OWEN ROE O'NEILL.*
WHEN last summer the House of Commons debated, with no little heat, whether Cromwell should have a statue, the Irish Members fiercely declared that if the tyrant and arch-enemy of their race was to be so honoured in London, Owen Roe O'Neill must have a memorial in Dublin, for was not in reality Owen Roe a greater man than his enemy ? Indeed, but for the untimely accident of his death, Owen Roe, they asserted, would have shown himself the better Genera], would have hurled the soldiers of the New Model into the sea, and would have changed the course of history. They did not quote the lines, may be, but in their speeches burnt some- thing of the fire which inspired Davis when he cursed the supposed murderers of the great Celtic leader :— may their lifeblood cease to flow, May they walk in living death who poisoned Owen Roe." When these eloquent references were made to Owen Roe O'Neill, how many Members of the House of Commons or of the general public, we Wonder, knew who he was or what he did or why Irishmen cherished his memory ? Not one in a hundred outside the Nationalists. We are the least historically minded people in the world. We ignore most of our own immediate history, and for the stories of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales we have deaf ears. Lord Beaconsfield said of his wife :—" She was a bright creature. She lived only in the present. She cared nothing for the future. She knew nothing of the past. She did not even know whether the Greeks or Romans came first." Perhaps the ordinary Englishman cannot be called a bright creature ; but at any rate he knows nothing of the past, and therefore the name of Owen Roe O'Neill was to him, if possible, less intelligible than that of Dowlat Rao Scindiah or the Bhonslay. Still, a few painstaking people pricked up their ears and got down their encyclopwlias and histories and tried to hunt up Owen Roe. Alas, they got very little " forrader." At last, however, there is light. "The New Irish Library" has published an excellent little monograph on the subject from the very able pen of Mr. J. F. Taylor. With this interesting piece of historical work we have only one quarrel. Mr. Taylor has tried to get a quart-measure of grain into a pint-pot. Hence the material is packed a little _ ' (bran Bo. O'N.i,I. By .7. F. Taylor. London: Fisher Unwin. Dublin: Sealy. Bryerf, and Walker. 1856. too tight, and we do not get quite as vivid an impression of Owen Roe O'Neill as we should have liked. Mr. Taylor should have made a study like Mr. GoldwinSmith's Pym his modeL Instead, he has written a short history of Owen Roe's period. This, however, is a fault for which no historical student will blame him, and what we lose in one way we gain in another. In other respects the book is most readable. It is, as a rule, fair and moderate in tone—only very seldom does the fire of Celtic indignation break into flame—and the literary handling is excellent. The two most striking
things in the book are the pictures it raises, first, of the con- dition of Ireland, and secondly, of the personal character of Owen Roe O'Neill. If he was in reality what Mr. Taylor
represents him, and we see no reason to think that he has been led into captivity by his hero, he must have been a man of singular charm,—the very beau idial of a modern warrior
chief. A great soldier and a great gentleman, he stands forth in singular contrast to the men around him. While they were either knaves or fools, or else the regular "politic men" of the seventeenth century, he was a statesman and a patriot. He knew what he wanted, tried to gain it by honourable means, and saw through and despised all the petty meannesses of the intriguers around him. The picture of Ireland, from the end of Strafford's reign till the re- conquest by Cromwell, which is given in the present book, does full justice to that strangest of strange epochs. Nowhere
else but in Ireland could such an organised anarchy have existed. In no other part of the world could three or four mutually antagonistic insurrections have existed side by side. Elsewhere A and B would have combined against C, or C and B against A. In Ireland they really managed a triangular, and indeed for a time a quadrangular, duel. Mr. Taylor makes one realise this great free-fight with singular vivid- ness, or rather with singular power, for vividness is hardly a word to apply. We get in his pages a wonderful present-
ment of the confusion and dust of the conflict. Beneath the mist of battle we see armies in conflict, and hear the shouting of the captains; but a distinct account of the how, the when, and the where of the fighting it is almost impossible to give or to receive, at any rate in a book of two hundred and fifty pages.
We shall not, then, attempt to try to tell the story of the events in which Ormond, the Nuncio, Owen Roe, and Clan- ricarde played each their part. "Little wonder that parties and factions arose. Agents from the Pope, agents from the King, agents from the Queen, agents from the Prince of Wales, Ormond, Clanricarde, Antrim, and Digby to boot; what earthly assembly, what human head, could stand fixed and calm in the midst of such commotion ? " These are the words in which Mr. Taylor writes of but one incident in the general anarchy. They may stand as our excuse for not trying to unravel the ten times tangled web. It is curiously characteristic of Ireland that the one thing which emerges clearly is a written Constitution. The Irish race has a genius for the details of political science, and, in spite of all the confusion and the din of arms, a most ingenious instru- ment of Government was devised and partly applied. After telling how the new model of Government contained a Par- liament with Lords and Commons, Mr. Taylor continues :—
"So far, with unimportant modifications, the makers of the constitution follow old models. Their originality, however, was brought into play when they came to deal with the executive. At a time when in no country in the world, whether monarchy or republic, had rulers or people conceived the idea of a responsible representative executive, still less of an elected one, this great principle was embodied in the new Irish constitution. Twenty- four supreme councillors were to compose the Irish cabinet. The members of the General Assembly reprezenting each province were out of their own number to elect by ballot six councillors or, as they are sometimes called, magistrates. They might be all bishops, all lay lords, or all commoners, or, as invariably happen-6d, a compound of all three, such as we find in the first Supreme Council, to which were elected three Archbishops, two bishops, four peers, and fifteen lay commoners. Nine members at least were required to validate any administrative act ; and of these it was necessary that six at least should give their assent, and sign every decree or order, thus ensuring the personal responsibility of ministers in the clearest manner. To the council sovereign power was temporarily delegated. But all its acts were liable to be reviewed by the General Assembly, which was to meet at least once in every year. Each province was to have its Provincial Council on the same plan, and each county its County Council ; the wider the space over which jurisdiction extended the higher naturally was the jurisdiction itself, and in every grade appeals lay from the inferior to the superior till the ultimate and highest court, the Supreme Council itself was reached. In contemplation of law, the whole system of government was thus conceived as a system of concentric circles, having for their common middle point the Supreme Council, which like the king in previous times was the source and fountain of all authority, military and civil."
We must not, however, rest content with this quotation, for it does not do justice to Mr. Taylor's narrative powers. Let us,
then, add Hr. Taylor's spirited account of Belling and Fennell, the first the Secretary of State to the Supreme Council, the other the politically minded doctor to Ormond
"Richard Belling was the Secretary of State to the Supreme Council; by far the most important office in the administration. He was the son of the man who had made up evidence against the Wicklow O'Byrnes in Faukland's time (1626-7). He had literary pretensions, wrote a continuation of the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, and gracefully toying with compliments lamented his insufficiency to reach Divine Sidney's' height. Between him and Ormond the closest intimacy was kept up, and most of the Cabinet deliberations at Kilkenny were as well known in Dublin as they were in the Council chamber. Angry men called Belling a traitor ; but Owen Roe deprecated such a charge. 'Belling is no traitor. Remember an oath is binding only in prose ; and as Belling only talks a kind of half-mad rhapsody, he breaks no vow.' Dr. Fennell angered Owen much more. Fennell was one of the tribe of persons always too numerous in Ireland, who are devoured with zeal when there is no risk to be run ; who are overflowing with noble sentiments; ready to make all sorts of sacrifice in the indefinite future, but who meantime plunder with both hands. As Ormond's physician, he gave himself the airs of one who was the friend and adviser in high politics of the great, although he cared little himself, he said, for these things. He was now installed in a profitable office, and his face, weighty with the load of State cares, was to be seen daily as he drove in his open carriage from the residence of My Lord Mountgarrett,' or My Lord Muskerry,' to the offices of the Council. Mount- garrett himself being Lord President,' and Muskerry in com- mand of the Munster troops, the Ormondian faction' was thus easily dominant in the Kilkenny counsels, even if we acquit Darcy and Cusack of anything more serious than facile acquies- cence. Another scandal too common and familiar now unfor- tunately rose into public notice. The taxes and rates assessed by the Assembly and intended mainly for the support of the Army, were in great part diverted to the use of favourites and friends. Offices and salaries multiplied daily. Soon there was a world of clerks and attorneys, commissioners in every county, receivers, and applotters. The exchequer was full with daily taxations, customs monopoly, enemy land custodiums. excise and many more, so that there was a world of money ; but the most part or rather all was spent in daily wages of the Supreme Council, judges, clerks and other mechanical.men, and little or nothing went to the soldiers."
We do not wish to say anything unfriendly to Ireland, but, alas ! the picture here given but too faithfully bears out the saying of a recent Irish Secretary :—" The chief thing I notice in Ireland is that everybody wants a place, and when he has got it, wants his son made deputy."
We have left little space to speak in detail of Owen Roe O'Neill himself. One reason is that there is no passage dealing with him in the present book which lends itself well to quotation. Besides his attractive personality and the powers of generalship, on which we have dwelt, he is in- teresting as the last leader of the "ancient Irish,"—the true unmixed Celts. The "ancient Irish" loved him, for he was one of themselves, and possessed their virtues without their vices. He was liberal without being prodigal, lion-hearted without being savage, tolerant without being indifferent. At least so Mr. Taylor draws him. We have only one more word to add. Mr. Taylor assumes that the stories of the Irish massacre, which so greatly inflamed Puritan England, were false or most grossly exaggerated. We are not prepared on the present occasion to controvert that statement, but at the same time we are not prepared to accept it. We do not object of course to Mr. Taylor putting forth his view, but it is only right to say that there is another side to the question.
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