Lord John Russell, Stuart J. Reid [types of ebook readers TXT] 📗
- Author: Stuart J. Reid
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It is easy to assert that Lord Clarendon took a panic-stricken view of the situation, and attempts have again and again been made to mitigate, if not to explain away, the dark annals of Irish crime. The facts, however, speak for themselves, and they seemed at the moment to point to such a sinister condition of affairs that Lord John Russell felt he had no option but to adopt repressive measures. Sir George Grey stated in Parliament that the number of cases of fatal bloodshed during the six summer months of 1846 was sixty-eight, whilst in the corresponding period in 1847 it had increased to ninety-six. Shooting with intent to slay, which in the six months of 1846 had numbered fifty-five, now stood at 126. Robbery under arms had also grown with ominous rapidity, for in the contrasted half-years of 1846 and 1847 deeds of violence of this kind were 207 and 530 respectively, whilst outrage in another of its most cruel and despicable forms—the firing of dwelling-houses—revealed, under the same conditions of time, 116 acts of incendiarism in 1847, as against fifty-one in the previous year. The disaffected districts of Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary made the heaviest contribution to this dismal catalogue of crime; but far beyond their borders though with diminished force, the lawless spirit prevailed.
Mr. Spencer Walpole, in his standard and authoritative ‘Life of Lord John Russell,’ has shown, by an appeal to his correspondence with Lord Clarendon, how reluctant the Prime Minister was to bring forward a new Arms Bill. He has also made it plain that it was only the logic of events which finally convinced the Prime Minister of the necessity in any shape for such a measure. Mr. Walpole has also vindicated, at considerable length, Lord John from the familiar charge of having adopted in power the proposals which led to the overthrow of the Peel Administration. He lays stress on the fact that the Arms Bill, which the Government carried at the close of 1847 by a sweeping majority, was, to a noteworthy extent, different from that which Sir Robert sought to impose on Ireland twelve months earlier, and which the Whigs met with strenuous and successful opposition. In Mr. Walpole’s words, the new proposals ‘did not contain any provision for compensating the victims of outrages at the expense of the ratepayers; they did not render persons congregated in public-houses or carrying arms liable to arrest; above all, they did not comprise the brutal clause which made persons out of doors at night liable to transportation.’ The condition of Ireland was, indeed, so menacing that the majority of the English people of all shades of political opinion were of one mind as to the necessity for stern measures. Sir Robert Peel, with no less candour than chivalry, declared that the best reparation which could be made to the last Government would be to assist the present Government in passing such a law. Perhaps still more significant were the admissions of Mr. John Bright. At the General Election the young orator had been returned to Parliament, not for a Sleepy Hollow like Durham, which had first sent him, but for the commanding constituency of Manchester, and almost at once he found himself in opposition to the views of a vast number of the inhabitants. He was requested to present a petition against the bill signed by more than 20,000 persons in Manchester. In doing so he took the opportunity of explaining in the House of Commons the reasons which made it impossible for him—friend of peace and goodwill as he assuredly was—to support its prayer. He declared that the unanimous statements of all the newspapers, the evidence of men of all parties connected with Ireland, as well as the facts which were placed before them with official authority, made it plain beyond a doubt that the ordinary law was utterly powerless, and, therefore, he felt that the case of the Government, so far as the necessity for such a bill was concerned, was both clear and perfect.
Mr. Bright drew attention to the fact that assassinations in Ireland were not looked upon as murders, but rather as executions; and that some of them at least were not due to sudden outbursts of passion, but were planned with deliberation and carried out in cold blood. He saw no reason to doubt that in certain districts public sentiment was ‘depraved and thoroughly vitiated;’ and he added that, since the ordinary law had failed to meet the emergency the Government had a case for the demand they made for an extension of their present powers, and he thought that the bill before the House was the less to be opposed since, whilst it strengthened the hands of the Executive, it did not greatly exceed or infringe the ordinary law. Mr. Bright at the same time, it is only fair to add, made no secret of his own conviction that the Government had not grappled with sufficient courage with its difficulties, and he complained of the delay which had arisen over promised legislation of a remedial character.
Lord John himself was persuaded, some time before Mr. Bright made this speech, that it was useless to attempt to meet the captious and selfish objections on the question of agrarian reform of the landlord class; and, as a matter of fact, he had already drawn up, without consulting anyone, the outline of a measure which he described to Lord Clarendon as a ‘plan for giving some security and some provision to the miserable cottiers, who are now treated as brute beasts.’ Years before—to be exact, in the spring of 1844—he had declared in the House of Commons that, whilst the Government of England was, as it ought to be, a Government of opinion, the Government of Ireland was notoriously a Government of force. Gradually he was forced to the view that centuries of oppression and misunderstanding, of class hatred and opposite aims, had brought about a social condition which made it necessary that judicial authority should have a voice between landlord and tenant in every case of ejectment. Lord John’s difficulties in dealing with Ireland were complicated by the distrust of three-fourths of the people of the good intentions of English statesmanship. Political agitators, great and small, of the Young Ireland school, did their best to deepen the suspicions of an impulsive and ignorant peasantry against the Whigs, and Lord John was personally assailed, until he became a sort of bogie-man to the lively and undisciplined imagination of a sensitive but resentful race.
Even educated Irishmen of a later generation have, with scarcely an exception, failed to do justice either to the dull weight of prejudice and opposition with which Lord John had to contend in his efforts to help their country, or to give him due credit for the constructive statesmanship which he brought to a complicated and disheartening task.[16] Lord John Russell was, in fact, in some directions not only in advance of his party but of his times; and, though it has long been the fashion to cavil at his Irish policy, it ought not to be forgotten, in common fairness, that he not only passed the Encumbered Estates Act of 1848, but sought to introduce the principle of compensation to tenants for the improvements which they had made on their holdings. Vested interests proved, however, too powerful, and Ireland stood in her own light by persistent sedition. The revolutionary spirit was abroad in 1848 not only in France, but in other parts of Europe, and the Irish, under Mr. Smith O’Brien, Mr. John Mitchel, and less responsible men, talked at random, with the result that treasonable conspiracy prevailed, and the country was brought to the verge of civil war. The Irish Government was forced by hostile and armed movements to proclaim certain districts in which rebellion was already rampant. The Treason Felony Act made it illegal, and punishable with penal servitude, to write or speak in a manner calculated to provoke rebellion against the Crown. This extreme stipulation was made at the instance of Lord Campbell. Such an invasion of freedom of speech was not allowed to pass unchallenged, and Lord John, who winced under the necessity of repression, admitted the force of the objection, so far as to declare that this form of irksome restraint should not be protracted beyond the necessity of the hour. He was not the man to shirk personal danger, and therefore, in spite of insurrection and panic, and the threats of agitators who were seeking to compass the repeal of the Union by violent measures, he went himself to Dublin to consult with Lord Clarendon, and to gather on the spot his own impressions of the situation. He found the country once more overshadowed by the prospects of famine, and he came to the conclusion that the population was too numerous for the soil, and subsequently passed a measure for promoting aided emigration. He proposed also to assist from the public funds the Roman Catholic clergy, whose livelihood had grown precarious through the national distress; but, in deference to strong Protestant opposition, this method of amelioration had to be abandoned. The leaders of the Young Ireland party set the authorities at defiance, and John Mitchel, a leader who advocated an appeal to physical force, and Smith O’Brien, who talked wildly about the establishment of an Irish Republic, were arrested, convicted, and transported. O’Connell himself declared that Smith O’Brien was an exceedingly weak man, proud and self-conceited and ‘impenetrable to advice.’ ‘You cannot be sure of him for half an hour.’ The force of the movement was broken by cliques and quarrels, until the spirit of disaffection was no longer formidable. In August, her Majesty displayed in a marked way her personal interest in her Irish subjects by a State visit to Dublin. The Queen was received with enthusiasm, and her presence did much to weaken still further the already diminishing power of sedition.
The question of education lay always close to the heart of Lord John Russell, who found time even amid the stress of 1847 to advance it. The Melbourne Administration had vested the management of Parliamentary grants in aid of education in a committee of the Privy Council. In spite of suspicion and hostility, which found expression both in Parliament and in ecclesiastical circles, the movement extended year by year and slowly pervaded with the first beginnings of culture the social life of the people. Lord John had taken an active part in establishing the authority of the Privy Council in education; he had watched the rapid growth of its influence, and had not forgotten to mark the defects
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