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diff --git a/78814-0.txt b/78814-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..950bef2 --- /dev/null +++ b/78814-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3408 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78814 *** + + + This ebook, based on a book first published in 1825, was created in + honour of Distributed Proofreaders’ 25th Anniversary. + + + + + ABSENTEEISM. + + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + + WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. + + Lately Published, + + THE LIFE and TIMES of SALVATOR ROSA. In 2 vols. 8vo. with a + fine Portrait of Salvator, from the Original Painting by + himself, in the possession of Earl Grosvenor, price 28s. bds. + + “Lady Morgan has produced two of the most amusing octavos we + have met with, even in this biographical age.”--EDINBURGH MAG. + + + ITALY. By LADY MORGAN. Being the Substance of a JOURNAL of HER + RESIDENCE in that Country; exhibiting a View of the present + State of SOCIETY and MANNERS, ARTS, LITERATURE, and Literary + Institutions, interspersed with numerous Anecdotes of the most + eminent Literary and Political Characters, &c. The Third + Edition, revised, in 3 vols. 8vo. price 36s. + + “Lady Morgan’s fearless and excellent work upon Italy.”--LORD + BYRON. + + “Lady Morgan has given us more information on the actual state + of society in Italy at the present moment, than can be found in + any of the numerous publications which have made their + appearance since the peace.”--NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. + + “This is not merely a work of opinions expressed in the + ornamental style of the writer. It is a substantial account of + Italy, and may be consulted for its facts by the historian, the + traveller, and the topographer.”--MONTHLY MAGAZINE. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + + ABSENTEEISM. + + + BY + + + LADY MORGAN. + + + “Les absens ont toujours tort.” + + + “You heare of a case as it were in a dreame, and feell not the smart +that vexeth us.”--_Speech of the Earl of Kildare to Cardinal Wolsey._ + + + LONDON: + HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. + 1825. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + + LONDON: + IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + + TO + + CHARLES BROWNLOW, ESQ. + M. P. + + +Dear Sir, + +Your recent speech on the Catholic question, has been hailed as an event +favourable to the best interests of Ireland by all who in sympathising +with her sufferings, have sought for, and ascertained their master +cause. + +All Irishmen are brave! it is scarce a national boast to say so! for the +courage of nerve and sinew is, after all, a quality of pretty general +distribution, “from Indus to the Pole.” Man is every where a pugnacious +animal; and _les heros de circonstance_--prompt to fight “for any God or +King”--are always to be had for hire, be the _cavalier pagante_ who he +may. But there is a quality of courage, which has been found rare in all +ages and in all regions, the peculiar endowment of high, free, and above +all, of _honest minds_. This is the courage that sets at nought + + “The world’s dread sneer, + Which scarce the stern philosopher can scorn,” + +which boldly opposes a startling truth to a received opinion, which +frankly recants the cherished error of early associations, and avows the +change operated by arduous inquiry and clear conviction, at the expense +of all worldly interests, and the sacrifice of all private feelings. +Such, Sir, is the courage which you have displayed upon a subject of +vital importance to Ireland. As an Irishwoman, I beg to offer my mite of +gratitude for the benefit conferred upon our common country--convinced +that whenever the spirit of those sentiments which you have avowed shall +govern the councils of the nation, Absenteeism will cease to be a +national malady. + + I have the honor to be, + + With every sentiment of respect, + + Your obedient Servant, + + SYDNEY MORGAN. + + London, June 4th, 1825. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + + PREFACE. + + +The following pages were originally published in the New Monthly +Magazine. The continued demand for the numbers in which they appeared, +has induced the proprietor to reprint the article, and it is now offered +to the public in a substantive form. + +Notwithstanding the intense interest which is felt throughout all +England concerning Ireland and Irish affairs, notwithstanding the +frequent debates in parliament, and more frequent pamphlets and volumes +published on points of Irish politics and œconomy, the prevailing +ignorance on these subjects still operates powerfully in maintaining +prejudices the most unfounded and the most fatal, and in retarding those +measures of wisdom and of justice without which Ireland can never be +happy, or the British Empire secure. + +It is this ignorance more especially which enables the party opposed to +the settlement of Ireland to occupy public attention with minor +grievances, behind which the danger and malice of their system are +concealed from a nation too generous to tolerate open and avowed +oppression. No sooner is the question of Catholic Emancipation proposed +in the senate, with some chance of obtaining a favourable consideration, +than one or other of these convenient abuses is thrust forward to +distract attention and to puzzle the will. The absentees, the deficiency +of employment, the potatoe diet, the want of poor laws, or the want of +education, are, from time to time put forth as the paramount evil, the +gushing fountain of every misfortune of Ireland; while the main subject +of complaint, the Catholic disability, is studiously represented as +affecting only a few briefless barristers, or ambitious landlords. The +advantage which is thus obtained in pre-occupying the public mind, and +in affording additional ground for a superstructure of sophisms is +immense. + +The British nation has so many and such vast interests to pursue, its +relations with every country in the world are so many and so +complicated, that the most instructed of its subjects can find but +little time and attention to bestow on any one of them, however +important. The public in general is therefore compelled to repose +confidence in those who affect a knowledge of each particular subject; +and to take for granted the propositions they advance. When the men who +should be the guides of public opinion are false to their trust, and +instead of presenting truths in a clear and perspicuous form, studiously +bury them beneath a mass of plausibilities, or entangle them in a +net-work of sophistry, the task of unweaving their web, and detecting +their fallacies, must be again and again undertaken, before a credulous +and a pre-occupied people can be made aware of the deception, and +enabled to judge of the question at issue by its intrinsic merits. + +On this account, it cannot but be deemed most unfortunate that the +friends of Ireland unwittingly complicated the recent discussion on the +Catholic Question, by the two bills with which they clogged their main +proposition. It was not sufficient that the public should be dinned and +stupified with the mass of untelligible and absurd theology with which +that very plain question of policy and common morality is too +unfortunately loaded; but it must also be mystified with high sounding +phrases of “disfranchisement,” “oppression of the poor,” and other +similar phantoms. To lead the British public to imagine that the +disqualification of the forty shilling freeholders would affect the +influence either of the catholic or protestant party in Ireland, was, to +say the best of it, a strange mistake: but on the other side, to attempt +making men believe that the franchise is a benefit to its holder, or +that the existing representative system of Ireland, with or without the +forty shilling freeholders, has any the remotest practical utility as an +instrument of liberty or of self-taxation, is a gross and absolute +deception. All the discussion which was raised on this most silly of +disputes (and the enemies of emancipation were not slow to profit by the +advantage) was _de lana caprina_, and so much diversion of the public +mind from the main point at issue; serving only to inflame enemies, and +to divide friends. Though no one will dispute that both the riders were +appended to the Catholic Bill in deference to the opponents of that +measure, and with an honest intention to conciliate and to compromise, +yet in the event, the introduction of extraneous matter has proved +eminently unfavourable to the cause, and will, it is to be hoped, never +again be attempted. + +The futility of the arguments derived from a putting forth of secondary +causes of evil in Irish politics, as directed against the entertainment +of the Catholic Question, is the greater, in as much as all the various +subjects which are advanced as matters of complaint, derive immediately +from this one source. Deficient capital, deficient knowledge, deficient +civilization, are all the necessary consequences of bad government,--of +that bad government for whose sake Catholic has been set against +Protestant, and the Irish people divided, in order to prevent the +assertion of their political rights. In England people are governed in +their opinions on the Catholic Question exclusively by their hopes and +fears; and none but the clergy have a corrupt interest in withholding +justice from any religious sect. But in Ireland power and place, the +licence to oppress, and the facility of living on the public purse, are +closely entwined with the permanence of a system, which, while it +tramples the Catholic in the dust, degrades and impoverishes the whole +population, for the exclusive benefit of a few powerful families. It is +bad government, and the destraction and turbulence which bad government +has engendered, that drives industry and capital from the country, and +forces the peasantry to abandon all pretence to luxuries and +refinements, whether moral or physical. It is bad government that +banishes meat from the cotter’s table, and instruction from his mind. It +is bad government that puts a pike in his hand, and hardens his heart +against all the charities of life; it is bad government that makes +property insecure, and life precarious; it is bad government, therefore, +that induces the aristocracy to fly to happier regions, to abandon their +duties to their country and to themselves, and to seek for tranquillity +and safety even at the expense of half their fortunes; and it is, above +all, bad government which renders the absence of a limited aristocracy +an evil of magnitude, either morally, politically, or economically. + +The geographical position of Ireland, and its political dependence, (the +necessary consequence of that position,) must always occasion more +absenteeism than usually occurs in other nations. The robbery and +spoilation of the native proprietors to endow the pampered favourites of +a foreign court, which took place in the preceding centuries, afford +another cause for this evil; but by far the greatest number of absentees +are banished by the direct operation of the penal code, or by its +indirect influence in limiting the pursuit of fortune at home. Ireland +has no field for enterprise and industry, it has no market for +merchandize. It has no scope for honest ambition, no promise of +pleasure, no resting place for repose; and yet it is expected that those +who have the means of quitting the land will inhabit it out of respect +for a principle, or regard for an abstraction! + +Absenteeism considered in itself is an unnatural ill. There is usually +so much of ease, of happiness, and of personal consequence in living at +home surrounded by friends, relations, and a respectful tenantry,--there +is usually so much mortification and disgust in the condition of a +stranger and a foreigner, that nothing but political causes can drive +the great proprietors of a country to permanently abandon their estates. +Yet so natural is it for men to complain of the evil which strikes the +most powerfully on the senses,--so convenient is it for those, who are +determined in the denial of justice, to make absenteeism the _causa +causans_ of calamities which they want the humanity to relieve, that all +classes of persons, the Protestant and the Catholic, the mere Irish and +the lord of the pale, the oppressor and the oppressed, the Irish +corporator and the English minister have joined in a common cry against +absentees. It is not therefore very surprising that the mere John Bull, +wrapped in his own affairs, and buried in his counting-house, should +believe what every one repeats, and should shut his eyes against the +real causes of that turbulence and that discontent which, though they +have given him so much trouble and uneasiness, are yet too far removed +from his gaze to allow of the formation of an independent judgment. It +is not very wonderful that he should credit the assertion so hardily +made, that Catholic Emancipation is not the one thing needful to +Ireland, the essential preliminary, without which, no practical relief +can be afforded to the economical distresses of the country. + +In taking up the subject of absenteeism, the peculiar bent of Lady +Morgan’s mind, and the character of her habitual pursuits, have +inevitably given a picturesque turn to her ideas, and induced her to +view the matter less as an economist than as a poet and a woman. But the +great truth has not escaped her, that absenteeism is less a cause than +an effect: and while in the romance of her imagination she has +delineated what Ireland might be under the fostering protection of an +enlightened and liberal aristocracy, she has not forgotten that under +existing circumstances it must remain for ever the blighted victim of an +oppressive and ignorant _bureaucratie_. + + T. C. MORGAN. + +London, June 3, 1825. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + + ABSENTEEISM. + + + “Les absens ont toujours tort.” + + _La Rochefaucault._ + + +The phrase “Absentee,” says Dr. Johnson, is one “used _with regard to +Irishmen_ living out of their country;” and as its origin is Irish, so +its use and application are strictly confined to the history of that +unfortunate people. The inference to be drawn from this fact is plain: +that there is something in the circumstances of the Irish, peculiar to +themselves,--something which forces upon them a line of conduct contrary +to the ordinary instincts of humanity, and compels them to fly from that +land which all other nations regard with more or less of favour and +affection,--from that land which youth quits with regret, and to which +age clings with passion, when all other passions fade,--the land of +their nativity. + +In every history of Irish grievances, this cabalistical term “absentee” +appears in the front of the array, and, like the terrible “_Il +Bondocani_” of the Calif of Bagdat, strikes down all before it,--the +apology for every abuse, the obstacle to every plan of amelioration, the +bugbear of the timid, the stalking-horse of the designing. + +“Absenteeism,” observes the Secretary for the Home Department, “is an +operative cause of tumult, but it is without a remedy;” and thus +dismissing all ministerial responsibility with a laconic aphorism, he +launches an integral portion of the empire committed to his management, +to revolve for ever in the turbulent whirlpool of a vicious circle of +cause and effect. Tumult expels the rich landholders, the absence of the +rich landholders perpetuates tumult: this is a law of nature, which +admits of “no remedy;” and the executive have nothing to do but to +procure the passing of penal statutes according to the necessities of +the moment, and to find the means of extorting four millions a year from +English industry, to pay the expense of Irish misrule. + +In political philosophy there are no evils without a remedy, save those +which arise out of the common condition of humanity;--and the minister +who confesses a political evil which he cannot remove, should remove +himself: for he is himself the greatest evil with which the people have +to contend. Sully, who administered the affairs of France under the most +adverse circumstances, when it was still harassed with civil contentions +and torn with religious factions, saw no political impossibilities, +though many political difficulties, with which he courageously and +successfully grappled: but, alas! the Secretary for the Home Department +is not Sully. + +To what physiological peculiarity of constitution this irremediable +tendency to wander, inherited from their progenitors by the restless +sons of the great Milesius, is to be attributed, the learned Secretary +has not informed us; and it is certain that Spurzheim, on his visit to +the Irish capital, discovered no migratory inequality upon the surface +of the Irish cranium, to account for the disposition. But in whatever +particular of temperament or exuberance of cerebral developement the +cause of this “effect defective” lies latent, it is matter of historic +fact, that though the ancient Irish were restless enough at home, +(“never,” says Campion, “wanting drift to drive a tumult,”) yet this +activity, which induced them “to pick a quarrel, fall in love, or any +other diverting accident of that kind,” never found vent in absenteeism. +Where, indeed, could Irishmen go to better their condition, when all in +Ireland, who were not saints, were kings; and many were both, while none +were martyrs.[1] “_Il est certain negoce_,” says the French proverb, +“_où l’on perd beaucoup en quittant boutique_;” and this proverb, at all +times applicable to Irish absentees, was particularly so in that golden +age, so often referred to by antiquaries, when Ireland, “lying aloof in +the Western Ocean, was a nest of kingdoms,” when superb and wealthy +monasteries and royal palaces occupied every foot of the territory, and +when swallows built their nests in old men’s beards for want of worse +habitations. In those true church and state times of Ireland’s +prosperity, of which the Orangeman’s Utopia is but a type, it is little +wonderful that the people gave into no wanderings, but those “_du cœur +et de l’esprit_;” and that a pilgrimage to St. Patrick’s purgatory, a +royal progress of some Toparck of the South to a Dynast in the North, or +a morning visit from King Mac Turtell to his close neighbour King +Gillemohalmoghe,[2] (which occasionally ended in the broken heads of +both parties,) should include the recorded absenteeism of two thousand +years. + +It was reserved, however, for one of these royal heroes first to commit +the patricidal crime: and the first Irish absentee of note, though a +great king, was but a _mauvais sujet_, having pillaged his people, +wasted his revenue, ran away with his neighbour’s wife, and sold his +country for a mess of pottage. It is almost unnecessary to add that this +royal founder of absenteeism is condemned to the contempt of posterity +by the title of Dermot Mac Murrogh O’Kavenagh, King of Leinster; and +that the result of his absenteeship was the successful invasion of +Ireland by Henry II. the crusading grants of Pope Adrian IV. and, above +all, the fearful forfeitures followed by rebellion on one part, and on +the other by an effort at extermination, which have multiplied from age +to age those possessors and deserters of the soil, who have drawn over +“the profits raised out of Ireland, and refunded nothing.”[3] + +It appears very probable that one of the motives by which the lords of +Ireland (as the English kings were long styled) were actuated in giving +such large tracts of land to great English proprietors, was to get rid +of the troublesome and rebellious Barons, by tempting them to reside in +that “most beautiful and sweet country as any is under heaven,” where so +much was given up to their power and pillage, and where the services +demanded in return, “the raising of forts and castles and fencing +themselves with garrisons, as captains, keepers, and constables,” might +forward the royal interests by protecting its power against the inroads +of the natives. “For, except Leinster,” says Campion, “all other parts +retayned still their ancient kind of government, and were always ready +to start at every corner, _ag and rag_, to expell the English.” But the +framers of Magna Charta, the guardians of all that was then known of +liberty in England, were not by the bribe of principalities to be kept +from the great scene of action; and some of the most considerable, +having accepted, or seized upon the fairest portions of the land, made +them over to sons-in-law or other kinsmen; and having thus, by the +scratch of their rude pen,[4] conveyed to others the fee simple of an +Irish province, hastened back to England to dispute the power of the +barbarous despots, who reigned by their sufferance, or were deposed by +their caprice. + +In process of time, the mischief of this species of transfer was not +only felt as an additional grievance by the Irish, but as an annoyance +by the English sovereign.[5] The injury done to their power by the +absence of those whom they had deputed to watch over it, at a time when +that power was held by a precarious tenure, was deemed so great, that a +law against absentees was passed so early as the time of Richard II. The +divisions of the houses of York and Lancaster, however, abrogated all +laws; “at which time,” says Spenser, “all English lords and gentlemen +which had great possessions in Ireland, repaired over hither into +England, some to succour their friends here, and to strengthen their +partie, others for to defend their lands and possessions here against +such as hovered after the same, upon hope of the alteration of the +kingdom, and success of that side which they favoured and affected.”[6] +The result of this absenteeism of the great landholders of Ireland was +natural and inevitable. “The Irish, whom before they had banished into +the mountains, where they lived only upon white meates,[7] as it is +recorded, seeing now their lands so dispeopled and weakened, came down +into all the plains adjoining, and thence expelling those few English +that remayned, re-possessed them again.” But these re-possessions were +only temporary. New conquests and new forfeitures ensued. New +possessors, unaffected to the soil, and disdainful of its children, +afforded fresh causes of absenteeism, which, in whatever way it +operated, was injurious to the country; till at length the forfeiture of +Leix and Offaly (the King and Queen’s Counties) under Edward VI. threw +the whole of those spacious and fertile districts into the hands of new +proprietors; who having established themselves by “fire and sword,” +transferred the ownership “to _foreigners by connexion, and resided +themselves in England_.” + +But if the first barbarous English legislators for Ireland (and when has +the epithet been inapplicable?) were, at an early period of their +unfixed power, sensible of the injury which the state and the country +suffered from absenteeism--if the Plantagenets took cognizance of the +evil, and endeavoured to provide against it by statute, the Tudors +(those sanguinary but sagacious despots) considered the absence of the +Irish from their homes and country as a state engine; and wielded it +with a policy which always advanced their own interests, and confirmed +their power over that unhappy land. Sometimes they allured the Irish +nobility to their splendid court for the purpose of dazzling their +imagination, and corrupting their patriotism. Sometimes, on shallow +pretexts, they cited them as accused or criminals, to awe them by their +array of power, or to intimidate them by their display of cruelty. Yet, +frequently forced to feel that the prosperity of the country and the +English interests were both best served by the permanent residence of +the gentry of the pale, they did not the less frame laws which made it +penal for the proprietors of the soil to spend its profits elsewhere +than at home.[8] The love which the Irish had borne to the house of +York, had rendered it a point of courteous policy to appoint the second +sons of the king to the Lieutenancy of Ireland, with a deputy for the +execution of the high office: and Henry VIII. as Duke of York, while yet +a boy, and during the life-time of his elder brother, began his career +of power under this character, conjointly with his deputy, Gerald +Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, “a mighty made man,” says his chronicler, +“full of honour and courage.” (1501) This grand conservator of the +peace, however, had the old Irish fashion of being occasionally disposed +to break it; and his fierce feuds with the Butlers, Earls of Ormond, +(“nothing inferior to Kildare in stomache, and in reach of policy farre +beyond him,”) were the causes “of much ruffle and unquietness to the +realm.” These served his enemies for a pretext to draw down upon him the +displeasure of the English government, and finally induced Henry VII. to +summon the old deputy over to the English court, and to seek to break +down that haughty and turbulent spirit in a region rarely favourable to +powerful energies and independence of mind. A bon-mot saved the earl +from the danger which awaited him, and limited his absenteeism to a few +months residence in the court of Henry, from which he returned to +Ireland more powerful than he left it. + +Gerald Fitzgerald, son of the aforesaid earl, “a gentleman valiant and +well spoken,” succeeded his father in all his dignities; but though +appointed lord deputy of Ireland, his influence, power, and spirit, soon +awakened the jealousy of Henry VIII. Being “overtaken with vehement +suspicion of sundry treasons, it was deemed politic to draw him away +from Ireland; and, by secret _heavers_ and enviers of his fortunes, +nourishers of the old grudge, the king was urged to call upon him to +attend the English court.” The illustrious but involuntary absentee, +was, on his first arrival in England, treated with a severity vainly +intended to intimidate a spirit which was afterwards to be subdued by +other and more seducing means. Among many frivolous charges, “_he was +opposed with divers interrogatories touching the Earl of Desmond, his +cousin, a notorious traytor_.” His trial, however, was but a mockery, +and as the object was to sink the popular chief of a nation into a +pliant courtier, to bind him more firmly to the English interests, and +to weaken his feelings of patriotism, the union of the turbulent Gerald +was proposed with the Lady Elizabeth Grey, the king’s own kinswoman and +daughter of the Duke of Suffolk. This marriage, celebrated with royal +splendour, with all the festivities of a boisterous but splendid court, +was deemed a preliminary step to permanent subjection, and to frequent +and long visits to the English court. + +Scarcely, however, had Kildare returned home, and resumed the deputyship +of Ireland, when the domestic tumults of the great lords of the pale +involved him in new accusations on the part of the crown, “intimations +of new treasons passing to and fro, with complaynts and replyes;” and as +Cardinal Wolsey “_did hate the Kildare bloud_,” and had resolved on +breaking down their power, the earl was again called from his stronghold +in Ireland, and accused of having “wilfully winked at the Earl of +Desmond (whose large possessions were his crimes in the eye of the +minister), and with having curried acquaintance and friendship with mere +Irish.” While lying under the imputation of a crime, always heinous in +the Irish,--natural affection to the land and its suffering +children,--the brave Kildare (like an eagle taken from its eirie in the +mountain-cliffs of its native region, and chained to the earth in a +golden cage) was suffered to loiter away his existence, in listless +indolence and life-wearing anxiety, in the purlieus of a court that +resembled the seraglio of an Asiatic satrap, alternately favoured and +persecuted, as the caprice of the sovereign or the aversion of the +minister ruled the hour. It was at this period, when his mind was borne +down by his humiliating position, that he was prevailed on to consent to +his daughter the Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald’s permanent residence at +court; and it was by this concession that the loveliest of all Irish +absentees, “_the more than celestial Geraldine_,” has become an object +of interest and admiration to posterity, as the poetical idol of the +gallant and unfortunate Surrey.[9] + +Although educated at the rural palace of Hunsdon with her kinswomen the +Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, and though afterwards maid of honour to +the Queen, it is probable that this lady was rather an hostage than a +guest, and was detained more by force than by inclination:--as the +sequel of her story goes to prove. “All this while,” says Campion, +“abode the Earl of Kildare at the court, and with much ado found shifte +to be called before the Lords to answer solemnly.” When, at last, every +excuse for delay was exhausted, and every hope of subduing his +invincible spirit faded, he was “called before the lords to answer +solemnly,” who “sat upon him diversly affectioned; and especially the +Cardinal Lord Chancellor (Wolsey) who disliked his cause, comforted his +accusers, and enforced the articles objected.” + +The whole scene of this mock trial is so graphic, and the speeches of +the Cardinal and of the Irish Lord Deputy so curious and descriptive of +the state and manners of the time, that the introduction may be pardoned +of an episode which goes to prove, by a striking instance, that Irish +absenteeism under any form, voluntarily or involuntary, graced by royal +favour, or marked by ministerial persecution, is derogatory to the +dignity, and injurious to the interests of the Irish nobility. The Earl +of Kildare, alone, unfriended, without the aid of counsel to plead, or +witness to depose in his behalf, appeared in the midst of the Lords, +every one of whom was the slave of the King or the parasite of the +minister,--“for what,” (says Walpole, one of their own caste,)--“what +twelve tradesmen could be found more servile than every court of peers +during the whole of this reign?”--Wolsey was the first to speak, and he +began with these words:--“I wot well, my Lord, that I am not the meetest +man at this board to charge you with these treasons, because it hath +pleased some of your pew-fellows to report that I am a professed enemie +to all nobilitie, and namely to the Geraldines: but seeing every curst +boy can say as much when he is controled, and seeing these points are so +weightie that they should not be dissembled of us, and so apparent that +they cannot be denyed of you, I must have leave, notwithstanding your +state slaunder, to be the mouth of these honorable persons at this time, +and to trumpe your reasons in your way, howsoever you take me. First, +you remember how the lewde Earle your kinsman, who passeth not whom he +serve, might he change his master, sent his confederates with letters of +credence to Frauncis the French king, and, having but cold comfort +there, to Charles the Emperour, proffering the helpe of Mounster and +Connaght towards the conquest of Ireland, if either of them would helpe +to win it from our King. How many letters? what precepts? what messages? +what threats have been sent you to apprehend him? and yet not done! why +so? forsooth, I could not catch him: nay, nay, Earle, forsooth you would +not nightly watch him. If he be justly suspected, why are you partiall +in so great a cause? if not, why are you fearfull to have him tryed? Yea +sir, it will be sworn and deposed to your face, that for feare of +meeting him, you have winked, wilfully shunned his sight, altered your +course, warned his friends, stopped both eyes and eares against his +detectors, and, when soever you tooke upon you to hunt him out, then was +he sure before hand to bee out of your walke: surely this juggling and +false play little became either an honest man, called to such honour, or +a nobleman put in such trust. Had you lost but a cow or a garron of your +owne, two hundred Kyrneghes would have come at your whistle, to rescue +the prey from the uttermost edge of Ulster: all the Irish in Ireland +must have given you the way. But in pursuing so weightie a matter as +this, mercifull God! how nice, how dangerous, how wayward have you bin! +One while he is from home, sometimes fled, sometimes in the borders +where you dare not venture: I wist, my Lord, there be shrewd Bugges in +the borders for the Earl of Kildare to feare. The Earle, nay the King of +Kildare, for, when you are disposed, you reigne more like than rule the +land:--where you are malicious, the truest subjects stand for Irish +enemies: where you are pleased the Irish enemie stands for a dutifull +subject: hearts and hands, lives and lands, are all at your courtesie: +who fawneth not thereon, hee cannot rest within your smell, and your +smell is so ranke that you tracke them out at pleasure.” + +Whilst the Cardinal was speaking, the Earle chafed and changed colour, +and sundry proffers made to answer every sentence as it came; at last he +broke out, and interrupted them thus. “My Lord Chancellour, I beseech +you pardon me; I am short-witted, and you, I perceive, intend a long +tale. If you proceede in this order, halfe my purgation will be lost for +lacke of carryage: I have no schoole tricks, nor art of memory; excepte +you heare me while I remember your words, your second processe will +hammer out the former.” The Lords associate, who for the most part +tenderly loved him, and knew the Cardinal’s manner of termes so +lothsome, as wherewith they were tyred many years agoe, humbly besought +his Grace to charge him directly with particulars and to dwell in some +one matter till it were examined through. That granted, “It is good +reason (quoth the Earle) that your Grace beare the mouth of this +chamber. But, my Lord, those mouthes that put this tale into your mouth, +are very wide mouths, such indeed as have gaped long for my wreck, and +now at length, for want of better stuff, are fain to fill their mouths +with smoak. What my cousin Desmond hath compassed, as I know not, so I +beshrew his naked heart for holding out so long. If hee can bee taken by +my agents that presently wayte for him, then have my adversaryes +betrayed their malice, and this heape of haynous wordes shall resemble a +man of strawe, that seemeth at a blush to carry some proportion, but +when it is felt and poysed, discovereth a vanity, serving only to fraye +crowes; and I trust your honours will see the proofe hereof and mine +innocencie testified in this behalfe by the thing itselfe within these +few dayes. But goe to, suppose hee never bee had, what is Kildare to +blame for it, more than my good brother of Ossory? notwithstanding his +high promises, having also the king’s power, he is glad to take egges +for his money, and bring him in at leysure. Cannot the Earle of Desmond +shift, but I must bee of counsell? cannot hee bee hid, except I winke? +If hee bee close, am I his mate? If hee bee friended, am I a traitour? +This is a doughty kinde of accusation, which they urge against mee, +wherein they are stabled and myred at my first denyall. You would not +see him, say they; who made them so familiar with mine eye sight? or +when was the Earle within my _Equinas_? or who stood by when I let him +slip? or where are the tokens of my willfull hood-winking? Oh, but you +sent him word to beware of you: who was the messenger? where are the +letters? convince my negative. See how loosely this idle reason hangeth: +Desmond is not taken, well, we are in fault: why? because you are. Who +proves it? nobody. What conjectures? so it seemeth. To whom? to your +enemies. Who told it them? What other grounds? none. Will they sweare +it? they will sweare it. My Lords, then belike they know it: if they +know it, either they have my hand to show, or can bring forth the +messenger, or were present at a conference, or privy to Desmond, or +somebody betrayed it to them, or themselves were my carryers or +vice-gerents therein. Which of these parts will they choose? I know them +too well to reckon myself convict by their bare wordes, or headlesse +hearsayes, or frantick oathes: my letters were soone read, were any such +writing extant; my servaunts and friends are ready to bee sifted. Of my +cousin Desmond they may lye lewdly, since no man can heere will tell the +contrary. Touching my selfe, I never noted in them either so much wit, +or so much faith, that I could have gaged upon their silence the life of +a good hound, much lesse mine owne. I doubt not, may it please your +honours to oppose them, how they came to knowledge of these matters +which they are so ready to depose, but you shall finde their tongues +chayned to another man’s trencher, and as it were knights of the post, +suborned to say, sweare, and stare the uttermost they can, as those that +passe not what they say, nor with what face they say it, so they say no +truths. But of another thing, it grieveth me that your good grace, whom +I take to be wise and sharpe, and who of your own blessed disposition +wish me well, should be so farre gone in crediting those corrupt +informers, that abuse the ignorance of their state and country to my +perill. Little know you, my lord, how necessary it is, not onely for the +governour, but also for every nobleman in Ireland, to hamper his +vincible neighbours at discretion, wherein, if they wayted for processe +of law, and had not these lives and lands you speake of within their +reach, they might pass to loose their own lives and lands without law. +You heare of a case, as it were in a dreame, and feell not the smart +that vexeth us. In England there is not a meane subject that dare extend +this hand to fillip a peere of the realme;--in Ireland, except the lord +have cunning to his strength, and strength to save his owne, and +sufficient authoritie to racke thieves and varletts when they stirre, +hee shall finde them swarme so fast that it will bee too late to call +for justice. If you will have our service take effect, you must not tye +us always to the judicial proceedings, wherewith your realme, thank-bee +God, is inured. As touching my kingdome, my Lord, I would you and I had +exchanged kingdomes but for one moneth, I would trust to gather up more +crummes in that space, than twice the revenues of my poore +earledome;--but you are well and warme, and so hold you, and upbraide +not me with such an odious storme. I sleepe on a dablin, when you lye +soft in your bed of downe; I serve under the cope of heaven, when you +are served under a canopy; I drinke water out of a skull, when you +drinke out of golden cuppes; my courser is trained to the field, when +your jennet is taught to amble; when you are begraced, and belorded, and +crowched and kneeled unto, then I finde small grace with our Irish +borderers, except I cut them off by the knees.” At these girds the +councell would have smiled if they durst; but each man bitt his lippe, +and held his countenance. The Cardinall perceived that Kildare was no +cake, and rose in a fume from the councell-table, committed the Earle, +and deferred the matter till more direct probations came out of +Ireland.--It is unnecessary to add, that these “_probations_” were +readily procured. “For of this treason,” continues the quaint +chronicler, “he (Kildare) was found guilty, and imprisoned in the Tower +a long time. The gentleman betook himself to God and the King, was +heartily loved of the lieutenant, pittied in all the court, and standing +in so hard case, altered little his accustomed hue, comforted other +noblemen prisoners with him dissembling his own sorrow. + +“One night, when the lieutenant and he, for disport, were playing at +_slide-groat_, suddenly commeth from the Cardinall a mandat to execute +Kildare on the _morrow_. The Earl marking the Lieutenant’s deep sigh on +reading the bill, ‘By Sant Bride,’ quoth he, ‘there is some mad game in +that scralle, but, fall how it will, this throw is for a huddle.’ When +the worst was told him: ‘Now I pray thee,’ quoth he, ‘doe no more but +learn assuredly from the King’s owne mouthe whether his Grace be witting +thereto or not.’ Sore doubted the Lieutenant to displease the Cardinall; +yet of very pure devotion to his friend, he posteth to the King at +midnight, and said his errand (for all houres of the day or night, the +lieutenant hath accesse to the prince upon occasions.) King Henry, +controwling the sawcyness of the priest--those were his tearmes--gave +him his signet in token of countermand; which, when the Cardinall had +seene, he began to breake into unseasonable words with the lieutenant, +which he was loath to heare, and so he left him fretting. Thus broke up +the storme for a time, and the next yeare Wolsey was cast out of favour; +and within few yeares Sir William Skevington was sent over deputy, who +brought with him the Earle pardoned, and rid from all his troubles.” + +But this “riddance” was only of short duration. New causes of complaint, +and new reasons, were soon found or invented for once more drawing the +Earl from the strong hold of his interest and power--his native country: +and he was again “commanded by sharp letters to repair to England.” His +arrival there was followed by a report of his execution,[10] which soon +reached his family in Ireland. His son, whom he had left Lord Justice in +his place, the gallant but impetuous Lord Thomas, on hearing of this +supposed act of treachery against his father, threw down the sword of +office, and flew into open rebellion, followed by his five uncles the +Lords Fitzgerald. The insurrection was soon quelled; and the unfortunate +Geraldines having surrendered, set out for England on the parole of the +Lord Marshal Dorset, where, shortly after their arrival, they were all +executed in one day. The death of the old Earl himself in the Tower, +where he is said to have died “for thought and paine,” ends the tragic +story of the enforced absenteeism of the Geraldines.[11] + +This murder of the Lady Geraldine’s uncles, father, brother, and that of +her unfortunate and highly endowed lover, (“who,” says Lodge, “reflected +splendour even on the name of Howard,” and who was put to death by Henry +VIII. for quartering the arms of Edward the Confessor,) must have +rendered the English Court a dreary residence to her. Still, however, +she remained there, most probably under the influence of the same major +force which first drew her from her domestic home. But while Henry thus +continued to retain the most beautiful woman of Ireland near his person, +he began to see, as it appears, the policy of keeping the men at home; +and he passed his famous bill against “_absencie_,” the preamble of +which is curious, as portraying the evils against which it was +framed--at least that portion of the evils by which the English +government, for a long series of years, was alone touched. Like a good +many more modern acts, be it remarked _en passant_, it commences by the +formal averment of a self-evident falsehood: “That, for as much as it +was notorious and manifest, that this land of Ireland being heretofore +inhabited and _in obedience_ to the said king’s most noble progenitors, +who in those days in the righte of the Crown of England had great +possessions, rentes, and profits, within the same land,” &c. It then +goes on to state “the ruine, rebellion, and decay,” which ensued by the +absence of the great landholders: who, “after abiding within the said +land, nobly and valiantly defended the same against all the king’s +enemies, and also _kept the same in such tranquillity and good order_, +as the King of England had due obedience of the inhabitance there, the +laws obeyed, and the revenues and regalitie were duely answered;” but +that afterwards “they and their heires absented themselves out of the +said land of Ireland, _denjorning_ within the realm of England, not +pondering, ne regarding the preservation thereof,--the townes, castels, +and garrisons appertaining to them fell in ruin and decay, and the +English inhabitants therein, in default of defence and _justice_, and by +compulsion of those of the Irish, were exiled, whereby the king’s said +progenitors lost as well their said dominion and subjection there, as +also their revenues and profites; and their said enemies by redopting or +retaining the said lands, dominions, and possessions, were elevated into +great pride,” &c. &c. + +Hitherto, with a few exceptions, _absencie_, as touching a residence in +England, had been confined to the great Irish lords of the pale, who, +although of English descent, and bearing Norman names, had in the course +of successive generations run through all those shades of +naturalization, which left them in manners, habits, and affections, but +little distinguishable from the aboriginal Irishman, who proudly traced +his origin to the Lady Scota, the daughter or grand-daughter of King +Pharaoh.[12] + +But it was reserved for the reign of the Virgin Queen to drive the +genuine nobility of Ireland from their native land at any loss or risk +into distant regions[13] and unknown countries, or to allure them to her +own formal and fantastic court, by a show of feminine sympathy; which, +though in direct contradiction to her whole policy and conduct, was well +calculated to win the unwary, and to soothe the unfortunate.[14] + +The Queen, in her quality both of woman and sovereign, was fond of +making speeches; and she probably found it prettier to be pathetic than +just, as she certainly found it easier to chide than to call in the pack +of bloodhounds she had let loose upon the devoted country of her +delegated sway. While the Fitzwilliams, the Binghams, the Drurys, the +Bagnals, and others of her Irish ministers, were carrying destruction +through the land by “fire, sword, and pestilence,”[15] the fair and +royal rhetorician was exclaiming in her closet against their conduct, by +classical allusions to parallel facts, which showed at once her learning +and her sympathy. “I fear,” she said, apostrophizing her ministers in +Ireland, “that the same reproach will be made to me as was formerly made +by Bato to Tiberius. It is you who are to blame for these things, who +have committed your flocks not to shepherds but to wolves.” The Irish, +“who love learning to a fault,” says Spenser, (and women too, God +forgive them,) were bewitched by similar declarations of pity, breathed +in the language of the learned from the lips of the royal and the fair. +The O’Rourkes, the O’Neils, the O’Connors, forgot the wiles and the +treachery of which their fathers had been the dupes or the victims; and +each in his turn expiated his credulity in its fatal results.[16] + +The English were accustomed to the presence of the Geraldines, the +Butlers, the De Courceys, De Burgos, and other great Anglo-Irish lords +of the pale, who, though by “gossipry and alliance” they occasionally +fell into Irish habits, and sported a glib or a mantle at home, were +still sure to resume the English costume when at the English court. But +the true aboriginal Irish gentlemen, the brave O’s and Macs, who, driven +to their woods and morasses with no other weapon of defence than their +skein, their hatchet, or their pike, had for centuries resisted the +well-armed force of England,--they were creatures of almost fabulous +interest and existence; and the “anthropophagi and men whose heads do +grow beneath their shoulders,” were not more monstrous to English +apprehensions than the “flying Irish,” whose wings were supposed to grow +beneath their heads. To the higher castes, however, they were known by +the reputation of their prowess and their comeliness; and were noted by +some of the poets of the day, alike for their invincible spirits and +their lofty stature.[17] This romantic interest thrown round a race at +once so brave and so unfortunate, so wild, and yet so gallant in their +bearing, might not have been without its effect in influencing the +policy of the coquettish queen, and drawing to her court those (as yet +unseen) Thanists, the known admirers of her sex and contemners of her +power. + +The restlessness of suffering, the enterprise of romantic valour, the +partiality of the House of Tudor to the O’Neil’s, and other inducements +which Elizabeth herself held out, determined the famous Shane O’Neil (by +the prescriptive right of ages Thanist of his powerful sept, and by the +patent of Henry VIII. to his father, Earl of Tyrone) to visit the court +of England in the most perilous moment of his life. The sudden +appearance of the representative of the ancient kings of Ulster in the +ante-chambers of Whitehall excited a sensation in which the “lion-ported +queen” is said to have deeply and obviously participated. He burst upon +the guarded presence of her, whose acts against his religion and his +rights “resembled the bloody mandates of a Turkish divan rather than the +mild ordinance of a Christian queen,” in all the fearless hardihood of +one who “bore a charmed life,” fresh from the lines of revolt, with the +excitement of the fierce contest between the oppressor and the oppressed +fluttering at his bold heart and fevering his manly brow. He is +described as entering the presence-chamber at the head of a rude but +imposing train, composed of his guard of honour, the Irish +gallowglasses, who,--armed with battle-axes, their heads bare, their +long hair flowing in locks on their broad shoulders, their yellow +surplices with open sleeves trailing to the earth and surmounted by a +military harness--formed a strange contrast to the groupings and +_tournure_ of the ribboned and tagged chivalry through which they +passed. Even the “Londoners,” says Spenser, “marvelled at this strange +sight.” + +O’Neil had come to plead his own cause at one of the court historians, +“received him with an affectation of tenderness; and after he had +resided some time at court, the flattery of his address, which appeared +artless and unstudied, and the speciousness of his allegations, so +wrought upon her, that, at his departure, she dismissed him with favour +and presents.” + +This absenteeism of O’Neil, though favourable to his pride, and +flattering to his vanity while abroad, was injurious to his interests at +home. His base-born brother, Matthew, availing himself of his absence, +had usurped his rights, and assumed the chieftainship of his sept. The +question was debated (as if it were debateable) by the Irish government, +who, in defiance of all law, “ruled the point in favour of the bastard; +practising (says Parnell[18]) a policy that has governed them (the +English) to the latest times in India, where it has been the custom to +raise to the throne, in violation of the customary mode of succession, a +person who depended for his station on their power, who was strictly a +dependent, and _who might be set aside whenever a favourable opportunity +occurred_.” The _Sic jubeo_ of the Virgin Queen was, of course, +decisive. The bastard was declared the lawful heir; and the consequence +was a rebellion on the part of Shane. In this rebellion the chieftain +was unfortunate, and the whole possessions, both of Shane and Matthew, +were confiscated. “In order,” says Parnell, “to divert Shane, the +territory was reputed Matthew’s; and in order to get rid of Matthew’s +claim, the territory was confiscated as Shane’s.”[19] Meanwhile, +however, the Queen had won golden opinions in Ireland for her reception +of the most popular of Irish chiefs. The gates of absenteeism were now +thrown most seducingly open. The track was already beaten down which led +from the desolated banks of the Shannon to the pavilioned shores of the +Thames. Men, whose national failing was a sanguine credulity not +untouched with personal vanity, whose infirmity of temperament was a +reckless impetuosity, and whose weariness of suffering caught at every +change as a relief, now first began to find new hopes for their country +and themselves springing up in the “primrose path of dalliance” which +conducted them to the British court, and placed them in personal contact +with a woman and a queen--with one who, unlike her savage delegates in +Ireland, received them “with tenderness, and dismissed them with +favour.” The baubles given by a royal hand, and displayed at Shane’s +Castle, were pledges to the followers of O’Neil that the heart of the +Queen was of another policy from the counsels of her ministers. This +characteristic credulity is not even yet abated by experience. A +flattering reception of the Roman Catholic bishops, and a ribbon +bestowed on a Roman Catholic peer, led the sanguine Irish to draw a +similar conclusion respecting the politics of George IV. A mandate, +therefore got up in the form of a slight accusation, but considered by +the accused as an invitation, brought the O’Rourke chief or prince of +Brefny promptly and inconsiderately to the feet of the fair sovereign +who had issued it. + +This gallant Irishman, as renowned for his personal beauty as for his +turbulence, had long been a favourite theme of complaint in the +despatches of the Irish deputies. Even his personal influence, and the +splendid endowments out of which it arose, were brought as damning +proofs against him. These also may have induced the Queen to judge for +herself; for the handsome absentee was received like O’Neil with a show +of tenderness, though not, alas! like him, “dismissed with favour.” +While history has briefly thrown off the facts of his summons, to court +his detention, and his unexpected execution, tradition has woven his +story in the many-coloured web of her own romantic loom; and though the +catastrophe of the tale, which still circulates in the neighbourhood of +his ruined castle, attests the ignorance or the love of the marvellous +of those who invented and circulated it; still there is a dovetailing of +the old Irish _Shanaos_ with historic record, which shows that _si cela +n’étoit pas vrai, c’étoit bien vraisemblable_. + +“A wild story concerning O’Rourke,” says the author of the History of +the Irish Bards, “wanders about the County of Leitrim. O’Rourke was a +powerful and turbulent chieftain of this country in the reign of +Elizabeth. The Queen invited him to London, making him, at the same +time, warm professions of honours and service, though she only intended, +by this invitation, to lead him into a kind of exile, in order to secure +his obedience. The ingenuous O’Rourke, duped by the Queen’s arts, +promised to comply. Before his departure, he assembled his vassals and +neighbours in the great hall of his castle, and entertained them with +all the splendour of the times.[20] This is the feast so humorously +described by Mac Gauran. + +“On O’Rourke’s arrival at Whitehall, the Queen was ready to receive him. +The elegant symmetry of his person, and his noble aspect, struck her +Majesty, and she secretly determined to rank him with her choicest +favourites. A sumptuous apartment was allotted him in the palace, and a +train of domestics were ordered to attend him. One night, a female +tapped at his door, and was readily admitted; but she retired before the +morning broke. The lady continued her visits for several nights, always +retiring about the same hour. O’Rourke’s curiosity was awakened and he +often urged her, but in vain, to disclose her name. At length he +discovered, by the light of the moon, a ring on one of her fingers, +which he observed with strict care, in the hope that it would lead to a +discovery. Next day espying the identical ring on her Majesty’s finger, +he unfortunately insinuated to her that he had discovered his fair +visitor. The following night an assassin was employed to punish him for +his idle curiosity.” The public execution of O’Rourke is however on +historical record.[21] + +The fate of O’Neil, O’Rourke, and of O’Connor, who, to his own eternal +disgrace,[22] had been lured over to the English court, was not +calculated to encourage others, or to bring absenteeship into fashion. +Even those, who from long sufferings, harassed spirits, and subdued +energies, were desirous of peace and forgiveness at the expense of +independence, were still afraid, from experienced treachery, “to come +in,” as the phrase was; and were unwilling to absent themselves from the +fearful security of their woods and mountains, to which they were +romantically attached. + +Lord Deputy Mountjoy, in a curious letter to the English council, +observes that “all the Irish that are now obstinate, are so only out of +their diffidence to be safe in forgiveness. They have the ancient +swelling of liberty of their countrymen to work on, and they fear to be +rooted out, and have their old faults punished upon particular +discontents.” + +The plunder of Shane O’Neil, who, attainted, and driven beyond the pale +of law and of humanity, died a miserable death, did not satisfy those +who had benefited by his ruin. There was something too terrible to be +endured in the name of these fierce toparchs of the North, who were +still crowned in their stone chair, “with heaven for their canopy and +earth for their footstool;” and when the young and gallant Hugh O’Neil, +the last of his race, worthy of their illustrious descent, started up to +claim his inheritance, his death or his absenteeship (a political +decease) were the alternatives proposed to themselves by those who had +so largely profited by the confiscation of the immense property of his +family. “In an Irish parliament,” says Morrison, “O’Neil put up his +petition, that by virtue of letters patent granted to his grandfather, +his father, and their heirs, he might there (in parliament) have the +place of Earl of Tyrone, and be admitted to his inheritance. The title +and place were granted him:” but the inheritance was “reserved for the +Queen’s pleasure;” for the obtaining whereof, Sir John Perrot, (Lord +Deputy,) upon O’Neil’s promise of a great rent to be reserved to the +crown, gave him letters of recommendation into England. There he well +knew how to humour the court; for in the year 1587 he got the queen’s +letters patent for the earldom of Tyrone without any reservation of the +rent he had promised. + +Whatever was O’Neil’s secret for “humouring the court,” great efforts +were made to fix him there as a permanent absentee; and the queen (who +at the same time had the young and unfortunate Earl of Desmond shut up +in the Tower[23]) gave O’Neil a troop of horse, a pension of a thousand +marks, and such proofs of her personal favour, as might have subdued a +less energetic mind, and abated a less deep-seated feeling of patriotism +and independence. But the young Irish Hercules soon became weary of the +court of his middle-aged Omphale. He sought “_to do her Majesty +service_” in Ireland by his influence over his countrymen, rather than +to submit to the bondage which he foresaw awaited his protracted +residence in England. “He lived,” says Morrison, “sometimes in Ireland +and much at the court of England:” yet by degrees he abandoned the +English court altogether; and, resuming his natural position in Ireland +as Earl of Tyrone, he contrived to preserve the good opinion of his +countrymen even while acting for the queen, “with all the alacrity of a +faithful subject.” + +The reappearance of O’Neil in Ireland, his loyalty, and the queen’s +favour, threw the Irish government into utter consternation; and the +Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam, upon the execution of M‘Mahon (who was put to +death for an offence committed before the law which declared it capital +had been enacted) let fall some speeches against the Earl of Tyrone +(says Morrison) notwithstanding his late services,[24] “which speeches +coming to the Earl’s ears, were, as he afterwards said, the first causes +which _moved him to misdoubt his safety_, and to stand upon his defence, +now first combining with O’Donnel and other lords of the north, to +defend their honour, estates, and liberties.” The horrors which ensued +during a civil war of ten years’ duration, and which laid waste what +Lord Verulam calls “the most miserable and desolate nation on the face +of the earth,” produced the most effectual species of absenteeship; for +it sent out of the world, those that were not driven by any other means +out of the country; exterminating more than a third of the native +population! + +The queen, however, says Bacon, “sought not an extirpation, but a +reduction;” but such was the _reduction_, that at the end of the war, +when Lord Mountjoy received the submission of a few “well-disposed +chiefs,” he _disposed_ of the others in a very summary way, “and by +fire, famine, or sword, weakened or ruined most of those who still +continued obstinate.” Still, however, the master-blow of this deputy +(who was after all one of the best Irish viceroys who served under the +Tudors) was the ruin of the once magnanimous and invincible O’Neil. +Having “taken the most of his fortresses, and what perhaps was more +mortifying to him, having broken in pieces the chair of stone, wherein +for many centuries the O’Neils of his family had been invested with more +than kingly authority, he obliged the unfortunate chief “to tender his +submission on his knees before the Lord Deputy and the council, and in +the presence of a great assembly; whereupon the Lord Deputy, in the +Queen’s name, promised the Earl for himself and his followers her +majesty’s gracious pardon.” Is it wonderful that in the ensuing reign +the O’Neils and the O’Donnels fled for ever from the scene of their +sufferings and humiliation; or that having chosen Spain as the goal of +their permanent absenteeship, they should have arrived there, only to +die of broken hearts? + +Remote as are the times, the events of which are here so slightly +touched,--unfixed, capricious and despotic as were the government and +the laws,--rude, wild, weak and disorganized as was the state of +society,--yet, through the obscurity and confusion which hung over the +neglected annals of the day, it is evident that absenteeism, sometimes +encouraged or enforced by the English policy, was foreign to the +national habits and natural temperament of the Irish; and that the +aristocracy of the country were more than any other wedded to their +native land by natural affection, by family pride, by power, by +religion, and by every feeling and every prejudice which brightens or +shadows the mixed and imperfect condition of humanity. Hitherto +emigration had been the result of necessity or of despair; but it was +reserved for the Stuarts, Ireland’s direst foes, the flatterers of her +foible, and the enemies of her rights, to give a spell to absenteeism, +which even the policy and the despotism of the Tudors could not lend to +it. When the rude home of the Irish had by the sanguinary crusades of +Elizabeth been rendered no longer endurable, the Stuarts held out a lure +and presented a blandishment which suffering humanity could not resist; +and under an impulse, consecrated by a mistaken sense of loyalty and +chivalrous devotion, the long-enduring Irish rushed from the dreariness +of their desolate abodes, and thronged to a court where they fancied +they saw the representative of their native kings, seated on the throne +of their foreign tyrants. + +The drivelling and despotic pedant, James, with the true family instinct +towards power, sought to win over that portion of his subjects whose +religion preached “passive obedience and the divine right of kings,” and +with whom he had so deeply tampered in the reign of his predecessor. On +his coming to the throne, he loaded the Irish with favours, while he +withheld rights; but with a disingenuous and stupid policy, secretly +counteracting the intentions of his own council, he privately led the +Irish to an open assumption of religious privileges, which he permitted +his ministers in Ireland to oppose, not only by remonstrance and +proclamation, but by “fire and sword.” To ingratiate himself still +further with the Irish gentry, and to break down whatever yet remained +of devotion to their country, or of “the old swelling of liberty,” +inherited from their fathers, he invited the most distinguished among +them to his court; where, “graciously received by the king,” and +incontinently ridiculed by the courtiers, they obtained the honour of +being made the heroes of a court masque, in which the sarcastic +laureate, Jonson, has handed down to posterity their devotion to “_the +king’s sweet faish_,” and the melancholy fact that they danced “_a +fadan_” for the amusement of “_King Yamish_;” who, as the arch-patron of +all buffoonery, doubtless chuckled over the degrading exhibition. How +many Irish _absentees_ have since danced “_the fadan_,” for the +amusement of mystifying royalty![25] + +Thus prepared, by being “brayed as in a mortar” at home, and at once +degraded and flattered abroad, the Irish nobility but too willingly lent +themselves to the allurements held out by Charles the Second; (the +falsest of all their royal friends;) and from the epoch of the +Restoration absenteeship became a voluntary habit. It was then that what +has been called the characteristic virtue of the Irish, became the +source of one of their peculiar vices; and that the feeling of loyalty +which had led them to follow the king in his misfortunes, and to embrace +his almost hopeless cause in many a distant land, now once more lured +them from their own, to “share the triumph and partake the gale” of his +prosperity. The habits of a great capital and a gay court confirmed +their taste for emigration, and excited a disgust for their native land, +which became, in the end, as fatal to their interests as it was +destructive of their patriotism. Then absenteeism became a species of +national malady, a disease, infinitely more grievous in its effects than +that terrible pestilence, which, a little before, in ravaging the +population of Ireland, confined its mortal epidemia to a season and a +generation.[26] + +Absenteeism was no longer limited to the harassed Catholic gentlemen or +loyal cavaliers, who came to seek the price of their sacrifice and their +fidelity at the exchequer of royal gratitude, and found it, like that of +the nation, closed by a fraudulent bankruptcy. The wealthy and the +noble, the Protestant and the Papist, the English by blood, and the +Scotch patentees; in a word, all who could afford to fly, now hastened +to a court, where for a time an Irish mistress and an Irish minister +held the ascendant; and where the Ormondes, the Ossorys, and the +Villars, exchanged the honourable retreat of their own beautiful +residences in Ireland, for the entresol of a royal villa at Newmarket, +or “a lodging” in the harem of Whitehall.[27] Titles, and places, and +pensions, and privileges, were then scattered among the Irish nobility, +and became the premium of absenteeism; paying the sacrifice of +patriotism in one sex, and of honour in the other. The talent, beauty, +and virtue, which, if concentrated at home, might have redeemed and +adorned the country from whence they were drawn, now served but to +increase the sum of elegant profligacy in that region, whose very +atmosphere was as fatal to manly independence, as it was to female +purity. Ireland, thus abandoned by the heads of her noble families, +deserted by her rank, her talent, her beauty, and her education, pouring +out the “_profits of the land to those who refunded nothing_,”--unhappy +Ireland, during the whole of the reign of Charles II. exhibited the most +deplorable picture of a country left a prey to strangers, to +undertakers, to patentees, to delegated powers, and official despotism; +and of a society which, false in its position, and divested of all those +ties and combinations which bind man to man, was totally destitute of +every element that confers the strength of political cohesion, and +disseminates the advantages of moral civilization. + +In the midst of this anti-social chaos, every act of the legislature +served to render the atoms of the system more jarring and discordant, +until finally “the _Act of Settlement_,” by unsettling every thing and +rendering “confusion worse confounded,” added insult to injury, and +multiplied both the causes and the effects of absenteeism to the opulent +of all sects. The country was now more than ever given up to a +particular faction, which made its powerful stand on the heights of +ascendancy, under the sanction of a king who, in a great degree, owed +his life and throne to those whom that ascendancy was to reduce to +slavery and ruin.[30] It was at this period, more than any other, that +the stale devices of Catholic conspiracies and Popish plots were +resorted to, as a means of startling a distant ignorant legislature into +new acts of rigour, which, by crushing all that remained to be crushed, +by forfeitures and penalties, was to elevate a factious minority of the +nation to the supremacy of power and wealth. + +The English Parliament, frightened, or pretending to be so, by the state +of things in Ireland, published a proclamation “for the apprehension and +prosecution of all Irish rebels,” at a moment when Ireland had sealed by +her best blood her devotion to the reigning dynasty; and the King, in +the face of his pledged honour and royal promise, excluded from the act +of indemnity (which was shortly after passed) more than two thirds of +his Irish subjects, who had alone been faithful to him, when all else +were false. While calumny and misrepresentation were thus working the +destruction of Ireland abroad, there were none at home to “remonstrate,” +as in the time of Elizabeth and James; none to protect or vindicate the +national character, or to raise the dark veil, which the cupidity of +domestic and predatory enemies had dropped over the injuries, the worth, +and the misfortunes of the country. It is still more lamentable to add, +that some of the most illustrious of the absentees, who haunted the +Court as dependants, or influenced the Cabinet as counsellors, found it +their account to sanction the misrepresentations, and to perpetuate a +state of things by which the noble renegadoes were to be themselves the +ultimate gainers. It is the effect of absenteeship to harden the heart +against all the precious sympathies of patriotism, and it has ever been +the practice of absentees to magnify and circulate the rumour of those +national disorders which arise in part out of their own desertion of +their native land, and which they suppose might offer a reason, if not +an excuse, for their abandonment of the soil and its interests.[31] + +The times, however, changed with the men, and the short reign of the +unfortunate bigot James II. was pregnant with new and important events +for Ireland. At the first temporary turn of the scale in Irish politics, +absenteeism, which could scarcely increase, certainly did not diminish. +By this change, the nation at large gained little; and the mean ambition +of the nobility, who accepted power and place without one feeling of +patriotism or sympathy for the country, was soon nipped in the bud, and +for ever blasted with the fortunes of the monarch, on whose favour it +was founded.[32] The Irish gentry supported the cause of despotism and +bigotry in vain; and the impetuous imbecility of James served only to +hasten that ruin, which public opinion had so deservedly prepared for +him and his family. The mistaken adherence of the people to so bad a +cause, was, in some measure redeemed by the disinterested fidelity with +which they continued to serve that family in its adversity, which in +prosperity had always repaid their services with ingratitude. It was the +Irish (the ultra-royalists of all times) who, during the dark fortunes +of the worthless _protégé_ of the Bourbons, clung to him, when all else +deserted him. They manned his navy, recruited his army, replenished his +coffers, and took their stand around his person on their native soil; +and when they saw him the first to fly,[33] they still erected his torn +standard, and rallied in his cause,[34] paying the penalty of their +generous but misapplied devotion to a bigot and a tyrant, by utter ruin, +and eternal exile. The outlawry and confiscations of 1688 drove near +four thousand Irishmen of family into a dreary and perpetual +absenteeism, and sent them to dole out for a pitiful hire, in the cause +of oppression in other countries, the same valour, and the same spirit, +which their fathers had displayed in support of the liberty of their +own. + +The sale of the estates of these unfortunate and involuntary +absentees,[35] under the authority of the English parliament, changed a +large portion of the Irish population, and introduced a new race of +landed proprietors, whose interest it was _to stay at home_. The tide of +absenteeship received a powerful check from the necessity of +circumstances. Those Irish Catholics, who had escaped detection, or were +exempt from suspicion, retired to their remote patrimonial domains, and +sought safety in obscurity; hoping, by remaining peaceably at home, to +escape the notice of a government which had sprung out of a revolution +they had so lately opposed. The Protestants likewise found it their +interest to remain the vigilant guardians of the new possessions they +had recently acquired, and of the old, which they had so bravely +protected. All parties were either impoverished or unsettled; and few +had the means, if they had the desire, to remove from a scene of ferment +and desolation, to one of security and enjoyment. For the Irish of any +sect or race, there was then no resting-place. + +While England gained every thing by a revolution, which she owed to the +moral and political education acquired during a century of struggle for +civil rights and religious freedom, Ireland lost nearly all she had left +to lose through her deficiency in these endowments, resulting from many +centuries of anarchy and misrule. The picture, sketched by a +master-hand, of the condition of affairs at this singular epoch, is full +of a fearful and melancholy interest. “By the total reduction of the +kingdom of Ireland in 1691,” says Burke, “the ruin of the native Irish, +and in a great measure of the first race of the English, was completely +accomplished. The new interest was settled with as solid a stability as +any thing in human affairs can look for. All the penal laws of that +unparalleled code of oppression which were made after the last event, +were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a +conquered people, whom the victors delighted to trample upon, and were +not at all afraid to provoke. They were not the effects of their fears, +but of their security. They who carried on this system looked to the +irresistible force of Great Britain for their support in their acts of +power. They were quite certain that no complaints of the natives would +be heard on this side of the water, with any other sentiments than those +of contempt and indignation. Their cries served only to augment their +torture. Machines which could answer their purposes so well must be of +an excellent contrivance. Indeed, at that time, in England, the double +name of the complainants, Irish and Papists, (it would be hard to say +singly which was the most odious,) shut up the hearts of every one +against them. Whilst that temper prevailed in all its force to a time +within our memory, every measure was pleasing and popular, just in +proportion as it tended to harass and ruin a set of people who were +looked upon as enemies to God and man; and, indeed, as a race of bigoted +savages, who were a disgrace to human nature itself.”[36] + +In spite, however, of religious intolerance[37] and civil +disqualification--of statutes which render commerce a crime, and laws +which made industry penal[38]; of abuses of power numerous under +William, and quadrupled under the last of the Stuarts and the first of +the Brunswicks, still something like a counterpoise was found to balance +these political evils in the _home residence of the educated gentry_, +and in the political bustle and activity of an Irish Parliament. As soon +as the positive calamities of war and confiscation ceased, as soon as an +approach was made to European habits and policy, and industry was +permitted to find a scope and a reward for its exertions, the nation +made a sudden and a rapid progress in civilization and comfort, simply +through the efficiency of its own resources, and the demands of its own +market. It was in vain that the talismanic words “Irishman” and “Papist” +were employed to arm passion and prejudice against the country; it was +in vain that commercial jealousy threw shackles round its infant +manufactures. In spite of these and many other obstacles, the moral +strength of a country always distinguished for the natural endowments of +its population,[39] rose superior to the cruel pressure of its political +inflictions; and the domestic activity and intellectual improvement of +the people--slow and limited as they appear, when compared with the +advances of the sister kingdom--proceeded with a rapidity little short +of miraculous, under so stultifying a system of legislation and +government. It was then that the light of national genius concentrated +its long-scattered rays to a point, and shining steadily from its proper +focus, threw out those inextinguishable sparks of moral lustre, + + “----Which are wont to give + Light to a world and make a nation live.” + +It was then that the powerful collision of active, ardent, and energetic +minds produced that brilliant burst of talent which, for something more +than a century, flung over the political darkness of the land a +splendour to which her struggles and her misfortunes served only to give +a stronger relief and more brilliant effect. It was then that, after +ages of mental depression, which the song of the Irish bard but deepened +into a more poetical sadness,[40] the Irish intellect broke out, like +the Irish rebellion, “threescore thousand strong,” when none expected or +were prepared for the startling and splendid irruption. The old mart of +learning was re-opened to the erudite of Europe, as in those times, when +if a sage was missing, it was said “_emandatus est ad disciplinam in +Hibernia_;” and the rich stream of native humour which, like a caverned +river, had hitherto kept the “noiseless tenor of its way,” darkened by +impending shadows, now rushed forth with the rapidity of a torrent, +pure, sparkling, and abundant, at the first vent afforded to its +progress. Science and philosophy now first raised their altars amidst +the monkish monuments of an antiquated institution, and benefited the +world by theories and by experiments originated in a land where public +opinion and private faith were still struggling under the ban of legal +proscription.[41] England then opened a running account with Ireland for +dramatic contributions when her own resources had, by being too largely +drawn upon, nearly become bankrupt;[42] and literary Europe stood +indebted to Irish wit, fancy, and humour, for the richest treats, which +render the leisure of the learned delectable, and the amusement of the +idle instructive.[43] + +Even the arts, in these stirring times of social concentration, awakened +from their long and deadly slumbers; and the slowly reviving school of +painting in England received some of its most noted disciples from +Ireland, a country so little adapted, by its miseries and its +commotions, to the cultivation of the most tranquil and meditative of +intellectual pursuits.[44] At this time, too, the Irish muse found a +willing and a worthy priestess in one of the fair daughters of the +land,[45] where her temples had so long been closed; and “the mother of +sweet singers,” awakened by the genius of national melody, beheld her +sons + + “Thronging round her magic cell,” + +as in the days of the Mayos[46] and the O’Connors.[47] + +The triumphs of Carolan, the last of the Firsgealaighthes or Irish +Troubadours, were followed by those of Handel and Piccini;[48] and +though the wild sweet tones of the Irish harp were still occasionally +heard in the pauses of the Messiah and of the elegant Armida, still, +taste, improving with the developement of the art, soon rendered the +Italian and German schools of music the exclusive study in Ireland; and +they excited an enthusiasm which well belonged to a people who, in all +their wretchedness and degradation, had found in music a vehicle for +their feelings and their passions, for their deep-seated indignation, +and their long-meditated revenge. St. Bridget now hid her diminished +head in her “cell of the oak;[50] while St. Cecilia saw more tapers +lighted at her shrine in the Irish capital than ever illumined her dusky +chapel in the Trastevere at Rome. Music halls were built for public +concerts; and musical societies, assuming the importance and dignities +of corporate bodies, were formed out of the amateur[51] and professional +talent of the country; while the conciliating genius of harmony, +refusing that “to a party which was meant for mankind,” devoted its +divine powers to smoothing political austerities, reknitting the social +affections, and promoting the first of all human virtues--charity.[52] +Oh! surely this was the true purpose for which the Divinity breathed +into the soul of man that fine susceptibility to the mystic charm of +harmony, which lulls the harsher passions, and substitutes the +excitement of delicious sensations for the bitter feelings and harassing +emotions which the cross purposes of life call hourly into existence. +Who now in Ireland but may look back with regret to the philharmonic +societies “of other times,” from the magic of whose strains a shelter +rose for the wretched, and in whose bands men of all parties blended the +“concord of sweet sounds.” Who that in the present day has witnessed in +the capital of Ireland, the different and dark purposes to which music +and musical society have been perverted, but must lament that the +sweetest of the arts should have been pressed into the service of civil +dissension--should have fulfilled the purposes of party intrigue, and +gratified the malice of a narrow-souled faction. Who but must shudder to +perceive its influence directed to rousing the irritable fibre, and +stirring up the bile of political malady; to exciting by its “musical +cheers” the passions of the powerful few against the suffering many, and +fomenting by its choicest harmonies the discord of social disunion and +the dissonance of party hatred. Spirits of Handel and of Arne, of +Calcott and of Mozart, how little did ye dream in your philosophy that +your heaven-inspired strains should serve as the war-whoop of faction, +the death-song of domestic peace, and national confraternity!! + +While music excited in Ireland the same enthusiasm, and was cultivated +with more science, than when “in early Greece she sung,” the drama +partook of the triumph. Two royal theatres and an Italian +opera-house[53] could scarcely supply the cravings of the public taste; +and an audience, noted for its critical acumen, gave to the Irish stage +a classical character, and developed a competition which drew forth +candidates for dramatic fame even from the higher classes of society, +conferring that respectability upon the members of the stage, which +ought at all times to belong to a profession which holds so decided an +influence over the morals and the manners of a nation.[54] + +But though the circumstances of the times rendered the home residence of +the Irish gentry more permanent than it has since ever been, or perhaps +ever was before, the fashion universally prevailed of sending the youth +of good family to make the grand tour; and the young and travelled +aristocracy, the Fitzgeralds, the Caulfields, the Kirwans, the O’Neils, +the Blakes, came back, no less to improve the tastes of their country, +than to defend her cause, and to enlarge the sphere of her energies. A +variety of refined amusements and elegant enjoyments, hitherto unknown +in Ireland, came in their suite; which while they gave employment and +food to the lowly and the industrious, tended to disseminate that taste +for factitious pleasures, and that craving for refined gratifications, +which though not in themselves the efficient causes of civilization, are +in no small degree favourable to its developement.[55] Pleasure, lured +to the Irish shores from distant regions, planted her gay standard, and +raised her brilliant pavilions in the capital, at that time crowded with +the wealthy and the educated. The ridottos of the music hall, with their +fantastic arrangements and sylvan scenery,[56] recalled the similar +festivities of the Italian carnival. Palaces succeeded to the cumbrous +mansions of the seventeenth century; and Charlemont house, with its +beautiful architecture, its splendid library, and invaluable +collections, still preserved in all their integrity by the present noble +owner, stands a singular monument not only of the pure taste and +magnificent spirit of an Irish nobleman, who had even higher claims to +the admiration and respect of his country, but of the genius of the +times, and the prosperity--the short-lived prosperity--of the land in +which such a private edifice was raised. The villas of Tuscany and +Lombardy were repeated along the shores of a bay that wanted only a +Vesuvius to rival that of Naples; and the names which these pretty +villas still bear, recal the travelled tastes of their elegant +founders.[57] Private theatricals (the dramatis personæ taken from the +red book) were got up in the castles of the O’Neils and the halls of the +Butlers; and the public assemblies, held under the newly-raised dome of +the Rotunda, were types of the _casino nobile_ of Florence and +Bologna;[58] while the Sunday evening promenades in its illuminated +gardens contributed to the funds of a blessed charity, and bestowed that +health and those spirits, without which the kindlier feelings are too +frequently blighted, and the generous propensities absorbed in a +querulous and fretful egoism.[59] + +The Irish press!--and who that now knows the capital of Ireland, and +beholds its utter incompetency to support the publication of even _one_ +trifling periodical work, will believe that Ireland once _had a +press_!--the Irish press then teemed with native literary productions; +which if as mere “_pieces de circonstance_,” thrown off at a heat, they +might sometimes want the higher finish of more elaborated composition, +were still stamped with the ardour of the national spirit, and “faithful +to its fires.” The frequent and “keen encounter of the wits” upon great +questions, produced an animated competition, which even the +statesman-like sobriety of English viceroys could not always resist. The +Draper’s letter of Lord Chesterfield, (an imitation of Swift,) and the +political caricatures of Lord Townshend, written at a later period, were +proofs that Ireland was not always governed by the dull and the dogged, +and that her metropolis once boasted of a society which _obliged_ the +representatives of majesty as well as the representatives of the people +to cultivate the suffrages of the public, by means never addressed to an +uncivilized or an illiterate community. Politics and polemics then alike +fell to the discussion of humour and talent. The public journals, though +few, were fair; their editors were responsible both by their property +and their personal consideration; and their contributors were frequently +the most brilliant members of Irish society, the most learned sons of +the Irish alma mater. Swift, Dr. Sheridan, Lucas, Flood, Burgh, +Yelverton, Courtenay, Jephson, Bishop Marley, Grattan, Curran, and +others equally notable, if not equally noted, contributed successively a +portion of their luminous intellects to illustrate the pages of that +mighty engine of public feeling--the PERIODICAL PRESS. Whatever side was +advocated,--the country or the court, patriotism or power,--it does not +appear that any journal was set up on a merely sordid principle, or an +utter disregard of all truth and decency. There was then no waylaying +with indiscriminate ruffianism the feelings of private individuals, no +exhibition of the sacred details of the domestic life of political +characters, as a means of existence to some outcast of society, who +wanted the courage to seek a less dishonourable bread on the public +highway. For when the genuine and educated gentry of Ireland, her +hereditary senators and native legislators, made up the larger portion +of the reading public of her capital, a journal edited by the nefarious +and the base, by the hired assassin of reputation or the paid pander of +ribald passions, would have been hunted down with one common feeling of +national indignation and manly contempt. Where is the land, so lost in +its degradation, so insensible to all its higher interests, as to endure +that such a “damning witness” should go forth to the world and bear +testimony to its moral, social, and literary depravity? Alas that there +should be one! Alas that the land of wit and feeling should furnish +forth readers, even from its high and official classes, to reward and +encourage the instruments of its own disgrace! Alas for the country, +where the hired servants of the government club their quota to propagate +the rancorous overflowings of the vilest and most antisocial passions; +where the ordained ministers of religion, subscribe for the +dissemination of the grossest and most mischievous falsehoods; where the +magistrate chuckles privately over the libel he is publicly bound to +punish; and where to be pre-eminent in villainy and matchless in +audacity, is the short road to command sympathy and ensure subsistence. + +But if a reduction of absenteeism, if the permanent residence of the +major part, of the wealth, the nobility, and above all, and more +precious than all, of the EDUCATION of the country, produced these +blessed effects, the greater good, the “last best gift,” which +congregated interests and intellects could bestow on a community, Public +Spirit, fell like dew in the desert upon the renovating nation. Men who +had long learned to feel and to think, now, in the consciousness and +confidence of their associated strength, first ventured to speak and to +act: at once inspiring and inspired, they spoke as prophets and acted as +patriots. The talent of the free suddenly burst into existence, as if by +a divine miracle in the land of the enslaved; and eloquence, the +inherent characteristic of the nation, which had occasionally broken +forth in the rude but exciting harangues of the O’Donnels and the +O’Neils, now shone out brilliantly, with a lustre which Athens in her +best, and Rome in her greatest days, scarcely surpassed. Political +oratory and political knowledge, proceeding from the same cause and +bearing on the same point exhibited Ireland in a new aspect to the +wondering world; and the names of Molyneux,[60] Ponsonby,[61] Prior,[62] +Boyle,[63] Connolly,[64] Tottenham,[65] Lucas, Charlemont, Burke, +Grattan, Curran--names which are now but sounds--will retain to the +latest posterity their mystical and magic influence, as the signs of +times and events, the glory of a nation’s history, and as the evoquing +spells of that genius, which awakens liberty and watches over a nation’s +happiness. Oh! these were times to live in and men to live among--when +the capital of the kingdom was something better than a garrison or an +assize town! when its fashionable assemblies were not thrown upon the +eleemosinary contributions of barracks and boarding-schools, of military +exquisites who “_never dance_,” and harmless young gentlemen who do +nothing else! These were times, when the men were all at home, and their +spirits all abroad! when the rush from the senate was sure to fill the +drawing-room; and they who boldly fought in the one for the liberties of +their country, came to lay their own liberty at the feet of beauty in +the other. These were times, when even love and law went forth arm in +arm together from the inns of court, to _that_ court, where the special +pleading of counsel rarely failed to win the cause, where even losses +were victories, and where the inconsiderate heart of the young legal +aspirant selected its client for life without reference to politics, +place, pension, or promotion. Then Leinster-house, and Charlemont-house, +and Powerscourt-house, and Waterford-house, and Moira-house, and an +hundred other splendid “_houses_” of the resident nobility, were open to +the wit, the talent, the literature, and the gallantry of the country. +Then, the cells of the University, silent as the tomb during the +studious day, echoed at night to the song, the laugh, the epigram, or +the jest of gay and brilliant spirits destined to come forth and enchant +society by their social and colloquial powers; while they defended the +independence of their country by their eloquence and patriotism. These +were times when the charms of the lovely Gunnings, the more lovely +Munroes,[66] and an hundred others of their lovely successors, were +embalmed for posterity in the verses of contemporary poets; and when the +amatory sonnets of one of the first orators of the age were not deemed +inferior to his speeches at the bar, or his orations in the senate.[67] +These were times when the young ladies of the capital did not wait for +the _marching in_ of the divisions of a regiment, as their only chance +of _marching out_ of the ranks of celibacy; for absenteeship was then +but temporary: the young nobility and gentry, if they travelled and +flirted abroad, came back to love and to marry at home; since, “where’er +they roamed, whatever climes” they saw, they still saw nothing fairer +than the fair they left behind them. These were times, which, when +recalled, like Ossian’s Song of Sorrow, are both “pleasing and mournful +to the soul.” + +But to return. When penal statutes and all that is intended by the false +policy of shallow and self-interested legislators to disqualify man for +the knowledge and assertion of his political rights, still continued to +check the progress of civil liberty in Ireland, the combined effects of +a portion of the liberal and educated resident gentry were found +sufficient to make head against a government which the sternest upholder +of English power, and he too an Irish chancellor,[68] declared “was +enough to crush any nation upon earth;” and which one of the wisest and +best philanthropists of that or any age[69] has defined to have been +“such a combination of rapine, treachery, and violence as would have +disgraced the name of government in the most arbitrary country in the +world.” Other events, bearing upon the same point, tended at this epoch +to soften, if not to remedy the evils of that terrific code, which +disgraced England even more than it degraded Ireland.[70] While the +church militant in Ireland usurped a power in the persons of its +Protestant popes, the primates and archbishops, which smelt of the times +of the Beckets and the Wolseys,--while Boulter and Stone preserved their +own supremacy by their well-sustained system of dividing Ireland within +herself, and adding to her restrictions by fomenting her +discontents,--it _did_ happen that the necessity of circumstances +occasionally procured for the country a chief governor, whose personal +interests in the land from which he drew his maintenance and support, +awakened “some bowels for a poor relation,” or whose higher order of +genius and generalized views raised him above the level of the miserable +local politics, the petty cabals, and factious intrigues of that remote +and wretched spot which is, in position as in politics, the _cul de sac_ +of civilized Europe. These happy incidents indeed were rare, and make +but a poor set-off in the balance, of vice-regal virtue and talent, +against the dulness, bigotry, and ostentatious pretension, which have so +often covered their Midas’ ears under the coronet of delegated sway. + +It was under a Devonshire that the susceptible Irish, always led by +personal feelings, first began to rally with confidence and hope round a +government that seemed to abate in the execution, if not in the spirit +of the law, something of that sanguinary reign which had hitherto +chilled loyalty into despair; and the personal qualities of this great +Irish proprietor were productive of the most felicitous effects, at the +most fearful epoch in the reign of the house of Hanover. The Stuarts, +the abdicated, the Catholic Stuarts, had planted their standard on the +English and Scottish shores, and the English and the Scotch, to a +dangerous amount, rushed from all parts to support the principles of +Toryism, in the person of him who was the “brief abstract” of all +Toryism. Where then in this moment of frightful exigency, when empire, +liberty, and life were at stake, where then were those “_enfans de la +revolution_,” the Protestant princes of Brunswick, the defenders of the +faith of Luther, to look for the rally of defence, for the protection of +loyalty against Catholic oppression? It was to the native Irish, the +Catholic Irish! that England, in the face of her own savage laws,[71] +turned for aid against British rebellion; and while the Irish gentry of +all sects remained immutably true to their legitimate (or according to +modern doctrines their _illegitimate_) sovereign, the flower of the +Catholic population rushed forth to man the navy and recruit the army, +which was to make a stand against successful rebellion,--successful at +least for a time, in every part of the British islands save alone in +Ireland. + +Still, however, in this moment of fearful exigency, when the old idols +of Irish devotion were again presenting themselves to a susceptible +people in all the charm of struggle and misfortune, something more than +the mild wisdom which the gentle blood of Cavendish has always produced, +was deemed necessary to watch over Catholic Ireland; and one was chosen +suited to meet the difficulties of the day, and to carry on that system +of conciliation begun by the Duke of Devonshire. This one was Philip +Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield, who, as the “Mirror of (Irish) +Magistrates,” in which succeeding chief governors of Ireland should +“dress themselves,” merits a particular notice. + +This nobleman, who had been for ten years in opposition, was selected +more in necessity than in liking: and he with difficulty obtained an +audience of leave from reluctant Majesty, on his departure for his +viceroyalty. When he demanded in the closet, “his Majesty’s commands,” +he was coolly told that he had already received his instructions, and +was dismissed without any token of confidence or of courtesy. While the +ministry put him forward as an instrument of conciliation, and loaded +him with the responsibility of a difficult government, they wished to +retain in their own hands the substance of power, and to shackle him +with some creature of their own, in the character of secretary; but he +laughed at the intrigue, and in their despite chose for himself one, +whom he describes to his son as “a very pretty young fellow, who knew +nothing of business;” for he was determined to rule by himself, to see +with his own eyes, and to encounter no subaltern interference with the +system he chose to adopt. Such was the spirit in which Lord Chesterfield +entered on his arduous mission, and ascended the vice-regal throne of +Ireland, on which he was placed by that influence to which even kings +and ministers must sometimes submit,--the influence of circumstances! +Docile mediocrity, the ordinary qualification of an Irish Lord +Lieutenant, was now no longer adequate to meet the exigencies of the +hour, as in those times of comparative tranquillity, when any +stalking-horse of diplomacy might be led over the beaten course by some +self-sufficient political jockey with the name of chief secretary; who, +without the pageantry of the higher office, monopolized all its +patronage and exercised more than its powers. At this moment dangers +both internal and external called for qualities of a different order, +and the English government was driven to the desperate resource of +accepting the aid of great abilities, at the expense of abiding by the +decisions of untrammelled independence. Such was the moment at which +George the Second disdainfully appointed one of the cleverest men of his +empire to the government of Ireland; and to this involuntary election he +probably owed that he was not himself sent back “to give his little +senate laws” in his patrimonial estate of Hanover. + +It was in vain that “Popery and the Pretender”[72] was the cry _mille +fois repeté_ in the ears of this new and singular Lord Lieutenant,--that +the old measures of the Boulters and the Stones were proposed as the +golden rules of vice-regal conduct,--that preachers from the pulpit +aroused the crusading spirit of intolerance against a sect beaten down +to the earth,--that the domineering party of a haughty ascendancy +assailed the audience-room of the Viceroy, and “stopped the chariot or +boarded the barge,” to teach him how to rule, to force him to recur to a +system beyond the rigour of the law, which enabled them to reign by +dividing, while it placed him on the list of mannikin lord lieutenants, +the wire-worked puppet of a bigoted faction. The acute, the elegant +Chesterfield, soon fathomed the depths of their ferocious feebleness, +and he played with the virulence he did not deign to wrestle with. When +the advocates of intolerance preached persecution, he answered their +counsels by an apotheghm and a _bon-mot_,--he quoted Cicero when they +cited Nassau,--he gave them parties for their politics,--suppers for +their sophistry, he forced them to swallow his measures with his +claret,--and he stopped the mouths of many with good dinners on whom +good arguments would have been thrown away. In a word, he knew them all, +he defied them all; and in despite of that party in the ministry which +supported an anti-national faction, he saved the wretched country they +were driving into a rebellion, which at that peculiar moment might have +separated Ireland for ever from the mother country. + +By this personal combination of wisdom, humanity, and impartiality, Lord +Chesterfield preserved a Catholic population in the most perfect peace +and obedience, during the whole of that rebellion, which in Protestant +England and Presbyterian Scotland had nearly restored the Stuarts to the +throne they had forfeited by their blind and bigoted attachment to papal +institutions--a memorable example of the value of an enlarged philosophy +in governors, and of the disposition of the people to be grateful for +kindness in their rulers, of their proneness to yield a willing +obedience to authority, if encouraged by the slightest show of justice +and fair dealing in those whom chance has placed over them. + +But narrow hearts and narrow intellects, impervious to the more generous +impulses of nature, and placing the whole force of government in the +scaffold and the bayonet--oppressing those they fear, and fearing those +they oppress--have too long exerted their baleful influence in +brutalizing and debasing the Irish nation into permanent anarchy, +creating those abuses, which they now plead in justification of their +own unpitying rigour: and if in rare and distant intervals the +patriotism and the kindly feelings of a Chesterfield have again found +themselves under the canopy of the viceregal throne, the oppressor and +the oppressed have alike been opposed to their beneficent activity. The +good which Chesterfield effected in times of difficulty and danger, can +now scarcely be hoped for even in the halcyon hour of peace: and should +the British empire be again involved in foreign conflict, Ireland, +unemancipated Ireland, might be urged to seek new destinies for herself +in an alliance from which she _might_ have something to hope, but from +which she could have nothing to fear more terrible than she has already +encountered during the ceaseless miseries of nearly six centuries. Of +this truth, harsh and repulsive as it may seem, no one who has studied +the subject can entertain a rational doubt. The example of America is +before the eyes of the people, and the hope delayed and the promise and +the pledge unredeemed lie deep in their hearts: restrictive and penal +laws, too severe even for occasional application, have become also +permanent on the statute book; famine and pestilence have grown almost +periodical in their visitations. From such premises what other +conclusion can be drawn? An influence behind the throne, and greater +than the throne, has chilled the sympathies and arrested the +outstretched hand of royalty; even the collective wisdom of the empire +has cowered before a party, and truckled to a faction; the cup of +reconciliation, though pledged by a sovereign, has been drugged with +poison; and a divided cabinet has distracted the country and paralyzed +the exertions of the only public functionary, who for years has +administered the laws of the country with any thing approaching to the +spirit of mercy and of fairness. + +From the period of Lord Chesterfield’s administration, the effects +produced by the permanent residence of the Irish gentry, were felt in +that most blessed consequence, the developement of a public spirit. The +English in Ireland, says Burke, began to feel that they were +domiciliated, and had a country; and the Irish found that what was +technically called “the English interest,” was gradually fading before +one common and independent national will! It was in vain that one of the +belligerent chiefs of the church (always the fomentors of Irish discord) +still struggled to uphold a system which was ruin to the many and power +to the few. The proud churchman and servile courtier, the arrogant and +despotic primate of the day, was taught to feel that he had other times +and other men to deal with than those living when the country sunk under +the weight of Boulter’s iron crosier. It was in vain that he affected to +“_do the king’s business_,” (as he termed it) as other Protestant +Wolseys had done it; and openly avowed his intention of carrying every +government measure, _à coup de main_, and in spite of all constitutional +opposition; for he lived to see the Irish gentry arrayed against the +undue influence of despotic churchmen under the standard of an Irish +speaker! The Irish patriots, led on by the chief of the Irish +aristocracy,[73] and united with the middle and the mercantile classes, +formed but one caste in feeling and in effort to array public opinion, +against unconstitutional measures,[74] and to put down for ever the +direct and ruinous interference of ecclesiastical statesmen! The +government was now awakened to the danger of employing the zealous and +intemperate, by the resistance which the primate had roused into +activity; and Stone, struck off the list of privy counsellors, the +object of national hatred and party contempt, exhibited one more example +of the vanity of unfounded ambition, and the weakness of that policy +which is opposed to public virtue, and the plain rule of right. + +The rapid progress which at this period public opinion and political +science were making, through the agency of a resident and educated +gentry, was so highly estimated, that an English Lord Lieutenant, (Lord +Harcourt,) as the most popular measure he could bring forward to +counteract the distasteful effect of other less gracious and salutary +acts, proposed on the part of government (1773) a tax on absentees! +Never was such a tax less called for; for the absentees were not in that +day in the proportion of one to an hundred, compared with those of the +present times. Yet the draining of the resources of Ireland in the +smallest proportion, the pouring forth of any modicum of native treasure +into foreign coffers, was considered as nothing less than high treason +to the country. The great English landholders of Ireland made a powerful +resistance to a tax which principally affected themselves; but the +majority by which the measure was rejected was so small[75] as to leave +no doubt of its popularity, and of the feelings of the public on the +subject. + +Those feelings, whether founded or erroneous, were by no means +unnatural; and the government, on its part, has never been slow to +encourage and strengthen them. The greater portion of the absentee +property had fallen to the lot of its English possessors, by fraud or +violence, by legal quibbling or by open proscriptions; and under the +most favourable circumstances, the cultivators of that soil, which on +the general principles of right and justice they imagined still to be +their own property, must naturally have regarded with a jealous eye the +foreign intruders. But in a country so poor as Ireland, so divested of +all other means of making money beyond the cultivation of the soil, this +annual exportation of excessive and burthensome rents could not fail to +be viewed with great discontent.[76] In England at the present day, if +all the landed proprietors were to export themselves to the Continent, +and to spend their rents in its various capitals, their absence would +scarcely be felt, amidst the multiplied resources of commercial +activity. Wherever the lord of the soil abandoned his dwelling, an East +India Nabob, a money-broker, or a merchant, would stand forth ready to +occupy his station, and rule over his domains; and the sums expended +abroad, would rapidly find their way home, in increased demands for the +products of English industry. On the other hand, the _nouveaux riches_, +divested of hereditary pretensions and feudal prejudices, and more +deeply instructed in the true principles of political economy, would +afford less opposition to the reception and diffusion of the lessons of +experience; and would therefore be the more acceptable to the labouring +classes, than those who, trammelled in the prejudices of hereditary +consequence, obstinately stand still in knowledge, while all around them +is moving in advance. In Ireland, however, it has always been otherwise. +Land has been ever the only instrument of industry, and rent the only +source of accumulated capital. The landed proprietors, together with +their immediate dependants, the members of the learned professions, have +long formed exclusively the educated classes; and their expenditure has +produced the only stimulus which existed, to excite the petty commerce +and circumscribed industry, which in the country towns of Ireland +support half-a-dozen shopkeepers; who, dignified with the name of +merchants, fill the municipal offices and send representatives to +Parliament. When, therefore, these favourites of fortune, the landed +proprietors, expatriate themselves, their mansions are left silent and +desolate; and none remains behind to employ the tenantry, to spread +illumination, or to distribute justice, but agents, middle men, and the +clergy, whose _ex parte_ notions of right and wrong, whose different +creed and opposed pecuniary interests wholly unfit them for the civil +duties which are thus devolved upon them. + +With such reasons for the unpopularity of absenteeism, the interests of +government in the prevalence of such a prejudice strongly conspire. When +the wretched condition of the country is made matter of general +declamation, the minister calls for specific abuses; and when a specific +abuse is dragged to daylight, and remedies are loudly demanded, +absenteeism is made a ready skreen to conceal the incapacity or +unwillingness to redress of the governing faction. Tithe abuses are met +by the charge of excessive rents and absentee consumption; corruption of +the magistracy is defended by the absence of independent justices of the +peace; and whatever is the evil to be averted, whatever the malpractice +to be reformed, the Absentees are the ready scapegoats for every +delinquent, and the plausible pretext for every forbearance. + +Absenteeship, however, always founded in bad government, becomes ruinous +only as it co-operates with other and mightier evils proceeding from the +same cause. In a well-ordered community the number and influence of +those who eat the bread of idleness and enjoy the means of expatriation, +can never bear an overwhelming proportion to that of the industrious +citizens chained down to a spot by the habits and the necessities of +their laborious lives. Wherever this relative proportion is materially +deranged, there will be found much to alter in existing institutions. In +such a condition of things, a restraining tax is as futile as it is +unjust. Government exists but to protect property; and any law which +restrains the owner’s right of spending his money where he pleases, +operates a violence, which the most urgent necessity alone could +justify. On the other hand, to expect that a pecuniary mulct, of any +amount short of an absolute seizure of the entire rental, would keep +those at home, whom a sense of injustice, of insecurity, and of the +absence of educated and liberal intercourse (of all that makes life +endurable and wealth enjoyable) drives into exile, is to be utterly +ignorant of human nature, and of the habits and feelings of the +aristocratical part of the community. + +To the pause which followed the commotions of 1745, succeeded an event +which belonged not to _one_ country or _one_ age, but to the great +history of mankind and to ages yet unborn! an event, which though it has +produced the most extraordinary and wide-spreading consequences on the +social condition, has not yet half worked out its mighty and +incalculable effects. The American Revolution,--the greatest explosion +that ever shook the complicated fabric of political abuses, the boldest +step which civilization has yet made _en avant_,--was felt in its +reverberations throughout all Europe; and even Ireland, remote, +isolated, and oppressed Ireland, returned some vibration to the shock! +England, amidst the host of ills which assailed her at this, the most +awful crisis of her history, already beheld the children of the land she +had so long oppressed, bursting their bonds and hailing with their +wonted “ten thousand welcomes,”[77] the hope of emancipation, which came +to them from the greatest and freest region of the earth. It was then +that a British minister, worked upon by his fears, or driven by his +necessities, granted a reluctant boon, for the purpose of winning back +the affections of an alienated people, whose co-operation he wanted, and +whose desertion he had but too just a cause to apprehend. It was then +that he admitted the Irish to rights for which during past ages they had +sued in vain; and flattered those with eulogies to whom he had hitherto +denied justice. It was not, therefore, wonderful, though it was new, +that when an Irish member in the British senate ventured to observe, +that “Ireland was the chief dependence of the British crown, and that it +behoved England to admit the Irish nation to the privileges of British +citizens,” there was not one dissentient voice to deny the fact, or +oppose the proposition;[78] and the bills which then passed the +Parliament for the relief of the Catholics, and for the opening of the +Irish trade, produced the usual effects of kindness on the human heart. +From that moment America promised, and Franklin wrote in vain. “If,” +says that patriotic philosopher,--the patriot of humanity, and the +philosopher of common sense!--in his celebrated letter to the people of +Ireland, “If the government whom you at home acknowledge, does not, in +conformity to its own interests, take off and remove every restraint on +your trade, commerce, and manufacture, I am charged to assure you that +means will be found to establish your freedom in the fullest and freest +manner; and as it is the ardent wish of America to promote, as far as +her other engagements will permit, a reciprocal commercial intercourse +with you, I can assure you that they will seek every means to establish +and maintain it.” + +But Ireland had not recourse to a foreign power to reclaim her rights. +She placed her cause in the hands of her resident gentry: she committed +it in the senate to a Grattan, and in the field to a Charlemont! The +restrictions on trade, which America offered to break, were removed by +the exertions of Irish patriotism, supported by that force, which is +alone constitutional, a national militia! It was at this eventful epoch +of Irish regeneration, that the combined exercise of those native +energies to which, in a moment of exigency, a brave and unhappy people +never fail to resort, produced that bulwark of national independence, +the IRISH VOLUNTEERS; and a whole people, with arms in their hands, and +liberty in their hearts, stood forth the protectors of their native +land, which an unnatural government had thus exposed to danger and +seduction. Even England looked on with respect and gratitude at the +efforts of the devoted and loyal Irish, who, forgetful of all past +injuries, came forward no less in her cause than their own;[79] and when +the Irish volunteers presented themselves to the admiration of the +empire, organised into a compact and disciplined body, under their +illustrious chief the Earl of Charlemont, (whose name ever falls like +light upon the page it illustrates,) it was declared in the British +senate, by one whose words were then deemed as _prophet’s breathings_, +“that this great event resembled, intrinsically and substantially, the +glorious Revolution of England in 1688!” + +This event, however, so glorious for the fame, and so profitable to the +interests and independence of Ireland, never could have occurred, if the +majority of the gentry, with their spirit, their wealth, their +influence, and their education, had not been a resident gentry! and if +there is one illuminated page in the dark story of Ireland’s misery! one +pause in her sufferings! it belongs to this proud and blessed moment, +when her people and their chiefs were armed, morally and physically, in +her defence; when her senate resounded to an eloquence as pure and +patriotic as the Forum ever echoed; when the private society of the +capital became proverbial for its wit and festivity; and when all tended +to, if it did not reach, the term of national prosperity and national +glory. + +But alas! this moment of promise and splendour was transient as a dream, +and the bright effulgence of Irish patriotism, brilliant as the midnight +meteor, was as suddenly succeeded by a midnight darkness. Causes on +which it is now beside the purpose to dwell, paralysed the virtues, and +marred the hopes of the honest and the brave. Engines were put into +play, and agents into activity, to destroy or to sap the foundations of +national independence. Corruption and injustice recommenced their +suicidal career; the rebellion and the Union were got up, and succeeded +beyond the hopes of their authors; and from that epoch every evil which +can afflict humanity and degrade a nation has gathered to a foul and +purulent head; every sad succeeding year has been marked by some new +step towards social disorganization and national extinction. + +“Scarcely had the law passed ratifying that great mischief--the +Union--(says one of the ablest, and what is yet more, one of the +honestest and most uncompromising writers on Irish affairs, of the +present or of any age) when Absenteeism, the predominant calamity of +Ireland, was fearfully accelerated. The chief proprietors fled from the +metropolis, as from an invading army; and the country affording neither +interest nor expectation, they expatriated themselves in shame, in +disgust, in anguish, in despair. A category of evils beset the +land.--Those who had entertained fair hopes soon found their prospects +darken, and a long night close the transient day. To infatuation +succeeded self-torment. A chief Judge died of a broken heart because he +had participated in that signal treachery--another Judge asked pardon of +God and his country, for sanctioning it with his vote. Pitt, the +machinist, perished amidst the misfortunes of the Empire--and +Castlereagh, in his pride and power, became his own executioner. The +noble delinquents and their race perish together. Twenty-four Irish +peerages have become extinct since the Union in January, 1801, exclusive +of Peerages under a superior title, but continued in an inferior +honour--and while I write, another of the noble order which stands +between the prerogative and the people, as hounds between the huntsman +and the hare, is extinguished. Thus nature takes vengeance on the +exalted traitors to their country. The Union cannot subsist--Sin and +Death have fixed their peremptory seal of doom upon it. Not all the +vices of Ferdinand to his parentage and family and country--not all the +deeds of the magnanimous Allies and the Holy Alliance to Spain, Germany, +and Italy--no, not the repeated partitions of Poland by the Royal +Robbers, the Austrian, and Frederic, and Catherine, equalled altogether +the dreadful sum of sinning by the English Ministry, in preparing, +prosecuting, and accomplishing that sad catastrophe--the Incorporate +Union of Ireland with Great Britain.”--_Ensor’s Address to the People of +Ireland._ + +Previously to the Act of Union, Absenteeism, though encouraged by the +geographical position of the country, and promoted by some inveterate +habits derived from ancient abuse, was principally confined, among the +native Irish, to a few individuals whose ill understood vanity tempted +them to seek for a consequence abroad, which is ever denied to the +unconnected stranger, a consequence which no extravagant expense can +purchase. With a few exceptions, therefore, the malady was confined to +the great English proprietors of forfeited estates, whose numbers must +in the progress of events have been diminished, by the dissipations +inseparable from unbounded wealth, and the growth of commercial and +manufactural fortunes. It might, in some cases, indeed, be both a vice, +and a ridicule, in the absent; but had the nation in other respects been +well used and well governed, it would have been of no serious evil to +those who remained at home. But the Act of Union, whatever may be its +other operations, meritorious or vicious, at once converted a local +disease into a national pestilence. The centre of business and of +pleasure, the mart of promotion, and the fountain of favour, were by +this one fatal act at once removed into a foreign land; ambition, +avarice, dissipation and refinement, all combined to seduce the upper +classes into a desertion of their homes and country: and as each +succeeding ornament of the Irish capital abandoned his hotel, as each +influential landlord quitted his castle in the country, or his house in +the city, a new race of vulgar upstarts, of uneducated and capricious +despots, usurped their place, spreading a barbarous _morgue_ over the +once elegant society of the metropolis, and banishing peace and security +from the mountain and the plain. + +Many whom temptation could not hitherto seduce from home, were now +forced by fear to fly; and every passion, every motive combined to drive +from the happy land, all those who were possessed of the means of +flight. It is in vain that patriotism struggles and conscience arrests +the departing step of those who yet linger behind in painful +vacillation. Self-preservation must and will in the end prevail. +Whatever is educated, whatever is tasteful, whatever is liberal, will +too probably fly a land, where the insolence of official rank supplies +the amenity of an admitted aristocracy, and where vulgar wealth, +acquired by political subserviency, and too frequently unaccompanied by +knowledge, holds talent at arms’ length, and rejects wit from its +coteries as dangerous to its own dull supremacy and hostile to the +repose of its own “_fat contented ignorance_.” Philanthropists, +disgusted with the perpetual spectacle of hopeless wretchedness and +irredeemable despair, will seek relief by flying the misery they cannot +mitigate; the enlightened and the liberal will turn with horror from the +country where laws of exception have been adopted into the permanent +code, and where necessitated violence is only met by judicial severity +and legal murder. The landholder, wearied by his contests with the +clergy, and intimidated by the armed and masked opposition of his +tenantry, will be contented to purchase repose by abandoning at once the +soil and its produce, to the proctors, the police-men and their chiefs. +The _sbirri_ of Ireland will alone find in a land, thus every way +accursed, the elements congenial to their existence, as the reptiles and +insects subsist in that putrefaction, which spreads disease and death +among the nobler animals. + +In the present political prospect of Ireland, the eye of philosophy and +philanthrophy turns on every side in search of a principle of +regeneration, and turns in vain. On every side a circle of recurrent +cause and effect, like the mystic emblem of the Egyptians, points to an +eternity of woe, and to endless cycles of misgovernment and resistance. +As long as the actual system continues, (as long as every cause is +forced to concur in rendering Ireland uninhabitable,) so long will it be +impossible to organize any plan for civilizing, tranquillizing, and +enriching the country. It is an empty and an idle boast in the British +House of Commons, that it devotes its successive nights to the debating +Irish affairs, so long as the religious division of the people and the +proconsular government founded upon that division are to be recognized +as sound policy or Christian charity. The half measures which have +hitherto been adopted, far from proving beneficial, and composing the +contentions of hostile factions, have served only to increase discontent +and disarm inquiry.[80] Nor can the ministers be entitled to any praise +for generosity who dare not, in the first place, be just. In spite, +therefore, of all their professions of zeal and compassion for the +national distress; in spite of all their parliamentary tamperings with +the national abuses, they must still remain answerable for the greater +part of the absenteeship which they strenuously hold up as the giant +ill, over which they have no controul, and for the existence of which +they imagine themselves not responsible. + +The grand principle of “_divide et impera_” has produced both the +religious question and the question between landlords and tenants, which +are the hinges on which all the misfortunes of Ireland turn. To commence +the work of regeneration in earnest, that principle must be fairly and +honestly abandoned: when this is done, and not before, absenteeship, +with every other evil which has grown out of the monstrous anarchical +system, that has so long subsisted, will gradually disappear; and +proprietors in Ireland, as in other countries, will inhabit their +country, when their country becomes inhabitable.--“_Ubi bene, ibi +patria_” is a maxim not altogether unreasonable; and, surely, if in any +circumstances it is entitled to toleration, it is in that land where the +greater the patriotism and virtue, the less chance is there of social +comfort and rational happiness. To the absentees themselves we would +willingly appeal with every invocation that can bind the conscience or +awaken the heart. But the appeal were worse than idle, it would in fact +be injurious, by pointing to effects and disengaging the attention from +causes. In the present condition of affairs, absenteeism is a +necessitated evil!! In the absentees it is less a crime than a +misfortune; and with respect to the government it is so far from being a +justification of its acts, that it has become a pregnant and a pointed +conclusion of its ignorance of all sound principle, or its heartless +indifference to all those interests which the unhappy destiny of “_the +most unhappy country under heaven_,” has committed to its charge. + + + THE END. + + + + + LONDON: + IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +FOOTNOTES: + +Footnote 1: + + Irish potentates were then as plenty “as Munster potatoes.” “Ils se + coudoyoient,” as in the _salle des rois_ of Napoleon. Irish saints + were equally numerous; but, if the scandalous chronicles of the times + be worthy of credit, the social order of that day was not the better + for the circumstance. While King Mac Murrogh was running away with + Queen O’Rourke, wife of O’Rory, King of Breffny, who was on a + pilgrimage to St. Patrick’s purgatory, his son was undergoing the + operation of having those eyes put out, which had looked too tenderly + on the Queen of Ossory. The gallantries of these Macs and O’s from the + earliest ages to the present day, recall the answer of the French + Silvester Daggerwood to his manager, who asked his line of parts, + “_Chacun s’en tienne au metier de ses pères; je sais que dans notre + famille, nous sommes tous amoureux de père en fils_.” + +Footnote 2: + + King Mac Turtell was King of Dublin, and held his kingdom by tribute + from the King of Leinster. “Not far from Dublin,” says the admirable + Maurice Regan, historiographer to Mac Murrogh,--“not far from Dublin + there lived an Irish king named Gillemohalmoghe.” Of the territories + of this prince, Michael’s lane in Dublin formed a part. It is called + in the black book of Christchurch, Gillemohalmoghe. As there is some + reason to suppose that the kingdom extended as far as Swords, Sir + Compton Domville may be regarded as the modern representative of the + Gillemohalmoghe dynasty. + +Footnote 3: + + Child’s Discourse upon Trade.--“No inconsiderable portion of the + entire of Ireland has been confiscated twice, and perhaps thrice, in + the course of a century.”--_Lord Clare’s Speech on the Union._ + + The causes of absenteeship are, in fact, coeval with the first steps + of English power in this country. “Those that were adventurers,” says + Temple, “in the first conquests, and such others of the English nation + as came over afterwards, took possession by former grants of the whole + kingdom, and _drove the Irish_ in a manner out of all habitable parts + of it, and settled themselves in all the plains and fertile places of + the country, especially in the chief towns, ports, and sea-coasts. It + was no capital offence to kill any of the rest of the Irish; the law + did neither protect their life nor revenge their death.”--_History of + Irish Rebellion._ Here is the starting-post of absenteeism, pointed + out by an English minister and historian. + +Footnote 4: + + The signatures of Magna Charta evince that the nobility of those + times, like Pierrot in the farce, were “_un peu brouillés avec + l’Alphabet_;” but the spirit which founded that great arch of British + freedom, was well worth all the namby-pamby acquirements of all the + modern nobles who ever presided over archæology, (or, as Walpole calls + it, “old woman’s logic,”) flirted with the muses, and combined to give + tracts to England, or rose-trees to the starving peasantry of + Connaught and Munster. + +Footnote 5: + + Henry II. obliged the Earl Strongbow to return to Ireland, “being + likely for his own wealth and assurance to procure all possible means + of bridling and annoying the Irish.” In the time of Edward III. + military emigration seems to have been considerable. The Irish robbers + did good service at Cressy. + +Footnote 6: + + The Irish were always ready for a little commotion at home or abroad; + “Great was the credit of the Geraldines ever when the House of York + prospered, and likewise the Butlers thryved under the bloud of + Lancaster.” It was this disposition towards the House of York, which + caused the temporary success of Perkin Warbeck in Ireland. The + unfortunate Duke of Clarence, who was drowned in a butt of Malmsey, + was born in Ireland during the lieutenancy of his father, the Duke of + York. His godfathers were the Earls of Ormond and Desmond. Whether + this Irish origin will serve to explain the peculiarity of his + destiny, I cannot say; but the residence of a York in Dublin may in + part account for the popularity of the faction in that city. + Shakspeare probably alludes to this personage in Henry VI. + + “Please it your grace to be advertised + The Duke of York is newly come from Ireland, + And with a puissant and mighty power + Of Gallowglasses and stout Kernes + Is marching hitherward in proud array.” + +Footnote 7: + + The English reader is not to suppose that these _blanc-mangers_ of the + poor Irish were such as are to be had at the Verys or Beauvilliers. + The Irish white meates were curds and whey, the only provisions which + men whose lives were “in wandering spent and care” could obtain. The + Irish then lived like Arabs, a prey of cattle being the subject of + their fiercest contests. + +Footnote 8: + + Had they made the country endurable to live in, they would have done + what all the penal laws that ever have been framed can never + affect--they would have kept the Irish at home. At the time when Henry + VIII. was framing his “act of absencie” for preventing the increase of + the absentees the state of the country in which they _were by law_ + obliged to live, is thus described by Spenser;--“Notwithstanding that + the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and + cattle, (Munster more particularly is here speken of,) yet in one year + and a half (during the war carried on against the Earl of Desmond for + the purpose of forfeiting his estates) the natives were brought to + such wretchedness, as that any stoney heart would rue the same. Out of + every corner of the woods and glyns they came creeping forth upon + their hands, for their legs could not bear them, they looked like + anatomies of death, they shoke like ghosts crying out of their graves, + they did eat the dead carrion, happy when they could find them; yea, + and one another soon after, inasmuch as the very carcasses they spared + not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of + water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the + time, yet not able to continue them withal, that in short space there + was none almost left; and a most populous and plentiful country + suddenly left void of man and beast.”--_State of Ireland_, 1581. + +Footnote 9: + + English antiquaries have been much puzzled to determine the identity + of this “more than celestial Geraldine.” “Who she was,” says Walpole, + “we are not directly told.” Surrey himself mentions some particulars + of her, but not her name. The editor of the last edition of Surrey’s + Poems, in some short notes on his life, says, “that she was the + greatest beauty of her time, and maid of honour to Queen Catharine; + but I think I have very nearly discovered who this fair person was, + &c. &c. &c. I am inclined to think her poetical appellation was her + real name, as every one of the circumstances tally.” The elegant + antiquary then devotes three pages to prove the probability that Lady + Elizabeth, daughter of the Earl of Kildare, was the Geraldine of Lord + Surrey. Warton adopts this supposition, and compliments the biographer + on having, with the most happy segacity, solved the difficulties of + “this little enigmatical ode.”--_History of English Poets._ There was, + however, a much shorter way of solving the difficulties, namely, the + consultation of Irish authors for an historical incident respecting + one of the most illustrious Irish families. Campion, who had probably + many a time and oft seen the “fair Geraldine,” with his usual quaint + simplicity says, “The Fitzgerald family is touched in the Sonnet of + Surrey made upon Kildare’s sister, now Lady Clinton;” + + From Tuscane came my ladyes worthy race, + Faire Florence was sometime her ancient seate; + The western isle, whose plaisant shore doth face + Wilde Cambre’s cliffes, did give her lively heate.” + + The ode goes on as follows;-- + + Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast, + Her sire an earle, her dame of prince’s blood; + From tender years in Britain she doth rest + With kinges childe, while she tasteth costly food. + Honsdon did first present her to mine yeen, + Bright is her hue, and Geraldine her hight, + + &c. &c. &c. + + This fair and celebrated Irish absentee, after having sent her + illustrious lover to Italy “to defend her beautie by an open + challenge,” in which he was victorious, married the Earl of + Clinton:--a most unsentimental conclusion to a most romantic story. + +Footnote 10: + + “A false muttering flew about that his execution was intended.” + +Footnote 11: + + “Soon after,” says Campion, “was the house of the Geraldines attaynted + by Parliament, and all of the name busily trayned out for feare of new + commotions. But Thomas Leurces, late Bishop of Kildare, schoolemaster + to a younger brother, Gerald Fitzgerald, the Earle that now liveth, + secretly stole away with the childe, first into Scotland, then into + France, and misdoubting the French, into Italy; where Cardinall Pole, + his neare kinsman preserved him till the raigne of Edward the Sixt, + with whom hee entred into high favour, and obtayned of him his olde + inheritance of Meinothe.” + +Footnote 12: + + The various epithets applied to these retrogradations on the scale of + civilization are very amusing. Between the “mere and uncivil Irish,” + and the “English Lords of the Pale,” were the “English Lords beginning + to wax Irish;” “degenerating,” “becoming mere Irish,” and ending by + being “very wilde Irish,” &c. &c. + +Footnote 13: + + O’Sullivan Beare, one of the bravest and noblest chiefs of Kerry, and + Lord of part of the paradise of Killarney, in writing to the Spanish + minister an account of his sufferings at this period, urges him “to + the speedy sending of a ship to receive him, his wife, and children, + to save them from the hands of his most merciless enemies: Making + choice (he pathetically adds) rather to forsake my ancient + inheritance, friends, followers, and goods, than any way trust to + their graceless pardon or promise.”--_Pacata Hibernia._ Here was + absenteeship in the sixteenth century!! + +Footnote 14: + + Elizabeth frequently discovered that her Deputies were carrying the + joke too far. On the occasion of the wanton massacre of Smerwick, “The + queen (says the Bishop of Chichester) was not _pleased_ at the + _manner_ of this execution, and was hardly _after_ drawn to admit any + excuse of the slaughter committed.” The “_manner_” was curious + enough,--“It was concluded that only the leaders should be saved, (the + leaders were Spanish officers,) the rest slain, and _all the Irish_ + hanged up: which was presently put into execution, to the great + disliking of the queen, who detested the slaughter of such as yielded + themselves.”--_Baker’s Chronicle._ + +Footnote 15: + + “The Queen was assured,” says Leland, speaking of the inhuman rigour + of Lord Deputy Gray, “that he tyrannized with such barbarity, that + little was left in Ireland for her Majesty to reign over but ashes and + dead carcases.”--_Hist. of Ireland_, v. ii. p. 227.--Here are reasons + for absenteeship quite as cogent as any which can be advanced in the + present day. + +Footnote 16: + + The credulity of the Irish has ever been their ruin. Some English + officers having assured certain Irish chiefs that, upon surrendering + themselves to the government, they would obtain their pardon; those + chiefs (says Leland) “embraced the counsel, submitted, and consented + to attend the Lord Deputy St. Leger to Ireland. But here the only + favour granted them was, that they were not brought to immediate + execution. They were committed to prison, their lands declared + forfeit, and granted to those on whose counsel they had + surrendered.”--_Hist. of Ireland_, v. ii. + +Footnote 17: + + “Then came the Irishmen of valiant hearts, + And active limbs, and personages tall.” + + _Sir J. Harrington’s Translation of Orlando Furioso._ + +Footnote 18: + + Apology, p. 58. + +Footnote 19: + + _Si je ne vous mange pas en oiseau, je vous mangerai en souris._ + “Other times,” they say, “bring other manners;” and it is not + impossible that men, restrained by the _manners of our own times_, may + avail themselves of the circumstance of their enforced moderation, to + reproach the writer who thus recalls a fact disreputable to the + English government, with _ripping up old sores_. The fact, however, is + “germane to the matter;” for it was such forfeitures that sowed the + first seeds of that permanent absenteeism which modern ministers + affect to deplore: and it was these flagrant violations of common + justice, that first nurtured the lawless disposition in the peasantry, + which is made an excuse for the suspension of all constitutional + rights, and which is most unjustly charged on the Catholic religion. + Besides, as long as the system is continued, which withholds + emancipation, and gives over the land to the tyranny and plunder of + churchmen and their inherents, the “ripping up old sores” is both + useful and justifiable. + +Footnote 20: + + The only crime of which O’Rourke could be accused, was his having + received some shipwrecked Spaniards under his roof,--men, says + O’Connor, whom the most hardened barbarity could scarcely consider as + enemies. It is remarkable that O’Rourke previously to his execution + was denied a priest of his own persuasion. But Miles Macgrath, the + converted archbishop of Cashel, was sent to prevail on him to conform. + “No,” said O’Rourke firmly, “but do you remember the dignity from + which you have fallen; return to the ancient Church, and learn from my + fortitude the lesson you should have taught me, and which you ought to + have been the last to disavow.” + + If there is a shadow of truth in this wild story of Leitrim, and if + Rourke did not betray the lady, he deserves canonization. Essex, + however, who shared the same fate, preserved the same honourable + secrecy; and the purity of the Virgin Queen remains intact. + +Footnote 21: + + The ruins of O’Rourke’s castle still exist. They are sublimely + situated on a rock that hangs and frowns over a rapid river, near + Manor Hamilton, in the county of Leitrim. A few trees are scattered + immediately about the castle, and around are heathy mountains rising + to the clouds. “O’Rourke’s noble feast” has been rendered immortal by + the translation of Dean Swift. + +Footnote 22: + + O’Connor Sligo resided some time in the court of Elizabeth, where he + was flattered up to his bent, though not into a permanent + absenteeship. He returned to Ireland in 1596, after obtaining a grant + to secure him in the possession of his own property; in gratitude for + which “he was extremely active in her (the Queen’s) favour, and gained + back, partly by menace and partly by cunning, many of the revolted + clans.” The celebrated O’Donnel of Tirconnel, hearing of O’Connor’s + desertion from the common cause, marched with an army to bring him to + obedience: and, in spite of the assistance of Sir Conyers Clifford and + Lord Mayo, he ravaged and destroyed O’Connor’s country. + +Footnote 23: + + This youth was the only son of the Earl of Desmond, already mentioned. + He had been detained a prisoner in the Tower from his infancy as a + pledge for his father’s loyalty. He was afterwards sent to Ireland as + a state engine to play off against another Geraldine who had made + claims to the forfeited Palatinate; but after he had fretted his hour + on the bloody stage of his own country, he was brought back to + England, and lingering at court for a few months in hopeless + despondency, he died in the prime of his youth, of a broken + heart.--_See_ _Pacata Hibernia_. + +Footnote 24: + + Upon two occasions the Earl saved a large party of English from + destruction. Macguire, chief of Fermanagh, had given the Lord Deputy + three hundred cows to free his country from a sheriff; “after which + bargain, the sheriff, one Willis, was let loose upon Fermanagh, + leading about some hundreds of women and boys, with a guard of one + hundred men, all living upon the spoils of the country.” Macguire, + having driven this model of a modern Irish police into a church, was + about to put them to the sword, when the Earl of Tyrone interposed his + authority. This same Willis was again rescued by Tyrone from an + insurrection occasioned by similar circumstances in the O’Donnel’s + country.--_See_ _Memorial to Queen Elizabeth_. + +Footnote 25: + + The “Irish masque,” got up to compliment the absentees at the English + court, is either a bitter satire, or a disgusting picture of the state + of Irish society at that epoch. “The King being seated (says _the + programme_) in expectation, out ran a fellow attired as a citizen, + after him three or four footmen, Denis, Donnel, Dermoch, and Patrick,” + the object of whose visit to London was not like that of many of the + Denises and Patricks of the present day, to become either _porters_, + or _reporters_, as the chances determined; but simply, as Donnel + observes, ‘to see King Yamish,’ for which purpose ‘they had travelled + a great way miles,’ having got the start of their lords or chiefs who + had come over on the same loyal errand. + + _Der._ I’ fayt, tere ish very much phoyt stick here stirring to night. + He takes ush for no shquires I tinke. + + _Pat._ No; he tinksh not ve be imbasheters. + + _Der._ No, fayt, I tinke sho too. But tish marriage bring over a + doshen of our besht mashters to be merry, perht tee shweet faish, an’t + be; and daunsh a fading at te vedding. + + _Den._ But tey vere leeke to daunsh naked, and pleash ty majesty; for + tey villanous vild Irish sheas have casht away all ter fine cloysh, as + many ash cosht a towsand cowes and garrans, I warrant tee. + + _Der._ And te prishe of a cashtell or two upon teyr backs. + + _Don._ And tey tell ty majesty, tey have ner a great fish now, nor a + shea moynshter to save teyr cloyth alive now. + + _Pat._ Nor a devoish vit a clowd to fesh’hem out o’ te bottom o’ te + vayter. + + _Der._ But tey musht eene come and daunsh in teyr mantles now; and + show tee how tey can foot te fading and te fadow, and te phip a’ + Dunboyne, I trow. + + _Don._ I pree dee now, let not ty sweet faysh ladies make a mock on’ + him, and scorn to daunsht vit ’hem now, becash tey be poor. + + _Pat._ Tey drink no bonny clabber, i’ fayt now. + + _Don._ It ish better ten usquebaugh to daunsh vit Patrick. + + _Pat._ By my fater’s hand, tey vill daunsh very vell. + + _Der._ Ay, by St. Patrick, vill tey; for tey be nimble men. + + _Den._ And vill leap ash light, be creesh save me, ash he tat veares + te biggest fethur in ty court, King Yamish. + + _Der._ For all tey have no good vindsh to blow tem heter, nor + elementsh to preserve hem. + + _Don._ Nor all te four cornersh o’ te world to creep out on. + + _Pat._ But tine own kingdomes. + + _Don._ Tey be honesht men. + + _Pat._ And goot men; tine own shubshects. + + _Der._ Tou hast very good shubshects in Ireland. + + _Den._ A great goot many, o’ great good shubshects. + + _Don._ Tat love ty mayesty heartily. + + _Den._ And vill run t’rough fire and vater for tee over te bog and te + bannoke, be te graish o’ Got and graish o’ King. + + _Der._ By Got tey will fight for tee, King Yamish, and for my mistiesh + tere. + + _Den._ And my little maishter. Paish, paish, now room for our + mayshter.--Then the gentlemen dance forth a dance in their Irish + mantles to a solemn music of harps, which done, the footmen fall to + speak again.” + +Footnote 26: + + Borlase asserts that in 1650, ten years before the Restoration, 1700 + died of the plague in Dublin alone; this horrible infliction was + peculiar to those “picturesque times,” which describe so well, and + which, it is a mark of literary loyalty to admire and eulogize. + + “Sir, nothing against antiquity, I pray you, + I must not hear ill of antiquity.”--_B. Jonson._ + +Footnote 27: + + The most noted beauties of the Court of Charles the Second, Lady + Barbara Villars, (Duchess of Cleveland,) the Countess of Chesterfield, + (a Butler,) the Lady Kildare, introduced by St. Evremont into his + pleasant little poem of “The Basset Table,”[28] the Countess de + Grammont, and many others, were Irish women. The delightful author of + “Mémoires de Grammont,” Anthony Hamilton, was himself an Irishman,[29] + and a branch of the illustrious house of Hamilton, which obtained from + James the First such princely possessions in the North of Ireland, and + which is still represented by the Marquis of Abercorn. The + Fitzmaurices, (Muskerry,) the O’Briens, the Butlers, the Talbots, are + names noted in the fasti of Whitehall at this period. With respect to + the Talbots, however, it is but fair to observe that the elder branch + of this ancient and patriotic family always remained permanently + resident in their splendid castle and domain of Malahide, as their + worthy representative the Member for the county of Dublin continues to + do in the present day; though the younger branch, the Lords of Carton + (now the seat of the Duke of Leinster) were prime favourites at + Whitehall, and boon companions of both Charles and James. “The Dick + Talbot” of that day, whom Charles would fain have set at odds with the + Duke of Ormonde, brought no additional rays to the original splendour, + when he added a ducal coronet to its less perishable honours. This + Colonel Richard Talbot (afterwards Duke of Tirconnel) was sent to the + Tower for having challenged the Duke of Ormonde with duplicity of + conduct with respect to the Irish Catholics, whose agent Colonel + Talbot then was. Ormonde, believing the better part of valour to be + discretion, fought shy, instead of fighting Talbot; and when rallied + on this circumstance by the King, petulantly demanded, “Is it then + your Majesty’s pleasure that at this time of day I should put off my + doublet to fight duels with Dick Talbot?” + +Footnote 28: + + Vous ne me parlez pas de Madame de Kildare, + I never saw personne avoir meilleure air. + +Footnote 29: + + His mother, the beautiful Lady Maria Butler, was daughter to the Duke + of Ormonde. + +Footnote 30: + + It is farther particularly notable that James, the friend and + correspondent of Pope Clement VIII. and the special protector of the + Irish Catholics, first established in Ireland a Protestant ascendancy + in parliament, in obedience to the advice of the Lord Deputy + Chichester. With the inconsistency which ever accompanies a want of + principle, he occasionally amused himself at the expense of the very + people he affected to favour. When Chichester made King James a + present of a beautiful horse, his Majesty asked him if it were an + Irish horse: on being answered in the affirmative, the King swore his + favourite oath, “Then it must be a Papist,” for he verily believed + that all things produced in Ireland were Papists, even the very + animals themselves. + +Footnote 31: + + None benefited more largely by these “plots of rebellion” than the + house of Ormonde. “His Grace (says Lord Anglesey in his letter to the + Earl of Castlehaven) his Grace (the Duke of Ormonde) and his family, + by the forfeiture and punishment of the Irish, were the greatest + gainers in the kingdom, and had added to their inheritance vast scopes + of land, and a revenue three times greater than his paternal estate, + as it was before the Rebellion, and most of his increase was out of + their estates who adhered to the peace of 1648, or served under His + Majesty’s ensigns abroad.” In the anonymous and curious pamphlet “The + Unkind Deserter,” it is asserted that the Ormonde estate was but + 7000_l._ per annum before the civil wars in Ireland, and that in 1674 + it was close upon 100,000_l._ a year; which increase arose from the + King’s grants to him “of other men’s estates,” &c. &c. &c. The history + of the last Rebellion in 1798, and of the Union, would furnish many + anecdotes of a similar increase of the wealth of Irish families; not + indeed by forfeitures, (for the mode had passed,) but by intriguing + and bullying the government out of every place at its disposal, from a + mitre to a cornetcy of dragoons,--by the wholesale and retail sale of + the country: (a vote upon a single stage of a question has been hired, + like a job-carriage, by the night;) by corrupt dabbling in every + species of public work; in short, by every disgraceful practice of the + fraudulent tradesman, the scheming adventurer, and the sturdy + mendicant. The philosopher Kirwan was wont to quote a calculation he + had made, that the money spent on carrying the Union, would have built + a bridge from Howth to Holyhead. + +Footnote 32: + + In James the Second’s reign some of the measures were calculated to be + of the greatest service to Ireland, and emanated from a wise and + discreet minister, formerly attached to the Protestant interest, the + second Earl of Clarendon. His instructions announced the intentions of + the legislature, or at least of the King, to introduce Catholics into + the corporations, and invest them with magistracies and judicial + offices; and he gave his opinion in favour of the legality of the + measure, though contrary to an Act of Elizabeth. But the greatest evil + which can occur to a reformation, is to have it undertaken by men of + small capacity; as their best intentions are ever marred by their + petulance and dullness. The folly with which James hurried on a + change, and the injudiciousness of some of the proposed measures, + caused his own ruin, and that of the unhappy country he made the + principal scene of his egregious weakness and incapacity. + +Footnote 33: + + The Irish army under Tirconnel and Sarsfield made a most vigorous + resistance against a superior and well-disciplined force; and + Limerick, the last hold, was surrendered upon terms from which it + appears that none more esteemed their valour and fidelity than King + William himself. + +Footnote 34: + + When James, after his flight from the battle of the Boyne, arrived in + Dublin, he had the ingratitude and ungraciousness to reflect upon the + cowardice of the Irish. He reached the Castle late at night, and was + met at its gates by the Lady Lieutenant, the beautiful Duchess of + Tirconnel, “La belle Jennings” of Grammont’s Memoirs. In return for + the sympathizing respect which marked her reception, the King is said + to have sarcastically complimented her upon the “alertness of her + husband’s countrymen.” The high-spirited beauty replied, “In that, + however, your Majesty has had the advantage of them all.” The King, in + fact, was among the first to arrive in the capital with the news of + his own defeat. + +Footnote 35: + + They were estimated at the annual sum of two hundred and eleven + thousand six hundred pounds. + +Footnote 36: + + Letter to Sir H. Langrish. + +Footnote 37: + + Of this intolerance William stands in a great measure acquitted. His + known liberality subjected him to the suspicions of the party who + forged the penal statutes for Ireland, and who accused him of + infidelity, because he was unwilling to become a persecutor. When left + to act for himself, he exhibited a wisdom, wanting in the measures of + those to whom he was occasionally obliged to submit. In his + instructions to the commissioners in Scotland, dated 1689, he says + expressly, “You are to pass an act establishing that church government + which is most agreeable to the inclinations of the people.” + +Footnote 38: + + To favour the English manufacturer, the exportation of the staple + commodity and manufacture of Ireland (wool) was prohibited on pain of + confiscation, imprisonment, and transportation!! It would be difficult + to say whether the infamy or the absurdity of such legislation is the + greatest; and indignation at the avarice of the lawgivers, is so + largely mixed with contempt for their blind ignorance, that the pen + pauses in its vituperation of measures which were so obviously their + own punishment. Be it however remarked “_en passant_,” that the + framers of these laws were the aristocracy of England, the most + educated and moral people then in existence; a striking proof of the + perfect inadequacy of abstract principles of right and wrong to the + good government of conduct. Force, and force alone, too generally + makes right, in opinion, as well as in fact; and where the power to + abuse exists, the will to injure and the sophistry to justify the + injury, will never long be wanting. + +Footnote 39: + + “Have they any wit in their compositions? (says Spenser in speaking of + the poetry of the Irish in his day.) Yea, truly, I have caused divers + of them to be translated unto me, that I might understand them; and + surely they savoured of sweet wit and good invention, sprinkled with + some pretty flowers of their natural device, which gave good grace and + comeliness to them.” + +Footnote 40: + + “Oh wretched condition of our loved compatriots, the remains of a once + happy people, steeped in blood and drenched in slaughter! Vain is your + struggle for liberty, hapless crew of a bark long tempest-tossed, and + now cast away forever. What! are we not wrecked on our own shores, and + prisoners to the Saxons? Is not the sentence passed and our excision + foredoomed? How are ye fallen from the ancient glories of your native + land! Power degraded into weakness, beauty to deformity, freedom into + slavery, and the song of triumph into elegies of despair. Nial, of the + nine hostages, look not down upon us, lest thou blush for thy captive + Gadhelians. Conn, of the hundred battles, sleep in thy grass-grown + tomb, nor upbraid our defeats with thy victories.”--_Oran_ (or song) + _of Ognive, the family bard of the last of the O’Neils._ + +Footnote 41: + + Boyle, Berkeley, King, Dodwell, Leslie, Toland, Clayton, (Bishop of + Clogher,) Molyneux, (the friend of Locke the philosopher and champion + of Irish independence,) Helsham, Robinson, Macbride, Sullivan, + Hutchinson, Abernethy, Harris, Keating, Leland, Kirwan, Young, (Bishop + of Clonfert,) &c. &c. + +Footnote 42: + + Even so far back as the reign of James the First, Ireland began to + furnish her quota to the English drama. But from the middle of the + seventeenth century to something more than the middle of the + eighteenth, she produced almost all the best dramatic writers on the + British stage: Congreve, Howard, Southerne, Steele, Farquhar, + Phillips, Kelly, Jones, Orrery, (Earl of,) Tate, Concanen, Dobbs, + Bickerstaff, Brook, Centlivre, Griffiths, Jephson, Murphy, Macklin, + O’Hara, West, Goldsmith, Sheridan, &c. &c. And among the actors, + Wilks, Quin, Sheridan, Barry, Mossop, Macklin, Havard, O’Brien, Brown, + Woffington, Clive, Fitzhenry, &c. + +Footnote 43: + + Denham, Parnell, Swift, Sterne, Burke, Goldsmith, the Sheridans; to + whom may be added Molesworth, Millar, Wood, Webb, Pilkington, Johnson + (Chrysal), &c. &c. Even the women no longer deemed it the exclusive + purpose of their being + + “To suckle fools and chronicle small-beer;” + + and the elegant and witty productions of Mesdames Millar, Pilkington, + Centlivre, Grierson, Griffiths, Sheridan, Barker, Brook, contributed + to the general stock of national literature. + +Footnote 44: + + Jervas, (Pope’s Raphael,) Bindon, Roberts the landscape-painter, + Barrett, &c. + +Footnote 45: + + Miss Brook, the elegant translator and composer of the “Relics of + Ancient Irish Poetry.” + +Footnote 46: + + The Lord Mayo, of the early part of the eighteenth century, here + alluded to, was a model of the genuine Irish resident nobleman, living + in his rural palace, surrounded by his family, his bards, and + musicians. One of these, “his retainer,” David Murphy, composed an + Irish Ode of some celebrity, called “Tiagherna Mhaigho,” the “Lord of + Mayo,” which another of his retainers, O’Keeneghan, set to music. This + Carolan was wont to play at night in the hall of the Burkes, on his + harp. It happened that during Carolan’s last visit to Lord Mayo, + Geminiani arrived from Italy by special invitation from the amateur + Earl; and his Italian music completely usurped the attention of the + Ladies Susan and Bridget Burke, of whose praise Carolan was especially + jealous, and he frankly complained to his noble host of this neglect. + Lord Mayo, rallying the bard on his feelings, concluded by telling + him, that when he should produce the same music as Geminiani, he would + meet with the same attention. On this Carolan proposed a wager, that + he on his harp would follow the Italian in any piece of his + composition, but that Geminiani should not follow him through an Irish + planxty: the wager was accepted by the Italian, and won by the Irish + bard. + +Footnote 47: + + The O’Connors of Ballingar, the favourite residence of Carolan. + +Footnote 48: + + “In the year 1740, the sublime genius of Handel roused our feelings + from the lethargy into which they had fallen.”--_Memoirs of the Irish + Bards._ + + Banished from London by the intrigues of a party, Handel[49] fled to + Ireland, where, with his friend Dubourg, the violin of his age, he was + received with rapture. His first public exhibition in Dublin was the + Messiah, which he performed for the benefit of the city prisons. + Whoever had the happiness of knowing the late Richard Kirwan, the + Irish philosopher, may judge of the enthusiasm of the travelled Irish + gentlemen for Italian music, and the vogue which Piccini obtained + through their means. + +Footnote 49: + + Pope alludes to this banishment of Handel in his Dunciad: + + “Strong in new arms, lo! Giant Handel stands + Like bold Briareus with his hundred hands,--&c. &c. &c. + Arrest him, Goddess, or you sleep no more: + She heard, and drove him to Hibernia’s shore.” + +Footnote 50: + + St. Bridget was accustomed to pray under the shade of an oak, a + circumstance which has given its name to an Irish county, Cil doire, + the cell of the oak (Kildare.) + +Footnote 51: + + “Concerts were the favourite amusement in the houses of the nobility + and gentry, and musical societies were formed in all the great + towns.”--_Memoirs of Irish Bards._ + +Footnote 52: + + The Philharmonic Society gave up its subscriptions towards building + the hospital in Townsend-street, 1753. + +Footnote 53: + + “Italian singers were invited over, and the fair dames of Ireland + learned to expire at an opera.”--_History of Irish Music._ + +Footnote 54: + + Barry, Sheridan, Mossop, Diggs, Daly, Crawford, and others of a more + modern date, were all gentlemen of family, and members of the Irish + University. They lived with their own class, and some of them went to + court. The intimacy of Sheridan with successive lords lieutenant is + recorded in the life of his celebrated wife, written and recently + published by their accomplished grand-daughter. + +Footnote 55: + + If a desire for luxuries and refinements is in all classes the natural + check to excessive population, and to the degradation of the species, + that check is wholly wanting in Ireland. Not only the peasant, but the + tradesman sees no attainable object of enjoyment in the possession of + a class just above himself in ease and comfort, which might stimulate + his ambition. The connecting link between the rich and the poor is + wanting; for middlemen are no refiners of manners. As a familiar + illustration, let the reader imagine that, except in towns of the + first class, few vegetables beyond a cabbage or a potatoe are to be + found in the market. There is absolutely no demand for such _luxuries_ + to repay the culture. + +Footnote 56: + + One of these rooms painted in fresco and highly decorated, remains, or + did remain a few years back, in Fishamble-street. + +Footnote 57: + + Marino, Frescati, Marli, Sanssouci, Tivoli, Bellevue, Maritimo, &c. + are curious monuments of the manners and feelings of the Irish + nobility of the eighteenth century. + +Footnote 58: + + Concerts were given in this room twice a week, for the benefit of the + Lying-in Hospital, to which it is an appendage. Previously to its + erection, these musical meetings were held for the same purpose in a + long room in Granby-row, where Castruci, the last pupil of Corelli, + performed.--See _Memoirs of Irish Bards_. + +Footnote 59: + + The refinement not to say dissipation, of this period was perhaps + precocious and disproportionate to the riches of the country; but this + circumstance, always perhaps inherent in a particular stage of + civilization, was in Ireland increased by peculiarities in the + distribution of national wealth, another fatal consequence of the + frequent forfeitures. Time, however, would have cured this evil, if + the tide of absenteeship had not again set in, and swept away all + improvement and prosperity from the land. + +Footnote 60: + + It has been said with great truth that “the politics of Molyneux long + continued to be no less revered by the Irish than the morality of + Confucius by the Chinese.” The burning of his excellent work, the + “Case of Ireland,” the prosecution of Swift’s “Drapier’s Letters,” and + the imprisonment of his spirited publisher, Faulkner, had the great + merit of bringing the doctrine of libel into public discussion, and of + first awakening the people of Ireland to the value of the liberty of + public speaking and writing, the most important of the many blessed + constitutional rights extorted from power at the Revolution. It is + pleasant to observe, that patriotism becomes an heir-loom, and to note + that the immediate descendant of William Molyneux, who inherits his + principles with his property and name, is a permanently resident Irish + gentleman! + +Footnote 61: + + John Ponsonby, Speaker of the House of Commons in 1756, under whom the + Irish patriots made a most successful stand on a constitutional + question of vital importance. The energy and firmness of the patriotic + Speaker, and of a majority of the members of the House of Commons, who + then (“Hear this, ye gods, and wonder how ye made them”) attended to + the business of their country, forms a brilliant feature in the + history of the times. + +Footnote 62: + + The friend of the celebrated Berkeley, a right good Irishman and + author of a “List of Absentees,” a class, to which he showed no + quarter. + +Footnote 63: + + Henry Boyle, the patriot of the Irish House of Commons in the early + part of the eighteenth century. + +Footnote 64: + + Connolly died Speaker of the House in 1730, lamented by all who loved + Ireland; Sir R. Walpole gave him the name of “King of the Irish + Commons,” from his astonishing influence over the Lower House. + +Footnote 65: + + Member for New Ross. On an important political question he rode post + to town sixty miles to be present at the debate, and arrived just in + time to give his vote. + +Footnote 66: + + Dolly Munroe, the reigning Irish beauty of Goldsmith’s day, to whom he + alludes in his Haunch of Venison: + + “’Twas a neck and a breast that might rival Munroe’s.” + +Footnote 67: + + See some of Right Hon. John Philpot Curran’s Verses preserved in his + Life by his son William Henry Curran--a work full of interest with + respect to matter, and full of beauty with respect to style. The + account given in its pages, of the convivial and intellectual meetings + of “the Monks of the Screw” at the Priory (Mr. Curran’s villa) forms a + brilliant but painful contrast to other orgies now celebrated in + Dublin, which alas! are neither social nor intellectual! + +Footnote 68: + + Lord Clare. + +Footnote 69: + + Dr. Franklin. + +Footnote 70: + + The penal laws had been multiplied and rigorously executed under + George the First. On the accession of George the Second, for the first + time since the Revolution, the unfortunate Catholics, who by a feeble + and foolish fiction of the law of the land, were “not supposed to + exist,” ventured to approach the throne by a public act of their body; + and they presented an address of congratulation at once dignified and + loyal. + +Footnote 71: + + Forbidding Catholics to bear arms either by sea or land. + +Footnote 72: + + When Lord Chesterfield arrived in Ireland, all the Catholic places of + worship were closed. A Mr. Fitzgerald saying mass in the obscure + garret of a condemned house, an immense crowd had assembled, and the + floor giving way, the officiating priest with many of his flock were + buried in the ruins, and the greater number were maimed or wounded. + Lord Chesterfield, horror-struck at the event, ordered that all the + chapels in the capital should be opened on St. Patrick’s day, and they + have never since been closed. + + A zealous Protestant thinking to pay his court to the Lord Lieutenant, + came to inform him that one of his coachmen was a Roman Catholic, and + went privately to mass. “Does he, indeed?” said his Lordship, “then I + shall take care that he never drives me there.”--_Chesterfield’s + Memoirs._ + + The Bishop of Waterford relates that the vice-treasurer, Mr. Gardiner, + a man of good character and considerable fortune, waited upon Lord + Chesterfield, one morning, and in a great fright told him that he was + assured upon good authority that the people in the province of + Connaught were actually rising; upon which the Viceroy looked at his + watch, and with great composure answered him, “It is nine o’clock, and + time for them to rise; I believe, therefore that your news is true.” + This system of alarm, be it observed, continues in all its vigour to + the present day; and the actual Viceroy has to withstand the falsehood + of the designing and the credulity of the nervous, full as much as any + of his predecessors. + +Footnote 73: + + In a contest for constitutional rights (1755), the Earl of Kildare + placed himself at the head of the liberal party, which was then + technically designated “the patriots:” and the agents of the Castle + and the Church faction having represented to the King that the Irish + House of Commons was bent on destroying the royal prerogative, for the + purpose of preparing his Majesty’s expulsion, the Earl, with “the + oulde bloode of the Geraldines” boiling in his veins, denied the + calumny, and composed and with his own hand presented a memorial to + the king, proving historically that the Irish were to a fault the + upholders of the royal prerogative, and lovers of kingly government. + For this spirited conduct, which recalls the opposition of the + Kildares of old to the ministers of Henry the Seventh and Eighth, he + received the glorious appellation of Father of his country. + +Footnote 74: + + The terrorism of former times having now yielded to a more salutary + system, the expression of public feeling took a variety of forms. It + was at this period that political toasts came into fashion, introduced + into social meetings through the convivial talents of a Mr. Carter, + son to the Master of the Rolls. His toast of “May all secretary + bashaws and lordly high-priests be kept to their proper tackle, the + sword and the bible,” became a charter sentiment at all public and + private dinners. The lordly high-priest was Archbishop Stone, and the + bashaw was Lord G. Sackville, who brought all the pedantry of the + schools to his official diplomacy, and added the superciliousness of + fashion to the hauteur of conscious supremacy. + +Footnote 75: + + The numbers of those who voted were 102 for, and 122 against the + measure. The tax proposed was two shillings in the pound upon rents + and profits of landed property in the hands of those who did not + reside in Ireland for six months in each year, from 1773 to 1775. + +Footnote 76: + + It is stated in the public prints that 350,000_l._ are, at this day, + taken annually from the county of Kilkenny alone. + +Footnote 77: + + Cead mille faltha. + +Footnote 78: + + It is worth citing, that Sir Cecil Wray, one of the most violent + opponents of the extension of Irish trade, observed at this time to + the House, “that the true grievances of Ireland were the Irish Pension + List, the Sinecure Offices, the Roman Catholic Disabilities, and the + Absentees.” + +Footnote 79: + + It was to the loyalty of the people of Ireland at this period, that + the Lord Lieutenant of the day alluded, when, in his speech from the + throne, he observed, “That the united and great military preparations + of the House of Bourbon seemed only to have roused the courage and + called forth the exertions of his Majesty’s brave and loyal subjects + of this kingdom of Ireland; and I have only to lament that the + exhausted state of the treasury has hitherto put it out of my power to + give those exertions the most extensive and constitutional operation, + by carrying the militia law into effect. + +Footnote 80: + + These half measures are, however, in the present state of affairs + almost inevitable.--A divided cabinet founded upon a divided state of + public opinion, opposes an insuperable barrier to a frank and honest + reform: and oscillations of principle and of practice must attend the + effort to manage factions so nicely balanced. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + + PROSPECTUS + OF + SIR JONAH BARRINGTON’s + HISTORIC ANECDOTES OF IRELAND + DURING HIS OWN TIMES, + WITH SECRET MEMOIRS OF THE UNION; + + +Illustrated by Delineations of the principal Characters connected with +those Transactions, curious Letters and Papers in fac simile; and +numerous Original Portraits, engraved by the elder HEATH. + + + To be completed in Ten Numbers, in Royal 4to. + Price 12s. 6d. each. + + + PRINTED FOR HENRY COLBURN, + NEW BURLINGTON STREET. + + +Unforeseen circumstances, over which the Author had no influence or +controul, had altogether checked the progress of this Work, suspended +the publication of its latter parts, and left them on the Publisher’s +shelves unadvertised and uncirculated. + +This temporary relinquishment had given rise to unfounded and injurious +reports of its suppression; an object which never was for one moment in +the contemplation of the Author, nor sought for, or even suggested, by +the Government of England. + +On the contrary--the lamentable and unimproving march of Ireland from +the period of the Union having fully proved the deceptious prospective +given to that fatal measure by its mistaken or corrupt supporters, and +exciting a novel interest and grave reflections of vital importance to +the British Empire, the Author had determined to seize upon the first +available opportunity of fulfilling his engagement to the friends and +patrons of the Work, by its completion. + +Those friends were not confined to one party. They were mingled in +all--they comprised several of the highest orders of society--many who +held, and some who still hold important stations in the Government of +both countries;--and the commencing parts of the Work having been +honoured by the approbation and encouragement of His present Majesty and +other Members of His Royal House, it was with deep regret the Author +found himself, from a succession of causes, for several years unable to +fulfil his intentions, and gratify his own laudable ambition, by +compiling into a compact Memoir, the most important Historic events of +Ireland. In many of those he was himself a not unimportant actor. He +possessed also the advantage of individual intimacy or acquaintance with +the most celebrated personages of all parties; without which, and the +fidelity of a contemporary and independent pen, the delineation of their +characters and the record of their conduct, if not lost for ever, would +have descended to posterity with imperfect details and an ambiguous +authenticity;--or have left a wide chasm in a highly interesting epocha +of British History. + +The fallacious measure of a Legislative Union,--the progress of which +from commencement to consummation the Author energetically resisted--has +proved by its inoperative or mischievous results, the justness of that +resistance. And he now, in common with many of the most distinguished of +its original supporters, deeply deplores its accomplishment. But +established by lapse of time--confirmed by passive assent--and +complicated with some beneficial, and many political and financial +arrangements, its tranquil reversal seems to have passed feasibility. +Yet--as an hereditary friend to British connexion--the Author hopes, by +the revival and completion of this History, to open wide the eyes of +Great Britain to the present dangers of Ireland--to draw aside the +curtain of ignorance and prejudice by which her history has been so long +obscured--to compare her once rising prosperity with her existing +miseries--to discover the occult causes of their continuance and the +false principles of her misrule--to display her sacrifices for +England--and to unmask her libellers in both countries. + +Developments such as these may rouse the Legislature to probe her wounds +to their depth--to employ her labour--to succour--to foster--and to rule +her on the broad principles of a steady and philanthropic policy--and to +relinquish for ever that system of coercive Government, which an +experience of many centuries has proved to be destructive of almost +every thing--except her crimes and her population. + +The British people should also learn that the absence of the ancient +Nobles and protecting Aristocracy of Ireland,--drawn away by the Union +from their demesnes and tenantry to the Seat of Legislation, and +replaced only by the griping hands and arbitrary sway of upstart +deputies,--increases in proportion with the miseries and turbulence of +the lower orders; and that the luxuriance of vegetation which clothes +that capable Island, has, through the same causes, become only a +harbinger of want, or the forbidden fruit of a famished peasantry. + +It should therefore be the object of every pen and of every tongue, to +render the Union as innoxious as its paralyzing nature can now admit of; +to recall the proprietors of the Irish soil to a sense of their own +security and their country’s welfare; and thereby strengthen the ties +which should bind the two nations together, in equality, prosperity, and +affection--on the firmness and durability of which _species_ of +connexion depends, not only the constitutional security of England +herself, but perhaps the political existence of both countries. + +Such is the Author’s view in the completion of this Work. The obstacles +to its progress are surmounted, and its publication is now in the hands +of those who will spare nothing to render it worthy of its object, and +ensure a lasting and beneficial record to the United Empire. + +It is fortunate for Ireland, and disastrous to her calumniators, that a +recent and great event has at once exposed the misrepresentations of her +enemies, and displayed a great source of her misfortunes. The visit of a +conciliating King to a distracted people rapidly disclosed their native +character, and produced a burst of unfeigned, unanimous, genuine +loyalty--never before experienced in such profusion by any Monarch from +his subjects. The equivocating language of diplomacy was rejected for +awhile. The King was a Patriot, and the People were loyal. For the first +time they were allowed to approach each other. Both were sincere--and +both were ardent. In a few days, the King became despotic in the +affections of the Nation, and his Ministers descended into a comparative +insignificance. When he arrived, he was respected as a British King--but +when he departed, he was adored as an Irish Monarch. He saw at once that +the existence of faction and discord was incompatible with the peace and +the prosperity of Ireland; and that she hung on Great Britain, as a +withering limb upon a healthful body--essential to its symmetry, but +useless to its functions and injurious to its Constitution. + +There was but one remedy--conciliation. His Majesty saw its efficacy and +commanded its adoption.--But his commands were disobeyed by the _Regal +Rebels_[81]--and Ireland is still seen withering and cankering--by the +obstinacy of intolerant faction, the irritation of local tyranny, and +the multiplying mischiefs resulting from disobedience to the benevolent +and wise commands of the only British King who ever yet set foot on the +Irish shore as a friend, and as a patriot. + +Footnote 81: + + Mr. Grattan’s definition of men, “Who make their loyalism a pretence + to perpetuate their supremacy,--and distract the peace of a Country + under colour of protecting it.” + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + + NEW BOOKS, + PUBLISHED BY HENRY COLBURN, + 8, NEW BURLINGTON-STREET, + (Removed from the Library in Conduit Street.) + + +1. MEMOIRS OF SAMUEL PEPYS, Esq. F.R.S. Secretary to the Admiralty in +the Reigns of Charles II. and James II. comprising his Diary, deciphered +from the Original Short-hand MSS. in the Pepysian Library, and a +Selection from his “Private Correspondence.” Edited by RICHARD LORD +BRAYBROOKE. In 2 vols. royal 4to. printed uniformly with Evelyn’s +Memoirs, and embellished with Portraits and other Engravings by the +first Artists. + +The Diary commences immediately before the Restoration, when Mr. Pepys +sailed with the Earl of Sandwich to bring over the King from Breda, and +is continued almost uninterruptedly for ten years, containing much +curious matter not to be found in any other history of that eventful +period. Independently of the political transactions of the period, the +pages abound with private anecdotes of Charles II. and his Court; and +Mr. Pepys’ peculiar habits of observation led him generally to record +the most curious characteristics of the times in which he lived. + +2. The MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS of JOHN EVELYN, Esq. the celebrated Author +of “Sylva,” or, a Discourse of Forest Trees, Memoirs, &c. Now first +collected and edited, with Notes. Printed uniformly with Evelyn’s +Memoirs, in 1 vol. royal 4to. and embellished with Engravings, price 3l. +10s. boards. + +3. SYLVA: or, a DISCOURSE of FOREST TREES, and the Propagation of +Timber, to which is added the “Terra.” By JOHN EVELYN, Esq. A new +Edition, with Notes by the late A. HUNTER, Esq. F.R.S. &c., in 2 vols. +4to. embellished with numerous plates, price 5l. 5s. boards. + +4. MEMOIRS of the COUNTESS DE GENLIS. Illustrative of the History of the +Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Written by Herself. Editions in +French and English. + +⁂ This work will be found to abound in Anecdotes of the most Eminent +Literary and Political Characters, who figured at the latter end of the +Eighteenth, and the commencement of the Nineteenth Centuries. + +5. TREMAINE; or, the MAN of REFINEMENT; a New and revised Edition. 3 +vols. post 8vo. 31s. 6d. + +6. A SECOND SERIES OF SAYINGS AND DOINGS; or, SKETCHES FROM LIFE. Second +Edition. 3 vols. post 8vo. 31s. 6d. + +“Full of wise saws and modern instances.”--SHAKESPEARE. + +7. A SECOND SERIES of HIGHWAYS and BY-WAYS, or TALES of the ROAD-SIDE; +picked up in the French Provinces by a Walking Gentleman. Containing +Caribert the Bear Hunter; the Priest and the Garde du Corps; and the +Vouee au Blanc, or Maid devoted to the Virgin. A New Edition, in 3 vols. +post. 8vo. 30s. + +“I hate the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say, ’Tis all +barren.”--STERNE. + +8. DON ESTEBAN; or, MEMOIRS of a SPANIARD. Written by Himself. In 3 +vols. post 8vo. 27s. + +This Work forms an excellent supplement and companion to the admirable +Letters of Don Leucadio Doblado. In giving a detailed history of his +life, Don Esteban professes to present a faithful picture of the +manners, habits, and customs of his countrymen. “He takes the reader +into the interior of their private houses; introduces him to their +Tertulias, Balls, Assemblies, and public places; leads him to the +Romerias, Convents, Nunneries, and Palaces; and gives him an insight +into the national private character of the Spaniards.--The work, +besides, contains an account of the state of the Spanish Court under +Ferdinand, which is worthy of Gil Blas, and puts us in mind of that +Novel.”--(GLOBE AND TRAVELLER.) + +9. GAIETIES and GRAVITIES. A Series of Essays, Comic Tales, and Fugitive +Vagaries. Now first collected. BY ONE OF THE AUTHORS OF THE REJECTED +ADDRESSES. 3 vols. post 8vo. 27s. + +10. REMINISCENCES OF MICHAEL KELLY, of the King’s Theatre, and Theatre +Royal Drury Lane; Abroad and at Home: including a period of nearly Half +a Century: with original Anecdotes of many distinguished Persons, +Political, Literary, and Musical. Dedicated, by permission, to His +Majesty. In 2 vols. 8vo. with a portrait. + +11. MEMOIRS of the COURT of FRANCE, during the Residence (above thirty +years) of the MARQUIS DE DANGEAU, Now first translated from the French, +with Historical and Critical Notes. In 2 vols. 8vo. 28s. + +This very curious Work will be found to contain a great number of Secret +Anecdotes and Facts, hitherto unknown, respecting the Courts of France +and England. + +12. A NEW FRENCH EDITION of the MEMOIRES de DANGEAU, with a Supplement +by M. LE MONTEY, containing curious Autograph Notes, by an Anonymous +Courtier of the same period. In 3 vols. 8vo. price 28s. + +13. CAPTAIN C.S. COCHRANE’S JOURNAL of a RESIDENCE and TRAVELS IN +COLOMBIA, during the years 1823 and 1824. In 2 vols 8vo. with a Map, and +coloured Plates, 30s. + +14. MEMOIRS and RECOLLECTIONS of COUNT SEGUR, Ambassador from France to +the Courts of Russia and Prussia. 8vo. English, 12s.; French 10s. 6d. + +The Count de Segur was connected by ties of friendship or consanguinity +with all the remarkable personages of the Courts of Louis XV. and XVI. +and was engaged in the intercourse of Affairs and Society with Catharine +II., Frederic the Great, Potemkin, Joseph II., Gustavus III., +Washington, Kosciusko, La Fayette, Mirabeau, and Napoleon, as well as +with the Chiefs of the Aristocratical and Democratical Parties, and the +most illustrious Writers of the times, of whom he records the most +interesting particulars. + +15. THE SPIRIT of the AGE; or, CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 8vo. 12s. + +Contents.--Mr. Jeffery, Mr. Gifford, Mr. Southey, Sir Walter Scott, Lord +Byron, Mr. Campbell, Mr. Thomas Moore, Mr. William Godwin, Mr. Jeremy +Bentham, Mr. Coleridge, Mr. Leigh Hunt, Mr. Wordsworth, Sir James +Mackintosh, Mr. Brougham, Sir F. Burdett, Rev. E. Irving, Lord Eldon, +Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Malthus, Mr. Crabbe, the late Mr. Horne Tooke, &c, +&c, + +16. THE LAST DAYS of NAPOLEON. By Dr. ANTOMMARCHI. In French and +English, in 2 vols. 8vo. 21s. + +17. LETTERS FROM SPAIN. By Don LEUCADIO DOBLADO. Second Edition, +revised. In 1 vol. 8vo. + +“This is an invaluable work.”--MORNING CHRONICLE. + +18. COUNT LAS CASES’ JOURNAL of the PRIVATE LIFE and CONVERSATIONS of +the late EMPEROR NAPOLEON: a new edition, illustrated with Portraits of +Napoleon and Las Cases; a View of the House in which Napoleon was born +at Ajaccio in Corsica; four coloured views of St. Helena, taken on the +spot; besides Maps, Plans, &c. complete in 4 handsome volumes, 8vo. +Price 2l. 12s. in French or English. + +As this work is universally acknowledged to form the most complete +epitome of the Life, Character, and Opinions of this extraordinary man, +it is presumed that this new edition, compressed into 4 vols. and +published at a very moderate price, will be extremely acceptable to the +public, and that there are few who will not be desirous of possessing +it. + +19. THE ILLUSTRATIONS to the JOURNAL of COUNT LAS CASES, separately, to +complete the First Edition, price 5s. comprising a Portrait of Napoleon, +engraved by Cooper after the original well-known Painting by DAVID, a +Portrait of Count Las Cases, and four coloured Views of St. Helena, from +Drawings taken on the spot by eminent artists. + +20. THE FOURTH and LAST LIVRAISON of NAPOLEON’S HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. +Dictated at Saint Helena, to Counts Montholon, Bertrand, Gourgaud, &c, +and published from the original manuscripts. Corrected by Himself. 8vo. +14s. French, 12s. + +This important work is now completed in 7 vols. comprising four of +Memoirs, and three of Historical Miscellanies, and the public are +advised to complete their sets without delay. + +“This work bears impressed on it the stamp of the gigantic mind from +which it emanated. It is wholly free from the usual vices of French +composition; depth, originality, comprehensiveness, and great energy of +expression are its prominent characteristics. A profound and intuitive +sagacity, a clear and unerring insight into human character, mental +resources almost preternatural, and an incredible knowledge of the +minutest details of every subject discussed, are exhibited in almost +every page: nothing escapes the observation, or transcends the capacity, +of the Imperial Annalist. He combines the judgment and penetration of +Tacitus with the prodigious versatility of Cæsar, and the more enlarged +views of modern philosophy and science; policy, religion, war, civil +administration, statistics, art, even literature,--in short, whatever he +touches on,--seems to unfold its most recondite principles to his view, +and to be fully comprehended and appreciated. To the future historian +the value of the “Historical Miscellanies” is incalculable: with regard +to the Memoirs themselves, no history can ever supersede +them.”--EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. + +“On these sheets are traced events that will never be forgotten, +portraits that will decide the judgment of posterity. It is the book of +life or death to many whose names are recorded in it.”--OPINION OF LAS +CASES IN HIS JOURNAL. + +21. JOURNAL of a RESIDENCE in ASHANTEE. By JOSEPH DUPUIS, Esq. late his +Britannic Majesty’s Envoy and Consul for that Kingdom, comprising Notes +and Researches relative to the Gold Coast and the Interior of Western +Africa, chiefly from Arabic MSS. and Information communicated by the +Moslems of Guinea. To which is prefixed an Account of the causes of the +present War. In 1 vol. 4to. with a map and 15 plates, 2l. 12s. 6d. +boards. + +22. THE PRIVATE JOURNAL of MADAME CAMPAN’s CONVERSATIONS; comprising +Original Anecdotes of the French Court; also Selections from her +Correspondence, her Thoughts on Education, &c. 8vo. 14s. French, 12s. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + + Transcriber’s Notes + + +This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text. New original cover +art included with this ebook is granted to the public domain. + +The spelling and diacriticals used in non-English words and phrases has +not been modernised or corrected. + +This book as printed included multiple complex footnotes, including +footnotes to footnotes. All notes have been converted to endnotes for +this ebook edition. The following changes and corrections have been +made: + + • p. 7: Added period after phrase “the recorded absenteeism of two + thousand years.” + • p. 19: Replaced “kings” with “king’s” in phrase “Lady Elizabeth Grey, + the king’s own kinswoman.” + • p. 20: Replaced opening with closing quotation mark after phrase + “having curried acquaintance and friendship with mere Irish.” + • p. 23: Replaced “of of” with “of” in phrase “England, in the face of + her own savage laws.” + • p. 27: Added period after phrase “for the Earl of Kildare to feare.” + • p. 28: Replaced apparent mid-dot with period after phrase “that you + tracke them out at pleasure.” + • p. 35: Added opening double quotation mark to indicate continuation + of quotation before paragraph beginning “One night, when the + lieutenant and he, for disport, were playing at _slide-groat_.” + • p. 35: Added opening single quotation mark before phrase “there is + some mad game in that scralle, but, fall how it will, this throw is + for a huddle.” + • p. 45: Added closing double quotation mark after phrase “gossipry and + alliance.” + • p. 45 note 16: Replaced “to to” with “to” in phrase “and granted to + those on whose counsel they had surrendered.” + • p. 103 note 53: Added period after phrase “the fair dames of Ireland + learned to expire at an opera.” + • p. 133: Replaced closing single quotation mark with closing double + quotation mark after phrase “the English interest.” + • Booklist item 14: Added commas after “Joseph II.” and “Gustavus III.” + in list. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78814 *** |