BOOK X. 1798. June. exertions Ireland owed all that she possessed in the form of order and decency. They had given her a language and laws at least better than her own; and even the yoke of the worst of them was lighter on the peasantry than the little finger of their own chiefs. Where the peasantry suffered most, it was under the middlemen and agents of the absentees-under men who were for the most part of their own blood, and those chiefs' lineal representatives. England, not the gentry, was most to blame for the condition of Irish society. The clamours of the colony for self-government, their rant of patriotism, the applauding shouts with which they greeted their Grattans and their Floods become intelligible, and almost pardonable, when studied by the light of England's accursed legislation and yet more unpardonable policy. It would have been better and happier by far had England never confiscated the lands of the Irish, had she governed Ireland as she governs India, and never attempted to force upon her a landed gentry of alien blood. Having chosen the second alternative, having given the land and the Constitution into the hands of men of her own race and creed, principle as well as prudence should have taught her to remember their difficulties, and to encourage them in introducing habits of order and industry, which would have reconciled the people through prosperity to the imposed presence of the stranger among them. The wisdom of England had been to weaken her garrison instead of strengthening it, to make it useless for purposes of government, to saturate it with the elements of disorder, and when it broke into discontent and complaint to hold it in check by elevating and arming as a counterpoise the wronged and resentful race whom it was planted in the island to keep in awe. II. 1798. June. Ingenuity could not have invented a line of CHAP. action more certain to precipitate rebellion. When the Protestants at the last moment felt the knife at their throats, when they found themselves threatened with a second 1641, when they found England, which had provoked the insurrection, turn round and charge it upon themselves, and refuse to help them, Cornwallis should neither have been shocked nor surprised when desperate men turned to desperate remedies; and being too few in number to hold in subjection the poor frenzied wretches who had begun a war of extermination, were being driven to write upon their memories a lesson which it should be impossible for them to forget. The Yeomanry were strong enough to destroy the rebels. They were not strong enough to pardon them. Irresistible power alone can afford to be merciful. The Protestants of Ireland, like the scanty English garrisons of earlier times, having to deal with an irreconcileable foe, as fierce as a wolf and as untameable, were being taught, in spite of themselves, that if England declined to stand by them, they and the Irish could not live side by side, and that if they would sleep in peace thenceforward they must give no quarter to enemies in arms. Cornwallis saw the feeling, and was shocked at it. He did not care to enquire into the grounds in which it originated; although, had he cared to reflect, his Indian experience might have enlightened him. In studying Ireland he was thinking, not of India, which would have been full of instruction for him, but of America, which was fatally misleading. He regarded the disposition of the Parliament and Privy Council as a confirmation of the accusations which had been levelled against them by Lord Moira; and, with an insight into Irish history which, if his letters were BOOK X. 1798. June. not unjust to him, extended no further than the preceding year, he attributed the rebellion to the whips and pitch-caps of the Yeomanry, and as such determined to deal with it. Again, and more fatally, Cornwallis mistook the character of the native Irish. Like every Englishman who becomes first acquainted with them, he found much in their character that interested and attached him. From the impurity which disgraced other nations they were singularly free. To one another they were affectionate and charitable. In the army he had himself experienced the fine qualities of courage and fidelity which reveal themselves invariably when the Irishman is under military discipline. He looked upon them as an innocent, cruelly injured people, who had been driven mad by tyranny, and required nothing but gentleness and kindness to bring them back to their allegiance. Gentleness and kindness the Irish indeed needed, but the gentleness of inflexible authority and the kindness of even-handed justice. Cromwell had landed in Ireland under circumstances not unlike those of Lord Cornwallis. Cromwell insisted first on absolute submission, and when submission was refused dealt two blows so resolutely, so sternly, and with so clear a meaning, that rebellion turned sick, lay down and died, and peace was restored to Ireland with a loss of life which was as nothing compared to the waste and ruin of a protracted war. If Cromwell's hand was heavy on the enemy on the field, he was as severely just in repressing disorder in his own army. Two soldiers stole a fowl from an old woman. Cromwell immediately hanged them. He had come to Ireland to enforce respect for the laws. The army was made to set an example of obedience. Cornwallis found his troops in disorder, living at free-quarters among the peasantry, and making the rebellion a plea for plunder. He was indignant. He wrote despatches and reprimands. But neither on one side nor the other did he venture to imitate Cromwell. He checked indiscipline by combining rebukes which were just in themselves with reflections on the conduct of the Yeomanry in the field, which, after Ross and Enniscorthy, he ought to have spared them. In dealing with the insurrection his chief thought was to win the rebels by forgiveness, to supersede martial law while they were still everywhere in arms, to restore the jurisdiction of the civil courts when it implied impunity for the most horrible crimes, and to conciliate them at the earliest possible moment, by placing them on a political equality with the Protestants. The Irish people had many fine qualities, but they had a lesson yet to learn, that the laws of the land must be obeyed. Cornwallis believed that he could persuade them into it by what he called clemency, and confessed to a foolish pleasure when he had brought the mob to cheer him in the streets. Many times he thought that he had succeeded. As often some fresh spurt of ferocity, some village burnt, some family murdered, checked his ardent expectations. His letters confess his disappointment, but they show no abatement of confidence in the correctness of his own insight; and when he recorded his failures, it was only to reassert with more emphasis that he failed only because the Catholics were not in Parliament. 1 When I passed the people cried, "God bless him! That's he! There he is!" Not unpleasant.' VOL. III. H H 'Marquis Cornwallis to General CHAP. II. 1798. June. BOOK X. 1798. June. And as Cornwallis had misconceived the character of the people with whom he had to deal, so his despatches are searched in vain for a sign that he understood the remedies for the condition in which he found them. Always, when there is anything to be done, the indispensable preliminary is to understand the facts of the case. The facts with which Cornwallis had to deal were these : 1. The Irish were a conquered people. Had their votes been taken, four-fifths of them would have desired separation from Great Britain. They remained attached to the British Crown by force, and by force only. Cornwallis supposed that if the Catholics were admitted into the Constitution, disaffection would disappear, and that they would become loyal subjects. Nothing but the most complete unacquaintance with the history of the country could have misled him into so perfect a misapprehension. If Ireland was to be incorporated into the empire, the Constitution might be incomplete without a representation of the hostile Irish element; but Emancipation by itself would have as little tendency to remove or qualify the hostility as Home Rule to cure the potato-blight. 2. Had Ireland been a thousand miles distant in midocean, and her connection with the British Crown no longer essential, therefore, to the security of the empire, the Protestant colonists left to themselves would long since have asserted their natural superiority. Either by penal laws they would have compelled the Celtic Catholics to conform, with the alternative of exile, or if the native inhabitants had remained and persisted in rebellion they would have gradually destroyed them. Lord |