England and Ireland |
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absolute affairs agricultural population allowed America Austria and Hungary Belgium believe benefit Britain Britain and Ireland British Parliament burthen Canada capitalist farmer Catholic cause circumstances civilized condition connexion conscience copyholder cultivated difficulty economy of Ireland endowment enemies ENGLAND AND IRELAND England and Scotland English nation equal alliance estates Europe evil existed famine farm feelings Fenianism foreign give govern Ireland HARVARD COLLEGE historical antecedents Hoche hold Ireland hostile House of Commons idea improvement independence India industry institutions interest Irish Catholics Irish disaffection Irish landlord Irish peasant Irishmen Kilkee labourer-tenant lease less Liberal Englishmen Limerick manual labourers ment métayers in France middleman mischievous rights moral motive ness opinion overpopulation party pathies payment pecuniary permanent posi present property in land proprietor prosperity Protestant reasons rebellion requires revolution rule Russia separation social economy soil spoliation sublet tenant things thought tion union with England veto worst wrong
Popular passages
Page 12 - Before the conquest the Irish people knew nothing of absolute property in land. The land virtually belonged to the entire sept, the Chief was little more than the managing member of the association. The feudal idea, which views all rights as emanating from a head landlord, came in with the conquest, was associated with foreign dominion, and has never to this day been recognized by the moral sentiments of the people. ... In the moral feelings of the Irish people, the right to hold the land goes, as...
Page 11 - It is otherwise with regard to land, a thing which no man made, which exists in limited quantity, which was the original inheritance of all mankind, and which, whoever appropriates, keeps others out of its possession. Such appropriation, when there is not enough left for all, is, at the first aspect, an usurpation on the rights of other people.
Page 6 - Alas for the self-complacent ignorance of irresponsible rulers, be they monarchs, classes, or nations. If there is anything sadder than the calamity itself, it is the unmistakable sincerity and good faith with which numbers of Englishmen confess themselves incapable of comprehending it.
Page 21 - Such a change may be revolutionary, but revolutionary measures are the thing now required. It is not necessary that the revolution should be violent, still less that it should be unjust. It may and it ought to respect existing pecuniary interests which have the sanction of law. An equivalent ought to be given for the bare pecuniary value of all mischievous rights which landlords or any others are required to part irith. But no mercy ought to be shown to the mischievous rights themselves...
Page 7 - If there is anything sadder than the calamity itself, it is the unmistakable sincerity and good faith with which numbers of Englishmen confess themselves incapable of comprehending it. They know not that the disaffection which neither has nor needs any other motive than aversion to the rulers, is the climax to a long growth of disaffection arising from causes that might have been removed. What seems to them the causelessness of the Irish repugnance to our rule is the proof that they have almost let...
Page 24 - ... way we choose to turn it, is true, are we the power which according to the general fitness of things and the rules of morality, ought to govern Ireland? If so, what are we dreaming of when we give our sympathy to the Poles, the Italians, the Hungarians, the Servians, the Greeks and I know not how many other oppressed nationalities? On what principle did we act when we renounced the government of the Ionian Islands...
Page 26 - Congresses to concert united action for the interests of labour, is not one in which labourers will cut down labourers at other people's bidding. The time is come when the democracy of one country will join hands with the democracy of another, rather than back their own ruling authorities in putting it down.
Page 41 - The difficulty of governing Ireland lies entirely in our own minds ; it is an incapability of understanding.
Page 21 - Irish, always ready to trust implicitly those whom they think hearty in their cause, no accommodation is henceforth possible which does not give the Irish peasant all that he could gain by a revolution — permanent possession of the land, subject to fixed burthens. Such a change may be revolutionary ; but revolutionary measures are the thing now required. It is not necessary that the revolution should be violent, still less that it should be unjust. It may and it ought to respect existing pecuniary...
Page 9 - First, there is no other civilized nation which is so conceited of its own institutions, and of all its modes of public action, as England is ; and secondly, there is no other civilized nation which is so far apart from Ireland in the character of its history, or so unlike it in the whole constitution of its social economy...