HERE AND THERE.—No. XI.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 3917, 5 September 1874, Page 5 (Supplement)

HERE AND THERE.—No. XI.

(Written for the Otago Daily Times.)

1774—Ireland's metropolis was rt t this time one of the pleasantdt in Europe. It had its own Parliament in Collego Green, and representative of Royalty in Dublin Castle ; it vied in a miniature maimer with Paris for gaiety and prodigality ; it liad all the gaining and political vices of London ; and it might have compared favourably with Naples in respect of the abject wretchedness and laziness of its poor. For the great bulk of the people, however, the times were as bad as they could well be. The conflict with the Colonies had closed tlie American market against furtner ex; orfc of the linen staple of tho north ; deficiencies in the revenue called for the imposition of stamp duties, and the absentee landlords wore driven by the state of the English market to bo more exacting than even In England, the mass of the population suffered from the scarcity of wheat, to encourage tlie importation of wliich tho City of London had just offered a bonus per bushel; but the Irish peasant seldom saw. that luxury in the shape of bread, and, so long as the potato crop escaped blight, the grain crop was to him of little moment one way or the other. This was a miserable consolation at the best, but he found it.

A little book, by one J. Bush, published somewhere about 1770, under the title of Hibernia Curiosa, being an account of a gentleman's travels in Ireland, gives a truly doleful account of the condition of the peasantry. A great number of tlie titled lords of the soil lived permanently in England ; lauds wore leased and sub-leased shrough tive or six hands before the holdings of a few acres each reached the workers of the soil. "In the south and west," continues the writer, "the roads are lined wifch beggars, who live in huts or cabins as iliey are called, of such shocking material and construction that through hundreds of them you may see the smoke from every inch of the roof, not one in twenty having a chimney. The produce of the Kingdom is certainly not two-thirds of what it mighfc be by good cultivation, but there ia no encouragement for the poor cotter, and so the landlords gefc all fchat is made out of the land, wliile the tenant gets "poverty and potatoes." Between the exaction of the highest rent endurable—the tithes to the State priest—aud the demands of the still more exacting priest of their own persuasion, ifc is little wonder that the condition of the poor should have been a dreadful one. Lord Harcourt, the Lord Lieutenant in the previous year, had attempted to introduce an Act to tax absentee landlords, but, through their powerful opposition, was defeated. The Papist was then in the full bondage of disability. It was not legal that he shonld hold leases of lands for lives ; lie could not marry a Protestant; lie was excluded from all public offices of trust or usefulness ; and even the equivocal honour of being an attorney was not conceded to him until 1793. If an unoffending people ever groaned with cause enough under barbarous oppressive legislation, it was the Roman Catholics of the last century. The high road to distinction was always open to them through the Apostate's gate, but to the enduring honour of the country be it said that it was rarely anyone passed it. Intellectually, the country held her own wifch the powerful sister across the channel, Grattan, Busche, Flood, Burke, Curran — men whose powers of thought and mear'S of expression have not been exceeded—fought manfully to maintain her reputation, and yet at the same time there was more venality in high places, as much recklessness aud profligacy, aud more disregard for the condition of the mass of the people, than 'the records of any country under the sun of Christianity are able to show.

In journalism, by wliich we now-a--days estimate the mental condition of a people, Ireland was considerably in advance of England. Dublin had three established papers—two of them—the freeman's Journal, and Saundcr's News Letter, are flourishing to this day. Unlike the London papers, they gave original and independent essays, which we should now call leaders, and their information on foreign, social, and domestic affairs of the day were much more full and comprehensive. The Edisfc of Nantes Hugueno's had established themselves pre-eminently as typographers and engravers, and much of the fine work in these branches issued from the Dublin Press. Cork, too, always famous for its mental calibre, was in the van, both in literature and art; and Belfast, then a purely commercial town of small dimensions, but of great promise, was represented by its iN rews Lotter, which had been established in 1737, and still continues to be published. But ifc was in hospitality, in conviviality, and unbridled social pleasure, that tho country had gained a reputation. A squire, whose house was barricaded against the sheriff, killed twenty sheep f-.,r a dish of kidneys, to please the pa!ate of an English guest, A host would invite a stranger to dine with him, and lock up his horse and boots for a week so as to show -him what cewil inilh fa'dftw was Uke, and to prevent guests from putting their claret glasses on the table with anything in them it was the custom to knock oif the stems ! The social songs wore all about wine and women. It was an age of steady, persistent drinking, and a reputation for extra capacity without respect, was a sure passport to popular esteem.

Were I possessed of all the chink That was conquered by Cnrfces—Hernan, I'd parfc with ifc all for one good drink Wish Johnny Adair, of Kifcternan.

Thus rii-jgs one of the catches of tl}e festive be^.rd of the time, it speaks the popular convivial' sentiment. " The once, celebrated gong, '«One F-ofctle moro," was written by Archdeacon Day. There was a celebrated drinking club in Werburgh street, where topers met to swallow their way through paternal acres as quickly as possible. It was there that a member, one dark night, threw from an tipper window a basin of filthy water, which was answered from below by a loud shriek. "If you're a Protestant," sang out the offender, "I beg your pardon respectfully ; but if you're a Papist, take it, and bad luck to you !"

A well-known character of the time one afternoon met a favourite boon companion, and was induced to go into a tavern, where he bad sixteen tumblers pf whisky punch. On rising tb leave, his friend implored him to stay and "make up the

twenty." To which he replied, " Faith I can't. Father Roe is to dme with me to-night, and I shouldn't like him to see the sign of liquor on me." Sir Jonah Barrington relates tliat Monckton, one of the Equity Barons, was so early at his potations, that he invariably described the segment of a circle on making his way to the seat of Justice. Claret, the universal drink of the upper class, was about £18 a hogshead ; but as few of the convivial squires ever paid their wine bills until the amount was either levied by the Sheriff, or registered as a judgment against their acres, it has been ingeniously calculated that every hogshead co3t at least £50.

There were not many of the old squire stock with unencumbered estatos, and it is not too much to say that three-fourths of their houses gave no welcome to the sheriff. When it came to a writ of execution, that officer—being, as he almost invariably was, friendly to the "right sort" —has been known, in his zeal, to return on tho writ that the defendant had " neither body nor goods."

Dublin of the present day is a beautiful city, but a century ago it presented aspects which it happily lost with the Union. In winter, leading thoroughfares were blocked with snow for weeks together, and as papers of the day inform us, people of distinction broke their legs ii attempting to get over frozen heaps. Although heavy rates were levied for police and lighting, the city was, in both respects, in a deplorable condition. IJ >.lf-a-dozen oil lamps were all that were given for a leading thoroughfare, and it was well if they lasted till one or two in the morning; and, between footpads prowling in search of the time of day and the king's likeness, aiK the young Mohawk on the warpath for fighting and adventure, .the streets were dangerous after the closing of the theatres. The frolic-seeking night birds of the time carried bludgeons, affectionately known as " Who dure sneeze," and, as they sallied out of Reilly's Hazard Room in Smock Alley, or from Mrs Llewellyn's at the corner of Crane Lane, it was found prudent to give them a wide b-rth. Sack ville street, now 120 feet wide, and one of the grandest of European highways, was then a struggling passage of some 50 feet across. The noble Rotunda flanked it, as it does now, but the stately buildings on the line of the Post Otiice had not been dreamt of, and the other side of the street, now the Dublin " Shady side of Pall Mall," was not to be formed nutil better times.

Tn the previous centrry, the Earl of Meath's Liberty had been the abode of the grandees of the time, but they had long since forsaken the old city for the neighbourhood of the Green, Merrion Pquare, and the numerous streets north of the Liffey. Grafton street was settling down to be a street of shops, and the north side of Stephen's Green was the " Beaux's Walk."

When cily belles in Sunday's pomp are seen, And gilded chariots roil through Stephen's Grcca.

Wriles one of the doggrel makers of the day.

The Green had boen for fifty yeai-3 a place of public execution, and remained so until 170G, when oue Darby Kelly, the keeper of an infamous house in Copper Alley, was hanged and publicly burnt tliere. Soon after this, the place of execution was changed to Newgate, where in 1785, a father, mother, son, and daughter were hanged together for robbing a bleach, ground at Kilmainham ! This barbarous casosof wholesale punishment bears some similarity to the ca-e of Robert Arletfc, who was hanged for murder afc Tyburn, on the 20th May, 1773. His father and grandfather before him had both been hanged for similar crimes ; his mother was transported, his brother was under sentence of transportation, and he himself had been tried on four indictments two years before. Dame street w.is an irregular street, permanently built only on tho north side, varying in width as ifc extended to tbe College from forty to lifteen feefc. The Houses of Parliament stood in dignified isolation. iii a quarter of a century, venality was to close that stately pile as a. Senate House, ancl tho Speaker would carry away the mace, which his descendants retain to this clay, until—as the Speaker replied to the King's demand that it should be given up —" it is reclaimed by the authority that gave ifc"—so you see there was some unpurchaseable patriotism in College Green after all. In 1802 the building described as one of the most convenient and extensive of the kind in Europe, was sold to the Bank of Ireland f ;-r £40,000— a price which a lucky stockbroker will give ungrudgingly now-a-days for a villa. Adjoining the Houses stood Daly's Club, in which it is said that half the land in Ireland changed hands at the gamingtable. King William's statue, familiar to everyone who has been in the city, stood where it stands now, but it had a cobbler's stall stuck on the steps on one side, ahd a watch house on the other. In 1735 the collego boys abstracted the truncheon from the hand of the smileless King, for which they did much penauce ; and somewhere about this time, on the eve of a great public event, the statue was unholily auointed wifch soft tar, and subjected to other indignities too numerous to mention. In 1836, as every Dublin citizen will remember, the figure was blown from the horse—to be speedily restored, however ; and in 1842, during Mr O'Connell's mayoralty, to receive a bronze coat, in which ifc has shone peacefully ever sin.c. Can any student of T.C.D. forget a college election?—the sally through the dense crowd, the noble struggle to get round the statue, the pellmell charge of the police, and the woeful list of lost aud wounded "when, once within the gates, his leader called the roll." As well can ho for jet Jade's and the anti-collegian Keating fighting brigade, or Anderson's pineapple nun, or Jemmy Delaney's stewed kidneys in Harry street, or any other of the reminiscences wliich made his college servitude a time to be delightfully remembered for ever and ever.

Tne old four Courts stood in the neighbourhood of Christchurch, ancl were not removed to Inn's Quay until 179 G. Here one might have heard Bully Egan in nisi pri-us, and seen Toler, afterwards Lord Norbury, in the King's silk. There are many racy anecdotes about this mau. He was a pitiless criminal Judge—a witty Jeffreys, bufc without his ferocious depravity. On que occasion a wretched culprit, sentenced to be hanged for murder, craved'a long day. ''Your wish is granted," said his Lordship, " this is the 20fch of June, you shall have to-morrow, the longest day in the year." On being askeel to subscribe to a shilling subscription list to bury a poor attorney, " Here's a guinea," said Toler, "bury one-and-twenty of them." fie is said to have passed sentence of death at one occasion on ISB persons, 197 of whom passed through the hands of Calvin, the hangman. His Lordship lived to the yeai--1836, but not beyond bis evil reputation, for, when his coftjn'was being lowered by i-opes into a deep grave, a voice in the crowd wag heard %o cry out " Giye him rope galore, boys, he haver wa3 sparing of it to others !" It was in tha latter part of this year that the Fifth Regiment of Foot — the " Fighting Fifth " — the " Shiners"—after ten years' inglorious Whiteboy and still-hunting, might have been seen marching gaily through Dame street to the tune of " Over the hills aud far away," to ship at Dimleary for America, where they were destined to fire the first shot at the disastrous battle of Lexington. Nothing is left of the "Bold Fifth" of that day but its time-worn ensigns, with the philosophic device " Quo JEata Focant."

The noddy, a one-horse contrivance, was the hack vehicle in common use, but the sedan was the fashionable means of transit, and the ladies often vied with

each other in the splendid liveries of their chair-men. Twenty yeara ago, the writer saw three of these old bygone luxuries in a ghostly old streot of stately houses off Stephen's Green ; but as there wero no chair-men attached, he concluded they were there for the accommodation of the courtly old shadows who perhaps, when the clock strikes one, visit the scenes of their former social glories Smock Alley, now Essex street west, was the locality of the main theatre, on the boards of which Spranger Barry was gaining laurels as a tragedian ; and there were two other houses of liko entertainment—one in Crow street, the other in & nngier street. They are all, long ago, converted to other uses. Smock Alley, perhaps in penitence, gave its site to a Roman Catholic Church and burial grounds ; Crow street became a practical dissecting room ; and Anrgier street passed into the oblivion of private life. On Bachelors' Walk, the citizen could indulge in a Turkish bath, which a pseudo-Turk, one Dr Achrnet, had just established there ; and if after his cup of coffee, 'or more likely his glass of punch at Lucas's'in Essex street or in the Exchange in Crampton-street Court, he was prepared for exercise, tliere ivas the racket court in Thomas street, or billiards in Cole alley. If in a charitable mood and inclined to melting pity, he might pass the Four Courts, Marshalsea, where the poor prisoners looked through the grating and implored everything, from a tenpenny to a guinea, for the love of God !

Reader, can you fancy yourself alive in that age of bag-wigs, velvet coats, steelhilted swords, saw-handled pistols, moral contrariety 1 Step into the gallery of the House of Commons, and you may hear the discussion on Sir Boyle Roche's measure, that every quart bottle shall hold a quart; or, if you are in luck, you may be present at that animated debate in which a representative, availing himself of the extraordinary latitude in speech allowed by the House, addressed the Speaker thus: —" Sir, they are all rotten, from the honourable member who has just sat down, to the toothless old hag that is now grinning at U3 from the gallery;': the lady referred to being the "honourable members" mother !— Au revoir.