Review
Russell Rees delves into this excellent account of the life of an Irish, Catholic Unionist...
- William Monsell of Tervoe 1812-1894: Catholic Unionist, Anglo-Irishman
- Irish Academic Press
Rome Rule?
Over the last two decades there has been a sharp increase in the number of publications on Irish unionism.
In particular, it is the diversity within liberal unionism, in the south as well as the north, that has attracted the attention of historians. Matthew Potter’s book is a fine addition to this work.
His subject, William Monsell, was a County Limerick landowner, a Liberal MP from 1847-74, a junior minister in two Westminster governments, and, as the title suggests, a Catholic supporter of the Union. By 1871, partly as a result of purchases made in the post-famine period, close to 40 per cent of landowners were Catholic and the majority of these were supporters of the Union. The author points out that Monsell always regarded himself as Irish, but he was an Irishman who believed passionately in the British connection. Potter even draws a comparison with Edward Carson who, he claims, was another Irish liberal. Both wanted the best government for Ireland and the maximum amount of liberty for its people, though Carson’s liberal credentials are surely harder to prove. Monsell’s unionism was a product of his English education, his liberalism, his social status and his nationality. As a resident landlord, Monsell’s record as a local grandee, supporting the provision of health and education and contributing to the construction of public buildings in Limerick city, was impressive. He was essentially part of a long tradition of improving Irish landlords, and he was a consistent critic of absenteeism. He refused to increase rents on his estates at all between the 1830s and 1880s and never evicted anyone in his 58 years as a landlord. Yet while Monsell allowed ‘free sale’ between his tenants, he was an implacable opponent of peasant proprietorship. He regarded the Land League as ‘socialistic’ and was convinced that Home Rule would result in the destruction of Ireland’s social system. In fact, Monsell considered Home Rule to be just as big a threat to Ireland as Fenianism. He was convinced that the Westminster government could easily have undermined Fenian influence by prompt action to redress Irish grievances. Throughout his career he had sought to reconcile unionism and Catholicism, but a combination of Westminster negligence and misjudgement made this particularly difficult – reforms came too little, too late. Their failure was due, in part, to their refusal to listen to the advice of Monsell and other enlightened members of the gentry class. Yet in a fair assessment of Monsell’s career, Matthew Potter shows how these southern unionists, in spite of their self-confidence and social position, struggled to survive as a political force in the new political landscape. The only hope for southern unionism lay in reconciliation with nationalism, but this was to prove impossible.
Dr Rees’s latest book, Labour and the Northern Ireland Problem 1945-51: The Missed Opportunity has recently been published by Irish Academic Press.
Russell Rees