houses, rendered idle and poor by every sort of obstruction, and wretched by popular dislike: and there were Catholic priests who knew, in virtue of their office, how political disappointment was made use of to sink their flocks deeper into crime. There were hedge-schools, where tattered boys were eagerly learning arithmetic and land surveying, that they might enter into the competition for land and land offices, which was their only notion of getting a living. There were hollow places under the turf of the moors, betrayed only by a thread of blue smoke, where illicit stills were at work, and dogs were in training to carry bladders full of whisky through the beat of the exciseman in the night. There were hovels without number, where parents were compelled to give their children the potatoes which they had promised as rent. The little ones could not starve to-day, whether or not they were to have a roof over their heads to-morrow. There were wastes on the mountain, and wild sands by the sea where men stealthily collected in the dusk or at daybreak for drill, with pike or fork or scythe, when firearms could not be got; and frantic was the joy, or desperate the rage, according to the report of scouts or prophets, as to the approach of the French, or the putting off of the invasion. There was emigration in those times, though we are too apt to forget it. Not only did Irish mowers, reapers, and hop-pickers invade our agricultural counties in the season in numbers (the like of which will never be seen again), but several thousands of the peasantry yearly found their way to the United States or the British Colonies. In America they were very welcome, in the early days of railways and canals. The new comers, it is true, died off fast, of drink, miasma, and needless discomfort; but the lowest of them valued education for their children; and, as education is universal in the free States, the next generation were well worth having; but the characteristic of the Irish in America was found to be, as it is now, their intolerance, and preference of despotic to free government. John Mitchel is a true representative of his countrymen in America in his aspiration after “a goodly plantation, stocked with fat negroes.” As the emigrants dispersed over the world, they spread everywhere the notion that their people were made slaves of by England, and that all their woes were owing to political causes. At this moment a sound is ringing in my ears, one of the most painful I ever heard,—the passionate, peevish cry of the widow of Theobald Wolfe Tone,—an aged lady living at Philadelphia, who poured out her Irish politics to me, exclaiming, on behalf of her country, “Let her alone! Don’t touch her at all! Only let her alone!” It was not a case for reasoning. The Catholics were then emancipated; and the Whig government was entering on its course of beneficent rule; but the widow of the rebel of 1798 had no patience to hear of good news for Ireland if it came through English hands.
I shall ever believe that to Thomas Drummond, more than to any other human agency, is the regeneration of Ireland due. An undemonstrative Scotchman, he seemed animated as by a new soul when he had warmed in his Irish office; and it might well be so; for he had set before him the object of saving Ireland, whatever became of himself. Ireland was saved, and he perished under the burden of the work. To those who knew him before he crossed the Channel, it is very moving to see his statue at Dublin,—with the face full of the well-remembered intellectual sensibility, but so thin and worn! In dying, he declared that he died for Ireland; and it is true. Those who know him by nothing else remember him by his saying—so simple to him that he could not conceive how it became so celebrated,—that “Property has its duties as well as its rights:” and it will be fully recognised hereafter that he inaugurated the rule of indulgence which alone could have saved Ireland,—so deeply sunk as she was. The rule of the Whig government, worked by Mr. Drummond, and exemplified by the high officials who did the demonstrative part, was the turning point of the fate of Ireland.
There was a new phase, but not a much more promising one to superficial observers, when O’Connell, having obtained Catholic emancipation, found himself unable (supposing him willing) to withdraw from his function of Agitator. I have never been able to think well of O’Connell, more or less. Men of all politics desired to like and admire him, if possible: but I, for one, never could see that he answered to any sort of test of sound character, political or moral. He had his retribution for his sins in the tribulation of his later years, every one of which plunged him deeper in the embarrassments of false promises, timid collusion, and public pledges which he could never redeem. Nobody now supposes that latterly he believed Repeal possible, or in any way desirable; yet he had not courage to avow the truth: and his humiliation extended even to sanctioning each man’s dream as to the results of Repeal. He obtained the support of the Irish peasantry by permitting them to believe that “Repale” meant the possession of land by each man in fee simple. A glimpse of Ireland at that time, twenty years ago, shows us an altered scene, but one as full of peril as ever, except that plans of regeneration were maturing at the Castle at Dublin.
There had been abundant proof within a few years that the loyalty of the Irish was to persons more than to institutions. It had astonished us all in 1820 that George IV., who would not grant Catholic emancipation, and had been no benefactor to Ireland, was received there with an enthusiasm which seemed perfectly senseless. We might have learned more than we did from the fact that the mere presence of the king could so work upon the people. Nearly twenty years later, the people were hero-worshipping again; and their heroes were changing the aspect of Ireland for the time. Father Mathew had obtained a hold on the popular imagination in one way, as O’Connell had in another. In Ireland we then saw the distilleries shut up, and the spirit-merchants turning to other occupations. We saw the temperance medals on tens of thousands of necks and breasts; and where they were worn, the children were getting clothed, and the cabins furnished, and the parents rising out of debt and difficulty. But it was really worship, and therefore dangerous. Father Mathew,
