MR. GLADSTONE ON '98.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 20, 6 September 1889, Page 31

MR. GLADSTONE ON '98.

Mb. Gladstone has a powerful article in the current number of the Nineteenth Century on the morality of the Union. The following are some passages in which he deals with the events of '98 ; — The baseness of the Union policy, and the lack of all claim on the conscience of the lrißh as a nation, have been shown, but I have still to hand charges of tyranny and cruelty which made part of my " bad history " and violent declamation. Space will only permit me to produce samples of the truth, but I am much mistaken if even samples do not •office amply to sustain the language which I endeavoured to apportion with accuracy to the merits of tha case. It will suffice for my purpose to select only a narrow area of time and place. I shall refer mainly to events connected with the Rebellion of 1798, and shall rely on the evidence, not of Irish Nationalists, but of a beneficed Protestant clergyman. Mr. Gordon's " History of the Rebellion of 1798 " contains abundant evidence that he was touched with the strong prejudices of his caste, bat he was an honest man, incapable of wilful suppression, He carries us to the scene of war in Wexford. It was marked by the massacres of Scullabogue and the Bridge, the most cruel and wicked actß (so far as I know) to which even the dregs of the population were even driven by maddening, ferocious, and prolonged oppression. In the Killala rising in 1798, we learn, I think, from the narrative of Bishop Stock, that the insurgents injured no man except in the field. Even in the utmost exasperation of the Wexford Rebellion there is no case known where a woman was outraged by the rebels. Gordon Bays—" Amid all their atrocities the chastity of the fair sex was respected. I have not been able to ascertain one instance to the contrary in the county of Wexford, through many beautiful young women were absolutely in their power," Not so with the King's forces. He speaks of the retreat of the rebels, " Many of whose female relatives promiscuously with others suffered in respect of chastity, some also with respect to health, by their constrained acquaintance with the soldiery." On the 7th Jnne, after the massacres of Scullabogue, Roche, the Roman Catholic priest, so active in arms, issued a proclamation containing the following passages :— In the moment of triumph, my countrymen, let not your victories be tarnished with any wanton act of cruelty. ... To prjmote a union of brotherhood and affection among our countrymen of all religious per suasion ■ has been our principal object. We have sworn in the most solemn manner ; we have associated for this laudable purpose, and no power on earth shall shake our resolution. And Bagenal Harvey, then commander- in-chief, on the 6th June issued general orders, which contained these words :—: — " Any goods that shall have been plundered from any house, if net brought into bead quarters, or returned immediately to the houses of owners, that (sic) all persons so plundering as aforesaid shall, on being convicted thereof, suffer death. It is alao resolved that any person or persons who shall take upon them to kill or murder any person or prisoner, burn any bouse, or commit any plunder without special written orders from tha comraander-in -chief, shall suffer death." And this, be it borne in mind, while plunder, incendiarism, rape, torture, and murder were carried on wholesale in the name of law and order before the Rebellion during it, and (as Lord Cornwallis has borne witness) after it. How Irish life was valued wholesale we may judge from the following narrative : — On the 28th of May two thousand men collected in arms made a proposal to surrender them and to go home, which was wisely accepted. But one of them said be would only give over bis gun empty, and he discharged lt^with the muzzle upwards. Htreopon the soldiers, and a troop of fencible cavalry, slew two hundred men, and many more would have perished had not the general recalled his force. So, in an early copy of (I think) the limes, dated in September, 1798, which I have eeen, an officer reports to his superior — without shame, and apparently with every confidence of good service— that he met a body of men who had taken arms on the landing of General Humbert, and slaughtered about seventy of them, though they made no attempt at resistance. It would be idle to relate the very large numbers of those slain in action. Every effort was indeed made to prevent the rebels from observing the laws of war, as, when they seat a fUg of truce it was fired upon. After relating how one Furlong was shot in the execution of such a mission, Gordon adds a note :— " To shoot all persons carrying flags of truce from the rebels appears to have been a maxim with his Majesty's forces." It is not the vast destruction of rebel life which constitutes the gravamen of the case, but tha reckless and lawless spirit in which jai> proceedings, as a rule, were. carried on. Assuming then that ■Ogre idea has been conveyed as to the manner in which rebels, sitber actual, or past, or suspected, were treated by a civilised and Christian Government, the case is still open to the remark that, after all there was a rebellion and that there were rebels, and that the case is not complete without some endearour to show how and why it was that they became rebels. They became rebels under a course of treatment such hb allows of no rational interpretation boXone — namely, that the Government were determined that tbwe should be

rebels. In 1795, a people not, as now, partially at variance, but united in sentiment from south to north, were divided, as Antrim declared in its county meeting of 1797, through the agency of the Government, waich diffused among them through the Orange lodges the venom of religious animosities. Secondly, by disarming in a brutal manner the Roman Catholic population they were deprived of the means of self-defence. Thirdly, by suspending the Habeas Corpus Act they were deprived of any and every guarantee for personal liberty. Fourthly, secrecy was promised to all informers against persons suspected of disloyalty, on the plea that if they were known their lives would be in danger. The Insurrection Act of 1796 authorised the Viceroy to proclaim any county or district as disturbed, and thereupon the magistrates might imprison or Bend into the sea-service any persons attending " at nnlawful assemblies or otherwise to acting at to threaten the public tranquility." Bat even this was not enough, so, fifthly, indemnity from all criminal consequences was promised by law both to magistrates i and to others for illegal acts done against disloyal persons, which includes all persons suspected of disloyalty by the doers of the actß. Finally, even in peaceful parts of the country like Wexford, provocation was carried to its last extremity by the method of free quarters for the armed forces.— Nation,.