The Land War In Ireland (1870) by James Godkin

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THE LAND-WAR IN IRELAND

A HISTORY FOR THE TIMES

BY JAMES GODKIN

AUTHOR OF 'IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES'
LATE IRISH CORRESPONDENT OF 'THE TIMES'

LONDON MACMILLAN AND CO. 1870

LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND
PARLIAMENT STREET

PREFACE.

It would be difficult to name any subject so much discussed during the
last half century as 'the condition of Ireland.' There was an endless
diversity of opinion; but in one thing all writers and speakers
agreed: the condition was morbid. Ireland was always sick, always
under medical treatment, always subject to enquiries as to the nature
of her maladies, and the remedies likely to effect a cure. The royal
commissions and parliamentary committees that sat upon her case were
innumerable, and their reports would fill a library. Still the nature
of the disease, or the complication of diseases, was a mystery. Sundry
'boons' were prescribed, by way of experiment; but, though recommended
as perfect cures, they did the patient no good. She was either very
low and weak, or so dangerously strong and violent that she had to be
put under restraint. Whenever this crisis arrived, she arrested the
special attention of the state doctors. Consultations were held, and
it was solemnly determined that something should be done. Another
effort should be made to discover the _fons malorum_, and dry it up if
possible.

A diseased nation, subject to paroxysms of insanity, and requiring
30,000 keepers, was a dangerous neighbour, as well as a serious
financial burden. Yet many contended that all such attempts were
useless. It was like trying different kinds of soap to whiten the skin
of a negro. The patient was incurable. Her ailment was nothing but
natural perversity, aggravated by religious delusions; and the root
of her disorder could never be known till she was subjected to a _post
mortem_ examination, for which it was hoped emigration, and the help
of improving landlords, would soon afford an opportunity. In the
meantime, the strait waistcoat must be put on, to keep the patient
from doing mischief.

But at length a great physician arose, who declared that this state of
things should not continue; the honour, if not the safety, of
England demanded that the treatment should be reversed. Mr. Gladstone
understands the case of Ireland, and he has courage to apply the
proper remedies. Yet the British public do not understand it so well;
and he will need all the force of public opinion to sustain him and
his cabinet in the work of national regeneration which they have
undertaken. It is not enough for a good physician to examine the
symptoms of his patient. He must have a full and faithful history
of the case. He must know how the disease originated, and how it
was treated. If injuries were inflicted, he must know under what
circumstances, how they affected the nervous system, and whether there
may not be surrounding influences which prevent the restoration of
health, or some nuisance that poisons the atmosphere.

Such a history of the case of Ireland the author has endeavoured
to give in the following pages. It it is no perfunctory service. He
resolved to do it years ago, when he finished his work on the Irish
Church Establishment, and it has been delayed only in consequence of
illness and other engagements. He does not boast of any extraordinary
qualifications for the work. But he claims the advantage of having
studied the subject long and earnestly, as one in which he has been
interested from his youth. He has written the history of the country
more or less fully three times. During his thirty years' connexion
with the press, it has been his duty to examine and discuss everything
that appeared before the public upon Irish questions, and it has
always been his habit to bring the light of history to bear upon the
topics of the day. Twenty years ago he was an active member of the
Irish Tenant League, which held great county meetings in most parts of
the island; and was enthusiastically supported by the tenant farmers,
adopting resolutions and petitions on the land question almost
identical with those passed by similar meetings at the present time.
Then Mr. Sharman Crawford was the only landlord who joined in the
movement; now many of the largest proprietors take their stand on the
tenant-right platform. And after a generation of sectarian division
and religious dissension in Ulster, stimulated by the landed gentry,
for political purposes, the Catholic priests and the Presbyterian
clergy have again united to advocate the demands of the people for the
legal protection of their industry and their property.

There is scarcely a county in Ireland which the author of this
volume has not traversed more than once, having always an eye to the
condition of the population, their mode of living, and the
relations of the different classes. During the past year, as special
commissioner of the _Irish Times_, he went through the greater part of
Ulster, and portions of the south, in order to ascertain the feelings
of the farmers and the working classes, on the great question which is
about to engage the attention of Parliament.

The result of his historical studies and personal enquiries is
this:--All the maladies of Ireland, which perplex statesmen and
economists, have arisen from injuries inflicted by England in the wars
which she waged to get possession of the Irish land. Ireland has been
irreconcilable, not because she was conquered by England, not
even because she was persecuted, but because she was robbed of her
inheritance. If England had done everything she has done against the
Irish nation, omitting the _confiscations_, the past would have been
forgotten and condoned long ago, and the two nations would have been
one people. Even the religious wars resolve themselves into efforts to
retain the land, or to recover the forfeited estates. And the banished
chiefs never could have rallied the nation to arms, as they so often
did against overwhelming odds, if the people had not been involved in
the ruin of their lords. All that is really important in the history
of the country for the last three centuries is, the fighting of the
two nations for the possession of the soil. The Reformation was
in reality nothing but a special form of the land war. The oath of
supremacy was simply a lever for evicting the owners of the land. The
process was simple. The king demanded spiritual allegiance; refusal
was high treason; the punishment of high treason was forfeiture of
estates, with death or banishment to the recusants. Any other law they
might have obeyed, and retained their inheritance. This law fixed
its iron grapples in the conscience, and made obedience impossible,
without a degree of baseness that rendered life intolerable.
Hence Protestantism was detested, not so much as a religion, as an
instrument of spoliation.

The agrarian wars were kept up from generation to generation, Ireland
always making desperate efforts to get back her inheritance, but
always crushed to the earth, a victim of famine and the sword, by the
power of England.

The history of these wars, then, is the history of the case of the
Irish patient. Its main facts are embodied in the general history of
the country. But they have recently been brought out more distinctly
by authors who have devoted years to the examination of the original
state papers, in which the actors themselves described their exploits
and recorded their motives and feelings with startling frankness. When
a task of this kind has been performed by a capable and conscientious
historian, it would be a work of supererogation for another enquirer
to undergo the wearisome toil, even if he could. I have, therefore,
for the purpose of my argument, freely availed myself of the materials
given to the public by Mr. Froude, the Rev. C.P. Meehan, and Mr.
Prendergast, not, however, without asking their permission, which was
in each case most readily and kindly granted.

The ancient state of Ireland, and especially of Ulster, is so little
known in England, that I was glad to have the facts vouched for by
so high an authority as Mr. Froude, and a writer so full of the
instinctive pride of the dominant nation; the more so as I have often
been obliged to dissent from his views, and to appeal against his
judgments. Beguiled by the beauty of his descriptions, I am afraid I
have drawn too largely on his pages, in proving and illustrating
my case; but I feel confident that no one will read these extracts
without more eagerly desiring to possess the volumes of his great work
from which they are taken.

I have similar acknowledgments to make to Father Meehan and Mr.
Prendergast, both of whom are preparing new editions of their most
valuable works. The royal charters, and other documents connected
with the Plantation of Ulster, are printed in the 'Concise View of the
Irish Society,' compiled from their records, and published by their
authority in 1832. Whenever I have been indebted to other writers,
I have acknowledged my obligation in the course of the work. In
preparing it, I have had but one object constantly in view: to present
to the public a careful collection and an impartial statement of facts
on the state of Ireland, for the right government of which the British
people are now more than ever responsible. I shall be thankful if my
labours should contribute in any measure, however humble, to the new
conquest of Ireland 'by justice' of which Mr. Bright has spoken.
His language is suggestive. It is late (happily not 'too late') to
commence the reign of justice. But the nation is not to be despised
which requires nothing more than _that_ to win its heart, while its
spirit could not be conquered by centuries of injustice. Nor should it
be forgotten by the people of England that some atonement is due for
past wrongs, not the least of which is the vilification and distrust
from which the Irish people have suffered so much. 'The spirit of a
man may sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?'
Some manifestation of Christian magnanimity just now would greatly
help the work of national reconciliation. The time is favourable. The
Government enjoys the prestige of an unparalleled success. The only
Prime Minister that ever dared to do full justice to Ireland, is the
most powerful that England has had for nearly a century. He has in
his Cabinet the only Chief Secretary of Ireland that ever thoroughly
sympathised with the nation, not excepting Lord Morpeth; the great
tribune of the English people, who has been one of the most eloquent
advocates of Ireland; an Ex-Viceroy who has pronounced it felony
for the Irish landlords to avail themselves of their legal rights,
although he put down a rebellion which that felony mainly provoked;
another Ex-Governor, who was one of the most earnest and conscientious
that ever filled the viceregal throne, and who returned to Parliament
to be one of the ablest champions of the country he had ruled so well;
not to mention other members of commanding ability, who are solemnly
pledged to the policy of justice. In these facts there is great
promise. He understands little of 'the signs of the times,' who does
not see the dangers that hang on the non-fulfilment of this promise.

J.G.

LONDON: _January 20_, 1870.

CONTENTS.

I. INTRODUCTION

II. THE RULE OF THE O'NEILLS

III. SHANE O'NEILL, SOVEREIGN OF ULSTER

IV. EXTERMINATING WARS

V. AN IRISH CRUSADE

VI. THE LAST OF THE IRISH PRINCES

VII. GOVERNMENT APPEALS TO THE PEOPLE

VIII. THE CASE OF THE FUGITIVE EARLS

IX. THE CONFISCATION OF ULSTER

X. THE PLANTATION OF ULSTER

XI. THE REBELLION OF 1641

XII. THE PURITAN PLANTATION

XIII. THE PENAL CODE. A NEW SYSTEM OF LAND WAR

XIV. ULSTER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

XV. POVERTY AND COERCION

XVI. THE FAMINE

XVII. TENANT-RIGHT IN ULSTER

XVIII. TENANT-RIGHT IN DOWN

XIX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ANTRIM

XX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ARMAGH

XXI. FAKNEY--MR. TRENCH'S 'REALITIES'

XXII. BELFAST AND PERPETUITY

XXIII. LEASE-BREAKING--GEASHILL

XXIV. THE LAND SYSTEM AND THE WORKING CLASSES

XXV. CONCLUSION--AN APPEAL TO ENGLISHMEN

XVIII. TENANT-RIGHT IN DOWN 313

XIX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ANTRIM 328

XX. TENANT-RIGHT IN ARMAGH 346

XXI. FAKNEY--MR. TRENCH'S 'REALITIES' 356

XXII. BELFAST AND PERPETUITY 381

XXIII. LEASE-BREAKING--GEASHILL 387

XXIV. THE LAND SYSTEM AND THE WORKING CLASSES 401

XXV. CONCLUSION--AN APPEAL TO ENGLISHMEN 424

THE LAND-WAR IN IRELAND.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

As the hour approaches when the legislature must deal with the Irish
Land question, and settle it, like the Irish Church question, once
for all, attempts are redoubled to frighten the public with
the difficulties of the task. The alarmists conjure up gigantic
apparitions more formidable than those which encountered Bunyan's
Pilgrim. Monstrous figures frown along the gloomy avenue that, leads
up to the Egyptian temple in which the divinity, PROPERTY, dwells in
mysterious darkness. To enter the sanctuary, we are solemnly
assured, requires all the cardinal virtues in their highest state of
development--the firmest faith, the most vivid hope, and the charity
that never faileth. But this is not the only country that has had a
land question to settle. Almost every nation in Europe has done for
itself what England is now palled upon to do for Ireland. In fact,
it is a necessary process in the transition from feudalism to
constitutional self-government. Feudalism gave the land to a few whom
it made princes and lords, having forcibly taken it from the many,
whom it made subjects and serfs. The land is the natural basis of
society. The Normans made it the artificial basis of a class. Society
in nearly every other country has reverted back to its original
foundations, and so remains firm and strong without dangerous rents or
fissures. No doubt, the operation is difficult and critical. But what
has been done once may be done again; and as it was England that kept
Irish society so long rocking on its smaller end, it is her duty
now to lend all her strength to help to seat it on its own broad
foundations. Giving up the Viceroy's dreams that the glorious mission
of Ireland was to be a kitchen garden, a dairy, a larder for England,
we must come frankly to the conclusion that the national life of the
Irish people, without distinction of creed or party, increases
in vigour with their intelligence, and is now invincible. Let the
imperial legislature put an end for ever to such an unnatural state of
things--thus only can they secure the harmonious working and cordial
Union of the two nations united together in one State--thus only can
they insure for the landlords themselves all the power and all
the influence that can be retained by them in consistency with the
industrial rights and political freedom of the cultivators of the
soil. These now complain of their abject dependence, and hopeless
bondage, under grinding injustice. They are alleged to be full of
discontent, which must grow with the intelligence and manhood of the
people who writhe under the system. Their advocates affirm that their
discontent must increase in volume and angry force every year, and
that, owing to the connection of Ireland with the United States,
it may at any time be suddenly swollen with the fury of a mountain
torrent, deeply discoloured by a Republican element.

It must be granted, I fear, that the Celts of Ireland feel pretty much
as the Britons felt under the ascendency of the Saxons, and as the
Saxons in their turn felt under the ascendency of the Normans. In
the estimation of the Christian Britons, their Saxon conquerors,
even after the conversion of the latter, were 'an accursed race, the
children of robbers and murderers, possessing the fruits of their
fathers' crimes.' 'With them,' says Dr. Lingard, 'the Saxon was no
better than a pagan bearing the name of a Christian. They refused to
return his salutation, to join in prayer with him in the church, to
sit with him at the same table, to abide with him under the same roof.
The remnant of his meals and the food over which he had made the sign
of the cross they threw to their dogs or swine; the cup out of
which he had drunk they scoured with sand, as if it had contracted
defilement from his lips.'

It is not the Celtic memory only that is tenacious of national wrong.
The Saxon was doomed to drink to the dregs the same bitter cup which
he administered so unmercifully to the Briton. His Teutonic blood
saved him from no humiliation or insult. The Normans seized all the
lands, all the castles, all the pleasant mansions, all the churches
and monasteries. Even the Saxon saints were flung down out of their
shrines and trampled in the dust under the iron heel of the Christian
conqueror. Everything Saxon was vile, and the word 'Englishry' implied
as much contempt and scorn as the word 'Irishry' in a later age. In
fact, the subjugated Saxons gradually became infected with all the
vices and addicted to all the social disorders that prevailed among
the Irish in the same age; only in Ireland the anarchy endured much
longer from the incompleteness of the conquest and the absence of the
seat of supreme government, which kept the races longer separate and
antagonistic. Perhaps the most humiliating notice of the degrading
effects of conquest on the noble Saxon race to be found in history,
is the language in which Giraldus Cambrensis, the reviler of the Irish
Celt, contrasts them with his countrymen, the Welsh. 'Who dare,'
he says, 'compare the English, the most degraded of all races under
heaven, with the Welsh? In their own country they are the serfs,
the veriest slaves of the Normans. In ours whom else have we for our
herdsmen, shepherds, cobblers, skinners, cleaners of our dog kennels,
ay, even of our privies, but Englishmen? Not to mention their original
treachery to the Britons, that hired by them to defend them they
turned upon them in spite of their oaths and engagements, they are
to this day given to treachery and murder.' The lying Saxon was,
according to this authority, a proverbial expression.

The Saxon writers lamented their miserable subjection in a monotonous
wail for many generations. So late as the seventeenth century an
English author speaks in terms of compassion of the disinherited
and despoiled families who had sunk into the condition of artisans,
peasants, and paupers. 'This,' says M. Thierry, 'is the last sorrowful
glance cast back through the mist of ages on that great event which
established in England a race of kings, nobles, and warriors of
foreign extraction. The reader must figure to himself, not a mere
change of political rule, not the triumph of one of two competitors,
but the intrusion of a nation into the bosom of another people which
it came to destroy, and the scattered fragments of which it retained
as an integral portion of the new system of society, in the _status_
merely of personal property, or, to use the stronger language of
records and deeds, _a clothing of the soil_. He must not picture to
himself on the one hand the king and despot; on the other simply his
subjects, high and low, rich and poor, all inhabiting England, and
consequently all English. He must bear in mind that there were two
distinct nations--the old Anglo-Saxon race and the Norman invaders,
dwelling intermingled on the same soil; or, rather, he might
contemplate two countries--the one possessed by the Normans, wealthy
and exonerated from public burdens, the other enslaved and oppressed
with a land tax--the former full of spacious mansions, of walled
towns, and moated castles--the latter occupied with thatched cabins,
and ancient walls in a state of dilapidation. This peopled with
the happy and the idle, with soldiers, courtiers, knights, and
nobles--that with miserable men condemned to labour as peasants and
artisans. On the one side he beholds luxury and insolence, on the
other poverty and envy--not the envy of the poor at the sight of
opulence and men born to opulence, but that malignant envy, although
justice be on its side, which the despoiled cannot but entertain on
looking upon the spoilers. Lastly, to complete the picture, these two
countries are in some sort interwoven with each other--they meet
at every point, and yet they are more distinct, more completely
separated, than if the ocean rolled between them.'

Does not this picture look very like Ireland? To make it more like,
let us imagine that the Norman king had lived in Paris, and kept a
viceroy in London--that the English parliament were subordinate to the
French parliament, composed exclusively of Normans, and governed by
Norman undertakers for the benefit of the dominant State--that the
whole of the English land was held by ten thousand Norman proprietors,
many of them absentees--that all the offices of the government, in
every department, were in the hands of Normans--that, differing in
religion with the English nation, the French, being only a tenth of
the population, had got possession of all the national churches and
church property, while the poor natives supported a numerous hierarchy
by voluntary contributions--that the Anglo-Norman parliament was
bribed and coerced to abolish itself, forming a union of England with
France, in which the English members were as one to six. Imagine that
in consequence of rebellions the land of England had been confiscated
three or four times, after desolating wars and famines, so that all
the native proprietors were expelled, and the land was parcelled
out to French soldiers and adventurers on condition that the foreign
'planters' should assist in keeping down 'the mere English' by force
of arms. Imagine that the English, being crushed by a cruel penal
code for a century, were allowed to reoccupy the soil as mere
tenants-at-will, under the absolute power of their French landlords.
If all this be imagined by English legislators and English writers,
they will be better able to understand the Irish land question, and to
comprehend the nature of 'Irish difficulties,' as well as the justice
of feeble, insincere, and baffled statesmen in casting the blame
of Irish misery and disorder on the unruly and barbarous nature of
Irishmen. They will recollect that the aristocracy of Ireland are the
high-spirited descendants of conquerors, with the instinct of conquest
still in their blood. The parliament which enacted the Irish land laws
was a parliament composed almost exclusively of men of this dominant
race. They made all political power dependent on the ownership of
land, thus creating for themselves a monopoly which it is not in human
nature to surrender without a struggle.

The possession of this monopoly, however, fully accounts for two
things--the difficulty which the landlords feel in admitting the
justice of the tenant's claims for the legal recognition of the value
which his labour has added to the soil, and the extreme repugnance
with which they regard any legislation on the subject. Besides,
the want of sympathy with the people, of earnestness and courage in
meeting the realities of the case, is conspicuous in all attempts
of the kind during the last half-century. Those attempts have been
evasive, feeble, abortive--concessions to the demand that _something_
must be done, but so managed that nothing should be done to weaken the
power of the eight thousand proprietors over the mass of the nation
dependent on the land for their existence. Hence has arisen a great
amount of jealousy, distrust, and irritability in the landlord class
towards the tenantry and their advocates.

The Irish race, to adopt Thierry's language, are full of 'malignant
envy' towards the lords of the soil; not because they are rich, but
because they have the people so completely in their power, so entirely
at their mercy for all that man holds most dear. The tenants feel
bitterly when they think that they have no legal right to live on
their native land. They have read the history of our dreadful civil
wars, famines, and confiscations. They know that by the old law of
Ireland, and by custom from times far beyond the reach of authentic
history, the clans and tribes of the Celtic people occupied certain
districts with which their names are still associated, and that the
land was inalienably theirs. Rent or tribute they paid, indeed, to
their princes, and if they failed the chiefs came with armed followers
and helped themselves, driving away cows, sheep, and horses sufficient
to meet their demand, or more if they were unscrupulous, which was
'distress' with a vengeance. But the eviction of the people even for
non-payment of rent, and putting other people in their place, were
things never heard of among the Irish under their own rulers. The
chief had his own mensal lands, as well as his tribute, and these he
might forfeit. But as the clansmen could not control his acts, they
could never see the justice of being punished for his misdeeds by
the confiscation of their lands, and driven from the homes of their
ancestors often made doubly sacred by religious associations.

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