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The utmost stretch of toleration cannot reach to the endurance of a belief which makes rebellion a duty, and teaches temporal obedience to some other sovereign as an article of faith. No government need keep terms with such a creed when there is power to abolish it. To call the repression of opinions which had issued so many times in blood and revolt, by the name of religious persecution, is mere abuse of words; while at that time the best minds in England really believed that, besides its treasonable aspects, the Roman Catholic religion was intellectually degrading and spiritually poisonous.

The results to the country, from the attempt at repression which was actually made, lamed as it was by impediments thrown deliberately in the way by politicians, and with the flaw upon it of the breach of promise made conditionally in the Articles of Limerick, prove that with wisdom and firmness the end could then have been completely attained, and Ireland been made a Protestant country as entirely as England and Scotland. Had the Catholic bishops been compelled in earnest to betake themselves elsewhere, had the importation of priests from abroad been seriously and sternly prohibited, the sacerdotal system must have died a natural death, and the creed have perished along with it.

But repression could not go alone. If in so vital a matter the Government interfered with the natural tendencies of the people, it was bound most strictly to give them every other opportunity of real improvement. Industry, in the first place, ought to have been encouraged in all directions by all legitimate means. Infinite wealth was in the Irish soil if only it was cultivated; rare virtues were in the Irish character if only

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it had fair play; and industry was the school in which both might have been developed. England had no natural advantages which Ireland did not share with her. The seeds of trade and manufacture which had been sown by James the First and Cromwell, though blighted by the Navigation Act, were not dead, and if let alone would revive. The persecutions in France were driving out fresh swarms of Protestant artisans to whom Ireland, were trade and manufactures free, would be a welcome home. Scotch and English capital was waiting to flow over there, and workmen, who aspired to better their condition by emigrating, and would prefer a nearer home than America. No country in the world had a more brilliant commercial future opening before her, if the opportunity had been wisely used.

Again; experience had shown, that the form of Protestantism known as the Anglican Establishment, though entitled to remain on equal terms with other reformed communities, ought not to have retained a power of persecuting those who had carried out more thoroughly the principles of the Reformation. The creation of the English mind, arising out of the disposition towards compromise which is so marked an English characteristic, the Established Church had so far failed in England itself, that the legal toleration of Dissent had become a necessity. An assumption of exclusive authority was more mischievous in Ireland, where the conditions of the compromise did not exist, where the Episcopalians formed but a third of the Protestant body, and where there was an enemy to be daily encountered, against whom they were the least effective antagonists. The more robust forms of Protestantism furnish no converts to Popery. Angli

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canism, a limb incompletely severed, remains attached CHAP. to the old system by veins and ligaments, which allow passage to the virus of sacerdotalism; it has always been the favourite nursery in which Rome has sought and found recruits, and has been singularly ineffectual in making converts in return. A mind sufficiently in earnest about religion to prefer truth to falsehood listens only to teachers who speak with emphasis and certainty, who do not think and say, but feel with warmth and passion. Before a man can persuade others to accept him as a guide, he must know his own mind, and be ready with a Yes or No, on the questions with which his hearers are perplexed. On the points which divide Protestant from Romanist, the Anglican answers Yes and No. Is there a Christian priesthood? There is and there is not. Is there a real presence in the Eucharist? There is and there is not. Is baptism necessary to salvation? It is and it is not. Such hesitating modes of thought may be prudent and cautious, but they will make no converts. The only Protestants who could make an impression on the Catholic peasantry were the Presbyterians, and it was in them that the strength of Irish Protestantism lay. The bishops had preached passive obedience, had looked favourably on the Catholics, and had been bitter and violent with the Nonconformists. In the day of trial the Nonconformists of the North had been found at their posts. The clergy of the Establishment continued to pray for King James. The least that the Presbyterians had deserved was an ample toleration. If Ireland was to be a sanctuary for Protestant refugees, the utmost possible freedom should have been allowed them; the more complete the Protestant, the more secured his allegiance to

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BOOK England, the less danger of a repetition of the fatal mistake which had driven out the Cromwellians. Repression too, it should have been remembered, could not last for ever. The Catholic peasantry were not to be expelled. Their families could not grow up in Atheism; and, if they were not converted, sooner or later, their liberty must be given back to them. A respite only could be secured at best, and if the opportunity were lost it might be lost for ever.

And there was another matter of scarcely less vital moment. The lands of the Irish chiefs had not been taken from them that they might be owned by noble lords and gentlemen residing the other side of the Channel, and acknowledging no further connexion with their estates beyond receiving rents for them. The theory of attainders rested on the duties attaching to property. If no such duties existed, the penalty was absurd and irrational. The absentee grievance was a very old one, and less easy to deal with than in earlier times. Under the feudal system the responsibility was visible, and the claims of the state were understood and admitted. When the state sold lands to raise money, or allowed men to sell to one another, it became necessarily more indulgent to neglect. But if, on the one hand, London speculators, or crown favourites, could not be prevented from acquiring large estates in Ireland, on the other the entire object of the confiscation was defeated if the population were ́left unshepherded; or, if for the landlords' convenience, the sons and grandsons of the old owners were left in possession as tenants retaining their local influence, still to all intents and purposes the practical rulers; and of the conquest, no result was left but the annual exasperation of the returning rent-day. An owner

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ship which consisted merely in robbing a poor country CHAP. of a percentage of the fruits of its industry, was no benefit but a curse; and although it might have been impossible to revive the laws of Henry the Eighth, a wise settlement of Ireland would have included a tax so heavy on all rents sent out of the kingdom, as would have compelled proprietors to sell their lands to others who would make their estates their home.

Lastly, as including in itself every other condition, as, at that time, the warmest object of desire with every intelligent Anglo-Irishman, the separate constitution should have been abolished, the two countries reunited, as Cromwell had designed, and thus, better far than by any separate detailed condition, the Irish admitted to the full participation of every British privilege. So long as there were two centres of political life, and two legislatures, the idea of a separate nationality and of a separate interest, persistently survived; and absenteeism of the most mischievous kind could not be prevented. To the great peers, hereditary statesmen like the Shelburnes, a public career in the larger country was an irresistible temptation. The young barrister, conscious of real powers, could not but prefer the ampler field of Westminster Hall for his energies and his abilities. A man of letters or an artist would be drawn to London as by a magnet. All the influences which could govern healthily and nobly the public tone of Irish life would be lost to her; and the provinces and the capital, the legislature, the learned professions, the arts and sciences-all which constitute the strength and greatness of a nation, would be left to the second best. The nationality itself, perversely maintained, would survive, perpetually conscious of ill-usage,

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