2. K. Marx. Outline of a Report on the Irish Question Delivered to the German Workers' Educational Society in London on December 16, 1867
2. K. Marx. Outline of a Report on the Irish Question Delivered to the German Workers' Educational Society in London on December 16, 1867[228]
I
What distinguishes Fenianism? Actually, it originates from the Irish Americans, Irishmen [living] in America. They are the initiators and LEADERS. But in Ireland itself the movement took root (and is still really rooted) only in the mass of the people, the LOWER ORDERS. That is what characterises it. In all earlier Irish movements the people only followed the aristocracy or MIDDLE-CLASS MEN, and always the Catholic churchmen. The Anglo-Irish chiefs and the priests during the rising against Cromwell; even James II, King of England, was at the head in the war against William III; the Protestant Republicans of Ulster (Wolfe Tone, Lord Fitzgerald) in the 1798 revolution,[229] and, finally, in this century the BOURGEOIS O'Connell supported by the Catholic clergy, who also played a leading role in alLearlier movements excepting 1798. The Catholic clergy decreed a ban on Fenianism, which it did not lift until it realised that its attitude would deprive it of all influence on the Irish masses.
II
Here is what baffles the English: they find the present regime mild compared with England's former oppression of Ireland. So why this most determined and irreconcilable form of opposition now? What I want to show — and what even those Englishmen who side with the Irish and concede them the right to secession from England do not see — is that the [oppression] since 1846, though less barbarian in form, has been in effect destructive, leaving no alternative but Ireland's voluntary emancipation by England or life-and-death struggle.
III
Concerning past history the FACTS are available in any history book. Hence, I shall give only a few, firstly, to clarify the difference between the present epoch and the past and, secondly, to bring out a few points about the character of those who are now called the Irish people.
A) THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND BEFORE THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION
1172. Henry II. Conquered less than 1/3 of Ireland. NOMINAL CONQUEST. A gift from Pope Adrian IV (Englishman). Some 400 years later another Pope (under Elizabeth) (1576), Gregory XIII, took back the present from the English (Elizabeth).[230] T h e "ENGLISH PALE".231 CAPITAL: Dublin. Mixing of English COMMON COLONISTS with Irish, and of ANGLO Norman nobles with Irish chiefs. Otherwise, the war of conquest was conducted (originally) as against RED INDIANS. N O English reinforcements sent to Ireland until 1565 (Elizabeth).
B)* PROTESTANT EPOCH.* ELIZABETH. JAMES I. CHARLES I. CROMWELL. COLONISATION PLAN (16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES)
Elizabeth. T h e plan was to exterminate the Irish at least u p to the RIVER Shannon, t o take their LAND and settle English colonists in their place, etc. In battles against Elizabeth the still Catholic Anglo-Irish fought with the NATIVES against the English. T h e avowed plan of the English. * Clearing the island of the natives, and stocking it with loyal Englishmen. They succeeded only to plant a landowning aristocracy. English Protestant "adventurers"[232] (merchants, usurers), who obtained from the English crown the confiscated lands, and "gentlemen undertakers", who were to plant the ceded estates with native English families.
James I. Ulster. (Jacobite plantation, 1609-12.) British undertakers, "to stock the confiscated, stolen lands with Irish". *Not until 1613 are IRISH considered ENGLISH subjects; previously they were looked upon as "OUTLAWS- and ENFMIES- and the IRISH PARLIAMENT ~33
governed only the Pale. Persecution of Catholics.
* Elizabeth settled Munster, James I, Ulster, but Leinster and Connaught have not yet been purged. Charles I tried to purge Connaught.
Cromwell: First national revolt of Ireland, its 2nd complete conquest, partial re-colonisation (1641-60).
Irish Revolution of 1641. August 1649 Cromwell landing in Dublin. (Followed by Ireton, Lambert, Fleetwood, Henry Cromwell.) In 1652 the 2nd complete conquest of Ireland completed. Division of spoils: the Government itself, the "adventurers" who had lent £360,000 for the 11 years of war, the officers and soldiers, by the Acts of the English Parliament, 12 August 1652, and 26 September 1653.'M Smite the Amalekites[235] of the Irish Nation hip and thigh, and replant the re-devastated [land] with new colonies of brand-new Puritan English.* — Bloodshed, devastation, depopula-tion of entire counties, removal of their inhabitants to other regions, sale of many Irish into slavery in the West Indies.
By engaging in the conquest of Ireland, Cromwell put paid to the English Republic.
Thence the Irish mistrust of the English people's party.
*C) RESTORATION OF THE STUARTS. WILLIAM III. SECOND IRISH REVOLT, AND THE CAPITULATION ON TERMS.23''
1660 — 1692"*
The BRITISH were then more numerous in Ireland than at any other time. * Never higher than 3/11, never lower than 2/11 of the Irish population.
1684. Charles II begins to favour the Catholic interest of Ireland, and to enlist a Catholic army.
1685. James II gives full rein to the Catholics of Ireland. Catholic army increased and favoured. The Catholics soon began to declare that the Acts of Settlement must be repealed and the proprietors of 1641 re-established. James calls some Irish regiments to England.
1689. William III in England, 12 March 1689: James landed at Kinsale at the head of Irish soldiers. Limerick capitulates to William III, 1691. Shameful violation of the treaty, already under William III, still more under Anne.
D) IRELAND DEFRAUDED AND HUMBLED TO THE DUST. 1692-JULY 4, 1776
a) All notions of "planting" the country with English and Scotch yeomen or tenant farmers were discarded.* Settling German and
In the manuscript there follows "(1701) (Anne)".— Ed.
French Protestants attempted. French Protestants in the towns (woollen manufacturers) flee the English protectionist and mercantile system.
* 1698. The Anglo-Irish Parliament (like obedient colonists) passed, on the command of the mother country, a prohibitory tax on Irish woollen goods export to foreign countries.
1698. In the same year, the English Parliament laid a heavy tax on the import of the home manufactures in England and Wales, and absolutely prohibited their export to other countries. She struck down the manufactures of Ireland, depopulated her cities, and threw the people back upon the land.
The Williamite (imported lords) absentees.[237] Cry against absentee landlords since 1692.
Likewise legislation of England against Irish cattle.
1698: Molyneux pamphlet for the independence of the Irish Parliament (i.e. the English Colony in Ireland) against the English.[3]
Thus began the struggle of the English Colony in Ireland and the English Nation. Simultaneously, struggle between the Anglo-Irish Colony and the Irish Nation. William III resisted the shameful attempts of the English and Anglo-Irish Parliaments to violate the treaties of Limerick and Galway.
ß) Queen Anne. (1701-13; George until 1776). Penal Code239, built up by the Anglo-Irish Parliament with assent of the English Parliament. Most infamous means to make Protestant Proselytes amongst the Irish Catholics by regulations of "Property". A code for the transfer of "Property" from Catholics to Protestants, or to make "Anglicanism" a proprietary title. (Education. Personal disabilities.) (No Catholic able to be a private soldier.) To teach the Catholic religion was a transportable felony, to convert a Protestant to Catholicism an act of treason. To be a Catholic Archbishop — banishment, if returning from banishment — act of high treason; hanged, disembowelled alive, and afterwards quar-tered. Experiment to coerce the mass of the Irish nation into the Anglican religion. Catholics deprived of vote for members of Parliament[239]
This Penal Code intensified the hold of the Catholic Priesthood upon the Irish people.
The poor people fell into habits of indolence. During the palmy days of Protestant ascendancy and Catholic degradation, the Protestants did not encroach upon the Catholics in numbers* E) 1776-1801. TIME OK TRANSITION
a) Before dealing with this transition period, what was the result of English terrorism?
* English incomers absorbed into the Irish people and Catholicised. The towns founded by the English Irish. No English colony (except Ulster Scotch) but English landowners. The North American Revolution forms the first turning-point in Irish history.
ß) 1777 the British army surrendered at Saratoga Springs to the American "rebels". British cabinet forced to make concessions to the Nationalist (English) party in Ireland. 1778. Roman Catholic Relief Billa (passed by the Anglo-Irish Parliament).[240] (Catholics were still excluded from acquiring by purchase, or as tenants, any freeholds[241] interest.) 1779. Free trade with Great Britain. Almost all restraints put upon Irish industry swept away.
1782. T h e Penal Code still further released. T h e Roman Catholics allowed to acquire freehold property for life, or in fee simple, a n d — t o open schools.
1783. Equal rights of the Anglo-Irish Parliament!" Winter 1792-93. After the French Government had annexed Belgium, and England resolved upon French war, another portion of the Penal Code was released. Irish could become Colonels in Army, elective franchise for Irish Parliament etc. Rebellion of 1798.c Belfast Republicans (Wolfe Tone, Lord Fitzgerald). Irish peasants not ripe.
Anglo-Irish House of Commons voted for the Act of Union passed in 1800.[242] By the Legislature and Customs Union of Britain and Ireland closed the struggle between the Anglo-Irish and the English. T h e colony protested against the illegal Act of Union.*
1801-1846
a) 1801-1831. At this time (after the end of the war[243]) a movement for emancipation of Catholics under way among Irish and English (1829).
From 1783, * legislative independence of Ireland, shortly after which duties were imposed on various articles of foreign manufacture, avowedly with the intention of enabling some ot ner people to employ some of their surplus labour etc. The natural consequence was, that Irish manufactures gradually disappeared as the Act of Union came into effect.
Dublin
Master woollen manufacturers 1800 Hands employed Master woolcombers Hands employed Carpet manufacturers Hands employed Silk-loom weavers at work
91 1840 12 4,918 " 602 30 1834 5 230 " 66 13 1841 1 720 " 0 2,500 1840 250
Kilkenny
Blanket manufacturers 1800 Hands employed
56 3,000
1822 42 925
Balbriggan
Calico-looms at work 1799 2,500 1841 226
Wicklow
Handlooms at work 1800 1,000 1841
Cork
Braid weavers , 1800 1,000 Worsted weavers " 2,000 Hosiers " 300 Woolcombers " 700 Cottonweavers " 2,000
1834 40 90 28 110 220
etc. The linen industry (Ulster) did not compensate for this.a
" T h e cotton manufacture of Dublin, which employed 14,000 operatives, has been destroyed; the 3,400 silk looms have been destroyed; the serge b manufacture, which employed 1,491 operatives, has been destroyed; the flannel manufacture of Rathdrum , ihe blanket manufacture of Kilkenny, the camlet' trade of Bandon, the worsted manufactures of Waterford, the ratteen and frieze manufactures of Carrick-on-Suir have been destroyed. O n e business alone survives! ... T h a t fortunate business — which the Union Act has not struck down — that favoured, and (Speech of T. F. Meagher, 1847).*
Every time Ireland was about to develop industrially, she was CRUSHED and reconverted into a purely AGRICULTURAL LAND. After the latest General Census of 1861: * Agricultural Population of Ireland
(including all cottiers[244] and farm labourers with their families)* 4,286,019 In the 798 TOWNS (of which many were in fact small market towns) 1,512,948
5,798,967
Therefore (1861) approximately [4]/[5] purely agricultural, and actually perhaps [6]/[7] if market towns are also counted.
Ireland is therefore purely * agricultural: "Land is life" (Justice Blackburne). Land became the great object of pursuit. The people had now before them the choice between the occupation of land, at any rent, or starvation. System of rack-renting.
"The lord of the land was thus enabled to dictate his own terms, and therefore it has been that we have heard of the payment of £5, 6, 8, and even as much as £10 per acre. Enormous rents, low wages, farms of an enormous extent, let by rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolising landjobbers, to be relet by intermediate oppressors, for five times their value, among the wretched starvers on potatoes and water."
State of popular starvation.*
Corn Laws in England[245] create a monopoly to A CERTAIN EXTENT for the export of IRISH CORN to England. * The average export of grain in the first 3 years following the passage of the Act of Union about 300,000 qrs,
1820 over 1 million qrs, 1834 yearly average of 2V2 million qrs. Amount to pay rent to absentees, and interest to mortgagees (1834), over 30 million dollars (about 7 million pounds sterling). Middlemen accumulated fortunes that they would not invest in the improvement of land, and could not, under the system which prostrated manufactures, invest in machinery etc. All their accumulations were sent therefore to England for investment. An official document published by the British Government shows that the transfers of British securities from England to Ireland, i.e., the investment of Irish capital in England, in the 13 years following the adoption of free trade in 1821, amounted to as many millions of pounds sterling, and thus was Ireland forced to contribute cheap labour and cheap capital to building up "the great works of Britain".*
Many pigs and export of same.
1831-1841. Accretion of Ireland's population from 7,767,401 to 8,175,238
In 10 YEARS 407,837 In the same period there emigrated (somewhat more than 40,000 per YEAR) 450,873 The total being 858,710 * O'Connell. Repeal Movement, Lichfield-House Contract with Whigs.[246] Partial famines. Insurrection Acts, Arms Acts, Coercion
Acts.**
IV
THE PERIOD OF THE LAST 20 YEARS (FROM 1846). * CLEARING OF THE ESTATE OF IRELAND*
Earlier, REPEATED CASES OF PARTIAL FAMINE. NOW GENERAL. This new period was ushered in by the potato blight (1846-47), starvation and the consequent exodus.
Over one million die, in part directly from hunger, in part from DISEASES, etc. (caused by hunger). In 9 years, 1847-55, 1,656,044 left the country.
The revolution of the old agricultural system was, originally, but a natural result of the barren fields. People fled. * (Families clubbed together to send away the youngest and most enterprising.) * Hence, of course, the pooling of small leaseholds and substitution of pasturage for crop farming.
However, soon circumstances arose whereby this became a conscious and deliberate system.
Firstly, the chief factor: Repeal of the Corn Laws was one of the direct consequences of the Irish disaster. As a result, Irish corn lost its monopoly on the English market in the ordinary years. Corn prices dropped. Rents could no longer be paid. In the meantime, the price of meat, wool and other animal products has been rising steadily in the last 20 years. Tremendous growth of the wool industry in England. Pig-raising was partly connected with the old system. Now, chiefly sheep and horned cattle.* [Ireland] deprived of the English market now, as by the Act of Union of her own.*
Contributing circumstances that made this systematic:
Secondly: Reorganisation of agriculture in England. Caricature of same in Ireland.
Thirdly: The despairing flight of starving Irish to England filled basements, hovels, WORKHOUSES in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow with *men, women, children in a state almost of starvation *.
Act of Parliament passed (1847-48) that Irish * landlords had to support their own paupers *. (The English Pauper Law is extended to Ireland.[3]) Hence, the Irish (especially English) landlords, mostly deep in debt, try *to get rid of the people and clear their estates*.
Fourthly: * Encumbered Estates Act (1853?)b:
"The landlord was ruined, for he could collect no rents, and he was at the same time liable for the payment of enormous taxes for the maintenance of his poor neighbours. His land was encumbered with mortgages and settlements, created when food was high, and he could pay no interest; and now a law was passed, by aid of which property could be summarily disposed of at a public sale, and the proceeds distributed among those who had legal claims upon it."*
ABSENTEE PROPRIETORS (English capitalists, INSURANCE SOCIETIES etc.) thereby multiplied, equally former MIDDLEMEN etc., who wanted to run their farms on modern economic lines.
Eviction of farmers partly by friendly agreement terminating tenure. - But much more EVICTION on a large scale (forcibly by CROWBAR BRIGADE, beginning with the destruction of roofs), forcible EJECTION. (Also used as political retribution.) This has continued since 1847 to this day. (Abercorn, Viceroy of Ireland.) African razzias * (razzias of the little African kings). (People driven from the land. The starving population of the towns largely increased.)
"The tenantry are turned out of the cottages by scores at a time.... Land agents direct the operation. The work is done by a large force of police and soldiery. Under the protection of the latter, the 'crowbar brigade' advances to the devoted township, takes possession of the houses.... The sun that rose on a village sets on a desert." (Galway Paper, 1852.) (Abercorn.)*
Let us now see how this system affected the land in Ireland, where conditions are quite different from those in England.
DECREASE OF CULTIVATED LAND. 1861-1866
* Decrease in cereal crops Decrease in green crops*
1861-65 428,041 acres 107,984 acres 1866 42,876 acres 20,077 acres
Total 470,917 128,061
DECREASE OF * YIELD PER STATUTE ACRE OF EVERY CROP 3
1847-1865 per cent: the exact decrease: oats 16.3, flax 47.9, turnips 36.1, potatoes 50. Some years would show a greater decrease, but on the whole it has been gradual since 1847.
Estimated Average Produce per Statute Acre
Wheat Potatoes Flax cwts tons stones (14 lbs.)
1851 12.5 5.1 38.6 7866 11.3 2.9 24.9*
Though Ireland exported considerable quantities of wheat in the past, it is now said to be good only for cultivating OATS'[3] (the yield of which per acre also continuously decreases).
In fact: 1866 Ireland shipped out only 13,250 qrs of wheat against 48,589 qrs shipped in (that is, almost fourfold). Meanwhile, it shipped out approximately one million qrs of oats (for £1,201,737).
* Since the exodus, the land has been underfed and overworked, partly from the injudicious consolidation of farms, and partly because, under the corn-acre system,[247] the farmer in a great measure trusted to his labourers to manure the land for him. Rents and profits (where the farmer is no peasant farmer) may increase, although the produce of the soil decreases. The total produce may diminish, and still greater part of it be converted into surplus produce, falling to the landlord and (great) farmer. And the price of the surplus produce has risen.*
Hence, sterilisation (gradual) of the land, as in Sicily by the ancient Romans (ditto in Egypt).
We shall speak of the livestock, but first about the population.
DECREASE OF THE POPULATION
1801: 5,319,867; 1841: 8,222,664; 1851: 6,515,794; 1861: 5,764,543. If the trend continues, there will be 5,300,000 "in 1871, that is, less than in 1801. I shall now show, however, that the population will be lower still in 1871, even though the emigration rate remains constant.
EMIGRATION
Emigration ACCOUNTS naturally for part of the decrease. In 1845-66 there emigrated 1,990,244, or approximately 2,000,000 IRISH. (Unheard of.) (About [2]/[5] of the TOTAL emigration from the UNITED KINGDOM in 1845-66 which was 4,657,588.) In 1831-41 emigration approximately equalled half the accretion of population during the decade, and after 1847 it was considerably higher than the accretion.
However, emigration alone *does not account for the decrease of the population since 1847*.
DECREASE OF THE NATURAL ANNUAL ACCRETION OF THE POPULATION
The accretion (annual) in 1831-41 was 1.1 per cent, or ABOUT 1 Vio P e r c e n t a year. If the population had increased in the same proportion in 1841-51, it would have been 9,074,514 in 1851. In fact, however, it was only 6,515,794. Consequently, the deficit was 2,558,720. Out of this figure, emigration accounted for 1,274,213. That leaves 1,284,507 unaccounted for. Over a million, but not the whole deficit of 1,284,507, died in the FAMINE. Hence, evidently, natural population growth decreased in 1841-51.
This is borne out by the decade of 1851-61. No FAMINE. The population decreased from 6,515,794 to 5,764,543. Absolute decrease: 751,251. Yet emigration in this period was over 1,210,000. Henoe there was an accretion of NEARLY 460,000 during the ten years. Because 751,251+460,000 = the number of emigrants= 1,211,251. Emigration claimed almost triple the accretion. The rate of accretion was 0.7 per cent per year, hence considerably lower than the 1.1 per cent of 1831-41.
The explanation is very simple. * The increase of a population by births must principally depend on the proportion which those between 20 and 35 bear to the rest of the community. Now the proportion of persons between the ages of 20 and 35 in the population of the United Kingdom is about 1:3.98 or 25.06 per cent, while their proportion in the emigration even of the present day is about 1:1.89 or 52.76 per cent.* And probably still greater in Ireland.
PHYSICAL DETERIORATION OF THE POPULATION
* In 1806, with a total population of 5,574,107, there was an excess of males over females by 50,469, whilst in 1867, with a total population of 5,557,196, there is an excess of the females over males.* At the same time not only a relative, but an absolute increase in the number *of deaf-mutes,[3] blind, insane, idiotic, and decrepit inhabitants. Contrasting 1851 with 1861, whilst the population had decreased enormously, the number of deaf-mutes had increased by 473, on their former total of 5,180; the lame and decrepit by 225, on their former total of 4,375; the blind by 1,092, on their former total of 5,767; the lunatic and idiotic, by the immense number of 4,118, on their former total of 9,980; mounting up, in 1861, notwithstanding the decrease in the population, to 14,098.
WAGES
Wages have not risen more than 20% since the potato famine. The price of potatoes has risen nearly 200%, and the rise* for essential foodstuffs has been 100% *on an average.
Professor Cliffe Leslie, i-n the Economist of February 9, 1867, says:
"After a loss of two-fifths of the population in 21 years, throughout most of the island, the rate of wages is now only Is. a day; a shilling does not go further than 6d. did 21 years ago. Owing to this rise in the ordinary food the labourer is worse off than he was ten years ago."
Partial famines, especially in Munster and Connaught.* Bankruptcy of SHOPKEEPERS PERMANENT. Market towns, etc., fall into decay.
THE RESULTS OE THIS PROCESS
In 1855-66, 1,032,694 Irishmen replaced by 996,859 head of LIVESTOCK (cattle, sheep and pigs). That, in fact, was the accretion of
;l After this English word Marx gives its German equivalent in brackets.— Ed.
LIVESTOCK during that period, with the DECREASE OF HORSES (20,bob) compensated by four sheep [to one horse], which are therefore subtracted from the accretion.
* c o \ soi m vi ION oi i• \KMS*
From 1851 to 1861 the TOTAL DECREASE of EARMS was 120,000. (Though the number of 15-30 acre RKMS and EAKMS of .'50 acres and over increased.) Thus, the decrease affected particularly farms of one to under 15 acres.
In 1861 about [3]/-, of the area (Ireland's total area: 20,3-19,924 acres) or 12 million acres was held by 569,844 tenants who worked plots of one up to less than 100 acres, arid about L7:> (8 million acres) by tenants with over 100 and 500 acres and over (31,927 tenants).
T h e process of consolidation in full gear. Ulster. (Cultivation of flax; Scottish Protestant tenants.)
The Times etc. officially congratulates Abercorn as Vicerouy on this system. He, too, is one of these DEVASTATORS. Lord Dufferin: over-population etc.'[1]
In sum, it is a question of life and death. Meagher, Hennessy, Irishman.
DECREASE Ol '.RIME IN 1RE1AND
Committed (Convicted for trial
1852 17,078 10,454 1866 4,32b' 2,4 US
V UNITED STATES AND FENIANISM
Writ ten on about December Hi, 181)7
See this volume, pp. 428, 43.5.— F.d.
Endnotes
[228] This outline is a draft conspectus for a report on the Irish question that Marx was to make at a meeting of the German Workers' Educational Society in London on December 16, 1867. "Yesterday I gave a IV2 hour lecture on Ireland at our German Workers' Society (though a further 3 German workers' associations were represented, about 100 people in all)," Marx wrote to Engels on December 17 (see present edition, Vol. 42). Some members of the General Council of the International also attended the meeting. Eccarius, a Council member who attached great importance to this report, which explained the attitude of the General Council towards the Irish national liberation movement, took notes in order to prepare them for publication (for Eccarius' record of Marx's report see this volume, pp. 317-19). A copy of these notes was sent to Johann Philipp Becker, the editor of Der Vorbote, but they were not published. The outline was written by Marx both in German and English. English words used by Marx are set in small caps. Longer passages written in English in the original are placed in asterisks. German words and sentences occurring in the passages written by Marx in English are, with a few exceptions, not indicated, so as to avoid numerous footnotes. The outline was first published in English in Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971. On the German Workers' Educational Society in London see Note 50. p. 194
[229] A reference to the three biggest national liberation uprisings in Ireland. The 1641-52 uprising was provoked by the colonialist policy which the English absolute monarchy pursued in Ireland and which was continued during the seventeenth-century English Revolution by the English bourgeoisie and the "new" nobility. The majority of the insurgents were Irish peasants led by.the expropriated clan chiefs and the Catholic clergy. The Anglo-Irish nobility, descendants of the first English conquerors who had become, related to the Irish clan élite and adopted many Irish customs and habits, also participated in the uprising. In October 1642, the insurgents formed the Irish Confederation in Kilkenny. A struggle went on within it between the indigenous Irish, who stood for Ireland's independence and action both against the Long Parliament and the English Royalists, and the Anglo-Irish aristocrats, who endeavoured to come to terms with Charles I on condition that they were allowed to keep their estates and receive a guarantee of freedom of worship for Catholics. The latter gained the upper hand and a treaty was signed with a representative of Charles I. After the defeat of the Royalists in England, Oliver Cromwell, the head of the new bourgeois republic, organised an expedition to Ireland on the pretext of suppressing a Royalist revolt there but in fact with the aim of reducing it to colonial submission and plundering the land. (He hoped that by confiscating Irish lands he would solve the problem of paying the creditors of the republic, the officers and men of the army.) In 1649-52, the Irish uprising was brutally suppressed; the garrisons and population of entire towns were destroyed, the Irish were sold en masse into slavery in the West Indies, and Irish lands were confiscated and handed over to new English landlords. These actions by Cromwell and his successors did much to prepare the ground for the restoration of the monarchy in England in 1660. The 1689-91 uprising followed in the wake of the 1688-89 coup d'état in England (known as the Glorious Revolution), involving the overthrow of 18-733 James II and the establishment of a bourgeois-aristocratic constitutional monarchy in England under William III of Orange. The Catholic nobility in Ireland, supported by the masses who were dissatisfied with the colonial regime, rose against William. Under the banner of defence of the Stuarts the insurgents fought for the abolition of Ireland's political and religious inequality and the return of the confiscated estates. James II, who had taken refuge in Ireland and was endeavouring to use the Irish movement to regain the crown, became its official head and recognised the demands of the Irish people. But the differences between the reactionary Jacobites and the Irish patriots weakened the insurgents. Despite their stubborn resistance, they were finally defeated. The 1798 uprising was the result of the upsurge of national sentiments in Ireland, caused by the growth of the liberation movement and the impact of the American and French bourgeois revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century. It was prepared by Irish bourgeois revolutionaries (Theobald Wolfe Tone, Edward Fitzgerald and others), who in 1791 founded a patriotic society, "The United Irishmen", in Belfast (the chief town' of the Northern Irish province of Ulster) and proclaimed a fight for an independent Irish republic. On the eve of the uprising, however, most of the society's leaders were tracked down by government spies and arrested. The uprising broke out on May 23 and lasted until June 17, 1798. It flared up in a number of counties in South-Eastern and Northern Ireland and was particularly strong in County Wexford. The majority of the insurgents were peasants and urban poor. In August and September 1798, after the landing of a French force in support of the Irish patriots, the uprising spread to a number of places in Connaught. The English authorities launched savage reprisals against the rebels (almost all the leaders were executed) and passed the Act of Anglo-Irish Union (see Note 123).
[230] About 1155 Pope Adrian IV issued a Bull which conferred on the English King Henry II the title of Supreme Ruler of Ireland in exchange for the promise to subject the Irish Church to Rome. Henry II used this "gift" to launch an aggressive expedition against Ireland in 1171. In 1576, in connection with the exacerbation of relations between Protestant England and the Catholic powers, Pope Gregory XIII declared that Queen Elizabeth I had forfeited the right to the Irish crown.
[232] T h e n a m e given in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to merchants and bankers, particularly those from the City of London, who took part in colonial plunder and financial speculation. During the English revolution of the mid-seventeenth century, "adventurers" loaned Parliament considerable sums of money to finance the war against the Royalists in exchange for land confiscated in Ireland. A m o n g the "adventurers" were many statesmen, members of the gentry, and civil servants.
[235] Amalekites—members of a nomadic tribe living in the second millennium B.C. on the Sinai. The Amalekite warriors made raids on Palestine and drove the population into captivity. At the turn of the tenth century B.C. the Amalekites were practically annihilated.
[237] Absentees—landlords who owned estates in Ireland but lived permanently in England. Their estates were managed by realty agents who robbed the Irish peasants, or were leased to speculator-middlemen who subleased small plots to the peasants.
[239] Catholics were officially deprived of voting rights by the Act on the Regulation of Elections passed in 1727. Irish Catholics had not enjoyed the right to stand for election to Parliament from the end of the seventeenth century, after the introduction of an oath to be taken by M.P.s involving the abjuration of Catholic dogma. The latter restriction was only lifted in 1829. Voting rights were restored to the Catholic population somewhat earlier, in 1793, since the English landlords themselves often needed the votes of their Catholic tenants.
[240] Marx refers to a n u m b e r of concessions which the English Government was forced to make to Ireland because of the victory of the American troops at Saratoga in October 1777, during the American War of Independence, and the reaction to this event in England. The penal laws most hated by the Irishmen were abrogated (in 1778 the Government abrogated the law prohibiting the 18* Catholics to rent more than two acres of land from Protestants or to enter into commercial or credit agreements with them). However, as before the Catholics were deprived of the right to elect M.P.s.
[2 4 1] Freehold—a category of small landownership which had come down from medieval England. The freeholder paid the lord a comparatively small rent in cash and was allowed to dispose of his land as he saw fit. In Ireland, freeholders were mainly English colonists and their descendants.
[2 4 2] See Note 123.
[2 4 3] Marx refers to England's war against Napoleonic France which ended in 1815. On the movement for the emancipation of Catholics mentioned by Marx further in this passage, see Note 223.
[2 4 4] Cottiers—a category of the rural population consisting of land-hungry or landless peasants. In Ireland cottiers rented small plots of land and cottages from landlords or real estate agents on extremely onerous terms. T h e i r position resembled that of farmhands.
[4] The Lausanne Congress of the International in 1867 designated Brussels as the venue of the next general congress. On February 24, 1868, the General Council called on all sections to begin preparing the Congress agenda. However, the Belgian Minister of Justice, Jules Bara, declared in the Chamber of Deputies on May 16 that he would not permit the convocation of the Congress in Brussels and urged the deputies to renew the Aliens Law of 1835, under which any foreigner could be expelled from the country as politically unreliable. In view of this, at the General Council meeting of May 26, 1868, Marx raised the question of not meeting in Brussels (see The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 346, May 30, 1868). The resolution drawn up by Marx to this effect was read by Jung at the General Council meeting of June 2, since Marx had left for Manchester. Bara's statement and the prolongation of the Aliens Law caused great discontent in Belgium. The Brussels Section of the International sent the Minister a protest letter which was published in La Tribune du Peuple, No. 5, May 24, 1868. In their letters to the General Council, De Paepe and Vandenhouten, the leaders of the Brussels Section, urged the Council not to yield to the government because this threatened the further existence of the International in Belgium. Consequently, on Marx's proposal, the General Council meeting of June 16 cancelled the resolution of June 2 and Brussels remained the venue for the next annual congress (see this volume, pp. 320-21 and also Marx's letter to Engels of June 20, 1868, present edition, Vol. 43). The text of the June 2 resolution was included in the Minutes of the General Council meeting of June 2, 1868, and was also published in The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 347, June 6, 1868.
[6] " The public meeting to celebrate the anniversary of the June 1848 insurrection of the Paris workers was held on June 29, 1868 in the Cleveland Hall, London. Such meetings were annually held by the German Workers' Educational Society in London jointly with other émigré organisations. The French petty-bourgeois democrat Félix Pyat, who attended the meeting, delivered a speech and moved a provocative resolution urging terroristic acts against Napoleon III (the resolution was published in The Bee-Hive, No. 351, July 4, 1868). The Brussels Espiègle, No. 25, July 5, 1868, published a report of the meeting which described it as a meeting of the International with Pyat as one of its leaders. This statement was repeated in other newspapers. The General Council held that this could discredit the International in the eyes of the workers and give the Bonapartist government a pretext for the persecution of its members in France and Belgium. Consequently, at its meeting on July 7 the Council resolved, on Marx's proposal, to disavow Pyat's behaviour in a resolution to this effect (see also Marx's letter to Engels of July 7, 1868, present edition, Vol. 43). When the General Council's resolution against Pyat appeared in the press, a split took place in the French Section in London, of which he was a member. Eugène Dupont, Hermann Jung, Paul Lafargue and other proletarian members of the section expressed their disapproval of Pyat's adventurous and provocative tactics and withdrew from it. Pyat's group lost ties with the International but continued to act in its name and repeatedly supported anti-proletarian elements opposing Marx's line in the General Council. On May 10, 1870, the General Council officially dissociated itself from this group (see this volume, pp. 127-28). The text of this resolution has been preserved in the Minutes of the General Council meeting of July 7, 1868. It was first published in La Liberté, No. 55, July 12, 1868 and reproduced in La Cigale, No. 29, July 19, La Tribune du Peuple, No. 7, July 26, 1868 (with the end of the resolution denying Pyat's connections with the International omitted), and in other newspapers. This resolution was first published in English in The General Council of the First International. 1866-1868, Moscow, 1964.
[7] 17 In 1866-68, after the suppression of the Polish insurrection of 1863-64, the Russian Government promulgated "Regulations on the Gubernia and Uyezd Administration in the Kingdom of Poland" and a number of ukases aimed at the abolition of Polish institutions and the consolidation of the administrative apparatus — the chief means of national oppression. The number of gubernias was increased, the prerogatives of the governors appointed by the Russian Government were extended, supreme bodies (the State Council and others) were abolished, and different administrative departments (post, communications) were subordinated to the respective ministries in St. Petersburg.
[245] T h e Corn Laws, the first of which were passed as early as the fifteenth century, imposed high import duties on agricultural products in order to maintain high prices for these products on the domestic market. The Corn Laws served the interests of the big landowners. The struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy over the Corn Laws ended in their repeal in June 1846. The repeal of the Corn Laws marked the victory of the industrial bourgeoisie whose motto was Free Trade (see also Note 219).
[2 4 6] In February 1835, Daniel O'Connell, the leader of the Irish bourgeois nationalists, signed an agreement with representatives of the Whigs according to which he was to support them in the House of Commons in return for certain concessions; in particular, Irish political leaders were promised posts in the administrative apparatus after the Whigs came to office. For his part, O'Connell undertook to stop the Repeal of the Union campaign. T h e agreement was negotiated in Lord Lichfield's London house and became known as the Lichfield-House Contract. It meant that the liberal circles of the Irish bourgeoisie and the medium landowners had reached a compromise with the English politicians and had renounced consistent struggle for Ireland's independence (see also Note 223).
[2 4 7] See Note 218.
[2] Marx means an extensive amnesty granted by President Lincoln in A 863 and President Johnson in 1865 to persons who had fought in the US Civil War on the side of the South.
[1] In the autumn of 1867 the General Council of the International Working Men's Association launched a widespread campaign among the English workers in support of the Irish national liberation movement led by the Fenians. The memorial written by Marx was an integral part of this campaign. The Fenians were Irish revolutionaries who named themselves after the "Féne"— a name of the ancient population of Ireland. Their first organisations appeared in the 1850s in the USA among the Irish immigrants and later in Ireland itself. The secret Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, as the organisation was known in the early 1860s, aimed at establishing an independent Irish republic by means of an armed uprising. The Fenians, who expressed the interests of the Irish peasantry, came chiefly from the urban petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia and believed in conspiracy tactics. The British Government attempted to suppress the Fenian movement by severe police reprisals. On September 18, 1867, the Fenians made an armed attack on a prison van in an attempt to liberate Kelly and Deasy, two of their leaders. The latter managed to escape but a policeman was killed during the clash. Five Irishmen (Maguire, Condon, Larkin, Allen and O'Brien) were charged with murder and brought to trial. Although there was no direct evidence, they were sentenced to death. Maguire was subsequently pardoned, and Condon, as an American citizen, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. The others were executed. The Fenian trial in Manchester aroused a storm of protest in Ireland and England. On the insistence of Marx, the General Council of the International began, on November 19, a discussion on the Irish question during which the leaders of the international proletarian organisation expressed their solidarity with the struggle of the Irish people for independence and condemned the position of the reformist trade union leaders who, in the wake of the English bourgeois radicals, denied the right of the Fenians to resort to revolutionary methods in the struggle. The discussion was scheduled to continue on November 26 (see this volume, pp. 189-93), but when the news of the conviction was received, the General Council convened a special meeting on November 20 and addressed a memorial to the Home Secretary asking for the commutation of the death sentence. The British Government ignored the memorial. Because of opposition from the trade union leaders, the English labour press did not publish the memorial in its original wording. A report on the special meeting of the General Council, published in The Bee-Hive, No. 319, November 23, 1867, only summarised it, and named the General Council members who had signed it. The French translation was published by Le Courrier français, No. 163, November 24. In English the memorial was first published in full in The General Council of the First International. 1866-1868, Moscow, 1964. This document is also preserved in the form of the manuscript copy made by Mrs. Marx which fully coincides with the text entered into the Minute Book. Written as an article, this copy was apparently to be sent to the press. In this volume the memorial is reproduced from this copy.
[3] Marx wrote this item on the basis of a letter from Johann Baptist Schweitzer dated April 29, 1868. The item was included in the report of the General Council meeting of May 12, 1868 published in The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 344, May 16, 1868, but is not to be found in the Minute Book. Informing Engels of Schweitzer's letter, Marx wrote to him on May 4, 1868 that he intended "to use this question in the interests of the Party", and insisted on an inquiry into the condition of the workers employed in the iron trade of the Rhine Province (see this letter and Marx's letter to Engels of May 7 and the latter's reply of May 6-7, 1868, present edition, Vol. 43).
[5] This refers to the Aliens Law adopted in Belgium on September 22, 1835 and prolonged every three years. Despite the widespread protest campaign in the press and at meetings, it was renewed at the end of June 1865. In May 1868, the Belgian Government, for fear of fresh mass action, prolonged it without discussion in the Chamber of Deputies.