Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/140

 IRELAND

108

IRELAND

arose when, in 1S14, the Prefect of the Propaganda, Quarantotti, issued a rescript favouring the veto. Ho acted, howe\'er, beyond liis powers in the absence of Pius VII, who was in France, and when the pope re- turned to Rome, after the fall of Napoleon, the rescript was disavowed.

In these years the Catholics badly needed a leader. John Keogh, the able leader of 1793, was then old, and Lords Fingall and Ciormanstown, Mr. Scully and Dr. Dromgoole, were not the men to grapple with great difficulties and powerful opponents. An abler and more vigorous leader was required, one with less faith in petitions and protestations of loyalty. Such a leader was found in Daniel O'Connell, a Catholic barrister whose first public appearance in 1800 was on an anti-Unionist platform. A great lawyer and orator, a great debater, of boundless courage and re- sources, he took a prominent part on Catholic com- mittees, and from 1810 he held the first place in Catho- lic esteem. Yet the Catholic cause advanced slowly, and, when Grattan died in 1820, emancipation had not come. Nor would the House of Lords accept Plun- ket's Bill of 1821, even though it passed the House of Commons and conceded the veto. At last O'Connell determined to rouse the masses, and in 1823, with the help of Richard Lalor Sheil, he founded the Catholic Association. Its progress at first was slow, but gradu- ally it gathered strength. Dr. Murray, the new Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, joined it, and Dr. Doyle, the great Bishop of Kildare; other bishops followed; the clergy and people also came in; and thus rose a great national organization, supervising from its central office in Dublin subsidiary associa- tions in every parish; maintained by a Catholic rent; watching over local and national affairs, discharging, as Mr. Canning described it, "all the functions of a regular government, and having obtained a complete mastery and control over the masses of the Irish people". The Association was suppressed in 182.5 by Act of Parliament; but O'Connell merely changed the name; and the New Catholic Association with its New Catholic rent continued the work of agitation as of old. Nor was this all. By the Catholic Relief Act of 1793 the forty-shilling freeholders obtained the franchise. These freeholders, being so poor, were necessarily in the power of the landlords and were wont to be driven to the polls like so many sheep. But now, protected by a powerful association, and encouraged by the priests and by O'Connell, the free- holders broke their chains, and in Waterford, Louth, Meath, and elsewhere they voted for the nominees of the Catholic Association at elections, and in placing them at the head of the poll humbled the landlords. When they returned O'Connell himself for Clare in 182S, the crisis had come. The Tory ministers, Wel- lington and Peel, would have still resisted; but the people were not to be restrained: it must be con- cession or civil war, and rather than have the latter the ministers hauled down the flag of no surrender, and passed the Catholic Relief Bill of LS29. The forty- shilling freeholders were disfranchised, and there were some vexatious provisions excluding Catholics from a few of the higher civil and military offices, prohib- iting priests from wearing vestments outside their churches, bishops from assuming the titles of their sees, regulars from obtaining charitable bequests. In other respects Catholics were placed on a level with other denominations, and at last were admitted within the pale of tlir const it ut ion.

From that hour O'CdiincIl was the uncrowned king of Ireland. Where he IimJ tlic people followed. They cheered him when he prai.sed l>(jr(l Anglesey and when he attacked him; when he supported the Whigs and when hedescrilxMl tlicni as " base, brutal and bloody"; when he advocitcd I lie Repeal of the Union and when he abandoned the Kipcal agitation; and when, after long years of w aiting tor conces.sions that never came,

he again unfurled the flag of Repeal, they flocked to hear him, and laughed or wept with him, responsive to hisevery mood. Finally, to leave him free to devote his whole time to public affairs they sul>scril)ed yearly to the O'Connell tribute, giving him thus an income which never fell below £16,000 and often went far beyond that figure. And yet the legislative results of nearly twenty years of such devotion and sacrifice were poor. The National Education system, established in 1831, required much amendment lief ore it worked smoothly, and even now is far from being an ideal system. The Commutation of Tithes Act only transferred the odium of collection from the parson to the landlord, but gave little relief to the people. The Poor Law system, though it often relieved destitution, too often encour- aged idleness and immorality. And the Corporation Act, while reforming a few of the corporations, abol- ished many. Nor could anything be more complete than the failure of the Repeal agitation. The explan- ation is not far to seek. O'Connell had a wretched party, men without capacity or patriotism. His ac- ceptance of offices for his friends and his alliances with the Whigs was surely not a sound policy. And when he took up Repeal in earnest he was already old, with the shadow of death upon him. Lastly, as he neared the end, he lost the support of the Young Irelanders, the most vigorous and capable section of his followers. These things embittered his last days and hastened liis death in 1847.

Meantime the shadow of famine had fallen upon the land. The potato blight first appeared in Wexford, in 1845, whence it marched with stealthy tread all over the country, poisoning the potato fields as it passed. The stalks withered and died, the potatoes beneath the soil became putrid, and when they were dug and the sound ones separated from the unsound ones and put into pits, it was soon discovered that disease had entered the pits. The reckless creation of forty- shilling freeholders by the landlords for pofitical pur- poses, the reckless subdivision of holdings by the tenants, had so augmented the population that in 1845 the inhabitants of Ireland were well beyond 8,000,000, most of them living in abject poverty with the potato as their only food. And now, with half the crop of 1845 gone, and with the loss of the whole crop in the two succeeding years, millions were face to face with hunger. To cope with such a calamity required heroic measures, and O'Connell urged that distilleries should be closed, the export of provisions prohibited, public granaries set up, and reproductive works set on foot. But the premier. Peel, minimized the extent of the famine, and Lortl John Russell, who succeeded him in 1846, was equally sceptical. He would neither stop distilling nor the export of provisions, nor build rail- ways; and when he set up public works they were not reproductive, and the money expended on them, largely levied on the rates, was squandered by corrupt officials. Ultimately indeed he set up government stores, and in many cases food was distriljuted free. Charity supplemented the efforts of Government, and with no niggard hand. There were (Quaker, Evangeli- cal, and Baptist relief committees, and subscriptions from Great Britain and from Continental Europe, from Australia and from the West Indies. But .America was generous most of all. In every city from Boston to N(!W Orleans meetings were held antl sub- scriptions given. Philadelphia sent eight vessels loaded with provisions; Mississippi and .\labama large consignments of Indian corn; raihoads and sliip[iing companies carried relief parcels free; and the ( lovern- ment turned some of the war vessels into transports to carry food to the starving millions beyond the Atlan- tic. " Yet were the sutrcrings of the people great, and the number of deaths from famine and famine-fever appalling. Thousands lived for weeks on cabliage and a little meal, on cabbage and .seaweed, on turnips, on diseased horse and ass flesh; and one case is recorded