nimity in your resolutions as may once more put an end to all other distinctions in Ireland than that of Protestant and Papist." 66 were remarked, that the description of miscreants usually termed priest-catchers were generally Jews who pretended to be converts to the Christian religion, and some It may here be observed, once for all, to of them assumed even the character of the put an end to this delusion about Catholic priesthood, for the purpose of insinuating loyalty in Ireland, that the Catholics themselves more readily into the confiwould not have been permitted to be loyal, dence of the clergy. The most notorious even if they had been base enough to among them was a Portuguese Jew, desire it-that some abject attempts by named Gorzia (or Garcia). By means of some of them to testify their loyalty were this wretch seven priests had been aprepulsed, as will be hereafter seen-that prehended in Dublin, and banished the when a viceroy or lord-justice speaks of kingdom. Of this number, two "the nation" at the period in question, he Jesuits, one was a Dominican, one a Franmeans the Protestant nation exclusively- ciscan, and three were secular priests." nay, that the law was, that no Catholics These last were probably unregistered" existed in Ireland at all. It was long a priests; or else had not taken the abjurafavourite fiction of Irish law,* "that all the tion oath, which was then legally obligaeffective inhabitants of Ireland are to be pre-tory upon them all, under cruel penalties. sumed to be Protestants-and that, there- Indeed, by means of the various statutes fore, the Catholics, their clergy, worship, made against them, it may be affirmed &c., are not to be supposed to exist, save generally that every priest in Ireland, for reprehension and punishment." In- whether regular or secular, was now deed, in the time of George II., Lord- liable to transportation and to death; Chancellor Bowes declared from the because out of one thousand and eighty bench, "that the law does not suppose registered" priests, only thirty-three any such person to exist as an Irish Ro- ever took the oath of abjuration. The reman Catholic;" and Chief-Justice Robin-mainder stood firm, and set at defiance son made a similar declaration.† It appears plain, then, that the "loyalty" of the Catholics towards the House of Hanover, if indeed there has ever been any such loyalty, could not have sprung up in their hearts in the reign of George I., or of George II. No new enactments were made in this session of Parliament in aggravation of the Penal Code; but a resolution was passed recommending to magistrates the indispensable duty to put the existing laws into immediate and rigorous execution, and denouncing those who neglected to do so as "enemies of the Constitution;" no slight nor harmless imputation at that period, nor one which any magistrate would willingly incur. In fact, the penal laws against Catholics were put in force at this time, and during all the remainder of the reign of George I., with even more than the customary ferocity, as a design to bring in the Pretender was supposed to lurk in every Mass. In many places chapels were shut up, priests were dragged from their hiding-places, sometimes from the very altars, in the midst of divine service, hurried into the most loathsome dungeons, and from thence banished for ever from their native country.‡ "To the credit of those times," however, observes Brenan, the ecclesiastical historian, "it must be *See "Scully's State of the Penal Laws," p. 333. † Ibid., p. 334. Curry's Review. Brenan's Eccl. Hist. of Ireland. 66 the terrors which surrounded them.* Although the rebellion of the Presbyterians in Scotland was the sole pretence for this severity, and the very same law which banishes Popish priests prohibits also Dissenters to accept of or act by a commission in the militia or array, yet so partial were the resolutions of that parliament, that, at the same time that they ordered the former to be rigorously prosecuted, they resolved, unanimously, "that any person who should commence a prosecution against any of the latter who had accepted, or should accept of a commission in the array or militia, was an enemy to King George and the Protestant interest." Thus, of the only two main objects of the same law, its execution as to one of them was judged highly meritorious, and it was deemed equally culpable even to attempt it against the other; though the law itself makes no difference between them. Such was the justice and consistency of our legislators of that period. In the year 1719, the Duke of Bolton being lord-lieutenent, occurred the famous case of Sherlock against Annesley, which provoked the Irish House of Lords into a faint and impotent assertion of their privileges, opened up once more the whole question between English dominion and Irish national pretensions, and ended in settling that question in favour of Eng Ilibernia Dominicana land; setting it, in fact, definitively at rest until the year 1782. Irish Parliament had to submit for the time; but the principles of Molyneux, soon after enforced with far greater power by Swift, worked in men's minds, and at last brought forth Flood and Grattan, and caused the army of the Volunteers to spring out of the earth. Once more, however, it should be borne in mind that this constitutional question was a question between Protestant England and her Protestant colony alone; and that the Catholic Irish nation had at that time no more favour or indulgence to hope for at the hands of a parliament in Dublin than of a parliament in London. The That cause was tried in the Irish Court of Exchequer, between Esther Sherlock and Maurice Annesley, in which the latter obtained a decree, which, on an appeal to the Irish House of Lords was reversed. From this sentence Annesley appealed to the English House of Lords, who confirmed the judgment of the Irish Ex chequer, and issued process to put him into possession of the litigated property. Esther Sherlock petitioned the Irish Lords against the usurped authority of England, and they, having taken the opinion of the judges, resolved that they would support The Declaratory Act did not pass the their honour, jurisdiction, and privileges, English Parliament without opposition, by giving effectual relief to the petitioner. especially in the Commons, where Mr. Sherlock was put into possession by the Pitt made himself conspicuous by his Sheriff of Kildare; an injunction issued argument against it. It was finally from the Court of Exchequer in Ireland, carried by 140 votes against 88. pursuant to the decree of the English Duke of Leeds, in the Lords, made a Lords, directing him to restore Annesley; powerful protest against the bill, but in the Sheriff (let his name be honoured!), vain. Alexander Burrowes, refused obedience. In the same year, 1719, an act was He was protected in a contumacy which passed in the Irish Parliament "for so nobly contrasts the wonted servility granting some ease and indulgence to the of the judges, by the Irish Lords, Protestant Dissenters in the exercise of who addressed a powerful State paper their religion." The Duke of Bolton, in to the throne, recapitulating the rights | his speech, was pleased to commend this of Ireland, her independent parlia-act most warmly, as a step towards conment, and peculiar jurisdiction. They solidating the Protestant interest against went further, for they sent the Irish the common enemy. The duke earnestly barons to jail; but the king having the address of the Irish Lords laid before the English House, the latter reaffirmed their proceedings, and supplicated the throne to confer some mark of special favour on the servile judges, who, in relinquishing their jurisdiction, had betrayed the liberties of their country. An Act was at once passed in the English Parliament, enacting and declaring that the king, with the advice of the Lords and Commons of England, "hath had of right, and ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the people and the kingdom of Ireland. "And be it further enacted and declared, by the authority aforesaid, that the House of Lords of Ireland have not, nor of right ought to have, any jurisdiction to judge, affirm, or reverse any judgment, sentence, or decree, given or made in any court within the same kingdom; and that all proceedings before the said House of Lords, upon any such judgment, sentence, or decree, are, and are hereby declared to be, utterly null and void, to all intents and purposes whatever." This Declaratory Act is the last of the statutes claiming such a jurisdiction. The pleads for the necessity of union: "in the words," he says, of one of those excellent bills passed this day-I mean an union in interest and affection amongst all his majesty's subjects." The viceroy did not even feel it necessary to say "all his majesty's Protestant subjects," knowing that this would be understood; so firmly established was the State maxim, that the law knows not of the existence of an Irish Catholic. The year 1820 is memorable for the publication of Dean Swift's first pamphlet on Irish affairs-his "Proposal for the Use of Irish Manufacture.” He had now been for seven years Dean of St Patrick's: he had witnessed the enactment of many a penal law against Catholics: within hearing of his own deanery-house the Protestant mob, led on by priest-catchers, had dragged clergymen in their vestments out of obscure chapels amidst the lamentations of their helpless flocks, but he had never, in any of his numerous writings, uttered a syllable of remonstrance against this tyranny. It might be supposed that in this first of his Tracts relating to an Irish subject, and a subject, too, in which people of all religions were deeply interested, he might delicately convey some hint that neither the manufacturing nor any other material interest of a country on account of so cruel and unjust a sencould be promoted or developed while the tence; which, however, is fully executed great mass of its people were held in upon us by England, with further addidegrading slavery, disquieted in their pro- tions of rigour and severity, for the perty, and outraged in their persons by greatest part of our bowels and vitals is the extraordinary laws which he saw in extracted without allowing us the liberty operation around him. But not one word of spinning and weaving them." of all this does he write. He was well enough aware, however, of the growing misery and destitution of the country people; and says in this tract, "Whoever travels this country, and observes the face of nature, or the faces, and habits, and dwellings of the natives, will hardly think himself in a land where either law, religion, or common humanity is professed." Again: "I would now expostulate a little with our country landlords, who, by unmeasurable screwing and racking their tenants all over the kingdom, have already reduced the miserable people to a worse condition than the peasants in France, or the vassals in Germany and Poland; so that the whole species of what we call substantial farmers will, in a very few years, be utterly at an end." Swift had not yet ventured to take the leading part which he soon after bore in Irish politics; nor did he ever take any part in them with a broadly national aim. He lived at that time very much with his friends Sheridan and Doctor Delany; and his friends, as well as himself, wished to be considered Englishmen.* The Catholic people remained all these years perfectly quiet and subdued. In them all national aspiration seemed dead; so that the numerous enterprises projected all over Europe in favour of the Pretender never counted upon them. One of these enterprises was undertaken by the Spaniards, under the auspices of Cardinal Alberoni; and the Duke of Ormond was placed in command of a Spanish squadron, to effect a landing somewhere in the British Islands. The Irish Catholics remained quite unmoved: they were, in the words of Mr Plowden, "sternly loyal." It would be more accurate to say they were utterly prostrate, hopeless, and indifferent; and if they had been otherwise, the name of the Duke of Ormond would have been enough to repel them from any cause in which he was to be a leader. It is very singular, also, that although he justly attributes the decay of manufactures to the greedy commercial policy of England in suppressing the woollen trade and other branches of industry—and although, at the moment he wrote, all the island was ringing with the Sherlock-andAnnesley case and the Declaratory Act, this future author of the Drapier's Letters The Duke of Grafton, as lord-lieutenant, never thinks of suggesting that laws for prorogued the session of Parliament, and governing Ireland should be made in Ire-in his speech was pleased particularly to land, in order that the English monopolists might no longer have the power of ruining our country by their own laws. It seems the time was not yet ripe for such a pretension on the part of Irish patriots; though, that the dean very well knew the nature of the grievances he complains of, is evident from his savage sarcasm about the fate of Arachne. Ireland was becoming covered with herds of sheep, to produce wool for the English market, while English laws prevented its manufacture at home. "The fable, in Ovid, of Arachne and Pallas, is to this purpose: The goddess had heard of one Arachne, a young virgin, very famous for spinning and weaving: they both met upon a trial of skill; and Pailas finding herself almost equalled in her own art, stung with rage and envy, knocked her rival down, turned her into a spider, enjoining her to spin and weave forever, out of her own bowels, and in a very narrow compass. I confess that, from a boy, I always pitied poor Arachne, and could never heartily love the goddess, 66 recommend to them to keep a watchful eye upon the Papists; since I have reason to believe," says he, "that the number of popish priests is daily increasing in this kingdom, and already far exceeds what by the indulgence of the law is allowed." The members of Parliament, in times of recess, and when they were at their country-seats, must have followed the viceroy's exhortation, and kept a watchful eye upon the Papists; for the horror and alarm of the Protestant interest became more violent than ever before; and when Parliament assembled, in 1723, it was in an excellent frame of mind to do battle with the common enemy. The Duke of Grafton, on meeting Parliament, recommended several new And in truth, the ardent zeal and stancy, utterly unknown to fear, of the Irish Catholic priests during that whole century, are as admirable in the eyes of all just and impartial men as they were abominable and monstrous in the eyes of the Protestant interest. They often had to traverse the sea between Ireland and France, in fishing smacks, and disguised as fishermen, carrying communications to or from Rome, required by the laws of their church, though they knew that on their return, if discovered, the penalty was the penalty of high treason, that is death. When in Ireland, they had often to lurk in caves, and make fatiguing journeys, never sure that the priesthunters were not on their trail; yet all this they braved with a courage which, in any other cause, would have been reckless desperation. The English colonists could not comprehend such chivalrous devotion at all; and could devise no other theory to account for it than that these priests must be continually plotting with foreign Catholics to overthrow the Protestant interest, and plunder them of their newlygotten estates. This was the secret terror that always urged them upon fresh atrocities. duly enroll their certificates of conversion in the proper office. On the basis of these resolutions a bill was prepared; and the language and behaviour of Parliament on this occasion seems to have been even more vindictive and atrocious than had ever been witnessed before, even in an Irish legislature. One of the most zealous promoters of this bill, in a laboured speech, con-informed the House, that of all countries wherein the reformed religion prevailed, Sweden was observed to be most free from those irreconcilable enemies to all Protestant governments, the Catholic priests; and that this happy exemption, so needful to the Protestant interest, was obtained by a wholesome practice which prevailed in that fortunate land, namely, the practice of castrating all popish priests who were found there. A clause to this effect was introduced into the new bill.* It passed both Houses, and was presented on the 15th of November to the Duke of Grafton, with an earnest request that his Grace "would recommend the same in the most effectual manner to his majesty." His Grace was pleased to return this answer: "I have so much at heart a matter which I recommended to the consideration of Parliament, at the beginning of this session, that the House of Commons may depend upon a due regard, on my part, to what is desired." With the Duke's recommendation the bill was, as usual, forwarded to England. No objection to it had occurred either to his Grace, or to any peer or commoner in Ireland; but an Irish agent in France presented a memorial on the subject to the Duke of Accordingly, a series of resolutions was Orleans, then regent. The two nations agreed upon and reported by the Com- were at peace, and Cardinal Fleury, mons; that Popery had increased, partly French prime minister, had considerable owing to the many shifts and devices the influence with Mr Walpole. A strong repriests had for evading the laws, partly presentation was made by order of Fleury owing to the neglect of magistrates in not against the new bill. As it has never searching them out and punishing them-suited British policy that its measures in that "it is highly prejudicial to the Protestant interest that any person married to a popish wife should bear any office or employment under his majesty." This measure was thought needful, inasmuch as some magistrates, having married Catholics, were observed to be remiss in taking informations against their wives' confessors, knowing that they would have no peace in their house afterwards. The resolutions further recommended, that no convert (to the Established Church) should be capable of any office, nor practise as a solicitor or attorney for seven years after his conversion, nor "unless he brings a certificate of having received the sacrament thrice in every year during the said term:" further, that all converts should Ireland should become the subject of discussion and notoriety amongst the civilized nations of the continent (where English reputation for liberality has to be maintained), the Council disapproved the bill; and this was the first occasion on which any penal law against Catholics met with such an obstacle in England. Some writers on Irish history have been inclined to carry this failure of so atrocious a bill to the credit of human nature; and Mr. Plowden, after narrating the French interposition, says, with his usual amiable credulity, "but surely it needed no Gallic interference," &c. At any rate, the bill was lost. The de *Curry's Review. Plowden. † Brenan, Eccl. Hist. Plowden. Curry. amount of £108,000, for which one William Wood had taken the contract and received the patent. Here was the crying griev pendence of Ireland upon the crown of It is necessary that the history of this transaction should be taken out of the His Grace the lord-lieutenant, in his domain of rhetoric, and established upon a speech to that Parliament, at the close of basis of fact. A great scarcity and need the session, in order to console them for of copper money was felt in Ireland; and the loss of their favourite bill, gave them this is not denied by the dean. William to understand, "that it miscarried merely Wood, whom Swift always calls, "hardby its not having been brought into the wareman and bankrupt," but who was, in House before the session was so far ad- fact, a large proprietor, and owner or vanced." And after earnestly recommend-renter of several extensive iron works in ing to them, in their several stations, the England,* proposed to contract for the care and preservation of the public peace, supply needed, and his proposal was ache added, "that, in his opinion, that cepted. The national, or rather colonial, would be greatly promoted by the vigorous jealousy was at once inflamed; and alexecution of the laws against popish ready, long before Dean Swift's first letter priests; and that he would contribute his on the subject, the two Houses had voted part towards the prevention of that grow-addresses to the crown, accusing the ing evil, by giving proper directions that patentee of fraud, affirming that the terms such persons only should be put into the of the patent had been infringed as to the commissions of the peace as had dis- quality of the coin, and that its circulatinguished themselves by their steady tion would be highly prejudicial to adherence to the Protestant interest." the revenue and commerce of the Everybody knew what that meant-in-country. The Commons, with great creased vigilance in hunting down clergymen, and in discovering and appropriating the property of laymen; nor is their any reason to think that his Grace's exhortations were addressed to unwilling ears. exaggeration, declared that even had the terms of the patent been complied with, the nation would have suffered a loss of at least 150 per cent.; and indeed the whole clamour rested on partial or ignorant misrepresentation. Wood's coin was as good as any other copper coinage of that day; and the assertion of its opponents (repeated by Swift), that the intrinsic was no more than one-eighth of the nominal value of the metal, must be taken with great caution. If this assertion had even been true, the matter would have been of little consequence, because when coinage descends below gold and silver, it comes to be only a kind of counters for the conSwift and Wood's Copper.-Drapier's Letters.-venience of exchange, deriving its value Claim of Independence. Primate Boulter.Swift popular with the Catholics.-His feeling towards Catholics.-Desolation of the country.Rack-rents.- Absenteeism.- Great Distress. Swift's modest Proposal.-Death of George I. CHAPTER VIII. 1723-1727. WHILE the Irish Parliament was so earnestly engaged in their measures against popish priests, Dean Swift, who had lived in great quiet for three or four years, writing Gulliver's Travels in the country, suddenly plunged impetuously into the tumult of Irish politics. His indignation was inflamed to the highest pitch-not by the ferocity of the legislature against Catholics, but by Wood's copper halfpence. The country, he thought, was on the verge of ruin, not by reason of the tempest of intolerance, rapacity, fraud, and cruelty, which raged over it on every side, but by reason of a certain copper coinage to the from the sanction of the government which issues it; and being receivable in payment of taxes, it has for all its purposes the whole value which it denotes on its face.t From the specimens, however, of Wood's halfpence preserved in the British Museum, and fac-similes of which are given in some editions of Swift's works, it is clear that the coins were of a goodly size, and with a fair impression; and by an assay made at the mint, under Sir Isaac Newton and his two associates, it was proved that in weight and in fineness these coins rather exceeded than fell short of the conditions *Coxe. Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole. The present base coinage of cent and threecent pieces in the United States is an example of this. It is intrinsically of no value at all, being composed of the vilest of metal; yet it answers all the purposes of small change, without injury to anybody. |