IRELAND IN 1862.*
Tuts volume is a translation of the " Etudes sur l'Irlande Con-- temporaine," published in' Paris in the spring. of 1862. Its English title is, therefore, somewhat of a misnomer, as the information containedin it is nowhere of a later date than February, 1862.. The point is•of some little importance, as it is-only fair to Father. Perraud to remember that some of the more extreme of his con- clusions would doubtless have been modified by the outbreak of agrarian crime which a few months after shocked Europe. As it is, the book is valuable, because it is always desirable-to read an exhaustive statement of an opponent's case; but it is, neverthe- less, the work of an enthusiastic advocate. It does not supply the want which those have long felt who really desire to redress the grievances-under which Ireland still labours. Irishmen gene- rally are too impassioned, too illogical, to be able to state their wants without exaggeration, and to abstain from concealing-. what they may fairly ask beneath a mass of demands which are at once unreasonable and unjust. With such a history as theirs, . this is far from wonderful.; but it seemed that a foreigner might. very well have succeeded-in putting their case with more fairness, and temper, and therefore-with more plausibility, than can be expected of the sufferers themselves. Unfortunately, however, Father Perraud is a violent Ultramontane, and wherever religious feeling comes in—and in what Irish question is it not to be found? —he is as much of a partizan as those whose cause he advocates. A French Protestant of the temper of M. Guizot might produce an invaluable work. Meanwhile, what M. Perraud has giVen us. will repay examination.
The first position which the author sets himself to prove is, that the assertion of many of the English papers that the Established Church is the only abuse remaining in Ire- land, is untrue, and that Ireland does not enjoy " poli- tical equality" with- England. In the list of grievances on which he relies, with a. confusion of thought not uncommon with him, he muddles up administrative and legal grievances. Of course, when the Established Church is called the only abuse in Ireland, people mean the only abuse established by law. When M. Perraud shows that the law is not always fairly administered in Ireland, he shows no more than this—that Ireland is in the same plight with England, Scotland, and every other country in the world. At the same time, we concede to him that-the system of jury-packing—the system by which, from a list of jurors in which Catholics vastly preponderate, the Sheriff returns a panel with an equally vast preponderance of Protestant names at the top—is a gross abuse. But we believe it to be an abuse which had far better be left to be eradicated by the improved state of public feeling, than by drawing a hard legal line between the rival religions. Another grievance is, that the Catholics do not get their fair share of Government appointments.. There is truth, *inland fa 1862. Translated from the French of the Ear. Father Adolphe Perraud, Priest of the Oratory of the Immaculate Conception. DubIlm: JemewDurty. 1863.
too, in this, though nothing can be more unfair than the argu- ment that because the Catholics are four-fifths of the population, they are entitled to the same proportion of places. Government appointments must be given to educated men, and the vast majority of the educated classes in Ireland is Protestant. Three- fourths of the Irish bar, for instance, are Protestants ; yet M. Perraud makes it a grievance that only seven out. of twelve judges are Catholics. But the simple fact is that Governments must give the places which fall vacant to their political sap- porters. Of course, in the old evil time of Protestant ascendancy Protestants had them. Now that Catholics have almost a mono- poly of the representation of Ireland, any Catholic who will support Government gets promoted, and those Catholics whose Ultramontane leanings keep them in constant opposition, of course, fare differently. But it is the curse of all Celts that they look too much to Government patronage. The same thing happens in England, but no one there dreams that it is a grievance. But in the opinion of Irishmen, and even of Father Perraud, everything must be done for them. It is the business of Government to develope the lrisleports. Government is to relieve the distress in the west. Let Father Perrand. consider whether the Scotch ever thought themselves wronged because they had to develope the harbours of Glasgow and Greenock unaided, and how much Government money has in far severer distress been forwarded from London to Lancashire.
But to come to the legal disabilities of Ireland. She is treated as a "conquered country," because the Irish peers only send representatives to the House of Lords, and because she has not her fair share of members in the Commons. So far as the first goes, Scotland also must be called a conquered country, and she is Protestant ; and the Scotch peers do not enjoy the privilege of the Irish, of being eligible as members of the Lower House for an English constituency. It is true that Ireland would be entitled to thirty-nine additional members if population were the sole basis of representation, but, whatever may be the case in France, in the United Kingdom this principle has never been admitted. If the number of qualified voters be taken as the basis, Ireland has four more members than she ought to have, and even to obtain this result it has been necessary to establish a far lower voting qualification than in this country. A forty-shilling freehold cer- tainly does not confer a vote there. But in counties a 121. instead of a 501., and in boroughs an 8/. instead of a 10/. occupier, enjoys the franchise. Is this a sign of " a conquered country ?"
The great instance of political injustice seems, however, to be the existence of the Peace Preservation Act. The magistracy and police have special powers for the repression of crime in Ireland, while crime is actually less prevalent than ill England. But Father Perrand surely might see that the prevalence of crime merely requires a larger police force. Why it is necessary to give the Irish police extra powers is because the Irish people is un- happily more hostile to the law than to the criminal ; on the one side of the Channel every one is ready to aid the police and give them information—on the other, a process-server becomes a hero as soon. as he shoots a land-agent in broad daylight, and the whole country is in league to screen him from detection. So long as this is the case, rational Irishmen ought not to object to the retention of the Peace Preservation Act, and certainly it is no mark of political inferiority. If the same state of things existed in the Isle of Wight, the same system would of necessity be established there to-morrow.
The best part of M. Perraud's book is his account of the land question, for it is that into which his religious feelings least enter. The real cause of Irish poverty is shortly this, that an excessive labouring population has no means Of subsistence, except by occupying land, and that by virtue of the ordinary rules of competition the occupiers of land have, in consequence, bid against each other, until rents are so high as to leave only a bare subsistence to the cultivator, and the landowners have even been able to throw on the occupier the duty of erecting the necessary permanent buildings. Having the occupier at his mercy, the Protestant landlord has too often exercized his rights without compassion ; while the Catholic occupiers have nursed the recollection of the numerous confiscations by which the land has been transferred to a conquering caste, until, without a modicum of evidence of their descent from the original posses- sors, they half believe the land to be their own. This latter belief XL Perraud seems to share, though he has the sense to shrink. from proposing, like Sismondi, to transfer the land to the occupier by legislative enactment. Still he urges that evictions ought to be prohibited, which comes, in fact, to the same thing. As soon as an owner has• lost, and is unable to
regain at will, the possession of his land, he ceases to be an owner ; and even in granting a lease, beneficial to him as it is, he parts with a portion of the ownership, though a portion limited both as to duration and extent. These tyrannical evictions must, we fear, be left in Ireland, as in England, to the operation of public opinion. Considering the recent county elections iu Ireland, evic- tions for political reasons cannot be very numerous, and the out- burstof public indignation which followed on the Bishop of Tuam's doings at Partry show that religious intolerance is diminishing: in intensity. But so long as the cultivators are too numerous for the land, there must be numerous evictions for nonpayment of renr, and so long as evicting a tenant for not paying his rent is considered by that tenant as ground for shooting his landlord; landlords will be absentees. Father Perraud thinks he haw proved that Ireland is not overpopulated by producing opinions that her soil, if all cultivated as highly as it. might be, would support even more thau it does. But he forgets that by overpopulation economists mean population. which increases more rapidly than capital. All the waste land- in Europe would be useless to the Irish people, without sufficient capital accumulated to bring it into cultivation. In all countries the labouring class marry too early, far more early than any class which the possession of property has taught the duty of making some provision for children before bringing them into the world: But it is a duty of which the Irish are especially neglectful, and the priesthood, paid in a large measure by marriage fees, must take the blame of encouraging their improvidence. There is, however, sometimes a peculiar hardship about Irish evictions, because the evicted tenant loses the permanent improvements: which lie has made, and we entirely agree with Father Perron& that it is a subject of the deepest regret that Mr. Cardwell in, his bill of 1860 did not go a little further, and adopt the proposel of the Devon Committee. A tenant about to erect farm build- ings, make roads, reclaim waste, or drain or irrigate his land, may. give notice of his intention to his landlord. If the landlord does not signify his disapproval within three months, the tenant will be entitled to compensation on eviction. But the Government shrank from giving the tenant an appeal from the landlorde
in case of refusal, to the assistant-barrister. This would; have forced the landlord to make all useful improvements in the land himself, or let his tenant make them ; and no landlord has the right to keep his land unim- proved. Practically, however, provisions of this kind, implying a resort to the law, and the observance of a number of minute legal forms, will hardly be of much use to an ignorant peasant farming four or five acres of land. Perhaps he would be more, benefitted by the abolition of that absurd rule of law which•. makes all fixtures erected by a tenant the property of his land- lord. Why on earth a tenant, when he gives up land, should not take away everything he has put on it, subject to the landlord's, right to compensation for any injury done to the freehold, it'is impossible to see. This change is as desirable, though not as necessary, in England as in Ireland. And though it seems small comfort to a man who has built a barn or a farmhouse to tell him he may pull it down, and take away the materials, yet the power would effectually prevent a purchaser from evicting tenants for the sake of getting possession of the results of their labour— a thing which though rare has sometimes happened even in England.
Father Perraud's other grievances are principally religious. The. Catholic priests cannot get a room for a chapel in the workhouses, buthave to use a moveable altarin the dining-room, and the Protes- tants have too large a share in the management of the national school system. Englishmen may congratulate themselves to find there are no worse wrongs to be endured than these. Protestants in France make similar complaints. But we will say no word which can be tortured into an upholding of the old system of Protestant ascendancy—of which, no doubt, there are everywhere in Ireland the traces still remaining. Father Perraud himself admits that they are disappearing, and it is not in the power of law to move faster than opinion. May Providence hasten the arrival of that happy time, when all churches shall cease to aim at predominance where they are in a majority—in Spain, and Italy, and Belgium, not less than in Ireland and Sweden.
We have already been betrayed into commenting on Father Perraud's interesting work at sects length, that several minor points which the book raises must go untouched. Taking it a whole, we doubt if it will do Catholics much good, but we heartily recommend it to all Protestants, for they cannot read it without profit.
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