Relief Bill Passed

This marks a great social revolution in Ireland — the substitution of the priests for the landlords as the leaders of the people.

Continuing Catholic Emancipation in Ireland,
with a selection from Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland by William E.H. Lecky published in 1871. This selection is presented in 6.5 installments, each one 5 minutes long. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Catholic Emancipation in Ireland.

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Time: 1829

The Relief Bill of 1829 marks a great social revolution in Ireland — the substitution of the priests for the landlords as the leaders of the people. For a long time, a kind of feudal system had existed, under which the people were drawn in the closest manner to the landlords. In estimating the character of this latter class we must make very large allowance for the singularly unfavorable circumstances under which they had long been placed. The Irish Parliament was governed chiefly by corruption, and as the landlords controlled most of the votes, and as the county dignities to which they aspired were all in the gift of the Government, they were, beyond all other classes, exposed to temptation. They were also subject to much the same kind of demoralizing process as that which in slave countries invariably degrades the slave-owner.

The estate of the Protestant landowner had in very many cases been torn by violence from its former possessors. He held it by the tenure and in the spirit of a conqueror. His tenants were of a conquered race, of a despised religion, speaking another language, denuded of all political rights, sunk in abject ignorance and poverty, and with no leader under whom they could rally. Surrounded with helots depending absolutely on his will, it was not surprising that he contracted the vices of a despot.

Arthur Young concludes a vivid description of the relation between the classes by the assertion that “a landlord in Ireland can scarcely invent an order which a servant or laborer or cot tier dares to refuse to execute” and the total absence of independence on the part of the lower orders, and the general tolerance of brutal violence on the part of the higher orders, struck most Englishmen in Ireland. Besides this, the penal laws which gave the whole estate of the Catholic to any son who would consent to abjure his religion, seemed ingeniously contrived to secure a perpetual influx of unprincipled men into the landlord class; while the vast smuggling trade which necessarily followed the arbitrary and ruinous prohibition of the export of wool conspired with other causes to make the landlords, like all other Irishmen, hos tile to the law. The glimpses which are given incidentally of their mode of life by Swift, Berkeley, Chesterfield, and Dobbs, and at a later period by Arthur Young, are in many respects exceedingly unfavorable.

The point of honor in Ireland has always been rather in favor of improvidence than of economy. In dress and living a scale of reckless expenditure was common, which impelled the landlords to rackrents and invasions of the common land, and these in their turn produced the agrarian troubles of the “Whiteboys” and “Hearts of Steel.” Hard drinking was carried to a much greater extent than in England, and both Berkeley and Chesterfield have noticed the extraordinary consumption of French wines, even in families of very moderate means. The character of the whole landed interest is always profoundly influenced by that of its natural leaders, the aristocracy and the magistracy; but in Ireland peerages were systematically conferred as a means of corruption, and the appointments to the magistracy were so es essentially political that even in the present century landlords have been refused the dignity because they were favorable to Catholic emancipation.

A spirit of reckless place-hunting and jobbing was very prevalent and combined curiously with that extreme lawlessness which was the characteristic of every section of Irish society. Dueling was almost universal, and it was carried largely into politics, and even into the administration of justice; for a magistrate who gave a decision in favor of a tenant against his landlord was liable to be called out; by the same process landlords are said to have defended their own tenants against prosecution. No Irish jury, Arthur Young assures us, would in dueling cases find a verdict against the homicide. It was a common boast that there were whole districts in which the King’s writ was inoperative. In the early part of the eighteenth century “hell fire clubs,” which were scenes of gross vice, existed in Dublin, and the crime of forcible abduction was, through nearly the whole of the eighteenth century, probably more common in Ire land than in any other European country, and it prevailed both among the gentry and among the peasants. It is worthy of notice that Arthur Young observed in the former, as much as in the latter, a strong disposition to screen criminals from justice.

These are the shades of the picture, and they are sufficiently dark. On the other hand, as the eighteenth century advanced, the character of the higher classes improved. Drinking and dueling, though still very general, had appreciably diminished. The demoralizing influence of the penal laws was mitigated. The gentry were gradually rooted to the soil, and a strong national feeling having arisen, they ceased to look upon themselves as aliens or conquerors. The Irish character is naturally intensely aristocratic; and when gross oppression was not perpetrated, the Irish landlords were, I imagine, on the whole very popular, and the rude, good-humored despotism which they wielded was cordially accepted. Their extravagance, their lavish hospitality, their reckless courage, their keen sporting tastes, won the hearts of their people, and the feudal sentiment that the landlord should command the votes of his tenants was universal and unquestioned.

The measure of 1793, conferring votes on the Catholics, though it is said to have weakened the zeal of some of the advocates of Parliamentary reform, left this feeling unchanged. Nor were the Irish gentry without qualities of a high order. The love of witty society; the passion for the drama and especially for private theatricals, which was very general in Ireland through the eighteenth century; and above all, the great school of Parliamentary eloquence in Dublin, indicated and fostered tastes very different from those of mere illiterate country squires. The noble efflorescence of political and oratorical genius among Irish men in the last quarter of the century, the perfect calm with which great measures for the relief of the Catholics which would have been impossible in England were received in Ireland; above all, the manner in which the volunteer movement was organized, directed, and controlled, are decisive proofs that the upper classes possessed many high and commanding qualities, and enjoyed in a very large measure the confidence of their inferiors.

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