Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/173

 IRISH

133

IRISH

proportions that, before attempting to trace its prog- ress, it may be useful to inquire what were the causes which compelled over five million people, pouring out in a continuous stream through nearly two centuries, to abandon their nati\e land with all its associations, re- Lgious, domestic, and national, and seek homes for themselves and their families beyond the Western Ocean.

For over a hundred years preceding the CromwelUan era Ireland had been distracted by the frequent in- vasions of the English under desperate and unscrupu- lous leaders, whose professed purpose was to re- estabUsh English supremacy in Ireland and to force the new religion of Henry VIII upon her clergy and laity. The old religion which the nation as a whole had cherished for over a thousand years was pro- scribed, and her churches, monasteries, and other shrines of religion plundered. The lands attached to them were confiscated by the Crown and parcelled out among the greedy adventurers, whose success in despoiling the true owners of their property meant their own enrichment. The adherents of the old Faith, comprising as they did much more than five- si.xths of the population, were made outlaws, their homes destroyed, their estates forfeited and their hberties and life itself were the price they had to pay for their refusal to conform to the new religion. In aid of the policy of exterminating the C'athoUc Irish (of which no concealment was made) a system of penal laws was put into force, under which they were disfranchised, disqualified from acquiring or holding property, compelled to remain illiterate, fined, im- prisoned, and many of them tortured with every refinement of cruelty. Their bishops and priests were classed as felons, a price set on their heads, and an incredible number of both clergy and people who ad- hered loj'ally to the religion of their forefathers were either put to the sword or hanged, drawn, and quar- tered. So cruel and atrocious was this code that Edmund Burke described it as "a truly barbarous system; where all the parts are an outrage on the laws of humanity and the rights of nature; it is a system of elaborate contrivance, as well fitted for the oppression, imprisonment and degradation of a people, and the dcliasement of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man". "The law", says another writer, "did not suppose the existence of an Irish Roman Catholic, nor could they even breathe without the connivance of the government" (Lecky, Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, I, 246).

Concurrently with the enforcement of these laws, various schemes were projected by the English adven- turers, some as early as the reign of Elizabeth (157.3), for the colonization of Ireland chiefly with English and Scottish settlers. For instance, in 1709, in pursu- ance of the policy of stamping out the Irish and re- placing them by a more tractable race, 820 families of German Palatines, comprising 3073 persons, landed at Dublin at a cost to the Government of £24,000 (Young, I, 371). Military expeditions were organized and sent over to take possession of the lands of the disaffected Irish. Cireat tracts of land, sometimes embracing whole counties, were declared confiscated to the Crown and were allotted to the "gentlemen undertakers" who financed these enterprises. Under James I, 5,000,000 acres, and under Charles I about 2,500,000 acres were thus confiscated. The native Irish chiefs and their clansmen naturally resisted these attempts to dispossess them of their lands. If they remained passive some provocation was invented for goading them into rebellion. In either case they were ad- judged to be rebels who might be la^N-fully hunted and shot down at sight. The methods adopted to crush them were cruel in the extreme, their cattle were taken from them, their houses levelled, and their harvests burned. Men, women, and even children were indis- criminately shot down or hanged by a brutal soldiery.

and the remnant which escaped found shelter in the neighbouring bogs and mountains where they were hunted to death as outlaws or perished from starvation.

In other parts of Ireland, where these methods of transplantation or extermination had not as yet been attempted and where the inhabitants had escaped the horrors of this guerilla warfare, there were hundreds of thousands of fertile acres. These were then and had been for over 300 years in the undisputed possession of their owners, the native Irish, and were held under the tribal system of tenure. As a pretext for dis- possessing these lawful proprietors from their lands and rendering them available for plantation, a Royal Commission, appointed for the purpose, declared the titles defective, and over half a million acres of the land not theretofore confiscated were adjudged to have reverted to the Crown. In consequence the true owners, against whom no disaffection could be alleged, were forced either to retire or were permitted to re- main practically as tenants, upon onerous conditions, of a small portion of their former holdings, the balance being reserved in part to the Crown, and in part dis- tributed among the adventurers who had advanced money for carrTinng out the scheme, and the soldiers as a reward for services rendered. The informers, or " discoverers", as they were called, who attacked these titles before the Commission, were hkewise rewarded by grants of portions of the plundered lands. Speak- ing of these various changes in the ownership of the land, Arthur Young, an impartial Protestant observer, wTiting in 1776 (Tour of Ireland, Vol. II, p. 59), says: " Nineteen-twentieths of the kingdom (com- prising 11,420,682 Irish acres or nearly 21,000,000 acres, English measure) changed hands from Catholic to Protestant. ... So entire an overthrow of landed possessions is, within the period, to be found in scarce any country in the world. In such great revolutions of property the ruined proprietors hafl usually been extirpated or banished." While the enforcement of these laws and such methods of conquest bore heav- iest on Roman Cathohcs. yet the Presbyterian Irish, chiefly in the north, and the Quakers were likewise made to suffer for their attachment to their country and to the religion which their consciences dictated, so that no element of the native population escaped the savage vengeance of their English conquerors. The periods of respite were few, and the calm was only the peacefulness of death and desolation.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the population of Ireland, as a result of this barbarous treatment, had been reduced to about one and a half million souls. Lest the survivors, in whom the native instinct of industry and enterprise still prevailed, should draw any measure of prosperity to themselves and away from England, the legislation for Ireland was steadily directed towards the restraint, if not the ab- solute ruin, of all her trade and commerce. Embar- goes were laid on the exportation from Ireland of cattle, meat, and other food products, and the exporta- tion of wool and woollen goods to any country other than England (which manufactured a supply sufficient for home consumption) was forbidden under heavy penalties, so that in 1699 as many as 40,000 weavers were deprived of the means of livelihood and many of them forced to emigrate. Such trading as was not positively forbidden had to be carried on only in Eng- lish built ships, to the ruin, of course, of the seaboard towns and shipbuilding industries of Ireland, and in 1696 all import trade direct to Irelaml. whetherfrom foreign countries or from the English Cdlcmies, was prohibited; even the linen industry, then slowly grow- ing, was checked by heavy duties imposed on its sail- cloth and other manufactures exported to England, where alone they were allowed to find a market. With the success of the American patriots and the re-estab- lishment of the Irish Parliament in 17S2, some prospect of improvement appeared, only to be ilispelled by the