they were, in a single word, outlawed-the exercise of their religion proscribed, their authority over their children curtailed, their marriages with Protestants rendered invalid, their rise in life made absolutely impossible, even the enjoyment of the remains of their property prohibited by jealous and malignant severity.

This Penal Code continued in force until 1778, when it was relaxed but only in a slight degree, and it cannot be said to have been repealed entirely until 1829. It formed thus a fundamental law of society in Ireland for three generations, and it cannot be doubted that its results were in the highest degree disastrous, and have left deep and permanent traces. By giving the Established Church in Ireland a factitious and most unjust supremacy it made it a dependency of the State and the appanage of an oligarchic sect, depriving it thus of moral strength, and it aroused not only against the Establishment, but also against the whole scheme of Government, the conscience and feelings of the Irish Catholics, that is, of the great mass of the nation. The Penal Code, by practically limiting the lands of Ireland to a few thousand Protestants and giving them all the privileges of the State, perpetuated the memories of confiscation and wrong, and made the aristocracy of Ireland, at least in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, that most mischievous and injurious order, a narrow, haughty, and exclusive caste, with no sympathy for the classes beneath them, and divided from them by a deep barrier. And as for the Roman Catholics of Ireland, it is needless to say that the Penal Code succeeded, to a considerable extent, in accomplishing what it intended against them. It drove many of their leaders into exile, and reduced the Catholic nobility and gentry in many instances to humiliation and poverty. It acted as a degrading influence on the whole mass of the Catholic nation, preventing them from hoping for advancement in the State, debarring them from the exercise of their natural qualities, and fastening the mass of them upon the soil in dull, ignorant, and hopeless serfdom. But, above all, it kept alive, and continued in their original vividness, the recollections of conquest and wrong, making the Irish Roman Catholic feel that he really was an alien outlaw, and that the order of society for him was a system of oppression and iniquity. To the Penal Code is unquestionably due much of what we see in Ireland at this day; the alien and disliked State Church, the peculiar traditions still cherished by many of the Protestant gentry, and the moral state of the Catholic people, at once depressed, discontented and disaffected, are, in part at least, to be ascribed to it.

The results, however, of this long train of unfortunate events

Conquest. Conflicting Creeds. Commercial Restraints. 9

and bad were not only political and social; they left a deep and ominous mark on the economic condition of Ireland. One of the consequences of repeated confiscation was a numerous absentee proprietary, in race and religion different or hostile to the occupiers and cultivators of the soil; and it is hardly necessary to point out the mischiefs of this distribution of property. It was not only that such a class paid little attention to their estates, and consumed the produce in another country, it was that they remained aliens having little sympathy with the peasantry beneath them, and no feeling except to extract the greatest amount of rent possible. The restrictions placed by the Penal Code on the acquisition of land by the Catholics-as Burke predicted a century ago-threw the lands of Ireland into a kind of mortmain, giving a few Protestants a monopoly of them, and keeping them out of natural commerce. This not only discouraged the industry, the energy, and the thrift of the country, it had also a direct tendency to produce a class of embarrassed landowners there being no check on encumbering land, although there was on its absolute transfer-and also to create an order of middlemen in evasion of the law against alienation. It is hardly possible to conceive a worse system of landed tenures than was the consequence of this state of things, or one more injurious to the country and the evil of course was largely aggravated by all the other circumstances of Ireland, her poverty, backwardness, and disturbed condition. Of course, too, as we have noticed before, this unhappy tenor of Irish history found but too clear and mournful an expression in the state of the great mass of the peasantry in three at least of the four provinces. A century ago, seventy years after the settlement effected at the Revolution, the characteristics of the classes that form the farmers and agriculturists of Ireland, were in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, servility, a kind of sluggish apathy, and widespread and despairing poverty. When Burke and Arthur Young wrote, the economic structure of Ireland represented her history but too truly; its evidences were an idle and wasteful proprietary, in many instances non-resident; a grasping oppressive race of middlemen interposed between the owners and the occupiers of the soil, a degraded mass of peasantry and labourers, and a wretched and unimproving agriculture.

Nor have we even yet completed the tale of the causes which unhappily concurred to render Ireland the disgrace of the Empire. The healing and soothing influences of commerce would, perhaps, even in the last century, have removed some of her worst ills, have opened a way to Roman Catholic industry, have called into being a middle class to counterbalance the

Protestant oligarchy, have relieved the land from its swarms of paupers, have dissipated by the magic of comfort the evil memories of war and revolution. But, unfortunately, the narrow-minded policy which marked our whole colonial legislation until the days of Adam Smith and Pitt, was applied to Ireland with strict severity, and her relations in trade with the rest of the Empire were regulated by the mercantile system. The trade of Ireland was a colonial trade after the fashion of the eighteenth century; that is, her natural exports were diminished; her manufacturing industry was almost destroyed, and she was compelled to procure in the English market almost every article of luxury and ornament. This system of exclusion and repression, which formed perhaps the main grievance of Irish patriots' in the last century, was, assuredly, a very minor evil compared to others we have enumerated; nor do we deny that, in spite of it, the trade of Ireland made some progress, and that with happy and marked advantages. There is no doubt that in 1778, after nearly a century of settled government, the exports and imports of Ireland had increased immensely beyond what they had been, and that the result had been fraught with considerable benefit to the country. But the mercantile system, nevertheless, had reduced the commerce of Ireland to an amount insignificant compared to what it should have been ; and this mischievous effect of legislation in checking the development of progress that might have lessened the evils of the past, must be taken into account in any inquiry into the complex causes of the Irish Question.

Such, briefly, were the principal causes which, acting through a series of ages, made Ireland, what we know she was, during the century after the Revolution. Her condition has been fully described by writers of different genius and tendencies, but though their views may not coincide, they all agree in the general picture. They concur in this, that after years of settled government and established order, the distinctions of race and religion remained deep marked in the frame of society; that if Ulster was comparatively prosperous, Leinster, Munster, and Connaught continued backward; that the Penal Code had accomplished its work in elevating the Church of a caste into illegitimate and hated ascendancy, in producing a oligarchy of proprietors, and in outlawing the mass of a nation; that Ireland, bound in commercial fetters, was unable to expand naturally; that the Catholic people, wretched as they were, clung fondly to their persecuted Church, and cherished the memory of its wrongs; and that poverty and discontent were the normal state of three-fourths of the country. The gentle, acute,

narrow

Her State in the Last Century.

11

and Christian Berkeley, lamented the impenetrable barrier which separated the Romish clergy from his own even in the commonest duties of life, regretted the arrogance and harshness of the squirearchy, and endeavoured, so far as in him lay, to call attention to the misery of the peasantry. Swift, less philosophic, contented himself with savage philippics against the laws which burdened the minority in trade, but drew ghastly pictures of the waste and brutality of the upper classes, and of the want of three-fourths of the nation. Burke traced the evil to its historical source, and showed conclusively that, governed as she was, Ireland never could become prosperous, and that she was a wretched dependency. And Arthur Young, that excellent observer, in his admirable economic sketch of Ireland, traced a striking picture of the material consequences of class ascendancy and landed monopoly.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century, the state of Ireland attracted the attention of William Pitt, in his conceptions at least, perhaps the greatest of the statesmen of England. Her sectarian divisions, her class dissensions, the domination of her Protestant aristocracy, the commercial checks upon her development, and the miserable depression of the mass of her people, were appreciated by him in all their bearings. He applied his vigorous and capacious mind to devise and execute a remedial policy. It was an age for preserving ecclesiastical establishments, and Pitt probably did not think that Ireland was ripe for religious equality. He thus left the State Church untouched; but he wished to raise from its degradation the fallen Church of the Roman Catholics by endowing liberally the Roman Catholic priesthood, and thereby to attract to the State the sympathies of the Roman Catholics of Ireland and their leaders. This measure was to be supplemented by Catholic emancipation in the largest sense; that is, not only were the cruel fetters of the Penal Code to be wholly removed, but the Irish Catholics were to receive the full benefits of complete citizenship. A policy like this, Pitt justly hoped, would at least lay the basis of a reconciliation between the Irish Catholics and their Government, would gradually obliterate their past wrongs, and, their energies being set free, would gradually bring them material prosperity. As regards the ascendancy of the Protestant caste, Pitt, evidently following Adam Smith, believed that a union with Great Britain would, in the course of time, effect its extinction; and this measure accordingly was a cardinal point in his plans for Ireland. At the same time he declared that Ireland was entitled to absolute freedom of trade, and he looked to the increase of wealth which would inevitably follow this change as

the best means of lessening her poverty. His policy, if not in all respects conformable to modern Liberal ideas, was truly noble and comprehensive; to this day it has not been equalled by any of his successors who have attempted to touch or mitigate the Irish difficulty.

Unfortunately, however, the policy of Pitt was not carried out on account of prejudices which only complicated the Irish Question. The Union was accomplished indeed, but in a manner which shocked the conscience of all honest and upright men, and under circumstances which almost made it a breach of faith to the Irish people. There can be no doubt that the general support which the Catholics of Ireland gave the Union was given under an implied promise that it would be accompanied by a series of reforms in the interest of their Church and themselves; and when it was discovered that this condition in the national compact was eluded, widespread distrust was the inevitable consequence. The Union, effected in this way by alienating the Catholics of Ireland from the British Government which had seemed to deceive them, compelled that Government to throw its weight in the scale of the Protestant oligarchy; and the result was that the influence of that caste, so fatal to the progress of the nation-its illegitimate and mischievous ascendancy-has hardly diminished for many years. During the generation that followed the Union, the political frame of society in Ireland continued in no respect altered; that is, favour, influence, and property were centred in the Protestant aristocracy; they monopolised all the patronage of the State; possessed all the local administration; engrossed nearly all the landed estates; and were allowed to oppress with impunity the Roman Catholic nation of three-fourths of Ireland. Meanwhile the Protestant Establishment still monopolised the ecclesiastical revenues of the country; the Church of the real nation continued in poverty, degradation, and contempt; and, the pledge of Catholic Emancipation having been repudiated as impracticable, the whole Catholic people of Ireland were kept deprived of the rights of citizenship, the lower orders held in subjection, the middle and upper rendered unable to take their natural place in society. From this state of things what could arise but a prolongation of the old evils-the iniquitous supremacy of class and creed-the monopoly of power by a sectarian caste-and a deep sense of injustice in the hearts of the mass of the Catholics, most powerful of course in the three provinces in which they formed the body of the people?

While this was the political state of Ireland for years after the Union, a great change was operating gradually in the