The Irish Brigade had overthrown the Derby ministry and had obtained a scat, even though a minor one, in the coalition government. How did it use its position? It helped the coalition to burke measures designed to reform landed ownership in Ireland. The Tories themselves, having taken the patriotism of the Irish Brigade for granted, had decided to propose these measures in order to gain the support of the Irish M.P.s Palmerston, who is an Irishman by birth and knows his Irish quarter, has renewed the Lichfield-House Contract of 1835 on an all-embracing basis. He has appointed Keogh, the chief of the Brigade, Attorney-General of Ireland, Fitzgerald, also a liberal Catholic M.P. for Ireland, has been made Solicitor-General, and a third member of the Brigade has become legal counsel to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, so that the juridical general staff of the Irish government is now composed entirely of Catholics and Irishmen. Monsell, the Clerk of Ordnance in the coalition government, has been reappointed by Palmerston after some hesitation, although as Muntz, deputy for Birmingham and an arms manufacturer, rightly observed Monsell cannot distinguish a musket from a needle-gun. Palmerston has advised the lieutenants of the counties always to give preference to the proteges of Irish priests close to the Irish Brigade when nominating colonels and other high-ranking officers in the Irish militia. That Palmerston s policy is already exerting an influence is evident from the fact that Sergeant Shee has gone over to the government side, and also from the fact that the Catholic Bishop of Athlone has pushed through the re-election of Keogh and that moreover the Catholic clergy has promoted the re-election of Fitzgerald. Wherever the lower ranks of the Catholic clergy have taken their Irish patriotism seriously and have stood up to those members of the Irish Brigade who deserted to the government, they have been rebuked by their bishops who are well aware of the diplomatic secret. A protestant Tory newspaper bemoans the complete congruity existing between Lord Palmerston and the Irish clergy. When Palmerston hands over Ireland to the priests, the priests will elect M.P.s who will hand over England to Lord Palmerston. The Whigs use the Irish Brigade to dominate the English Parliament and they toss posts and salaries to the Brigade; the Catholic clergy permits the one to buy and the other to sell on condition that both acknowledge the power of the clergy and help to extend and strengthen it. It is, however, a very remarkable phenomenon that in the same measure as the Irish influence in the political sphere grows in England, the Celtic influence in the social sphere decreases in Ireland. Both the Irish quarter in Parliament and the Irish clergy seem to be equally unaware of the fact that behind their back the Irish society is being radically transformed by an Anglo-Saxon revolution. In the course of this revolution the Irish agricultural system is being replaced by the English system, the system of small tenures by big tenures, and the modern capitalist is taking the place of the old landowner. The chief factors which prepared the ground for this transformation are: 1847, the year of famine, which killed nearly one million Irishmen; emigration to America and Australia, which removed another million from the land and still carries off thousands; the unsuccessful insurrection of 1848, which finally destroyed Ireland s faith in herself; and lastly the Act of Parliament which exposed the estates of the debt-ridden old Irish aristocrats to the hammer of the auctioneer or bailiff, thus driving them from the land just as starvation drove away their small tenants, subtenants and cottagers.
Karl Marx in Neue Oder-Zeitung 1855