WHAT SALISBURY DIDN'T TELL. (Irish World, February 20.)

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 27, 22 April 1892, Page 15

WHAT SALISBURY DIDN'T TELL. (Irish World, February 20.)

Labt week we made soma comments on Lord Salisbury's recent speech at Exeter, as briefly reported by cable despatch. Tbia week the full report is to hand, and we find in it matter calling for a few further remarks.

Now the least notable of tbe Tory leader's charges against the Irish Oatbolic people is that contained in the following utterances :—: — "Yon are going to give the power of the majority of that State (Ireland), and therefore the power of that State to those who, through long ages, have always been the enemies of English influence and English power. They fought against us when we quarrelled with Spain ; they fought against as when we quarrelled with America ; they fought against us when we quarrelled with France. In each ewe they took the side of Spain, or America, or France."

What Lord Salisbury moans, we suppose, is that in the American War for Independence, and in the wars of England with France and Spain more than a century ago the sympathy of the Irish Catholic people was against England, and that in those wars large numbers of Iruh Catholics were in the armies of America, France, and Spain, and fought against England. Taking this to bo what Lord Salisbury means, we grant he has stated the truth, and we say that Irishmen hare put tbe facts on record in Irish history, as they are on record in American and Fiench and Spanish history, and all good Irishmen of the present day are proud of the record.

It is true that Catholic Ireland was in hearty sympathy with the glorious and, happily for mankind, successful fight for freedom led by George Washington, and it is the truth that the American patriot army was composed largely by Iritih Catholics, and that Irish Catholic citisens contributed generously to the treasury of that army . These •re facts, and who, except a British Tory, will say that they are not facts honourable to the Irish name ? Is there anyone in the world to-day outside of British Torydom who will not say that in that great struggle America was right and England wrong, and that all who were on the side of America were oa the side of the cause of human liberty 1

As to the action of Irish Catholics in England's " quarrels " with France and Spain, Lord Salisbury's reference is, of course, to the amoua Irish Brigades, and the reference recalls the history of the atrocious penal code regarding which the Tory Prime Minister was prudently silent in his speech at Exeter. Lord Salisbury did not explain to his Tory audience how or why it was that thousands of Irish Catholics were found in the armies of King Louis of France and in the armies of Spain and Austria in the middle of the last century. He did not say a word about the treaty of Limerick and the perfidious violation by England of every one of its provisions, which guaranteed, on the bond of an English king, religious liberty to the Catholics of Ireland. That Treaty was Bigned on October 3, 1691, by General Ginkell, with the authority and on behalf of King William 111. "The whole history of Ireland," says a Protestant writer, " from that day nntil the 1793 consists of one long and continued breach of this Treaty."

The laws, known as the Penal Laws, wbich were enacted and enforced in Ireland in violation of the Treaty of Limerick, were described by a great Englishman, Dr Samuel Johnson, as " more grievous than all the Tea Pagan persecutions of the Christians." Under those laws Catholics were not allowed to sit in Parliament, or to vote at elections, or to practice in the professions of law or medicine, or to purchase land, or to own a horße worth more than five pounds. Any Protestant knowing a Catholic to own a horse worth mote than five pounds had right by law to take the horse away from the Catholic on payment of that sum. Tbe Penal Laws imposed a fine of £10 ft month on any Catholic employing a Catholic teacher for his children and a fine of £2 a day on the teacher, and any Catholic sending his child to a Catholic school in a foreign country was fined £100, and the child sent was disqualified tor ever for inheriting, purchasing or possessing property of any kind in Ireland. The Penal Laws imposed a fine of £60 for hearing Mass. Under the Penal Laws Catholic priests were banished from the country, and any who returned were liable to be hanged. Death was also the penalty for any Protestant who became a Catholic.

These are a few and but a few of the infamous laws which were in active operation against tbe Catholics of Ireland for a century after the Treaty cf Limerick, A Protest ai it historian writing on the condition of Ireland in the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne (1702) describes the situation in the following words: — " The penal code might now be considered tolerably c omplete, and the nine-tenths of the population (the Catholics) of Ireli tnd was thus effectually brought down under the feet of the other o ac-tenth (the Protestants; ; so absolutely subjugated, indeed, that they could not possibly be depressed lower unless they had been a< itually bought and sold as slaves. Forbidden to teach or to be taught;, whether at home or abroad ; deprived of necessary arms for self defence, or even for the chase, disabled from being so ranch as game-, keepers, leat any of them should

learn the use oE fire-arms ; and provision being made for gradually impoverishing tbe Catholic families who still owned anything, and preventing the industrious from making themselves independent by their labour— it would be hard to point out any people of ancient or modern times who groaned under a mora ingenious, torturing, and humiliating oppression."

Was it any wonder that under such a system of law tens of thousands of Catholic Irishmen — the young, tha spirited, the Btiong — fled from their native land as from a pest-house, and crnssea the seas to America and France and Spain ? And was it any wonder that those Irish exiles carried with them a hatred of England, and that they were eager to fight against England whenever an opportunity offered? They "fought against England," as Lord Salisbury says, and they would have been more or less than human if they didn't. At the Battle of Pontenoy, in 1745, in the war between England and France, there was an Irish brigade on the French side, and it was by the charge of that brigade that the victory was won for France, a fact which the English King, George 11 , recognised and felt when exclaimed, on bearing how and by whom his Britiah troops had been routed, " Cursed be the laws which deprive me of such subjects. ' What were those Irish soldiers thinking of that day at Fontenoy 1 What waß it that nerved them to fight against England ? We are told that the Irish brigade at Fountenoy, led by O'Brieo, Lord Clare rushed upon the red-coats (the English) with the cry, ringing out in their native Irish tongue, " Remember Limerick and British Faith." They remembered the violated treaty, they remembered the penal laws :—: — " The treaty broken ere the ink wherewith 'twas writ could dry, Their plundered homes, their ruined shrioes, their women's parting

cry, Their priesthood bnnted down like wolves, their country overthrown, Bach looked as if revenge for all were staked on him alone."

These are some of the facts, and very many more might ba given, which explain and fully justify the hostility of the Irish Catholics to England in her wars with America, France, and Spain. Lord Salisbury seems to think, or rather pretends to think, that such hostility under such circumstances, is a good reason why Ireland should not have Home Rule. Nobody in Great Britain or out of it will agree with him except hia Orange following whose fathers exulted in the enforcement of the sanguinary penal cade, and who, if they had the power, would revive that code and put it ia force attain to-day <md forever. The truth is that Lord Salisbury looks upon Ireland — Catholic Ireland — as " the enemy," and as such he would deal with it. If all England were of like mind, which happily is not the case, the world would hold Ireland justified in resorting to far other than constitutional means for the recovery of her freedom.

In this connection it is worth/ to note that while the Irish people are not within constitutional lines the head of the Tory party is suggesting and inciting his followers to unconstitutional methods. He has been talking about Englishmen " showing the qualities whereby their ancestors in former ages obtained their empire." What is this but physical force ? And if Lord Salisbury preaches physical force against a law of Parliament (Home Rule, if passed) is he not a " treason felon " or a " rebel " aa much as was JohngMitchell or Smith O'Brien? Very much more go we should say, for in the casa supposed Salisbury would hi rebelling against a law of his own country, whereas Mitchell and O'Briea were rebels against laws not of their own but of a foreign country.