British views on Irish national character, 1800–1846. an intellectual history1

History of European Ideas, Vol. 23, No. 5—6, pp. 193—219, 1997( 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd

PII: S0191-6599 (98) 00002-3 All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain0191-6599/98 $19.00#0.00

BRITISH VIEWS ON IRISH NATIONAL CHARACTER,1800–1846. AN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY1

ROBERTO ROMANI

Centre for History and Economics, King’s College, Cambridge CB2 1ST, U.K.and Darwin College, Cambridge

Despite the long-standing reputation of the Victorians for showing contempttowards the Irish, recent scholarship has drawn a more complex and nuancedpicture which acts as a liberating insight for my research.2 I aim to extend thisreassessment back to the hitherto under-documented period between the Act ofUnion and the Famine, and in the process to argue that concern with nationalcharacter should be assessed not as pre-political views, attached in various waysto political thought, but as component parts of it. In discussing Irish character,early- and mid-nineteenth century British authors made use of a theme that wascentral to their political universe, the relationship between a free constitutionand the moral adequacy of its citizens. That is why the article is subtitled‘an intellectual history’: I am setting out, not to recount the history ofIrish character per se, but to shed light on an aspect of the political thought ofthe day.

At this point it would be as well to explain that, in accordance with nine-teenth-century usage, what is meant by the term ‘Irish character’ is the traits andattitudes exclusively of the Irish peasantry. A further necessary explanationconcerns the texts being surveyed. The immense quantity of relevant literaturemade selection essential: and while the article is confined to those items ofliterature that are pertinent both to political thought in its conceptualised formsand to the social sciences, the discriminating criteria cannot but be subject toobjection, since noteworthy remarks on the Irish character might be found invirtually any text belonging to this period. The exclusion of works such as thoseby Maria Edgeworth is due more to lack of space and literary skills than to anyconviction of the irrelevance of her novels to the shaping of political and socialattitudes.3

The psychological traits and the detectable behaviour that made up the ‘Irishcharacter’ were not in question at the time. All agreed on its warm-heartedness,inquisitiveness, and social disposition; whereas, on the dark side, its indolence,proneness to fight and riot, inclination to lawlessness, and lack of forwardthinking were commonly mentioned. Even the Irish writers, Protestant andCatholic, added little substantial to the stereotype,4 which, however, markeda significant step beyond the ‘wild Irishman’ whose echoes still resound throughDavid Hume’s History of England.5 For the perceived image of the Irish had infact undergone a slight but decisive shift over the course of the eighteenthcentury.6 In the decades of concern here, some long-noticed qualities succeeded

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in making an impact on the stereotype. Now, even the most thunderous Toryreviewer had to acknowledge that the Irish had certain virtues, like hospitality,courage, or fondness for family affections. Despite this, my survey will show thatpolitical discourse overwhelmingly dealt with Irish faults, constant referencebeing made to their notoriety. Generally speaking, national images are part oftextual traditions, where continuity is predominant, and therefore the establish-ment of new shades of meaning always proves difficult.

The features of Irish character were focussed through comparison notonly with the English character but also with the Scottish, there definitelybeing three actors on the stage rather than simply two. Yet it is difficult tonotice any uniform view that accords with the provenance of the commentators.In fact political standpoints largely predominated over any other consideration.Furthermore, I have found no evidence whatsoever that Irishness, howeverdefined, had a bearing on the characterization of British identity. TheUnion notwithstanding, Ireland continued to be perceived as an obstinatelyrebellious province which had to be healed of its many wounds before anytrue contribution to the national polity could be contemplated. The con-trast with Scotland could not be more striking, as many contemporariesobserved.

Commentators differed, not only as to the emphasis laid on one or other ofthe above features, but, more crucially, as to the causes of them. A fundamentaldivide was at play here: was Irish character due to history—was it the result ofcenturies of oppression and demoralization—or to primordial, quasi-naturalcauses—to Celtic descent and immemorial habits? The battle on Irish characterwas fought over this dilemma, which lies at the heart of the notion of nationalcharacter itself. It is true that some authors simply thrived on the tacit blurringof nature into history and vice-versa, thus seemingly opting for a practicalapproach which took the existing Irish character as given irrespective of thequestion of its origin. The fact is that collective identities easily lend themselvesto ambiguous treatments. The resilience of Catholicism is a good case in pointfor, according to many, the civilizing influence of the Reformation had failed toextend to Ireland because of the savage state of the natives. By arguing so, anhistorical event with incalculable consequences for national character becameinextricably linked to the traditional image of Irish ancestral barbarism. Never-theless, the dilemma between history and original characteristics is to a certainextent inescapable, as I hope to demonstrate.

On dealing with the position taken by the Edinburgh Review, the first sectionof this paper involves consideration of the ‘environmentalist’ legacy of theScottish philosophers. The views expressed in the Tory press are the subject ofthe second section, and the third presents a sketchy reconstruction of the role ofracial and religious standpoints. Here, Cobden and Combe are dealt with atsome length. The purpose of the fourth section is to point to a shift in theperception of national character which occurred throughout Europe in themid-nineteenth century. The case of Scotsman Daniel Dewar provides evidenceof that shift with regard to Irish character. The paper concludes with briefassessments of Carlyle and of Macaulay’s History of England. Although contri-butions are organized in a roughly chronological sequence, the structure of the

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paper is also designed to show how the environmentalist approach of Scottishorigin came under increasing attack from various quarters as time went by.

1.

An unambiguous plea for an account of the Irish peasants’ lack of industrioushabits that was social and historical in nature was made by Arthur Young in1780, and there is evidence that his views remained influential well into thesucceeding century.7 Above all, elements of a social and historical tendencyappear to occur in the Edinburgh Review. In the face of the reassertion ofaccusations of Catholic criminal cunning by exponents of the Ascendancy in thewake of the 1798 rebellion, the Review took a radically divergent stand.8Edmund Burke’s ¸etter to Sir Hercules ¸angrishe provided the conceptualframe of reference that the Edinburgh reviewers needed for a campaign againstthe remaining Catholic disabilities. The campaign mingled with a defence ofIrish character, which, in Burke’s view, had been intentionally impaired by thepenal laws. What Burke had in mind, however, was the moral attitude of theCatholic gentry, the lower classes being largely outside his concerns. But the1798 revolt, and, on a larger scale, the French Revolution, shifted the focus ofinterest towards the peasantry, whose state of mind now became the subject ofintense interest. After the Act of Union, and during the Napoleonic wars, theloyalty of Ireland came prominently to the fore—and the complaint aboutinsufficient knowledge of Irish affairs became a regular feature of British com-mentaries.9

A glance at the leading document of Ascendancy opinion immediately after1798 is useful in assessing the relevance of the Edinburgh Review approach. Inwriting his Memoirs of the Different Rebellions in Ireland (1801), RichardMusgrave’s hidden task was to play down the disturbing fact that the UnitedIrishmen who sparked off the revolt of 1798 arose from an alliance betweenCatholics and Protestants (i.e. the Ulster Presbyterians). In accordance witha long-established pattern, the recent upsurge is depicted by Musgrave asa religious war, prompted by the Catholic priests. Their control of the minds ofthe populace is in fact absolute, Musgrave argued. 1798 is seen merely as thelatest, inevitable outcome of the political disloyalty and moral wickednessinherent in Catholic tenets. In consequence, Ireland’s perpetual state of rebellioncould only be soothed by new English settlements. On a more general plane, themain theme of Musgrave’s book is that peace and security ‘depend on themorals of the lower class of the people’; but no autonomous will is ascribed tothe Irish peasants, who are represented as mere puppets whose strings are in thehands of priests.10

In Britain, close enquiries were revealing the characteristic social identity ofIrish landholders and, in the process, noting the Irishman’s faults. In thisclimate, those who opposed Musgrave’s line of argument could not helpsupplying an explanation of Irish character which made its reform possible.And while Burke offered ready-made arguments for Catholic emancipation, itwas the Scottish philosophers’ stadial conception of growth that became the

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theoretical cornerstone of progressive accounts of Irish character. John Millar,in particular, had treated Irish manners along stage-theory lines in a previouslyunpublished paper on ‘The government of Ireland’ contained in the posthumousedition of An Historical »iew of the English Government (1803). In this paper—overall, a carefully argued denunciation of English policy towards Ireland—Millar opposes the view held by many English writers that the native Irishwere ‘disgraced by a greater portion of barbarity and ferocity, than the rudeinhabitants of other countries’. Actually, when Irish customs are compared tothose of other nations, they ‘exhibit that striking resemblance of lines andfeatures, which may be remarked in the inhabitants of every country before theadvancement of arts and civilization’. The only peculiarity of Irishmen is thatthe continual ‘acts of injustice and oppression’ perpetrated by English govern-ments have made the Irish character focus on ‘political and religious disputes’ inpreference to more pragmatic concerns. The Irishman mocked on English stagesfor his ‘bulls’ and blunders is an unfair caricature, Millar continued, of an ‘ardentand vehement’ temper, of ‘a disposition open, forward, undesigning, and sincere,little corrected by culture’.11 Most importantly, Millar’s sociological treatmentmade the religious factor less consequential. This now appeared as a secondaryand late element.

Millar’s approach to national character was expounded by Francis Jeffrey inhis account of An Historical »iew, and was adopted by many contributors to theEdinburgh Review, culminating in James Mill’s article on Ireland.12 More oftenthan not, the notion that manners follow from the stage of civilization naturallymerged with that other Scottish tenet, that government is a most effective factorin the shaping of habits and customs. As is well-known, Hume’s ‘Of NationalCharacters’ focuses on the primacy of governments and institutions over cli-mate.13 Leading Edinburgh reviewers like Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, McVeyNapier, James Mackintosh, Henry Hallam, and James Mill agreed in ascribingthe dark side of the Irish character to ‘the infamous policy of the English’. Inparticular, although most of the penal laws had been repealed between 1772 and1793, the persistence of both their social effects and the manners they hadbrought about was often pointed to. As Mackintosh wrote in 1812, circumstan-ces are such as to take away from the Catholics ‘skill and industry, hope andpride’.

The helotism of the Catholic, which either breaks his spirit or excites his rage, ineither case equally unnerves his arm, and devotes his fields to barrenness. Men areonly just, when they are justly dealt with; and those who are looked down upon asslaves, must look up to their masters as tyrants. The sense of degradation, as well asthat of insecurity, extinguishes industry, either by subduing the activity of thehuman mind, or by converting it into destructive fury.14

Equally unanimous among the reviewers was the claim that hostility toPopery had turned into a convenient screen behind which the Ascendancy hadcloaked its policy of social exclusion and economic exploitation. With increas-ing awareness over these decades, the Irish Question came to be seen by theEdinburgh reviewers as essentially a social and economic one; and the repeal of

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the remaining Catholic disabilities in 1829, which brought to an end a phase ofintense interest in Irish affairs, certainly reinforced the trend.

Malthus’ article of 1808 marked a breakthrough in this direction. Hefamously demonstrated that ‘indolent and turbulent habits’ resulted from theeffects of the ‘potato system’ on fertility rates via the labour market. Malthus’next step is very significant, for he identified English rule as the main factor inthe Irish reliance on the cheapest and humblest sort of food. Despotism, heargued in typical eighteenth-century jargon, invariably annihilates to a greatextent individual importance and dignity. It follows that full emancipation ofCatholics is necessary to induce ‘an elevation in the character and condition ofthe lower classes of society’, and, with it, a taste for the comforts of life. WhileCatholic disabilities remain, no system of education can possibly work inIreland, argued Malthus against the Irishman J. W. Croker.15

Theoretically, Malthus provided the most articulate explanation for the Irishmoral situation. The point was later brought home by fellow economists J. R.MacCulloch and Nassau Senior, who both elaborated on the necessity ofinspiring the Irishman with a more refined taste which led him to aspire to a lesscoarse diet. The desired change in the indolent habits of the people, however,was in their opinion to result from interventions designed both to render labourmore productive and to reduce the prices of many conveniences (i.e. throughlighter taxation).16 The political economists, in subsuming the Irish Questionunder ‘scientific’ categories, never failed to oppose fatalistic as well as religious-minded views. In Senior’s article of 1844 an explicit hint of the way in which‘material’ and ‘moral’ evils interact on the Irish stage is given, with the ‘moralevils’ being insecurity, ignorance, and indolence, which have been brought aboutby the ‘material evils’, namely want of capital and absence of small proprietor-ship. However the moral evils have in turn made the material evils more severe.In particular, the Irish tendency to violence and resistance to law—their ‘mostprominent’ and ‘more mischievous’ trait—has deterred British capital frombeing employed in Ireland. Although such a trait is seen as ensuing from themisuse of law perpetrated by the English, and ignorance and indolence too areaccounted for on the same lines, Senior makes clear that it is now imperative forthe Irish to practise the virtues of self-help in order to break their ‘circle ofcalamities’.17

It was generally understood by the Edinburgh reviewers that certain Irishtraits did hinder social and economic development. In this case, educationrather than laws seemed to be the appropriate remedy.18 However, although therule was that ‘internal peace must come first, and then the arts of peace willfollow’, some apparent inconsistencies do surface. Sydney Smith, for instance,inserted a sharply-worded criticism of Irish character into one of his pleasagainst English policy in Ireland.

The Irishman has many good qualities: He is brave, witty, generous, eloquent,hospitable, and open-hearted; but he is vain, ostentatious, extravagant, and fond ofdisplay—light in counsel—deficient in perseverance—without skill in private orpublic economy—an enjoyer, not an acquirer—one who despises the slow andpatient virtues—who wants the superstructure without the foundation—the result


without the previous operation—the oak without the acorn and the three hundredyears of expectation. The Irish are irascible, prone to debt, and to fight, and veryimpatient of the restraints of law. Such a people are not likely to keep their eyessteadily upon the main chance, like the Scotch or the Dutch2

Textual evidence supports the view that Smith believed this character to be‘original’, predating the ‘system of atrocious cruelty and contemptible meanness’established by the English and to which Irish backwardness is ‘directly charge-able’ even if the national character ‘contributes something’.19 Generally speak-ing, it can hardly be maintained that the Edinburgh reviewers were unreservedlysympathetic to the Irish peasantry: they were attempting to achieve objectivityon a political problem by bringing it under the cold eye of the social scientist. Inpartial contrast, it should not be forgotten that a solid layer of moral principlesconstituted the true foundation of social knowledge in those decades; whichseems to explain why scathing remarks on Irish character sometimes spring uplike weeds alongside sociological arguments. A particularly puzzling example isMacCulloch’s A Dictionary, Geographical, Statistical, and Historical (1841—2),with its neat contrast between a socio-economic analysis of Ireland’s evils andthe unexpected vehemence of the ensuing portrait of Irish habits.20 Senior isanother case in point: both his Irish journals and his post-Famine articlesabound with deprecatory remarks on ‘that most un-English society’ and itspeople. Thus large cracks in the veneer of social science become visible: in thelong and intricate history of Irish distress nothing is more striking, Senior wrotein 1849, ‘than the intimate connection of much of that distress with the careless-ness, the inactivity, and the improvidence of the sufferers’.21 I shall expand uponthe economists’ attitude in section 3.

In the wake of the Act of Union, the Edinburgh reviewers were not alone inplaying down national character as a major cause of Irish backwardness. Mosttravellers associated stern condemnation of British policy with a political andsocio-economic explanation of the defects of the Irish character, an explanationwhich in some cases rested on stadial theory.22 To many writers, the Irishappeared public-spirited and polite, cheerful, and clever. In spite of their tragicsituation, they enjoyed family affections with a warmth unknown to the English.The purity of their sexual life was another common matter for congratulation.23Late in the period of concern here, the moralizing and disciplining effects of boththe Repeal and the Temperance Movements were largely acknowledged (even ifthe political message of the former was opposed by most British onlookers).24

But the work that probably did most to replace the stereotype of the‘wild Irishman’ with a more sympathetic and, at the same time, more detailedpicture was Edward Wakefield’s An Account of Ireland, Statistical and Political(1812).25 His two bulky volumes depicted all facets of Irish life, seasoningarguments and figures with travel notes, reminders of the principles of politicaleconomy, and geographical descriptions. Wakefield considered his work to bea continuation of Young’s: he fully endorsed Young’s concern with theeducative, disciplining and improving role of landlords, whose deficiencies inIreland occasioned both writers’ bitter laments. Many core points in Malthus’analysis also recur in Wakefield’s pages. The Irish peasant is portrayed as

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a victim of the harsh treatment he receives and especially of the system oftenancy.26 A notable characteristic of his narrative is the effort to shift attentionaway from the religious divide.27

2.

Some support for a less biased image of the Irish came from an unexpectedquarter, the Tory press. Neither Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine nor theQuarterly Review devoted themselves unreservedly to a defence of the Ascend-ancy. The extreme views expressed in Quarterly Review by mavericks such asRobert Southey and William Sewell were successfully counteracted by morepragmatic articles written by Poulett Scrope and others. Ireland was nota regular topic for Quarterly reviewers, who nevertheless attempted to set upa bulwark against the Edinburgh offensive on Catholic emancipation. Theproposition that ‘a finer race of men than the Irish peasantry, more nobly giftedand more generously disposed, is not to be found upon the habitable globe’, wasre-announced in the pages of the Quarterly.28 In particular, George PoulettScrope mounted a passionate campaign for an Irish poor law and a plan ofpublic works which relied heavily on the social account of Irish idleness.29

Blackwood’s, however, seems to be another matter. It explicitly prided itselfon being ‘the only Irish magazine’ and published dozens of pieces on Irishaffairs, mostly by representatives of the Ascendancy. Although there was a de-cline later, a peak of interest occurred in the 1820s, when Catholic emancipationwas at issue. A notable contributor was Horatio Townsend of Cork, who mostassiduously voiced the usual grievances of the Anglo-Irish on the depravedmentality of the peasants. The whole of Townsend’s assessment of Irish evilsrested on the necessity of a ‘moral reformation’—that is, the emulation ofEnglish prudence, industry, honesty, and decorum—viewed as a prerequisite tomaterial improvement. Irishmen, he argued, should give up blaming Englishoppression for ‘their own defects, imperfections, and vices’. Not surprisingly, the‘ancient superstition’ of Catholicism was seen to lurk behind the mischievousside of Irish character.30 However, a more ‘British’ editorial line was alsoupheld, blending the denunciation of an all-powerful Popish plot with condem-nation of landowners’ rapacity and negligence. In the words of leading journalistDavid Robinson, the Irish peasants are ‘religious fanatics, and political revo-lutionists, as well as savages’, but this is the fault neither of England, as Whigpropagandists claimed, nor of the landlords. Intellectually, the lower classes arethe ‘slaves’ of Catholic priests regularly connected to ‘profligate demagogues’:the peasantry is in fact not ‘a people acting from settled principle’ but anindistinct populace whose mind is always shaped by the educated.31 AlthoughRobinson’s analysis focused on how to replace the influence of the priests withthat of a proto-English class of landowners, his more immediate and realistictask was to reaffirm the validity of the religious divide in the face of conciliatoryWhig policy. Thus those facets of Irish character not directly related to thealleged Popish agitation, such as laziness, were unclamorously accounted for onthe basis of the dispiriting circumstances.32 Later on, Catholic conspiracy and


Whig complacency became inseparable topics regularly recurring in Black-wood ’s, but the gradual shift of focus towards parliamentary politics resulted inthe eventual disappearance of the earlier national character themes.33

Religion-induced standpoints play the main role in Southey’s QuarterlyReview article (1828) as well. Catholicism, it is contended, takes full advantage ofboth peasant distress and a primeval attitude to vice and murder.34 In a sim-ilarly mystic vein, although with apparently opposite purposes in view, Oxfordclergyman William Sewell turned Irish character into apt material for therestoration of a ‘pure and holy form of Christianity’, or, more mundanely, for ananti-modern society founded on deference. Sewell elaborated at length on a setof characteristics whose potential usefulness had already been noticed by othercontemporaries: the Irishman’s childlike docility and gratitude, his fatalism,gregariousness, and impetuosity. He is a warm-hearted creature who is made‘for loyalty and religion’, whereas the English are a ‘pudding and ale’ peopleleaning dangerously towards ‘a spirit of independence’ nourished by politicaleconomy. It follows that, while the mode of influencing Englishmen is throughtheir head, ‘the way to govern an Irish peasant is through his heart’. Paternalrule of the feudal type, associated with occasional doses of military disciplineand fortified by the sober religious tenets of Protestantism, would succeed inkeeping the Irish ‘under rule’.35 Although Sewell indulges in the depiction of hisown vision of a deferential society on Irish soil, the plainer idea that Ireland hadto be ruled differently—i.e. more sternly—from Britain because of its backwardnational character was quite common in conservative literature.36

Having surveyed both Whigs and Tories, I am now in a position to offer anoverall evaluation. A first point to consider is the prevalence of a historicalperspective. Variously detailed reconstructions of Anglo-Irish relations over thecenturies constituted the main vehicle for assessments of Irish character, and, atthe same time, were their essential sources of legitimacy. Although historicalwriting strictly intended will be (cursorily) dealt with in section five below, it canalready be pointed out that, as far as the historical treatment was concerned, theWhig, Edinburgh Review stance had the advantage over Tory intepretations.Centuries of English wrongdoings, tirelessly re-examined under the aegis ofa prestigious historical method, guaranteed the plausibility of an environ-mentalist account of Irish character, and, with it, the legitimacy of a reformistagenda.37 The Whig ‘Justice to Ireland’ campaign of 1835—41, which Lord JohnRussell saw as focused on ‘a disposition of mind favourable to the Irish people’,is a case in point.38 More regular and fair information also contributed toa more favourable climate of opinion, in parallel with the progressive growth ofa tolerant attitude towards Catholicism. Yet, all these influences were to a cer-tain extent counterbalanced by others, as the next section will show.

3.

The causal relationship between Catholicism and poverty was firmly estab-lished long before the decades of concern here. But it is certain that this themeprogressively gained strength throughout the nineteenth century, taking on new

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shades of meaning in the course of time. A very general reason for this was,I believe, the link established in mainstream political economy between ‘scient-ific’ principles and the agents’ moral habits—that is to say, in the absence of thelatter the economy would not work properly. The role of the principle ofpopulation was paramount in this respect, as the admittedly extreme case ofThomas Chalmers, a leading figure of a group of ‘evangelical’ political econom-ists, shows at length.39 In the evidence he gave to a committee on the state ofIreland (1830), Chalmers reaffirmed his fundamental belief that ‘character is thecause, and2 comfort is the effect’. What the Irish economy needed was moralimprovement, aimed at bringing about a change in marriage habits alongMalthusian lines. Purely economic measures would prove ineffective aftera short lapse of time, while a poor law would have an irretrievably demoralizingeffect. The Scottish case served to show that moral improvement could beobtained through education, and, in particular, through religious educationcentred on non-compulsory ‘Scriptural classes’.40

Whatever the influence of evangelical economics, a retributive element ofMalthusian origin, recent scholarship has convincingly argued, was part andparcel of social and economic thought in general.41 This holds true even if manydismissed the religious side of the matter, and most introduced a time lagbetween an increase in well-being and population. Senior, for one, made themost of self-helpism in his ¸etter against an Irish poor law. Here, welfare isdepicted as being entirely dependent on ‘industry’ and ‘forethought’. (He alsogave abundant excerpts from Chalmers’ evidence, ‘the most instructive, perhaps,that ever was given before a Committee of the House of Commons’).42 However,the main point made by such writers as Chalmers, Senior, and Whately—i.e., thenegative moral effects of a legal provision for the poor—was universally valid.Therefore, although retributive economics called for a definite view of Irishcharacter, albeit implicitly, the discussion revolved around a mechanism ofhuman nature and not specific national characteristics. Ireland was only theworst possible guinea pig.

The Irish were held in low esteem from another economic perspective: thealleged pivotal role of the human factor in the ongoing civilization of newcountries.43 That certain ‘races’ seemed fit for the task—that is, that theyshowed unremitting vitality and energy in the face of titanic challenges, beingcapable of moulding nature to their will—was, for many, indisputable evidenceof their superiority. However the celebration of Anglo-Saxonism through aneconomic-minded pattern of thought where ‘race’ referred to ancestral identityrather than biological traits was in fact boosted by a Frenchman, MichelChevalier, who published his famous ¸ettres sur l ’Amerique du Nord in 1836,while in Britain, the first to upgrade the traditional theme of the supremacy ofBritons in all things economic in accordance with the new international scenariowas Oxford economist Herman Merivale.44 As far as Ireland is concerned, thescathing remarks of the economist and colonizer Edward Gibbon Wakefieldwere representative of widely held opinion: ‘the hordes’ of Irish emigrants toNorth America were ‘virtually slaves’ because of ‘their servile, lazy, recklesshabit of mind’ in the midst of ‘the energetic, accumulating, prideful, domineeringAnglo-Saxon race’.45 Feelings like these probably owed something to Irish


immigration to Britain, universally regarded by economists as a potential causeof lower wages. In De Quincey’s picturesque words, ‘Irish intruders uponScotland had taken the bread out of her own children’s mouths’.46

Actually, both the meaning and the use of the term ‘race’ were so loose thatnot only physical characteristics, but also climate, language, and perhaps alsoreligion and primitive mode of government, seem to have (implicitly at least)contributed to its definition. ‘Race’ was a catchword which resists any attempt atdeconstruction: its range of application was mobile and indistinct.47 It canhardly be ascertained whether ‘race’ was used in the sense of type, that is todesignate one of a limited number of permanent forms, or in the sense of lineageand common descent.48 The two meanings appear closely interrelated as long as‘race’ turns into an operational notion in the hands of historians, economists,travellers, etc. Then, the regular suggestion ‘race’ transmitted was an allusion tounchangeable ancestral characteristics.

The period of interest here witnessed the progressive rise of ‘race’ to the statusof paradoxically self-evident folk term after the heated debates about Celts andGoths of the last third of the previous century. Yet the ever more definitecharacterization of the Anglo-Saxons did not imply that the cause of the Celtswas deserted. Pinkerton’s anti-Celtic racialism being kept alive by books likeJohn MacCulloch’s, some antiquaries and ethnologists committed themselves toits refutation, even when, as in the case of George Chalmers’ Caledonia, nothinglike a eulogy of the Celts was put in its place.49 It is also remarkable that thehistorian of the Anglo-Saxons, Sharon Turner, one of the first ‘Germanists’ ofnotice, appreciated the genius and sensibility of ‘the great Celtic race’, ancientIrish barbarity being equated to that of the Anglo-Saxons.50 On a more obviouslevel, the Welshman Thomas Price (himself a believer in races, but environ-mentally determined) wrote that, whatever their racial stock, the Irish should bemore appropriately classified as ‘the well-fed, and the ill-fed ’.51

The above is merely a tentative exploration of unbounded territory. But, inorder to assess the place of ‘race’ in the discourse on society, its careless,everyday use in various contexts is more relevant than the treatments offered byself-appointed specialists. There was a grey area in the British attitudes to theIrish, where the ambiguities of both race and religion served, either together orin turn, to express feelings and emotions which were very much part of thescenario I wish to reconstruct. In this section, Celt race and Catholic religion arechiefly dealt with in relation to their alleged influence on economic life.

Brazen conclusions are drawn on the basis of ‘race’—religion is entirelyneglected—by the ‘commissioner’ of ¹he ¹imes, Thomas C. Foster, who col-lected his articles written on the eve of the Famine in ¸etters on the Condition ofthe People of Ireland. Here is a blatant case of a preconceived view masquerad-ing as the outcome of a five-month tour of Ireland. The evidence supplied byseveral official reports being hard to ignore, Foster endorses in its entirety theEdinburgh Review economists’ analysis of the effects of existing forms of tenancyon the habits of the population. In particular, Foster notes that the lack ofimprovements by the tenants is due to the landlords’ eventual appropriation ofbenefits. At this point, a treatment of Irish destitution in terms of the inferiorityof the Celts in comparison to the Ulster Saxons is brought into play and given

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pre-eminence.52 Although Foster’s collection of newspaper articles may bedissimilar to the more refined literature which it is the purpose of this essay toexamine, in acting as a reminder of the notorious approach to Irish affairs of themost influential of British papers, it may serve to place the more up-market textsin the proper perspective.

The relative wealth of Ulster was traditionally connected to the Protestantfaith of its inhabitants. Remarkably enough, Henry D. Inglis was the only oneI have traced who argued against that connection explicitly and at length. Heefficaciously reminds the reader of the areas where sustained growth is asso-ciated with Catholicism but on the whole his arguments seem unconvincing.53In contrast, ascribing poverty to laziness and, in turn, laziness to Catholicismevoked a sort of primordial note which few Protestants refrained from striking.But some were more cautious and self-restrained than others, British authors asa rule being among the former. Most of them simply alluded to the link betweenCatholicism and idleness as a matter of course, and did not credit it with decisiveeffects. In view of later outspokenness, it is arguable that the struggle forCatholic emancipation played a part in inducing a low-profile approach. TheAnglo-Irish, in contrast, were always heavy-handed.54

Richard Cobden was one of the few cultivated Britons who tackled thereligious divide thoroughly. In his opinion, Catholicism made the Irish geniusunsuited to ‘the eager and persevering pursuit of business’. The point is, Cobdenargued, that if it can be proved that

the Protestant is, more than the Catholic faith, conducive to the growth of nationalriches and intelligence, then there must be acknowledged to exist a cause, indepen-dent of misgovernment, for the present state of Ireland, as compared with that ofGreat Britain, for which England cannot be held altogether responsible.

Irishmen have clung tenaciously to their savage characteristics of ancient daysbecause everywhere in Europe Catholics abhor change, he concluded on thebasis of a short survey.55 It is in the unrestrained manifestation of thepassions—‘in the vehement display of natural feeling’—that the Irishmen’s mainfault seems to lie. This results in a ‘ferocious and lawless community’ where‘filth, depravity, and barbarism’ are exhibited on a large scale.56 This evidentfragility of Cobden’s celebrated cosmopolitanism is confirmed by his Americandiaries (here I make an exception to the rule of ignoring unpublished materials),where he remarks that the Irish are everywhere the same: ‘the same passions—the same cunning—the same love of fun and drink—the same proneness toriot and fight’.57

As for Cobden’s practical proposals, they are more or less in line with thoseput forward by progressive writers. Above all, he does not call for the conversionof Catholics, even if he says that only their persecution has kept their faith alive,and that the true aim of the reform of tithes would be to induce more en-lightened views on religious matters.58 Therefore Cobden’s case seems to a cer-tain extent to conform with the pattern noticed in section 1: perhaps the Irish aredespised but this feeling does not enter into policy prescriptions. The fact is thatthe full emancipation of Catholics took away from the progressive writers not


only a powerful argument in defence of the Irish, but also, and perhaps moreimportantly, the pride of fighting a battle for liberty. In view of the fact that littleif any improvement in their habits seemed to come to light in successive years,political environmentalism lost momentum to a significant extent.

It is not by accident that Cobden was an enthusiast of phrenology to the pointof finding Combe’s Constitution of Man ‘ like a transcript of my own familiarthoughts’.59 Although the phrenological movement appears to us as a distinctforerunner of the ‘scientification’ of social thought which took place after themid-century, its real appeal to contemporaries seems to lie primarily in itsbeing the most radical of the available languages of morals. Phrenologysimply made possible the expression of certain moral perspectives. To givea significant example, Combe and others explicitly denied the influenceof circumstances and in particular of government on both individual andnational character, preferring to ascribe them to observed regularities in‘size, form, and constitution of the brain’. A chapter of Combe’s A System ofPhrenology is probably the most telling piece of polemics in this respect.60I would argue that there was an urge in Britain, wider in range than thephrenological circles, to sever that causal relationship in the direction of thefull independence and responsibility of individuals. One wonders whether youngCobden’s animal spirits were stirred by phrenologists’ pan-moral utopia:the whole of society to be reconstructed along retributive lines. The scienti-fication of morality advocated by Combe meant that the sphere of ethicaljudgement became all-pervading. On the one hand, politics is reduced tothe choice of rulers with the right skulls; on the other, the degree of libertya people can enjoy is determined by the relative development of ‘the faculties ofBenevolence, Veneration, and Conscientiousness’.61 It immediately becomesclear that behind the smokescreen of anatomical innatism the actual contents ofthis utopia are unbounded John Bullism, stretched to cover the whole socialcompact.

Once removed from the sphere of politics to be placed under the umbrella of‘science’, nothing can protect the Irish from the violence of a gloomy stereotype.Not surprisingly, the analysis of their skulls reveals the usual personalitytraits,62 while an explanation of Ireland’s political misfortunes is promptlysupplied.

Hierarchies and constitutions do not spring from the ground, but from the mindsof men: If we suppose one nation to be gifted with much Wonder and Veneration,and little Conscientiousness, Reflection and Self-Esteem; and another [i.e. Scot-land] to possess an endowment exactly the reverse; it is obvious that the first wouldbe naturally prone to superstition in religion, and servility in the state; while thesecond would, by native instinct, resist all attempts to make them reverence thingsunholy, and tend constantly towards political institutions, fitted to afford to eachindividual the gratification of his Self-Esteem in independence, and his Conscien-tiousness in equality before the law.63

The huge success of Constitution of Man notwithstanding, phrenology asa system of thought did not gain access to the high-brow circles of British

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culture. Yet phrenology unrefinedly and shamelessly expressed certain posturesthat were in the air at the time. Ulster prosperity, an anonymous contributor tothe Phrenological Journal contended, must be ascribed to a different shape of thepopulation’s brains—hence the linen manufacture.64

4.

Not surprisingly in view of his acquaintance with the authors of the ScottishEnlightenment, Daniel Dewar’s Observations on the Character, Customs, andSuperstitions of the Irish (1812) is dedicated to Thomas Brown, who succeededStewart in the Edinburgh chair of Moral Philosophy. Like Brown, Dewar, whoat the time he wrote was yet to be admitted to the Church of Scotland, helda professorship in Moral Philosophy.65 His book is an extensive and quitebrilliant application of the ideas of Hume, Smith, Stewart, and Malthus to theIrish case—with a difference though, as will be shown in due course. Certainly,Dewar too praises the Irish for their inquisitiveness, shrewdness, and ‘ardentlove of kindred and of country’, and, in accordance with the lesson given byHume, blames political and economic circumstances for their defects.66 Whatmarks Dewar’s book out is the point about the education of the Irish, which ismade in full and with the utmost clarity, forming the theoretical and politicalcore of the book, whereas most authors’ references are merely sketchy.67 Thisbook carries further the alliance between social environmentalism and educa-tion noticed earlier. Thus once the English government has done its part—oncethe disabilities are taken away and the fruits of industry secured—Irishmen areexpected to go through a process of education aimed to make them suitable forthe institutions of the new regime.

By comparing the Irish to their sister people, the Scottish Highlanders, whomhe regards as a model, Dewar comes to the conclusion that the difference isultimately accounted for by the lack in the former of both ‘enlightenededucation’ and ‘moral and religious instruction’. Taken together, these are‘omnipotent’ principles of improvement, as Adam Smith and Malthus havedemonstrated.68 To expedite the propagation of enlightened education, Gaelic-speaking teachers and priests could be introduced from Scotland, as well as Bell-Lancaster schools, and, as far as religious teaching is concerned, the ‘puremorality of christianity’ would be diffused through the Bible; the ‘prejudices ofthe natives’, however, must not be offended.69 Dewar’s agenda stems from hisawareness of the power of habits on behaviour as well as from his view that‘national prejudices’ can continue in all their force long after the institutionsfrom which they had arisen are forgotten. Accordingly, the Irish Questionamounts to establishing popular habits and beliefs which, as in Scotland, ‘comein aid of the sober dictates of reason and philosophy, and give energy and effectto the enlightened deductions of the sage, and the generous efforts of thelegislator’.70 Dewar ends up putting forward the rule that any successful plan ofreform is the effect, rather than the cause, of ‘national intelligence andimprovement’, and reference to the ignorant French people unprepared tochange in 1789 is made to prove the point.71 Thus Dewar is maintaining that


historically-determined national characters are to be considered an independentforce for all practical purposes.

At this point let me take a step backward. In eighteenth-century Britain, therewere some perspectives capable of inducing assessments of the relationshipbetween people and government that were strikingly different from the effectthat Millar had. Both the civic humanist tradition (as heralded by AdamFerguson for instance) and some of Burke’s writings pointed, or might have beeninterpreted as pointing, to a proper national character as a prerequisite ratherthan a consequence of a free government. Late treatments of civic virtuecontinued to base forms of government on different sets of manners; and Burke’sspeech on Conciliation with the Colonies (1775) viewed American character asthe element which determined the colonial agenda.72 The centrality of customsand habits in Hume, Smith, and a host of Scottish philosophers could quitenaturally lend itself to such a perspective, whose founding father has often beenidentified as Montesquieu. He had maintained against absolute rule that nogovernment had the right to encroach on established manners and habits, thesebeing, alongside climate and existing laws and religion, the true basis forlegislation. This idea effectively filtered through eighteenth-century thinking onboth sides of the Channel, and is recognizable for instance in the relentlesspolemics waged against the ‘man of system’, the thinker or politician who aimedto apply abstract schemes to the living bodies of societies.73 As a logicalconsequence of the alternative, ‘Montesquieuvian’ approach, the government tosuit Ireland was a junta rather than the British constitution.

As a matter of fact, the whole nineteenth century would be marked byattempts to secure the primacy, logical and historical, of national charactersover institutions. This is a sort of subterranean current which fully emerged onlyin the second half of the century but whose seeds in France and Britain had beenplanted by prior works (my reference is to France rather than to the Germanstates because of France’s more significant intellectual exchange with Britain). Inpolitically shocked France change was articulated sooner: as Mme de Staelmade clear at the opening of the Restoration, a reasonable doubt could beentertained about the suitability of the French for liberty. But the editors of theCenseur Europeen Charles Comte and Dunoyer had no doubt whatsoever: therevolutionary events had spotlighted the ignorance and vices of the French,who, instead of giving social and political authority to the industrieux, hadcherished the obsolete values of ancient republics and at the same time engagedin a fierce race for public appointments and jobs. Moved by his denunciation ofdemocratic politics, de Maistre made national characters a crucial element of hispolitical theory by severing any link between them and ‘circumstances’. Histor-ians like Michelet and Thierry and economists like Chevalier and Blanqui werelater motivated to thrive on non-institutionalist approaches by the same questfor the identity of France in the face of British supremacy.74 In Britain, it isdoubtful whether Richard Chenevix’s two-volume Essay upon National Charac-ter (1832) exerted any influence: although pointing to the new direction, thework is messy and clumsy.75 Tentatively, one could argue that a properbreakthrough did not occur before Spencer’s Social Statics (1850) and Bagehot’s¸etters on the French Coup d ’Etat of 1851 (1852).76

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If I had to fall back on a general hypothesis to account for the progressiveblossoming of national character tracts over the century, I would ascribe it tothe post-revolutionary perception of the lower classes’ new political role and tothe correlated necessity of taking this fact into some account. To put it bluntly,concern with national character would be a reflection of the advent of masspolitics. But the timing of French and British politics is in this respect verydifferent, so that John Bull would predate Marianne by fifty years or there-abouts. It is indicative of this lag that while for the French philosophes of theeighteenth century national aristocracies were the natural bearers of nationaltraits, contemporary English texts reveal a widespread awareness that theyshould be drawn from ‘the middling and common people’.77 At any rate, mypoint is that, whereas peasants’ manners figure in all British accounts of Irelandsince Giraldus Cambrensis, their relevance to political discourse should be seenas a relatively recent occurrence. In the literature I have been surveying, the Irishpeasantry is said to have a distinctive character which marks it out from thepeasantries of other nations and, related to it, a political behaviour independentof the will of those who ought to be its natural leaders. The peasantry isdefinitely one of the conscious forces in Irish politics even though its records arekept by others. Besides being soldiers and workers, the nineteenth-century lowerclasses were recognized throughout Europe in their capacity as citizens, and inmy opinion this new reality is well-signalled by new shades in the treatment ofnational character. On the other hand, I am aware that such a general inter-pretation may prove little more than a suggestion: a closer focus easily reveals infact that national character has mattered in specific and geographically circum-scribed debates, where the views of celebrated writers were carelessly put towork by a plethora of minor and even obscure authors. Therefore, the historyof such an inherently vague, jack-of-all-trades notion can only be episodic,and traceable only through its rhizomic surfacings according to politicalcontingencies.

5.

The British writer who did most to prepare the ground for the change inperception was probably Thomas Carlyle. After ‘Signs of the Times’, the Britishpublic became familiar with a spiritualist vision of history. In particular, Carlyleargued against Smith and Bentham that, first, ‘our happiness depends on themind which is within us, and not on the circumstances which are without us’,and, second, that mind and history with it are ultimately determined by some-thing he calls ‘faith’, ‘Moral Force’, or ‘Idea’. It follows that ‘it is the noblePeople that makes the noble Government; rather than conversely’.78 A detailedtreatment of Carlyle’s contribution cannot be given here, but an overview of hisremarks on Irish character may suffice to make my general point. HenceChartism is the relevant text—the same where, I note in passing, free rein wasgiven to the mystique of Anglo-Saxonism. The use of the term ‘Sanspotatoes’ todesignate the Irish peasantry is actually not proof of a derisive attitude onCarlyle’s part. Such a typical efflorescence of language simply points to English


wrongdoings in Ireland. But Carlyle cannot stop here because, in his perspect-ive, it is not material needs alone that mark the fate of men on Earth.

For the oppression has gone far farther than into the economics of Ireland; inwardsto her very heart and soul. The Irish National character is degraded, disordered; tillthis recover itself, nothing is yet recovered. Immetodic, headlong, violent, menda-cious: what can you make of the wretched Irishman?2 A people that knows notto speak the truth, and to act the truth, such people has departed from even thepossibility of well-being. Such people works no longer on Nature and Reality;works now on Phantasm, Simulation, Nonentity; the result it arrives at is naturallynot a thing but no-thing—defect even of potatoes. Scarcity, futility, confusion,distraction must be perennial there. Such a people circulates not order butdisorder, through every vein of it—and the cure, if it is to be a cure, must begin atthe heart: not in his condition only but in himself must the Patient be all changed.Poor Ireland! And yet let no true Irishman, who believes and sees all this, despairby reason of it279

But the cause of Irish degradation seems to be forgotten in the abusively-worded portrait of Irish immigration to Britain which follows. Further on, theidentity of ‘Might and Right’ is argued against Thierry. It plainly comes to mind,then, that for Carlyle English rule of Ireland is a historical necessity its opera-tional brutality notwithstanding, the ultimate curse of the ‘noisy vehement Irish’being their geographical nearness to the ‘strong silent’ Anglo-Saxons. YetCarlyle’s pity for the Irish as well as his attack on English policies seem heartfelt,however unstereotyped their phrasing. Later, Ireland would take up evena symbolic meaning in his eyes (‘Ireland really is my problem; the breaking pointof the huge suppuration which all British and all European society now is’, hewrote in the diary of his 1849 journey).80 What is more relevant from my pointof view is that the above depiction of the Irish as a people which ‘knows not tospeak the truth’ expresses a deeply ingrained belief of his, as Cromwell makesclear. Here the same theme returns: the Irish are ‘unveracious’, that is, false inthought because they have ‘parted company with Fact’. They have refused tolisten to the ‘harsh story’ which ‘Fact’ tells. Cromwell has therefore come toIreland ‘like the hammer of Thor’ to re-establish the difference between ‘Good’and ‘Evil’.81 In Carlyle’s conceptual network, ‘Facts’ are also the unerring lawsof Nature against which man has to prove himself, his virtue and strength lyingin the work he does and not in the words he utters. Work always agrees withfact. The ‘talent of silence’ that peoples like the English and the Romans haveshown is sure proof of their consonance with both Nature and History.82

One of the main purposes of this paper has been to document how environ-mentalist accounts of Irish character by and large failed to have a lastinginfluence on British opinion. This was in particular manifest after the promisingcampaign which led to Catholic emancipation in 1829. The fragility of thatstance came tragically to full light during the Famine, when providentialist andretributive explanations of the potato failure—seen as ‘the judgement of God onan indolent and unself-reliant people’—held sway over attitudes towards reliefpolicy.83 As Mill argued when criticising the proclamation of a day of GeneralFast for Ireland (24 March 1847), it proved disastrously true that there were few

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things more practically mischievous ‘than giving the countenance of authorityto the religious notions characteristic of a rude age’.84

The field of historical writing provides exemplary evidence of the shift fromenvironmentalist to ‘spiritualist’ views, and in particular to an aggressiveideology of Anglo-Saxonism. It is not an overstatement to say, in fact, thatMacaulay’s History of England marks the end of a phase in which some of thetraditional Irish grievances were finally acknowledged. As far as my topic isconcerned, the stadial interpretation of Irish character had been adhered to byHallam, together with the view that Ireland would have developed as Scotlanddid but for the English conquest. The other noteworthy history of England ofthe first half of the century was written by the Catholic Lingard in a conciliatoryspirit, evidenced by the mild tone and the almost equal amount of blameapportioned to the two sides. Earlier in the century, another English Catholichistorian, Francis Plowden, had gone as far as postulating the suitability of Irishcharacter to the Union.85 William Godwin certainly did his best to defendCromwell’s res gestae in Ireland, though not to the extent of either approving ofEnglish rule overall or ignoring the Irishman’s many virtues. In History ofIreland and the Irish People, Samuel Smiles denounces English oppression withthe utmost force, and, correspondingly, Irish character appears to him to havebeen debased by past anarchy and a perpetual state of war. Yet contemporaryIrishmen offer, in Smiles’ view, ‘a sublime moral spectacle’ of devotion andself-sacrifice through the Temperance and Repeal movements, thus indicatingthat ‘regeneration is at hand’.86 Of course there were some stains in the pictureas well. The most serious one was probably Carlyle’s Oliver Cromwell; anotherwas the highly successful History of Europe from the Commencement of theFrench Revolution (1833—42) by Archibald Alison, where Irish character wasdeemed to be irreconcilable with representative government.87 Yet it shouldalso be recalled that the Celtic descent that Alison complained about was in thesame years eulogized by Thierry and Michelet in parallel with an indictment ofBritish policies towards Ireland. The rise of Celtism in French historiogra-phy—a Celtism which in Michelet amounted to the advocacy of France’sMediterranean imperialism—has to be taken into account, whatever the influ-ence that the French climate of opinion might have exerted in Britain.

The religious divide, effectively played down by most of the aforementionedhistorians,88 was revived by Macaulay in the context of extensive recourse tonational characters (and other more or less metaphysical historical subjects) asexplanatory devices.89 The character of the Irish is depicted by Macaulayaccording to two logically different but continuously overlapping criteria. Onthe one hand there is the quasi-natural Celtic descent, ancestrally showing ‘thesusceptibility, the vivacity, the natural turn for acting and rhetoric, which areindigenous on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea’. On the other, historicalfactors like underdevelopment and the resilience of Catholicism are called toaccount for the faults of the Irishman: hence, English rule was ‘the dominion ofwealth over poverty, of knowledge over ignorance, of civilised over uncivilisedman’.90 The blurring of the two criteria—or rather the lack of distinctionbetween them—turns Irish history into a self-fulfilling prediction. The Irishcharacter is evaluated against the yardstick of the Scottish. In the Essays, the


comparison serves to exemplify that the human stuff may, as in Scotland, ‘supplyin a great measure the defects of the worst representative systems’, constitutionsbeing means and not ends. A similar capacity is out of the question in Ireland. Inthe History, the Scots are said to possess ‘all the qualities which conduce tosuccess in life’ whereas the Irish have those which make a people ‘interesting’.91Perhaps more remarkably, the portrait of the ancient Highlanders follows morestrictly stadial lines and is much more sympathetic than that of their fellow Celtsthe Irish.92 The difference between the two Celtic peoples is accounted for by‘the better qualities of an aristocracy’ which the Highlanders showed.93

NOTES

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a seminar at the University of Sussexon 8 May 1997. I wish to thank all those present, and particularly Brian Young,Richard Whatmore, and Donald Winch, for many valuable comments. R. D. Col-lison Black, Geoffrey Lloyd, and Donald Winch provided useful criticisms of anearlier draft. I also thank Andrew Cresswell for polishing up my writing. Usualdisclaimers apply. The essay is part of a broader project, aimed at assessing the roleplayed by notions of national character in pre-1914 European social sciences. Theproject has been carried on in conjunction with the Leverhulme Historical PoliticalEconomy Programme at the Centre for History and Economics of King’s College,Cambridge.

2. Those who, following the footsteps of L. P. Curtis, Jr., Anglo-Saxon and Celts.A Study of Anti-Irish Prejudice in »ictorian England (Bridgeport, CT: 1968), haveasserted the continuity of anti-Irish feeling have been opposed, in various ways, byS. Gilley, ‘English Attitudes to the Irish in England, 1780—1900’, in C. Holmes (Ed.),Immigrants and Minorities in British Society (London: 1978); D. G. Paz, ‘Anti-Catholicism, Anti-Irish Stereotyping, and Anti-Celtic Racism in Mid-VictorianWorking-Class Periodicals’, Albion, XVIII (1986), pp. 601—616; and R. F. Foster,Paddy and Mr Punch. Connections in Irish and English History (London: 1993),pp. 171—194.

3. The paper being a survey of British educated opinion, the self-representation ofIrishmen has been largely excluded. Yet the anonymity of review articles might haveinadvertently re-introduced Irish views occasionally. No unpublished material (suchas letters and diaries) has been considered, for my interest lies in the public discourseon the Irish and not in capturing personal sentiments.

4. For a random sample, see R. Bell, A Description of the Condition and Manners as wellas of the Moral and Political Character, Education, & c. of the Peasantry of Ireland[2] (London: 1804), esp. pp. 13—25, 34—35 (this is a collection of articles ofunusually high literary quality, detail, and penetration); [J. W. Croker], A Sketch ofthe State of Ireland, Past and Present (London: 1808), pp. 27—37 (this work wentthrough some twenty editions, and was republished in 1884); S. Barlow, ¹he Historyof Ireland, from the Earliest Period to the Present ¹ime (2 vols., London: 1814), II,pp. 419—430; G. L. Smyth, Ireland: Historical and Statistical (3 vols., London:1844—1849), III, pp. 14—33. For a general comment, see the perceptive essay ofD. Kiberd, ‘Irish Literature and Irish History’, in R. F. Foster (Ed.), ¹he OxfordHistory of Ireland (Oxford: 1992), pp. 230—281.

5. See D. Berman, ‘David Hume on the 1641 Rebellion in Ireland’, Studies, LXV (1976),pp. 101—112. Voltaire’s attitude is also revealing of eighteenth-century hostility to the

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‘religious fanaticism’ of Irish rebels: see G. Gargett, ‘Voltaire and Irish History’,Eighteenth-Century Ireland, V (1990), pp. 117—141.

6. For a comprehensive account, see J. T. Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fıor-Ghael. Studies inthe Idea of Irish Nationality, its Development and ¸iterary Expression Prior to theNineteenth Century (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: 1986), esp. Chap. 2. The ‘trans-formation of the stereotypical Irishman in the period following the Restoration froma half-human savage into a ridiculous and contemptible gimcrack Englishman’ hasbeen documented by D. Hayton, ‘From Barbarian to Burlesque: English Images ofthe Irish c. 1660—1750’, Irish Economic and Social History, XV (1988), pp. 5—31. Butsome Irish qualities already figure in Tudor literature: see D. B. Quinn, ¹he Eliza-bethan and the Irish (Ithaca, N.Y.: 1966), pp. 89—90, 150—151.

7. A. Young, A ¹our in Ireland 1776—1779 (2 vols., Dublin: 1970).8. I use the expression ‘Protestant Ascendancy’ to describe Irish Protestants, more

especially Anglicans and landlords. See J. Hill, ‘The Meaning and Significance of‘‘Protestant Ascendancy’’, 1787—1840’, in Ireland after the ºnion (Oxford: 1989), pp.1—22, and J. Kelly, ‘Eighteenth-Century Ascendancy: a Commentary’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, V (1990), pp. 173—187. However convenient is the term, it nonethe-less conceals significant differences in Ireland’s ruling class: see J. Spence, ‘The Philo-sophy of Irish Toryism, 1833—1852’ (PhD thesis, University of London: 1991).

9. See G. I. T. Machin, ¹he Catholic Question in English Politics 1820 to 1830 (Oxford:1964).

10. R. Musgrave, Memoirs of the Different Rebellions in Ireland (3rd edn., 2 vols., Dublin:1802), quotation from p. xiv. On Musgrave, see J. R. Hill, ‘Popery and Protestantism,Civil and Religious Liberty: the Disputed Lessons of Irish History 1690—1812’, Pastand Present, XXXVI (1988), pp. 126—129. Many conservative accounts of the 1798rebellion on both sides of the water hardly mention the Dissenters’ role; see forinstance A. Alison, History of Europe from the Commencement of the French Revol-ution (vols. 1—2, 1833; 6th edn., 10 vols., Edinburgh: 1844), III, pp. 692—706.

11. J. Millar, ‘Review of the Government of Ireland’, in An Historical »iew of the EnglishGovernment (4th edn., 4 vols., London: 1812), IV, pp. 7—9, 49—52. The stadial view ofIrish manners is traceable to Hume’s History as well, but buried under gloomydepictions of Irish atrocities.

12. Jeffrey’s review is in Edinburgh Review (henceforth ER), III (1803), pp. 154—181 (esp.165—168); Mill’s account of the Irish Question is in ER, XXI (1813), pp. 340—364. SeeJ. Clive, Scotch Reviewers. ¹he ‘Edinburgh Review’, 1802—1815 (London: 1957), pp.177—179. I note in passing that, owing to the stadial environmentalist tenets appliedto both cases, Irish character shows a basic similarity to Hindu character as depictedby Mill in History of British India. Mill’s Hindus are passionate, imaginative, ‘sharpand quick of intellect’, but also indolent and passive: ¹he History of British India (3vols., London: 1817), I, pp. 312—315. According to Mill, national character essentiallyresults from climate, government, and religion. Mill had already dealt with Irishaffairs: see the ‘Preface by the translator’ and the ‘copious notes’ in C. Villers, AnEssay on the Spirit and Influence of the Reformation of ¸uther [2] ¹ranslated, andIllustrated with Copious Notes, by James Mill, Esq. (London: 1805).

13. See D. Hume, ‘Of National Characters’, in Essays Moral, Political, and ¸iterary(Indianapolis: 1987), pp. 197—215. Other texts by Hume stress the relevance of‘sympathy’ in this regard.

14. J. Mackintosh, ‘Wakefield’s Ireland’, ER, XX (1812), p. 352; and see II (1803), pp.398—402 (Smith); VIII (1806), pp. 311—336 (Hallam); VIII (1806), pp. 116—124(Macvey Napier); XI (1807), pp. 116—144 (Jeffrey); XXXIV (1820), pp. 320—338(Smith); XLVI (1827), pp. 433—470 (Jeffrey). Smith in particular wrote regularly on


Irish affairs: see P. Virgin, Sydney Smith (London: 1994). Bentham too subscribed tothe Edinburgh Review interpretation: J. Bentham, Principles of the Civil Code, in id.,¼orks, ed. J. Bowring (11 vols., Edinburgh: 1843), I, p. 317.

15. I am quoting from ‘On the State of Ireland’, in E. A. Wrigley and D. Souden (Eds),¹he ¼orks of ¹homas Robert Malthus (8 vols., London: 1986), IV, pp. 23—43, esp.40—42 (originally in ER, XII (1808), pp. 336—355). Malthus also wrote a second articleon Ireland, here on pp. 47—67. For Malthus and his critics on Ireland, see D. Winch,Riches and Poverty (Cambridge: 1996), pp. 341—344. For an evaluation from the pointof view of economic history, see C. O’ Grada, ‘Malthus and the Pre-FamineEconomy’, in A. E. Murphy (Ed.), Economists and the Irish Economy from theEighteenth Century to the Present Day (Dublin: 1984), pp. 75—95, and esp.79—80.

16. See for instance J. R. MacCulloch, ‘Ireland’, ER, XXXVII (1822), pp. 60—109 and esp.pp. 95—96; N. Senior, ‘Ireland’, ER, LXXIX (1844), pp. 189—266 and esp. pp. 205—209(on the genesis of this article, endorsed by all Whig leaders, see P. H. Gray, ‘BritishPolitics and the Irish Land Question, 1843—1850’ (PhD thesis, University ofCambridge: 1992), pp. 61—65). The heated exchange between MacCulloch and Sadleron the size of Irish population is of little interest to us—the relevant texts are M. T.Sadler, Ireland; its Evils, and their Remedies (London: 1828), and J. R. MacCulloch,‘Sadler on Ireland’, ER, XLIX (1829), pp. 300—317.

17. Senior, ‘Ireland’, pp. 196—209. For an assessment of the economists’ approach toIreland, see the classic study by R. D. Collison Black, Economic ¹hought and the IrishQuestion (Cambridge: 1960).

18. The public subsidy of Catholic priests was advocated by many as a necessaryprecondition of any education scheme.

19. All the quotations are from S. Smith, ‘Ireland’, ER, XXXIV (1820), pp. 334—335.20. J. R. MacCulloch, A Dictionary, Geographical, Statistical, and Historical (2 vols.,

London: 1841—1842), II, pp. 35—52 and esp. pp. 48—50.21. N. W. Senior, ‘Relief of Irish Distress in 1847 and 1848’ (ER, 1849), in Journals,

Conversations and Essays Relating to Ireland (2 vols., London: 1868), I, p. 230; see alsoin the same article pp. 212—216, 236. Senior bitterly observed that ‘we must allow the[Irish] people an amount of free action, which we know they will abuse, becauseworse evils even than that abuse will be produced if we restrain it’, and cited asexamples the franchise, the liberty of the press, and the trial by jury (p. 215). Senior’sfamiliarity with national character issues is evidenced by his ‘France, America, andBritain’ (ER, 1842), in Historical and Philosophical Essays (2 vols., London: 1865), I,pp. 1—139.

22. See the book by the London barrister, G. Cooper, who toured Ireland in 1799:¸etters on the Irish Nation (London: 1800). See also J. C. Curwen, Observations on theState of Ireland (2 vols., London: 1818). Curwen was a Cumbrian businessman andMP.

23. See for instance Curwen, Observations, Passim (and I, pp. 171—172, on Irish women);Mr & Mrs S. C. Hall, Ireland: its Scenery, Character, & c. (3 vols., London:1841—1843), esp. II, pp. 314—315, on Irish women (but consider that, while Mr Hallwas English, Mrs Hall was Irish); [J. Grant], Impressions of Ireland and the Irish(2 vols., London: 1844), esp. II, pp. 183—185.

24. See for instance Hall, Ireland, esp. I, pp. 33—47; An English Traveller, A »isit to the¼ild ¼est, or, a Sketch of the Emerald Isle (London: 1843); Grant, Impressions.

25. The work rapidly gained a reputation for objectivity and knowledgeability. EdwardWakefield (1774—1854) was a farmer at Romford and later a land agent in London.His mother was the Quaker philanthrophist, traveller, and writer Priscilla; and one ofEdward’s sons was the Edward Gibbon Wakefield mentioned below. Edward was

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a long-standing friend of Mill and Place and was employed by Ricardo as his landagent.

26. E. Wakefield, An Account of Ireland, Statistical and Political (2 vols., London: 1812),I, pp. 262—263.

27. I discern three elements in his strategy. First, he does not identify Catholics exclus-ively with peasants, as most authors implicitly or explicitly do. On the contrary, hestresses the existence, social relevance, and loyalty of other groups (the ‘gentlemen oflanded property’ and the middle-class graziers). Second, Wakefield reverses thedirection of influence between Catholic priests and their flocks: in contrast toMusgrave, the latter control the former. Third, Wakefield tends to speak of a compre-hensive and truly ‘national’ Irish character, i.e. inclusive of all classes and faiths.Although he mentions the ‘character of industry and enterprise’ which marks thepeople of Ulster in sharp contrast with the rest of the country, he also extends therange of the usual stereotype. Typical negative characteristics like garrulousness,prodigality, ‘thoughtless habits’, violence, impetuosity, vanity, and a propensity toextremes—in short, a ‘want of restraint upon their passions’—are seen to be sharedby Protestants and Catholics alike. Wakefield, An Account of Ireland, II, pp. 542—566(the point on the dependence of the priests was taken up by many), 571, 794—797,805—806.

28. G. A. A. Dealtry and J. T. Coleridge, ‘The Church in Ireland’, Quarterly Review(hereafter QR), XXXI (1825), p. 523.

29. See for instance QR, LXVI (1832), pp. 390—410; and LV, (1835), pp. 35—73. ModerateTories often shared the environmentalist perspective: one of those was Sadler,Ireland, pp. 17—18.

30. I have been quoting from H. Townsend, ‘The Irishman, I’, Blackwood’s EdinburghMagazine (hereafter BM), XIV (1823), pp. 544, 549.

31. Quotations from D. Robinson, ‘Ireland’, BM, XV (1824), p. 280; and id., ‘On WhatGeneral Principles Ought Ireland to be Governed?’, BM, XXV (1829), p. 63.

32. Robinson, ‘Ireland’, pp. 272, 274, 276, 291. On the one hand, Robinson’s criticism ofthe absentees went as far as advocating the confiscation of their land (see ‘On WhatGeneral Principles Ought Ireland to be Governed?’, pp. 56—57); on the other, hisantipathy towards the Irish populace surfaces in various contexts (see e.g. his ‘Noteson the United States of America’, BM, XXIV (1828), esp. pp. 626—627).

33. Basically, Blackwood’s turned from politics to literature as its prevailing interest.After 1829, there appeared a notable article by the historian Alison: ‘Ireland’,XXXIII, pp. 66—87, 223—242, 338—357, 561—582, and XXXVI, pp. 747—767. ThomasDe Quincey contributed a few articles about Irish parliamentary politics in the 1840s.

34. ‘Occisio, combustio, devastatio’: the whole history of Ireland is comprised in thesethree words, according to Southey: ‘The Roman Catholic Question in Ireland’, QR,XXXVIII (1828), pp. 535—598 (quotation from p. 543). Perhaps also ‘Ireland: its Evilsand their Remedies’, QR, XXXVIII (1828), pp. 53—84, is by Southey. More moderateviews on the Irish are expressed in id., ¹he ¸ife of ¼esley (2 vols., 2nd ed., London:1820), II, pp. 256—263. On Southey, see D. Eastwood, ‘Robert Southey and theMeanings of Patriotism’, Journal of British Studies, 31 (1992), pp. 265—287, andM. Storey, Robert Southey. A ¸ife (Oxford: 1997).

35. I have been drawing from W. Sewell, ‘Romanism in Ireland’, QR, LXVII (1840), pp.117—171, and esp. pp. 120—121; id., ‘Sketches of the Irish Peasantry’, QR, LXVIII(1841), pp. 336—376, and esp. pp. 350, 369—370, 340. Another article by Sewell in theQR is ‘Romish Priests in Ireland’, LXVII (1841), pp. 541—591.

36. As regards another important review, the radical ¼estminster, there is very little toreport. The Irish Question seems to have held no special interest. I just mention the


review’s stern opposition to the introduction of a poor law to Ireland in the late1820s and early 1830s. Instead, the British and Foreign Review was in favour of themeasure, as various articles by the Irish MP Fitzstephen French in the 1837 issuedemonstrate.

37. In a late specimen of historical environmentalism, Charles Greville wrote: it isimpossible ‘to form a fair and impartial judgement upon Irish affairs2 withoutknowing, and keeping studiously in view, the whole course of Irish history’; earlierevents are in fact ‘linked with succeeding transactions in an unbroken chain ofconnection’. [C. C. F. Greville], Past and Present Policy of England ¹owards Ireland(London: 1845), p. 14.

38. See Lord J. Russell, ¹he Government of Ireland. ¹he Substance of a Speech Deliveredin the House of Commons on Monday, April 15th, 1839 (London: 1839), esp. p. 16,where the theme of Irish character is tackled. On Russell and Ireland, see now D. A.Kerr, ‘A Nation of Beggars?’ Priests, People, Politics in Famine Ireland, 1846—1852(Oxford: 1994).

39. I am referring to B. Hilton, ¹he Age of Atonement. ¹he Influence of Evangelicalism onSocial and Economic ¹hought (Oxford: 1988).

40. T. Chalmers, ‘Evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons on theSubject of a Poor Law for Ireland’ (1832), in id., Dr. Chalmers and the Poor ¸aws,G. Kerr and G. Chalmers Wood (Eds) (Edinburgh: 1911), pp. 63—235. For Chalmers’view of the Irish, see T. Chalmers, ¹he Doctrine of Christian Charity Applied to theCase of Religious Differences (Glasgow: 1818), pp. 40—42.

41. Hilton, ¹he Age of Atonement; P. Mandler, ‘Tories and Paupers: Christian PoliticalEconomy and the Making of the New Poor Law’, Historical Journal, XXXIII (1990),pp. 81—103. See also A. M. C. Waterman, Revolution, Economics and Religion.Christian Political Economy, 1798—1833 (Cambridge: 1991).

42. N. W. Senior, A ¸etter to ¸ord Howick, on a ¸egal Provision for the Irish Poor(London: 1831). The 1833 commission, presided over by Richard Whately, opposeda poor law on the usual moral grounds but viewed the flaws in the Irish character asdue to the lasting effects of the penal laws. ‘Third Report from His Majesty’sCommissioners for Inquiring into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland’,Parliamentary Papers, XXX (1836), pp. 7—8.

43. I have tangentially dealt with this topic in R. Romani, ‘The America of the Econom-ists and the Smithian Legacy: English and French Political Economy Confronted byUnited States Growth, 1815—1860’, History of Economic Ideas, V (1997), pp. 47—85.

44. I am referring to the series of articles on colonization issues which Merivale pub-lished in the Edinburgh Review since 1839. On Merivale see D. Winch, ClassicalPolitical Economy and Colonies (London: 1965), p. 132.

45. E. G. Wakefield, A »iew of the Art of Colonization (London: 1849), pp. 84, 175.Travellers in the United States often sketched an unflattering image of Irish immi-grants; see for instance F. Marryat, A Diary in America with Remarks on its Institu-tions (1839; New York: 1962), pp. 395—396.

46. T. De Quincey, ¹he ¸ogic of Political Economy (Edinburgh: 1844), p.146 footnote(but the whole comparison between the Swiss and the Irish, pp. 143—149, is interest-ing). Cf. D. Fitzpatrick, ‘ ‘‘A Peculiar Tramping People’’: the Irish in Britain,1801—1870’, in W. E. Vaughan (Ed.), A New History of Ireland, V, Ireland ºnder theºnion, I, 1801—1870 (Oxford: 1989), pp. 623—661. It is worth mentioning thatG. Cornewall Lewis’ official Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain(London: 1836), depicted the immigrants as ‘the most efficient workmen’, p. 79.

47. This imprecision was fully recognized by the middle of the century: see C. Bolt,»ictorian Attitudes to Race (London: 1971), pp. ix—x.

214 Roberto Romani

48. The distinction is put forward by M. Banton, Racial ¹heories (Cambridge: 1987),pp. 1—64.

49. See in particular J. MacCulloch, ¹he Highlands and ¼estern Isles of Scotland (4 vols.,London: 1824), IV, pp. 250—298. Among his critics, I mention [J. Browne], A CriticalExamination of Dr. MacCulloch’s ¼ork on the Highlands and ¼estern Isles of Scotland(Edinburgh: 1825), and T. Price, An Essay on the Physiognomy and Physiology of thePresent Inhabitants of Britain (London: 1829). Robert Knox’s ¹he Races of Men(1850) marked the end of a widely observed truce between Saxons and Celts. Cf. R.Horsman, ‘Origins of racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850’, Journal ofthe History of Ideas, XXXVII (1976), pp. 387—410. G. Chalmers, Caledonia: or,a historical and topographical account of North Britain (1807—1826; 8 vols., Paisley:1887—1902), vols. I and II. For a comment, see some scattered remarks in C. Kidd,Subverting Scotland ’s Past : Scottish ¼hig Historians and the Creation of an Anglo-British Identity, 1689—c.1830 (Cambridge: 1993), esp. chap. 11, and also T. P.Peardon, ¹he ¹ransition in English Historical ¼riting 1760—1830 (New York: 1933).C. O’ Halloran, ‘Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations: Antiquarian Debate on theCeltic Past in Ireland and Scotland in the Eighteenth Century’ (PhD thesis, Univer-sity of Cambridge: 1991), is a good introduction to the debate.

50. S. Turner, ¹he History of England from the Norman Conquest, to the Accession ofEdward the First (London: 1814), pp. 240, 242.

51. Price, An Essay on the Physiognomy and Physiology, p. 103.52. The Scottish origin of the Ulstermen originated a character fit to business, argued

Inglis, which has made all the difference between the North and the rest of Ireland; inthose wealthier areas, Catholics too enjoy wellbeing thanks to higher wages andcontinuous employment: Henry D. Inglis, Ireland in 1834 (2 vols., London: 1834), II,pp. 212—218, 251, 267, 324. Cf. Black, Economic ¹hought and the Irish Question,p. 157.

53. See, e.g., R. M. Martin, Ireland Before and After the ºnion with Great Britain(London: 1843), pp. 189—194, where the self-help precepts of the Bible were contras-ted with the various ‘excuses for idleness’ offered by Catholicism. Martin wrote alsoIreland, as it ¼as,—Is,—and Ought to Be (London: 1833).

54. T. C. Foster, ¸etters on the Condition of the People of Ireland (London: 1846). In 1836,Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal published a long article which praised Ireland and theIrish, depicted as ‘stout and willing labourers’ (‘A Few Days in Ireland’, V, issues249—256). Ten months later, the same writer reported that talks with local landlordshad convinced him that the Irishman’s many faults, which the writer now empha-sized, came from ‘something which lies deep in the constitution of the Celtic race’:‘A Few More Days in Ireland’, VI (1837), issues 298—302.

55. R. Cobden, ‘England, Ireland, and America’ (1835), in ¹he Political ¼ritings(London: 1878), pp. 25—27. George Chalmers combined the economic inferiority ofboth Catholicism and Celtism in An Historical »iew of the Domestic Economy ofG. Britain and Ireland (Edinburgh: 1812), pp. 402—404. Cobden’s point on theeconomic superiority of Protestant countries was accepted by G. Cornewall Lewis,‘The Irish Church Question’, ¹he ¸ondon Review, II (1835), pp. 252—254, but muchsoftened in a later reprint: G. Cornewall Lewis, On ¸ocal Disturbances in Ireland(London: 1836), pp. 387—391. Incidentally, the first essay in this book (‘Irish Distur-bances’, pp. 1—340) is a detailed account of Irish agricultural violence along socialand political lines. For a penetrating survey of pre-Weberian explanations of Protes-tant economic superiority, see J. Viner, Religious ¹hought and Economic Society(Durham, N.C.: 1978), pp. 159—189.

56. Cobden, ‘England’, p. 31.


57. E. Hoon Cawley (Ed.), ¹he American Diaries of Richard Cobden (New York: 1969),p. 125. Cobden’s European Diaries 1846—1849 (Aldershot: 1994), show the same anti-Catholic bias. For a recent treatment, see N. C. Edsall, Richard Cobden IndependentRadical (Cambridge, MA: 1986).

58. Cobden, ‘England’, pp. 28—30.59. Quoted in J. Morley, ¹he ¸ife of Richard Cobden (London: 1920), p. 93.60. G. Combe, ¹he Constitution of Man Considered in Relation to External Objects (1828;

8th ed., Edinburgh: 1847), pp. 193—196, 256; id., A System of Phrenology (1825; 4th ed.,2 vols., Edinburgh: 1836), II, pp. 726—767. See S. Shapin, ‘Phrenological Knowledgeand the Social Structure of Early Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh’, Annals of Science,32 (1975), pp. 219—243.

61. G. Lyon, ‘Essay on the Phrenological Causes of the Different Degrees of LibertyEnjoyed by Different Nations’, Phrenological Journal, II (1824—5), p. 607.

62. ‘Cursory Remarks on Ireland’, Phrenological Journal, II (1824—5), pp. 161—177.63. Combe, A System of Phrenology, II, p. 731. Yet Irish indolence is due to long periods

of unemployment, Combe argues on p. 767, footnote.64. ‘Cursory Remarks’, pp. 176—177.65. He taught at the University and King’s College, Aberdeen. In 1819 he was translated

to Tron Church, Glasgow. In his Elements of Moral Philosophy, and of ChristianEthics (2 vols., London: 1826), I, pp. 499—500, industry is marked out as themost important virtue. Dewar also co-authored A Dictionary of Gaelic ¸anguage(Glasgow: 1831).

66. The one-volume work is divided into two parts, each with separate page numeration:for what is referred to in the text, see D. Dewar, Observations on the Character,Customs, and Superstitions of the Irish (London: 1812), I, pp. 21—85. Dewar identifiesthe following causes of Irish debasement: continual civil wars, minimal exchangebetween the higher and the lower classes, the bad example of the English settlers andtheir open contempt, political and civil oppression, the exclusive moral influence ofthe Catholic priests, and the unrewardedness of industrious effort.

67. Yet another Scot discussed at length the Irish need for education: see C. Anderson,Memorial on Behalf of the Native Irish (London: 1815), and id., Historical Sketches ofthe Native Irish and their Descendants (1828; 2nd ed., Edinburgh: 1830).

68. Dewar, Observations, I, pp. 30, 138; 156—157; II, p. 67.69. Dewar, Observations, II, pp. 66—145.70. Dewar, Observations, II, pp. 8, 13, 15. Dewar’s polemical target is the idea that

Irishmen are unsuited to moral improvement, that is to civilization (see pp. 112, 121,etc.).

71. Dewar, Observations, II, p. 128.72. A. Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767; Edinburgh: 1966), esp.

bk. VI; id., Principles of Morals and Political Science (2 vols., Edinburgh: 1792), I,pp. 214, 302; II, pp. 413—419; E. Burke, ‘Speech on Moving His Resolutions forConciliation with the Colonies, March 22, 1775’, in ¼orks (12 vols., London:1854—1869), I, pp. 450—512. See also id., ‘A Letter to John Farr and John Harris,Esqrs., Sheriffs of the City of Bristol, on the Affairs of America. 1777’, in id., Speecheson the American ¼ar (Boston: 1898), esp. pp. 204—208. For this aspect of Burke’sthought, see C. P. Courtney, Montesquieu and Burke (Westport, CT: 1975), esp.pp. 94—99, 102—103.

73. For the criticism of the ‘man of system’ in Scotland, see the scattered remarks inWinch, Riches and Poverty, esp. chap. 4.

74. Besides Chevalier’s ¸ettres, the relevant texts here are G. de Stael, Conside& rations surla Re& volution Franmaise (1818; Paris: 1983); ‘Avant-propos’, ¸e Censeur Europe&en,

216 Roberto Romani

I (1817), pp. i—viii, and [C. Comte], ‘Considerations sur l’etat moral de la nationfraniaise, et sur les causes de l’instabilite de ses institutions’, ibid., pp. 1—92;J. Michelet, Introduction a% l’histoire universelle (1831), in P. Viallaneix (Ed.), Oeuvrescomple% tes de Michelet (21 vols., Paris: 1971—1982), II, pp. 227—297, and id., Histoire deFrance (vols. I—II, 1833), bks. i—iv, in ibid., IV; A. Thierry, Histoire de la conqueL te del ’Angleterre par les Normands (2nd ed., 4 vols., Paris: 1826); A. Blanqui, Coursd ’e& conomie industrielle 1836—1837 (3 vols., Paris-Versailles: 1837—1839), esp. vol. I. Asregards J. de Maistre, his most telling work is Etude sur la souverainete& (Lyon-Paris:1924), also known as De la souverainete& du peuple. This work was written in1794—1796 but published as late as 1870. Bonald too might be included, for nationalcharacter was for him the outcome of traditional institutions only—demo-cracies do not create any national character—and acted in practice as an indepen-dent and crucial force: L. G. A. Bonald, ¹he&orie du pouvoir politique et religieux dansla socie& te& civile (1796), in id., Oeuvres comple% tes (3 vols., Paris: 1864), I, cols. 122—953,esp. 287—288, 419—452.

75. For this interesting figure of chemist, phrenologist and journalist, see R. Cooter, ¹heCultural Meaning of Popular Science. Phrenology and the Organization of Consent inNineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: 1984), pp. 57—59.

76. In Spencer’s book, institutions are a reflection of the moral evolution of men as socialbeings, and ‘national character’ essentially refers to the stages of that evolution. In thecase of Ireland, all classes and groups are seen to exhibit the same traits of violence,improvidence, and bigotry: see H. Spencer, Social Statics (London: 1868), p. 255.Bagehot’s text is a shorter and much lighter one. It may be placed at least loosely ina Burkean tradition. See J. Burrow, ‘Sense and Circumstances: Bagehot and theNature of Political Understanding’, in S. Collini, D. Winch, and J. Burrow, ¹hatNoble Science of Politics (Cambridge: 1983), pp. 163—181.

77. As regards the French scenario, I refer to R. Romani, ‘All Montesquieu’s Sons: thePlace of ‘‘esprit general’’, ‘‘caractere national’’, and ‘‘moeurs’’ in French PoliticalPhilosophy, 1748—1789’, Studies on »oltaire and the Eighteenth Century, forthcoming.As for my comment on contemporary British attitudes, the debate which followed thepublication of John Brown’s complaint of luxury and effeminacy in 1757 is particularlyindicative. Among the critics of Brown’s Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the¹imes, those who pointed to the habits of the lower classes as truly representative wereC. L. St., ¹he Real Character of the Age (London: 1757); O. Ruffhead in ¹he MonthlyReview, XVIII (April 1758), pp. 354—374 (from which the quotation is taken, p. 367);[R. Wallace], Characteristics of the Present Political State of Great Britain (2nd ed.,London: 1758), pp. 174—175, 204—206; some other critics simply alluded to whatappeared as a commonplace view. As regards the Irish, Arthur Young maintained thatit was ‘among the common people’ that one had to look for ‘a national character’ , for‘the manners, habits, and customs of people of considerable fortune, are much the sameeverywhere’: Young, A ¹our in Ireland, II, p. 146.

78. T. Carlyle, ‘Signs of the Times’, in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (7 vols., London:1888), II, pp. 230—252, esp. pp. 239, 242—244.

79. T. Carlyle, ‘Chartism’, in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, VI, p. 126.80. T. Carlyle, Reminiscences of My Irish Journey in 1849 (London: 1882), p. v. For his

visits to Ireland, see F. Kaplan, ¹homas Carlyle. A Biography (Cambridge: 1983),pp. 334—347. A merciful reference to the Irish peasants is in ¹he French Revolution(Oxford: 1989), p. 442.

81. T. Carlyle, ¹he ¸etters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (3 vols., London: 1904), I, pp.459—460, 462. Fred Kaplan has written that for Carlyle ‘history is an avenging arrowfrom God’: see ¹homas Carlyle, p. 225.


82. T. Carlyle, Past and Present, in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, IV, pp. 134—143.On Carlyle’s ‘facts’, see Kaplan, ¹homas Carlyle, p. 343. In a Spectator article, Carlyleproposed to organize Irish peasantry into military corps: see S. Heffer, MoralDesperado. A ¸ife of ¹homas Carlyle (London: 1995), pp. 265—266.

83. See Gray, ‘British Politics’, which expands upon R. J. Montague, ‘Relief and Recon-struction in Ireland, 1845—1849: a Study in Public Policy during the Great Famine’(PhD thesis, University of Oxford: 1976); id., ‘ ‘‘Potatoes and Providence’’: BritishGovernment Responses to the Great Famine’, Bulla& n, I (1994), pp. 75—90; id.,‘Ideology and the Famine’, in C. Poirteir (Ed.), ¹he Great Irish Famine (Dublin:1995), pp. 86—103, and Hilton, ¹he Age of Atonement, pp. 108—114. See also C.O’ Grada, Ireland Before and After the Famine (Manchester and New York: 1993), pp.125—133, and id., Ireland. A New Economic History, 1780—1939 (Oxford: 1995), pp.187—199. The quotation is by Charles Trevelyan, permanent under-secretary at theTreasury, cited in Hilton, ¹he Age of Atonement, p. 113.

84. ¹he Collected ¼orks of John Stuart Mill (31 vols., Toronto and London: 1963—),XXIV, p. 1075. On Mill’s forty-three Morning Chronicle articles on Ireland(1846—1847), where he contended that peasant proprietorship was the solutionbecause it could heal the two main vices of Irish character, idleness and reproductiveimprovidence, see in particular L. Zastoupil, ‘Moral Government: J. S. Mill onIreland’, Historical Journal, XXVI (1983), pp. 707—717, and B. L. Kinzer, ‘J. S. Milland Irish Land: a Reassessment’, ibid., XXVII (1984), pp. 111—127.

85. See respectively H. Hallam, ¹he Constitutional History of England from the Accessionof Henry »II to the Death of George II (2 vols., London: 1827), II, pp. 699—770;J. Lingard, A History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans to theAccession of Henry »III (8 vols., London: 1819—1830); and F. Plowden, An HistoricalReview of the State of Ireland (2 vols., London: 1803), esp. I, pp. 1—7. For otherexamples of British Catholic opinion, see J. Milner, An Inquiry into Certain »ulgarOpinions Concerning the Catholic Inhabitants and the Antiquities of Ireland (3rd ed.,London: 1810), and H. W. Tancred, An Historical Review of the Policy of theBritish Government, in the ¹reatment of its Catholic Subjects (London: 1815). Somequite balanced remarks are also scattered in C. Coote, History of the ºnion ofthe Kingdoms of Great-Britain and Ireland (London: 1802). The already men-tioned Christopher Anderson mounted a case for Irish education which was largelyhistorical in character: in his Historical Sketches of the Native Irish and theirDescendants; Illustrative of their Past and Present State with Regards to ¸iterature,Education, and Oral Instruction (2nd ed., Edinburgh: 1830), see esp. Anderson’sdefence of the Celts, p. 14, and his portrait of praiseworthy Irish character,p. 251.

86. See W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth of England (4 vols., London:1824—1828); S. Smiles, History of Ireland and the Irish People, under the Government ofEngland (London: 1844), esp. pp. iii—iv, 20. William Cobbett’s denunciation of theReformation (on both sides of the water) was isolated: see W. Cobbett, A History ofthe Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland (2 vols., London: 1829).

87. A. Alison, History of Europe from the Commencement of the French Revolution (vols.1—2, 1833; 6th ed., 10 vols., Edinburgh: 1844), esp. III, pp. 692—706.

88. Besides Hallam, Lingard, Plowden, and Smiles, George Brodie too deserves mentionin this respect: see his History of the British Empire, from the Accession of Charles I tothe Restoration (4 vols., Edinburgh: 1822), I, pp. 441—449; III, 157—159. See alsoGreville, Past and Present Policy. On the other hand, S. Turner’s ¹he Modern Historyof England (4 vols., London: 1827—1829), written in opposition to Leland, stresses therole of the Catholic Church in the Irish rebellions.

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89. See J. Clive, ¹homas Babington Macaulay. ¹he Shaping of the Historian (London:1973), pp. 105—124. For a comprehensive assessment, see J. W. Burrow, A ¸iberalDescent. »ictorian Historians and the English Past (Cambridge: 1981), pp. 11—93.

90. T. B. Macaulay, ¹he History of England from the Accession of James II (5 vols.,London: 1849—1855), I, p. 66; II, pp. 127—131, 134.

91. T. B. Macaulay, ‘Burleigh and his Times’, in Critical and Historical Essays (3 vols.,London: 1903), I, pp. 468—470; ¹he History of England, I, pp. 65—66.

92. ¹he History of England, III, pp. 304—309.93. ¹he History of England, III, pp. 308—309. For a comment on Macaulay’s attitude, see

N. Lebow, ‘British Historians and Irish History’, Eire-Ireland, VIII (1973), pp. 32—35(although the paper suffers from an oversimplistic interpretative line). A few yearslater, R. H. Inglis Palgrave took a radically divergent stand on English dealings withIrish and Scots: see ¹he History of Normandy and of England (4 vols., 1851—1864;Cambridge: 1921), IV, pp. 208—211, 492—494.


Documents

British views on Irish national character, 1800–1846. an intellectual history1