Included are accounts of visits to Ireland in 1852, 1858 and 1862 including on each occasion, visits to Lord Rosse at Birr Castle (the astronomer third Earl). Senior writes in an introduction to the essays he had prepared in 1861: Tools of their Priests
"Though the aspect of Ireland is somewhat changed since 1852, and much since 1844, I doubt whether any great real alteration in the habits to feelings of the people has taken place. They still depend mainly on the potato. They still depend rather on the occupation of land, than on the wages of labour. They still erect for themselves the hovels in which they dwell. They are still eager to subdivide and to sublet. They are still the tools of their priests, and the priests are still ignorant of the economical laws on which the welfare of the labouring classes depends. They are still the promoters of early and improvident marriages; they still neglect to preach to their flocks the prudence, parsimony, industry, cleanliness, and other self-regarding virtues, on which health and comfort depend; they are still the enemies of emigration; they are still the enemies of every improving landlord; they are still hostile to a Government which has seized the property of their Church - which refuses, or at least neglects, to provide for the spiritual instruction of the great mass of the people, and everywhere, except in its workhouses and in its gaols, ignores the existence of a Roman Catholic clergy." Nassau Senior was as critical of the Catholic Clergy as he was of the Established Church of Ireland in a country where the vast majority were Catholic. In his views he anticipated Disestablishment in 1869. In his journal he records the conversations with the owners or managers of land, "They tell us what is the conduct which our Irish tenant approves - what he will tolerate, what he will resent, and what he will punish." Some of the parliamentary resources he supported were adopted including the reduction of the "excessive Episcopal Establishment" - Church of Ireland - some progress with National Education: the Poor Law of 1838 upon which the workhouse system was based. Senior established the decline in population from 8.175 million in 1841 to 5.764 million in 1861 - at the potato disease, the Famine and the emigration that followed it:
'That in eight years, from 1847 to 1854 inclusive, a population, not exceeding at the commencement of that period 7,000,000, should have sent out more than 1,600,000 persons (nearly one-fourth of its original numbers), to inhabit countries the nearest of which was more than 3,000 miles from its shore, was an event still stranger than the potato disease. Stranger still is the fact, that the greater part of the expense of this emigration was supplied by previous emigrants: by men who, having - sometimes by their own exertions, but more frequently by the assistance of their landlords - obtained a new country, saved year after year, from their hardly-earned wages, sums which they sent home, to enable their brothers, their sisters and their parents to join them.
I say 'hardly-earned wages,' for the life of the Irish emigrant, at least in the United States - the country to which, as the most accessible, Irish emigration has been chiefly directed - is painful and hazardous. In the slave countries he is put to the works which are so unhealthy, that the life of a slave is not risked in them. In the free countries, he is put to those which an American rejects as too dangerous, or too disagreeable, or too severe.
But he is well-paid; at a comparatively small price, he is well-fed. In a few years he can accumulate a little capital, not to be spent, not to be invested, but to be sent home to bring out other members of his family. For this purpose he sacrifices enjoyment, and even comfort, and risks health and life.
In his 1852 Journal Nassau Senior records arriving at Kingston (now Dun Laoghaire) from Holyhead on 2nd September. Having stayed in Dublin, Limerick, Kerry, Cork, he and his wife made their way to the house of W. S. Trench at Cardtown, Mountrath. On the first day after his arrival, Sunday, 26th September 1852, the Oxford economist took a long walk before breakfast. He thought the fields large and well drained. He saw no cabins and met scarcely a single person, "There seems to be neither poverty nor over-population." Trench had a mountain farm and at a cost of £14 per acre had reclaimed 600 acres and improved his rental by £600 per year - a high return on capital for that time. The reclaimed land let for 20s to 22s per acre and the waste land at £1 per acre. The only reason for not reclaiming more land, said Trench, was the want of capital. English capital could not be attracted because land prices were high "not less than from 22 to 23 years purchase, on a fair moderate rental."
'Then why,' I said, 'does not some English capitalist invest £20,000 in the purchase of an estate including 3,000 or 4,000 acres of reclaimable waste, employ £30,000 more of it in reclaiming that waste, and thus obtain for £50,000 an estate producing £4,000 a year - an estate which would be very cheap in England at £100,000?'
'The thing,' he replied, 'certainly could be done. Why it is not done, there are several reasons. 'In the first place, the possibility of doing it is little known. In the second place, the purchaser must make a profession of it; he could not well do it through agents. In the third place, he must understand his business; he must know how to cultivate, and how to cultivate in this climate and soil. And, lastly (which is the most difficult), he must know how to deal with this people; if he went too fast - if he shocked their prejudices, or did not know how to resist or elude their exigencies, he might fail, or he might be shot.'
Trench told him that when he began to reclaim his mountain
farm:
'I employed 100 men, at wages varying from 8d. to 1s a day, the average
being 10d., and the weekly expenditure £25. After this had gone on for about
three months, my clerk wrote to me in Tipperary, where I was staying on
business, that the men had struck, and demanded that the minimum payment should
be 1s. 2d. a day, and that the wages of the better men should be raised in
proportion. We were in a critical period of the work, and my clerk thought the
matter serious.
'In my answer I said to him, "I am ready to accede to the men's demands. I am willing to give a minimum price of 1s. 2d., and a maximum price of 3s. a day. Of course, at that rate of wages, I cannot continue my present expenditure. You will reduce it to £12. 10s. a week. You will select the best men, beginning by the highest wages. In this matter you will follow out, not your own opinion, but my instructions, and you will read this letter to the men."
'The men assembled next day to hear my answer. It was read to them, and highly approved of. My clerk then said -
'"Now boys, I must choose my men," and he began by selecting a dozen of the best. "And what wages must you have?" he asked.
'"Oh," they said, "we'll take the top price - the 3s."
'"Very well," he answered, "18s. a week for twelve men makes £8 8s. a week; there is only £4 2s. left of the £12 10s., at that rate I can only have four more; then there will remain 10s. for one other. I can therefore take seventeen of you; the remaining eighty-three may go."
'This did not suit the eighty-three. They began to talk together in knots, to abuse the greediness of those who had demanded 3s., to threaten to break their heads - first, if they took more than 1s. 6d., then if they took more than their minimum of 1s. 6d., then if they took more than their minimum of 1s. 2d.; and at last, finding that, even at that price, more than half of them would be thrown out of employ, they broke up their combination, and returned to work at the old prices. "The master," they said, "is too many for us."
'From that time I had no difficulty with these men; and though I have once or twice afterwards been assailed by combinations, they have never given me any trouble. They are always unjust to some classes of the men, and may always be dissolved by turning against them the influence of the oppressed class. I think that I could have managed the Amalgamated Engineers.'
"Monday, September 27 [1852] - we talked of the state of the county. 'Queens County,' said Mr. Trench, 'this neighbourhood in particular, is as tranquil as Lincolnshire or Middlesex, though not fifteen miles off, in Tipperary and in King's County, men have been shot in the presence of the police.'
'And to what,' I asked, 'do you attribute your quietness?'
'To our thin population,' he answered. 'We have no paupers, no cottiers, no five-acre farmers. Much of the land is farmed by the proprietors; where there are tenants, they seldom pay less than £50 rent, and there is a demand for more labourers than we possess.'
'And to what,' I said, 'do you attribute the thinness of your population.'
'Partly,' said Mr. Trench, 'to the famine. We met it, perhaps, better here than in most places. Mrs. Trench almost passed her life in the soup-kitchen, which was established in the Constabulary Barracks [in Mountrath], and, like many others of the higher classes, sacrificed her health, perhaps irrecoverably, to her duty. But we could not prevent a great mortality, especially among the old, the young, and the weakly; and our population never was excessive. It never was encouraged by our proprietors. They were not tempted to allow subdivision and conacre, and the other expedients by which, before the potato failure, high rents could be extracted from a crowd of miserable occupiers; at least they did not yield to the temptation. And now I think that we are safe, and the Poor Law will keep us straight. No proprietor in his senses would neglect its threats: any one who was shortsighted enough to do so, and to bring into an electoral division a family likely to become chargeable, would be immediately checked by public opinion.'
'And to what,' I said, 'do you attribute the superior good sense of your proprietors? Why have they managed their affairs better than your neighbours in King's County and Tipperary?'
'I suppose,' said Mr. Trench, 'that I must call the better management of Queen's County, as compared with King's County, a lucky accident, which is the same as saying that I cannot explain it. But some explanations though not perhaps a satisfactory one, may be given of the ill-management of Tipperary. It is peopled by a set of smaller gentry, many of them descendants of old Cromwellians, violent anti-Catholics, and violent Orangemen - exceedingly brave and reckless, apt to estimate highly their rights, and to enforce them with little regard to the feelings of others, or the consequences to themselves. The peasantry are also a bold energetic race, not cowed and degraded, like those of Kerry and Clare. The relations of owner and occupier are not always easily adjusted, even when a good mutual feeling exists. A rich man cannot enforce his claims against a poor man without occasional severity; and in the public opinion of the poor, such severity becomes an injury. In Tipperary two races, each pugnacious, and each unscrupulous, have been pitted against one another for centuries, and with the utmost mutual repulsion, have been forced into constant contact as landlord and tenant, employer and employed. The consequence has been an hereditary animosity always smouldering or bursting forth.'
'We drove over to Ballyfin, Sir Charles Coote's place. On our way, we passed his farm on the side of the hill, all a few years ago waste. At an expense of about £3,000, Sir Charles has created an estate producing a net income of £300 a year.
Tuesday, September 28. - Mrs. Trench drove us to Roscrea, halfway to Birr. It is a poor town, in which the remains of an old castle have been converted into a fortified barrack. From thence we posted to Birr Castle, through a country apparently not so well cultivated as Queen's County, but better than the average of Munster.
Birr Castle: Wednesday, September 29. - This is a fine old castle, of which portions are earlier than any record; but the main building belongs to the time of Elizabeth. The town, from its central situation, has always been an important military position, and is now occupied by a considerable garrison [at Crinkle, destroyed in 1922]. The castle has sustained several sieges, and one of the towers retains the marks of cannon-shot. Two rivers meet in the grounds, which though generally flat, are agreeable from the union of wood and water, and catch, at every opening among the trees, views of the castle, with its huge square central tower.
The glories of Birr Castle, however, are of course the telescopes. Lord Rosse took us over them today, and explained to us the machinery by which a speculum of six feet in diameter was cast and ground and polished, and by which a tube fifty-six feet long (inside of which the tallest man may stand erect), and weighing about two-and-twenty tons, is made as manageable as a drawing-room telescope.
I never before saw such a reflector. The speculum placed at the bottom of the table produces, nearly at its extremity, an image of the object to which it is directed. A flat piece of metal catches this image, and turns it aside, so that, instead of being on the same plane as the speculum, it is at right-angles to it. A slit is made in the tube at its end, just opposite to this image, in which is placed a microscope. The spectator stands at this slit, and looks through the microscope at as much of the image as it covers. The strongest microscope that has been employed magnifies 2,000 times; but it is very seldom indeed that this power can be used. Any cause that disturbs the atmosphere distorts the image, and the distortion, multiplied by the power of the microscope, soon interferes with correct vision. Damp, cold, wind, heat are all disturbing causes. It is only when the stars are perfectly still, that the higher powers can be used, and in this climate there are not sixteen such nights in a year. (Lord Rosse reviewing the diary before publication added: 'There is frequently the finest vision when there is a high wind; the wind having apparently mixed together the strata of air of unequal temperature, and so rendered the atmosphere homogeneous. The stars are then steady, the twinkling or unsteadiness being caused by the disturbance of the light proceeding from them in its progress through strata of different temperatures, and therefore refracting unequally. The stars are also sometimes steady when it is calm, and the weather settled. But there is the greatest probability of fine vision during, or immediately after, a storm.' - Rosse.)
It rained all last night, and of course nothing was done. This evening was clear, but the wind was easterly. Only a smaller telescope, twenty-six feet long, with a 3-feet mirror (the largest in the world, except that of the great telescope), and a microscope of 250-power, could be used. Yesterday, too, was the full moon, and the astronomer is not like Homer's swains. He does not Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.
Moonlight of course dims the stars, and the moon herself when full, reflecting the direct rays of the sun, looks comparatively flat. She presented to my eyes a rough cream-coloured surface, something like the rind of a white melon, with eminences and depressions forming, in general, nearly circular ovals.
Thursday, September 30 1852.- B. [Senior did not identify his informant, but perhaps it was Captain Thomas Bernard, the unsuccessful Conservative candidate in the 1852 General Election. [The reference to Father L. is Father O'Malley, the Parish Priest of Shinrone] told us this morning, that he had been hailed a little while ago, when on one of the Shannon steamers, by an old acquaintance - Father L., a Roman Catholic priest. 'He asked me,' said B., 'how we were going on in the Queen's College at ---. [the new University Colleges at Dublin, Cork, Galway, Belfast.]
'"What is that to you?" I said. "You denounce us as a godless college, and threaten our pupils with purgatory, or worse."
'He looked round to see that we were not overheard, and then answered, "Of course we do; our lives would not be safe if we held any other language. But in our hearts we thoroughly wish well to you; and we rely on the good sense of the Catholic laity to protect you against the sincere bigotry of the lower orders, and against the assumed bigotry of the clergy."'
'Father L.,' [Fr. O'Malley] said Lord Rosse, 'attacks us landlords with more substantial threats than that of purgatory.'
'What are they?' I asked.
'I will show you,' said Lord Rosse; and he brought out the
King's County Chronicle of the 21st July last, [1852] reporting the proceedings
at the King's County nominations, and showed me Father L.'s [Fr. O'Malley's]
speech, denouncing assassination against the promoters of emigration. I extract
a few passages:-
'The Irish people are the most hardworking in the world, and they must not and shall not be exterminated from the soil. They must not be hunted off like vermin. The exterminators are banded together, but I tell you there must be an end of the system. I tell you [pointing to the Conservative party], there is danger in it. I have been before now threatened to have a shot in my head, for endeavouring to save the blood of the landlords. I will not be so active hereafter. You have for your protection the army, the police, and the law; but these are now insufficient to sustain you. It has occurred that, in my own parish, murder has taken place with police before, behind, and at the side of the victim. The ablest man of the day designated such occurrences as "wild justice." I now tell you, the people to assert your rights, and that it is not in the power of the oligarchy to crush you. They must leave you on your land - they must not assail your title to it. It must not be given up to black cattle and sheep.'
'I must explain,' said Lord Rosse, 'the allusion to murder committed while the police was before, behind and at the side of the victim. A Mr. Lucas, a proprietor in Shinrone, [perhaps of Scorduff where Mrs. Anne B. Lucas was farming in 1854] turned off from his estate some squatters. He was generally popular, but those who knew the peasantry warned him that he had done a dangerous act, and that, for some time at least, he must take precautions. He hired a Terry Alt, [a member of a secret agrarian society] a man of great courage and strength, who accompanied him whenever he left his door. Under the protection of this man's bodily powers, and still more of his influence, Mr. Lucas appears to have been safe - at least he was not attacked. But the Terry Alt was convicted of a murder, and hanged. Lucas then had a police-station at his gate, and never went out without four policemen, walking (just as Father L. [Fr. O'Malley] described them) before, behind, and on each side of him. One evening he wanted to speak to his herd, who lodged about fifty yards from the police-station. It was against his habit to go out, except by day, but he thought that in the evening he might cross the road surrounded by his bodyguard. The instant he left his gate, he was shot, from the other side of the road, by a man who, perhaps, had been waiting his opportunity for weeks. This was the priest's "wild justice." The man was pursued, but escaped in the dusk, and was not detected - at least was not prosecuted.'
'What sort of a man,' I said, 'is Father L.? [Fr. O'Malley] He does not speak ill.'
'He is a man,' answered Lord Rosse, 'of education and literature. He has frequently dined at this table. He is rather a favourable specimen of his class. But the emigration deprives the priests of income as well as of power, and the Ecclesiastical Titles Act has driven them mad. It was strange conduct in the Government to attack them with insults and penalties immediately after the new Irish Reform Act, by giving the franchise to the petty occupiers, had put the representation into the hands of the priests. Captain Bernard, the Conservative candidate, had, according to his promises, an overwhelming majority. His opponent, a whiskey-seller - whose uncle, the head of the family, still lives in a cabin - beat him at the poll by two or one. I have looked carefully over the returns, and Ireland, I find, will give you in his Parliament only one Whig.'
In the 1852 King's County Election, Patrick O'Brien and L. H. Bland, both described as Liberal (Independent) were successful with 1264 and 1191 votes respectively as to Bernard's 697 votes. (See B. M. Walker's Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801 - 1922). The term Liberal (Independent) describes those members of the House of Commons who, in their election addresses, etc declared themselves in favour of our independent party in parliament. The Ecclesiastical Titles Act, posed in 1851 forbade Roman catholic bishops in England to assume titles assigned to them by the Pope. O'Brien's father, a Dublin merchant, was born in Birr in 1787 and subsequently settled in Dublin and it would appear, was in the 'whiskey business'.
'I have been much struck,' I said, 'by the appearance of the Constabulary.' 'They are fine young men,' said Lord Rosse, 'but they are not to be depended on against the priests.'
'In Smith O'Brien's time,' [the Young Irelander] I said, 'they were staunch.'
'So they were,' said Lord Rosse; 'but then the priests, except the young ones, were with us. And the service is not one very much coveted, or very much valued. They dismissed on very light grounds - for drunkenness, for instance; whereas a soldier may be drunk a hundred times with impunity, if he only keeps sober while on actual duty. I am inclined to think that the best plan would be to have a considerable interchange of Irish and English police, as you did with the Irish and English militias. Our people might be relied on in England, and yours in Ireland.'
Friday, October 1 1852. - We drove to Meelick, near Banagher, on the banks of the Shannon, crossed it just below the rapids, in rather a frail boat, and looked at the ruins of the Abbey. The choir, and nave, and part of one transept remain, picturesque from the ivy, but with little architectural beauty. It is still used as a burying-ground, but much neglected. Among the inscriptions, I saw one to a daughter of the Earl of Clanricarde, dated in 1625. It had been torn from its place and was lying on the ground. The Maddens appear to have been then the great people of the neighbourhood - they are now extinct or forgotten.
Close to the Abbey is a martello tower, and the shores of the Shannon, within a few miles of Banagher, are fringed with towers and forts. 'They form part,' said A., 'of a system of fortified posts, with which, a few years ago, the Duke of Wellington took military possession of Ireland. It includes all the barracks, and runs along the whole line of the Shannon, so as to make it difficult for an insurgent force to cross it. None of the forts have much strength, except Spike Island, near Queenstown, and that is not quite finished. They would be formidable, however, to insurgents.'
'I do not think,' answered A., 'that they would be worth building, but they are worth repairing. A shell exploding, as you suggest, would certainly play the devil with the defences and the defenders; but it would not be very easy to pitch it exactly there, and a post which cannot be taken without cannon, and a sort of siege, is always formidable.' Meelick Abbey church situate some six miles from Banagher and in County Galway is now in excellent condition and beautifully restored. The Madden tombstones can be seen behind the altar. The Martello towers in the vicinity have also survived.
Senior while staying at Birr Castle heard from Lord Rosse the story of the Crotty schism. This story has been written up on a few occasions over the past twenty years and most recently in the Diocese of Killaloe 1800 - 1850, by the late Ignatius Murphy. Fr. Crotty had a spleen with the committee over the building of the new church in Birr, saying that there had been found a proposition with which the Bishop did not agree. Such was the annoyance created that Bishop McMahon placed the parish of Birr under interdict - meaning that the mass and sacraments could not be administered. Soon after a new Parish Priest Patrick Kennedy (subsequently Bishop) was appointed to Birr. Peace prevailed for a time but by mid-1826 the division in the parish was such that the Parish Priest abandoned the chapel for a time and it was taken over by the Crotty supporters. The Bishop suspended Crotty in July 1826. In August the church was repossessed by the Parish Priest with the help of the army and Fr. Crotty stripped of his priestly functions by the Bishop. Crotty was jailed for a time in 1827. Support for Crotty continued into the early 1830's. Crotty had a new church built in 1836 at Castle Street. This became a Presbyterian church.
Murphy in summarising the position wrote: “The Birr dispute, like a dispute in Castleconnell in the 1790's which did not progress into the schism, showed how a priest with good leadership qualities could command a very strong following, even in the face of intense opposition from the Church authorities. Although support for Michael Crotty dropped off as it became apparent that there were little hope of reconciliation, he retained a sizeable following until he and William began to reject doctrines of the Catholic Church and change the liturgy on Protestant lines."
In Rosse's account to Senior, Crotty is described as Father R.
"Mrs. S. is the translator of 'Humboldt's Cosmos.' I asked S. in what style the original was written.
'In German-German,' answered S.- 'that is to say, in the pure and vague German of old times, not in the clearer and somewhat foreign manner of the German-Gallic school. I sometimes tell my wife, that certain phrases and statements in her translation are vague. She defends herself, by showing the vagueness of the original. And Humboldt is on her side. He says that he prefers her translation to the French translation which he is making himself, because the genius of the French language forces him to be much more precise than he likes to be. He values highly her occasional obscurity.'
Sunday, October 3 1852. - Lady Rosse desired me to ask Lord Rosse for the story of Father R. [Crotty], which happened before her time. So, this morning, I begged him for it.
'Father R.,' said Lord Rosse, 'is a vulgar pushing man, who was a curate to Kennedy, the Roman Catholic priest of Birr. He obtained great influence among the lower orders here, by preaching violent sedition. This tempted him to try to supplant his superior. He denounced Kennedy as a friend of the Saxons, and got together with a party, for the purpose of seizing by force the Roman Catholic chapel. He justified the seizure, on the ground that the chapel belonged to the congregation, and that a large majority of the congregation preferred him to Kennedy. Kennedy consulted the law-officers of the Crown, and they were of the opinion, that the chapel, having been erected for the purpose of the Roman Catholic Communion, was subject to the discipline of that Church, and consequently, that the priest appointed by the Roman Catholic bishop had, legally, the exclusive right to perform service therein - an opinion not quite consistent with the declaration, that "the Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in the Queen's dominions."
'Armed with this opinion, Kennedy required the aid of the civil power, and - what in Ireland is the necessary consequence - of the military force. For many months he never went out, never went to his chapel, or visited a parishioner, without the protection of a corporal's guard. One of the magistrates always accompanied him to the chapel; a strong body of troops was posted in one of the transepts, and a stronger body in the chapel-yard. I myself, in my magisterial capacity, have spent many hours by the side of the altar, mounting guard over the celebration of the Mass.
'R. [Crotty], unable to get possession of the chapel, opened a conventicle of his own, was supported by a considerable subscription, and beat the regular performer hollow in the number of his hearers. The Bishop interdicted him, and he repelled war by war. He began by preaching against the discipline of the Church of Rome, maintained the right of each congregation to elect its own pastor, and disclaimed all Episcopal authority. As he warmed in the contents, he attacked the doctrines of his enemies, preached against Purgatory, and Transubstantiation, and the Invocation of Saints, and at last got rid of nearly all the peculiarities of Romanism. His success was such that there seemed to be a danger of his creating a schism. The heads of the Church were seriously alarmed. Archbishop Murray, Bishop Doyle, and another bishop (whose name I forget), came to Birr for the purpose of solemnly excommunicating him. They fixed the time for doing so at eight o'clock in the morning, and relying on their ecclesiastical dignity, dispensed with the attendance of the troops. Father R.'s [Crotty's] mob broke into the chapel, destroyed all the windows, extinguished the tapers, and would have injured (perhaps killed) the archbishop and bishops, if they had not taken refuge in the sacristy, barred the door, and defended themselves there until news was sent to the barracks, and a detachment came and relieved them. 'At last, however, poor R. ventured a step too far. As long as he preached against the doctrines of the Church of Rome, he was applauded. But he began to attack its ceremonies. This they could not stand. "It was awful," some of those who had been his adherents said to me, "to see him extinguish the candles on the altar, and then say Mass without them!" The subscriptions ceased, his conventicle was deserted, and he now thought that the best thing he could do was openly to turn Protestant. He conformed to the Anglican Church, and left Ireland.' (In a later note for publication, Rosse recorded that: 'His [Crotty's] nephew, also a contumacious priest, who had officiated for him for about a year, became a Presbyterian - the transition to Presbyterianism being easier than to Anglicanism, owing to the strong feeling, arising out of the Tithe question, then prevailing among the peasantry against the Established Church. The nephew secured for himself, as Presbyterians, a small part of his uncle's congregation. About a year after he was transferred by the Synod to Galway. The congregation was handed over to Dr. Carlisle, who is still our Presbyterian minister.' - Rosse.
'What became,' I asked, 'of Kennedy?'
'Kennedy,' said Lord Rosse, 'was made the Roman Catholic bishop of Killaloe. He died a year ago.'
Lord Rosse and I talked, during our walk today, of the dangers of the country - the people poor and disaffected, the priests in a state of chronic conspiracy against the Government, and 65 out of the 105 representatives returned by a foreign sovereign, naturally hostile, and now a tool in the hands of our bitterest enemy.
'What,' I said, 'would you do, if you were Minister, and had a fair working majority, so as to be able to carry any measures not absolutely irreconcilable with the prejudices of the English people?'
'Some English prejudices,' said Lord Rosse, 'I must get rid of before I could do much. The worst of all prejudices is the opinion - still, I believe, cherished by many of the English Liberals - that Ireland can prosper under English institutions, without supplemental measures to render the laws and institutions really equivalent to those of England; that is to say, that one of the least civilised countries in Europe can be well governed by the same machinery as the most civilised, which is like giving the same education and the same degree of freedom to a boy of eight years old and to a boy of sixteen. (Rosse later added: 'With identically the same laws on the Statute Book, and without supplemental measures, many of the laws would be inoperative, and therefore the whole code, measured by its effective portion, would be different in the two countries' - Rosse.)
'In the first place, I would disarm the people. Never was a more unlucky aphorism than that of Labouchere, that every man has a natural right to carry arms. It is like saying that a child has a natural right to play with edged tools. At present they are disarmed merely in certain districts, and under a temporary Act, which, whenever it expires, requires a Parliamentary case - that is to say, half-a-dozen murders - before it can be renewed. Then the Act, where and when it is in force, is capriciously acted on. In this district, the general rule of the magistrates was to refuse licences; in the next - that in which poor Cage and Pike were shot - the general rule was to grant them. ('Though the rule as to the registration of arms was strict in the district in which Lucas was shot, the peasantry had been well supplied with them in Labouchere's time, and they concealed and retained them.' - Rosse.) The consequence was, that the arms were taken from the district in which they were forbidden to that in which they were allowed, and kept there until they were wanted. I would make the Disarming Act general and permanent, and allow very few exceptions.
'I would then reform the Stipendiary Magistracy. On this institution the security of the country mainly depends. As soon as an outrage has been committed, it is the duty of the stipendiary magistrate to collect into a focus the slight and transitory indications, which, if acutely perceived and sedulously followed up, will lead to detection. No function requires more zeal, vigour, and intelligence. The men selected for it are generally elderly roués, with broken fortunes and damaged reputations, who are made stipendiaries because their patrons do not venture to make them anything else. I have implored Lord-Lieutenant after Lord-Lieutenant not to allow so important an office to be thus jobbed away. All that I could get from any one of them were promises that the appointments should be as little bad as they could make them.'
'But what,' I said, 'would be your remedy? To whom would you give the appointments?'
'The appointments,' answered Lord Rosse, 'should be made in England; or, if in Ireland, two persons should concur, and I would require them to be chosen from the police - that is to say, from the officers of the Constabulary. This would secure their having some experience in the investigation of crime, and would, besides, raise the character of the police force.
'The police force itself requires almost as much reform...
'All your measures,' I said, 'are measures for the prevention or punishment of crime. You would disarm the people, improve the stipendiary magistrates and the police, diminish trial by jury where you could, and require juries to decide by a majority. You propose merely to improve the administration of the penal law.'
'The prevention and punishment of crime,' answered Lord Rosse, 'are all that we want. Emigration will restore the proportion between population and subsistence, under the National School system education is rapidly spreading, the physical resources of Ireland are vast and almost untouched. But we are under two different and repugnant systems of law. One is enacted by Parliament and enforced by the Courts - the other is concocted in the whisky-shop and executed by the assassin. And the law of the people is far better enforced than that of the Government. Those who break it are generally sure to be detected, for their offences are generally public, the punishment is as severe as any that man can inflict or suffer, and the chances of escaping it are few. The popular law, therefore, is obeyed; the Government law is disregarded. Give us merely security; let the proprietor be master of his land, the manufacturer of his capital, and the labourer of his strength and skill, and the virtues which we now seem to want - industry, frugality, and providence - will spring up as soon as they can depend on their reward.'
Sir Duncan McGregor is an excellent man - honourable and impartial; but, under his guidance, the Constabulary has become rather a military corps than a police. It has substituted mechanical obedience to orders, and inactivity until it receives them, for the zeal and independent action which belong to a preventive and detective body. Sir Duncan's great wish is, that his men should be blameless, - at least, that they should not be blamed. Promotion is given to those who have got into the fewest scrapes, and they will generally be found to be those who have done the least real service. What Talleyrand said to a young diplomatist, Sir Duncan's conduct says to everyone who serves under him: "Surtout, monsieur, point de zele."
'I would endeavour to extend the field of summary convictions: juries are fit only for countries in which the people are the friends of the law. In Ireland it is difficult to find a jury that dares, or even wishes, to do its duty. Where juries must be retained, I would adopt the Scotch plan, and make them decide by a majority; and make it penal to reveal how each juryman voted. Among the mischiefs of requiring a unanimous verdict is its publicity.'
'What would you do,' I asked, 'with the Ecclesiastical Titles Act?'
'No one,' said Lord Rosse, 'can disapprove of that Act more than I do; but having once passed, it is, I fear, irrevocable. I should do what I have no doubt that the present and every succeeding Government will do. Let it remain a dead letter - a monument of our folly, but not an active cause of dissension.'
'What would you do with the Lord-Lieutenancy?'
'Abolish it,' he answered. 'It is a mere hotbed of jobbing, corruption and maladministration. The Queen is neutral; but, in Ireland, as if there was not enough of party-feeling already, her representative is always a strong party-man. It ought not to have survived steam - that it should be coexistent with the electric telegraph is monstrous.'
'How would you deal,' I asked, 'with the Franchise?'
'I would really base it,' answered Lord Rosse, 'on property. The present qualification, a ten-pound rating, is absurd. So little capital is employed by the Irish tenants, that a man rated at ten pounds is often a pauper. I would assimilate the Parliamentary Franchise to that by which Poor-law Guardians are elected, give a plurality of votes according to the amount of property, and let the votes be given in writing and collected by a public officer.'
'Would you introduce the Ballot?'
'No. It would produce nearly unmixed evil. The priest's influence would be untouched, and the landlord's destroyed.'
The evening was overcast, so that we saw nothing. B. talked of the cholera of 1832. 'The greatest mortality,' he said, 'was in a place called, I think, Ballysadare, near Collooney, in Sligo. It contained, when the cholera approached, 580 inhabitants, and the filthy, undrained, damp huts of which it consisted marked it out as a fit victim. The inhabitants were urged to take precautions, but they neglected, perhaps were not able, to do so. About eighty, however, left the place; the rest remained, trusting, they said, to Providence. At that time the belief in the contagiousness of cholera was firm, at least in that country. The cholera came, and became instantly very destructive. The neighbours formed a cordon around the place, and allowed no one to leave it. Mr. Cooper, the greatest proprietor in the district, sent every day to the neighbourhood of the village a cart loaded with provisions, which was left there until the inhabitants had taken what they wanted and retired. From time to time less and less of the contents of the cart were taken. At last it remained totally untouched. The last person among the 500 who had remained at Ballsadare was dead!'
Nassau Senior returned to Birr in 1858 on 6th October for a short stay. We reached Birr Castle, where we remained until the 18th. We saw the comet through the 3-feet reflector, but with little advantage. The nucleus was smaller and more defined, and more clearly separated from the tail. Lord Rosse estimated its size at about half of the moon; but the materials of the tail were too gaseous to be magnified. The increased light seems to disperse rather than to illuminate them. The comet seen through an opera-glass was a finer object than when seen through a telescope, and finest when perceived by the naked eye.
He was again in Birr on 27th October.
"Wednesday, October 27. I returned to Birr Castle.
Thursday, October 28. I took a long walk with Lord Rosse. We discussed some of the schemes of the Communists.
'A friend of mine,' said Lord Rosse, 'a man of good family, who was educated at Trinity College and at Oxford, and is a scholar and a gentleman, at the age of forty, having previously shown no eccentricity, convinced himself that his fortune was given to him, not for his own benefit, but for that of others - that he was a mere trustee for the public. Unhappily, the mode of public utility that he selected was keeping open house for all-comers. Of course the idle and the dissolute crowded to him. He was told that he had collected round him all the worst people in the neighbouring town. He admitted it, but said that the worse they were, the more they required assistance and advice. His advice, however, does not seem to have improved them. They not only lived on him, but pillaged him; property after property was disposed of, and now all that remains of a large estate is a house and park, which are entailed and cannot be sold, and a cottage, in which he lives on the bounty of his relations.'
A Mr. H., of Trinity College, is staying at Birr Castle. He has prepared himself to compete for a fellowship, and Lord Rosse thinks that, if the examination could take place now, he would succeed. But some changes are being made in the constitution of the College, which may prevent any vacancies being filled up for four or five years. Lord Rosse fears that, in that case, Mr. H. will be beaten by younger men.
'The subjects of examination.' he said, 'are so numerous and so varied, that no mind can long retain them. The memory is too much fatigued. In the moral sciences you are required to answer in the words of the textbook. Who can keep all Butler and Locke in his head? The classical examination adds Hebrew to Greek and Latin, and the mathematical one extends to the bounds of the science.
'Mathematics,' he continued, 'are lost with wonderful rapidity. I have known men who, only three or four years after having taken a high degree, had forgotten half that they knew, and had lost their readiness in the use of the rest. That probably is the reason why great mathematicians, from Newton down to Arago and Leverrier, have been so quarrelsome a race. They are forced to devote so much time to their peculiar study, that they have none for anything else. They live among their diagrams and numbers, cease to be men of the world, and attach to their own discoveries - and above all to their priority of discovery - what appears to us to be an undue importance, and think themselves cheated by their rivals, and unappreciated by the public.' I asked Lord Rosse what was to be the next employment of the powers of his telescope. 'You do not intend,' I said, 'to confine it to the resolution of nebulae?'
'Certainly not,' he answered. 'We have now done nearly all that we can for nebulae. I have two further purposes. One is, to enquire, more earnestly than has yet been done, into the way in which the stars are distributed and arranged in space; the other is, to re-examine the moon. She has never been carefully studied with the six-feet reflector. I think it probable that such an instrument will put us in possession of facts relating to the nature and position of her strata, which may bear on terrestrial geology.
Nassau Senior's last visit to Ireland was in 1862. This time he was accompanied by his daughter and having visited Derry, Limerick and Kerry, he arrived at Birr Castle on 10th October.
"Birr Castle, October 10.- We left Killarney at nine o'clock, and reached Parsonstown at half-past four in the evening. The town comes up to the gates of Birr - Lord Rosse's fine old castle. It is by far the neatest town that I have seen in Ireland.
October 11.- Mr. R. dined with us.
'The police have ascertained,' he said, 'that there is a plot to shoot Mr. C---, the contractor for the railway from Clara to Banagher.' [Work on the Clara to Banagher railway commenced in 1858. The contractor was the well known William Dargan.]
I begged him to tell me the story. 'What offence,' I asked, 'has Mr. C--- given?'
'All that is known,' he answered, 'is that one G., a man in the employment of a disreputable person, came this morning to the Petty Sessions Office, and informed the magistrate that his master, and two other men - one of whom was formerly employed in the railway, and the other is an itinerant ballad-singer - proposed to him, last night, to shoot Mr. C---, and showed three pounds, which were to be given to him as soon as the murder had been perpetrated, and also a new pistol, with which it was to be effected, and described to him the place at which it could be done.
'The instant that this proposal had been made, the two parties stood in a new and dreadful relation to one another. As "conspiracy to murder" is a capital crime in Ireland, G. had the lives of these three men in his hand. On the other hand. they had his life in their power; for, unless he consented, they would certainly assassinate, or get assassinated, the depository of such a secret. His only choice was either to accept the offer, execute the murder, and take the chance of escaping detection, or to denounce the conspirators. It appears that he thought his safest course was to denounce them, for he came and did so this morning, and I am going, with the magistrate and two policemen, to try to discover the conspirators.'
At a quarter to ten o'clock Mr. R. left us. It was a good night for the purpose, furiously windy, with heavy rain.
'Some twenty-five years ago,' said Lord Rosse, 'I went out in just such a night on a similar expedition. Mr. V., Lord ---'s agent, had been fired at. The head of our Parsonstown police came to me, and told me that he had ascertained the names and residences of the men (six in number) who had made the attempt; but as they lived in a village about ten miles from hence, in Tipperary, out of his jurisdiction, he proposed to me, as a magistrate for Tipperary, to accompany him, and sanction his arresting them.
'We started at ten o'clock at night, in three cars, reached the village at about one in the morning, found the six men, (each asleep in his own cabin), put them on cars. and took them to the gaol at Tullamore. It turned out that one of them, A., was V.'s confidential man, and V. wrote a violent letter, affirming the man's innocence, and demanding his immediate release.
'Further enquiries showed, that A. had really been the instigator of the conspiracy. He was an irritable man, and so is V., they had a quarrel, and A. set on foot a conspiracy to murder V.; but he cooled and repented. He thought it unsafe to withdraw; his confederates might have murdered him, as a false brother. So he resolved to let the attempt be made, and fail; and effected this by posting his men at such a distance from the road by which V. was to pass, that they missed him.
'We had now to consider what to do. We could not prosecute the five sub-conspirators, and let off A., the instigator; and V. pleaded for A., as, in fact, having saved his life. So we let them all off, and V. took A. back into his service. Three or four years after there was another plot against V. A. heard of it, told V. where it was to take place, and advised him to go by a different road.
'"No," said V., "I may bring you into danger. You will be suspected as my informant. I will go by my usual road, but with companions, and armed."
'As they approached the scene of action, V. walked along the road, and his clerk, armed with a double-barrelled gun, walked on the other side of the hedge. He came in sight of two armed men lurking behind the hedge, lost his presence of mind, and shouted out to V. to stop. They instantly ran and escaped.
'After that, V., when he suspected danger, used to take with him a sergeant of the Constabulary. One day the sergeant, who was walking before him, perceived men in ambush. V. had only a useless pocket-pistol, the sergeant has a musket; but Sir Duncan McGregor - who has spoilt the Constabulary by treating them as soldiers - had issued an order that they should not load their guns until they had to use them. This was an absurd copy of the military rule, that a man, except on outpost-duty, is not to load until he is actually going into action. 'The sergeant's musket was therefore unloaded, but he thought that he could alarm them by presenting it. It did alarm them, but they all fired on him, wounded him severely, and then fled. So V. escaped from a third conspiracy.
'He is an upright humane man, but rough in his manner. The Roman Catholic bishop of this diocese denounced him from the altar, but afterwards acknowledged to me that he had done wrong. V.'s character is now better understood, and he is popular among the people.'
October 12 - Mr. L. dined with us.
We talked of A.
'He was remarkably clever,' said L., 'but a great rascal. V. certainly employed him, but reposed no confidence in him. If he intended the first attempt on V. to fail, he ran it very close, for the shot passed through Mrs. V.'s bonnet. She was sitting on a car by V.'s side, and they were driving down the avenue leading to their own house. A. himself was a victim to the Ribbon conspiracy, for, having broken one of its laws, he was fired at, and received a wound from which he never recovered.
'There is nothing political or religious,' he added, 'in the Ribbon code. It is simply agrarian. It recognises the obligation on the part of the tenant to pay rent, but no other obligation. It resents all interference by the landlord in the use of the land. To throw farms together is an offence; to prevent subletting is an offence; to prevent the admission of lodgers is an offence. In fact, every act of ownership is an offence, and consequently all improvement; and it treats all accomplices as principals.
'The man who takes a farm from which another man has been evicted, or who buys a cow which has been distrained, is held as guilty as the evictor, or the distrainer.'
'Is every eviction,' I asked, 'an offence?'
'Not necessarily,' he answered. 'An eviction for non-payment of rent may be pardoned, if the tenant has been notoriously able to pay, and has refused to do so.'
'That is the theory,' said Lord Rosse. 'They always say that a man ought to pay his rent, and to submit to eviction if he make default. But the practice scarcely follows the theory. It is generally prudent, on the part of the incoming tenant, to buy out his predecessor. In fact, there is a constant endeavour to introduce tenant-right, a system which we always oppose, as it tends to make the tenant the real proprietor, and the landlord the owner of a mere ground-rent.'
'Sometimes, too,' said L., 'though the society does not interfere, the dispossessed tenant executes his own vengeance.'
'How many evictions,' I asked, 'are there in a year?'
'Three or four,' he answered.
'And is each of those,' I asked, 'a source of danger?'
'The danger,' he answered, 'varies from time to time. One assassination is generally followed, almost immediately, by several others. A conviction, perhaps, stops the practice, and there is peace for years.'
'You do not,' I said 'connect the priests with the recent outrages?'
'Only so far,' he answered, 'as they preach disaffection, as they preach hostility to the existing Government, to the connection with England, and to the law which England is supposed to support.
'They tell the peasantry that they are oppressed. The persons with whom the peasantry come most into contact, are the landlords. They infer, therefore, that the landlords are their oppressors, and the transition from that inference to shooting them - or, at least, to sheltering, or even applauding, those who have shot them - is easy.'
October 13. - Mr. R., on his return from his midnight expedition, and Mr. T., who came back a few years ago from Melbourne with a fortune, dined today at the Castle.
'We found the men who had conspired to shoot the railway contractor in bed,' said R., 'and in one of their houses (concealed by a heap of turf-ashes under the grate), we found the pistol, and we have lodged them in Tullamore Gaol. I suspect that, if we like it, we shall get more evidence from one of them. He turned pale with terror as soon as we awoke him, and told him our errand. The question for the Government will be - whether it will be worth while to buy his evidence at the price of having not merely to let him escape, but also to provide for him, and for his family, out of the country.'
'And what has become of the informer?' I asked.
'Oh,' he said, 'he is under Government protection near Dublin. He could not have been left for a day in King's County. Some persons went this morning to his wife, and threatened to murder her. She and her children must be removed. They told her that if her husband was within a thousand miles, they would have his blood. The whole family must be provided for.'
'Where?' I asked.
'In Australia,' said R.
'But,' I said, 'will he be safe among the Irish in Australia?'
'Perfectly safe,' said T. 'Nothing done in Europe is punished, or even recollected against a man, in Australia....
'Was there any difficulty,' I asked R., 'in taking the prisoners through the town?'
'None,' he said. 'It is a collection of cabins; the women hissed us, and we heard some people say, that they were glad there was still the old spirit in King's County, and that it was not a mere robbery for which the men were in trouble.
'Not long ago, a man took shelter in a Ribbon lodge. "It's for murder," he cried out, "that I am in hiding." So they gave him a seat by the fire, and his whiskey.
'Another man came; he looked suspiciously at the stranger.
'"He is hiding for murder," they said.
'"For murder?" exclaimed the freshcomer; "sure it's for pig-stealing, the dirty blackguard!" On which he was seized and given up to the police. 'The proceedings of these societies,' he continued, 'have more than the force of law, and many of its forms. They evict as we do, and the Posse Societatis goes to the ground, and executes the writ of habere.
'I know a case, a little while ago, in which a man was accused of some offence. Several of them surrounded his house, and then two went in and summoned him to go with them to the place where they held their sessions. He obeyed - was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be shot.
'But a member of the Court, pleaded in his behalf some mitigating circumstances, and required the sentence to be commuted for transportation. This was assented to. Two members were deputed to attend him to the port, pay his passage-money, and see him embark; and he was solemnly warned that, if he returned, he would be shot without mercy.'
'He cannot guess,' answered R., 'not can we. He is a kind, free, liberal man. He gives abundance of employment at high wages. Probably he requires them to work for their money or to be regular in their attendance. No one who has anything whatever to do with persons so ignorant, so excitable, so unreflecting, so vindictive, and so careless of life as the lower people of this country, is safe. It is like playing with a half-tamed beast of prey.'
'How far,' I asked, 'does what you call "this country" extend?
'It takes in,' he answered, 'King's County and Queen's County, and Tipperary, Westmeath, Roscommon and Longford - in short, the centre of the island.'
Later on 19th October 1862 he made his way to Cardtown, the
home of W. S. Trench, (the author of Realities of Irish Life), who with his two
sons managed Lord Landsdowne's estates in Kerry and Laois, Lord Bath's in
Farney, Monaghan and Lord Digby's at Geashill (30,000 acres). Trench made the
point of interest in the context of the Northern troubles today that:
"The
Irishman murders patriotically. He murders to assert and enforce a principle -
that the land which the peasant has reclaimed from the bog, the cabin which he
has built, and the trees that he has planted, are his own, subject to the
landlord's right, by law, to extract a rent for the results of another man's
labour. In general he pays that rent, generally he exerts himself to pay it,
even when payment is difficult to him. But he resolves not to be dispossessed.
He joins a Ribbon lodge, and opposes to the combination of the rich, the
combination of the poor.
He goes further: he asserts the right, not merely to occupy the land, but to deal with it as he thinks fit. He marries at eighteen a girl of seventeen, and subdivides ten acres among ten children. He refuses to allow farms to be thrown together, though both parties may desire it. He refuses to allow them to be squared. He refuses to allow land unfit for tillage to be turned into sheep-walks. In short, he forbids improvement, and enforces, as far as he can, a system productive of general misery, famine, and pestilence. But he does not know what he is doing. He firmly believes that he is defending the rights and the interests of the poor against the tyranny and avarice of the rich."
Of Offaly, c.1858, (the time of the Geashill evictions), he
wrote:
"Three or four years ago, King's County was disturbed; there was as
much intimidation and assassination there as I have very known in any part of
Ireland. For two years I never went out without arms, or without being attended
by two armed men."
This is the first day of the Quarter Sessions. We had an enormous dinner-party. I sat next to Miss P. We talked of the prayer-meetings, or (as they are called) 'Revivals,' which have prevailed during the last two or three years in Ireland.
'I think,' said Miss P., 'that they are doing great good. Many young people, of both sexes, have been awakened to religious thoughts and to religious impressions, and the irregular vehemence of emotion which they at first excited has passed off. I never saw the hysterical scenes which I used to hear described, and I never heard of more than one.
That took place at Parsonstown, a few weeks ago. There was a prayer-meeting, presided over by a very remarkable man, whose name I do not know. He was obviously not a scholar, nor indeed a gentleman. His appearance, and voice, and manner were those of a man of the middle orders, but he had great eloquence.
'The evening began, as usual, by prayer - then followed an address by the President. His text was the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, and his sermon was on the character of Our Saviour. When it was over, one or two others addressed the meeting, and then there was a prayer again. Most of us then went away, and the President said, that if any person present felt themselves peculiarly sinful, or peculiarly disturbed in mind, he was ready to pray with them in private. Two or three women remained.
'A couple of hours, after, my brother, passing under the room in which the meeting had been held, saw that it was still lighted, and heard voices within. He entered, and found a girl of about eighteen on the floor, in strong hysterics, and the preacher standing over her, praying that she might be delivered from the power of Satan.'
'What,' I asked, 'are the doctrines usually preached at these "Revivals"?'
'What are called,' she answered, 'Low Church doctrines - the all-sufficiency of the sacrifice of Jesus - the free offer of salvation - the necessity of accepting it - the danger of self-reliance, or of reliance on anything except the blood of the Lamb - the condemnation that awaits those who are under the law - the glory that awaits those who believe in Jesus.'
Friday, October 24 - I walked this morning with A.B., round
the park. 'I have lately met with persons,' I said, 'the outline of whose
religious theory was this:
'That any one sin renders a person justly subject
to the wrath and to the condemnation of God.
'That, since the Fall, all men are naturally wicked, and sin continually.
'That all men, therefore, are justly punish men for the sin which He has already punished in Christ.'
'This,' said A.B., 'leads to the inference that no man whatever can be the subject of punishment.'
'They qualify,' I answered, 'this doctrine, by adding that the sacrifice of Christ is for the benefit of those only who believe that they are the objects of it; that those only are saved who assert their claim to salvation - in their language, "who lay their hand on the head of the Lamb." And they compare the state of men to that of prisoners for debt, to whom the money necessary for their release is offered. If they accept it, they are free. If they do not accept it, it is as if the offer had never been made to them.'
'I believe,' said A.B., 'that some of them go further still; that they affirm that to be saved you must believe that Jesus Christ died for you individually - that He foresaw your existence, and offered Himself for the purpose of redeeming you, personally and individually. And as this belief cannot be founded on evidence, they suppose that it is acquired by a special revelation, made by God Himself to everyone who is to be saved.'
'What then,' I asked, 'can be the use of exhortations, of prayer-meetings, or indeed of prayer itself, since the decree of God, formed from all eternity, cannot be altered.'
'They ought not to pray,' said A.B., 'that the decree be altered, but that it be revelation, made by God Himself to everyone who is to be saved.'
'What then,' I asked, 'can be the use of exhortations, of prayer-meetings, or indeed of prayer itself, since the decree of God, formed from all eternity, cannot be altered?'
'They ought not to pray,' said A.B., 'that the decree be altered, but that it be revealed to them. Theirs is an imperfect Calvinism. Real Calvinism is logical, if you assume the omnipotence and the omniscience of the Deity, and deny His benevolence. It supposes that for the purpose of displaying His power He created man; that, for the same purpose, He decreed that out of the millions of the human race a certain number shall be saved, and the rest (being the great majority) shall be damned; that the sacrifice of Our Saviour was made for the redemption of the elect, being the small minority, and that its benefits extend only to that small minority.'
'Are the elect,' I said, 'a number, or a proportion?'
'A fixed number,' he answered.
'Then,' I said, 'every increase of population increases only the number of the damned?'
'Certainly,' he answered.
'And the damned are not annihilated,' I said, 'but suffer to all eternity?'
'Certainly.'
'I heard,' I said, 'a sermon of Archbishop Leighton, on Faith, read aloud. It seemed to me full of inconsistencies and absurdities, but the greater part of the hearers were delighted with it.'
'The meaning of the word Faith,' said A.B., 'is somewhat vague; but I think that it means, rather trust than believe - rather conduct than opinion. We are told that it is shown by works - that is, by the conduct which may be expected from a man believing in the benevolence of God, and believing that His favour is to be acquired by loving your neighbour as yourself. For this conduct, which is in our power, the enthusiasts, of whom we have been speaking, substitute what is not in our power - what they call faith, and explain to be an inward certainty that you, individually, are among the persons for whom Jesus died, and who His death has saved; a certainty which, as I said before, can be obtained only by a special revelation made to you, by God.'
I visited the workhouse. It is, as it always is in Ireland, a handsome roomy building, and is well situated, on a hill overlooking the town, from which it is separated by a rapid river.
The whole number of inmates was 271, of whom 168 were adults - that is, in workhouse language, above the age of fifteen - and 103 were under fifteen. Of the adults, 26 were mothers, with 37 illegitimate children. The master told me, that the voluntary inmates consisted chiefly of these mothers, and of the very aged of dying, who come in, or are sent in by their friends, in order to be buried at the expense of the Union.
'What is the expense,' I asked, 'of such a burial?'
'A coffin,' he answered, 'costs ninepence a foot, which, for six feet, is fifty-four pence; the shroud takes five yards, which, at threepence a yard, is fifteen pence - altogether, 5s 9d. The grave is dug by the paupers in the Union cemetery, so that this 5s 9d is the whole expense.'
'How many,' I asked, 'have been buried in that cemetery?'
'About 3,000,' he answered, '33 were buried there in the last six months, out of 38 deaths. The whole number of deaths in the last year was 71, out of 651 who passed through the house - about one in nine. The average age of the deceased adults was 64 years.
'It is very much to be wished,' he continued, 'in the first place, that the girls who do not get places, should be allowed to remain in the school till the age of twenty. A workhouse girl of twenty is not older, or stronger in body or in mind, than an ordinary child at fifteen. And, secondly, that there should be a separate ward for girls of good character, above twenty, who have not got places, or have lost them from any cause except viciousness. At present, every such girl is turned into the adult ward, and a week there is enough to corrupt her. We have women there who come to us to be confined, go out, and return to be confined again. The greater part of the illegitimate children in the house were born there.
'There are no able-bodied men at present. Their diet, when there are any, is ten ounces of oatmeal, eighteen ounces of brown bread, half a pint of milk, one-eighth of an ounce of tea, and half an ounce of sugar a day. A few potatoes are grown in the workhouse garden, but none are bought. Four pounds of raw potatoes are held equivalent to one pound of bread. An able-bodied man, living on potatoes, is supposed to eat about fourteen pounds a day, equal to three-and-a-half pounds of bread.'
I drove with Lady Rosse to Knockshegowna, a small ruin at the point of the mountain of that name, 700 feet above the sea-level. The view is extensive, comprehending nine counties.
'It would make,' I said, 'a fine estate.'
'I should not be sorry,' said Lady Rosse, 'to have a funded property equal in value to such an estate, or producing dividends equal to the rents of such an estate; but I should be grieved to be the owner of all the land that we see, or even of more of it than Lord Rosse actually possesses. More land in Ireland means more tenants, more trouble, more vexation, more worry, and less leisure. I do not wish for it.'
We saw a large and long valley flooded by the Brosna river.
'Those floods,' said Lady Rosse, 'are owing to two or three mills. The river could easily be embanked, and thousands of acres - now not merely useless, but mischievous, diffusing malaria all round - could be made good pasture and healthy. The proprietors, with one exception, are ready and anxious to make the improvement.'
An old man, who called himself the 'care-taker' of the mountain, showed us the best way down. Lady Rosse talked to him about his circumstances. He told us that he had his cottage and garden rent-free, and an acre of land, on which he fed his cow and his geese.
She asked if he had any geese to sell.
No; he had sold all that he could spare.
'I think,' he added, 'that goose is the chapest mate to ate in the world.' Probably, he works for some farmer, as a day-labourer, or he could not live and 'ate' goose on the produce of his garden and an acre of land. He said that he paid nine-pence a yard for permission to cut turf, but that six yards were enough for the whole year. This is cheap fuel.
The sky has been clouded ever since we have been at Birr, until yesterday and today. The smaller speculum of the great telescope has been broken, and no one except Lord Rosse himself can polish it, which he has not yet had time to do; but we have been able to use the 3-feet reflector. The jagged outline, deep caverns, and black shadows of the moon, in her second quarter, were striking. The only other object which the clouds permitted us to see was Mars, apparently about one-fourth of the diameter of a full-moon.
The air was too unsteady to allow us to use a magnifying power exceeding 400. So we were unable to discern the white colouring supposed to arise from the accumulation of snow at his poles.
'The example of Clare,' said Lord Rosse, 'was followed in King's County [a reference to Ribbonism and agrarian crime.] An association was formed, with a lawyer at the head of it, with purely political objects. Intimidation and violence were used against the landlords, who were almost all Conservative; and against their tenants, if they voted for the Conservative candidates. 'The peasantry and (what is nearly the same class) the small farmers perceived that this political agitation might be turned into an agrarian one; that landlords and agents might be shot, if they raised rents on consolidated farms; that purchasers might be shot, if they bought beasts taken in distress for rent; that occupiers of lands from which the former tenants had been evicted might be shot - in short, that all interference on the part of landlords might be prevented. This was the beginning of Ribbonism.'
'Perhaps,' said S., 'it was never more powerful, or more active, than a few years before the famine.'
'Yes,' said Lord Rosse, 'there were landlords in this neighbourhood who were afraid to sleep in their own houses. Some took to living in Dooly's Hotel. One of them carefully pasted paper over every chink in his bedroom and sitting-room, lest he should be seen and fired on from without.'
'And small blame to him!' said S.; 'for before he went to Dooly's, he was shot at twice in his own parlour.'
'The famine and emigration,' said Lord Rosse, 'relieved us of many of the leaders; but enough remain to keep up the system, though it is only occasionally that it shows itself in violence.'
'No,' he answered; 'but one of my neighbours, an excellent man, and a Roman Catholic, does not like to drive home in the dark. He is an improver.'
Lord Rosse, alluding to the swamps produced by the Brosna river, spoke strongly of the mischief done by water-mills.
'In England,' he said, 'the fall is generally obtained by a mill-race, which takes the water higher up in the stream, and does not interfere with the main course. In Ireland, it is obtained by damming the river.
'And these dams are constantly growing. As the miller enlarges his wheels, and wants more power, he throws in stones at night to raise the dam. Formerly this was corrected, by the people who were injured rising, and breaking down the dam; but we are become too refined for this rough-and-ready justice, and are forced to proceed by presenting the dam as a nuisance, and bringing an action at the assizes to abate it. And, however mischievous it may be, unless we can prove that it is recent, we get no redress.
'I remember a case, in which a watercourse was led along a road to help feed a mill-pond. The Grand Jury presented it as a nuisance. The miller pleaded ancient usage, and that the water thus obtained was useful to him, and defeated the presentment.
'There is a mill a mile or two below me. A tract of about 500 acres adjoins the river above it. We made it dry and cultivable by a drain, which emptied itself into the river below the mill.
'The miller complained. That land, he said, was his sponge; it absorbed water in wet seasons, and gave it to him in dry ones. I believe that he would have beaten us, if we had not threatened to attack him for having surreptitiously raised his dam. He has yielded as respects the drainage, and we submit to the injury (which is very great) of his dam.'
'What,' I said, 'is the amount of the damage which the mills on the Brosna river do?'
'The great damage,' he answered, 'is not appreciable in money. It is the unhealthiness produced by frequent floods. The pecuniary damage is the deterioration in value (perhaps by one-half) of four or five thousand acres of land. A mill worth, perhaps, £5,000. does mischief to the amount of £40,000 or £50,000.
'It seems to me a case for legislation. I would enable the Grand Jury to present every mill which was positively mischievous, or an obstacle to improvement; and I would appoint a tribunal to decide as to the facts of the case - including the compensation (if any) to be paid to the owner and occupier of the mill - to direct its removal, and to apportion the cost among the persons interested.'
Saturday, October 25 - I talked to Lord Rosse about the Constabulary.
'They certainly are not improved,' he said, 'since you were here in 1858. They are not a police. They are a military force, scattered over the country, and for military purposes, merely to support the local authorities, far too numerous and too expensive. I would turn them over to the regular army, just as the "Black Watch" in Scotland was, and raise in each county a real police named by the magistrates, and under their orders. A couple of thousand men would be ample. The expense need not exceed £100,000. a year, of which half might be thrown on the Consolidated Fund. It would be a saving of £400,000 a year, and you would have a force resembling the old police, living among the people, and knowing their habits - the servants of the civil power, instead of being its rivals.'
Mr. L. V. dined with us. I suggested to him the plan which had been proposed to me, of creating a tribunal which, on the eviction of a tenant for any cause, except breach of covenant or non-payment of rent, should be empowered to judge what (if any) compensation should be paid to him. The idea was new to him. He said that for improvements made after the 2nd of November 1860, the Landed Property Improvement Act was sufficient. That Act enables a tenant who wishes to drain, reclaim, embank, make farm-roads, irrigate, or build, to give to the owner notice of the improvements which he proposes, of their probable expense, and the time (not exceeding two years) within which they are to be made.
The owner may thereupon execute the improvement himself, and charge the tenant five per cent. per annum on the outlay; or he may disapprove, wholly or partially, of the proposed improvement, in which case the tenant is not entitled to make it. But if the landlord allow the improvement to be made, he has to pay to the tenant, for twenty-five years, an annuity of £7. 10s. on the outlay, or on so much thereof as the Chairman of Quarter Sessions within whose jurisdiction the property is situated, shall decide to have been properly expended.
'My proposed tribunal,' I said, 'applies to past improvements - to cases in which substantial improvements have been made by a tenant-at-will, and the landlord, without giving compensation, raises the rent or evicts the tenant.' 'Such a thing,' he said, 'occurred to my father. He expended a large sum in creating an estate out of bog and heather, on the faith of an under-lease. The original lease was set aside, as illegal, by the head landlord. My father thereby became a tenant-at-will, and was ejected without compensation.' 'The Irish landlords,' I said, 'partly politically, and partly to obtain additional rent, by means of the potato, encouraged or (what was enough without active encouragement) permitted subdivision, and the increase of population. The inhabitants of Ireland, from 4,088,226 in 1792, rose to 8,175,124 in 1841. The landlords were unable or unwilling to expend money on their estates. They allowed the tenants themselves to make the provision - by building and by reclaiming land, from its original state of bog or heather, or stony field - necessary to lodge and feed this increased population. It is thus that many estates have been created, and almost all have been enlarged, by generation after generation of tenants, without assistance. It was the tenants who made the barony of Ferney, originally worth about £3,000 a year, worth £50,000 a year.
'My brother (Colonel Senior) rented some fields covered with stones, adjoining his own property. They were worth a shilling an acre, as affording pasture for a goat or two. He spent about £15 an acre in removing the stones; they are now worth £1 an acre, or more. He had a lease of a few years when he began; it is now about expiring. His widow would feel aggrieved if the rent were raised to the present value.
'It is to meet cases like these that I propose my tribunal.'
'I should like,' answered L. V., 'to think more about it. It would be difficult to create a tribunal, deserving the confidence of both landlord and tenant, or in which both landlord and tenant would in fact confide.'
'The tribunal,' I said, 'created by the Landed Property Improvement Act, is the Chairman of the Quarter Sessions within whose jurisdiction the property is situated. It would be easy to constitute one as impartial, and with as much specific knowledge as that.'
'Have agrarian outrages,' I asked, 'increased in the counties with which you are acquainted?'
'I think,' he answered, 'that they have. The land has become better worth fighting for by the tenant, and better worth improving by the landlord. The landlords are more frequently resident, and necessarily more anxious to interfere, and to prevent practices which they know to be mischievous to all parties. A large part of Ireland is still in rundale - that is, in patches so small, and so scattered, that a farm of ten acres may be in ten or fifteen places. 'The tenants disapprove of an estate so situated being squared, that is redivided, so as to make each man's tenancy compact. It was for squaring some farms that Mr. Fitzgerald, a Catholic, and a most charitable and humane man, was murdered a little while ago. Our constant endeavour is to consolidate, and to square; but we seldom venture it, unless where a farm is thrown on our hands.
'Not long since, a tenant (for his own life) of a considerable farm, of about ninety acres, died. About nine years before his death, he had sold his interest in it to a woman, who has since held it. It is in a lamentable state - undrained, untilled, unstocked, with scarcely a habitable hovel on it. 'We gave her notice to quit, intending to let it to some one with sufficient capital. Immediately the priest denounced us from the altar, as exterminators, and wrote to us a letter, full of the most violent abuse and threats.'
'And what will you do?' I asked.
'The widow,' he answered, 'is not a tenant whom we prefer, or even approve. But she has money, and some of her relations, respectable persons, offer to guarantee her effecting the improvements which we shall prescribe. I believe that, for the sake of peace, we must keep her on.'
Thursday, October 30 - R. and Colonel T. (who has seen much service in the regular army, particularly in India) dined with us.
I mentioned Lord Rosse's proposal to incorporate the Constabulary in the regular army, and to let each county raise and manage its own police.
'The Constabulary,' said Colonel T., 'are a very bad police, but I doubt their making good soldiers. They are not accustomed to act in bodies. Their duties are to lounge at the door of their barracks, march two-by-two a certain number of miles along the road, gossip with their comrades at the next barrack, walk back again, clean their arms, and take care that their uniforms are not spoiled by hard work, or by exposure to rain, or to dirty roads.'
'Is the regular army,' I asked, 'much better trained?'
'Better,' he replied, 'but still very ill. We try to fatten up our soldiers, and to stiffen them, by good feeding and little exercise, except by a quantity of useless parades.
'We ought to profit by the example of the French, the most practically military nation in the world. They allow their men to employ themselves, and to be paid, and find that they are never so health, and never so well-disciplined, as when they are at work. Why should we suffer the labouring power of 120,000 vigorous men to be utterly wasted - partly in idleness, partly in parades, and partly in standing in the cold as sentinels, where no sentinels are wanted?' 'I am told,' I said, 'that there are two objections to allowing soldiers to work - that they would get a slouching gait and round shoulders, and that their additional pocketmoney would make them more drunken.'
'The first objection,' he answered, 'can be made only by some tapist fool. Are the French soldiers slouching or round-shouldered? - and, if they are, do they fight a bit the worse? As to the second objection, I would make their officers receive and keep their wages, and remit them to their families, or accumulate them till their service was out. A further advantage would be, that our soldiers would not be the helpless beings that they are now. They have been taught nothing, and practised in nothing but their strictly military duties. I have a hundred times felt the want, among my men, of skill in the common arts of life. In a French company you find men practised in all the useful trades.'
'How much drill,' I asked, 'would you give them?'
'Much less,' he answered, 'than is given at present. The King's County Militia, who are drilled at the utmost for twenty-four days in the year, are fairly drilled. And the drill should be different. The French are accommodating their drill to the new weapons. Slow movements and compact formation are unfit to cope with the rifled musket and the rifled gun. The object must be to get men under cover as quickly as possible; their order ought to be as loose, and their motions as rapid, as they can be made. The French are practised in marching in double-quick time for miles; our men are blown in a few hundred yards. Their clothes are unfit for quick movements. The tunic, as originally proposed and used, was loose. It was a sort of cloth blouse. Now it has been gradually turned into a tight-fitting jacket, because it looks smarter. The abomination of the leather stock is retained. Both for freedom, and to prevent colds, the soldier's throat ought to be exposed. The trousers are heavy, and get wet; I would give them knickerbockers, loose at the knee, with high stockings and gaiters. The cotton shirt is of little use; I would give each man two flannel shirts.'
'Would they not shrink?' I asked.
'Not,' he answered, 'if washed in scalding water.'
'I thought,' I said, 'that to prevent shrinking, flannel ought to be washed in cold water?'
'Just the contrary,' he answered, 'that is sure to shrink it. Washed in scalding water, and dried quickly - if the flannel be made purely of wool, without any mixture of cotton - it will never shrink.
'One of these days,' he continued, 'some great disaster will show us the error of our ways. Our want of a good commissariat and of a wagon-train occasioned the loss of our first army in the Crimea. The use of tactics unsuited to the present weapons may lose us an army under far more dangerous circumstances.'
'Might it not be useful,' said T., 'to make from time to time an exchange - to employ sometimes a portion of the Irish constabulary in England, and of the English police in Ireland?'
'I do not know,' said R., 'how you would like to exchange your intelligent, active, vigilant London policemen, for our smart, well-dressed, well-set-up sub-constables, with their dandified self-sufficient airs, and their indifference to the convenience or to the security of the public. I am not sure that our people would be improved by the change, and I am sure that yours would be spoiled by it.'
'At all events,' said T., 'I would send over to Ireland a few of the best English sergeants of police, with extra pay and local superior rank, to teach our people a little activity and good sense.'
'It would be of no use,' said R. 'Our people, as you call them, are unteachable; they wear an amount of conceit which nothing can penetrate.'
'Is Roscommon disturbed?' I asked.
'It contains,' he answered, 'its fair proportion of Ribbonmen, and its fair proportion of professional assassins. A friend of mine, an improving landlord, had long been the object of a conspiracy, and had eluded it by vigilance. 'One evening, as he was driving home, a man, whom he knew to belong to the assassin class, begged to be allowed to accompany him. There was something about the man's manner which induced my friend to consent. At one turning the man begged him to take a different road. He did so, and arrived in safely. '"Now," said the man, "I will tell you why I came with you, and why I made you change your road. On the other road there were men waiting to shoot you." '"But," said my friend, "you yourself are one of the Ribbonmen who have been plotting against me?"
'"That is true," said the man, "but I have nothing to do with this job. And besides, I may have to do a job about you some other time."'
I drove with Lady Rosse to Knockshegowna, a small ruin at the point of the mountain of that name, 700 feet above the sea-level. The view is extensive, comprehending nine counties.
'It would make,' I said, 'a fine estate.'
'I should not be sorry,' said Lady Rosse, 'to have a funded property equal in value to such an estate, or producing dividends equal to the rents of such an estate; but I should be grieved to be the owner of all the land that we see, or even of more of it than Lord Rosse actually possesses. More land in Ireland means more tenants, more trouble, more vexation, more worry, and less leisure. I do not wish for it.'
We saw a large and long valley flooded by the Brosna river.
'Those floods,' said Lady Rosse, 'are owing to two or three mills. The river could easily be embanked, and thousands of acres - now not merely useless, but mischievous, diffusing malaria all round - could be made good pasture and healthy. The proprietors, with one exception, are ready and anxious to make the improvement.'
An old man, who called himself the 'care-taker' of the mountain, showed us the best way down. Lady Rosse talked to him about his circumstances. He told us that he had his cottage and garden rent-free, and an acre of land, on which he fed his cow and his geese.
She asked if he had any geese to sell.
No; he had sold all that he could spare.
'I think,' he added, 'that goose is the chapest mate to ate in the world.'
Probably, he works for some farmer, as a day-labourer, or he could not live and 'ate' goose on the produce of his garden and an acre of land. He said that he paid nine-pence a yard for permission to cut turf, but that six yards were enough for the whole year. This is cheap fuel.
The sky has been clouded ever since we have been at Birr, until yesterday and today. The smaller speculum of the great telescope has been broken, and no one except Lord Rosse himself can polish it, which he has not yet had time to do; but we have been able to use the 3-feet reflector. The jagged outline, deep caverns, and black shadows of the moon, in her second quarter, were striking. The only other object which the clouds permitted us to see was Mars, apparently about one-fourth of the diameter of a full-moon.
The air was too unsteady to allow us to use a magnifying power exceeding 400. So we were unable to discern the white colouring supposed to arise from the accumulation of snow at his poles.
November 1 - I took a long walk with Lord Rosse and Mr. S.
We talked of the tribunal which I had proposed to Mr. L.V., for the purpose of assessing the compensation (if any) to be paid to a tenant for past improvements, if he should be evicted without his own default.
'The law,' said Lord Rosse, 'would of course apply only to improvements made before November 1, 1860. The existing law provides for those made since that date.
'It is obvious that such a law would interfere with existing rights. It would give to the tenant a claim which he has not, and never bargained for. Such an interference is justifiable only when the evil to be remedied is great and frequent.
'Now, I admit that the evil in question, when it does exist is great. It is shocking that a man, who, by the toil of a life, has turned heather, or bog, or fields of stones, into good land, should be turned out of it without compensation. But how often does such a thing occur? I believe, scarcely ever.'
'V----'s case,' I said, 'was an instance.'
'True', he answered; 'but he incurred it by gross imprudence. He spent money on an estate, without ascertaining that he had a good title to it.
'You would not, I suppose,' continued Lord Rosse, 'give compensation for improvements made more than twenty years ago, nor for any made after November 1, 1860; so that the new law would affect only tenants who had made improvements during a period of eighteen years, or rather of seventeen, for it could not come into operation till next year?
'I do not believe that a single case would be brought before your new court. The Landed Estates Improvement Act has remained a dead letter, and so would your retrospective Act, excepting so far as it set the mischievous precedent of an interference with the rights of property; and so far as it strengthened the popular opinion, which is at the bottom of Ribbonism, that the original and the real owner of the land is the tenant, over whom the law of a conquering race has imposed foreign usurpers, called landlords, who are to be tolerated only while they cannot be resisted.'
'You do not believe,' I said, 'in a sudden outburst of Ribbonism?'
'I do not,' he answered. 'It has shown itself lately in Tipperary, where it is always smouldering, and in Limerick, which has been usually free from it: but the country, in general, has not more of it than it has had ever since the first revolt of the tenants at the Clare election.'
'Or rather,' said Mr. S., 'at the Waterford election, when Villiers Stuart and the priests obtained the first victory over Protestantism and Property.'
'The example of Clare,' said Lord Rosse, 'was followed in King's County. An association was
formed, with a lawyer at the head of it, with purely political objects. Intimidation and violence were used against the landlords, who were almost all Conservative; and against their tenants, if they voted for the Conservative candidates.
'The peasantry and (what is nearly the same class) the small farmers perceived that this political agitation might be turned into an agrarian one; that landlords and agents might be shot, if they raised rents on consolidated farms; that purchasers might be shot, if they bought beasts taken in distress for rent; that occupiers of lands from which the former tenants had been evicted might be shot - in short, that all interference on the part of landlords might be prevented. This was the beginning of Ribbonism.'
'Perhaps,' said S., 'it was never more powerful, or more active, than a few years before the famine.'
'Yes,' said Lord Rosse, 'there were landlords in this neighbourhood who were afraid to sleep in their own houses. Some took to living in Dooly's Hotel. One of them carefully pasted paper over every chink in his bedroom and sitting-room, lest he should be seen and fired on from without.'
'And small blame to him!' said S.; 'for before he went to Dooly's, he was shot at twice in his own parlour.'
'The famine and emigration,' said Lord Rosse, 'relieved us of many of the leaders; but enough remain to keep up the system, though it is only occasionally that it shows itself in violence.'
'Has Mr. Dooly,' I asked, 'any involuntary guests now?'
'No,' he answered; 'but one of my neighbours, an excellent man, and a Roman Catholic, does not like to drive home in the dark. He is an improver.'
We talked of O'Connell.
'He has left no successor,' said Lord Rosse, 'because from the time that Emancipation was gained, his objects became purely personal; and, even as personal objects, they were sordid, for they scarcely rose above the acquisition of money, to be spent in keeping open house for his tools and flatterers.'
Sunday, November 2 - Lady Rosse read out to us, after breakfast, the Journal of the last four days, which she said Lord Rosse had not previously seen. Lord Rosse, alluding to the swamps produced by the Brosna river, spoke strongly of the mischief done by water-mills.
'In England,' he said, 'the fall is generally obtained by a mill-race, which takes the water higher up in the stream, and does not interfere with the main course. In Ireland, it is obtained by damming the river.
'And these dams are constantly growing. As the miller enlarges his wheels, and wants more power, he throws in stones at night to raise the dam. Formerly this was corrected, by the people who were injured rising, and breaking down the dam; but we are become too refined for this rough-and-ready justice, and are forced to proceed by presenting the dam as a nuisance, and bringing an action at the assizes to abate it. And, however mischievous it may be, unless we can prove that it is recent, we get no redress.
'I remember a case, in which a watercourse was led along a road to help feed a mill-pond. The Grand Jury presented it as a nuisance. The miller pleaded ancient usage, and that the water thus obtained was useful to him, and defeated the presentment.
'There is a mill a mile or two below me. A tract of about 500 acres adjoins the river above it. We made it dry and cultivable by a drain, which emptied itself into the river below the mill.
'The miller complained. That land, he said, was his sponge; it absorbed water in wet seasons, and gave it to him in dry ones. I believe that he would have beaten us, if we had not threatened to attack him for having surreptitiously raised his dam. He has yielded as respects the drainage, and we submit to the injury (which is very great) of his dam.'
'What,' I said, 'is the amount of the damage which the mills on the Brosna river do?'
'The great damage,' he answered, 'is not appreciable in money. It is the unhealthiness produced by frequent floods. The pecuniary damage is the deterioration in value (perhaps by one-half) of four of five thousand acres of land. A mill worth, perhaps, 5,000l. does mischief to the amount of £40,000. or £50,000.
'It seems to me a case for legislation. I would enable the Grand Jury to present every mill which was positively mischievous, or an obstacle to improvement; and I would appoint a tribunal to decide as to the facts of the case - including the compensation (if any) to be paid to the owner and occupier of the mill - to direct its removal, and to apportion the cost among the persons interested.'
In the afternoon I took a long walk with Lord Rosse and Mr. S.
We returned to the subject of the police. 'Do you believe,' I said to Mr. S., 'R's description of a portion of the local magistracy to be accurate?'
'I do,' he answered. 'I believe that in some parts of the adjacent counties they are as bad as can be. I believe that, if they had the absolute control of the police, not only would they make corrupt appointments, not only would they employ the police for their own purposes, but that they would sometimes use them to get up accusations against their enemies.'
'That,' said Lord Rosse, 'would be worse even than our present state, which is merely that of having no police for the purpose of detection, and scarcely any for the purpose of prevention.
'But such is not the general character of the local magistracy, and it must be remembered that no persons are more interested in the prevention of crime - indeed, that no persons are so much interested. It is their lives that are endangered, and their properties that are withdrawn from their own control.
'I would give more power to the Lord-Lieutenants of counties, require their assents to the appointment and promotion of the new police, and give them absolute power of dismissing them. I would retain in each county a small portion of the present police as a local military body, under the absolute orders of the Lord-Lieutenant of that county. The Government should have nothing whatever to do with the police. When the police is managed by a central authority, its prevailing motives always are - to escape responsibility, to get into no scrapes, never to be talked about, and consequently never to be active or zealous.
'I remember this county under our old police, which was managed by a man named ----. He was perfectly honest, but he used means which a man of sensitive self-respect would have rejected. He had lists of all the persons within his district belonging, or likely to belong, to the criminal class, either as instigators or accomplices, and it was rarely that a criminal was undetected.'
'His means,' said S., 'were, as Lord Rosse says, not such as a sensitive man would employ. When a crime had been committed, he arrested the four of five persons whom he thought most likely to have been guilty. He left them together, and concealed policeman to overhear their conversation. At first a prisoner says little, but he soon begins to talk. The only use that he made of the reports of these policemen was as indications. The prisoners were then placed in separate cells, and -- used to visit them. Using what he did know, and pretending to know a great deal more, he got them to speak freely, and was generally able to discover their innocence or their guilt, and in the latter case to ascertain where produceable evidence was to be found. And even those whom he had to discharge as innocent often put him upon the scent of the real culprits.'
'Would you retain,' I asked S., 'the system of rewards?'
'Rewards merely for apprehending a given man,' he answered, 'seem to me proper, and even necessary, and I do not see any evil to which they lead. Rewards for giving information I would abolish; they throw a suspicion over the administration of justice, and seldom promote it. The best sources of evidence are the approvers. It is to fear, not to cupidity, that you have to trust. And the great advantage of obtaining a conviction by the evidence of an approver is, that you get rid not only of the criminal, but also of the approver, for he cannot remain in Ireland.'
'One mode,' said Lord Rosse, 'of improving the magistracy, would be to get rid of the stipendiary magistrates. No appointments are so infamously jobbed; no special education, no talents, no character seem to be thought necessary for a stipendiary magistrate. Half of those whom we have had here have been habitual drunkards; more than half of them were unable to show themselves on any day, except a Sunday. We called them Sunday birds; there was one at Shinrone, whose dead body was seized by his butcher, who would not suffer it to be buried until his bill had been paid. The present man is the only good one that we have had.'
'I would get rid, too,' said S., 'of the assistant-barristers, and throw their duties upon the Judges. We have now twelve Judges for less than six millions of people; you, in England, have only fifteen for twenty millions. I would add twelve more to them, and let the twenty-four perform all the functions now performed by the Judges and the assistant-barristers. The expense would be rather less, and the duties would be far better executed.'
Lord Rosse dropped behind to talk to his bailiff, and I finished the walk with Mr. S.
'Long experience,' he said, 'has convinced me of the inexpediency of public executions. A single criminal who dies boldly does harm, more than ten times as much as all the good that is done by the terror of an execution. 'Beckham, the murderer of Fitzgerald, came to the edge of the scaffold to receive the applause of the crowd. "Boys," he said, "I am Beckham of Tipperary!" Neither he nor they thought that he had committed a crime. An acquaintance of mine, a judge (for he was a coroner) had a nephew who was convicted of horse-stealing. "He was a thorough scoundrel," said the coroner; "and if it had been for any decent crime - for sending a threatening notice, or for robbing arms, or even for shooting an agent - I should have been glad to be rid of him; but horse-stealing is a disgrace to the family."
'Beckham was a sufferer for the common cause. "From time to time," say the people, "a landlord or an agent is shot, and a poor man is hanged, and we get the land easier." I would not allow these exhibitions of defiance, or these boasts, suggested by the priest - that the murderer has made his peace with God, received absolution, and is going by a quick death, to eternal happiness.'
'Is the priest sincere?' I asked.
'Probably,' said S. 'He is sprung from the peasantry, and shares in all their passions and their prejudices. Every year convinces me, more and more, that there will be no peace in Ireland until the two religions - indeed, until all religions - are placed on an equality; and as the English Parliament will not endow the Catholics, all that I hope is that it will disendow the Protestants. I believe that the great support of Romanism is the irritation occasioned by the presence of the Established Church, and by the bitter proselytism of its ministers and agents.
'If I had absolute power, I would endow every sect, and prohibit controversial preaching, and meetings for religious disputations, and tract-distributing, and sending Bible-readers about to disturb the peace of families where they are received, and excite indignation where they are repulsed. The Roman Catholics, if they were let alone, would let the Protestants alone.' 'Would the priests take the money?' I asked.
'Most of them,' he answered, 'would be delighted to take it, and the people would force them. The irregular pressure of dues is one of the causes of poverty of the people, and of their attempts to appear miserable. They are in constant terror of the priest's exactions, and would not submit to them if he had sufficient provision from the State.'
'I quite agree,' said Lord Rosse, when I read this conversation to him, 'in S.'s suggestion as to the assistant-barristers. As Judges, they would be far more respectable, and far more efficient.'
November 3. - We left Birr Castle for Ashton, the residence of my brother the Poor-law Commissioner.
Senior died on 4th June 1864.