We are aware, that when a man begins to tell the tale of Ireland's wrongs, he is met by the generality of Englishmen of the present day, with laughter loud and long. We are prepared to endure this. It is a strange way of answering a man, it must be admitted. Not so bad, however, as that adopted towards Sydney-when they could not answer him, they cut off his head. He was an overgrown poppy to be sure. Madmen are not accountable for their ac- | reader to substitute Irishman for "Animal" tions. It is possible to drive a man mad by wherever that word occurs, and the whole persecution. We know that many a man scope of the article will be plain as a pikewith "mens sana in corpore sano," has been staff. "Take, according to the animal's immured in a lunatic asylum, by pretended (Irishman's) age, a stout cane, a supple-jack friends, for the purpose of appropriating to or an iron rod. If the creatures be very their own uses his inheritance, and that the young, the cane will be sufficient; if persecutions he has there endured, have suc- greater, or from that to half-grown, you ceeded in making him actually mad. Should will require the supple-jack, and let it be the man turn and rend his keeper, would he thicker at one end than the other. For a halfbe guilty of murder? Certainly not. That grown animal (Irishman) the iron rod will this is a case in point, we think is easily be absolutely necessary; and it must be shewn. of sufficient weight, that a blow of it on the skull may be sufficient to produce a temporary insensibility-the only chance you will have of escape, should the fierce brutes at any time take it into their heads to rebel." Then our satirist particularizes the dress and bearing of the Tamer, and proceeds in these words :-" Thus accoutred with your rod in your hand, and if the animal (Irishman) be more than half-grown, a brace of pistols in your breast, approach the cage of the young For centuries our countrymen had been animal (Irishman) which you design to tame suffering under "the oppressor's wrong, the......let there be two assistants near at hand, proud man's contumely,"-from the times in which an appetite for breakfast was procured by the then fashionable amusement of winging half a dozen of the mere Irish, for the small charge of half-a-crown a-piece; when the slaughtering of a hare within the pale, by any of these mérè Hibernici, was punishable with death; from the times in which the patriarch of fathers, "father Mole," so pathetically describes the utter wretchedness of the then Irish, down to the days in which the maddened people-the point of endurance being passed-rose tumultuously; their habits, their tempers, their feelings being changed for the time, into a reckless ferocity, which we may lament and condemn, but can hardly wonder at. Their chiefs were despoiled of their estates once, twice, thrice in a century; their priests were hunted as wild beasts, and they themselves were treated somewhat as Van Amburgh treats his animals, according to an article on "animal taming" in that most excellent and truly national publication, "the Irish Penny Journal," which article would appear to be a transcript from the English treatment" to throw open the door and enter with a of the Irish. Indeed it seemed to us throughout, a sustained double entendre, a covert satire on our history. "Take," says the writer of the article, pretending to address the amateur animal tamer, but manifestly meaning the quondam tamers of the Irish.-We recommend the Vol. 1, No. 20. and a small stove, in which half a dozen iron rods are heating." The clever allegorical writer has omitted to mention some other assistants that were usually employed by the very celebrated Tamers, such, for instance, as the "walking-gallows" and "triangle people. He goes on-" speak kindly to the animal,' and caress him through the bars of his cage," (there's a touch above GoetheMephistophiles never equalled that for mockery) "or the suddenness of your entrance may irritate or alarm him, and thus induce him to attack you." This has not only a retrospective, but a prospective meaning. The writer so evidently points to the wily management of Sir Robert Peel, previous to his intended entrance on the Premiership, that comment is totally unnecessary. He then follows this up with some further hints to Sir Robert, in his advice to the Tamer. " Your costume should likewise by no means have been put on for the first time; you should have dressed in a similar manner during all your former visits." Let Sir Robert Peel look to this. Our author then advises, firm and resolute step. Speak kindly towards the animal,' and if he comes over to you, fear nothing, but stretch forth your hand and caress him. The creature will then probably purr and rub against you," (this has been done often, and was met precisely as our author advises it should be) "but if it offer to play with you, repress such disposition with firmness; repress every being torn to pieces some fine morning, and devoured for his breakfast." Nevertheless we do not mean for a moment to justify the cruelties of our countrymen. We entirely reprobate them. Our business, however, in accordance with our plan, " if plan that can be called, which plan is none," is to see whether we cannot find things equally repugnant to humanity in the doings of Englishmen. It is an unpleasant office, but not of our seeking. If dirt is flung upon a man, he must in the wiping it off, necessarily soil his fingers. We must attempt to play-use your rod freely and severely. Do so not merely for a grievous fault, but for the most distant appearance of Now all this is, in many respects, a fair insubordination. Let your corrections be and accurate description of the treatment terrible when you do inflict them." Some," which Irishmen had experienced from their the clever H. D. R. goes on to say, "and English Van Amburghs, previous to their Van Amburgh I believe among the rest"-"forgetting themselves and despising the Here there is also a prospective as well as a authority" of their masters. retrospective meaning; the retrospective meaning is evident. To explain thoroughly the prospective, we will substitute for Van Amburgh the individual really pointed at, and then the passage will be-"Some, and 'Lord Stanley' I believe among the rest, are in favour of beating the Irishmen' every morning, whether they deserve such chastisement or not, just by way of keeping up a salutary awe of their masters.' To this H. D. R. objects, as "he conceives it to be both cruel and unnecessary," but suggests-premise that, in our estimation, atrocities de"If," says he "animals are of an unruly disposition, I should rather recommend that they should be visited every morning" (with what appliances we beg our readers to bear in mind)" and an opportunity of misbehaving themselves thus afforded, when indeed a good thrashing might be administered with much greater justice"-thus, in close imitation of the fine old Florentine, under the guise of pointing out how certain matters should in future be managed, painting in the vividest of colours, and holding up to the reprobation of mankind, the exact course pursued in these and similar matters in times past and present. liberately planned and coolly executed, bespeak a nature infinitely more depraved than do those perpetrated in moments of passionate excitement. It ought to be sufficient for our purpose to shew, as we easily could, that the treatment which has been glanced at, as driving the Irish into rebellion, and the counter cruelties practised during and after these rebellions, were at least fully commensurate with the deeds of the insurgents. But it may be, this is not enough we have plenty from which to pick and choose. We will not refer to the deeds done in the wars of the Roses to the annals of the Tower-to Mary of Scotland-to the Cromwellian Englishmen in Ireland, though here we might rest our cause. We will not call Sheridan and Burke to give evidence concerning the deeds done in India. We will pass over these things, and content ourselves with pointing to Monmouth's rebellion, and the extreme cruelties practised on his adherents, not in the heat of battle when the blood is up, but It is unnecessary, perhaps, to adduce history in proof of the covert meaning of our Irish Machiavelli. Still we cannot resist, in direct support of the above passage, reminding our readers that Dugdale says,-These courses were pursued designedly to drive the Irish into rebellion, in order that an excuse might be procured for completely exterminating the aborigines, the original possessors of the island. Does not this passage of Dugdale disclose also a line of conduct, similar to that pursued by those who immure a man into the burning alive of women for being full possession of his faculties, and by persecution drive him mad, in order to seize upon his possessions? And if so, were we not right in calling it a case in point? We have not yet done with H. D. R.; this gentleman concludes his lecture with, never for an instant permit any 'animal' to make too free with you;" and then sums up generally thus :-"Recollect the old copy-book adage, familiarity breeds contempt and recollect that if a young lion or tiger so far forgets himself as to despise your authority, you will stand a fair chance of "When the hurly-burly's done; gentle, compassionate, and true to their beautiful natures,*-to Jeffries, Feversham, and Kirk, and the barbarities and the perjuries which, ramifying from the judge through witnesses and jurors, pervaded the whole land. "Aha!" cries some Orange or Tory reader such people do read "the Citizen”—“ I have you on the hip, my fine fellow. These things are not to be laid to the charge of Protestant England; the Popery of James was the moving cause.' ."* Stop a bit-Was it "Popery" that caused the equally sanguinary, aye, and equally cold-blooded policy pursued towards the Scottish adherents of the Stuarts? Was it " Popery" that caused the satanic faithlessness, and the long-planned and deliberate butchery of Glencoe ?+ Was it "Popery" that caused the Lord Chief Justice Scroggs "to rant for the plot, and hew down Popery, as Scanderbeg hewed the Turk ?" Besides, we are writing of England and the English collectively, whether Protestants, Catholics, or Dissenters. We are comparing Irishmen with Englishmen, not Catholicism with Protestantism. Let any man, having first considered the causes of Irish rebellion, and the persecutions which drove the people mad, and after allow ing for these things, cast up into one sum the amount of guilt chargeable on these men, and then let him compare this with the sum of the atrocities of English rebellions from William's invasion-of their crimes in Ireland, in Scotland, in America, § in Indiaand in Canada || the other day, where, among many other things by no means honourable to the victors, four prisoners were shot without even the form of a trial, by order of a militia colonel, in spite of the remonstrance of a clergyman who happened to be present, and the indignant rebuke of It is certain that when Lord Keeper North made complaints of what Jeffries was doing, James gave orders to stop him-(Dalrymple, vol. 1, Book II. page 82). By an odd coincidence, Glencoe signifies in the Celtic, "the Valley of Tears." North's Examen. "It will be a record that must render the British name odious in America to the latest generations. In that record will be found the burning of the five towns of Charlestown, near Boston; of Falmouth, just before winter, where the sick, the aged, the women and children, were driven to some Indians whose prisoners the unfortunate men were. Let any man compare these sums, and there can be little doubt on which side the balance would be. At length we have arrived at the last division of our subject, which is, that the natural turbulence of Irishmen is clearly shewn in their lawless associations of Whiteboyism, Peep-o'-day boys, Ribbonism, and Terry-Altism. To attribute these things to the turbulence of Irishmen, is rivalling the 'Tenterden-steeple and Goodwin-sands' principle of cause and effect. Many a goodly ship has gone down at sea in the midst of a calm; many a gallant-looking one lags behind, and cannot bear a press of sail-if all her canvass is given to the wind, be the gale ever so steady, destruction is often the result. Many more, through the violence of tempests, and the various perils of the great deep, are made unmanageable hulls— mere wrecks upon the waters. Would any man in these cases blame the captain and his crew, and attribute these disasters to them? No. In the one case the construction of the vessel, her original putting together, amateur interference, or yacht-club intermeddling with her building, are the causes. In the other, man's skill and daring are frequently powerless; circumstances are irresistible. În both, the captain and his crew are blameless. In Ireland, the existence of Whiteboyism, Terry-Altion, &c., are proofs, not of turbulence being natural to the people, but of oppression, poverty, and want of employment, being universal throughout the land. Hence it follows that Englishmen, assuming or pretending that these things are the manifestations of a lawless half-savage people, get up penal laws and coercion bills. And this they do to avoid the enacting of fair, just, and equitable laws; the keeping in the country of four millions that leave it annually for the use of absentees; and the pro seek shelter where they could hardly find it; of Norfolk, in the midst of winter; of New London; of Fairfield; of Esopus; besides near a hundred and fifty miles of well-settled country laid waste, every house and barn burnt, and many hundreds of farmers, with their wives and children, butch-curing the means of employment for the peoered and scalped."-(Franklin's description of ple, which, if they admitted the truth, they could not for very shame refuse to do. English Government in America.) "On Sunday evening (November 11th, 1838) the whole back of the country about Laprairie presented the awful spectacle of one vast sheet of lurid flame, and it is reported that not a single rebel house has been left standing. God only knows what is to become of the surviving Canadians and their wives and families during the approaching winter, as nothing but starvation from cold and hunger stares them in the face. The history of the past proves that nothing but sweep ing them from the earth, and laying their habitations level with the dust, will prevent renewed rebellions south of the St. Lawrence. The Canadians in the rebellious districts, whose houses have been given to the flames, and who have escaped the bullet, the bayonet, or the prison, are doomed to perish in the woods, for in the United States they can expect no assistance."-Montreal Herald. * When Colonel Prince, an English attorney, ordered those men to be shot, the Indians claimed them as their prisoners; on this being refused, they said "we cannot participate in this butchery; we are christians, though red-men," and hurried from the shocking scene. Whiteboyism is the parent of the lawless associations of Irishmen. It made its first appearance in 1768, and appeared only, or chiefly, in those parts of the country where manufactures were not established; that is, where poverty and want of employment prevailed. In the following year, the Lord Lieutenant, in his speech from the throne, advised as a remedy for the evil, the procuring the means of employment, thereby acknowledging that the want of these means was the cause of it. And the parliament promised what?-to attend to the erection of Protestant schools; as if the men guilty of Whiteboy outrages were children, to be breeched and a-b-c'd into submission and unmurmuring endurance of cold and hunger, which tame into obedience the wildest of beasts, but drive to outrage and desperation the reasoning animal man. What is true of Whiteboyism, is true also of the various other societies. Religious persecution, political oppression, want of employment, high rent, and absenteeism, have been, and are, the causes of them all. Because there has been, now and then, an agrarian disturbance in parts of the kingdom, the whole people are set down as constitutionally turbulent and unruly-a gross misstatement, utterly at variance with candour and plain-dealing, as we hope to shew. The causes which have forced them into such courses are never hinted at. "Oh! no, we never mention them"-causes, the tithe of which would be sufficient now, and have been found heretofore, more than sufficient to drive the sturdy Englishman and fierce Scotchman into open rebellion. We scouted chartism from our shores, and laugh socialism to scorn. Remove these causes, and the effects will cease. This is not mere assertion; it is capable of direct proof. In Upper Canada, during the late troubles there, while the gaols were filled with Canadians, Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Americans, there was not a single Irishman to be found in the goodly company. Papists and Protestants were, for once, unanimous in loyalty, in a determination to uphold the laws, and the connection with the mother country. And wherefore? Because in that province the causes existed not, which at home have produced such lamentable results. Give the Irishman at home, as in Canada, fair play, a clear stage and no favour, and is it too much to say that in his own land, as in the land of his adoption, he would be celebrated for his loyalty, for his obedience to the laws, and for his love of order and good government? Let us look at an Irishman under the pressure of two of these causes only,―enormous rental and absenteeisin-and let us see whether his turbulence arises from his natural character, or whether it is not the inevitable consequence of the circumstances in which he is placed. We speak of the times when the late improvement in the government and in the habits of our people was almost unhoped for; for we are judged, and our capabilities for all that is great and good estimated, not from what we are, and are fast progressing to, in spite of all obstacles, but from what we have been, under the united influences of systematical oppression in our rulers, our absentee landlords, and resident agents,-in the bailiff, the orangeman, the proctor, and the bayonet. The odds were fearful against our anti-Malthusian and excitable peasantry, "impar congressus Achilli "-the consequences were lamentable, but natural and inevitable. Let us take a man, then, under the influences of the two causes only, which we have mentioned, and behold their workings; for he who would know thoroughly the truth in this respect, should, like Cassius, "look quite through the deeds of men," and examine into the springs of actions. And when he has done so, we think he cannot fail to find, that the great mass of Ireland's misery and Ireland's crime-for criminal she has been-is fairly attributable to these causes, generated by bad government, bad landlords, and bad laws; and that the inhabitants are no more to be blamed for the misery and the crime, than the strings of the national harp for sending forth harsh and unmusical sounds when struck fiercely and unskilfully. The soul of music is in the strings, and will out when struck by the hand of an artist. Owing to his large family and his high rent, our peasant's life has been a perpetual struggle from year to year, to satisfy the agents and keep his children from starving. Still he despairs not. A bad season comes (one such is ruinous), the crops are unproductive; the rent falls behind-the tithe is unpaid-the bailiff is bribed, or bullied; perhaps the cow is in the pound-(with a species of refinement in cruelty that does honour even to bailiffs, the cow is invariably taken, and the wretched family are deprived of their only comfort, "the sup of milk for the weans"): the landlord, in another country, is feasting, drinking, imitating his grooms, gambling at Crockford's, waltzing at Almacks, dangling after the Phrynes, the Aspasias of the day; chasing a fox at Melton Mowbray-grouse-shooting on the Gram- combination; not for protecting every man pians-squandering immense sums on the Derby-upholding the dictum of ancient Pistol, with reference to his tradesmen, "base is the slave that pays," and cultivating the various other fashionable acquirements of the age: for those things money must be had. The agent is savage, inflexible, peremptory. Cow, horse, pig, and 'plenishing' are 'canted' for half their value. The farmer, from fretful, becomes at length despairing, drunk with passion, then with whiskey. The wife is helpless, hopeless, heart-broken. The children in the ashes, naked and starving, quarrelling for a potatoe. Time passes; rent accumulates; the house is in ruins, and the fields are untilled; actual starvation stares him in the face. He cannot bribe the bailiff any longer, and will not give his 'dirty dogs' to the agent;-has perhaps voted against him at the last election; he is set down as a worthless vagabond, an incumbrance on the estate, and is-ejected. His wife and children may either "take to the country and beg," or "die in a ditch and be damned." And the husband, the father, the freeholder, is penniless, houseless, landless. Desolation around him, revenge within him. Houseless! landless! we said. Oh no! he but exchanges his thatched covering for the canopy of heaven-his earthen floor for the flower-enamelled carpet of his own green isle -his paltry acres for the world ;-yet, shame upon him! he is not grateful for the change. He is as difficult to be satisfied as the soldier, who, being about to be flogged, requested his friend, the drummer, to flog him first high up, then in the middle, then lower down. This the drummer faithfully promised, and very faithfully performed. But the poor fellow not feeling comfortable, and venturing to complain, was stopped by his friend with, "Damn it, man, there's no satisfying you, flog where I will." So with the peasant, there's no satisfying him either. Only think of his consummate impudence! He dares to think, the "dissentious rogue," that he was hardly treated; that time might have been allowed him; that assistance to a tenant in distress from his landlord would do honour "to him that gives and him that takes;" would, at least, be more becoming than the exaction of the uttermost farthing. That the severity of the seasons was not his fault; that, after all, the landlord, the agent, and the bailiff, have not a whit more right to the good things of this earth than he himself. In the bitterness of his heart, he is induced to think society a state of war; an unjust in his rights, and securing to him the means of existence, but for engrossing all its advantages to a few favoured individuals, and reserving, for the portion of the rest, want, dependence, and misery. He looks around upon his wife and children, he beholds naught but wretchedness and rags. He asks himself, why it is that their oppressors go clothed in purple and fine linen. He is startled from his gloomy reverie by the cries of his little ones for bread: he rushes from their presence: in a fit of rage and desperation he links himself with the lawless bands of his country, made up of men circumstanced as himself: he becomes a Minion of the Moon,' a Blackfoot, or a Terry-Alt. From that moment he is an outcast, and he knows it. The heart of the husband and the father becomes the abode of demons. All the bad passions of humanity are up in arms, in open rebellion. Reason is dethroned, and passion reigns supreme. Famine talks to him with an eloquence more convincing than ever issued from the lips of mortal man. Wrongs deep and lasting speak to him trumpet-tongued, and revenge leads him on to deeds of darkness and of death. Then is he called traitor and murderer, even by the very men who have lashed him on to this. And lastly, "last scene of all that ends this strange eventful history," the law, the gentle law, the law made by the rich for the poor, steps in, and the hangman's drop closes the scene. As we do not intend to discuss the question of absenteeism, which has been already handled in the pages of the Citizen-but only to show how it and high rent operate in producing not a trifling portion of the alleged lawlessness of the people, we will now leave it, and proceed to another cause, the immediate work of our governors and former masters; premising that, according to Burke, "Folly in governors operates worse than all the wickedness in the world." This cause requires only to be named, to show how falsely our people are censured. Censure and calumny will sting; there is no moral Styx. The practice to which we allude was the pet of our former governors,--those dashing, but rather unscrupulous heroes, so celebrated in "The Irish Rogues and Rapperees," 'yclept the Tories, of the olden time, an elaborated and carefully carried out plan of dividing and governing-of raising a fraction of the people of Ireland to po Tories. The name is derived from toruighim' to pursue for the sake of plunder. |