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

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"This dual Government business," he said, "can only end in a duel
between the two Governments, and it must be a duel to the death of one
or the other."

To-night at dinner I had a most interesting conversation with Mr.
Colomb, Assistant Inspector-General of the Constabulary, who is here
engaged with Mr. Cameron of Belfast, and Colonel Turner, in
investigating the affair at Mitchelstown. Mr. Colomb was at Killarney at
the time of the Fenian rising under "General O'Connor" in 1867--a rising
which was undoubtedly an indirect consequence of our own Civil War in
America. Warning came to two magistrates, of impending trouble from
Cahirciveen. Upon this Mr. Colomb immediately ordered the arrest of all
passengers to arrive that day at Killarney by the "stage-car" from that
place. When the car came in at night, it brought only one person--"an
awful-looking ruffian he was," said Mr. Colomb, "whom, by his
square-toed shoes, we knew to be just arrived from your side of the
water."

He was examined, and said he was a commercial traveller, and that he had
only one letter about him, a business letter, addressed to "J. D.
Sheehan."

"Have you any objection to show us that letter?"

"Certainly not," he replied very coolly, and, taking it out of his
pocket, he walked toward a table on which stood a candle, as if to read
it. A gentleman who was closely watching him, caught him by the wrist,
just as he was putting the letter to the flame, and saved it. It was
addressed to J. D. Sheehan, Esq., Killarney [Present], and ran as
follows:

"_Feb. 12th, Morning_.

"MY DEAR SHEEHAN,--I have the honour to introduce to you Captain
Mortimer Moriarty. He will be of great assistance to you, and I
have told him all that is to be done until I get to your place. The
Private _Spys_ are very active this morning. Unless they smell a
rat all will be done without any trouble.

"Success to you. Hoping to meet soon,--Yours as ever.

"(Signed) JOHN J. O'CONNOR."[6]

Despatches were at once sent off to the authorities at different points.
They were all transmitted, except to Cahirciveen, the wires to which
place were found to have been cut. Mr. Colomb--who had a force of but
seventeen men in the town of Killarney--saw the uselessness of trying to
communicate with the officer at Cahirciveen, but was so strongly urged
by the magistrates that he unwillingly consented to endeavour to do so,
and a mounted orderly was sent. Just after this unfortunate officer had
passed Glenbehy (the scene of the eviction I have just witnessed) he was
shot by some of O'Connor's party, whom he tried to pass in the dark, and
who were marching on Killarney, and fell from his horse, which galloped
off. He managed to crawl to a neighbouring cottage, where he was not
long after found by "General O'Connor" and some of his followers. The
wounded man was kindly treated by O'Connor, who had him examined for
despatches, but prevented one of his men from shooting him dead, as he
lay on the ground, and had his wounds as well attended to as was
possible. There was no response in the country to the Kerry rising, such
as it was, because the intended seizure of Chester Castle by the Fenians
failed, but O'Connor was not captured, though great efforts were made to
seize him. How he escaped is not known to this day.

At that time, as always in emergencies, Mr. Colomh says the Constabulary
behaved with exemplary coolness, courage, and fidelity. His position
gives him a very thorough knowledge of the force, which is almost
entirely recruited from the body of the Irish people. Of late years not
a few men of family, reduced in fortune, have taken service in it. Among
these has been mentioned to me a young Irishman of title, and of an
ancient race, who is a sergeant in the force, and who recently declined
to accept a commission, as his increased expenses would make it harder
for him to support his two sisters. Another constable in the ranks
represents a family illustrious in the annals of England four centuries
ago.

As to the _morale_ of the force, he cites one eloquent fact. Out of a
total of more than 13,000 men, the cases of drunkenness, proved or
admitted, average no more than fourteen a week! On many days absolutely
no such cases occur. This is really amazing when one thinks how many of
the men are isolated on lonely posts all over the island, exposed to all
sorts of weather, and cut off from the ordinary resources and amusements
of social life.

CORK, _Friday, Feb. 24th._--This morning after breakfast I met in the
South Mall a charming ecclesiastic, whose acquaintance I made in Rome
while I was attending the great celebration there in 1867 of St. Peter's
Day. Father Burke introduced me to him after the Pontifical Mass at San
Paolo fuori le Mure; and we had a delightful symposium that afternoon. I
walked with him to his lodgings, talking over those "days long
vanished," and the friend whose genius made them, like the suppers of
Plato, "a joy for ever." He is sorely troubled now by the attitude of a
portion of the clergy in his part of Ireland, which is one almost of
open hostility, he says, to the moral authority of the Church, and
indicates the development of a class of priests moving in the direction
of the "conventional priests," by whom the Church was disgraced during
the darkest days of the French Revolution of 1793.

Almost more mischievous than these men, he thinks, who must eventually
go the way of their kind in times past, are the timid priests, for the
most part parish priests, who go in fear of their violent curates, and
of the politicians who tyrannise their flocks. He showed me a letter
written to him last week by one of these, whose parish is just now in a
tempest over the Plan of Campaign. Certainly a most remarkable letter.
In it the writer frankly says, "There is no justification for the Plan
of Campaign on this property.

"I assented to putting it in force here," he goes on, "because I did not
at the time know the facts of the case, and took them on trust from
persons who, I find, have practised upon my confidence. What am I to do?
I am made to appear as a consenting party now, and, indeed, an assisting
agent in action, which I certainly was led to believe right and
necessary, but which upon the facts I now see involves much injustice
to ---- (naming the landlord), and I fear positive ruin to worthy men and
families of my people. I shall be grateful and glad of your counsel in
these most distressing circumstances."

"What can any one do to help such a man?" said my friend. "The
rebellious and unruly in the Church, be they priests or laymen, can only
in the end damage themselves. _Tu es Petrus_; and revolt, like schism,
is a devil which only carries away those of whom it gets possession out
of the Church and into the sea. But a weak sentinel on the wall or at
the gate who drops his musket to wipe his eyes, that is a thing for
tears!"

He asked me to come and see him if possible in his own county, and he
has promised to send me letters to-day for priests who will he glad to
tell me what they know only too well of the pressure put upon the better
sort of the people by the organised idlers and mischief-makers in Clare
and Kerry.

To-day at the City Club, I made the acquaintance of the Town-Clerk of
Cork, Mr. Alexander M'Carthy, a staunch Nationalist and Home Ruler, who
holds his office almost by a sort of hereditary tenure, having been
appointed to it in 1859 in succession to his father. He gave me many
interesting particulars as to the municipal history and administration
of Cork, and showed me some of the responses he is receiving to a kind
of circular letter sent by the municipality to the town governments of
England, touching the recent proceedings against the Mayor. So far these
responses have not been very sympathetic. He invited me to lunch here
with him to-morrow, and visit some of the most interesting points in and
around the city. Here, too, I met Colonel Spaight, Inspector of the
Local Government Board, who gives me a startling account of the increase
of the public burdens. Twenty years ago there were no persons whatever
seeking outdoor relief in Cork. This year, out of a total population of
145,216, there are 3775 persons here receiving indoor relief, and 4337
receiving outdoor relief, making in all 8112, or nearly 6 per cent. of
the inhabitants. This proportion is swelled by the influx of people from
other regions seeking occupation here, which they do not find, or simply
coming here because they are sure of relief. This state of things
illustrates not so much the decay of industry in Cork as the development
of a spirit of mendicancy throughout Ireland. In the opinion of many
thoughtful people, this began with the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund,
and with the Mansion House Fund. Colonel Spaight remembers that in
Strokestown Union, Roscommon, when the guardians there received a supply
of one hundred tons of seed potatoes, they distributed eighty tons, and
were then completely at a loss what to do with the remaining twenty
tons. Mr. Parnell and Mr. O'Kelly, however, came to Roscommon, and the
latter made a speech out of the hotel window to the people, advising
them to apply for more, and take all they could get. "With a stroke of a
pen," he said, "we'll wipe out the seed rate!" Whereupon the
applications for seed rose to six hundred tons!

The Labourers Act, passed by the British Parliament for the benefit of
the Irish labourers, who get but scant recognition of their wants and
wishes from the tenant farmers, is not producing the good results
expected from it, mainly because it is perverted to all sorts of
jobbery. Only last week Colonel Spaight had to hand in to the Local
Government Board a report on certain schemes of expenditure under this
Act, prepared by the Board of Guardians of Tralee. These schemes
contemplated the erection of 196 cottages in 135 electoral divisions of
the Union. This meant, of course, so much money of the ratepayers to be
turned over to local contractors. Colonel Spaight on inspection found
that of the 196 proposed cottages, the erection of 61 had been forbidden
by the sanitary authorities, the notices for the erection of 23 had been
wrongly served, 20 were proposed to be erected on sites not adjoining a
public road, and no necessity had been shown for erecting 40 of the
others. He accordingly recommended that only 32 be allowed to be
erected! For a small town like Tralee this proposition to put up 196
buildings at the public expense where only 32 were needed is not bad. It
has the right old Tammany Ring smack, and would have commanded, I am
sure, the patronising approval of the late Mr. Tweed.

I mentioned it to-night at the County Club, when a gentleman said that
this morning at Macroom a serious "row" had occurred between the local
Board of Guardians there and a great crowd of labourers. The labourers
thronged the Board-room, demanding the half-acre plots of land which had
been promised them. The Guardians put them off, promising to attend to
them when the regular business of the meeting was over. So the poor
fellows were kept waiting for three mortal hours, at the end of which
time they espied the elected Nationalist members of the Board subtly
filing out of the place. This angered them. They stopped the fugitives,
blockaded the Board-room, and forced the Guardians to appoint a
committee to act upon their demands.

It is certainly a curious fact that, so far, in Ireland I have seen no
decent cottages for labourers, excepting those put up at their own
expense on their own property by landlords.

I dined to-night at the County Club with Captain Plunkett, a most
energetic, spirited, and well-informed resident magistrate, a brother of
the late Lord Louth,--still remembered, I dare say, at the New York
Hotel as the only Briton who ever really mastered the mystery of
concocting a "cocktail,"--and an uncle of the present peer. We had a
very cheery dinner, and a very clever lawyer, Mr. Shannon, gave us an
irresistible reproduction of a charge delivered by an Irish judge famous
for shooting over the heads of juries, who sent twelve worthy citizens
of Galway out of their minds by bidding them remember, in a case of
larceny, that they could not find the prisoner guilty unless they were
quite sure "as to the _animus furandi_ and the _asportavit_."

_Saturday, Feb. 25._--I had an interesting talk this morning at the
County Club with a gentleman from Limerick on the subject of
"boycotting." I told him what I had seen at Edenvale of the practice as
applied to a forlorn and helpless old woman, for the crime of standing
by her "boycotted" son. "You think this an extreme case," he said, "but
you are quite mistaken. It is a typical case certainly, but it gives you
only an inadequate idea of the scope given to this infernal machinery.
The 'boycott' is now used in Ireland as the Inquisition was used in
Spain,--to stifle freedom of thought and action. It is to-day the chief
reliance of the National League for keeping up its membership, and
squeezing subscriptions out of the people. If you want proof of this,"
he added, "ask any Nationalist you know whether members of the League in
the country allow farmers who are not members to associate with them in
any way. I can cite you a case at Ballingarry, in my county, where last
summer a resolution of the League was published and put on the Chapel
door, that members of the National League were thenceforth to have no
dealings or communication with any person not a member. This I saw with
my own eyes, and it was matter of public notoriety."

I lunched at the City Club with Mr. M'Carthy. Sir Daniel O'Sullivan,
formerly Mayor of Cork, whose views of Home Rule seem to differ widely
from those of his successor, now incarcerated here, was one of the
company. In the course of an animated but perfectly good-natured
discussion of the Land Law question between two other gentlemen present,
one of them, a strong Nationalist, smote his Unionist opponent very
neatly under the fifth rib. The latter contending that it was monstrous
to interfere by law with the principle of freedom of contract, the
Nationalist responded, "That cannot be; it must be right and legitimate
to do it, for the Imperial Parliament has done it four times within
seventeen years!"

I walked with Mr. M'Carthy to his apartments, where he showed me many
curious papers and volumes bearing on municipal law and municipal
history in Ireland. Among these, two most elaborate and interesting
volumes, being the Council Books of Cork, Youghal, and Kinsale, from
1610 to 1659, 1666 to 1687, and 1690 to 1800. The records for the years
not enumerated have perished, that is, for the first five or six years
after the Restoration, and for the years just preceding and just
following the fall of James II. These volumes take one back to the
condition of Southern Ireland immediately after English greed and
intrigue had sapped the foundations of the peace which followed the
submission of the great Earl of Tyrone, and brought about the flight to
the Continent of that chieftain, and of his friend and ally, the Earl of
Tyrconnell.

They give us no picture, unfortunately, of the closing years of
Elizabeth's long struggle to establish the English power, or of the
occupation of Kinsale by the Spanish in the name of the Pope. But there
is abundant evidence in them of the theological hatred which so
embittered the conflict of races in Ireland during the seventeenth
century.

It was a relief to turn from these to a solemn controversy waged in our
own times between Cork and Limerick over a question of municipal
precedence, in which Mr. M'Carthy did battle for the City of the Galley
and the Towers[7] against the City of the Gateway and Cathedral dome.
The truth seems to be that King John gave charters to both cities, but
to Cork twelve years earlier than to Limerick. Speaking of this contest,
by the way, with a loyalist of Cork to-night, I observed that it was
almost as odd to find such a question hotly disputed between two
Nationalist cities as to see the champions of Irish independence
marching under the banner of the harp, which was invented for Ireland by
Henry VIII.

"I don't know why you call Cork a Nationalist city," he replied, "for
Parnell and Maurice Healy were returned for it by a clear minority of
the voters. If all the voters had gone to the polls, they would both
have been beaten."

A curious statement certainly, and worth looking into. Mr. M'Carthy gave
me also much information as to the working of the municipal system here,
and a copy of the rules which govern the debates of the Town Council.
One of these might be adopted with advantage in other assemblies, to
wit, "that no member be permitted to occupy the time of the Council for
more than ten minutes."

There is an important difference between the parliamentary and the
municipal constituencies of Cork. The former constituency comprises all
residents within the borough boundaries occupying premises of the
rateable value of L10 a year. The municipal constituency consists of no
more than 1800 voters, divided among the seven wards which make up the
city under the "3d and 4th Victoria," and which contain about 13,000 of
the 15,116 Parliamentary voters of the borough. The same thing is true
in the main of nine out of the eleven municipal boroughs of Ireland
including Dublin. The 3d and 4th Victoria was amended for Dublin in
1849, so as to give that city the municipal franchise then existing in
England, but no move in that direction was made for Cork, Waterford,
Limerick, or any other municipal borough. The Nationalists have taken no
interest in the question. Perhaps they have good reason for this, as in
Belfast, where the municipal franchise has been widely extended since
the present Government came into power, the democratic electorate has
put the whole municipal government into the hands of the Unionists. The
day being cool, though fine, Mr. M'Carthy got an "inside car," and we
went off for a drive about the city. The environs of Cork are very
attractive. We visited the new cemetery grounds which are very neatly
and tastefully laid out. There was a conflict over them, the owners of
family vaults staunchly standing out against the "levelling" tendency of
a harmonious city of the dead. But all is well that ends well, and now
two handsome stone chapels, one Catholic and one Protestant, keep watch
and ward over the silent sleepers, standing face to face near the grand
entrance, and exactly alike in their architecture. A very pretty drive
took us to the water-works, which are extensive, well planned, and
exceedingly well kept. They are awaiting now the arrival from America of
some great turbine wheels, but the engines are of English make. In the
city we visited the new Protestant cathedral of St. Finbar, a very fine
church, which advantageously replaces a "spacious structure of the Doric
order," built here in the reign of George II., with the proceeds of a
parliamentary tax on coals. Despite his name, I imagine that admirable
prelate, Dr. England, the first Catholic bishop of my native city in
America, must have been a Corkonian, for he it was, I believe, who put
the cathedral of Charleston under the invocation of St. Finbar, the
first bishop of Cork. The church stands charmingly amid fine trees on a
southern branch of the river Lea. We visited also two fine Catholic
churches, one of St. Vincent de Paul, and the other the Church of St.
Peter and St. Paul, a grandly proportioned and imposing edifice.

It was at vespers that we entered it, and found it filled with the
kneeling people. This noble church is rather ignobly hidden away behind
crowded houses and shops, and the contrast was very striking when we
emerged from its dim religious space and silence into the thronged and
rather noisy streets. There is a statue here of Father Mathew; but what
I have seen to-night makes me doubt whether the present generation of
Corkonians would have erected it.

At dinner a gentleman gave us a most interesting account of the
picturesque home which a man of taste, and a lover of natural history,
has made for himself at the remote seaside village of Belmullet, in
Mayo, the seat of the Mayo quarries, in which Mr. Davitt takes so much
interest. The sea brings in there all sorts of wreckage, and the house
is beautifully finished with mahogany and other rare woods, just as I
remember finding in a noble mansion in South Wales, near a dangerous
head-land, some magnificent doors and wainscotings made of that most
beautiful of the Central American woods, nogarote, which I never saw in
the United States, excepting in a superb specimen of it sent home by
myself from Corinto. This colonist of Mayo employs all the people he can
get in the fisheries there, which are very rich; and the ducks and wild
geese are so numerous that he sometimes sends as far as to Wicklow for
men to capture and sell them for him. He was once fortunate enough to
trap a pair of the snow geese of the Arctic region, but Belmullet, in
other respects a primeval paradise, is cursed with the small boy of
civilisation; and one of these pests of society slew the goose with a
stone. The widowed gander consoled himself by contracting family ties
with the common domestic goose of the parish, and all his progeny, in
other particulars indistinguishable from that familiar bird, bear the
black marks distinctive of the Arctic tribe.

Belmullet, this gentleman tells me, boasts a very good little inn, kept
by a Mrs. Deehan, which was honoured by a visit from Lord Carnarvon with
his wife and daughters during the Earl's Viceroyalty. This was in the
course of a private and personal, not official tour, during which, Lord
Carnarvon says, he was everywhere received with the greatest courtesy by
all sorts and conditions of the people. It is an interesting
illustration of the temper in which certain priests in Ireland deal with
matters of State, that when Lord Carnarvon politely invited the parish
priest of Belmullet to come to see him, that functionary declined to do
so. Upon this the placable Viceroy sent to know whether the priest would
receive the visit he refused to pay. The priest replied that he never
declined to receive any gentleman who wished to see him; and the Viceroy
accordingly called upon him, to the edification of the people, who
afterwards listened very respectfully to a little speech which His
Excellency made to them from a car. It is rather surprising that these
incidents have never been adduced in proof of Lord Carnarvon's
determination to take the Home Rule wind out of the sails of the
Liberals!

CORK, _Sunday, Feb. 26._--I went out to-day with Mr. Cameron to see
Blarney Castle and St. Anne's Hill. Nothing can be lovelier than the
country around Cork and the valley of the Lea. A "light railway," of the
sort authorised by the Act of 1883, takes you out quickly enough to
Blarney, and the train was well filled. The construction of these
railways is found fault with as aggravating instead of relieving those
defects in the organisation and management of the Irish railways, which
are so thoroughly and intelligently exposed in the Public Works Report
of Sir James Allport and his fellow-commissioners. A morning paper
to-day points this out sharply.

In the days of King William III. Blarney Castle must have been a
magnificent stronghold. It stands very finely on a well-wooded height,
and dominates the land for miles around. But it held out against the
victor of the Boyne so long that, when he captured it, he thought it
best, in the expressive phrase of the Commonwealth, to "slight" it,
little now remaining of it but the gigantic keep, the walls of which are
some six yards thick, and a range of ruined outworks stretching along
and above a line of caverns, probably the work of the quarrymen who got
out the stone for the Castle ages ago. The legend of the Blarney Stone
does not seem to be a hundred years old, but the stone itself is one of
the front battlements of the grand old tower, which has more than once
fallen to the ground from the giddy height at which it was originally
set. It is now made fast there by iron clamps, in such a position that
to kiss it one should be a Japanese acrobat, or a volunteer rifleman
shooting for the championship of the world. There are many and very fine
trees in the grounds about the Castle, and there is a charming garden,
now closed against the casual tourist, as it has been leased with the
modern house to a tenant who lives here. In the leafy summer the place
must be a dream of beauty. An avenue of stately trees quite overarching
the highway leads from Blarney to St. Anne's Hill, the site of which, at
least, is that of an ideal sanatorium. We walked thither over hill and
dale. The panorama commanded by the buildings of the sanatorium is one
of the widest and finest imaginable, worthy to be compared with the
prospect from the Star and Garter at Richmond, or with that from the
terrace at St. Germain.

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