‘ Representing Ireland in the Periodical Press During 1848

The year of revolutions, 1848, stimulated a passionate discussion of Irish politics in the British and Irish periodical press. This article considers the range and nature of that debate. Periodicals represented every shade of opinion across a spectrum extending from the reactionary to the liberal to the revolutionary. Periodicals were deployed by governments in defence of their policies; they were quickly suppressed when they were accounted treasonous and as promptly replaced. The creation of stereotypical versions of the Irish character provided a context for the conditioning of opinion within the public sphere. This coloured the reporting of the Famine and the debate about measures taken in response to it, and influenced the different responses to agitation, agrarian discontent and sectarian violence. The periodicals imported into the debate about Irish issues some of the effects of political tensions arising from European revolutions, especially those in France and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Various rhetorical strategies were directed at periodical readers in the interests of the competition between agitation and conciliation.


III. Versions of the Irish Character
In December 1847 the Quarterly published a review praising Paddiana, a twovolume account of Irish life which "overflows with humour, yet is unstained by vulgarity." 14 The reviewer claims (in an extraordinary misjudgement) that the writing is reminiscent of Maria Edgeworth's. This account of the travels of a British Lieutenant represents Paddy as a fighting animal, keen on an unregulated "shindy": "an Irishman may be called par excellence the bone-breaker amongst men, the homo ossifragus of the human family; and in this indulgence of this their natural propensity there is total and systematic disregard of fair play" (423).
Paddiana tells how Michael Cronin roughly seduces Kitty from her father's house and incarcerates her in his cabin in the canal bank, lined with peat and home to an illicit still. The grovelling obeisances made to a Roman Catholic Bishop, the grotesque death scene of Father O'Shea and the comical misbehaviour of a priest officiating at the execution of a murderer, provide the obligatory anti-clerical incidents. Improvident Paddy "will allow himself to die of sheer starvation, although all the while he has half a dozen gold sovereigns sewed up in his neckerchief" (433). While fishing, Irish Michael prefers to starve rather than eat fish or an exquisite soup made from seabirds. When the Saxon party feasts on eggs and bacon, Michael still refuses: He, an Irishman, of the age of twenty, -who had probably been brought up with pigs since infancy […] yet he had never tasted bacon! Nor wished to taste it! Poor creatures! What hope is there for a man who, half starved, will yet dine upon a boiled potato -nay, go without even that -rather than try a new dish?
[…] When the late "Famine" was at the worst in Connemara, the sea off the coast there teemed with turbot […] but the common people would not touch them … (435).
The writer's upper-class restraint then deserts him: "To wait till the age of reason dawns upon a people whose besotted ignorance is such that you cannot make them understand what is best for them, or that you are trying to benefit them, is hopeless (436)." Liberal periodicals are all dangerously deluded: "We see certain continental journals continually crammed with articles on Irish matters made up of extracts from Whig and Radical journals of English birth" but "kindness and conciliation are thrown away upon the Irish." (438).
This picture of Paddy aligns with his representation in other English journals. Blackwood's recommends Thackeray's The Irish Sketch Book as "not a whit inferior to Paddiana" (65). 15 Even the Westminster Review, usually sympathetic to Ireland, publishes a favourable review of another travesty, The Confessions of Con Cregan. Its readers are expected to be much amused by Con's clever trickery of the dying Henry McCabe, heartlessly resulting in the transportation of Con's own father. 16 The Athenaeum also admires Con Cregan. 17 The Gentleman's and Chamber's both recommend D. Owen Madden's stereotypical Revelations of Ireland for its "lively portraits and humorous anecdotes." 18 These articles deliberately blur the line between fiction and factual reporting. The interplay between representations of the Irish in novels such as Castle Rackrent and allegedly objective accounts, such as Paddiana, would have created a confused mindset among periodical readers.
The late Leslie Williams has fully documented the regular misrepresentation of the Irish in the Times, Observer, Punch and the Illustrated London News. 19 Weary of this phenomenon, the Tory and reactionary Dublin University Magazine is stung into uncharacteristic anger by Paddiana. 20 "We hoped the Quarterly Review would have been superior to such miserable prejudices" but it has followed the example set by the Times, with its "atrocious and slanderous libels." (715). "Does it not speak volumes for the credulous gullibility of John Bull that he can swallow whole pages of stuff written in such a manner, merely because it possesses the palatable ingredient of abuse of Ireland?" (726). During a period of social problems linked to industrialisation and a bout of overextended imperial adventures spread across the globe, it was important for the English to appear, by contrast, civilised, clean, sober, intelligent, and free from superstition. 21 The Victorians were in any case preoccupied with the concept of "character", seeing it always as an index of the moral health of the nation. (Collini 108-9). Paddiana illustrates the desire of Victorian Englishmen to cultivate what Seamus Deane calls "a more winsome view of the Irish as an entertaining people, rather than a people horribly mutilated and demoralised by English rule." (Deane 1994. 114). It is left to Blackwood's to trumpet overtly (in scare italics) the overt imperialist conclusion: The cause of Irish pauperism and mendicancy is entirely owing to this -that England has given Ireland institutions and political franchises, for the exercise of which it is wholly disqualified by temperament, habit and political advancement. We have put edged tools into the hands of children [original italics]. 22 These infantilising perceptions set a defining context for readers in their understanding of Irish politics.
Stereotypes of this kind were further reinforced in a debate about Irish historiography where, for example, in its account of Richard Madden's History of the Penal Laws, the Dublin University Magazine heads its review "Seditious Literature in Ireland". It accuses Madden of being "a perverter of the uses of history" treating Romanists as lambs and Protestants as wolves. In his work, "treason is fashioned into primers and sedition converted into spoon-meat for the elevès [sic] in the new school of normal agitation." 23 Here the DUM justifies Terry Eagleton's description of the magazine as working "in the style of its great mentor Edmund Burke to raise the gut instincts of the gentry to the level of a political philosophy." (Eaglteon 1999. 55) The Dublin Review, on the other hand, supports Madden, whose sympathies are with "the suffering, the many and the oppressed" 24 Blackwood's version of Irish history describes the establishment of Grattan's Parliament in 1782 as the outcome of a movement which "owed character and solidity to GREAT SAXON LEADERS [sic]", of whom Grattan himself was allegedly one. 25 The Quarterly condemns Macaulay's Whig version of history as over-sympathetic to Catholics and "full of political prejudice and partisan advocacy. "26 This debate would have conditioned the responses of many influential readers in their reactions to contemporary Irish events.

IV. The Irish Famine
Charles Trevelyan's article in the Edinburgh on "The Irish Crisis" runs to ninety-one pages, almost a quarter of the issue. 27 He sets out "to render some service to the public by attempting thus early to review, with the calm temper of a future generation, the history of the Great Irish Famine of 1847" (229). Immediately, therefore, the Famine is distanced and consigned (over-optimistically) to history. Providentialism surfaces early: he hopes that "supreme wisdom has educed permanent good out of transient evil". (230). Irish society is beset by many problems: absenteeism, bigotry, Orangeism, Ribbonism, Repeal, "but what hope is there for a nation that lives on potatoes?" Importation of Indian corn met resistance from a population who believed the "absurd notion" that eating it turned people black (249). Relief committees met insuperable obstacles such as lack of transport, and a "monstrous system of centralisation" resulted.
Trevelyan often uses excessively precise statistics that give his writing the cachet of official authority and proclaim an illusory degree of control over events. 28 Leslie Williams points out his reluctance to use the word "death" (Williams 276). This is perhaps especially remarkable, given the usual Victorian predilection for the funereal. Only once does he refer directly to the condition of the starving (267). He is inclined to be self-congratulatory: this is "the grandest attempt ever made to grapple with famine over a whole country". As Trevelyan moves into his final conclusions, he advocates more responsibility among landlords, citing "Mr Drummond's apophthegm that "property has its duties a well as its rights'." (301). The issue of national or collective character appears again: a peasant proprietary requires "a foundation of steadiness of character, and a habit of prudence, and a spring of pride, and a value for independence and comfort". (308). At the end he cannot resist a hollow joke at the expense of the Irish landlords' proverbial dependency on government: "It was a common saying that an Irish gentleman could not even marry his daughter without going to the Castle for assistance." (314). Trevelyan's article is simultaneously an attempt at a cool objective account, a record to assist posterity in future crises and a self-serving defence reeking of Free Trade ideology. The qualities of character he both personified and advocated in others clearly blind him to imaginative identification with the suffering of the Irish, which he barely acknowledges. 29 In Ireland, the Warder instantly recognises it as "a document of considerable importance", but also condemns it as "a laboured attempt to extenuate the blunders of the government." 30 The Westminster engages with the famine in a series of articles throughout 1848, drawing on Trevelyan's article, and on publications by sympathetic commentators such as Jonathan Pim (Secretary to the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends in Dublin) and G. Poulett-Scrope MP. 31 The Dublin Review supports these enlightened views, drawing on some of the same sources. 32 Wayne Hall, in his study of the Dublin University Magazine, points out that it had originally engaged with the Famine in 1846 and 1847, through its publication of Carleton's The Black Prophet and also through two highly influential articles by its earlier editor, Isaac Butt. 33 The DUM's commentary on the Famine in 1848 takes up some of the same publications that have attracted the attention of its rivals. 34 Trevelyan's article in the Edinburgh "contains in one narrative two strikingly contrasted histories", demonstrating that private individuals contributed to the relief of distress while decisions by public bodies aggravated it (537).
The Dublin University Magazine was usually a supporter of the landlords' position, its editors coming for the most part from the land owning class. Nevertheless, a later reviewer in August, praises Jonathan Pim, Secretary to the Relief Committee of the Society of Friends, paying tribute to his Quaker affiliations and admitting, remarkably for the DUM, that he has demonstrated that Irish landlords have been guilty of faults of neglect. 35 It immediately qualifies this, however, by accusing him of ignoring "crimes of most deliberate commission" perpetrated by Roman Catholic priests who have deliberately kept the people ignorant and "sown rancour, hatred and malevolence against their Protestant rulers". (230). In the following month's issue, it is much less generous to Young Ireland's writers in the Nation, who are characterised as demagogues, motivated by "avaricious cupidity, morbid vanity, frenzied ambition, and a frantic hatred of England." 36 Some of the English periodicals of the time manage to get through 1848 without any significant comment on the Irish Famine. This is true of the Gentleman's and, more surprisingly, of the Quarterly and Blackwood's. It is tempting to speculate on the motives for these silences, especially since all these journals have much to say about rebellion and agrarian outrages in Ireland. The Athenaeum, maybe in exasperation, welcomes the idea of mortgaging the whole of Ireland for fifty million pounds sterling. 37 Chamber's suggests that the importation of more Scottish entrepreneurs like John Anderson, who is credited with the successful development of the township of Fermoy in Munster, would do incalculable good. It underscores the infantilising theme by suggesting that this would displace the value of "a hundred agitators, bawling and bellowing from year's end to year's end." 38 Perhaps the silences of Blackwood's and others are to be preferred to these simplistic solutions.

V. Agitation, revolt and rebellion
There are two distinct responses in this area. One group of periodicals concentrates on expressing outrage; another group, more liberal, seeks greater understanding. In December 1847, The Quarterly advocated the recall of Parliament to deal with agrarian murders. 39 Failure to renew the Arms Act has caused the assassination of landlords (274). The article singles out the murder of Major Mahon: he was "unjustly exposed to odium by Roman Catholic priests" whose denunciations from the pulpit had been defended by "the Popish Archbishop McHale." (289). There is no reference to the Famine. Blackwood's also opens 1848 with a diatribe against "culpable lenity' towards agitation. "40 It denounces juries made up of criminals and the cosseting of O'Connell's quasi-military organisation. In Ireland "property has no rights and […] life has no protection ." (118). In addition, "thirty-seven Irish members are completely in the hands of the priests, one of whom has incited the murder of the landlord, Major Mahon, but is thought to be beyond the reach of the law." (122). The Dublin University Magazine stigmatises attempts to involve the Catholic Church in securing better government as a "fatal alliance." (137) 41 Fraser's Magazine marks the beginning of 1848 by attacking O' Connell. 42 His agitation has led to a "deliberate system of murder." (126). A Coercion Bill is needed but will not touch the priests who instigate murders. By April "the Romish priests" are aiding Duffy, Mitchel, and others, whose writing "renders altogether unnecessary any legal evidence of their treason." (479). After Mitchel's trial and O'Brien's rebellion, Fraser's exults in the defeat of insurrection. 43 "Revolutionary journals" are allocated a leading role in the rebellion: "The affair seems to have been Journalism and Talk from beginning to end." (355). The Dublin University Magazine claims that Mitchel's acquittal would have meant that "no extravagance of seditious language, no audacity or truculence of treasonable design or incentive, could any longer, in Ireland, be made amenable to existing law". (785). 44 The Quarterly again strikes a note of colonialist self-justification: It has been the fashion to say […] that Ireland is the victim of English misrule […]. But in our view, whatever of peace, civilisation and prosperity has been introduced and as it were imported into Ireland has been by England -all her misfortunes are her own -her own obstinate resistance to the example, the counsels, the indefatigable indulgence, charity and generosity of England. (594). 45 If the "mischievous madmen at Ballingarry" had been Catholics and had "furled the green flag over a crucifix", there would have been far more bloodshed (603). The article mixes defensiveness with malice, suggesting that to save the people from Famine, they should be employed building fortifications: "It would be a pleasant and gratifying Hibernianism to see the starving peasantry fortifying Slieve -na -nann -against themselves!" (612).
Among the second, more liberal group of responses, the Spectator expresses concern that ministers "seem resolved that the live surplus in Ireland shall be disposed of by dying off." 46 The Spectator studies the nationalist press, noting nervously the escalation of rhetoric in the United Irishman, where Mitchel declares that "the shortest, straightest, surest and plainest path to liberty, is the path of a rifle bullet" and also issues detailed advice on how to conduct street fighting in Dublin. 47 The Spectator reports Mitchel's trial fully, with the seizure of the United Irishman's presses, its replacement by the Irish Felon and the subsequent closure of all the nationalist journals. 48 In August it gives a sympathetic account of Mitchel's fellow-journalist, John Martin, now sentenced to transportation, calling him "honest and conscientious as well as brave and devoted" and declaring him "a martyr to the emulation of spicy sedition." 49 The Westminster has a generous retrospect on Ireland in October 1848, perceiving that the Irish have sympathy abroad and arguing that military occupation is dangerous (163). 50 Evictions and house levellings, "largely and unscrupulously acted upon", are the sources of discontent (165). The assassination of Major Mahon was provoked by his emigration project, involving three thousand of his tenants, of whom almost a third died in passage (169). The author of Paddiana would have been infuriated by the Westminster's condemnation of the "extortionate, extravagant, dissipated, gambling, sporting, jobbing squire -landlords." (176). The Dublin Review comments on the regular misrepresentation of the Irishman: "If he says he is oppressed and persecuted by a wicked faction, he is told that he deserves it because he is a papist […] he is treated as an alien, in language, in blood, and in religion." (471). 51

VI. Revolutions in Europe
The Nation leads the Irish response to European revolutions by greeting the abdication of Louis Philippe with banner headlines. Freedom has dawned. This "means war and liberty". 52 Even the moderate Pilot celebrates the revolution. 53 The Warder voices the fears of loyalists, forecasting that the "ferocious and sanguinary" policies of 1789 will reappear and that in Ireland "unbridled anarchy and rapine must follow." 54 In England, the Quarterly and the Westminster fall out over Lamartine's alleged promises to the Irish. The Quarterly claims that Lamartine had promised assistance to the Irish if they could secure their own independence. "The mouthpiece of this synod of sharpers, proclaimed the fraternity of France with all oppressed nationalities […] Are we to thank France that Mr. Smith O'Brien has not been crowned King of Ireland?" 55 The Westminster, however, quotes Lamartine's precise words, comparing them with what the Quarterly seeks to make him say. They cite his formal speech, specifically refusing to intervene militarily in Ireland or Poland, and pledging France to "remain in friendly and equal relations with Great Britain." 56 In the event, in E. J. Hobsbawm's words, the European revolutions of 1848 "all succeeded and failed rapidly and in most cases totally." (Hosbawum 26).

VII. Conclusion
The treatment of these issues illustrates the difficulty of constructive interchange between the zealots of the nationalist press and the conservative writers of the reviews. Nationalist journals always write in the tradition of "performative discourse", deliberately intended to provoke revolutionary actions. 57 Both groups of writers come from the same educational background and there is much intertextual awareness. Their most dominant style entails a kind of mocking parody of each other, reflected in orotund circumlocutions and latinised phraseology. Periodical writing in nineteenth-century Ireland suffered from what Seamus Deane calls "an excess of rhetorical skills" (Deane 1997. 46 ).A ppearing as a gentleman was always a pre-condition of being heard in Victorian societies (Collini 88). The concentration on the alleged "coarseness" and crudity of the O'Connell family betrays some of the class element in this discourse. 58 The clashes of 1848 served to harden attitudes on both sides of the Irish Sea. English journals are similarly polarised, but around different issues. They oscillate between repression and sympathy, between revulsion against the primitive character of Catholic peasant life in Ireland and a desire to construct a more romantic and civilised image of a sensitive, celticised, humorous, but essentially subordinate people. These periodicals are torn between charitable instincts in the face of human suffering and realpolitik in support of a landlord class, the balance being tipped by the fears of disorder that are often fed by the surge in republican feeling, reflected from the European revolutions of 1848.