w*as stopped by the clerk, and the door-keepers in the corridor now joined in the pursuit, but at length he was able to make his escape by forcing his way through the enemy behind the Speaker’s chair. It being observed by some member that the sergeant-at-arms should have stopped the man at the back door, Sir Boyle Roche asked the honourable gentleman, “ How could the sergeant-at-arms stop him in the rear while he was catching him in the front ? p id he think the sergeant-at-arms could be, like a bird, in two places at once ?”

D u e l l in g . At that time a duel was considered a necessary piece of a young man’s education, but by no means a ground for future animosity with his opponent. The first two questions always asked as to a young man’s respectability and qualifications, particularly when he proposed for a wife, wrere “ What family is he of? Did he ever blaze ? ” Duelling was, in fact, the most characteristic feature of the manners of that period, and the number of killed and w’ounded, especially among the Bar, was very considerable. Amongst the most notable combatants may be cited the Lord Chancellor of Ireland (Lord Clare), the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench (Lord Clonmell), two Chief Justices of the Common Pleas, and a Baron of the Exchequer, the Master of the Rolls, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Provost of the , several Judges and Privy Councellors, and Lords Norbury, Buckinghamshire, Llandaff, and Tyrawly, as well as Grattan, Curran, and many others.

O r ig in of t h e O r a n g e S o c ie t ie s . Orange Societies, as they were termed, were first formed by the Protestants to oppose and counteract the turbulent demonstrations of the population of the South of Ireland, who wrere mostly Catholics. At first the Orangemen certainly adopted a principle of interference which was not confined to religious points alone, but aimed at putting down all popular disturbances. The term Protestant ascendency was coined by Mr. John Gifford, and became an epithet very fatal to the peace of Ireland. Some associations were originated to support Reform, others to oppose it ; some for toleration, others for intolerance. There were good men and loyal subjects among the members of each, including many who never entertained the most distant idea that disastrous results were to be apprehended, at the feverish period preceding the Revolution of 1798, from any encouragement to innovation. Ireland then, as now, was England’s difficulty. Her Parliament had been freed from all Imperial control, but misgovernment still produced its melancholy fruit; the miserable land was torn by political 'faction, ( 13 ) religious feuds and formidable peasant conspiracies, sustained by promises of foreign aid.

P i t t ’s O p i n i o n o f I r is h D i s c o n t e n t . Pitt’s strength lay in finance, and he came to the front at a time when the growth of English wealth made a knowledge of finance essential to a great Minister. He saw that much at least of the misery and dis­ loyalty of Ireland sprang from its poverty, and that much of that poverty was the direct result of mischievous laws. Ireland was a grazing country, and needed markets for its agricultural produce, but to protect the interest of English graziers, the import of its cattle into England was forbidden. So also, to protect the interests of English clothiers and weavers, Irish manufactures were loaded with duties. To redress this wrong was the first financial effort of Pitt, and a Bill which he introduced in 1785 was intended to do away with every obstacle to freedom of trade between England and Ireland. It was a measure which he held would “ draw what remained of the shattered Empire together/’ and repair in part the loss of America by creating a loyal and prosperous Ireland. Although fiercely opposed by the Whigs and by the Manchester mer­ chants, he dragged it through the English Parliament, but only to see it flung aside by the impracticable faction under Grattan which then con­ trolled the Parliament in Ireland.

F a i l u r e o f G r a t t a n ’s P a r l i a m e n t . From first to last Grattan’s Parliament w'as in fact a failure ; it accom­ plished nothing for the benefit of the people. “ The Statute-book,” said the Lord Chancellor of Ireland when summing up the results of his experience of that Parliament, “ Has been loaded with laws of unexampled rigour, passed to repress the horrible excesses of the masses. When I look at the squalid misery and pro­ found ignorance, and brutal ferocity of our people, I am sickened with the rant about Irish dignity and independence. So long as the people remain the unfortunate victims of delusion, and are made the instruments of faction, and stimulated to acts of outrage by wicked and inflammatory appeals to their ignorance and uncivilisation, they will for ever be condemned to the depths of misfortune. Unless you will civilise your people and inculcate in them habits of religion and morality, of industry, and of due subordination ; unless you can relieve their wants and correct their excesses, it is vain to look for national tranquillity or contentment. . . . I do most solemnly declare that no earthly consideration short of a strong sense of duty should have induced me to remain an eye witness of the scenes of folly and madness and horrors of every description in which I have lived for some years past. ’ At length, after 16 years’ experience of their independent Parliament in Dublin the smouldering discontent and disaffection burst into flame. Grattan’s Parliament had been driven to the hard necessity of suppressing the municipal law and putting the country under the ban of military govern­ ment. In 1793 their House of Commons was actually set fire to by the mob. It was invaded by a tumultuous mob in 1794; it had to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act in 1796; it passed the Convention Act in 1797; and the rebellion of 1798 was brought to a head by the cruelties inflicted ( 14 ) by the yeomanry and soldiers in their fruitless attempts to establish order. The outrages of which the latter were accused were screened by a Bill of indemnity passed by the Irish Parliament and sanctioned and protected for the future by an Insurrection Act and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus. When at last the revolt broke out, atrocities were answered by atrocities. Loyal Protestants were tortured in their turn, and every English soldier taken by the rebels was butchered without mercy. Ulti­ mately, 15,000 rebels entrenched themselves at Vinegar Hill, near Ennis- corthy; their camp was stormed by the English troops and the revolt utterly suppressed. But the suppression was only just in time to prevent greater disasters, for a few weeks after the close of the rebellion a thousand French soldiers, under General Humbert, landed in Mayo, defeated an English force in a battle at Castlebar, and only surrendered when the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Cornwallis, faced them with 30,000 men. After so much butchery and this French interference, Lord Corn­ wallis found it more difficult to check the reprisals of his troops and of the Orangemen than in stamping out the last embers of insurrection.

T h e U n io n o f I r e l a n d w it h G r e a t B r it a in U n a v o id a b l e . The political necessity for a Union of the two Islands had already been brought home to every English statesman by the perpetual dis­ turbances in Ireland and by the course taken by the Irish Parliament during the disputes over the Regency; for while England repelled the claims of the Prince of Wales to the Regency as of right, Ireland admitted them. As the only Union left between the two peoples was their obedience to a common ruler, such an act might have ended in their entire severance, and the sense of this danger secured a welcome on this side of the Channel for Pitt’s proposal to unite the two Parliaments. It was a measure which involved the abolition of a large number of sine­ cures, pensions, and lucrative posts in the law courts, in Government offices, and in the general administration, and consequently large indem­ nities had to be paid. The assent of the Irish Parliament was bought with a million of money, and the matter was finally arranged in June, 1800, by one hundred Irish members becoming part of the House of Commons at Westminster and by twenty-eight temporal, with four spiritual peers, chosen for each Parliament by their fellows, taking their seats in the House of Lords. Commerce between the two countries was to be gradually freed from all restrictions, and all the trading privileges of the one were thrown open to the other, while taxation was proportionately distributed between the two peoples.

H o m e P r o d u c t io n t h e R e m e d y fo r I r is h D isl o y a l t y . It would be out of place at the end of a somewhat gossiping article to enter upon any serious consideration of the measures proposed by Mr. Gladstone as a remedy for the present condition of Ireland, but we cannot refrain from remarking that it would be strange indeed if anyone, possessed of the least personal acquaintance with the country and its ( i5 ) people, should imagine that the discontent of the masses could be reached by measures purely administrative and political, which leave the much more burning, social, and economical questions unaffected. The protecting body of country gentlemen, to whom England and Scotland owe so very much of their enlightened social progress, has for years past been rapidly diminishing in Ireland, and absenteeism is recognised as one of the most serious causes of her disturbed condition; yet Mr. Gladstone’s proposals, far from checking, would intensify the evil and drive the most loyal and the only highly educated residents out of the country. The universal corruption which characterised the members of Grattan’s Parliament is used as an argument to discredit their adhesion to the Act of Union ; but what has become of the common sense of those who appear to imagine that Irish politicians of the present day are free from interested motives and governed exclusively by instincts of pure patriotism ? The disloyalty and misery in Ireland, now as in the days of Pitt, springs mainly from the poverty of the people, and above all it is the agrarian problem which calls for solution. Irish political leaders would meet with very much less support in their factious opposition to the Imperial Government if the eloquent leader of the Liberal party would abandon his pedagogic political prophylactics, and, after introducing so many adventurous and disappointing Land Acts, would crown the edifice by turning his attention to the much simpler task of encouraging the growth of two ears of corn where one now grows, or, in other words, to the economical question of doubling the present value of agricultural produce. So long as this latter is deprived of a healthy market at home, and still more, so long as it is handicapped in the English market in favour of the “ cheap” foreign supplies, Irish cultivators—whether as small farmers paying rent to their landlords or as tillers of their own soil— would be no more able to sustain them­ selves under Home Rule and a Parliament in Dublin than whilst forming part of a united and prosperous empire. Free imports of foreign produce, however beneficial they may have pioved for a time to English manufacturers, have cruelly affected the Irish; and although the adoption of Free Trade was succeeded in this country during a quarter of a century by a highly prosperous commerce with foreign countries, which at a certain period grew annu­ ally in importance by leaps and bounds, it cannot be denied that there is a growing conviction, even in England, that that period has, for some reason or other, exhausted itself, and that the time has come for reconsidering above all whether we are not now losing more than we gain by preferring “ cheap ” food grown in the vast plains of America and Russia to the cultivation of our own rapidly decreasing fields. Lord Clare, in his speech in the proposing the Union, pronounced that the true remedy for Ireland’s disaffection was to be found in teaching the people to improve the natural energies and extend the resources of their country, so as to supply employment for the poor. “ The true mainspring of prosperity and wealth is em ploym entwrites Lord Penzance in his recent articles on “ Free Trade Idolatry,” con­ ( i6 ) tributed in March and April to the Nineteenth Century Review, and this is in strict accordance with the principles of Adam Smith. “ Wealth,” he continues, “ is born of exertion and skill, of which there is plenty in this country,” and Lord Penzance has convincingly shown that mere cheapness, when it is due to the excessive importation of articles pro­ duced in foreign countries at less cost than they can be produced at home, is not an advantage to the general community, if the lower price is arrived at by substituting the foreign article for a similar one which might, at a slightly greater cost, have been produced in this country and given employment to home labour. The truth of this axiom is especially obvious in its application to the free importation of foreign agricultural produce, for cheap bread will not create wages, and from the moment when the reduction in price throws our own lands out of cultivation, our labourers are to a corresponding extent left without employment, and the “ true mainspring of national prosperity and wealth ” is sacrificed without any adequate advantage in exchange. Ireland, as the more purely agricultural part of the country, suffers from the resultant depression in prices more than the rest of the Kingdom, as is conclusively proved by the fact that during the last fifteen years no less than one-quarter of her arable land has ceased to be ploughed. There is consequently insufficient work for the population, wages are reduced to a minimum, and her labouring classes are reduced, as Mr. Parnell bitterly expressed it, to a choice between extermination and banishment. Ever since the adoption of free imports her popula­ tion has annually decreased, and during the last thirty years it Has diminished by very nearly one-fifth, about 2,700,000 having emigrated during that time. Apart from a marked diminution in manufacturing industry, since the year 1869 the extent of land cultivated with wheat has fallen from 281,117 to 7°)^74 acres, barley and oats have decreased by upwards of 400,000 acres, potatoes by 243,000, and flax lands by 140,000 acres. How much the value of the crops on the remaining lands has lessened in value may be inferred from the fact that since 1874 the fall in the average prices of corn has been 54 per cent, on wheat, 61 per cent, on barley, and 68 per cent, on oats, which is the chief cereal crop in Ireland. In the words of Sir James Caird—

“ If the present prices of agricultural produce continue, I should fear that from the land held by the large body of poor farmers in Ireland any economical rent has for the present disappeared ; and a large proportion of the land of Ireland, under the new circumstances in which we are placed, must very soon go out of cultivation.”

What more is needed to account for the success of the National League, in fanning the flame of war against rents ? Can any legislation for Ireland which, over a vast extent of country, leaves the produce of their land of less value than the cost of its cultivation, be expected to satisfy the people ? With no decrease in the cost of tillage, an acre of land which fifteen years ago produced a crop worth £ 10, now only produces £ 6—less than two-thirds ! During the last thirty years the acreage of corn crops in Ireland has decreased as follows : — No. of Acres cultivated. In 1855. In 1885. Decrease. Acres. Acres. Acres. Wheat 445> 5°9 70,874 374.635 Oats ... 2,117,955 1,327,982 789.973 Barley, rye, beans, &c. 267,565 ' 95,3° i 72,264

2,831,029 i .5 9 4 .1 5 7 1,236,872 We have no statistics of the live stock which was raised in Ireland in 1855, but a comparison of the last five years— 1881 to 1885—with the five years ending with 1875 shows that it is an error to suppose that the decrease in arable land is compensated by a corresponding increase in grass lands and live stock; for during the later as compared with the earlier quinquennial period there was an average decrease of 1,074,968 per annum in the number of cattle, sheep, and pigs, and of 15,659 in the number of acres in grass.

T h e N ationalists C o m p l a i n t h a t “ F r e e T r a d e ” R u i n s I r e l a n d . • Mr. Parnell contends that Free Trade is the cause of the mischief, and in that contention he is not far wrong; but then he maintains that the remedy must be sought in Separation and an Irish Parliament, because that alone would permit the Irish Home Rulers to protect their industries and agriculture against ruinous foreign competition—and this corollary is clearly erroneous. He would, reasonably enough, make foreign pro­ ducers, who profit so much by our consumption, contribute their mite to the Irish revenue by levying Customs’ duties on foreign-grown produce and on some articles of manufacture, so as to enable the Irish to restore their lands to profitable cultivation, and build up their home industries ; and he claims for the Irish Parliament the power to carry out a policy of moderate Protection. “ I tell English Radicals and English Liberals,” he exclaimed at Wicklow, in October, 1885, “ that it is useless for them to talk of their desire to do justice to Ireland when from motives of selfishness they refuse to repair that most manifest injustice of all—namely, the destruction by England of oui- industries—by giving us the power which we think would be sufficient to enable us to build up those comparatively few industries which Ireland is adapted by her circumstances to excel in.5’ But in truth it is not Ireland alone which suffers, and neither could the evil be remedied by Customs’ duties imposed in Ireland only. Our statesmen are so absorbed by the Irish question that they have no time to consider the equally heavy losses of English, Scotch, and Welsh land­ lords, whose straits are quite as great as those of the landowners and farmers of the better class of lands in Ireland, and in their turn affect all other industries in the kingdom. Ireland would gain a magnificent m a r k e t for all that she can produce if the United Kingdom levied moderate imperial duties on such foreign productions as throttle our own; and it is not in Ireland alone, but in ( i8 ) the whole kingdom that, sooner or later, the truthmust suddenly flash on the minds of the Government, when it will have to be acknowledged that Free Trade, or free imports, have latterly affected the country in a very different way from what was the case during the first quarter of a century after its adoption.

O p p o s it e E f f e c t s o f F r e e T r a d e d u r in g T wo P e r io d s . Since the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846 the results generally attributed to, but which might more accurately be described as contem­ poraneous with Free Trade, require to be divided into two epochs, viz., (1) those which refer to the twenty-eight years preceding 1872, and (2) those of the last fourteen years from 1872 to 1885. During the former period the value of the exports of British and Irish produce quadrupled in value, rising in 1872 to ^ 2 5 6 millions, or to the proportion of is. per head of our population, whereas during the latter period those exports have fallen back to ^ 2 13 millions sterling in 1885, i.e., to only 17s. 3d. per head of the population; a comparative decrease since the year 1872 in the value of our exports in proportion to the population of no less than 27 per cent. The falling off is chiefly in all the most important branches of our manufactures—cotton-woollen and linen-yarn and manufactures, iron and steel, haberdashery and millinery, &c.— and, but for the constantly growing trade with India and the Colonies, the decrease would be even more remarkable, for the exports to foreign countries have fallen since 1872 from ^ 1 9 6 millions, or ^ 6 3s. 2d. per head of our population, to ^ 1 3 0 millions, or ^ 3 u s . 7d. per head in 1885, which shows a decrease of more than 40 per cent. Our manufacturing supremacy during the earlier period, aided by Californian and Australian gold discoveries and by the progress made in mechanical invention and machinery, in railways, ocean steamers, and ocean telegraphs, were some of the causes which enabled our producers to defy competition, and for that length of time to contend with great success against free imports ; but the feature which has chiefly distin­ guished the two epochs has been the extraordinary difference in value of our agricultural produce, which, during the earlier period—concurrently with our flourishing trade— was maintained at remunerative prices, whereas during the latter it has declined in much the same ratio as the value of our foreign exports, thus indicating that the deficiency in the nation’s purchasing power which that fall has occasioned has to a like extent affected the export as well as the home trade of the country. From 1846 to 1874 the price of wheat— which is so often called the barometer of England’s prosperity—was maintained at an average of 53s. per qr., and other agricultural produce in the same proportion; from 1871 to 1874, when the value of the exports of British and Irish produce reached the highest annual average of any four years, viz., ^ 2 4 3 ^ millions, the price of wheat also maintained the high average price of 57s.; barley, 40s.; and oats, 25s. 8d. per qr.; but since the enormous influx of American corn which began about fifteen years ago, the price of British wheat has fallen to 30s., with the terribly impoverishing result that there has been a reduction to the extent of 2,500,000 acres ( 19 ) in the cultivated area of our arable lands, and an aggregate annual decrease in the market value of British and Irish corn and green crops of no less than ^85 millions, which is that much deducted from the spendable income of the country, whereas all that we have to set against this gigantic loss is the very much over-praised saving to the consumers of bread due to the fall from 53s. to 30s. per qr. of wheat, which, at the high estimate of 6 bushels per annum per head of the population, amounts to less than ^32,000,000, or at the rate of 4d. per head per week ; for the market value of our manufactures has decreased as much as the extent of our foreign export trade.

P r o f it a b l e C u l t iv a t i o n t h e F o u n d a t i o n o f W e a l t h . That the cultivation of our own fields with fairly remunerative prices for their produce is of far greater importance to our well-being as a nation than the excessive importation of cheap corn from America or Russia, is a fact which is incontrovertible, because, in the first place, it affords that employment of home labour, those wages, and that self- supporting power which the people of every country have always regarded as their inalienable birthright; and because, in the second place, all sources of indigenous production and wealth act and react one upon the other, contributing by their harmonious co-operation to the maintenance and prosperity of each. All industries and trades, manufactures and commerce, in this country are interdependent : as branches of a grand old oak, of which the land is the trunk and the main support, they will wither and fade (as our own experience has shown) if we neglect the healthy and remunerative cultivation of the soil. Rich and poor, labourers and mechanics, merchants and manufacturers, every class is equally concerned in the extension and prosperity of agriculture, which, of all our great industries, supplies employment to by far the largest number of persons, gives circulation to the largest amount of wealth-producing capital, and provides the major part of the means necessary for inter­ national trade. So it is that a depression in British and Irish agricul­ ture, and in the prices and market values of the produce of the land, affects the trade, prosperity, and wealth of the whole world. With the keen foresight for which he was so remarkable, Mr. Disraeli said of the Irish land question many years ago— “ I will at once declare that I see no chance of tranquillity and welfare for that impoverished and long distracted land until the Irish people enjoy the right to which the people of all countries are entitled, namely, to be main­ tained by the soil that they cultivate by their labour, and I cannot find terms to express my sense of the injustice and the impolicy, the folly and the wickedness, of *my longer denying to Ireland the consolation and the bless­ ing of well-regulated measures tending to that result.” Sir James Caird has pointed out that the capital employed by farmers in the cultivation of the land of the United Kingdom may be moderately estimated at ^400 millions sterling, and that, large as that aggregate of capital is, it is but one-fifth of that of the landlords. De gaieté de cœur, Free Trade idolators are deliberately ruining our food-producing classes; but no nation can afford to muddle away its real capital as we have been doing during recent years, and whether producers or consumers, all are ( 20 ) now suffering from the blind adherence of our legislators to their past affection for Free Trade—a captious and capricious jade who has long since transferred her favours to rival competitors. It should be urged on all those “ English Radicals and English Liberals ” to whom Mr. Parnell addressed himself, who wish well to Ireland and to their own country, that the time has come when they should reconsider the present bearing of Free Trade on agriculture and trade generally. They would find on examination that the higher, but relatively fairer, prices at which the produce of the land was sold during the height of our manufacturing and commercial prosperity, from 1855 t0 I^74> by allowing our farmers to cultivate British and Irish land at profitable prices, and by thus adding enormously to the purchasing and spending power of the country, was an essential element, if not indeed one of the chief mainsprings of that prosperity and of the rapid increase in the wealth of the community. Remunerative labour would again be found for all willing workers if the leaders and instructors of the people would boldly determine to restore the value of agricultural produce to the normal-prices which were current during that prosperous period by the only possible means of easily ascertainable duties on foreign grown food. There is no task more worthy of a rising and ambitious statesman ! Ireland would be the greatest and more immediate gainer, for, with a much decreased population, a million of her now impoverished acres might be returned to the plough, whilst the mischievous agitation of the National League would perish for want of popular support. There would then be no need to expend ^ 1 5 0 millions in buying out and expatriating Irish landlords, for such a measure of “ Justice to Ireland ” would add more than twenty millions sterling to the annual revenues and spendable income of her food-producing classes, and thus give a magnificent impetus to the extension of other industries. At the same time some contribution to the Imperial Revenue would be insured, other Imperial taxes would be diminished, employment with good wages would be supplied to hundreds of thousands of labourers throughout the kingdom, and the existing trade depression would vanish as by magic, for confidence would be restored and prosperity re-esta­ blished in agriculture, trade and manufactures. The two momentous problems might by such means be simul­ taneously solved of substantially producing an equivalent to two ears of corn where now only one is grown, and of restoring peace, plenty, and— if that be compatible with the Irish temperament and with Irish-American interference—political concord to the poverty-stricken and much harassed population of the sister island. (21)

POSTSCRIPT

A l e t t e r from Mr. Gladstone to the Hon. Philip Stanhope has been published, in which he expresses the belief that the late Earl Stanhope, who, as Lord Mahon, wrote in 1854 an admirable “ History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles— 1713 to 17 8 3,” which stamps him as “ a man of liberal and most impartial mind,” would have “ stigmatised as it deserves the infamous (!) history of the Union had it fallen within his period,” and would have now supported the retrograde policy proposed by Mr. Gladstone. Lord Mahon’s History, which is brought down to the year after the creation of Grattan’s Parliament, certainly contains no comments what­ ever on the subsequent Union, and, with all due submission to Mr. Gladstone, I venture to assert that that History is far from lending any support to his. supposition. On the other hand, it strongly confirms the views expressed in the “ Reminiscences.” During the whole of the period of which he writes, Ireland, as Mr. Gladstone has frequently repeated, had her own Parliament, and Lord Mahon makes it quite evident that he disapproved of the policy of always bringing forward Irish grievances in the British Parliament as a stalking horse for attack­ ing the Tory Government during the difficult period of the war with France and America. He says :— “ Although the English opposition, ‘ led by Fox and Lord Shelbourne,5 always excepting Burke and some others, would view Irish grievances only as affording grounds of crimination against the Government of Lord North, they were at that time, and for long afterwards, the fault of Irish laws far more than of the British Government.55 And he shews that the complaints of the Irish had no reference to political questions, but to changes for which they clamoured in British laws affecting their trade and commerce. Lord Mahon narrates the circumstances which led to the severance of the Irish Parliament (“ Grattan’s ”) from British control, and his observa­ tions are very suggestive at this moment, for they prove that the grievances and disputes resulted from Ireland being treated by the Imperial Government too much as a separate kingdom, especially in respect of Irish productions and Irish trade. The Customs’ duties which at that time prevailed in this country, and protected English and Scotch producers against foreign competition, would have been highly advantageous to Ireland, but that they were levied also on Irish com­ modities as if Ireland were a foreign country, and her people complained that they were thus ousted from their best market. Lord Mahon proceeds to show that then, as now, the economic ques­ tion overshadowed all others, and he continues :— “ It must be acknowledged of the Irish people at that juncture that their distresses were most real and their complaints well founded. Besides the customary restraints upon their commerce, an embargo had been in force ever since 1776. Thus their great staple commodities of beef and butter were shut up and perishing in their warehouses, lest they should serve to supply the enemy ; while their only great and free manufacture, their linen, was contracted under the fatal blight of the American war.” A plan for conciliating the American colonies by commercial con­ cessions had been proposed, and Lord Mahon proceeds :— • “ In 1778 the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland—the Earl of Buckinghamshire— addressed to Lord North ‘ the humble hope and earnest request of many of H.M.’s principal servants and others in Ireland, that whatever privileges or advantages in trade shall be granted if the conciliatory plan shall take effect, the American Colonies may not in any respect be put upon a better footing than Ireland.5 Propositions were accordingly laid before the British House of Commons for the relief and, as it were, the enfranchisement of the Irish trade, which were zealously supported by Burke ; but here again Lord North’s want of energy and of fixed purpose wrought evil, for he gave way far too readily to the opposition which these proposals provoked in Parlia­ ment, and, in the result, most of the advantages designed for Ireland came to be relinquished : only some relief being given to the linen trade and some opening allowed in the African and West indian commerce. “ But next year (1779) when it became plainly evident how small were the commercial concessions made in England, and that no more were intended, the murmurs of the Irish were renewed. The merchants of Dublin, meeting in the Tholsel, expressed their resentment at the unjust, illiberal, and im­ politic opposition of many self-interested people in Great Britain, and they bound themselves, until a better policy should prevail, neither directly nor indirectly to import or use any British goods which could be produced or manufactured in Ireland. In this non-importation agreement the Dublin merchants were following the significant example of America, and they were followed in their turn by several counties and towns in Ireland, as Cork, , Roscommon, &c. “ In October, 1779, Grattan advanced a step further by proposing an amendment to the address, claiming ‘ Free Export and Import5 as the birth­ right of an Irishman, and this amendment was carried up to the Lord- Lieutenant in state, the streets being lined by the Volunteers in full array with the Premier Peer of Ireland, the Duke of Leinster, at their head. “ The king’s answer was, however, couched only in vague terms, and then Grattan—in order to bring more pressure to bear on the Government—moved and carried by a large majority, a resolution ‘ That at this time it would be inexpedient to grant new taxes after which he carried a further vote, giving the supplies, not as usual, for two years, but for six months only.” At length Lord North introduced three Bills conceding the claims of the Irish, and establishing their commercial equality, but the concession came too late. The Ministry had been already weakened by votes of censure in both Houses in respect of the state of Ireland, and when the news arrived of the capitulation of York Town, of the loss of several islands in the West Indies, and finally, in February, 1782, of the crown­ ing disaster, the loss of the Island of Minorca, then, says Lord Mahon : “ Stimulated by the tottering state of the Ministry in England, 242 dele­ gates, representing upwards of 140 bodies of Volunteers, met in the church of Dungannon, February 15th, 1878, and after deliberating eight hours, adopted unanimously the following Resolution, which Grattan had pre­ pared :— * That a claim of any body of men other than the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, to bind this kingdom, is unconstitutional, illegal, and a NOTE ON “ FREE TRA^E IDOLÂ^RY.” .— V- V Owing to extraneous and special circumstances, the prices of our home produceyere not much affected during the first twenty-five years which succeeded the abolition of the Corn Laws. Wheat remained at the average price of 53s. per quarter from 1846 to 1875, and accordingly our home and foreign trade continued very prosperous. But during the last fifteen years the excessive importations of corn from abroad, and chiefly from the United States, have gradual^ lowered the home pnbi* to such an extent that farming ia fast becoming an unremunerative occupation. On a large proporn^ of the land the cost of cultivation exceeds the value of its produce, andjience the area of cultivate» arable land in the United Kingdom has diminished since the year 1809 by upwards of 2,500,000 acres, of which neaily one million acres are in Ireland. The following figures show that the advantages of “ cheap bread ” are* very far outweighed by the enormous loss inflicted on the country through the free importation of forefen corn. In 18(59 the area cultivated with wheat in the United Kingdom was 3,981,989 acres ; in 1885*2,549,192 acres ; decrease in the cultivated area in fifteen years 1,432,797 acres. Taking their produce in 18C9 at 28 bushels,pçr acre, the value of the crop at the normal price of 53s. per quarter (the average from 1846 to 187Î?), and the value of the straw at£1 per acre, the annual loss to the country by the wheat crops which those 1,432,797 acres ought to have produced is £24,524,738. Again, the area cultivated with other corn crops, green crops, and flax, was in 1869,13,334,1<£ acres, which area had been reduced in 1884 to 12,187,980 acres, showing a decrease of 1,146,195 acies, the’ gross produce of which in the year 1869 averaged at least £10 per acre, and thus have a. further loss to the country of £11,461,950 per annum. If to these figures we add the loss bj| depreciation in the price of agricultural produce on the 12,187,980 acres now remaining in cultivation* taking this at an all-round average of £4 per acre, we shall arrive at a moderate estimate of the tpffl decrease in the value of agricultural produce in the United Kingdom during the last fifteen years aa follows

Loss pe^annum. £ By decrease in the area cultivated with wheat ...... 24,524, By decrease in the area of other arable lands ...... 11,461,9 By the diminished price of agricultural produce on 12,187,980 acres now c u ltiv a te d ...... 48,751,920

Total fall in value of agricultural produce since 1869, and consequent annual loss to the country ...... 84,738,608 Now all that we have to set against this gigantic loss is the very much over-praised saving to the con­ sumers of bread due to the fall from 53s. to 30s. per quarter of wheat. The population of the United Kingdom in 1885 was 36,325,115, and the consumption of wheat per head being six bushels per annum, there should have been 27,243,840 quarters of wheat consumed in the year 1885. The maximum paving to the consumers of bread on that quantity, taking it at 23s. per quarter, is thus seen to be £31,330,416, and the amount of dead loss to the country occasioned by the purchase from foreign sources of cheap corn is the difference between the two figures £84,738,608 and £31,330,416, viz., £53,408,192 per annum. Landlords, farmers, and labourers in the first place, but as a direct consequence all other classes also, are affected by this loss of wealth and of purchasing power. Our agricultural labourers are driven to the manufacturing centres, the wages of our town mechanics being thereby reduced, and large numbers are added to the ranks of the unemployed. To the five million inhabitants of Ireland there falls for their share no less than 40 per cent, of the above mentioned decrease in the cultivated area, viz., 995,805 acres, and the loss will be seen to be proportionately far greater than in the rest of the United Kingdom, which fully accounts for the present acute state of disaffection, for we have :— Loss per annum. By decrease in the area cultivated with corn, green crops, and flax at £10 £ per acre ...... 9,958,050 By diminished price of agricultural produce on the remaining 2,910,238 acres, at £4 per a c r e ...... 11,640,952

Total amount of loss due to free imports of foreign corn ...... 21,599,002

These effects are due not by any means to the irresistible force of an immutable law, but to our own voluntary legislative enactments which might very well be modified in deference to the lessens of experience, were it not for the supposed sanctity of “ Free Trade Idolatry.” The late Attorney-General enumerated in the House of Commons the numberless repressive Acts under which Ireland has been governed since the beginning of this century, but it is a very significant fact that from 1850 to 1866, when plenty of work was to be had, no extreme legislation was necessary; during that period neither Peace Preservation Acts, Arms and Insurrection Acts, suspension of the Habeas Corpus, nor Martial Law were ever once needed. On the other hand, from 1869 to 1885 one or other of those Acts has been uninterruptedly in force. Work creates industry, industry produces the means of averting hunger, and when they have work enough and food enough, Irishmen may be turned to anything. But, as Lord Penzance says, “ Cheap bread will not create wages,” whereas bread, at the price at which it ruled during the height of our commercial prosperity, from 1855 to 1870, when wheat averaged 53s. per quarter, will always be accompanied by good wages, prosperity, and plen+ 7, because it is a sure index that the land is in remunerative cultivation, which signifies a1 >j(liuv-e of employment for labour, “ the true mainspring of prosperity and wealth/’ / X v ' • V