piers, but the owners themselves. Landlords, gradually becoming more and more impoverished during a course of years, had, in a multitude of instances, heavily charged their estates. In many cases their own excesses of expenditure were to blame, but in some this course of action was dictated by a natural solicitude for the maintenance of their families; and, as the value of their land had been increasing for a long time, these encumbrances could not always be deemed an evidence of extravagance. The great famine, however, which had just desolated the land, had ruined these men in hundreds, their rentals having diminished one-half, whilst their debts were often swollen in proportion. Moreover, the process of selling encumbered estates in Ireland had always been tedious and costly in the extreme; indeed, this was one of the reasons why so many encumbered estates existed, and this difficulty at such a time rendered their condition all the more embarrassed. Before a final settlement could be arrived at between landlord and creditor by means of a sale, the various encumbrances and other interests had to be dealt with. Mortgagees indeed might obtain a decree for sale in the Court of Chancery, but the laborious and ruinous process of working it out often rendered it worse than useless. Thus a large part of the Irish land was practically unsaleable. In view of this sufflamination of procedure the Government, at Peel's instigation, proposed to throw these burdened lands in a mass upon the market, and thus to transfer them bodily to a new race of owners, more fitted, in their opinion, to discharge the responsible duties of property.

With this intent an Act was passed on July 28, 1849, which was described by Sugden,' the great equity lawyer, as a measure "removing from property the wise safeguards which the Habeas Corpus Act had secured for persons." By the time it had come into play hundreds of encumbered estates had passed into the power of the Court of Chancery, which was the only tribunal through which they could be sold, although the process was insufferably slow and costly. The new measure created a Court for the special purpose of selling out embarrassed landlords. Under the terms of the Act every creditor, except the petitioner who was forcing the sale, and even the latter if he obtained the leave of the Court, was at liberty to bid for and become the possessor of a property, with an absolutely indefeasible title. The purchaser bought from the Government, and at the invitation of the Government, the complete and absolute ownership of

Lord Chancel

1 Edward Burtenshaw Sugden, Baron St. Leonards (1781-1875). lor of Ireland in Peel's first administration, and again in Peel's second administration. In 1852 he was appointed Lord Chancellor of England on Lord Derby's accession to power. He was the author of the celebrated remark on Brougham's appointment to the Woolsack.

the estate, discharged from all claims except those recorded in the deed of conveyance, and subject only to the existing contracts under which the tenants had rented it. Any permanent or other improvements on the land were specifically mentioned in the printed advertisements that were issued by the Land Court, and sold out and out to the purchaser under the direct sanction of Parliament by a judge appointed for the purpose. In fact, the improvements upon which tenants had expended their labour, exhausted their savings, and founded their expectations of future remuneration were confiscated in order to soothe the itching palms of a pack of usurers, who took as much interest in the welfare of the Irish people as a man feels in that of the maggots that run upon his cheese. The purchaser, moreover, was given the full legal right of determining the existing yearly tenancies, and as the tenants were as a rule unprotected by lease, and the law under which the estates were sold contained no recognition of their right to their own improvements, the rents were raised on some of those estates which actually derived the greater part of their value from recent tenants' improvements.

The result of the Act proceeded as surely as a law of Nature. Lands with rentals in the aggregate of hundreds of thousands a year were suddenly thrown upon the market; and estates, valued a few years before at more than twenty years' purchase, sold for half or even a third of that amount. Thousands of creditors, who in a sudden panic had called in their demands, lost debts at one time perfectly secure, and time-honoured families, whose estates were not encumbered to much more than half their value, were sold out and reduced to beggary; whilst the grasping incumbrancers escaped all participation in the effects of the great famine, and forgot their duty to humanity in ministering to the relief of greed.1

The malignancy of the Act was aggravated by the fact that the occupying tenants on the majority of these estates had improved their farms, and in this way had become morally entitled to concurrent rights in them; for these rights, sometimes amounting to joint ownership, were ruthlessly destroyed by the abovementioned provision which released purchasers from all such and similar claims. In fact, estates upon which the custom of tenantright prevailed were sold to purchasers who actually bought them with the intention of robbing the tenants of that right, and who were thus enabled, in view of a future increased rent, to outbid competitors who would have refrained from violating it. After a certain period of depression had elapsed, the price of land recovered itself, but the Encumbered Estates Act was renewed, and between the years 1850 and 1901 about one-sixth 1 Appendix LIIB, quotations from Gerald Fitzgibbon and John Stuart Mill,

part of the soil of Ireland was transferred under the provisions of the law. Between October 1849 and August 1857 the number of purchasers or new landlords amounted to 7,489, of which 7,180 were natives of Ireland, and 309 Englishmen, Scotchmen, or foreigners. The total sum realized by these sales amounted to £20,475,956, of which £17,639,731 was Irish capital. Thus nine-tenths of the estates that were sold fell, contrary to the hopes and expectations of the Government, into the hands of impecunious Irishmen, some of whom bought cheap in order to sell again at a profit, and thus became jobbers in land of the worst type; but most of the vendees retained their possessions, and, having usually borrowed half the purchase money, raised the rents in order to meet the accruing interest.

In this way was brought about, through the injudicious nursing of the rulers of Ireland, a palingenesis of the almost extinct race of middlemen, the curse of eighteenth century Ireland. In fact, the majority of the cases of harsh eviction, rack-renting, and other unjustifiable conduct in the treatment of the Irish cottier during the next forty years may be traced to this brood, -the creation of the Encumbered Estates Act. In such manner did the boasted measure, which was hailed at the time by its advocates as the panacea of every Irish distemper, pave the way for a new land question. The rulers of Ireland had tried to solve the Irish land difficulty by a policy of evasion, which was not inconsistent with the obliquity of their previous Irish rule, and was most damaging to their character for statesmanship-a policy that was partly due to an exhausted and shallow political intelligence, which is capable only of spreading itself over a portion of the surface of things, and ignores principles, for the reason that its shifting view can embrace but a few landmarks at a time, and in part also to that squinting mental vision which sees in the methods of the charlatan the only instruments of cure.1

That what was good enough for Ireland was considered much too bad to cross the Channel, is proved by the fact that when the proposal was brought forward in Parliament to apply the measure to England, there was such an outcry against it, as a revolutionary and dangerous scheme, that it had to be dropped with as little apology as possible. He had to be a bold man indeed who could venture to suppose that what was meat for one portion of the kingdom might be wholesome for another.

1 Appendix LIIc, quotation from Isaac Butt.

CHAPTER X

REVOLUTIONARY AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL EFFORTS TO OBTAIN THE SEVERANCE OF IRELAND FROM GREAT BRITAIN,-EMMET, SMITH O'BRIEN, AND FENIANISM UP TO 1867

"Let us reunite ourselves with our better mind and with the world through science; and let it be one of our angelic revenges on the Philistines, who among other sins are the guilty authors of Fenianism, to found at Oxford a chair of Celtic, and to send, through the gentle ministration of science, a message of peace to Ireland." -MATTHEW ARNOLD (Study of Celtic Literature).

"An American by birth, I love liberty; an Irishman by descent, I hate oppression; and if I were in Ireland I should be a Fenian."-PHILIP SHERIDAN, the celebrated American General.

IRELAND, without a doubt, was a wicked and ungrateful country. After a careful study of the best opinion entertained by her rulers, the author has reluctantly arrived at this inevitable conclusion. Rocked in the lap of indulgence as perhaps it has fallen to the lot of no other nation to be; humoured and petted by a long succession of capable governors sent out to rule and soothe her; watched over with affecting solicitude by the Imperial Parliament at Westminster, what a load of ingratitude must have weighed upon her conscience when she remembered the perversity of her conduct towards her benefactors! For what, after all, were the grievances that justified, or even palliated this churlish obduracy of spirit, this hardened indifference to the conciliatory overtures of affectionate masters? It was no argument to urge that her whole history had been one long catalogue of oppression, for was she not oppressed by her best friends, by those who ardently loved her, who anxiously laboured for her welfare, or at least affirmed they did? The Irish peasant groaned and staggered under his intolerable burden. Hope for him in this world there was none; his children might die in a ditch; he himself might famish; his life might be one continual, desperate battle for bare existence; but how could he, of all people, have the forehead to complain, zealously cared for as he was by a just, self-sacrificing landlord, who by every argument that could be advanced by the Ascendency was proved to be acting, if not within his moral, at least within his legal rights? The entire population might languish, the greater part of the country wear the aspect of a desert, the whole nation seethe with discon

tent-a discontent bred of disease and want, of national aims frustrated, and national demands refused-but who would be so bold as to lay the blame of all the evil consequences at the door of the rulers of Ireland, when the Government of those rulers was professedly founded upon the doctrines of the Christian religion? The author feels that an apology is due for thus trying to prove what is already a demonstration; but any man unacquainted with Ireland, through having omitted to make himself familiar with that best opinion to which reference has been made, might be puzzled by the eternal cry of Irish distress. He might be led very naturally to suppose that there must be some false joint in the family harness; that so evilly-disposed a daughter, that such a prodigy of iniquity, that such an adept in crime, must have been subjected to very crooked schooling at the hands of her mother; that, in fact, the parent was not wholly irresponsible for the unparalleled depravity of the child.

On March 13, 1801, Castlereagh,1 in view of the troubled state of Ireland, moved the renewal of the Insurrection Act passed by the Irish Parliament in 1796. This Bill empowered the Lord-Lieutenant to proclaim any disturbed country, whereupon all persons outside their houses after a fixed hour might be arrested. Houses also might be visited at night and searched for arms, and all members of the household found absent might be hunted down, seized, and sent on board the fleet for compulsory service or transportation. Castlereagh also introduced a Bill about the same time for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus in Ireland, and succeeded in carrying both these measures. On the 12th of July of the following year a serious riot took place in Dublin on the occasion of the anniversary of the battle of Aughrim. The statue of King William had been decorated for the occasion, and Protestant enthusiasm was rampant. The result might have been foreseen. Having shown the mettle they were made of in 1798, the yeomanry were determined not to throw away their reputation, and conducted themselves while parading round the statue with such soldierly marks of contumely towards the Catholics, that the populace was provoked to fury and retaliation.

In 1803 the rebellion of Robert Emmet 2 occurred. The leader of the rising was a young enthusiast of twenty-four, and a brother of Thomas Addis Emmet, and had had, so it was rumoured, an interview with Buonaparte, in which he proposed to stir up a fresh insurrection in Ireland, which in turn was to be assisted by an armed descent from France. He was aided by the counsels of Miles Byrne, and fluctuated between the policy of extreme temerity and that of excessive caution, and the great 1 Robert Stewart, second Marquis of Londonderry (1769-1822). 2 Robert Emmet (1778-1803). He was the youngest son of the family.