CHAPTER XXXI. DEATH OF GEORGE THE FOURTH-O'CONNELL ELECTED FOR THE THIRD TIME-RENEWED DISTURBANCES- CONFLICTS—THE ROOT OF THE EVIL. URING the year in which O'Connell first took his seat in Parlia DURING ment, perhaps the most notable event was the death of George the Fourth, on the 26th of June, 1830, which necessitated the dissolution of Parliament. William the Fourth prorogued in person on the 23rd of July, and dissolved the Parliament the next day. At the ensuing general election O'Connell relinquished his seat for Clare in favour of his former opponent, MacNamara, who had for his colleague the agitator's right-hand man, O'Gorman Mahon. O'Connell was returned for Waterford county. The election proved unfavourable to ministers, who, while deeply offending their friends during the last Parliament, had failed to conciliate their opponents. Probably they imagined they had washed their hands for the present of Irish troubles, but they were speedily corrected in that false impression. Summer, as was not unusual, had passed calmly; but as autumn advanced all the old disorders broke out afresh. In defiance of everything that had been done, there seemed to be no improvement. Ministers had all along been mistaking the shadow for the substance. Again it was shown that the removal of dishonour from altars was not the banishment of discontent from homes. It would appear that when O'Connell himself declared religious emancipation to be only a comparatively small means to a greater end, either ministers did not believe him or had forgotten it. He had not forgotten it. The people had not forgotten it. He had roused them by means of religious enthusiasm, and now he led them through the influence that had been given him into far more material considerations. The same never-ceasing echo came again-Union legislation had failed once more. It is not recorded that ministers were ashamed, but it is certain they were confounded. Amongst the new ground for discontent was the reflection of thousands of people that though they were what was called emancipated, they were disfranchised, and when their increased political helplessness came to their minds they were enraged on reflecting that just as power seemed to dawn upon them in the election of O'Connell for Clare, it was snatched from their hands. Thus they were silenced; but they determined not to be crushed. Ministers had sown the wind only to reap the whirlwind. Bodies of men with arms in Tipperary was the first to break out. their hands, often in numerous companies, paraded the country, exciting the utmost alarm, and almost daily committing violence both upon persons and property. Proclamations were repeatedly issued, out of which new disorders seemed to spring, until martial law prevailed throughout the southern counties. The Marquis of Anglesea had been restored to the office of Lord Lieutenant in the hope that the people, who had formerly idolized him, would be favourably influenced by his presence. But a King's representative who openly advocated emancipation, was quite a different thing to the same representative who issued martial proclamations. Even in Dublin, usually so tractable, sedition was rampant. Parliament having opened on October the 26th, ministers were too much engaged with their party opponents in the House to give much special attention to Ireland; so O'Connell improved the occasion by reorganizing the Catholic Association under the name of "The Friends of Ireland of all Religious Persuasions." This being put down, he started the "Anti-Union Association." That was put down also, and O'Connell and some others were arrested on January the 18th, 1831 He (during a brief Parliamentary recess), on a charge of sedition. was released on his own recognizances for a thousand pounds and two sureties for five hundred each. The trial commenced on the 17th of February, and speedily resulted in a verdict of guilty. Judgment was deferred, and O'Connell was released. He went straight to a public meeting, and there declared that the government would never presume to pronounce a judgment upon him, and he proved to be right. Peel had by this time succeeded to, the baronetcy on the death of his father; and, after a speech in the House of unusual violence by O'Gorman Mahon, Peel declared that the government would enter upon civil war, if necessary, to preserve the entirety of the State. How much such a declaration was worth may be best judged of by reading what Peel said against emancipation on the eve of granting it. Not unnaturally, much doubt of the sincerity of the speaker prevailed, as, judging from previous experience, the more he said against anything, the more likely he was to assent to it. There was all the more suspicion because O'Connell, and the considerable body of Catholic members who had been returned from Ireland by the general election, usually voted with ministers, and the whole political world was in a ferment. At the same time, terror reigned in Clare, Roscommon, Galway, and Tipperary, and the Insurrection Act then in force was applied vigorously during May. The soldiery were largely increased in those counties to aid the civil power. A striking episode ensued of a character resembling the Boycotting of 1880. On the 18th of June, some cattle which had been impounded were to be sold for the non-payment of tithes, at St. Mary, Newtown. A notice was plentifully posted on the walls of the town, which said, "Inhabitants of the parish of St Mary, Newtown, Barry. There will be an end to church plunder. Your pot, blanket, and pig will not hereafter be sold by auction to support in luxury, idleness, and ease persons who endeavour to make it appear that it is essential to the peace and prosperity of the country, and your eternal salvation, while the most of you are starving. Attend at an auction of your neighbour's cattle on Saturday next, the 18th inst., seized for tithe by the Rev. Alexander M'Clintock." It was market day, and a large concourse of people assembled from the surrounding country, determined to prevent the proceedings. The sale was stopped; the military were called out; a serious conflict ensued, and twelve or thirteen of the people were killed, and a great many more wounded. A coroner's jury, after sitting nine days, could not agree upon a verdict. The Crown prosecuted the captain and sergeant who were in command, but a verdict of acquittal was returned. Nine or ten persons were killed in a similar skirmish at Castle Pollard, in Westmeath, followed by disagreement at inquest, prosecution, and acquittal again. In another case, events went in the contrary direction on the 25th of November. A tithe proctor was sent to serve a process of distraint, escorted by a body of police. The country people assembled in great numbers, and lined the ditches and hedges along the road which the party had to traverse. In defiance of Insurrection Acts, Arms Acts, Preservation of the Peace Acts, and all the rest of the Acts, the people were extensively armed, again showing the futility of legislation of that kind. When the tithe proctor and his party reached a narrow lane, the people demanded that the proctor should be given up. The police, with an intrepidity that did them great credit, refused. A furious attack was immediately made upon them, five policemen being killed on the spot, and almost all of them seriously wounded, the chief officer having his brains dashed out with a bludgeon, wielded (it was said) by a lad under fifteen years of age. So the civil war, for whatever cause, had actually begun. So far as any remedy was concerned, the government was paralyzed, and, as was acknowledged, the people were supreme. Agitation went on with comparatively unchecked vigour— daring and overriding the law in all directions. The Marquis of Anglesea, in endeavouring to enforce the law, is said to have been feeble, and it is suggested that more energy on his part would have succeeded; but, on turning to the speech of the Duke of Wellington, quoted in a previous chapter, it will be seen that events were occurring once more, with which no government could or ever can cope, as he candidly acknowledged, and to which events he was now compelled again to submit, his remedial measures having proved an inadequate set-off for the repression he so fatally indulged in at the same time. The immediate root of most of the evil at that time was the aforesaid extinguishment of the forty-shilling freeholders. Their disfranchisement was of itself enough to exasperate them to violence; but the case was far worse than that. They had always been regarded as inconvenient and unsavoury neighbours, as well as being unprofitable tenants, they being, most of them, as before pointed out, not really freeholders, but enfranchised under leases for lives that were suffered to pass for the purpose as freeholds. Notwithstanding all these objectionable features of their unhappy existence, they had been put up with, tolerated, and multiplied, so long as it was supposed that they contributed to the political power of the landlords under whom they held. The landlords thus stand convicted of deliberately encouraging extremely small holdings so long as they supposed it answered their political purposes; but as soon as O'Connell was elected for Clare, new views concerning this phase of political economy began to dawn, and when the wretched forty-shillingers were formally disfranchised those new views shone out most righteously! The clouds of enfranchisement that had obscured the truth having been withdrawn, the landlords clearly saw, for the first time, that they were conscientiously convinced such a state of things was not good for the tenants. Therefore there arose the highly respectable cant about small holdings which has passed current for economical gospel ever since; and the landlords, hastening to carry their newly-acquired convictions into practice, proceeded to rout out these leases for lives by means of every instrument of law and tortured equity they could lay their hands on. Under the stimulus of this new order of things, evictions were multiplied beyond all precedent, until the people were goaded into every form of covert retaliation, and even the judgment-seat remon |