The General Election—Crime in Ireland—Increased Powers granted to the Executive—Ireland on the Verge of Rebellion—Death of O\'Connell—Viceroyalty of Lord Clarendon—Special Commission in Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary—The Commission at Clonmel—Rise of the Young Ireland Party—The Nation—Meagher and Smith O\'Brien—They try to dispense with the Church—The Irish Confederation—The United Irishman—News of the French Revolution—Panic in Dublin—Lord Clarendon and Mr. Birch—The Deputation to Paris—Smith O\'Brien in Parliament—Preparations for Civil War—Young and Old Ireland at blows—Arrest and Trial of Mitchel, Smith O\'Brien, and Meagher—Transportation of Mitchel—Lord Clarendon\'s Extraordinary Powers—Smith O\'Brien in the South—Commencement of the Insurrection—Battle of Ballingarry—Arrest of Smith O\'Brien—Collapse of the Rebellion—Trial of the Conspirators—Trials and Sentences—The Rate in Aid—The Encumbered Estates Act—The Queen\'s Visit to Ireland—Cove becomes Queenstown—A Visit to Cork—Kingstown and Dublin—Departure from Dublin—An Affecting Incident—Belfast.

The disorganised state of Ireland, occasioned by the famine and the enormous system of public relief which fostered idleness and destroyed the customary social restraints that kept the people in order, naturally led to much outrage and crime in that country. At the close of the ordinary Session of 1847, the Parliament, which had existed six years, was dissolved. The general election excited very little political interest, the minds of all parties being concentrated upon the terrible famine in Ireland, and the means necessary to mitigate its effects. The first Session of the new Parliament commenced on the 18th of November. Mr. Shaw-Lefevre was re-elected Speaker without opposition, some leading Conservatives expressing their admiration of the impartiality and dignity with which he had presided over the deliberations of the House. The Royal Speech was delivered by commission. It lamented that in some counties in Ireland atrocious crimes had been committed, and a spirit of insubordination had manifested itself, leading to an organised resistance to legal rights. Parliament was therefore requested to take further precautions against the perpetration of crime in that country; at the same time recommending the consideration of measures that would advance the social improvement of its people. In the course of the debate on the Address the state of Ireland was the subject of much discussion; and on the 29th of November Sir George Grey, then Home Secretary, brought in a Bill for this purpose. In doing so, he gave a full exposition of the disorganised state of the country. He showed that "the number of attempts on life by firing at the person, which was, in six months of 1846, 55, was in the same six months of 1847, 126; the number of robberies of arms, which was, in six months of 1846, 207, in the same six months of 1847 was 530; and the number of firings of dwellings, which in six months of 1846 was 51, was, in the same six months of 1847, 116. Even this statement gave an inadequate idea of the increase of those offences in districts which were now particularly infested by crime. The total number of offences of the three classes which he had just mentioned amounted, in the last month, to 195 in the whole of Ireland; but the counties of Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary furnished 139 of them—the extent of offences in those counties being 71 per cent. on the total of offences in Ireland, and the population being only 13 per cent. on the whole population of Ireland." It was principally to those counties that his observations applied; but as the tendency of crime was to spread, they must be applied in some degree also to King\'s County, Roscommon, and part of Fermanagh. The crimes which he wished to repress were not directed against the landlord class alone, but against every class and description of landowners. Their ordinary object was the commission of wilful and deliberate assassination, not in dark or desolate places, but in broad daylight—of assassination, too, encouraged by the entire impunity with which it was perpetrated; for it was notorious that none but the police would lend a hand to arrest the flight, or capture the person, of the assassin.

The murder of one landlord was sufficient to spread terror throughout the whole class, the most recent and horrible case being used for this purpose in the threatening notices. Thus, when Major Mahon was shot, a letter was sent to the wife of another landed proprietor, warning her that if her husband did not remit all the arrears of rent due by his tenants, two men would be sent to dispatch him as they had dispatched the demon Mahon. The Lord-Lieutenant had increased the[561] constabulary force in the disturbed districts, and called out the military to aid in the execution of the law. But it was the opinion of the magistrates in those districts that the powers of the executive were not sufficient. The object of Sir George Greys measure was to extend those powers—not to create any new tribunal, for trial by jury had worked satisfactorily. What he proposed was that the Lord-Lieutenant should have power to "proclaim" disturbed districts, to increase in them the constabulary force to any extent he might think fit out of the reserve of 600 in Dublin, to limit the use of firearms, and to establish nocturnal patrols. He thought that by such a measure the Government would be able to put down the crimes that were disorganising society in Ireland. Sir Robert Peel supported the Government measure. Mr. Feargus O\'Connor divided the House against it; but was supported by only twenty members. It was soon after read a second time, having been strenuously resisted by some of the Irish members. It rapidly went through committee, and was read a third time, when the minority against it was only fourteen. The Bill passed through the Lords without alteration.

TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. (From a Photograph by Poulton and Son, Lee.)
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Misery and privation in large masses of people naturally engender disaffection, and predispose to rebellion; and this was the state of things in Ireland at the beginning of the memorable year of 1848. O\'Connell had passed away from the scene. On the 28th of January, 1847, he left Ireland, never to return. He went to London for the purpose of attending his Parliamentary duties, but shortly after his arrival there he went for benefit of his health to Hastings. But a still greater change of scene and climate was found necessary, and he embarked for France, and proceeding to Paris, he was received with great consideration by the Marquis of Normanby, and other distinguished persons. In reply to a complimentary address from the electoral committee, of which Montalembert was chairman, O\'Connell said, "Sickness and emotion close my mouth. I would require the eloquence of your president to express to you all my gratitude. But it is impossible for me to say what I feel. Know, simply, that I regard this demonstration on your part as one of the most significant events of my life." He went from Paris to Lyons, where he[562] became much weaker. In all the French churches prayers were offered on behalf of "Le célèbre Irlandais, et le grand libérateur d\'Irlande." At Marseilles he became rather better; but at Genoa death arrested his progress. He expired on the 15th of May (1847), apparently suffering little pain. He was on his way to Rome, intending to pay his homage in person to Pius IX., but finding this impossible, he ordered that his heart might be sent to Rome, and his body to Ireland. It has been remarked that O\'Connell was the victim of the Irish famine, and that its progress might have been learnt from the study of his face. The buoyancy had gone out of his step; he had become a stooping and a broken-down man, shuffling along with difficulty, his features betraying despondency and misery. His memory was respected by Englishmen, because of the devotion of his life to the service of his country. Born of a conquered race and a persecuted religion, conscious of great energies and great talents, he resolved to make every Irishman the equal of every Englishman. After the labours of a quarter of a century he obtained Catholic Emancipation.

It was the lot of the Earl of Clarendon to govern Ireland during the most trying period of her history. It was a trying crisis, affording great opportunity to a statesman of pre-eminent ability to lay broad and solid foundations for a better state of society. But though a painstaking and active administrator, Clarendon was not a great statesman; he had no originating power to organise a new state of things, nor prescience to forecast the future; but he left no means untried by which he could overcome present difficulties. The population had been thinned with fearful rapidity; large numbers of the gentry had been reduced from affluence to destitution; property was changing hands on all sides; the Government had immense funds placed at its command; a vast machinery and an enormous host of officials operating upon society when it was in the most plastic and unresisting state, a high order of statesmanship could have made an impress upon it that would have endured for ages. But Lord Clarendon\'s government, instead of putting forth the power that should have guided those mighty resources to beneficial and permanent results, allowed them to be agencies of deterioration. The truth is, he was frightened by a contemptible organisation, existing openly under his eyes in Dublin, for the avowed purpose of exciting rebellion and effecting revolution. The conspirators might have been promptly dealt with and extinguished in a summary way; but instead of dealing with it in this manner, Clarendon watched over its growth, and allowed it to come to maturity, and then brought to bear upon it a great military force and all the imposing machinery of State trials; the only good result of which was a display of forensic eloquence worthy of the days of Flood and Grattan.

The opening of the year 1848 was signalised by the appointment of a special commission, which was convened to try those accused of agrarian murders in the counties of Tipperary, Limerick, and Clare. The judges were the Chief Justice Blackburne and the Chief Baron Pigot. The commission was pre-eminently successful. The trials commenced at Limerick on the 4th of January. The Chief Justice, in his charge to the jury, drew a melancholy picture of the demoralised state of the country. He praised the patience and enduring fortitude of the people under the visitation of famine, which were generally in the highest degree exemplary, and he made this remarkable statement:—"I do not find in the calendar before me, nor after the experience of the last two circuits have I been able to find, a single case in which destitution or distress, arising from the visitation of God, has in the remotest degree influenced this illegal confederacy, or stimulated any of those outrages." The first person tried was the notorious William Ryan, nicknamed "Puck," one of the greatest ruffians ever brought to the bar of justice. He was tried for the murder of a neighbour, named John Kelly, into whose house he entered, and shot him dead upon the spot, in the presence of his family. He was found guilty, and hanged on the 8th of February. He was well known to have committed nine murders during the previous year. A man named Frewin, a respectable farmer, was transported for life, being found guilty of harbouring Ryan, and screening him from justice. The next batch of prisoners consisted of six ill-looking young fellows, all of whom appeared to be about twenty years of age, charged with the abduction of the daughter of a respectable farmer, named Maloney, for whom they were in the habit of working, in order that another farmer, named Creagh, might marry her.

These cases may serve as illustrations of the state of the country at that time. On the 10th of January between twenty and thirty of the convicts were brought up together for sentence, and it seemed difficult to believe that so ill-looking and desperate a set of villains could be congregated in one place. They had all, with one[563] exception, been found guilty, without any recommendation to mercy from the jury. After an impressive address from the judge, the sentences were pronounced, varying in the amount of punishment assigned. But they heard their doom with the greatest indifference. The commission next adjourned to Ennis, the assize town of the county of Clare, where the results were equally satisfactory. The judges arrived at Clonmel, the chief town of Tipperary, on the 24th of January. There they found upwards of four hundred prisoners in gaol, charged with crimes marked by various degrees of atrocity. The trial that excited most attention here was that of John Sonergan, for the murder of Mr. William Roe, a landed proprietor and a magistrate of the county, who was shot in the open day, upon the road near one of his own plantations. The scene which was presented in this court on the 31st of January, was described in the report of the trials as scarcely ever paralleled. Five human beings, four of whom were convicted of murder, and one of an attempt to murder, stood in a row at the front of the dock, to receive the dreadful sentence of the law, which consigned them to an ignominious death.

Agrarian outrage had thus been effectually put down by the special commission; but a much more formidable difficulty was now to be encountered by the Government, which was called upon to suppress a rebellion. In order that its origin may be understood, it will be necessary to sketch briefly the rise and progress of the Young Ireland party. It had its origin in the establishment of the Nation newspaper in 1842, by Thomas Davis, Charles Gavan Duffy, and John Mitchel. Davis was a native of the county of Cork, a member of the Church of England, and a barrister who had devoted himself to literature. He was a man of genius and enthusiastic temperament, combined with habits of study and a love of system. As a member of the Repeal Association, and as a writer in the Nation, he constantly advocated national independence. He was a vigorous writer, and also a poet. He was much respected personally by all classes, and would have exerted a powerful influence, but he was cut off by fever in the midst of his career. His memory received the honour of a public funeral, which was one of the largest and most respectable that had for some time taken place in Dublin. Mr. Duffy, the proprietor and editor of the Nation, a Roman Catholic and a native of Monaghan, had been connected with the press in Dublin. Mr. Mitchel, also a northerner and a solicitor by profession, was the son of a Unitarian minister in Newry. These men were all animated by the same burning love of Ireland, and unmitigated hatred of English domination. The Nation soon attained a vast circulation; its leading articles were distinguished by an earnestness, a fire, a power, an originality and boldness, till then unknown in the Irish press. Its columns were filled with the most brilliant productions in literature and poetry, all designed to glorify Ireland at the expense of England, and all breathing the spirit of war and defiance against the Government. In addition to the Nation, they prepared a number of small books, which they issued in a cheap form as an Irish library, devoted chiefly to the history of their country, and its struggles for independence. By their exertions, reading-rooms were established throughout the country, and a native literature was extensively cultivated. The orator of the party was Thomas Meagher, at a later period general in the American army, son of a Waterford merchant, who was afterwards member of Parliament. He was a brilliant, fluent, ardent, daring speaker; his appearance and manners were those of a gay, reckless, dashing cavalier; and his warlike harangues had won for him the designation, "Meagher of the Sword." His speeches fired his audience with wild enthusiasm. Since 1844, as we have seen, Mr. William Smith O\'Brien had become the leader of this party, which differed in spirit and purpose from the Old Ireland party, of which O\'Connell had been so long the leader. O\'Connell\'s agitation even for Repeal was essentially religious. Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church were indissolubly associated in his mind. His habits as a nisi prius barrister made him an advocate more than a statesman; and having pleaded the cause of his Church for forty years, having been rewarded and retained for so doing by an annual "tribute" collected in the chapels of the kingdom, and having won his unparalleled popularity and almost kingly power by his services in this cause, he could not help regarding himself as the special champion of the Irish priests and their people. For them he courted Whig alliances, for them he abused the Tories, for them he sought Repeal, and for their sakes he deprecated war. He knew that the Protestants of Ireland would never sufficiently trust him or his ecclesiastical clients, to join them in a war against English supremacy, which they disliked far less than Roman Catholic ascendency. He knew that a war for Repeal must be a civil and religious war; and he too well remembered the horrors of 1798, and was too well aware of the[564] power of England, seriously to encourage anything of the kind. He talked indeed about fighting at the monster meetings, but he did so merely to intimidate the Government, confident of his power to hold the masses in check, and to prevent breaches of the peace. The State prosecutions and the proceedings of the Young Ireland party worked in him the painful and almost heart-breaking conviction that he had gone too far. Another essential difference existed between the two parties regarding religion. The Young Irelanders wanted to ignore religion in the national struggle. Their object was to unite all Irishmen in the great cause, to exorcise the spirit of bigotry, and to cultivate the spirit of religious toleration. But neither the Protestants nor the Catholics were prepared for this. The peasantry of the South especially would not enter into a contest in which their priests refused to lead and bless them; and these would neither lead nor bless except in the interest of their Church. This truth was discovered too late by Mr. Smith O\'Brien and Mr. Meagher. The latter gentleman is said to have remarked in his prison, "We made a fatal mistake in not conciliating the Catholic priesthood. The agitation must be baptised in the old Holy Well."

When the two parties separated in 1846, the Young Irelanders established the Irish Confederation, which held its meetings in the Music Hall, Abbey Street, and whose platform was occupied by a number of young men, who subsequently figured in the State trials—Mr. Dillon, a barrister, who had been a moderator in Trinity College, Mr. Doheny, solicitor, Mr. O\'Gorman, and Mr. Martin, a Protestant gentleman of property in the county Down. The object of the confederacy was to prepare the country for national independence, "by the force of opinion, by the combination of all classes of Irishmen, and the exercise of all the political, social, and moral influence within their reach." They disclaimed any intention of involving the country in civil war, or invading the just rights of any of its people; and they were specially anxious that Protestants and Roman Catholics should be united in the movement. Resolutions to this effect were adopted at a great meeting in the Rotunda, a revolutionary amendment by Mr. Mitchel having been rejected, after a stormy debate, which lasted three days, and did not terminate on the last day until one o\'clock at night. This led to Mitchel\'s secession from the Nation, and the establishment of the United Irishman, in which he openly and violently advocated rebellion and revolution. He continually insisted on the adoption of the most diabolical and repulsive measures, with the utmost sang froid. Every Saturday his journal contained a letter "To the Earl of Clarendon, Her Majesty\'s Executioner-General and Butcher-General of Ireland." Plans of insurrection were freely propounded; the nature and efficiency of street fighting were copiously discussed; ladies were invited to throw vitriol from their windows on the Queen\'s troops, and to fling empty bottles before the cavalry that they might stumble and fall. Precise instructions were given, week after week, for the erection of barricades, the perforation of walls, and other means of attack and defence in the war against the Queen.

Such was the state of things in Ireland when the news of the French Revolution arrived and produced an electric effect throughout the country. The danger of permitting such atrocious incitements to civil war to be circulated among the people was obvious to every one, and yet Lord Clarendon allowed this propagandism of rebellion and revolution to go on with impunity for months.· Mitchel might have been arrested and prosecuted for seditious libels any day; the newsvendors who hawked the United Irishman through the streets might have been taken up by the police, but the Government still remained inactive. Encouraged by this impunity, the revolutionary party had established confederate clubs, by means of which they were rapidly enlisting and organising the artisans of the city, at whose meetings the most treasonable proceedings were adopted.

[565]

MUSTER OF THE IRISH AT MULLINAHONE. (See p. 568.)
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In the meantime rumours were in circulation, said to have emanated from Dublin Castle, to the effect that a conspiracy existed to massacre the members of the Government and the loyal citizens. However these rumours may have originated, they spread a panic through the city. People expected that when they woke some morning they would find the barricades up in the leading streets, and behold an imitation of the bloody scenes lately enacted in Paris. The Government seemed to share the alarm. Strong bodies of soldiers were posted in different parts of the city. Trinity College, the buildings of the Royal Dublin Society, the Linen Hall, and the Custom House were occupied as temporary barracks. The Bank of Ireland was put in a state of defence, and cannon were placed on the roof in such a way as to command the streets. Bullet-proof shutters were furnished for the front of Trinity College. The Viceroy evidently apprehended some serious work, for he ordered the troops in all these extemporised fortresses to be furnished with rations for several[566] days. These preparations for a siege continued throughout the months of March and April. For more than three months the chambers of the College were turned into barracks; the troops were paraded in the quadrangles every morning. In all the fortified positions the soldiers were kept under arms at unreasonable hours. In fact the whole community was in a state of painful suspense, hourly anticipating the attacks of an imaginary enemy. During all this time there was not a single dep?t of arms seized nor a single rebellious leader arrested. The clubs, indeed, were meeting and plotting, and the Government spies were amongst them, but they had made no preparations for insurrection that should have excited alarm. There was much talk of the manufacture of pikes, but the only instance made public was one in which a blacksmith had been asked to make one by a detective policeman.

During this protracted agony of suspense and alarm business was almost at a standstill. Nobody seemed to think or talk of anything but the rebellion—the chances of success and the possibility of having to submit to a republic. There could not be a more striking proof of the inability of Lord Clarendon to cope with this emergency than his dealings with the proprietors of the World, a journal with a weekly circulation of only 500 or 600 copies, which subsisted by levying blackmail for suppressing attacks on private character. It was regarded as a common nuisance, and yet the Lord-Lieutenant took the editor into his confidence, held private conferences with him on the state of the country, and gave him large sums for writing articles in defence of law and order. These sums amounted to ￡1,700, and he afterwards gave him ￡2,000 to stop an action in the Court of Queen\'s Bench. Mr. Birch, the gentleman in question, was not satisfied with this liberal remuneration for his services; the mine was too rich not to be worked out, and he afterwards brought an action against Sir William Somerville, then Chief Secretary, for some thousands more, when Lord Clarendon himself was produced as a witness, and admitted the foregoing facts. The decision of the court was against Birch; but when, in February, 1852, the subject was brought before the House of Commons by Lord Naas, the Clarendon and Birch transactions were sanctioned by a majority of 92.

While the Irish Government was in this state of miserable trepidation, the Dublin confederates carried on their proceedings with the most perfect unconcern and consciousness of impunity. Among these proceedings was the sending of a deputation to Paris to seek the aid of the republican Government on behalf of the "oppressed nationality of Ireland." The deputation consisted of Messrs. O\'Brien, Meagher, and O\'Gorman. They were the bearers of three congratulatory addresses, to which Lamartine gave a magniloquent reply about the great democratic principle—"this new Christianity bursting forth at the opportune moment." The destinies of Ireland had always deeply moved the heart of Europe. "The children of that glorious isle of Erin," whose natural genius and pathetic history were equally symbolic of the poetry and the heroism of the nations of the North, would always find in France under the republic a generous response to all its friendly sentiments. But as regarded intervention, the Provisional Government gave the same answer that they had given to Germany, to Belgium, and to Italy. "Where there is a difference of race—where nations are aliens in blood—intervention is not allowable. We belong to no party in Ireland or elsewhere except to that which contends for justice, for liberty, and for the happiness of the Irish people. We are at peace," continued Lamartine, "and we are desirous of remaining on good terms of equality, not with this or that part of Great Britain, but with Great Britain entire. We believe this peace to be useful and honourable, not only to Great Britain and to the French Republic, but to the human race. We will not commit an act, we will not utter a word, we will not breathe an insinuation, at variance with principles of the reciprocal inviolability of nations which we have proclaimed, and of which the continent of Europe is already gathering the fruits. The fallen monarchy had treaties and diplomatists. Our diplomatists are nations—our treaties are sympathies." The sympathies felt for the Irish revolutionists, however, were barren. Nevertheless the deputation who were complimented as "aliens in blood" shouted "Vive la République," "Vive Lamartine," who had just declared that the French would be insane were they openly to exchange such sympathy for "unmeaning and partial alliance with even the most legitimate parties in the countries that surrounded them."

Mr. Smith O\'Brien returned to London, took his seat in the House of Commons, and spoke on the Crown and Government Securities Bill, the design of which was to facilitate prosecutions for political offences. He spoke openly of the military strength of the Republican party in Ireland, and the probable issue of an appeal to arms. But his[567] address produced a scene of indescribable commotion and violence, and he was overwhelmed in a torrent of jeers, groans, and hisses, while Sir George Grey, in replying to him, was cheered with the utmost enthusiasm.

In the meantime the preparations for civil war went on steadily on both sides in Dublin, neither party venturing to interfere with the other. Lest the Government should not be able to subdue the rebellion with 10,000 troops in the strong points of the city, and artillery commanding the great thoroughfares, with loopholes for sharpshooters in every public building, an association was formed to provide loyal citizens with arms and combine them in self-defence. The committee of this body ordered six hundred stand of arms from the manufacturer, and also some thousands of knots of blue ribbon to be worn by the loyal on the night of the barricades. It was intimated that the Government woul............