The Framework of Home Rule by Erskine Childers
page 80 of 491 (16%)
page 80 of 491 (16%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
with Coercion Acts as stupid and cruel as those of the nineteenth
century. The tithe grievance, which festered and grew into civil war in the nineteenth century, was never touched. While tenants in North-East Ulster were painfully and forcibly establishing their custom of tenant right in the teeth of the law, the inhuman system of cottier tenancy, which was to last until 1881, became more and more firmly rooted in other parts of Ireland. None but a democratic Assembly could possibly have grappled with these evils; nor is there any reason to suppose that in the existing condition of Ireland a Protestant democratic Assembly, even if temporarily it retained its sectarian character, would have grappled with them less boldly and drastically than an Assembly composed of Catholics and Protestants. The material interests of nineteen-twentieths of the people were the same, while the education and intelligence belonged mainly to the Protestants. Ulster tenants had as much need of good land laws as other tenants. Tithes were as much disliked in the north as in the south. The Established Church was the Church of a very small minority, and its clergy, numbers of whom were absentees, were as unpopular as the absentee landlords and the absentee office-holders and pensioners. But with no redress, and, what is more important, no prospect of redress for the primary ills of Ireland, the centrifugal forces of religion and race had full scope for their baneful influence. And it was at the very moment when tolerance was steadily gaining ground among all classes that these spectres of ancient wrong were summoned up to destroy the good work. How did this come about? Let us remember once more that everything hinged on Reform. Reform gained a little, but suffered far more, by its |
|