Ireland

by Joseph Coohill

  YOUNG IRELAND

  Although the Repeal movement failed completely, it was to prove significant for Irish history because of its effects on succeeding generations of Irish nationalists. The first of these were a group called Young Ireland, who were active between 1842 and 1848. The early leaders were Thomas Davis (1814–45), Charles Gavan Duffy (1816–1903), and John Blake Dillon (1814–66). In 1842, they founded a newspaper called The Nation, in order to promote O’Connell’s Repeal movement. Their ideas were to become very important in shaping future ideas of Irish nationalism. Davis, a Protestant Dublin lawyer, believed strongly that the backbone to nationhood was a strong national identity. This should include everyone who lived in Ireland, Catholic and Protestant, tenant and landlord. He was a fierce opponent of the sectarianism that had been witnessed amongst Repeal extremists. Charles Gavan Duffy was a Catholic journalist, who edited The Nation and was a political organizer. His main idea was that the Irish party in the British House of Commons should act independently of the British parties, and not form an alliance with any party that did not support Repeal of the Union. John Blake Dillon believed that nationalists of different opinions should work together and (at least initially) that they should use exclusively non-violent means. John Mitchel (1815–75), a Protestant lawyer from County Down, joined the group in 1844. He argued that complete independence from Britain was required in order for Ireland’s problems to be solved. He was also the only Young Irelander to advocate the use of physical force from the beginning. James Fintan Lalor (1807–49) contributed articles to The Nation, arguing that the major problem in Ireland concerned land and landholding. The question of nationalism had to be linked with the problems of high rents and the lack of security of tenure which plagued tenant farmers, Lalor argued, in order for common people to be able to agitate for independence without losing their economic base. These ideas were to be taken up by later nationalists such as Davitt and Parnell (see chapters four through six).

  Although Davis died of scarlet fever in 1845, Young Ireland continued agitating, and split with O’Connell over the question of the use of force in July 1846. Another important figure at this time was William Smith O’Brien (1803–64), a Cambridge-educated former conservative MP from Limerick, who had acted as head of the Repeal Association during O’Connell’s imprisonment and had briefly joined Young Ireland from 1843 to 1846. In early 1848, there was a revolution in France, and the Young Irelanders sought to capture some of that spirit and apply it to a rebellion in Ireland. The government found out about their planned rising, and swept into Dublin to capture the rebels. They fled south and convinced O’Brien to lead them in a larger rising. They tried to organize local people into armed bands, but this largely failed in the face of clergy opposition and general disorganization. O’Brien led a skirmish in Ballingary, County Tipperary, on 29 July 1848. His group encountered police and two rebels were killed. Military reinforcements dispersed the rebels, and the rising fizzled out without further incident. For his part in the rising, Duffy was imprisoned until 1849. After his release, he revived The Nation and agitated for land reform in the early 1850s. He emigrated to Australia in 1855, became active in politics there, and was knighted in 1873. Although he did not take an active part in the rising because of physical incapacity, James Fintan Lalor was imprisoned for five months in 1848. He tried to revive and promote some of his ideas, but died in 1849. William Smith O’Brien was convicted of treason and transported to Tasmania. He was pardoned in 1854 and returned to Ireland in 1856, but was no longer active in politics. John Mitchel was convicted of treason in 1848 and transported to Tasmania. He escaped in 1853 and made his way to America, where he was involved in Irish-American politics. He returned to Ireland in 1875 and died in the same year.

  The Young Ireland rebellion was considered pathetic by many, including The Times, which called it ‘a cabbage-garden revolution’. What the Young Irelanders did accomplish, however, was the provision of a succinct propaganda for future nationalists. Not only did their journalism argue an easily understood nationalism, they produced a ‘Library of Ireland’, a series of biographies and histories which became a sort of extensive textbook for nationalists. It was the Library of Ireland series which did serious damage to O’Connell’s reputation, together with the fact that Charles Gavan Duffy lived until 1903, and was able to influence opinion through his retrospective writings about the 1840s and 1850s.

  ECONOMY, SOCIETY AND RELIGION

  Politics, however, was not everything during this period. Important social, religious and economic changes took place that greatly affected subsequent Irish history, particularly the Famine of 1845–52 and the land issue later in the century. While most of Europe (and certainly England) was industrializing between 1750 and 1850, Ireland remained remarkably rural and agricultural, with nearly seventy-five percent of the male workforce engaged primarily in farming. Less than twenty percent of Irish people lived in towns, and since the population reached nearly eight and a half million by the early 1840s, this meant that the Irish countryside was the main place for employment and living.

  Population growth in this period was staggering. Ireland outstripped all other European countries in growth rate before the Famine. There have been many explanations for this rapid increase in population. An increasing reliance on the potato was among the first. Since the potato was easy to cultivate and had great nutritional value, small farmers were able to have larger families (partly to work the fields), and people married younger and started their own families. But the evidence for this view is not conclusive, and an increased reliance on the potato may have been a result of growing population rather than the cause of it. Alternatively, the rapid growth in population may have been due to a fall in mortality rates and general improvements in health, but even this theory is difficult to prove. One of the few remaining ideas that has been generally accepted is that one important reason for population growth was high marital fertility. This implies that, although people may not have married at younger and younger ages (which would have increased population through a larger number of families in total), but that, once married (at any age), fertility was very high (that is, married couples had many more children than elsewhere in Europe). Economic historians argue all these points, but it is undoubted that an increasing (and largely rural) population was the main feature of Irish society before the Famine.

  This society was generally made up of three main economic classes – landlords, farmers and labourers. Landlords owned the land, farmers (generally) rented parcels from them, and labourers worked for both classes. But these distinctions are too broadly drawn. Within each category (especially those of landlord and farmer), there were tremendous differences in wealth and power. There were a few very wealthy landlords who owned vast estates, but there were also those who only owned tiny estates. Farmers ranged from those who rented large tracts of land, and who had many labourers, to those who scratched out a living on small parcels of land and did all the work themselves. Labourers were also a diverse group, with some of them able to rent (or even buy) small plots of land near their dwellings, and others being completely landless and only working the land of others (farmers or landlords). Labourers made up the great majority of the rural population. Land sales and renting were very complicated affairs, and, generally speaking, labourers fared the worst. Contemporary commentators were often shocked at the conditions in which the poorest of the labourers had to live. But this may have been due to the complexities of the system rather than to excessive rents, and there were also great regional variations across the country.

  The end of the Napoleonic Wars also had a great effect on the Irish economy, especially agriculture. The wars had raised agricultural prices, and led to an increase in prosperity. But their end brought about a price collapse to about two-thirds the wartime level. Prices grew only very gradually for the next three decades. Economic hardship touched most levels of society, but hit the labourers worst. Still, agricultural production was fairly equi
valent with that of most other European countries at this time, and a measure of agricultural success was that much of the potato crop was being sold for cash, rather than being used for food (although this remained the practice for most poor labourers). Although agricultural production was good, the lives of many poor labourers were very difficult, and they often lived on the margins of survival. When local crop failure struck, those at this subsistence level often had to resort to begging and charity. Irish industries were also affected by larger economic changes in Europe. The Irish textile industry suffered along with the British textile industry during recessions in the 1820s. The woollen and cotton industries also declined during the 1830s. Further, linen production moved from individual workers in cottages to centralized factories (largely in Ulster), and many cottage workers lost their means of living. This contributed to the first big wave of nineteenth-century emigration from the poorer parts of the country from 1815 onwards.

  All of these changes served to increase the differences in conditions between the regions in Ireland. The south and west were generally harder hit because their economies were less diverse and flexible than in the east and north. During periods of economic distress, rural violence and unrest flared up in various parts of the country. As in other aspects of Irish history, however, it is very difficult to find patterns for explanation. For the most part, rural unrest seems to have been highly localized and short term. Those forced to the economic margins often disrupted rural life by agitating against those farmers who were more economically affluent, by demanding lower rents, or higher wages, or even resorting to violence to meet the needs of subsistence. But even this is perhaps too much of a generalization, because much rural discontent was manifested in the poor stealing from the poor in order to survive. What is perhaps most certain is that the picture of rural Ireland portrayed by many novelists at the time as a place of bitter inhabitants and danger for the ‘respectable’ classes and the traveller was certainly exaggerated. While this image has fed on romanticized visions of rural Ireland as a place of wild beauty, in terms of presenting the country to foreigners (mainly the English), it provided for much misunderstanding and prejudice that was to last for generations.

  It is fairly clear that Ireland was a poor country in relation to the rest of Europe. It is also clear, however, that between 1800 and 1845, those who held land above a moderate amount witnessed increasing prosperity. Those without such holdings were in a gradually worsening condition in this period. And, perhaps most importantly, the difference between the prosperity of Great Britain and that of Ireland was increasing.

  Urban life was similarly complicated. As British factories started to produce cheap manufactured goods, Irish artisans who had made such things in the past started to suffer from the competition. Yet merchants were often quite successful, and industrialization in Dublin and Belfast became a permanent fixture. Unskilled labourers, however, were left to the fluctuations of the economy, and they were almost universally poor. One main feature of urban economics in this period was the general division between Catholic and Protestant merchants and businessmen. Although they were fairly evenly balanced in terms of wealth and often worked together to mutual advantage in big projects such as railways, in other respects they were kept apart. Local charities, political organizations and clubs were usually divided along Catholic–Protestant lines. This division would also frequently appear when businessmen supported political movements. Not surprisingly, O’Connell’s movement attracted support from Catholic merchants and businessmen, and Irish Toryism received equal support from Protestant merchants and businessmen. Even so, political support was not universal amongst religious groups, and O’Connell, for instance, found it difficult to understand the economic arguments of labourers and artisans who said that Emancipation had done nothing to improve their economic conditions. Finally, one of the most important ways in which Irish urban life was similar to rural life during this period was in the numbers of urban poor, and the conditions in which they lived (which may, indeed, have been worse than those in the country). There was a good deal of unemployment, and many families lived on the verge of starvation and were constantly harried by sickness and disease.

  Another important area of change in Ireland during this period was in religious life, especially in the expansion of the Catholic Church through the training of more priests and the building of more churches and cathedrals. While the Catholic religion had survived under the Penal Laws, there were not enough priests to cope with the rising population. Maynooth College had been founded by the government in 1795 to provide for the native training of priests (who had previously gone to continental Europe, particularly France, for seminary training). Although this increased the number of priests being trained, it could not keep up with the numbers of new parishioners. In 1800, there were roughly 2,675 parishioners per priest, but in 1835 there were nearly 3,000, and the geographical distribution of clergy was uneven. Throughout the early part of the nineteenth century, new churches were built and old ones expanded to allow for increasing numbers.

  Furthermore, the Catholic Church attempted to dictate a more regular set of religious practices to its flock. In much of the country, folk celebrations and superstitions were very popular, and Christian observance of important events (like marriage and death) was often accompanied by other rites which echoed what was thought of as a pre-Christian, Celtic Irish past. These observances and celebrations, however, were not usually held in opposition to church practices, nor would the participants have seen themselves as being anti-Christian or anti-Catholic. They were simply the customs of each region or locality, and they did not affect the degree of Catholic devotion. The church tried to rein in these practices, without complete success. Many people were opposed to losing what they saw as part of their local tradition, and some of the more tolerant local priests did not actively seek to impose restrictions on their parishes. These attempted reforms were more successful in towns and in areas where more prosperous farmers were dominant, and where folk practices had been less pervasive anyway. But these reforms were partially complete, and the ‘devotional revolution’ which has been traditionally described as a pious reaction to God’s wrath during the Famine can more properly be dated to the few decades before 1845.

  Protestant religions underwent similar changes in Ireland during the first half of the nineteenth century. Along with their sister churches in Britain, Episcopalians (members of the Anglican Church of Ireland) and Presbyterians saw an increase in the power of central church authorities, as well as an increase in devotional practice. Evangelicalism also came over from England, and the Methodists became a distinct and growing denomination in Ireland. Perhaps most importantly, however, was a growing consciousness of Protestantism and an increased desire to emphasize differences from Catholicism. This paralleled the rise in Protestant political consciousness (partly in response to O’Connell). The most striking theological aspect of Irish Protestantism during this period, however, was the impact of evangelicalism, not only in its own right, but in its effects on the existing denominations. Several important Church of Ireland ministers were ‘converted’, and adopted an evangelical tone in their work. The rise of evangelicalism and the increased organization of the Catholic Church eventually led to an increase of sectarian misunderstanding and mistrust. While there were still many examples of ecumenical co-operation as the first half of the nineteenth century continued, the divisions between all religions hardened.

  INTERPRETATIONS

  O’Connell did what many other Irish politicians were unable to do. Most nationalists tried to educate the populace to somewhat complex political ideas. O’Connell, on the other hand, used religion to motivate the people politically, which made politics easier for most people to understand. In the immediate years after his death, O’Connell was treated as a hero in Ireland. A change in interpretation began in the 1860s, when some of the Young Irelanders, notably John Mitchel and Charles Gavan Duffy, started to critique O’Connell in p
rint. They argued that O’Connell was not forceful enough, that he was too willing to co-operate with British politicians, and that his own financial and personal problems affected his ability to gain reforms for Ireland. Mitchel was particularly fierce in his condemnation of O’Connell’s policy of applying moral rather than physical force since it allowed the government to ignore the worsening famine of 1845–52. In addition to these charges, there were a few important political and religious changes that made the memory of O’Connell seem less relevant to Irish Catholics and tenants. In 1869, the government disestablished the Anglican Church of Ireland, so that it no longer held privileged status over the Catholic majority. Land reforms in the 1870s and 1880s eased poor tenants’ concerns somewhat, and it seemed as if some of the more important aims that O’Connell desired were achieved without him. O’Connell’s reputation was dealt a blow by these interpretations and events, and he remained unpopular in nationalist interpretations until after the Second World War in the twentieth century. Indeed, an attempt to preserve and restore O’Connell’s family home in 1947 (the centenary of his death) had to rely on publicizing his work on Catholic Emancipation and suppress the failed attempts at Repeal of the Union in order to gain financial support. The state of O’Connell’s reputation at this time is also shown by the fact that, in 1945, the centenary of Thomas Davis’s death, the Irish government published a commemorative volume, Thomas Davis and Young Ireland, while O’Connell’s centenary passed without official commemoration in 1947.

  Things started to change very slowly after the Second World War. In 1956, Thomas P. O’Neill argued in an important chapter in T.D. Williams and R.D. Edwards’ The Great Famine: Studies in Irish History (1956) that the Famine was a disaster quite beyond the scope of any one person to affect, and, by implication, that O’Connell’s policy of non-violence could not be blamed for government inaction. In 1963, Kevin Nowlan argued that the Young Irelanders had gone too far in their condemnation of both O’Connell’s tactics and his personality. Angus Macintyre wrote in 1965 that it was virtually impossible to find enough serious scholarship dealing with O’Connell. His book, The Liberator, showed in detail not only how O’Connell acted as a politician, but how his party set the organizational and ideological tone for Irish parties in the House of Commons for the rest of the century. Textbooks in the later 1960s and early 1970s, including those by Beckett, McCaffrey and MacDonagh (all listed in the Further Reading section at the end of this book), went a long way towards rehabilitating O’Connell and placing him at the centre of Irish history during this period. J.C. Beckett’s The Making of Modern Ireland 1603–1923 (1966), contains one of the strongest interpretations of O’Connell’s contribution to the organization of public opinion and Irish national identity, what Roy Foster has called ‘the mobilization of popular politics’. Beckett wrote,