6. F. Engels. Varia on the History of the Irish Confiscations
16th Saeculum." Henry VIII
1536. Parliament in Dublin introduces the OATH OF SUPREMACY to the King and he is given the privilege of taking the first-fruits of all ECCLESIASTICAL LIVINGS. Quite different in the doing, however, and the subsequent insurrections were directed, among other things, against the Oath. Refusal to take the OATH OF SUPREMACY was high treason in Ireland just as in England (Murphy, p. 249).(1)
16th Saeculum. Edward VI and Mary
Confiscations in Queen's and King's Counties. During the reign of Edward VI, the O'Moores of Leix and the O'Connors of Offaley carried on a feud with some lords of the Pale,(2)
as was usual in Ireland.
The government qualified this as rebellion. General Bellingham, later Lord Deputy, was sent against them and forced them to submit. They were advised to see the King and submit to him in person as O'Neill had done successfully in 1542.(3)
O'Moore and O'Connor, unlike O'Neill, were imprisoned and their estates confiscated. But that was not the last of the clans. The inhabitants declared that the land belonged to the clans, not to the chiefs, who therefore could not forfeit it, and were, at most, liable to forfeiting their private domains. They declined to move out. The government sent troops, and had^ the land cleared after unintermittent fighting and extermination of the population (Murphy, p. 255).
This was the pattern for all subsequent confiscations under Elizabeth and James. The Irish were denied all rights against the Anglo-Irish of the Pale, with resistance treated as rebellion. From then on that sort of thing became usual.
By Acts in the 3rd and 4th years of the reign of Philip and Mary, c. 1 and 2, the LORD DEPUTY, the Earl of Sussex,[3] was endowed with "full power and authority [...] to give and to grant to all and every Their Majesties' subjects, English or Irish [...], at his election and pleasure, such estates in fee simple, fee tail,[354] leases for term of years, life or lives" in these two counties "as for the more sure planting or strength of the countries with good subjects shall be thought unto his wisdom and discretion meet and convenient" (Murphy, p. 256).
16th Saeculum. Elizabeth
English policy under Elizabeth: to keep Ireland in a state of division and strife.
"Should we exert ourselves," the English Government averred, "in reducing Ireland to order and civility, it must soon acquire power, consequence and riches. The inhabitants will be thus alienated from England; they will cast themselves into the arms of some foreign power, or erect themselves into an independent and separate state. Let us rather connive at their disorders, for a weak and disordered people can never attempt to detach themselves from the Crown of England." Thus Sir Henry Sidney and Sir John Perrot, successive LORD DEPUTIES (the last-named the best that they ever had, held the post in 1584-87), describe this HORRID POLICY, against which they protest (Leland, Vol. II, p. 292 b and Murphy, p. 246). Perrot's intention of granting the Irish equal rights with the Anglo-Irish and obviating confiscations was blocked by the English party in Dublin.
(Yet he it was who had O'Donnell's sonc brought aboard a ship, filled with drink and borne away.)
Tyrone's rebellion, among other things, against religious persecution: "He and other lords of Ulster entered into a secret combination, about this time, that they would defend the Roman Catholic religion ... that they would suffer no sheriffs nor garrisons to be within the compass of their territories, and that they would [...] jointly resist all invasions of the English" (Camden).[355] The conduct of Deputy Mountjoy in this war is described by Camden: "He made incursions on all sides, spoiled the corn, burnt all the houses and villages that could be found, and did so gall the rebels, that, pent in with garrisons and streightened more and more every day, they were reduced to live like wild beasts, skulking up and down the woods and deserts" (Murphy, p. 251).
See Holinshed, Chronicles0 (p. 460) on how Ireland was laid waste in this war. Half the population is said to have perished.
According to the RETURNS for 1602 by John Tyrrell, the Mayor of Dublin, prices there climbed: wheat from 36/- to 180/- the QUARTER, barley malt from 10/- to 43/-and OAT MALT from 5/- to 22/- the BARREL, peas from 5/- to 40/- the PECK, oats from 3/4 to 20/- the BARREL, BEEF from 26/8 to 160/- the CARCASS, MUTTON ditto from 3/- to 26/-, VEAL ditto from 10/- to 29/-, lamb from 1/- to 6/-, and a pig from 8/- to 30/- (Leland, Vol. II, p. 410).
Desmond was deprived of his estates in all counties of Munster except Clare, and also in Dublin. They were worth £7,000 per annum. The Irish Parliament of 1586 expropriated 140 landowners by confiscation in Munster alone under the Act of the 28th year of Elizabeth's reign, c. 7 and 8. MacGeoghegan lists the names of the GRANTEES of Desmond's ESTATES a; some of these families are still, and up to 1847 nearly all were, in possession.
(? probably cum grano salis).
The annual Crown rent on these ESTATES was 2d to 3d per acre, with no indigenous Irish admitted as TENANTS and the government undertaking to keep adequate garrisons.
Neither provision was observed. Some estates were abandoned by the GRANTEES and reoccupied by the Irish. Many of the UNDERTAKERS stayed in England and appointed AGENTS, "ignorant, negligent, and corrupt" (Leland, Vol. Ill, p. 311).
17th Saeculum. James I
Penal Laws against Catholics (Elizabeth, in the 2nd year of reign, 1560, c. 1, Irish [Statutes, Vol. I, p. 275])[356] are applied more and more from the very beginning of the reign of James I, it becoming dangerous to practise [Catholicism].
Under Elizabeth 2 c. 1, the FINE of 12d was imposed for every NON-ATTENDANCE AT PROTESTANT CHURCH and, in 1605, under James, imprisonment was added by RO.YAL PROCLAMATION alone and, hence, unlawfully. This did not help. Besides, in 1605 all Catholic priests were ordered out of Ireland in 40 days on pain of death.
SURRENDERS OF ESTATES AND REGRANTS (see Davies, 7b).[357] These followed the pronouncement of TANISTRY and GAVELKIND358 as unlawful by the COURT OF KINGS BENCH 3 5 9 in the HILARY TERM in the third year of the reign of James I. A Royal Proclamation stipulated SURRENDER [of estates] and REGRANT under new valid titles. Most Irish chiefs came forward to receive incontestable title at last, but this was made conditional on their giving up the clan relationship in favour of the English LANDLORD-TENANT relationship (Murphy, p. 261).
This in 1605 (see "Chronology"[360]).
PLANTATION OF ULSTER.According to Leland, Irish UNDERTENANTS and SERVANTS were TACITLY EXEMPTED from the OATH OF SUPREMACY, whereas all the other planters were compelled to take it.
Carte says[361] that all Irish settlers and the NATIVES who were allowed part of their land were exempted, but this was irrelevant
•' Engels took the reference to MacGeoghegan's History of Ireland (Dublin, 1844) from Murphy, pp. 257-58.— Ed.
because it [the taking of the Oath] could not be enforced anyway. The Scottish Presbyterians in Ulster also refused to take the OATH OF SUPREMACY, and this was suffered by the authorities (Murphy, p. 266). That may have been useful for the Irish as well.[11]
Carte estimates the number of English settlers in Ulster in 1641 at 20,000 and of Scottish settlers at 100,000 (Ormonde, Vol. I, p. I77).b
Sir Arthur Chichester, LORD DEPUTY, was rewarded for his services in this PLANTATION with the territory of Innoshowen (?) "and all the lands possessed by O'Dogherty, a tract of country far exceeding the allotments generally made to nothern undertakers" (Leland, Vol. II, p. 438). As early as 1633 these ESTATES were valued at £10,000 per annum (Strafford's State Letters? Vol. II, p. 294). Chichester was the ancestor of Marquis of Donegal, who would have had £300,000 per-annum for his Belfast estate alone, if one of his ancestors had not surrendered it to others under long LEASES (Murphy, p. 265).
T h e PLANTATION of Ulster culminated the first period, with a new means discovered for confiscation: DEFECTIVE TITLES. This is effective under James and Charles, until Cromwell renews the invasion. See extracts from Carte [Ormonde], 2 1 / b 3 6 2
Another nice pretext for confiscation was that
old Crown rents, long forgotten by Crown and landowners, were still due from many ESTATES. These were now pulled out and, wherever unpaid, the ESTATE was FORFEITED. Nor receipts existed, and that was enovigh (Murphy, p. 269).
Concerning the attempt to confiscate Connaught (see "Chronology", and O'Conor, Catholics),[363] recall James' dirty trick:
when the people of Connaught SURRENDERED their titles to a specially appointed ROYAL COMMISSION in 1616 and had these RECONVEYED BY NEW PATENTS, THEY PAYING £3,000 FOR THEIR ENROLMENT IN CHANCERY, the titles were not registered. A new commission was named on this pretext in 1623 to declare them null and void by reason of deliberate default, an oversight that depended not on the landowners but the government. (See Carte, Ormonde, [Vol. I,] pp. 47 and 48.) In the meantime, James died.
A COURT OF WARDS for Ireland was established in 1614; Carte avers in Ormonde, Vol. I, p. 517, that no lawful BASIS existed for it as for that in England. Meant to bring up Catholic heirs in the Protestant religion and English customs. Its president was the good d Sir William Parsons, who had helped plan it.e 17th Sâeculum. Charles I
That the Irish insisted in the "GRACES" [3 6 4] that "three score years' possession" (of an ESTATE) "should conclude His Majesty's title" was quite understandable, for this was the "law of England" (Strafford, State Letters, Vol. I, p. 279) by the Act of the 21st year of James' reign (Murphy, p. 274).
Yet English law applied to the Irish only in so far as it suited the [English] Government.
Strafford wrote to the English Secretary of State on December 16, 1634, that in his Irish Parliament "the Protestants are the majority, and this may be of great use to confirm and settle His Majesty's title to the plantations of Connaught and Ormond; for this you may be sure of, all the Protestants are for plantations, all the others are against them; so as these, being the great number, you can want no help they can give you therein. Nay, in case there be no title to be made out to these countries in the crown, yet should not I despair, forth of reasons of state, and for the strength and security of the Kingdom, to have them passed to the King by an immediate Act of Parliament" (State Letters, Vol. I, p. 353).
Outside Connaught, too, money was extorted continuously on
p a i n of INQUIRY INTO TITLES.
The O'Byrnes of Wicklow, for example, twice paid £15,000 to preserve a portion of their ESTATES, while the City of London paid £70,000 to prevent confiscation of its PLANTATIONS in Colrain and Derry for alleged breach of covenant (Leland, Vol. Ill, p. 39).
The COURT OF HIGH COMMISSION established by Wentworth in the year 1633, after the English model,[365] "with the same formality and the same tremendous powers" (Leland, Vol. Ill, p. 29), and this naturally without Parliament's consent, in order-"to bring the people here to a conformity in religion, and, in the way to that, raise, perhaps, a good revenue to the Crown" (January 31, 1633, State Letters, Vol. I, p. 188). The Court saw to it that all newly-appointed officials, doctors, barristers, etc., and all those who "sued out livery of their estates" should take the OATH OF SUPREMACY,
which, as Macaulay observed, was A RELIGIOUS INQUISITION where that of the STAR CHAMBER was political.
Then the CASTLE CHAMBER, called STAR CHAMBER366 as in England, which, Lord Deputy Chichester said, was "the proper court to punish jurors who will not find a verdict for the King upon good evidence"
(oft-quoted passage from Desiderata Curiosa Hibemiae, Vol. I, p. 262 a).
It is said therein that the penalties there employed consisted in "imprisonment and loss of ears"; and "fines, pillory, boring through the tongue, marking on the forehead with an iron and other infamous punishments" were likewise applied, as is stated in the indictment of Strafford (Murphy, p. 279).
p. 454). In Galway he imposed fines not only on the jury that would not find a verdict for the Crown, but also on the sheriff "for returning so insufficient, indeed, we conceive, so packed a Jury, in £1,000 to His Majesty" ([State Letters], August 1635, Vol. I, p. 451).
By the 28th of Henry VIII, c. 5, 6 and 13, all recourse to the Pope's jurisdiction was prohibited and all Irish came under the Protestant ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS, whose verdict could be appealed against to the King alone. They took cognizance of all marriages, baptisms, burials, wills, and ADMINISTRATIONS, and punished RECUSANTS FOR NON-ATTENDANCE AT CHURCH under the 2nd of Elizabeth, c. 2, and also collected the tithes. Bishop Burnet (Life of Dr. Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore, p. 89)a said these courts "were often managed by a chancellor that bought his place, and so thought he had a right to all the profits he could make out of it. And their whole business seemed to be nothing but oppression and extortion.... The officers of the court thought they had a sort of right to oppress the natives, and that all was well got that was wrung from them ... they made it their business to draw people into trouble by vexatious suits, and to hold them so long in that, for 3d worth of the tithe of turf, they would be put to a £5 charge".
In the "GRACES", which never materialised,
Protestant clergymen were to have been forbidden "to keep private prisons of their own" for spiritual offences, so that offenders should be committed to the King's public gaols (Murphy, p. 281).
About the Protestant clergy see Spenser, excerpt 5a.[367]
Borlase and Parsons encouraged the rebellion everywhere. According to Lord Castlehaven's Memoirs,h they said: "The more rebels, the more confiscations." Leland (Vol. Ill, p. 161), too, observes that, as before, "extensive forfeitures were the favourite object of the chief governors and their friends".
By that time, the Irish Royalist army was to have been 50,000 strong through reinforcement from England and Scotland.
See Carte, Ormonde, Vol. Ill, p. 61, for the instructions lo the army.[368]
The motto of the Kilkenny Confederates[36]" was: Pro deo, pro rege, et patria Hibernia unanimes[1]' (Borlase, Irish Rebellion, p. 128)(1
— so that is where the Prussians lifted it from.
17th Saeculum. Cromwell
Drogheda MASSACRE.370 After a successful assault "quarter had been promised to all who should lay down their arms — a promise observed until all resistance was at an end. But at the moment that the city was completely reduced, Cromwell ... issued his fatal orders that the garrison should be put to the sword. His soldiers, many of them with reluctance, butchered the prisoners. The governor and all his gallant officers, betrayed to slaughter by the cowardice of some of their troops, were massacred without mercy. For five days this hideous execution was continued with every circumstance of horror" (Leland, Vol. Ill, p. 350). A number of ECCLESIASTICS found within the walls were bayoneted. "Thirty persons only remained unslaughtered ... and these were instantly transported as slaves to Barbadoes" ([Leland, Vol. Ill,] p. 350).
Petty (Political Anatomy, Dublin edition of Petty's tracts, pp. 312-15)a estimates that 112,000 British and 504,000 Irish inhabitants of Ireland died in the war of 1641-52. In 1653, SOLDIERS' DEBENTURES371 were sold at 4/- to 5/- in the pound, so that with 20/- being the price [nominal] of 2 acres of land, and there being 8 million acres of good land in Ireland, all Ireland was purchasable for £1 million, though in 1641 it was worth £8 million. Petty estimates the value of the livestock in Ireland in 1641 at £4 million, and in 1652 at less than £500,000 so that Dublin had to get meat from Wales. Corn was 12/- per BARREL in 1641 and 50/- in 1652. The houses of Ireland, worth £2 million in 1641, were worth less than £500,000 in 1653.h
Leland, too, admits in Vol. Ill, p. 166, that "the favourite idea of both the Irish Government and the English Parliament" (from 1642 onwards) "was the utter extermination of all the Catholics of Ireland".
See Lingard (Vol. VII, 4th ed., p. 102, note) on the transportation of Irish as slaves to the West Indies (figures vary from 6,000 to 100,000). Of the 1,000 boys and 1,000 girls to be sent to Jamaica, the commissioners wrote in 1655: "Although we must use force in taking them up, yet it is so much for their own good and likely to be of such great advantage to the public, that you may have such number of them as you shall think fit" (Thurloe, Vol. IV, p. 23).d
By the first ACT OF SETTLEMENT, the forfeiture of 2/3 of their estates had been pronounced against those who had borne arms against the Parliament and 1/3 of their estates against those who had resided in Ireland any time from October 1, 1649 to March 1, 1650 and had not manifested their CONSTANT GOOD AFFECTION to Parliament. The Parliament had power to give them, in lieu thereof, other lands to the proportion of value thereof. The second Act concerned resettlement
(see Prendergast,e Excerpts, VII, 1 a372).
Distribution of land to soldiers was limited to those who had served under Cromwell from 1649 (Murphy, p. 302).
See Carte, Ormonde, Vol. II, p. 301, about some cases of land surveying, especially by ADVENTURERS.373
According to Leland (Vol. Ill, p. 397), the Commissioners in Dublin and Athlone kept considerable domains for themselves.
A PLANTATION ACRE=1 ACRE [2] ROODS [19] PERCHES [5] YARDS and 2 x/4 FEET IMPERIAL STATUTE measure, or 121 PLANTATION acres=196 STATUTE ACRES (Murphy, p. 302).
17th Saeculum. Charles II
A result of confiscations under Cromwell and Charles II.
The 7,708,238 STATUTE ACRES confiscated by Cromwell were distributed finally, by 1675, as follows:
STATUTE ACRES
1) To Englishmen
ADVENTURERS 787,326 SOLDIERS 2,385,915 "FORTY-NINE" OFFICERS 4 5 0 , 3 8 0 DUKE OF YORK 1 6 9 , 4 3 1 PROVISORS 477,873 DUKE OF ORMOND AND COLONEL BUTLER 2 5 7 , 5 1 6 BISHOPS'AUGMENTATIONS 3 1 , 5 9 6
4,560,037
2) To Irishmen
DECREES OF INNOCENCE 1,176,520 PROVISORS 491,001 KING'S LETTERS OF RESTITUTION 4 6 , 3 9 8 NOMINEES IN POSSESSION 6 8 , 3 6 0 TRANSPLANTATION 5 4 1 , 5 3 0
2,323,809
Remaining still unappropriated in 1675, being part of towns or land possessed by English or Irish without title or DOUBTFUL 824,392 [Total in] Statute acres 7,708,238 On "Forty-Nine" officers see O'Conor and Notes.[374]
THE DUKE OF YORK3 received a GRANT of all the lands handed over to the ATTAINTED REGICIDES.*3 "Provisors were persons in whose favour provisoes had been made by the Acts of Settlement [1662] and of Explanation. Nominees were the Catholics named by the King restored to their mansions and 2,000 acres contiguous."
At that time the profitable lands of Ireland = [2]/[3] of all land, or 12,500,000 STATUTE ACRES. Of the rest, considerable tracts were occupied without title by soldiers and ADVENTURERS. In 1675, the 12 l/[2] million ACRES of arable land were distributed as follows:
"Granted to English Protestants of profitable land forfeited
under the Commonwealth 4,560,037 Previously possessed by English Protestant Colonists and by
the Church 3,900,000 Granted to the Irish 2,323,809 Previously possessed by 'good affectioned' Irish 600,000 Unappropriated as above 824,391
STATUTE ACRES 12,208,237"
[This table] was compiled by Murphy[3];
the figure of 3,900,000 acres was taken from the ACCOUNT PUBLISHED BY THE CROMWELLIAN PROPRIETORS and the rest on the basis of the Grace Manuscript quoted by Lingard and the REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS TO THE ENGLISH HOUSE OF COMMONS, December 15, 1699. It accords with Petty (Political Anatomy), who wrote: "Of the whole 7,500,000 plantation acres of good land (in Ireland) the English and Protestants and the Church have this Christmas (1672) 5,140,000 (=8,352,500 statute acres) and the Irish have near half as much" (Murphy, pp. 314 and 315).
(On the confiscations of William see p. 18.b)
17th Saeculum. William III[375]
By the ACTS OF SETTLEMENT AND EXPLANATION, 2,323,809 STATUTE ACRES were granted to the Irish, they having 600,000 previously in their possession, totalling 2,923,809
STATUTE
ACRES
Of these lands, 1,060,792 PLANTATION ACRES were escheated under William worth £211,623 6s 3d. per annum (REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 1699) 1,723,787
STATUTE
ACRES
[There remain] 1,200,022 STATUTE ACRES
or as Murphy calculated0 (he probably erred when 1,240,022 subtracting?) STATUTE In addition,
RESTITUTED BY SPECIAL FAVOUR OF THE KING ON PARDONING (65 persons) 125,000 STATUTE ACRES
the COURT OF CLAIMS RESTORED (792 persons) 388,500 STATUTE ACRES
[Total] 513,500 STATUTE ACRES
Making the total still in Irish hands 1,753,522 (4)
STATUTE ACRES
C o m p i l e d b y M u r p h y o n t h e basis of the REPORT OF THE
COMMISSIONERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS (ENGLISH) i n DECEMBER 1 6 9 9 .
Endnotes
[354] 4 Fee tail—an estate the use of which is limited to a category of heirs stipulated in the grant; in practice it means life tenancy.
[355] 5 Engels refers to W. Camden's Annals, or the History of Elizabeth. The book was first published in Latin (London, 1615); the English translation was also published there in 1625-29. Here and below Engels quotes this work according to Murphy's Ireland, Industrial, Political, and Social.
[356] *' In this, passage Engels analyses the anti-Catholic act passed by the Government of Elizabeth, given by Murphy on pp. 256-60 of his book. (This act imposed fines for non-attendance at a Protestant Church, introduced the Oath of Supremacy to the Queen as head of the Anglican Church, making this oath a condition of access to government service, to practice at the bar and to obtaining documents for the acquisition of land, etc.) Engels describes the act of 1560 and similar later acts as penal laws, evidently by analogy with the widespread term used to describe the anti-Catholic legislation for Ireland at the end of the seventeenth century and in the early half of the eighteenth century (see Note 238).
[357] 7 Engels refers here to his excerpts from J. Davies' Historical Tracts (see Note 329), pp. 127, 128, 135, 136.
[360] 11 See Note 334.
[361] 1 A reference to the book .by Th. Carte, An History of the Life of James, Duke of Ormonde, from His Birth in 1610, to His Death in 1688, vols. I-II, London, 1735-36. Below Engels refers both to the extracts from this edition in Murphy's book and to his excerpts from Carte's work included in Notebook VII of his preparatory material for his History of Ireland.
[11] The text of this resolution, adopted by the General Council meeitng of August 25, 1868 in connection with the preparations for the Brussels Congress, has been preserved in the minutes of this meeting; it was also published in The Bee-Hive, No. 359, August 29, 1868 (for the record of Marx's speech in substantiating this resolution see this volume, p. 387). At the Brussels Congress this resolution was moved by Eccarius and read in the report of the commission on reducing the working day on September 12, 1868. It was published in English in the reports of the Congress sittings in The Times, No. 26232, September 17, 1868 and in the pamphlet The International Working Men's. Association. Resolutions of the Congress of Geneva, 1866, and the Congress of Brussels, 1868 published in London in 1869; in French it was published in a special supplement to Le Peuple Belge, No. 399, September 18, La Cigale, No. 38, September 20 and La Tribune du Peuple, No. 10, November 8, 1868.
[363] 4 "Graces" — minor concessions "granted" to Irish Catholic lords and gentry by Charles I in 1628, after receiving from them large financial subsidies over a period of three years. The relevant document granted Irish Catholics certain guarantors of title deeds and instituted that only those of less than sixty years' duration were to be verified; it replaced the Oath of Supremacy to the King as head of the Anglican Church by the Oath of Loyalty in the event of Catholics being appointed to office; it permitted them to practise at the bar, etc. However, these "graces" were not properly formalised, and very soon representatives of the English Crown, in particular the Lord Lieutenant of Wentworth (Strafford), began grossly to violate them.
[364] 5 The Court of High Commission was founded in England in 1559 by Elizabeth I
[365] to deal with breaches of royal edicts and Acts of Parliament instrumental in furthering the Reformation, and with offences against the Church of England. It was directed not only against the Catholics but also against the radical Protestant sects — the Puritans.
[3 6 7] E d m u n d Spenser, A View of the State of Ireland, in Ancient Irish Histories, Dublin, 1809. In Engels' excerpts from Spenser's book (see Note 336) the following passage refers to the Irish clergy: "...ye may find there ... gross simony, greedy covetousness, fleshly incontinency, careless sloth, and generally all disordered life in the common clergyman. And besides ... they d o go and live like laymen, follow all kinds of husbandry and other worldly affairs as other Irishmen do. They neither read . Scriptures, nor preach to the people, nor administer the Communion , but baptism they do, ... they take the tithes and offerings and gather what fruit else they may of their living, ... and some of them ... pay, as due, tributes and shares of their livings to their bishops..." (Spenser, pp. 139-40). Engels added the following remark: "All the above, apparently, refers to the Protestant priests of that time. "
[368] A reference to an order given in 1641 by Lords Justices Parsons and Borlase to the English Commander with instructions to "wound, kill, slay, and destroy all the rebels and their adherents a n d relievers, and burn, spoil, waste, consume, destroy, and demolish all the places, towns, and houses where the rebels were or have been relieved or harboured, and all the corn and hay there, and to kill and destroy all the men there inhabiting able to bear arms".
[36] At its meeting of September 29, 1868 the General Council of the International Working Men's Association discussed, among other things, Hirsch's statement that all the principal trade unions of England had withdrawn from the Association. To refute this slander Marx wrote this item for the Demokratisches Wochenblatt (see his letter to Engels of October 4, 1868, present edition, Vol. 43). The editors presumably made changes in the first paragraph. This item was first published in English in The General (Council of the First International. 1868-1870, Moscow, 1966.
[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.
[19] See Note 5.
[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.
[374] Engels refers to his notes from Matthew O'Conor's The History of the Irish Catholics, supplemented by excerpts from other sources. In this particular case the reference is to the passage dealing with the declaration made in 1660 by the government of Charles II at the outset of the Stuart Restoration (on the Irish policy of the post-Restoration Stuarts see Note 387). According to that declaration the "adventurers" (see Note 232), the officers and men of the Parliamentary army retained their possessions in Ireland, while officers of Ormonde's Royalist army, who had served under him up to 1649 (hence the term "forty-nine officers"; in that year the majority of the defeated English Royalists left Ireland and the resistance to Cromwell's troops was continued mainly by the Irish rebels), received compensation in the form of those same confiscated Irish lands. Indigenous Irishmen, who had fought under the King's banner during the Civil War and been deprived of their possessions because of it, received practically no compensation.
[375] Given below are data on the confiscations of Irish lands carried out by William III after the suppression of the 1689-91 Irish uprising (see Note 229) and in violation of the terms of surrender signed with the insurgents at Limerick (see Note 236).
[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).
[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.