The Rebels of Ireland (103 page)

“I'll tell them that any evictions would be against their own interests.”

“Make sure they understand.”

Charles O'Connell was looking up the street.

“Ah,” he said, “here comes a sad crowd.”

Stephen joined him at the window. About forty men were walking slowly up the street. They were accompanied by an elderly priest, but at their head marched a small, dark-haired man who looked grim but determined.

“That's Callan the agent,” said Charles. “Absentee landlord. Old priest's called Casey. A good man, but I don't know if he can hold them together.”

“What's that?” Daniel O'Connell was across the room in a moment. “Open the big window,” he commanded, and stepped out onto the balcony. The men below saw him. The people lining the way cheered. O'Connell raised his hand, and the marching men stopped, while the crowd fell silent.

“Are the forty-shilling freeholders slaves?” His voice rolled down from the balcony and filled the street. The men looked up at him, and as he gazed back, his huge figure magically conveyed strength
and reassurance. “Are they like Negroes, to be whipped to the slave market?” His eyes searched out each man. “I do not think so.”

Callan scowled. The crowd cheered. The men also cheered, but you could tell they were afraid. It was obvious that Callan had threatened them. Voices from the crowd called out: “Come on, boys. Vote for the old religion.”

Looking down, Stephen noticed one fellow in particular. A big, handsome, blue-eyed fellow. He had taken his cap off in respect for O'Connell, but he was twisting it in his hands, obviously in some agony of mind.

O'Connell stepped back.

“Poor devils,” he remarked. “That little agent's done his work, you can see.”

“Threatened them with eviction?” asked Stephen.

“No. More effective than that. Threatened their wives.”

But now, just as the men were moving on, Stephen saw them halted again, this time by a priest who, obviously not satisfied with their demeanour, had decided to put some more fire into them. “That's Father Murphy,” said Charles O'Connell. “This will be something to hear.” And he opened the window again.

Father Murphy was certainly a striking figure. Tall, gaunt, his long white hair falling lankly to his shoulders, his eyes like coals of fire, he glared at the men like a prophet of old and began to harangue them in Irish.

William Mountwalsh was glad he had come to Ennis. He didn't think he'd stay the full five days of the election, but it was a historic occasion, and he'd be able to tell everyone that he was there.

He was amused by young Stephen Smith. Of course, the boy was hard and cynical, and thought life was all a game. But it was William's experience that young men of twenty are either too idealistic or too cynical; time would improve him. As for his new Quaker friend Tidy, he liked him.

Two months ago, he'd had one of the evangelicals down to Mount Walsh. A follower of Wesley. They were spreading quite surprisingly in Ireland, though not as fast as in England, thank God. They meant well, no doubt: they wanted to purify the world. He wasn't sure at his age he wanted the world to be so pure. And it depressed him to hear the Evangelical speak of “subjugating Irish popery to the Faith of Christ.” That was what people had done back in the century of Cromwell, and a grim business it had been.

Tidy was entirely different. The Quakers were becoming quite an active community in Dublin and in Cork, so he had thought it time he came to know them better. He had to admit that they puzzled him. Instead of a service, they sat in reverential silence in their meeting houses and got up to speak if the spirit moved them. A strange way to carry on. A Catholic bishop with whom he'd once discussed the Quakers had put it rather well. “I do not for a moment deny that their intentions are well-meaning. What I cannot discover is where their God is to be found.”

But a few days with Tidy had impressed the earl enormously. The Quaker did not criticize other churches, and he assured William that his fellow Quakers never tried to convert others away from their faith. He did not sanctify; he did not curse. He merely tried to treat his neighbour in a godly fashion, and his own goodness and sincerity were obvious. Actions, not words seemed to be his daily creed. “You remind me of the Good Samaritan,” William had told him, and meant it as a sincere compliment.

Here in Ennis, he could see that Tidy was rather shocked, and he didn't blame him. Indeed, from what he had witnessed so far, he was rather shocked himself. He turned to the Quaker.

“I don't like what I see, Samuel Tidy. Do you?”

“It is not what Quakers believe in.”

William nodded and pursed his lips. The trouble was, he thought, he'd seen it all before. He'd seen the French Revolution turn into terror and dictatorship. How quickly the underdog could turn into a tyrant. He'd supported the cause of Catholic emancipation
since he was a youth; and God knows, if this peaceful army of O'Connell's was militant, it was understandable. But as he watched the phalanx of priests marching in front of their men, with fifes playing and banners flying, he sensed a triumphalism that disturbed him.

Perhaps it was because he was middle-aged, but the older he got, the more William respected compromise; and from his perspective, these local priests were going further than necessary. Reforms were needed, of course, but there was no need for this bad feeling. For relations between the British government and the Vatican, nowadays, were actually rather cordial. During the years when Napoleon dominated Europe and threatened its Catholic monarchs, Rome had been glad that England stood as the bulwark against him; and after Napoleon's final defeat, when the territories of Europe were reordered at the great Congress of Vienna, a dozen years ago, it had been the British who insisted that the rich Italian Papal States must be given back to the Pope, who had been grateful to Britain ever since. O'Connell and the parish priests had a good case, for instance, when they complained about the tithes; but their outrage about the Prime Minister's veto over bishops was unnecessary. William himself was in a position to know that, behind the scenes, the British government and the Vatican discreetly arranged the top Church appointments together, to everyone's satisfaction.

“I'm with O'Connell on Catholic Emancipation. And since I was never for the Union, I would support its repeal,” he remarked to Tidy. “But times change, and one must look for what is practical. This militancy is dangerous.”

William usually spent about three months a year in London. He enjoyed sitting in the British House of Lords and keeping up with events in London. And much could be achieved there. Even Grattan thought so, for he'd spent the last fifteen years of his life in the London Parliament. And despite the fear of Catholicism which, William now understood, was ingrained in the English like a race memory, there were many in the British Parliament, especially in the liberal Whig party, who were most anxious to grant the Irish
Catholics what they wanted. This very spring, the last legal disabilities had been removed from the Dissenters. It was inevitable that, with time, the Catholics would be similarly treated. Patience was needed.

But what he saw here was war. War of tenant upon landlord, war of Catholic upon Protestant.

“I fear also,” Tidy continued, “that this will arouse the worst fears of the Presbyterians and Orangeists.”

“How right you are,” William concurred. Since he was a boy, the Presbyterians had changed their tune completely. In those days, most Ulster Presbyterians wanted to be free of England and its Church, which made them second-class citizens. But nowadays, with their own rights secured, they were the strongest supporters of the Union. “United with England and Scotland, we are part of a Protestant majority,” they judged. “Without England, we become a minority in a sea of Irish papists.” And propelled by that fear, their preachers were starting to sound as strident as they had back in the days of Cromwell. When they read of these marching priests and tenants in Clare, it would arouse all their worst fears.

And suddenly, William felt a pang of nostalgia for the days of his youth. He longed for the old Patriots, or the men of '98, like Patrick Walsh or noble young Emmet. They had all shared a common vision—of a free Ireland, where Catholic and Protestant, Presbyterian and Deist, could live together in equality under the law. It might be idealistic, but it was a noble ideal, and he missed it.

Nor was it impractical. For if the new republic of America, with its separation of church and state, could realize such an ideal, then why not here in the Old World, too?

Yet when he considered these men, marching in Ennis—no matter how justified their grievances—Lord Mountwalsh thought he heard not the continuing march of enlightenment, but a heavier, grimmer sound: the slow, sectarian thud of boot on blood, as though, like a returning prophesy, an age-old darkness was closing in again.

Tidy's thoughts at that moment were following quite a different course. He was glad he had gone to stay with the earl. He had never stayed in a great country house before. He had especially liked the library. He had even liked the earl's wife, whose heart was in the right place, even if she had seemed to him a little foolish. And he was glad that Mountwalsh had brought him to see this election. For this, too, was instructive.

But his thoughts were less on the election than upon what he had seen already in County Clare.

He had never been to the west before. Dublin and Leinster he knew, with their rich farmlands; the busy port of Cork, also. Ulster he knew, with its farmsteads, its cloth and linen industries. But the rural west of Ireland he did not know.

How was it possible, he asked himself, amidst such magnificent scenery, that the people could be so neglected and so poor? How was it that the burgesses of Ennis could allow the terrible squalour of the shantytowns along the approaches to their town? Were they not ashamed? How could the landlords—not only the absentees, but those there to see, Irishmen of the same blood, if they were Christians—let their neighbours live in such conditions and do nothing about it? How could the poor themselves take so little care that they would have families in the first place, to bring them up in deprivation? Why was there no industry, no enterprise to bring employment? His practical, self-controlled Quaker soul protested against this vast, cruel carelessness.

But now that unpleasant young political man was returning. He had learned as much as he cared to from Stephen Smith. But he took a deep breath and tried to remember that it was not for him to make judgements upon another man.

Stephen loved the mad business of the election. O'Connell had sent him on an errand, but he had promised to return to Lord Mount
walsh, and as he could only remain with him for a minute or two, he was glad to have something amusing to tell him. The scene he had just witnessed had been quite remarkable. For the harangue Father Murphy had delivered had been mesmerising in its intensity.