Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) by William Henry Hurlbert

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Since 1870 a change has come over New Hampshire. The population has
risen to 346,984. In places waste and fallen twenty years ago brisk and
smiling villages have sprung up along lines of communication established
to carry on the business of thriving factories.

What reason can there be in the nature of things to prevent the
development of analogous results, through the application of analogous
forces, in the case of "congested" Ireland? A Nationalist friend, to
whom I put this question this afternoon, answers it by alleging that so
long as fiscal laws for Ireland are made at Westminster, British capital
invested in Great Britain will prevent the application of these
analogous forces to "congested" Ireland. His notion is that were Ireland
as independent of Great Britain, for example, in fiscal matters as is
Canada, Ireland might seek and secure a fiscal union with the United
States, such as was partially secured to Canada under the Reciprocity
Treaty denounced by Mr. Seward.

"Give us this," he said, "and take us into your system of American
free-trade as between the different States of your American Union, and
no end of capital will soon be coming into Ireland, not only from your
enormously rich and growing Republic, but from Great Britain too. Give
us the American market, putting Great Britain on a less-favoured
footing, just as Mr. Blake and his party wish to do in the case of
Canada, and between India doing her own manufacturing on the one side,
and Ireland becoming a manufacturing centre on the other, and a mart in
Europe for American goods, we'll get our revenge on Elizabeth and
Cromwell in a fashion John Bull has never dreamt of in these times,
though he used to be in a mortal funk of it a hundred years ago, when
there wasn't nearly as much danger of it!"

DUBLIN, _Sunday, June 24._--"Put not your faith in porters!" I had
expected to pass this day at Castlebar, on the estate of Lord Lucan, and
I exchanged telegrams to that effect yesterday with Mr. Harding, the
Earl's grandson, who, in the absence of his wonderfully energetic
grandsire, is administering there what Lord Lucan, with pardonable
pride, declares to be the finest and most successful dairy-farm in all
Ireland. I asked the porter to find the earliest morning train; and
after a careful search he assured me that by leaving Dublin just after 7
A.M. I could reach Castlebar a little after noon.

Upon this I determined to dine with Mr. Colomb, and spend the night in
Dublin. But when I reached the station a couple of hours ago, it was to
discover that my excellent porter had confounded 7 A.M. with 7 P.M.

There is no morning train to Castlebar! So here I am with no recourse,
my time being short, but to give up the glimpse I had promised myself of
Mayo, and go on this afternoon to Belfast on my way back to London.

At dinner last night Mr. Colomb gave me further and very interesting
light upon the events of 1867, of which he had already spoken with me at
Cork, as well as upon the critical period of Mr. Gladstone's experiments
of 1881-82 at "Coercion" in Ireland.

Mr. Colomb lives in a remarkably bright and pleasant suburb of Dublin,
which not only is called a "park," as suburbs are apt to be, but really
is a park, as suburbs are less apt to be. His house is set near some
very fine old trees, shading a beautiful expanse of turf. He is an
amateur artist of much more than ordinary skill. His walls are gay, and
his portfolios filled, with charming water-colours, sketches, and
studies made from Nature all over the United Kingdom. The grand
coast-scenery of Cornwall and of Western Ireland, the lovely lake
landscapes of Killarney, sylvan homes and storied towers, all have been
laid under contribution by an eye quick to seize and a hand prompt to
reproduce these most subtle and transient atmospheric effects of light
and colour which are the legitimate domain of the true water-colourist.
With all these pictures about us--and with Mr. Colomb's workshop fitted
up with Armstrong lathes and all manner of tools wherein he varies the
routine of official life by making all manner of instruments, and
wreaking his ingenuity upon all kinds of inventions--and with the
pleasant company of Mr. Davies, the agreeable and accomplished official
secretary of Sir West Ridgway, the evening wore quickly away. In the
course of conversation the question of the average income of the Irish
priests arose, and I mentioned the fact that Lord Lucan, whose knowledge
of the smallest details of Irish life is amazingly thorough, puts it
down at about ten shillings a year per house in the average Irish
parish.

He rated Father M'Fadden and his curate of Gweedore, for example,
without a moment's hesitation, at a thousand pounds a year in the whole,
or very nearly the amount stated to me by Sergeant Mahony at Baron's
Court. This brought from Mr. Davies a curious account of the proceedings
in a recent case of a contested will before Judge Warren here in Dublin.
The will in question was made by the late Father M'Garvey of Milford, a
little village near Mulroy Bay in Donegal, notable chiefly as the scene
of the murder of the late Earl of Leitrim. Father M'Garvey, who died in
March last, left by this will to religious and charitable uses the whole
of his property, save L800 bequeathed in it to his niece, Mrs. O'Connor.
It was found that he died possessed not only of a farm at Ardara, but of
cash on deposit in the Northern Bank to the very respectable amount of
L23,711. Mrs. O'Connor contested the will. The Archbishop of Armagh, and
Father Sheridan, C.C. of Letterkenny, instituted an action against her
to establish the will. Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, lying in Londonderry
jail as a first-class misdemeanant, was brought from Londonderry as a
witness for the niece. But on the trial of the case it appeared that
there was actually no evidence to sustain the plea of the niece that
"undue influence" had been exerted upon her uncle by the Archbishop, who
at the time of the making of the will was Bishop of Raphoe, or by
anybody else; so the judge instructed the jury to find on all the issues
for the plaintiffs, which was done. The judge declared the conduct of
the defendant in advancing a charge of "undue influence" in such
circumstances against ecclesiastics to be most reprehensible; but the
Archbishop very graciously intimated through his lawyer his intention of
paying the costs of the niece who had given him all this trouble,
because she was a poor woman who had been led into her course by
disappointment at receiving so small a part of so large an inheritance.
Had the priest's property come to him in any other way than through his
office as a priest her claim might have been more worthy of
consideration, but Mr. M'Dermot, Q.C., who represented the Archbishop,
took pains to make it clear that as an ecclesiastic his client, who had
nothing to do with the making of the will, was bound to regard it "as
proper and in accordance with the fitness of things that what had been
received from the poor should be given back to the poor."

I see no adequate answer to this contention of the Archbishop. But it
certainly goes to confirm the estimates given me by Sergeant Mahony of
Father M'Fadden's receipts at Gweedore, and the opinion expressed to me
by Lord Lucan as to the average returns of an average Catholic parish,
that the priest of Milford, a place hardly so considerable as Gweedore,
should have acquired so handsome a property in the exercise there of his
parochial functions.

One form in which the priests in many parts of Ireland collect dues is
certainly unknown to the practice of the Church elsewhere, I believe,
and it must tend to swell the incomes of the priests at the expense,
perhaps, of their legitimate influence. This is the custom of personal
collections by the priests. In many parishes the priest stands by the
church-door, or walks about the church--not with a bag in his hand, as
is sometimes done in France on great occasions when a _quele_ is made by
the _cure_ for some special object,--but with an open plate in which the
people put their offerings. I have heard of parishes in which the priest
sits by a table near the church-door, takes the offerings from the
parishioners as they pass, and comments freely upon the ratio of the
gift to the known or presumed financial ability of the giver.

We had some curious stories, too, from a gentleman present of the
relation of the priests in wild, out-of-the-way corners of Ireland to
the people, stories which take one back to days long before Lever. One,
for example, of a delightful and stalwart old parish priest of eighty,
upon whom an airy young patriot called to propose that he should accept
the presidency of a local Land League. The veteran, whose only idea of
the Land League was that it had used bad language about Cardinal Cullen,
no sooner caught the drift of the youth than he snatched up a huge
blackthorn, fell upon him, and "boycotted" him head-foremost out of a
window. Luckily it was on the ground floor.

Another strenuous spiritual shepherd came down during the distribution
of potato-seed to the little port in which it was going on, and took up
his station on board of the distributing ship. One of his parishioners,
having received his due quota, made his way back again unobserved on
board of the ship. As he came up to receive a second dole, the good
father spied him, and staying not "to parley or dissemble," simply
fetched him a whack over the sconce with a stick, which tumbled him out
of the ship, head-foremost, into the hooker riding beside her! Quite of
another drift was a much more astonishing tale of certain proceedings
had here in February last before the Lord Chief-Justice. These took
place in connection with a motion to quash the verdict of a coroner's
jury, held in August 1887, on the body of a child named Ellen Gaffney,
at Philipstown, in King's County, which preserves the memory of the
Spanish sovereign of England, as Maryborough in Queen's preserves the
memory of his Tudor consort. Cervantes never imagined an Alcalde of the
quality of the "Crowner"' who figures in this story. Were it not that
his antics cost a poor woman her liberty from August 1887 till December
of that year, when the happy chance of a winter assizes set her free,
and might have cost her her life, the story of this ideal magistrate
would be extremely diverting.

A child was born to Mrs. Gaffney at Philipstown on the 23d of July, and
died there on the 25th of August 1887, Mrs. Gaffney being the wife of a
"boycotted" man.

A local doctor named Clarke came to the police and asked the Sergeant to
inspect the body of the child, and call for an inquest. The sergeant
inspected the body, and saw no reason to doubt that the child had died a
natural death. This did not please the doctor, so the Coroner was sent
for. He came to Philipstown the next day, conferred there with the
doctor, and with a priest, Father Bergin, and proceeded to hold an
inquest on the child in a public-house, "a most appropriate place," said
Sir Michael Morris from the bench, "for the transactions which
subsequently occurred." Strong depositions were afterwards made by the
woman Mrs. Gaffney, by her husband, and by the police authorities, as to
the conduct of this "inquest." She and her husband were arrested on a
verbal order of the Coroner on the day when the inquest was held, August
27th, and the woman was kept in prison from that time till the assizes
in December. The "inquest" was not completed on the 27th of August, and
after the Coroner adjourned it, two priests drove away on a car from the
"public-house" in which it had been held. That night, or the next day, a
man came to a magistrate with a bundle of papers which he had found in
the road near Philipstown. The magistrate examined them, and finding
them to be the depositions taken before the Coroner in the case of Ellen
Gaffney, handed them to the police. How did they come to be in the road?
On the 1st of September the Coroner resumed his inquest, this time in
the Court-House at Philipstown, and one of the police, with the
depositions in his pocket, went to hear the proceedings. Great was his
amazement to see certain papers produced, and calmly read, as being the
very original depositions which at that moment were in his own custody!
He held his peace, and let the inquest go on. A letter was read from the
Coroner, to the effect that he saw no ground for detaining the husband,
Gaffney--but the woman was taken before a justice of the peace, and
committed to prison on this finding by the Coroner's jury: "That Mary
Anne Gaffney came by her death; and that the mother of the child, Ellen
Gaffney, is guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food
and care to sustain the life of this child "!

It is scarcely credible, but it is true, that upon this extraordinary
finding the Coroner issued a warrant for "murder" against this poor
woman, on which she was actually locked up for more than three months!
The jury which made this unique finding consisted of nineteen persons,
and it was in evidence that their foreman reported thirteen of the jury
to be for finding one way and six for finding another, whereupon a
certain Mr. Whyte, who came into the case as the representative of
Father Bergin, President of the local branch of the National
League--nobody can quite see on what colourable pretext--was allowed by
the Coroner to write down the finding I have quoted, and hand it to the
Coroner. The Coroner read it over. He and Mr. Whyte then put six of the
jury in one place, and thirteen in another; the Coroner read the finding
aloud to the thirteen, and said to them, "Is that what you agree to?"
and so the inquest was closed, and the warrant issued--for murder--and
the woman, this poor peasant mother sent off to jail with the brand upon
her of infanticide.[29]

Where would that poor woman be now were there no "Coercion" in Ireland
to protect her against "Crowner's quest law" thus administered? And what
is to be thought of educated and responsible public men in England who,
as recent events have shown, are not ashamed to go to "Crowner's quest
Courts" of this sort for weapons of attack, not upon the administration
only of their own Government, but upon the character and the motives of
their political opponents?

CHAPTER XVI.

BELFAST, _Monday, June 25._--I left Dublin yesterday at 4 P.M., in a
train which went off at high pressure as an "express," but came into
Belfast panting and dilatory as an "excursion." The day was fine, and
the line passes through what is reputed to be the most prosperous part
of Ireland. In this part of Ireland, too, the fate of the island has
been more than once settled by the arbitrament of arms; and if
Parliamentary England throws up the sponge in the wrestle with the
League, it is probable enough that the old story will come to be told
over again here.

At Dundalk the Irish monarchy of the Braces was made and unmade. The
plantation of Ulster under James I. clinched the grasp not so much of
England as of Scotland upon Ireland, and determined the course of events
here through the Great Rebellion. The landing of the Duke of Schomberg
at Carrickfergus opened the way for the subjugation of Jacobite Ireland
by William of Orange. The successful descent of the French upon the same
place in February 1760, after the close of "the Great Year," in which
Walpole tells us he came to expect a new victory every morning with the
rolls for breakfast, and after Hawke had broken the strength of the
great French Armada off Belleisle, and done for England the service
which Nelson did for her again off Trafalgar in 1805, shows what might
have happened had Thurot commanded the fleet of Conflans. In this same
region, too, the rout of Munro by Nugent at Ballinahinch practically
ended the insurrection of 1798.

There are good reasons in the physical geography of the British Islands
for this controlling influence of Ulster over the affairs of Ireland,
which it seems to me a serious mistake to overlook.

The author of a brief but very hard-headed and practical letter on the
pacification of Ireland, which appeared in the _Times_ newspaper in
1886, while the air was thrilling with rumours of Mr. Gladstone's
impending appearance as the champion of "Home Rule," carried, I
remember, to the account of St. George's Channel "nine-tenths of the
troubles, religious, political, and social, under which Ireland has
laboured for seven centuries." I cannot help thinking he hit the nail on
the head; and St. George's Channel does not divide Ulster from Scotland.
From Donaghadee, which has an excellent harbour, the houses on the
Scottish coast can easily be made out in clear weather. A chain is no
stronger than its weakest link, and it is as hard to see how, even with
the consent of Ulster, the independence of Ireland could be maintained
against the interests and the will of Scotland, as it is easy to see why
Leinster, Munster, and Connaught have been so difficult of control and
assimilation by England. To dream of establishing the independence of
Ireland against the will of Ulster appears to me to be little short of
madness.

At Moira, which stands very prettily above the Ulster Canal, a small
army of people returning from a day in the country to Belfast came upon
us and trebled the length of our train. We picked up more at Lisburn,
where stands the Cathedral Church of Jeremy Taylor, the "Shakespeare of
divines." Here my only companion in the compartment from Dublin left me,
a most kindly, intelligent Ulster man, who had very positive views as to
the political situation. He much commended the recent discourse in
Scotland of a Presbyterian minister, who spoke of the Papal Decree as
"pouring water on a drowned mouse," a remark which led me to elicit the
fact that he had never seen either Clare or Kerry; and he was very warm
in his admiration of Mr. Chamberlain. He told me, what I had heard from
many other men of Ulster, that the North had armed itself thoroughly
when the Home Rule business began with Mr. Gladstone. "I am a Unionist,"
he said, "but I think the Union is worth as much to England as it is to
Ireland, and if England means to break it up it is not the part of
Irishmen who think and feel as I do to let her choose her own time for
doing it, and stand still while she robs us of our property and turns us
out defenceless to be trampled under foot by the most worthless
vagabonds in our own island." He thinks the National League has had its
death-blow. "What I fear now," he said, "is that we are running straight
into a social war, and that will never be a war against the landlords in
Ireland; it'll be a war against the Protestants and all the decent
people there are among the Catholics."

He was very cordial when he found I was an American, and with that
offhand hospitality which seems to know no distinctions of race or
religion in Ireland urged me to come and make him a visit at a place he
has nearer the sea-coast. "I'll show you Downpatrick," he said, "where
the tombs of St. Patrick and St. Bridget and St. Columb are, the saints
sleeping quite at their ease, with a fine prosperous Presbyterian town
all about them. And I'll drive you to Tullymore, where you'll see the
most beautiful park, and the finest views from it all the way to the
Isle of Man, that are to be seen in all Ireland." He was very much
interested in the curious story of the sequestration of the remains of
Mr. Stewart of New York, who was born, he tells me, at Lisburn, where
the wildest fabrications on the subject seem to have got currency. That
this feat of body-snatching is supposed to have been performed by a
little syndicate of Italians, afterwards broken up by the firmness of
Lady Crawford in resisting the ghastly pressure to which the widow and
the executors of Mr. Stewart are believed to have succumbed, was quite a
new idea to him.

From Moira to Belfast the scenery along the line grows in beauty
steadily. If Belfast were not the busiest and most thriving city in
Ireland, it would still be well worth a visit for the picturesque charms
of its situation and of the scenery which surrounds it. At some future
day I hope to get a better notion both of its activity and of its
attractions than it would be possible for me to attempt to get in this
flying visit, made solely to take the touch of the atmosphere of the
place at this season of the year; for we are on the very eve of the
battle month of the Boyne.

Mr. Cameron, the Town Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary, met me
at the station, in accordance with a promise which he kindly made when I
saw him several weeks ago at Cork; and this morning he took me all over
the city. It is very well laid out, in the new quarters especially, with
broad avenues and spacious squares. In fact, as a local wag said to me
to-day at the Ulster Club, "You can drive through Belfast without once
going into a street"--most of the thoroughfares which are not called
"avenues" or "places" being known as "roads." It is, of course, an
essentially modern city. When Boate made his survey of Ireland two
centuries ago, Belfast was so small a place that he took small note of
it, though it had been incorporated by James I. in 1613 in favour of the
Chichester family, still represented here. In a very careful _Tour in
Ireland_, published at Dublin in 1780, the author says of Belfast, "I
could not help remarking the great number of Scots who reside in this
place, and who carry on a good trade with Scotland." It seems then to
have had a population of less than 20,000 souls, as it only touched that
number at the beginning of this century. It has since then advanced by
"leaps and bounds," after an almost American fashion, till it has now
become the second, and bids fair at no distant day to become the first,
city in Ireland. Few of the American cities which are its true
contemporaries can be compared with Belfast in beauty. The quarter in
which my host lives was reclaimed from the sea marshes not quite so long
ago, I believe, as was the Commonwealth Avenue quarter of Boston, and
though it does not show so many costly private houses perhaps as that
quarter of the New England capital, its "roads" and "avenues" are on the
whole better built, and there is no public building in Boston so
imposing as the Queen's College, with its Tudor front six hundred feet
in length, and its graceful central tower. The Botanic Gardens near by
are much prettier and much better equipped for the pleasure and
instruction of the people than any public gardens in either Boston or
New York. These American comparisons make themselves, all the conditions
of Belfast being rather of the New World than of the Old. The oldest
building pointed out to me to-day is the whilom mansion of the Marquis
of Donegal, now used as offices, and still called the Castle.

This stands near Donegal Square, a fine site, disfigured by a quadrangle
of commonplace brick buildings, occupied as a sort of Linen Exchange,
concerning which a controversy rages, I am told. They are erected on
land granted by Lord Donegal to encourage the linen trade, and the
buildings used to be leased at a rental of L1 per window. The present
holders receive L10 per window, and are naturally loath to part with so
good a thing, though there is an earnest desire in the city to see these
unsightly structures removed, and their place taken by stately municipal
buildings more in key with the really remarkable and monumental private
warehouses which already adorn this Square. Mr. Robinson, one of the
partners of a firm which has just completed one of these warehouses, was
good enough to show us over it. It is built of a warm grey stone, which
lends itself easily to the chisel, and it is decorated with a wealth of
carving and of architectural ornaments such as the great burghers of
Flanders lavished on their public buildings. The interior arrangements
are worthy of the external stateliness of the warehouse. Pneumatic tubes
for the delivery of cash--a Scottish invention--electric lights, steam
lifts, a kitchen at the top of the lofty edifice heated by steam from
the great engine-room in the cellars, and furnishing meals to the
employees, attest the energy and enterprise of the firm. The most
delicate of the linen fabrics sold here are made, I was informed, all
over the north country. The looms, three or four of which are kept going
here in a great room to show the intricacy and perfection of the
processes, are supplied by the firm to the hand-workers on a system
which enables them, while earning good wages from week to week, to
acquire the eventual ownership of the machines. The building is crowned
by a sort of observatory, from which we enjoyed a noble prospect
overlooking the whole city and miles of the beautiful country around. A
haze on the horizon hid the coast of Scotland, which is quite visible
under a clear sky. The Queen's Bridge over the Lagan, built in 1842
between Antrim and Down, was a conspicuous feature in the panorama. Its
five great arches of hewn granite span the distance formerly traversed
by an older bridge of twenty-one arches 840 feet in length, which was
begun in 1682, and finished just in time to welcome Schomberg and King
William.

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