like O’Connell, let the popular imagination run wild, for the sake of influence, and the aims to which influence was directed. The people believed, and they were not contradicted, that Father Mathew healed the sick, and had raised at least one from the dead. He afforded thus the material of a Temperance host, which O’Connell drilled as an army. Those were the critical days when an indulgent policy was happily adopted, instead of a coercive one; and when the right choice was made between giving Ireland opportunity to be a convert, and calling her to account as a rebel. She was allowed to hold her monster meetings, where an army of sober peasantry marched before O’Connell, really believing him to be the destined king of Ireland, while their mothers and wives wept rapturous tears, in full faith that there was now to be no more poverty for anybody; no more evictions from field or cabin; no lack of potatoes ever again; but plenty, and glory, and liberty for every man to do as he liked, under King Dan—his own chosen prince. That mob-prince, meantime, carried a heavy heart within him. He was as a man half-way up a precipice, where he finds no path nor footing. His uncertainty and fear became very obvious, and they carried him to his grave. His influence was much lessened before he died, and so was Father Mathew’s. There was nothing to sustain the hero-worship in either case; and the chief practical result was the evidence that the way to govern the Irish was through the loyalty of the popular heart, and not by making them arbiters of their own political rights. Even O’Connell, to whom they were loyal so long, failed because he could not give them the bribes which he annexed to political claims; and no agitator since his time has succeeded at all. When Smith O’Brien was in the height of his hopeful delusions, Irishmen who knew their countrymen said he and his comrades must fail: no political Protestant could ever lead discontented Catholics on to a successful rebellion. The reason was, that the people wanted a hero to worship first, whatever notion of rights might come afterwards; and no political Protestant can be an idol in a priest-ridden Catholic country.
How far it might have been different if O’Connell had lived, there is no saying; but Irish history took a new turn when his vigour and influence declined, and began a new chapter after his death. There was the national system of education—a blessing which Ireland (and the whole empire, as interested in Ireland) owes primarily to Lord Derby. Half a million of the children of successive generations have been civilised and enlightened by that institution; and the Irish passion for education has happily counteracted the influence of the priesthood so far as to secure the signal success of the scheme. The Bishop of Oxford saw with delight, the other day, what those schools really are, in regard to the intelligence, and free, happy, and orderly bearing of the children, and the good understanding which exists among households of teachers of differing religious faiths. But, to estimate the full benefit, one should see what these schools do in the remoter parts of the country, where the priest is kept in order, and the rebel is laughed at, and the incendiary is restrained, and all wildness turned into reason, by the mere enlightenment of the children as they grow up. Bigots on both sides have made great difficulty; but the system survives and flourishes, and the period of Irish delusion from ignorance is evidently closed.
Of the famine, I will say only that it left the country covered with refuges for the helplessly poor. The workhouses were not mere roofs for the shelter of the destitute, nor abodes of shame, as they are elsewhere. There was no disgrace in the destitution caused by such a calamity as the famine and its consequent pestilence; and the workhouses operated in somewhat the same way as the schools. They were an interesting feature to the traveller who went to see what Ireland was like when the hungry were fed again, and the dead were buried. There the people learned to wear whole clothes; there habits of cleanliness and neatness were formed; there boys were trained in agricultural and girls in domestic arts; and the multitude of orphans left by the fever found a not unkindly parent in the State. The system could not have worked, however, without another great change. While the land lay waste under the burden of debt, and its owners could not live on it, and Irish capital was deposited in the imperial funds at low interest, while the country was perishing for want of it, there could be no actual poor-rate which could support the lowest class. The famine had proved the absence of a middle class at all in proportion to those above and below, as it had exhibited the mischievous lack of roads to connect one community with another. Everything wanted consolidation with other things—one class of society with another—one locality with another—trade with agriculture—labour with capital; and while the disintegration existed, even the feeding and clothing the destitute from the public purse could not go on. The remedy was applied when the land was released. There never was a more conspicuous instance of success in social administration than that of the Encumbered Estates Act. When it had come into full operation, it was really worth while to go to Ireland. It is true the country was studded all over with gable-ends where cabin-roofs had fallen in, and nettles and briars grew over the cold hearth-stones. It is true the churchyards were very full, and the villages very empty, in the dreariest districts. One’s heart was rent with the cry of parting, when groups of emigrants mounted the public cars. The priests hung about the shores or the lanes, as idle as the Protestant parson had ever been, and far more miserable. Their flocks were dispersed; their living was gone; and their neighbours had betaken themselves to a land where they were pretty sure to turn heretics. These incidents were mournful enough; and there were complaints that more and more cattle were grazing where cabins and potato-grounds contained inhabitants before. But there was an abundant set-off against all melancholy incidents. The beggars had diminished yet more than in proportion to the decrease of population. The men in the fields were earning double wages, and working better accordingly. The labourer who, at sixpence a-day, had lain down on his back as soon as the
