Ireland Prostrate

The picture of Ireland in the first half of the eighteenth century is a most gloomy one. Ireland lay bound hand and foot beneath the rule of her English master. There remained, indeed, in that period, but one ray of hope for the clown-trodden land. This was in the unsubdued national spirit of its people. The tyranny and misfortunes of centuries had not crushed out the peculiar traits which marked the Irish character. Love of country and of home, a desperate clinging to the soil of their island, ardent devotion to their faith,—qualities which survived every oppression,—saved the Irish from national extinction, and baffled every stubborn effort of English power to subdue them. A race less strong in its national traits must have yielded to the weight of that power, as it was felt in Ireland in the reigns of Anne and the first two Georges. Almost all the land was in the hands of the English. The laws were made by the Protestant Parliament, which was elected solely by Protestant votes, and was the creature of the English crown; and the laws thus made were executed solely by Protestant officials. The church of the small minority was sustained by the forced contributions of the majority. The church of the majority was persecuted, and, as far as possible, suppressed by the penal laws.

One great evil in Ireland was the fact, that many of the large owners of the land perpetually absented themselves from their estates. They lived abroad, in England or on the continent, enjoying the luxuries which were supported by the rents paid by the poor Irish peasants. These men were called "absentees;" and "absenteeism" has long been the cause of a great many of the miseries which the Irish have suffered. The absentees had agents on their Irish estates, who ground down the tenants remorselessly. They compelled them to pay high rents, and, if they were unable to pay these rents, turned them out of their plots without mercy. Thus a large part of the money earned by Irish toil went out of the country, and was spent by the absentees in foreign lands. This naturally made Ireland ever poorer and poorer. After a while, the law which forbade the Irish to import cattle, pork, butter, and cheese, into England, was repealed. But this, as it proved, only added to the distress of the country. It took a far smaller number of men to raise cattle, than to till the soil. So it happened that thousands of the Irish were deprived of employment, and were thrust out upon the roads to starve and die.

Driven by hunger and want to fierce despair, the Irish began to form themselves into secret bands, and to attack those who had robbed them of the chance to work, and doomed their children to the horrors of famine. These bands were known as "Whiteboys." They continued to commit desperate acts for many years. They began by mutilating, maiming, and killing the cattle belonging to the land-owners. This was because it was the revival of cattle-raising which had driven them from the soil. Sometimes the air, for miles around, would resound, in the dead of night, with the frenzied cries of the poor cows, which had been wounded by the Whiteboys, and were dying in agony. Then the Whiteboys committed crimes yet more savage. They hid behind hedges, or on the edges of the woods, and shot down landlords and herdsmen as they passed along the highway. They burned cow-sheds, sheep-pens, and even the dwellings of the well-to-do. All the while the peasants, who sympathized with the Whiteboys, sheltered them in their huts, and aided them to escape from their pursuers. Very severe laws were passed against the Whiteboys; and when any of them were captured, they were promptly hung. But in spite of this, the Whiteboys long maintained a reign of terror, especially in southern Ireland.

Other secret societies sprang up, from time to time, among the desperate and wretched Irish. In Ulster, a society called "Oakboys "(because they wore sprigs of oak on their coats), resisted the law which compelled everybody to work six days in the year, without pay, on repairing the public roads. The poor had been compelled to obey this law, while the rich and well-to-do had been released from the labor it imposed. The Oakboys refused to do any more work on the roads, until the prosperous farmers were also compelled to do their share. Another society was that of the "heart-of-steel Boys," who stoutly refused to pay the money which some of the landlords demanded for renewing land leases which had expired. About the same period,—in the reign of George the First,—an event took place which for once united all Irishmen, Protestant and Catholic, rich and poor, in stubborn resistance to oppression. An Englishman, named William Wood, received a patent from the crown to coin a large quantity of debased copper half-pence and farthings, for use in Ireland. These debased coins were to be forced upon the Irish, who were to be compelled to accept them as good money. The whole island rose against the imposition; and so obstinate was this resistance that the king was obliged to withdraw Wood's patent (1722).

This "copper war," as it was called, marks the beginning of a new era in Irish history. The most famous and able Irishman of the day was Jonathan Swift, dean of St. Patrick's. He is best known as Dean Swift. He was one of the most forcible and brilliant writers of his age. In spite of his many faults, and his high position in the English church, Dean Swift felt a great sympathy for his down-trodden, poverty-stricken, discontented country. Already he had vigorously denounced the laws by which England had tried to crush out Irish industry. He had boldly advised the Irish "to burn everything English except the coal." He said to them, "By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your own country, you are, and ought to be, as free a people as your brethren in England." Swift took an active part in the copper war. He gathered about him a group of Irishmen who were as hostile as himself to the tyrannical laws under which Ireland suffered. The triumph of the Irish over "Wood's half-pence," gained, as it was, not by rebellion, but by the union of all the people in a vigorous agitation, showed that they were more likely to secure the righting of their wrongs by agitation than by violence. Thus, under the inspiration of Dean Swift, a new method of resisting English power was discovered; and, for the first time, a succession of Irish agitators arose. Out of the copper war, there came into existence a new political party, called the "Patriot party." The Patriot party has continued to exist, in some form, from that time to this; and has never wholly ceased to agitate for the recovery of Irish rights.

Meanwhile the cruel tyranny under which Ireland suffered was followed by two important results. The poverty to which many of the Irish were reduced caused a large emigration of Irishmen to North America. Those who thus resolved to leave their ancestral land for new homes across the ocean comprised not only native Irish, but also a large number of the Scottish Presbyterians who had settled in Ulster, and of descendants of the early English settlers in eastern Ireland. The emigration of the Irish to America has continued ever since. In the early part of the reign of George the Second, the Irish had begun to cross the Atlantic by thousands. In one year (1729) more than five thousand Irish arrived at Philadelphia. In later years, the Irish swarmed across the ocean to find new homes in the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, New York, and New England. They thus became citizens of the colonies, which, in due time, rose in arms against English rule; and among the patriots of the American revolution were to be found many of the sons of the Irish whom English tyranny had driven, forty years before, from their native land.

The result of the laws which sought to suppress wool-growing, woolen manufactures, and other Irish industries, was, that smuggling began to be practiced on a large scale along the Irish coast. The many harbors and inlets of the western and southern Irish shores afforded excellent chances for this illegal traffic, and could not easily be watched and guarded by the English cruisers. The French needed wool, and Irish wool was to be had cheaper than any other. So great quantities of wool were smuggled off to France; and, in return, the smuggling vessels brought back French wines, brandy, and other articles. Often priests, also, were secretly introduced by these vessels into Ireland. The smugglers carried on their trade in safety; for the whole population of the coast concealed, aided, and abetted them. The officers of the law could not find them; or if, perchance, they did, the smugglers were rescued, or, if brought to trial, were acquitted by friendly juries. So it was that the Irish were taught, by the gross tyranny with which they were treated, to evade and defy the laws under which they lived.