WHAT CAN THE LAW DO FOR IRELAND?
LETTER VI.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
Dublin, 10th January 1848.
Sui—I am not without hope that some of those who may have taken the trouble to rend my slight sketches of the bearings of the criminal law in relation to the popular mind of Ireland, will agree with me in thinking that in that de- ent little is required to he done towards the establishment of public order
and a "thorough enforcement of every law." In reference to that branch, the so ution I would propose togive to the question " What can the law do for Ire- land?" would be simply—" Enforce the law." To carry out the precept, how- ever, is a matter of much more difficulty than the acknowledgment of its truth; and it is at this particular point that nearly all Irish Governments have failed. The reason of the failure is not very obscure: it lies in the fact that each suc- cessive Administration (few indeed were the exceptions) essayed to rule Ireland by and for a faction, almost universally without regard to the interests of the country, and seldom with any other view than that of bringing Irish support to the party at the time dominant in England. English parties, however, have never been at one in nature and objects with Irish factions; and the only result of these temporary leagues was the subsidizing of a few irregular mercenaries, not the consolidation of an alliance upon any stable politicalciple. I might prove the validity of this position by references to every period ofprin Anglo-Irish history; but it will suffice for my purpose to point to two or three important political movements of our own tunes. The Parliamentary Reform question, for example, never seriously agitated the minds of Irishmen upon its own merits: it was sup- ported by the Roman Catholic faction merely as a measure involving the success or failure of an English party upon whose patronage they could reckon; it was opposed by the Protestants upon grounds precisely analogous. No ten men in Ireland who entered into the struggle thought about it as anything but an Eng- lish party-fight; the reflection that it was the crisis of a contest between two an.. tagonistic principles of government did not kindle enthusiasm perhaps in a single breast. It was just the same with the Abolition of Slavery end the Anti-Com_ law movements: with the exception of a few Quakers, scarcely any man cared for the former; and to the latter almost every man was heartily opposed. Never_ theless, both these questions were made the subjects of party agitation in Ire- land by those free companions who had taken service with the English leaders on either side. When it is held in mind that the authority and emoluments belong. ing to the administration of the law have always formed the matter of the subsi- dization of the Irish auxiliaries, it can be no subject of wonder that the law never was thoroughly enforced.
Until this habit of misgovernment shall be broken, the law will not be enforced;
and again I say, nothing can be expected to be accomplished without a thorough enforcement of the law. What, then, can be done to break the habit? Certainly little by direct legislation, but much by the establishment of a right understand- ing of the state of the case in the English mind: and with the view of promoting this end I will now venture to offer a few remarks.
I have already endeavoured to combat the notion that the disorders of Ireland have their cause in the existence in the minds of the people of any original impa- tience of rule, or, as it were, innate disposition to lawlessness. This fallacy is very commonly received; yet none could be entertained more diametrically opposed to truth, or that has produced worse practical results. The fact, on the contrary, is, that an elementary constituent of the Irish character, and one that, as it has been dealt with, has occasioned much evil, is an overweening confidence in what laws can effect, and a blind submission to the will of leaders: and these qualities have, in troth, so far prevailed in the moral constitution of the Irishman as to have annihilated in him all disposition to rely upon his own strength and resources in his hour of need. Among no other people was the natural desire to be governed ever so strongly marked as it is among the Irish. If the hand of the Almighty smites them with pestilence or famine, they will not tend their sick nor retill their lands without invoking the aid of "the law"; and, upon every fresh occasion, of a new law. " The law " is " the unknown god" of their worship; and if their divinity withholds a revelation, rich and poor forthwith set about erecting an idol the work of their own hands. If a Parliament be not called at Westmuister to fulminate law against typhus and potato rot, the Irish landowners pass resolutions in a " Reproductive Employment Committee" at Dublin; and the peasantry enrol bloody edicts in the courts of " Molly Maguire" and " Mary Ann Green " through- out the respective jurisdictions of those > parlous impersonations of Themis. Again, so far from the Irishman being impat:,nt of control, there is, unfortunately, too much evidence that his passion is to be governed—to rid himself of proper care for his own wants and of manly responsibility for his own actions. When " the master" (as a landlord is universally designated in Ireland) became an ab- sentee, or otherwise separated himself from a community of feeling with his de- pendants, they have ever, in the very irksomeness of an unwelcome liberty, pros- trated themselves, body and soul, before the demagogue and the Church; and surely never was mob so faithful to sway, so stern and ungenerous, as the Irish mob has been for the last generation, to the coigne, livery, and coshering of their priests and agitators. It would, indeed, seem as if an Irishman found such a charm in personal servitude, that
"Be would not if he could befree."
With lands before them to till and reclaim, with minerals ready to be dug from the earth, with numberless mill-sites inviting manufacturing industry, with a coast and a sea wooing the commerce of the world, the enduring dream and desire of every man, woman, and child in Ireland, is for a " Government post," wherein they may enjoy a little brief authority, and be ruled and governed in their turn. "In suing, long to bide," is to their imaginations no" hell ": with undaunted constancy they still sue on; and in this vain pursuit, borne along by the strong desire of being governed, the gentleman leaves his lands uncared for, to seek a Commia- sionership or a Police Magistracy, by humble service in Parliament; the lawyer quits his study to supplicate in the anterooms of the Castle for some paltry pro- fessional office; the farmer neglects his fields, the tradesman his shop, that they may solicit for themselves or their sons the much-coveted distinction of a tax- gatherer's warrant or a policeman's uniform. The work before a statesman is to raise a spirit of confidence, not to lay one of lawlessness; to evoke in Ireland a brave reliance upon national and personal resources, not to quell an inordinate impatience of control. A great step would be made towards the regeneration of Ireland, if her gentry and people could be persuaded that placehunting and beg- ging are mean occupations; that the free pursuit of agriculture, trade, or com- merce, open up prospects at least as honourable as the slavery of a situation in the Customhouse, the Police, or the Post-office. It is not by patchwork legisla- tion, or the employment of a panacea, that this most desirable consummation is to be aimed at; but by a steady and protracted exercise of the art of government, and by a patient and widely extended training of the people. In strong opposition to the first of these remedial causes, and in active corrobo- ration of the habit of misgovernment, I have no hesitation in expressing my opin- ion that the Viceregal mode of ruling Ireland has, with two or three remarkable exceptions, actively worked; and if 1 felt any doubt in the correctness of my own belief, it would be removed by the concurrent testimony of Spenser and Davies, the two statesmen (for statesmen they truly were) who brought to the discussion of the subject the greatest amount of wisdom and knowledge ever turned to the con- sideration of the political condition of Ireland. " The English," says the former writer, " were at first as Monte and warlike a people as ever the Irish; and yet you see are now brought into that civility, that no nation in the world excelleth them in all goodly conversation, and all the studies of knowledge and humanitie: but by how many thornie and bad wales they are come thereunto, by how many civil' broiles, by how many tumultuous rebellions, that even hazzarded often- times the safety of the kingdome, may easily be considered: all which they never- thelesse fairely overcame by reason of the continuall presence of their King; whose onely person is oftentimes in stead of an army, to contain the unrulie peo- ple from a thousand evil occasions, which this wretchd kingdom,for want there- of, is dayly carried into." Sir John Davies, after recounting the beneficial ef- fects of the statutes of Kilkenny in quieting Ireland, thus proceeds—" I join with these laws the personal presence of the King's son [Lionel Duke of Clarence, son of Edward the Third], as a concurrent cause of this reformation: because the people of this land, both English and Irish, out of a natural pride, did ever love and desire to be governed by great persons. And therefore I may here justly take occasion to note, that first the absence of the Kings of England, and next the absence of those great Lords who were inheritors of those mighty seignories of I.einster, Ulster, Connaught, and Meath, have been main causes why this king- dom was not reduced in so many ages. Touching the absence of our Kings, three of them only since the Norman Conquest have made royal jonrnies into this land; namely, King Henry the Second, King John, and King Richard the Second. And yet they no sooner arrived here, but that all the Irish, as if they had been but one man, submitted themselves, took oaths of fidelity, and gave pledges and hostages to continue loyal; and if any of those Kings had continued here in person a com- petent time, till they had settled both English and Irish in their several pos- sessions, and had set the law in a due course throughout the kingdom, these times wherein we live had not gained the honour of the final conquest and re- ducing of Ireland. For the King, saith Solomon, dissipat (MOW malum intuitu suo." Unfortunately for Sir John's laudation of his own times, and for the best in- terests of the empire, a change of policy, and the removal of himself,and the Lord Deputy Chichester from the Irish administration, prevented the finality of the conquest and reduction of Ireland; and now, at the end of two hundred and forty years, we have, in a remarkable coincidence, evidence but too complete of the small progress the country has made towards civil reformation in that long in- tenal. On the 19th of July 1607, Sir John Davies, joined in a special commis- sion of assize and gaol-delivery with the Chief Justice of the day, began his jour- ney wider the protection of " a guard of aix or seven score foot, and fifty or three- horse"; and the public journals inform us that in the week just past, the Lord Chief Justice now in office, joined in special commission with another judge, also began an extraordinary judicial progress under a strong escort of Police and nrAEeons. During the long lapse of years between the mission of Mr. Attorney Davies and that of Chief Justice Blackburn, but two Governors, and each but for a short time, possessed at once the capacity, the will, and the power thoroughly tenforce the law in Ireland. In the hands of Strafford and of Cromwell the to enforce of the civil disorder was sharp; but it would have been effectual had either of these practitionersbeen permitted to operate for a competent time. As however, it is highly improbable that either a Cromwell or a "Black Tom" will ever again fill the Viceregal throne; and as the experience of Lord-Lieute- nants endowed with ordinary constitutional powers has been at least sufficiently extended to show that it is not reserved for them to break the habit of misgo- vernment, is it not reasonable to doubt the propriety of continuing the experi- ment? Would it not be equally reasonable to test that other experiment sanc- tioned by the few trials it has ever received, and approved by men so wise as Davies and Spenser ? would it not, at all events, be quite safe to try for a few years what effect the periodical presence of the Sovereign (not in a flying visit, bat in our pleniere) would have upon the feelings and habits of her Irish subjects? I fLielieve it possible that by this measure, and by it alone, of all that are practicable at the present day, the habit of misgovernment might be broken so completely as to open a possibility of thoroughly enforcing the law. To effect such a revolu- tion a total change in society most take place; and holding in view the desired object, I see no way in which that can be brought about except by the introduc- tion into the system of new elements eminently superior in power and estimation to the old. "Kings," says Burke, " are naturally lovers of low company ": but, whatever the natural inclinations of vice-kings may be, Irish Lords-Lieutenant i have no power of choice. They must mix in low company; they can possibly have no other. Their court must be a circle of placehunters; their cabinet at best a knot of apprentice placemen and lawyers, the professional calibre of whose minds is rendered even more "lawyerlike and common in fashion" by their ex- clusively provincial experience. This unlucky companionship casts a spell over the Viceroyalty, which the ablest Lord-Lieutenant, if endowed only with the cus- tomary powers, could not break: it would melt away at once before the grandeur of a real Court and Council. The provincialaristocracy of placemen would then fall back into its proper place; • there would be fewer placehunters, and more honest and industrious contributors to the common stock of public prosperity. To enable a trial of this expedient to be made, no new law is necessary; no coer- cion bill, or arms bill, or gift, or loan, or imposition of tax, is requisite: would it not be worth while to try it, if it were only for the novelty of showing the world an Irish measure not included in that famous category? It would be doing much, to exercise the relatively superior classes of Irish so- ciety in a knowledge of themselves and of their proper position; and we would, I think, take a long step in that direction byabolishing the Lord-Lieutenancy and breaking in pieces the pinchbeck idol of gentility now worshiped in the halls and antechambers of the Castle: we would do more .by a regular periodical exhibition of the reality of a dignified Court and powerful Council. But it would still be necessary to devise means for training into order and civility the masses of the people. In this direction much is in coarse of performance by the National Board of Education; and great credit is due to the able and patriotic men who, in the face of so much obloquy and factious opposition, have persevered in the conduct of that measure. Every honest Irishman is bound to aid and encourage them; and it is therefore to me a subject of much regret, that an Irish Representative, i whom I know to be capable of better things, has thought the present time a fitting oc- casion for placing upon the paper of !the House of Commons notice of a motion for stirring up this long-vexed. question. I am not unaware of the sincerity and patriotism of the honourable gentleman, and I do not despair of his yet changing his views upon this matter. I can assure him, that looking at his movement even as nothing more than a shaking out of his banner to cheer the spirits of a reve- rend mob among his constituents, that he has made a mistake in undertaking it: the Irish Protestant clergy have generally become awake to the error into which they were led; among no class in Ireland is there more public virtue or honesty of pm-pose; and as a class, I am convinced the clergy would be ill pleased to be now called to battle by the old rallying-cry of "Down with National Education!" It cannot be denied, however, that as a system of general and united training, the plan of national education has not succeeded: something more obligatory and more physical in its character is required; and, it seems to me, might be supplied by the establishment of a Landwehr, or National Guard or Militia, in the extended sense of the latter term. I believe there is no existing nation more susceptible of military training than the Irish; and I believe no other form of training is more capable of producing confirmed habits of order and obedience, and attention to the personal 'interests of the individuals trained. If every Irishman not a pauper were obliged to subject himself to drill, and to present himself in his proper locality for military inspection at suitable times, a united system of education of rich and poor, Protestant and Catholic, would be at once set at work, such as the bigotry of all parties must ever prevent the National Board from being able to establish. blare than this would be done by such a measure; by it would be created an army of national defence such as never before was at hand for the protection of true English interests no Ireland. A proposal to train to arms a populace for whose disarmament an extraordinary law has just been enacted, may appear strange to some: that it is not unwise, however, a slight reflection upon the actual composi- tion of armies is sufficient to prove. In nine cases out of ten, the early history of the orderly and tractable soldier would show that his enlistment was the result of a course of turbulent dissipation. I entertain no doubt that a weekly parade after mass, with " the master " and " the young master" at the same time under arms, &monthly drill and a half-yearly inspection by the Lieutenant of the County, would keep many a Tipperary boy better amused than he now is in devising, ad- ministering, and executing the sanguinary fox loci. General Napier, in his His- tory of the Peninsular War, tells of an unaccountable panic which seized a Bri- tish regiment while asleep in a bivouac: men and officers together sprang up in terror from their lairs, and were upon the point of engaging in a confused and deadly struggle with each other, when a drummer-boy, unbidden, beat to anus: at once every man fell into his proper place, and all stood amazed at their own folly, and thankful for their escape from its consequences. Here was the result of military discipline; and I believe the same cause, with the peculiar concomitant associations of a landwehr system, would produce like results upon the Irish people. I would hope that at the tap of the division-drum many a man high and low would fall into his proper place, which no man now occupies or knows. As to fliers manual skill in the use of arms, there is no need to fear that any system will render that more dangerous than it is now in Ireland. "Yon would be surprised," wrote a gentleman from a Southern county, " to see what expert marksmen the peasants have become: as I was standing at my gate yesterday, a farmer's boy, coming from Limerick market, caught up his gun from the cart he was driving, and shot a rook, before my eyes, with a single ball." I can answer for it that my informant would have been much better pleased had he known that the skill which he had an opportunity of admiring was tempered by the discipline of a sergeant-major of local militia.
Having ventured thus to hint at the consideration of a subject which I sincerely hope may attract the notice of those whose superior judgment better fits them to deal with it, I will postpone till next week the tew remaining observations I have to -make upon what the law can do for Ireland. H. M.
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