Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

war against the Irish landlords. Ireland is the chief difficulty of oligarchical statesmen, because they are the chief difficulty of Ireland.

Observant men often asked each other, 'What will be the consequences of the death of O'Connell? They saw that, in the shape of a reviler, he was really the protector of the Irish proprietors and British interests. His appearance in public affairs caused a stoppage of the shedding of blood, and his withdrawal from the world was followed first by a frightful amount of agrarian assassinations, and next, by open rebellion. Just after his death, such had been the effect of his lessons, that it seemed probable an industrial movement would obtain the principal share of the attention of the people, under the leadership of the Irish council. The English journalists had made it a loud and bitter complaint against him, that he had not used his influence in favour of industry. In conversation with the present writer on these cruel charges, he observed, 'I have done all I could for industry; I have given them what they never had before, peace and security, for their industrious pursuits.'

The present scene in Ireland is partly that of a country which has lost its king during a famine. The monarch mind' is here no more. Thinking of the relation of the aged O'Connell to his countrymen, we have had brought to our recollection a grand, if ghastly, passage of Ossian, the Celtic bard. To our fancy, it symbolizes the attitude and influence of the kingly O'Connell towards the Irish people and in Irish history. 'A mist rose slowly from the lake. It came in the figure of an aged man along the silent plain. Its large limbs did not move in steps; for a ghost supported it in mid-air. It came towards Selma's Hall, and dissolved in a shower of blood.' O'Connell, the impersonation of his country, vanishes, and the green island is spotted with the blood of assassination and rebellion. O'Connell was the great preserver of the peace. A million and a half extra spent on soldiers and policemen this year, will fail to accomplish the good done by this one man for the protection of life and property by his abhorrence of violence, and his lesson, The man who commits a crime, gives strength to the enemy.' While he lived, he was denounced as the opposite of all he was, by those persons he preserved and benefitted. Love for Ireland enabled the famine to lodge death in the heart of the venerable liberator, and with the withdrawal of his mind from Irish affairs, the mighty, moral-force influence he had created, dissolves in blood, though not, let us hope, in a shower of blood.'

Sir Robert Peel was one of the first among our statesmen to see that there must be an approach made to free trade in land in Ireland. But, to have adopted this necessity into his policy, on

the authority of the parties who alone supported it at the time, would have damaged his influence. Certain London and Westminster Reviewers, Mr. Daniel O'Connell, and M. Gustave de Beaumont, were authorities to whom it would have been injurious to the Conservative Premier to have appeared to defer. How he disarmed the prejudices of his followers is a curious tale, and singularly illustrative of his party management.

In a good state of society, it would suffice to recommend any beneficent idea to the adoption of the legislature that it was recommended by men of genius and wisdom. But, in this country, such ideas are naught until indorsed by men of title, who are themselves proprietors of legislative influence by hereditary seats in the upper, and equally hereditary proxy seats in the lower, House of Parliament. Hence the necessity for a work every one has heard of,-Earl Devon's Report. There are as great differences in the circumstances in which books are published, as there are in the circumstances in which men are born. Seldom has any book been ushered into the world more pompously than was this thin blue folio volume of fifty pages. O'Connell would have given up the monster agitation of 1843, if Sir Robert Peel would have promised to act upon his own convictions respecting the relations of the peasantry and the land. But this he would not do. However, when Ireland seemed in a state approaching insurrection, and monster assemblages, marshalled and commanded by repeal wardens, appeared ready for civil war,-when there had been great homage done to O'Connell, at Tara, of the Kings, and at Mullaghast, a cap had been placed on his head like a royal crown,-the wary and sagacious premier had a wise thought: 'I will send to Ireland noblemen and gentlemen on whom I can depend,' said he,' who will write a blue book on the relations between the people and the soil.' Of course the wise thought was applauded. The commissioners or authors proceed to Ireland to collect materials for their book. Years elapse; but, from time to time, intimations appear that the work will be forthcoming by-and-bye. When it is nearly ready, her Majesty rides to the House of Lords, in state, and, while the world listens, says to her auditory in ermine, lawn, and jewels: The Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the law and practice in respect to the occupation of land, is nearly prepared, and shall be communicated to you immediately after its presentation.' As in the description of Milton, Morning fair—

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

so Victoria held forth, in her jewelled hand, this blue book, to put down the grisly speeches' of agitation and insurrection.

[ocr errors]

Was there ever book so honoured? It is summoned forth by statesmanship to calm a nation, and ushered towards its high destiny by royalty. Surely it is a most valuable work. Undoubtedly its merits are correspondent to its honours. When thinking of the honours given this book, even in embryo, visions obtrude themselves of the circumstances suggested by contrast in which three other books were produced. Nearly a century ago, a young professor lectured to his students, in the little moral philosophy class-room of Glasgow, from his manuscripts, destined to be published, on political economy; but what was to be expected from a Scotch teacher of grown-up boys? But thus was prepared 'The Wealth of Nations.' There was once a young peasant who wrote parts of a book in the hay-loft of a stable in Ayrshire; but who would take from the hands of peasants their vile trash? Yet thus was produced 'The Cotter's Saturday Night' of Robert Burns. In the small back room of a bookseller's shop, in Naples, there toiled a student of the law at his books, while his family slept around him, and he was fearful of awaking the sleepers by the noise of turning the leaves. He was poor all his life, but his studies produced The New Science, as Vico called his Philosophy of History, the book which has been the source of most of the light which has of late been shed upon the course and causation of human affairs. What a contrast between the circumstances in which these immortal works were produced and those which attended the birth of Earl Devon's Report. This thin blue book sprung from coronetted brains; a premier was the editor of it-a queen the puffer of it and a government and a legislature the publishers of it. What was it worth? Threepence a pound as waste paper. What was the use of it? The commission and their report gave the dull sanction of aristocratic authorities to the partial adoption of beneficent ideas, which are nothing to the legislature without this indorsement. Except for the sanction which it gave to the necessity for measures to adjust the relations between the peasantry and the land of Ireland, the report was as valueless as unreadable. But, though genius is just a heart and eyes for the feeling and perception of truth, the most valuable suggestions, the most powerful demonstrations go for little in the British legislature, and may not enter upon the sublime function of relieving human suffering, unless they have received the approval of men duly entitled to wear golden caps on their heads, and been invested with the weighty authority of unreadable folios in blue wrappers.

The Encumbered Estates Bills, the Tenant Right Bills, the

Landlord and Tenant Bills, and others, embody the attempts made to give the industry of the people scope upon the soil of the sister island. The phenomena of Ireland are very obvious: a Celtic people, whose land has been taken from them, and their religion persecuted, and who, therefore, wage a perpetual war, dumb or audible, against the descendants of the conquerors who seized their lands, and the protestants who have persecuted their religion. The conquering race have not merely protected their estates by law and arms, from the reseizure of the celts, but they have, in their jealousy, prevented the capital and labour of their industrious countrymen from tilling the earth and making it fruitful. The beginning of good for Ireland is the destruction of the legal cobwebry which has had these malign influences. At last, thanks to Sir Robert Peel, in spite of delays, a beginning is made;-made too late to alleviate the famine-too late to save the money of the British tax-payers, and too late to prevent disaffection from ripening into rebellion. The honour of the measure belongs to Sir Robert Peel, and his skilful tactics and manoeuvres; and the blame of the delay, and the defects of it, belong to Lord John Russell.

But the good work is begun. The worthless squireens, without capital, without industry, and without enterprize, will, by and bye, be displaced by proprietors of capital and intelligence, who will give employment to the people by eliciting the fruitfulness of the soil.

Agrarian assassinations and rebellions are not peculiarities of any race. They are characteristics of all conquered races. They are phenomena of conquests. The Norman experienced them from the Saxons as the English experience them from the Celts. They are moral perversions displayed by all people who have been subdued by stronger races. Thuggery, in India, is only a different name for a perversion identical in its nature with the Rockite and Whiteboy phenomena of Tipperary. In broad day an Irish peasant shoots his victim in the presence of many witnesses. No one hinders-no one arrests him-no one denounces him-and no one succours his wounded victim. Such things are inconceivable in England in the present day, and it is flattering to the national pride to believe that these facts are characteristics of the Celtic race. Our Saxon ancestors did the same things. The conquered Hindoos have similar practices. It is not yet two centuries since the persecutions which the second Charles inflicted on the Scotch, made True Blue Presbyterians believe that it was quite right to murder Archbishop Sharp. Two hundred years ago, the noble and knightly followers of the great Marquess of Montrose deemed it a worthy act to murder, as he sat at dinner in a public ordi

nary, Dr. Dorislaus, the ambassador who represented the English Commonwealth at the Hague. Had he not been concerned as a lawyer in the trial of the anointed Charles the First? Was it not right to slay a regicide-a parricide? Fanatical Royalists acted on this maxim. Clarendon and the Royal Charles, and James the Second, planned the assassination of Oliver Cromwell by an infernal machine which was fired at Hammersmith. After the Restoration, Royalists traversed both worlds to shoot Regicides wherever they met them, and one of them was shot as he left church. These moral perversions are not peculiarities of race. Human nature in certain circumstances always displays them. A lofty fanaticism in a Laud or a Corday, craziness in a Fenton, or vanity in a Fieschi,-they are symptoms of the paganism which still predominates over most of the actual proceedings of modern Europe. Theft is quite right in the eyes of the inhabitant of the thief villages of India. The Bheel says to himself-were not my fathers robbed of their all? The feelings of a long conquered race in the Thug justify the unjustifiable. He has been taught the meritoriousness of human sacrifices to the Black Goddess, and he offers up to her an enemy of his tribe. Robbery is wrong, but the enemy is dead, and the living alone have any right to property. Land is life to the Tipperary peasant. He, therefore, joins a secret association, and executes in open day the sentences of the midnight tribunal, who condemn to death the violators of their wellknown conventions. All the governments of the world teach the people to overcome evil with evil, violence with violence. Blood for blood is the spirit of all criminal codes. Hence hereditary traditions, caste conventions, clan tribunals, which justify assassinations, insurrections, and rebellions. Overcome evil with good,' is a word which has yet to be uttered in the legislatures of Europe. Nevertheless it is true, that conciliation, the justice of kindness, alone can suppress the wild justice of revenge. Governments, like individuals, to be loved must be loveable. The Norman could not reconcile the Saxon by coercion-nor will the Englishman, the Irishman. When statesmen are embarrassed with their chief, their Irish difficulty, we wish a little bird might sing in their ears these words, Recompense to no man evil for evil-see that none render evil for evil to any man-if thine enemy hunger feed him; if he thirst give him drink. Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, overcome evil with good.'

Free trade in land would, perhaps, be the most beneficent thing which this parliament could give by its present leaders and present constitution to the people. When we reflect what boundless resources there are in the soil of these islands, and

« НазадПродовжити »