Protestant Loyalty - The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps)
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hardly tell you he is a cheat. What institutions of the country are there to be attached to? That all who pay taxes should have a voice in the outlay of those taxes, is not one of our institutions;—that those who create the whole wealth of the State by their labour, should get leave to live, like Christians, on the fruits of that labour, this is not amongst the institutions of the country. Tenant-right is not an institution of the country. No; out-door relief is our main institution at present—our Magna Charta—our Bill of Rights. A high-paid church and a low-fed people are institutions; stipendiary clergyman, packed juries, a monstrous army and navy, which we pay, not to defend, but to coerce us;—these are institutions of the country. Indian meal, too, strange to say, though it grows four thousand miles off, has come to be an institution of this country. Are these the 'venerable institutions' you are expected to shoulder muskets to defend?
"But, then, 'Protestants have always been loyal men.' Have they? And what do they mean by 'loyalty'? I have never found that, in the north of Ireland, this word had any meaning at all, except that we, Protestants, hated the Papists, and despised the French. This, I think, if you will examine it, is the true theory of 'loyalty' in Ulster. I can hardly fancy any of my countrymen so totally stupid as to really prefer high taxes to low taxes—to be really proud of the honour of supporting 'the Prince Albert' and his Lady, and their children, and all the endless list of cousins and uncles that they have, in magnificent idleness, at the sole expense of half-starved labouring people. I should like to meet the northern farmer, or labouring man, who would tell me, in so many words, that he prefers dear government to cheap government; that he likes the House of Brunswick better than his own house; that he would rather have the affairs of the country managed by foreign noblemen and gentlemen than by himself and his neighbours; that he is content to pay, equip, and arm an enormous army, and give the command of it to those foreign noblemen, and to be disarmed himself, or liable to be disarmed, as you are, my friends, at any moment. I should like to see the face of the Ulsterman who would say plainly that he deems himself unfit to have a voice in the management of his own affairs, the outlay of his own taxes, or the government of his own country. If any of you will admit this, I own he is a 'loyal' man, and 'attached to our venerable institutions;' and I wish him joy of his loyalty, and a good appetite for his yellow meal.
"Now, Lord Clarendon and Lord Enniskillen want you to say all this. The Irish noble and the British statesman want the very same thing; they are both in a tale. The Grand Master knows that if you stick by your loyalty, and uphold British connection, you secure to him his coronet, his influence, and his rental—discharged of Tenant-right, and all plebeian claims. And Lord Clarendon knows, on his side, that if you uphold landlordism, and abandon Tenant-right, and bend all your energies to resisting the 'encroachments of Popery,' you thereby perpetuate British dominion in Ireland, and keep the 'Empire' going, yet a little while. Irish landlordism has made a covenant with British government, in these terms;—'Keep down for me my tenantry, my peasantry, my masses, in due submission, with your troops and laws;— ...continue reading »
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