BOOKS.
MR. FRO UDE'S ENGLISH IN IRELAND.* MR. FM:JUDE has published two more volumes of his history of the English in Ireland, but we do not know that we have anything to add to our review of his first volume. The huge party pamphlet is growing more huge, the drawing is a little more out of scale, and the prejudice is a little more conspicuous, but that is all. The style is a little less spirited, the eloquent summaries are a little fewer, and the interspaces of detail are decidedly more tedious, but we see no alteration either in motive, or object, or manner of treatment. Mr. Fronde hates Ireland and the Irish, and wishes the island to be governed Cromwell fashion, and makes up his- tory to prove that he is quite in the right in all his views. That he hates the majority most is pretty certain, but he by no means allows the minority to escape his damning censure. He has, no doubt, a slight bias towards the governing caste, relating every atrocity committed by Catholic Irish with deep gusto, while he slurs over the atrocities which provoked reprisals ; denounces every statesman who, like Lord Moira, held Irishmen to be a "two- legged race," and over and over again defends or extenuates Major Sirr and the use of the whip and the pitch-cap to induce
* The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. By James Anthony Froude, MA In 3 vols. Vol. III. Loudon: Longman&
' Catholic Irishmen to betray each other. General Abercrombie, for instance, had peremptorily refused to perform the duties required of him—a mistake, we quite admit, as he might have subdued Ireland, yet conciliated her people by his justice—and General Lake was entrusted with the duty :-
a The ten days weakly granted by Abercrombie were allowed to expire, and then, as not a pike had been surrendered, General Lake set about his work. He had to deal with a temper of which the natural stubbornness was encouraged by the impression that the Castle Govern- ment would not be supported by the power of England. Of British troops he had but a handful. The force on which he had to rely to carry out his orders consisted mainly of the loyal Irish yeomanry, men whose friends had been murdered, who had themselves been marked for murder, whose hands had for years been tied by a law which gave them no protection, while to their enemies it was a convenient shield. There was little cause of surprise if now at last, when they wore per- mitted to show a people who had laughed at courts of justice that there were other modes by which they could be compelled into obedience, the poison-fangs were not drawn with the gentlest hand. It is true that during three weeks regiments were sent to live at free quarters in districts where the inhabitants combined to resist the dis- armament. It is true that when other means failed the lash was freely used to compel disclosures, though only where sure and certain infor- mation had led the officers to know that there was something to be disclosed. It is true, also, that the lash proved the most efficacious of persuasives, that under its pressure the labours of the Revolutionary Committee were rendered futile, that the army of insurrection was deprived of half its means of injury, that the rebellion when it broke out was confined to districts where the process had been imperfectly carried out, and that General Lake's determination, though it could not prevent infinite horrors, did at least prevent a massacre on the scale of
the precedent of 1641 The United Irishmen had affected the fashion of short hair. The loyalists called them Croppies, and if a Croppy prisoner stood silent when it was certain that he could confess with effect, paper or linen caps smeared with pitch were forced upon his head to bring him to his senses. Such things ought not to have been, and such things would not have been had General Lake been supplied with English troops ; but assassins and their accomplices will not always be delicately handled by those whose lives they have threatened.. Occasionally, not often, men suffered who were innocent, so far as no definite guilt could be proved against them. At such times, however, those who are not actively loyal lie in the border-land of just suspicion.
No slight courage was required to disarm Tipperary, nor was the disarming an easy matter when there was courage to undertake it. The high sheriff was a Uniacke by birth. His father took the name or Fitzgerald. He is likely, therefore, to have been a relation of Mr. Uniacke, who had just been assassinated, with his wife and Colonel St. George. This gentleman did, by decisive measures, effectually break the insurgent organisation in Tipperary, so that when the rebellion. came the most dangerous county in Ireland lay motionless. They were not gentle measures. He used the whip freely, and he made one mis- take which was not forgotten. A man named Wright, at Clonmel, was suspected of connection with the United Irishmen. The suspicion in all likelihood was well-founded. On searching him a letter was found in his pocket, in French. Fitzgerald did not understand the language, but his mind, like that of everyone else, was full of the expected French invasion. The letter, though utterly innocent, was treated as an evidence of guilt, and Wright was severely flogged. He prose- cuted the high sheriff afterwards, and recovered £500 as damages. Fitzgerald has been rewarded with a black name in Irish legend and with the scorn of foolish historians. He was rewarded, also, by the knowledge that by his general nerve and bravery be had probably saved at least ten thousand lives ; and the English Government, though generally too proud to remember good service in Ireland, yet so far acknowledged Fitzgerald's merit that they paid his fine and created him a baronet."
The extracts are somewhat long, but what is there to add to them? If the reader's blood does not boil under that cool defence not of slaughter, which can often be defended, but of torture, applied not by invaders, but by a dominant caste, maddened by its dread of its own tenantry, whom, as Mr. Fronde repeatedly allows, it had itself provoked, words of ours will not make- it boil, and we have no disposition to waste them in stirring up a useless hostility. Fitzgerald treated his white equals who had not rebelled, but were only suspected of an intention to. rebel, as Eyre treated negroes in rebellion, and England made him a Baronet, and Mr. Froude thinks historians who think Fitzgerald, a wicked oppressor " foolish " persons. And what more is there to say, except that he would probably condemn the Generals who punished La Vendee in language of unequalled fire? The man is so filled with hate, so utterly demoralised with fanaticism, that he can- not even see the difference between the crimes committed by men little above the Portuguese, and those of the educated gentlemen. sent to prevent a repetition of them ; but while utterly and justly condemning the one, quietly lends the whole aid of a skilful pen to extenuate the other. If the extracts do not prove themselves, we have literally nothing to say and nothing to wish, except that Mr. Froude would write the history of the conquest of the Highlands after Culloden, and stultify himself and damn the " Butcher " Cumberland in the style which, writing of the torture of Protestants by Protestants, he would most assuredly use. Of his incessant condemnation of English statesmen for their weak- ness in doubting whether tyranny of this kind was just or judicious we might indeed have somewhat to say, but that the task is so utterly hopeless, so completely beyond the range of reason, that we shrink from the weary effort. When a man justifies Alva, answer is very useless; and when a man declares that the stern Indian conqueror, the Marquis of Hastings, was a weak fool for thinking justice a good thing in Ireland, we can but bow, and wait for a history of Ireland which shall, at all events, pretend to be just. Mr. Fronde, for example, quotes this speech by Lord Moira, as a piece of "flatulent declamation" which Ministers ought not to have been -called away from their duties to hear
"Appeal," he exclaimed, "to the hearts of the people ; while you appeal to their fears you will never succeed. You must grant Catholic emancipation. I give the opinion with the more confidence after the zeal and ardour manifested by the Catholics of the South when a French -fleet was in one of your ports. You must grant Parliamentary Reform. The greatest evil to be feared from it sinks to nothing compared to the mischief which is raging at present. The expression of a conciliatory -desire on your part would suspend immediately the agitation of the public mind."
One credit, however, we must give Mr. Fronde. He does not -conceal what the Protestant Parliament of Ireland was, does not spare us one detail of corruption, villainy, or flightiness, does indeed rake up for the disparagement of that Parliament facts most Englishmen have never heard of.
He tells one story oh absolute authority — that of the Re- cords of the Irish Parliament—which is, to our mind, by itself and in itself, a full justification of armed rebellion, and which had it, per impossibile, occurred in England, would have produced one. To avoid the accusation of misrepresentation, we give the statement II his own words :— " There was in Dublin an institution called the Foundling Hospital. It had largo private funds, and was assisted liberally by grants from Parliament. Three hundred peers and gentlemen were the governors, and twenty-one at least were required to be present at the periodical meetings of the Board. Sir John Blaquiere, in bringing the condition ef the Hospital before the House, stated that from the day of its founda- tion as many as twenty-one governors had never been in attendance save when some office was to be given away. They had delegated their authority to the treasurer. The treasurer had been bed-ridden for six years. In consequence Sir John had to mention circumstances too horrible for the ear,' which the reporter, for the honour of his country, thought it necessary to conceal. In substance he stated that the number -of infants received in the past year into the Hospital was 2,180, and that of that number as many as 2,087 were dead or unaccounted for. A story BO startling was received with outcries of incredulity. Ireland's character was at stake before the world. The Corporation of Dublin mot and made inquiries, and reported that the charge was utterly with- -out foundation. Blaquiere had moved for leave to introduce a Bill to remodel the governing body. Grattan, as member for the city, presented a petition that lehve be refused, and spoke warmly in vindication of the existing management. Blaquioro was too sure of his ground to be beaten from it by clamour. He was surprised, he said, that so eminent a person as Mr. Grattan should have become the advocate of abuses which disgraced the society of men. He repeated that out of 2,187 children introduced in one year into the establishment more than 2,000 had dis- appeared. He held in his hand, he said, a return for the last ten years which had been given upon oath. In that time 19,368 children had been entered on the books, and almost 17,000 were dead or missing. A -committee of enquiry was appointed. The condition of the Hospital was sifted to the bottom. The result was laid before the House by Blaquiere in the ensuing year. The average annual number of infants who sur- vived admission to this beautiful institution, taken on a large number -of years, was 130. The annual expenses were £16,000. Each child, there- fore, who was saved from death was costing the public £110. He expected to find, he said, that his original information had understated the frauds, but had exaggerated the cruelty. He had been sorry to find that although the robbery was, as he anticipated, greater, the murders wore no fewer 'than he had before declared. The wretched little ones were sent up from all parts of Ireland, ten or twelve of them thrown together into a ' kish,' or basket forwarded on a low-backed car, and so bruised and crushed and shaken at their journey's end that half of them were taken eut dead and were flung into the dung-heap."
The children, in fact, were murdered wholesale, that the cost .o` their keep might be stolen by politicians. 1Vill it be 'believed that Blaquiere could not obtain a remedy, and that six years after the systematic murder continued as flagrant as ever ?—
" Sir John Blaquiere recalled attention to the Foundling Hospital, -the condition of which he had exposed some years before. A committee Of enquiry had reported that out of 2,200 children annually received into the Hospital, 1,900 disappeared unaccounted for. Blaquiere had twice attempted to introduce a measure for a change of management. The first time he was opposed by Grattan. The second time his Bill was lost by the unaccountable apathy of gentlemen who could not be 'brought to give it support.' Having been unsuccessful in his efforts, he had hoped that the publicity of their misdeeds would have shamed -the governing body into attention. He had lately, however, ho said, been again invited to take up the subject in the interests of humanity; and, on enquiry, he had found that the same mortality continued. Out of 540 children received into the house between December, 1795, and March, 1796, 473 were murdered by negligence. The loss of life bad been concealed in the formal returns. On the books three deaths alone had been entered, and the truth was only brought out on a strict examination. Blaquiere said ho had personally inspected the hospital, and in one instance had found fourteen children thrust away into a garret to die."
And then Mr. Froude excuses the whip and the pitch-cap when used to coerce a nation subjected to a caste whose chosen repres.ett- tatives were these wretches. No Catholic could vote for these men, no Catholic could sit among them, yet a plea for the emancipation of the majority, made in England by a man who subsequently governed a continent with conspicuous ability, is described as a piece of "flatulent declamation," and the yeomanry who used the whip and the pitch-cap are thus defended :—The Government, tired at last of the cruelties permitted by Lord Camden, appointed Lord Cornwallis Viceroy :—
"Cornwallis should neither have been shocked nor surprised when desperate men turned to desperate remedies ; and being too few in number to hold in subjection the poor frenzied wretches who had began a war of extermination, were being driven to write upon their memories a lesson which it should be impossible for them to forget. The Yeo- manry were strong enough to destroy the rebels. They were not strong enough to pardon them. Irresistible power alone can afford to be merciful. The Protestants of Ireland, like the scanty English garri- sons of earlier times, having to deal with an irreconcileablo foe, as fierce as a wolf and as untameable, were being taught, in spite of themselves, that if England declined to stand by them, they and the Irish could not live side by side, and that if they would sleep in peace thenceforward they must give no quarter to enemies in arms. Cornwallis saw the feeling, and was shocked at it,"
—and is represented therefore—he, the wisely tyrannical Satrap of India—as an idiot. Reviewing a book penetrated with senti- ments such as these is folly; and we shall not commit it, except to observe that Mr. Froude has made out a case for Catholic emancipation such as even we did not believe existed.
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