REALITIES OF IRISH LIFE.* THE uses of irony as an
efficient instrument of artistic composition have been appreciated by all the great masters of literary art. The author of Realities of Irish Life, possibly with the unconscious instinct of genius, has apprehended and utilized the ironical,—at least in his title. We should be sorry to deny Mr. Trench the praise, which is his due, of some literary skill and of considerable inventive power; indeed, we should look with interest for a novel from his hand. But when the public consideration of Mal% affairs, both inside and outside the House of Commons, has assumed a serious and practical aspect, we must protest in the interests of truth and justice against the acceptation of Mr. Trench's highly-coloured pictures of Irish life as conveying anything like a fair representation of existing facts. It is necessary to make this protest, because already the advocates of laissez-faire in England have appealed to Mr. Trench as an experienced and unprejudiced witness, and have gone so far as to rank him with Mr. Senior as an acute and sensible critic of Irish grievances. Anything more different from Mr. Senior's journals than the melodrama of these so-called "Realities" it would not be easy to conceive. Mr. Senior's mind was essentially of the judicial character ; his leading idea was to get hold of the truth about Ireland, regardless of the source of his information ; and he was to be absolutely relied on for the strict accuracy of his statements of fact. In everything Mr. Trench is the opposite of Mr. Senior. He is a fierce partizan, socially, if not politically ; and he is wholly unable to record facts without colouring them. His honesty of purpose cannot be doubted, yet we have no hesitation in pronouncing his book one which teaches what is untrue and illusory, and put together with a mischievous design. That design may be briefly stated in half-a-dozen words : it is intended to show that no change in the land laws of Ireland or in the status of the Church will avail to remove the popular discontent. The facts recorded by Mr. Trench are carefully selected to sustain this position, and though most of them no doubt took place in one shape or another, it would be a fatal error to suppose that they can be accepted as typical of the Irish character and social state of Ireland.
Mr. Trench's opportunities of observation have been referred to as conclusively establishing his claim to be heard as an authority on Irish questions. For a quarter of a century Mr. 'Trench has discharged in various parts of Ireland the duties of a land agent, and has on the whole maintained the character of a lenient and kindly representative of the great absentee landlords whose estates he has managed. In birth and education, Mr. Trench has had advantages far greater than those of which Irish laud agents can usually boast. A nephew of the late Lord Ashtown, and closely connected with the present Archbishop of Dublin, he can almost lay claim to a place among the aristocracy of the country ; and many evidences of a high feeling of honour and generosity, very far transcending the practices of his class, might be gathered from this book. Still, Mr. Trench is essentially and decidedly an Irish "agent," in thorough sympathy with the high notions of landlord prerogative in vogue among the Irish gentry and nobility. Early in life he became agent to the estates of the Shirley family in the county of Monaghan, a part of Ulster where tenant-right has been most fiercely upheld by the Ribbon Code ; but soon resigned the post, finding the proprietor unwilling to adopt his policy towards the tenants. The failure of the potato in 1846 ensued ; and in 1850, when the country was first beginning to recover from the immediate stupor of that unparalleled calamity, Mr. Trench was appointed to manage the estates of the Marquis of Lansdowne in Kerry. He received in the following year the charge of the Marquis of Bath's property in Monaghan, and in this quarter he appears to have met with the strangest of his adventures. In 1857, when comparative quietude had succeeded to the turbulence and disasters of the preceding decade, Mr. Trench became agent for Lord Digby's estates at Geashill, in the King's County. In this long and varied experience Mr. Trench had, at least, a fair opportunity of becoming acquainted with the real character of the people among whom he lived. 'That he did not choose to avail himself of it was his own fault, if, indeed, he has not been tempted to convey to his readers an impression differing very widely from that which he has himself derived from the teachings of Isis life.
It is only just to Mr. Trench to say, that accepting the premisses of landlord prerogative from which be starts, no fault can be found with his conduct as an agent. He made a rule not to evict a tenant without giving him at least as much compensation as would carry him to the United States, and he resigned the management of the Shirley estates because he was not at liberty to act as fairly as he thought right. But for all this, Mr. Trench is a determined advocate of the existing power of the landlord in Ireland. He sees that by judicious and not illiberal conduct Lord Bath and Lord Lansdowne have " cleared " and improved their properties and he says to the landowners of Ireland, "Go ye and do likewise." We should like, however, to ask Mr. Trench how many Feuians the " clearing " process sent out to New York, and to remind him of what he must very well know, that not one landowner
in Ireland out of twenty is able, even if he were willing, to act as Lord Bath and Lord Lansdowne have acted.
If Mr. Trench had been content to give his own individual opinion, to be taken for what it was worth, on the value of legislative interference in the Irish question, we should take no exception to his testimony. But we must object to his calling the Irish peasafit, as he imaginatively paints him, into court to bear witness on the same side. We might gather many examples of this rather dishonest artifice from Mr. Trench's volume. Perhaps the most striking is to be found in the account of a Ribbon meeting, which Mr. Trench received, he tells us, from an informer who took part in the debate. The report of the speeches and sentiments, thus filtered through two so different media, can hardly be considered more authentic than the orations in the first decade of Livy. Any one who is familiar with the forms in which the thought and language of the Irish peasant are moulded will be as much amused as disgusted at meeting the arguments of Irish Tory politicians in the mouths of Mr. Trench's Ribbonmen.
"By degrees as the liquor told upon the party the conversation grew fast and furious, and various subjects were introduced and commented
on in their own wild way. They say,' observed one of the leaders,
that if the boys had held out well when they rose in 1641 they could have had the country to themselves, and driven every Saxon out of it. I hear there was great sport up at the Castle of Carrickmaoross that time, and that they put a rope round the agent's neck and were going to hang him at his own hall door.'—' Bad luck to them for spalpeens that they didn't hang him,' said another. 'If we had the country all to ourselves now, I know how it would be !'—' Some says it's the land laws that's mighty bad,' observed another ; that it's them that's crushing us down, and that they are going to bring in a bill—as they call it—to alter them.'—' A curse upon the land laws,' cried the president, and all concerned in them. It's the land itself' we want, and not all this bother about the laws. The laws is not so bad in the main, barrin' they make us pay rent at all. What good would altering the laws do us ? sure we have tenant-right, and fair play enough, for that matter, for Trench never puts any one off the land that's able to pay his rent, and stand his ground on it. But why should we pay rent at all? That's the question, say I. Isn't the land our own, and wasn't it our ancestors' before us, until these bloody English came and took it all away from us? My curse upon them for it—but we will tear it back out of their hearts' blood yet.'—' In troth, then, ye'll have 'tough work of it before ye do,' rejoined another. Them Saxons is a terrible strong lot to deal with. They beat down ould Ireland before, and I doubt but they'll hold on the land still, and beat her down again, rise when ye may,'—' None of your croakin',' cried the president. 'Sure, it's not more than three hundred years since they took it all from us, and many a country has risen and hold its own again after a longer slavery than that. I say. TSB LAND we must have, and cursed be the hand and withered the arm that will not strike a blow to gain it!'—' Some say it's the Church that's crushing us,' suggested one of the party who bad not spoken before. 'Damn the Church, and you along with it,' cried the president, in a passion. 'What harm does the Church do you or any one else? The gentlemen that owns it are quiet decent men, and often good to the poor. It's the land, I say again, it's the land, we want. The Saxon robbers took it from our forefathers, and I say again we'll wrench it out of their hearts' blood ; and what better beginning could we have than to blow Trench to shivers off the walk ? True for yo,' said another, 'so far as that goes, but ye are wrong about the Church, for all that. Sure, isn't it what they call the dominan' Church, and what right has it to dominate over our own clergy, who are as good as them any day. Up wid our clargy, and down with the doininan' Church! say I. Besides,' continued he, more softly, maybe if we had once a hold of the Church lands, the landlords' lands would be 'aitiier come at after.' —' Why, then, that may be true, too,' said the president ; 'down with the Church, down with the landlords, down with the agents, down with everything, say I, that stands in the way of our own green land coming back to us again.'—' What wonderful grand fun we'll have fightin' among ourselves when it does come !' said a thick-sot Herculean fellow, at the lower end of the table.= Well now, I often thought of that!' replied his neighbour in a whisper. It'll be bloody work then in airnest, as sure as you and I live to see it. Anything that has happened up to this will be only a joke to what will happen then.'—' And what
matter?' cried the advocate for fighting. Sure, wouldn't it be far better any day to be fightin' among friends than have no fightin' at all, and be slaves to our enemies ? By the powers !' cried he, and he gave the table a salient stroke with his shillelagh that made the punchglasses leap. ' but'I would rather go out as our ancestors did beford us, with the skein() in our hands, and the skins of wild beasts upon our backs, and fight away till the best man had it, than be the slaves wo are now, paying rint in the office, and acknowledging them Saxons as our landlords l'"
Surely nothing could be more " unhistorical " than this reported conversation. If it were worth while, we might direct our readers to some amusing personal episodes, in which Mr. Trench always appears as his own hero, baring, as it were, a charmed life, facing at one time an infuriated crowd of peasants, at another time a desperate but chivalrous Ribbonman—subduing the enemy always, now by moral force, now by physical force, again by the power of the eye, and often by an eloquence which we can hardly trace in Mr. Trench's reports of his own speeches. We have not space to enter into these interesting adventures, of which no political use can be made ; but we are bound to warn English readers against this book. The facts are no doubt pretty correctly stated ; but all the colouring is false, and what is worse, it is artistically laid on to impress persons unacquainted with the Irish character with certain dangerous, because entirely unsubstantial and illusory, views. Irish peasants may have acted as the characters in Mr. Trench's book act, but it is a matter of certainty that they never spoke and thought as Mr. Trench's characters speak and think. This is a point which can only be settled by the impartial judgment of witnesses acquainted with Ireland, and to them we are content to leave it.
Mr. Trench, generously enough, acknowledges the existence of high moral qualities among the peasants with whom he has spent his life, but always, as it appears, with an undertone of surprise, as if it were strange that a poor wretch who is unable to pay his petty rent of a few shillings for his five-acre holding should have a noble and generous heart. The " caste " feeling is strong in every line that Mr. Trench writes, and until that feeling be eradicated in the class to which he belongs by a social revolution, —whether gradually or suddenly effected,—we cannot hope for that "justice to Ireland" which Mr. Trench—in all sincerity, we doubt not—proposes as the end to be furthered by the production of this mistaken and mischievous book.
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