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From Macmillan's Magazine. MR. FROUDE'S ENGLISH IN IRELAND.

trine of this school is the worship of success as the supreme evidence of goodness. AMONG the intellectual phenomena of Wherever they find might there also they the present day, one of the most remarka- find right. To decide whether a nation is ble is certainly the presence among us of right in invading, dispossessing, or enslava small but able body of literary men, ing another, the one real question is whose repugnance to modern liberal ten- whether she is able to do it. If she is, the dencies has led them to opinions on secu- pretext she chooses is of little consequence. lar policy more fitted for the latitude of Her ultimate success is her justification. Russia than of England, and on religious She is obeying "God's law," and the weakpolicy more fitted for the Middle Ages er nation, if unable to resist effectually, is than for the nineteenth century. The two immoral in resisting at all. The supreme things they hate the most are civil and re-law of political ethics is thus

ligious liberty. Freedom of speech, free-. The good old rule, the simple plan,

dom of the press, representative government, the rights of nations to determine the form of government under which they will live, the rights of weak minorities to protection, as long as they do not injure their neighbours, the right of every man

to profess the religious belief and adopt

That he should take who has the power,

And he should keep who can."

As Mr. Froude expresses it in the present work: "The superior part has a natural right to govern, the inferior part has a natural right to be governed; and a rude

but adequate test of superiority and infe

the religious worship which he considers the best, are in their phraseology mere riority is provided in the relative strength of the different orders of human beings."* cant or shams. The two fundamental "The rights of man principles of all constitutional government - if such rights there -that the will of the majority should rule, be- are not to liberty, but to wise direcand that the scruples of the minority tion and control." "The right to resist should be respected-are equally antipa-There is no disputing against strength, depends upon the power of resistance." thetic to them. The whole tendency of modern policy in their eyes is a mistake, nor happily is there any need to dispute, and history has to them a certain melan- for the strength which gives a right to freecholy charm as a record of religious and dom implies the presence of those qualities which ensure that it will be rightly political despotisms which have been weakly banished from the world. used."§

Opinions such as these, though now rare, and, we venture to think, morbid eccentricities, were once supreme in Europe, and were usually based upon theological tenets. The belief in an infallible Church, in the criminality of religious error, and in the divine right of kings, has at different periods led good men to justify some of the most atrocious crimes that ever disgraced our world. The modern school, however, has no sympathy with these doctrines, and it is a melancholy, and indeed a humiliating fact, that some of the most ardent eulogies of the policy of destroying certain forms of religion by the sword have come from men whose own opinions on these matters are notoriously heterodox or lax.

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that there is no distinct principle underlying these views. The leading doc

The

That the leading writers of this school are not only men of great genius, but also of eminently noble and humane dispositions, may be readily conceded. character of a writer is one thing. The principles he advocates are quite another, the latter is intended to cast the smallest and nothing which is here written about reflection upon the former. Of the doctrine, however, we can speak with no respect. It appears to us not only profoundly false in itself, but also as well fitted as any in the whole range of opinions to pervert the moral judgments of men. No system can strike more directly at the root of all that is noble and generous in human nature than this deification of success, this worship of force as the incarnation of right, this

should be to annihilate their social and political power, to prevent them as far as possible from amalgamating with, and thus depressing the ruling race, and, above all, to extirpate their religion. Cromwell, and Cromwell alone, we are told, endeavoured to govern the Irish "by true ideas," or, in other words, "by the laws, so far as intellect can discern them, appointed by the Maker of the world." When the capture of Drogheda and Wexford and the deliberate massacre of their entire garrisons had concluded the rebellion, he availed himself of the opportunity to confiscate all the land in the three chief provinces of Ireland. He

hatred of all that is weak and of all that is ansuccessful. It makes it the function of History to stand by the scaffold and curse the victims as they pass. Its natural fruits have been an enthusiasm for despotism and persecution, a firm belief in the power of ends to justify means, a systematic depreciation or neglect of all the virtues which soften the character and adorn the social or domestic sphere, without fortifying men for the great collisions of life. It has led one great and venerable writer to make Frederick William a hero, and to become the eulogist of the invasion of Silesia, and the partition of Poland, while he speaks with contempt of the philanthropy | colonized those provinces with his soldiers. of Howard, and of all the noble efforts that have been made to break the fetters of the slave. It has made another great writer. the panegyrist of Henry VIII., the apologist for the use of judicial torture, and the author of one of the most uncompromising defences of religious persecution it has ever been our fortune to peruse.

--

the entire priesthood guilty of high treason; and those who remained to sustain the faith of the wretched peasants, or carry comfort to their desolated homes, were either put on board vessels for Spain, transported as convicts to the Barbadoes, or imprisoned in two small islands in the Atlantic. Having taken these measures with the natives, he endeavoured to encourage the Protestant colony by commercial freedom, by abolishing the separate parliament, and giving the colonists a representation in England.

He left indeed the peasantry to till the soil for the new masters, but he banished all the ruling classes, "the chiefs, the leading members of the Irish race the middle and upper classes, as we should call them,"† into Connaught. IIe absolutely suppressed that religious worship which the whole native population believed to be This book belongs to the class of his- essential to their eternal salvation. He tories which are written, not for the pur-pronounced by one sweeping judgment, pose of giving a simple and impartial nar- and without any detailed investigation, rative of events, but clearly and almost avowedly for the purpose of enforcing certain political doctrines. It is written with passion, and apparently under extreme irritation, and is, for the most part, a bitter invective against the Irish people, against the Catholic religion, and, above all, against the maxims of liberal policy. The Irish Celts, in the opinion of Mr. Froude, are a race hopelessly vitiated and debased, absolutely, incurably, and constitutionally unfitted for self-government, and only to be ruled by a strict and steady despotism. They are a people "who do not understand forbearance, who interpret lenity into fear, and respect only an authority which they dare not trifle with."* They are a people incapable of self-restraint." "The worst means of governing them is to give them their own way. In concession they see only fear, and those that fear them they hate and despise. Coercion succeeds better. They respect a master hand, though it be a hard and cruel one." The main object in ruling them

• P.65. P. 188.

↑ P. 571.

This scheme of policy in all its parts is the subject of warm, repeated, and unqualified eulogy by an English historian of the nineteenth century. The attempt especially to extirpate by law the religion of an entire nation arouses his most ardent sympathies. He dilates with fervour upon the disloyalty of the Catholics, upon the penalties which in other lands they inflicted upon Protestants, upon the pernicions na> ture of their opinions. No Moslem conqueror, no Spanish inquisitor, was ever

siderable body of followers, each of whom was constantly at war with the English, or with the others. At certain periods, intermarriage with the Irish, and the strange fascination which the freer Irish mode of life appears to have exercised over the colonists, induced the latter in great numbers to adopt the manners of the natives. At others, the line of demarcation was clearly

The Irish were placed beyond the pale of law, and were accustomed themselves to levy black mail upon the English. There was a kind of chronic hostility, accompanied on both sides by great barbarities. On the one side was a compact body of disciplined men of a higher civilization, and often actuated by motives and views of government that were far from ignoble; on the other were a multitude of divided chiefs and undisciplined clans, recoiling from the obligations of feudal law, and struggling to free their country from a foreign invader.

less troubled with scruples of humanity | dependent chiefs, each of whom could comin persecuting the enemies of his faith. mand the undivided allegiance of a con"The lines of the two creeds," we are told, "were identical with the lines of loyalty and disloyalty."* "The best minds of England really believed that besides its treasonable aspects the Roman Catholic religion was intellectually degrading and spiritually poisonous." "The mass- - as a symbol whose supreme pontiff had applauded the insurrection of 1641-it was not legitimate only, but necessary to in-drawn. Intermarriage was forbidden. terdict, till the adherents of it retired from a position which was intolerable in civilized society." Of the efficiency, as well as of the legitimacy of persecution, Mr. Froude has no doubt. "Had the Catholic bishops been compelled in earnest to betake themselves elsewhere, had the importation of priests from abroad been seriously and sternly prohibited, the sacerdotal system must have died a natural death, and the creed have perished along with it."§ "Ireland, had Cromwell left a son like himself, must in another generation have been Protestant." || Romanisin, sternly repressed, must have died out as ProThe Reformation came, and it undoubttestantism died in Spain and Italy." ¶ edly furnished some new pretexts, aggraWe do not intend - - to the great ma-vations, and alliances; but it did not projority of our readers we believe it would duce, for some years it hardly influenced be wholly superfluous — to make any com- the quarrel. “On the rupture of England ment upon the morality or humanity of with the l'apacy," says Mr. Froude, "the those sentiments, or to enter into any gen- Irish, by immediate instinct, threw themeral defence of the principles of religious selves on the Roman side."* It would be toleration. We shall content ourselves more correct to say that the Irish simply with pointing out what appears to us the remained in the position in which they gross historical exaggeration involved in were. The causes which induced the the belief that the creed of the Irish was English suddenly to change their creed at the root of their rebellions. The strug- did not operate in Ireland, and the main gle between the two races had raged for demand of the Irish for a long period was centuries when their religion was the same, merely to be permitted to worship accordand it was the natural and inevitable con- ing to the religion in which they were sequence of their relative position. It was born. Their creed, however, at this time a question of nationality, and of race, and rested very lightly upon them, and no part afterwards of the possession of land, much of their violence can be ascribed to fanatmore than of creed. Ireland had only icism. Under Henry the chiefs were inbeen very partially conquered by Strong- duced with little difficulty to accept large bow. The English remained a small mili- portions of the confiscated Church lands.† tary colony, planted in the midst of a Under his successor proselytism was more large, hostile, and half-savage population. active. Unconsecrated prelates were The Irish followed a multitude of great in-thrust into Irish sees, but still there was

• P. 210.

† P. 213.

hardly a ripple of religious agitation.

* P. 127. IP. 212.

§ P. 213.

¶ P. 140.

• P. 89.

† P. 40.