The hierarchy was left undisturbed, and an understanding gradually grew up, that the Bishops should give practical assistance to a Government which was on the whole so lenient. The educated Irish Catholics began from this time to forget their disloyalty. Among the state papers preserved in Dublin is an examination of a Bishop in the year 1745, whose name is disguised behind initials, and those probably incorrect. He was questioned as to an intention of insurrection. He was able to assure the Government that there was none. He had himself, in his diocese, discouraged externes,' as the foreign priests were called; he had kept the Jesuits at arm's length, and suppressed convents and friaries more effectively than the county magistrates could have done all combined. Conspiracy, he said, there could be none of which he could be left in ignorance. And, if he knew of any practices,' he promised to give notice to the authorities at the Castle.1 1 Examination of N. S., 1745.' Dublin, MSS. The Bishop, whoever he was, gives curious particulars as to the condition and organization of the Irish priesthood. At that time there were twentyfour bishops and archbishops. The Pope appointed them, sometimes at the postulation of the priests of the diocese. N. S. had been a parish priest for twenty-six years before he was made a bishop. He had his orders in Spain; ordination in Ireland being, he said, unusual. The friars were governed by their own provincials, who, if necessary, could inflict corporal punishment on them. He himself, though a bishop, retained his parish, and had two curates to help him. They must have all been very poor, and made the burden of their maintenance as light as possible. 'In his parish,' he said, 'some gave him five shillings and five pence, some one shilling and a penny, some sixpence halfpenny. In some parishes the priests got only corn and bread, and other little things. Collections were made on Sundays. In his parish he got half the collections and the friars of a religious house the other. He had thirty-two priests under him. They gave him a guinea each at the distribution of the oils. His income from his parish was forty pounds a year, of which he gave a third to his coadjutors. The collections at his chapel door were about sixteen shillings a year. His parish was the best in the diocese. Common parishes were worth thirty or thirtyfive pounds a-year—no more. CHAP. I. 1725 BOOK CHAPTER II. PROGRESS OF ANARCHY. SECTION I. THERE are four systems under which a dependent people may be held together under the forms of a coherent society. They may be governed wisely and firmly under a rule impartially just, by the laws, so far as intellect can discern them, appointed by the Maker of the world. They may be governed, without justice, by superior force, which considers nothing but its own will. They may be left to govern themselves according to such ideas as to the majority of them seem good, authority claiming nothing but political allegiance, and maintaining a police to repress the grosser form of crimes. And, lastly, they may be managed' by adroit handling, the internal factions being played off one against the other; while the central authority prevents violent collisions, maintains a general equipose, and dissolves dangerous combinations by 'corruption' and influence. The first of these methods, which succeed always and in all countries, is the most rarely tried, because it implies virtues which are rare at all times, and especially rare in men in power-self-denial, patience, wisdom, courage, the subordination of the rulers themselves to the rules which they impose on others. II. The English, under the high impulse of Puritanism, CHAP. attempted it once in Ireland, but for the few years only, during which they endured for themselves the moral restraint of deep and noble convictions. When they ceased to govern themselves nobly, they were no longer able to govern Ireland nobly; and after a short-lived experiment gave up the effort. The second method, coercion without justice, became the rule in Ireland at the Revolution. This too, if carried out, might have been successful in keeping the Irish in subjection. Being a people incapable of self-restraint, the Celtic peoples are and always have been pre-eminently amenable to an authority which dares to assert itself. But coercion implied force; force, or forces-a large and disciplined army; and England, free herself, imagined that she could coerce Ireland under the forms of her own constitution, and refused to supply materials of despotism which might be dangerous to herself. Coercion failed for want of strength. Self-government of a real kind, self-government, accompanied by the enfranchisement of the Catholics and Dissenters, it was dangerous to try. No one indeed as yet thought of trying it in a country where ninetenths of the land had been taken violently from the old proprietors, whose crime had been to challenge for Ireland her right to her own laws and her own creed. There remained, therefore, the last expedient, the easiest and also the worst: the policy, if so base a system may be honoured by such a name, which had been tried already by the Plantagenet and Tudor sovereigns, and had produced a condition of society in which order and morality were words without meaning, and out of which, in the vision of the IV. BOOK saint, human souls were seen descending into hell as thick as hail showers. This method, set upon its feet once more, became again the rule, till misgovernment produced its inevitable fruits-agrarian conspiracies, mock patriotism, rebellion, and the still weltering chaos of discontent and disloyalty. The attempt to prevent, by unexecuted threats, the continuance of the priesthood and the Catholic hierarchy having decisively failed, the next object of English statesmen was to disarm their hostility and detach them from the cause of the Pretender. The change of view was natural and not indefensible. Catholicism in Europe was losing its political character. New principles of combination, with new objects, were forming themselves between the leading powers, and a Catholic crusade against Protestantism was ceasing to be possible. The adherence of the Irish to the Papacy was no longer necessarily dangerous. England might be at war with France, and yet France, if care was taken to keep the priests in good humour, need no longer as a matter of course find an ally in Irish disaffection. The same influences might be made available to neutralize domestic discontent. To promote the prosperity of Ireland was not a matter which presented itself as a duty to an English administration, whatever its political eomplexion otherwise. The poorer the country could be kept the less likelihood there was of its being troublesome. The only anxiety was to preserve outward quiet, to secure the voting of the supplies, and to suppress Parliamentary mutinies which might threaten the commercial monopolies. The agitation which England had most to fear was among the Protestants, whose manufactures had been ruined, and whose ! energies there was a determination to repress. The Catholic population formed a counterpoise which it was convenient to keep in good humour, while to protect them from persecution was an easy compliment to Catholic allies on the Continent. In effect, therefore, under the two first Georges, English statesmen said to the Irish priesthood, 'We will defend you from the penal laws if you in turn will discountenance the agitation from Ormond and the Pretender. If you will be loyal to England, we will take care to shield you from Protestant ascendancy.' The simplest method would have been to modify the laws; and the Irish Parliament itself would have gladly consented to some arrangement by which the priesthood could have had a recognized existence. But no hint can be traced among the English state papers of any such desire. The state of English opinion might perhaps have made an alteration of the penal statutes impossible; perhaps their continued maintenance was essential to the continuance of Catholic gratitude. This ambiguous handling, however, though convenient to Walpole and Newcastle, was less satisfactory to the Protestants of Ireland. They had been planted as a garrison in a hostile country. They had been set to rule on principles which, unless acted upon with sufficient consistency to destroy the creed at which they were aimed, were an enduring and yet useless insult; and they saw the professors of that creed recovering strength and numbers, and re-acquiring wealth and consistency. They were in possession of the estates of the native proprietors, who had lost them in defence of their religion; aud the toleration of that religion was a quasi-confession that the confiscation had been an unrighteous act. Their position СНАР. II. |