Ireland before and after the Union.

Chapter IX.

1806.

**Ireland after the Union - Insincerity of the English Government

• Disappointment of the Catholics - New Enlistment of the Protestant Garrison - Obliteration of all traces of Union among Irishmen - Elements of strife - Operation of the Franchise of ‘93 - Progress of the Power of the Catholics - Effect of the Penal Laws in driving them to Industrial Pursuits - Effects of Placehunting in crushing the spirit of the Protestants - The Clare Election - Surrender of the Duke of Wellington - Zenith of Catholic Power - Social Changes observable in 1806 - Dublin Society before the Union - Change in Feeling between the Classes - Settlement at Lyons - Traces of the Condition of Irish Society visible there - Loyal Invasion and Robbery of my House during my Absence - Kindness of Lord Hardwicke - A Hint of what I was to expect from the Powers that were - Lord Redesdale’s Refusal to grant me the Commission of the Peace - Letters; from Mr. Borne, Lord Redesdale, and Myself - Intervention of Lord Hardwicke - Submission of the Chancellor - Letters from him and Mr. Burne - Accession of “all the Talents” - The Magistracy, and their Mode of doing Business - Ancient and Discreet Constables - Their Protestant Qualification - An Embarrassing Inquiry - Care taken of the King’s Windfalls - Kenny’s Case - The Dublin Police - Affair at Saggard - Working out of the Policy of Discord and Corruption.**

The Ireland to which I returned at the end of the year 1805, was, in many respects, so different from the country I had left in 1797, that I must again pause in my personal narrative, to reflect upon the nature of the changes that had taken place. I have already sketched the outlines of the national course from 1782 to the date of the Union, and have marked the steps of the downward progress of Ireland, during those 18 years, from legislative freedom to political annihilation. The legislature was enfranchised only that its members might be enabled to sell their country. The rotten borough system was preserved, and the Catholics were endowed with the forty-shilling franchise, in order to make that sale practicable. A united national resistance was rendered impossible, by the skilful introduction of religious discord among the people; and the bargain was completed by a profuse exchange of English gold, for the power of governing a nation, humiliated, dissatisfied, and so broken in spirit, and destitute of self-reliance, as to be, of necessity, a galling burden upon the shoulders of the purchaser.

The Union was scarcely accomplished when the English government began to exhibit very plain indications of the insincerity of the professions, by the use of which they had managed to carry it. The further relaxation of the penal laws against Catholics was indefinitely postponed. The stipend which the clergy expected was not forthcoming. The Catholics, accordingly, both lay and clerical, became deeply and dangerously disaffected to the new regime. The Catholics had been bought over by promises to lend their weight to crush the Protestant opposition to the Union. Protestant help to bear down Catholic disaffection, was now bought with a more substantial consideration - the country was delivered up to the will of the Protestant yeomanry, who, drilled, and armed, and paid by the state, were taught that they were a garrison entrusted with the keeping of Ireland for England; and that the foes, against whom it was their especial duty to hold out to the death, were their fellowcountrymen. In the teaching of this doctrine no pains were spared: it was preached from the pulpit, declared from the bench of justice, talked over in the Castle waiting-room, and made the subject of a course of mutual instruction in the Orange lodges, which were founded and fostered by government officials and hangers-on, of every grade. All traces of that union among Irishmen, which had been begun by the Volunteers at Dungannon, and attempted to be permanently cemented by the United Irish leaders, were, of course, speedily effaced from society, and in their stead were only to be seen in the two factions, the reopened wounds of ‘98, festering under the irritating treatment of the common enemy of both.

The unfortunate outbreak of Emmett in 1803, materially aided the English government in carrying out their policy of division, and its suppression left the Irish people split into two factions, the fierceness of whose mutual animosity has, perhaps, never been equalled within a Christian community. On the one side were the masses of the Catholic population, with the few Protestants whose liberality outlived the shocks of the rebellion and Union, and withstood the blandishments of the Castle; on the other, the bulk of the Protestants, supported and stimulated by all the influence that a thoroughly corrupt and unscrupulous government could exercise. The elements of strife were threefold - the spirit of the unnatural quarrel was compounded of the hatred of race, the hatred of religious opinion, and the hatred of a property dispute. The one party justified its oppressions as being events in a war against barbarians, idolaters, and outlaws; the other felt its vengeance to be sanctified by being directed against foreigners, heretics, and robbers. In such a conflict there was, of course, little quarter.

The government hung peasants in the name of the law, and followed with vexatious persecutions, against which no legal protection could be obtained, all those who opposed or attempted to moderate that exercise of their power. The peasants shot down government officers and government men whenever and wherever they could take them at an advantage.

Meanwhile the power given to the oppressed together with the forty-shilling franchise, was entering upon a course of growth which, in 29 years from the Union, became so formidable as to overcome the will of the most despotic minister of his age, backed, though he was, by the prejudices of the entire English nation. The forty-shilling Catholic freeholders, who had been called into existence for the purpose of dividing and baffling Irish parliamentary reformers, who had been used by the Irish aristocracy to magnify their own power and importance, who had constituted the matter of traffic in that gigantic market of corruption which had been established within the fabric of the constitution of ‘82; those same forty-shilling freeholders, in 1829, forced the Duke of Wellington to confess that he feared to engage with them in civil conflict, and so fearing, he capitulated almost at discretion to their leaders.

In that capitulation the interests of the fighting men were neglected, as is often the case - the forty-shilling freeholders were disbanded by beat of drum, and having been, like the soldiers of former times, called away from the tranquil pursuits of industry to fight the battles of others, they were dismissed without provision for their maintenance, after the course of their service had, in a great degree, rendered them unfit to support themselves. A more impolitic and reckless act of selfishness never was perpetrated, than the enfranchisement, in 1793, of the lower classes of the Irish Catholics - that knocking from the limbs of the serfs of so much of their fetters as to leave them at liberty to work for the profit of their Protestant masters.

A more cruel deed of ingratitude never was done than the sudden disfranchisement of the same serf-class, when they had finished the work of their Catholic leaders, and, in the course of doing it, had incurrred the hostility of those upon whose soil they were bound by the fatal facility of the potato-crop. I have already adverted to this subject; but as a historical lesson, supplying in all its parts a warning against political dishonesty and selfishness, its interest can never be exhausted.

The gradations by which the power of the Irish Catholics arrived at the height it attained in 1829, are worthy of notice. The foundation and the main props of the structure were certainly laid in the donation of the electoral privilege to the very lowest class of the Catholic population; but it was also greatly strengthened by other incidents. One of these was the rapid increase of wealth among the middle and upper classes of the same creed, which accrued as a sort of indirect result of the penal laws. By preventing Catholics from holding real property, those statutes had forced such of the more intelligent and better educated among them as had no inclination to enter into the military service of foreign countries, to engage in trade and mechanical pursuits at home.

Placehunting was then, happily for them, a forbidden pursuit. Upon that manor the Protestants, long after the Union, permitted no poaching. The consequence was, that while the professors of the state religion filled all places of profit and honour, from the highest to the lowest, the believers in the proscribed creed were acquiring wealth in trade, and by the practice of such of the professions as were open to them; and were taking advantage of the peculiar state of the Irish law in reference to judgment debts, to invest their savings in liens upon the land. The former thus naturally fell into those habits of combined subserviency and insolence, which always characterise a bureaucracy - they considered themselves, as a party, to be possessed of an hereditary right to the profits and privileges of domination, while, with the decline of their actual political power, they gradually lost that spirit of bold independence which was the Protestantism of the Volunteers of Dungannon.

They became grovelling worshippers of the Castle; but they whined, and murmured, and sometimes even threatened before the shrine, if a stray beam of the favour of their divinity was seen to fall upon a worshipper of the outer court. While such training as this was working out its proper effects, enfeebling, denationalising, and even (for placehunting is not a profitable calling) impoverishing the Protestants, the Catholics, on the other hand, were becoming vigorous under the stimulating discipline of persecution: the wealth and professional and commercial standing many of them had obtained, made them all the more anxious to attain to a social position of equality with their oppressors.

Their Committees and associations became filled with rich merchants and loud-voiced lawyers, who, having no favours to expect from the government, hurled a noisy defiance against it. The clamour pleased the people; the clergy joined in it; the movement became by degrees more and more real, until, at length, it carried Mr. O’Connell to the doors of the House of Commons, at the Clare election in 1828. It was then the Duke of Wellington beat his *chamade, *and Catholic relief having been yielded grudgingly and with a bad grace, yet upon terms much worse than might have been obtained for England and the Irish Protestants, a new phase of Irish society began to exhibit itself, the character and progress of which I shall probably have another opportunity of considering.

The social changes observable by one who returned to live in Ireland in 1806, after an eight years’ absence, were not less remarkable than those political mutations to which I have just now referred. Dublin in 1797 was, perhaps, one of the most agreeable places of residence in Europe. There were no conveniences belonging to a capital, in those days, which it did not possess. Society in the upper classes was as brilliant and polished as that of Paris in its best days, while social intercourse was conducted with a conviviality that could not be equalled in France, and which, though not always strictly in accordance with modern notions of temperance, seldom degenerated into coarseness.

All persons of a certain condition were acquainted with each other, and were in the habit of meeting together in social circles both private and public. Thus a pleasant familiarity grew up; but was prevented from passing into contempt by the punctilious habits of personal respect belonging to the time. It is true there was a duel now and then, as the *sequela *of a ball or assembly; but not more frequently than in other countries at the time, and it was conducted in a gallant manner, the adversaries being no worse friends after it was over. The public sympathy also generally went with the party in the right and thus this exercise of the *jus privatum *(which, however, I do not mean formally to defend) had the effect, in the upper ranks of Irish society, of heightening the polish of its members, and establishing well-defined lines of demarcation between ease and licence.

Among the lower classes, the extreme destitution of latter years was, speaking generally, unknown. The rural population was decidedly in a more prosperous state than it has ever since been in; and although the weavers of Dublin, like the weavers of Spitalfields, were frequently the objects of public charity, still it needs but to look at the ruins of the “Liberty” to be convinced that the manufacturing population who built and dwelt in the houses still existing there, though now in a state of dilapidation, must have been very superior in wealth and numbers to any similar class at present existing in Ireland.

There was another strongly-marked difference between the before and after of the Union, which is worthy of notice, and which forcibly attracted my attention upon my return. I had known the existence of a kindly feeling between the upper and lower classes of society; but I then found, in its place, the bitterest hatred. At the former period, there were, indeed, unpopular lords and squires, but there were, also, men of the highest rank, and many of them, who were the idols of the people. The divisions then existing were divisions of political parties, men of all ranks being arrayed upon both sides: after the Union, the lower Class were pitted against the upper, and the appearance upon the side of the former of a partisan of noble or gentle rank, was looked upon as a sort of wonder. For a lord or squire then to be popular was a rare exception. This could not but seem strange to me, who remembered the splendour with which the magnates were wont to exhibit themselves to the citizens of Dublin, and the manifest enjoyment afforded by the spectacle to the latter.

It was the custom, on Sundays, for all the great folk to rendezvous, in the afternoon, upon the North Circular Road, just as, in latter times, the fashionables of London did in Hyde Park; and upon that magnificent drive, I have frequently seen three or four coaches-and-six, and eight or ten coaches-and-four, passing slowly to and fro in a long procession of other carriages, and between a double column of well-mounted horsemen. Of course, the populace were there, too, and saluted with friendly greetings, always cordially and kindly acknowledged, the lords and gentlemen of the country party, who were neither few in number nor insignificant in station. The fact that those Sunday exhibitions were countenanced at all, may possibly move some devout moderns to thankfulness for the shadowy passage of those days of vanity; and such feelings will, no doubt, be much strengthened when I mention, that the evenings of those Sunday mornings were commonly passed by the same parties in promenading at the Rotunda. I have frequently seen there, of a Sunday evening, a third of the members of the two houses of parliament. Nevertheless, I must characterise those days as days of kindliness, and good feeling, and national happiness, when compared with those which have succeeded them.

Directly upon my return to Ireland I settled myself at Lyons, where I afterwards constantly resided, and endeavoured to discharge the duties of my station during a period of more than 30 years. The condition of affairs which I have just been describing, was then in the height of its first stage, and I had abundant illustrations of its progress at once presented to me the traces of one of these were, indeed, visible in my own house.

During my absence in Italy, in 1803, a Mr. C ---, a tenant of my own, a gentleman boiling over with Protestantism and loyalty, and desire to show the Castle that he was filled with a proper zeal in the cause, took it into his head that to insult one whom the government had delighted to persecute, would be a suitable mode of advancing his object. He, accordingly, pretended that he had information, as a magistrate, to the effect that some of Emmett’s wounded rebels, and a quantity of arms, were concealed in Lyons House; and thither he proceeded, at the head of a large military force, to make searches.

The house was, at the time, in the hands of workmen, and every room open except the library, which he forced, and (he or his followers) robbed of a quantity of papers, three or four fowling-pieces, some curious ancient armour, and a silver tea-urn, that happened to be too large to fit in the plate presses. Not satisfied with this booty, the heat of Mr. C---‘s enthusiasm led him to desire to taste my wine, and he ordered the cellar to be broken open, which would have been done had not the commanding officer interfered, and declared that he would not be a party to such an outrage, for which it was obvious there could be no excuse. This gentleman (Colonel Coleman, of the Guards, afterwards Serjeant-at-Arms of the House of Commons), upon being pressed to do what was called his duty, absolutely refused, but placed his seal upon the cellar door, which I found there, unbroken, upon my return two years afterwards.

Lord Hardwicke was, at the time, Lord Lieutenant, and to him I proceeded with my complaint, and with a request that he would send some person to be present at the opening of the wine-cellar, in order to test the correctness of Mr. C---‘s information. This his Excellency, in the kindest manner, refused to do, declaring that he would receive no report of the search but from myself. I did not, however, obtain the restitution of my stolen goods, nor any other redress except Lord Hardwick’s fair words. Indeed, in those days, I doubt much if his Excellency would have thought it prudent to have made known his sympathy when it ran in any degree counter to the ebullition of Protestant zeal, and I am quite certain that in the existing state of the tribunals of law, it would have been a wild-goose chase to have attempted to obtain a legal remedy for my wrong.

This affair was but an outbreak of violence against a person known to be friendly to the popular cause, perpetrated by a squireen in pursuit of Castle favour. It was, nevertheless, a type of the justice which was then administered throughout the country by that class, and illustrates the general tone of their feelings towards the government and the people. Before I had been many weeks at home, however, another hint was given to me, from a very different quarter, as to what measure of favour I was to expect from the powers that then were. I had returned to my home full of the idea of devoting the remainder of my life to the quiet discharge of my duty as a country gentleman. I had personally suffered much from being the subject of the suspicions of an unscrupulous ministry, and I was well aware that Ireland was not then in a state to be served by political agitation.

At this day it has been made evident, by the publication of the Castlereagh correspondence, that ministers then knew that no sustainable charge, not even a sustainable suspicion, lay against my character as a good subject and citizen. I had further just given a pledge of my peaceful intentions, by expending a large sum in building additions to my house, and I had eagerly set to work as an agricultural improver.

Under such circumstances, I trust it will not be thought presumptuous in me to have fancied, that neither my personal character and position, nor a due regard to the welfare of the country, required that persecutions, which I was willing to forget, should, after a lapse of five years, be renewed by one of the two persons who had the best possible reasons for knowing they never were justifiable.

Lord Redesdale, who was at this time Lord Chancellor of Ireland, had been Solicitor-General, and afterwards Attorney-General of England at the time of my arrest, and during my imprisonment in the Tower; and that he had neither forgotten any portion of his official enmity towards me, nor was willing to learn anything of my real character, will be evident upon a perusal of the following correspondence. It was preceded by an intimation given to Lord Redesdale’s secretary, by my friend Mr. John Burne (then a King’s counsel, and a most respectable Chancery barrister), to the effect that I would be willing to accept the commission of the peace:- *

John Burne, Esq., to Lord Redesdale.

“*My Lord - Not having received any answer to a note which I sent to Mr. Dwyer, some time since, I take the liberty of troubling your Lordship with a few lines on the same subject. Lord Cloncurry, who has lately returned to Ireland, informs me that in those parts of the counties of Kildare and Dublin in which his estates are situate, there are at present, from various causes, very few resident magistrates. He, therefore, thinks by his becoming a magistrate he could be useful to the country. But though I have reason to know that he entertains a very high respect for your Lordship’s character, yet not having the honour of a personal acquaintance, delicacy has prevented him from addressing your Lordship on the subject; and he has requested that I should apply on his behalf. Permit me to assure your Lordship, that I should not interfere were I not convinced that person is more anxious, and few are more interested, than Lord Cloncurry, to preserve the peace and good order of the country.” *

Lord Redesdale to John Burne, Esq.*

Ardrinn, January 16,1806.

“Sir - I have felt great difficulty in determining what it was proper for me to do with respect to your letter of the 13th instant, and I have, therefore, delayed returning any answer to it. The application, as well as the communications to me through my secretary, are in a form so different from that in which applications to insert the names of gentlemen in the commissions of the peace are commonly made, that if the person on whose behalf you have applied had been wholly unknown to me, I should have thought the mode of application a sufficient reason for declining to comply with it.

But having long held the office of Solicitor-Gcneral, and afterwards of Attorney-General, in England, where my duty, as a servant of the Crown, compelled me particularly to attend to the conduct of Lord Cloncurry, I feel that I cannot be warranted, upon a mere representation from a gentleman whom (whatever personal respect I may have for him) I cannot consider as entitled, by office or situation, generally to recommend persons to be inserted in the commissions of the peace for the counties of Dublin and Kildare, to insert Lord Cloncurry’s name in those commissions.

I am not informed, even by you, that his Lordship feels, in any degree, differently than he did when his conduct was thought to warrant strong proceedings against him. If no change has taken place in his opinions, I certainly cannot think myself justifled in putting any power into his hands. If he has seen (what appeared to me) his errors, the proper application to me, I conceive, would be immediately from himself, with an avowal of the change in his sentiments; and I should then think it my duty to communicate the application to his Excellency, before I could venture to act upon it.

I trust that you, sir, will feel that I mean every personal respect to you, which my duty to his Majesty would warrant me in observing; and I can assure you that it would be my wish to show every respect to Lord Cloncurry, consistent with the same duty. I have the honour to be, sir,

Your most obedient, humble servant,

REDESDALE.” *

Lord Cloncurry to Lord Redesdale.*

Lyons, February 17th, 1806.

“My Lord - Last Wednesday evening I heard, for the first time, of the correspondence between your Lordship and my friend, Mr. Burne, on the subject of the commission which I desired him to take out for me. I never authorised him to write in the manner he did to your Lordship; but supposed it a mere matter of course for a peer to become an acting magistrate when he pleased; and if respect be no longer due to the Irish peerage, my property in the country made it your duty to comply with my desire, unless I had forfeited my rights by ill conduct, which, I believe, *you know *I never did.

I think it necessary to state to your Lordship, that I have not changed my sentiments, and I hope I never shall: they are, and always were, loyal and patriotic sentiments, full of abhorrence for the men and the measures which, in ‘97 and ‘98, drove the unfortunate people of this country into rebellion - measures for which the minister was indemnified by parliament, as well as for his treatment of me, the illegality and inhumanity of which are not, I believe, unknown to your Lordship.

I shall say a few words on what you are pleased to call my errors. I was living in London, a student, in 1798, associating with other young men of opposition but not disloyal principles. I was arrested in bed, dragged to Bow-street, and thence to a messenger’s, where I remained three days; after which I was taken before some persons of the cabinet - of whom, perhaps, your Lordship may have been one - and was desired to answer certain questions, provided I could do so without injuring myself. I replied that had I been questioned without the scandal of imprisonment, I might have answered any question, as I could have no fear; but that having been so grossly insulted, I should hold my tongue till I could have legal redress.

I was remanded to confinement; and at the end of a month I was again brought before the same persons, when my Lord Loughborough informed me that I was at liberty, saying he hoped I would be more cautious in future, for that government had information that I had been at a seditious meeting in ‘97, and that I had allowed some Irish refugees to frequent my house. I answered, that any Irish refugees who came to my house were received from motives of humanity; but that I had never taken the slightest part in any seditious meeting. His Lordship advised me to refrain from all interference in politics, and showed me a letter of my father’s, promising I should do so. *I *certainly made no promise; but from that day to this, now eight years, I never, directly or indirectly, by word or act, said or did anything in opposition to the measures of government, whether legal or illegal.

What, then, must have been my feelings when I was again arrested in ‘99, as I was informed by Mr. Pitt, for the same reason as before, viz., that I had been present at a seditious meeting in 1797, a year prior to my first arrest. I said that I would submit to any punishment if a *single *credible witness could prove me guilty of the smallest illegal act or expression. I begged of his Majesty’s ministers to observe, that instead of thinking of politics, I had lived in the country ever since my former arrest, and was on the point of being married. This was of no avail; the entreaties of my father that I should he brought to trial were of no avail: I was sent to the Tower, and confined in the room belonging to the lamplighter of that fortress, from which I was afterwards removed by the humanity of the governor.

Neither pen, ink, nor a common newspaper was allowed me for more than six months; I was denied the use of a servant, or the sight of my friends, for two years; I was confined to one room, where I had not even the pleasure of solitude, being locked up with two warders, and a sentry at the door, whose relief never allowed me more than two hours’ uninterrupted sleep. No interest, no entreaty, could procure a relaxation from treatment never before experienced by any state prisoner.

The consequence of this was, the destruction of my health, the murder of her to whom I was engaged, and, perhaps, the death of my father and grandfather, the former of whom, by a hasty alteration of his will, deprived me of above £50,000. All this because I refused to accuse myself or others of crimes of which I was ignorant, and which I abhorred.

But God is merciful: by his Majesty’s illness in 1801, the habeas corpus came into force; I regained my liberty, and the illegal oppressor sought protection in an indemnity act. I returned to my country: I found my family broken and unhappy on my account, my property injured, and my character tarnished. I could not obtain justice against my cold-blooded oppressors; they were above all human law; but divine justice will surely overtake them.

I went abroad for the re-establishment of my own and my sister’s health; and when I return, after an absence of four years, I find my house plundered by the military, the places containing my title-deeds and valuables broken open and left exposed. I waited on the Lord Lieutenant, who ordered the restoration of my property, and showed that goodness of heart and manner which so much endear him to the people of this country. He expressed a wish that I should reside; I said I should, and endeavour, as far as I could, to second his good intentions. I was sincere; I desire my friend to take out the commission of the peace, but it is refused. And by whom? By the man who, having no property of his own, is paid to protect that of others - the man who should know what is due to the peerage to which he has been raised - and the man who, I believe, knows that there never was a shadow of criminality in my conduct.

I should feel myself debased by thus entering into explanation with your Lordship, did I not believe that your power is near its end. The reign of bigotry and prejudice is over. I shall remain in my country, from which you would have driven me, and I shall cherish those sentiments you would have me renounce. May your Lordship, in retiring from Ireland, leave no bad blood or party spirit behind you; and may you leave no person on whom your conduct has made more impression than it could on me. With the consideration due to the high office your Lordship holds, I remain

Your Lordship’s obedient and very humble servant,

CLONCURRY.” *

John Burne, Esq., to Lord Redesdale.*

“My Lord - I have had the honour of receiving your Lordship’s letter, in answer to one from me. Nothing could be further from my thoughts, or more repugnant to my feelings, than to adopt any mode of recommendation to your Lordship, which could be deemed in the slightest degree disrespectful. For me to recommend persons to commissions of the peace would be a degree of arrogance and presumption of which I am incapable. I merely meant to communicate to your Lordship the wish of Lord Cloncurry as to the magistracy, without supposing, for a moment, that the application could derive the slightest aid from the recommendation of such an obscure individual as I am. It is, however, but justice to myself to say, that whatever Lord Cloncurry’s offences were, I am unacquainted with them; and that I believe him, at present, to be as strongly attached to the constitution and tranquillity of the country as any person in it.”

The foregoing letter to the Chancellor was followed up by an appeal, made without my knowledge, to Lord Hardwicke, by my brother-in-law, the Hon. Colonel Sir Francis Burton; and upon this occasion his Excellency did not restrain himself from taking the course which his own sense of justice and propriety pointed out to him. He immediately ordered Lord Redesdale to insert my name in the commission of the peace; and reverting to the grounds upon which that learned lord had based his insult, his Excellency stated, in the kindest manner, that he was fully aware of the injustice that had been done me by my imprisonment, and that he would gladly do all that lay in his power to make amends, as an earnest of which he offered at once to recommend me for a viscounty. This offer I declined, but with expressions of great gratitude, which I really felt for the personal kindness of Lord Hardwicke, whose Conduct, public and private, so far as I was acquainted with it, was marked by tokens of good feeling that tended very much to cool down any desire of opposition I might have been disposed to feel towards his administration. My conversation with his Excellency was immediately followed by the receipt of the following note, which will be admitted to form a curious counterpart to that addressed to Mr. Burne by the same writer just four weeks previously *

Lord Redesdale to Lord Cloncurry.*

Ely-place, Dublin, 24th Feb. 1806.

“My Lord - I have desired instructions with respect to the insertion of your Lordship’s name in the commissions of the peace for the counties of Dublin and Kildare, and I have to request that your Lordship would be pleased to apply to Mr. Ponsonby, whom his Majesty has appointed Chancellor of Ireland, and to whom the great seal will be delivered as soon as he shall arrive in this country. I have the honour to be, my Lord,

Your Lordship’s most humble servant,

REDESDALE.”

My pride, however, was now up, and I would not receive any favour at the hands of Lord Redesdale. The copy of my letter rejecting his offer of the commission I have not found among the other papers; but the allusion to it in the following letter leads to the inference that it was not couched in holiday phrase. It was, I recollect, Concocted at a consultation between Curran, George Ponsonby, and myself; but when written it was considered to be so strong that it would be better not to send it to the Chancellor, but that I should wait upon him in company with a friend, and read it to him, which I accordingly did. It was not “sent,” as is implied in Mr. Burne’s observation upon it:- *

John Burne, Esq., to Lord Cloncurry.*

Feb. 27th, 1806.

“My dear Lord - There are some expressions in your letter to the Chancellor which I should have advised to be omitted, had I seen it before you sent it. But I don’t consider it either as too complaining or undignified. An unfounded imputation ought to be repelled with a proper degree of resentment; but a little less asperity of expression would, perhaps, have been better. However, I am not surprised that your feelings should be roused by a recollection of the treatment you have experienced; but I am extremely concerned that you should think yourself obliged to disavow any part of my letters, as containing an admission of guilt on your part. Nothing could have been further from my thoughts, and, surely, nothing could be more inconsistent with the expressions I used: so far from thinking you guilty of any crime, I am persuaded that you drew on yourself the resentment of the worst ministers that ever these countries saw, merely by avowing your just abhorrence of their abominable system of cruelty and oppression; and the only excuse I can suggest for Lord Redesdale is, that he was the dupe of those ministers; and that being a very weak, though, perhaps, well-meaning politician, he has imbibed prejudices which it is now too late to remove.

I don’t think that you should take any further steps during the present government here; but I think that you should see the Duke of Bedford as soon as you can after his arrival, and state the transaction to him. I am persuaded that the new government will have a pleasure in contrasting their conduct with that of their predecessors. Mr. Grattan, I understand, is favourable to a partial, instead of a total change, in which, I think, he is much mistaken. I scarcely know any man at present in place in this country who is not objectionable, as having obtained his situation either by atrocities in the rebellion, by corruption on the Union, or by a gross dereliction of party and principle.

What, then, can be expected from a government under which such men are suffered to remain in place? If you write to Grattan, you will serve the country essentially by remonstrating with him on this subject. We can expect no useful change of measures without a radical change of men. If any of the old leaven be retained, the country will be disgusted, and the present administration will become as unpopular as the former. Mrs. B. joins in best regards to you and Lady Cloncurry, to whom I request you will remember me in the kindest manner; and believe me, my dear Lord,

Ever truly and sincerely yours,

S. Burne.”

Very shortly after the date of this transaction Lord Hardwicke left Ireland. The ministry of “all the Talents” came in, and with them the Duke of Bedford, from whom personally, and from his government, during the short time it survived, I received every suitable civility and support in the performance of my local duties.

When appointments to the magistracy were dealt with in the spirit evinced by Lord Chancellor Redesdale, it is not difficult to imagine how the magistrates so appointed were likely to exercise their authority, thus confessedly delegated for party uses. Magisterial business was then done privately and solitarily by each justice in his own house, and acting at his own discretion, unchecked by any public opinion. Before the separation which I have described had taken place between the upper and lower classes, the inconveniencies and mischiefs of this system were less felt by the latter, as a sort of rude, clownish justice was administered, or, at all events, protection was afforded by each landlord to his own tenants and dependants against every one except himself; and where the law failed to furnish the means of making such protection effectual, the magistrate not unfrequently appealed to his pistols in defence of his tenant - it might be from unprovoked injury, or it might be from the consequences of sonic trespass of his own against the laws.

But now this was all changed. The landlord no longer headed his tenants, and the tenants no longer followed the landlord in a feud; but the former arrayed himself with his order, while the latter banded with his fellows, each party pitted against the other in the ranks of a sort of servile war. To obtain justice or magisterial intervention was still a sort of favour and compliment, rather than a right that could practically be enforced; but there remained little good feeling or kindliness between those who sought for and those who had the power of granting the favour.

If a peasant or farmer had a complaint to make to a justice, he might parade for hours, sometimes for days, before his worship’s door, before he could gain a hearing; and if his complaint lay against a neighbouring squire or squireen, no summons for the latter could be procured but, perhaps, a sealed note inviting his attendance, to be humbly delivered to him by the complainant with his own hands. A distant day was then probably appointed for a hearing, when the defendant was received with friendly courtesy, while the plaintiff was suffered to resume his parade before the door until it suited the convenience of the justice to call him into the hall. If, then, his case was so clear, or so feebly opposed, as to necessitate a decree in his favour, the law provided another distant day for the settlement of his claim, allowing no compensation for the three or four days’ time which, in all likelihood, he had lost in prosecuting the suit.

The law, thus administered in its primary processes, was executed, when necessary, by a barony constable, whose qualification for the duty was having received the sacrament at the parish church, and whose emoluments of office amounted to £4 a-year. The natural disposition of this functionary was, of course, to earn a shilling, or a glass of whiskey, or even a good word from the party against whom he might be entrusted with a warrant, by noticing him to keep out of his way.

The employment of those “ancient and discreet constables,” with their religious qualification, was but a part of the system of subsidization of the Protestant garrison of Ireland to which I have adverted. It had, however, a specially injurious effect upon society, by the impediments it threw in the way of the administration of justice, and was, most beneficially, put an end to by the establishment of the constabulary force.

For the first introduction of the changes that resulted in the existing development of that system, the country is greatly indebted to Sir Robert Peel, to whom I recollect mentioning an illustration of the character of the old barony constable, when I was pressing upon his attention (which I did, urgently, at the time of his official residence in Ireland) the necessity of a more efficient executive police. A protegé of a neighbouring lady came to me to be sworn in as a barony constable, the place and dignity of which had been obtained for him by her ladyship. He was a sound Protestant: and I, of course, administered to him the proper oath, accompanying the act with an exposition of the important duties of the office. When I came to that of preventing cattle from straying or grazing upon the public roads, the aspirant Dogberry, in much embarrassment, stopped me with the question, “Ah, then, where am I to keep my own little cow, my Lord?”

It was usually like master like man, with justice and constable; and there was little generic difference between the principle of action of either and that of the highest executive authority of the country. The inferior administration of the law seldom received active support from “the Castle,” unless for party reasons; and high authority usually fell into a paralysis when its interference in favour of the oppressed was called for. I will mention a few instances in point, not restricting myself to the particular date at which the wandering course of my narrative has arrived.

I think I had not occasion more than twice, in a long magisterial life, to call for military assistance, and one of these occasions was under the following circumstances. On a farm, about five miles from Lyons, the tenant had a dispute with the landlord, who seized a large crop of hay. The tenant replevined; and during the litigation, the hay remained upon the fields, when the country people thinking it a pity to see so much good fodder spoiled, began very freely to help themselves.

I was informed of the circumstance, and posted notice forbidding the plunder. The priest also admonished them, but they attended to neither justice nor priest; and each night a few cocks of the hay disappeared, in spite of the keepers and constables. A military interference then became necessary; and I accompanied the soldiers myself, at night, to the fields. The rogues resisted, and fired upon us, and were fired upon in return by the military, whereby a man was killed on a hay-cock. He wore white stockings, which made him a good mark; and though thus killed in the commission of a felony, turned out to be the steward and bailiff of a neighbouring clergyman, Dean Keatinge, formerly Chaplain to the Irish House of Commons.

The rest of the party ran away, leaving eight or ten carts and horses, which I seized as theft boot. A coroner’s inquest was held upon the dead man, and a verdict of justifiable homicide returned; and I sent the derelict horses and carts to livery, to be kept for the Crown. His Majesty, however, had but bad caretakers of his windfalls; and before they were sold, a considerable charge for livery was incurred. This Mr. Attorney-General Saurin insisted I should pay; and, after a lengthened correspondence, it was only as the result of a threat that the whole affair should be shown up in the newspapers, that the Lord Lieutenant, Earl Talbot, paid the costs out of his own pocket.

Upon another occasion, during the viceroyalty of my late respected friend, the Marquis Wellesley, a district not far from my house was proclaimed, under the Insurrection Act, although the immediate neighbourhood of Lyons, and the adjoining lands of Bishops-court were peaceable and unproclaimed.

A respectable farmer, a tenant of Lady Ponsonby’s, upon the latter lands, a man named Kenny, who paid £200 a-year rent, happened, one evening, to want silver to pay a number of mowers, and went to procure it to a public-house, which, though but a few hundred yards from his farm, was within the proclaimed district. Two of his labourers came into the public-house while he was there, and he gave them share of what he was drinking. The circumstance of the house being within the proclaimed district, the man forgot, or did not think of; but he was soon reminded of it by a party of constables who were there drinking, and who, the sun having set, made him prisoner. It was in vain that he explained his business, and told who he was: his captors called him a “bloody papist;” and one of them having rubbed a prayer-book to his mouth, Kenny immediately knocked him down.

He was brought before me, and I took upon me to take bail for his attendance at the special sessions, which, under the Insurrection Act was rather a stretch of authority. At the sessions, all the magistrates, except the Duke of Leinster, myself, and (I believe) Mr. Henry, found him guilty under the letter of the Act, and sentenced him, accordingly, to transportation. The particulars of the case were, however, favourably represented by Mr. George Bennett, the presiding barrister, to Lord Wellesley, who pronounced the conduct of the majority of the magistrates to be most erroneous, and remitted the case to them for reconsideration, with a view to a new finding.

They refused to go into the matter again; and his Excellency’s law advisers being unable to show him any way of getting out of the dead lock, poor Kenny was kept in prison for several months. At length, at the urgent solicitation of Lady Ponsonby and Lord Fitzwilliam, the Lord Lieutenant resolved to cut the knot, and liberated the man upon his own authority; but he was discharged from jail only to find himself utterly ruined: his affairs had fallen into confusion, and he himself had contracted habits of dissipation out of which he never rose.

Even for the strength of Lord Wellesley’s will and administrative genius, the power of the system under which the dominant class had been created and separated from the majority of the people, was too strong; and, in further illustration of this fact, I may relate the particulars of another occurrence which fell within my own knowledge:- The city of Dublin, in those days, was governed by its own magistrates, who appointed the municipal police-masters and men being all “good Protestants.” A party of the latter happened to be employed on patrol duty at the fair of Saggard (a village about eight miles from Dublin, but within the city jurisdiction), and riding carelessly through the crowd, were made game of and laughed at. They took no notice of this at the time, but five of them having subsequently retired to a neighbouring public house, their indignation rose with the depth of their potations, and, at the close of the day, they issued out into the fair with their swords drawn, crying out “Five pounds for a Priest - a shilling for a Papist.”

A riot, of course, followed, and the result was that an old man was killed by one of the police. Informations were sworn at Celbridge, before the Duke of Leinster and myself, and we issued our warrant against the five policemen. To render this instrument valid within the city, it was, however, necessary that it should be backed by a city justice, and all those functionaries refused to add their authority to the warrant until the parties were identified, although they had the most accurate means of knowing what men were told off for patrol in Saggard on the day of the murder, and the country people were unable to identify the particular individuals from among a number of men dressed in uniform, and shown to them at a formal parade.

The city magistrates stood by their men like true comrades, and effectually screened them, notwithstanding the interference of Lord Wellesley, who, at the instance of the Duke of Leinster and myself, did all in his power to forward the ends of justice. All his Excellency could accomplish was a private dismissal of the five men from the police force, and one of them, a man named Hamilton, was reinstated within the year. He waited upon me, on his reappointment, to deprecate my further interference, and to promise better conduct for the future.

It is not to be supposed that the affections of a conquered people could be won for their conquerors under a system of jurisprudence such, in its several parts, as I have described. In coincidence with that system, the various departments of administration worked most successfully in furtherance of the policy of discord.

The tithe~proctor, the exciseman, the local rate collector, the parish schoolmaster (when there was one) were chosen from those whom the people looked upon as their enemies, and the selection was made upon the very ground of that enmity - the difference of religion - the fact of the aspirant officials being professors of the English-garrison faith. The natural antipathies of men to tithes, taxes, excise imposts, and, generally, to dogs in office of every kind, were thus swelled into one common and overwhelming hatred against the Englishman arid the Protestant, and these synonymes, with their Irish equivalent Sassenach, came into use as words of power, which every agitator, whether in a good or a bad cause, might employ to call the angry spirit of the mob to his service.

Meanwhile successful corruption was producing its natural effects upon the dominant party. Confident in their own strength, they were wantonly lavishing it, or suffering it to waste away. Thus, the institution of the yeomanry corps was a contrivance, and, for a time, a successful one, for retaining for the English government all those Protestants who could not be provided for as trading justices, barony constables, guagers, parish clerks and schoolmasters, tithe proctors, or city policemen. Clothes, arms, a shilling a-day when on duty, and the consideration attached to connexion with the government, were found to be sufficient inducements to all such to hold on upon their garrison duty, even after real fear of the rebels had ceased to operate upon their minds. Nevertheless, I have known a needy country gentleman draw pay and allowances for a corps of a hundred and fifty men in buckram, of which he was nominally captain, while, in reality, he had not upon his muster-roll more than a dozen yeomen.

All these changes had been initiated during the eight years that had elapsed from the period of my departure from Ireland in 1797, to that of my permanent return to it at the close of 1805. I attempted to do what my small power enabled me towards counter-working them, and some of what I did I will refer to in the ensuing chapter.

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