MR FROUDE AND THE IRISH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 74, 26 September 1874, Page 8

MR FROUDE AND THE IRISH.

Ix the June number of • Macmillan's Magazine ' appeared an extremely able and crushing review of Mr Froude's last volume, f«otn the pen of one of the best Protestant writers, Mr W. E. H. Lecky. we tnke the following extract :— J 17 n ?? f > imn \ en f e evils of popular institutions, Ireland, in Mr Froiirie s judgment, Ws a striking example. He certainly shows hin self an admirer of the British Government in Ireland. He dwells with indignation on " the iniquitous trade-laws of England, her scanof J™ T r J PrOP i" tt ! lOn ° f ? ish afn "" r>S h6r '°"g contemptuous neglect tS,v», k ? US t - hat v" 10 T <Ollp9 "of which America had to complan v ere but mosquito bites by the side of the enormous injuries fe S J! nf T66T 66 ! 1 "fV/^f b y English selGshness on the trade and manufactures of Ireland •» that '« never in the history of the world had any Ireland ; but he maintains that no evil was so great as " the delusion o™ ''« Z C -° U r ?% hon TT h }y *™™«1 by" a Parliament of ie own, the mwcliief of conferring free institutions on a people who TZI^WIT* 1 / hllble 11 t ° C ° mipt ijlfl^'H-es.» There wasa '>-Jved impossibility of so muc-li as commencing the rcforaintion of Ireland so ong 08 a # *ep«rote ; leg.slature exited there." '• The fatal privilege of constitutional self-government which she wanted honesty tO g use ?AA iec Into » deeper aby.B " than that she had before escaped, and f the upper classes of the community were very corrupt, «• polfti' And now let us examine for a moment what was the constitulion Are t oK'm T h f- y <he c . o " >ll P tio » °f *hioU furnishes a dec" andis^on/, cU < 1 lnCaP - aC ' Uy ° f the IHs!l f« self government, and a strong piesumption Bgainst constitutional free-lorn in general s it i I? 1 or Lril" 1 7& WC 7 a r bS ° - llte]y unw P«»™ted. TJ.e y could not sit in it, oi, until 1 /93, vote for Vs members. It was a Parliament in !. 1 P ♦"'• TGT G nlmuSfc "nrcuresented. Thej had Jllll/l i? y influ . enc Vnd most of tlie borough member, were SanoS arT f?) who , comp r ed if « 216 Were refcumed ty boroughs o SM % a SC borotl 8 b members 176, according to the estimate of Mr iroade, were nominated by individuals (vol. ii. 366) acco rdn,e maticnVv iOllBi 0118 ! 115 -' th ° VaSfc P»*«>iiago at its disposalLs sySS^T? y 1, .? T d X ? "From the peerage down/aa-ds pense g o f " shoLr^ State « P romofcion beln the recon - boi ahfand S XK JMJ M Em P lo y mm t nfc u " der the Cromi been either 2 IZ I tj- °V™. m »^> bartered away for political support flung as bribes to political agitators, or bestowed on some mem, EnXi^WV^itT^W 0 , 001^! 110 ' C ! CCCntl y be Prided for^i m- luT, « ( 111 1 7I J Xt Avas the confession or the boast of Rtz.gibbon the great hero of this book, that one important division undi Lord lownshend had cost the Government half a million of money Befii^Btr! *?s° utof Itiw1 tiw "«iori«y of 158 who rejected Bloofl's U ° thaU 138 &"» Or sions f — niPhaSSr s^' SOlUe CoUrage t0 re P resent corruption of such a body as this as a consequence of poUtual liberty or a proof of SiTfi"*- a T tWn *,° r e^-eoreiiment. Men are in the main Mhat their circumstances have made them, and in no age could a Parliament so constituted have been other than corrupt § Thl >yj\ rv^LV 6 ' bYb V 6h °?f I haTeproTed itself ' aB ifc unquL ionably S Shmft g * a " i the material interests of «» country, that it shoidd have contained a certain number of very honest and very able :£Sr dd * Sl f % ro made its^ a cci -tmng naTioS riS^winfT i greatest danger, however, of the situation reverence, and every department of national life was viSed hi ton A Parliament was necessarily corrupt which disposed of the natSai revenues without any real control from the body of the people Land lords planted m the midst of serfs inevitably contracted tie vices of slaveholders. The professions were filled with men osSLiSJ for a religion they did not believe. The poor were 3t to look on law as the natural enemy of religion, while the tithe! that were wrung from their misery made the most wretched cottier per petually sensible of the injustice of his lot. Considered as a pros^lvSon to X? ™17 t rfcr fe \ nt ? Dded tO S ive a good industrial eduS hon to the people had sunk into complete decay because (to Mr Proude s great admiration they made instruction in the Protestant creed the condition of obtaining it. The effects of the codetS purely temporal and purely evil. Mr Froude, who speaks wSmiS truth of the pre-eminent necessity in Ireland of just laws firmly enlorccd, is the apologist for this, tho master-in justice of IrishTLlafcionj and appealing to tbe Continental laws against the PrLSts he is very angry with Surke for having spoken of its £

humanity. The answer is evident. The continental laws, atrocious as they were, were directed against a small fraction, the Irish laws against the great majority of the nation, oi^l^'i 1 ' lh '° ndo ' s augment, tlle P enal code ' ™ *<* essential parts, ought to have been preserved to the present hour. Ho tells us i,i language not very consistent with his denunciations either of Irish mgratitude or of Irish rebels, but which will doubtless boi^todSl every Fenian newspaper, that " it is only when* ceasing to be Catholics that it was possible for the Irish to become loyal subjects to the oSSoV "' i" I* • was at once 1 Celt ami a Catholic received a legacy of bitterness from the past which L was forbidden to forget The invaders were in possession of the land of his fathers lie had been stripped of his inheritance for hi fidelity S,Sh 17 i' f - SaW himSel / Odden down into serl " dom on the soil which had been his own, and England-England alone-he knew to be the cause of his sorrows." « Centuries of injustice and neelect harl divided the Irish nation into a proletariat to whom £^ w^ssynonf mous tyranny, and into an aristocracy and gentry who, deprived of the natural mducements to honorable energy, lived only for kUo amuscmens, and used political power as a mSns of recrStW theS exchequer." (Vol. ii. 195, 436.) Mr Froude accorchngly Sures "us JS' DD r77 r 77 °.^y s P ote " the bitter truth » when he sficl thT*' no Irish Catholic either is, was or ever will be, a loyal subject of a British Protestant king or a Protestant Government ;" that « LevSJ statesmen may please to quarrel with it, it was, is and ever wUiie the exact truth" whJol ffitagibbon spoke wheft'he declare I that "as long as the claims of Rome to universal spiritual dominion over the Christian world shall be maintained, it is impossible that any man who admits them can exercise the legislative powers of a Protestant state with temper and justice 5 " that Camden knew "tLfcathoUc loyalty when most loudly professed was from the lips outwards ?» that "no sincere Irish Catholic could ever, as Lord bare TaM be ifTw? V to i a - PrOt f £"* Sovere^" (Vol. in. 88, 97 102, Ml V.i admim ' Of Mr Froude in the <Pall Mall Gazette* May 8, has the astonishing hardihood to assure us that "Mr Frourl'i> has nowhere said or implied that Catholic Emancipation was a bad «i , ; }iISi 1S was neces6al> J fc hat the Catholics shoidd be ' bridled and bitted " that the " claws " of the CathoUc clergy shoidd be "pared/ and "their teeth drawn;" and Mr Froude accordinX regards with evident disgust the Bill of 1778 enabling Catholics to hold leases of 999 years as "the final surrender of the poHcv which was designed to throw the whole soil of Ireland into Protestant ?WfiM the . fi S? fc sei% i?«s departure from that happy state in which (foiir-fifthsof the nation being CathoUcs) "intellect, education property, political power-cverything that coidd make itself felt as a constituent of national life— was still Protestant." i I ' llo seriously regrets the penal code and implies that the whole Catholic population of Ireland ought as far as possible to be deprived of every description of political representation, is not deserv ing as a politician of a serious answer. However much it may please literary gentlemen m search of sensational paradox to coquet with such views, any responsible statesman who acted on them would be very properly regarded as more fit for a place in Bedlam than for a place m Downing street. Their principal importance arises from the tact, that in exact proportion as it is believed in Ireland that these opinions are held by large sections of Englishmen wi u fc]le £££ Catholics inevitably pass into the ranks of Home Rule. It is indeed hardly possible that any Irish Catholic can read this book without being more or less alienated from Great Britain. The passages that havebeen rated amount to nothing less than a distinct charee of trca" ,cry and hypocrisy against every sincere member of his creed who Lias ever filled an office under the State, fought under its bavor.orprosessedhis loyalty to its sovereign. The reader must torm his own estnnate of a writer who, with the obvious- effect of sow ing dissension among his fellow-subjects, deals in such charges as