CATHOLIC WORLD. (continued 3)

We were now near the cathedral—one of the grandest, and certainly the richest, in Spain. Its first foundation is lost in the obscurity of legendary times. The people, however, are not so indefinite in their opinion. With a true Oriental love of the marvellous, they not only attribute the foundation of Toledo to patriarchal times, but declare this church was built by the apostles, and that even the Blessed Virgin herself took a personal interest in its erection. It is at least certain that a church was consecrated here in the time of King Ricared the Goth, after the condemnation of the Arians by the Council of Toledo, Pg 789 and it was probably built on the site of a previous one. It was placed under the invocation of the Virgin, and her ancient statue, which has been preserved to this day, was regarded then, as now, with special veneration. The old Gothic kings were noted for their devotion to Mary, and hung up at her altar the beautiful crowns of pure beaten gold and precious stones discovered a few years ago near Toledo, and now at the Hôtel Cluny at Paris.[190]

The Moors, when they took Toledo, seized this church, so sacred to the Christians, razed it to the ground, and erected a mosque in its place; and when Alfonso VI. triumphantly entered the old capital of the Visigoths, May 25, 1085—the very day the great Hildebrand died at Salerno, exclaiming: “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, and therefore I die an exile”—having left the Moors in possession of the building, he was forced to hear Mass in a little mosque of the tenth century, afterwards given to the Knights Templars and called the Christo de la Luz, where may still be seen the wooden shield hung up by King Alfonso, with its silver cross on a red ground.

The people, of course, were dissatisfied to see the infidel left to defile a spot where the Gospel had first been announced to their forefathers and the Christian mysteries first celebrated, and, as soon as the king left the city, determined to regain possession of it. Queen Constanza

Bernard de Sédirac was now Archbishop of Toledo. He belonged to a noble family of Aquitaine, and became early in life a Benedictine monk at St. Oren’s Priory, Auch, of which he was soon made prior. This house was affiliated to the Abbey of Cluny, to which he was transferred by St. Hugo on account of his talents and eminent virtues, and when Alfonso VI. sent there for a monk capable of re-establishing monastic discipline in the convents of Castile, Dom Bernard had the honor of being appointed to the mission. He found not in the Spanish monasteries the austerity and silence of Cluny. The neighing of steeds, the baying of hounds, and the whistle of the falcon prevailed over the choral chants, and soft raiment had taken the place of haircloth and the scourge. The monks, however, were by no means depraved, and Bernard soon acquired such an ascendency over them as to effect a radical change in their habits, especially at the great Abbey of San Facundo, of which he had been made abbot.

When Alfonso VI. took Toledo, desirous of restoring the see to its ancient grandeur and importance, he endowed it magnificently, and appointed Dom Bernard archbishop. The part this prelate took in the seizure of the mosque has been alluded Pg 790 to. Mariana, the Jesuit historian, considers his zeal on this occasion as too lively and impetuous. The Moors were naturally enraged at losing their chief place of worship, and for a time it was feared they would break out into open revolt. But they finally concluded to send a deputation to the king to make known the violation of the treaty and demand redress.

Alfonso was then in the kingdom of Leon, and, when he learned what had occurred, he was not only alarmed for the safety of his capital, but angry with those who had endangered it. He at once set out for Toledo, resolved to punish the queen and archbishop. When the Christians of Toledo learned that he was approaching the city in such a disposition the principal citizens clothed themselves in black, and the clergy put on their sacred robes, and went forth to meet him. In the midst was the fair Princess Urraca, pale and trembling, clothed in sackcloth, with ashes on her head, sent by the queen to appease the king’s anger, knowing, if anything could turn him from his purpose, it would be the sight of his favorite daughter. But Alfonso hardened his heart when he saw them approach, and silently registered a vow not to be moved by the princess’ entreaties. Urraca had the true tact of a woman, and, divining her father’s thoughts, fell at his feet, conjuring him to grant her but one favor—to show no mercy on those who had set at naught his authority out of obedience to a higher will!

The king was taken aback by this pious stratagem, and, before he recovered from his embarrassment, a second embassy from the Moors appeared. The king, in anticipation of their renewed complaints,

The messengers fell on their knees and replied: “The archbishop is the doctor of your law, and if we, however innocent, be the cause of his death, his followers will some day take vengeance on us. And should the queen perish, we shall become an object of hatred to her posterity, of which we shall feel the effects when you have ceased to reign. Therefore, O king! we release you from your promise, and beg you to pardon them. If you refuse our petition, allow us to seek in another country an asylum from the dangers that threaten us here.”

The king, who had been weighed down with sadness, broke into transports of joy: “You have not only saved the archbishop, but the queen and princess. Never shall I forget so happy a day. Henceforth you may be assured of my special protection.”

When the king entered the city a few hours after, he proceeded directly towards the mosque taken from the Moors. On the threshold stood Queen Constanza in garments of mourning, and Dom Bernard in pontifical vestments. The king kissed the archbishop’s hand, embraced the queen, and entered the church to give thanks unto God for the happy ending of so threatening a drama. And so, adds Mariana, this day of tears and lamentations was changed into a day of joy. This was in the year of our Lord 1087.

The Alfaqui, or Moorish doctor, whose sagacious advice the Moors had followed on this occasion, was regarded with so much gratitude by the Christians that they set up his Pg 791 statue in the Holy of Holies, where it is to be seen to this day among the kings of Spain and the dignitaries of the church.

The present cathedral was begun by St. Ferdinand in 1227. Eight portals give entrance to the edifice. The principal one is called the great Door of Pardon. Seven steps lead up to it, which the people often ascend on their knees. And to kneel is the attitude one instinctively takes on entering this magnificent church, which is like a great jewelled cross of marvellous workmanship. It is, in fact, a museum of sculpture and painting. The eye is absolutely dazzled by its richness, as it looks up the long aisles with their clustered columns, lit up by the finest stained-glass windows in Spain. The choir alone it would take hours to examine, so profuse are the beautiful carvings. On the lower stalls—those of the choristers—are carved jousts, tourneys, battles, and sieges, as if to figure the constant warfare of man here below. Even the very animals in the accessory carvings are represented contending. Forty-five of these stalls represent the siege of some city or fortress in the war with the Moors, and are curious for the costumes and arms of the time. The most interesting relate to the conquest of Granada, just after which they were executed. Nor is it surprising to find such things commemorated in so holy a place. The war with the Saracens was not merely a national enterprise, but a holy crusade on which depended, not only the safety of Spain, but of all Christendom, and Europe has never been sufficiently grateful to the Spaniards for saving it from the yoke of Islam. These carvings seem like a psalm of triumph for ever echoed in this choir: “The Lord hath triumphed

On the upper stalls, where sit the canons of the church between red marble columns, are the holy mysteries of the faith, carved by Berruguete and Felipe de Borgoña, and above in alabaster is the genealogy of Christ. At the head of the choir is the archbishop’s throne, like the stalls of carved walnut, but supported by bronze pillars. Among other carvings on it is the legend of St. Ildefonso and the sacred Casulla, so popular at Toledo, and which has inspired the pencil of Murillo, Rubens, and other eminent artists. St. Ildefonso was Archbishop of Toledo in the seventh century, and the author of a famous work entitled De Virginitate Mariæ. It is said that one night, entering the church at the head of his clergy to sing the midnight office, he found the altar illuminated, and the Blessed Virgin seated on his ivory throne surrounded by a throng of angels, holding in her hand the book he had written in defence of her virginity. She beckoned him towards her, and said, as she bestowed on him a beautiful white chasuble of celestial woof: “Inasmuch as with a firm faith and a clean heart, having thy loins girt about with purity, thou hast, by means of the divine grace shed on thy lips, diffused the glory of my virginity in the hearts of the faithful, I give thee this vestment, taken from the treasury Pg 792 of my Son, that even in this life thou mayest be clothed with the garment of light.” And the attendant angels came forward to fasten the sacred Casulla around him.

After the time of St. Ildefonso no one ever ventured to use this chasuble till the presumptuous Sisberto was made archbishop; but he experienced the fatal effects of his rashness and died a miserable death in exile. This precious garment was carefully preserved fifty-seven years at Toledo, and then carried to the Asturias to save it from the Moors—perhaps by Pelayus when he floated down the Tagus two hundred and fifty miles in a wooden chest, a second Moses destined to save his nation:

When the church of San Salvador at Oviedo was completed, Alfonso el Casto had the Santa Casulla solemnly conveyed thither, and there it remains to this day.

St. Ildefonso and the holy Casulla are to be seen at every hand’s turn at Toledo. Countless houses have a majolica medallion depicting them inserted in their front walls. They are sculptured over one of the doors of the cathedral, and several times within. And among the numerous paintings that adorn the edifice are two in which the Blessed Virgin is clothing St. Ildefonso with something of the grace and majesty of heaven.

But the vision of St. Ildefonso is specially commemorated on the spot where it occurred by a beautiful little temple of open Gothic work on one side of the nave. Here the whole legend is admirably told by Vigarny in a series of bas-reliefs in marble. In the outer wall is inserted

The Capilla mayor is of excessive richness. Jasper steps lead up to the high altar. The retable, covered with countless sculptures, rises almost to the arches, alive with scenes from the life of our Saviour amid innumerable pinnacles, and niches, and statues of most elaborate workmanship. Around are the tombs of the ancient kings of Spain, and among them that of the celebrated Cardinal Mendoza, the tertius rex, who took so prominent a part in the government in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella—a tomb in the Plateresco style, and worthy, not only of that great prelate, but of the marvellous chapel in which it stands. Near by is the effigy of the Alfaqui, who interposed in favor of Queen Constanza and Archbishop Bernard, and opposite is a statue of San Isidro, who led Alfonso VIII. to victory at Navas de Tolosa, as well as one of that king himself in a niche. There is certainly nothing grander in all Christendom than this chapel—nothing more in harmony with the imposing rites of the church, which are here celebrated with a majesty that is infinitely impressive.

The chapel of the Sagrario contains the celebrated statue of the Virgin so honored by the Goths, said to have been saved from the Moors by an Englishman. It is of wood, black with age, but entirely plated with silver, excepting the face and hands. This Madonna Pg 793 stands in a blaze of light from the numerous lamps, and is absolutely sparkling with jewels. One of her mantles is of silver tissue embroidered with gold thread (that required three hundred ounces of gold to make) and thousands of pearls weighing nearly as much. There is scarcely room for the rubies, emeralds, and diamonds suspended on this mantle. That of the Child is similar in style, and took nine persons over a year to embroider.

Near by, in the chapel of Santa Marina, is a tombstone over the re-mains of Cardinal de Carrero, the king-maker of Philip the Fifth’s time, with its Hic jacet pulvis, cinis, et nihil!—sublime cry of Christian humility.

Every chapel in this cathedral is worthy of interest. One bears the curious name of the Christo de las Cucharas, or of Spoons, from the armes parlantes of Diego Lopez de Padilla emblazoned here—three padillas, or little paddles in the form of a spoon. It was a lady of this family who, in some civil contest, stripped the statues in the cathedral of their valuable ornaments as a means of defraying the expenses of the war, but first kneeling before them to beg the saints’ pardon for the liberty she was about to take.

Then there is the beautiful chapel of Los Reyes Nuevos, lined with rich tombs in sculptured recesses, each with its recumbent effigy, among which is that of a daughter of John of Gaunt, “time-honored Lancaster,” who married a Spanish prince.

The chapel of Santiago, in the flamboyant style, was built before the discovery of America, by Alvaro de Luna, grand-master of the Knights of Santiago. On every side are scallop-shells, emblem of the tutelar, and the crescent, cognizance

The Mozarabic chapel, with its memories of Cardinal Ximenes, is very interesting. One side of it is entirely covered with a fresco of the battle of Oran, in which the cardinal took a leading part, full of animation and vigor. Here the Mozarabic rite which he re-established is still kept up.

What the primitive form of the Spanish liturgy was we have no certain knowledge, for it was superseded, or greatly modified, by the Goths. After the fourth Council of Toledo, presided over by St. Isidore of Seville, a uniform liturgy was established throughout the kingdom, to which was given the name of Mozarabic from that of the Christians who lived under the Moorish rule, and only had permission to maintain their own rites by the payment of an annual tribute. The Gregorian liturgy was introduced in the time of Alfonso VI. by the wish of the pope. The clergy and people were at first in consternation at the proposed change, but the archbishop, Bernard de Sédirac, was in favor of it, and he was sustained by the government. Six churches at Toledo were assigned to the Mozarabic rite, but by degrees the Gregorian acquired ascendency. Mozarabic books became more and more rare, and the rite was nearly abandoned when Cardinal Ximenes, in order to preserve a vestige of it, founded this chapel in the year 1500, and had the ancient service Pg 794 printed at Alcala de Henares. One peculiarity of this rite is, the Host is divided into nine parts, which are placed on the paten in the form of a cross, in memory of the Incarnation, Nativity, Circumcision, Adoration of the Magi, Passion, Death, Resurrection, Ascension, and Eternal Reign.

The chapter-room of the cathedral is the richest in Spain. It is Moorish in style, and has a magnificent artesonado ceiling of gold and azure, rare carvings in oak, and a profusion of paintings, mostly portraits of the archbishops of Toledo, ninety-four in number, among which is that of Carranza, the confessor of Mary Tudor, and such a favorite of Charles V. that he summoned him to his death-bed at Yuste.

But the best paintings are in the sacristy. Here is the Santa Casulla on the ceiling, by Luca Giordano, the most productive painter that ever existed, and on the wall is El Greco’s chef d’œuvre—the casting of lots for Christ’s garment—in which the artist introduced his own portrait as one of the soldiers. There is also a beautiful Santa Leocadia rising from her tomb, by Orrente. St. Ildefonso is cutting off a portion of her veil, according to the legend, which says that while he was celebrating Mass at the tomb of this saint on her festival, Dec. 9, in presence of the king and a great crowd, the stone that covered the tomb, which it took thirty strong men to remove, was suddenly raised, to the amazement of the assembly, and St. Leocadia came forth shrouded in her veil. Going to St. Ildefonso, she took him by the hand and said: “Ildefonso, it is by thee the Queen we serve in heaven hath obtained victory over her enemies; by thee her memory

The Ochavo is a fine octagonal room entirely lined with precious marbles. Here are the silver shrines of St. Eugenius and St. Leocadia, with silver statues and reliquaries, and countless articles of great value. The riches of this church are still extraordinary, though the French carried off more than a ton of silver objects in their day. A dignitary who officiated in a procession while we were there wore a magnificent collar, which we afterwards examined. It was absolutely covered with pearls, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, etc. A man followed him with a mace, as if to guard it. The silver custodia for the Host, the largest in the world, weighs four hundred pounds, and is composed of eighty thousand pieces. It is of the florid Gothic style, and contains two hundred and sixty-six statuettes. Cardinal Ximenes ordered it to be made in 1515, but it took nine years to complete it. There is another of pure gold, weighing thirty-two pounds, which Isabella the Catholic had made of the first ingots from the New World, as a tribute to the divine Host. After her death Cardinal Ximenes bought it and presented it to his cathedral.

The vestments in the sacristy are perhaps unrivalled. Many of them are hundreds of years old, of rare embroidery that looks like painting, done on cloth of gold. We remember Pg 795 one cope in particular, on which is the coronation of Mary, done by hands of fairy-like skill. All the crowns of the divine personages, as well as their garments, are edged with real pearls, and the whole scene, though wrought with silk, seemed to have caught something of the celestial beauty and calm rapture of Fra Angelico.

We have given only a faint idea of this magnificent cathedral, which must be seen to be fully appreciated. No wonder the proverb says: Dives Toledana. Leaving the church by the first door at hand, we saluted the huge San Christobalón, forty feet high, on the wall—saint of propitious omen, whom we always like to meet.

The cathedral cloister is charming with its laurels, orange-trees, and myrtles. The frescoed arcades are brilliant with the poetic legends of the church of Toledo, among which are St. Leocadia refusing to sacrifice to Jupiter, and Santa Casilda, a Moorish princess converted to the faith, visiting the Christians in her father’s dungeons. Around the gate of the Niño Perdido is painted the legend from which it derives its name, similar to that of St. Hugh of Lincoln. This “lost child” was of Christian parentage, and kidnapped in 1490 by the Jews, who carried him to La Guardia. On Good Friday they took him to a neighboring cave and made him undergo all the tortures of the Passion, finally crucifying him at the ninth hour, at which time his blind mother, who was at a distance, is said to have suddenly recovered her sight. His heart was torn out and wrapped up with a consecrated Host, as if from some dim sense of the connection between the Sacred Heart and the Holy Eucharist, and sent by a renegade to the Jews of

On the Plaza Zocodover once took place the bull-fights and other public spectacles of Toledo. It has always been a market-place, and, above the arcades, is the chapel of the Christo de la Sangre, where Mass used to be said for the benefit of the market-men, who could thus attend to their devotions without leaving their stalls.

It is on the Plaza Zocodover you may make the pleasant acquaintance of “a most sweet Spaniard, the comfit-maker of Toledo, who can teach sugar to slip down your throat a million of ways,” and by none easier than what is called the eel of Toledo, which could not have been surpassed in Shakspere’s time—a most delicious compound of sweet-meats, fashioned like a huge eel, which is sold coiled up in a box. If the famous eels of Bolsena are to be compared with those of Toledo, it is not surprising that, as Dante implies, they even tempted Pope Martin the Fourth, particularly if he had been recently subjected, like us, to the “divine diet” of the Fonda de Lino!

There are numerous charitable institutions at Toledo, due to the munificence of its great prelates, who, if they had immense revenues, knew how to spend them like princes of the church. Cardinal Mendoza spent enormous sums on the magnificent hospital of Santa Cruz, which is now converted into a military Pg 796 academy. Here the cross, which the cardinal triumphantly placed on the captured Alhambra in 1492, and which forms the device on his arms, is everywhere glorified. This hospital is noted for its unrivalled sculptures of the Renaissance, particularly those of the grand portal, which is really a jewel of art. The discovery of the True Cross by St. Helena is appropriately the chief subject. The beautiful patio is surrounded by Moorish galleries which, as well as the staircases, are sculptured. On all sides are the Mendoza arms, with its motto composed by an angel: Ave Maria, gratia plena. The rooms have fine Moorish ceilings. The church is peculiar in shape, being in the form of a Mendoza cross, with four long arms of equal length. The right transept is now used for gymnastic exercises, and the left one as a school-room. On the wall still hangs the portrait of its great founder, expressive of lofty purpose. He was familiar with the din of camps, as well as with the peaceful duties of charity, and does not look out of his element in this military school. The building is a grand monument to his memory, and one of the wonders of Toledo.

The hospital of St. John the Baptist was built by Cardinal de Tavera in the sixteenth century, and in so magnificent a style as to make people reverse the murmuring of Judas and say: “To what purpose is this waste? And why hath all this money been given to the poor?” The tomb of the beneficent prelate, sculptured by Berruguete, is in the centre of the nave. It is in the cinque-cento style. At the corners stand some of the virtues that adorned his life: Prudence, with a mirror and mask; Justice, with scales; Fortitude, with her tower;

In front of this hospital is a small promenade, ornamented with rude statues of the old Gothic kings. Keeping on, outside the city walls, we passed tower after tower of defence at the left, while at the right lay the Vega, where are still some remains of an old Roman amphitheatre. At length we came to the ruined palace of Roderick, the last of the Goths, built by good King Wamba of more pleasant memory. In a niche is a rough statue, purporting to be Don Roderick himself, looking where he has no business to look—down on the baths of Florinda. An immense convent beyond towers up over the walls, like a prison with its grated windows, that are dismal from without, but which command an admirable view over the valley of the Tagus, along whose banks rise steep cliffs like palisades, with here and there an old Moorish mill. Just below, the river is spanned by St. Martin’s bridge with its ancient fortifications. On the rough hills beyond are numerous cigarrales, or country-seats. There is something wild and melancholy about the whole scene. The river itself rushes on in a fierce, ungovernable manner, as if it had never come under the influences of civilization. It comes from the palæontologic mountains of Albarracin, and flows on hundreds of miles, disdaining all commercial appliances, in lonely, lordly grandeur, till lost in the Atlantic. Its current is clear, green, and rapid, though poets sing it as the river of the golden waves. Don Quixote tells of four nymphs who come forth from its waters and seat themselves in the green meadow to broider Pg 797 their rich silken tissues with gold and pearls, referring to Garcilasso de la Vega, the poet-warrior of Toledo, who says:

Farther up the river are a few Arab arches of the palace of Galiana, a heroine of ancient romance. She was the daughter of King Alfahri, who gave her this rural retreat, and embellished it in every possible way. The young princess was of marvellous beauty, and generally lived here to escape from her numerous suitors, among whom was Bradamante, a gigantic Moorish prince from Guadalajara. This redoubtable wooer endeavored, but in vain, to soften her heart. He only served to keep his rivals in check. At length a foreign prince, none other than the mighty Charlemagne himself, came to aid her father in the war against the King of Cordova. He was at once captivated by the beauty of Galiana, and, as she showed herself by no means insensible to his advances, he soon ventured to ask her hand in marriage. To dispose of Prince Bradamante, he challenged him to a private combat, and struck off his head, which he offered to the bride-elect. This obstacle removed, the wedding soon took place, and Galiana was triumphantly carried to France. Some pretend Charlemagne never crossed the Ebro, but we have unlimited faith in the legend, on which numberless songs and romances are based, and sold to this day by blind men on the public squares of Toledo.

One of the attractions of Toledo is Santa Maria la Blanca, an ancient Jewish synagogue in the style of the mosque of Cordova, which, after many vicissitudes, has become ad nives—of the snow—which led to the foundation of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, and is evidently popular in Spain from the number of churches bearing the name. That at Toledo is very striking from the horse-shoe arches, one above the other, supported by octagon pillars with curiously-wrought capitals. There are lace-like wheels along the frieze of the nave, and the roof is of cedar—a tree sacred to the Jews, and which they say only came to perfection in the Garden of Eden. In their epitaphs we often read: “He is gone down to the Garden of Eden, to those who are amongst the cedars.”

The Transito is another old synagogue, which was erected in the days of Don Pedro the Cruel by Samuel Levi, his wealthy treasurer. The architects were probably Moors, for it is decorated in the style of the Alhambra. It consists only of one nave, but this is richly ornamented. Along the walls are Hebrew inscriptions, said to be in part from the Psalms, and partly in praise of Samuel Levi. His praises were not on the lips of the people, however. On the contrary, he was very obnoxious to them on account of his exorbitant taxes, and when put to the torture by Don Pedro, he was by no means regretted. The Jews were specially detested at Toledo. It is said they opened the city to the Moors, and subsequently to the Christians, and were faithful to neither party. When expelled in 1492, this building was given to the Knights of Calatrava.

The church of San Juan de los Reyes was built in 1476 by Ferdinand and Isabella in gratitude for a victory over the Portuguese. It is now a parish church, but was Pg 798 first given to the Franciscans, whose long knotted cord is carved along the frieze. It is magnificently situated on a height overlooking the Tagus. An immense number of chains are suspended on the outer walls, taken from Christian captives in the dungeons of the Alhambra. These glorious trophies were brought from Granada in 1492, and cannot be regarded without emotion. It is said—but who can believe it?—that some of them were recently used by the authorities to enclose a public promenade, to save the expense of buying new ones—a most odious piece of economy, of which Samuel Levi himself would not have been guilty. The portal of this church is a beautiful example of the Plateresco style, exquisite as goldsmith’s work, with its fretted niches and sculptured shields. The building, though only intended for a conventual church, is of grand proportions and richly ornamented. The emblems of Ferdinand and Isabella, with other heraldic devices, are sculptured amid delicate foliage around the royal gallery, and over the high altar Cardinal Mendoza is painted at the foot of the cross.

The cloisters adjoining, of the florid Gothic style, are exquisitely beautiful. They are built around a pleasant court, which has a fountain in the centre, and a profusion of orange-trees and myrtles. The niches of the arcades are peopled with saints, and the columns and arches covered with an endless variety of acanthus leaves, lilies, bellflowers, ivy, holly, and even the humbler vegetables, carved with a skill that reminded us of Scott’s well-known lines:

To say nothing about the swords of Toledo would be almost like leaving the hero out of the play. Spanish weapons have been renowned from ancient times. Titus Livius and Martial mention them. Cicero alludes to the pugiunculus Hispaniensis. Gratius Faliscus, a friend of Ovid’s, speaks, in particular, of the Cultrum Toledanum which hunters wore at their belts:

Swords continued to be fabricated at Toledo in the time of the Gothic kings. Their broad, two-edged swords were probably the type of the alfanjes of the Moors, which we see in the paintings in the Alhambra. The kings of Castile accorded special privileges to the corporations of espaderos, such as exemption from taxes on the steel they used. This was brought from the Basque provinces, about a mile from Mondragon.

—“Sword victorious, thy steel is from Mondragon, but tempered at Toledo.”

The most ancient Toledan sword-maker known is a Moor called Del Rey, because Ferdinand the Catholic stood as godfather at his conversion. His mark was a perrillo, or little dog, which was so famous that Don Quixote speaks of it. But the swords of Spain were in general renowned all over Europe in the middle ages. Froissart speaks of the short Spanish dagger with a wide blade. We know by Pg 799 Shakspere how much this weapon was prized in England. It was a trusty Toledo blade Othello kept in his chamber.

The great blow to the sword manufactory of Toledo was the introduction of French costumes in the seventeenth century, in which swords were dispensed with. Carlos III. resolved to revive this industry, and erected the present fabric on the right shore of the Tagus, more than a mile from the city. The swords are inferior in quality and lack their former elegance of form. They participate in the degeneracy of those who wield them. Spain, once noble, chivalrous, and of deep convictions, has lost its fine temper and keenness of thrust. The raw material out of which such wonders were wrought in the old days remains still, however, in the people as in the country. It only needs a return to old principles of faith and honor on the part of the ruling classes to prepare the way for a new Spanish history, more glorious and more advantageous to the world at large than even Spain has ever known.

ENGLISH RULE IN IRELAND.

No one can pass from England into Ireland without being struck by the contrast in the condition of the two countries—a contrast so marked and absolute that it is revealed at the first glance, and in lines so bold and rigid that it seems to have been produced by nature itself. In England there is wealth, thrift, prosperity; in Ireland, poverty, helplessness, decay. Into the great heart of London, through arteries that stretch round the globe, the riches of the whole earth are poured. Dublin is a city of the past, and, in spite of its imposing structures, impresses us sadly. The English cities are busy marts of commerce or homes of comfort, luxury, and learning. The Irish towns are empty, silent, decayed. Into England’s ports come the ships of all the nations; but in Ireland’s hardly a sail is unfurled. There the chimneys of innumerable factories shut out with their black smoke the light of heaven; here the Round Tower or the crumbling ruin stands as a monument of death. England is over-crowded; in Ireland we travel for miles without meeting a human being; pass through whole counties from which the people have disappeared to make room for cattle. Freedom is in the very air of England: the people go about their business or pleasure in a sturdy, downright way, and in a conscious security under the protection of wise laws; in Ireland we cannot take a step without being offended by evidences of oppression and misrule. The people are disarmed and unprotected, guarded by a foreign soldiery, the servants of an alien aristocracy.

To what causes must we ascribe this wide difference in the condition of two islands, separated by a narrow strip of sea, with but slight dissimilarity of climate, and governed ostensibly for now nearly seven hundred years by the same laws?

The explanation given universally Pg 800 by English writers, with the tone with which one is accustomed to affirm axiomatic truths, is based upon the dissimilarity of the two peoples in natural character and in religious faith. The Irish, they say, are by nature discontented, idle, and thriftless, and their religion is in fatal opposition to liberty and progress. The subject is worthy of our attention. Ireland is an anomaly in European history. Just at the time when the other Christian nations, after overcoming the divisions and feuds of a barbarous age, were settling down into the unity which renders harmonious development possible, the seed of perpetual discord and never-ending strife was planted ineradicably in her soil. Three hundred years of almost incessant warfare with the Dane had left her exhausted and divided, an easy prey to the Norman barons, who introduced into her national life a foreign blood and an alien civilization.

From that day to the present time Ireland’s fate has been the saddest of which history has preserved the record. There has been no peace, no liberty, no progress. Opposing races, contrary civilizations, and opposite religions have clashed in such fierce and bloody battles that we could almost fancy the furies of the abyss had been let loose to smite and scourge the doomed land. Mercy, justice, all human feelings have been banished from this struggle, which has been one of brute force and fiendish cunning. Whatever the stronger has been able to do has been done; and there is no good reason for believing that England, in her dealings with Ireland, has ever passed one just law or redressed one wrong from a humane or honorable motive. From the conquest to the VIII., a period of nearly four centuries, the English colonists, entrenched within the Pale and receiving continually reinforcements from the mother country, formed a nation within a nation, always armed and watching every opportunity to make inroads upon the possessions of the native princes, who were not slow to return blow for blow. There was no security for life or property; the people were left to the mercy of barons and kings, to be robbed and pillaged or butchered in their broils. Nothing could be more inhuman than English legislation in Ireland during these four centuries, unless it be English legislation in Ireland during the three centuries which followed. Henry II. confiscated the whole island, dividing the land among ten of his chief followers; though they were able to hold possession of but a small part of the country. In the legal enactments and official documents of this period the term habitually used to designate the native population is “the Irish enemy.” They were never spoken of except as “the wild Irish,” until, as an English writer affirms, the term “wild Irish” became as familiar in the English language as the term wild beast. They were denied the title of English subjects and the protection of English law. An act, passed in the reign of Edward II., gave to the English landlords the right to dispose of the property of their Irish dependents as they might see fit. All social and commercial intercourse with the “Irish enemy” was interdicted. An Irishman if found talking with an Englishman was to be apprehended as a spy and punished as an enemy of the king; and the violation of an Irishwoman was not a crime Pg 801 before the law. Even exile was not permitted as a mitigation of this misery; for a law of Henry IV. forbade the “Irish enemy” to emigrate. There is no exaggeration in the address which the people of Ireland sent to Pope John XXII.:

“Most Holy Father,” they say, “we send you some precise and truthful information concerning the state of our nation, and the wrongs which we are suffering, and which our ancestors have suffered from the kings of England, their agents, and the English barons born in Ireland. After having driven us by violence from our dwellings, from our fields and our ancestral possessions—after having forced us to flee to the mountains, the bogs, the woods, and caves to save our lives—they cease not to harass us here even, but strive to expel us altogether from the country, that they may gain possession of it in its entire extent. They have destroyed all the written laws by which we were formerly governed. The better to compass our ruin, they have left us without laws.… It is the opinion of all their laymen, and of many of their ecclesiastics, that there is no more sin in killing an Irishman than in killing a dog. They all maintain that they have the right to take from us our lands and our goods.”

In the second period of English rule in Ireland, to the war of races was added a war of religion, in which the “Irish enemy” became the “Popish idolater.” To kill an Irishman was no sin, and to exterminate idolatrous superstition was a mission imposed by Heaven upon the chosen people to whom the pure faith of Christ had been revealed.

Then began the series of butcheries, devastations, famines, exterminations,

Elizabeth confiscated 600,000 acres of land in Munster after the revolt of the Earl of Desmond; her successor, James I., confiscated a million acres in Ulster. Charles I. confiscated 240,000 acres in Connaught, and would have confiscated the whole province had he been able to obtain possession of it. Under the Commonwealth 7,708,237 acres were confiscated. William of Orange confiscated 1,060,000 acres. And in these confiscations we have not included the lands of the church, which were all turned over to the Establishment. The atrocity of England’s Irish wars is without a parallel in the history of Christian nations. Women and children were murdered in cold blood; priests were burned to death; churches were pillaged and set on fire; towns were sacked and the inhabitants put to the sword; men and youths were put on shipboard, carried into mid-ocean, and deliberately thrown into the sea. Others were sold as slaves in the Barbadoes. Whatever could serve as food for man was destroyed, that famine might make way with all who escaped the sword. Spenser, the poet, who visited Ireland after the revolt of the Earl of Desmond, in the reign of Elizabeth, has left us a description of the condition of that province as he saw it: “Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came, creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghosts crying out of Pg 802 their graves; they did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find them; yea, and one another soon after, inasmuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue therewithal; that in short space there were none almost left; and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man and beast.”[191]

Lord Gray, one of Elizabeth’s lieutenants, declared towards the end of her life that “little was left in Ireland for her Majesty to reign over but carcasses and ashes.”

Cromwell’s wars were even more cruel, and left Ireland in a condition, if possible, more wretched still. Half the people had perished; and the survivors were dying of hunger in the bogs and glens in which they had sought refuge from the fury of the troopers. Wolves prowled around the gates of Dublin, and wolf-hunting and priest-hunting became important and lucrative occupations. But it is needless to dwell longer upon this painful subject. Let us remark, however, that it would be unjust to hold Elizabeth or Cromwell responsible for these cruelties. They but executed the will of the English people, who still cherish their memories and justify these outrages. No English ruler ever feared being called to account for harshness or tyranny in dealing with Ireland. The public opinion of the nation considered the extirpation of the Irish as a work to be done, and applauded whoever helped forward its consummation. This much we may affirm on the authority of Protestant witnesses.

“It is evident,” says Warner, “from the Lords-Justices’ last letter to the Lieutenant, that they hoped for an extirpation, not of the mere Irish only, but of all the English families that were Roman Catholics.”

The feeling against the Irish was even stronger than against the church, so that the English seemed to feel a kind of pleasure in the adherence of the Celtic population to the old faith, since it widened the chasm between the two races. They really made no serious efforts to convert the Irish to Protestantism. They neglected to provide them with instructors capable of making themselves understood. They put forth no Protestant translation of the Bible in the Irish language, but contented themselves with setting up a hierarchy of archbishops, bishops, and rectors whose lives were often scandalous, and who, as Macaulay says, did nothing, and for doing nothing were paid out of the spoils of a church loved and revered by the people. Some justification for the extermination of the Irish race would be found in the fact that those who perished were only papists. War, famine, confiscation, and exile had, by the close of the seventeenth century, either destroyed or impoverished the native and Catholic population of Ireland. The land was almost exclusively in the hands of Protestants, who had also taken possession of all the cathedrals, churches, and monasteries which had escaped destruction. The Catholics, reduced to beggary, were driven from the towns and, as far as possible, from Pg 803 the English settlements into the bleak and barren hills of Connaught. In many instances the confiscated lands had been given to Englishmen or Scotchmen, with the express stipulation that no Irish Catholic should be employed by them, even as a common laborer. In this extremity the Irish people were helpless. Every line along which it was possible to advance to a better state of things was cut off. Their natural leaders had been driven into exile or reduced to abject poverty; their spiritual guides had been murdered or banished; or if any had escaped their pitiless persecutors, a price was set upon their heads, and they led the lives of outlaws, unable to administer the sacraments even to the dying, except by stealth.

All their institutions of learning had been destroyed; and England permitted no instruction except in the English tongue—which the Irish neither spoke nor were willing to speak—and in Protestant schools, from which she knew the Catholics were necessarily shut out. They not only had nothing, but were in a condition in which it was impossible that they should acquire anything. Indeed, the little security which was still left them to drag out a miserable existence was found precisely in their utter helplessness and wretchedness. They could no longer be plundered, for they had nothing; they could not be butchered in battle, for they were powerless and without weapons; and so their persecutors paused, not, as the poet says, to listen to their sad lament, but from sheer contempt and indifference, thinking it no longer worth while to take notice of their hapless victims.

Three-fourths of the population of the island were nevertheless still Irish Catholics; and in spite of Pg 804 suffer death. Heavy fines were imposed upon all who harbored or concealed the proscribed ecclesiastics; and rewards were offered for their discovery or apprehension. Care was taken at the same time to exclude all foreign priests. By thus cutting off from Ireland the fountain-source of orders and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, it was confidently expected that in a few years the Catholic priesthood would cease to exist there, and that the people, left without priests or sacraments, would have no alternative but to become Protestants. Every exterior sign of Catholic worship was suppressed, and it was tolerated only as a hidden cult, whose ceremonies were performed with bated breath, clandestinely in cabins and unfrequented places. Whatever appealed to the heart or the imagination was condemned. The steeple that pointed to heaven; the bell whose religious tones thrilled with accents of a world of peace; the cross that told of the divinity that is in suffering and sorrow; the pilgrimages in which the people gathered to cherish sacred memories and to do homage to worthy deeds and noble lives, were all proscribed. And even the poor huts in which it was possible to offer the Holy Sacrifice were carefully watched by the officers of the law, as to-day, in the great cities, places of infamy are put under the surveillance of the police.

Having suppressed the hierarchy and shorn the Catholic religion of its splendor, the rulers of Ireland next proceeded to adopt measures by which every imaginable inducement to apostasy was held out both to the clergy and the laity. An annual pension, first of twenty, then of thirty, and finally of forty pounds sterling was offered to all priests

The Catholic people were placed in a position like that of the Forty Martyrs, who were exposed naked on the frozen lake, surrounded by warm baths and comfortable houses, which they could enter by renouncing their faith. The deepest and holiest instincts of human nature were appealed to against the most sacred convictions which man is capable of holding. If the father wished to educate his child, schools abounded, but he could enter them only by abandoning his religion. He was not, indeed, forced to send his children to these Protestant schools, but it was made impossible for him to send them to any other. His tyrants went farther. They spared no pains to make it impossible that an Irish Catholic should learn anything even by stealth. All Catholic schoolmasters were banished from Ireland, and, in case of return, were to suffer death.

The law made express provision for the money necessary to defray the expenses of transporting these obnoxious persons. Nay, it went yet farther. There were schools on the continent of Europe to which a few Irish children might possibly find their way. This danger was foreseen and met. An act was passed prohibiting Catholics from sending their children across the Channel without special permission, and the magistrates were authorized to demand at any time that parents should produce their children before them. Beyond this it was not possible to go. All that human enactments can do to degrade the Pg 805 mind of a whole people to a state of brutish ignorance was done. And let us remark that this applied not to the Irish only, but to all Catholics who spoke the English language. The English government took from them every opportunity of knowledge, made it criminal for them to know anything; and then they were denounced by English writers almost universally as the foes of learning and as lovers of ignorance. We know of no harder or more cruel fate in all history, nor of a more striking example of the injustice of the world towards the church. Even here in the United States we Catholics are still suffering the consequences of this unparalleled infamy. But we have hardly entered on the subject of the Penal Laws: we are as yet on the threshold.

The enforced ignorance of the Irish Catholics was but a preparation for innumerable other legal outrages. From all the honorable careers of life they were mercilessly shut out—from the army; the navy, the magistracy, and the civil service. That a Catholic was not permitted to become an educator we have already seen. As little was he allowed to perform the functions of barrister, attorney, or solicitor. He could neither vote nor be elected to office. Shut out from all public life, from every liberal profession, disfranchised, ignorant, despised, was anything else needed to make the Irish Catholic the most wretched of men? His land had been confiscated, he had been robbed; he was a beggar; but might he not hope gradually to lift himself out of the degradation of his poverty? To regain ownership of the soil was out of the question. He was disqualified by law, which, however, permitted him to become a tenant—not to do him a favor,

Without, for the present, taking a larger view of this question, it will be sufficient to consider the restrictions placed upon Catholics in this matter. Commerce and manufacture were controlled by municipal and trading corporations of which no Irish Catholic could be a member. This of itself, at a time when monopoly and privilege were everywhere recognized, gave to Protestants the entire business of the country.

Prohibitory laws were therefore not needed. But no security could lull to rest the fierce spirit of the persecuting Protestant oligarchy. A Catholic could not acquire real estate; he could not even rent land, Pg 806 except on ruinous terms; he could not exercise a liberal profession or fill a public office; he was unable to engage in commerce or manufacture; he had no political rights, no protection from the law; and, to make all this doubly bitter, his masters were at once the enemies of his race and his religion. This, one would think, ought to have been enough to satisfy the worst of tyrants. But it is of the nature of tyranny that the more it oppresses, the more it feels the necessity of inflicting new wrongs upon its victims. Every motive that incites men to activity and labor had been taken from the Catholics, and yet their oppressors, with the cowardice which naturally belongs to evil-doers, were still fearful lest some of them might, by chance or good fortune, acquire wealth enough to lift them above the immediate necessities of life. A universal threat was therefore held over all who possessed anything. A Catholic was not allowed to own a horse worth more than five pounds; any Protestant in the kingdom might take the best he had by paying him that sum. Whenever it was deemed necessary to call out the militia, the law declared all horses belonging to Catholics subject to seizure; and twenty shillings a day for the maintenance of each troop was levied on the papists of the country. Whenever property was destroyed, the law assumed that the Catholics were the offenders, and they were forced to indemnify the owners for their loss. They were taxed for the support of the government, in which they were not allowed to take part and from which they received no protection; for the maintenance of the Established Church, in which they did not believe and which was already rich

No Catholic was permitted to marry a Protestant; and the priest assisting at such marriage was punished with death. No Catholic could be a guardian; and to the agonies of death this new pain was added: that the dying father foresaw that his children would be committed to Protestants, to be brought up in a religious faith which had been the unclean source of all the ills that had befallen him and his country. The law held out a bribe to Catholic children to induce them to betray their parents, and put a premium on apostasy.

This inhuman Code was not framed at one time, nor was there found in its enactments any system or unity of purpose, other than that which is derived from the hate of the persecutor for his victim. To this blind fury whatever helped to crush and degrade the Catholic people of Ireland seemed just.

Though it seems almost incredible, it is nevertheless certain, that the execution of these laws was worse than the laws themselves. The whole intent of the legislators being directed to the extermination or perversion of the Irish Catholics, the fullest license was granted to the caprice and cruelty of individuals. The Catholic had no protection. If he sought to defend himself, he was forced to employ a Protestant lawyer, who could bring his case only before a Protestant judge, who was obliged to submit it to a Protestant jury. In these circumstances recourse to the law was worse than useless. The great landed proprietors were accustomed to deal out justice with a high hand. They had prisons in their castles, into which, for or without cause, they threw their helpless Pg 807 dependents; and whenever these outrageous proceedings were complained of, the grand juries threw out the indictments. To horsewhip or beat the poor Catholics was a frequent mode of correction, and they were even deliberately murdered without any fear of punishment. This we have upon the authority of Arthur Young, whose testimony is certainly above suspicion; and he adds that the violation of their wives and daughters was not considered an offence. If the great lord met them on the road, his servants were ordered to turn their wagons and carts into the ditch to make room for his carriage; and if the unfortunate wretches dared complain, they were answered with the lash. For a Catholic to bring suit against his Protestant persecutor would have been at once most absurd and most dangerous.

The religious fanaticism which had inspired the Penal Code lost its honesty and earnestness amid these frightful excesses. The tyrant is degraded with his victim, and crimes committed in the name of religion, if they begin in sincerity, end in hypocrisy. Even the poor honesty of blind zeal vanishes, and selfishness and hate alone remain. This is the sad spectacle which Ireland presents to our view after the first fury of persecution had spent itself. The dominant class grew indifferent to all religion, and, having ignominiously failed to make any impression on the faith of the Catholics, connived at their worship.

But as zeal grew cold, self-interest became more intense. So long as the Catholics remained in poverty and helplessness no notice was taken of them; but the moment they acquired anything which could excite the cupidity of a Protestant, the law was appealed to against

Pg 808 Is it, then, possible that six hundred years of hereditary bondage, of outlawry, of want and oppression, should produce no evil effect upon the character of a people, however nobly endowed by God? Are we to expect industry when every motive that incites men to labor is absent? How can he who is forbidden to possess anything be provident? Or is it not natural that the hopelessly wretched should grow desperate, reckless of their deeds or their consequences?

Great misfortunes, like great successes, try men as nothing else can. In the lowest depths of misery we are apt to forget that there is a lower deep. For ourselves, the more we study the history of the Irish people, and compare their character with the wrongs which they have suffered, the more wonderful does it seem to us that they should have remained superior to fate. If they have not wholly escaped the evil influences of the worst of all tyrannies, nothing, at least, has been able to destroy their purity, their hopefulness, their trust in God, and belief in the final triumph of right. They are, in our eyes, the highest example of the supremacy of the soul, of the invincible power of faith; the most striking proof of a divine Providence that watches over the destiny of nations. It will not be thought out of place to quote here the words of a Protestant historian who, in his old age, seems to regret the impartiality and generous love of unpopular truth which characterized his earlier manhood.

“Such,” says Mr. Bancroft, “was the Ireland of the Irish—a conquered people, whom the victors delighted to trample upon and did not fear to provoke. Their industry within the kingdom was prohibited [192]

So long as there was question of oppressing and impoverishing the Irish Catholics the Protestant Ascendency received the hearty approval and efficient co-operation of the English government. But there was danger lest these Irish Protestants, possessing a country of the richest natural resources, should come to compete with England in the markets of the world.

There are few countries in the world so fertile as Ireland. About one-half of the island consists of a fat soil, with a chalky sub-soil, which is the very best of soils. The richness and beauty of her meadows were celebrated by Orosius as early as the fifth century. The climate is milder than that of England; the scenery more varied and lovely. The frequent rains clothe the fields with perpetual verdure. From her wild mountains gush numerous rivers, which, as they flow into the sea, form the safest and most capacious harbors, while in their rapid course they develop a Pg 809 water-power, available for purposes of manufacture, unsurpassed in the world. This water-power of Ireland has been estimated by Sir Robert Kane at three and a half millions of horse power. The country abounds in iron ore, and three centuries ago Irish iron was exported to England. Geologists have counted in the island no less than seven immense beds of both anthracite and bituminous coal; and of turf, the heating power of which is half that of coal, the supply is inexhaustible. The soil is most favorable to the growth of the beet-root, from which such large quantities of sugar are made in France and Belgium. The flax and hemp, as is well known, are of the best quality, and the fineness of Irish wool has long been celebrated. The rivers and lakes abound in trout and salmon and pike; and the fisheries alone, if properly managed, might become the source of enormous wealth. Were it not that, in the designs of Providence, the most cunningly-devised plans, when conceived in iniquity, defeat themselves, the English statesmen would have perceived that the most efficacious means for bringing about the result at which the policy of England, in its relations with Ireland, had always aimed, would have been the encouragement of Irish commerce and manufactures. No benefit could have accrued, from such a course, to the Catholic population, which was not only disfranchised, but rendered incapable by law of acquiring or possessing wealth.

Had the descendants of the Scotch and English settlers planted by Elizabeth, James, and Cromwell been permitted or encouraged to develop the natural resources of the country, they would not only have grown strong, but opportunities I.

But no motive of religion or humanity has ever influenced the policy of the English government when there was question of English interests. The desire of acquiring wealth or the necessity of defending one’s possessions are, in the opinion of Englishmen, the only sufficient reasons for going to war.

It was not to be expected that Ireland, with her harbors and rivers, her fertile fields and unnumbered flocks, would be permitted to tempt capital to her shores or to stimulate enterprise. Nothing seemed more shocking to the English traders and manufacturers than the thought of having to compete in the home and foreign markets with the products of Irish industry. It was deemed intolerable that this nest of popery, this den of ignorance and corruption, should be dealt with in the same manner as England. The Parliament was therefore called upon to “make the Irish remember that they were conquered.”

England had assisted the Protestants Pg 810 of Ireland to crush the Catholics; she had for this purpose placed at their service her treasures, and her armies; and now the Irish Protestants were required, in evidence of their gratitude, to sacrifice the commercial and industrial interests of their country to English jealousy.

At the end of the seventeenth century the manufacture of woollen stuffs had attained to considerable importance in the southern provinces of Ireland. The superiority of the Irish broadcloths, blankets, and friezes was recognized, and it was therefore resolved that they should no longer be manufactured. The Lords and Commons, in 1698, called upon William III. to protect the interests of English merchants; and his majesty replied in the well-known words “I shall do all that in me lies to discourage the woollen manufacture of Ireland.” Accordingly, an export duty of four shillings in the pound was laid on all broadcloths carried out of Ireland, and half as much on kerseys, flannels, and friezes. This, in fact, was equivalent to a prohibition, and the ruin of the Irish woollen manufactures which followed was not an unforeseen, but the directly intended, consequence of this measure. The linen manufacture, since there were at the time no rival English interests, was opposed only in an indirect way by offering large bounties for the making of linen in the Highlands of Scotland, bounties on the exportation of English linen, and by imposing a tax of 30 per cent. on all foreign linens, with which most of the Irish linens were classed.

Still other measures were needed for the complete destruction of Irish commerce and industry. The Navigation Laws forbade all direct trade between Ireland and the British colonies; so that all produce intended for Ireland had first to be unloaded in an English port. The Irish were not allowed to build or keep at sea a single ship. “Of all the excellent timber,” said Dean Swift in 1727, “cut down within these fifty or sixty years, it can hardly be said that the nation hath received the benefit of one valuable house to dwell in, or one ship to trade with.” The forests of Ireland, which so greatly added to the beauty of the country, were felled and carried to England to build ships which were to bring the wealth of the world into English ports. Even the Irish fishery “must be with men and boats from England.”

By these and similar measures, commercial and industrial Ireland was blotted out of existence, and even the possibility of her ever entering into competition with England for the trade of the world disappeared. The unjust legislation by which Irish industry was repressed was not inspired by religious passion nor directed against the Catholic population. Their condition was already so wretched and helpless that it would have been difficult to discover anything by which it could have been made worse. “The aboriginal inhabitants,” says Macaulay—“more than five-sixths of the population—had no more interest in the matter than the swine or the poultry; or, if they had an interest, it was for their interest that the caste which domineered over them should not be emancipated from all external control. They were no more represented in the Parliament which sat at Dublin than in the Parliament which sat at Westminster. They had less to dread from legislation Pg 811 at Westminster than from legislation at Dublin.… The most acrimonious English Whig did not feel towards them that intense antipathy, compounded of hatred, fear, and scorn, with which they were regarded by the Cromwellian who dwelt among them.”[193]

Molyneux, who at this time came forward as the champion of Ireland and of liberty, demanded nothing for the Irish Catholics but a more cruel slavery; and Dean Swift, who gained much popularity for his advocacy of Irish rights, declared he would as soon think of consulting the swine as the aboriginal inhabitants of the island.

Indisputable as the fact is that the Irish Catholics had no direct interest in the contest in which the commerce and industry of their country were destroyed, the consequences of the iniquitous policy of England proved nevertheless most disastrous to them. Manual labor was the only work which they were permitted to do, and there now remained for them nothing but the tillage of the soil, either as tenants-at-will or common laborers. Ireland was to supply England with beef and butter, and the work of exterminating the Irish Catholics was not to be pushed further than the exigencies of successful cattle-grazing might demand. Society was constituted in the simplest manner. There were but two classes—the possessors of the soil and the tillers of the soil: the lord and the peasant; the master and the slave; the Protestant and the Catholic; the rich man and the beggar. There were but two kinds of human dwellings—the castle, with its high walls and splendid park, and the mud cabin, in which

The Southern planter felt a kind of interest in his slaves—they were his property; an Irish landlord felt no interest of any kind in the people by whom he was surrounded. It was important that they should remain slaves, beggars, and outcasts; that the chasm which separated him from them should in no way be diminished; but for the rest he gave no thought whether they starved or murdered one another or were drowned in the deep. He spent most of his time in England, living in luxury, leaving his estates to the care of brutal agents, who pleased him the better the more cruel and grinding their exactions were. English in origin and sympathy, Protestant in religion, there was no bond of union between him Pg 812 and his people. He cared neither for the country nor its inhabitants. He was unwilling to risk capital even to improve his own lands; for he had no faith in the permanence of a social and political state which was possible only because it outraged the holiest and best instincts of mans nature. When it was proposed to take steps to drain the bogs and bring the waste lands of Ireland under cultivation, the Protestant party strenuously opposed the measure, on the ground that this would be an encouragement to popery. Nothing, therefore, was done either by the government or the landlords to improve the soil or to introduce better methods of tillage. The great proprietors, living in London, spending their time and fortune in a life of pleasure and display, let out their estates to land speculators, who were generally capitalists. These speculators sublet them, in lots of several hundred or a thousand acres, to a class of persons called middlemen, who divided them up into portions of five, ten, or twenty acres, and rented them to the poor Catholics. By neither the proprietors nor the speculators nor the middlemen was any risk of capital made. The peasant was therefore compelled to rent his little plot of ground, bare of everything—he found on it neither dwelling nor stabling, nor implements of any kind. He had nothing himself, and those whose interest it would have been to advance him money were unwilling to risk a penny. All that he could do was to put up a mud-cabin, and to get a wretched spade with which to begin work. If by honest labor he could have looked forward to an improvement in his condition, his lot would not have been altogether comfortless. The fifty thousand families were turned upon the road to die; two hundred thousand human beings, without shelter, without bread, sent up their piteous moan of hunger and despair to God from the midst of a Christian nation, the richest in the world. The terrible famine of 1847 and 1848, which was only an unusually startling outbreak of an evil that has long been chronic in Ireland, was not caused by excess of population. The country, if its resources were Pg 813 properly developed, is capable of supporting a far larger number of inhabitants than it has ever had. There were but eight millions of people in Ireland in 1847, and it has been conclusively proven that under favorable circumstances fifteen millions would not be an excessive population. In fact, in the so-called years of scarcity, when the people were dying, by thousands, of starvation, the country produced enough to feed its inhabitants; but they had to sell their wheat, barley, and oats to pay the rent, and, the potato crop having failed, they had nothing to eat. In 1846 and 1847 enormous quantities of grain and live-stock were exported from Ireland to England, and yet the people of Ireland were starving. During the four years of famine Ireland exported four quarters of wheat for every quarter imported. The food was in the country, but it had to be sent to England to pay the rent of the landlords. The people were starving, but that was no concern of these noble gentlemen, so long as their rent was paid. The cry of hunger has rarely been hushed in Ireland. All through the eighteenth century the people died of starvation. In 1727 Boulter, the Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, declared that thousands of families were driven from their homes by hunger; and Dean Swift has given us an account of the condition in his time of even the better class of tenants. “The families,” he says, “of farmers who pay great rents live in filth and nastiness, upon buttermilk and potatoes, without a shoe or stocking to their feet, or a house as convenient as an English hog-sty to receive them.” In 1734 the famous Bishop Berkeley asked this question: “Is there on the face of the

In 1778, while we were struggling for freedom from English tyranny, Lord Nugent declared, in the House of Commons, that the people of Ireland were suffering all the destitution and misery which it is possible to human nature to endure. Nine-tenths of them earned no more than fourpence a day, and had no nourishment but potatoes and water. In 1817 the fever, brought on by hunger, attacked one million five hundred thousand persons—nearly half of the entire population of the country. In 1825, 1826, 1830, 1832, 1838, 1846 to 1850, and finally in 1860, 1861, and 1862, the melancholy cry of multitudes dying of hunger was heard throughout the land. In 1843 Thackeray, travelling in Ireland, declared that “men were suffering and starving by millions”; and a little later we know from the most accurate statistics that more than a million of the Irish people died of hunger within a period of two years. The history of Ireland is, we are persuaded, the sublimest and the saddest of all histories. It has never been written, and the grandest of themes awaits the creative power that will give it immortal life on the pictured page. It will be written in the English language, and it will link the English name and tongue for all time with the greatest social crime which one people ever committed against another. In another article we hope, by the aid of the faint and glimmering light that shines so fitfully in this blackness, to be able to trace the doubtful and devious way along which this providential Pg 814 race seems to be slowly rising into the promise of a better day. For the present we shall conclude with a quotation from De Beaumont, whose careful and conscientious studies on the Social, Political, and Religious Condition of Ireland we recommend to all who are interested in this subject.

“I have seen,” he wrote in 1835, “the Indian in his forests and the negro in chains, and I thought, in beholding their pitiable state, that I saw the extreme of human misery; but I did not then know the fate of poor Ireland. Like the Indian, the Irishman is poor and naked; but he lives, unlike the savage, in the midst of a society which revels in luxury, and adores wealth. Like the Indian, he is deprived of every material comfort which human industry and the commerce of nations procure; but, unlike him, he is surrounded by fellow-creatures who are enjoying all that he [194]

A MARCH PILGRIMAGE.

Pg 817

SIX SUNNY MONTHS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.