MR. SHEIL'S SPEECH. 311 their landlords, but would make them rush into the field, scale the batteries of a fortress, and mount the breach; and, gentlemen, give me leave now to ask you, whether, after a due reflection upon the motives by which your vassals (for so they are accounted) are governed, you will be disposed to exercise any measure of severity in their regard? “I hear it said, that before many days go by, there will be many tears shed in the hovels of your slaves, and that you will take a terrible vengeance of their treason. I trust in God that you will not, when your own passions have subsided, and your blood has had to cool, persevere in such a cruel, and, let me add, such an unjustifiable determination. Consider, gentlemen, whether a great allowance should not be made for the offence which they have committed. If they are, as you say they are, under the influence of fanaticism, I would say to you, that such an influence affords many circumstances of extenuation, and that you should forgive them, 'for they know not what they do.' They have followed their priests to the hustings, and they would follow them to the scaffold. But you will ask, wherefore should they prefer their priests to their landlords, and have purer reverence for the altars of their religion, than for the counter in which you calculate your rents? Ah, gentlemen, consider a little the relation in which the priest stands toward the peasant. Let us put the priest into one scale, and the landlord into the other, and let us see which should preponderate? "I will take an excellent landlord and an excellent priest. The landlord shall be Sir Edward O'Brien, and the priest shall be Mr. Murphy of Corofin. Who is Sir Edward O'Brien? A gentleman who has a great fortune, who lives in a splendid mansion, and who, from the windows of a palace, looks upon possessions almost as wide as those which his ancestors beheld from the summit of their feudal towers. His tenants pay him their rent twice a-year, and they have their land at a moderate rate. So much for the landlord. I now come to Father Murphy of Corofin. Where does he reside? In an humble abode, situated at the foot of a mountain, and in the midst of dreariness and waste. He dwells in the midst of his parish ioners, and is their benefactor, their friend, their father. It is not only in the actual ministry of the sacraments of religion that he stands as an object of affectionate reverence among them. I saw him, indeed, at his altar, surrounded by thousands, and felt myself the influence of his contagious and enthusiastic devotion. He addressed the people in the midst of a rude edifice, and in a language which I did not understand; but I could perceive what a command he has over the minds of his devoted followers. But it is not merely as the celebrator of the rites of Divine worship that he is dear to his flock; he is their companion, the mitigator of their calamities, the soother of their afflictions, the trustee of their hearts, the repository of their secrets, the guardian of their interests, and the sentinel of their death-beds. A peasant is dying: in the midst of the winter's night, a knock is heard at the door of the priest, and he is told that his parishioner requires his spiritual assistance: the wind is howling, the snow descends upon the hills, and the rain and storm beat against his face; yet he goes forth, hurries to the hovel of the expiring wretch, and, taking his station beside the mass of pestilence of which the bed of straw is composed, bends to receive the last whisper which unloads the heart of its guilt, though the lips of the sinner should be tainted with disease, and he should exhale mortality in his breath. "Gentlemen, this is not the language of artificial declamation—this is not the mere extravagance of rhetorical phrase. This, every word of this, is the truth- the notorious, palpable, and unquestionable truth. You know it, every one of you know it to be true; and now let me ask you can you wonder for a moment that the people should be attached to their clergy, and should follow their ordinances as if they were the injunctions of God? Gentlemen, forgive me, if I venture to supplicate, on behalf of your poor tenants, for mercy to them. Pardon them, in the name of that God who will forgive you your offences in the same measure of compassion which you will show to the trespasses of others. Do not, in the name of that Heaven before whom every one of us, whether landlord, priest, or tenant, must at last appear-do not prosecute these poor MR. SHEIL'S SPEECH. people don't throw their children out upon the public road don't send them forth to starve, to shiver, and to die! 313 "For God's sake, Mr. Fitzgerald, and for your own sake, and as you are a gentleman and a man of honor, interpose your influence with your friends, and redeem your pledge. I address myself personally to you. On the first day of the election you declared that you would deprecate all persecution by the landlords, and that you were the last to wish that harsh and vindictive measures should be employed. I believe you; and now I call upon you to redeem that pledge of mercy, to fulfil that noble engagement, to perform that great moral promise. You will cover yourself with honor by so doing, in the same way that you will share in the ignominy that will attend upon any expedients of rigor. Before you leave this country to assume your high functions, employ yourself diligently in this work of benevolence, and enjoin your friends, with that eloquence of which you are the master, to refrain from cruelty, and not to oppress their tenants. Tell them, sir, that instead of busying themselves in the worthless occupation of revenge, it is much fitter that they should take the political condition of their country into their deep consideration. Tell them that they should address themselves to the Legislature, and implore a remedy for these frightful evils. Tell them to call upon the men, in whose hands the destiny of this great empire is placed, to adopt a system of conciliation and of peace, and to apply to Ireland the great canon of political morality which has been so powerfully expressed by the poet-'Pacis imponere morem.' Our manners, our habits, our laws, must be changed. The evil is to be plucked out at the root. The cancer must be cut out of the breast of the country. Let it not be imagined. that any measure of disfranchisement, that any additional penalty, will afford a remedy. Things have been permitted to advance to a height from which they can not be driven back. "Protestants, awake to a sense of your condition. Look round you. What have you seen during this election? Enough to make you feel that this is not mere local excitation, but that seven millions of Irish people are completely arrayed and organized. That which you behold in Clare, you would behold, VOL. II.-14 under similar circumstances, in every county in the kingdom. Did you mark our discipline, our subordination, our good order, and that prophetic tranquillity which is far more terrible than any ordinary storm? You have seen sixty thousand men under our command, and not a hand was raised, and not a forbidden word was uttered, in that amazing multitude. You have beheld an example of our power in the almost miraculous sobriety of the people. Their lips have not touched that infuriating beverage to which they are so much attached, and their habitual propensity vanished at our command. What think you of all this? Is it meet and wise to leave us armed with such a dominion? Trust us not with it; strip us of this appalling despotism; annihilate us by concession; extinguish us with peace; disarray us by equality; instead of angry slaves, make us contented citizens: if you do not, tremble for the result!" THE PENENDEN HEATH MEETING. ANXIOUS to witness the great assembly of "the men of Kent,” of which the High-Sheriff had called a meeting (having appointed twelve o'clock upon Friday the 24th for the immense gathering), I proceeded from Rochester to Maidstone at an early hour.* Upon my way, I saw the evidences of prodigious * The Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, early in 1828, with little more than a shadow of resistance from the Wellington Ministry, was a sort of political "writing on the wall," to the Protestant Ascendency people throughout the United Kingdom. To check any further concessions, particularly as the Catholics had more and juster claims than the Dissenters, it was resolved to establish Brunswick Clubs, which were practically much the same, minus the secret oaths and obligations, as the Orange Lodges, put down by a prohibitory and penal statute in 1825. The Duke of Cumberland (brother of the reigning sovereign) was the patron of these associations, and Lords Winchilsea, Kenyon, and other persons of rank and property, were openly members. Clare Election, ending July 5, 1828, on the victory of O'Connell, a Catholic, excited the anger and apprehension of these ultra-Protestant agitators, who determined to hold public meetings, in defence of Protestant Ascendency in all the English counties. The first of these came off in Kent, on the 24th of October, 1828, on Penenden Heath, and from twenty thousand to thirty thousand persons were present. Mr. Sheil, whose graphic description brings the scene before us, happened in London when the meeting was about taking place, and several friends of civil and religious liberty strongly pressed him to attend, as a speaker, confident that he might thereby advance the cause which they had at heart. He consented, prepared a long and elaborate speech, obtained the small landed qualification requisite to allow him to address the meeting as a freeholder, and proceeded to Penenden Heath, where the clamor was so great that he could utter only a few sentences, though what he intended to say was printed, and distributed far and wide. The Penenden Heath Meeting, however, did not encourage similar attempts elsewhere, and Protestant Ascendency made no further public display until February, 1829, when Catholic Emancipation was proposed as a Government measure. The newspapers of the day amused them |