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CHAP. IX.

Persecution of landlords-New Rent-Its effects and utility-Simultaneous Meetings-Continental sympathyAmerican sympathy-American addresses and associations, &c. alarming-American party in Ireland-Its principles-Its conduct-Results-Canning administration-His policy-His means-Wellington ministryMarquess of Wellesley-Marquess of Anglesey.

THE triumphs of the Catholics were too important and too galling to the ascendancy, not to produce an immediate reaction. The elections were immediately followed by open war against the insurgents. Tenants were ejected without mercy; whole families turned out upon the high road; and recurrence had to every expedient of retaliation, which could most strongly mark the indignation and vengeance of the defeated party. The tenant, in many cases, lay particularly exposed to the severity of his landlord. In parts of Ireland, for instance, a small tenement was given to a peasant for a yearly rent sufficiently low to allow him the interest prescribed by law :

this rent was allowed to accumulate sometimes for thirteen or fourteen years successively, until it was utterly beyond the power of the freeholder to repay it. Where ejectment took place, the freeholder remained still liable for the debt, and was subjected by other process to imprisonment. In other cases the single life, sometimes nearly eighty or ninety years old, on which perhaps thirty or forty holdings depended, suddenly dropped, and a whole district became, at one blow, exposed to the cruelty of the village tyrant. These facilities to persecution were seized with avidity, and the immediate results of the election were of the most melancholy description. The breach between the parties was widened; new exasperations were added to the old; the priest was accused with the landlord; and the worst consequences, on all sides, were apprehended. It was dreaded, that once more the peasant would resume the rights of self-defence, and rush on to those acts of personal retaliation, which in all times had been so anxiously identified with the cause of the Catholics. It had produced the various coercive acts, with which the statute-book had formerly been crowded, and thrown the most serious obstacles in the way of emancipation. On the side of the freeholder, there were scarcely less

difficulties to contend with. The want of sympathy in the situation of men, to whom the late triumph had so pre-eminently been owing, would of all others have been the most certain means of deterring them in future from similar co-operation. A fund was proposed for their relief, and in a few weeks the "New Rent"* for the protection of the forty-shilling freeholders, poured in from every side into the coffers of the Association.

The result of this exertion was most perceptible. The freeholders. not only were very speedily released, but they were taught to identify their interests, in a still more intimate manner, with the Association. They preferred personally their claims for redress, either to the Protecting Committees, as they were called, existing for that purpose in the contested counties, or to the clergy of the parish, or to the more popular leaders of the Association. They

The creation of such a fund was first suggested at Dungarvan, in consequence of numerous applications from the clergy about two months before the Waterford election. It was then limited to a local subscription, and the promises of preference on vacant lands to such freeholders as might be ejected by their landlords for a conscientious discharge of their duty during the ensuing contest. Mr. O'Connell had the merit of making it really useful, by extending it to every part of Ireland.

were assured of having such petitions received with every due consideration by a body, which affected to proceed directly from the people, had encouraged them in the late struggle, and declared themselves the organ of their complaints, and the determined asserters of their violated rights. On the other side, the Association derived the most material advantage from this additional principle of union. The Rent, which flowed out upon the people, came back through the various channels doubled and quadrupled to the Association treasury. Like every other attempt to repress the advancement of the cause, the persecution of the landlords but added a new impetus to its progress. The landlords themselves at last admitted the justice of this assertion. They dropped off, one by one, from the unequal conflict, and came into terms of arrangement, through the intervention frequently of the priests, with their own tenants.* In some

• When this persecution in some instances had gone to the greatest extremes, it was suddenly stopped by the menace of purchasing up the outstanding judgments affecting the landlord, and wielding the same weapon which he had employed to persecute the freeholder, against himself. It is not meant to offer any defence of this species of domestic warfare; but it may be observed, that it arose out of the anomalous state in which all the relations of private as well as public life, were thrown by the laws, and the continuance of

cases, where ejectments had taken place, the tenants rather benefited than otherwise, by the arrangement. Several freeholds virtually fell into the hands of the Association, and the landlords abstained from any new registry of their tenants, with a declaration, that they had no intention in future of placing weapons in the hands of their enemies. All this tended to an obvious augmentation of the Catholic interest. The Catholics every where profited by the fears or apathy of their enemies. An active registry was commenced in the popular interest in Louth, Limerick, &c. &c. It no longer appeared doubtful that, with ordinary exertion, the Catholics would be enabled to return threefourths of the representation of Ireland at the next ensuing General Election.

The necessity of presenting an annual petition from the Catholics of Ireland to parliament, and the policy of adding as much as possible to its weight, by similar petitions from the country, had suggested during the last year various expedients for the better arrangement of such petitions in the cities, counties, and parishes, of the kingdom. The secretary of the Catholics of each county was directed to send down to the parishes immediately under his control, the form which had been advocated, and prolonged by the very men who were now the first amongst its victims.