IMPRISONMENT OF O'CONNELL AND FRIENDS. 237

law, and every one of them making on the calendar of crime a cypher; but by multiplying cyphers, you come, by a species of legal witchcraft, to make it a number that shall be fatal. One meeting is legal, another meeting is legal, a third is the same, and three legal meetings, you say, make one illegal meeting. That, sir, is my first objection; the second

is the striking out of all the Catholics from the jury panel. There is no doubt of the fact. Eleven Catholics were upon the jury panel, and every one of them was struck out."

Nothing came of the debate. Ireland was held down by a military force of at least fifty thousand men, besides thousands of "peelers " forming the armed constabulary. On the 30th of May the traversers duly appeared, and were forthwith imprisoned in Richmond Penitentiary, a suburban prison at the south of Dublin, with splendid gardens and handsome accommodations; where they rusticated for three months, holding levées in an elegant marquee in the garden; receiving daily deputations, and visits from bishops, from Americans, and from all classes of Irish, including numerous ladies.

Nothing more condemns the government than the character of this imprisonment. If the allegations against the traversers were true, and their sentence just, they ought to have been rigorously and severely punished. It is evident, therefore, that the fraudulent character of the proceedings was virtually acknowledged, and some qualification was attempted in the preposterous character of the punishment, which was, in fact, only a clumsy excuse for shutting the prisoners up so as to prevent them from exercising popular influence.

Meanwhile the proceedings were brought before the House of Lords, on a writ of error which was heard on the 2nd and 4th of September. The opinions of nine English judges had been delivered. Eight pronounced for the validity of the trial, Mr. Justice Coleridge alone dissenting. In the Lords, the Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst and also Brougham pronounced in approval of the decision of the eight judges, but Lords Denman, Cottenham, and Campbell gave it as their opinion that the jury had been unfair and fraudulent, that no fair trial had

taken place, and therefore that the judgment should be reversed. So the whole proceedings were quashed, and Macaulay's declaration that the government's victory was worse than a defeat proved true.

All the traversers were immediately released, being escorted through the city by a vast and orderly procession to O'Connell's house. The procession marched through College Green; and just as O'Connell's carriage came in front of the Irish Parliament House, it stopped; and there was a deep silence as O'Connell rose and pointed with his finger to the portico, turned slowly round, and gazed into the faces of the people without a word. Again and again he stretched forth his arm, and his gestures were presently saluted with successions of the loudest cheers.

During the imprisonment, the contributions to the repeal treasury increased considerably, and the release of O'Connell was hailed as the harbinger of triumph. He was anxiously looked to for his wonted guidance. To the surprise of both friends and enemies he did nothing after his old manner. His enemies ascribed his succeeding feebleness to fear of further proceedings. His friends chafed and marvelled at his apparent supineness. Both were wrong. The secret of his quieter attitude was that he was nearly seventy, and the hand of death was already upon him. Whatever else he henceforth did lacked his old force. Softening of the brain had set in. His efforts got fewer and feebler, as he gradually sank under his malady. He lived long enough to witness some of the horrors of the great famine that so soon followed upon his imprisonment and release. Those horrors probably increased the mental paralysis that was growing upon him, which eventually resulted in a restless desire to see the Pope, and to go to Rome for the purpose. On his way thither, by slow and painful stages, he reached Genoa, where he broke down and died on the 15th of May, 1847, in his seventy-second year.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

D

THE DEVON COMMISSION.

URING the very month in which the vigour of the government

was manifested by the finding of the grand jury against O'Connell, the same government seems to have thought it necessary to do something per contra. Hence the Queen was induced to issue, on the 20th of November, 1843, a commission which she commenced, in the usual manner, with "Victoria, by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen, Defender of the Faith, To our right trusty and right well-beloved cousin, William, Earl of Devon; and our trusty and well-beloved Sir Robert Alexander Ferguson, Baronet; George Alexander Hamilton, Esquire; Thomas Nicholas Redington, Esq.; and John Wynne, Esquire, greeting. Whereas, we have thought it expedient, for divers good causes and considerations, that a commission should forthwith issue for inquiring into the state of the law and practice in respect to the occupation of land in Ireland, and in respect also to the burdens of county cess and other charges which fall respectively on the landlord and occupying tenant, and for reporting as to the amendments, if any, of the existing laws, which, having due regard to the just rights of property, may be calculated to encourage the cultivation of the soil, to extend a better system of agriculture, and to improve the relation between landlord and tenant in that part of our United Kingdom."

For the purpose stated, the fullest powers were granted to the commissioners named to take evidence and report thereon. Officially it was called the Commission on Occupation of Land (Ireland); but from the name of the chairman it was and is familiarly known and recognized as the Devon Commission. Whatever else may be said of

the members of that commission, when we consider that they reported on the 14th of February, 1845, and that between November 1843 and February 1845 (less than fifteen months) they took evidence and got information enough to fill four stupendous folio books, closely printed, and crammed with most valuable information, no one can question for a moment that they were men of the very highest order of business capacity. For the rest, they were all landlords, and the chairman was an Irish absentee landlord. That such men could come to conclusions favourable to tenants was too much to expect from human nature. To suspect them of leaning in favour of their own order would be impolite, but perhaps not altogether unreasonable. "You might as well," said O'Connell," consult butchers about keeping Lent as consult these men about the rights of farmers."

Be that as it may, the report was derived from the examination on oath of eleven hundred witnesses of every class and condition, in addition to conversations with numerous persons. This evidence was also strengthened by a tour of the commissioners through the country, during which no trouble seems to have been spared to make the investigation thorough; always, as enjoined in their commission, "having regard to the just rights of property."

A prominent feature of the report of these ultra-landlords is the candid admission that the original landholders of Ireland were despoiled by "the confiscations of Elizabeth, James, and Cromwell; and [later on] the confiscations of the lands of O'Neill in the north, and Desmond in the south." Thus, to start with, we have to bear in mind that the whole tenure of land in Ireland, as admitted by these landlord commissioners themselves, is based upon the sacred right of confiscation. The penal code, which in its earlier days forbade Catholics to hold land in any quantity on any terms, was intended to make the confiscations more complete, and such would have been perpetual, only, as the Commissioners tell us, with admirable simplicity, the restraints upon Catholics were not consistent with a "due regard for the just rights of property," for the anti-Catholic code was eventually relaxed, not out of regard for Catholics and tenants, the ruffians, but

REPORT ON THE Tenure of LAND.

241

because "the Protestant landlords [poor fellows] also suffered indirectly from the operation of the same laws, for in letting their estates they were, to a great degree, confined in the selection of their tenants to those who alone could enjoy any permanent tenure under them." Yet though the landlords were thus placed at a disadvantage, the prejudice against Catholics, or rather in favour of Protestants, was so intense that, as late as 1771, the utmost that a Catholic was allowed to do in the way of tenure was "to take a lease of sixty-one years of not less than ten acres, or more than fifty, of bog, with only half an acre of arable land for the site of a house, but not to be situated within a mile of a town; and if it was not reclaimed in twenty-one years, the lease to be void." Here we have a complete epitome of the whole theory of tenure in Ireland. The unhappy tenant, rigorously excluded from advantageous occupations, permitted to vegetate how he can upon the bog, bound to reclaim it in twenty-one years or be dispossessed; or, in the event of holding on the lease to the end, bound to deliver up the fertile land his own labour has created, subject only to renewal of his lease at an enormously advanced rent based upon the improvements he, and he only, has made. In like manner, and for the same reasons, other Catholic disabilities have by slow degrees been removed, not for their sake, but that they might become the more acceptable prey of their devourers. It is precisely so, in the letter and in the spirit, with the whole of the law of land tenure in Ireland. It needs no detailed illustrations; that epitome contains the whole history, varying only in its ramifications and grades.

In our earlier pages we have noticed the forty-shilling voters-how they were created, and how they were extinguished. The report refers to the fraud of leases for lives, under which both processes were manipulated, always "having due regard to the just rights of property." The commissioners say that these leases for lives invariably contained covenants for perpetual renewal, on payment of a moderate fine, sometimes merely nominal, on the fall of each life. The commissioners add, This tenure, though manifestly intended to be perpetual, has proved a source of frequent litigation. Various constructions have been put