POCOCKE'S TOUR THROUGH IRELAND IN 1752.*
THE author of this work was one of the most distinguished travellers of the eighteenth century. In his youth he travelled a great deal upon the Continent, and spent five years in the East. His account of Egypt, Palestine, and Asia Minor, generally published in three volumes, and embellished with numerous engravings and diagrams, is still worth consulting. Though an Englishman, born in Southampton, he held a sinecure appointment in the Irish Church which enabled him to indulge in what seems to have been the master-passion of his life. After his promotion in the Church of Ireland, for he was in succession Archdeacon of Dublin, Bishop of Ossory, and Bishop of Meath, he made various tours through the land of his adoption, always with the inquiring mind and watchful, observing eye of the true traveller. Pococke literally rode round Ireland in quest of knowledge. On horseback he traversed all the maritime counties, starting from Dublin and returning to Dublin,—an example of laudable cariosity which almost seeks its fellow, for no kudos was to be gained, and not much to be learned, by travels in Ireland. It is the record of that journey which lies before us.
Pococke's Tour deals exclusively with the social condition of the island. The writer makes not the faintest allusion to politics. This is singular, for if we are to believe the political historians, headed by Mr. Fronde, Ireland was at the time shaken with political excitement. In fact, the Irish problem had just emerged as a burning question. The Irish Parlia- ment had defied the Imperial Government, thrown out or altered their Money Bills, had thwarted the Ministers of George II. in their foreign policy, had already given much trouble, and was threatening to give much more. Now, for the first time, the Irish difficulty began to haunt the meditations of statesmen. Swift did his bad best to embroil the two Parliaments, and failed. Lucas, who, with less genius but rather more sincerity, followed him on the same lines, failed too. But the writings of both men produced an effect nevertheless. The people had begun to be conscious of their misery and poverty, and to look for an explanation. Swift and Lucas had told them that the cause lay, not in themselves but in England's misgovernment; and at length the House of Commons put itself forward as representative and champion of the views which passed current in society. The Irish diffi- culty, long dimly foreseen, had at last arrived, and seemed to have come to stay. Henry Boyle, Speaker of the House of Commons, led this movement, which was in full swing at the very time when our inquisitive ecclesiastic was riding round the island. Yet of this storm Pococke says not a word, directly or indirectly. At Castlemartyr, County Cork, he even visited the great "patriot" himself ; yet from a perusal of the Tour one would never suspect that the Parnell of the period was anything but an opulent country gentleman intent on building operations and on beautifying his demesne. In this character he delighted our traveller, for amongst Boyle's other improve- ments, Pococke relates, with an enthusiasm not so easy to understand in our times, that the Speaker could "row four miles on a serpentine canal" which he had made round his grounds. If Pococke regarded the whole of this movement which makes such a figure in history as a mere storm in a teapot, he was right. A year or two later the Imperial Government quite suppressed the Irish difficulty as repre- sented by Boyle and his Parliamentary patriots. How ? By a very simple expedient. The Government bought them up, for they were all in the market. Parliament in its next Session presented a, spectacle which Cowper's lines aptly describe :— "Patriots bursting with heroic rage, And placemen all tranquillity and smiles."
Boyle and his friends were placed and pensioned, but, not unnaturally, a fresh crop of patriots, seeing that "heroic rage" paid so well, arose in their room. The Irish difficulty
• Pococke's Tour through Ireland, 1752. Edited by George Stokes, D.D. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. Dublin : Hodges, Figgie, and Co.
had come to stay, and it did stay, not being found solvable by the simple method adopted in the case of Henry Boyle and his adherents.
Bishop Pococke was one of the best-instructed men of his time ; but about politics be strictly held his tongue. Never- theless, we can perceive clearly enough that be did not belong to the school of Swift and Lucas, but, consciously or uncon- sciously, followed the lead of a man infinitely more virtuous and infinitely wiser and more patriotic than either of them. We refer, though the reader may be surprised, to the famous. metaphysician, Bishop Berkeley. Every one knows that Berkeley inaugurated a new and great departure in philosophy.. Every one knows that Pope attributed to Berkeley "every virtue under heaven." But every one does not know that Berkeley wrote concerning Ireland and the Irish difficulty a treatise more charged with wit and wisdom, more profound, practical, and sagacious, than any spoken or written utterance which the cen- tury otherwise produced. As it dealt only with Ireland, and only with the internal condition of Ireland, at a time when the world almost ignored Ireland's existence, Berkeley's Querist attracted no general attention, and is even now known to few. All the world is aware that Berkeley " said there was no matter." But who knows anything of Berkeley as the wise practical philo- sopher, the witty, graceful, and tender moralist, the true Irish patriot ? In the eighteenth century, two great intellectual influences contended for the control and direction of Ireland's future, the genius of Swift and the genius of Berkeley, the one hostile to England and the other friendly, the one tending towards angry international politics and the other to self- reform. Berkeley was, in fact, an Irish Carlyle of the eighteenth century, but more humane, gracious, and insinua- ting, his influence, not like that of stormy Boreas, but like genial sunshine.
Berkeley, unlike Swift, did not attribute Ireland's misery to England, in whole or in part. Swift told his countrymen that England, hated them, and taught them to hate England. Berkeley told them the reverse. Swift attributed their woes to the dependence of their Parliament and the commercial policy of the Imperial Government. Berkeley maintained that that commercial policy was, in fact, beneficial to Ireland, and that the dependence of their Parliament, by securing, as it did, freedom from foreign complications, and the defence of Ireland by Imperial armies and navies, supplied the Irish Parliament with a unique opportunity of developing the resources of the island, and of making their country rich and prosperous. All things would be well if his country- men only resolved to go to their work like men. In all Irish histories, even Mr. Fronde's, we are accustomed to see furious. diatribes against the commercial greed of England, as exhibited, for example, in the suppression of the Irish woollen trade. Berkeley maintained that the development of that trade would be ruinous to the poor people of Ireland, by promoting the eviction of the peasantry, and the consolidation of farms into sheep-walks. Query 85- is as follows :—" Whether it be not a sure sign or effect of a country's thriving, to see it well cultivated and full of inhabi- tants ? And if so, whether a great quantity of sheep-walk be not ruinous to a country, rendering it waste and thinly inhabited ?" By every method, Berkeley sought to discourage political discontent, to reduce the angry feeling towards England which emanated from Swift, and to concentrate the attention of all classes upon self-improvement and the im- provement of their common country. So he asks in Query 435, "Whether we can thrive so long as we entertain a wrong- headed distrust of England P "—and again, 323, "Whether it be not our part to cultivate the love and affection of England in all manner of ways ?" As to the practical work which the Irish aristocracy and their Parliament ought to undertake, his suggestions are endless ; his wise, tender, and humorous counsel embraces all sorts and varieties of activity and self- amendment. For example, the Irish rural gentry in Berkeley's time dwelt in cabins, and spent their revenues, the men chiefly in claret, the women in Flanders lace and other imported finery, so much so that an Irish lady of this period, circa 1730, "spent as much on dress as an English lady of six times her income." Berkeley again and again, returning to the subject in almost every other page, urges the gentry to build good houses, to lay out gardens, beautify their demesnes, and generally improve their surroundings. Observe here the wisdom of the serpent, which in Berkeley co-existed with the harmlessness of the dove. He did not ask the Irish gentry to do anything hard or heroic. He only urged them, at least for a beginning, to build good houses and lay out pleasant grounds, knowing well that a great deal would follow from such a commencement.
And Berkeley's gracious genius prevailed. It was in 1735 that he published The Querist, in which as in a mirror he bade the Irish gentleman of the period observe his unadmirable self, with his cabin behind him, with his ruinous estate and impoverished tenantry around; while on the backs of horses— for roads were still a rarity—barrels of foreign wines and bales of Continental frippery were seen approaching that abode of poverty and folly. Seventeen years later, Pococke, riding round the island, found the Irish rural gentry building them- selves line houses, laying out gardens, digging artificial lakes and canals, and also, a result foreseen by Berkeley, improving their estates all round,—making roads, planting woods, searching for minerals, erecting mills, and therefore em- ploying many thousands of idle hands. The whole aspect of Ireland had altered. The tide of absenteeism was checked, and even reversed ; that, too, Berkeley foresaw.
In this glorious movement which emanated from the mind of Berkeley and was in full course at the time, Pococke was an ardent sympathiser. Of the bitter, rancorous, and barren political movement started by Swift, he wrote not one word. His whole book seems to be written in snstainment of that -career of social reform which Berkeley inaugurated. But, alas ! once again the genius of Swift overpowered that of Berkeley ; politics reasserted their sway over the mind of the Irish gentry. They laid aside The Querist and returned to the study of the Drapier's Letters, and of Molyneux's and Lucas's lucubrations about " liberty " and " slavery ; " so that Grattan, at the inauguration of the short-lived and unfortunate independent Irish Parliament, could declare, in his semi- theatrical style : "Spirit of Swift ! spirit of Molyneux ! your genius has prevailed!" So it had. The wrong-headed distrust of England had prevailed. Natural sloth, the exciting pleasures of politics, the desire to blame every one but themselves, had pre- vailed, and the wise and gentle Berkeley, pointing out the true sources of public and private happiness, was forgotten. The Irish gentry, how much to their advantage we know, took Swift for their prophet instead of Berkeley. They neglected their natural work in order to work the Irish difficulty. The Irish difficulty is, indeed, still with us, but the Irish gentry are, before our eyes, melting away out of the land which was once theirs. Pococke's Tour, which has suggested to us these reflections, must be regarded as part of the Berkeleian movement of social and internal reform. It can only be read with proper interest and satisfaction by one who is already familiar with Berkeley's Querist. Berkeley asked whether there was in the world a nation to which the fable of Hercules and the carter better applied than to the Irish. Pococke shows us the carter with his coat off diligently endeavouring to lift his cart-wheel out of the slough.
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