Smith O'Brien's Burial-place.

289

manifest than that the English members assume as an axiom that Ireland has no right to her own revenues. "England, under the convenient name of the Empire,' is assumed to be the rightful owner of the revenues of Ireland. England, in their view, is entitled to grasp all the Irish revenue she can lay hold of, and is not bound to refund anything. The Union is practically interpreted to be an identification of burdens and of taxes, but not of benefits or of expenditure. 'The Empire' means England when there is question of outlay, but it is held to include Ireland when there is question of taxation. The English members disregard the disparity of the two pre-Union debts, which, although it is the very pith and marrow of our case, yet forms no part of the ground on which Sir Stafford Northcote appears to have arrived at the conclusions in his report."

Yet in spite of the foregone conclusions of the English members, General Dunne succeeded in extorting an admission that Ireland is grievously and disproportionately overtaxed. The General, on this fiscal question, was an excellent and patriotic Irish agitator. His meritorious labours are appropriately mentioned in this work; for one of the standing complaints of the Repealers is the great fiscal wrong done to Ireland.

On the 17th of June, 1864, Smith O'Brien, whose health had been for some time declining, died in Wales. I need not say that his death caused heartfelt grief, not only among those who personally knew and loved him, but among the millions of his countrymen who revered him as a brave and honest man, and a true Protestant patriot. His remains reached Dublin in the Cambria steamer about four o'clock in the morning of the 23rd, and were met by a sorrowing crowd, who had in many instances remained up all night to be present at the arrival of the vessel. A procession was formed through the city to the Kingsbridge terminus; the number of persons who attended at that early hour were computed at 20,000. O'Brien's remains were interred at Rathronan, in the County Limerick. He had reached his sixty-first year. "Requiescat in pace."

Þ

CHAPTER XXX.

SUCCESSIVE AGITATIONS AGAINST POPULAR GRIEVANCES.

Can the depths of the ocean afford you not graves,
That you come thus to perish afar o'er the waves,
To redden and swell the wild torrents that flow
Through the valley of vengeance, the dark Aherlow ?
Spirit of the Nation.

THE reader who has accompanied me thus far will have seen that ample provocatives exist in Ireland for that discontent which, when coloured by American connexion, assumes the shape of Fenianism. I have elsewhere examined the causes of the Fenian phenomenon,* which is in my judgment the direct result of the Legislative Union.

The popular discontent I regard as not only legitimate but inevitable. The Fenian attempts at redressing the national wrongs were absurd, ill-conceived, ill-contrived, treasonable, and impracticable. The National Association, which comprised all, or nearly all, the Catholic bishops and a large number of clergymen, earnestly invited the people to support it. The National League, instituted by Mr. Martin and The O'Donoghue, sent forth a similar invitation. The objects of both these societies were in a high degree popular. Yet the great body of the people held aloof, because they were destitute of confidence in the Imperial Parliament, to which the appeals for removal of wrongs were to be addressed by the two societies I have named; and because they had taken up a vague idea that conquering hosts were speedily to come from America and set all right. This idea was very prevalent, and in my intercourse with the peasantry I found it extremely difficult to dispel the illusion. A particular day would be fixed by the Fenian agents for the landing of the armament; and when the day would arrive, bringing with it no armament, another day would be named, and another, and another; successive postponements still leaving the popular credulity undiminished.

The number of signatures to petitions for disendowing the State Church amounted in 1866 to no less than 202,682. This number does not represent the whole, for many petitions were rejected in consequence of informality. The number would have been much greater if the people had confidence

* In a small pamphlet entitled, "Why is Ireland Discontented ? ” published by Cameron & Ferguson, Glasgow.

A Fenian Armament expected.

291

in the Imperial Legislature. The signatures to petitions for a change in the Land Laws amounted, during the same year, to 233,766. Such numbers, under circumstances of considerable discouragement, must be allowed to indicate great earnestness in the petitioners. Sir John Gray, M.P. for Kilkenny, took charge of the question of ecclesiastical disendowment in Parliament. Of his speech, delivered on the 11th of April, 1866, the Times of the next day said: "Whoever doubts the anomaly or the failure of the Irish Church, may be recommended, once for all, to peruse the speech of Sir John Gray." It is indeed a very able statement.

The Fenian organisation proceeded apace. Of course the Government had full and early information of the secret doings of the Fenians; for there never was, and never will be, an illegal conspiracy in Ireland in which spies and false brethren will not swarm. The very existence of such a conspiracy is certain to invite pretended enthusiasts, whose sole object in swearing themselves into the society is to betray its members to the Government for payment.

Pierce Nagle, Petitt, and Warner, in 1866, were mere reproductions of John Donnellan Balfe in 1848, and of Reynolds, Newell, and Armstrong in 1798. The useful though infamous services of informers placed the Viceroy, Lord Wodehouse, in possession of every detail of the conspiracy; and it is due to him to say that he used his powers not only with firmness and discretion, but with as much clemency as consisted with the performance of duties in themselves severe. He proclaimed in Parliament that Ireland had grievances to be redressed, amongst which he gave the alien State Church a prominent position. When the first batch of Fenian prisoners had been tried, convicted, and sentenced, it was fondly hoped by persons who could not see beneath the surface that Fenianism was extinguished. The Earl of Derby knew better; he said it had only been scotched, not killed. Lord Wodehouse was created Earl of Kimberley to reward him for having killed or scotched it. From his early and accurate knowledge, derived from the informers, he was able to anticipate and counteract every movement projected by the conspirators.

The English journals had for some time been amusing the world with statements that Ireland was prosperous and contented; that she had cordially accepted the Union, and had at length become sensible of its benefits. Fenianism came into awkward collision with those statements. Here

was a conspiracy against English connexion, extending nobody could tell how far among the population. Persons who knew nothing about the matter imagined that it was an integral conspiracy, confined to the men who were actually enrolled in it. But in truth it was no more than a symptom of a far more extensive disease of that national discontent inevitably flowing from the Union and its evil consequences, and of which the Fenian exhibition was merely the accident of special circumstances.

It is well to recall the solemn warnings given in 1799 and 1800 by the parliamentary friends of the Irish Constitution, that the Union necessarily tended to promote the ultimate separation of the countries.

Mr. Saurin said: "It will endanger the present happy Constitution and connexion with Great Britain."

Colonel Barry: "It will impair the connexion."

Right Hon. John Foster, Speaker of the House of Commons: "The ruinous measure of an Union-a measure calculated to disturb the harmony and threaten the existence of the Empire."--"Which, if persevered in, must threaten separation."

Mr. Saunderson: "It will endanger, perhaps dissolve, the connexion."

Lord Powerscourt (moving an amendment): "It would tend, in our opinion, more than any other cause, ultimately to a separation of this kingdom from Great Britain."

Mr. Waller: "It will weaken, if not dissolve, the connexion."

Lord Mathew: "The Union will tend more to weaken than to fortify the connexion."

Lord Cole: "The strongest abhorrence of the Union is compatible with the most unshaken attachment to the connexion."

Mr. John Claudius Beresford: "It will undermine the welfare and subvert the liberties of Ireland, and endanger the connexion."

Right Hon. W. B. Ponsonby: "I oppose the Union from an anxious desire to maintain the connexion."

Right Hon. George Ogle: "A rejection of the Union is the only mode by which the connexion can be preserved."

Mr. R. French : "The preservation of the Irish Parliament will encourage and maintain the connexion."

Mr. Gorges: "The happy communion with Great Britain is best maintained by the Constitution of 1782."

The Union disintegrates the Empire.

293

Mr. George Ponsonby: "The Parliament which so recently protected the Irish Crown is the firm and saving bond of British connexion."

Colonel Vereker: "The Union will effect the downfall of Ireland, the annihilation of her independence, and separation from British connexion."

Mr. Bushe: "Union is alienation from British connexion." Mr. Peter Burrowes: "This Union not only menaces the connexion, but the Constitution itself."

Mr. Plunket: "This bill I oppose, not as a bill of Union, but of separation; as a bill calculated to dismember the Empire."

Mr. Grattan: "The two nations are not identified, though the Irish Legislature be absorbed; and by that absorption the feeling of one of the nations is not identified, but alienated. . . . Union is Irish alienation."

In truth, any other result than Irish alienation was out of the question. That alienation rankles and festers in the nation's heart. How could it be otherwise? The Union seems pre-eminently calculated to destroy the attachment of Irishmen to British connexion, and to render them indifferent to the conquest of their country by a foreign force. If Ireland's destiny is to be robbed, degraded, and dispeopled, Irishmen may, not unnaturally, ask what can it matter whether the robbery, the degradation, the dispeopling, are achieved by Great Britain, or by any other power?

How different the case if the Union had never been enacted! Had the policy of equal laws which Earl Fitzwilliam believed he was commissioned to effect in 1795 been fairly carried out; had the country been suffered by England to advance in the career of prosperity she enjoyed under her domestic Legislature; we should have seen her own resources expanding into national wealth and employed for the support of her own people; we should have seen, deeply rooted in the nation's heart, the loyalty that springs from national happiness and from an an honourable pride in domestic institutions adapted to the people's wants and dear to their affections; we should have seen no exodus of impoverished millions from a land to which God has given plenty; we should have seen no Fenianism.

"There is

The Times now and then tells truth. nothing," said the leading journal (30th of June, 1863), "about which we Englishmen know so little as Ireland. We are often told this, and no doubt very justly."