Progress and Conciliation. 1803-1906

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CHAPTER XII** *

Gradual Progress and Conciliation***

1803-1906**

“And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light;

In front, the sun climbs slow, how s]owly,

But westward, look, the land is bright.”

• *Clough.

Whatever its effects on Ireland generally, the Union was a severe blow to Dublin. With the abolition of the native legislature, a stagnation set in. The political battle ground which always attracts the rank, wealth and intellect of a nation, had shifted from College Green to Westminster. The Irish nobility, always prone to become absentees from their own country, found less than ever to interest them at home. With one accord they sold their city mansions to the government, to societies, to manufacturers, to any one who would take them off their hands. Scarcely a dozen Irish peers now reside in or near Dublin.

For a while it seemed as if the capital of a once independent nation were destined to sink into a sleepy, decaying, provincial town. The city had no manufactures to turn to, now that her political influence was gone. The Nationalist party, as it may now be called, was prostrate after its severe defeats. In view of the British naval supremacy after Trafalgar, no help could be hoped for from abroad. The 19th century has seen several conspiracies, but nothing that merits the name of a rebellion.

sackville.gif (14739 bytes)The giant figure, in both senses of the phrase, of Daniel O’Connell, is the first to enter upon this empty stage. Catholic Emancipation was to have been coupled with the Union, but had to be dropped owing to the hostility of King George III. The Catholic masses of Ireland, now beginning to awaken to a sense of their strength and their just rights, resented their exclusion from the privileges of citizenship. (Pictured, left, is Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street) and the O’Connell Monument.

O’Connell, a man of great eloquence and vehement enthusiasm for his faith and his country, became the mouthpiece of this inarticulate discontent. He was soon a popular idol. His forensic skill was used to baffle and defeat the Crown lawyers, to the great delight of the people, who love a battle of wits almost as dearly as an actual physical combat.

A regular contribution called the “Catholic Rent” was made from every parish for the expenses of the movement. Every behest of the “great tribune” was obeyed with a ready alacrity never accorded to the orders of Dublin Castle. O’Connell, though raised to a power and authority which might have turned the head of a lesser man, behaved throughout with a sagacious moderation. Though his enemies watched eagerly for a false step, they could never prove him guilty of any illegal act.

Finally his cause triumphed. The Duke of Wellington, in order, as he said, to avert a civil war, was obliged to make the tardy concession, which should have been made 29 years before in 1801.

Soon after the removal of the Catholic disabilities the close Protestant corporation of the city of Dublin was reformed and its franchise freely extended to the inhabitants generally. In 1841 Daniel O’Connell was elected Lord Mayor and was the first Catholic to hold that office since the days of Tyrconnell.

After his first triumph the “Liberator,” as he was popularly known, set himself to procure the repeal of the Union. He was greatly helped in his propaganda by a knot of brilliant writers, known as the “Young Ireland” group. Their journal, the *Nation, *in which appeared the vehement poems of Thomas Davis, the Tyrtaeus of the party, had an effect akin to that of the famous Drapier Letters.

O’Connell was eventually undone by his allies. They went lengths and advocated measures, to which he, who had seen popular fury let loose in Paris during the Revolution, was utterly averse. The severance came in 1843. A great mass meeting, one of those huge assemblages, which O’Connell’s oratory was wont to sway just as a breeze ruffles and bends to its will a field of standing corn, was to have assembled at Clontarf, the Dublin suburb, where Celtic Ireland won its greatest victory.

The long - pending choice between constitutionalism and armed force was to have been finally made on that historic spot. But the government forbade the meeting altogether. “Young Ireland” wished to accept the challenge, but the old leader, moderate to the last, declined. His influence waned from that moment. A few years later he died half forgotten and but little regretted.

The young men, from whom he had seceded, made their essay at revolution in 1848. It was a hopeless, not to say ridiculous, failure.

For the next 18 years Dublin was peaceful and progressive. The effects of the great famine, however, which had desolated rural Ireland, were felt in the shape of a terrible epidemic of cholera, originally produced by the nettles, docks, and other garbage eaten by the starving country people. In 1849, while the pestilence was still raging in the city, Queen Victoria, with a courage truly queenly, paid her first visit to her Irish dominions. She was well received in Dublin and declared herself delighted with the island and its inhabitants. By this journey and that of her predecessor George IV., the stigma of royal neglect was taken from Ireland. From then till now monarchs and princes of the blood have frequently crossed the Irish Sea, though, perhaps, not often enough even yet.

Taking example from the great London Exhibition of 1851, Dublin devoted herself, with considerable success, to the organisation of similar displays. The Irishman makes a good entertainer and a genial host. Although the extravagant hopes once cherished of a general millennium to be produced by huge collocations of art and industry were nowhere realised, yet the particular towns, where these exhibitions were held, felt a quickening impulse thereby. The Irish National Gallery is the fruit of the exertions made on such an occasion.

Without any serious provocation disturbances again began to rise in 1866. A conspiracy for armed insurrection, which took its rise in foreign countries, slowly penetrated to Ireland. There were many Irish soldiers on both sides during the American Civil War. When the Southern States were finally defeated, most of these men were eager to use their military experience on behalf of their native country. Irishmen at home were mostly disinclined to such a course, but it is a remarkable fact that the Irish exile is always more extremist than his brother, who has not crossed the sea.

The plans of the Fenians, as they were called, were well-laid. Their emissaries had entered the government services and tampered with the fidelity of the men. The police was suspected by the authorities, the army was so tinged with principles of rebellion that regiments had to be hastily sent out of the country, and even the prison warders neglected their duties and permitted persons in their custody to escape.

The Fenian chief, Stephens, was arrested and lodged in Richmond Gaol, but was soon at large again, owing, undoubtedly, to the connivance of officials. But in the field little was effected. At Tallaght, beyond Terenure, in County Dublin, a large, irregular mob marched to attack a constabulary barracks, but was dispersed after receiving a deadly volley in a narrow roadway from the rifles of a mere handful of police.

In 1869 the Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland was disestablished, though its continued support by the State was one of the conditions of the Union. Still it was manifestly unfair to tax the whole country for the maintenance of the church of a minority. After the severance of the tie which bound it to government, it entrusted itself confidently to the devotion of its congregations, with the result that it has never been so strong and popular as it is now.

After the Fenian rising there was again peace for a quarter of a century until the Land War broke out in 1881. The interval was marked by considerable civic progress. In 1868 the problem of the water supply was solved. An aqueduct over 20 miles in length was constructed from the heart of the Wicklow mountains into the city. Along it ran a plentiful stream of pure, soft water, furnished by a distant river and reservoir called Vartry.

In 1872** **a step was taken, which has had a remarkable effect on the old town. The first tramline was laid from Nelson’s Pillar to Rathmines. In time the present suburban network grew all round Dublin. The middle classes left the heart of the city, where they had long lived, and went to dwell in the outskirts amid brighter and more airy surroundings. The exodus had hitherto been confined to the wealthy, who had carriages to take them to and from their business. But the tram is everybody’s carriage.

The fine streets of the central districts have now been, for the most part, abandoned to the poorer grades of artisans and labourers, whose scanty wages cannot even afford tramfares. The old houses are so neglected by their landlords and suffer such hard usage from their occupiers that few of them will last another 50 years.

The Royal University of Ireland was set up in Dublin in 1879. It was not intended to rival or supplant Trinity College, but to furnish education for those who, from conscientious scruples or for pecuniary reasons, could not avail themselves of the older foundation. On account of the difficulties inevitable in the case of a teaching and residential university in the midst of a people still sharply divided by politics, religion and race, the functions of the new body were limited to the examination of students and the conferring of degrees. The Royal University, though obviously but a makeshift, has proved successful in its own sphere. It has certainly extended education to thousands, whom Trinity would never have reached. In 1880 S. Stephen’s Green, one of the prettiest little parks in the United Kingdom, was laid out at considerable expense and opened in its present form. The munificent donor was Lord Ardilaun, a member of that generous Guinness family, which never seems to “weary in well-doing.”

In the following year the fiery cross went round once more. The strife was now centred in the land. The relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland, never very amicable, became more strained than ever. There was dragooning and eviction on one side, and murder and boycotting on the other. The problem of land tenure was difficult, but certainly not insoluble by ordinary constitutional methods. To all appearances it has just been settled by a great scheme for purchase by the tenants, assisted by a loan from Imperial funds.

But Irishmen, unfortunately, have not the happy English genius for compromise. Neither party will yield an inch. There is always a call for force, a tendency to rush into extreme measures on both sides. The Parliamentary Nationalists, the Fenians of America, the discontented peasantry were joined together by Parnell in a close alliance against the landlords and the government.

Dublin, though, as a city, she was little interested in this peasants’ question, was Nationalist enough to take the popular side. There were riots in the capital on the arrest of Irish members. But the worst incident of these troubled times was the cold-blooded and deliberate assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish, Chief Secretary, and Thomas Burke, Under Secretary, in the Phoenix Park on the 6th May 1882. Burke, as the actual, though not the nominal, head of the Irish administration for many years, had long been marked out for vengeance, but Cavendish was an Englishman newly arrived in Ireland. The crime was the work of the physical force extremists, who conducted their operations from America.

The official Nationalist party, though it hastened to disassociate itself from the plotters of such an outrage, was undoubtedly discredited for the time. The Land League was put down by the authorities with a strong hand, and the movement had apparently failed for the moment. But, under the leadership of Parnell, a man of strong character and great ability, it soon recovered.

By skilfully using his compact phalanx of 80 members to harass and obstruct the business of the Empire, and to make and unmake British Ministries, he succeeded in gaining considerable concessions in the way of land legislation; and, indeed, all but won self-government, or Home Rule. Mr Gladstone had introduced one bill to repeal the Union. It had been defeated, but he was .known to be ready to bring in another when occasion should offer.

When things were at this pass, Parnell suddenly fell. The proud and fierce, yet taciturn leader, whom even his colleagues feared rather than loved, had one weak side, which proved his undoing. He had, it appeared, been guilty of a *liaison *with a married woman. Divorce Court proceedings ensued, and his secret fault was soon revealed to the whole world.

He was at once disowned by his English allies and most of his Irish followers. A scanty remnant still clung to the fallen politician, who fought on in a hopeless endeavour to overcome the forces now arrayed against him. He was insulted, and even mobbed in places where he had once been an idol. After a few months of bitter contention, Parnell sank into the grave, a broken-hearted man.

He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, where annual pilgrimages are still made to his place of interment. There are few stories in history so tragic as that of the swift and unexpected overthrow of the “uncrowned King of Ireland.”

Since that day there has been a peace in Ireland, which may, as most of us hope, be due to an increasing tolerance and a growing spirit of conciliation among all classes. Yet it may be but a period of exhaustion, of slow recuperation until some other great spasm of the body politic shall supervene.

There are signs of improvement, however, though one has to survey the centuries to gain the true perspective. The turbulence of 1882 is not likely to be repeated. The Fenians of 1866 could not arouse the people as the United Irishmen did in 1798. Cromwell, Mountjoy, Phelim O’Neill seem like a long past nightmare of blood and horror. The clouds gather sometimes and obscure the dawn. but behind them the sun is still slowly rising. Each successive paroxysm of Ireland is so much milder than the last that there is some ground for hoping that they will soon cease altogether.

Meanwhile, the city has pursued its path of improvement. in 1890**, the splendid Museum and Library in Kildare Street were opened. In 1900, **the suburbs on every side except the south were incorporated with Dublin for municipal purposes. The action of the late Queen, when, in the last year of her life, she crossed the Irish Sea to pay a compliment to the gallantry of her Irish troops, not the least distinguished of whom were the Dublin Fusiliers, the city regiment, touched a chord in the hearts of the people.

King Edward has twice visited Dublin since his accession. His unequalled tact and diplomacy has made a whole half-hostile nation his warm admirers. His Majesty is well-known to entertain a kindly feeling for both the country and the people. While his genius for producing peace and concord exerts its influence over his Ministers and his subjects on both sides of the channel, the ancient quarrel begun near 800 years ago by Strongbow may yet be reconciled.

Then the old city on the Liffey, which has been successively a Danish stronghold, an English outpost, an Anglo-Irish capital, and a disaffected Irish subject town, may settle down into its true position as the centre and heart of not the least among the great confederation of free and prosperous nations, which compose the British Empire.

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