Peel's Second Ministry II
(October
1843 to June 1846)
Summary. The trial of O'Connell and
his associates resulted in his being put in prison, but he was now visibly a
sick man. He was released on a legal technicality on appeal. Peel decided to
intervene personally. The Lord Lieutenant was replaced and measures brought in
to provide for university education for Catholics and for their charitable
bequests. A bill was brought in to provide more secure revenues for Maynooth
Catholic seminary. O'Connell had no difficulty in proving that these were really
penal laws. At this point the potato blight struck Western Europe and relief
schemes were everywhere introduced. The Government also took steps to provide
food in those areas where the market or private charity were insufficient.
***********************************************************************
The O’Connell Trial
Peel Intervenes
Charitable Bequests
Other Measures
The Provincial Colleges
Ireland under Heytesbury
The O’Connell Trial
[January 1844] It is not necessary
to pursue the trial of O'Connell that commenced on 13 January
1844 in
detail. He made no rousing speeches in his own defence, nor
in favour of Repeal, but just followed the advice of his counsel. The Rent
poured in so the defence could pursue its case to any length. Those who
observed him closely realized that he was not well. The defendants were free on
bail and O'Connell and his son attended Parliament as usual. After the verdict
but before the sentence John O'Connell was appointed to serve on a committee of
Parliament. It was assumed that the business of the committee would be finished
before the judges passed sentence. The Government did not object to him
serving. The sitting of Parliament commenced on 1 February 1844. Lord John Russell brought forward a
motion critical of the Government’s handling of the case, but the Government
won the vote easily.
The
trial came on in February 1844 and the defendants were found guilty of
conspiring to intimidate the queen's subjects and to over-awe both Houses of
Parliament. The counsel for the defence appealed to the Court of Error (the
twelve chiefs justices and puisne judges sitting together) to have the verdict
set aside on procedural grounds, chiefly the misdirection of the jury by the
Chief Justice (Pennefather.) (A detailed, if partisan, account is given by
Duffy, one of the defendants.) The Court of Error rejected the plea, and the
defendants came forward for sentence. They were each sentenced to a fine of
£2,000 and twelve months imprisonment. The defence counsel then asked for an
arrest of judgment pending an appeal to the House of Lords, but the judges
rejected this. Most people were surprised at this rejection. The judges were
not the Government and this rejection, though technically within the law,
smacked of partisanship.
So,
on 30 May 1844 the defendants were confined to Richmond prison. As the law stood, gentlemen
were allowed to hire rooms in the prison, and to bring in their servants and
members of their families, the sentence being simply one of loss of liberty.
They hired the gaoler's house, sent for their servants, and got ready to
receive visitors. These came in a flood, with Archbishop Murray in the lead.
Duffy says that they had a programme of useful writing to be done, but the many
visitors made this impossible. O’Connell was now a very sick man, and took
little part in the activities of the prisoners. In addition, he fell madly in
love with a lady young enough to be his granddaughter, and devoted most of his
attention to her, though she was not interested in him (Duffy). The Young
Irelanders believed he was preparing to sell out to the Government,
or at least to compromise with the Federalists who were now well organized. In
June 1844 the Rent's highest weekly total ever at £3340 was reached. Thereafter
it fell off rapidly and was down to £350 by the beginning of October. William
Smith O'Brien was chosen to lead the Repeal Association for the moment. Peel
had removed de Grey, who was, it was said, in ill
health, in July 1844, immediately after the imprisonment of O'Connell,
appointing Baron Heytesbury in his place.
An
appeal to the House of Lords proceeded. The appeal was not concerned with the
question of guilt, but with whether there had been irregularities in the trial.
In the previous year, an eminent Belfast barrister named Joseph Napier
(subsequently Sir Joseph Napier and Lord Chancellor) had been defending Sam
Grey an Orangeman at the Monaghan assizes. He had been refused leave to
challenge a particular juror, so he sued out a writ of error alleging an
improperly constituted jury. He took his case to the House of Lords and won.
O'Connell tried to secure his services but the crown lawyers had anticipated
him. Lord Brougham, a former Lord Chancellor of England, contended that mere
technical imperfections in framing charges did not invalidate verdicts if the
charges were substantially accurate. However, the Law Lords voted on 4th
September 1844
three
to two to
reverse the judgment, so all charges against O'Connell were dropped. Parliament
recessed the following day, 5th September 1844. (In strict law, it seems, a split
verdict should leave the judgment of the lower court to stand, but Peel was not
prepared to quibble. Also the judgment of the Lords was on a legal
technicality not on the substantive charges.) The release of the prisoners as
soon as the news reached Dublin was followed by great rejoicing in
most of Ireland, and Archbishop Murray presided over a
solemn High Mass of thanksgiving. The Morning
Chronicle of London remarked with some point that his imprisonment
was the best thing that could have happened to O’Connell, for the monster
meetings were becoming a threat to him more than to anyone else (cited in SNL 11 Sept 1844). O’Connell made a triumphal progress
to his home in Kerry.
Duffy
gives a detailed account of the trial, giving the impression that the
Government, the Law Officers, and the judges used every unfair trick that they
knew. This was not so. The leading barristers in Dublin were selected on either side. The counsel for the defence were entitled to make as many
objections as they could. These finally boiled down to the very general nature
of the charges in the indictment, and what was considered misdirection of the
jury by a partisan summing-up by the Lord Chief Justice. Charles Gavan Duffy
was the ablest, and most balanced of the Young Ireland group. (He was born in
Monaghan, and was educated briefly at a local Presbyterian school. Otherwise he
was largely self-educated. He began to contribute to various newspapers,
briefly edited the Belfast Vindicator, and in 1842 started the
weekly Nation. Like many other
journalists at the time he studied for the bar. In 1848 he was arrested before the armed rising broke out, and
though brought to trial five times he was eventually discharged. In 1855 he
went to Australia. In 1871 he became the Chief Minister
in the colony of Victoria and in 1872 he was knighted.)
In
the matter of the charges, there is no doubt that O'Connell's meetings did
terrify many of the queen's subjects, and that he knew this was the case, but
still conspired with others to hold the meetings. To frame proper charges on
that score was difficult, yet a jury which returned a verdict of 'Guilty' could
hardly be faulted. The same applied to the charge of the attempt to over-awe
Parliament. Many of those who took part in the meetings were determined, if
necessary, to overthrow Parliament, and Duffy, for one, in his own defense,
would have preferred for political reasons to make this clear. He was
over-ruled by his counsel. O'Connell disclaimed any wish for violence in the
'Mallow Defiance'. Yet the majority of the Law Lords conceded that the charges
were too broadly framed, and not specific enough, for example by not specifying
who exactly was terrified. On the other hand, it could be argued that it should
be left to the jury to decide. The Protestant Evening Mail remarked that O’Connell had as much right to benefit
from the quirks of the law when they were in his favour, as the Orangeman Sam
Grey was when they favoured him. There were few Catholics who were prepared to
concede the parity of the cases.
de Grey’s several blunders played into O'Connell's hands.
His first, perhaps, was to bother proclaiming any meeting. The second was to
proclaim it at such short notice. There could have been a massacre if O'Connell
had not acted so decisively and turned back his followers. No sensible
Government puts itself in such a situation. The third was to lay charges
against O'Connell at all, especially when it became clear that the charges
would be long, wordy, and imprecise. The fourth was a failure to take
affidavits from numerous Protestants claiming to be terrified. If they had,
they could probably have convicted O'Connell easily of common law offences.
Peel had actually advised de Grey to procure such affidavits. The fifth one was
to actually imprison O'Connell while an appeal to the House of Lords was still
in progress. The sixth was their failure to ensure that they were fully backed
by the Prime Minister and the cabinet. The Irish Government might have been
strictly legally right on every point, and it seems they were, but they played
into the hands of the nationalist propaganda machine at home and abroad.
de Grey contented
himself with the letter of the existing law, and in no way yielded to demands
from extreme Protestants. A Protestant Reformation Society petitioned him to
refuse all public money to Catholic priests in Maynooth or anywhere else, to
promote scriptural education, to appoint a Board of Commissioners to set out
the errors of popery, to remove from Parliament all MPs unwilling to pass such
legislation, and so on, but he took no notice (SNL 17 Oct 1843). de Grey more resembled
Richmond than any other Lord Lieutenant, and
using the powers of the state to promote Protestantism was not in the mind of
either. But Peel knew that the Richmond era was long past.
[Top]
Peel Intervenes
We can assume that
Peel had not intended taking any direct action in Ireland himself. Under Lord Liverpool, when he
was Home Secretary, Wellesley Lord Lieutenant, Goulburn Secretary, and Plunket
Attorney General, a systematic programme for Ireland was put into effect. He mistook the
character of de Grey who blocked every one of Eliot's proposals. Not only was
no legislation to improve the lot of Catholics introduced, not even a single
Catholic was awarded an office.
Now
in 1844 Peel had to take the initiative; under his direction the whole cabinet
and the officers in the Irish Government became much more favourable to the
Catholics. Peel's biographer attributes the initiatives to Peel
himself, and Duffy spoke of them as concessions won from Peel (Gash, Duffy).
(Since the start of the Protestant Volunteers in 1779 there were always those
who described any favourable legislation as 'concessions wrested from the
Government'. If one reads the speeches of Lord North on the repeal of the
Navigation Acts, or those of Charles James Fox on an independent Irish
Parliament we find only genuine concern to right perceived injustices or
inequities.) But it was a joint effort of the cabinet and the Irish Government,
where Eliot, at last, was given a free hand. The parliamentary leader of the
Irish Tories was Sir Frederick Shaw, the Recorder of Dublin, an open-minded man
like Peel himself. Nor were there any major changes in direction by Peel. All
his life Peel had been a reformer, as William Pitt had been. He was only opposed
to radical reform, and was always ready to bring in practical ones. In this,
his most famous disciple, Gladstone, followed him.
[July 1844]
The
incoming Lord Lieutenant was Baron Heytesbury, a retired diplomat, who arrived
in Dublin in July 1844. The Attorney General,
Thomas Cusack Smith, had impressed Peel by his defence of the policies of the
Irish Government during a debate on Ireland in the Commons, and this speaks
well of his ability and moderation. (He was a hot-tempered man, who, during the
trial of O'Connell, relapsed into the archaic practice of sending a hostile
message to an opposing counsel. O'Connell had himself tried to do this with
Saurin thirty years earlier, but fashions had much changed. His impetuous act
cost him the Lord Chancellorship, but he was made Master of the Rolls in 1846.)
Richard Wilson Green remained as Solicitor General.
By
the beginning of 1844 Peel had arrived at some agreement with the cabinet
concerning measures to be put forward in Ireland. Peel and the cabinet then discussed
what further should be done. Peel, especially, was sensitive
to the criticism that the Emancipation Act (1829) had done very little for the
Catholics, nor had it lived up to the inflated claims made for it beforehand.
Various proposals that had been put forward when the Whigs were in office were
re-examined.
The Whigs, and some others, like William Smith
O'Brien, were reviving the idea of State Provision for the Clergy. The idea
behind this was that the priests were not leaders of the agitation, but were
forced by economic necessity to go along with their flocks. At one stage,
indeed, in the struggle for Emancipation, O'Connell had threatened to put a
financial squeeze on all priests who did not support his views. But by 1840, it
was often the priests who were giving the lead. Peel was against all official
recognition of Rome and of the Catholic Church, and so did not seek
concordats, vetoes, or state payment of the clergy. The Catholic bishops
totally rejected the idea of accepting payment from the state.
There could be no
reasonable complaint however about changing the law to allow the Catholics
themselves to establish endowments for religious or charitable purposes. Such
could be endowments to provide for the maintenance of a parish priest, or for a
Catholic professorship at a college, not to mention bequests for masses.
[Top]
Charitable Bequests
That most likely to
please the Catholics and be passed by a Tory House of Commons was a reform of
the Charitable Bequests Board on the lines suggested by the Irish Catholic
bishops in 1840. Most bequests for religious and charitable purposes in Ireland were legal. There was no Act, as in England, outlawing 'superstitious bequests',
i.e. bequests for the saying of masses. By the Registration of the Clergy Act
(1703) bishops and regular clergy were not allowed to reside in the kingdom,
and the banishment of the regulars was re-iterated in 1829. But priests were
allowed to reside in Ireland, to have a mass-house, and to say
mass. And since 1750, various Governments had been treating with bishops under
the title of 'Doctor'.
Charitable
Bequests were regulated in Ireland by a Board of Commissioners, set up by
the Irish Parliament, and reorganized in 1799. It was given certain equity
powers, particularly that of cy pres
('as near as possible'), to dispose of bequests where the intentions of the
testator could not be carried out. All the members of this Board were
Protestant clergymen and the Catholic hierarchy had suggested that the law should
be changed to allow Catholics to be appointed. There was a popular suspicion or
prejudice that the Commissioners diverted Catholic bequests to Protestant
purposes. A Catholic religious Order could not hold property as a community or
corporate body, even its church, so systems of trustees had to be set up. Each
trustee named other persons to succeed him or her as trustee if he or she died.
The system was complicated but workable DEP
24 Dec 1844).
Under
Peel's projected Charitable Bequests Act, there would be a different
Board of Commissioners, similar to those administering the Maynooth grant and
National education, and including Archbishop Murray and Archbishop Whately,
with several other Catholics and Protestants. This Board could itself act as
trustee for any charities that might be established by Catholics. This did not
include the support of friars, to whom the old rules would still apply. (The
Government recognized the continuing residence of friars within the kingdom,
but did not act, despite strong demands by the anti-popery faction to have the
relevant clauses in the Emancipation Act enforced.)
Peel
went a small but significant step further. Archbishop Murray would be addressed
by the title 'Most Reverend', implying recognition of his episcopal status.
When the Whigs came to power they followed this up by referring in a minor Act
of Parliament to the Catholic archbishops of Dublin, following which Murray was
advised by Dublin Castle that it was appropriate that he be accompanied by a
chaplain when he called at a levee.
Cusack
Smith was asked to draft the Bill. The power of cy pres was to go. On the Board, at least five of the members were
to be Catholics. The Commissioners could hold bequests from any part of Ireland in trust. One wonders if either Peel
or Cusack Smith realized that this would mean making Archbishop Murray the
trustee in MacHale's diocese. Other clauses stated that the statutes against
friars remained, and (to prevent Jesuits or others working on the fears of
dying persons, as they were supposed to do) a clause, number 16, was inserted
that no bequest made within three months of dying was valid. That, in essence,
was the Bill.
When
O'Connell heard that Peel was proposing to introduce a Bill modifying the law
on Charitable Bequests he asked permission to introduce a Bill of his own just
to get it printed. Peel courteously acceded to the request. This has all the
appearance of a spoiling tactic by O'Connell. The idea behind O'Connell's
Charitable Bequests Bill would be to rush in with a Bill, taking good care not
to assemble support for it, and to insert clauses objectionable to many Tories
like the recognition of the Irish Catholic hierarchy and the abolition of the
statutes of mortmain. When his Bill
was rejected, as it was bound to be, he could them claim that the Government
was hostile to the Catholic religion. (As dioceses or religious Orders were
corporate bodies, they never died. Consequently, land bequeathed to them tended
to accumulate. Giving land to the Church was compared to giving it into the
hand of the dead mort main. The
original statute of mortmain was
passed in 1279.) His Bill was predictably rejected. O'Connell could then tell
the Repealing bishops that if there was a native Parliament his Bill would have
been passed, and the bishops would have complete control over their own
affairs.
When
Peel's Bill was published, it became clear that many people, including
Archbishop Murray, distrusted his intentions. It was central to Peel's plan
that Murray, of all people, should sit with
Whately on the Board, and it required much explanation and persuasion to bring
him round. The first bishop to announce that he would give the Bill a trial was
the Primate, Archbishop Crolly. Murray's objection was almost exclusively to
clause 16, for it would prevent a Catholic penitent making restitution of
property unlawfully obtained on his deathbed. Anthony Blake suggested, and the
Government concurred, that in such a case he could charge his estate to the
proper amount. Murray withdrew his objection.
The Commissioners
for Charitable Bequests were Archbishop Whately, Primate Beresford, the Dean
of St. Patrick's (Rev. Henry Packenham), the judge of the Prerogative
(Ecclesiastical) Court, (the Rev. Pooley Shuldam Henry), the Chief Baron of the
Exchequer (Mazier Brady, a Whig), and the Master of the Rolls (Blackburne,
Whig/Tory) on the Protestant side. The Catholic Commissioners were Archbishop
Murray, Primate Crolly, Dr Cornelius Denvir of Down
and Connor, Sir Patrick Bellew (Whig) and Anthony Blake (Whig/Tory).
What
nobody had foreseen was the fierce, blind prejudice of MacHale, and his
determination to secure for the Irish Repealing bishops the ultimate
arbitration of what was lawful and unlawful in religious matters in Ireland. Also, as in the matter of education,
the fact that Archbishop Murray could act for him (even if only in secular
matters) in his own diocese infuriated him. He subsequently took the same
attitude towards Cardinal Cullen. He had
a score to settle with Crolly as well because of his interference at the Pope’s
request in Tuam.
MacHale in characteristic oratorical style
reminiscent of the great eighteenth century orators wrote on 2 July to Peel
denouncing the Act as ‘atrocious, surpassing in its odious provisions the worst
enactments of penal times, and developing a maturity of wicked refinement in
legislation which the most clumsy artificers of the anti-Catholic code would in
vain attempt to rival’ (SNL 5 July
1844). He called the Act 'the most
insidious attempt yet, following veto and state provision, to corrupt the
Catholic Church'. (Perhaps for connoisseurs of rhetoric the
gem of MacHale’s oratorical flights of denunciation is his attack on Archbishop
Whately’ textbooks for the National Schools. He complained of some
leading Catholics who knowing ‘as much of the canonicity of the Sacred Books as
of the Cosmogony of the Budists, ladled a
la Soyer out of the steaming cauldron of this heterodox prelate the most
deleterious doses of uncatholic doctrine for the caged urchins of those
anti-national schools. It is no wonder if famine should come upon the land, and
if divine wrath should be enkindled, when such scenes are acted before high
heaven, on the theatre of Catholic Ireland. W.J. Fitzpatrick, Memoirs of Richard Whately p118
–Soyer was a famous chef at the time.)
MacHale
and the other Repealing bishops were determined on two things: that there
should be a native Irish Parliament with a majority of Catholic MPs and that
those MPs would take their instructions on all moral issues from their bishops.
It is rather odd to find a Protestant like Richard Barrett accepting this and
lecturing Davis that Ireland was a Catholic country and therefore
he should follow the wishes of the majority, and also accept the direction of the
Catholic bishops. In his youth, O'Connell himself would never have accepted
such a condition, but now he was old and waited to see the reaction of MacHale.
O'Connell,
by now in prison, obliged him (24 August 1844) by giving a professional legal
opinion in the sense he required. MacHale denounced the Bill in
Rome as an attack on the Catholic Church,
but Anthony Blake, anticipating such a move, had acted earlier. Dr Paul Cullen
was active in Rome trying to persuade the Pope that the Act was an
attack on the Church (DEP 31 Oct.
1844; Paul Cullen in 1820 at the age of seventeen went to Rome to study for the priesthood. He was
ordained in 1829, and was appointed vice-rector of the
Irish College in Rome). Blake was fortunate as
Rome was just about to send the instruction
to the MacHale faction to avoid politics. Rome did not act. But the main campaign was
fought in Ireland. Murray and Crolly had to be forced to
drop their acquiescence in the Act if the religious and moral struggle against
the Union was to retain credibility. A public
campaign of unbelievable ferocity was whipped up against them in the Press. A
visiting bishop, Dr Walsh of Halifax, Nova Scotia, commented that the ordinary people
meant well but
‘the schemes and practices of some of their leaders, both lay
and clerical, were most uncatholic and dishonest. I was never more disgusted
with some of the legerdemain exhibited on the occasion’ (Broderick). He
complained to O'Connell and noted that he was ashamed of the actions of his
followers. One of the rumours circulated was the Archbishop Crolly was mad.
The
general committee of the Repeal Association on which Young Ireland was well
represented favoured the Bill. O'Connell was now backing the clerical part of
the Repeal movement against the Young Irelanders. He did not attack the latter
directly from his prison. Without saying anything beforehand to the committee
of the Association, one of O'Connell's 'tail' attacked
the Bill. His son, Daniel O'Connell, Junior, also without consulting the
committee, moved a vote of thanks to him. Barrett (in prison along with
O'Connell), in the Pilot the
following day, lauded both of them. The Young Ireland group knew that this
could not have been done without the knowledge and consent of O'Connell
himself.
The bishops of
MacHale’s faction too were intent on whipping Young Ireland into line. By the
end of the year, priests were openly attacking Young Ireland, saying that
various articles that had appeared in the Nation were uncatholic. Davis was so mortified at this course of
action that he felt like resigning from the Repeal Association. From now
onwards there was bitter war between the Pilot
and the Nation. The Charitable
Bequests Board functioned as intended. There were in fact no religious grounds
for objecting to it, only political ones.
[Top]
Other Measures
Though not
primarily connected with the Non-Subscribing Presbyterians in Ireland, the Dissenters Chapels Act (1844) was
of the greatest assistance to them, for it meant that the Subscribers could not
take away their chapels and other assets. Unitarians were legally recognized in
1813, but some court decisions tended to regard as invalid trusts held by them
dating from before that year (DNB
Edwin Wilkins Field). The Act legalized peaceful possession for twenty five
years.
The Party
Procession Act that had been re-enacted annually for several years prohibiting
party processions, especially Orange processions, was again passed. Another
minor Fisheries Act (1844) gave control some controls over inland fisheries to
the Irish Constabulary. The Astronomer Royal made an attempt by carrying thirty
chronometers from Greenwich to Valencia Island to establish the exact longitude of
that place. Russian astronomers were making a similar attempt to determine the
longitude of the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Siberia. This would enable geographers to
determine the exact dimensions of the Eurasian landmass. The Dublin to Drogheda line was completed. A decision of the
Rolls Court, 7 November 1844 confirmed the validity of bequests for
masses in Ireland. The decision repeated the earlier
decision of Lord Chancellor Manners in 1823 on the same point (SNL 8,15 Nov.
1844).
O’Connell was now veering towards Federalism (DEP 15 Oct., 2 Nov. 1844). The Rent had
fallen back to about £200 a week. As O’Connell’s powers waned his place was
increasingly taken by his third son, John. The latter favoured the political
bishops, and strongly suspected tendencies towards the use of violence or
towards indifferentism in religion among the Young Irelanders. From this arose
the split in Catholic nationalism that persists to this day between
constitutionalists who always consult the bishops, and revolutionaries who do
not. In a letter to Duffy on 5 Nov. 1844 William Smith O’Brien said he foresaw
a priest party and an anti-priest party, and he was proved right. But the
anti-priest party never adopted the liberal or anti-clerical opinions of their
counterparts on the Continent. For their part the Young Irelanders were worried
that Protestant Repealers were being led on to establish a Catholic ascendancy.
[1845] The Charitable
Bequests Act (1844) came into force on 1 January 1845. On 1 February 1845 Thomas Fremantle replaced Lord Elliot
as Irish Secretary. On 4 February, Parliament opened, with Peel proposing to
deal with academical instruction in Ireland, consideration of the report of the
Devon Commission, and amending the law on the Bank of Ireland. Thomas Wyse was
insisting that something must be done to improve higher education in Ireland,
and MacHale expressed his determination to stamp out Mr. Wyse’s fooleries, i.e.
any education not under the direct control of the Catholic clergy (Letter to
Dillon Brown 28 Jan. 1845 in DEP 1
Feb. 1845). On 20 March 1845 Wyse presented a petition from the
province of Munster, praying for the establishment of
provincial colleges in Ireland.
Peel aimed also at improving the
financial situation of Maynooth. The Government under William Pitt had
established and built Maynooth in 1795 and provided a grant, voted annually,
for the maintenance of the professors and students. As was usual in those days,
for example, in the building of roads and piers, no money was provided for
upkeep and maintenance, nor could the college be endowed. The result was that
education in Maynooth ‘was conducted with sordid economy, on a small annual
grant, which at each renewal was made the subject of offensive controversy in
the House of Commons’ (Duffy).
On
3 April 1845 Peel set out his Maynooth Act (1845), to the
displeasure of many of his own followers like Frederick Shaw. He proposed to
raise the annual grant from £9,000 to £26,000, to be paid out of the
Consolidated Fund and not subject to an annual vote, and also to give a lump
sum of £30,000 for buildings. He made his Bill a money Bill so that the Lords
could not dismember it clause by clause. They could only vote on the general
principle. Wellington, with the aid of Spring Rice (now Lord Mounteagle
of Brandon), pushed the Bill through the Lords.
MacHale, for once, did not object. O'Connell, at first, considered it a bribe
to the clergy but when he got no support from MacHale he desisted.
Wellington, when moving the Second Reading in the
Lords on 2 June noted that he had not personally approved of the founding of
the College, but the king, George III and the Archbishop of Canterbury had
approved of it.
In May 1845 Peel
decided to carry further the reform of English banking which he had undertaken
the previous year and apply it to Irish and Scottish banks. The Irish banks had
developed well, with no great difficulties, since 1824. The Bank of Ireland
worked with the joint-stock banks, and acted as a lender of last resort of its
own accord. Ireland, unlike England, had escaped the worst financial
storms, and had safely weathered such slumps or financial crises as occurred,
for example in 1836. The currency too was stable. Nevertheless, Peel felt it
better to set precise enforceable limits to the amounts individual banks could
lend, to consolidate Irish banking legislation, and to remove the right of the
Bank of Ireland to exclusive banking within fifty Irish miles of Dublin. As a
result, Newry, which had been just within the fifty-mile limit, for the first
time got banks (Newry Telegraph 18
May 1847). The Bank itself proposed, and Peel concurred, that the oaths imposed
on Catholics should be removed. The Irish Bank Act (1845) passed without
difficulty. To bring the registration of marriages in Ireland more into line with English practices
the Registration of Marriages Act (1845) was passed and the General Register of
Marriage Office was opened in Dublin. But as Corish noted the presence of a
civil registrar was not required at all marriages, and
Catholic priests were reluctant to register marriages they conducted. (This was
from a wish to avoid recognizing the rights of the civil power in the matter
Corish 220.)
[Top]
The Provincial Colleges
For his next
measure Peel took up Wyse's proposals for colleges of higher education in his
Provincial Academical Colleges Act (1845). On 9 May 1845 the Home Secretary Sir James Graham
introduced the Government’s proposals for higher education. Three colleges of
one university were to be established, to be called the Queen's Colleges, on
the model of London University with its two colleges. The practice in
Scotland that had five small separate
universities was rejected. The university, like London's, would be secular, and there would
be no religious tests either for the faculty or the students. Divinity would
not be taught, but it would be allowable for Catholics to endow professorships,
and the college authorities would have to provide rooms. (This latter proposal
was not out of the way. When Trinity College, of Dublin University, endowed
professorships, say, of engineering, it was normal to allocate a salary of
about £300 a year plus the use of a lecture hall to the professor.) The
colleges would not be residential and students would live in private
accommodation. The Bill passed through Parliament without difficulty. Wyse, Sheil,
and Richard Bellew spoke in favour. The Maynooth Bill, the Colleges Bill, and
the Banking Bill went through their various parliamentary stages almost
simultaneously.
The
ultra-Tory Sir Robert Inglis, speaking for the clergy of the Established Church
instantly denounced the Bill. He claimed: 'a more gigantic scheme of godless
education has never been proposed'. Catholic and Protestant bishops united in
denouncing them as 'Godless colleges'.
Crolly
summoned the Catholic bishops to discuss the Bill, and they met on 21
May 1845. The
principles were identical with those in national education, and one would have
expected that the bishops who favoured the one would back the other. But this
was not so. Several bishops adhered to MacHale on this issue who had opposed
him on national education. MacHale wanted the bishops to get back to the
declaration of principles made in 1826 that he maintained they had since
neglected. In particular, he drew up a list of subjects, history, logic,
metaphysics, moral philosophy, geology, and anatomy, which should be taught
only by Catholic professors to Catholic students. (The grounds for objection to
anatomy are not obvious. Regarding geology, Protestant professors might teach
Lyell's Principles of Geology which
demonstrated the slow formation of rocks, without mentioning the biblical
'Seven Days') As in 1826 Murray knew that such proposals had no hope of
acceptance, but went along with the memorial to the Lord Lieutenant. The
Government considered the objections, and introduced some changes designed to
protect the morals of young men away from home. (A rather lame explanation
which eventually came from the Holy See as to why it permitted national schools
but not university education focussed on the fact that the students were living
away from home.) O'Connell, for no obvious reason, told MacHale that the
ministry was pliable and he had only to stand firm and make his own terms, i.e.
get denominational education. But Peel was standing firm, as he always did, on
the principles of the Report of 1812 about the advisability of educating all
Irish children together.
Dr Cullen was on
holiday in Ireland, and he consulted Higgins and
Cantwell, and on his return to Rome put their case strongly to the Holy
See. Murray and Crolly, confident that Rome would decide consistently, also
appealed to Rome for a decision. They did not require actual
approval but only that Rome would allow each bishop to decide for
students from his own diocese. MacHale and Cullen had to get a positive
condemnation applying to all dioceses stating that the colleges were, in their
words, intrinsically evil.
Young
Ireland backed the colleges. They wanted to see all the youth of Ireland educated together in the principles of
nationalism. O'Connell insisted on denouncing the colleges, and Duffy (perhaps
correctly) saw this as virtually abandoning Repeal altogether. He could not
possibly hope for Repeal if he attacked people like Davis who seconded him so ardently. Davis,
on this occasion, when O'Connell was no longer in prison, felt that the Repeal
Association would lose all credibility with Irish Protestants if free
discussion was not allowed in the Association, and if everyone had to bow to
the dictates of MacHale. O'Connell rose to reply and fiercely attacked Young Ireland.
The latter were astonished to find him deliberately mis-stating and
misrepresenting the Bill. Duffy's mature comments, made many years afterwards,
were still tinged with bitterness. The Irish Catholic bishops in Australia a few years later had rushed to
co-operate with the newly founded Australian universities that provided much
fewer moral safeguards for youth. What MacHale and Cullen succeeded in doing
was ensuring that positions all over the Empire would go to young Englishmen
and Scotsmen, while Irishmen, of greater natural ability were passed over
because they had no degrees (Duffy). (The question again arises, was O'Connell,
at this stage deliberately trying to scupper the Repeal movement that had got
out of hand? The 'Independent Opposition' with a distant hope of Repeal, which
eventually emerged under MacHale and Cullen, was much closer to his ideal.)
Two
sets of Irish bishops were now presenting to Rome totally contradictory versions of the
Government's Bill. The Government itself had no intention of infringing
Catholic discipline or canon law in any way and was ready to make minor
adjustments if the Holy See pointed out anything it specifically objected to,
or any canon actually over-ridden.
But,
it may be asked, how did these contradictory views of Peel's
intentions arise. Archbishop Murray, as a younger man, was unwilling to
give the Government (or Canning) credit for good intentions, but he was
reasonable enough to listen to them and to hear their own explanations. One
might still object to the veto, but one would know exactly what one was
objecting to. Both Murray and MacHale had ample opportunity to know Peel's
views on Ireland, for they had been printed in the
Irish newspapers off and on for thirty years. Peel had not the slightest intention
of interfering in any way with the Catholic Church. From the very start he had adopted the
practice of his predecessor, Wellesley-Pole, of according to Catholics all that
they were entitled to under the law. Sometimes he even went beyond that, as when
he added to the endowment (under a Protestant will) of the Dunboyne
Establishment for the education of Catholic priests. He passed the Emancipation
Act. At Tamworth he declared that the Conservative
Party should be one in which Catholic gentlemen could feel at home.
Murray, if he was in doubt, consulted the Law
Officers. But MacHale preferred his own blind prejudices. He preferred to
believe that Peel did not grant anything willingly, but that it had to be
wrested from him, that he was a persecutor and a supporter of persecutors. He
ignored explanations of the Law Officers even when they appeared in the
newspapers. (Judgments on Peel's actions in this book are based on a study of
his speeches concerning Ireland over his entire political career.)
What
is even more strange was how this narrow-minded intolerant bigot, MacHale, (for
that is what he was) managed to infect so many other bishops with his
prejudices. MacHale did not think it possible that an English Protestant could
act in good faith. As he once put it, Aut
ulla putatis dona carere dolis Danaum? (Do you
think that Greek gifts ever lack trickery or treachery?) Some years later he
finished the quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid, by advising Pius IX ‘time Anglos et
dona ferentes (Fear the English even when they are bringing gifts. The
original in Virgil was Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, I fear the Greeks even when they are
bringing gifts, the reference being to the Trojan horse.) To us, nowadays,
Duffy's remarks are only common sense, and Duffy was a very loyal Catholic. But
a majority of Irish bishops refused to see the common sense. It would seem that
a resonance had arisen between MacHale's prejudices, O'Connell's rhetoric, and
Young Ireland's ideology which prevented them from giving a reasonable consideration
to any proposal coming from the Tories.
There
is another interesting question that has been neglected in the discussion of
MacHale's opposition. That is why Peel established three Colleges instead of
two. Trinity College would obviously do for the Established
Church. One college would be required in the south as a 'Catholic' college, and
another in Belfast to serve both sets of Presbyterians. Scotland, it is true, had five small
universities. The University of Dublin, with its single college of the Most
Holy Trinity, was only slightly smaller than Oxford and Cambridge, with their numerous colleges. But
there were simply not enough students from Catholic grammar schools to supply
two colleges, not counting those who went to Belfast, Trinity, or the Scottish
universities. Galway had drastically to reduce standards in
the early days to keep itself going. Cullen and
MacHale complicated matters by starting their own 'Catholic University’ that could not confer degrees.
The
Colleges Bill passed all its stages in Parliament and received the royal assent
before Parliament rose in August. The Irish Government set about the task of
establishing the Colleges. Sites had to be identified and acquired, architects
had to be engaged, and most importantly, staff of sufficiently high calibre had
to be recruited. Archbishop Crolly accepted the Act and determined to have the
northern college in Armagh, not Belfast.
[Top]
Ireland under Heytesbury
In 1844 the Post reported that Ribbonism too was
reviving. In July 1845 parts of Cavan were proclaimed, apparently because of
clashes between Orangemen and Ribbonmen. In February 1844 O'Connell issued a
letter denouncing incendiarism. In January 1845, Dr William Kinsella of Ossory
wrote a pastoral letter against Whiteboyism. In June 1845 agrarian disturbances
appeared in Longford and Leitrim. In 1846 there was widespread combination with
murder and intimidation among the workers who were being assembled to construct
the new railway lines, and among Doyle's old adversaries, the miners. In 1846
sectarian disturbances again broke out in Cavan. The outbreaks were as yet
fairly sporadic. Agrarian crime had been rife for several years before the
political uprisings in 1798, and again before the attempted political rising in
1848.
At
this point Peel decided to emend the existing legislation to make convictions
in certain cases, such as daylight assassination, easier. Typically, in such
cases there were no witnesses willing to testify. He had been considering this
measure for some time, and it was not connected with any disturbances in the
country. Parliament was not convinced of the need for any changes and the Bill
was defeated.
Richard
Barrett's Pilot continued to be the
vehicle of the clerical party even when O'Connell was visibly failing and after
he died. Barrett staunchly backed O'Connell, his son John, and the bishops, and
violently denounced Young Ireland, and Davis in particular, for daring to
attack the aged leader. He also pointed out that some of these Young Irelanders
had had revolutionary ideas in 1843 and wished to secure an intervention by the
French. At a meeting of the Repeal Association in June, John O’Connell gave a
lengthy speech against the Colleges. The Tory Evening Mail found much interesting matter in the Pilot.
The Pilot in its turn found
interesting matter in the Tory papers. It cited the Dublin
Monitor's views on the
Nation. According to it, Young
Ireland did not join with O'Connell in 'the unscrupulous repudiation of the
Bequests Bill', or in his attempt to represent the
Maynooth Bill as 'cunningly planned device for the corruption of the clergy' (Pilot 16 May 1845).
In
Ulster, the Presbyterians were moving more
and more in the direction of the High Tories. Since the Rev. Dr. Cooke had won
his victory over the Rev. Henry Montgomery regarding subscription he had become
the dominant figure among the Presbyterians in Ulster. He was resolutely opposed to Repeal.
In 1841 he issued a challenge to O’Connell who was on a visit to
Belfast to publicly and fairly debate the
issue, but O’Connell refused. Cooke’s prestige soared accordingly.
The disputes
between the Subscribing and Non-subscribing Presbyterians continued. In 1835
Montgomery formed an association of
Non-subscribing Presbyterians, those of the Remonstrant Synod, the Synod of
Munster, and the Presbytery of Antrim. In 1836, Cooke finally succeeded in
getting subscription enforced in the main body. Cooke then (1838) turned his
attention to getting the non-subscribing lecturers expelled from the Royal
Belfast Academical Institution, but Montgomery defeated him on that. In 1840 Cooke
formed the General Assembly of Irish Presbyterians by linking up with the
Secession Synod. The General Assembly voted to establish its own college (known
since as the Assembly's College) in which young men would be taught by
'orthodox' ministers. In 1844 the Non-subscribers were in danger of losing
their meeting-houses. As noted above legal decision in England indicated that a sect could not hold
on to its chapel if it differed fundamentally from the intentions of those who
originally built the chapel.
Montgomery's congregations were now vulnerable to
attempts by Cooke to take their chapels from them. Peel sided with
Montgomery, and passed a Dissenters' Chapels Act
(1844) to allow them to keep chapels of which they had peaceful possession.
Another question arose which affected both sets equally and that was the
validity of marriages celebrated by Dissenting ministers. (Strictly speaking
marriages conducted by Presbyterian ministers were as legally valid as those
conducted by Catholic priests, but Presbyterians who married in this manner
could be cited in a court of the Established Church for fornication.) Peel
passed a Marriages Act (1844) to ensure their legal validity. Catholic
marriages before a Catholic priest were always regarded as valid, but not mixed
marriages. (Catholic priests were put on the same basis as Presbyterian
ministers with regard to mixed marriages in 1870 Corish 220ff, New Irish Jurist 19 Sept 1902). These
dissentions were to complicate the Government's task in providing for the
education of the Ulster Presbyterians.
There
were no developments in the Established Church. Whately continued to support
the Government and the rest of the clergy were still more or less in opposition
even though the Government was now Tory.
The
Repeal agitation was gradually having its effect on the Orange faction. In August 1844,
Conway in the Post claimed that the lodges were re-organizing. The Government
assumed that the Orange Order had disappeared, and that it was illegal. The
Grand Lodge of Ireland had dissolved itself in compliance with the wishes of
William IV. Then Parliament, in the seventh year of William IV had made it
unlawful to sell liquor to illegal bodies. Another Act of the 2nd and 3rd of
Victoria had suppressed the Order, and another
had made party processions illegal. But the Evening
Mail stated the actual state of the law. Victoria's Act and the Party Processions Act
had both lapsed, while the Order had never been declared illegal, and so could
still purchase liquor. Furthermore, the Mail
observed, the policies of Peel were causing a revival of the Order, and
anti-Peel Tories were being put up at by-elections (Mail 18 July, 11 August 1845). Heytesbury and Sugden removed
various magistrates from the bench for attending Orange meetings. In July 1845 there were Orange riots in Armagh. On the 12th August there was a great Orange rally at Enniskillen. In October the
Grand Lodge of Ulster was restored.
Sharman
Crawford had been gaining some support for Federalism. On his release from
prison O'Connell returned to Kerry in September 1844 and from there announced
that he could see considerable merits in Crawford's arguments. He also
instructed Ray that abuse of Crawford was to cease. Smith O'Brien, too, said he
was willing to consider the federal solution while preferring simple Repeal.
O'Connell accepted one of Crawford's main contentions, that under Grattan's
Parliament, the Irish had no control of any kind over British foreign policy,
or the making of foreign treaties, or access to the trade with the colonies,
nor over who was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Young
Ireland became really alarmed. From the time of his arrest O'Connell had
definitely, if not publicly, been backing away from the Repeal issue. There was
no repeat of the so-called Mallow Defiance during the trial, which was
conducted on purely orthodox lines. On his release he had done nothing to
capitalize on the swell of public feeling in his favour. He had stopped the
monster meetings, he had failed to back the arbitration courts (alternative
courts set up by dismissed Repealing magistrates), he let drop the idea of a
Council of Three Hundred to manage Irish affairs in Ireland. Now he was proposing to merge with
the Federalists. Young Ireland suspected that in such a merger Crawford would
be very much the senior partner (after O'Connell's death the only partner), and
there would be no room for people like themselves. They concluded that they
must dispute this issue directly with O'Connell.
The
latter backed down and began to cover his tracks. He announced that there were
grave defects in Crawford's plan. Duffy, though not himself favouring
Federalism, maintained that the point should be fairly argued, and not hooted
down as it had been the previous year. He recognized that there would be less
opposition to it than to simple Repeal.
Crawford then published detailed version of his scheme and asked him
what specifically he objected to. Duffy was prepared to extend an olive branch
and assured O'Connell that he respected his great desire to maintain the
connection with Britain. The proposal to unite Repealers with
Federalists was quietly dropped to the great relief of the Orange party.
Parliament
was prorogued on 9 August 1845. O’Connell, as was his
custom, went to his estate in Kerry. The Government continued with its plans
for the Colleges, and commissioners were appointed to find appropriate sites
and construct the buildings. Archbishop Crolly with other gentlemen went to see
the Lord Lieutenant to try to get the northern college built in Armagh. However, Cork, Galway, and Belfast were selected. A Catholic
priest, called Dr Kirwan, was appointed president of the Galway college
and accepted. It had been expected that Dr Cooke would be offered the
presidency of Belfast College, but this was offered to
another Presbyterian minister, Dr Pooley Shuldam Henry, minister in Armagh. Professor Kane was made
president of the college in Cork. (Professor
Robert Kane, author of ‘The Industrial
Resources of Ireland, was professor of chemistry in the Apothecaries Hall,
and was knighted in 1846.) The architect Pugin was engaged to add to the
buildings at Maynooth, and had to limit himself to the grant of £30,000 for
Peel would give no more. £2,000 of the grant was taken by the Board of Works
for repairs to the existing buildings.
Thomas Davis died
of a fever on 16 September 1845. He was unusual in the Repeal
Association in that he was a Protestant. As a prominent member of Young
Ireland, he gave balance to the movement, and showed that it was not for
Catholics alone. His vision of a new Ireland meant
that it would have to be, if not a secular state, at least a non-denominational
one. He was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and a man of considerable learning.
He was a man of rather extreme political views, and prepared for armed combat
if necessary. Gavan Duffy’s first wife died of consumption (tuberculosis) aged
twenty five. On 10 October Richard Barrett started a magazine called Old Ireland to oppose the Nation, to be what he regarded what the Nation should have been. It was however
little more than a weekly edition of Barrett’s Pilot.
The
Irish economy continued to prosper though the great problems of a massively
growing population and a stagnant economy in Connaught remained unresolved. Had the potato
failed even a decade later, when the railways had brought the cultivation of
cash crops to Connaught, the outcome might have been very
different. On 6 September the Post
noted that there were gratifying reports of a good harvest coming in. But on
the 9 September it reported an alarming ‘potato pestilence’, but the editor did
not think that Ireland need worry. By the 30 October the Post noted that famine threatened parts
of Ireland, and that he was receiving numerous letters on
the subject for his readers.
Unlike
in England, the repeal of the Corn Laws, introduced three
decades earlier chiefly to stimulate the growth of the Irish economy, was not a
burning topic. The great objection to the Corn Laws was that they made bread
dear for ordinary working-class people. In Ireland most of these ate potatoes, so the
issue did not arise until the potato failed. Ireland, like many other
parts of the British Isles, benefited by
Protection. High
returns on cereal crops meant more employment on the land. Money in the
farmers' pockets meant more work for tradesmen. It was recognized that wheat
was being grown on unsuitable land that would give a better return from cattle.
But on the other hand, cereals could be processed within Ireland, while cattle had to be driven to
slaughterhouses close to the markets in the industrial towns in England. Nobody who could afford it would buy
salted meat when they could buy fresh. The pig producers had however
considerable success in developing alternative means of curing. (Frozen and
canned meat from the Southern Hemisphere were not yet
a serious threat.)
Just
before the outbreak of the Famine the 'Railway mania' reached Ireland. The papers were filled with
prospectuses for projected companies. In 1844 the sum of £800,000 was
subscribed in Ireland itself towards the construction of the
Great Southern and Western Railway, the original 'trunk line' to the south. In
the parliamentary session of 1845 the Railway Committee of the Commons allowed
the Bills for twelve Irish railways with a total length of 560 miles to go
forward. The Midland Great Western Railway acquired most of the land it
required for its line from Dublin to Galway cheaply by buying up the moribund
Royal Canal. (It did not get running powers on the
canal itself which therefore remained separate.) Great battles, legal and
wordy, were fought between these two railway companies to determine the
boundary between their spheres of influence. Most of the work brought to Ireland was in the eastern part of the island.
The railway construction workers were a new kind of labourer. They were fed on
a rich diet of beef and alcohol and they worked extremely fast and efficiently.
The earliest railway constructors in France had refused to employ the
undernourished French peasants on the arduous work, but in Ireland Irishmen
were used from the start. From this point of view the proposal to use emaciated
labourers to construct the railways was unrealistic. Where the railways were
being constructed money flowed into the adjoining regions all through the
Famine.
[1846]
In
January 1846 Heytesbury cut the first sod of the Midland Great Western Railway.
Work on the Great Southern and Western had begun a year earlier and by the
middle of 1846 the line was open to Carlow. (The spur to Carlow into a great
flourmilling area was constructed before continuing the main line to
Cork.) The Dublin to Drogheda Railway line was completed
in 1844 and a different company to construct the Junction Line to connect with
the Ulster Railway at Portadown was floated. The Chester and Holyhead Railway Company (soon to
be absorbed into the London and North Western Railway) announced
that it intended to construct a deep-water pier at Holyhead equal to that at
Kingstown. The electric telegraph was creeping
along the railway lines in England, and the Irish companies hastened to
erect them too. Plans were put forward in 1846 to lay a telegraph cable under
the Irish Sea. The Belfast and County Down
Railway hoped that the terminus would be at Donaghadee and placed wires along
its track to Bangor. The Midland Great Western Railway placed
telegraph lines along its track to Galway hoping to attract packets carrying mails or
urgent news across the Atlantic
into the harbour there.
[Top]
Peel’s Defeat
Parliament
commenced its 1846 sitting on 22 January 1846. Peel, because of the situation in Ireland, immediately proposed the repeal of
the Corn Laws, again splitting the Tory Party. With the help of the Whigs under
Lord John Russell, Peel secured the repeal of the Corn Laws, opening the United Kingdom to the free import of grain. (It was
not envisaged then that British markets would eventually be swamped by vast
imports from the United States, Canada, and Australia. The sources envisaged for the cheaper
wheat lay largely in eastern Europe and the Baltic states.)
On 14
February 1846
Henry Pelham, 12th Earl of Lincoln and heir to the Duke of
Newcastle, replaced Thomas Fremantle as Irish Secretary. He was in office for
just a few months. Parliament was largely taken up with the crisis in Ireland, It was generally regarded that the
Government had dealt successfully with the failure of the potato. Peel had to
turn his attention to the spread of agrarian terrorism, and his proposal to introduced the traditional remedy, another temporary
anti-terrorism act led to the fall of his ministry. Peel was aware of the
problems of Irish terrorism, and the reluctance of the local magistrates to
deal with it since he first arrived in Ireland thirty years earlier. He had devoted
much thought over that period as to how best to deal with the problem. At first
there was little opposition in Parliament when he introduced his Coercion Bill
(1846) in February, many Whigs supporting him. Lord Cloncurry, now aged 73, who
had been arrested on suspicion more than once in 1798
was one of the first to voice opposition. The Whigs however rallied around Lord
John Russell to defeat the Government on its Second Reading on 25/26 June 1846.
For Russell the issue was more a tactical one than any objection in principle.
Oddly enough, the chief opposition to the Bill came from a group of Tories that
included Disraeli. Disraeli strongly opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws.
The disputes in the
Repeal Association between the Young Ireland party, and the ‘Old Ireland’ party
that centered on John O’Connell continued, but the Repeal Association was
inactive. Daniel O’Connell spent most of his time in the first half of 1846 in
Westminster, where famine relief bills, the repeal
of the Corn Laws, and Peel’s Coercion Bill occupied his time. John O’Connell
and William Smith O’Brien were also active in Parliament.
MacHale and those bishops who sided with him
were, in the latter part of 1845 and early 1846, in close correspondence with
each other and with Dr Paul Cullen in Rome about getting Rome to condemn Peel’s colleges. He and
Archbishop Slattery of Tuam sent a formal complaint to Rome in January 1846 (Kerr 344). They continued
sending letters to Rome on the subject during the rest of the
year. The nub of their argument was that the system under the National Board
had become in practice denominational, but the colleges were not, and the
Catholic students were away from home. To which it could be replied that any
dangers could be met by providing Catholic halls of residence and Catholic
chaplaincies. MacHale had always argued that Catholics could raise enough money
for an independent Catholic university, so by his argument, there should be
sufficient money for halls of residence and chaplaincies. But MacHale did not
want Peel’s scheme to succeed. Throughout the spring and summer of 1846 letters
from members of MacHale’s faction poured into Rome. The bishops on the other side, believed that Rome would decide consistently, and also
that it was a matter for each individual bishop in whose diocese a college was
sited. But they also took care to inform Rome of their position. It was unfortunate
that the violently anti-Protestant Dr Cullen was one of those that Rome relied
on for advice, and he put forward the suggestion that the Irish Catholics
should do as the Belgians had done and improve the own colleges. (In Belgium the bishops had founded
Louvain University). The problem of course, as Archbishop
Murray well knew, was that such a do-it-yourself solution had been already
tried, and had almost immediately been abandoned for lack of financial support.
Yet MacHale informed Rome that the
Irish Church would have no difficulty in raising the
necessary money. (MacHale’s successor in Tuam had to abandon his disastrous
attempt to fund even primary education from the resources of the diocese
alone).
The Farmers’ Gazette noted that the
shorthorn cow was being everywhere adopted in Ireland, eclipsing all other breeds. It also
noted that Irish farmers were slow to adopt the growing of turnips. The Trades
Political Association had been replaced by the Incorporated Guild of Trades
that confined itself to normal trade union affairs. The Trades Political Union
was no longer in existence, though its leader John O’Brien was still
corresponding with Sir Thomas Fremantle. The Trades Unions opposed the Corn
Laws because they made food dearer in towns. A decision in the Court of the
Queen’s Bench decided that a trade guild still had the right to regulate its
own trade for its own members despite the Municipal Reform Act (1840) had
removed such rights from city and town corporations (Dublin Argus and Trades Gazette 21 February 1846).
In the midst of all
these disputes and these enterprises came ominous reports of a 'potato cholera'
which was destroying the potato crop all over the world. The first reports of a
failure of the potato crop came in September 1845. It must be remembered that
while the Great Irish Famine brought 3 millions people, three eighths of the
population on to relief schemes, 5 million people were largely unaffected.
These three million of the poorest people in any case rarely involved
themselves in national affairs. They were largely illiterate and often spoke
only Gaelic. They took no part in the campaigns for Catholic Emancipation or
for Repeal. Indeed the whole province of Connaught took little part in the campaign for
Emancipation. The people who were concerned in
national affairs, whether of Church or State, were educated, reasonably
prosperous by the standards of the time, farmers, businessmen, tradesmen,
merchants, professional people, and the land-owners. These who had incomes not
dependent on the potato were little affected by its failure, and pursued their
normal interests, both political and religious.
The Great Famine
will be dealt with in the following two chapters. The chronological narrative following on the
accession of the Whigs under Lord John Russell to power following Peel’s defeat
will be resumed in Chapter twenty.
[TOP]