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61 chapters
PREFACE.
PREFACE.
Irish history is a long, dark road, with many blind alleys, many sudden turnings, many unaccountably crooked portions; a road which, if it has a few sign-posts to guide us, bristles with threatening notices, now upon the one side and now upon the other, the very ground underfoot being often full of unsuspected perils threatening to hurt the unwary. To the genuine explorer, flushed with justified self-confidence, well equipped for the journey, and indifferent to scratches or bruises, one may supp
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PRIMEVAL IRELAND.
PRIMEVAL IRELAND.
"It seems to be certain," says the Abbé McGeoghehan, "that Ireland continued uninhabited from the Creation to the Deluge." With this assurance to help us on our onward way I may venture to supplement it by saying that little is known about the first, or even about the second, third, and fourth succession of settlers in Ireland. At what precise period what is known as the Scoto-Celtic branch of the great Aryan stock broke away from its parent tree, by what route its migrants travelled, in what de
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THE LEGENDS AND THE LEGEND MAKERS.
THE LEGENDS AND THE LEGEND MAKERS.
Better far than such historic shams--cardboard castles with little or no substance behind them--are the real legends. These put forward no obtrusive pretensions to accuracy, and for that very reason are far truer in that larger sense in which all the genuine and spontaneous outgrowth of a country form part and parcel of its history. Some of the best of these have been excellently translated by Mr. Joyce, whose "Celtic Romances" ought to be in the hands of every one, from the boy of twelve upward
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PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND.
PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND.
Getting out of this earliest and foggiest period, whose only memorials are the stones which still cumber the ground, or those subtler traces of occupation of which philology keeps the key, and pushing aside a long and uncounted crowd of kings, with names as uncertain as their deeds, pushing aside, too, the legends and coming to hard fact, we must picture Ireland still covered for the most part with pathless forests, but here and there cleared and settled after a rude fashion by rough cattle-owni
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ST. PATRICK THE MISSIONARY.
ST. PATRICK THE MISSIONARY.
But a new element was about to appear upon the troubled stage, and a new figure, one whose doings, however liberally we may discount the more purely supernatural part of them, strikes us even now as little short of miraculous. There are plenty of heathen countries still; plenty of missionaries too; but a missionary at whose word an entire island--a heathen country given up, it must be remembered, to exceedingly heathen practices--resigns its own creed, and that missionary, too, no king, no warri
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THE FIRST IRISH MONASTERIES.
THE FIRST IRISH MONASTERIES.
At home during the same period the chief events were the founding of monasteries, and the settling down of monastic communities, every such monastery becoming the protector and teacher of the little Christian community in its vicinity, educating its own sons, and sending them out as a bee sends its swarms, to settle upon new ground, and to fertilize the flowers of distant harvest fields. At one time, "The Tribes of the Saints" seem to have increased to such an extent that they threatened to abso
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ST. COLUMBA AND THE WESTERN CHURCH.
ST. COLUMBA AND THE WESTERN CHURCH.
About fifty years after the death of St. Patrick a new missionary arose, one who was destined to carry the work which he had begun yet further, to become indeed the founder of what for centuries was the real metropolis and centre of Western Christendom. In 521 A.D., St. Columba was born in Donegal, of the royal race, say the annalists, of Hy-Nial--of the royal race, at any rate, of the great workers, doers, and thinkers all the world over. In 565, forty-four years later, he left Ireland with twe
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THE NORTHERN SCOURGE.
THE NORTHERN SCOURGE.
While from the fifth to the eighth century the work of the Irish Church was thus yearly increasing, spreading its net wider and wider, and numbering its converts by thousands, not much good can be reported of the secular history of Ireland during the same period. It is for the most part a confused chronicle of small feuds, jealousies, raids, skirmishes, retaliations, hardly amounting to the dignity of war, but certainly as distinctly the antipodes of peace. The tribal system, which in its earlie
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BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE.
BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE.
At last a time came for their oppression to be cut short in Ireland. Two valiant defenders sprang almost simultaneously into note. One of these was Malachy, or Melachlin, the Ard-Reagh and head of the O'Neills, the same Malachy celebrated by Moore as having "worn the collar of gold which he won from the proud invader." The other, Brian Boroimhe, commonly known to English writers as Brian Boru, a chieftain of the royal Dalcassian race of O'Brien, and the most important figure by far in Irish nati
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FROM BRIAN TO STRONGBOW.
FROM BRIAN TO STRONGBOW.
Whatever lamentations were uttered on this occasion were certainly not uncalled for, for a greater disaster has rarely befallen any country or people. Were proof wanted--which it hardly is--of that notorious ill-luck which has dogged the history of Ireland from the very beginning, it would be difficult to find a better one than the result of this same famous battle of Clontarf. Here was a really great victory, a victory the reverberation of which rang through the whole Scandinavian world, rejoic
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THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.
THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.
The invasion of Ireland by the Anglo-Normans differs in several respects from other invasions and conquests, not the least singular feature about it being that nearly the whole of that famous band of knightly adventurers who took part in it, and to whose audacity it was in the first instance due, were more or less closely related to one another, either as brothers, nephews, uncles, or cousins. The connecting link between these variously-named relations was one Nesta, princess of South Wales, dau
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HENRY II. IN IRELAND.
HENRY II. IN IRELAND.
This was practically the end of the struggle. The king had four thousand men-at-arms at his back, of whom no less than four hundred were knights. In addition his ships contained vast stores of provisions, a variety of war devices never before seen in Ireland, artizans for building bridges and making roads--a whole war train, in short. Such a display of force was felt to be irresistible. The chieftains one after the other came in and made their submission. Dermot McCarthy, lord of Desmond and Cor
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EFFECTS OF THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.
EFFECTS OF THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.
Henry had been only six months in Ireland, but he had accomplished much--more certainly than any other English ruler ever accomplished afterwards within the same time. He had divided the ceded districts into counties; had appointed sheriffs for them; had set up three Law Courts--Bench, Pleas, and Exchequer; had arranged for the going on circuit by judges; and had established his own character for orthodoxy, and acquitted himself of his obligations to the papacy by freeing all church property fro
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JOHN IN IRELAND.
JOHN IN IRELAND.
Henry had gone, and the best hopes of the new dependency departed with him never to return again. Fourteen years later he despatched his son John, then a youth of nineteen, with a train of courtiers, and amongst them our friend Giraldus, who appeared to have been sent over in some sort of tutorial or secretarial capacity. The expedition was a disastrous failure. The chiefs flocked to Waterford to do honour to their king's son. The courtiers, encouraged by their insolent young master, scoffed at
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THE LORDS PALATINE.
THE LORDS PALATINE.
The jealousy shown by Henry and his sons towards the earliest invaders of Ireland is doubtless the reason why Giraldus--for a courtier and an ecclesiastic upon his promotion--is so remarkably explicit upon their royal failings. The Geraldines especially seem to have been the objects of this not very unnatural jealousy, and the Geraldines are, on the other hand, to Giraldus himself, objects of an almost superstitious worship. His pen never wearies of expatiating upon their valour, fame, beauty, a
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EDWARD BRUCE IN IRELAND.
EDWARD BRUCE IN IRELAND.
One of the greatest difficulties to be faced in the study of Irish history, no matter upon what scale, is to discover any reasonable method of dividing our space. The habit of distributing all historical affairs into reigns is often misleading enough even in England; in Ireland it becomes simply ridiculous. What difference can any one suppose it made to the great bulk of the people of that country whether a Henry, whom they had never seen, had been succeeded by an Edward they had never seen, or
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THE STATUTE OF KILKENNY.
THE STATUTE OF KILKENNY.
It was not to be expected, however, that the larger country would for very shame let her possessions thus slip from her grasp without an effort to retain them, certainly not when a ruler of the calibre of an Edward III. came to the helm. Had his energies been able to concentrate themselves upon Ireland the stream which was setting dead against loyalty might even then have been turned back. The royal interest would have risen to the top of faction, as it did in England, and would have curbed the
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RICHARD II. IN IRELAND.
RICHARD II. IN IRELAND.
Richard the Second's reign is a more definite epoch for the Irish historian than many more striking ones, for the simple reason of two visits having been paid by him to Ireland. The first of these was in 1394, when he landed at Waterford with 30,000 archers and 40,000 men at arms, an immense army for that age, and for Ireland it was held an irresistible one. It was certainly high time for some steps to be taken. In all directions the interests of the colonists were going to the wall. Not only in
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THE DEEPEST DEPTHS.
THE DEEPEST DEPTHS.
The most salient fact in Irish history is perhaps its monotony. If that statement is a bull it is one that must be forgiven for the sake of the truth it conveys. Year after year, decade after decade, century after century, we seem to go swimming slowly and wearily on through a vague sea of confusion and disorder; of brutal deeds and yet more brutal retaliations; of misgovernment and anarchy; of a confusion so penetrating and all-persuasive that the mind fairly refuses to grapple with it. Even ki
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THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT.
THE KILDARES IN THE ASCENDANT.
When the Battle of Bosworth brought the adherents of the Red Rose back to triumph, Gerald Mor was still Lord-deputy. He was not deposed, however, on that account, although the Butlers were at once reinstated in their own property, and Sir Thomas Butler was created Earl of Ormond. According to a precedent now prevailing for several reigns, the Lord-Lieutenancy was conferred upon the Duke of Bedford, the king's uncle, Kildare continuing, however, practically to exercise all the functions of govern
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FALL OF THE HOUSE OF KILDARE.
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF KILDARE.
The battle of Knocktow was fought five years before the death of Henry VII. Of those five years and of the earlier ones of the new reign little of any vital importance remains to be recorded in Ireland. With the rise of Wolsey to power however a new era set in. The great cardinal was the sworn enemy of the Geraldines. He saw in them the most formidable obstacle to the royal power in that country. The theory that the Kildares were the only people who could carry on the government had by this time
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THE ACT OF SUPREMACY.
THE ACT OF SUPREMACY.
In spite of his feeble health and feebler energies, Sir William Skeffington was continued Lord-deputy until his death, which took place not many months after the fall of Maynooth--"A good man of war, but not quick enough for Ireland"--seems to have been the verdict of his contemporaries upon him. He was succeeded by Lord Leonard Grey, against whom no such charge could be made. His energy seems to have been immense. He loved, we are told, to be "ever in the saddle." Such was the rapidity of his m
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THE NEW DEPARTURE.
THE NEW DEPARTURE.
So far so good. Despite a few trifling clouds which overhung the horizon, the latter years of Henry VIII.'s life and the short reign of his successor may claim to count among the comparatively halcyon periods of Irish history. The agreement with the landowners worked well, and no serious fears of any purpose to expel them from their lands had as yet been awakened. Henry's policy was upon the whole steadily conciliatory. Tyrant as he was, he could be just when his temper was not roused, and he ke
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THE FIRST PLANTATIONS.
THE FIRST PLANTATIONS.
With Mary's accession the religious struggle was for a while postponed. Some feeble attempts were even made to recover the Church property, but too many people's interests were concerned for much to be done in that direction. Dowdal, Archbishop of Armagh, who had been deprived, was restored to his primacy. Archbishop Brown and the other conforming bishops were deprived. So also were all married clergy, of whom there seem to have been but few; otherwise there was no great difference. As far as th
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WARS AGAINST SHANE O'NEILL.
WARS AGAINST SHANE O'NEILL.
Upon the 17th of November, 1558, Mary died, and upon the afternoon of the same day Elizabeth was proclaimed queen. A new reign is always accounted a new starting-point, and in this case the traditional method of dividing history is certainly no misleader. The old queen had been narrow, dull-witted, bigoted; an unhappy woman, a miserable wife, plagued with sickness, plagued, above all, with a conscience whose mission seems to have been to distort everything that came under its cognizance. A woman
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BETWEEN TWO STORMS.
BETWEEN TWO STORMS.
By 1566 Sir Henry Sidney became Lord-deputy, not now in the room of another, but fully appointed. With the possible exception of Sir John Perrot, he was certainly the ablest of all the viceroys to whom Elizabeth committed power in Ireland. Unlike others he had the advantage, too, of having served first in the country in subordinate capacities, and so earning his experience. He even seems to have been fairly popular, which, considering the nature of some of his proceedings, throws a somewhat sini
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THE DESMOND REBELLION.
THE DESMOND REBELLION.
The tale of the great Desmond rebellion which ended only with the ruin of that house, and with the slaughter or starvation of thousands of its unhappy adherents, is one of those abortive tragedies of which the whole history of Ireland is full. Our pity for the victims' doom, and our indignation for the cold-blooded cruelty with which that doom was carried out, is mingled with a reluctant realization of the fact that the state of things which preceded it was practically impossible, that it had be
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BETWEEN TWO MORE STORMS.
BETWEEN TWO MORE STORMS.
Two great risings against Elizabeth's power in Ireland had thus been met and suppressed. A third and a still more formidable one was yet to come. The interval was filled with renewed efforts at colonization upon a yet larger scale than before. Munster, which at the beginning of the Desmond rising had been accounted the most fertile province in Ireland, was now little better than a desert. Not once or twice, but many times the harvest had been burnt and destroyed, and great as had been the slaugh
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BATTLE OF THE YELLOW FORD.
BATTLE OF THE YELLOW FORD.
The northern river Blackwater--there are at least three Blackwaters in Ireland--forms the southern boundary of the county Tyrone, which takes a succession of deep loops or elbows in order to follow its windings. At the end of the sixteenth century and for centuries previously it had marked the boundary of the territory of the chiefs or princes of Tyrone, and here, therefore, it was that the struggle between the earl and the queen's troops advancing from Dublin was necessarily fought out. A good
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THE ESSEX FAILURE.
THE ESSEX FAILURE.
Elizabeth was now nearly seventy years of age, and this was her third war in Ireland. Nevertheless, she and her Council girded themselves resolutely to the struggle. There could at least be no half-hearted measure now; no petty pleas of economy; no penurious doling out of men and money. No one, not even the queen herself, could reasonably question the gravity of the crisis. The next person to appear upon the scene is Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, whose brilliant mercurial figure flashes for a
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END OF THE TYRONE REBELLION.
END OF THE TYRONE REBELLION.
A very different man from the chivalrous and quixotic Essex now took the reins. Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, had expected to be sent to Ireland when Essex had suddenly been appointed with ampler powers and a more extended consequence, and the disappointment had caused him to follow the course of that ill-starred favourite with ill-concealed jealousy to its tragic end. Mountjoy was himself a man of cold, clear-sighted, self-seeking temperament. In almost all English histories dealing with this
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THE FLIGHT OF THE EARLS.
THE FLIGHT OF THE EARLS.
This was the last serious attempt on the part of any individual Irish chieftain to rise against the power of England. The next rebellion of which we shall hear arose from perfectly different causes, and was general rather than individual, grew indeed before its conclusion to the larger and more imposing dimensions of a civil war. In one respect this six years' struggle was less productive of results than either of the two previous ones. At the end of it, Tyrone was still Tyrone; still the first
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THE FIRST CONTESTED ELECTION.
THE FIRST CONTESTED ELECTION.
In 1613, it was resolved by the Government to summon an Irish Parliament, for the purpose of giving legality to their recent proceedings in Ulster, and also to pass an Act of formal attainder upon the two exiled earls. The great difficulty felt by the executive was how to secure an adequate Protestant majority. Even after the recent large introduction of Protestants the great mass of the freeholders, and nearly all the burgesses in the towns were still Roman Catholics. In the Upper House, indeed
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OLD AND NEW OWNERS.
OLD AND NEW OWNERS.
The zeal for Irish colonization had by no means subsided after the Ulster settlement had been established; on the contrary, it was the favourite panacea of the hour, especially in the eyes of the king himself. After one such resounding success, why, it was asked, not extend so evident a blessing to the rest of Ireland? "A commission to inquire into defective titles" was set on foot, whose duty it was to collect evidence as to the condition of estates, and to inquire into the titles of owners. Th
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STRAFFORD.
STRAFFORD.
In 1632, Wentworth--better known as Strafford--arrived in Ireland, prepared to carry out his motto of "Thorough." Only three years before, he had been one of the foremost orators in the struggle for the Petition of Right. The dagger of Fenton had turned him from an impassioned patriot and constitutionalist into a vehement upholder of absolutism. His revolt had been little more than a mask for his hostility to the hated favourite Buckingham, and when Buckingham's murder cleared the path to his am
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'FORTY-ONE.
'FORTY-ONE.
Stafford's fall and death would alone have rendered this year, 1641, a memorable one in Irish history. Unhappily it was destined to be made yet more so; few years, indeed, in that long, dark bead-roll are perhaps as memorable, both from what it brought forth at the time, and, still more, from what was afterwards to follow from it. The whole country, it must be remembered, was in a state of the wildest and most irrepressible excitement. The fall of such a ruler as Strafford--one under whose iron
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THE WATERS SPREAD.
THE WATERS SPREAD.
So far the rising had been merely local. It was now to assume larger dimensions. Although shocked at the massacre, and professing an eager desire to march in person to punish its perpetrators, Charles' chief aim was really that terms should be made with the leaders, in order that their troops might be made available for service in England. In Dublin courts-martial were being rapidly established. All Protestants were given arms; all strangers were ordered to quit the city on pain of death; Sir Fr
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CIVIL WAR.
CIVIL WAR.
The passionate excitement which the news of the Ulster massacre had awakened in England seems to have deepened, rather than diminished, as time went on, and the details became more known. Nothing that has happened within living memory can be even approximately compared to it, though, perhaps, those who are old enough to remember the sensations awakened by the news of the Indian Mutiny will be able most nearly to realize the wrath and passionate desire of revenge which filled every Protestant bre
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THE CONFUSION DEEPENS.
THE CONFUSION DEEPENS.
The indescribable confusion of aims and parties in Ireland begins at this point to take even more rapid and perplexing turns. That "poor panther Inchiquin," as one of his opponents derisively calls him, who had already made one bound from king to Parliament, now, upon some fresh offence, bounded back again, and made overtures to Preston and the Moderates. Rinucini, whose only policy was to hinder any union between the Catholics and Royalists, thereupon fled to O'Neill, and together they opposed
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CROMWELL IN IRELAND.
CROMWELL IN IRELAND.
Cromwell had hardly set foot upon Irish soil before he took complete control of the situation. The enterprise, in his own eyes and in those of many who accompanied him, wore all the sacred hue of a crusade. "We are come," he announced, solemnly, upon his arrival in Dublin, "to ask an account of the innocent blood that hath been shed, and to endeavour to bring to an account all who, by appearing in arms, shall justify the same." Three thousand troops, the flower of the English cavaliers, with som
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CROMWELL'S METHODS.
CROMWELL'S METHODS.
The total loss of life during-those weary eight years of war and anarchy has been estimated at no less than six hundred thousand lives, and there seems to be no reason to think that these figures are exaggerated. Whereas in 1641 the population of Ireland was nearly one and a half millions, at the end of 1649 it was considerably under one. More than a third, therefore, of the entire population had disappeared bodily. Nor were the survivors left in peace to bind up their wounds and mourn their sla
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THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT.
THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT.
Cromwell was now dead, and after a very short attempt at government his son Richard had relinquished the reins and retired into private life. Henry Cromwell, who had for several years been Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland, and had won no little liking by his mild and equable rule, also honourably resigned at the same time, and left. Coote, on the other hand, and Broghill, both of whom had acquired immense estates under the Cromwellian rule, were amongst the foremost to hail the Restoration, and to sec
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OPPRESSION AND COUNTER OPPRESSION.
OPPRESSION AND COUNTER OPPRESSION.
No class of the community suffered more severely from the effects of the Restoration than the Presbyterians of Ulster. The church party which had returned to Ireland upon the crest of the new wave signalized its return by a violent outburst of intolerance directed not so much against the Papists as the Nonconformists. Of the 300,000 Protestants, which was roughly speaking the number calculated to be at that time in Ireland, fully a third were Presbyterians, another 100,000 being made up of Purit
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WILLIAM AND JAMES IN IRELAND.
WILLIAM AND JAMES IN IRELAND.
James's appearance in Ireland was hailed with a little deserved burst of enthusiasm. As a king, as a Catholic, and as a man in deep misfortune, he had a triple claim upon the kindly feeling of a race never slow to respond to such appeals. All along the road from Cork to Dublin the people ran out out in crowds to greet him with tears, blessings, and cries of welcome. Women thronged the banks along the roadsides, and held up their children to see him go by. Flowers--as to the poor quality of which
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THE TREATY OF LIMERICK.
THE TREATY OF LIMERICK.
Nothing was now left but Limerick. Galway had yielded immediately after the day of Aughrim, its garrison claiming and obtaining the right of marching out with all the honours of war. Tyrconnel was dying, and had long lost, too, what little reputation he had ever had as a soldier. Sarsfield, however, stood firm to the last. Fresh reinforcements were hoped for from France, but none came until too late to be of any use. The town was again invested and besieged. An English fleet held the mouth of th
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THE PENAL CODE.
THE PENAL CODE.
We are now upon the brink of a century as full of strange fortunes for Ireland as any that had preceded it, but in which those fortunes were destined to take a widely different turn. In the two preceding ones revolts and risings had, as we have seen, been the rule rather than the exception. In this one from the beginning down to within a couple of years of its close when a rebellion--which, in most impartial historians' opinion, might with a little care have been averted--broke the peace of the
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THE COMMERCIAL CODE.
THE COMMERCIAL CODE.
All power, place, and authority had thus once more swung round into the hands of the Protestant colony--"The Protestant Ascendency," as it came after a while to be called. They alone had seats in Parliament, they alone, until near the end of the century, were competent to vote. Taxes were collected over the whole island, but only Protestants had a voice in their disposal. All the parliamentary struggles of this century, it must clearly be understood, were struggles between Protestants and Protes
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MOLYNEUX AND SWIFT.
MOLYNEUX AND SWIFT.
The early half of the eighteenth century is such a very dreary period of Irish history that there is little temptation to linger over it. Two men, however, stand out conspicuously against this melancholy background, neither of whom must be passed over without a few words. The first of these was William Molyneux, the "Ingenious Molyneux," as he was called by his contemporaries, a distinguished philosopher, whose life was almost exclusively devoted to scientific pursuits. Molyneux is, or ought to
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HENRY FLOOD.
HENRY FLOOD.
The forty years which follow maybe passed rapidly over. They were years of absolute tranquillity in Ireland, but beyond that rather negative praise little of good can be reported of them. Public opinion was to all practical purposes dead, and the functions of Parliament were little more than nominal. Unlike the English one, the Irish Parliament had by the nature of its constitution, no natural termination, save by a dissolution, or by the death of the sovereign. Thus George the Second's Irish Pa
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HENRY GRATTAN.
HENRY GRATTAN.
"Great men," wrote Sydney Smith, sixty years ago in an article in The Edinburgh Review , "hallow a whole people, and lift up all who live in their time. What Irishman does not feel proud that he lived in the days of Grattan? Who has not turned to him for comfort from the false friends and open enemies of Ireland? Who did not remember him in the days of its burnings, wastings, and murders?" Grattan is, indeed, pre-eminently the Irish politician to whom other Irish politicians--however diverse the
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THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS.
THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS.
The revolt of the English Colonies in America, although it evoked no disloyalty, had a strong and unforeseen influence upon the equally English colony in Ireland. It would have been strange had it not done so. The circumstances of the two colonies--looking at Ireland merely in that light--were in many respects all but identical. If England could tax America without the consent of its representatives, then, equally it could tax Ireland, in which case the long struggles lately waged by Flood, Grat
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DANGER SIGNALS.
DANGER SIGNALS.
The significant warnings uttered by Flood and others against the danger of postponing reform until the excitement temporarily awakened upon the subject had subsided and the volunteers disbanded, proved, unfortunately, to be only too well justified. Where Flood, however, had erred, had been in failing to see that a reform which left three-fourths of the people of the country unrepresented, could never be more than a reform in name. This error Grattan never made. During the next ten or twelve year
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THE FITZWILLIAM DISAPPOINTMENT.
THE FITZWILLIAM DISAPPOINTMENT.
The eagerness shown at this time by the principal Irish Protestants to give full emancipation to their Roman Catholic countrymen is eminently creditable to them, and stands in strong relief to the bitterness on both sides, both in earlier and latter times. By 1792 there seems to have been something almost like unanimity on the subject. What reads strangest perhaps to our ears, 600 Belfast Protestant householders warmly pressed the motion on the Government. In a work, published six years earlier,
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'NINETY-EIGHT.
'NINETY-EIGHT.
It was not long delayed. The Society of United Irishmen had now grown to be little more than a mere nest of Jacobinism, filled with all the turbulent and disaffected elements afloat in the whole country. Of this society Wolfe Tone was the creator, guide, and moving spirit. Any one who wishes to understand the movement rather as it originally took shape than in the form which it assumed when accident had deprived it of all its leaders, should carefully study his autobiography. As he reads its tra
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THE UNION.
THE UNION.
By the month of August the last sparks of the rebellion of '98 had been quenched. Martial law prevailed everywhere. The terror which the rising had awakened was finding its vent in violent actions and still more violent language, and Lord Cornwallis, the Lord-Lieutenant, was one of the few who ventured to say that enough blood had been shed, and that the hour for mercy had struck. The ferocity with which the end of the contest had been waged by the rebels had aroused a feeling of corresponding,
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O'CONNELL AND CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.
O'CONNELL AND CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.
Another century had now dawned, and, like the last, it was heralded in with great changes in Ireland. More than change, however, is needed for improvement. " Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose " has been said of French politics, and is at least equally applicable to Irish ones. The Union had not brought union, and the years which followed it were certainly no great improvement on those that had preceded them. The growth of political institution is not so naturally stable in Ireland that the
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"YOUNG IRELAND."
"YOUNG IRELAND."
The camp and council chamber of the "Young Ireland" party was the editor's room of The Nation newspaper. There it found its inspiration, and there its plans were matured--so far, that is, as they can be said to have been ever matured. For an eminently readable and all things considered a wonderfully impartial account of this movement, the reader cannot do better than consult Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's "Four Years of Irish History," which has the immense advantage of being history taken at first h
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THE FAMINE.
THE FAMINE.
All the time the earlier of the foregoing scenes were being enacted, the famine had been drawing its python grasp tighter and tighter around the unhappy island. The first symptoms of the dread potato disease showed themselves in the autumn of 1845, and even that year there was much suffering, though a trifle to what was to follow. Many remedies were tried, both to stop the blight and save the crops, but all alike proved unavailing. The next year the potatoes seemed to promise unusually well, and
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THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT.
THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT.
The story of the last forty years must be compressed into a nutshell. The famine was over at last, but its effects remained. Nearly a million of people had emigrated, yet the condition of life for those remaining was far from satisfactory. The Encumbered Estates Act, which had completed the ruin of many of the older proprietors, pressed, in some respects, even more severely upon the tenants, a large number of whom found themselves confronted with new purchasers, who, having invested in Irish lan
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CONCLUSION.
CONCLUSION.
"Concluded not completed," is the verdict of Carlyle upon one of his earlier studies, and "concluded not completed," conscience is certainly apt to mutter at the close of so necessarily inadequate a summary as this. Much of this inadequacy, it may fairly be confessed, is individual, yet a certain amount is also inherent in the very nature of the task itself. In no respect does this inadequacy press with a more penitential weight than in the case of those heroes whose names spring up at intervals
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AUTHORITIES.
AUTHORITIES.
Adamnan, "Life of St. Columba" ( trans .). Arnold (Matthew), "On the Study of Celtic Literature." Bagwell, "Ireland under the Tudors." Barrington (Sir Jonah), "Personal Recollections," "Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation." Brewer, "Introduction to the Carew Calendar of State Papers." Bright (Rt. Hon. J.), "Speeches." Burke (Edmund), "Tracts on the Popery Laws," "Speeches and Letters." Carlyle, "Letters and Speeches of Cromwell." Carew, "Pacata Hibernia." Cloncurry, "Life and Times of Lord Clonc
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