Chapter 2

Not only were the Irish prevented from earning money, but they were forced to pay large sums to the mistresses of English kings. Lecky tells us that the Duke of Saint Alban's, the bastard son of Charles II., enjoyed an Irish pension of £800 a year. Catherine Sedley, the mistress of James II., had another of £5,000 a year. William III. bestowed a considerable Irish estate on his mistress, Elizabeth Villiers. The Duchess of Kendall and the Countess of Darlington, two mistresses of the German Protestant George I., had Irish pensions of the united value of £5,000. Lady Walsingham, daughter of the first-named of these mistresses, had an Irish pension of £1,500; and Lady Howe, daughter of the second, had a pension of £500. Madame de Walmoden, mistress of the German Protestant King George II., had an Irish pension of £3,000. This king's sister, the queen dowager of Prussia, Count Bernsdorff, a prominent German politician, and a number of other German names may be found on the Irish pension list.

Lecky's description of the Protestant Church of Ireland is just as revolting. Archbishop Bolton wrote, "A true Irish bishop [meaning bishops of English birth and of the Protestant Church] has nothing more to do than to eat, drink, grow fat and rich, and die."

The English primate of Ireland ordained and placed in an Irish living a Hampshire deer-stealer, who had only saved himself from the gallows by turning informer against his comrades. Archbishop King wrote to Addison, "You make nothing in England of ordering us to provide for such and such a man £200 per annum, and, when he has it, by favor of the government, he thinks he may be excused attendance; but you do not consider that such a disposition takes up, perhaps, a tenth part of the diocese, and turns off the cure of ten parishes to one curate."

From the very highest appointment to the lowest, in secular and sacred things, all departments of administration in Ireland were given over as a prey to rapacious jobbers. Charles Lucas, M.P. for Dublin, wrote in 1761 to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, "Your excellency will often find the most infamous of men, the very outcasts of Britain, put into the highest employments or loaded with exorbitant pensions; while all that ministered and gave sanction to the most shameful and destructive measures of such viceroys never failed of an ample share in the spoils of a plundered people."

Arthur Young, in 1779, estimated the rents of absentee landlords alone at £732,000; and Hutchinson, in the same year, stated that the sums remitted from Ireland to Great Britain for rents, interest of money, pensions, salaries, and profit of offices amounted, on the lowest computation (from 1668 to 1773), to £1,110,000 yearly.

If, in treating of Newfoundland, I have made many extracts from Mr. Lecky's references to Ireland, it is in order that I may show Mr. Spearman the danger of laying too much stress on the French claims as the cause of the present distress in England's oldest colony.

France had no claims in Ireland, and yet the conduct of the British government and the British tradesman to that unfortunate island is one of the blackest infamies of the eighteenth century.

Mr. Lecky says in Chapter V., page 11, of his history: "To a sagacious observer of colonial politics two facts were becoming evident. The one was that the deliberate and malignant selfishness of English commercial legislation was digging a chasm between the mother country and the colonies which must inevitably, when the latter had become sufficiently strong, lead to separation. The other was that the presence of the French in Canada was an essential condition of the maintenance of the British empire in America."

If Mr. Lecky had studied Newfoundland's history, he might have added a third fact; namely, that the French claims in Newfoundland have been for the Jingoes of the last half-century a convenient means of excuse for shirking their own responsibility to the unfortunate island, and for covering up the malignant selfishness of those tradesmen in Canada and England to whose private interests the island has been sacrificed by the government.

It is interesting to observe how, at the time of the Peace of Utrecht, on Article XIII. of which the modern claims of France are based, the conditions were similar to those of Tory intrigue to-day.

King Louis of France, encouraged by the momentary supremacy of the Tories in England, had insulted the English people by recognizing the Pretender as King of England.

The popular indignation roused by this insult enabled King William, by dissolving Parliament, to overthrow the Tory power, and obtain a large majority pledged to war with France. The Whigs carried this war to a victorious conclusion; but, most unfortunately for both England and its colonies, Abigail Masham, by her influence over the queen, secured the overthrow of the Whigs. And her cousin Harley, a Tory, became Chancellor of the Exchequer, thus permitting the Tories to reap the fruits of Whig victories. In reference to the conclusion of the peace with France Lecky says, "The tortuous proceedings that terminated in the Peace of Utrecht form, beyond all question, one of the most shameful pages in English history."

The greatest of England's generals was removed from the head of the army, and replaced by a Tory of no military ability. The allies of England were most basely deserted; and a clause was inserted in the treaty respecting Newfoundland to the following effect:--

"But it is allowed to the subjects of France to practise fishing and to dry fish on land in that part only which stretches from the place called Bonavista to the Northern Point of the said Island, and from thence, running down by the Western Side, reaches as far as the place called Point Riche."

What compensation was given by France in return for this right to catch and dry fish on a part of the Newfoundland shore?

That was the immense accession of guilty wealth acquired by the Assiento Treaty, by which England obtained the monopoly of the slave-trade to the Spanish colonies.

In the one hundred and six years from 1680 to 1786 England sent 2,130,000 slaves to America and the West Indies.

On this point Lecky writes: "It may not be uninteresting to observe that, among the few parts of the Peace of Utrecht which appear to have given unqualified satisfaction at home, was the Assiento contract, which made of England the great slave-trader of the world. _The last prelate who took a leading part in English_ politics affixed his signature to the treaty. A Te Deum, composed by Handel, was sung in thanksgiving in the churches. Theological passions had been recently more vehemently aroused; and theological controversies had for some years acquired a wider and more absorbing interest in England than in any period since the Commonwealth. But it does not yet appear to have occurred to any class that a national policy, which made it its main object to encourage the kidnapping of tens of thousands of negroes, and their consignment to the most miserable slavery, might be at least as inconsistent with the spirit of the Christian religion as either the establishment of Presbyterianism or the toleration of prelacy in Scotland."

Is it not characteristic that, just as the Tories of Queen Anne's time were willing to prejudice the rights of a colony in return for the infamous profits of the slave-trade, so the Tory of 1862, Lord Robert Cecil, was among the chief Englishmen who sympathized with the slaveholders who were then attacking the American Union?

It is equally characteristic that this first of the Primrose Dames, Abigail Masham, quarrelled with her cousin Harley about the share which this lady of High Church principles was to receive out of the profits of the infamous trade.

Surely, the country that made so much profit out of the slave-trade is bound to compensate Newfoundland for the losses caused by its weakness in the French shore question rather than that France which in 1713 abandoned the infamous traffic to the British Tories.

The next treaty between France and England, that of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, made no alteration in the Newfoundland question; but the government of England, in returning Louisbourg to the French, gave another of those proofs of the selfish indifference of the home government to the rights of the colonies which was one of the most potent causes that led the New Englanders, with the aid of France, to achieve their independence.

At the south-eastern extremity of Cape Breton Island the strong fortress of Louisbourg, which it was once the fashion to call the Gibraltar of America, threatened the safety of the New England and Newfoundland fisheries alike. Governor Shirley of Massachusetts induced the legislature to undertake an expedition against this fortress, and intrusted its command to Colonel William Pepperell. The New England forces, raw troops, commanded by untrained officers, astonished the world by capturing a fortress which was deemed impregnable. This was the most brilliant and decisive achievement of nine years of otherwise useless bloodshed and treachery.

It is well that the people of the United States propose to celebrate its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary this year; for, more than any other event in their colonial history, it gave them confidence in the power of untrained men of spirit to overcome the hireling soldiers of the European governments.

But the action of the British government at the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in restoring this fortress to the French, gave the colonists an equally necessary lesson. What did England get in exchange? The already mentioned Assiento, that famous compact which gave to England the right to ship slaves to the Spanish colonies, was confirmed for the four years it still had to run; and the fortress of Madras, which had been taken by the French in 1746, was restored to England in 1748 by the treaty. Even the most selfish and heartless of British politicians may doubt whether the true interests of his country were served by abandoning the American fortress for that of India; but the American statesman will not fail to see in the conduct of England towards her American colonists in this transaction a justification not alone for the Declaration of Independence, but also for that Monroe doctrine which, in its fullest application, will prevent the interference of any European power in the affairs of any part of America, not excluding Newfoundland. The Treaty of Paris, in 1763, which made Great Britain practically master of North America, produced no change in the position of the 13,000 settlers then in Newfoundland. For them the London government cared nothing. The provisions of the treaty, by which France gave up Canada to England, only served to emphasize more strongly the injustice done by England to her Catholic population, both in Ireland and in Newfoundland.

In 1719 the Irish Privy Council, all tools of England; actually proposed to the London government that every unregistered priest or friar remaining in Ireland after the 1st of May, 1720, should be castrated; and, although the English ministers did not accept this suggestion, they adopted one that such priests should have a large P branded with a red-hot iron on their cheeks. It can be hardly wondered at that the more honest Irishmen sought refuge from such infamies either in foreign service or in the colonies; and many of them came to Newfoundland, only to find that the Church of England spirit of persecution was rampant there also.

Every government official was obliged to abjure the special tenets of Catholicism. In 1755 Governor Darrell commanded all masters of vessels who brought out Irish passengers to carry them back at the close of the fishing season. A special tax was levied on Roman Catholics, and the celebration of mass was made a penal offence. At Harbor Main, Sept. 25, 1755, the magistrates were ordered to fine a certain man £50 because he had allowed a priest to celebrate mass in one of his fishing-rooms. The room was ordered to be demolished, and the owner to sell his possessions and quit the harbor. Another who was present at the same mass was fined £20, and his house and stage destroyed by fire. Other Catholics who had not been present, were fined £10 each, and ordered to leave the settlement. These infamies were not altered until the Tory government was humiliated by the victory of the United States and their allies. But even then the Newfoundland settlers were taught that England treats her loyal colonist more harshly than the possible rebel.

The Newfoundland settlers, Catholic or Protestant, had proved the most loyal men in the colony.

When the French, under D'Iberville, captured St. John's, and all Newfoundland lay at their feet, the solitary exception was the little Island of Carbonear in Conception Bay, where the persecuted settler John Pynn and his gallant band still held aloft the British flag. In 1704-5 St. John's was again laid waste by the French, under Subercase; and, although Colonel Moody successfully defended the fort, the town was burned, and all the settlements about Conception Bay were raided by the French and their Indian allies. But Pynn and Davis bravely and successfully defended their island Gibraltar in Conception Bay.

In 1708 Saint Ovide surprised and captured St. John's, but again old John Pynn held the fort at Carbonear.

In the American War one of Pynn's descendants, a clerk at Harbor Grace, raised a company of grenadiers from Conception Bay; and they fought with such success in Canada that he was knighted as Sir Henry Pynn, and raised to the rank of general. But the selfish government at home cared nothing for Newfoundland. The first Congress of the United States, Sept. 5, 1774, forbade all exports to the British possessions. This would not have hurt Newfoundland if the settlers had been allowed to carry on agricultural pursuits there. But these had always been discouraged by the English; and so they were dependent on the New England States for their supplies, and were threatened with absolute famine as soon as the war broke out. Had they been disloyal, they might have gained their rights from England; but their very loyalty to such a government was their worst misfortune.

Even in 1783 the Englishman had not learned the evil results of permitting royal interference in British politics. It is not merely in the reigns of the libertine kings that we see this. Queen Elizabeth injured England by interfering with the policy of its wisest statesmen. The ascendency of Harley and Saint John Bolingbroke, who deserted England's allies and threw away the fruits of Marlborough's victories, was due to the influence of a High Church waiting-woman over Queen Anne; and now, when even Lord North, to say nothing of the better class of Englishmen, disapproved of George III.'s obstinate resistance to the just claims of the American colonies, the support given to the king by the Tories led to the loss of a dominion far more valuable to England than all the trade of India or China.

He was obliged to call on a Liberal minister to undo, as far as possible, the evil done by himself and the Tories, just as in later days Mr. Gladstone had to settle with the United States the damage done by the Tories in the "Alabama" question.

The death of Rockingham left the direction of the negotiations with France and the United States in the hands of Lord Shelburne; and that he was extremely liberal in his arrangements with both countries was not to be wondered at. The wrong had been done by England; and the innocent English had to suffer, as well as the guilty ones. Unfortunately for Newfoundland, Shelburne did not cede this island to the United States; and so it had to bear more than its share in the misfortunes which the policy of King George had brought upon the British empire.

Mr. Spearman (page 411) writes that "Adams, the United States envoy, himself bred up among the New England fishermen, said 'he would fight the war all over again' rather than give up the ancestral right of the New Englanders to the Newfoundland fisheries"; but that Shelburne should be able, when France and America were victorious, to take away from the former power the concessions made to it by the Tories in 1713 and in 1763 was not to be expected.

There was a slight alteration in the shore line on which the French might fish. They abandoned that right between Cape Bonavista and Cape St. John, in consideration of being allowed to catch and dry their fish along the shore between Point Riche and Cape Ray. That was all; and that is precisely the reason why the Beaconsfield-Salisbury cabinet, in 1878, refused their sanction to the Bay St. George Railroad.

The only advantage that the poor Newfoundlanders gained from the war which caused them so much distress was the fact that the English government was _whipped_ into conceding to their Roman Catholic population some of the rights which for many years afterwards it obstinately withheld from their brethren in Ireland.

In 1784 Vice-Admiral John Campbell, a man of liberal, enlightened spirit, was appointed governor, and issued an order that all persons inhabiting the island were to have full liberty of conscience, and the free exercise of all such modes of religious worship _as were not prohibited by law_.

In the same year the Rev. Dr. O'Donnell came out to Newfoundland as its prefect apostolic. But the liberal movement did not last long. Lord Shelburne retired, and from 1784 till the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832 the Tories mismanaged the affairs of Great Britain and her colonies.

One great advantage of American independence was that it gave the world a fair chance of judging between the results of republican and royal government in colonial affairs.

We have certainly much that is rotten in the United States; but, when we compare our republic at its worst with British colonial administration, we can find good reason to be thankful for the crowning mercy of 1781, when Washington, Lafayette, and De Grasse gained their decisive victory over the troops of King George.

I will not now refer to England's use of her immense power in India, China, and Japan. As I watched the course of the Congress of Religions at Chicago in 1893, I could not help thinking that the impressions taken from that Congress by our Oriental visitors would bear fruit that in due course may teach even his Grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury, something about England's criminal neglect of Christian duty to these people. For us it is enough to compare our position with that of the two unfortunate islands nearer our own shores, Ireland and Newfoundland.

Suppose we had been cursed with the rule of British Tories since 1783, is it likely that our condition would have been better than that of these islands?

Even such small instalments of justice as Mr. Gladstone has been able to secure through his splendid fight for "justice to Ireland" are due far more to the pressure exercised on England by the Irish in America than to British sense of right. Poor Newfoundland has had no Ireland in America to help her. She has been among the most loyal of England's colonies, and because of her loyalty she has been the most shamefully treated.

It might be expected that Irish Catholics would emigrate in large numbers to Newfoundland to escape the infamous penal laws by which King George oppressed them in Ireland, and that sailors from all parts of Great Britain would seek there a shelter from the press-gangs at home. Dr. O'Donnell, the first regularly authorized Catholic priest on the island, applied in 1790 for leave to build a chapel in an outport; and, the Tories being in power, Governor Milbanke replied: "The Governor acquaints Mr. O'Donnell [omitting the title of Rev.] that, so far from being disposed to allow of an increase of places of religious worship for the Roman Catholics of the island, he very seriously intends next year to lay those established already under particular restrictions. Mr. O'Donnell must be aware that it is not the interest of Great Britain to encourage people to winter in Newfoundland; and he cannot be ignorant that many of the lower order who would now stay would, if it were not for the convenience with which they obtain absolution here, go home for it, at least once in two or three years. And the Governor has been misinformed, if Mr. O'Donnell, instead of advising his hearers to return to Ireland, does not rather encourage them to winter in this country. On board the 'Salisbury,' Nov. 2, 1790."

Do we need clearer proofs than that to show us who is responsible for the misery both of Newfoundland and of Ireland? This Catholic priest, to whom the Tory governor refuses both his religious rights and the titles given him by his church and university, knew how to return good for evil.

In 1800 a mutinous plot was concocted among the soldiers of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment to desert with their arms, and, being joined by their friends outside, to plunder St. John's, and afterwards escape to the United States. Fortunately, Dr. O'Donnell, who had meanwhile become bishop of St. John's, discovered the plot, and not only warned the commanding officer, but exerted all his own influence among the Catholics of the town to prevent outbreak.

The British government gave him the miserable pension of £50 a year, while they pay one of £6,000 a year to the Duke of Richmond, for no better reason than that he was descended from the bastard son of that Louise de la Querouaille who was the French mistress of King Charles II.

Chief Justice Reeves had been sent out from England to report on the condition of the country; and his "History of the Government of Newfoundland" shows that the ascendency so long maintained by a mercantile monopoly for narrow and selfish purpose had prevented the settlement of the country, the development of its resources, and the establishment of a proper system for the administration of government. Soon afterwards, in 1796, Admiral Waldegrave was appointed governor. The merchants of Burin complained to him that some of their fishermen wanted to emigrate to Nova Scotia. The merchants desired to prevent this.

Admiral Waldegrave reported thereon: "Unless these poor wretches emigrate, they must starve; for how can it be otherwise, while the merchant has the power of setting his own price on the supplies issued to the fishermen and on the fish that the people catch for him? Thus we see a set of unfortunate beings worked like slaves, and hazarding their lives, when at the expiration of their term (_however successful their exertions_) they find themselves not only without gain, but so deeply indebted as forces them to emigrate or drive them to despair." He further relates how the merchants refused to allow a tax of sixpence per gallon on rum, to help them to defray administrative expenses; and he describes the merchants as "opposed to every measure of government which a governor may think proper to propose for the general benefit of the island."

But even this Governor Waldegrave, though he so clearly saw the true cause of the evil, sternly refused the only remedy within reach, which was to grant the poor wretches the right to use the waste, uncultivated land which existed in so great abundance round about them.

He was so far from doing this that, when about to leave, he put on record, in 1799, for the use of his successor, that he had made no promise of any grant of land, save one to the officer commanding the troops, and that was not to be held by any other person. That is the way in which Britain's Tories have cared for her colonies.