CHAPTER V

THE SEVEN YEARS' TITHE WAR, 1830-8

"I wish, for the sake of humanity, and for the honour of the Irish character, that the gentlemen of that country would take this matter into their serious consideration. Let them only for a moment place themselves in the situation of the half-famished cotter, surrounded by a wretched family, clamorous for food; and judge what his feelings must be, when he sees the tenth part of the produce of his potato garden exposed at harvest time to public cant; or, if he have given a promissory note for the payment of a certain sum of money, to compensate for such tithe, when it becomes due, to hear the heart-rending cries of his offspring clinging round him, and lamenting for the milk of which they are deprived, by the cows being driven to the pound, to be sold to discharge the debt. Such accounts are not the creation of fancy; the facts do exist, and are but too common in Ireland. Were one of them transferred to canvas by the hand of genius, and exhibited to English humanity, that heart must be callous indeed that could refuse its sympathy. I have seen the cow, the favourite cow, driven away, accompanied by the sighs, the tears, and the imprecations of a whole family, who were paddling after, through wet and dirt, to take their last affectionate farewell of this their only friend and benefactor at the pound gate. I have heard with emotions that I can scarcely describe, deep curses repeated from village to village as the cavalcade proceeded. I have witnessed the group pass the domain walls of the opulent grazier, whose numerous herds were cropping the most luxuriant pastures, whilst he was secure from any demand for the tithe of their food, looking on with the most unfeeling indifference."-EDWARD WAKEFIELD (An Account of Ireland).

BEFORE the English invasion, the Catholics of Ireland supported their Church by voluntary gifts, but after that event an innovation was made in the system, and decrees were passed at the Synods of Cashel and Dublin in 1175 and 1186 respectively, directing the payment of tithes to the clergy. Up to the time of the Reformation, however, these injunctions were only obeyed within the Pale, and in order to give belated effect to the dormant law an Act was passed in 1541 to provide for the extension of the tithe system throughout the country and to secure conformity to it. But this enactment remained likewise a dead letter until the reign of Elizabeth, when with the establishment of the Protestant religion in the island as a State institution, the payment of tithes was for the first time rigidly exacted. The privilege of receiving tithes was at first confined to the Protestant Episcopalians; but on the colonization of Ulster by James I the Presbyterians were admitted to the same right. At the restoration there was a reversion to the original system the Presbyterians were deprived of their tithes and livings, and the monopoly of tithes was left to the Episcopalians.

Soon, however, the Episcopalians and Presbyterian graziers, not deeming the consolations of religion sufficient compensation for the inconvenience of the tax, refused to pay the tithes on pasturage, and the tithe agistment Acts which exempted pasture-lands from the tax were passed in consequence about 1735. This measure led very naturally to the increase of pasture and the accompanying decrease of tillage land, until Parliament wishing to counteract this tendency offered bounties in 1780 for the cultivation of land. In 1785 the Catholics, who like their fellow creatures of the other faith considered the mysteries of the Protestant religion somewhat dear at the price of starvation at home, began to rebel against the tithe system and the hard cunning of the tithe proctors. Their complaint was certainly well founded, more especially in the southern districts, for there the great tithable article was potatoes, a product not tithable in the north, and potatoes were the only food of the people. The injustice of the system was in the eyes of the Ascendency one of its chief recommendations. To gall a Catholic was to prove one's loyalty, and nothing seemed fairer to a churchman than that prayers should be offered up for a heretic's repentance and the Almighty dunned in his behalf at the cost of a Papist dog; and the cost was heavy, for it was borne almost entirely by the ragged Catholic peasantry.1 But this was not heeded by the Irish Church. Her inclination and interest went hand in hand. Catholic Ireland was a sponge to squeeze, and as long as there was any moisture in it, it was her duty before God to have it out.2

The discontent among the Presbyterians of the north was also very bitter, and there is no doubt that one of the chief causes of their adhesion to the cause of the United Irishmen was their hatred of the oppressive and indefensible system of tithe exactions. The discontent in the latter case the Government in

1 J. A. Froude says

"The wealthy Protestant grass farmers ought to have been the first to bear the expense of the Protestant Church. They paid nothing at all. The cost of the Establishment fell, in the south, exclusively on the poorest of the Catholic tenantry. The Munster cottier paid seven pounds a year for his cabin and an acre of potato ground. The landlord took his rent from him in labour, at fivepence or sixpence a day; the tithe farmer took twelve to twenty shillings from him besides, and took in addition from the very peat which he dug from the bog a tithe called in mockery 'smoke money.'

2 The impartial and learned Wakefield wrote in 1812

"Instead of directing our views to Ireland, which might be rendered, not only the store-house, but the best bulwark of Great Britain, the whole policy of the country has been to render its inhabitants inert, to damp their spirit as well as their industry; and while those objects which are calculated to raise them from their torpor or reclaim them from idleness are withheld they are ungenerously reproached for indolence, and punished for being unruly; as if insubordination were not the natural consequence arising from such treatment.

"Of all institutions," says William Paley, "adverse to cultivation, none SO noxious as tithe, not only a tax on industry, but the industry that feeds mankind."

vain attempted to allay by an increase in the grant of the Regium Donum to the Presbyterians in 1803; but the antidote was not administered from a sense of justice, but in order to cripple a damaging opposition; for the Catholics, who stood in need of relief most of all, and whose creed varied far more widely from the Protestant religion than that of the Presbyterians, were sent hungry away. The tithe system in view of the state of the Protestant Church was indeed not only indefensible-no one presumed to defend it upon principle-but tyrannical in the extreme. There were six million Catholics, and only eight hundred thousand Protestant Episcopalians. In order that the very few should have the benefit of a particular and endowed religion, it was made a law of the land that the vast majority should famish. But though buffeted by fortune the Catholics of Ireland did not desert their faith. Evil times made them the stauncher; hardships lent them courage; and, with a constancy that was scarcely human, they clave to their independence and supported their priests when starvation stared them in the face.1

In the parish of Mansfield town in Armagh there were 1,067 inhabitants, of whom 1,063 were Catholics and only four were Anglicans, but the minister was paid two hundred and sixteen pounds a year to preach to these four persons. In the parish of Templebreedan in Emly the minister's income was ninety-three pounds, but there were only two Anglicans out of a population of 1,414, all the rest being Catholics. In the parish of Castletown in Cloyne the minister's income was four hundred and fourteen pounds, the inhabitants numbered 3,296, of whom 17 were Anglicans and all the rest Catholics. In the parish of Clonmult in Cloyne there were 1,196 inhabitants, of whom only one was an Anglican, all the rest being Catholics, but it cost one hundred and seventy-six pounds a year to coax this one sinner into Paradise. Besides the tithe exactions, Church cess also contributed largely to the revenues of the Establishment.2

At length, in 1823, Goulburn's voluntary Composition of Tithe Act was passed. The year before, a measure had been carried which permitted the tithe proprietor to let the tithes on lease to the owner of the land. Goulburn's Bill empowered the Lord1 Sidney Smith wrote

"On an Irish Sabbath morning, the bell of a neat parish church often summons to worship only the parson and an occasionally-conforming clerk, while, two hundred yards off, a thousand Catholics are huddled together in a miserable hovel, and pelted by all the storms of heaven."

2 Lord Althorp said of this impost

"Church cess was a tax imposed for maintaining churches and for meeting the expenses of religious service. In Ireland this rate, though paid by a Catholic population, was under the exclusive management of a Protestant vestry. It was (unlike tithes) an uncertain tax which varied according to the purposes for which it was applied. It might be increased by abuses of management, or it might be diminished by frugality; but in neither case had the Catholic the means of exercising any control over the money so levied upon his property."

Lieutenant, on the application either of the incumbent of a parish, or a certain number of the tithe-paying inhabitants, to summon a special vestry for the purpose of agreeing upon a composition for tithes, on the basis of an average price of corn for the preceding three years. The incumbent was to appoint one commissioner, and the inhabitants another; and the two commissioners, in the event of disagreement, were to nominate an umpire, and the amount of compensation for tithe to be thus determined. The sum, so fixed, was to be apportioned by assessors among the various holdings in each parish which were not tithe-free. Lands which were tithe-free were to continue so; but agistment or pasture land, that had till now been exempt from tithe, was in future to be made liable to the impost. Goulburn's Bill was a permissive one, the composition being purely voluntary. It was a slight step in the right direction, but conferred a benefit on the miserable cottier which was almost inappreciable after a little time. His lot was a dour one.1 He was oppressed by the weight of the tithes and soured by the method of their collection, and his daily struggle with hunger and ferocious desire to live, were a perpetual disgrace to the Established Church. In the summer of 1823 the rector of Castlehaven, in Cork, finding it impossible to obtain his tithes, procured a distress warrant, and ordered his proctor with the help of five special constables to execute it, whilst four mounted men and seven dismounted constables, under the command of a lieutenant, were deputed to assist. The rector had thus obtained the services of an armed force of eighteen men to collect what his Church assured him was his due. They proceeded to seize a few cattle, and commenced to drive them to the rector's premises. But upon this they were surrounded by the country-people, who, exasperated by the injustice of the exaction, attacked them with volleys of stones. The police then fired on their assailants, but as they were unable to break through with their spoil they were forced at length to leave the cattle and to beat a retreat. The skirmish resulted in the proctor and one of the constables being killed and several others of the party being wounded, whilst the peasantry suffered equal loss. Such was the state of affairs in Ireland. Religion, armed with a sword, went about like a destroying angel.2

The success of Goulburn's Bill, although a mere temporary alleviation, was decided. Before the middle of the following February 1,033 applications,-507 from the clergy and 526 from lay impropriators-had been made from different parishes; and

1 The squalor of the peasantry, the filthy condition of the prisons, and other aspects of Irish life are graphically described in Travels in Ireland in the Year 1822, by Thomas Reid.

2 As Sidney Smith said-"There is no cruelty like it in all Europe, in all Asia, in all the discovered parts of Africa, and in all we have ever heard of Timbuctoo."

in 240 cases a basis of agreement had already been found, the parties themselves having arranged the terms of the composition. The year after Goulburn's Bill was passed, Select Committees of both Houses of Parliament were appointed to inquire into the nature of the Irish disturbances, and having collected a vast mass of evidence thought they had done their duty.

Meanwhile a new proselytizing movement had been inaugurated under the name of the "New Reformarion," its object being the defamation of the Catholic creed and the conversion of Catholic peasants from the errors of Popery. It proved to be the immediate source from which the Tithe War shortly afterwards sprang. Tithe owners from a tardy sense of the injustice of the practice had latterly been accustomed to avoid exacting tithe from Catholic priests, but some of the Protestant clergy determined to exact the last penny that was due, and as they applied the proceeds to purposes of proselytizing, grave discontent arose in consequence among the Catholics. The collection of tithe became in some cases almost impossible, and the expense of collecting them greater than the tithes themselves. In 1830 the Catholic parishioners of Graigue refused to pay tithe to MacDonald, the locum tenens and a "new Reformer," and this opposition started the ball rolling afresh. Payment of tithe, where no composition had been arranged, was now frequently resisted, and outrages arising out of this state of affairs became general. On June 18th of the same year occurred the Newtown Barry incident. Some cattle seized for tithe by the Reverend Alexander McClintock were put up for sale under a guard of police; but the mob charged the guard, and 190 of the yeomanry had to be called out, and by the time the affray was at an end twelve of the peasants were shot dead and twenty fatally wounded, the yeomanry escaping with scarcely a scratch. In August the peasants determined to resist the objectionable visits of the process-server at Thurles. The police intervened to support him, and before they could effect their retreat to Thurles with their protégé a number of the peasants had been killed and many wounded, the police themselves escaping scathless. A few weeks later a similar encounter took place at Castle Pollard, in the County Westmeath, where many of the peasants were shot down like partridges, the police as usual escaping unhurt. These were a few instances out of many of the way in which the Protestant clergy collected their tithes, and the agitation was becoming every month more serious.

It is difficult, perhaps, for you to understand, humane and courteous reader, the passions roused by this imposition. Reclining, as we may suppose you, in an easy-chair in some comfortable establishment, with every necessity of life and almost all its pleasures within your reach, it is hard for you, nay, it is