Ireland’s Unhappy Peasantry

The condition of things in Ireland is sufficient to keep the British government on the alert. The London Courier mentions, that ministers have determined to call out the yeomanry force of that island. A fierce spirit of discontent and blind violence pervades most of the districts in the south and west, and was fast spreading in the adjacent parts. We observe the following passage in a speech delivered in Dublin towards the end of November, by one of her leading magistrates:

“A barbarous combination, without a single patriotic pretence, is rioting in every species of plunder and midnight assassination. Though the explosion is heard from afar, the train may be now laid which threatens our destruction. The free access to spiritous liquors is the fruitful cause of all the crime and wretchedness that afflict or disgust the inhabitants of Dublin. Idleness, with mendicity, have their origin in drinking, and the 7000 beggars who infested the streets in 1818 were offspring of that vice.”

The main object of the Irish malcontent, is to obtain fire arms. A letter from a magistrate of Limerick published in the London papers, says:

“Within the last ten days about fifty stand of serviceable fire arms have been taken from the gentry and farmers near me. No gentleman can be out after nightfall, nor is he safe by day. Some with you may think it is all over: I tell them it is not– all the neighboring villages, were ransacked for arms last night,” &c.

The following paragraph from the Dublin Journal of the 26th November furnishes an additional and striking illustration of the nature of the evil:

“The object of the deluded peasantry, is evidently to abolish tithes and rents. In the disturbed districts, the system of intimidation is paramount, and carried to an extent almost incredible. As an instance of this fact, we are assured that the unburied remains of Jeremiah Scully were lying in the side of the road, and not one of his relations or friends would venture to remove, or any way interfere with them. This circumstance shews the tremendous influence of the banditti who can thus overawe the strongest feelings of our nature.”—[ Nat. Gaz.

IRELAND.
Our pen recoils at the task before it. Such scenes of conflagration and savage buchery, as the Irish accounts present to our view, were probably never before heard of, and might move to pity the heart of a stoic. We read of the torch applied at midnight to human dwellings, and sleeping families consumed. Magistrates obnoxious perhaps for executing laws they had sworn to enforce, have been murdered in their beds– churches set fire to and destroyed– the unhappy peasantry, driven by want and maddened by despair, with the instruments of husbandry in their hands, attack in their irregular manner the well armed soldiery, and the consequences may be easily imagined. Such was the sate of affairs, that government had resolved upon the most vigorous measures– all the disturbed counties had been put under martial law; and additional troops had been required from England. So far as we can learn, the cause of these commotions and atrocities may be found in the poverty and oppression of the lower classes of society in that country– in the relentless rigor of the landlord, and the indignant and unyielding spirit of the tenant. A correspondent of the Dublin Evening Post, after mentioning the dispossession of a poor tenant from a piece of ground, of which he had a right to expect that he would have continued the undisturbed possessor, says: “You may rest assured that this and such like conduct towards the tenants of Ireland, is the sole cause of the present troubles– for the poor do not care a fig about any government, provided they are treated with a little lenity and kindness; and it is the ignorant and petty magistracy that necessity constituted in the year 1798, who, by their overbearing and tyrannical conduct to the poor, cause some of these illegal transcations. If a peasant has a complaint to make, you will see him follow this mighty Man of Justice, like a spaniel or a pointer, with his hat under his arm or in his hand, and along the road for a mile, if his Honor has not patience to wait, without once desiring him to cover, though it should be teeming with rain; and whenever there is a little squabble, his Honor immediately converts it into rebellion or disloyalty, for some sinister purpose he may at the moment have in view.” The excesses and outrages which have in some instances been committed, are too atrocious to be given in detail. On the night between the 19th and 20th of November, the dwelling house of Mr. Shea, a respectable farmer in the county of Tipperary, was set on fire by ruffians and burnt, in which seventeen persons were consumed. They attempted to escape, but were shot or driven back to the flames. “Of this number three were female infants! two were children of fuller years. A lovely and very young woman, respectably connected, and who was on a visit to the family, made the sixth sufferer. Shea and his wife, three servant women, and five laboring men, swell the group of victims to sixteen. The seventeenth was a child not born.” After the examination of witnesses, the jury returned the following verdict: “Burnt to death by the wilfully setting on fire the house of Edmund Shea.” The house of the Rev. Henry Bevan, Vicar of Bruree, county of Limerick, had been attacked for arms, by a body of people consisting of some hundreds. Mr. B. with his son and servant, made a stout resistance, and finally succeeded in compelling the insurgents to retire, with the loss of several killed and wounded. These instances are selected from a great number of similar occurrences, detailed in the Irish papers. The counties most affected by these disturbances, are Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Kerry, Clare, Carlow, Mayo, and Tipperary. It thus appears that the King’s visit has not had the effect contemplated, that of conciliating and tranquilizing Ireland. The truth is, blarney is but a poor substitute for bread; and the King’s drinking whiskey punch with the Nobility, has neither paid the arrears, nor procured new leases for the peasantry.