THE first periodical news-sheet which appeared in Ireland would seem to be An Account of the Occurrences of Ireland. It came out on the 23rd or so of February 1659, the year preceding the Restoration, and ran for five numbers. The tattered brown pages may be seen preserved in the National Library. Later followed the Dublin News Letter (1685) and Dublin Intelligence (1690-3). The Dublin Gazette began to appear in 1708 and continued almost to the end of the century. But the first Irish newspaper really worthy of remembrance was Faulkner's Dublin Journal, which continued, with some slight breaks, into the nineteenth century, ending only in 1825 with No. 13,671.

The articles dealing with that newspaper which are appearing in these pages dispense me from further reference to it. Few of its early contemporaries deserve any extended notice in so brief a survey as the present. Saunders Newsletter had a very long life, lasting from 1755 to 1879. It became a daily paper in 1777. It presented itself as neutral in politics, being mainly concerned with commercial and business interests, and its tone was moderate and respectable, but it was really pro-Government and anti-Catholic, though without the bitterness and virulence of the Orange press. The Dublin Evening Post had an equally long run, from 1732 to well on in the nineteenth century. The most noteworthy part of its career was that during which it was conducted by a Presbyterian family named Magee, who were Whig and Catholic in their sympathies and suffered cruelly for the fact. On two occasions at least they and their paper made history.

One was in 1818. On the departure of the Viceroy, the Duke of Richmond, their paper published an article reviewing in highly unfavourable terms the late and previous administrations. Magee was prosecuted and O'Connell defended. At the trial the great advocate made the most famous speech of his career, four hours of terrific invective against his opponents and against British rule in Ireland. It echoed far beyond the law courts into the furthest corners of the land.

The other occasion was nearly a quarter of a century previously. In 1789, as we shall see, a more famous newspaper, the Freeman's Journal, was in the hands of an unprincipled villain, Francis Higgins, known as the Sham Squire. In a persistent series of articles in the Evening Post Magee assailed this personage and unmasked his perfidy. The Freeman for November 3rd of that year speaks of the "foul and vulgar slaver vomited forth by the Dublin Evening Post." Magee, of course, was prosecuted for libel, but his work had been done.

The first number of the Freeman's Journal appeared in 1763, and the paper did not finally disappear till 1924--a run of 161 years. But so radical were the changes that took place at various periods in that long career, that its continuity was rather one of title than of anything else. In its early years it was closely (more closely than Dr. Madden is willing to admit) associated with Charles Lucas, who in his young days had played a noteworthy part in opposition to the illiberal government of the time. But during the period of his association with the Freeman, 1768-71, it was like the rest of the press in those days strongly anti-Catholic, as indeed Lucas was himself. But in 1770 it became the organ of the "Patriots," who stood for Irish parliamentary independence and favoured a measure of relief for the Catholics. Sir John Gilbert speaks highly of the noteworthy part it played in bringing about the peaceful revolution of 1782.

But the Freeman's Journal suffered the fate of other newspapers of the day. In 1783 it was bought by the Administration and put into the hands of the infamous Francis Higgins, nicknamed (as I have mentioned above) the Sham Squire, and later revealed as the betrayer of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. He was in the pay of the Government from 1783 to 1802 and used his paper to justify its doings and support its policy. But this was not done in a frank and open way. The paper feigned sympathy with the "patriotic" party while working to undermine its influence in the country. It assailed Grattan in particular, but by insidious innuendo rather than by open attack.

On the death of the "Sham Squire" in 1802 the paper was acquired by a Mr. Harvey of Wexford, an honourable man who resisted all efforts to bribe or cajole the paper into support of the Administration. He was, by a strange irony of fate, succeeded by Henry Grattan (son of the great statesman), who had married Harvey's daughter. We find it in 1825 reporting in full the proceedings of the Catholic Association and the "Aggregate Meetings" of the Catholics of Ireland. The issue of December 15 has a five column letter from O'Connell.

Throughout 1828, the eve of Emancipation, we find, in addition to full reports of Catholic Association meetings and those of the Friends of Civil and Religious Freedom, leading articles advocating the Catholic cause. "The Catholic mind of Ireland," we read in the issue of September 13, "is unquestionably wrought up to an assurance that the first national act of the Legislature will be Emancipation." The language at times is forcible. Thus on November 20 the leading article speaks of "the truly atrocious war which England has ben prosecuting for centuries against this country."

It will be well at this point to glance back for a moment at the course of journalism previous to Emancipation. In the last decade of the eighteenth century the press in Ireland was divided into two groups, pro-Union and anti-Union or "patriotic." The principal Metropolitan papers were the Freeman's Journal, Faulkner's Dublin Journal, Dublin Evening Post, Saunders' Newsletter, The Press (Arthur O'Connor's organ), and the Hibernian Journal. The two last-named were moderate supporters of liberal principles. There was as yet no Catholic, no nationalist press. The government party and the "patriots" assailed each other furiously in print. It was a war of squibs and lampoons, pamphlets and scurrilous libels. The mass of the people were little concerned with this newspaper war. They were, as O'Connell asserted most vehemently at a later date, hostile to the Union. But the passing of the Irish Parliament they could contemplate without emotion, for it was an exclusively Protestant assembly subordinate to a Protestant administration. And the wounds of '98 were still open and bleeding. The press, in their eyes, stood on the whole for the Protestant Ascendency, even when it shouted loudest against the Union. There were liberal- minded Protestants who advocated Catholic rights, but the voice of Gaelic and Catholic Ireland was unheard and unheeded.

Mat Matters were little better in the years that followed the Union. In 1810 about a dozen newspapers were appearing in Dublin. They were all owned by Protestants, and the majority were subsidized by the Government--about $10,000 a year being expended for that purpose. Only three of the metropolitan newspapers supported the Catholic claims. But the growing power and influence of O'Connell gradually called into being new journals in support of the nationalist and Catholic cause. To some of them O'Connell might well have said Non tali auxilio.

These were the days of that curious and not very reputable character, Watty Cox. There was his Irish Magazine and Asylum for Neglected Catholic Biography (1807-1815) which, according to himself, writing in 1817, "attracted more of the public attention in Ireland than ever before honoured any print since the introduction of printing into that country." It certainly attracted the attention of the Government and of the law courts, for Cox was pilloried, fined, imprisoned, and driven into exile, whence he returned later to found in 1822 the New Irish Magazine and Monthly National Advocate. But he was then a Government pensioner, as was also his most violent opponent, Dr. John Brenan, editor of the ultra-national Milesian Magazine (1812-25). But there were newspapers of a somewhat better type than these.

The Patriot began in July 1810 as a strictly constitutional, loyal and pro-English paper. But even its introductory address augured other things. It summed up its idea of patriotism in the adage: "Here is my country and there is a foreign invader." We must, it went on, discuss our grievances among ourselves. "But let us not be seduced by the silly hope of amendment from foreign interference." Which sounds like a foretaste of Sinn Fein. But it was fiercely assailed by the Freeman and the Evening Post as a hireling and slave of the Administration. Yet in 1827 we find it strongly advocating Catholic emancipation. In an article on the press on February 4 it describes itself as "representing the liberal Protestant mind of Ireland." Of its contemporary the Mail it says: "In its pages Protestantism appears as a fiend of hatred instead of the religion of the God of charity, peace, and goodwill." It has no patience with "those who in the name of loyalty and Protestantism irritate and disturb the country." The Morning Register (1824-1842), at least towards the close of its career, was likewise a moderate and liberal organ, equally opposed to the Tory Mail and to the Morning Herald--the latter being stigmatized by it as "a low-minded organ of inveterate bigotry." It favoured Repeal and for a short time, before their founding of the Nation, Davis and Dillon contributed to it.

But the paper that most consistently supported O'Connell, right or wrong and through thick and thin, was the Pilot (1828-1849) edited by Richard Barrett. "We are proud to avow it," the editor wrote in 1834, "we are the supporters of Mr. O'Connell, a support as independently given as accepted." This independence was somewhat diminished in later years when John O'Connell became its moving spirit. In 1834 Richard Barrett went to gaol for his advocacy of Repeal and was described by O'Connell as "the first victim for the advocacy of the great measure which is so absolutely necessary." The Young Ireland writers speak of editor and paper with the utmost bitterness and contempt. Lucas of the Tablet, an independent witness, wrote: "The character of the Pilot for every species of turpitude is now well known." An overstatement, no doubt, but not to be entirely brushed aside. It was an article in the Pilot that brought about one of the saddest episodes in the history of those days--the secession of Young Ireland from the Repeal Association and their final break with O'Connell. They went their several ways, the former to the tragi-comedy of Ballingarry, he to his death, a lonely and broken man, at Genoa less than a year later. But, in spite of failure, both Young Ireland and O'Connell had done their work.

Besides the newspapers just referred to, O'Connell had on his side, as we shall see, the Freeman's Journal; so that on the whole he had strong backing from the press. Yet in his Emancipation and Repeal agitations he made but little direct use of that powerful weapon. His appeal was to the people and the people did not trust, and for the most part did not even read, the press of those days. Indeed the Liberator often flouted the newspapers that supported him.

On the 12th of October, 1842, appeared the first number of a newspaper that was to infuse a new spirit into the national struggle. Founded by Davis, Duffy, Dillon and a brilliant group later to be known as Young Ireland, the Nation was something wholly new in Irish journalism, new in its aims, for it boldly advocated the restoration of Ireland's independence; new in its ideals, for it stood for a whole range of Irish culture that was all but forgotten by the bulk of Irishmen; new in its spirit, for it stood for union among men of all classes and creeds who were on Ireland's side. Not that any of these things were hitherto unheard of, but that never until then had they been taken up with such a fire of enthusiasm and advocated with such splendid fearlessness and such brilliant talent. The Nation was not so much a newspaper on the English model as a daily budget of articles on a very wide range of subjects, literary and historical as well as political, and of stirring verse.

The paper met with instant and extraordinary suceess. "From the first number," says Gavan Duffy in his Life of Davis, "it was received with an enthusiasm compounded of passionate sympathy and personal affection." "In speech, article, song, and essay," says Michsel Doheny,'"the spell of Davis's extraordinary genius and embracing love was felt. Historic memories, forgotten stories, fragments of tradition, the cromlech on the mouatain and the fossil in the bog supplied him substance and spirit wherewith to mould and animate nationality. Native art, valour, virtue, and glory seemed to grow under his pen. All that had a tendency to elevate and ennoble he rescued from the past to infuse into the future." Alas, Davis lived but four more years to do his great work. After his death and the horrors of the Famine, matters drifted steadily towards revolution. The Nation, reinforced by new and splendid talent--Thomas D'Arcy M'Gee, Thomas Francis Meagher, Devin Reilly, James Fintan Lalor, William Smith O'Brien--continued its career under the editorship of Gavan Duffy until its suppression in 1848. Revolution found a voice, stifled time after time, in Mitchel's United Irishman, followed by the Irish Felon. These were the forerunners of a long line of periodicals issued by the more extreme political groups or parties (extreme, that is to say, in their spirits or in their methods, rather in their aim or goal). The Nation, revived by Duffy, took a different path. Under the Sullivans, A. M. and T. D., it became an organ of the home Rule and agrarian movements, and did noble work for the cause. It lasted till the end of the century.

The years that followed the Famine and the collapse of '48 might be described as the nadir or rather the low water mark of the national movement. The tide had ebbed, and it seemed as though it would never flow again over the muddy flats. A vigorous and outspoken paper, The Irishman (second of the name), began in January 1840 with much of the spirit and some of the features of the Nation. It assailed landlordism and the Whigs, but it was short-lived--not surviving the year. Then came the ignoble days of Sadleir and Keogh. In 1850 Sadleir founded a newspaper. "Sadleir," says Mr. T. P. O'Connor, "had established a paper called the Catholic Telegraph. It was a journal of ultra-religious fervour, went into fits of lunacy over the (Ecclesiastical) Titles Bill, and, while upholding Sadleir and Keogh as the spotless champions of the Church" . . This is not quite correct. Sadleir's paper was the Weekly Telegraph. It was not until 1857, after Sadleir's financial crash and suicide, that it became the Catholic Telegraph. As such, especially under the editorship of that worthy man William Bernard Mccabe, it rendered good service to the Church and to Ireland. It fought for the Catholic University, reported Catholic news from all over the world, supported enthusiastically the Pope in his dangers and difficulties (e.g. June 20, 1857), printed a series of valuable articles by Rev. Dr. Cahill and the lectures of Cardinal Wiseman. It ran till 1866. Its only successor, until the Standard was founded less than ten years ago, has been the Irish Catholic, started in 1888 and still with us. The Irish Catholic was and is more exclusively religious in its contents than the Catholic Telegraph. In such politics as it professed, the former was for long out of sympathy with the national aspirations and never attained to any great popularity.

While the Weekly Telegraph, or rather the miserable group of men who had made it their mouthpiece, was being furiously assailed by the combined forces of the Freeman and the Nation, there was working in Belfast a young journalist who in his day played a worthy part on the Irish political stage, but who seems now to be forgotten. Denis Holland had started his career on the Cork Examiner. About 1851 he went to Belfast and there founded the Ulsterman, which in 1858 became the Irishman, "A Weekly Journal of Irish National Politics and Literature." In April 1859 Holland removed to Dublin. At a farewell banquet given him on that occasion, at which many of the clergy and of the laity both Catholic and non-Catholic, were present, the Irishman was referred to as "our only Catholic journal in Ulster." In his speech Holland dwelt-- how history repeats itself--upon "the recent disturbances which had made Belfast so unhappily notorious." He pointed out "how creditably and triumphantly the Catholic population of the town, harassed by a lawless Orange rabble, had passed through that ordeal." His journal, he said, had been instrumental in procuring a government commission to enquire into the origin and causes of the riots, the report of which was a complete vindication of the Catholics.

The Irishman continued in Dublin as a militant Catholic and nationalist paper until Holland's departure for America in 1866, where some years later, in 1872, he died. Meantime it had been taken over by Richard Pigott of unhappy memory. In his hands it verged more and more towards Fenianism, becoming anticlerical when that movement was condemned by ecclesiastical authority. The issue for January 1, 1870, contains a skit headed "Cardinal Cullen's Progressive Policy" which is highly insulting to that prelate. At a later date it was edited for some years by Dr. George Sigerson. Towards the close of its career, which ended in 1884, it was purchased by Parnell and handed over to William O'Brien, who was afterwards to play a noteworthy part in the national struggle. The last number contains an historic letter from Dr. Croke in which the Archbishop, in accepting the honorary presidency of the newly-founded G.A.A., sets forth his views on Gaelic games. It is followed by a brief note from Parnell associating himself with the movement. As we shall presently see, William O'Brien on the ruins of the Irishman erected United Ireland.

Before we pass on to Fenianism and then to Home Rule and the Land League, we must hark back to 1859. In that year there was founded a newspaper which has played an important part in Irish life and which still flourishes-the Irish Times. It was founded by Major Laurence E. Knox, who remained its proprietor until his death in 1878. It was then purchased by Sir John Arnott, head of a great commercial firm in Dublin, and the present Sir John Arnott is Chairman and Managing Director of the Irish Times Company. The Irish Times was from the start and has consistently remained the organ of the Protestant interest in Ireland, its politics being Conservative or Unionist. It steadily opposed all the national movements. It afforded a platform and a rallying ground for all those, Catholics as well as Protestants, whose first allegiance was to England or whose principal pre-occupation was the maintenance of the existing order. Since the setting up of Saorstát Eireann its policy has been considerably modified; but that, for the moment, does not concern us.

Its principal rival, the Freeman's Journal, was in 1830 purchased by its first Catholic proprietor, one Patrick Lavelle. Eleven years later it was acquired by a group of supporters of O'Connell's Repeal policy, the chief of whom was John Gray--afterwards Sir John Gray--a Protestant of strong nationalist leanings, who became sole proprietor in 1851, subsequently passing it to his son Edmund Dwyer Gray, described by William O'Brien, who worked for some years on its staff, as "the most enterprising newspaper man Ireland ever produced." But this enterprise was not in the political sphere. On the contrary the Freeman was always moderate and cautious to a fault. Extremists looked upon it with contempt, and the more ardent spirits of the party which it supported were often exasperated by its hesitancy and moderation. It maintained that reputation--not always deserved--to the end. But the sound Irish and Catholic outlook of its later years and its advocacy of good causes made its loss in 1924 a severe one for the Church in Ireland.

In 1868 the Irish People, with John O'Leary as editor, was founded as an organ of Fenianism. But O'Leary and other prominent Fenians were arrested in September 1865, and the Irish People was suppressed by the Government. However, it was followed on September 5, 1868, by another Fenian organ, the Flag of Ireland, which lingered on till about 1881. Its first leading article was in a lyrical strain, full of Scripture texts: "Our trust, our hope, our cause are in the justice of the Lord who delivered Israel out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people. . He will send forth His light and we shall be delivered and He shall renew the face of the earth." One number contains an article enthusiastically greeting the Spanish revolution, the next prints in extenso the decree of the revolutionary Junta suppressing the Jesuits. There is little in the paper but news of Fenian doings, chiefly in America.

But if Fenianism as a movement failed in the sixties, its spirit had survived even to these days. It did not descend into the grave with John O'Leary, as Mr. Yeats has lamented;

"Romantic Ireland's dead and gone
'Tis with O'Leary in the grave."

The movement which followed Fenianism, Butt's Home Rule movement, does not seem to have caused any very considerable stir in the newspaper world. But in 1880 came the rise of Parnell and the foundation of the Land League. And with these came a nationalist paper that made history--William O'Brien's United Ireland (1881 to 1891, or 1898 if we include its career under new ownership). It was founded at the request of Parnell in the full heat of the Land War and was, as its creator wrote in later years, "from crest to spur a fighting organ." From 1881 to 1884 it bore the full brunt of the battle against Earl Spencer's coercion régime. Its editor and all connected with its production were prosecuted, fined, imprisoned. Every effort was made to suppress it. Its offices were raided and its plant destroyed. But it could not be suppressed. It was produced in at least ten cities successively-London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, Paris, etc. Then Home Rule triumphed in the English House of Commons, and the success of United Ireland was tremendous. But the crash of 1890--the Parnell split as it has always been called--"brought United Ireland and all else beside it to red ruin." Parnell took possession of the paper, which survived till 1896.

The Freeman had taken sides for Parnell, but was combined with another nationalist paper, the National Press (which was principally inspired by Mr. T. M. Healy), and continued as an anti-Parnellite organ. It was to counter the influence of the new combination and to uphold the cause of Parnell that in the winter following the death of the Leader on October 6, 1891, there was launched a new paper which he had planned--the Irish Daily Independent. It was a fighting paper and definitely partisan in outlook. Years after Parnell's death the shattered Irish Parliamentary Party came together again; and the raison d'être of the Independent seemed to be gone. It saved itself from incorporation with the Freeman by absorbing the Nation.

In 1905 it was acquired by an enterprising and successful business man, William Martin Murphy, and his advent was the signal for a new departure in Irish journalism. Its new owner proclaimed its policy in the phrase: "The extravagances of partisanship will be unknown in the Irish Independent." From the first it was turned out in a fashion notably superior to its Irish contemporaries and has since kept abreast of progress in newspaper production. The Independent is first and foremost a commercial undertaking. Indeed its very essence is business. To this rather than to the popularity of its political opinions it owes its remarkable success.

Meantime two movements had been started and were growing steadily which were destined to sweep away the parliamentary movement. These were the revival of the Irish language and all that went with it--the "Irish Ireland" movement, as it came to be called--and the movement later known as Sinn Féin. Each of these movements had its organs of the press. On March 18, 1890, there appeared the first number of Fainne an Lae (the Ring or Break of day), afterwards An Claidheamh Soluis (The Sword of Light), which continued until its suppression by the British Goveniment in 1919. It has reappeared at intervals since. Many of us remember with what delight and eagerness we read every line of what it gave us--in English, for in those days the Irish language was a rare possession outside the ranks of native Gaelic speakers. The most noteworthy editor of An Claidheamh was P. H. Pearse, who was later to be executed for his part in the Rising of 1916.

The Sinn Féin movement found its ablest spokesman and propagandist in Arthur Griffith, a journalist of singular power, who had founded the United Irishman, referred to above, in the same year that saw the appearance of An Claidheamh Soluis. It was anti-parliamentarian even to the repudiation of O'Connell. It preached an aggressive anti-British policy, envisaging "an Ireland leading the world against the bloody, rapacious, and soul-shivering imperialism of England" (leading article Vol. II, No. 28). It did not, however, advocate physical force as a means of attaining national aims. Arthur Griffith's policy was one of abstention from the British Imperial Parliament, together with organised effort to render ourselves nationally self-sufficient, that is to say, economically, culturally, and in the end politically also. In 1906 the United Irishman was replaced by Sinn Fein.

These periodicals may be called the official organs of the new movements; but these movements had an unofficial organ which perhaps did more than any official organs to further their aims. This was the Leader, founded in 1900 by an Irish Catholic journalist, D. P. Moran, who in 1904 summed up his ideas in a little book that wrought a great work--The Philosophy of Irish Ireland. The Leader hit out, often with telling nicknames and catchwords, against everything that it deemed humbug, but in particular against what it termed West Britonism and Shoneenism. It scoffed at and derided its contemporaries of the press-Irish Times, Freeman, Independent, and Sinn Fein alike came under the lash. It outlived its influence chiefly because the bulk of the Irish people had come to accept as truisms what it had proclaimed as new and vital truths. But the Irish people must not forget what they owe to the vigorous and fearless pen of D. P. Moran, who edited his paper up to the moment of his lamented death on January 31 of this year.

I do not wish to carry this rapid survey beyond that turning point in Irish history, Easter Week 1916. It would be of no small interest to study the rise of the local and provincial press, especially in Cork and Belfast, the powerful influence on Irish opinion, not only in America but in Ireland, of the Irish-American press and in particular of Patrick Ford's Irish World, and lastly the labour press, the vicissitudes of which are mainly a matter of recent history, but which, with James Connolly as its moving force, had made a beginning before 1916.