THE

NEW MONTHLY

MAGAZINE

AND

Literary Journal.

NO XLII.

LONDON-JUNE 1, 1824.

Boston:

PUBLISHED BY OLIVER EVERETT, 13 CORNHILL.

Press of the North American Review.

1824.

XV. The Indian Woman to Diogo Alvarez, on his departure for Bahia

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ABSENTEEISM.-NO. I.

"Les absens ont toujours tort."

THE phrase "Absentee," says Dr. Johnson, is one "used with regard to Irishmen living out of their country:" and as its origin is Irish, so its use and application are strictly confined to the history of that unfortunate people. The inference to be drawn from this fact is plain: that there is something in the circumstances of the Irish, peculiar to themselves, something which forces upon them a line of conduct contrary to the ordinary instincts of humanity, and compels them to fly from that land which all other nations regard with more or less of favour and affection, from that land which youth quits with regret, and to which age clings with passion, when all other passions fade, the land of their nativity.

In every history of Irish gievances, this cabalistical term "absentee" appears in the front of the array, and, like the terrible "Il Bondocani” of the Califf of Bagdat, strikes down all before it: the apology for every abuse, the obstacle to every plan of amelioration, the bugbear of the timid, the stalking-horse of the designing.

"Absenteeism," observes the Secretary for the Home Department, "is an operative cause of tumult, but it is without a remedy;" and thus dismissing all ministerial responsibility with a laconic aphorism, he launches an integral portion of the empire committed to his management, to revolve for ever in the turbulent whirlpool of a vicious circle of cause and effect. Tumult expels the rich landholders, the absence of the rich landholders perpetuates tumult: this is a law of nature, which admits of " no remedy;" and the executive have nothing to do but to procure the passing of penal statutes according to the necessities of the moment, and to find the means of extorting four millions a year from English industry, to pay the expense of Irish misrule.

In political philosophy there are no evils without a remedy, save those which arise out of the common condition of humanity ;—and the minister who confesses a political evil which he cannot remove, should remove himself; for he is himself the greatest evil with which the people have to contend. Sully, who administered the affairs of France under the most adverse circumstances, when it was still harassed with civil contentions and torn with religious factions, saw no political impossibilities, though many political difficulties, with which he courageously and successfully grappled: but, alas! the Secretary for the Home Department is not Sully.

To what physiological peculiarity of constitution this irremediable tendency to wander, inherited from their progenitors by the restless sons of the great Milesius, is to be attributed, the learned Secretary has not informed us; and it is certain that Spurzheim, on his visit to the Irish capital. discovered no migratory inequality upon the surface of the Irish cranium, to account for the disposition. But in whatever particular of temperament or exuberance of cerebral developement the cause of this effect defective lies latent, it is matter of historic fact, that though the ancient Irish were restless enough at home ("never," says Campion, "wanting drift to drive a tumult,") yet this activity, which induced them "to pick a quarrel, fall in love, or any other diverting accident of that

kind," never found vent in absenteeism. Where, indeed, could Irishmen go to better their condition, when all in Ireland, who were not saints, were kings; and many were both, while none were martyrs.* "Il est certain negoce," says the French proverb, "où l'on perd beaucoup en quittant boutique ;" and this proverb, at all times applicable to Irish absentees, was particularly so in that golden age, so often referred to by antiquaries, when Ireland, "lying aloof in the Western Ocean, was a nest of kingdoms," when superb and wealthy monasteries and royal palaces occupied every foot of the territory, and when swallows built their nests in old men's beards for want of worse habitations. In those true church and state times of Ireland's prosperity, of which the Orangeman's Utopia is but a type, it is little wonderful that the people gave into no wanderings, but those "du cœur et de l'esprit ;" and that a pilgrimage to St. Patrick's purgatory, a royal progress of some Toparck of the South to a Dynast in the North, or a morning visit from King Mac Turtell to his close neighbour King Gillemohalmoghe † (which occasionally ended in the broken heads of both parties), should include the recorded absenteeism of two thousand years.

It was reserved, however, for one of these royal heroes first to commit the patricidal crime: and the first Irish absentee of note, though a great king, was but a mauvais sujet, having pillaged his people, wasted his revenue, ran away with his neighbour's wife, and sold his country for a mess of pottage. It is almost unnecessary to add that this royal founder of absenteeism is condemned to the contempt of posterity by the title of Dermot Mac Murrogh O'Kavenagh, King of Leinster; and that the result of his absenteeship was the successful invasion of Ireland by Henry II. the crusading grants of Pope Adrian IV., and, above all, the fearful forfeitures followed by rebellion on one part, and on the other by an effort at extermination, which have multiplied from age to age those possessors and deserters of the soil, who have drawn over "the profits raised out of Ireland, and refunded nothing."

* Irish potentates were then as plenty "as Munster potatoes."""Ils se coudoyert," as in the salle des rois of Napoleon. Irish saints were equally numerous; but, if the scandalous chronicles of the times be worthy of credit, the social order of that day was not the better for the circumstance. While King Mac Murrogh was running away with Queen O'Rourke, wife of O'Rory, King of Briffny, who was on a pilgrimage to St. Patrick's purgatory, his son was undergoing the operation of having those eyes put out, which had looked too tenderly on the Queen of Ossory. The gallantries of these Macs and O's from the earliest ages to the present day, recall the answer of the French Silvester Daggerwood to his manager, who asked his line of parts," Chacun s'en tienne au metier de ses pères; je sais que dans notre famille, nous sommes tous amoureux de père en fils."

+King Mac Turtell was King of Dublin, and held his kingdom by tribute from the King of Leinster. "Not far from Dublin," says the admirable Maurice Regan, historiographer to Mac Murrogh, and who wrote in French,-" not far from Dublin there lived an Irish King named Gillemohalmoghe." Of the territories of this prince, Michael's lane in Dublin formed a part. It is called in the black book of Christchurch, Gillemohalmogh. As there is some reason to suppose that the kingdom extended as far as Swords, Sir Compton Domville may be regarded as the modern representative of the Gillemohalmogh dynasty.

Child's Discourse upon Trade.-"No inconsiderable portion of the entire of Ireland has been confiscated twice, and perhaps thrice, in the course of a century."-Lord Clare's Speech on the Union.

The causes of absenteeship are, in fact, coeval with the first steps of English power in this country. "Those that were adventures," says Temple, “in the first conquests, and such others of the English nation as came over afterwards,

It appears very probable that one of the motives by which the lords of Ireland (as the English kings were long styled) were actuated in giving such large tracts of land to great English proprietors, was to get rid of the troublesome and rebellious Barons, by tempting them to reside in that "most beautiful and sweet country as any is under heaven," where so much was given up to their power and pillage, and where the services demanded in return, 66 the raising of forts and castles and fencing themselves with garrisons, as captains, keepers, and constables,” might forward the royal interests by protecting its power against the inroads of the natives. "For, except Leinster," says Campion, "all other parts retayned still their ancient kind of government, and were always ready to start at every corner, tag and rag, to expel the English." But the framers of Magna Charta, the guardians of all that was then known of liberty in England, were not by the bribe of principalities to be kept from the great scene of action; and some of the most considerable, having accepted, or seized upon the fairest portions of the land, made them over to sons-in-law or other kinsmen; and having thus, by the scratch of their rude pen*, conveyed to others the fee simple of an Irish province, hastened back to England to dispute the power of the barbarous despots, who reigned by their sufferance, or were deposed by their caprice.

In process of time, the mischief of this species of transfer was not only felt as an additional grievance by the Irish, but as an annoyance by the English sovereign. The injury done to their power by the absence of those whom they had deputed to watch over it, at a time when that power was held by a precarious tenure, was deemed so great, that a law against absentees was passed so early as the time of Richard II. The divisions of the houses of York and Lancaster, however, abrogated all laws; "at which time," says Spenser, "all English lords and gentlemen which had great possessions in Ireland, repaired over hither into England, some to succour their friends here, and to strengthen their partie, others for to defend their lands and possessions here against such as hovered after the same, upon hope of the alteration of the kingdom, and success of that side which they favoured and affected." The result of this absenteeism of the great

took possession by former grants of the whole kingdom, and drove the Irish in a manner out of all habitable parts of it, and settled themselves in all the plains and fertile places of the country, especially in the chief towns, ports, and sea-coasts. It was no capital offence to kill any of the rest of the Irish; the law did neither protect their life nor revenge their death."-History of Irish Rebellion. Here is the starting-post of absenteeism, pointed out by an English minister and historian. *The signatures of Magna Charta evince that the nobility of those times, like Pierrot in the farce, were "un peu brouillés avec l'Alphabet;" but the spirit which founded that great arch of British freedom, was well worth all the namby-pamby acquirements of all the modern nobles who ever presided over archæology, (or, as Walpole calls it, "old woman's logic,") flirted with the muses, and combined to give tracts to England, or rose-trees to the starving peasantry of Connaught and Munster.

Henry II. obliged the Earl Strongbow to return to Ireland, "being likely for his own wealth and assurance to procure all possible means of bridling and annoying the Irish." In the time of Edward III. military emigration seems to have been considerable. The Irish robbers did good service at Cressy.

The Irish were always ready for a little commotion at home or abroad: "Great was the credit of the Geraldines ever when the House of York prospered,