the shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie, wherever the tide of emigration has extended, are to be found one unbroken chain of graves, where repose fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, in a commingled heap, no stone marking the spot. Twenty thousand and upwards have gone down to their graves ! '2

A remnant of these unhappy fugitives escaped from the famine ship and the fever shed, and what became of them? Their fate is the fact most significant and instructive in all this painful story. Many of them are to-day dynamiters in New York or Chicago, or sympathisers in Canada and Nova Scotia. The man whose name is most familiar to Englishmen as an Irish anarchist was bred in Skibbereen, the scene of the most fearful suffering. Suppose him as base as you will, a mercenary braggart, a trafficker in blood, but what of the people who listen to him and fill the pay-chest? Be assured the majority of them are convinced that their destruction was planned; that the thinning of the Irish race was promoted by British statesmen as a good stroke of policy, and this is the reason why their thirst for vengeance is implacable.

In 1852 the Irish Land Question was for the first time pushed to a position where it became a factor in imperial politics. At the instigation of the Tenant League, and by a tremendous effort, the twice decimated population sent a majority of representatives to London, pledged to support a scheme of agrarian reform formulated by Mr. Sharman Crawford. The first aim of the League was to get men elected who must be listened to in the House of Commons. Their labours in this respect are still secret history, but one fact at least has become public: Mr. Mill records in his Autobiography that Mr. Lucas and I were authorised to offer him the representation of an Irish county, which he would have accepted but for his engagements with the East India Company. The League wanted numbers of course, but they wanted still more capacity and integrity; for, as the subtle American humorist who is now ambassador at St. James's, demands:

What use in adding to the tail

If 'tis the head wants strengthening?

They succeeded in a remarkable degree. Frederick Lucas had all the gifts of a great Parliamentarian; Lord Palmerston was of opinion that he was the most notable recruit sent from the three kingdoms to the new Parliament; George Henry Moore was a master of rhetorical art; Serjeant Shee had solid talents and high professional reputation, which he placed at the service of the party, so far at least as was consistent with ulterior ambition; Colonel Greville, the late Lord Greville, certainly began his parliamentary career with a sincere desire to help the trampled tenantry; and Patrick McMahon, who had no showy gifts, laboured without stint or pause to 2 Four Years of Irish History.

furnish the essential ammunition of debate. From an early date Mr. Disraeli understood the Irish problem; but if he long found it impossible to induce the party he inspired to accept his opinions on the question he had most at heart, the emancipation of his own race, how hard must it have been to bend their intractable prejudices where Ireland was concerned?

It was sometimes my duty, when I was an Irish member, to communicate with that statesman statesman on public questions, and I carried away the conviction that he had no prejudices or prepossessions which forbade him dealing with Ireland, whenever it became practicable, in the spirit of Sir Robert Peel's memorable declaration. In the first session of the new Parliament he carried through the House of Commons a bill more generous in its provisions than Mr. Gladstone's Land Act of 1870, though far less so than his Land Act of 1881. At this point a joint attack on the Administration was planned by the Whigs and Peelites in the shape of a Free Trade motion, and the balance of parties at the moment rendered the vote of the Tenant Leaguers decisive. After some negotiation, the leaders of the party agreed to vote with Mr. Disraeli on the coming division, rather than risk the loss of such a measure as his Land Bill. They were pledged to support no Government which would not make Sharman Crawford's bill a Cabinet question; but the bill before Parliament approached so near to Crawford's scheme that they considered it a duty consistent with their pledges to protect the framers of it from a party vote. The Irish Peers, however, were alarmed lest concessions had been promised dangerous to their monopoly; they rushed to Lord Derby with a complaint that Disraeli was betraying them to secure a temporary triumph; and the impulsive Premier, to satisfy their fears, volunteered a declaration in his place in the House of Lords that he would never consent to accept the principles of Sharman Crawford's bill. The possibility of supporting the Government consistently with their pledges was taken away from the Irish members by this coup; they voted for the Free Trade motion, and the Derby Administration fell.

The Aberdeen Government, which succeeded them, instead of taking up the Land Question at the point which it had reached-a concession freely promised by party canvassers before the divisionset about corrupting the Irish party. They gave office to the notorious John Sadleir, who, after a run of gigantic swindling, ended his shameful career on Hampstead Heath, and to one of his confederates, who, in the end, made a scarcely less tragic exit; both of them having publicly and solemnly promised, on the hustings, not to ask or accept place for themselves or others from any Government which did not stake its existence in passing Crawford's bill. Lord Palmerston, who was landlord of an impoverished Irish tenantry, scoffed at the proposal of recognising tenant right; and it is proper to VOL. XV.-No. 83.

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add that at home the deserters found unexpected support from a section of bishops and priests under the influence of Archbishop Cullen, who, fresh from a Roman cloister, confounded the legitimate claims of the people with Italian projects which he detested. The Irish. party was disabled and finally broken up; and the Crimean war, the Indian mutiny, and the troubles with America over the Trent' and ́Alabama' cases, long diverted the attention of Parliament from the wrongs of Irish farmers.

6

A Reform Act was the next boon to Ireland. In 1867 Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli were again in office, because the House of Commons had lately rejected a Reform Bill of the Whigs as too adventurous and democratic. How it came to accept a more democratic measure from the Tories is beside my present purpose. The Derby-Disraeli bill, as it finally became law, established household suffrage in English boroughs, and beyond household suffrage gave a In vote to every lodger who paid rent to the amount of 10l. a year. counties the franchise was extended to all owners of property to the value of 5., and to occupiers paying 121. a year rent. No political party but the Chartists had ever suggested a scheme so broad and comprehensive. It provided also for trying as an experiment, in certain large constituencies, the principle of representing minorities; a principle without which political power can never be fairly distributed. There is no more justification that I can discern for giving all the representatives of a district to the majority and none to the minority, than for disposing of wages or rations on the same method; and the modern Liberals who insist that the members in such a community as Manchester or Birmingham ought to be monopolised by one party, while the other is altogether excluded, seem to me to understand fair play as little as the old Tories who refused to give these towns any members.

When, after long delay, the Irish Bill was proposed, it proved to be an impudent pretence of reform. While in English boroughs every rated householder had a vote, and every lodger holding by the year who paid 4s. a week rent, in Irish boroughs a man must occupy a house rated at 4l. a year, equivalent to an 87. rental, and the lodger qualification was altogether omitted. In the counties the franchise was given to occupiers of tenements subject to a 10l. Government valuation; but experienced men in Ireland pointed out that, while in England a 121. rating is equivalent to a 127. rental, in Ireland, from the different method of valuation, it represents a rent of 18. The result has been that English counties in proportion to population have much more than twice as many voters as Irish counties. far this arrangement was founded on the principle proclaimed by Sir Robert Peel twenty years before, the unprejudiced reader can determine for himself.

How

And now we have arrived by rapid strides at the era of Mr. Gladstone. There was nowhere in Europe an institution for which so little could be said as the Established Church in Ireland, and I fully recognise that it would be still standing erect, buttressed by the whole authority of the empire, but for his sole will. Mr. Matthew Arnold affirms that it was abolished to gratify the English Dissenters, but I prefer to believe that the statesman who overthrew it was ashamed of the spectacle such a Church among such a people presented to the world. What it alone concerns me at present to consider is the nature and character of the religious equality established in Ireland by that transaction. To frame a just and amicable settlement of the case was not beyond human skill. In the Irish Parliament of James II.-that Popish Parliament which disgusted Lord Macaulay by the number of O'Neills and O'Donovans, McMahons and MacNamaras who lolled on the red benches long reserved for Anglo-Normans and Anglo-Saxons, but which has been recognised by one of the most gifted Irish Protestants since Grattan as 'the Patriot Parliament a very simple and just compromise was effected. The tithe paid by Protestants was reserved for the support of the Protestant Church; the tithe paid by Catholics, for the support of the Catholic Church. This was religious equality as it was understood by Irish Catholics in the seventeenth century; the religious equality which found favour in England in the nineteenth century was different.

The property of the Irish Establishment was valued at from sixteen to eighteen millions sterling, and of this sum nearly two-thirds were restored to the Church in the name of compensation to existing interests, the balance being reserved for the future disposal of Parliament. The Establishment possessed everywhere throughout the island churches which were taken from the majority at the period of the Reformation, or built in later times at their expense; these edifices were not redistributed in proportion to the needs of the people, but were all bestowed in perpetuity on the minority. To the churches, wherever there was any business for a resident clergyman, there were attached glebe houses and glebe lands, and these also were bestowed upon the Disestablished Church. In Dublin there are two cathedrals situated in essentially Catholic districts; the Catholics have no cathedral except a temporary edifice in a back street, and one of these historic temples would have supplied an obvious want; they were both given to a Church which in its ritual and ceremonial has little place for cathedrals. That the nature of the settlement might not be misunderstood by the most heedless, the Lords added a final touch. The ruins of an ancient church which was never occupied by Protestants, which indeed had lain waste since it was burned by the soldiers of the Commonwealth, stands on the Rock of Cashel.

A bill passed the House of Commons authorising the Catholics to occupy and rebuild this ruined edifice-one in the whole island, one which lay deserted and useless-one out of thousands which in natural equity were theirs, and when the measure reached the Lords it was peremptorily rejected. How far Mr. Gladstone is responsible. for the settlement of the Church question I can only conjecture; it is probable that he did all English opinion would permit him to do; but this is my case, quod erat demonstrandum.

One genuine and effectual boon, however, was extended to Ireland during the tenure of the first Gladstone Government: the jury system was reformed. It is scarcely necessary to describe the base parody of justice which prevailed under the old method. Sheriffs packed panels, and Crown prosecutors packed juries in political trials as systematically as a sharper packs cards. Two or three cases which became the subject of parliamentary criticism will sufficiently illustrate the practice for anyone to whom it is unknown. When Lord Mulgrave was Lord Lieutenant, Thomas Drummond UnderSecretary, and Stephen Woulfe Attorney-General, a complaint came from a northern county that the office of sub-sheriff was conferred upon Sam Gray, the most noted Master of an Orange Lodge in Ulster, a man who had been twice tried for murdering a Catholic in broad daylight, and had twice escaped punishment by the connivance of his brethren in the jury-box. The Government thought that the duty of framing panels could not be safely entrusted to this person, and they requested the High Sheriff to substitute some one less objectionable. The High Sheriff positively refused, and the Lord Lieutenant then had recourse to the only remedy the Constitution provided, by removing him from office; and the deputy necessarily disappeared with his deputator. The Melbourne Administration were cannonaded in both Houses, and nearly overthrown for this legitimate and necessary exercise of authority. Four or five years later O'Connell was tried for a political offence in the Catholic metropolis of a Catholic nation, of which he was the most conspicuous citizen, and on his jury there was not permitted to sit a single Catholic. The jurors' book had been confessedly tampered with by some official having access to it; a panel shamefully unfair in its composition had been framed by a partisan sheriff from this mutilated book, and finally the Crown prosecutor struck off every one of the handful of Catholics who survived the double winnowing. Four years later, in the political trials of 1848, jury after jury was sworn on which a single Catholic had not a place. It was at this time that the early volumes of Macaulay's History appeared, in which the panel packing of the Stuarts in Middlesex is held up to execration. Mr. Macaulay was then a Cabinet Minister, and one of the prisoners addressed an ironical letter to him, inviting him to carry his historical inquiries