Fáilte Romhat
Bigotry Exposed
Setting a scenario for conflict - the great debate between Father O'Leary and Bence Jones
The year was 1881. In one corner, a veritable 'angel in shining light,' one Father John O'Leary, then C.C., Clonakilty, later Monsignor, P.P. and chairman of the Southern Star Company Limited and in the other corner landlord supreme, rack renter, persecutor of the poor and defenceless, despiser of the Irish and all things Irish, a veritable monster, a Caliban to wit William Bence Jones of Lisselane, Clonakilty, and parts around.
To achieve any understanding of how
Father O'Leary achieved a towering reputation in West Cork and a clearly
nationally prominent position in the Land League, an examination of his
celebrated altercation with William Bence Jones is of fundamental importance.
A description of one as an angel and the other a Caliban, or a devil, might well
be to extreme but such was the ferocity of exchanges conducted publicly in the
English and Irish press during the early 1880s, it is well nigh impossible to
avoid being judgemental.
Removed at such a present distance of over one hundred years from the 'scene of
battle' anybody attempting an analysis of the bitter dispute, which was not just
a local issue but very much national, can only examine the evidence and where
possible cite such contemporary views as might be unearthed.
UNPUBLISHED
One hitherto unpublished view, and
which, it has to be admitted comes from a then clearly prejudiced pen
(prejudiced, surprisingly as a Catholic and subsequent Southern Star editor
against Father O'Leary) is that of the celebrated James M. Burke, B.L.
Writing, in the late 1890s, a diatribe entirely against Father O'Leary (then
Monsignor), and mainly to do with other controversies, James M. Burke penned
this paragraph -
"As a curate of Clonakilty parish and head centre of the National League, Father
O'Leary was a great hero. He got involved in a great controversy with a local
landlord named Bence Jones. The reviews and journals were full of it. Jones was
a ruthless landlord; Father O'Leary was a merciless boycotter. Jones was
subjected to indignities of all kinds, graves were dug in front of his door and
during the controversy, he died. It is needless to say to what the peasants
attributed his death."
This was another jaundiced view of the Rev. Monsignor O'Leary will, we feel, be
later evident, as will the justification for a priest becoming involved in
politics, not to mention the Fourth Estate, but initially, it is necessary to
paint a brief picture of the contemporary landlord versus tenant scene and put
it in perspective apropos the Irish and English varieties.
Given that the landlord system prevailed in England also, why the absence there
of such bitter disputes, evictions, boycotting, labourers' strikes,
imprisonments and all the rest?
The landlord and tenant climate in England was entirely different to the Irish
situation. In England, the ownership of land was a sign of gentility and of
industrial success and anybody who made money during the Industrial Revolution,
bought land but were not dependent for their income on what they got from
tenants.
Thus, unlike in Ireland, the English landlord treated their tenants generously
and the general principle was that no gentleman should try to get more out of
his land than he would get out of a gilt-edged investment.
The English tenant also had security of tenure, with leases of perhaps 25 years
or more significantly with a right to a new lease. While some Irish tenants had
long leases, these arrangements began to fail late 18th and early 19th century
and most common were leases from year to year, commencing at a fixed date and
determinable at the end of any current year by either party giving six months'
notice, usually the landlord.
THE THREE Fs
Insecurity of tenure was,
therefore, rife in Ireland and led to the celebrated demand for the "Three Fs"
(Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure and Free Sale) and this call was backed by the
Devon Commission but none of its recommendations were implemented. As early as
the 1850s, the Tenant Right League and the League of the North and South
campaigned for the "Three Fs" but early legislation such as Deasy's Land Act of
1860 did nothing to help the tenants.
All this time, in the planted Ulster counties, and now echoing the Partition of
Ireland, later to materialsise, there existed the so called "Ulster Custom" and
which approached the English landlord and tenant system in that tenants had a
right to review leases (if they were good farmers) and also to free sale. They
had fair rent and a higher bidder could not dispossess and established tenant.
Even though the Ulster Custom was no law, if a landlord tried to break it, he
was liable to be shot.
The Land Act of 1870 represented the first attempt to help the Southern Irish
tenant and tried to give the Ulster Custom force of law in the South and also
sought to give tenants compensation for improvements. The British prime
minister, Gladstone, also wanted to stop landlords evicting tenants but he could
not get the measure through a parliament filled with landlords.
So to the Land Act of 1881 (and the high point of the Bence Jones - Father
O'Leary controversy) and this bill provided for statutory tenancies running for
fifteen years to be renewed if tenants were satisfactory. There were new
measures for compensations for improvements which did not work but the Land
Commission began to fix judicial tenancies (average reductions about 21 per
cent) and gradually, the power of landlords began to wane.
By 1881, the Irish landlord began to feel that the British parliament was
against him and when the Conservatives came to power, their line was to weaken
the demand for Home Rule by economic amelioration (killing Home Rule by
kindness) and so they passed the Land Purchase Acts of 1885 and 1903. When all
that stage came to pass, the power of the rackatrenting Irish landlord class was
over and the great battle initiated by Michael Davitt, Charles Stewart Parnell
and their Land League colleagues had been won. It was a bitter struggle but the
argument that this victory matched the later achievement of Independence is hard
to resist,
"ORANGE" BIGOT
That aside from his activities as a landlord, William Bence Jones exhibited characteristics redolent of Northern Orange bigotry and which was likely to be tolerated more in thickly "planted" West Cork than elsewhere in the South, is an aspect worthy of exposure in all it connotations.
Two particular 'bribes'
proferred by William Bence Jones at two quite separate junctures, had
particularly sinister racial discrimination undertones and, at the later stage,
1881, caused considerable public controversy, with the 'Skibbereen Eagle' coming
out editorially against the Lisselane landlord.
The later bribe, in 1991, related to a College Hall in Cork (£500
if no Irish materials or labour were employed) but the earlier one in 1863
relating to the rebuilding of St. Finbarre's Cathedral - £5,000
to Bishop John Gregg, if no Irish architect was employed, constituted an
inducement of then monumental proportions !
Bence Jones, according to his own book "A Life's Work in Ireland" first came to
the Lisselane Estate in 1840. The estate was originally 2,000 acres but, by
purchase, it was increased to about 4,000 acres and prior to his arrival, had
been let by his father, and grandfather before, to agents and was, in his words
"thoroughly neglected." Farms averaged 25 acres, through some were 50 acres or
more and many only from ten to fifteen acres.
The grandfather of William Bence Jones was a true 'absentee landlord' because he
'never saw the estate in his life' while his father 'saw it but once when
arriving in a carriage, he stopped for half an hour to talk to tenants and then
drove away again.'
The agent employed, says Jones in his book, was 'bad and about 1838 turned out
dishonest and took a large sum of rent for his own use.' It was therefore
necessary that somebody look after the estate and through educated at Harrow and
Balliol and having been a lawyer in London, he resolved to come to Lisselane and
settle there.
Though born and reared in Suffolk, where a knowledge of farming 'came by
nature,' Bence Jones 'knew all about the theory of good farming but very little
of the practical working details.'
That he soon found out and significantly from a North of Ireland agent, a W.
Blacker, was unsurprising but clearly, Bence Jones also learned a lot about
persecution and exploitation and in the process, acquired a large modicum of
anti-Irish , and thinly-veiled anti-Catholic, prejudice.
Central to the nation-wide controversy that surrounded him, and for which his
ill-treatment of tenants and labourers and while that is the kernel of the
story, it is instructive to illustrate some of his other odious attributes with
specific incidents.
If we take these reprehensible characteristics as being based on first,
religion, secondly race and thirdly, class or social status, one has to remember
that in regard to the first-names in particular, it would have been highly
dangerous in the climate of the times, with Catholic priests forming a major
backbone of the Land League agitation for any landlord to be publicly identified
as an anti-catholic bigot.
Bence Jones' major tome "A Life's Work in Ireland" while striking very directly
against the person of Rev. Monsignor John O'Leary, with whom this entire book is
mainly concerned, is careful to exclude from his criticisms 'Roman Catholics as
such' and a 'large proportion of whom are fully to be relied upon.'
That such a 'concession' by Bence Jones was very much a tongue in cheek and
aimed more at self-preservation, than with 'ecumenical' feelings, is elf-evident
but like the rest of his thesis, his argument is very adroit if, it has to be
said, boringly circuitous. Trained as a lawyer, his legal mind is always at work
but, in fact, this entire 'apologia pro vita sua' is directed at redeeming his
already lost reputation and as such, does blatantly 'protest too much.'
When Bence Jones, consequently, tries to dissect the motivations and intentions
of the Catholic Church in general and individual Catholics in particular, it is
hardly necessary to pinpoint the large does of ambivalence involved. 'It is the
fashion to say,' he writes, that 'Roman Catholic priests will have to follow
their people into disaffection' and while 'priests have a hard game to play,'
their power is very great 'and is prized by them above everything.'
The Fenians, on the other hand, opined Bence Jones. 'positively hate priestly
interference of any kind' and being 'eaten by an insatiable vanity of self' will
never submit to the priests. Whether this was some weak attempt to drive a wedge
between the Church and nationalist politicians or insurgents is of little
consequence and through, with the later emergence of Sinn Fein, it was shown
that the Catholic Church was principally a backer of constitutional means, there
was no doubt of the very real friendships between priests of the Land League
times and principal leaders such as Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell.
Up to the decline of Home Rule at any event, Catholic priests, many of whom went
to jail, seemed solidly in support of nationalist leaders and in 1800, it was
futile for Bence Jones to suggest problems of conscience for the Church.
Bence Jones, nonetheless, was, by his book undoubtedly hoping to undermine the
authority and arguments of Father John O'Leary in particular and if his
campaigning was, in Jones's words, 'wholly discreditable to the Roman Catholic
clergy and Church' conceivably, this 'young priest of the Clonakilty parish'
could be arraigned before his religious superiors.
ATTACKED O'LEARY
The entire preface of the "Life's
Work in Ireland" (sub-titled 'A Landlord Who tried to do His Duty') is devoted to
an attack on Father O'Leary and Bence Jones eventually concluded, no doubt in
hope, that he did not think 'his conduct will be approved by his Church.'
Jones, in his book, seeks to undermine the creditability of adversaries by means
other than sticking to plan facts of the controversy. These are usually personal
insults. Father O'Leary, for example, is 'an ignorant man' and some one 'so
ashamed of his speech, discreditable to the Roman Catholic clergy and Church,
that in two papers (the Cork Examiner and Cork Herald), the
speaker was called Mr. O'Leary instead of Father O'Leary.
That this was a plain lie, doubtless unnoticed by many, is pointed out by Father
O'Leary in his first major reply published in the July 1991, number of the
'Contemporary Review.' 'What is this fact?,' asks Father O'Leary and he goes on
that 'my name was mentioned in several places in the issue of both papers
referred to and I am invariably styled Father O'Leary or Rev. Mr. O'Leary, not
once Mr. O'Leary.
Father O'Leary, also in the same reply, comments on his deviousness of Bence
Jones and his peculiar convoluted style of writing. 'No one will deny.' wrote
Father O'Leary, that 'Mr. Bence Jones is a good pleader.' 'When he wishes to be
clean, no one is more clear. When he wishes to be obscure certain facts, he
adroitly succeeds in doing so, without appearing to be obscure. He says harsh
things and he says them in short plain Saxon words, as Swift might have said
them, and without clothing them with the thin veil of Swift's sarcastic humour.
One person is 'a schemer,' another 'a scamp' and a third 'a hopelessly lazy
fellow,' a fourth 'a drunken rake' and a fifth 'as thorough a rougue and schemer
as ever lived' and 'everything in Ireland is mixed up with scheming.'
In Ireland, Bence Jones further added, 'there is an atmosphere of untruth and
'the lowest depth of untruth is reached by some of the bishops and most of the
clergy of the Disestablished Church under the Disestablishment Act' and the
'charges brought against myself are a tissue of misrepresentations and
falsehoods' and 'the Roman Catholic priest, in a letter to the London papers,
added a number of mere inventions, not having a shadow of truth in them.
Further, Father O'Leary alleges that Bence Jones, not content with having
himself heard fully, and frequently, 'he coolly and as if proferring the most
reasonable request, seeks to deprive every opponent of his a hearing. 'Like a
certain Hempenstall, who, in another period, Father O'Leary says, was 'judge,
jury, gallows, ropes and all,' Bence Jones would set himself up a veritable
Hempenstall in this controversy.
If, by these allegations against Catholic bishops and priests, Bence Jones hoped
that Father O'Leary's conduct 'would not be approved of by his Church,' the West
Cork landlord was to be sorely disappointed.
CARDINAL MANNING
One of the most outstanding Roman
Catholic prelates in Britain and Ireland, in these times, was Cardinal
Archbishop Henry Manning of Westminister, a convert to Catholicism and whose
father, in fact, had been governor of the Bank of England. Once married and
widowed, he was received into the Church and ordained by Cardinal Wiseman and
was known for his social conscience and was active in the cause of the labour
movement. In fact, his strenuous advocacy of the claims of working classes, led
to his being denounced as a socialist.
Thus, if, as in the words of one biographer, Cardinal Manning 'loved
righteousness and hated iniquity,' it was not surprising that his comments
touched upon the Irish land controversy and so, at some point in the early
summer of 1881, he issued a statement praising those clergymen who have been
assisting the Irish Land League.
Such a stance hurt Bence Jones to the quick and immediately, he was again into
print and had a letter published in the London Times attacking Cardinal
Manning for, as he states, 'praising those clergymen, among them Father O'Leary
and Father Mulcahy (P.P. of Timoleague) who, he alleges , 'deprived him of his
labourers.' Jones added that the labourers 'will find that their best source of
employment is cut off by the Land Bill' which, he says, will prevent the
'improving landlords' like myself, Mr. Mahony of Dromore, Lord Kenmare and others
from 'laying out a penny in labour.'
If, as we have shown, Bence Jones lost out as regards wringing any support from
the Catholic Church, it was even less likely that his unpopularity would have
waned as a result of his racialist anti-Irish feelings, which could also be
regarded as intertwined with class consciousness.
Two incidents, at least, one major and one somewhat minor, can be cited to
illustrate his anti-Irish attitudes. Apart from hurling various insults at the
Irish race in his book, such as their 'universal untruth' and 'unreliableness,'
he had pronounced the Irish not to be industrious and hard work, however
gainful, he said, was 'disliked.' All this name calling did not, however,
adequately illustrate his own prejudices in regard to race.
What might be called a North of Ireland situation where Englishmen or
non-Catholics would be preferred in jobs to the 'mere Irish' was undoubtedly
prevalent in the Ireland of the times and while the peasant class was alright
for unskilled labour and other menial jobs, particularly at slave wages then
obtaining, sections of the landlord class would naturally, keep the best
positions for their own co-religionists who were mostly also of English or Welsh
extraction.
The first and more important incident, we wish to cite, relates to an 1881
controversy concerning the re-building of St. Finbarre's Church of Ireland
Cathedral in Cork and contemporaneously, with another building going up in the
city, a College Hall, being built by Rev. Dr. Webster, owner of the Webster Home
for Young men, accommodating students of the Queen's College.
A £500 'BRIBE'
While the St. Finbarre's Cathedral
controversy 'went public' in 1991, it appears to have originated much earlier,
in 1863, in fact when and architect was appointed to the project. The Lord
Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, at the time was Rev. John Gregg and while it is
understood that there were 62 entrants for a competition to get the
architectural work, of whom many were Irish, the prize went to an Englishman,
one William Burgess, a native of London.
Nothing controversial emerged at the time and though unfinished, the Cathedral
was consecrated in 1870 and up to the 1911 (when it was still unfinished), had
according to Pike's 'Contemporary Biographies,' cost over £100,000.
Eventually, when the roof of Sanctuary was completed to the Burgess design in
1935, it was considered to be finished.
The controversy of 1881 emerged because of a dispute which arose in the public
press where it was alleged, originally, that Mr. Bence Jones had offered Dr.
Webster £500 (a large sum in those days)
towards the building of his College Hall on express condition that no Irishman
be employed on the work.
The Trades Association in Cork (trade unions of those days) had also discovered
that Dr. Webster was importing English materials such as timber for his College
Hall and, as a result, a ship called 'The Wave' which arrived in Cork, with a
cargo of building materials mostly timber, was subjected to a severe process of
boycotting and which was also applied to Dr. Webster himself.
Police, and a company of Royal Engineers, had to protect the unloading and those
involved were subjected to abuse and stone throwing. Significantly, according to
a report in the Skibbereen Eagle, the carts employed in unloading the
timber were rumoured to be the property of Mr. Bence Jones.
Just as significant was the fact that on the following week to the unloading,
10th September, 1881, the Skibbereen Eagle carried a strong editorial,
condemning not only Bence Jones for his £500
'bribe' but Dr. Webster himself for importing foreign materials and apparently
obeying Jones' instructions on the contract. Dr. Webster, the Eagle
reports, had, due, to a boycotting and general public odium, now transferred the
contract back to a 'Home Rule' builder, a Mr. Delany but that has not extricated
him from trouble and he has to be guarded night and day by policemen in his
home.
For the Skibbereen Eagle, despite its largely Protestant ownership, to
come out against a Church of Ireland clergyman and a landlord was not unusual
because Fred Potter, the editor, generally supported land reform and a
particular affection for the theories of Henry George.
This particular Skibbereen Eagle editorial was, however, unusually
hard-hitting and pronounced that Bence Jones, as one who subscribes £500
to an undertaking, on the express condition that no Irishman be employed
'deserves nothing better than a thorough Irish boycotting retribution.' Bence
Jones, it said, 'had forsaken Ireland and her sons seem not to mourn his
desertion (mentioning also his other 'unenviable attributes').
FLED TO LONDON
Bence Jones, it appears had left
Ireland, but only temporarily, but Dr. Webster had also fled to London, a fate
the Eagle considered to be deserved but the paper also condemned him for
other activities, allowing it to be put abroad that the authors of threatening
letters he received, were protestant clergymen, no less. The Eagle also
condemned him for trying to transfer blame for importing cargo to timber
merchants, Messrs James O'Connor and Sons, whose retort said the editorial was
'bold and pungent,' showing the 'luckless doctor' had in the present dilemma
woven about his majestic person a threaded candour and web of wiles.'
Some of these allegations Dr. Webster denied in a letter send to the Eagle
from Margaret Street, London, and through admitting that Bence Jones had
promised £500 for his College Hall, he
denied the stipulation that only English work would be used. But again, seeing
as before a meeting of the Trades Association, he had also denied ordering the
cargo of timber and subsequently found it impossible to shift the blame, what
credence can one attach to his attempt to absolve Bence Jones?
Dr. Webster, in his Eagle letter, made matters worse for Bence Jones in
that he referred to another report, published in a December issue of a paper
called the Standard that Bence Jones had proffered a sum for the building
of Cork Cathedral, or St. Finbarre's but according to Webster, 'what Jones did
in this regard 'I know not.'
'I confess I heard,' says Dr. Webster, however that 'such was Mr. Bence Jones'
regard for architect William Burgess that he insisted upon having his plans
adopted.' This had happened he said in 1863-4, when he himself had opposed the
Burgess appointment.
WAS IS £5,000?
This Standard report was
much more damaging to the reputation of Bence Jones than the alleged £500
bride offered to Dr. Webster for his building, for it suggested that Jones had
offered a sum of £5,000 (massive money in
1863) to the ten Protestant bishop provided no Irish architect was employed. If
that was true, and the Eagle backed the story, it was easy to see why
Bence Jones could insist on Burgess getting the contract!
The Eagle editor, in a note to Dr. Webster's letter, states,
categorically that the £5,000 Bence Jones
'bribe' was proferred and contends that Webster in his letter, 'seems to imply
the same for, he states, he heard of dealings of that description.'
Ironically, around the same time, a Catholic church builder, a Canon Hegarty,
had also been boycotted for importing materials for alterations to St. Peter and
Paul's Church but this was a minor and unconnected incident and had to racial
undertones.
For Webster, however, the punishment of banishment was severe but as regard
Bence Jones and the £5,000 for St.
Finbarre's, chastisement was not confined to Ireland and even some sections of
the London press, it was reported, were 'severely critical'.