Page images
PDF
EPUB

interests of the Church to vilify a Protestant landlord, it must be done as a matter of course. The first report brought to the Priest by a discontented tenant is believed and repeated, and education and prejudice will render the most honest men careless in their enquiries into the real state of the facts. Again, if a conscientious Roman Catholic be on a jury, he is so trained to obedience, that he asks himself involuntarily, how will this matter affect my Church? If the accused be found guilty, will it bring discredit on my religion? If therefore, the balance of evidence be doubtful, he leans to the side which will not criminate his party. If he be an unscrupulous man, of course he makes up his mind before he hears the evidence.

For these reasons, (omitting the strong ground of religious principle) we dissent from the favourite position taken up by the Commissioner, that the government ought to pay the Priests. Is it politic to support men who are so bound together, that at a given signal they must co-operate to overthrow you? Would it have been prudent in the Rennepont family, to have entered into a subscription to subsidize Rodin and the Jesuits? We think the old fable of the wood-cutter and the trees, would be a sufficient answer to those who advise us to give additional power into the hands of those who will wield it against us. The only good argument we have heard, is one derived from the master of "The Happy Family," who once occupied the battlements of Blackfriars Bridge; he fed his cats so well that they grew fat and lazy, and allowed the white mice and canary birds to run over them, without being tempted by the plumpness of their skin, or the golden brightness of their feathers.

The second reason, why we hold the Roman Catholic Church to be the enemy of social order, is that it justifies lying in a good cause. Then, as the Priest is the proper judge of what ought to be considered a spiritual matter, so the ignorant conscience of each individual is allowed to decide what is a good cause, self-interest or injury to a heretic may easily appear a good cause, and we must recollect, that while lying is innocent in a good cause, it is necessary, and even meritorious, when required for the good of the Church. A gentleman with whom we are well acquainted, related the following fact, to which he was eye-witness: A freeholder at an election, who was suspected of having taken a bribe, had the bribery oath tendered to him in the polling-booth. He threw down the book and ran away, declaring that he could not take it. Shortly after, the same man was brought back, leaning on two priests: he took the oath and voted. The natural inference is, that falseswearing, as well as false-speaking, is allowable for the good of the

[blocks in formation]

Church, and that the priest can give absolution beforehand for the sin of wilful perjury.

The Times Commissioner with all his sagacity does not understand this point. He seems surprised at what every Irish Protestant knows; namely, that the Roman Catholic peasantry will lie to any extent, when they can serve a purpose for themselves, or in any way advance their cause. The Commissioner had visited Mr. O'Connell's estate, and had discovered great misery in the village of Derrynanebeg: he had been contradicted by the newspapers, and returned with a reporter belonging to the Times in order to verify his own statement. This controversy has been fully before the public, so we do not intend to enter into it further than to say, that the Commissioner appears to have laid hold of the worst end of the property. Our present object is to show, that the duty of telling truth for its own sake, never occurs to the people. On the second visit to Derrynanebeg, the reporter thus writes:

:

[ocr errors]

"A little apart from these was the house of T. Sullivan, junior, who with his twelve children, a sick cow, and two pigs suffering under some grievous malady, occupied the same room. For a dirty cabin and the grass of four cows and a horse, he paid, he said, £11 a year to Mr. O'Connell. In answer to our enquiries as to his condition, he replied, that the food of himself and family all the year round was potatoes and buttermilk. Were the potatoes good?' 'Troth they were not; bad as could be:' and he proved the assertion by cutting open a number of them, taken at random from the heap, and showing us the extent of the disease. Had he plenty of potatoes?''Indeed he had not.' 'Of milk?' 'Never, nor half enough; never had enough for either dinner or breakfast. All his children were as badly off as himself, not half enough of potatoes, and nothing to drink with them; as he could only afford the milk of one stripper for his family; he had no fish, and very little of any thing.' This was the substance of his story translated to us by an interpreter (Mr. Connell), and yet he was a large holder, though his bed was of straw, his cabin falling to pieces, and the mud outside percolating to the interior, where it was trodden into a filthy adhesive earthy glue by the feet and hoofs of the semi-naked children, pigs, fowl, and cattle."—(p. 538.)

Immediately after we meet with the following:

"Starting at an early hour the following morning, I arrived at Cahirciveen at ten o'clock; whilst sitting in the hotel, Mr. Trant, a magistrate of the county, entering the room, informed me that Thomas Sullivan of Oaghermung (whose house I visited on the preceding day, and whose testimony I have already given), was outside, and wished to make evidence on oath that he had quite misinformed me as to his condition,-in other words, that he was desirous of swearing that he had been telling me lies. Sullivan was called in, and as it appeared that he was quite ready to take an affidavit, I took from Mr. Trant, who acted as interpreter, the following explanation of Sullivan's previous statement: 'He imagined that I and your commissioner were coming from Government to enquire into the state of the potatoe crop, and he therefore exaggerated the badness of its condition, and the poverty of his own, as much as possible. He now wished to say that he was not nearly so bad off as he had stated,-that he had plenty of potatoes and milk,-that he had a bed-tick, which was in the loft when we inspected his cottage, and

that his rent was only £10: 10s., instead of £11; and having said all this, Sullivan returned homewards, with a walk of some seven or eight miles before him, quite satisfied that he had done his duty in proving himself a misrepresenter of facts.' "'-(p. 542.)

Here again the Commissioner wonders at the effect, but does not perceive the cause of the evil. In his letter on the Town of Sligo, he shews the frauds in the butter trade, which are exposed by Lord Devon's Commission. On this subject he writes:

"Thus it is that the natural mind of the people of the west of Ireland mistakes cunning for wisdom. By this piece of roguery they of course lose their trade. I was informed there that the country-people near Sligo prefer carrying their butter to the Enniskillen market, because they are more fairly dealt with there. It was by practices like these that the Irish nearly ruined their export trade in flax. They twisted up pebbles in the knots of flax, which, being sold by weight, the purchaser bought pebbles at the rate of £40 or £50 a tou. As soon as he found it out, he would either not buy Irish flax at any price; or, if he did buy it, he bought it at a price below its value, calculating so much loss by roguery in pebbles. The cunning of the Irish mind delights in over-reaching a neighbour; but is not wise enough to foresee that the neighbour, though over-reached once, may not be a fool,-may find out the deception, and afterwards refuse to have dealings with dishonesty. The same system of unfair dealing is carried out in other things; they cheat one another, and mutual want of confidence and want of enterprize are the result." (p. 163.)

2

The oats are usually brought to market by a carrier, the carrier is bribed by the merchant, and makes what return he pleases to the farmer. The people think there is some design against them, and are unwilling to weigh their corn at the public crane, though no charge is made; when they do so, the buyer has a man on the watch, who gives notice at the store that a sack with his master's mark has been weighed, and they know how to treat it. If it be not weighed at the public crane, and the seller stands by to see it weighed in the scales of the merchant, he is often cheated even while he is looking on; this is done either by means of a lever, which hooks up the scale containing the weights, or if the farmer be very sharp and this is not attempted, the weigher calls out the true weight, and the clerk enters a less weight in his book. It is the same with pork and everything else:

66 These," says the Commissioner, "are pitiable examples of littleness, chicane, and low cunning. Minds capable of such tricks as these are incapable of enterprize, or of wisely striving to realize a great trade by fair dealing. They are not wise enough to see the value of a good name; and they lose the wealth and greatness which honest industry would realize, by peddling tricks and trying to cheat in halfpence."

Again, as the Commissioner is opposed to agitation, the Repeal newspapers were most anxious to find fault with him, and he shows most clearly that they did so without the least regard for truth :— Appendix, Part ii. p. 219.

2 Ibid.

"When in Galway, I had a conversation with two gentlemen,-one, the rector of the town, the Rev. John D'Arcy, a most straight-forward and useful man, and a gentleman who is allowed by all parties to have been of vast service in improving the town,-the other, a landed proprietor in the neighbourhood. The conversation was upon loan-funds, and on the utter ignorance of the people of the commercial value of money. Mr. D'Arcy mentioned as an instance of this, the fact that the poor pawned money (paying of course pawnbrokers' interest, or fifty per cent, for a portion of their own money) to the extent of hundreds every year in the town of Galway. I laughed at this as an incredible story: Seeing him serious, I told him I did not doubt his word, but would like to be convinced of the fact by seeing some such pledges myself, otherwise no one would believe me if I mentioned it. He was about politely to show me the town, and we all three walked into the first pawnbroker's shop we met with, which happened to be Mr. Murray's. Mr. Murray was not in, but his shopman was, and Mr. D'Arcy at once explained the object of our call, and told him I doubted that money was ever pawned. The shopman said he would soon convince me of the fact, and pulled out a small drawer containing several bank-notes with duplicate tickets pinned to them, and also a guinea with a duplicate ticket round it. I unpinned some of these myself, and took the description of the notes down; the other gentleman who was with me did the same, and read the description of the notes. I thought this so strange a fact of utter and absurd ignorance of the commercial use of money, that I stated it to you in a former lettter. In going out we met Mr. Murray, the shopkeeper, who seemed anxious to account for the pawning by various surmises-such as the £10 note being a daughter's fortune, that the poor people did not like to break into, and the guinea being an heir-loom, or pocket-piece. In answer to my question, Was a guinea ever left unredeemed and sold as a forfeited pledge? he replied that this had frequently occurred. A Tralee paper, however, has discovered-that I am not the man for Galway, where I have been served in a manner most laughable, and well worthy of an Irish wag.' It then says, Mr. Murray persuaded me' of what both myself and the gentleman with me had seen and felt with our own eyes and hands, and that I had 'jotted down' his information as a veritable fact. How clever this is, to be sure. What waggery' there is in telling a lie, even supposing Mr. Murray to have done so, which he did not. I notice this foolish attempted contradiction only to stop it, for I see that great authority, Mr. Dillon Browne, has plumed himself much upon this assumed 'waggery' of the poor ignorant money-pledgers in imposing upon me.”

In a note added afterwards the Commissioner says:-
:-

"The Tralee paper afterwards disowned the authorship of this discovery, which it appeared had been invented by the Galway Vindicator, or some such creditable authority, which, with the means of ascertaining the truth close to its own printing-office, unblushingly ventured a falsehood in order to cast a slur on an undeniable truth. Such, to a great extent, is Irish journalism, and such are very many of the sources from which information respecting Ireland is derived."-(p. 392.)

We account for all this system of deceit by the simple fact, that the religion of the Irish admits and encourages falsehood, and when thus the only true restraint is removed, we may well exclaim, "If therefore the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness."

We have thus examined a part of the theory of the Commissioner; we have shown where he has seen the truth without dis

covering the whole truth. Let us now briefly consider some of the remedies he suggests for the evils which he has seen and described. His first remedy is remunerative employment. This requires investment of money, and co-operation between landlord and tenant. He shows how valuable an investment the improvement of land affords, and enters into an elaborate calculation as to the cost of thorough draining. He shows that the tenant even without the landlord would find his advantage in cultivating more land. He would raise the setting value from five shillings to thirty shillings an acre, and even if the landlord should exact the full value, which is very unlikely, there would still be a surplus in favour of the tenant of £2: 15s. an acre. He shewed his calculation to several of the farmers, saying, You now pay five shillings and gain nothing, would it not be better even to pay the whole thirty shillings and have a profit for yourselves? The farmers and the schoolmaster made this very calculation, but with their own result before them, they were unconvinced, and kept crying out; Yes, but the landlord would raise the rent, and who should we improve for? He adds

"The only surprizing thing is, that the priests as men of education, should not see this, and point it out to the tenants, if they are too stupid to see it themselves. What matters it to the tenants whether the landlord benefits or not by their exertions, so long as they themselves make a profit by it?"

Does the Commissioner seriously suppose that the priesthood, whose education has been such as to teach them a hatred of the Saxon, would persuade the people to any thing that would unite them to the landed interest, or lead them to rest satisfied to increase the rental, even for their own good. If he thinks so, we do not agree with him. The Commissioner gives us the real state of the case in the same letter, where he describes the improvements made by Mr. David John Wilson of Belvoir, in the County Clare. This gentleman spends £400 or £500 a year in draining, subsoiling, and building better cottages. Yet though the tenants are paid for improving their own farms, every step taken by the landlord is viewed with suspicion. Mr. Wilson's plan is to add one half of the increased value to the original rent as interest for the money he expends, the other half going to the benefit of his tenants. In consequence, however, of compelling his tenants to follow an improved system of cultivation, this gentleman received several notices that he would be shot; the Commissioner drove with him in the evening, and he was obliged to carry pistols for his defence, and since then he has gone to reside in Paris.' Thus agitation

1 Page 322.

« PreviousContinue »