I have written much on Ireland from early youth, especially in the Edinburgh Review and the Times; and two works of mine, ‘Ireland, 1494-1868’ published in ‘The Cambridge Historical Series,’ and ‘Ireland, 1798-1898,’ have been received with more than ordinary favour. I have ventured to think that the opinions of a veteran inquirer into Irish affairs, with respect to ‘Present Irish Questions’ just now of much importance, and certain to be ere long fully discussed in Parliament and elsewhere, may be of some use to a younger generation, that will have to examine and must be affected by them. I am not unaware of the cynical remarks of Swift on the disregard shown to authors who may be said to have had their day; and I do not pretend that, in the instance of myself, ‘old experience’ has given something of a ‘prophetic strain’ to what is contained in this volume. But I can say, with truth, that few living men have had such opportunities as have fallen to my lot, during a long series of years, to understand Ireland in its different parts, and the feelings and sentiments of the Irish community; to form sound and moderate views on the many and perplexing phenomena called ‘Irish Questions;’ to deal reasonably with Irish political and social problems, free from the influences of party prejudice and passion; in short, to do my subject complete and impartial justice. How the accidents and associations of a life already protracted beyond the ordinary span, have, as I hope, given me these qualifications, I have explained at some length in my ‘Ireland, 1798-1898;’ I shall not repeat what I have already written. But Ireland has constantly been uppermost in my thoughts; and as regards the conclusions I have come to in these pages, I may say, with the Roman historian, ‘hÆc senectuti seposui.’

The examination of ‘Present Irish Questions,’ in this work, shows the views I entertain with regard to the actual condition of Ireland in its various aspects, and to her probable future destinies. These views may be censured as too gloomy, and even paradoxical; but Ireland remains, as she was when Macaulay wrote of her, ‘A member indeed of the Empire, but a withered and distorted member;’ the revolution which has passed, nay, is still passing, over her, has destroyed a great deal that ought to have been preserved, and has put little that is solid and stable in its place; there is much that is threatening and even dangerous in her political and social order, and in the sentiments of the mass of her community. In the case of Ireland, indeed, as in that of any other people, I have faith in the effect of salutary legislation on wise and just principles, and of consistent good government steadily carried out, of both of which there has been but too little evidence, during the last twenty years, in Irish affairs; above all, my trust is large in the healing influences of Time. But I have not forgotten that the vision of ‘Pacata Hibernia,’ which flitted even before the majestic understanding of Bacon, three centuries ago, has not been realised; the thoughtless optimism, which, during the last two generations, has represented Ireland to be in a state of continual ‘progress,’ nay, as ‘contented and happy,’ whenever she has not been convulsed by disorder and trouble, or racked by poverty and distress, has been completely falsified; and with nations, as with individuals, the profound remark of Butler is true; a life of repentance often fails to redeem the errors of the past. I proceed to indicate some at least of the authorities which relate to the different parts of my subject. The material condition of Ireland of late years may, perhaps, be best ascertained by studying, over some length of time, the large body of statistics compiled by the Government, and contained in that valuable publication, ‘Thom’s Directory,’ and by a perusal of the Irish debates in Hansard. Reference, too, should be made to the important papers of Mr. Childers, of Lord Farrer, and of Mr. Sexton in the Report of the Childers Commission, and especially to the evidence of Sir Robert Giffen, and even of Sir Edward Hamilton, in the Blue Books appended to that inquiry. ‘England’s Wealth, Ireland’s Poverty,’ by Thomas Lough, M.P., though a one-sided book, also deserves attention; and useful information may be obtained from ‘The Five Years in Ireland, 1895-1900,’ of Mr. Michael J. F. McCarthy, too much a eulogy, however, of things as they are, and marked by a spirit of aversion to, and distrust of, the Irish priesthood, which are a characteristic of a small section of the Irish Catholics.

The sources of our knowledge respecting the moral, social, and political state of Ireland are numerous and ample; I shall confine myself, as much as I can, to those which relate to what may be called her recent revolutionary period, though Irish history in the past, even in the distant past, is anything but an ‘old almanack.’ This mass of evidence faithfully represents the disturbances and the troubles that have prevailed in Ireland, with intervals of time between, during the last twenty years and upwards, and the fierce animosities and conflicts which have been the consequence. Here a reader should again consult Hansard, notably the debates on Ireland, during the agitated period from 1880 to 1889; of course he should only study the great speeches. The publications on this subject are very many, and some of real importance; as regards the policy and conduct of the Land, and even of the National Leagues, and the frightful outbreak of disorder and crime which was the result, nothing is equal in value to the Report of the Judges of the ‘Special Commission,’ and to the immense body of evidence brought before them; ‘The Verdict,’ by Professor Dicey, sums up well the conclusions at which they arrived. The utterances of the so-called Irish ‘Nationalist’ Press, throughout these years, fully verify the facts disclosed in the Report, and its findings; they have, indeed, been continued in a less ferocious and violent, but in a significant, strain ever since; a collection of them will be found in the volumes published by the Irish Unionist Alliance. On this subject, and also on the state of opinion existing among a large majority, probably, of the Irish people, see ‘The Continuity of the Irish Revolutionary Movement,’ by Professor Brougham Leech; ‘The Truth about the Land League,’ by Mr. Arnold Foster, M.P.; ‘Parnellism and Crime,’ republished from the Times; ‘Incipient Irish Revolution,’ anonymous but able; some valuable articles on Ireland by the late Lord Grey that appeared in the Nineteenth Century; ‘Disturbed Ireland,’ by Mr. T. W. Russell, M.P.; ‘The Plan of Campaign Illustrated;’ and ‘About Ireland,’ by Mrs. E. Lynn Lynton. The recent revolutionary and agrarian movements in Ireland have not found many to vindicate them, or even fully to explain their causes; but reference may be made to ‘The Parnell Movement,’ by T. P. O’Connor, M.P.; to the ‘New Ireland’ of Mr. A. M. Sullivan; to Mr. Barry O’Brien’s ‘Irish Wrongs and English Remedies;’ and to a series of articles called ‘Ungrateful Ireland,’ in the Nineteenth Century, from the pen of Sir G. Duffy. A host of papers in quarterly, monthly, and other reviews and magazines on the political and social condition of Ireland of late years has, also, been published from time to time. Attempts have been made, quite recently, to show that the troubles of Ireland have become things of the past, and that she is a prosperous and happy land; but though real improvement has certainly taken place, these are mere repetitions of the optimistic fancies that have so often proved delusions.

The great question of Home Rule, ‘present’ if for a time postponed, was first put forward formally by the late Isaac Butt. His ‘Irish Federalism’ is a thoughtful and able treatise that ought to be studied. The speeches in Parliament, from 1874 to 1885, on this subject, collected in Hansard, deserve attention; notably the violent attacks on this policy made during many years by Mr. Gladstone. Hansard, too, should be perused, after that statesman became a convert to Home Rule, for the speeches on both sides, on the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893; some are of marked power and insight, though few rise to the heights of great constitutional principles. Mr. Gladstone’s defence of his sudden change of front will be found in his ‘History of an Idea,’ a tract published soon after his defeat at the polls in 1886; he has endeavoured to vindicate his later Irish policy, in many pamphlets and speeches, in volumes collected by himself. For a masterly examination of his public conduct on matters relating to Ireland, and in some other passages in his career, I would especially direct the reader to the ‘Memoirs of the late Lord Selborne,’ part ii. vol. ii. pp. 339-360; Mr. Lecky’s brilliant sketch in his ‘Democracy and Liberty,’ Cabinet Edition, Introduction, pp. 19-56, is a composition of rare excellence. Nothing is to be compared to Professor Dicey’s ‘England’s Case against Home Rule,’ and his ‘Leap in the Dark,’ for a thorough investigation, from the Unionist point of view, of the natural and the probable consequences of the Gladstonian Irish policy, and for an analysis of the two Home Rule Bills; few political works have attracted equal attention. There have also been many publications, on the side of the Union, of more or less merit; see ‘Home Rule,’ reprinted from the Times, containing several very able letters and papers; ‘The Truth about Home Rule;’ ‘A Sketch of Unionist Policy;’ and a number of articles in the Edinburgh and the Quarterly Review, and in other reviews and magazines. The publications which advocate Home Rule have not been numerous; a reader may consult the ‘Hand Book of Home Rule,’ edited by Mr. Bryce, M.P.; ‘Irish Members and English Gaolers,’ and ‘Combination and Coercion,’ by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre; and some contributions to a few reviews and other serials.

The ‘Present Question’ of the Irish land, and of Irish landed relations, goes back to even remote antiquity, and is connected with the whole course of Irish history. The characteristics and peculiarities of tribal land tenure in Ireland, before the Anglo-Norman Conquest, have been admirably explained in Sir Henry Maine’s ‘Early History of Institutions,’ a very valuable work. I may refer to an article on this book, from my pen, in the Edinburgh Review of July, 1875. See, also, the ‘Senchus Mor,’ and the ‘Book of Aicile,’ fragments of the Brehon Laws, well annotated by the late Professor Richey. The state of the Irish land, from the Anglo-Norman Conquest to the beginning of the Tudor period, has been fully illustrated in the ‘Statute of Kilkenny,’ edited by James Hardiman, whose learned commentary is useful and important; in the ‘Discovery’ of Sir John Davies; in Spenser’s ‘View of the State of Ireland;’ in the ‘O’Conors of Connaught,’ by the O’Conor Don; in Hallam’s ‘Constitutional History,’ vol. iii. chapter on Ireland; and in Professor Richey’s ‘Lectures.’ I have glanced at the state of Irish land tenure during the tribal and the feudal ages, in the introductory chapters to my ‘Ireland, 1494-1868,’ in the ‘Cambridge Historical Series.’ The most complete account, perhaps, of the confiscations of the Irish land, from the reign of Henry VIII. to that of Charles I., will be found in the ‘Carew Papers,’ edited by J. S. Brewer and William Bullen; valuable information abounds in the ‘State Papers relating to the reign of Henry VIII.,’ edited by Hans Claude Hamilton; in ‘The Life of Sir John Perrott and his Letters;’ in the ‘Earls of Kildare,’ edited by the Marquis of Kildare; in the ‘State Papers,’ edited by Hamilton, ante, ‘relating to the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth;’ in the ‘Annals of the Four Masters;’ and see Davies and Spenser, ante. Several modern writers have treated this subject in their narratives of Irish history; Froude’s ‘History of England,’ vol. ii. ch. viii.; vol. iv. ch. xix.; vol. v. ch. xxviii.; vol. viii. chs. vii.-xi.; vol. x. ch. xxiv.; vol. xi. ch. xxvii., may be consulted; but a reader should be put on his guard against the brilliant but partisan historian. There is a valuable chapter also, in a very different work, Mr. Lecky’s ‘History of England in the Eighteenth Century,’ vol. ii. ch. vi. pp. 92 seqq.; and a great deal may be learned from the ‘O’Conors of Connaught,’ and Richey’s ‘Lectures,’ ante; and especially from an ‘Historical Account of the Plantation of Ulster,’ by the Rev. George Hill, and from Sigerson’s ‘History of Irish Land Tenure.’ In the momentous period of confiscation, from the beginning of the reign of Charles I. to that of William III., a reader should study ‘Strafford’s Letters;’ Carte’s ‘Life of Ormond;’ Lord Clanricarde’s ‘Memoirs;’ the ‘Letters of Cromwell,’ edited by Carlyle; the ‘Acts of Settlement and Explanation;’ the ‘Articles of the Treaty of Limerick;’ Sir William Petty’s ‘Political Anatomy of Ireland;’ ‘MacariÆ Excidium;’ and the Abbe MacGeoghegan’s ‘History of Ireland.’ The modern authorities on this period are numerous and some of great value; see Gardiner’s ‘History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate’ (the Irish chapters), notably vol. iii. ch. xliv.; ‘The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland,’ by John P. Prendergast; ‘The Life of Sir William Petty,’ by Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice, with an article by me in the Edinburgh Review of July, 1895; ‘The Patriot Parliament,’ by Thomas Davis; Macaulay’s ‘History of England’ (the Irish chapters), vol. iv. ch. xxii.; vol. v. ch. xiv.-xvi.; vol. vi. ch. xvii.; and Mr. Lecky’s ‘History,’ ante, vol. ii. ch. ix. Many instructive and philosophic passages on all these confiscations and their results, will be found scattered among the writings of Burke; they are admirable.

The era of violent confiscation closed with the reign of William III.; the modern history of the Irish land system begins from this period. For an account of the penal code, as it affected Irish landed relations, reference may be made to Vincent Scully, ‘On the Penal Laws;’ to Howard’s ‘Popery Cases;’ and especially to Burke’s ‘Tracts on the Popery Laws.’ Much, too, can be gathered from Curry’s ‘State of the Irish Catholics;’ from Primate Boulter’s and Archbishop Synge’s ‘Letters;’ from the writings on Ireland of Swift and Berkeley; and from various passages in the ‘Works and Correspondence of Burke.’ For the state of the Irish land from the beginning of the reign of George III. to the Rebellion of 1798, study the celebrated ‘Tour’ of Arthur Young, written in 1776-78; Crumpe’s ‘Essay;’ an admirable sketch by Mr. Lecky in his ‘History,’ ante, vol. vii. ch. xxvii.; and Sir George Lewis on ‘Irish Disturbances,’ a book which gives an account of the rise and progress of the Whiteboy movement, and carries the narrative down to 1836. Froude has illustrated this subject very skilfully in his ‘Two Chiefs of Dunboy;’ but his account, in his ‘The English in Ireland,’ is very inaccurate and one-sided. The nature of Irish landed relations during the troubled period before the Union is fully explained in many passages of Mr. Lecky’s ‘History,’ ante, vols. vii. and viii.; and the reader should peruse Lord Clare’s speech in the Irish House of Lords during the debates on the Union. From the Union to the present time, the authorities on the Irish land system are very numerous; it is not easy to make compendious selection. For the period of the Great War, Edward Wakefield’s ‘Account of Ireland’ is valuable, and so is, for the immediately subsequent period, the evidence on the state of Ireland taken by a Committee of the House of Commons in 1825. The nature and the characteristics of the Irish land system, in 1843-44, are fully explained and commented upon in the well-known Report of the Devon Commission, and the voluminous evidence; and for the revolution wrought in the Irish land by the Famine of 1845-47, see the ‘Irish Crisis,’ by Sir Charles Trevelyan, republished from the Edinburgh Review; and a ‘History of the Great Irish Famine,’ by the Rev. John O’Rorke. Much information, too, on the subject, as a whole, may be obtained from ‘L’Irlande, Sociale, Politique, et Religieuse,’ of Gustave de Beaumont; from ‘Ireland from the Treaty of Limerick to 1851,’ by John Mitchell; from parts of ‘Two Centuries of Irish History,’ edited by James Bryce, M.P.; from several ‘Reports’ of the Loyal National Repeal Association; and from parts of Mr. Barry O’Brien’s ‘Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,’ and ‘Irish Wrongs and English Remedies.’

The Irish land question has given birth to a literature of its own in the last half-century; legislation on the Irish land system has been extraordinarily active. With respect to the first, reference may be made to ‘Two Centuries of Irish History,’ ante, and to Mr. Barry O’Brien’s works, ante; to ‘Emigration and the Tenure of Irish Land,’ by Lord Dufferin; to John Stuart Mill’s ‘The Irish Land Question;’ to ‘The Irish People and the Irish Land,’ by Butt; to Sir George Campbell’s ‘The Irish Land,’ a very good little book; to Judge Longfield’s essay on the Irish land in ‘Systems of Land Tenure;’ and to my own ‘Letters on the Land Question of Ireland,’ republished from the Times. I am happy to think that, on this subject, I have always ‘pitched my Whiggery low;’ my first essay was on the Encumbered Estates Act; when fresh from Oxford I condemned that scheme of confiscation as unequivocally as, in the present and other works, I have condemned Irish agrarian legislation since 1880-81. Other books contain passages on the Irish land system that may be read with profit; see the ‘Recollections and Suggestions’ of Earl Russell; ‘Ireland in 1868,’ by Gerald Fitzgibbon; ‘Ireland,’ by Lord Grey; ‘Journals, Conversations, and Essays relating to Ireland,’ by Nassau Senior; and ‘New Views on Ireland,’ by Lord Russell of Killowen. As regards recent legislation on the Irish Land, from 1870 to 1896, the Acts passed by Parliament must of course be studied, and also the important debates reported in Hansard. Butt wrote a very able volume on the Land Act of 1870; I contributed a short treatise; an exhaustive and technical work of great value, on all the Irish Land Acts, has been produced by Messrs. Cherry and Wakely; this, with the Irish Reports, supplies ample professional, and even general, information. With respect to the administration of the Irish Land Acts, see the Report of the Committee of the House of Lords, and the evidence published in 1872; the Report of, and the evidence collected by, the Bessborough Commission of 1880-81; the Report of a Committee of the House of Lords on the working of the Land Act of 1881, published, with the evidence, in 1882; the Report, with the evidence, of the Cowper Commission, 1888-89; the Report, with the evidence, of the Morley Commission, 1894-1895; and, especially, the Report of Sir Edward Fry’s Commission of 1897, with the important evidence it has put together. Mr. Lecky, in his ‘Democracy and Liberty,’ vol. i. ch. ii., has criticised, almost as severely as I have done, recent Irish agrarian legislation; no serious defence of it has ever been made or attempted.

To understand the real state of the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland, it is necessary to go back to the times of the Union; those who resist the Irish demand avoid an appeal to history. The debates in the Irish Parliament in 1800 should be carefully studied, especially the speeches of Castlereagh, Grattan, and Foster. The Seventh Article of the Treaty of Union, set forth in this work, should also be diligently scanned and perused. See, too, the debates in the Imperial Parliament in 1816; the resolutions passed by the House of Commons in that year; and the Act abolishing the separate Exchequer of Ireland. Reference, moreover, should be made to the evidence taken before General Dunne’s Committee in 1864, in which sophistry triumphed for the moment over truth. All these sources of information, however, are scanty and imperfect compared to the celebrated Report of the Childers Commission, with the valuable evidence annexed to it; this for the first time completely brings out the whole facts on the subject. The debates in Hansard on the financial claims of Ireland may also be looked at; but they are not of peculiar importance; the same remark applies to nearly all the articles in reviews, magazines, and journals, in which endeavours have been made to answer the Report. I may be allowed to say that I have some claim to have a distinct opinion in this matter; when still quite a boy I often heard my grand-uncle, the late Sir John Newport, one of the ablest and last of the Chancellors of the Irish Exchequer, condemn the financial treatment of Ireland from 1800 onwards; many years afterwards I was intimately acquainted with several of the independent Irish gentlemen, survivors of the great school of Grattan, who protested against Mr. Gladstone’s fiscal Irish measures from 1853 to a later date; Butt and Judge Longfield, both very able economists, fully concurred. With respect to local government and administration in Ireland, see Mr. Barry O’Brien’s ‘Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,’ vol. i. books iv. and v.; the Report of the Commissioners on Irish Corporate Reform issued in 1833-34, and the Irish Municipal Corporation Reform Act of 1840; the Irish Towns Commissioners Acts; a report made by Mr. W. P. O’Brien in 1878; a good treatise by Mr. Bailey published in 1888; and the recent Irish Local Government Act of 1898, with the debates in Hansard on this measure, should be perused. The authorities on Irish education of all kinds are numerous, and some valuable. Froude has glanced at the subject, with characteristic unfairness, in his ‘The English in Ireland;’ the refutation of Mr. Lecky, in his ‘England in the Eighteenth Century,’ is complete. A good description of education in Ireland, in all its branches, as it existed in 1812, will be found in Edward Wakefield’s ‘Account of Ireland,’ vol. ii. ch. xxiv.; another in Mr. Barry O’Brien’s ‘Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,’ vol. i. book i.; vol ii. book x.; the author brings the narrative down to 1881. As regards high education in Ireland, reference may be made to ‘The History of the University of Dublin,’ by the Rev. W. Stubbs; to ‘The Constitutional History of the University of Dublin,’ by D. C. Heron; to the Report of Archbishop Whateley’s Commission, in 1853, on the University of Dublin; to Mr. Gladstone’s Irish University Bill of 1873, and the able debates on the subject in Trinity College and the House of Commons; to Mr. Fawcett’s Act of 1873; to a masterly pamphlet by Butt, on the whole question, published in 1875; and to the ‘Irish University Question,’ by Archbishop Walsh, with recent debates in Parliament on Irish University reform. For the nature, constitution, and working of the Queen’s Colleges and the Queen’s University, see the debates in Parliament when Peel introduced this policy; many Reports; the work of Archbishop Walsh, ante; and the Act creating the Royal University in Ireland may be examined. As regards primary and secondary education in Ireland, see the Reports of the Education Commissioners from 1810 to 1825; the Reports of the National Education Board; the Reports of the Kildare, Rosse, and Powis Commissions, noticed in this work; and Mr. Godkin’s ‘Education in Ireland.’ An excellent synopsis of the subject, as a whole, will be found in ‘The Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland,’ by Mr. Graham Balfour.

WILLIAM O’CONNOR MORRIS.

Gartnamona, Tullamore,
14th May, 1901.