vice and misery, under which the whole creation of God
suffers in this country, by which rebellion against the law
of charity is promoted, under a holy name by which men
are persecuted for a heroic avowal of the truth, and brutes
for an innocent conformity to the law of nature by which
envy, hatred, malice, hypocrisy, oppression, grovelling super-
stitions, battles, bloodshed, and a love of litigation, with
various demoniac passions, are all poured forth in copious
streams, upon our unhappy country from the same exhaustless
source. When the existence and desolating effects of these,
we say, upon the whole state of society in Ireland are
perceptible to every eye; then must there not be some
deeper and more radically vicious springs of action for all
this evil, than any which are found in the pure and uncon-
taminated fields of nature ? since it is the property of the
springs which bubble in these fields to court the light to
fertilize the fields through which they flow to refresh every
living thing that is languishing with drought to purify
from every external stain and, in a word, to communicate
to society all the good of which they are capable, while pro-
ceeding in their peaceful stream towards the bosom of that
ocean which is their centre and their end. This is a plain
and unvarnished view of nature, travelling through those
channels (in the primitive order and harmony of creation) in
which heaven has appointed her stream to flow; and with
PETTY SESSIONS. 347
the rights of nature in this course, no law of man should
dare to interfere, unless for the special purpose of strength-
ening her embankments, and preserving from every taint of
selfish coi'ruption, the freedom and purity of that current,
upon which depends the physical and moral health of
all nations. Let us, however, for a moment, change the
scene, and suppose the finger of oppression and superstition
to have poisoned these waters, and to have forced them into
rigidly contracted limits for selfish ends. What then would
follow ? Why in the first place, the streams which had
been forced into contracted channels, would burst the boun-
daries that had been unjustly prescribed to them by the
tyrants and impostors of the human race In the next,
having lost their purity, the fields of society would lose their
native green In the third, as physical and intellectual
existence would thenceforth derive their nourishment from
poisoned sources, the human faculties would become per-
verted and deranged Physical and moral disorders of the
worst and most dangerous description, would then follow as
a natural effect The corrupt and selfish laws (and in pro-
cess of time, the deceitful dogmas) which had produced the
evil, would be trampled under foot Authority would be
resisted or evaded And finally, the flood of misery and
moral disorder produced by these evils, would rise to such
an enormous height under this system, as to cover the whole
land and all its fruits with a universal curse !
Such has been the experience of some of those Christian
nations (and in the end will probably be the experience of
them all) where poverty, prejudice, and moral disorder, have
been entailed upon the people, by priestcraft and oppressive
institutions ; and where the laws have been founded in
blood, for the protection of overgrown monopolies, and
exorbitant misapplications of privilege and public wealth,
to the exclusion of the bulk of the people from rational
liberty, from enlightened education, and not only from a
moderate enjoyment of the comforts of social life, (which is
their due) but also from the means of procuring a livelihood
348 COUNTY OF TYRONE,
even in the lowest rank of existence by honest labour ; thus
forcing them into habits of mendicancy, or into scenes of
midnight plunder for the support of life. And it is a fact
deserving of remark, that some of those unfortunate men,
whose characters had been so deeply deteriorated by this
system, as to be obliged to fly from the punishment which
pursued the crimes that it had generated and maintained,
have become wholly reformed and made useful citizens,
when transplanted from the corrupted climates of Europe
into that purer moral air of the new world, where the
rights of freemen (we lament that we cannot say human
nature, in a country where the African is still a slave) have
been fully recognised, after ages of suffering and oppression
in their native land, and both by law and practice placed
upon their proper base.
CHAPTER VI.
COUNTY OF FERMANAGH.
ENTRANCE INTO THE COUNTY, WITH OBSERVATIONS
ON ITS GENERAL APPEARANCE.
FROM Omagh we proceeded to Enniskillen, the capital of
Fermanagh, by Trillick, a rising village situated on an
estate of General Mervyn Archdale, one of the representa-
tives of this county in Parliament, who occasionally resides
at an interesting rural residence, which he holds in his own
occupation, in the neighbourhood of that village.
After having traversed Fermanagh in all directions, we
could not but derive the highest gratification from that
appearance of competency and comfort, by which the habi-
tations of the farmers were very generally distinguished;
and that remarkable exemption from mendicity and want,
which appeared to impart to this little county an aspect of
charitable policy, or wise landlordship, of which we could
not always boast in the neighbouring districts of Tyrone
and Donegal, where the hoards of able-bodied poor people
with long trains of children, that we saw soliciting relief in
the towns of Omagh and Ballyshannon, were quite ap-
palling.
Let us now trace these peculiar advantages of Fermanagh
to the probable causes which produced them. Among these
causes, we do not find that important source of wealth to
every commercial country which enjoys it, a prosperous manu-
facture. Of this it is comparatively destitute ; and yet the
face of the county wears for the most part a smiling appear-
ance. To those who have glanced at the well-known poverty
350 COUNTY OF FERMANAGH,
of some corn countries on the shores of the Baltic, and other
parts of the North of Europe,* and who know that it is not
to agriculture, but to manufactures and commerce, that
England owes her superiority to other nations. To such as
these, the apparent exemption of Fermanagh from the
rapidly increasing mendicancy of the surrounding counties,
may appear somewhat problematical ; more particularly as
it has not derived from the profits of past centuries of trade
(as Antrim, Armagh, and Downshire have done) a power
to resist that generally overwhelming mendicancy, under
which even the neighbouring county of Tyrone is conspi-
cuously bending, notwithstanding that the coarser branches
of the linen trade, with a vast number of bleach-greens and
public markets, have been long established, and are in full
operation in that county. This, to the closest observers of
these counties, must appear somewhat enigmatical ; and,
(as the trade of Tyrone, by the profitable employment which
it formerly provided for the poor, must have opposed a
powerful bulwark to the progress of this evil) can only be
accounted for by a decay of trade, rendering manufacturing
labour less remunerative than formerly; and a culpable
inattention on the part of the property of the county, to the
rational and practicable means of arresting the evil of desti-
tution, in its progress to that enormous height to which it
appears to have recently arisen in various parts of this once
prosperous province.
It is not then to the benefits of trade and commerce,
(powerful as they are known to be) that the comfort and
respectability of Fermanagh are to be imputed ; for it has
few or no manufactures, no sea-port town ; and the little
inland trade which it carries on, is heavily encumbered by
the expense of land carriage to and from divers distant
ports, and by the obstacles to a free communication with
the ocean, which is presented to the men of enterprize in
Enniskillen, by the bar of Ballyshannon, and by certain
* Under this head might not Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, and the late
Poland, be all fairly included?
CAUSES OF ITS COMPARATIVE PROSPERITY. 351
existing impediments to the free navigation of Lough Erne,
(subjects more particularly noticed in our Review of Done-
gal.) But since the trade of this little inland county, in
consequence of these impediments, has been so partial ; to
what causes may we, with a probability of truth and justice,
impute its cleanliness, comfort, and good order, and the
advantage which it obviously possesses over several of the
surrounding counties, in a comparative exemption from the
rapidly increasing evil of mendicity ?
The principal causes we believe are these First. A resi-
dent proprietary, governing their tenantry (with few excep-
tions) by laws of rent and tenure, which have a just and
reasonable reference to the tenants interest Secondly. A
body of freeholders, as comfortable in their circumstances,
and as independent in their own rank, as the lords of the
soil above them. And lastly, a very general reception of
the free and independent doctrines of the Protestant religion,
by the gentlemen, farmers, and shopkeepers of this county.
We know that many of our Roman Catholic countrymen
will call this latter sentiment, (however strongly supported
by evidence) a prejudice of education.) They will throw the
Republic of Venice in our teeth (a case by no means in
point, if it be true, as some have asserted, that though called
a Republic, it was, de facto, an Oligarchy, and that a
Popish Inquisition was maintained there.) They will drag
in the constitutional monarchy of France to their support (a
case still less in point than that of Venice, since liberty had
its origin in their hatred and expulsion of the clergy.) They
will reproach us with Magna Charta, procured by English
Catholic Barons from the cowardice of John ; but they will
carefully overlook this important fact, that Magna Charta
contained no record of religious liberty. They will talk of
English penal persecutions on account of conscience ; but
they will not tell you that England derived these from her
mother Rome, that she has grown out of them into universal
toleration ; while Rome remains stationary, in an obstinate
adherence to the most exceptionable doctrines of her religion,
352 COUNTY OF FERMANAGH,
and to as large a proportion of religious and political despo-
tism, as she dare venture to exercise in the present prevailing
hatred of her impostures, and that universal thirst for liberty
that is now breaking out in every country in Europe.* Mr.
O'Connell will remind us of the liberality of the Pope (as we
have heard him do at a breakfast meeting at Home's) in
permitting a Protestant church to be built at Rome (one Pro-
testant church mind ! for the English embassy and gentry
visiting that city) and in refusing to give his sanction to the
revival of the Inquisition in Madrid but Mr. O'Connell
will not tell you that these are cock boats of improvement,
following at an immense distance in the wake of the Reforma-
tion ; nor will he notice that act of Ferdinand's government
(called an act of faith !) by which a Jew and a Christian are
said to have been immolated some years since on the altar
of Spanish piety, in defiance of that policy of the present
Pope, which we have just reported upon the authority of
our Irish member. Neither will Mr. O'Connell tell his
people, that that which is granted as & favour in Rome, and
which even as a favour is refused in Madrid (that is liberty
of conscience,) is given to Catholics as a mere matter of
right by every Protestant country ; nor is England contented
with making the same provision for the religious and
literary instruction of Catholic children that she has made
for her own, (by founding schools and a college for that
purpose) but she has earned her hospitality to foreign
Catholics to the last extreme of virtue, for she has opened
her ports and her soil to all those monks and drones of
France, who supporting ecclesiastical impositions for the
love of God, have been swept by the besom of public indig-
nation from the face of that country, and might perhaps
have perished if they had not found in the liberal genius of
a Protestant government, a sure asylum ! Now when Mr.
O'Connell, (who having been educated for a priest himself,
* See the note on this subject, under the head of " The Press and the
Parties," connected with the passage on Cobbett's Reformation.
CAUSES OF ITS COMPARATIVE PROSPERITY. 353
has very naturally a deep and lively interest in the honour
of Catholicity,) has brought Italy, Spain, Portugal, and
Ireland, to this perfection of liberality. When he can point
his finger towards Catholic countries and their colonies,
protecting in the exercise of their various creeds, a hundred
different sects, some of them exhibiting in their books of
saints and martyrs, as many lying legends as the greatest
impostors among the poets, and even errors and superstitions
(in parts of their public worship and religious pilgrimages)
very little inferior to those which are received and prac-
tised by the simple inhabitants of Hindostan ! When Mr.
O'Connell can procure such examples of liberality as this,
in countries purely Catholic When he can make every
man equal in the eye of the law, without any other reference
to his creed or his superstition (as in Protestant England)
save that of the liberty of exercising it in the broadest
latitude When he can do this for Italy, Portugal and
Spain, as has been done by Protestant liberality for Ireland,
then he may reproach us (in his public speeches) with our
bigotry, and with the superior liberality of the Pope ; but
until then we must adhere to our well proved opinion, that
the reformation of religion in Europe, was the greatest
benefit conferred upon it since the days of Charlemagne ;
that Catholics themselves have derived large and important
additions to their liberty from that great event ; that this is
proved by their flying to Protestant rather than to Popish
countries when they are persecuted : and finally, that we
are justified in believing, that the general prevalence of
Protestantism in Fermanagh and other districts of Ulster, has
proved tributary to the wealth, industry and good order of
that province, as being inseparable from that freedom of
thought and action, in which is contained the incipient
principle of all human improvement. If in coming to this
conclusion we have erred from prejudice, it is a prejudice
supported by all the great leading facts of the living history
of Europe ; while the arguments which assail these facts,
are proved by the public notoriety of the facts themselves, to
2 A
354 COUNTY OF FERMANAGH,
be false and inconclusive; and Mr. O'Connell, (in his vain
attempts to puff off the Pope's liberality , and to assail the
generous genius of the Protestant religion in the hearing
of a priest ridden populace) to be a prejudiced advocate,
labouring to establish, by a system of special pleading, in
assemblies where few are able to detect his fallacies, and
none dare oppose him with the full vigour of their
minds, conclusions that are favourable to Popery, and unfa-
vourable and unjust to the Protestant religion.* These
are the results to which the most impartial examination of
the facts that we are able to command, has unavoidably
conducted us. But although our opinion of the liberal and
tolerant genius of the Protestant religion is fixed and im-
movable, we have not lost sight of the English penal laws
and their horrible effects. We have not forgotten that these
laws forced upon human nature in Ireland, a deep and
slumbering spirit of revenge, and an incurable hatred of
the English power. We have not forgotten that though the
work of legal reformation has commenced, it is yet very far
from being completed. We know that poverty and immo-
rality, with mendicity, filth, famine, and disease, have been
made the inheritance of the Irish poor, by a wicked neglect
of their just interests; and that with this criminal negligence,
the men who use the poor of Ireland as tools for their own
purposes, are just as chargeable as their honet governors by
law. Nor are we ignorant of the fact, that Catholics are
compelled to support a church against which they protest ;
and the benefits whereof, as a reformed system, have not
only been neutralized, but essentially poisoned and rendered
* At the celebration of the last centenary of the Reformation, in Germany,
an English traveller who was present has informed the public, that he saw
several Cathojic clergymen assisting at that ceremony, dressed in their full
canonicals ! On perceiving the astonishment of the stranger, one of them
addressed him (we believe in French) to this effect, that they (the continen-
tal Catholics) derived as much advantage from the Reformation as we did.
No doubt they do ; for it forms the sure and irresistible barrier of their
rights against the encroachments of the Roman Pontiff.
CAUSES OP ITS COMPARATIVE PROSPERITY. 355
hateful to the people by the tithe system, by the overgrown
revenues of the Bishops, and by divers impolitic statutes
enacted for its support ! We know that the Roman Catholic
clergy, the original owners of our church property, were
stripped of their livings, and thrown upon their people for a
maintenance ; and we cannot but think that in a country
where there are church lands of more than a million annual
value, that all tithes should be abolished, all the clergy of
the country paid out of the income of those lands, delivered
thereby from all secular embarrassment, from all sources of
discord, from all just causes of disaffection to the state and
to each other ; and the people by the same means, from all
and every impost now levied by law or custom off those
articles of ecclesiastical merchandise, which in the book of
Revelations, are significantly styled, " SLAVES AND SOULS
OF MEN." We know full well all these unfortunate facts of
our Irish history we have long known and long deplored
them ; and thus acquainted with the true state of things,
we do not expect a sudden transition from war to peace in
Catholic Ireland ; although we will do O'Connell the justice
to say, that we believe he is honestly favourable to the libe-
ralization of the Catholic character ; and that he is success-
fully wielding the passions and prejudices of his country
against a variety of public abuses, those of his own church
(which it is both his interest and inclination to conceal) save
and excepted. But with these it is our special business to
deal, as plainly, faithfully, and impartially, as with the abuses
of the Law Church, or those of any other system. And
although a conviction of the intolerance of the Romish
Church, has been long forced upon us by the facts of its pub-
lic and well known history ; still, as its members are rational
beings, blessed with the same faculties as their Protestant
brethren, and equally anxious with them to reach the goal
of happiness, (whether right or wrong in their notion of
the course) it would be wicked and illiberal to suppose that
they should not, like other men, derive more or less light and
liberality from the observation of those errors and abuses of
356 COUNTY OF FERMANAGH,
their church, in the day of her power, which were so clearly
brought to light, and so ably exposed by the champions of
the reformation ; as well as the errors of her clergy, by
Erasmus and other able writers of her own communion. And
although Irish Catholics may not feel inclined to abandon
the church of their birth and education Although its cus-
toms, institutions, and high professions of sanctity, (and with
the vulgar its assumed antiquity) may maintain an empire
over their judgments and although they have no power to
work the slightest alteration in the most absurd, revolting,
and superstitious of its rites and ceremonies ; still, as men of
education, reading what comes before them, and as men of
business, travelling with the reason of the age, and incapable
(whatever narrow and bigoted inclinations they may feel) to
roll the world back into those dark and iron ages, from
which Christendom has been rapidly emerging since the re-
formation cast the first broad beam upon the multiplied abuses
of the Papal power. As men thus instructed, and upon whom
the light of ages has been forced in defiance of the intoler-
ance of their church (and it is comfortable to think, thanks
to the Reformation, that if Galileo now rose from the dead,
he would not, even in Popish countries, be murdered in the
dungeons of an Inquisition, by bloody priestly inquisitors,
for asserting that the Sun stood still, and that the Earth
moved round ! ! !) Intelligent Catholics cannot, in propor-
tion as they reflect, but feel ashamed (however they may
labour to conceal it) of those errors and atrocities, from
which the Reformation derived its birth, progress, and con-
summation. And with such sentiments as knowledge of this
kind usually imparts, the subjects of that knowledge cannot
but feel a disposition to amalgamate with liberal institutions,
(however strong and inflexible the despotism of their church)
and hence we would wish to see the Protestant government
of this realm, begin (and it is time) to manifest to the
Catholic Irish of the labouring classes, the just and generous
genius of the Protestant religion, by enacting laws that
shall protect them against the grinding impositions of their
CAUSES OF ITS COMPARATIVE PROSPERITY. 357
various oppressors, and that may have a tendency to teach
them by still better and stronger examples, than those of
education, history or hearsay, the advantage which a Catholic
population derive from being placed under the mild and
protecting wing of a Protestant government. It is thus we
would labour to prove by the fruits of a true Christian faith,
the value of that faith to an unenlightened people ; nor would
this labour of love and justice (and these virtues are perfectly
compatible with the necessary chastisement of faults) be lost
or thrown away upon the warm hearted Irish. The steps
however which our church government took for their instruc-
tion in former times, were of another character. The
inefficiency of these measures, after a long trial, has now
appeared ; and until perfect justice has been done to Ireland,
a country so long and so deeply mismanaged, we can hardly
form a correct opinion of the exact degree of liberality of
which the lower classes of the Irish Catholics may be ren-
dered capable, by enlightened education and even handed
justice. To the wisdom of this true Christian policy, we
trust the attention of the British government is now seriously
turning. We hope also that Catholicism in Ireland is stea-
dily, though slowly, marching towards that goal of religious
liberality, of which we regard the reformation of religion as
the primitive and parent source; and should Catholicism
ever arrive, in the countries where it possesses exclusive
power, at this high religious and political attainment, prov-
ing by its acts of law and government, that it is as fully
capable of granting religious and political liberty to men of
all sects and parties, as Protestant England now proves her-
self to be ; we should then indeed rejoice at the approach of
that happy day, when the nominal believers in the holy
name of Christ, had arrived at that point of truly Christian
liberality, in which they could regard each other as members
of the same family, as children of the same father ; labouring
in that character to maintain the balance of charity and
justice, fair between the different branches of their common
family ; instead of spreading over the face of every country,
358 COUNTY OF FERMANAGH,
misery, tears, and desolation, by war, persecution, robbery,
and wrong ! as has been the universal course of Christendom
in her history of almost 2000 years ! Oh Christendom,
thou den of oppressors, this has been thy foul portrait,
though pretending to be the disciples of Him who gave " his
back to the smiters and his cheeks to those who plucked
off the hair ;" and whose last mandate to his disciples was
this, (John xiii. 14,) " If I then, your Lord and master
have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one anothers
feet."
To this happy state, we know many Protestants, with the
facts of history before them we have quoted, and with many
others to which w r e have made no allusion, will not believe
it possible that the Roman Catholic Church and its pro-
fessors can ever reach ; but we recollect that England had