When the French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville visited Ireland in the decade preceding the Great Famine, he found a deeply divided society. In a letter home to his cousin, he said “this country is divided in the most violent way between two parties which are altogether religious and political”. Eager to impress on the young Frenchman their respective side of the story, the two parties tried to get de Tocqueville to “see things through their spectacles”, immediately following his arrival in Dublin.
For six weeks between July and August 1835, de Tocqueville travelled around Ireland conducting research for a book he planned to write on the country.
He was accompanied by his compatriot, friend and fellow nobleman, Gustave de Beaumont. In that time, the two men covered over 600 miles by mail coach, as they made their way from Dublin to Carlow, and on to Waterford, Kilkenny, Cork, Galway and Mayo.
Journal
On his trip, de Tocqueville kept a journal which he updated almost every day. He also sent letters home to relations in France. From these various sources, we can follow the path of his journey and get an insight into his impressions of Ireland and the Irish people.
The journal serves two purposes. First, it is a record of what he witnessed as he travelled around the country. He writes about the quality of the land, the state of the buildings and the customs of the people. Second, it is a record of a series of conversations that he had with the various people he met, which included lawyers, educators, members of the clergy and judiciary, as well as those administering the country.
The topics discussed with these people range from politics to religion, education and justice, to the distribution of land and wealth in Ireland.
From his writings, we can see that de Tocqueville was interested in the present state of Ireland, but he was equally concerned about the future of the country. Which system of government would work best for Ireland and should the Irish parliament be reinstated, or would it be better off remaining in the union, he wondered.
Religion is a key theme that runs throughout the journal. De Tocqueville came from a wealthy, aristocratic family and was brought up as a devout Catholic, but became agnostic around the age of 15 or 16.
While walking through the streets of Carlow, he noted how the priests were greeted with great respect by all the people they passed. Coming from France, where the revolution reinvented the relationship between the people and religion, de Tocqueville also observed that “there exists an unbelievable union between the Irish clergy and the Catholic population”.
While making his way around Ireland, de Tocqueville stayed in inns and priests’ houses. He was often invited to dinner with priests, bishops and archbishops. When he dined with William Kinsella, the bishop of Ossory, de Tocqueville was joined by other guests, including a number of priests and several prominent Catholic laymen who numbered landlords and barristers among their ranks.
‘Democratic tirade’
The discussion after dinner focused on the poor and the poor laws. De Tocqueville said that it was a “long democratic tirade”, which lasted for two hours. He enjoyed it. He said that “it was passionate, superficial, light, often interrupted by jokes and witticisms”. Such was the nature of the discussion that de Tocqueville noted, “I thought myself in France. Nothing resembled England”. He was well placed to make this observation; he had spent time in England and his wife was born there.
A lawyer by profession and an experienced magistrate, de Tocqueville was eager to examine the Irish legal system to see how justice was dispensed in Ireland at first-hand. To this end, he attended several court cases, known as assizes, in Waterford, Kilkenny and Galway.
He was warmly welcomed as a visiting colleague by the barristers and judges. He noted the nature of the cases he witnessed and described the sentences that were handed down, which included prison terms and an execution.
The level of poverty that de Tocqueville witnessed in parts of Ireland surprised and saddened him.
He found "a collection of misery such as I did not imagine existed in the world". In Newport, Co Mayo, de Tocqueville found that people had been reduced to "fasting like Trappists" due to potato failure. Some of the poor he encountered reminded him of the Iroquois tribe he met in America, while carrying out research for his celebrated ground-breaking study, Democracy in America.
Throughout his journal, de Tocqueville was scathing of the aristocracy for creating this deeply divided society. This respected theorist of liberal democracy said, “If you wish to know what the spirit of conquest, religious hatred, combined with all the abuses of aristocracy without any of its advantages, can produce, come to Ireland”.
Interestingly, de Tocqueville never actually wrote his book about Ireland. His friend, Gustave de Beaumont, did.