GIFT OF .HE K.^SATHER
THE LAST INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
First Edition , . . 1918
Second Impression . . . 1919
%:\
THE LAST
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT
OF
IRELAND
WITH ACCOUNT OF THE SURVIVAL OF THE NATION AND ITS LIFEWORK
BY
GEORGE SIGERSON, M.D.
PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL LITERARY SOCIETY OF IRELAND AND OF THE HISTORY SOCIETY, U.C.D.
Dublin M. H, GILL & SON, LTD.
50 UPPER O'CONNELL STREET 1919
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PRINTED AND BOUND IN IRELAND
BY
M. H. GILL & SON, LTD DUBLIN
• - • •
* • • > • • • •
« • • ^ • •
• • • r * •
I^eMcatet) to tbe memory
of
Dora Stgerson Shorter
430007
/
AUTHOR'S NOTE
THERE is no nation under the sun that doth love equal and indifferent justice better than the Irish." Examples in verification of the statement by Sir John Davis ^ are many in these pages and those who recognise its truth possess the clue to the Irish Question.
A clear conception of that Question cannot be ob- tained if our attention be confined to the legal life of the Independent Parliament of 1782 and not enlarged so as to include its origin, its achievements, and its relations to the old Nation of Ireland. With this it had coalesced ; from this it drew new life ; when, ceasing to be the fettered Council of a Colony, it resolved to become the Parliament of a People. That indomitable Nation, the light of whose freedom Agricola of old desired to extinguish, had set examples in the Parlia- ments under Charles I and under James II, when " freedom of conscience and the rights and liberties of Ireland " were demanded and guaranteed. Now, indeed, that liberal Nation, which had generously welcomed all races to its colleges, was forbidden learning ; that Christian Nation, which had sent missionaries every- where and never persecuted, was forbidden religion, that ancient Nation which alone uplifted Freedom in the Western World was seemingly buried under penal
* Attorney-General to King James I, vii
Vlii INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
fetters. But its unshackled soul saved it, and it marvellously arose, whilst the splendid achievements of its exiles carried high its claim to liberty over two continents.
The mode of this arising, the great fusing force of the Irish Nation, and the friendship which ever followed fight, it was important to show, in order that the question under examination should be understood. The Parliament might be corrupted, the Nation could not ; a Ministry might extinguish a Parliament, it could not annihilate a Nation.
That section of this volume, which describes the life and the various work of Grattan's Parliament was first published (now slightly modified) in 1888, 1.. " Two Centuries of Irish History," to which five other writers contributed and for which Professor (now Lord) Bryce wrote an Introduction. From the archives of the commercial rivals and enemies, in those days, of Irish legislation, I have been enabled to prove that in matters for which it has been most blamed, it was most wronged. Take, for instance, its control of Customs and Bounties. Calumny denounced it as reckless, ruinous, and extrava- gant. The authoritative evidence of its British rivals demonstrates that it was more scientific than theirs, more economic, and quite too efficient.^ They looked to it as a model. With a natural sagacity and foresight for results, the Irish authorities combined accuracy. Dr. Bridges, the eminent English official, writes : " It will surprise those who suppose that Irishmen are worse men of business than English or Scotchmen to find that, on the unquestioned authority of the Clerk of the Exchequer, accounts of income and expendituie were far more accurately stated in Ireland than in
^See Chap. XI. and Appendix.
AUTHOR S NOTE IX
Great Britain up to the time when the Exchequers were amalgamated." ^
Notwithstanding its thwarted efforts and brief hfe, the Independent ParHament accompHshed great things. It largely reconciled all classes, social and religious, raised the standard of public ideals, and, fusing long- contending sections, formed an United Nation. Peace between the two kingdoms would have been made permanent, had England then been guided by the spirit of true statesmanship which caused protests in her legislature, against the destruction of the Inde- pendent Parliament of Ireland. Great part of the work of that Parliament consisted in rescinding and repairing the wrongs and damage done, consequent on the violation of the Treaty of Limerick, in 1692.
Of equal importance with that Ireaty, and as authoritative in conscience and in law was the solemn pact made by the King, Lords and Commons of Great Britain, in 1783, and announced in these words :
"Be it enacted that the right claimed by the people of Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by His Majesty and the Parliament of that Kingdom, in all cases whatever, and to have all actions and suits at law, or in equity, which may be instituted in that Kingdom, decided in His Majesty's courts therein, finally and without appeal from thence, shall be and is hereby declared to be established and ascertained for ever, and shall at no time hereafter be questioned or questionable."'
The violation of this solemn pact is responsible for all the tumultuary troubles which have arisen to pre-
1 " Two Centuries of Irish History," Second Edition, p. 254. Note, with evidence of the unfair treatment of Ireland in the amalgamation.
? 23 Geo. III., c. 28.
X INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
vent or to rescind it. Every generation seems to claim the fee simple of justice, and every generation to be- queath to its successor an entailed struggle for legis- lative liberty. In sequent scries they make a peaceful effort and when that fails or seems to fail, force is attempted. Thus the United Irishmen, all colonials, were formed to plead for reforms, their pleading re- jected, they resorted to force. The patriotic party in Parliament strove against a corrupt and coerced Union ; they failed, and Emmet's insurgent effort followed. Then came O'Connell with his great peace agitation for Repeal, he was imprisoned, and the Young Ireland Party resorted to arms. This failed, and again resort was had to constitutional agitation in the Tenant-Right movement ; it failed, three of its leaders were bought ; and then arose the more formidable Fenian conspiracy. Whilst its partisans were yet in prison, the Home Rule movement began partly as a protest by Protestant Irishmen against Disestablishment, but which soon became a great national power. The result of its effort being deferred, there has been a repetition of history. In the past we may have a mirror of the future. But if hope deferred make a nation desperate, hope fulfilled makes a nation peaceful, progressive, and prosperous.
The antagonism of sections, the war of classes, the hostility of kingdoms, and the enmities enduring throughout generations — all the grievous waste of energy that should make a happy nation — would have been averted had the declaration of Magna Charta been obeyed : —
" Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus, aut differemus justum vel rectum." " We shall sell to none, we shall deny to none, we shall defer to none justice or right."
CONTENTS
PAGE
Author's Note . . , . . . vii
INTRODUCTION
Not Race nor Religion Causes of Unsettlement .' xv Instability of Government : Stability of Irish character xv Conquest-Colony Rule .... xvii
Code of Commercial Penal Laws : Victim-Colony . xvii Penal Code of Anti-Christ : " For a time Anti-Christ
Ruled in Ireland " . . . . . xxi
Four Consequences of Penal Legislation : Agrarian discontent — Emigration of Ulster Colonists — Emigra- tion of Irish to the Continent — Awakening to Nation- hood ...... xxii
Irish Exiles in America : In Arms — " The Friendly Sons of St. Patrick" — Washington an Adopted Irishman — Eternal Gratitude . . . xxiv
Irish Exiles on the Continent : In Arms — Austria, Prussia, Spain — The Irish Brigade in France and America ...... xxvii
PREFATORY
Survival of the Irish ; Fusing Forces : Formation of Volunteers — Victorious Struggle for Free Trade, Free Conscience, and a Free Parliament — Ireland a Nation i
CHAPTER I
Effect of Concession — Vital Work of an Inde- pendent Parliament — From Poverty to Pros- perity . . . . . -27
CHAPTER II
The Commercial Question — Progress of Irish Manu- factures— Commercial Proposals Accepted — The Irish System Regarded as a Model — Ministerial Disloyalty to the Irish Constitution — British Factions . .... 40
xi
xu
CONTENTS
CHAPTER III
The Regency Question
PAGE
6i
CHAPTER IV
The Franchise Act of 1793
69
CHAPTER V The Olive Branch — Lord Fitzwilliam
. 81
CHAPTER VI
Camden's Mission to Provoke Dissension — Emancipa- tion AND Reforms Advocated — Dragooning, Terrorism and Revolt — Ulster Proclaimed
95
CHAPTER VII
Last Sessions of Parliament — The Union
. 136
CHAPTER VIII
Corruption — The *' Purchase-Price " — Coercion and Courts-Martial — Resistance of the People of all Classes : Nobles, Merchants, Peasants, Orangemen and Catholics — " Union " .
148
APPENDIX
Irish Fishers of the Deep : Evidence of their Enemies ....
An Island of Floating Food .
The Irish Teach Kelp-Making in Scotland
Irish Fishers Teach the Shetlanders .
Neglect and Encouragement .
The Bounty System in England and Scotland : Its Faults .....
The Irish System Superior . . .
The Irish More Active
The Irish Fisheries at Home and Abroad
The Irish " Highland Fishery "
The Irish Teach Fish-Curing in Scotland
187 188 189 190 190
191
193 194
195 196 196
CONTENTS
Xlll
PAGE
The Great Irish Fishery : Newfoundland Banks . 197
Singular British Policy : Raw for Roast . .197
Irish Fishers Populate Newfoundland ; Contrary to
Policy . . . . . . 19S
An Irish Fish-Export Trade . . . .199
The Irish Cured Fish Superior . . .199
High Repute of Irish Fish . . . .199
Productiveness of Fisheries .... 200
Flourishing Exports to Foreign Lands . . 200
Exceptional Probity of Irish Merchants : Ill-repute
of British Brands .... 201
British Trade Ruined by Frauds . . . 201
Enterprise of Irish Merchants . . . 202
Testimony to Superior Wisdom of Irish Legislation
and Produce ..... 203 Evils of British Salt Policy .... 203 Benefits of Irish Salt Policy .... 204 Salt Smuggling ..... 204
Meat Trade : Salted Provisions . . . 205
British Policy Injurious to Fisheries . . . 206
Advantages of Irish Legislation . . .206
Triumph and Ruin of the Great Irish Industry. . 207
INTRODUCTION
NOT race nor religion accounts for the unsettlement of Ireland.
Foreigners entered the fertile isle, in successive swarms, fought, fused, became fast friends, and gave sons who have been its foremost champions.
Identity of religion, when both sides were Catholic,
did not prevent the Anglo-Normans from expelling
I Irish priests, nuns, and laity from their churches,
convents, and cities, or from banning their customs,
literature and language.
Nor, when both sides were Protestant, did it save the elder settlers from confiscation, or the later from robbery of their rights, blockade of their commerce, destruction of their industries, or the corruption and annihilation of their Parliament.
Two causes chiefly have contributed to the unsettle- ment of Ireland, since its connection with Britain. These are :
First, the instability of British Government in con- trast with the stability of the Irish character. Second, the conquest-policy of treating colonies as serf-states whose energies were to be developed, discouraged,* or destroyed as seemed the most profitable to the parent country.
1 Take, for example, Lord North's direction to the Governor of Newfoundland : " Whatever they loved to have roasted he was to give it to them raw, and whatever they wished to have raw he was to give it to them roasted." Sec Appendix : Irish Fishers of the Deep.
XV
xvi INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
The first may seem a paradox, for the contrary opinion is a common-place of arrogant ignorance. Yet it is an obvious and inevitable inference from the facts of history. Thus when Charles I and a section of his subjects quarrelled, the Irish generally remained constant to the King and their Constitution, the EngHsh cut off his head, and the constancy of the Irish royalists cost them their estates. Had they been as unstable as their neighbours, and changed principles as quickly, they had retained lands during the Re- public. When the English changed shortly after from republic to royalty, with profit, the restoration of royalty did not mean the restoration of estates to the consistent Irish royalists. Again, when James II and a section of his English subjects quarrelled, the Irish remained constant to the King and the Irish Constitution, and again suffered for their stability of character. Had they been as rapid in revolt as their more variable neighbours, they had not lost their lands, and had prospered as they did.
One condition, however, was imperative : that they should have retained an Irish Constitution, for without such a steadfast guardian of the rights and liberties # of a Nation, they had lapsed into the serfdom of a Colony. No statement can present a clearer or more convincing picture of the significance of such serfdom than the precise and dispassionate, though not com- plete, account set forth by Mr. Eden,^ an English official, in 1785, and dedicated to the Right Hon. Charles James Fox. It was a plea for Freedom of Commerce then correctly called " Free Trade," in the course of which the author specifies the series of Acts
1 Mr. Eden (afterwards Lord Auckland) was Secretary for Ireland under Lord Carlisle.
INTRODUCTION XVll
passed in England to crush the industries of the Colony by searching prohibitions. And let it be clearly re- membered that no question of race or religion enters here — the plea is made on behalf of the Colonial Settlers, sons or descendants of Enghsh invaders, and all of the dominant English creed. There is nothing to parallel it, in commercial history. The relation of Britain to her colony may recall the fable of Saturn and his offspring ; but Saturn did not devour his children because of their industry and enterprise.
It constitutes a code of Commercial Penal Laws, enacted by Protestant England against her Protestant Colony, for this is what he means when he mentions Ireland :
Code of Commercial Penal Laws
"If we were to state to an Irish gentleman," wrote Mr. Eden, " the long continued poverty and idleness which have prevailed over so large a proportion of his countrymen, he would probably answer :
" All this may be very true, but the monopolising spirit of the sister Kingdom is the cause of it : that spirit exercising itself upon Ireland in a very early state of her civilisation nipped her disposition to in- dustry, and, indeed, made it impossible for her to become industrious.
'* In the very infancy of our country " (rede colony), " and while we were contenting ourselves with the exportation and sale of our cattle, you made an act ^ to prohibit these exportations.
" We next gave our attention to the increase of our
1 8 Eliz. c. III.
XVIU INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
sheep, in order to export wool, but you forthwith pro- hibited the exportation of wool, and made it subject to forfeiture.^
" We then endeavoured to employ and support ourselves by salting provisions for sale, but you im- mediately 2 refused them admittance into England, in order to increase the rents of your lands though you thereby increased the wages of your labourers.
" We next began the woollen manufacture, but it was no sooner established than destroyed, for you prohibited the exportation of woollen goods to any other place than England or Wales, and this pro- hibition alone is reported to have forced twenty thousand manufacturers out of the Kingdom.^
" The Navigation Act * had, unwittingly but kindly, permitted all commodities to be imported into Ireland on the same terms as into England ; but by an Act,^ passed three years afterwards, the exportation of any goods from Ireland with any of the Plantations was prohibited, and, as if that had not sufficiently crippled the benefits given by the Navigation Act, we were
1 13 & 14 Car. II. c. 18.
2 18 Car. II. c. 10.
3 10 & II Win. II. c. X. The destruction of the Irish woollen manufactures was accomplished by King William III in compliance with an Address from the English House of Lords, who besought him to warn his Irish subjects (i.e. the Colonial Parliament) that " the growth and increase of the AvooUen manufacture there hath ever been and will be ever looked upon with great jealousy by all your subjects in this kingdom, and if not timely remedied may occasion very strict laws totally to prohibit and suppress the same." It was prohibited, though at that time entirely an industry of Irish Protestants, for no Irish Catholic was admitted to any trade, nor allowed to reside in the towns. It is calculated that 40,000 Protestant artisans were thrown out of work, and large numbers compelled to emigrate because of the industries ruined by this Act.
* 12 Car. II. c. 10.
^ 15 Car. II. c. 7.
INTRODUCTION xix
soon afterwards ^ forbidden to import any of the enumer- ated commodities from the Plantations into Ireland. The restriction, too, was much enforced by subsequent Acts and the list of enumerated goods was much increased.
" I say nothing of your regulations regarding glass, hops, sail-cloth, etc.,^ and other inferior barriers and obstructions to our commerce.
" We subsisted under all this and under a drain which has gradually increased upon us, by remittances to our own absentees, English mortgages, government annuitants and other extra-commercial purposes to the amount of half a million sterling annually, ^ and although we retained no trade but in linen and pro- visions, the latter has been under a three years pro- hibition, during which period we lost the principal market for our own beef, though three-fourths of the people were graziers.
" Many of us, indeed, carried on a clandestine trade and it was essential to our support ; but, that, too, has been lately checked, first by the revolt of the Colonies, and now by the War with France and Spain.
" Our annual remittances and debts to Great Britain now increase mth our distresses ; our leases when they expire are raised by our Absentees, the drain is become greater than our means can supply.
" After having taken for many years British manu- factures to the amount of two millions sterling we are
I22 Car. II. c. 18.
'^ 10 & II William c. 12.
3 Mr. Eden's estimate is under the mark: in 1769 it was estimated that Absentees drew out of Ireland ;[^777,773 ; and in 1782 that estated absentees drew ;;^i, 188,980, whilst absentee pensioners took ;^75,79o.
XX INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
at present reduced to Non -importation agreements as a measure not of expediency but of necessity. . . our circumstances are urgent, and your later relaxations are insufficient.
" We desire, therefore. Free Trade, otherwise our distresses must, if possible, increase and the con- venience of the forts will continue of no more use to us than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in a dungeon."
These Commercial Penal laws, of course, indirectly affected others than members of the Victim-Colony, they manifestly injured the industry, for example, of all who raised cattle or produced wool within the Victim-Nation.
II
The Penal Code of Anti-Christ
Stoma and cloud overshadowed in Ireland that eighteenth century which shone so resplendent abroad. The King and a section of his English subjects quarrelled, and the latter invited the Stadhouder of Holland to dethrone his royal uncle and father-in-law. Though willing, William could not move without the permission of his over-lord, the Catholic Emperor of Austria. This was refused. The WilUamites appealed to the Papal Court and its sanction was granted, no doubt upon pledges not revealed nor performed, because it seemed politic to shake the power of France — James's ally — whose King Louis was terrorising Rome.
From all these intrigues our country stood aloof and stable, but the surge of foreign strife swept dowTi upon it, bringing the insurgent leader WiUiam, with Teuton troops, to defeat the royalist army and to sign the
INTRODUCTION XXI
treaty of Limerick, which he allowed to be disgracefully broken.
Ireland, at this time, seemed like a noble vessel, war-stricken yet stately still, which, deserted by its captain, had battled bravely and secured honourable terms of surrender, upon which a gang of pirates had suddenly seized, violating all pledges, persecuting for plunder and enriching themselves by robbery, which they called Law.
Then, for a time, Anti- Christ ruled in Ireland.
Cromwellian cruelty looks mild, and the Pagan persecution of the early Christians almost human when compared with the Penal Code, enforced in Ireland. Heavy and savage penalties forbade the victim-Nation the privileges of freemen, and vile methods were de- vised to break up and destroy the sacred rights of religion, of education, and of home, the last refuge of the shackled slave. Gross bribes generated and fostered noisome swarms of spies, pimps, informers and discoverers, who stank in social life, but often grew wealthy and secured estates by persecution and perjury. But what need of details ? Let it here suffice to quote the words of Edmund Burke, in sardonic stricture : "It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance and as well fitted for the oppression, im- poverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man."
There have been some who seem to apologise if not to justify this persecution by reference to the dragon- nades of Louis in France, but Ireland was not respon- sible in any way for these flagitious deeds.
It would, indeed, be correct to quote against her the Acts for which Ireland was responsible, and what were these Acts ? Ireland welcomed the Protestants who
XXll INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND -
fled from the English Queen Mary's persecution to Dublin ; in the reign of Charles I the independent Irish Parliament declared for freedom of religion, and in that of James II the same right of religious liberty was again assured. This contrast has not been quoted by apologists for the crime, for it would have shown that crime as more odious in the Hght of the liberty Ireland had guaranteed.
With this Penal Code, and part of it, came the Test Act and the Schism Act Vv^hich desecrated a religious rite by making the acceptance of the Protestant Sacra- ment an essential qualification for official position and privilege. By this, Presbyterians, as well as CathoHcs, severely suffered.
Ill
Consequences of Penal Legislation
What were the Consequences of these Causes ?
Oppression, like a scorpion, stings itself to death. Its very virus is fatal to its existence.
The wreckage of industries within the Colony was resented by riots, and, in the centre of Ascendancy, where no Irish Catholic might reside or learn a trade, the privileged, but impoverished workers " houghed " English soldiers. North and South, as the evidence of Swift, Young, Wilkinson and others demonstrates, the petty despots, who had obtained lands by force or fraud, arrogant and unrestrained, treated their tenants mercilessly. There were undoubtedly many of the landlords, old gentry or new, to whom such con- duct was odious, and who showed a fine example, be- friending at times their Catholic neighbours, and shielding Catholic possessions with their covering names. But the others, the petty, idle, hard-drinking despots.
INTRODUCTION XXlll
whom Arthur Young called " the vermin of the country " rack-rented, imposed corvees, dutj^-work, duty-fowl and other exactions, on their starveling tenants, from whom they robbed the common lands — theirs by custom and by law. The rapacity of such rulers scourged the people, subject to them, as readily within the colony as without, and the result was the formation of secret societies, of Presbyterians and Protestants in Ulster, under the names of " Hearts of Oak " and " Hearts of Steel," and in the South of the " Levellers " (of fenced commons) and " White- boys."
Four Consequences followed the stated Causes of the unsettlement of Ireland.
First, Agrarian Disturbances and general disaffection.
Second, Emigration of Discontented Ulster Colonists to America, where they formed a splendid fighting force in Washington's Army — against England.
Third, Emigration of Despoiled Cathohc gentlemen and soldiers to the Continent, where they gave high service to Spain, Austria, Russia and to France, for whom the far-famed Irish Brigade fought so gloriously, and under whose banner a section of that Brigade sailed for America to co-operate with their Ulster fellow- countrymen in the strife for freedom — against England.
Fourth, the Awaking of the Conscience of the Country, and the formation amongst the now nationalising Colonists of an organisation — the Volunteers prepared, in arms, to demand Freedom of Trade, and then Freedom of Parliament — against England.
All these Consequences could have been averted had only the solemn Treaty of Limerick been honorably maintained. Ireland would have developed in con- nection with Britain into a peaceful Nation and a strong ally. On considering the grave consequences
XXIV INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
which followed its breach one can but marvel how potent a power for evil is Stupid Statesmanship.
Lest any, in ignorance, might say that the prowess and prestige of the Irish abroad were a vain vaunt or an inconsiderable disaster, this summary is set forth :
IV
Irish Exiles in America, in Arms Referring to the agrarian exactions, the Rev. Mr. Gordon writes : " Many thousands of Protestants emigrated from these parts of Ulster to the American Settlements, where they appeared in arms against the British Government and contributed powerfully by their zeal and valour to the separation of the American Colonies from Great Britain." ^ Richard Montgomery, of Raphoe, a native of that county from which Lord Donegal ^ took his title, supplies a distinguished ex- ample. Having been an officer in the British army in his earlier years, he was appointed Brigadier-General by Congress, and given supreme command of the ex- pedition against Canada. He captured Fort St. John in 1775, entered Montreal, and fell in the attack on Quebec. Two years later, Andrew Brown, an Ulster- man, obtained the rank of Muster-Master-General, and subsequently founded " The Federal Gazette." " The Declaration of Independence " itself issued from the press of the Irish and Soldier-printer, John Dunlop of Strabane in Tyrone ; an officer in Washington's Guard, printer to Congress, he subscribed four thousand
1 Gordon, " History of Ireland," VoL II. p. 249.
* Lord Donegal, and Mr. Upton, when their tenants* leases expired, violated custom by demanding exorbitant fines and accepting the high offers of speculative land-jobbers, in breach of what Lord (Chancellor) Lifford called " the old equity of the kingdom."
INTRODUCTION XXV
pounds to the cause — a sum equal to £25,000 of our money. To him also belongs the credit of having founded " The Pennyslvania Packet," the first daily paper of the New World. These expatriated Ulstermen, Protestant or Presbyterian Palesmen though they were, had become thoroughly Irish at last — neither Cromwell, nor James, nor William, would they have as patron, but St. Patrick — the patron Saint of Ireland, which they loved.
The noble Irish Society then formed in the States, under the name of the " Friendly Sons of St. Patrick," spared not any aid of mind, money or blood in the cause of freedom. To relieve the pressing need of Washington's army in Valley Forge, twenty-seven members sent him a generous contribution of £103,500,^ equal to half a million of our money, and certainly worth much more_ to that army then. But this As- sociation was, neither by design nor by chance, com- posed of Irish Protestants, or of Ulstermen, only. Its President about this period was an Irish Catholic, Stephen Moylan — Washington's Aide-de-Camp, and a distinguished General in the War of Independence ; his brother, a priest (afterwards Bishop of Cork) — a fellow student "^ith the Abbe Edgeworth — might have been one of many whose refuge in Penal times was in forest fastness or mountain cave.
Flying from agrarian oppression in an island, where the Catholics were as persecuted pariahs, the Ulster Protestants and Presbyterians saw in America the Cathohc Colony of Maryland, founded by Lord Balti- more, an Irish nobleman, where, as Bancroft points out, " reUgious liberty obtained a home, — its only home in the wide world." There, " the Roman
^History of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, New York.
XXVI INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
Catholics who were oppressed by the laws of England were sure to find a peaceful asylum in the quiet harbour of the Chesapeake, and there, too, Protestants were sheltered from Protestant intolerance. The disfran- chised friends of Prelacy from Massachusetts and the Puritans from Virginia w^ere welcomed to equal liberty of conscience and political rights in the Roman Catholic province of Maryland."
In this State, the Catholics numbered about twenty
thousand, the families of many had been long settled.
Carrol of Carroltown, was of these, and risked his vast
estate by signing the Declaration of Independence :
on signing he specified his locality — Carroltovin — lest
another should bear the blame. Eight thousand of
the same faith, but more recent imigrants from Ireland,
inhabited Pennsylvania. They were foremost in the
fray. " During the Revolution," observes an American
writer, " a band of Irishmen were embodied to avenge,
in the country of their adoption, the injuries of the
country of their birth. They formed the major part
of the celebrated ' Pennsylvanian Line,' which was
chosen out of the whole army to guard Westpoint,
after Arnold's treachery."
Three of these Irish Catholic emigrants stood out conspicuous among their fellows. One of these was Moylan, first Quarter Master General of the American army ; the second was Fitzsimons, a Member of Con- gress ; and the third Vv^as John Barry, founder, father and first Commander of the American Navy.^ This Wexfordman had been driven off the land to the sea, like so many others, by the Penal Code. But in America he received the public thanks of George Washington,
1 Archbishop Hughes of New York ; Complete Works, VoL II. p. 124, 1865.
INTRODUCTION XXVll
obtained the highest naval rank when his native land was yet demanding freedom to trade, and shortly after bore the Agent of the United States to France and brought home in triumph two captured cruisers of Britain.
Into this Association of St. Patrick's Sons, composed of representatives of the Protestant Pale, and of the old Catholic natives of Ireland, all now most cordial companions and loyal friends — came George Washing- ton, an adopted Irishman.
" I accept with singular pleasure," he said, " the ensign of so worthy a fraternity as that of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick — a Society distinguished for the firm adherence of its members to the glorious cause in which we are all embarked."
In after days, when relief was sought in Ireland for the still fettered Catholics, his adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis, revived the memory of Irish services with honourable warmth. " The Shamrock," said he, " should be intertwined with the laurels of the Revolution." " Americans ! " he exclaimed, " re- call to your minds the recollections of this heroic time, when Irishmen were your friends, and when in the whole world we had not a friend beside."
Eternal gratitude he said was their due. " The rank grass had grown over the grave of many a poor Irishman, who had died for America, ere the Flag of the LiHes floated in the field by the Star-Spangled Banner."
V
Irish Exiles on the Continent in Arms
The Fleur de Lys itself was raised and advanced in America by Irish exiles in the ser\'ice of France* The van of battle against England was their special
XXVlll INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
perquisite. " They have always claimed the privi- lege of marching foremost against the English, in whatsoever clime France should wage war against them." 1
Two years before France entered into a Treaty with the United States, a number of supernumerary Officers of the Irish Brigade had sailed to offer their swords. Whilst the British Government was still struggling against the freedom of Irish Colonial trade, Berwick's Regiment, with portion of Walsh's, was attached to the Squadron of Comte d'Orvilliers, and the First Battalion (numbering 1,400 men) of Dillon's Regiment embarked for the West Indies.
Their presence in the fray was quickly conspicuous. At the siege of Savannah, Colonel Browne twice placed the French colours on the walls where on a third at- tempt he fell. Here also Linch won distinction, who afterwards became Lieut. -General of French Infantry. Their efforts, however, were chiefly directed against the British strongholds in the West Indies.
News came to England that Admiral de Guichen's fleet had landed troops. The isle of Tobago was wrenched from her mailed grasp. The isle of Eustatia was conquered, its governor, Lieut-Colonel Cockburne being made prisoner by Chevalier O'Connor, a Captain of Walsh's Regiment. " The troops landed were amongst the best of France," is the record in the English Annual Register, " being principally com- posed of Count Dillon's Regiment, a part of that Irish Brigade, which has been so long and so highly dis- tinguished for its valour and the excellence of its troops
^ " lis ont toujours reclam6 le privilege de marcher les premiers contre les Anglais dans tons els climats ou la France leur ferait la guerre." — Memoire du Lieut-General Comte Arthur Dillon.
INTRODUCTION xxix
and which the ill policy of England and Ireland has driven into the French service."
The Irish Catholic soldiers in the service of England could not, at that time, according to General Howe, be depended on, as against America, a thing not sur- prising when, whilst the law branded them as unfit to bear arms, the pressgangs captured them as slaves were seized. Every man of one regiment, it is recorded, was shipped, tied and bound. In St. Eustatia 350 of them, when made prisoners, gladly enlisted in the ranks of the Irish Brigade. This island yielded British treasure valued at three-quarters of a million, which would represent four millions of our money.
Finally, when the question of the Irish Legislative Independence was being urged forward at home, the Isle of St. Christopher was taken, Dillon's Regiment capturing Brimstone Hill, the " Gibraltar of the Antilles," with 173 pieces of artillery.
Looking forth, the British advocates of a policy of Persecution could now note, as some of the Consequences of that policy : the French flag flying over these islands, whilst Count Arthur Dillon was Governor of St. Christopher, Lieut. -Colonel Thomas Fitzmaurice was Governor of St. Eustatia and Lieut. -Colonel H. O'Dunn was Commandant of the Isle of Granada. And in the meantime, U.S. Commodore Barry sailed the high seas triumphant, capturing British cruisers, and carrying Lafayette, with all honours to France.
The change must have been very welcome to many of the inhabits.. its of the West Indian islands. These were the descendants of the Irish who had been carried off and sold as slaves to the planters, under Cromwell's order, St. Christopher's itself receiving some thousands. But much later, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a contemporary wrote that " every year ship-
XXX INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
loads of men, boys and girls, partly crimped, partly carried off by main force for purposes of slave trade were conveyed by the English to these islands :"i to them, whose priests used to pass from isle to isle dis- guised as merchants or hewers of wood, the arrival of their conquering brethren, bringing hope and freedom, seemed like a celestial vision.
Their condition could not, however, have been worse than was that of their kindred at home in Ireland. Arthur Young — an upright Enghsh Protestant — was moved to indignation at the sight of so much wrong and unmerited suffering. The landlord of an estate inhabited by Catholics was a despot, he wrote, his will the only law; arrogant and unrestrained himself, the Irish natives under his rule were " slaves in the bosom of written liberty."
Yet they had their consolations. Passionately de- voted to their faith, they worshipped God in woods and mountain glens. They were enthusiastic lovers of learning, and hidden behind a hedge, or ensconced in some rocky cavity, or in a desolate bog islet (with sentinels posted), the murmur of their children's voices would rise like the humming of bees. Harpers, too, survived, spared for the sake of the wondrous melodies of their race, which moved even their tyrants' hearts at times — and they had bards still, often serving as contraband teachers, whose songs recall Spenser's eulogy of those of their predecessors, instinct as they are with an exquisite appreciation of nature, a pathetic fidelity to a fallen cause ; and, throughout, burning with all a chivalric lover's devotion to the lofty ideal of Holy Ireland.
* Lenihan, " History of Limerick." Letter of the Pfere Garazanel, French Priest at La Martinique, asking for Irish Priests
/
INTRODUCTION XXXI
In visions like the visions of the Prophets, they beheld the Spirit of their Country, abhorred by aliens, come, in shining splendour, to comfort their souls, endowed with all the exquisite grace which imagina- tion could picture, and bright with a radiance which only Heaven could confer.
Favoured by exceptional circumstances, a few of the old Irish nation forced their way to distinction in Britain, in spite of all obstacles through the rare avenues left open. Such were in letters and antiquarian research the two O'Conors, in painting Barry, in mezzo- tint engraving McArdell, and in music, dramatic authorship and the stage Kane, O'Hara, Clive,^ Murphy, Quin, Macklin (McLaughlin), Kelty, and O'Keefe, whose uncle, as he relates, used often to point out to him the estates of which they had been despoiled.
Repressed, repelled and outraged at home, the Irish sought freedom and scope for their energies on the Continent, where they were welcomed. Yearly the vessels which smuggled into Ireland forbidden learning, foreign wines and fabrics, carried off cargoes of " Wild Geese," as the adventurous volunteers for the Irish Regiments of the Continent were named. Their number was so great, especially as regards officers that candidates exceeded vacancies, and in France most of the Sergeants were, at one period, gentlemrn by birth. 2
They to whom education was banned in Ireland, founded Colleges over all Europe — from Lisbon in the West to Prague in the East, and from Antwerp in the North to Capranica and Rome (where they had
^ Mrs, K. Clive (nee Rafter) whom Dr. Johnson regarded as the most intellectual person on the stage was the daughter of a Kilkenny officer, whose estate was confiscated. ' Memoir of Count Arthur Dillon.
XXXll INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
three colleges) in the South. In Spain, they had colleges at Madrid, Salamanca, Seville, Alca'a, Bilboa, and Compostella. In France, at Bordeaux, Toulouse, Nantes, Rouen, Boulay, Charleville, Sedan, and Lille, with two colleges in Paris. These were founded and endowed by the self-sacrifice of Catholics at home, and by the generous contributions of their soldiers and officers abroad. More than one of the professors acquired eminence, and these were enrolled on the staff of the famed Sorbonne and other foreign Universities. Arthur Dillon became Archbishop of Narbonne.
They were a college-creating race.
But abroad, the Irish excelled especially in the arts of War and Government. In Spain, at this period, Count Alexander O'Reilly, who had re-organised the army, saved the king's life, and obtained the cession of Louisiana, had risen to the rank of Field-Marshal, and successively occupied the posts of Governor of Madrid, Inspector General of Infantry, Governor of Cadiz and Captain-General of Andalusia. Soon after, Ambrose O'Higgins was last Captain-General of Chili, and Viceroy of Peru, whilst an O'Donoju was last Spanish Viceroy of Mexico. Bernard O'Higgins was liberator and first President of Chili, where the names of McKenna and others are in honour for heroic deeds.
In France at this time. Colonel Dromgold was, as Dr. Johnson notes, " a very high man, the head of the Ecole Militaire," whilst Count Daniel O'Connell, Inspector-General of Infantry, won renown by the capture of Port Mahon from the British. Count Theobald Dillon was Marechal-de-Camp (or Major- General), as had been two others of the name ; Count Darcy held the same rank, and the Chevalier Nugent was Lieutenant General of the armies of the king. Others there were, in great number — such as O'Mahony
INTRODUCTION XXXlll
who re-captured Cremona, holding positions and titles of high distinction. Thus Lally of ToUendal ruled the French East Indies.
In Austria, the exiled Irish were even more con- spicuous than in France at this time. Field-Marshal Viscount Taafe, Chamberlain to two Emperors had just died, but not until he had shown by his pubhcations and his presence at the British Court, where his high rank and services commanded respect, the injustice of keeping his Irish brethren in slavery. Field-Marshal Brady of Cavan, by Penal Law a serf in Ireland, had married into the proud Imperial Family .* In Count Lavall Nugent, then a child, Ireland sent another representative who became Field-Marshal, who married a descendant of Augustus, King of Poland, and whose renown eclipsed that of most monarchs.
Perhaps nothing better enables one to realise the position of the Irish abroad than an incident which had recently occurred in Vienna. " On the 17th of this month (March), His Excellency, Count Mahony, Ambassador from Spain to the Court of Vienna, gave a grand entertainment in honour of St. Patrick to which were invited all persons of condition that were of Irish descent, being himself a descendant of an illustrious family of that kingdom. Among many others were present : Count Lacy, President of the Council of War, the Generals O'Donnell MacGuire, O'Kelly, Browne, Plunket, and MacElhgot, four chiefs of the grand Cross, two Governors, . several Knights Mihtary, six Staff Officers, four Privy Councillors, \\'ith the Principal
1 Later, Sir Thomas Wise, of Waterford, a most distinguished member and historian of the Catholic Committee, married into the Imperial family of France, whilst more recently Marshal MacMahon's son, Patrice, espoused a princess of the ro5'al House of Orleans.
XXXIV INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
Officers of State, who, to show their respect to the Irish nation, wore Crosses in honour of the day, as did the whole Court." Thirty Irish Generals are recorded as having been at one time, in the Austrian service, which also possessed seven Irish Field-Marshals. Prussia likewise had her laurelled Irish exiles.
Russia also received and honoured the banished Irish. There Count Brow^ne was appointed Field- Marshal and Governor of Livonia, under Peter III and Catherine. There also Count Peter Lacy, enlisting under Peter the Great, attained the same rank and a similar position, having re-organised the Russian Army and added part of Finland, and the Crimea, to the Empire.
There is no parallel for so splendid a record else- where or at any time in the world's history. Writing of an antecedent period, Macaulay's w^ords apply with double strength to this, and sum up the situation. " There were indeed Irish Roman Catholics of great ability, energy and ambition, but they were to be found everywhere except in Ireland — at Versailles, and at St. Ildefonso, in the armies of Frederick, and in the armies of Maria Theresa, one exile (Lord Clare) became Marshal of France. Another (General Wall) became Prime Minister of Spain. If he had stayed in his native land, he would have been regarded as an in- ferior by all the ignorant and worthless squireens, who drank the glorious and immortal memory. In his palace at Madrid he had the pleasure of being as- siduously courted by the Ambassador of George II, and of bidding high defiance to the Ambassador of George III. Scattered over all Europe w^ere to be found brave Irish Generals, dexterous Irish Diplo- matists, Irish Counts, Irish Barons, Irish Knights of St. Louis, and St. Leopold, of the White Eagle and of
INTRODUCTION XXXV
the Golden Fleece, who, if they had remained in the house of bondage, could not have been ensigns of marching regiments or freemen of petty Corporations." In our own days, an O'Donnell, premier of Spain, a distinguished general, conquered and became Duke of Tetuan ; a Nugent, who had defeated Murat, was Field-Marshal and Viscount Taaffe was premier of Austria; whilst Marshal Niel reorganised the armies of the French Empire and Marshal MacMahon redeemed its fate— whom first I saw in his camp at Chalons, after his glorious victory of Magenta, in company with General O'Farrel, General Sutton de Clonard, General Dillon, and other distinguished officers of our race, and whom I last met in the palace of Versailles, when as President of the French Republic, he stood, a Nation's honour, first amid princes and potentates, and remembered Ireland.
X
I > >
PREFATORY
Survival of the Irish : Fusing Forces : Ireland a
Nation
WARS with the sword may leave a clean wound, but civil wars with confiscation leave a festering sore. Edmund Burke pointed out that in Ireland the war of chicane followed the war of the sword, and cheating the conquered is base, and rankles. Such incidents have been too numerous, for Ireland was " the plunder-ground of English factions," as Blackbume has w^ritten ; suc- cessive and over-lapping arrivals of land-graspers pre- vented peace. They profited by plots, and fostered forfeiture as a gold-mine, which was not left unworked. Hence, besides the earlier seizures in Leinster, and Elizabeth's " composition of Connaught," where the clanns were defrauded of their rights by new feudalism, we had the great Confiscation of Munster, when over 570,000 acres were shared out among new-graspers, followed in James the First's time by the great Confisca- tion of Ulster, when over 510,000 acres became a profit- able prey. With Charles I, Lord Strafford projected a Confiscation of Connacht, by voiding the titles of elder grantees, for which he was, in part, attainted ; but the same English parliament which attainted him con- spired in a policy — or rather a joint-stock speculation — which they hoped would result in a forfeiture of 2,000,000 Irish acres. Cromwell did but little more than carry into extreme execution this perfidious scheme, when three-fourths of the land of Ireland fell to the plunderers. The later royaHst Act of Settlement was
• •
a •"» \Sit^^t}^TiH^t 5A;(^LIAkENT OF IRELAND
an attempt at restitution, checked by the "Phanatick Plot," of revolting settlers, and further efforts under James II effected little. Then came the Confiscation of William III when a million acres of Irish land came into the grasping hands of strangers, of which 120,000 acres of the finest land in Munster were granted by King WiUiam to the Countess of Orkney !
In after times, Fitzgibbon, Lord Clare, when wishing to frighten his audience into voting for the Union, told them the crude truth, that not only had the whole island, with slight exception, been confiscated, but " no inconsiderable portion of it twice or perhaps thrice in the course of a century." The situation, he said, was unparalleled in history, and he proceeded : " The whole power and property of the country has been conferred by successive monarchs of England upon an EngHsh colony composed of three sets of English adventurers who poured into this country at the termina- tion of three successive rebellions — confiscation is their common title ; and from their first confiscation they have been hemmed in, on every side, by the old inhabitants of the island, brooding over their discontent in sullen indignation."
This goes far to explain how, with changing and aHen landlords, there could be little sympathy between the land-classes, and that the greater holders were so often absentees and mere rent-receivers, whilst the lesser were resident rack-renters.
It does not explain the remarkable phenomenon of friendly fusion which the persistence of perverse state- craft failed so markedly to prevent. This phenomenon was due to the attraction of the older, higher and more pleasing civilisation of society in Ireland, which, when- ever opportunity permitted, converted its former foes into present friends. Thus King Magnus of Norway,
PREFATORY 3
in the twelfth century, preferred Dublin to home- faring, and wrote a madrigal to his Irish love. In the fourteenth, Earl Gerald of Desmond, Lord Justice, wrote poems in Irish as in French, and maintained his minstrels, in spite of the Statute of Kilkenny. Gerald Barry, Chaplain to Henry II, extolled Irish music as the most exquisite on earth. Drayton declared the Irish lyre was another Apollo's and the mother of British music. Spenser, himself an " undertaker," eulogised the Irish knight as another Sir Thopas, and pays tribute to the country's former splendour : —
Whilome, when Ireland flourished in fame
Of wealth and goodness, far above the rest
Of all that bear the British Islands name,
The gods then used for pleasure and for rest
Oft to resort thereto, when seemed them best ;
But none of all therein more pleasure found
Than Cynthia, that is Soverain Queen profest
Of Woods and Forests that therein abound,
Sprinkled with pleasant waters more than most on ground.
Nor did he forget the loveliness of " MuUa mine," whom once he taught to weep, or other Irish rivers, but bequeaths them to us in melodious memory.
The charm of a country, redolent of old romance, and of a society, with so fine a culture of its own and in constant contact with that of the Continent, could be appreciated by many of the Elizabethan age. Not by aU. There were those who spoke and wrote evil of the island. Robert Paine, an EngUsh undertaker in Munster, writing to his twenty-five partners at home, warns them against the evil-speakers : They speak, he said, of the dangers of Ireland ; yet are freed from the three greatest, first, they cannot meet in all the land any worse than themselves ; second, they cannot be robbed, for they have nothing ; third, they cannot run into debt for none will trust them.
4 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
What troubles them is that they cannot get anything there except by honest work, which they are quite ignorant of I
The Irish, he remarked, consisted of kernes (warlike men, then few), wanderers, and the better sort, " very civill and honestly given," " greatly inclined to hus- bandrie," " rich in cattell," " some one man milketh one hundred kine " and rears most of their breed, and has flocks of sheep and goats. They give you " a welcoming and plentiful " entertainment, " for though they did never see you before, they will make you the best cheare the country affords, for two or three days, and take not anything therefore." They brought up their children to learning. Latin and English were taught and spoken. " They keepe their promise faith- fully, and," he pointedly remarks, " are more desirous of peace than our English men, for that in time of war they are more charged." They were quick-witted and well-formed. They had a saying, " Defend me and spend me " — " meaning from the worsser sort of our countrymen." " You may," adds Paine, " travel through all the land without any danger or injurie offered of the verye worst Irish, and be greatly reheved of the best."
As to the undertakers, he distinguished two classes, the better and " the worsser sorte." The latter had done much damage " for they have enticed many honest men over, promising them much but performing nothing, no, not so much as to pay their servants or workmen wages."
On the other hand, their falsity favoured the survival of the industrious Irish peasantry ; " they find such profit from their Irish tenantes, who give them the fourthe sheafe of all their corne, and xvi^. yearly for a beastes grass, besides divers other accustomed Irish
PREFATORY 5
duties. So they care not although they never place an English man there."
This also Edmund Spenser observed, ten years after the plantation, for he states that " instead of keeping out the Irish, they not only make the Irish their tenants in those lands and thrust out the English, but also some of them become meere Irish." His own sons became mere Irish and suffered in the next confiscation.
Precisely similar statements were made with regard to the results of the Plantation in Ulster. Some of the Scottish planters knew that they were Irish by ancestry, and remembered, as the Parhament of James I (of Scotland) expressed it, " the gude auld friendship with the Irishrie of Ireland." But many, both Scottish and English planters, acted Hke those mentioned by Spenser. Examples of " the worsser sorte " were numerous, who cheated the Government, defrauded their imported tenants, and rack-rented the industrious Irish. The woods there, however, sheltered friends in the wood-kern, disbanded soldiers, and the wolf — so that it were well to keep on kindly terms with the Irishry, especially as these had cattle, whose re- moval would mean ruin.^
As time passed, it bore away with it many hatreds in whose place grew and ripened feelings of respect and friendship between neighbours, A Palesman, writing in 1641, testifies that the two Nations of Irish and EngHsh in Ireland had " consolidated into one body, knit and compacted together with all those bonds and ligatures of friendship, alliance, and consanguinity that make up a constant and perpetual union between them " — had there not been other revolutions in England,
* Sigerson ; " History of Land-Tenures," Chapters v. and vi.
6 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
What had happened in the plantations of Munster took place, with little change, under the Cromwellian settlements. Officers balked the Government's pohcy, they secured the allotments of their soldiers by " divers aweings," or for trifling sums ; in one case a Captain obtained the allotments of his troop for a barrel of beer. Such as he could not cultivate the soil, or abide in wild desolate lonely lands — and so the never-tiring industry of the Irish had its chance again. And, a like tale, with but little modification, is true for the post-WilHamite times. In 1697, a writer, referring to former examples of English settlers having become Hibemicised, says : " We cannot wonder at this when we consider how many there are of the children of Oliver's soldiers in Ireland, who cannot speak one word of Enghsh, and (which is strange), the same may be said of the children of King William's soldiers who came but t'other day into the country." ^
It may be said : This statement of facts explains the continued existence of the industrious Irish, by their self-sacrifice, and accounts for the formation of rack-renting petty despots, whom Arthur Young described as " vermin." But it does not solve the apparently insoluble problem : how was it possible for the CathoHc Irish (Celtic or non-Celtic) to survive during the penal period, when laws were made and enforced to rob them of two-thirds of their earnings, to prevent them from possessing, inheriting, or be- queathing land, when not until the year 1771 were they permitted — a great concession ! — to lease and reclaim fifty acres of unprofitable bog, four feet deep, and a mile distant from any town. If the bog were too wet to hold up a hovel they might get a half-acre
* " A True Way to Make Ireland Happy." 1697.
PREFATORY 7
of solid soil to build on. But the house would be their landlord's, and they should 3deld him two-thirds of their earnings, and pay tithe to their despot's church.
" Come let us oppress them wisely," said the Egyptians when, seeing the IsraeHtes increase in cap- tivity, they refused them straw, whilst demanding the full tale of bricks. But they left them the flesh-pots. Had their task-masters, instead of pagan Egyptians been those British Colonial Christians they would have confiscated the flesh-pots, and, by way of con- cession, permitted them to take a chattel lease of sands of Sahara, whilst extorting two-thirds of their savings, and also tithes for the priests of Egypt.
How could those Irish Catholics survive ? In a manner marvellous — which should furnish an illustra- tive example to the biologist, the economist, and the politician : to the first, of the sur\ival of the fittest, to the second, of the suicidal effect of extortion, and to the last of how impossible it is for stupid statesmen to misgovern an intelhgent people.
The solution of the survival problem may be most fittingly given in the words of Lord Viscount Taaffe, one of that distinguished family of eminent Austrian administrators, exiled from Ireland by penal perfidies.
" No sooner," he wrote, " were the CathoHcs excluded from profitable and durable tenures, than they com- menced graziers, and laid aside agriculture . . . they fell to wasting the lands they were virtually forbid to cultivate — the business of pasturage being compatible with such conduct. This business, moreover, brings quick returns in money, and, though its profits be smaller than those arising from agriculture, yet they are more immediate, and more adapted to the con- dition of men who are confined to a fugitive property, which can so readily be transferred from one country
8 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
to another. This pastoral occupation eludes the vigilance of the present run of informers, as the diffi- culty of ascertaining a grazier's profit is considerable, and the proofs of his enjoying more than the third penny profit cannot so easily be made clear in our courts of law."
The most unexpected and most astonishing result ensued. Those deep deliberate penal laws, devised to clear the Irish out of their lands for ever, resulted, con- trariwise, in sweeping away the colonial planters — the lease-holding Ascendancy Yeomanry — from vast regions of the best lands in Ireland. It happened thus, as stated by Lord Taaffe : the graziers living frugally, gathered wealth, and negotiating privately with the harpy landlords, were prepared to give large sums of ready money when a lease fell in. So the landholders who broke faith with the Irish as regards the Treaty of Limerick, broke faith with their own henchmen. This race of yeomen " has been broken and dispersed in every quarter."
Query : did it never enter the mind of the penal law-makers that to compel the Catholic Irish to retain only the third penny profit would render them more desirable as tenants than those who could keep for themselves two-thirds of their profits — or, were they more subtle than is thought and secretly devised this method of fleecing a tenantry rendered helpless, under an affected zeal for " Religion " ? Their predatory policy made both Catholics and Protestants its victims.
There was another method also, by which the poorer Irish, with admirable ingenuity and energy, managed to raise themselves, and conquer circumstance. They formed Co-operative Societies, or " Knots " as they were called, following an old Irish practice ; one person
PREFATORY 9
acting as their spokesman, when a lease fell, offered a much higher rent, with " duty-work, etc.," than any privileged tenant would yield, and so got the farm, when obtainable.
In a competition of sacrifice the man who has nothing triumphs over the man who has much. Hence, these industrious poor repossessed the land.
Finally, there was another resource, and another field of action discovered. Driven from the land, numbers of the adventurous Irish took to the sea, and, by co-operative methods, and greater aptitude, took hold of the commerce with foreign nations, and ultimately created a great Fishery, which ex- celled that of England and Scotland, or any in the world.
This has been hitherto overlooked — but in an Ap- pendix I have given authoritative demonstration of its magnitude, by the evidence of its enemies.
These facts will explain the amazing, and otherwise inexphcable statements made, in 1792, in the Irish House of Commons, regarding the status of the members of the Catholic Committee. Colonel Hutchinson testified that one of them, Mr. Byrne, paid £100,000 a year, in duty alone, to the revenue. Others were among the foremost merchants of the city. It was calculated that the Cathohc Committee represented one million of money.
It was acknowledged that the possession of wealth by Catholics, even before 1769, was considered as a factor in liberalising the penal laws. Gentlemen found it very difficult to raise money on landed pro- perty, and " began to think of relaxing some of the popery law with respect to allomng papists to take real or landed securities under certain restrictions, to induce them to bring money into the kingdom " — which
10 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
was impoverished by the heavy drain of the ascendancy absentees. 1
There are two aspects of the Penal Code. The first, the obvious one, that in its commandments to perse- cute, plunder, and slay your neighbour — and in its great blasphemy, its doing this in the name of God — it stands out as the black code of Anti-Christ. The second, and more subtle one, requires reflection, and has not been set forth. Let us see : Why were penal codes considered necessary ? To keep apart the Colony and the Nation, unquestionably. There had then been a tendency to coalesce in kindly harmony ? Avowedly ; and the poHcy of Extern Rule was to hinder that harmony and to create and maintain dis- cord, on the old policy of "divide and dominate.'*
Therefore, since the first dividing Pale there has manifestly been, in Ireland, a great vital fusing force which irresistibly attracted all later comers into the Nation. Age after age, a pahsade of rigid laws was set up, like a stockade, hideous with horrid penalties like spiked skulls ; and age after age that great vital Irish fusing force has broken down and swept away every penal pale, and changed foes into friends.
The existence of a penal code, therefore, demonstrates the existence of a counter-acting force ; the more violent the Code of Hate the stronger the evi- dence it bears to the potency of the fusing Force of Friendship.
We shall discern direct proof in the penal code itself. Thus, when the pirate ParHament declared, in 1704, that all magistrates and others who neglected or omitted to enforce the penal laws against papists, were traitors, it thereby acknowledged, for it did not legislate against shadows, that there were Protestant magistrates and 1 " A List of the Absentees." Faulkner, 1783.
PREFATORY II
other geijjlemen who disapproved of the persecutions. Again, when the same infamous parUament declared that the trade of Judas — that of the informers who for blood-money betrayed the persecuted papists — was " honourable," it yields evidence that the Protestant people generally loathed the base miscreants.
It has been said that a people is often better than its law — and that is especially true when the laws are not made by the people. Nor must it be forgotten that the violation of the Treaty of Limerick was opposed strenuously in the Irish House of Lords by seven Protestant Bishops and seven lay peers, who recorded their protest, declaring that it left the Roman CathoUcs in a worse position than they had been. And it should also be remembered that the Jacobites — the adherents of James II — were largely Protestant in England and Scotland, and that in Ireland numbers stood by his cause, free of the penal laws, on account of their re- ligion, these Jacobites naturally leavened their associates.
Abroad, the splendid gallantry of the Irish Brigade at Landen, Blenheim, Ramillies, Fontenoy,^ and else- where won honour and prestige for the old Irish nation. The raid of O'Farrel (usually called Thurot) who, in 1760, landed a thousand men at Carrickfergus, showed that the island might be reached, and that perhaps it were politic at least not to tyrannise beyond endurance. The rebellion of the American Colonies and their triumph at Saratoga in 1777, when General Burgoyne and his army of 6,000 men were captured by General Gates, gave a sudden shock to penal despotism, which,
^ Voltaire commemorates their valour :
" Clare avec ses dragons, qu'animent nos exemplea, Venge son roi trahi, son Dieu et ses tempes."
This proves that Thomas Davis was justified in using the word " dragoons " ; but the meaning has changed.
12 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
next year, was shattered when France acknowledged the young RepubUc. Then came a quick conversion : some most cruel fetters of Catholic enslavement were struck off, their homes were freed, education was tolerated, they were allowed to hold land for life — but many shackles remained. This concession happened only 139 years ago.
" A voice spoke in America," said a distinguished orator, " and the Hills of Ireland echoed ' Liberty.* "
The Conquest-Colony had long been suffering and smarting under treatment incomparably worse than that which caused the American Colonies to rebel. Even William III, who called together the first parlia- ment of the Revolution here, had, at the demand of English competitors, totally destroyed the woollen manufacture in Ireland, then exclusively the privilege of Protestants. They were refused freedom to trade. Their parhament was a slave parUament.
The shackles had been laid on the Colonial parlia- ment, till then independent, in 1494, under Henry VII, first of the Tudors, a Lancastrian. Lambert Simnel, the so-called impostor, with the support of 2,000 Germans, had been accepted as the true Yorkist prince by the Colony, and crowned in Christchurch, Dublin, in 1487, as Edward IV. Defeated and captured. King Henry forgave his potent feudatories. But seven j^ears later, after the Perkin Warbeck abortive raid. Sir Edward Poynings was sent over, and convoked a parliament at Drogheda, in 1494, which was induced to pass several Acts to maintain division, such as the revival of the Statute of Kilkenny, and forced, in some manner, to decree that no parliament should be held in Ireland until the Heads of Bills, with full explanations, had been sanctioned by the King and EngUsh Privy Council ; they might then be debated, accepted or rejected, but
PREFATORY I3
not improved or changed. This is a short summary of the shackHng Act, known as " Poyning's Law."
The first independent parUament was fettered with iron ; the last was gagged and strangled with gold.
The age was one of philosophical enquiry and dis- quisition, especially in France, and it is interesting to note that William Molyneux, Member for Dublin University, was the first to apply its methods to an analysis of Government in Ireland. For he was, as his name indicates, of French extraction, a man of distinc- tion, and a friend of John Locke. In 1698, indignant at the continuous maltreatment of the country, he produced : " The Case of Ireland being bound by Acts of Parhament in England Stated." He argued that the parhament being estabhshed in Ireland, not by conquest but by voluntary compact, was an independent organism, which could not be fettered.
His reasoning was so clear and convincing that the English Parhament ordered it to be burned by the hands of the common hangman. Its flame flashed a lesson of contempt to the Colony, and this contempt was taught with greater and a ruinous emphasis next year. Ireland had, of old, been famed for its textile industries ; at this time, the Colonial factories of woollen goods were flourishing, and the English makers com- plained of the competition. King William III and the English Parliament at once effected the stoppage of the factories and ruin of the trade in Ireland, although none but Colonial Protestants were permitted to manufacture. By this interference, twenty thousand operatives were compelled to emigrate, some carried their skill to France, many more were ruined in the wreckage.
Another and a more portentous act of usurpation took place a score of years later. In a claim to pro-
14 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
perty, between Esther Sherlock and Maurice Annesley, the Court of Exchequer decided in favour of the latter. Esther Sherlock petitioned the Irish Peers, who re- versed the court's decision. Annesley appealed to the EngHsh House of Lords which reversed the decision of the Irish House, and ordered him possession. Esther Sherlock petitioned again, and the Irish Peers, resolutely supported their rights against encroachment.
The struggle was ended by an act of usurpation, the Declaratory Act of 1719 — the Sixth of George I — which against the protest of Pitt and others, decreed that the EngHsh Parliament had the right to make laws for Ireland, and that the Irish Peers should not act as a Court of Appeal.
This Act of Usurpation differed from Poyning's Act and was worse. By the former Act, the Irish Inde- pendent Parhament was placed in leading-strings, seemingly at least, by its own consent. Now, contrary to its consent, against its will, alien hands placed the garotte on its neck, and by one turn could suffocate it.
This brutal disdain for the Irish Lords and Commons, and their independence, taken together with the hostiUty displayed towards colonial industries, created intense indignation. It increased and fired the finer intel- lects. It was plain that open resistance could not then be attempted. Perceiving that a frontal attack would not serve, a flank movement was devised by the subtle spirit of Dean Swift.
Immediately after the Usurpation Act, he published, in 1720, his essay, " A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures," in which he clearly stated or subtly :mplied the tnie causes of the country's poverty, with a surpassing simplicity of style and strength of reasoning that made it instantly popular. He reminded the people of Molyneux, and that " in reason all govern-
PREFATORY 15
ment without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery," and that " by the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country, you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England."
The Viceroy was alarmed, the printer prosecuted before a carefully culled jur}^ but it refused to convict. Then came the question of " Wood's halfpence." The origin of the affair was a sordid scandal. As William III had given his " favourite " 120,000 acres of the finest land in Munster, George I gave his " favourite," the Duchess of Kendal, in 1723, a patent for coining £108,000 in base metal half-pence and pence. She, of course, sold it for a great sum to Wood. The scandal was the greater, because Ireland had neither requested nor required any such superabundance, which must surely depreciate in value and ruin traders. The " Drapier's Letters," models of simple, acute, and clever controversy, carried conviction to all classes, and made the Dean the most popular man in Ireland.
Thus did the rapier riposte to the British bludgeon, and supply another example to illustrate Chief Justice Morris's dictum that it is difficult .for a stupid people to govern an intelligent people.
After Swift, came the eminent philosophic patriot, Bishop Berkeley, whose famous " Querist," made him " a dangerous man " to those who ruled the land.
He was a Protestant, indeed, a privileged dignitary in a privileged pale, a stainless Bishop — but he was an Irishman. That this should be a disqualification must seem amazing, but we have it in his own letters.
There had been a vacancy in the Primatial See, and many expected his superior claims to prevail, but not he. The Viceroy, he wrote to a friend, might think well of him, " yet it is not likely he would make an Irish-
l6 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
man primate." Swift had had a like experience, and we know the ignoble treatment of the eloquent and learned Kirwan, because " he was an Irishman." All the positions of great emolument in the State Church were reserved for imported Englishmen.^
Lucas, whose name indicates a French origin, an apothecary, again raised the banner of Molyneux, and appealed to a larger public through " The Citizen's Journal," for an independent parhament, and against abuses. He was popular and persecuted, but ulti- mately became Member of Parliament and effected several reforms.
There being a Jacobite war in Scotland, Lord Chester- field was sent over to Ireland, as Viceroy, in 1745, to enforce a policy of superficial conciliation by the charm of his manner and the courtesy of his speech. He advised that the King would be better served by moderation than by severity, stopped priest-hunting, and allowed Catholic churches to be opened. Catholics even appeared at the Viceregal Court ; to one of whom, the beautiful Miss Ambrose, he addressed the witty compliment :
" Say, pretty rebel, why this jest Of wearing orange on thy breast, When the same breast uncovered shows The whiteness of the rival rose."
But when he withdrew, and but a short time after,
1" Primate Boulter complains," (in a letter to Lord Carteret), " that if an Englishman were not appointed to the See of Cashel, there would be thirteen Irish to nine English Bishops which we " (the Lord Chancellor and himself, both Englishmen) " think will be a dangerous situation." — " Two Centuries of Irish History," p. 47.
Had a Catholic dynasty succeeded in England, the Irish Catholic Church would have suffered a like encroachment. It paid the blood price of freedom.
PREFATORY ly
Mr. Saul, a Catholic merchant of Dublin, was charged and convicted of harbouring a Catholic relative, who had taken refuge with him from the pressure of certain neighbours who wished her to conform to the State Church. " Know," said the Judge to him, " that as a papist you have no right, inasmuch as the law does not presume a papist to exist in the kingdom, nor could they so much as breathe there except by connivance of the Government."
This was their legal status in their native land, one hundred and seventy years ago.
Many earnest efforts were made in Parliament, with some success, but no event of national importance took place until the Declaration of American Inde- pendence, its recognition by France, and the formation of the Irish Volunteers in 1778.
Previous to the formation of the Volunteers, the patriot party in ParUament had succeeded in retaining control over the surplus revenue to lessen the (small) National Debt, and the Commons, rejecting an English attempt to encroach, succeeded also in holding its right to originate money bills. ParHaments could be called, continued, and dismissed, at the King's pleasure, in Ireland ; the patriots, after strenuous efforts, secured that it should sit for a definite period — seven years they sought, eight years was the term conceded.
But they could not punish abuses or bribery, however gross. The Surveyor-General, guilty of embezzling a vast amount of public money, was shielded from mulct by the Viceroy, Dorset, the Primate Stone, and the Privy Council.
Two noted opposition politicians were bought by the Castle, Boyd (who got a pension and a peerage), and Malone (who was made Chancellor of the Ex- chequer)— with which may be compared, in later days of Independent Opposition, the purchase of
/
l8 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
Sadlier (made Junior Lord of the Treasury), and of Keogh (made a judge).
No finer proof could be given that the patriot party were then — as ever afterwards — the champions of purity against corruption, than their vigorous efforts to obtain (what all now approve) that every Member of Parliament should vacate his seat, if granted a pension or a paid civil office, under the Crown. It speaks well for the Commons that only a small majority of 20 defeated the attempt. Time after time, but in vain, they fought against the pension-poison which the Government injected into the veins of the body cor- porate, and persistently increased until the fatal end.
When in 1775, the revolt of the Colonies in America, caused the withdrawal of four thousand troops from Ireland to reduce the rebels, a garrison of German mercenaries was offered, but refused, the gentlemen of Ireland declaring they could defend their own coasts. Hence the origin of the Volunteers, the first force of the kind, which confessedly was imitated in the forma- tion of the French National Guard, and more recently in England,
From the formation of the Volunteers, events marched rapidly. The first companies were organised in Belfast, at the end of 1778, in the early spring of 1779, four thousand Volunteers were enrolled in Down and Antrim, and, in a short time there was a fine army of forty thousand Volunteers, drilled, disciplined and armed. This movement did not indicate hostility to the American insurrection, for FrankHn bears witness to a general sympathy in Ireland with a cause so similar to its own.
It is deserving of notice that, whilst the uniforms of the Volunteers were red, like those of the Irish Brigade in France, their banners were green. Several of their beautiful banners have been preserved, bearing on a
PREFATORY I9
green field the golden Queen-harp of Ireland, sur- mounted by a gold crown. ^ That is the proper blazon, being the sole sanctioned by the Independent Irish Parliament.
Sensations of hope and happiness, long unknown to Ireland thrilled the expectant island. The Volunteers were welcomed everywhere, though exclusively Pro- testant at first. Catholics contributed to their funds, and, later on, were admitted to the ranks. Guided by their distinguished commanders, the Earl of Char- lemont and the Duke of Leinster, inspired by the noble eloquence of Hussey Burgh and Henry Grattan, they marched boldly onward to the great goal of National Liberty.
The influence of their presence as " good lookers on " was soon displayed. ParUament met in the third week, October, 1779, the address from the throne did not satisfy, and an amendment moved by Hussey Burgh and Grattan declared that nothing but free trade could save the country from ruin. The amended Address was borne by the Speaker and the Commons to the Viceroy, through streets glowing with the bright uniforms, arms and flags of the Irish Volunteers who lined the thoroughfare and saluted the Irish Speaker and Commons. It made the ministers uncomfortable, but the King's speech, which they drafted, followed the usual form, showing a vague desire to do good, but no intention of doing it. This evasion would have served its purpose, in former years, but not now.
Early next month, the 4th November, there was a splendid scene — a great parade of Irish Volunteers, under their popular General, the Duke of Leinster,
' There is a general misunderstanding as to the crownless harp. Some think it an emblem of republicanism, in reality it meant that Ireland had been discrowned as a sovereiga power. See Lord Cloncurry's Memoirs.
20 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
and the landed gentry of the country. The magnificent spectacle has been engraved, but no graver could give an idea of the fervid enthusiasm that briUiant assembly excited and displayed. More impressively than even the echoing volleys of musketry, in salute, was the lesson taught by the mottoes on the cannon, "Free
Trade or " " The Lord will open our mouths," and
elsewhere " The Glorious Revolution " {for this was William Ill's birthday), and " Forty thousand united prepared to die for their country."
There was no slackness ; no moment was lost. It was determined to cut off supplies from the refractory Government. Graft an moved that it was inexpedient to grant new taxes, and 140 was the great majority for it. Next day, the supphes were voted for six months only. Startling and striking as this action was — ^it expressed the very spirit of constitutional government. Its effect was heightened by Hussey Burgh's retort to one who offered a pseudo-plea for peace. " Peace," ex- claimed Hussey Burgh, " Ireland is not in a state of peace, it is smothered war. England has sown her laws like dragon's teeth and they have sprung up armed men."
The Government surrendered next month, December, 1779. Lord North brought three bills before the EngUsh Parliament ; the first allowed the Irish to export their own wool and woollen manufactures, the second per- mitted them to export their glass wares : "^ these passed at once — the third giving them leave to trade with British plantations abroad, on conditions, was delayed.
There were illuminations and great joy. But, this was still the act of an English ParUament making law for Ireland, and if it did this act one day, it might undo it another. Hence, the patriot party, ever vigilant, took
* Irish cut glass was highly valued then as now.
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action : On the 19th April, 1780, Grattan delivered his famous speech, " The Declaration of Irish Rights " : a closely reasoned convincing statement of the Irish situation, which defined his policy, and electrified the country.
Had he lived, he said, when WilHam destroyed our woollen industry, or when George debased our ParUa- ment, he would have made a covenant with his con- science to rescue his country from such ignominy. Therefore, now he came to move a Declaration of Irish Rights. Your ancestors sacrificed trade and liberty, he proceeded, you have recovered trade — but it may be taken away again — the kingdom calls on you to restore her Hberty. The populace may illuminate, the courtier make it a pretext to apostatise, but it is a trade by Hcense of England not by Irish Charter, and so needs armed vigilance to retain it, and peace is dreaded — making the country attribute all it holds dear to the calamitous condition of British interests abroad. Its discontent with the liberty it has lost, is increased by the opportunity it is losing. " If this Nation, after the death-wound given to her freedom had fallen on her knees in anguish and besought the Almighty to frame an occasion in which a weak and injured people might recover their rights, prayer could not have asked for nor God have furnished a moment more opportune for the restoration of liberty than this." It is plain that here is the germ of O'Connell's maxim, " England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity." Then, indeed, as Grattan showed, England was in the gravest difficulties on land and sea. Ireland was stronger than ever ; they could not stand still, since encroachments had increased. Not the people of England but the ministers were to blame ; the English people sympathised, the ministers traduced
22 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
England to debase Ireland. The British commis- sioners offered Congress, in 1778, legislative liberty to every State — " she has offered this," he said, *' to the resistance of America, will she refuse it to the loyalty of Ireland ? " And he intimated that Ireland was armed, and might resent such a refusal.
He repudiated the supposition that Ireland would not be satisfied when she had recovered her Constitu- tion, observing with keen sarcasm : "To say that Ireland will not be satisfied with Uberty because she is not satisfied with slavery is folly." He concluded his luminous and stimulating speech by this profession and prediction :
*' I have no ambition unless it be the ambition to break your chains and contemplate your glories. I never will be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking on his rags ; he may be naked, he shall not be in irons. And I do see the time is at hand, the spirit has gone forth, the declaration is planted ; and, though great men should apostatise yet the cause will live ; and, though the public speaker should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlive the organ which conveyed it, and the word of Liberty, like the word of the holy man, will not die with the prophet but survive him."
The long debate closed, without a division, but not without efect. The organization of the Volunteers proceeded with enthusiasm throughout the land, reviews were held, and all classes and creeds were drawing together in a fraternal effort for Freedom.
Striving for Liberty enlarges and ennobles the human mind, and thus the colonial patriots earnestly began to break away the chains that colonial tyrants had laid upon the Irish. The Catholic Relief Act, Feb. 5, 1782, which Luke Gardiner (Lord Mountjoy), intro- duced made an epoch. 1° It permitted Catholics to
PREFATORY 2$
lease, buy, sell, and inherit lands, like Protestants ; 2° It allowed them to celebrate and hear Mass, to possess a horse worth five pounds or more, to reside in Limerick and Galway, and relieved them of the exactions laid upon them for any damage done by privateers, rebels, and robbers. Next, they were per- mitted to teach, to learn, and to have the guardianship of their children. These were accepted and enacted. But, by a small majority of eight, permission for inter-marriage between Protestant and Catholic was rejected.^
During the debate, the self-denying conduct of the Catholics was eulogised by Grattan, among others. He pointed out with what noble patriotism they had subordinated their claims to the demand for Free Trade, and bade men remember that they had wrested a Constitution — a Magna Chart a — from King James II before following him.
He might have added that they had similarly acted, as regards Charles I, and secured with Freedom of Conscience, an Independent Parliament. In both instances, the Irish Catholics set an example to the world, and further illustrated it in their colony of Maryland.
The patriot party, by their Act of Emancipation, though incomplete, not only elevated the mind of the country, but strengthened their own cause. The fusion of friendships and of interests had begun.
The Volunteers, meantime, had greatly increased in number, and were increasing. In Ulster, Lords Charle- mont and Erne were in command ; in Connaught, Lord Clanricarde, and, in the South, Lords Kingborough, Inchiquin and Shannon. Now, on the 15th February,
* Within the memory of many, priests have been punished, in the law courts, for marrying Catholics and Protestants.
24 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
1782, came the great Convention of the Ulster Volunteer
Delegates, when a hundred and forty-three corps were
represented. Several resolutions were passed, one in
favour of a short Mutiny Bill, so that the Commons
should retain power over the Army, another drawn by
Flood repudiated Poyning's law, and two were drafted
by Grattan. The first resolution of these Ulstermen
is famous : —
Resolved ! That a claim of any body of men, other than the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland to make laws to bind this kingdom is unconstitutional, illegal and a grievance.
The second is glorious : —
Resolved : That we hold the right of private judgment in matters of religion to be equally sacred in others as well as in ourselves. That as men and Irishmen, as Christians and as Protestants we rejoice in the relaxation of the Penal Laws against our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and that we conceive the measure to be fraught with the happiest consequences to the union and prosperity of the inhabitants of Ireland."
By this act, the Pale was abolished and a Nation established.
Their Address to the patriot Peers and Commoners in Parliament was manful and memorable. :
" We thank you for your noble and spirited, though ineffectual efforts, in defence of the great and commercial rights of your country. Go on ! The almost unanimous voice of the people is with you, and in a free country, the voice of the people must prevail.
" We know our duty to our sovereign and are loyal ; we know our duty to ourselves and are resolved to be free.
" We seek for our rights and no more than our rights ; and, in so just a pursuit, we should doubt the being of a Providence if we doubted of success."
The encouragement of the Volunteers came as a new force to hearten the patriotic party in Parliament. They were equal to the occasion. A few days later, on the 22nd Feb., Grattan moved their resolutions in the form of an Address to the King. It was welcomed with enthusiasm, and the Ministry was shaken.
The Irish Legislature adjourned until the memorable
PREFATORY 25
i6th of April, 1782, and in the interval Lord North resigned, and a new Ministry was formed. Had he remained obdurate, in power, facing Grattan's ques- tion : "In what quality does his Majesty choose to consider the Irish hereafter — his subjects in Parliament or his equals in Congress ? " it is possible he had driven them to follow the example of the revolted colonies of America.
The wiser and wilier Whigs replaced him. Rocking- ham was Premier ; Fox, Secretary of State ; Burke, Paymaster of the Forces ; and the Duke of Portland, Viceroy of Ireland. These were friends, but in the middle of March, Grattan gave notice, and moved a call of the House for the i6th April, when he would tender the Rights of the Irish Parliament. The Ministers asked for time, but Grattan was not the man to postpone a nation's rights, lest the demand should embarrass the Government, however sympathetic.^ Charlemont and other Irish Whigs pleaded with him, who then lay ill from excessive work : "No time ! No time ! " cried Grattan, and made the Earl write that " they could not delay, they were pledged to the people."
Then came the peace-offering. Mr. Eden, on the 8th April, moved in the English Parliament a repeal of the Declaratory Act (6 Geo. I), declaring " they might as well strive to make the Thames run up Highgate Hill as attempt to legislate for Ireland, which would no longer submit to any legislation but that of its own Parliament." *
* A little later, at the time of the Volunteer Convention, the correspondence between Fox and the Viceroy shows the Viceroy writing : " Our next step was to try by means of friends to perplex its proceedings and create confusion in its deliberations " — " another desirable step was to involve them, if possible, with the House of Commons,"
? " Two Centuries of Irish History," p. 89,
26 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
When the loth April arrived, College Green and the streets around were fervent with excitement and brilliant with colour. In the House itself, a most gracious message from His Majesty was read, deploring and promissory, and was obsequiously replied to by the official rhetoricians. Then, Graft an arose and moved the classic Declaration of Irish Rights, namely : "That
" The Kingdom of Ireland is a distinct Kingdom, with a Parliament of her own, the sole Legislature thereof ; that there is no body of men competent to make laws to bind but the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, nor any Parliament which hath any authority or power of any sort whatever in this country, save only the Parliament of Ireland ; to assure his Majesty that we humbly conceive that in this right the very essence of our Liberty exists — a right which we, on the part of all the people of Ireland do claim as their birthright, and which we cannot yield but with our lives."
The enthusiastic approval of this resolution declared its victory.
On May 27th, the forms having been duly carried through in London, the Duke of Portland as Viceroy, communicated to the Commons the royal assent to their desires. Outside, College Green and the surrounding streets flashed with the splendours of the Volunteers — now 100,000 in Ireland — inside the House, all, in intent silence, listened to Grattan's impassioned words :
" I am now to address a free people. Ages have passed away and this is the first moment in which you could be distinguished by that appellation.
" I found Ireland on her knees : I watched over her with paternal solicitude, I have traced her progress from injuries to arms — and from arms to Liberty. Spirit of Swift ! Spirit of Molyneux ! your genius has prevailed. Ireland is a Nation. In that new charac- ter I hail her, and bowing to her august presence, I say ; EsTO Perpetua ! "
THE LAST INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
I
Effect of Conxession — Vital Work of an Independent Parliament — From Poverty TO Prosperity
THE struggle for a free Constitution, de- veloping the passion for liberty, had en- larged men's minds and extended their sympathies. Barriers between the sections of the people began to fall. The victory of the Con- stitution had an analogous effect on a larger scale. The wave of exultant emotion which surged all over the island swept away the memory of past enmities with Britain. Notwithstanding the fierce- ness of the strife by which she had secured a free legislature, Ireland's first act was one of friendship to England, her second of gratitude to her liberator. The Duke of Portland, in his speech to both Houses, on May 27, 1782, announced that the King and Parliament of Great Britain had cor- dially assented to remove all causes of discontent, and that his ^Majesty was ready and anxious to sanction Acts abolishing the powers of the Privy Councils to suppress Irish Bills, putting an end
27
28 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
to their alteration anywhere, and limiting the Mutiny Act to two years. These intentions were " unaccompanied by any stipulation or conditon whatever."^
Then Grattan, entering into detail, showed that Great Britain gave up every claim to authority over Ireland. The British Commons had agreed unanimously to the Irish claims, and in the House of Lords there had been but one dissentient. Next, touching a chord which vibrated in every heart, he declared that the spirit of the nation was called upon to make an unconditional grant to England. The sea had been the scene of Britain's glory ; there she could most effectually be assisted. Hence he would ask them to vote £100,000 to raise and equip twenty thousand Irish seamen, for the common defence of the empire. The suggestion was adopted with delight, as evi- dence of their resolve " to stand or fall with Eng- land," now that Ireland's rights were conceded.
Other proofs followed fast. Volunteer corps proffered to cross the Channel and give their services to Great Britain in case of an emergency. Their weapons, so lately directed against her, were now ready for her defence. Further, a Bill enabled his Majesty to draw five thousand men
1 The Duke wrote privately to Fox, then Home Secretary (England) that he thought it best to concede cheerfully, but thought he might still get terms more favourable to England by taking advantage of some difference of opinion he knew existed among gentlemen of weight, and that above all he would " cultivate " the Earl of Charlemont and induce him to give a " proper tone " to the armed bodies over whom he had great influence.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 29
out of the standing army of Ireland whenever he required them ; with the remnant of the regulars and her Volunteer army Ireland engaged to pro- tect her own coasts. These and analogous acts were evidences undeniable of that generous spirit of cordial amity which sprang up immediately on the concession of the Irish claims at a time when Ireland might have enforced them by arms.
Not ungrateful, the emancipated Parliament voted Grattan ;fioo,ooo. The court party, as if sharing in the glow of generous emotion, sought to disarm his influence by crown favours. The Lord-Lieutenant offered him the Viceregal Lodge. He accepted one-half of the people's tribute, but declined the court's proposals.
During the sessions of 1781-82 the abuses of the administration — for which the English Cabinet was responsible — were attacked by the popular party in Parliament with vigour and persistency.
At the beginning of the session, they called attention to the extraordinary fact that the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer, drawing an immense salary, did nothing for it, and lived out of the country. They protested against another grievance equally scandalous and startling, namely, that the Master of the Rolls was allowed to act in like manner, drawing a great revenue out of " a kingdom he does not condescend to visit." The judges, on the other hand, had been poorly paid, and kept dependent on the Government, their tenure being " during pleasure." Already the patriots had moved that they should be made
30 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
independent and properly paid. The Cabinet con- sented to increase the stipend (which by itself increased the dependency), and rejected the other issue. Not until the legislature acquired its inde- pendence was the independence of the judicature assured, and assured it was immediately.
Minor reforms, connected with the administra- tion of justice, relating to masters in Chancery and jurors, were also advocated by the popular party. The prisons had frequently been pest- houses, too often devastated by jail-fever, which sometimes swept off jurors, lawyers, and witnesses by its pervading contagion. Measures were taken to remedy this, and, by a revision of the criminal law, to humanise that terrible code which had dealt death alike to culprits offending by a petty theft and to those guilty of parricide. Poor debtors were considered. Until the popular party took up their case and bettered their condition, these unhappy wretches had been confined in- definitely in prisons, or rather noisome dungeons, often in the same cell with the felon and male- factor. Public baths were subsidised, to which the poor were admitted free, in great numbers.
Thus the Irish capital takes rank as probably the first to provide such hygienic accommodation for the humbler classes. Measures were adopted to promote the planting of trees in the rural districts. In the city, the repair of the streets was taken from a corrupt corporation, and by other measures the principal avenues of the city were enlarged, adorned, and a great new bridge
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 3I
built. The old Custom House had fallen into ruins, and become a disgrace and a danger ; ex- pansion of trade required new buildmgs ; the foundations were accordingly laid of the classic edifice which attracts the admiration of every visitor.
The rules relating to law students weie con- sidered, and the splendid Four Courts and Inns of Court arose, whilst the English judges still sat in sheds off Westminster Hall. Irrespective of these, the sole official measure brought in during the session was one for the creation of a national bank — the Bank of Ireland — a measure which Provost Hutchinson had previously urged on every administration for ten years, and urged in vain.
Then came the great constitutional Act of Habeas Corpus, at last secured at a period when arbitrary power had been advancing. Nor was the constitution of Parliament itself untouched or unimproved. Some members had been habitual absentees ; " one gentleman, twenty-two years a member, had never attended in his place but once to vote." Ballots for committees were ordered, and absent members rendered liable to punish- ment. Care was taken to prevent delays in calling Parliament, and an effort was successfully made to diminish the influence of the Crown by purify- ing the electorate to some extent.
Government had the appointment of revenue officers, and nominated them, by way of patronage, in numbers far in excess of the requirements of the service. Until then, as Mr. Mulgrave men-
32 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
tioned, at elections a gentleman could boast of having " mandatory letters from the Revenue Board to officers to influence them." Corruption could not be abolished in a period when minds were still corrupt ; it began to diminish in an era of virtue.
In the penal code directed against the Catholics, a legacy of hatred and foul oppression had been bequeathed. This Henry Grattan and others had Btriven against from the first ; and this, notwith- standing the objection of Flood and the murmurs of a few others, the Parliament had begun to destroy. Its early efforts were not great in them- selves ; they evoked the scorn of Burke ^ and the impatience of Grattan, but they marked a distinct advance. The declaration of the Volunteers in favour of Emancipation made this possible and imperative ; the bell of Dungannon Church an- nounced an epoch of national as well as of colonial freedom.
In reviewing the work done, the Lord-Lieutenant might well congratulate Parliament on the im- portant Acts which should strengthen the great constitutional reform achieved, and which would *' for ever distinguish that memorable session." " You have," he said, " provided for the impartial and unbiassed administration of justice by the Act for securing the independence of judges ; you have adopted one of the most essential securities of British freedom by limiting the Mutiny Act in
* Letter to a peer of Ireland, February 21, 1782
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 53
^
point of duration ; you have secured that most invakiable of all human blessings, the personal liberty of the subject, by passing the Habeas Corpus Act ; you have cherished and enlarged the wise principles of toleration, and made considerable advances in abolishing those distinctions which have too long impeded the progress of industry and divided the nation/' ^
Some fears had been expressed lest the simple " Repeal of Poynings Act," etc., might not be completely effective in the " final adjustment." Henry Flood, who had resigned a lucrative position, demanded a formal Act of Renunciation, which Grattan deemed superfluous : they were no longer *' tenants-at-will of their liberty, but free men." However, the demand was granted, in January, 1783, and, the edifice of independence seemed established for ever, when the King, Lords, and Commons of Great Britain declared that Ireland's right to be governed by its King and Parlia- ment was established and ascertained for ever, and shall at no time hereafter be questioned or questionable." The terms of the treaty of Limerick were not so solemn, nor more binding. Now, the entire commercial framework of the country had to be built on new foundations, and the labours of committees are not always interesting. But by such labours Parliament succeeded in averting a threatened famine, in relieving distress, in fostering infant industries, encouraging trade, extending
* " Irish Parliamentary Debates," voL i. p. 484,
34 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
commerce, and in making an impoverished country prosperous.
Harbours were improved, piers built, fisheries promoted, and the carrying trade of the inland counties facilitated by a system of canal and river communication. A shipping law regulated the manning, victualling, and accommodation of ves- sels, so that passengers should no longer suffer from the recklessness or rapacity of owners. The gaols were again looked to, and all prisoners who had been nominally acquitted or discharged by proclamation, but who were really detained for gaol fees, often in a starving condition and in- definitely, were at once liberated. Churches, col- leges, and schools (all Protestant, of course) were built. Skilled artisans were brought over from Britain, and factories established : the village of Balbriggan alone could show twelve hundred workers, six hundred being children.
Associations were encouraged to promote in- dustrial skill — the Dublin Society being granted £5,000 for the improvement of husbandry and the useful arts, particularly glass and porcelain-making, which it effected by procuring instruction and granting premiums. At the same time care was taken to prevent the abuse of loans to manufactures, and, on the motion of Mr. Foster, a man of great financial capacity, bounties on exports were gradu- ally substituted — each bounty being thus a species of results' fee, granted on work done.
The Post Office was taken under Irish charge, and new rules were laid down for its better govern-
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 35
y
ment, including the formation of Dublin (on a diameter of eight miles) into a penny-pcTstal dis- trict. Here, the Irish capital led the world. ^
A measure was also adopted to prevent bribery and corruption at elections. It is true that re- form of Parliament itself did not proceed so rapidly as was desired by many. The Volunteers held a Convention in the Rotunda, not far from the seat of the Legislature, and, under the chair- manship of Lord Charlemont, and guided by Flood, proposed a scheme for the more equal representation of the people. This scheme of reform was narrow, for in excluding the Catholics it virtually excluded the Irish nation. It was premature, and there can be no question that it was an error to convoke an armed Convention, in the heart of the capital, in order to propound a scheme of reform to Parliament. It savoured too much of dictation, and gave offence to moderate minds. Had Parliament been offered and refused a reform resolution, the case would have been altered ; popular manifestations might then have fairly pressed on a necessary and righteous reform. But Parliament had not been first consulted. Though Grattan pleaded that Flood should be allowed to bring in the Bill, and strongly depre- cated any semblance of difference between Parlia- ment and the Volunteers, his speech lacked fire. Many sympathised with Sir Hercules Langrishe
^ Half a century later, the district of the Twopennj'' Post still included London and the country within a distance of tea miles.
36 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
when, recalling the magnificent gains achieved, he asked the Volunteers to rest on their arms and view the present great labours of their representa- tives. " They would see them," he said, " ar- ranging supplies, so as to ensure annual meetings of your Parliament ; framing a Mutiny Bill to assert your Constitution and govern the army ; forming an Irish post-office, alike favourable to revenue and liberty ; establishing an Irish ad- miralty court, with final appeal, the last pledge of external legislation ; giving new authority to the laws, and new restrictions to prerogative, by an act of indemnity for a late embargo ; deliberating on a wide system of commerce between this country and America, with the great conception of making, if possible, Ireland the mart of communica- tion between the old world and the new ; they would see them anxiously and honestly consider- ing how best to relieve distress and promote the manufactures of this country." Yelverton, then attorney-general, carried the motion against the reception of the Bill by a majority of two-thirds, largely place-men, and immediately afterwards a resolution was passed declaring that " the House will maintain its just rights and privileges against all encroachments whatsoever."
The Convention, under Lord Charlemont's leader- ship, gave way to the susceptibilities of Parlia- ment and separated. This was a homage to the Parliament which the action of the Volunteers had made free, but its continued freedom required their continued vigilance. When the question of
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 37
reform was again brought before the Legislature, the measure submitted was fully debated (March 20, 1784) ; but on some points the weight of argument w^as against its advocates. The Bill, however, was rejected not so much because of its defects as on account of its merits. The former might have been corrected in committee ; the latter threatened too powerful interests.
Lord Powerscourt, in the Lords, said that it was not unconstitutional to declare the Parlia- ment corrupt : *' No man can deny it ; it is too well known that two-thirds receive the wages of corruption." And Lord Aldborough had moved to cut down the pension-list to one-fourth, with other suggestions as to retrenchment. The parasites of place and pension rallied round the ministry, and the Bill was rejected by 159 to 85.
The people outside did not analyse all the causes of failure : they saw only corruption and resist- ance. The dissolution of the Convention did not calm but disquiet them. The season had been bad, but the condition of trade was worse. Whilst the new code v/as being fashioned and the duties revised, the English merchants were zealously en- deavouring to destroy the nascent manufactures in Ireland by bu^dng up the raw material, and pouring in manufactured goods at low prices to undersell the Irish in their own market. This was not in realit}' a special anti-Irish act, since it was the habit in England itself for established manufactures thus to crush out a rising rival if
38 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
they could. But in this case there was a particular unfairness ; the Irish ports had been by previous legislation laid open to British goods, whilst Eng- lish harbours were practically closed against all Irish manufactured goods, except plain linens.
The consequence was that there existed great distress and destitution amongst the artisans of Dublin, and from distress and destitution sprang violence, tumults, and outrages within the confines of the colony. Mr. Gardiner, calling attention to these facts, and to the report of a committee, pressed for a system, not of prohibitory, but of restrictive duties to protect the undefended manu- facturers. On the other hand, Mr. Foster and the official party desired to delay the question of protective duties, until a final adjustment sHould be made with England by mutual conference and consent.
In the House of Peers Lord Mountgarret gave voice to the discontent. " Could Ireland," he asked, " say at this moment she had a free trade ? No. It was a name, a shadow. Could she pro- tect her trade ? . . . No. He supposed the in- attention of the English minister to this country, and the prejudice of the English nation, prevented the measure." Others, however, took a less gloomy view, and there is no doubt that, though there was distress, it was localised ; whilst the grievance of unequal duties, though it checked enterprise, did not arrest it, for the official records attest that there had been a remarkable annual increase of manufactured goods. When the first session of
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 39
the free Parliament ended, in May, 1784,^ fifty- six Acts had been passed (double the number passed in the previous session), of which forty- three were public Bills, all of them useful and some of great and permanent importance. On the whole, the Legislature, if not performing all that was desired, had worked hard and accom- plished, perhaps, as much as could reasonably be expected in the time. The enumeration of its Acts, given in the Viceroy's speech, is very imper- fect, but his testimony with respect to the work done is worth quoting. " The useful regulations proposed to be introduced into the collection and management of the revenue." he said ; " the security of private property and the extension of national credit ; . . . the plans for improving the metropolis, calculated not more for ornament and splendour than for health and convenience ; your unanimous determination to defend the freedom of the Constitution against the attacks of licen- tiousness ; and your attention to the support of charitable institutions, are all unequivocal testi- monies of your wisdom, humanit}^, and justice." ^
* The fourth session of the third Parliament of George III began Ortober 9, 1781, and ended July 27, 17S2. The first session of the fourth Parliament began October 14, 1783, and ended May 14, 1784, It was, therefore, the first session of the free Irish legislature.
" " Parliamentary Debates," vol. iii.
II
The Commercial Question — Progress of Irish Manufactures — Commercial Proposals Ac- cepted— The Irish System Regarded as a Model — Ministerial Disloyalty to the Irish Constitution — British Factions.
WHEN the king dismissed his ministers, in the last month of 1783, the news excited no discontent in Ireland. On the one hand, the coalition of Fox with North, an old enemy, and the intrigues of the Viceroy had chilled public sentiment ; on the other, Mr. Pitt, a young reformer, might be expected to amend the state of the representation. The convivial Duke of Rutland arrived as Lord-Lieutenant, with Mr. Orde as secretary. Carrying out a previous sug- gestion, *' Single-speech Hamilton," the absentee Chancellor, was induced to resign on a copious pension, and Mr. Foster received the office. A clever financier and a resident, his appointment was welcomed, though his politics were anti- popular. Mr. Fitzgibbon, however, became at- torney-general, and by his intolerant and domi- neering character soon aroused and embittered the slumbering forces of conflict.
The great question of this period was that of the commercial relations of Britain and Ireland. As they have been often misunderstood and some- times misrepresented, it is necessary to go into
40
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 4I
some details. One writer has described Ireland as plunged into great distress, whereupon Mr. Pitt offered to share v/ith her the abounding wealth of Britain — an offer which, through some mysterious madness, she rejected. Facts, how- ever, are in direct contradiction to this injurious fiction. The causes which led to a consideration of the commercial relations were chiefly two : the complaints of the Irish manufacturers and merchants, and the action of the Non-importation Leagues. The former, based on the great differences of import-duties in favour of Eng- land, induced the Irish Parliament to consider the question of their revision ; the latter pre- vailed with the English, whose trade had greatly fallen away during their existence.
To these may be added a third — the prevalence of cross-channel smuggling, the current of which, flowing in the direction of high profits, carried Irish products into Britain in spite of Britain's prohibitory tariff. In salt, for instance, an essen- tial element in fish-curing as well as in diet, there was a stirring trade all along the west coasts of Great Britain. Half a million persons in Scot- land never used any other than smuggled salt from Ireland, and, as the duty w^as still heavier in England than in Scotland, the movement thither was brisk. ^ Again, in the articles of soap and candles, none were exported into Ireland, and none were officially admitted into Britain
1 " First Report on the State of the British Fisheries " (England), p. 14. 1785.
42 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
from Ireland, " but great quantities are certainly smuggled into all the western counties of England and Wales, and from thence by inland navigation into other counties." ^
Writers have referred to the Non-importation Agreements of Irish consumers as ruinous to them- selves. As a general rule, however, people do not deliberately continue to injure themselves. The distress recorded amongst the artisans, indeed, is relied upon as proof ; but it is studiously over- looked that the leagues were formed because of that suffering, and to end it.
English merchants, strong in capital and skill, and having their own ports guarded by high pro- tective tariffs, were pouring their goods through the open ports of Ireland so as to overwhelm its infant industries and destroy its manufacturing projects. This it was which closed the factories and drove out the busy hands into wretched idle- ness. It was sought to redress the grievance in Parliament by levelling up the duties. When that effort failed, through a reluctance on the part of placemen and pensioners to irritate the Govern- ment, the people took the matter into their own hands. The influence of the non-importation agree- ment was strong and decisive. One London fac- tor's export trade in fine cloths fell from £30,000 to £5,000 a year. The Wiltshire export of super- fine and second cloths almost ceased. Chester calicoes and printed cottons fell to one-seventh in
1 Report of Lords of Committee of Council on Trade, etc., Evidence (England), March, 1785.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 43
the last half of 1784. The fustian trade was practically extinguished. One house, which in the last two months of 1783 exported £5,000 worth, had not a single order the following year.
The truth is, as British official records show, that the Irish trade and manufactures, so far from being in a perishing condition at this period, had sprung up with marvellous vitality and flourished exceedingly. Thus the British manufacturers gave evidence that their trade in soap and candles to North America and the West Indies had " much decreased of late." " To what causes do you attribute this decrease ? " asked the Lords of the Committee of Council. " We impute it," was the reply, " to the possession the Irish have now got of that trade ; we export but very few candles now to the West Indies." Some idea of the pro- gress made in Irish manufactures may be formed on learning that from 1780 to 1783, both inclusive, the general export of new drapery, or fine sorts of woollen goods, rose from 8,600 yards to 538,000 yards in round numbers ; and of new drapery, or coarser kinds, from 490 yards to 40,500 yards. Only 1,000 3^ards of fustians were shipped to America in the first year, whilst 47,000 yards were exported in the last. Other Irish manufactures were pressing forward in a similar manner, and some of these products were appearing in foreign markets.^
This progress was made, be it remembered,
* Report (and minutes) of the Lords of the Committee of Council, Whitehall, 1785.
44 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
whilst Britain prohibited absolutely the import from Ireland of arms, cheese, chocolate, gloves, goods of Asia, Africa, or America manufactured in Ireland, laces, gold and silver lace, silks, stock- ings (with silk), velvet, wrought ivory, whale- bone, etc. And whilst there was an ad valorem duty varying from about thirty to sixty-five per cent., besides other heavy taxes, against all Irish ale, beer, candlewick, chalk, chaises, chariots, coaches, coals, earthenware, fustians, glassware, ironware, lead, printed linens, mixed linen and cotton, manufactured leather, ox-guts, cotton or worsted stockings, toys, and wooden-ware. Irish starch need pay no ad valorem duty, but one hun- dred guineas a ton of other charges surely sufficed. A nearly equal sum kept out Irish manufactured sugar. Vinegar and cider were also barred off ; and, whilst nearly £2 a yard stopped the entrance of all manner of Irish woollen cloth, a sum of £2 6s. each was charged against every Irish-made hat.
Can it be a matter of wonder that Irish manu- facturers complained and formed Non-importa- tion Leagues ? What really does surprise the impartial observer is the amazing progress they made under such conditions. Free trade in manu- factures was a mere mockery, so far as it related to Great Britain, with the solitary exception of linen — and not of all kinds of linen.^ British ports were shut against manufacturing Ireland ;
1 Of the two pledges given, at the instance of the EngHsh Parliament, by William III to discourage the Irish woollen, and to promote the Irish linen manufacture, the former was
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
45
on the other hand, Irish ports were open to British goods. This will be readily seen from the following table, which shows the difference of duties. The idea is due to Lord Sheffield,^ but his schedule has been enlarged with facts taken from the British official reports already quoted.
|
Articles |
Import |
duties |
; payable in |
|
|
England |
Ireland |
|||
|
i s. |
d. |
£ |
s. d. |
|
|
All woollens or old drapery, per yard |
2 O |
6^ |
0 |
0 5* |
|
Stuffs made or mixed with wool, new |
||||
|
drapery, per yard . |
o 5 |
III |
0 |
0 m |
|
Cotton and linen, or cotton mixed, for |
||||
|
every ;^ioo value . |
29 15 |
10 |
9 |
18 5^ |
|
Linen cloth, printed, for every ;^ioo val. |
65 10 |
10 |
9 |
18 bix, |
|
Leather manufacture, for every ;^ioo . |
65 10 |
10 |
9 |
18 5A |
|
Checks, per piece of ten yards |
0 3 |
ii^§ |
0 |
I M |
|
,, for every ;^ioo value . |
35 15 |
0 |
0 |
0 0 |
|
Sugar refined, per cwt. |
5 6 |
9U |
I |
13 iiM |
|
Starch, per cwt. |
4 12 |
m |
0 |
6 5iJ |
faithfully kept, the latter was broken. Ireland was not per- mitted to export her white and brown linens to the Colonies until 1705 (3 & 4 Anne c. 8). Six years later (10 Anne c. 19) a bounty of |i. per yard was given in favour of the British manufacture over the Irish ; the importation of checks, striped or printed linens into Britain was prohibited. This prohibition was continued against all linens printed, stained, or dyed. Cambi'ics and lawns were likewise excluded, for which there were about two thousand Irish looms at work in 1783. Lord Sheffield, in 1785, observed that, as regards bounties, Ireland complained of that given by Great Britain on the export of sailcloth to Ireland, and with double force as it was a branch of her linen manufacture. He admitted she would be justified in meeting this by counteracting bounties or duties, but " the British Act adds to the bounty now given as much more as at any time Ireland shall impose as a duty on the import of British sailcloth into Ireland." This was an effectual mode of re- pressing Irish manufacture.
1 " Observations on the Manufactures, Trado^ and Present State of Ireland." Dublin : 1785.
46 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
In other matters likewise Britain had the ad- vantage. Thus, whilst the Irish prohibited the entrance of flour and meal from all countries but Great Britain, there was no reciprocity. *' It might be a just return to them," said the English corn-factors, " to prohibit in like manner the im- portation of flour and ground corn from any country but Ireland," which would encourage British mills.
When we look at the enormous disparity be- tween the duties of the two countries, and consider that the British capitalists had held possession of the market, it seems a marvel that Irish manu- factures should take root at all. Close study of the problem reveals that this happened because the Irish Parliament had men who seized upon the trufe principles of economic laws and applied them with great sagacity. They could not spend money in fostering factories and trade as England did, but what comparatively small sums they gave were more fruitful because more judiciously allotted.
By this means they raised their factories from the ruins the law^s had made, and by this means also their fisheries became the envy and admira- tion of their neighbours. The Irish bounties were not nearly on a level with the British, but " the fisheries are under no unnecessary restraints, and a 206. bounty there is equal to a 30s. bounty in the Hebrides fishery." ^ Frequently the West
^ " Third Report on the State of the British Fisheries, House of Commons (England)," vol. x. p. 42.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 47
India fleet, leaving the Clyde, went to Cork to ship Irish herrings. Contrary to what some have alleged, the elder (or native) Irish population had special aptitudes in maritime matters.
Men were brought from Ireland to teach the inhabitants of Uist the manufacture of kelp from seaweed. Others were brought to the Shetlands because of their dexterity in fishing, and because they could go out two months earlier and proceed much further to sea than could the natives in their Binall boats. The inhabitants of Barra learned fish-curing from the Irish fishermen, who had a " Highland fishery."
They v/ent even further a-sea, and established their " great fishery on the banks of Newfound- land, which," in 1785, " increases daily." ^ This was due, be it noted, to the energy and enterprise of the old natives of Ireland, who, homeless in their fatherland, poured out by the two and three thousand annually and remained abroad as resi- dents, in spite of all discouragements. The British who went usually returned. Newfoundland was practically founded by Irish Catholics. ^
The Irish fishers were honest dealers, as well as skilled curers. Though the Irish herring-barrel contained only twenty-eight gallons and the Scotch thirty-two, the former sold " at an equal or superior price." So high stood the Irish name that their
* " Third Report on the State of the British Fisheries, House of Commons (England)," vol x. p. 44.
2 " Second and Third Reports on the State of Trade to New- foundland," 1793.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
herrings sold " fourteen and a half per cent, dearer than the Scotch." They were never charged with the " fraud, perjury, and all the tricks which ingenuity could invent to rob the public " — such as partly filling barrels with stones and rubbish — which had almost entirely destroyed the sale of British herrings in European markets.^
The question of reducing British duties to the same level as the Irish was referred, by an order in council, January 14, 1785, to a committee. Reviewing possible plans, they concluded the best to be that both countries should agree upon a scale of moderate duties, " such as will secure a due preference in the home market," of the pro- ducts of each, " 37et leave to the sister kingdom advantages, though not equal to its own, yet superior to those granted to any foreign countrj^"
This was clearly fair and wise ; but it must astound those who have been taught to consider the Irish irrational and intractable in m.atters of trade to learn that the Lords of the Committee, in looking about for a proper standard, fixed upon the Irish scale. " The duties now payable on British goods imported into Ireland," they wrote, " seem by their moderation as well adapted to answer this purpose as any that could be devised." ^
After much consideration, Mr. Orde, chief secretary, brought the basis of a Commercial Treaty before the Irish Parliament on February 7,
1" Third Report" (Fisheries), Mr. J. Knox, p. 45. 1785. For full evidences of Irish efficiency see Appendix. * Report of the Lords of Committee of Council, 17S5.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 49
1785, in the form of eleven resolutions. They ordered : the admission of foreign articles through either country as if directly imported ; the aboli- tion of prohibitions and the equalisation of duties — these to be levelled down ; the regulation of internal duties in due proportion ; and the aboli- tion of bounties on goods intended for either country, except food-stuffs. The last, or eleventh, proposition attracted special attention. It pro- vided that, whenever the hereditary revenue (dur- ing peace) produced more than the sum of £656,000 the surplus should be appropriated to the support of the navy.
One member objected to this as making Ireland a tributar}^ nation, but withdrew his opposition on finding that the grant was under Irish control. Mr. Grattan further amended it by stipulating that it should be accorded only in years when income equalled expenditure. His principles were — " After the expense of the Nation is paid, to contribute to the general expense of the Empire " ; to interest ministers in economy by this stipula- tion, and to subject the surplus to the control of the Irish Parliament. Notwithstanding adverse petitions from the Chamber of Commerce and some merchants, the proposals were accepted with but little demur, Mr. Forbes remarking that " no Government ever received a milder opposition."
The Irish Parliament thus, contrary to some shameless statements, showed itself willing and anxious to come to a fair and final adjustment on the commercial, as it had done on the constitu-
50 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
tional, question. Grattan helped ; Flood criticised, but did not resist. All would have ended har- moniously had it not been for the battle of parties in the British Parliament.
On February 22, Mr. Pitt introduced the pro- posals to the Commons in committee. After a general review of the subject, he said there were but two systems possible for the two countries. One, to make the lesser subservient and a draw- farm to the greater, they had tried ; the other, a system of equality and fairness, with participa- tion of benefits, he proposed to try. The conces- sions might be reduced to two heads. First, the importation of colonial produce through Ireland into Britain. This seemed to infringe the vene- rated Navigation Laws, but really mattered no- thing ; Ireland could import such produce direct already, and Britain could more cheaply have it direct than through Ireland. The second was a mutual exchange of products and goods on equal terms. In return, Ireland paid over her surplus to the general expenses.
The Coalition part}^ now greatly beaten down, showed no large-minded desire to assist a settle- ment. Quickly perceiving that the sensitive jealousy of British trade might be roused against Pitt, Lord North, Mr. Fox, and others, spoke in prompt hostility. Fox intimated that, though he admired Ireland, he did not wish to see her made sole arbitress of the laws of navigation. Their speeches helped to inflame the country and stir up scores of petitions.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 5 1
Apparently, Mr. Pitt was in no hurry to press the matter forward ; he gave time for declamation. In Dublin Mr. Orde had refused a day's delay ; in London weeks and months were allowed to pass. If the minister had designed to divide the Irish from the English Whigs, he would have acted thus. The report of the Lords of the Committee on trade and plantations, though presented, was discredited ; fifty-four petitions supported the opposition. Pitt, on May 12, brought forward a revised series of propositions, almost double the number of the old. Three grave changes were made. It w^as stipulated that all trade or navigation laws which had been or should be made by the British Parliament, should also be enacted by the Irish Parliament ; that nothing but colonial produce should be transhipped through Ireland into Great Britain ; that, so long as the British Parliament wished to have commerce carried on beyond the Cape of Good Hope by an exclusive company, dealing through the port of London, so long should Ireland be debarred from dealing direct with any country whatever beyond the Cape and the Straits of Magellan.
If Pitt had intended that the odium of enforcing alterations should attach to the opposition, they were resolved, on the other hand, he should not escape obloquy. Pointing out to the English that by altering his Bill he justified their action, they held up the manner of the modification to the repro- bation of British Whigs, and to the alarm and hatred of the Irish nation.
52 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
The new conditions, requiring the Irish Parlia- ment to pass any trade or navigation Act the British legislature had made or might make, and to shut itself off from all direct trade beyond the southern Capes, as long as an alien Parliament pleased, were manifestly incompatible with Irish liberty. Fox denounced them. " I will not barter English commerce for Irish slavery ! " he ex- claimed. *' This is not the price I would pay, nor is this the thing I would purchase." Sheridan, following, compared Ireland to a high-mettled horse, recently escaped from harsh trammels, whom the secretary strove to catch, *' with a sieve in one hand, but with a bridle in the other readv to slip over his head." " There was to be," he said, ** an eternal boom placed against Ireland, from the Cape of Good Hope on the one hand, to the Straits of Magellan."
The Opposition declared that the ministry, justly censured for their violence, their attacks on the freedom of the press, and on the rights of public meeting and personal liberty in Ireland, had sought to compensate insult by imprudent concession. They now sought to retrieve their attack on English commerce by fettering the Irish Parliament. In the Lords something was said about a final settlement hindering a Union, which revealed that the ministry had ulterior objects. Lords Shelburne, Townsend, Derby, Fitz- william, Plymouth, Northington, Scarborough, and Keppel recorded their protest.
When the new proposals were brought before
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 53
the Irish Legislature on August 12, the denuncia- tions of the English Opposition heralded them. Grattan summed up the case by stating that they involved " a surrender of Trade in the East, and of freedom in the West." Attorney-General Fitz- gibbon threw in a sectarian brand, warning Parlia- ment of a popish population and popish neigh- bours ; but the old spirit was aroused, and material interests were at stake. The popular minority swelled to double its usual number, one hundred and eight members voting against leave to intro- duce the Bill. There was a majority of nineteen ; but at that stage it meant defeat, and Mr. Orde allowed the Bill to drop, for, on canvassing the House, he discovered he would be beaten.
Public illuminations attested the fidelity of the people to their independent Constitution. What- ever divisions, fostered by official arts, had arisen amongst the Volunteers on the question of tolera- tion, and between them and Parliament in reference to reform, were closed by the flagrant attempt to profit by their dissensions. When Parliament rose, the manufacturing population renewed, enlarged, and enforced their Non-Importation League ; several new counties supported the Capital ; the military were posted in the streets ; and the Viceroy became markedly unpopular.
Ireland fell under Mr. Pitt's displeasure. Until the French revolution shook the world, and war again threatened Britain, he left the Irish Govern- ment practically in the hands of a petty oligarchy, whose policy was to resist reforms, maintain
54 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
abuses, and augment its own power and im- portance by every method. Everything was ac- ceptable which might serve to strengthen the central executive, to extend its sphere of patron- age, and to divide, depress, and disarm the popular power. The session of the Irish Parliament in 1786 opened without a promise of reform, but with a reference to a new police force and a vigorous execution of the laws. This was based upon allegations of outrages which members de- monstrated to be exaggerated or untrue. Sir Edward Crofton, alarmed for his property in Roscommon, where the Catholic peasantry were said to be in rebellion, made inquiries, and found ** that the peace of the county was not for a moment disturbed." ^ Rumours of Popish plots, peasant insurrections, revivals of old Irish claims to estates of the later colonists, were sent forth from time to time : they served to frighten the timid, and make them gather into the Castle coverts. Advocating economy, the patriots pointed to a swollen pension list of £94,000, greater than Eng- land's by £4,000 ; to augmented taxes and an increasing debt. The expenses of a Nation, they urged, should not exceed its income. The At- torney-general scoffed at the notion ; "No Govern- ment ought to be tied up." ^ " Will the minister
^ " It WLS also rumoured that the Roman Catholics were in open rebellion. This was an insidious, infamous, and false report ; ... it was an illiberal and an infamous attack on a people distinguished for their peaceable demeanour " (" Parlia- mentary Debates," vol. vi. pp. 338, 339).
' " Parliamentary Debates," vol. vi. p. 124
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 55
of Ireland," Hardy asked, " the delegate of Mr. Pitt, give us Mr. Pitt's reform neither in repre- sentation nor in finance ? " In England, ministers disabled persons holding pensions " during plea- sure " from sitting in Parliament ; in Ireland, Government kept them there. It even gave similar pensions to their male and female relatives, so that an independent vote should make a whole family destitute. The British Cabinet had limited the English pension list ; in Ireland a similar motion was denounced by the Attorney-general as " going on the most dangerous principle ever introduced ""'* an attempt to rob the Crown of its responsibilit3^" The principles of the Consti- tution, the laws of England, were held to savour of treason in the judgment of the Castle oligarchy.
By a new Police Bill the power and patronage of the Executive were augmented. The patriots desired to amend the tithe-system, which bore oppressively on the small tillage-farmers, and produced secret societies. Officials like Lord Luttrel denounced the exactions of the clergy, their tithes being sometimes 28s. per acre. Mr. Montgomery, of Donegal, declared their extortions had driven 100,000 people out of the kingdom. Denis Browne doubted if the Whiteboys had done more harm. The Castle officials rejected all reform, and carried instead a sanguinary law, with " blood " and " felony " in every sentence, as Grattan said.
When the Duke of Rutland died in October, the administration could boast of having rejected every reform ; repudiated even the distant promise
56 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
of redress ; passed two Coercion Acts, extending their powers of corruption ; and of having, in that one j^ear, augmented the pension list by
The Marquis of Buckingham, who succeeded, appeared in a double character. Because of his loyal attitude, as Lord Temple, on the Renuncia- tion and Judicature questions, and because ot his reported antagonism to abuses and pensions, he was at first favourably received. But it quickly became evident that the hostile policy of the previous Administration would be con- tinued. The subject of tithes was revived by an official motion to grant compensation to clergy- men for tithes withheld ; they were also granted a perpetual tithe of 5s. an acre on hemp. More pensions were given ; existing pensions were jobbed, sold, transferred to other and younger persons ; members of Parliament were again granted pensions " during pleasure." The pension list, on January i, 1788, had swollen to £96,289, exclusive of military pensions and additions to salaries. Gross scandals were exposed ; but the Government refused to permit any redress. Mr. Connolly moved for a return as regards hearth- money, long abolished in England. The ad- ministration rejected even an inquiry. ^ On April
* " Parliamentary Debates," voL viii. p. 8,
■ Mr. Connolly said he understood their reluctance to investi- gate, because of the frauds arising from patronage which would be exposed. Was it not well known, when a gentleman solicited from the minister a hearth money collection, that instead of ^40 a year, its nominal value, he considered it worth from ;(ioo
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 57
14 Grattan submitted eight eminently practical resolutions for the modification of the tithe system. The justice and moderation of the proposals could not be gainsaid ; they were, therefore, simply met by a measure which kept them out of the Journals of the House — the premature proroga- tion of Parliament in the middle of April. This was a ready means of stopping all progress, and extinguishing even the hope of reform.
Public corruption could not exist without private depravity within the official domain. The Govern- mental system of appointing to places political renegades or their bribe-giving proteges had filled the official departments with the dregs of the Ascendency.^ They had been promoted because they had been unscrupulous, and they carried the quality which had gained them Government's favour into the Government's service. The Duke of Buckingham suddenly came down upon the minor offenders, seized their keys, and demanded a rigorous account. Panic, flight, and suicides followed.'^ This was a meritorious raid, no doubt ; but, considering the conduct of the Viceroy him-
to ;^20o a year ? and whence did that arise, but out of the plunder of the people, already too wretched, by taking indulgence money, and by afterwards taking their pot, their blanket, and at last their door, and making what return they thought proper to the public treasury ?
^ Frequently, in newspapers, until Civil Service examinations were established, might be seen advertisements offering " Douceurs " — sums of money — to those who should procure an appointment. A recent debate in the House of Lords shows that peerages have been obtained on the same principle.
* Plowden, " Historical Review," vol. ii. p. 199.
58 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
self, it rather resembled the raid of a great wolf on a pack of little foxes.
It must not be inferred, from the existence of local oppression and suffering, that there was a general depression. On the contrary, the country was generally prosperous ; this fact was declared by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who gave satisfactory proof of his veracity by introducing a Bill to reduce interest from six to five per cent. Manufactures abounded, and all the occupations dependent on them flourished. Dublin assumed the appearance of a thriving metropolis, at once a hive of industry, a home of arts and learning, and a haunt of fashion. Many absentees were drawn back by the attractive life of the brilliant Irish capital. Its stately and spacious avenues, new- paved, and lighted with improved lamps having double burners, were crowded with the splendid equipages of a profuse aristocracy and gentry. The magnificence of^'the public edifices was rivalled by the beauty of private mansions, on which the art of Italy was lavished, as well as the trained skill of Ireland. Leinster's ducal palace was taken as a model for the White House of Washington. Chimneypieces of the period are even still ripped out of old houses in decayed streets, and fetch enormous prices in London marts. Whilst a Viceroy had established the order of the Knights of St. Patrick to divert the minds of the nobility from " speculative subjects," Lord Charlemont founded the Irish Academy for the encouragement of science, polite literature, and the study of
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 59
antiquities. The Irish Parhament gave it a generous grant ; and, by hberal subsidies, en- couraged the Dubhn Society to foster and develop the industrial arts and to improve the agriculture of the island.
Not only did the provincial cities share in the general good fortune, but, in various rural places, medicinal spas came into vogue and attracted a fashionable concourse in the season. Field sports were a common passion, and hospitality a uni- versal virtue. Nor should it be inferred, from the grievances mentioned, that the state of the pea- santry was inferior to what it has been of later years. It is no exaggeration to say that in some respects it was superior.^
This statement is fully borne out by the re- corded regular and rapid increase of agriculture, owing to which, in the account of the interchange of cereals with Great Britain for the ten years following 1780, Ireland had a balance in her favour of nearly £1,500,000, according to the English official statement. ^ This was due to a well-arranged system of bounties, which, con- trolling the cost of inland carriage, brought the
* Freehold leases (commonly leases for lives and thirty-one years) were universal amongst Protestants, and were extended to Catholics when they obtained the electoral franchise. The landlords generally desired to appear at the head of a prosperous tenantry, especially during the time of the Volunteers. " I well recollect," wrote the late Lord Rosse, " the glowing terms in which several old people were wont to speak of the plenty in their younger days — bread, meat, and the best of ale being the ordinary peasants' fare " (Lord Rosse, " Relations of Land- lord and Tenant," 1870).
2 " Parliamentary Debates," vol. xi. p. 424, et seq.
60 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
market to the farmer's door, and, securing him a constant home demand, gave encouragement to create a surplus for export. The bounty system was better devised and carried out with more effective care in Ireland than in Britain. Whilst British witnesses complained of the frauds, per- juries, and scandalous abuses which, during the entire existence of the Irish Parliament, destroyed the repute of British-cured herrings abroad, they testified that the Irish article always . fetched a much higher price because of its unimpeachable character.^
The Irish exports of beef and bacon were similarly esteemed for their excellence. The Eng- lish Inspector-general of Imports and Exports quoted the wisdom and sound policy which led Virginia and Maryland to suffer no tobacco to be exported which had not undergone thorough inspection. " The same system of policy," he added, " has been adopted in Ireland, with respect to beef and pork ; and I believe both countries are in no small degree indebted to this regulation for the superior quality, character, and price which their respective staple commodities bear in every part of the world." ^
* " Reports on British Fisheries," vol. x,
2 " Reports from Committees on the State of the British Herring Fisheries," vol. x. Minutes of evidence of Mr. J. Irving, inspector-general of the imports and exports of Great Britain, June, 1798.
Ill
The Regency Question
IN the autumn of 1788 the King's mind gave way ; in the beginning of November, his insanity could no longer be concealed. The British Parliament met on the 20th, but was ad- journed till the first week of December, when the great question of the Regency came on. Re- cognition of the Prince of Wales as regent meant the dismissal of Mr. Pitt, and the accession to power of Mr. Fox and the Whigs.
Under these circumstances, it was perhaps natural, if not edifying, to find the Tory chief resorting to Whig, even to Radical, principles ; whilst the Whig leader adopted Tory views for the nonce. Mr. Pitt declared that the Prince of Wales had no more right to assume the regency than any other subject : Parliament might ap- point whom it pleased. Mr. Fox first asserted that the prince had the same right to Sovereignty as if the king were dead, and that Parliament could only state the period when his power began. Laying aside that theor}^ he afterwards main- tained the view that the Heir-apparent had a legal claim which, when adjudicated by Parlia- ment, became a sovereign right, not confined by limitations. Lord Loughborough (who had given his written
61
62 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
legal opinion that the prince should assume the regency without Parliamentary sanction) ^ pointed out that, if the British Parliament could appoint any person besides the Heir- apparent, a like course was open to the Irish Parliament, so that there might be two regents.
The question of right was ultimately waived, and the question of procedure entered on. Mr. Fox and Lord Rawdon proposed that an address of both Houses should be presented to the Prince, praying him to take upon himself, as Regent, the administration of the executive Government, in the King's name. This would have made him Regent without restrictions ; but Mr. Pitt wanted restrictions, for the Prince was then a " liberal." He proposed to proceed by Bill. The re- strictions forbade the Regent to create a single peer (except such of the Royal Family as came of age) ; to grant any office in reversion, or any pension or place for life, except such as were by their nature life-places.
In Ireland, the intelligence of the King's malady caused great political excitement. It was hoped than an arbitrary and odious oligarchy would be thrown out of power. During and after Novem- ber, in anticipation of a general election, associa- tions of electors were formed, bound not to vote for any candidate who should not pledge himself to their test : namely, a percentage tax on the property of absentees, a settlement or commuta-
* Campbell, " Lives of Lord Chancellors."
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 63
tion of tithes, restoration of the sailcloth manu- facture, protective duties, a limitation of the pension list (then £8,000 above the English list), and reform in the representation of the people.^
Grattan and Charlemont, who had been in com- munication with the English Whigs, were assured that the incoming Whig administration would grant the required redress of grievances. The Castle, however, had orders to obtain a majority for the registration of Pitt's decision. Urgent efforts were made to bribe and intimidate. Tainted gold was ready to flow in ; offers of place, pension, and dignity were thrust on members for accept- ance. Curran was offered a judgeship, with pro- spect of a peerage. 2 He rejected the offer on principle, and stood not alone.
The great landed interests, the Duke of Leinster Lords Shannon, Tyrone, and others, took up an independent attitude. The Ponsonbys left the Viceroy. Ministers convened Parliament on Feb- ruary 5, 1789, but were beaten by a majority of 128 to 74 on an amendment of Grattan's, fixing an earlier day for the consideration of the Regency question than ministers had proposed.
The subsequent action of Parliament has been strangely misread, as something peculiarly Irish and antagonistic to Britain. In simple truth, it was the British battle transferred to Dublin, with the Whigs made triumphant. The secretary, Mr. Fitzherbert (Lord St. Helens), officially proposed
1 Plowden, voL ii. p. 228.
2 • Curran's Life," by his son, vol. i. p. 240. iStg.
64 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
Pitt's mode of procedure — a Bill with restrictions. Grattan declared that the two Houses could always proceed by Address, but a Bill, involving legisla- tion, supposed a third estate, ready to act, and that estate was then incapable. By Address the Regent might be appointed, and by subsequent Act his power could be circumscribed ; the office should last during the King's illness, but with plenary regal power.
The Attorney-general objected to this, on the plea that they should follow Great Britain im- plicity in imperial matters, with a warning threat that difference might ** drive them to a Union," and that ** sober men, who had estates to lose, would soon become sick of independence." Yet he declared he abominated the idea of restricting the Prince Regent in making peers and grants ; such a difference he was ready to endorse, and to accord the plenitude of power, but " in God's name let it be done by Bill." Stranger still, the Secretary of State himself arose to declare that he dissented from his colleagues, and considered that the appointment should be made by Address, and could not be done by Act of Parliament. Thus the action of the Irish Parliament was in complete conformity with the convictions of the English Whigs and had the sanction of the Tory Secretary of State for Ireland.-^ It was far more consonant with sound constitutional doctrine than the views either of Fox or of Pitt.
1 Ten years later, to ensure perfect harmony, the patriot party proposed a Bill enacting that the Regent of England should, ipso facto, be Regent of Ireland.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 65
The Viceroy, however, refused to act. In this crisis the Irish Parhament proceeded with a grave dignity worthy of the occasion : it adjourned, in order that nothing should be said hastily. The Viceroy's conduct was subsequently censured, whilst a committee of Lords and Commons was appointed to present to the Prince the Address which Parliament had prepared. There was some danger of the Parliament being prematurely pro- rogued. Hence, Grattan proposed a short money Bill of two months. The Attorney-general, fum- ing with rage, blurted out his recollection of a previous prorogation, and his remembrance that, when Parliament next met, it had voted the Lord- Lieutenant ^ an Address of thanks, which (as virtually admitted) had cost the nation half , a million of money. With oblique innuendo, readily understood, he added that he would oppose measures " which might lead to an Address that would cost them half a million."
His conduct throughout the debates was cha- racteristic of the administration which drove the country into revolt. Adverting to the round robin, by which members of both Houses strove to guard their Parliamentary independence from executive punishment and corruption, he out- rageously denounced it as Whiteboyism, and in- sultingly declared that outsiders guilty of it would be flogged. Nor did he fail to fall back upon the insecurity of the Act of Settlement, in order to
* Lord Townsheud,
66 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
frighten the estated men of Ireland. His language was that of an incendiary. Affecting for the occasion a sentiment of historic justice, he declared that " the ancient nobility and gentry of this kingdom have been hardly treated. The Act by which most of us hold our estates was an Act of Violence, an Act subverting the first principles of the Common Law in England and Ireland. I speak," he said, " of the Act of Settlement ; that the gentlemen may know the extent to which that summary confiscation has gone, I will tell them that every acre of land that palys quit-rent to the Crown is held by title derived under the Act of Settlement." It is evident that one of the methods of misrule, then and long afterwards current, was the unscrupulous art of sowing fears and dis- sensions between different classes of the com- munity.
The Speaker, on March 2, 1789, communicated the gracious reply of the Prince to the delegates, which contained news of the King's recovery.
The Administration regained its majority, bribed unblushingly, and carried out its scheme of coarse revenge against the independent members. Three earls were made marquises ; four viscounts earls ; two lords viscounts ; seven commoners lords. Amongst these was Mr. Stewart, so prominent amongst the Volunteers, now Lord Londonderry. Fitzgibbon, now a baron, was appointed Lord Chancellor.
Vengeance, on the other hand, struck from office the Secretary, Fitzherbert ; the Earl of
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 67
Shannon, Vice-Treasurer ; the Duke of Leinster, Master of the Rolls ; the two Ponsonbys, and eleven other independent gentlemen. Their offices, worth £20,000, were taken from them and con- ferred on pliant creatures of the Castle.
Furthermore, the pension list was burthened with £13,040 more.i Nor was this all : by splitting ^ up offices, creating or enriching sinecures, endowing nominal posts, an additional charge of £2,800 a year was imposed. Then, in June, having accom- plished his work of infamy, the King's Viceroy left the country, like a conscious criminal, taking by-ways, and stealing off from a private gentle- man's villa near the Capital.
As a criminal he was denounced when Parlia- ment met, in January, 1790, with Lord Westmor- land as Viceroy. Grattan, on February 20, took a bold step. Reciting the instances of corruption, he observed that these supplied grounds for dis- missing the guilty ministers, not for personal punishment. But they had gone further. The sale of honours was one impeachable offence ; the Duke of Buckingham, in the reign of Charles I, had been impeached for it in England. Worse still had been done in Ireland ; money arising from the sale was applied to model the House of Commons — another impeachable offence. He therefore moved for a committee of investigation.
We pledge ourselves to co'hvict them," he said :
we dare them to go into an inquiry. We do
* Commons Journal, voL xiii. Appendix, p. 271.
68 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
not affect to treat them as other than pubhc male- factors ; we speak to them in a style of the most mortifying and humiliating defiance ; we pro- nounce them to be public criminals. Will they deny the charge 7 "
They could not, in truth, deny the charge ; they tried to parry its effect by showing that Lord Northington had acted nearly as badly before them. They escaped its consequences by bringing up their corrupted phalanx of a hundred and forty- four to vote against the eighty-eight independent members who supported it. Graft an, in a previous debate, had lamented the absence of ministerial responsibility, and referred to the case of Strafford. " Sir," he had said, *' you have in Ireland no axe, therefore no good minister." With a responsible ministry, he would have been able to hold the majority gained on the Regency question ; with- out it, the reactionists carried the day, and now, covered with corruption, as with a leprosy, they stood before the people as their Rulers.
IV
The Franchise Act of 1793
TO poison the founts of honour and legisla- tion, as the Government had notoriously done, necessarily entailed a paralysis of their influence. Many of the more ardent minds turned away in hopeless disgust, and began to look in other directions for redress of grievances and a purification of Parliament. The example of the American Republic seemed to realise an ideal of a clean Government, formed by the people, and now the great tidal wave of popular liberty had rolled back upon the old world and swept the Bastille and the system it typified from the soil of France. Through the conduct of their Governments, the inhabitants of Ireland have been rendered always keenly susceptible to foreign influences, and at this period the ideas and actions of the French excited the utmost interest and sympathy. This feeling prevailed not so much amongst the kindred Celts of the southern pro- vinces as amongst the Protestant artisans of the capital and the Dissenters of the north, where the seed of republicanism germinated readily. The time was one of organisation ; the people began to group together in association ; clubs were formed and multiplied. The Parliamentary
69
70 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
Opposition, not yet despairing of their methods, supplemented their work within the chambers by that of the Whig Club without, founded in June, 1789, and intended to be the rallying centre of Irish Liberals, whilst keeping in touch with the English Whigs. The list of members Xvas repre- sentative of colonial Liberahsm.^
Parliament was dissolved in April, 1790, and the new assembly met in July for a fortnight. Notwithstanding their energy, the patriots had been unable to add much to their strength, re- turning with little over four score — all the menaced minions of the Castle having fought desperately for their mess of corruption, backed by the entire influence of Government. When Parliament opened in January, 1791, every motion for reform was resisted by the Government, and beaten by the brute force of its mercenary phalanx.
Outside the precincts of Parliament, other and greater forces were at work. It is calculated that the Episcopalian colonists, at this period, formed but one-tenth of the population, whilst possessing five-sixths of the land, and monopolising the Government. A small section only of these were Whigs. The Dissenting colonists, chiefly found in
^ The club included one archbishop (Tuam), two bishops fourteen noblemen, Chief Baron Yelverton, and many com- moners of position — all pledged to the cause of reform, and bound by the following declaration : — " And we further declare that, as far as in us lies, we will endeavour to preserve to this country, in all time to come, a Parliament of her own, residing within this realm, and exclusively invested with all Parlia- mentary privileges and power " (" Memoir of Grattan," vol. iii. p. 435, note).
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND ^t
Ulster, were twice as numerous. Subject to various restrictions, less wealthy and more democratic, their aspirations went be3'ond the circle of aristo- cratic Whiggery. Outside the pale were seven- tenths of the population of Ireland, the elder natives who professed the Catholic faith. " The Catholics," wrote Thomas Addis Emmet, " loved Ireland with enthusiasm, not only as their country, but as the partner of their calamities. To the actual interference of England, or to its immediate influence, the}" ascribed their sufferings, civil or religious, with those of their forefathers. Heredi- tary hatred, therefore, and sense of injury had always conspired with national pride and patriot- ism to make them adverse to that country, and enemies to British connection." ^ Their peasants were racked and ground to the dust ; but several, by excessive parsimony, had accumulated money, chiefly in cattle-dealing. Their fishermen were active, and some earned profits as '* fair traders " ; whilst their merchants grew wealthy by their enterprise and superior knowledge of foreign countries, to which their sons were forced to go for education. Some nobles still remained amongst them, but they belonged chiefly to Anglo-Irish famiUes, never very patriotic, and now subdued in soul. The high-spirited nobles and chiefs of the old nation could not brook the penal code, but sought the Continent, where, in Spain, France, Italy, Russia, Prussia, and x^ustria,
1 MacNevin's " Pieces of Irish History," Essay by T. A. Emmet, p. 12. Dornin. New York, 1807.
72 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
they rose to the highest position as soldiers and statesmen to which subjects might attain. Nay, in the New World they gave viceroys to Chih, Peru, and Mexico ; and, for a season, governors to the captured isles of Grenada, St. Eustatia, and St. Christopher. They gave the United States army its first quartermaster-general, and their navy its founder and first commodore.
Seven-tenths of the people though they were, they could not prevail on a single member to present a petition, however humble, to Parlia- ment in 1790. Their committee, now a score of years old, with sturdy John Keogh at its head, resolved that, since neither Castle nor senate would deign to listen, they should turn their attention to the masters of both in London. Keogh returned from London with news that justified his action : Mr. Pitt's ministry would not object if the Irish Parliament should open to Irish Catholics the profession of the law, or render them eligible to be county magistrates, grand jurors, or sheriffs. Further, the general committee, on January 14, 1792, struck Lord Kenmare off the list of the Parliamentary sub-committee. Lords Fingall, Gor- manstown, and others, to the number of sixty- eight, were induced by the Castle to publish their resolutions (which had been negatived in com- mittee) ; but the Catholics, in nearly all the towns and counties, rallied to the support of their com- mittee. This caused a general discussion of the question at issue, and Protestant reformers saw, with surprise and pleasure, that the Catholics
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 73
whom they had regarded as passive instruments in the hands of their superiors, were the first in the field of democratic action.^
The intimation from London was effective. Sir Hercules Langrishe, always an enemy to the penal code, and now a confidant of the Government, introduced a timid bill on February 4, which opened the Bar, to the rank of king's counsel, and permitted intermarriage with Protestants, if cele- brated by a Protestant clergyman ; but if a Pro- testant married a Catholic wife, he should still be disfranchised, and if a priest celebrated, he should still be subject to the penalty of death, and the marriage annulled. Catholics needed no longer to seek permission from the Protestant clergyman to teach a school, and might take ap- prentices. By the organ of their committee, how- ever, the Catholics asserted their claims to better terms. Belfast petitioned in their favour ; but Parliament contemptuously rejected both the peti- tions. During the debate, Colonel Hutchinson testified that Mr. Byrne paid £100,000 a year duty to the revenue, Mr. Egan that other signatories were among the foremost merchants of the city ; and it has been estimated that the Catholic Com- mittee represented at least one million of money. -
^ MacNevin's " Pieces of Irish History," Essay by T. A. Emmet, p. 23.
2 The possession of wealth by the Catholics had, in previous days, helped to liberalise the laws as regards land-letting. Just before 1769 exchange rose to ten per cent.; merchants could not get their bills discounted. " Gentlemen of estates labour under great difficulties in raising of money upon landed
74 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
Langrishe's Bill was read a third time on Febru- ary 24, 1792, and passed. It could not content a population desiring freedom. The Catholic com- mittee, nothing daunted by the rejection of their petition, nor dismayed by the storm of abuse directed against them, by directions from the Castle oligarchy, through corporations and grand juries, on behalf of the Protestant Ascendency, pressed forward with courage. They spent money liberally, engaged the best talent to be had, having the good fortune to enrol as secretary, first Richard Burke, son of Edmund Burke, and then a briefless young barrister, named Wolfe Tone, subsequently made famous by his organising ability, literary genius, and advanced patriotism. They obtained declarations from the Catholic universities of the Continent, demonstrating the falsity of the doc- trines imputed to Catholics by their foes. They published a digest of the Popery laws, drawn up in plain language by the Hon. Simon Butler, which rudely portrayed the rack on which the Catholics were still tortured, in every phase of life. Take the right of self-defence, for instance, the law forbade it to the Catholic. An Irish Catholic might rise abroad to be field-marshal (a rank which seven did attain in Austria) ; if he landed in Ireland, he could not wear a sword — a Protestant beggar might pluck it from him in the street ;
security, insomuch that they began to think of relaxing some of the popery laws, with respect to allowing Papists to take real or landed securities under certain restrictions, to induce them to bring money into the kingdom " (" A List of Absentees," etc., Faulkner, p. 40, note. 1783).
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 75
the house in which he lived might be searched by day or by night. His CathoHc host or hostess might be summoned to inform on him ; if they refused they were subject to £300 line, or flogging and the pillory, if noble ; if not noble, to £50 fine and a year's imprisonment, if not flogged. For a second offence they were outlawed, and their goods forfeited. Raids for arms were being con- tinually made, in parts of the country, owing to the existence of this law, so that it was not obsolete.
The Catholics, in the midst of all the uproar, called a convention, voted at elections of dele- gates throughout the country, and held, for the first time since the Revolution, a public meeting, in a hall too small for their numbers, all larger ones being refused them.^ " All the speeches on that occasion," observes Emmet, " but particularly the able and argumentative declamation of Mr. Keogh, the classic and cultivated eloquence of Dr. Ryan, filled their Ascendency opponents with mortification and surprise." ^ The convention con- curred with their Ulster allies in adopting resolu- tions asking for complete repeal of the penal code, and it resolved to send to the King in London an address, which was signed by Archbishop Troy on behalf of the bishops, for the policy of the committee had triumphed. The committee ap- pointed their own delegates. Tone, a Protestant, accompanied them as secretary.^
1 Hay, " History of the Irish Rebellion."
' " Essay on Irish History," p. 34.
' Major Edward Sweetman, another Protestant, sat upon the Committee as a delegate, elected by the Catholics of Wex- ford {Ibid. p. 40).
76 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
The Catholic deputation, on their way to London, were induced to make a detour through Belfast, by the fervour of their northern sympathisers. There an occurrence took place marvellous to minds who know that town's later history of discord and bloodshed. The principal Protestants of Belfast called upon the Dublin delegates to welcome them, and as the Catholic deputies were departing, the Protestant populace took the horses from their carriages, and drew them through the streets amidst the most intense enthusiasm. The Catholics responded with deep delight, and pledged them- selves to maintain that fraternal union which was the strength and honour of Ireland.^ Grattan was in London, working in their cause. He found that the Dublin oligarchs had written over to prejudice their case, by declaring that the Catholics were armed and in a state of rebellion in Ireland. However, he believed that, owing to the con- dition of Europe, the ministers would yield them their own terms. ^ Hutchinson, Forbes, Curran, T>oy\e, and Lord Moira especially, gave welcome aid. The British ministers, instead of giving a rebuff, as the Castle wished, showed them favour, and the King himself received them most graciously.^ The former were probably not un-
^ " Essay on Irish History," p. 40.
2 Memoirs, voL iv. p. 73 ; Plowden, voL ii. p. 388.
^ The Catholic Committee, on the return of the deputation, voted £'2, 000 for a statue to the king ; ;^i,5oo, with a gold medal value thirty guineas, to Wolfe Tone ; ;^i,5oo to W. Todd Jones ; ;(5oo to Simon Butler for his Digest ; and a piece of plate, value one hundred guineas, to the Catholic delegates, who had refused to accept their expenses (Plowden, vol. ii. p. 393).
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND ']']
willing to appear to assume the roU of protecting friends ; and the latter hopes that the Catholics would, as in France, form a barrier to the revolu- tionary or Jacobinical spirit of the tim.e.
When the Irish Parliament assembled in Janu- ary, 1793, the Viceroy was obliged to state that he had it in particular command from his Majesty to recommend them to consider measures for the promotion of concord ; and, as one, to give a serious consideration to the situation of his Catho- lic subjects. The order from London went like an electric shock through the whole Ascendency faction, from the Viceroy, the lord chancellor, the secretary, and Mr. Speaker Foster, down to the no-surrendering corporators. It paralysed every objection, silenced every braggart, and all, with more or less grimacing, swallowed the proposals they had pledged life and fortune to resist. The secretary himself, who, a year ago, spurned the petition of the Catholics for the franchise, now, wheeling round like a puppet, made a speech, offering them — (i) the electoral franchise ; (2) the right of voting for civic magistrates ; (3) the privilege of becoming grand jurors ; (4) that, sitting as petty jurors, they should be no longer challenged for faith, when a Protestant and Catholic were in litigation ; (5) the power to endow a college and schools ; (6) the right to carry arms, when possessed of certain property ; (7) the right to sit as magistrates, and to hold civil and military offices and places of trust under certain qualifications. They were enabled to take
y8 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
degrees in the university, and to occupy chairs in colleges yet to be founded. Duigenan, a ran- corous renegade Catholic, and Ogle, were the only members who opposed the introduction of the Bill.
By a consistent continuance in this new policy of reform, Pitt could have rendered Ireland the stronghold of the empire. The Irish Brigade had ceased to exist as a separate entity in 1791, when the National Assembly placed it on the same footing as the French regiments. Afterwards, some of the Irish officers placed their swords at the service of the Republic ; but others, adhering to the fallen dynasty, emigrated, and were granted British commissions, and a new brigade of six regiments was formed. The clergy were alarmed at the excesses on the Continent, and displayed their abhorrence of " French principles." For the Irish Catholic nation the attraction of France diminished, and might have died out had the Dublin Parliament been allowed or induced to reform itself. Prince Charles Edward had ceased to exist, and with him the Jacobite hopes, whilst a friendlier feeling grew up towards England and George III. The Dissenters and Protestant re- formers desired to grant at once to the Catholics all they could wish. Thus to content and confirm the alliance of over nine-tenths of the inhabitants, nothing was required but perseverance in a wise and honourable policy. Such a policy, to be effective, should not have been obviously de- pendent on the caprice of ministers, but should
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 79
have been allowed to operate as a principle through the organ of a purified Parliament. As it was, the reformers gained some points. The Responsi- bility Bill was passed, bringing the signatories of money warrants under control of Parliament. The King could no longer dispose of the money alone, and the so-called hereditary revenue was voted annually. The Pension Bill was passed, excluding from Parliament all future pensioners at will or for years, and making the total amount reducible to £80,000, from the sum of ;fi20,ooo, to which corruption had raised it. The Place Bill was passed, excluding revenue officers, and vacating the seats of members who should hence- forth accept Government situations. These Acts had long been secured in England, and long de- manded in vain in Ireland. In Ireland, impro- bable as it might seem, the purificatory Place Act was perverted to the promotion of corruption. With these was enacted Grattan's Bill to encourage the reclamation of waste lands by exemption from tithes for seven years.
But the old Ascendency junto, at the Castle, were not done with. They had tried their worst to mislead, prejudice, and alarm that Cabinet, and being defeated, they resented that defeat.
They immediately endeavoured to justify their position by methods now old, but not forgotten. They obtained, in 1793, from a secret committee of the Lords (duly packed), a report against armed volunteers, conventions, and Catholic committee- men, whom it sought to mix up with agrarian
So INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
rioters. No project on the latter plea could be carried out, owing to the King's action. But they opened their mines against the volunteers by a Gunpowder Bill,^ which not only forbade the importation of arms and ammunition (its ostensible object), but the removal or keeping of gunpowder, arms, and ammunition without a licence (its real object), The Convention Act was passed to stifle all organised expression of popular desires, and, by gagging grievances, it converted reformers into conspirators. This was ever a triumph of policy, for then the adversary could be meritoriously killed. A military display £t^ being required, the army had been raised to twenty thousand men, and a militia Bill passed to produce sixteen thousand. The corrupt and oppressive manner in which the latter Bill was carried into force caused widespread discontent and consider- able rioting ; and this was added to by sectarian disturbances in Armagh, fomented by partisans of the junto. ^
» 33 Geo. III. c. 2.
2 Plowden, voL ii. p. 2oi ;] Madden, " United Irishmen," first series, cap. iv.
V
The Olive Branch — Lord Fitzwilliam
THERE came a rumour of glad tidings to the troubled country. The Castle junto which had misruled the people and dis- credited the Government was to be displaced,^ the Viceroy removed, and a representative ministry once more to occupy the Castle. Several causes contributed to the change. The statements of the junto had been so completely falsified that no weight could attach to their opinions, whilst their rule was not producing peace, but irritation. Penal laws had been repealed, but the victims were still made " to experience many of the evils of a proscription," through " the ill-disposition of the magistrate." 2 jt was urgent that the fruits of the concession should not be so lost, for demo- cratic ideas were spreading through the masses in the three kingdoms, and Jacobinical societies multiplying in England. Their text-book was Paine's " Rights of Man," and their intention to abolish monarchy, aristocracy, and other estab- lishments.^ Their proposed convention was
^ " The junto in Ireland entirely governs the Castle ; and the Castle, by its representations of the country, entirely governs the people here " (Letter of Edmund Burke to his son, November 2, 1792).
'Burke to Grattan, September 3, 1794.
^ Report from the Committee of Secrecy, by Mr. Secretary Dundas, March 15, 1799.
6 81
82 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
stopped by the arrest of its secretaries, against whom the Middlesex grand jury found a true bill ; but the petty jury acquitted them, amid popular applause. The Habeas Corpus Act was there- upon suspended in May, 1794. Then the news from the Continent was growing more ominous. The transient triumphs of the previous spring had been replaced by disasters ; and now came news from Tournay that on the i8th the allies had been routed, the Duke of York narrowly escaping. Next came the catastrophe of Fleurus, and the conquest of part of the Low Countries by the French. The effect of these events was to draw a number of the aristocratic Whigs into the ranks of the ministry ; and in July Pitt disarmed them of future power of opposition and sealed their fate by investing them with office. Lord Fitzwilliam became president of the council ; Lord Spencer, privy seal ; the Duke of Portland, secretary of state, and Mr. Wyndham, secretary of war. The Ponsonbys were communicated with, and sent envoys to Tinnehinch in August, re- presenting to Grattan that Pitt was favourable to reform and to the Catholics, and pressing their friend to co-operate and to accept the chancellor- ship of the exchequer. This position he declined, preferring to see Sir John Parnell continue in office, but he subsequently acted as leader. Lord Fitzwilliam, on August 23, wrote direct, intimat- ing that he was to come as Lord-Lieutenant, with the intention of purifying the principles of gov- ernment. This could not be done without the
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 8^
concurrence of the country's most eminent men, therefore he looked to him and his friends, the Ponsonbys, for aid ; otherwise he should decline the hopeless task.^ Grattan thereupon went to London, and called upon the Duke of Portland, who declared he had taken office because, he said, " I know there is an entire change of system." In October Pitt arranged a confidential conference with Grattan, but friends of both warned the latter not to trust Pitt ; to set down everything in writing, ** for if you have any dealings with Pitt he'll cheat you." ^ On the Catholic question Pitt's words were distinct : " Not to bring it forward as a Government question, but if Govern- ment were pressed, to yield it." At the levee the King was most gracious to Grattan, and Lord Fitzwilliam, duly sworn, proceeded to Ireland, believing he had full powers as regards the Catholic and other questions. His immediate chief w^as the Duke of Portland, who had brought the mes- sage of independence in 1782, and who would not have entered into the coalition had he not been secured " the general management and superin- tendence of Ireland." ^
1 Grattan's " Memoir." Lord Fitzwilliam to Mr. Grattan, August 23, voL iv. p. 173.
^ " Memoir," voL iv. p. 177.
' Lord Fitzwilliam to Lord Carlisle, Plowden, vol. ii. p. 467. This statement is fully corroborated by the testimony of Mr. W. B. Ponsonby, a kinsman and friend of the Duke of Port- land, who declared, of his own knowledge, that the coalition would not have taken place had not his grace received enough authority to reform all abuses. By this authority he sent over Lord Fitzwilliam, wdth explicit and full powers to carry every measure he proposed " (Debates," vol. xiv. p. 184).
84 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
The arrival in Ireland, on January 4, 1795, of Lord Fitzwilliam was welcomed with delight, not only in the capital, but throughout the country. With the exception, of course, of the baffled junto and its clique, Protestants as well as Catholics hailed the event. The fact that onty two obscure members had voted against the Bill of 1793, as well as the testimony of the late and present Viceroy, demonstrated the happy harmony of the nation generally. Addresses poured in, and Lord Fitzwilliam soon discovered that the Catholics were preparing to press for a repeal of the remain- ing restrictions, a fact which he communicated to the secretary of state. He considered that, as all were convinced of its propriety, an attempt to postpone it would be mischievous. Change of measures usually involves change of men. Pitt had acknowledged the principle by removing a viceroy ; the Lord-Lieutenant considered he should remove some subordinates — remnants of the junto — whose misrule had necessitated that change. Attorney-General Wolfe was elevated to the peer- age by the King's consent, with a reversion of 5^2,300 a year ; his place was given to Mr. George Ponsonby. Toler, solicitor-general, was also to be replaced and consoled. Cooke, a former clerk who had crept into power, was pensioned off ; nay, ev3n the potent Mr. Beresford was to retire on full pay, none of his family being disturbed. There had been some conversation about this before Lord Fitzwilliam left, and Mr. Pitt had made no objection. Mr. Beresford's power was
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 85
great enough to be dangerous ; he overshadowed the King's representative, and " I clearly saw that if I had connected myself with him," wrote Fitz- william, " it would have been connecting myself with a person under universal heavy suspicions, and subjecting my Government to all opprobrium and unpopularity attendant upon his mal-ad- ^ ministration." ^ No word of disapproval came from London.
The House met on January 22, and the Lord- Lieutenant delivered a vigorous speech. He re- ferred to the war with France, but thought it un- necessary to press them to make adequate pro- vision for it ; he pointed out that educational advantages had hitherto been partial ; their wis- dom would order matters in a mode better suited to the requirements of " the several descriptions of his Majesty's subjects." Engaged in an arduous contest, they should profit by the united strength and zeal of the whole people. Grattan, in reply, made a vehement speech for war with France, and cordial co-operation with England. He referred to a plan of colleges for the education of the Catho- lic clergy, then excluded from the Continent, and warned those who disturbed the peace in one of the counties that they should either give up their practices or their lives. Mr. Duquery alone sug- gested that peace with France might be sought for. None dissented from the other proposals. The programme of the patriots in power did not
* Lord Fitzwilliam to Lord Carlisle.
86 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
belie their principles in opposition. Their pro- jected reforms included the reduction of the pen- sion list by £44,000. of the concordatum list by £22,000, a diminution of the cost of revenue collection, and measures to restrain the use of spiritous liquors.^ The obnoxious Police Act was at once remodelled, and repeal of the Convention Act was under consideration. A great boon was immediately given to the poor by the abolition of the hearth-tax, where, in town or country, families had but one hearth ; duties on the wealthy made up for the loss of revenue.^ Bounties were to be pruned down where possible. On February 9 the chancellor of the exchequer, opening the budget, reported that, whilst in 1793 they were indebted, with credit decaying and trade declin- ing, now all was changed ; they had paid off sums advanced, credit and trade flourished, while the revenue had increased. After applying a surplus to national objects, they would be able " to ad- vance money to England for military purposes, as they had done to a considerable amount already, £100,000 of which yet remained to be put to the credit of the nation." The national debt stood at £3>^33>ooo only.
The question of the complete emancipation of the Catholics now came to the front. In long succession, petition after petition had poured in from the Catholics all over the country, and from the Protestant town of Belfast, praying for the
1 Grattan, " Memoirs," voL iv. p. 187.
^ " Parliamentary Register," vol. xv. p. 103
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 8y
removal of all penal restrTctions. Accordingly, on February 12, 1795, Grattan moved for leave to bring in a Bill on " a most important subject — the relief of his Majesty's Roman Catholic sub- jects." It was well known, after Mr. George Knox's proposal in a former session, that this Bill would admit Catholics to Parliament as well as to other positions,^ yet there were but three dissentients — Duigenan, Ogle, and Blaquiere. Two days later came letters from Pitt and Portland.
The former was a rather tardy remonstrance as to the dismissal of Mr. Beresford, and the super- session of the two law-officers. That gentleman, it appears, through his friends in London, and doubtless with the support of the ex-viceroy and his clique, represented that, though willing to withdraw, he had been discourteously treated. ^ The " family cabal " (of Beresford and Clare) got the ear of the King ^ and of the cabinet ; they urged, amongst other things, that they had be- longed to the " king's friends " during the debates on the regency question, and posed as injured victims of their fidelity to Pitt, and even spread the report that their dismissal was intended as
1 This Bill would have admitted Catholics to the post of lord chancellor, from which that of 1829 excluded them (Grattan, " Memoir," vol. iv. p. 194) ; and, again, it would not liave dis- franchised the unfortunate 40s. freeholders.
2 Lord Loughborough to Mr. Grattan, February 28.
3 " In the previous autumn, on the first rumour, Beresford had flowTi to the king at Weymouth, obtained a private audience, represented his fidelity to every administration for twenty-five years, and assurances of protection from the king's friends. By royal command, he attended a council, where the restoration of himself and his friends was voted " (Plowden, vol. ii. p. 507.)
SS INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
a deliberate slight on Pitt by Lord Fitzwilliam.^ The Duke of Portland's letter pressed for a post- ponement of the Catholic Bill. The Lord- Lieutenant replied to Pitt, justifying the dis- missals, and to Portland, expressing surprise at the demur to a policy which had been laid before him now some time ago, without eliciting any sign of dissent. The risk of popular discontent arising from a postponement, involving armed repression, was more than the Viceroy could run ; and, therefore, he plainly declared that, if not supported, he should be removed. Pitt replied that he felt bound to adhere to his sentiments, not only with respect to Mr. Beresford, but as regards the line of conduct adopted "in so many instances towards the former supporters of Gov- ernment." 2 Portland concurred in the decision of a Cabinet Council, none dissenting — sacrificed his " second self," his policy, and his party. Fox's faithful opposition exulted in a result they had predicted.
Burke, grievously humiliated at the position in which he had helped to place Grattan, reviewed the situation with bitter indignation. Ireland had become more loyal than England. " Opposi- tion to the Crown with you was not only weakened, but extinguished." Cries for peace with France, powerfully supported in the English Parliament, were not heard of in the Irish. '* Whilst so many
1 Edmund Burke to Grattan, March 5.
» Plowden, vol. ii. p. 493, Letter pf Lord Fitzwilliam to Lord Carlisle.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 89
in England were rushing into the arms of France, Ireland resolved to live or die with Great Britain. To crown all, more troops were raised, and greater sums were voted to the King's service than before was ever known." ^ This, indeed, was a point keenly felt in Ireland. The Parliament had been generous to excess after the arrival of this peace- message, as after that of 1782, and now it stood wounded through its gratitude by the perfidy of Pitt. Sir Lawrence Parsons, on hearing the re- ported recall of the Viceroy, rose to deplore and de- nounce it, reminding the House of the promises of conciliatory measures on the faith of which they had voted the enormous sum of ;f 1,700,000. ^ On March 2, when the rumour was confirmed, he rose again to propose that, instead of passing the money Bill for a year, it should be limited to three months. " The state of the kingdom," he said, " was most alarming. Measures had been promised, and hopes raised, which would soon be resisted." As to the Catholic Bill, " If the British Cabinet had held out an assent, and had afterwards retracted " — (a loud cry of ** Hear, hear ! ") — " if the demon of darkness should come from the infernal regions upon the earth, and throw a firebrand among the people, he could do
^Edmund Burke to Grattan, March 3, 1795.
* " Parliamentary Register," vol. xv., February 26. Grattan, February 3, moved that ;^2oo,ooo be granted to raise men for the fleet, and added that the chancellor of the exchequer would move in committee 41,000 men for the home defence. The motion was agreed to without a division (" Memoir," vol. iv. p. 186).
90 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
no more to promote mischief. The hopes of the pubhc were raised, and in one instant they were blasted. If the House did not resent this insult to the nation and themselves, they would, in his mind, be most contemptible ; for, though a majority of the people might consent to have their rights withheld, they would never consent to be mocked in so barefaced a manner.
" The case was not as formerly, when all the Parlia- ment of Ireland was against the Catholics, with the force of England to back them. Now, although the claim of the Catholics was well known and understood, not one petition controverting it had been presented from the Protestants in any part of Ireland. No remonstrance appeared ; no county meetings had been held. What was to be inferred from this but that the sentiments of the Pro- testants were for the emancipation of the Catho- lics ? " He pointed to the fact, that at a crowded meeting of merchants at the Exchange, with the Governor of the Bank of Ireland in the chair, the strongest possible resolutions were passed in favour of the Catholic claims. They had been duped into voting a quarter of a million taxes additional, and now a short money Bill was the staff of their authority. They could do more by a silent vote that night than b}^ brilliant orations afterwards.
His bold, brave spirit was not, however, to pre- vail. Tighe, Smith, Egan, and Dr. Brown spoke in support of a method which had been employed on critical occasions before with success. But the ministerialists pleaded that the delicacy of
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND QI
their position should be considered ; the secretary feared the comfort such an act might give to France. Grattan, unhappily, kept silence, feeling himself also a minister unattached. But their enemies had no respect for such scruples, and re- joiced when the}^ found the short money Bill sup- ported by only 24 resolute men, as against 146. Mr. Connolly, however, immediately moved that Lord Fitzwilliam " has by his conduct, since his first arrival in this kingdom, merited the thanks of this House and the confidence of the people." This was passed, nemine contradicente, and a similar resolution was sanctioned by the Lords. Thus, whilst the English Cabinet was recalling the Lord-Lieutenant, apparently on account of the Catholic Relief Bill, the Irish Protestant Par- liament and merchants expressed their full ap- proval of his conduct, and indignation at his re- moval. But a great opportunity had been lost, and, though the city and country joined in the protest, by the voice of meetings and by deputa- tions to the king, nothing availed. On March 25 Lord Fitzwilliam' s carriage was drawn by the hands of the citizens to the shore, through a metropolis in mourning. Two parties, however, were gratified : the Ascendency faction, and the republican separatists.
The former saw that Grattan had pledged the country against France — that extra taxes and supplies had been granted, and votes given for a great increase of the land and sea forces. Jacobin- ism seemed eradicated. They cried, " Victory ! "
92 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
" They say," wrote Burke, " that no evil can happen from the disgrace of the Lord-Lieutenant, and from your being set aside ; that by what you have done you have disarmed your opposition ; that they have you fast ; that they have nothing now but to enter quietly into their old possessions, and to enjoy the fruits of your labours." ^
The London Cabinet could get all the credit for concessions to the Catholics, and enhance their value by holding them over. There was another object in view. Of all the ministers of this period the most perfidious was, not Mr. Pitt, but the Duke of Portland. He had already attempted an in- trigue, in 1782, with Mr. Ogilvie against the in- dependence of the Irish Parliament, of which he was ostensibly the faithful friend. Now he sought to involve Lord Fitzwilliam in another intrigue of like nature, urging on him privately a post- ponement of the Catholic question, for that " was not only a thing to be desired for the present, but a means of doing a greater service to the British empire than it has been capable of re- ceiving since the Revolution, or at least since the Union." This pointed reference to the Anglo- Scottish Union was quickly taken as a revival of the purpose of an Anglo-Irish Union. Lord Fitz- william (February 21) charged his grace with calculating on the confusion arising from a post- ponement of the concessions, to induce the people to adopt a union. " It will be union," he added, " not with Great Britain, but with France."
1 Edmund Burke to Grattan, March 3, 1795.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 93
This correspondence lay in the bureaux of ministers, but its purport leaked out. Not only did young Valentine Lawless (Lord Cloncurry) hear of the project of a union, when dining in Baker Street with Pitt,^ but the Catholic Committee heard of it, and denounced it. At a meeting in Francis Street chapel (April 9), to receive a report of their deputation to the King, Keogh observed that he hoped the legislature w^ould be roused to a sense of its own dignity, as the proceedings showed that internal regulations for which it was alone com- petent had to be adjusted by a British Cabinet. This gave offence to the Government. ^ Edward Hay, a Catholic delegate, states that it was pro- posed by the British Cabinet to his lordship, " to carry the Union at a time when he had got the money Bills passed. ... It was even suggested that these " (certain popular) " measures might go hand-in-hand with the Union." ^ At the meet- ing, the passage from Portland's letter was read, and another expressing a desire to defer the Catholic question until the peace, in order to gain advantages not otherwise attainable. It being discerned that these expressions could admit of no other meaning than that of a meditated union between Great Britain and Ireland, the Catholic meeting came to the following vigorous resolution : " Resolved unanimously, that we are sincerely
I * Cloncurry, "Personal Recollections," pp. 38, 39. Dublin:
1849.
* Plowden, vol. ii. p. 512.
3 Edward Hay, M.R.I. A., " History of the Insurrection in I the County Wexford, 1803," p. 32.
94 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
and unalterably attached to the rights, liberties, and independency of our native country ; and we pledge ourselves, collectively and individually, to resist even our own Emancipation, if proposed to be conceded upon an ignominious term of an acquiescence in the fatal measure of a Union with the sister kingdom." ^
* Rev. Denis Taaffe, " Impartial History of Ireland," vol. iv p. 567. Dublin, 1 81 1. " Whilst this debate was going on, a very large party of the young men of the (Trinity) College came into the chapel, and were most honourably received. Some of them joined in the debate. They came that hour from pre- senting an address to Mr. Grattan, to thank and congratulate with him on his patriotic efforts in the cause of Catholic Emanci- pation and the reform of abuses, etc." (Plowden, vol. ii. p. 512).
VI
Camden's Mission to Provoke Dissension — Emancipation and Reforms Advocated — Dragooning, Terrorism and Revolt — Ulster Proclaimed.
WITH Lord Fitzwilliam departed all prospect of peace. He left the country flourish- ing, as an enemy confessed. " What is the state of Ireland at this moment ? " said Mr. Cuffe (April 21, 179,1). " ^ state of unexampled prosperity. The landlord gets his rent to the hour ; the tenant finds money for the purchase of his land the moment he brings it into the market ; and the manufacturer finds employ- ment and payment to his satisfaction. Ireland has the constitution of England, without its debt." ^ The Ascendency junto, despotically placed in power against the will of the people, soon changed the aspect of affairs. In a brief time, sect was set against sect, and class against class ; constitutional agitation was forbidden, and conspiracy engendered ; refusal of promised re- dress was followed by an attempt at revolution, and the Irish people, who had been willing to " stand and fall with England," who had granted great supplies of men and money to assist her in
1 " Parliamentary Debates," voL xv. p. 168.
95
96 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
danger, were now, by the inconstancy of Pitt and the perfidy of Portland, converted into des- perate enemies, seeking and obtaining the aid of France to support an organised insurrection. The prosperous country was made indigent and loaded with debt.
The new administration assumed power amid the execrations of the citizens of Dublin. Beres- ford, notwithstanding his malversations, was re- stored to the revenue board ; even Pelham, the new secretary, murmured. He could not defend the job ; the interest of a clique should not pre- vail against the country's peace. ^ His superiors thought otherwise. He found Dublin indignant over the Union innuendo in Portland's letter to Fitzwilliam, declared it was a false construction, ^ and expected that his chief, Lord Camden, would deny it in Parliament. Portland directed him to be silent on the subject, and to protest that the correspondence of statesmen should be ** kept religiously secret." ^ Lord Fitzwilliam had brought the plot into daylight, but they were to act in the dark. Camden came over with distinct orders from Portland to stir up the dying embers of Protestant bigotry into a flame. That this was necessary shows how tolerant, enlightened, and large-minded the Irish Protestants had become. It is additional evidence that they w^ould have voted for Grattan's Bill of complete emancipation
1 Pelham to Portland, March 22, 1795.
2 Ibid., March 30, 1795.
» Portland to Camden, April 13, 1795.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 97
had Fitzwilliam remained. Portland, the recreant Whig, wrote that " great firmness " would be " necessary to rally the friends of the Protestant interest." They had grown too placable and peaceable — were " enervated," in fact. " You must therefore," continued his grace, " hold a firm and decided language from the first moment of your landing." This was to " give the tone," and to excite them to exert themselves " against the further claims of the Catholics." " At the same time," observed the deceitful minister, " you will satisfy the Catholics of the liberal and con- ciliatory disposition entertained towards them. You will do this," he added naively, " the best way you can." ^ They might be promised some of the benefits of the Relief Act of two years ago (if practicable) ; perhaps seminaries and salaries for the priests might be considered. Accordingly, when Grattan moved his Catholic Bill (May 4), the solicitor-general was put up to " give the tone " by denouncing it, and demanding whether a trace was to be left of their old Protestant con- stitution. Denis Browne, Langrishe, M. Fitz- gerald, and Ruxton supported the Bill, Pelham interposed to stimulate bigotry, avowing that he would exclude all Dissenters and Catholics to preserve the Protestant Establishment in Church
1 Instructions to Lord Camden, March 10 (Froude, voL iii- pp. 138, 139). Yet on February 16 he had written a private letter to Fitzwilliam, saying " it was going too far to infer from anything he said that Lord Fitzwilliam was desired to undertake the task of deferring " the Catholic question until the peace. (Portland to Fitzwilliam, Grattan, " Memoir," vol. iv. p. 194).
7
98 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
and State. Sir Lawrence Parsons trenchantly ex- posed the trickery of the Cabinet, on which he fastened the full responsibility. It sought to make a puppet of Parliament. " In 1792," he said, " a majority decided against giving any further privileges to the Catholics. In 1793 the same majority passed the Catholic Bill. At the beginning of this session every one believed that a majority would have voted for this Bill ; every one believes that a majority will vote against it now : and should the English ministers in the next session wish it should pass, who does not believe that a majority will vote for it then? "
All this was manifestly true, but it suited the Cabinet to keep up the state of irritation and discontent Parsons deprecated. The gates of knowledge and opulence had been opened to the Catholics ; those of power and the constitution could not be closed without force, said George Knox, in a remarkable speech. " Take, then, your choice : re-enact your penal laws ; risk a rebellion, a separation, or a union ; — or pass this Bill." After a lengthy debate, in which the ad- vocates of the measure displayed exceptional eloquence, instinct with noble thought, based on sound reasoning and great research, the division was taken and the Bill rejected by 155 to 84.^ The coercive hand of the British Cabinet, by that vote, closed the opening gates of the constitution against the majority of the nation for thirty-four years.
* " Parliamentary Debates," voL xv. p. 361.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 99
Their administrators in the Castle, with a view to render the Irish Parhament odious as well as contemptible, and to make Irishmen resign them- selves to the idea of Union, then proceeded to inflame sectarian rancour and to dragoon the country into rebellion. To stir up or foster re- ligious discord was, indeed, an ancient and favour- ite resource of the party of misrule. Lord Deputy Strafford lauded the benefits derived from " emu- lations fomented underhand " between Protestants and Catholics.^ Primate Boulter lamented that the worst of a certain affair was that " it unites Protes- tants and Papists, and if that reconciliation takes place, farewell to English influence in Ireland."
In exactly the same spirit, Westmoreland had written to Dundas that ** every step of con- ciliating the two descriptions of people that in- habit Ireland diminishes the probability of that object to be wished — a union with England " (December 12, 1792). He, too, grieved over the extension of a spirit of conciliation towards Catho- lics on the part of Irish Protestants, but stiU hoped they might be roused by " a big word from England, of her determination to support the Protestant Establishment." ^ His policy having been adopted, the big word spoken, the country placed under the Ascendency triumvirate — Fitz- gibbon, Foster, and Beresford, with Camden as a figure-head — operations began. To counteract the harmonious co-operation of Irishmen^^missaries
1 Strafford, Letter to the Lord Treasurer, July 19, 1634. * Westmoreland to Dundas, December 12, 1792.
100 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
were sent into the country, especially to Armagh County, where the local sectarian feud had sub- sided into comparative peace. It was " rekindled by secret agents, and converted into a ferocious warfare of religious contention." ^ The poor Catholic peasants were expelled from their farms, and ordered " to hell or Connaught " ; a witness testifies that numbers of them were seen wander- ing about the country, hungry, half naked, and infuriated. He sometimes heard of over a dozen Catholic houses being wrecked or destroyed in one night. 2 Colonies of the Ascendency faction were given their lands and crops. Magistrates fomented the persecution, and the highest officials aided and abetted it for electioneering purposes. So patronised and encouraged, the penal faction showed themselves, as Grattan said, " A banditti of murderers, committing massacre in the name of God, and exercising despotic power in the name of liberty." ^ They proceeded uncensured until an unexpected event occurred. The landowners, when the time came for letting the farms in the
1 Plowden, " History of Ireland," voL i. p. i6. Dublin, iSii* Mr. Plowden, an English supporter of the Union, was engaged by the British minister to write a history of the period ; his inflexible honesty displeased, and was rebuked by Mr. Addington (Grattan, "Memoir," vol. v, pp. 233-236). Rev. Dr. Dickson, Presbyterian minister of Down and Armagh, fully corroborates him : " During the years 1795 and 1796, when public provo- cations did not succeed, private emissaries were sent abroad to circulate alarms and provoke jealousies " (between Catholics and Presbyterians). He exposed them, and was charged with sedition and threatened (" Narrative," p. 31).
* " Report of Committee on the Orange Institution," Mr. Christie, a Friend. In Edinburgh Review, 1836.
3 " Parliamentary Debates," vol. xvi.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT Oh'"'' l-RfeLA'ND lOI
devastated districts, found to their dismay that few bidders appeared, and of these not one offered more than about half what the persecuted Papist had given. ^ Thus their misconduct brought a heavy mulct. Thirty of the magistrates came together on December 28, 1795, at the call of Lord Gosford, governor of the count}^ to declare that Armagh was in a state of " uncommon dis- order," and to stay " the progress of the perse- cution now carried on by an ungovernable mob against the Roman Catholic inhabitants of this county." Lord Gosford, in his written address, stated that '' neither age, nor sex, nor acknow- ledged innocence " obtained mercy. " Confisca- tion of all property and immediate banishment " were the doom of every Catholic. There was no parallel for the horrors and cruelty of a proscrip- tion by which " more than half the inhabitants of a populous county " were " deprived at one blow of the means as well as the fruits of their industry," and driven out " in the midst of an inclement season." He would despise himself if, in presence of such sights, he kept silence " under any intimidation." The " intimidation " came from the Castle, where his lordship's conduct was denounced as " extra-ofhcious and unwarrant- able." 2 Yet this was the man who had been made governor of the county to mortify the patriot Charlemont. Colonel Craddock, in whom
^Edward Hay, M.R.I. A., "History of the Insurrection, 1803," p. 39.
' Plowden (Post-Union), " History of Ireland," vol. i. p. 37. 1811.
102 INDHi^E'NlOENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
the Government had " confiaence," was sent to the district, assisted by General Nugent ; he considered the matter, but " could see no possible way the troops could be employed." He there- fore asked for his recall, whilst admitting that the Protestants were guilty of " barbarous practices " which ought to be put down.^ When Papists ventured to linger, some had their roof-trees cut, and were smothered in the ruins ; into the cabins of some a dozen shots were fired in the direction of the bed. Others were shot when attempting to escape. Those who escaped fled to the ad- joining counties, and even to Connaught, where Mr. Martin and Lord Altamont gave refuge to them, and to some Protestants who wished for a quiet life. 2 The rumours of the wrongs committed had sped swiftly over the country, and the sight of the impoverished victims increased the alarm and indignation thus aroused. As a consequence, " Defenderism " had spread widely, and the Catho- lic peasantry banded themselves together in secret societies and strove to arm themselves by all means, lawful or not. The Castle junto had the gratification of seeing that such proceedings alarmed the country gentlemen, whose imaginations were kept excited by the ordinary methods of official exaggerations. Carhampton was despatched to the west on the trail of the victims, and his ex-
* February 22, 1796. " Parliamentary Debates," vol. xvi. p. 112.
*De Latocnaye, " Promenade d'un Fran9ais dans I'lrlande," p. 290. Dublin, 1797.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND ICJ
ploits there contrasted most remarkably with the inaction of Craddock in Armagh.
Whilst the summer assizes in Leinster were noted for the number of convictions and executions — in Connaught, Lord Carhampton forestalled the judges. He entered the jails, took out of custody numbers of untried prisoners, and banished them out of the country. Magistrates imitated him, and, without permitting any defence, often with- out even the formality of a sworn information, had the hapless people transported.^ It was com- puted that nearly 1,300 untried, and therefore presumably innocent, persons were sent to serve out their lives on board the fleet. The victims were to be seen passing to the seaports " tied down on carts, in the bitterest agonies, crying out incessantly for trial, but crying in vain." ^
The session of 1796 opened with sinister signs. Grattan, having criticised the recent administra- tion, moved an amendment to the address, asking for commercial equality. He was immediately assailed by a creature of the Castle. He should
1" Parliamentary Debates," voL xvi. p. 50,
2 MacNevin's "Pieces of Irish History," T. A. Emmet's " Essay," p. 134. Carhampton and the magistrates, says the petition of the Whig Club to the king, formed themselves into a kind of revolutionary tribunal, where " these men sat without law, tried without law, sentenced without law, and punished without law, not a few individuals, but hordes, tribes, and generations of country people, sent on board a tender, often on this principle, that if tried before a court of law they would probably be acquitted. His Majesty has heard the effect of this policy in the mutiny of the fleet," The courts-martial, in 1798, on board the Cambridge, Gladiator, and Diomede, bear witness to the same consequence (Report of Committee of Secrecy, 1799)-
104 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
be impeached for sedition, said Archdall ; he had dared, in replying to a CathoHc address, to say they should " instantly embrace and greatly emancipate." Here, " if sedition is not meant, it is at least expressed." Whoever talked of im- peaching Lord Westmoreland, let him remember there was a present Executive, and first think and tremble for his own neck.^ This indicated the tone of the ruling faction (echoed again and again during the session), and only fourteen voted with Grattan. Next, as some of the victims of op- pression had appealed to the law courts to right them, the attorney-general introduced a Bill " to indemnify certain magistrates and others," who, he admitted, " might have acted against the forms and rules of law." This barred out the wronged and plundered people from all redress ; but even that was not enough. Carhampton's outrages should not be merely condoned, but made opera- tive law. This was done by a Bill nominally to prevent insurrections, tumults, and riots, which the attorney-general himself declared was '' a bloody penal code," repugnant to his feelings. ^ The administering unlawful oaths was made felony of death ; no house was safe from search at any hour, nor any person's life or liberty after night- fall ; magistrates, at quarter sessions, were em- powered to seize all vagrants or persons having no visible means of livelihood, and send them to the fleet. This put at the mercy of every un-
* " Parliamentary Debates," vol. xvi. p. 7. ^Ibid., p. 18.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND IO5
scrupulous enemy, the life and liberty of members of the popular party in the country. The Ascend- ency faction had but to burn down a cabin : the expelled inmates were " vagrants," and could be banished for life. Mercenary foes had but to swear that a political or social antagonist had administered an unlawful oath, and the execu- tioner was set to work. If Grattan himself might be threatened, what chance had a poor peasant or simple citizen ? ^ After a futile effort to ob- tain that the judges should first state the true condition of the country, the Indemnity Bill was passed. The Insurrection Bill, empowering searches for arms, dispersal of meetings, seizure of vagrants, etc., had a similar fate. Lord Edward Fitzgerald opposed it, as tending to exasperate, not remove, the evil ; this could only be done by a redress of grievances. Parsons, Jephson, Curran, Hoare, cen- sured the Bill in committee. Grattan (February 29) moved its recommittal. Duquery objected to abolition of trial by jury. George Ponsonby denounced the Bill as Draconian, but all in vain,
On the other hand, the Castle majorit}/ rejected Grattan' s motion for equalisation of duties with England, and Curran' s for an inquiry into the condition of the poor. The work of the session was to empower a horde of profligate petty gentry to act as absolute despots — men whom Young had forcibly styled the " vermin of the kingdom " ;
^ Some time after, a spy was sent from the Castle to entrap Grattan, and his home was invaded by furious yeomen. He had to leave Ireland.
I06 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
men who had treated the peasantry as slaves, and in whom " drinking, wrangHng, quarrelHng, fight- ing, ravishing, etc., are found as in their native soil." ^ They had not changed in Wakefield's time, who testifies to their wanton cruelty. ^
Every stir of the trampled people was exaggerated and distorted for selfish objects ; even perjury was not spared.^ whilst their grievances were ignored. As a consequence of the Government's action, the people were harried by the military, their houses burned, themselves often maimed or murdered.* What redress did the law offer ?
At Armagh, a colonel was tried for murdering a Mr. Lucas, found guilty, and sentenced, where- upon he drew out a full pardon, and was set free.^
In September the Bar resolved to form an armed association for the defence of the country against invasion. This body might have become as patriotic as the volunteers had not the Executive taken care, wherever possible, to arm only the *' canaille de la cour," the lawless " vermin of
1 Young, " Tour in Ireland," voL ii. part ii. 1780.
2 Wakefield, " Account of Ireland," vol. ii. p. 773. 1812.
3 This is the testimony of Arthur, Duke of Wellington, in still later days (Letter to Brigadier-General Lee, July 7, 1808).
* Plowden, " Historical Review," vol. ii. p. 573.
^ Ihid.^ p. 573. A magistrate of Down County, who had kept his estate quiet, was informed on oath by three Orange- men, that members of Parliament supplied them with funds, guaranteed them impunity for any act, and pledged themselves that Government would provide for them. The magistrate wrote for instructions (Plowden, " Historical Review," p. 573, note). It was superfluous; their excesses were approved of by the paid press organ of the Government (" Faulkner's Journal "), for Armagh borough was to elect Mr. Pelham, the secretary, and Duigenan, the bigot, at the general election. Plowden, " Historical Review," p. 576.)
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND IO7
the country," and mould it into the bigoted and ruthless " yeomanry." Parliament met in October, to hear that the French threatened a descent on the British coast. Grattan moved an emancipation amendment to the address, which was rejected by 149 to 12. The ministry carried the suspen- sion of Habeas Corpus, by 137 to 7.
On March 17, 18, and 20, attention was called to General Lake's proclamation at Belfast, order- ing all persons to surrender their arms and am- munition. From the Viceroy came a message, stating he had proclaimed portions of Ulster (Down, Antrim, Donegal, Derry, and T}Tone) in a state of disturbance, owing to their insur- rectionary spirit, and ordered Lake to act. Grattan revolted against " attainting one entire province of Ireland of high treason." The ministers had begun their career by declaring against the Catho- lics ; they have proceeded to an outlawry of the Protestants. Ulster should recover her liberty ; military tyranny must fail, though " many of their enemies do not scruple to express a wish for a rebellion in the north." ^ He moved that the
* Violence, he added, their oppressors desired, as giving colour to persecution. Their desire for a rebellion was un- blushingly proclaimed during this debate (March 20) by two ministerialists, under the sanction of their superiors' silence. Mr. J. C. Beresford " wished they were in open rebellion, then they might be opposed face to face." Mr. Maxwell " wished that the north was in open rebellion, which might be more easily suppressed than concealed and growing treason." Grattan, in reply, took note of the charge, " the crime of recommending peace to the people." " It were to be wished they'd rebel ! Good God ! Here is the system and the principle of the system ; from a system of corruption, to a system of coercion, and so on to military execution " (" Debates," vol. xvii.).
I08 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
Viceroy be asked to recall his proclamation. The patriot phalanx could only muster i6 as against 127. George Ponsonby, on March 24, moved a repeal of the Insurrection Act. He reviewed the policy of the ministry, with especial reference to foreign perils, and demonstrated that the real danger lay in that policy. " Rely upon it," said he, " coercion will never do to defend the country against the French, or your system against the people. You may hang some, you may transport others, and you may imprison more, but remember that the purpose of Ireland is to pursue liberty, and somehow or other she will accomplish it." ^ The division was almost the same ; the minority being smaller by one.
The ministry had a sensation in store. Papers had been seized belonging to United Irishmen in Belfast, and on May 10, 1797, Mr. Pelham brought up the report of the Secret Committee (all its members being officials or castle partisans), to which they had been confided ; and, referring to it as indicating a conspiracy of confiscation, murder, and republicanism, pointed a moral for those who urged emancipation and reform (which the United Irishmen advocated) to be less zealous
1 " Debates," voL xvii. p. 179. On the previous day Mr, Fox, in the British Commons, moved an address to the king, asking him to adopt healing measures for Ireland, and was supported by 84 against 220 members. The tone of the Castle was given in Dr. Duigenan's denunciation of Fox as guilty of " abominable falsehoods," and " a flagitious attempt to excite treason and rebellion." Mr. Ogle supported him. The attorney-general declared the publication "libellous." Mr. Fox, in Ireland, would have run risk of imprisonment.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND I09
henceforth. Next day, however, Mr. W. B. Pon- sonby firmly stood by his declared intention to bring on a motion for a reform of Parliament, in spite of official dissuasions. When the day came. Lord Castlereagh artfulty forestalled him by moving that the address of the Lords on the treasonable papers be considered ; but, nothing daunted, Ponsonby introduced that broad measure of reform which would unquestionably have been accepted by all the discontented parties, and saved the country from conspiracy, torture, in- vasion, and ruin. His resolutions declared (i) that it was essential for a fundamental reform of the representation, to abolish all religious dis- abilities for ever, and to admit Catholics equally with Protestants to the legislature and all the great offices of State ; (2) that the people had an indispensable right to fair representation ; (3) that the privileges of boroughs and cities should cease in their present form, and each county should be divided into districts, compris- ing six thousand houses, which should each re- turn two members. Mr. Pelham tritely asserted that the time was not opportune. George Pon- sonby retorted that " the people would infer that no time would ever be thought safe to discuss this measure until it was safe to refuse it." Mr. Stewart (of Killymoon in T}Tone), who had sat on the Secret Committee, declared the measure would give general satisfaction. " Take away the grievance," said Mr. W. Smith, " you unmask the traitor ; you rescue the well-affected subject
no INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
from delusion." He produced a letter from Ed- mund Burke, declaring the Bill to be the best safeguard against Jacobinism. " Reform," ex- claimed Curran, " had become an exception to the proverb that says there is a time for all things ; but for reform there is no time, because at all times corruption is more profitable to its authors than public virtue and prosperity, which they know must be fatal to their views." If 100,000 persons (probably thrice that number) were at- tached to rebellion by the hope of reform through blood, how much more readily would they be detached by, not the promise, but the possession of reform without blood ! Their draconian laws had caused not safety, but danger, like mastiffs that turn and rend their masters.
The number of advocates and weight of argu- ment were all in favour of the Bill ; the ministry relied on a brute vote. Grattan rose, after con- sultation with his friends, to deliver the final speech and their decision. Reminding Govern- ment that they had tried all kinds of coercion, but not reform, he produced a document, signed by nine hundred Ulster merchants, in favour of that pacifying measure. Going into every detail of the measure, and justifying it, with as much care as if he expected to convince, and closing every argument with irresistible reasoning, he besought them to be wise in time ; but he could not forget the events which produced the American war. Then concluding his great but hopeless effort, he said, " We have offered you our measure,
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND III
you will reject it ; we deprecate yours, you will persevere ; having no hopes left to persuade or dissuade, and having discharged our duty, we shall trouble you no more, and after this day shall not attend the House of Commons." The measure was defeated, May 15, by 170 to 30 votes. The advocates of the constitution then withdrew, leaving the country to the executioner and the conspirator.
A deputation, composed of Lawless (afterwards Lord Cloncurry), Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and Arthur O'Connor, had called upon Grattan, Curran, and George Ponsonby to discontinue the " mis- chievous mockery " of attendance, and they com- plied.^ The country appealed to the King against those who misgoverned it. The people of Dublin (April 8) protested that ministers endeavoured to support corruption by terror and violence. The people of Protestant Armagh, convened by the high sheriff (April 19), declared that " the people are goaded to madness by accumulated miseries and oppression." " Your subjects, sire, are daily committed to prison for frivolous pretexts, and innocent and inoffending men confined without hope of trial, liberation, or redress. The richest and most populous province in the kingdom has been, in defiance of truth and justice, stigmatised and illegally treated as in a state of insurrection ; our most useful citizens, torn from their families and dearest connections, are, without trial by
1 Cloncurry, " Personal Recollections," p. 54.
112 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
jury, dragged to the fleet like the most atrocious felons, and military coercion has taken the place of common law." ^ Protestant Antrim, convened by its sheriff on May 8, likewise reiterated the charge : " Your ministers have laboured with the most remorseless perseverance to revive those senseless and barbarous religious antipathies, so fatal to morals and to peace. They have abro- gated the people's rights, filled the land with spies and informers, and let loose upon your sub- jects all the horrors of licentious power and military force." The Whig Club appealed in favour of re- form. The Bar of Ireland met on May 17 (two days after the secession), and declared for a redress of grievances aa calculated to have the happiest effect at that awful crisis. Seventy-four members attached their signatures. ^ This constitutional action was irksome, and the appeals to the monarch were odious to his ministerial servants ; they re- solved to stop them. A proclamation was issued on the day named, ostensibly against the United Irishmen, but forbidding all persons, under any pretext, to meet in unusual numbers, and ordering the military to suppress them. Carhampton
1 And then, most noteworthy of all, these Armagh Protestants called attention to the condition of the Catholics, and condemned their restrictions as hostile to the common rights of mankind and disgraceful to the age. " Your Majesty's ministers, sire, ungenerously taking advantage of these restrictions, have too long propagated amongst us religious animosities and the fiery persecutions of merciless bigotry. Against these men at this moment, sire, Irishmen of every persuasion lift up their voice with one accord. We arraign them of crimes at which humanity shudders, and from which Christianity turns an abhorrent eye."
2 Grattan, " Memoir," vol. iv. pp. 293-299.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND II3
directed the military to act, without waiting directions from the civil magistrates.^ How this operated may be judged from one instance. The Duke of Leinster, as Governor of the county Kildare had convened a meeting, on a requisition signed by a number of magistrates, the object being to adopt a petition against the Union, and in favour of reform and emancipation. It was signed by the Duke of Leinster, Lord Cloncurry,^ Right Hon. W. B. Ponsonby, and some hundreds of the county gentlemen. A large military force having concentrated at Naas, where the meeting was to be held, the chief secretary was addressed on the subject. His reply was that " his Excel- lency will give directions to his Majesty's forces to prevent an assembly so unusual as that of all the inhabitants of a county" (May 25, 1797).^ When this was done, in open insult to peers and magistrates of such standing, the despotic arro- gance elsewhere may be inferred. The projected meetings in other counties were abandoned. In Dublin, however, it was not judged expedient to disperse an assembly of the electors. Meeting, on July 29, with the Hon. V. B. Lawless (afterwards Lord Cloncurry) in the chair, they resolved that the electoral right of the people was abrogated by military power, and that they would abstain from
1 " Report of Secret Committee," No. 11, p. 120 ; and No. 12, p. 128.
2 When news of the Bantry expedition reached Dublin, the troops could not be moved from the adjoining camp until Cloncurry advanced ^45,000 (" Personal Recollections," p. 24).
"Cloncurry, " Personal Recollections," p. 52.
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the elections, and " leave to the king's ministers the appointment of the king's Parliament." Grattan concurred in this course " when the country is put down, the press destroyed, and public meetings for the purpose of exercising the right of petition to remove ministers, are threatened and dispersed by the military." ^ Eighteen regi- ments had been drafted into Ireland since the previous Christmas. ^ Lord Bellamont had given up the command of the Cavan militia, disapprov- ing of General Lake's proclamation, and the Duke of Leinster now resigned that of the Kildare militia.
Under these conditions the Union Parliament came into existence. The elections took place in sullen silence, 3 under the stern eye of an alien soldiery, with the Insurrection Act at work, the Habeas Corpus Act suspended, and the land in- fested by gangs of spies and hordes of uniformed house-burners. Lord Moira felt compelled to bring the condition of Ireland before the British peers, with the hope of influencing the King and Cabinet, The country, which Lord Fitzwilliam had left so flourishing, was now reduced to indigence. The
^ Grattan, " Memoir," pp. 301, 302. See also his " Letter to his Fellow-citizens," p. 305.
* Lawless, " Thoughts on the Projected Union." One of the first pamphlets against the Union. It was replied to by Under- Secretary Cooke in a pamphlet, but more effectively by the repeated imprisonment of the author (Cloncurry, " Personal Recollections," Appendix).
' " That the public had lost or renounced all confidence in Parliament is evident from the apathy and coolness with which the elections went over in the autumn " (Plowden, " Historical Review," vol. ii. p. 649).
«
%
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND II5
Lord Mayor of Dublin had made application on behalf of 37,000 starving operatives ; the customs of Newry and Belfast, which usually produced £15,000, did not produce £1,000 last year. " Be- fore God and my country I speak of what I have seen myself," Moira proceeded. " My lords, I have seen in Ireland the most absurd as well as the most disgusting tyranny that any nation ever groaned under. ..." Homesteads were burned in the night ; the cruellest tortures were repeatedly applied, the harshest oppressions practised, as factors of a sj^stem of government. The debate brought no redress, but the exposure seems to have induced Lord Camden to seek to be recalled from the dominancy of the junto. ^ Were there no courts of justice, Lord Grenville asked, open to the oppressed ? It was a strange question, in view of the " Luttrellades," as Burke called Car- hampton's outrages, and the Indemnity Acts. When the courts sat, their action was sanguinary. " In one circuit there were one hundred individuals tried before one judge ; of these, ninety-eight were capitally convicted, and ninety-seven hanged. One escaped ; but he was a soldier who had mur- dered a peasant." ^
When the Parliament, elected, or rather nomi- nated, in the midst of such horrors, met in Janu- ary, 1798, it was, perhaps, an excess of cynicism on the part of the Viceroy to cite *' the tran- quillity " of the late election as evidence that
1 Plowden, " Historical Review," voL ii. p. 644, note. " O'Connell, " Speeches," vol. i. speech for Magee.
Il6 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
" the wisdom and firmness " of the late Parha- ment had been " felt and approved by the nation at large."
The last Parliament of Ireland began its first session on January 9, 1798. It met, impeached from its origin. The two representatives of the metropolis, Grattan and Lord Henry Fitzgerald, with Henry (of Straffan) and John Philpot Curran, refused re-election on the principle that the elec- tions were not free, and that the Commons were overborne by the influence of the Crown. In a farewell letter to his fellow-citizens Grattan epitom- ised the policy of the ministers, and indicted them. ^ Some independent members remained, and some new men arose, Plunket the chief, to fight out the desperate struggle. Lord Moira had been abused for his revelations. Mr. Brown (of the University) corroborated him. The military, to his own know- ledge, had followed two general rules : (i) burning every peasant's house who was not at home at a fixed hour ; (2) " taking men who were supposed to be guilty of treason, but against whom there was no evidence, out of their houses and shooting them in cold blood." These were illegal outrages which even the King had no power to order. Knox and Smith, in the Commons ; Moira, Dun- sany, and the brave Bishop of Down,^ in the Lords,
* " You have declared you wish the people should rebel, to which we answer, * God forbid ! ' " (Grattan, " Miscellaneous Works," vol. V. p. 40).
2 From the fact that he had to defend himself against being supposed to be disaffected, the state of terrorism may be divined.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND II7
bore similar testimony. The outrages, as Plow- den remarked, were never contradicted, but no inquiry was allowed.^ Sir Lawrence Parsons (March 5) made another effort, and was supported by Lord Caulfield and Mr. Plunket, in moving for a committee of inquiry and conciliation ; but Lord Castlereagh rejected every concession to the very people who, in Ulster especially, had been led by his precepts into peril. ^
Coercion, and " coercion only," was the policy of the Irish Ascendency junto. ^ They cried out for a Cromwell, and found a Carhampton. Ever ready to exercise a " vigour beyond the law," to treat with equal contempt the claims of humanity and the constitution of the country, he was granted an indemnity for every outrage and praise for every crime, until the demoralisation of his army became a peril. Refusing to submit to orders, he resigned in November, 1797, and a skilled general was sent over. Sir Ralph Aber- crombie, who arrived early in the following month. He had had experience of the Irish. They made " excellent soldiers when they were well com- manded." Critical service he had frequently en- trusted to Irish regiments. The people, he truly said, were what the Government chose to make them. But of the purity and wisdom of that Government he had no favourable opinion.* The
^ " Historical Review," vol. ii. part i, p. 663.
2 Rev. Dr. Dickson, " Narrative of Confinement and Exile."
^ " Letter from Lady Sarah Napier to the Duke of Richmond," 1797 : Moore, " Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald," Appendix.
* Dunfermline, "Memoir of Sir Ralph Abercrombie, K.B.," p. 73. Edinburgh, 1801,
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Ascendency gentry were uneducated, " only oc- cupied in eating and drinking and uttering their unmanly fears. They know that they have been oppressors of the poor, and that a day of vengeance is at hand." They had a great force of yeomanry, but they ran to the Castle for troops, and these were scattered about to harass the peaceful in- habitants. ^ He tried to stir them up to manhood and self-reliance, and to reorganise the army. This, as his son rightly remarks, " led to a singular struggle, in which the military commanders wished to restrain the licence of the troops, to protect the people, and to place the army in subjection to the constitution and control of the civil power ; while the Government and the magistrates en- couraged and promoted the licentiousness of the troops, disregarded the authority of the law, and licensed the oppression of the people." ^ Abercrombie withdrew from Castle society to carry out his work. With all official sources before him, the commander-in-chief stated that ** within these twelve months every crime, every
1 The junto complained bitterly that new British generals would not share their views. They saw a peaceful people, and objected to harry them. They were " prejudiced," wrote Beresford to Westmoreland (March 20). Abercrombie, he lamented, " has often said since his arrival (nay, after he came back from his tour through Munster), that the country was quiet, except the disputes between two parties. A gentleman told me tnis day that he heard General Sir James Stewart declare that he would not suffer a man of his to act — that there was no occasion for them." Where these generals, on the spot,^ saw a peaceful people, Beresford, from his closet, beheld massacres and open rebellion. This is how the English Cabinet was taught the state of Ireland.
* Dunfermline, "Memoir," p. 76.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND II9
cruelty that could be committed by Cossacks or Calmucks, has been committed here." ^ After various efforts, he felt compelled to issue his famous general order of February 26, 1798, in which he declared that the very disgraceful fre- quency of courts-martial and other complaints had too unfortunately proved the army to be in a state of licentiousness that must render it " for- midable to every one but the enemy." Com- manding the officers to watch over discipline and good conduct, he emphatically directed them to " attend to the standing orders of the kingdom, which positively forbade troops to act (except in case of attack) without the presence and authority of the civil magistrate." ^ jhis order exasperated the ministry to frenzy. Hurrying into the Speaker's room, they plotted an impeachment. Pelham stopped it, fearing the scandal and the disclosures. Their agents set to work in London, and Portland called Camden to account — Camden, who had recently approved of Abercrombie's tactics in bringing the troops together. His grace would permit no pacification. He wanted to know how came such an order to be allowed which gave a triumph to Moira's friends " over the chancellor and the heads of 3'our Govern- ment " (March ii). Camden, whipped to heel, truckled to all parties, beseeching Abercrombie to retain his command, whilst he proclaimed that " open rebellion " had broken out, and directed
1 Dunfermline, " Memoir," p. 108. ? Plowden, vol. ii. p. 664.
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the commanding officers to act as they pleased, without the civil magistrates. Abercrombie dis- dained to remain a degraded man, and sent in his resignation with his reasons to the Duke of York as commander-in-chief. However, he consented to act in the interim, on account of alleged pressing peril. On March 12, arrests were made in Dublin of a number of United Irishmen, including three of the Leinster delegates. Pelham having sickened, Lord Castlereagh occupied his place temporarily, and, speaking through his frigid organ, Camden, ordered the commander-in-chief to employ his troops " in the disturbed districts " (now the midland counties) and in districts in danger of becoming disturbed, and to " crush the rebellion by the most summary military measures " (March 30). 1 Full powers were given him to quarter troops, take horses, carriages, food and forage, and to hold courts-martial for all offences, civil and military. 2 The gallant general, judging from the peremptory proclamation and instructions, thought an insurrection had broken out. So doubtless thought the British King and Cabinet ; ^ but Abercrombie had this advantage over them — he made a personal inspection of the " disturbed
1 Castlereagh, "Memoirs and Correspondence," March 30, voL i. p. 164.
^ Ibid., April i.
3 The report of the Secret Committee absolutely stated that ** in the months of February and March, many parts of the provinces of Leinster and Munster were actually in the hands of a murderous banditti." These were the parts inspected by Abercrombie, and his declaration (suppressed by the Junto) gives a test of the veracity of the ministry.
INDEPENDENT PARLL\MENT OF IRELAND 121
districts/' and found nothing but tranquillity. The people were occupied in industrial pursuits. They " were very civil and submissive " to him, these ruthless rebels, amongst whom he, the commander-in-chief, went without an escort, ac- companied by only one servant.^ There had been, indeed, some robberies of arms, for crimes take place in all countiies. Three days later, he wrote again, " The late ridiculous farce acted by Lord Camden and his Cabinet must strike every one. They have declared the country in rebellion when the orders of his excellency might be carried over the whole of the country by an orderly dragoon, or a writ executed without any difficulty, a few places in the mountains excepted." ^ Carhampton, however, would have made the farce a tragedy. It is noteworthy that brave soldiers like Doyle, the war secretary (who voted for W. B. Ponsonby's Bill in defiance of the junto), like Colonel
1 Letter to his son, April 20, 1798.
2 Letter to his son, April 23, 1798. His experience coincided exactly with that of another dispassionate visitor in 1797. De Latocnaye, a French royalist (holding rebellion and re- publicanism in horror), made a complete tour, on foot chiefly, of the country, from May to December. During that period he was only six times at an inn, such was the hospitality of all classes. He, also, found the greatest tranquillity prevail. In Ulster, he saw an assembly of persons soberly and good- humouredly garnering the potatoes of a popular gentleman, whilst women and children sang and helped. Unless informed, he could not have divined the " sedition." It was unjust to accuse the mass of the people with the guilt of a few murders. " I had heard so much said of the disturbances, assassinations, and conspiracies of which Belfast was the alleged focus," he wrote, " that it was not without repugnance I went thither I was agreeably surprised to find the town in the utmost quiet " — dans le plus grand calme (De Latocnaye, " Promenade dans rirlande," p. 249. Dublin, 1797).
122 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
Napier, Abercrombie, Sir James Stewart, and Sir John Moore, were all convinced that conciliatory measures should be adopted. The Ascendency junto felt it necessary to justify their policy. Words no longer sufficed, however alarming ; ^ there must be more tangible evidence. Aber- crombie, brave, honest, and humane, whose name is yet revered in Ireland, withdrew, like Fitz- william — like him betrayed. His departure, wrote Lord Holland, was hailed " as a triumph by the Orange faction," who, surrounded by tortures, sneered at the clemency of Government and the weakness of Camden.^ The junto, on April 25, assigned the command to Lake, whose ferocity in Ulster had recommended him to favour. Under his sway the tranquil country was rapidly con- verted into a place of tyrann}^ torture, and out- rage, with homesteads on fire, provisions destroyed, families ruined, and all the atrocities which Hcentious ruffians living at " free quarters " could inflict upon human victims. Death, by strangula-
^ " Informers '* readily came forward with affidavits suited to the market changes. In May, 1797, Camden wrote that the Secret Committee had heard with the utmost alarm that " on Sunday se'ennight," the ex-chairman of the Catholic Committee, Edward Byrne, Dr. Troy (the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin), and sixty priests, had been sworn in as United Irishmen (Camden to Portland, May 6, 1797). Now, an informer appeared oppor- tunely to declare that not only were Curran and Grattan ac- complices in the conspiracy, but that Abercrombie's order had been calculated to alienate the soldiery.
2 Holland, " Memoirs of the Whig Party." Within less than two months after his (revoked) order, Abercrombie wrote that " houses have been burned, men murdered, others half hanged. A young lady has been carried off by a detachment of dragoons," etc. ("Memoir," p. 108).
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 123
tion or the bullet, was common ; but it was a merciful fate compared with the fearful floggings (often a thousand lashes), which tore off skin and muscles. To extort confessions, the son was com- pelled to kneel under his father, and the father under his son, whilst the blood fell hot on them from the lash.^ Half -hanging was one mode of torture ; picketing another, when the victim, strung up by an arm, could only rest the w^eight of his body, with bare foot, on a pointed stake. Hot pitch w^as poured into canvas caps and pressed on the head, not to be removed from the inflamed and blistered surface without tearing off hair or skin. 2 Other outrages were perpetrated on help- less sufferers.^ Without any proof of the posses- sion of arms, on the secret whisper of a foe, at the dictate of malignity, or in the mere wantonness of sanctioned savagery, these deeds were, for the
} This was done by order of Major Sandys, brother-in-law to Under-Secretary Cooke (Madden, " Lives and Times of United Irishmen," ist series, pp. 332, 343).
*" History of Ireland," by Rev. J. Gordon, Protestant Rector of Killegny, vol. ii. pp. 377-379-
' There is probably nothing in history to surpass a case which occurred in Protestant or Presbyterian Antrim : "A justice of the peace for the county of Antrim, who was also a colonel of yeomanry, added to many other vices a libertinism which he practised heartlessly among the wives and daughters of his poorer tenantry. One of his victims, a younj: girl of eighteen, finding herself in a condition in which she had a claim at least for the protection of her seducer, applied to him for assistance. He not only refused this, but, on some frivolous pretext of complicity with the rebels, handed her over to his troops to be scourged. His brutal order was too faithfully carried out. The poor woman died almost immediately after the infliction of the torture, having given birth to a still-born child " (Plunket, " Life, etc., of Lord Plunket," vol. i. p. 243)'
124 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
most part, perpetrated. When the sentences of courts-martial were commuted, then and later, it generally meant that the victims were sent to the fleet (as to the galleys) or to foreign service.
" Many," wrote Lord Holland, " were sold at so much a head to the Prussians." In Prussia they were slaves, either under harsh military drill or in the salt mines. " The fact is incontrovertible," he remarks ; " the people of Ireland were driven into resistance, which possibly they meditated before, by the free quarters and the excesses of the soldiers, which were such as are not permitted in civilised warfare, even in an enemy's country." ^ He considered insurrection under these circum- stances not merely justifiable, but a duty.
" If I were an Irishman," said Sir John Moore to Grattan, " I should be a rebel." ^ The junto did their utmost to entangle their great adversary. A spy was sent down from the Castle to Tinnehinch, who gave a garbled account of a conversation, which the lord chancellor (Fitzgibbon) got pub- lished in the " Lords' Report of the Committee of Secrecy." Auckland urged arrest and trial for " misprision of treason." ^ Foster, however, had excluded this " conversation " from the Corn- mons' Report on account of its obvious falsity. A trial was not desired ; only pretexts to blacken, in the eyes of the country gentlemen, the Parlia-
1 Holland, " Memoirs," vol. i. p. 105. * Grattan, " Memoir," vol. iv. p. 393.
^Letter to J. Beresford, August 28, 1798; " Beresford Correspondence," 1854, vol. ii. p. 173
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 1 25
mentary opposition by tainting Grattan with treason and Ponsonby with Jacobinism.^ This with the efforts to provoke a peasant insurrec- tion, served to reahse Fitzgibbon's former pre- diction, and make the country gentlemen " sick of independence " ; for it is quite plain that the junto did not desire to prevent, but to provoke, a rebellion, seeing that they had full information from the informer Reynolds concerning Lord Edward Fitzgerald's projects on February 25, and could, by suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, have arrested all the alleged chiefs at an early date. Lord Chief Justice Clonmel affirms the fact, and urged them to this course, but met with a rebuff.^ It was implicitl}^ confessed by the lord chancellor, when he subsequently asked Addis Emmet, " Did you not think the Government very foolish to let you proceed as long as they did ? " 3
The Irish Union, as the society of United Irish- men was named, was the expression of the demo- cratic idea of the age. Engendered by the American struggle, inspired by great first efforts of the French Revolution, the democratic idea developed in the midst of an enthusiasm of which
*" Beresford Correspondence," 1854, voL ii, p. 217. J. Beres- ford writes to Auckland, February 18, 1799, that Ponsonby 's character was gone, that " he thinks his opposition to the Union will gain him some credit, and on that he will en- deavour to regain a character, and wipe away an impression which the public entertained of his connection with the rebels, or at least Jacobins."
* Grattan, " Memoir," vol. ii. chap. vii.
'MacNevin's " Pieces of Irish History," p. 262. New York, 1807. Emmet's Examination before Secret Committee of Lords, August 10, 1798,
126 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
calmer ages have no conception. In 1791, Wolfe Tone demonstrated that reform was hopeless, if the sympathies of the mass of the people were not engaged, by pressing for repeal of the popery laws — a question taken up by certain prominent Ulster Dissenters, Dublin Catholics, and Liberal Protestants. In consequence, a United Irish Society was formed in Belfast in October, another in Dublin in November, on the principles of a community of rights and a brotherhood of affec- tion among Irishmen of all religious persuasions.
Their " heavy grievance " was that they had no national government, but were ruled by aliens and their servants, through corruption. Their object was complete reform of the legislature on the basis of civil and religious liberty, by con- stitutional methods. They strove to reanimate the volunteers, and they rejoiced in the earlier progress of the French Revolution. Some went further ; but, like the advances of the French agent in 1793, they were discountenanced. When, however, in 1794, hope of reform disappeared, and Government assumed the offensive, dispersing the Dublin Society, other action was taken. The test was changed to include republicans. Parliamentary reform being omitted, and the society became a secret and military organisation. ^ On this system two chibs were formed in Belfast, and several others elsewhere in the winter of 1-794. This new movement, however, was suddenly checked by
^ There were kindred societies in England and Scotland : " United Englishmen " and " United Scotsmen."
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND I27
the policy of conciliation, and the arrival of Lord Fitzwilliam, in 1795 ; it remained in abeyance during his short administration. Tone, a separatist in private, was " perfectly ignorant of the new system," and was about emigrating to America, on the dissolution of the Catholic Committee, when the recall of Fitzwilliam revived the secret organisation, which charged Tone with a mission to the French Government through its American agent. Thenceforth they worked together to ob- tain French assistance. For three months after Fitzwilliam' s departure the society had only one " county committee " (Antrim). Then it rapidly multiplied under the Coercionist ministry, until all Ulster was organised, while emissaries swore in multitudes of members in Leinster. This suc- cess was due to the encouragement given by the junto agents to the Orange lodges ; where one of these was established ten United Societies were formed, owing to the reaction produced amongst the Catholics. Where, as in Munster and Con- naught, the Orange system made little way, these Catholic provinces remained quiescent, the pea- santry chiefly concerning themselves with local and agrarian grievances. Hence Munster is stated to have favoured the army despatched south, on news of the arrival of the French fleet in Bantry Bay, December, 1796. Even then the United Irishmen would have preferred reform to revolu- tion. They co-operated with members of the Opposition to promote the reform meeting in the Dublin Exchange, in 1797, and would gladly have
128 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
adopted W. B. Ponsonby's Bill, and declined iurther assistance from France.^
The rejection of this peace-proposal, followed by the dragooning of Ulster and torturing of many Ulstermen, caused the northerners to press for an immediate rising ; the Dublin committee pre- ferred to wait for promised aid from France, de- sirous of an orderly revolution, fearing a jacquerie ; and the opportunity passed. Owing to contrary winds and other causes, the French fleets effected no landing, except when Humbert arrived too late and with too small a force. The sanguinary policy of the junto was successful, and an insur- rection which could so readily have been pre- vented was provoked. The remnant of the directory fixed the date for May 23, when Dublin was to be invaded by three converging columns, and the signal given to the provinces by the stop- page of the mail coaches from the capital.
Lord Edward Fitzgerald, their military chief, was arrested on the 19th ; but the Government only communicated their knowledge to Parliament on the eve of the day appointed, in order apparently to ensure the rising. The peasantry round Dublin rose, stopped the mails, and effected some sur- prises ; but the plan of the proceedings in Kildare, where greater efforts were made, was in the hands of the Government, through the treachery of the delegate Reynolds. The peasant pikemen fought
' MacNevin's " Pieces of Irish Plistory," p. 224. Addis Emmet reiterated this, on his oath, before the Lords Committee {Ibid., p. 256).
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND I29
with remarkable courage, and some temporary triumphs ; but everything was against them.
On their defeat the courts-martial took action, and horrified the country by their ruthless cruelties. At Carlow alone two hundred persons were ex- ecuted, and prisoners were tortured by the lash to force them to swear informations.^ A multitude, accepting General Dundas's terms of surrender, assembled at the Curragh to fulfil the agreement, and, when disarmed, were treacherously fired on by Sir James Duff's troops, and pursued by Lord Jocelyn's mounted fencibles. Two, or some say four, hundred were slaughtered. ^ In Ulster, early in June, the insurgents captured Antrim, made a successful surprise at Saintfield, in Down, and at Ballinahinch fought a stout fight, but were finally beaten and dispersed. It was reserved, however, for the most peaceful county of Ireland
1 " History of Ireland," by Rev. Mr. Gordon, Protestant Rector of Killegny, voL ii. chap, xliii. At the trial of Sir Ed- ward Crosbie, " Protestant loyalists, witnesses in favour of the accused, were forcibly prevented by the bayonets of the military from entering the court ; Catholic prisoners had been tortured by repeated floggings to force them to give evidence against him, and appear to have been promised their lives upon no other condition than his condemnation." No charge was proved before the illegal and illiterate court, but Sir Edward was hanged, and his head placed on a spike. From this may be inferred the mode of dealing with obscure peasant victims.
* A writer of history makes much of the fact that some slain insurgents had " protections " in their pockets. This, he alleges, proves their perfidy. It actually proves the perfidy of those who murdered them, as in this instance : "It is cer- tain," wrote J. Beresford to Auckland, July 11, " that several of those who were killed by Sir James Duff had protections in their pockets, obtained under the late proclamations of the generals." And they had surrendered their arms. This clinches the evidence.
130 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
to make the most desperate struggle. In Wex- ford only a few districts had been organised by the United Irishmen ; the county would most probably have remained peaceful, had it not been for the outrages of the licentious troops, whose barbarities left the men of Wexford no alternative but to arm in self-defence.
Their homes were fired, their families outraged, their property plundered, whilst the farmer in his field or the labourer by the roadside was shot down at sight. A mixed race, made up of Gael, Norse- man, Norman, and recent Flemings from England, they chose Protestant country gentlemen as com- manders, and marched under their priests with strong enthusiasm and desperate courage. Badly armed, without proper ammunition or discipline, and with no leader skilled in warfare, they prac- tically held their county for about two months against a considerable army, numbering at last 15,000 men, gathered from England, Scotland, Wales, and Hesse, as well as from Ireland, and commanded by Generals Lake, Dundas, Loftus, Needham, Wilford, Johnson, Duff, and Moore. The unequal contest, so long maintained, would excite marvel had it occurred elsewhere than in Ireland. Here the sins of the insurgents alone are seen.
Lord Charlemont said : "A rebellion of slaves is always more bloody than an insurrection of freemen." The rebellion in Wexford justified the saying. Under no military control, undisciplined, and practically unled ; goaded to revolt by in-
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND I31
tolerable barbarity, they flew to arms, without preparation, as a desperate resource. Such a struggle inevitably exhibited some of the feg.tures of a jacquerie. The peasants, refused quarter themselves, often gave none, and on some occa- sions committed acts of outrage and horror, in murderous retaliation, on their foes. Their leaders, clerical and lay, Protestant and Catholic, did their utmost to control them, and were generally suc- cessful. But, in some instances, the insurgents unhappily imitated the example of the regular soldiery ; and, flushed wtih momentary success, wreaked a dreadful vengeance on the instruments of the tyrants by w^hom they had long been op- pressed and degraded. It was not, however, of the atrocities of the rebels, but of the atrocities of the King's soldiers, that General Lake wrote to Castlereagh : ** The carnage was dreadful ; the determination of the troops to destroy every one they think a rebel is beyond description." The truth is, outrages were not committed by rebels until they had been taught innumerable lessons in barbarity by their foes. There was this marked distinction, that such sequent acts on their part were at once disavowed and denounced by their leaders, who, lay and clerical, intervened to save life ; the provocative deeds of their enemies were perpetrated by the hand or order of men in authority.^ They have been depicted as savages
^ In his life of the informer Reynolds, his son avows that outrages were urged and countenanced by persons of distinction, who indulged their brutality under a mask of loyal) ty. " Such was the murder of Mr. Johnson, of Narraghmore ; the burning
132 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
by strangers ; Protestant clergymen in their midst, knew them to be amiable, courteous, and chivalrous as gentlemen of other lands. ^ Another remarkable distinction is likewise always ignored. Whilst the armed and uniformed protectors of the country outraged every female they dared, Protestant loyalist or not, the daughters of their Orange or yeoman foes were as safe and sacred amongst the rebels as in their homes. " The fair sex was respected by the rebels," writes a Protestant rector ; " I have not been able to ascertain one instance to the contrary, though many beautiful young women were long absolutely in their power." ^ It suited the partisans of power to describe these peasants as engaged in a massacre of Protestants, though they fought simply against antagonists, against Catholic militia as against Protestant yeo- manry, whilst they had unanimously chosen Pro- testants as their commanders. The libel was dis- seminated in order to deter the northern Pres- byterians,^ and to divide the opponents of the junto.
of the rebel hospital at Enniscorthy, with all the sick and wounded it contained, to the number of 30 persons " (Cloney says 76) ; " the massacre of above 50 unresisting persons, under the command of Lieutenant Gordon of the yeoman cavalry, which provoked the massacre of Bloody Friday ; the slaughter of upward of 200 men " (350, Musgrave), " after they had surrendered on terms of capitulation on the Curragh of Kildare " (vol. ii. p. 33).
^ Gordon, " History of Ireland," vol. ii. p, 447.
2 Ibid.
" Two years before, when the United Irishmen were chiefly Presbyterians, Commissioner Beresford, with their oath of concord before him, wrote to Auckland that " part of their oath was to destroy all kings, to massacre all Protestants " » (March 5, 1796).
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND I33
Lord Fitzwilliam's forewarning had come true. By rejecting reforms, that confusion had been created which was to serve as a pretext for the Union ; but the confusion had grown into a danger. Camden and the junto were unable to quell the storm they had raised, and Lord Corn- wallis was despatched as viceroy and commander- in-chief to replace the former and control the latter. He arrived on June 20, but the warfare continued in Wexford until the end of the month, and a guerilla fight was kept up amongst the mountain-glens of that county, and of Wicklow still later. The junto struggled against control, exaggerated the danger, and their partisans so persecuted the peaceable that they were forced, Protestants as well as Catholics, to join the in- surgents. ^ Any man "in a brown coat," wrote Cornwallis, " was butchered, though miles away from the field of action." He issued a proclama- tion, on July 3, directing generals to give protec- tion to rebels who surrendered and swore allegiance, and introduced an Act of Amnesty a fortnight later for all engaged in the rebellion, except leaders, or any who had committed homicide not in battle.
That measure, however, evoked the worst passions,
* Gordon gives several instances in Wexford. In Kildare, the Duke of Leinster's tenantry were particularly harried by the men whose policy he had opposed. They punished him by depriving him of his rents, owing to the ruin of his tenantry, who, driven to despair, joined the insurgents, saying, " It's better to die with a pike in my hand than be shot like a dog at my work, or see my children faint for want of food before my eyes " (Lady Sarah Napier to the Duke of Richmond, June 27). Lord Cloncurry relates that men were left hanging along the elm avenue of Carton House.
134 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
perjury, avarice, revenge, to the destruction of numbers. " No means of conviction were neglected," writes Gordon ; " strange as it may seem, acts of humanity were considered as proofs of guilt. Whoever could be proved to have saved a loyalist from assassination, his house from burn- ing, or his property from plunder, was pronounced to have had influence among the rebels, conse- quently a rebel commander." ^ The most con- vincing testimony to the generous humanity of the insurgents was delivered at their trials, in order to hang them — by those whom they had saved. *' But even the horrors of martial law, carried out by passion and revenge, were trifling," wrote Cornwallis (July 24), " compared to the numberless murders committed by our people without any process of examination whatever." -
The yeomanry, militia, and fencibles were all engaged " in murder and every kind of atrocity." Such were the men who, with the demoralised troops, fled like frightened sheep when Humbert landed with about eight hundred troops in the west at Killala, on August 24, and made a tri- umphant march of a hundred and fifty miles into the heart of the country, surrendering on Sep- tember 8 to overwhelming forces. The undis- ciplined peasants held out to the end of the month ; and, as the Protestant Bishop of Killala testified, during the entire period " not a drop of blood was shed by the Connaught rebels except in the
* Rev. Mr. Gordon, " History of Ireland," p. 458.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND I35
field of war." A different result followed the courts-martial which ensued. The barbarities of Wexford were repeated, and for weeks the corpses of peasants dangled from trees along the road- sides.
VII
Last Sessions of Parliament — The Union
IN the summer of 1798, the Pitt-Portland Cabinet considered that the abolition of the Irish legislature might be attempted with success. Mr. Pitt has been credited with the best designs in abolishing the Irish Parliament. It was his aim, we sometimes hear, to incorporate the two islands by uniting the legislatures, emanci- pating the Catholics, and establishing equal laws all over the three kingdoms. If such were his aims, it must be confessed that the time, the instruments, and the means employed to carry them out were ill-chosen, unscrupulous, and vile. The country gentlemen had been made " sick of independence," and were held in hand, by the sustained dread of what was represented as a Jacobin insurrection. To the division of classes was added the dissension of sects. Papist rebels and Orange yeomen now seemed to occupy the stage in deadly strife, where but a short time ago Catholics and Protestants lived in general har- mony. The antagonism, in truth, was exag- gerated as well as fomented by those who, through perversity or panic, cared to dwell rather on acts
136
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND I37
of outrage than on acts of benevolence.^ Tuis had given an opportunity for drafting over British troops, who regarded all the Irish as rebellious ; of Hessian troops still more ignorant and inimical. Ultimately Portland desired to send over Dutch and even Russian mercenaries. ^ It must have appeared easy to terminate the life of a Parlia- ment so dependent on the British ministry, so isolated and estranged in a country overrun with foreign troops, whilst all the agencies of terrorism were at work to alarm public opinion. No art of cajolery or corruption was left untried. In July the Cabinet had had many discussions on a change of system, and it was proposed to give small salaries to the priests.^ This, coming at a time when the priests were often in peril of life from the junto, was designed to alienate the Catholics from the Parliament. In the autumn
1 Whilst the Rev. Mr. Gordon, a Protestant clergyman, records, in his " History of the Rebellion," numerous cases where Catholic insurgents saved the lives of Protestants, the Rev, P. F. Kavanagh, a Catholic priest, takes pleasure in recording " a few of the many good deeds performed by the Orange body in favour ot Catholics," one being the (forcible) rescue of an innocent priest from a persecuting magistrate by an Orange yeoman named Thackaberry, in Wexford (" History of the Insurrection," p. 117. Dublin).
' " Comwallis Correspondence," vol. iii. pp. 137, 298.
'Lord Auckland to J. Beresford, August i, 1798. Beresford assured his lordship that " the whole body of the lower order of Roman Catholics are totally inimical to the English Govern- ment ; that they are under the influence of the lowest and worst class of their priesthood. . . . The Dissenters are another set of enemies to the British Government. They are greatly under the influence of their clergy also, and are taught from their cradles to be republicans " (" Beresford Correspondence," August i).
138 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
the members of the junto, Lord Chancellor Clare (Fitzgibbon), J. Beresford, and the Speaker, Foster, were called over to London to assist in the de- liberations ; but, whilst the first two urged on the Union, the Speaker dissented, and in dis- senting represented the popular opinion.
When, in December, Cornwallis had to admit that hostility to the Union " increases daily," he ruefully confessed that he had been too sanguine about the Catholics. " Their dispositions are so completely alienated from the British Government," he added, " that I believe they would even be tempted to join with their bitterest enemies, the Protestants of Ireland, if they thought that measure would lead to a total separation of the two countries." ^
Convened by the father of the Bar, the barristers met on Sunday, December 9. It was, said Saurin, peculiarly the duty of the Bar to speak when the legislature was threatened with destruction. Not until October had the people of Ireland been told they were unworthy to govern themselves, and should surrender a constitution under which they and their fathers had lived happily, had risen and were rising in enviable pro&'perity. After dealing with the merits of the question, he declared that it was not when " a foreign army of forty thousand
1 Cornwallis to Portland, December 12, 1798. Next day thirty-seven of the principal Catholics, nobles and merchants, met at Lord Fingall's, but gave Cornwallis no comfort. The " temperate and liberal sentiments " at first expressed by some " were by no means adopted by the Catholics who met at Lord Fingall's, and professed to speak for the party at large " {Ibid. January 2, 1799). They agreed not to discuss the Union as Catholics, and adjourned sine die.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND I39
men were in the countr}^" that the people should be asked to give up their constitution and sur- render their legislative power. He moved that the measure was an innovation, which it would be highly dangerous and improper to propose. Burrowes, Goold, Plunket, and others, declared that the measure was beyond the competence of Parliament ; that it had revived the United Irish- men ; and that, if passed, it would tend to total separation. The Castle party ventured only to ask for a postponement, but they were defeated by 168 to 32. Indignation meetings of the at- torneys, of the various corporations of the capital, of the county and city of Dublin, of the Queen's and King's Counties, of Louth, Westmeath, Meath, Carlow, and Clare, followed in rapid succession before Parliament met, the high sheriffs presiding.^
One resolution, generally adopted, declared that their representatives had not been empowered to destroy the constitution, and that Parliament could not decree its own extinction.
When Lord Fitzwilliam had superseded a com- missioner— placing him on full pay — because that functionary's rectitude was impeached, the Vice- roy was rebuked and recalled. The selfsame ministry now directed and pressed for the dis- missal of commissioners and office-holders — with- out compensation — because these were faithful to
* Other counties met after the debate in Parliament, to express similar sentiments and give votes of thanks to the Opposition, namely, Monaghan, Limerick, Wicklow, Cavan, Tyrone ; also Clonmel and other corporations.
140 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
their country and its constitution.^ The Viceroy was told to declare that the Government was resolved to press the measure " to the utmost/' and (even though the legislature should decide against it) to renew it "on every occasion until it succeeds." ^ jj^e Lord-Lieutenant summarily dismissed the experienced chancellor of the ex- chequer and the venerated prime-sergeant, putting in their high places creatures of no account.
Similar dismissals were known to threaten every ofhce-holder who should stand by his sworn fidelity to the constitution.^ The Government now organised a system of corruption on a vast scale. The Castle counted on a considerable majority, but still nothing was neglected. Places, pensions, and even titles were in the market ; and ready money, not so secretly procurable in Ireland, was got over from Whitehall by special messengers. '* Most secret," writes Castlereagh on January 2, 1799, " already we feel the want, and indeed the absolute necessity, of the primum mobile." * He wished to operate on and through
1 Portland to Castlereagh, January 11; Camden to same, January 15.
* Portland to Cornwallis, December 21. Nothing but a con- viction of this purpose " can give the measure a chance of success" (Castlereagh to Portland, January 2, 1799). Pitt was to declare this determination.
3 The Cabinet was urged to send over office-holders living in England (Cornwallis to Portland, January 11 ; Camden to Castlereagh, January 15). Carhampton was amongst those to be sent, though (then) adverse to Union ; he was open to pressure, and his influence was subsequently required over his son.
'Castlereagh to Wickham, January 2, 1799.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND I4I
the press by hiring briefless young barristers to write. Five thousand pounds was most earnest!}' requested " in bank notes by the first messengers." Pitt, Portland, and Grenville saw and sanctioned the request, and his grace volunteered to say that " means will soon be found of placing a larger sum at the Lord-Lieutenant's disposal." ^ Castle- reagh welcomed the assurance ; the funds would be " carefully applied." With great magnates other methods were employed. Lord Ely, for instance, was hesitating in London. Castlereagh requested Portland to have a proper explanation with him on the subject of his peerage, or to authorise the Lord- Lieutenant " to assure him of that favour, in the event of the measure being carried." ^ Ely found all Irishmen he met " point- edly and decidedly against the measure." It was a " mad scheme " ; its only advocates absentees or strangers to the country. He had not heard a single argument in its favour ; still he kept his mind free.^ Cornwallis, however, gave him to understand that he would " not be allowed to shuffle." * Camden called on him, found him ad- verse, but " open to conviction " ; his friends still awaited instructions how to vote. Pitt was brought to town, gave an assurance, and averted the opposition.^ " The demands of our friends
^ Wickham to Castlereagh, January 7, [" Private and most secret."]
2 Castlereagh to Portland, January 5.
^ Letter from the Earl of Ely, January 7.
* Cornwallis to Portland, January 13,
* Camden to Castlereagh, January 15; " Beresford Corre-
142 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
rise," groaned Cornwallis, " in proportion to the appearance of strength on the other side."
He detested jobs, but would overcome his detesta- tion on account of the object (Jan. 21). The Castle set to work to manufacture addresses of confidence. These were issued to provincial autocrats whose adherence had been secured/ and they, moving with all the authority of yeomanry commanders in terrorised districts, procured signatures sufficient to make the addresses colourable imitations. An outline of the Union scheme was circulated.
There were many discomforting signs. " The Catholics still continue against us," wrote Castle- reagh. There had been notorious disaffection in some of the Irish regiments.- The Orangemen took such a " violent part " in opposition as to make an impression on the Castle's most Protestant supporters, to change Lord Shannon, and even to shake the chancellor. Nay, the British militia regiments themselves could not be trusted. When
spondence." Lord Ely slipped behind the throne on the division (January 23) ; Portland said he deserved every punish- ment. Afterwards in March (Castlereagh writes to Portland) he declared positively for the Union, and would control two members. The determination was " clogged with some awk- wardness." July 8, Cornwallis reports that Ely had been in- duced to " promote resolutions " in counties where his property lay, but it would be highly imprudent to give him his reward till the Union was carried. Finally, he is made a marquis and British peer, as had been promised in writing by Pitt, forwarded by Portland (Cornwallis, June 17, 1800).
^ On January 7 Castlereagh enclosed to Portland the draft of an address " which will be sent up from Cork this morning from Lord Boyle." Portland took it to the king ; it was eagerly welcomed to influence English opinion, especially the English militia (January 11 ; Portland).
" Camden to Castlereagh, January 8.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND I43
once they perceived that rebellion was over, or only a pretext, their love of liberty would bring them to the Irish side. It was necessary to influence them by confidence addresses, for " if no disposition to harm should be shown in Ireland, our militia may consider it entirely as a ministerial measure, and be more inclined to countenance than to resist the opposition to it, should it even pro- ceed to acts of violence and outrage." ^ The hint was not lost ; the " rebellion " was kept simmering to divide classes and countries, and so promote the Union. 2
The eventful day arrived. On Tuesday, Janu- ary 22, 1799, the Viceroy delivered the speech from the throne, in the Upper House. Their enemies had made efforts to separate the kingdoms, he said ; it was hoped both Parliaments would con- solidate, as far as possible, the strength and re- sources of the empire. When Lord Cornwallis and the Commons had retired, issue was at once joined. Lord Powerscourt declared himself an enemy to the mischievous measure. The country had risen in prosperity under its owoi Parliament ; it would not be calmed, but troubled, by the agita- tion of such a project. He challenged the com- petence of Parliament, and moved an amendment. Lord Enniskillen seconded him. The aged Charle- mont came forward to vote against the doom of
1 Portland to Castlereagh (January 11). ["Private and secret."]
2 Beresford informed Auckland that it was believed Corn- wallis " protected the rebels, and urged them on for the purpose of promoting the Union " (January 26).
144 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
the Irish legislature. Two Vishops and seventeen lay peers opposed its extinction ; fifty-six ap- proved ; one, Lord Ely, hid behind the throne. ^ In the Commons, the debate began at four o'clock, and continued throughout the night till one o'clock p.m. on the 23rd. The address was moved by the son of the Marquis of Waterford, and by the brother of the notorious Judkin Fitzgerald.
Sir John Parnell, late chancellor of the exchequer, opposed the principle of union in a speech which extorted approval from Cornwallis. George Pon- sonby, he adds, made an animated appeal to sup- port the national pride and independence (The viceroy had not a word to say for his own mercen- ary brigade of place-holders or place-hunters.) Ponsonby concluded by moving to supplement the address with the words, " Maintaining, how- ever, the undoubted birthright of the people of Ireland to have a resident and independent legis- lature, such as it was recognised by the British legislature in 1782, and was finally settled at the adjustment of all differences between the two countries." This was seconded by Sir L. Parsons, always staunch, and supported by all the inde- pendence, and almost all the talent in the House.
Lord Castlereagh alone displayed ability on the Unionist side, and the effort was not great ; it
* Of the Castle peers, Lords Ormonde and Westmeath were notoriously deep in debt to their tradesmen, who sent in their bills and procured executions {Beresford to Auckland, January 26). They, and others in similar condition, were easy prey to the Castle.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 145
was completely eclipsed by the bold convincing voice of Plunket, an Ulsterman, who, speaking in the grey dawn, made the House forget the absence of Grattan. He appealed to the sacred pact which established their constitution, to their success in its defence against foreign and domestic foes ; he denounced the " system of black corruption " carried on to undermine it, and the intimidation which held threats of dismissal over members to influence their votes. He challenged denial, and would prove the truth at the bar. Eminent as a jurist, he denied the competency of a Parliament, not elected for that purpose, to alter the con- stitution.^ Much less was it entitled to abohsh it against the expressed will of their constituents.
The country gentlemen, inspirited by the county meetings, spoke warmly and in great numbers against the measure. ^ The division was taken at one o'clock next day. The British Cabinet had been assured of a vast majority. From 160 to 170, or even 200, were expected to vote against 100 of the opposition.^ When, after the division,
* " Sir, I, in the most express terms, deny the competency of Parliament to do this act. I warn you, do not dare to lay your hands on the constitution. I tell you that if, circumstanced as you are, you pass this Act, it will be a nullity, for no man in Ireland will be bound to obey it. You have not been elected for this purpose. You are appointed to make laws, and not legislatures. You are appointed to act under the constitution, and not to alter it. You are appointed to exercise the functions of legislators, and not to transfer them. And if you do so your act is a dissolution of the Government " (Plunket, " Life and Speeches of Lord Plunket," pp. 141, 142. London, 1867).
'^ Castlereagh to Portland, January 28.
^ Ibid., January 21 ; Beresford to Auckland, February 6. 10
146 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
the numbers were announced, they were found to be nearly equal : ayes for the amendment (in- cluding tellers), 107 ; noes against it, 108.^ It was an unexpected and marvellous triumph. Pon- sonby, following it up, gave notice that he would on Friday or Saturday, whichever was the more convenient to the noble lord in office, take the sense of the House on the principle of the measure.
C^stlereagh deprecated haste. The division, he said, had been a surprise ; he would not persist further at present. However, on Thursday even- ing, the 24th, Sir Lawrence Parsons moved, on report, to expunge the consolidation paragraph from the address ; and after a stirring debate, the division, taken at six o'clock next morning, showed 106 for the Government, and iii for the constitution ; giving a majority of 5 to the national party.
The result was hailed with extreme enthusiasm all over the land. Dublin repeatedly illuminated ; bonfires blazed in its streets, the joy-bells were rung, and the exultant citizens drew the Speaker home in triumph. Elsewhere, the lord chancellor stood at his black and broken windows and
* Two members were bribed in the House. One was Luke Fox, who got a judgeship, which he disgraced (Barrington, " Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation " ; " Cornwallis Corre- spondence," vol. iii. p. 164). The other was Mr. Trench, of Galway, who spoke against the Union in the debate. He ob- tained " resolutions in favour of the Union " afterwards in Galway. and the title of Lord Ashtown, when it had passed (Barrington, " Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation " ; " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 304).
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND I47
fired on the populace ^ Meetings of counties and corporations were held to express the sentiments of the nation, and to convey the high approval of the people to their faithful representatives.
1 Beresford to Auckland, Januar)' 24. Cork was alleged to be Unionist, but " the bells of the cit}^ of Cork were rung, and at night numberless bonfires were lighted up, in consequence of the rejection of a union by the independent and virtuous majority of the representatives of the people " {Hibernian Magazine, 1799, p. 135).
VIII
Corruption : The Purchase-Price — Coercion AND Courts-Martial — Resistance of the People of all Classes : Nobles, Merchants, Peasants, Orangemen and Catholic — " Union."
ON January 31, 1799, Pitt brought forward the measure of the Union in the British House of Commons, moving a series of resolutions on the subject. Not being able to quote the consent of the Irish people, he laboured to prove that the settlement of 1782 was not final. He dwelt much on hypothetical differences and dangers, which might have happened or which might possibly happen. The regency question was, however, the only tangible point ; but on this British parties had differed. Pitt himself had abandoned his first position, and, as his appointed chief secretary had voted for the Irish mode of procedure, it could nowise be considered hostile to that of Britain. Fox, the Whig leader, for whose policy on that question, Grattan had support, and whose honour was pledged in the pact of 1782, slunk shamelessly from the strife.
Sheridan fought Pitt, foot to foot, and was supported by Grey, St. John, Tierney, Lawrence, Hobhouse, Fitzpatrick, and others. On February 7
148
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 1 49
Sheridan put Pitt's professions to the test by proposing, first, that no measure should be in- troduced which had not " the manifest, fair, and free consent of the Parhaments of both king- doms " ; and second, " that any person attempting to obtain the same by corruption or intimidation, is an enemy to his Majesty and to his countr}^" Pitt's majority voted this proposal down by 141 to 25. Several debates followed, in the course of which Lient .-General Fitzpatrick bore manful and emphatic testimony to the fact that the Cabinet had established the settlement of 1782 as final, he having been secretary to the Duke of Portland, viceroy at that period. The resolutions passed, of course, and, at a conference, were communicated on February 18 to the Lords, who, a month later, took them into consideration. They were vigor- ously opposed by Lords Moira, Fitzwilliam, Hol- land, and other peers.
In Ireland the Castle party had been much taken aback by the collapse of their fancied majorit3^ The country gentlemen, who supported them on coercion, opposed them on the Union. Many waverers left them, owing to the fervour of public feeling. Beresford thought the affair would end like the commercial propositions.^ Cornwallis
^ " I all along thought the Government were deceived in their numbers, and that this business was likely to end litie the Irish propositions " (J. Beresford to Auckland, January 24). His son, John Claudius (grand secretary of the Grand Orange Lodge), took sides against the Union. The commissioner him- self kept his bed, but was able to correspond, and might possibly have modified his views, had it not been for personal matters. He bitterly resented, after the Union, the " wantonly insulting
150 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
abandoned all hope of succeeding with the measure that session. Castlereagh, moving an adjourn- ment from January 28 to February 7 (to gain time for Pitt's declaration), assured the House that he " should never bring it forward as long as it ap- peared to him repugnant to the sense of Parlia- ment and the country." ^ In his closet he analysed for the Duke of Portland's information, the com- position of the Commons on a division ; and, not- ng the opposition, calmly informed his grace that " of these might be bought off 20." ^ Three of the revenue commissioners had voted against the Government, four for it. From London word came that the project should be carried forward
manner " in which the Irish boards were treated by the new authorities. " Can it be imagined," he wrote, " that noblemen and men of talents and abilities, men who have been high in the excutive business of the country, will tamely and quietly submit to be kicked, overturned, and trampled upon, and that with the highest insult, by the new authorities that have been set up ? " (Beresford to Auckland, November 20, 1804).
1 Plowden, " Historical Review," vol. ii. part ii. p. 916.
* " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 45. The letter is suppressed, but the analysis is given, like an extract from a trader's ledger :
" Voted with Government on the address, or on the report 113 Friends absent . . . , '39
152 Voted against, who had been expected to vote for (most
of them having distinctly promised support) . 22
Voted against or absent enemies . . .129
Of these might be bought off . . . .20
Vacancies . . . , , .7
178 Thus, by Castlereagh's own statement, there was a majority against the Union of at least nineteen (probably the vacant seats were mainly in hostile hands also).
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 151
ruthlessly. Pitt wrote to the Viceroy thcit it was the grand and primary object of their policy, and hence it was desirable (if Government were strong enough) " to mark by dismissal the sense enter- tained of the conduct of those persons in office who opposed." The Speaker's son should not be overlooked.^ Portland wrote to the same effect. Auckland wrote to Beresford that there would be " more turnings out, necessarily," - and also re- ferred to the Speaker's son. Cornwallis, having already taken action, delayed further sacrifices for motives of policy. As both parties were seek- ing support from the Catholics, the Liberal duke sent word that they should remain perpetually excluded, unless emancipated by means of the Union. ^
Castlereagh had not been granted the office of secretary without some difficulty, on account of his Irish birth. Now, however, his clear, unscrupulous ability was displayed and com- mended. On January 28 he placed before Port- land the probable plan of campaign of the patriots. They would undertake questions for which ministers proposed the Union as a cure,
* Pitt to Cornwallis, Januarj' 26.
• January 28.
8" Catholic Emancipation must not be granted but thi-ough the medium of an Union, and by means of an united Parliament " (Portland to Castlereagh, January 29). That this stratagem did not render the Catholic provinces Unionist may be inferred from Cornwallis's private letter to Major-General Ross, February 13, relating to Connaught and Munster : " The whole of the south is prepared to rise the moment that a French soldier sets his foot on shore." '
152 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
and so cut away the ground. The evils were rehgous dissensions defective connection, and commercial inequality. He was instructed to thwart their removal.
On the same day Castlereagh wrote his grace another letter, dealing with the financial aspect of the case. He would despair if he were not convinced the repugnance of the country gentlemen turned chiefly on points of personal interest. Then, going into the matter still more in detail, on February i, he calculated the re- sisting power of personal interest to be equal to £1,433,000.^ Portland submitted this to the Cabinet, whilst expressing a hope that Corn- wallis would, by influence, " by the means you will employ," recall those who had forsaken him in " ignorance or misapprehension of the terms on which the Union was to be proposed to them." ^ As a consequence, at the end of next month Cornwallis wrote that " the opinion of the loyal part of the public is changing fast in favour of the Union," a change justly set down to its having transpired that a material alteration was made in the plan. Compensations were to be granted not only to borough-proprietors, and for primary and secondary interests in counties, and purchasers, but to barristers and private indi- viduals. " Lord Castlereagh considered that £1,500,000 would be required to effect all these
1 Memorandum, February i ; " Castlereagh Correspondence," voL ii. p. 149. ^Ihid. 3, 4.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 1 53
compensations." ^ The flesh-pots were open, and the fumes intoxicating. They attracted all appe- tites if they did not satisfy all hunger.
Then also the Viceroy, being also general-in-chief, obtained practically the powers of a dictator by means of an Act enabling him to proclaim martial law, though the civil courts were sitting, whenever he pleased, wherever he pleased, ^^'ithout evidence of necessity, without restriction of prerogative, without control or appeal. ^ The fears of Jacobin- ism entertained by the country gentlemen secured him this power ; ministers played upon those fears to divide the opposition, and used the prerogative to keep up the alarm and terrorise the people with the sanguinary spectacle of courts-martial month after month until the Union was carried.
The patriot party strove strenuously against the Castle for the Constitution. Lord Corr}^ mem- ber for Tyrone, on February 15, moved that the House should resolve into committee and con- sider the state of the nation. Government feared that this would give the Speaker an opportunity of replying to Pitt and of binding the country gentlemen.^ The motion was rejected by 123 to 103 — a majority equal to the number Castlereagh calculated could be bought. However, the much- feared moment came in spite of all. The Regency
1 " Cornwallis Correspondence," voL iii. pp. Si, 82. Mr. Ross, the editor, writes, " The plan of union proposed in iSoo embodies most of his suggestions, and the success obtained was owing to these judicious alterations."
'Cornwallis to Portland, March 12, 1799.
• Ibid., February 16.
154 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
BilP was committed on April ii, and the Speaker, having left the chair, delivered an address which justified all their apprehensions. " It was of above four hours' duration," wrote Castlereagh to Portland, " embracing an infinite variety of topics, and delivered v/ith animation and ability." It was, he reluctantly adds, " well calculated to im- press every class of men with aversion to the measure of the Union." Its very completeness has, in fact, hindered its present popularity. Foster took up every argument of Pitt, dissected, and disproved it. With the minister's assertion that the settlement of 1782 was not final, he con- fronted the solemn declaration of the authorities of the realm. His Majesty by his messages, by the voice of his viceroy, his ministers by word and deed, the Parliaments by resolution, had declared the adjustment final. The- commercial question, not settled by pact, had been arranged by mutual co-operation. It had been hypothetic- ally asserted that the Irish Parliament might at- tempt to make war or peace ; that, Mr. Foster pointed out, was the King's prerogative. As to a possible collision between the two Parliaments, collision was also possible between the two Houses of the British Parliament. The argument that would blend two Parliaments would also blend the two Houses. 2 He was eminently successful in
1 This provided that whoever should be Regent in Britain would be Regent in Ireland, and so put an end to Pitt's pretext.
2 In this passage, Mr. Foster used the expression : "it passed the wit of man " — words which, when repeated by Mr. Glad-
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 155
dealing with the tinancial and trade aspects of the question, proving the falsity of the promised advantages, showing that his country need not fear for her commerce from Britain's antagonism, and demonstrating that Ireland had increased in agriculture, manufactures, general prosperit3^ ^^^ population far beyond Scotland, and in a greater ratio even than Britain in the same space of time. Pitt and Dundas had quoted Scotland's progress after the Union. As regards linen : —
Scotland 's export was in 1 706 . . 1,000,000 yards
„ „ „ 1796 . 23,000,000 „
Foster confronted these with the Irish figures relating to linen : —
|
and's export was in 1706 |
• |
530,838 yards |
|
„ 1783 |
• |
16,039,705 |
|
» » „ ^796 |
• |
46,705,319 „ |
Thus whilst in Scotland, without a resident Parlia- ment, it was but twenty-three times greater, in Ireland, with a resident Parliament, it had become eighty-eight times greater. In Scotland the popu- lation had increased from one to one and a half millions only ; in Ireland, from one and a half to four and a half millions. He did not shrink from
stone, on his Home Rule Bill, produced so much effect. It may be added, as of literary interest, that Mr. Asquith's noted phrase, " Wait and see," was anticipated by that of an orator of the French Revolution in " voir et attendre," and Disraeli's famous " peace with honour " was taken verbatim from a passage in an English version of Thucidides.
156 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
comparing the progress of Ireland with even that of Britain and Scotland united :
Value
|
The exports of Ireland were in 1 706 . |
;^54S,3i8 |
|
J, ,> 5, 1783 >, M „ 1796 . The exports from Britain were in 1706 |
2,935,067 5,064,834 6,512,086 |
|
„ „ „ 1708 . 1796 . |
6,969,089 • 27,621,843 |
Thus, he said, " in Ireland the exports rose from one to ten, and in Britain, from the year after the Union (which I have chosen for fair comparison, as it includes the Scotch trade), from one to three and a fraction." The Irish trade had grown ten times greater than it was, whilst the British had not grown four times greater. Then, taking the period before the Era of Independence, and con- trasting it with that short brilliant time that had followed, he demonstrated the immense impulse which a free Constitution had given to the trade and prosperity of Ireland.^ This oration, im- pressive by its cogent logic and serried facts rather than by verbal eloquence, spoke to the reason, and
1 " I take the year 1796, because Mr. Dundas selected it, and you will observe in the Irish statements that the exports of 1783 are marked, that you may compare them with 1796 and see the great spring which the free constitution has given to trade and manufacture. The general export rose in seventy- eight years, to 1782, from one to five, and in fourteen years after 1782 from five to ten. The linen export in the seventy- eight years rose from one to thirty-two, and in the last fourteen from thirty-two to eightv'-eight ; so that the general exports rose as much in the last fourteen years as it had done, not only during the preceding seventy-eight years, but during all time preceding ; and the linen increased in the last fourteen years very nearly to treble the amount of what it had been before " (Foster, " Speech," pp. 106, 107. Dublin, Moore, 1799).
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 1 57
the interests, as well as to the sentiment of the nation, and would have achieved the defeat of the Government, notwithstanding ten thousand copies of Pitt's speech distributed gratis, had not the Castle turned zealously to its organised methods of coercion and corruption. On the Regency Bill being scandalously got rid of by postponement to the " first of August," the tainting influence be- came very noticeable. " It would," wTites Plow- den, an honest Unionist, " be both false and stupid to deny that the whole powers of Govern- ment patronage, influence, and emolument w^ere now devoted to the proselytising for the Union." ^
Both parties did their best to gain adherents ; but the patriot party laboured in defence of the constitution, whilst the Government employed the resources of the nation and the powers of the Crown to upset the decision of Parliament by corrupting the representatives of the people. The meanest arts were used, and the most glaring unfairness marked its course. Thus, during the last debate of the session of 1799 (May 15), Plunket stated that the escheatorship of ^funster was given to vacate seats, when Government was assured the incoming member would vote for the Union : purchase did not matter. " It was publicly avowed that voting or not voting for the Union was the sole rule by which permission would be given." - This was confirmed by the fact that one of ]\Ir. Tighe's members was refused the nominal office because
* Plowden, vol. ii. part ii. p. 967.
* Ibid., p. 971.
158 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
his successor would be an independent member. A still more flagitious case was the refusal of the escheatorship to Lieut-Colonel Cole, called to military service in Corfu. This refusal was in deliberate opposition to constitutional practice, for the Viceroy avowed that " hitherto this ofhce has been granted without any consideration of the politics of the individual solrciting it." ^ The House was adjourned to June i by 47 to 32, and was then suddenly closed by a speech from the Viceroy. He would not dissolve it, and so take the sense of the country upon the question, as the patriots desired, because " the favourers of the measure are lukewarm," he said ; and very few would refuse an anti-Union test if it would save fifty guineas election expenses. ^ Nor could he deny that sheriffs had been instructed to refuse to convene county meetings, and so prevent public opinion from expressing itself.^ When the con- stituencies did assemble, under the authority of magistrates, the military occasionally interfered by '* menace and intimidation " to deter free dis- cussion * — a threatening proceeding in a country under military rule.
1 Cornwallis to Portland, May 19. The trick seemed too scandalous for English opinion. He was advised in future to follow the English rule (Portland, May 25 ; " Castlereagh Correspondence "),
2 July 3. To Ross.
^ Plowden, Plunket's Speech, vol. ii. p. 971.
* Plowden, vol. ii. p. 919, admits the viceroy "neglected no means " outside or inside Parliament ; but that he found " the majority of the nation, however desirous of a continuance of connection, hostile to the scheme of union."
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 159
Freed from the supervision of Parliament, the Viceroy set about his foul work more energetically. The opposition was " formidable in character and talents." On June 26 he sent Portland the names of those whom (in addition to Parnell, chancellor of the exchequer, and Prime-Serjeant Fitzgerald) he had now dismissed. These were Wolfe, Knox, Foster, Neville, Cole Hamilton, A. Hamilton, J. C. Beresford. The first three sacrificed a thousand a year each as commissioners of the revenue. They were worthy to head that noble " Army of Martyrs," as Auckland termed them, which the Castle created all over the country. Other gallant hearts were tempted in vain. Cornwallis went on with the evil work, groaning over its filthiness, fully con- scious of his own iniquity. It was the wish of his life to " avoid all this dirty business " ; but he carried it on. His was '* the most cursed of all situations"; but he did not resign it. He de- clared he longed to kick those whom he courted ; ^ but he preferred to play the hypocrite. The country, he admitted, was daily becoming more quiet ; nothing impeded perfect peace but *' the ferocity of the loyalists." But he persisted in terrorising ^ and in tainting, and, while corrupting, he moaned over the corruptness of the Unionist
^ Cornwallis to Ross, May 20.
2 On March 6 Cornwallis had personally decided upon 400 court-martial cases ; 131 /persons had been sentenced to death, of whom 90 were executed ; 418 were banished or transported — to the fleet or to Prussia (Cornwallis to Portland, February 28 ; Castlereagh to Wickham, March 6). Even in 1800 forty courts- martial sat (" Reports from Committee of Secrecy." London : April, 1 801). Assize courts were also at work.
l6o INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
proselytes. " My occupation is now of the most unpleasant nature — negotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt people under heaven. I despise and hate myself every hour for engaging in such dirty work. ..."
" The demands of our friends rise in proportion to the appearance of strength on the other side. If Lord D(ownshire) declares against us, many of our recruits will insist on higher bounty." So he wrote. ^ The essential corruptness of his bargains is shown by the fact that they were confessedly contingent on the passage of the Government Bill. " Among the many engagements which I have been obliged to contract in the event of the success of the legislative Union, I have promised to use my utmost efforts to obtain an earldom for Lord Kenmare." ^ Money was obtained direct from the English secret service fund, for the cor- ruption of Irish members.^ Pensions, offices of
* To Ross, January 21 and June 19.
2 To Portland, June 28. Even professed Unionists, like the bigot Musgrave, held aloof for terms. Persons connected with Government told him he had no chance of receiving a favour " unless I made terms and obtained a specific promise before- hand." It would ease his mind to be made certain of what acceptable appointment he should get " when the question of the Union will be determined " (Musgrave to Cooke, November i). " A few words from your grace in the envelope will secure his attendance " (Castlereagh to Portland, December 11), A barrister wrote that " Others had not concealed how circum- spect they had been in making — what I despise — a dirty bargain " — but yet he prudently hinted that it would gratify his friends if he got a promise — in writing (J. D. Grady to Lord Glentworth ; " Castlereagh Correspondence," vol. ii. p. 121).
'"Private and most secret" (January 7, 1799). Wickham writes to Castlereagh that next day a messenger should be sent off with the required remittance, and that Portland hoped
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND l6l
emolument, were granted with a like object, and yeomanry corps were kept unnecessarily on foot whose commanders pocketed the pay of the privates, their tenants, as rent.^
The Viceroy, on July 22, started on a three weeks' tour in the terrorised south, " for the pur- pose of obtaining declarations in favour of the Union." ^ His gracious presence and promises stimulated some local magnates, who exerted their all-powerful influence on their humble neighbours, and thus a certain number of paper-declarations were got up. It was judged desirable to have some Catholic addresses. On his return to Dublin, he informs Portland of his great success, and the zeal of nearly a dozen noble landlords, including the lord chancellor. In Tipperary and Waterford he had been particularly successful ; the latter, ipideed, might " be considered as unanimous." ^ A month later he writes, " The counties of Waterford and Tipperary are reported to be in a state of pre- paration for an immediate rising " ; * they at once were proclaimed under the Insurrection Act. The accuracy of the vice-regal diagnosis, and the value
soon to place " a larger sum at the Lord-Lieutenant's disposal '* (" Castlereagh Correspondence "). Apparently this second sum was sent also. On December 12 Portland is asked to assist them " in the same way and to the same extent " {£5,000) as previous to Elliott's leaving London. Elliott was there in September. This third sum was sent in the first week of January, 1800. Others followed.
1 Plowden (post-Union) " History," vol. i. pp. 1 12-184.
2 To Ross, July 21.
3 To Portland, August 14. * To Ross, September 16.
II
l62 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
of the paper-declarations, may be determined from this instance.
A paid agent was sent through Ulster, in August, to prepare the way,^ and the Viceroy followed to obtain the expected declarations from London- derry (lately "blockaded" for its treason), and half a dozen small towns or petty hamlets, all carefully enumerated. At Dundalk he was sur- prised by an address from a priest and some of his flock. In Belfast, great and opulent, Lord Donegal's father-in-law " doubted whether he could obtain a respectable signature," so a banquet was devised, as a public mark of approbation should be obtained " in some manner." ^ The bishop could not attend. Cornwallis avoided Down, on account of " that proud leviathan," Lord Down- shire ; also Monaghan, Cavan, and Fermanagh for similar causes. He reported sanguinely the com- plete success of his tour.^ It is not surprising to note that, in the same week, " General Lake, who is recently returned from the north, says the people in that part of the kingdom never appeared more ripe for mischief." *
Great efforts were made to obtain the assent of the old nation to the Union. It has been alleged that the Catholics favoured it, but never was favour shown by acts so hostile. Their committee
1 Dawson to Marshall, August 28 (" Castlereagh Corre- spondence.")
- Cornwallis to Portland, October 22.
3 To Portland, October 22.
* Elliott to Castlereagh, October 17 ("Castlereagh Corre- spondence.")
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 163
was the first body to denounce the project on the eve of FitzwilHam's departure. They supported the patriots in ParHament. When Grattan seceded and the opposition seemed crushed, the more ener- getic leaders took part with the " United Society."
Of its leading members forty-nine were Pro- testants, forty-five Presbyterians, and forty-two Catholics ; of these were executed over ten per cent, of the Episcopalians, over eleven per cent, of the Presbyterians, and over twenty-eight per cent, of the Catholics ! Thirteen Presbyterian ministers were accused, of whom three were executed ; of the fourteen priests accused six were executed.^ Of the 50,000 persons slain in battle or elsewhere, the vast majority were Catholics. Did they fall in support of the Government measure ?
It is true that several aged bishops were influenced by intimidation, by horror of the continuing cruel- ties, and by hope of favours and freedom to turn from colonial terrorism to a Union. 2 Archbishop Troy, ^ of Dublin, records that thirty-nine " chapels " were burned down in his district, a dozen of them in 1799, others in 1800. The Castle held sworn informations against him and sixty of his priests of high treason.* Hundreds had been executed on charges as groundless.^ Daily around him, all
1 See lists of names in Madden, United lyishman, ist series, Appendix x.
2 The four archbishops with six bishops assented in January, 1799, to state-payment and the veto.
3 Troy MSS., Madden, ibid.
* Camden to Portland, May 6, 1797.
^ What saved him and others was, not the clemency of the junto, but its fear of the effect on the army and militia, largely Catholic.
164 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
over the countr}^ " the same wretched business of courts-martial, hanging, transporting, etc., at- tended by all the dismal scenes of wives, sisters, fathers, kneeling and crying, is going on as usual," as Cornwallis wrote in September.^ The old and timid pastor was told the Union would bring peace and safety, and he promoted it. Major- General Asgill had called Bishop Lanigan of Water- ford to account the year before, for abetting seditious sermons ; ^ when the Viceroy had written to London that all the lower priests were ordered at confession to urge the people to stand by their country, and Dr. Troy besought that the prelates should be exculpated from calumnies that " operated most dreadfully." ^ Even at the close of 1799 Corn- wallis admitted that ** the vilest informers are hunted out from the prisons to attack, by the most barefaced perjur}^ the lives of all who are suspected of being, or of having been, disaffected ; and, in- deed, every Roman Catholic of influence is in the greatest danger." * Under such circumstances, while some bishops held firm, many gave way, whom their flocks stigmatised as " Orange " bishops.^
Catholic addresses should be procured, and some were arranged. Castlereagh sent out drafts from the Castle to be signed and returned as
1 To Castlereagh, September 26.
2 Dr. Lanigan to Dr. Troy, March 10, 1798 ("Castlereagh Correspondence ").
3 Dr. Troy to Mr. Marshall [ibid.).
* To Major-General Ross, November 6, 1799.
"Dr. Dillon to Dr. Troy, July 9 and September i.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 165
addresses to the Castle. Under-Secretary Cooke was zealous at the work. In September they had got " a Catholic declaration from Longford. I am promoting one in Roscommon," he added. ^ It has been said that the Catholics supported the Union ; but Cornwallis declared " the great mass of the people " to be United men ; and of the great mass the vast majority were Catholics. In 1798 and 1799 they had their hopes fixed on France and fighting, not on petitions ; the struggles, sufferings, and deaths of so many of them suffi- ciently spoke their convictions. When the storm abated, when it was seen tliat the resolution of Lord Fingal's meeting had been violated by the concoction of Castle petitions, they again appeared in public meeting as Catholics to protest against the Union. They had co-operated with the Pro- testants as Irishmen since FitzwiUiam's departure. Now a great aggregate meeting of metropolitan Catholics was announced for January 14, 1800. Town-Major Sirr, a notorious rebel-hunter, brought up his armed men, who grounded muskets with a loud clash at the doorway to deter and disperse them. It was a critical moment. Four of their old committee were among the State prisoners ; Broughall, the late secretary, was in jail ; Tone, their former secretary, dead. But they stood firm. A new man had arisen to them. O'Connell then and there made his maiden speech. He reminded them that they had resolved to meet no more as
^ September 18, 1799
rG6 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
Catholics for political discussion, but as Irishmen. Their conduct had been taken foul advantage of ; it was circulated that they favoured the Union, though multitudes of them had taken action in different capacities against it. "To refute a calumny directed against them as a sect," he said, " they were obliged to come forward as a sect, and in the face of their country disavow the base conduct imputed to them, and to declare that the assertion of their being favourably inclined to the measure of legislative incorporation was a slander the most vile — a libel the most false, scandalous, and wicked that ever was directed against the character of an individual or a people."
He reiterated the chivalrous determination of the Catholic Committee of 1795. " If Emancipation," he said, " be offered for our consent to the measure — even if Emancipation after the Union were a gain — we would reject it with prompt indigna- tion." Nay, going further, he verified Cornwallis's remark by declaring, amid loud applause, that with hearts full of desire for mutual forgiveness and affection, he would prefer a re-enactment of the penal code to the Union, and rather " confide in the justice of my brethren, the Protestants of Ireland, who have already liberated me," he ex- claimed, " than lay my country at the feet of foreigners." These patriotic and high-spirited men well deserved the eulogy which Grattan bestowed on them.i
^ Dublin Evening Post, January 14, 18, 25, voL 9 ; " O'Connell's Life and Speeches."
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 167
A Catholic address had been " promoted " in Limerick.^ The Catholics held a general meeting, and repudiated it as the expression of " partial and influenced " men, " formed without our con- currence and prosecuted without our knowledge " (January 23). ^ Two days later, Cooke's Longford address was repelled by the Catholics of that county, who declare their " full and entire appro- bation of the manly and liberal resolutions of the Roman Catholics of Dublin," " and adopt them as our own " (January 25). Over two thousand signatures were appended, and in a few days " up- wards of four thousand additional signatures " were forwarded.^ Much has been made of the one priest and " several " Roman Catholics who addressed NCornwallis at Dundalk ; but mention is suppressed of the aggregate meeting of the Catholics of the entire county (Louth) at Dundalk, when, declaring further silence criminal, they rejected all lures, and appealed to every sect of Irishmen to forget all religious feuds and support the constitution of their country against provincial dependence and irrevocable degradation.* The sheriff of Monaghan
1 Waterford supplies a standard of the value of such papers. In the contents to the " Castlereagh Correspondence," vol. ii,, may be found this summary, sparkling with unintended humour ; " The Marquess of Waterford to Lord Castlereagh, on the favourable opinion of the county and city of Waterford towards the Union, and the manifest intention of the lower classes to rise and murder the supporters of the measure ! " The entire lower classes, including nearly all his o\\ti under-tenants, were so favourably disposed towards the Union as to be intent on murdering its promoters !
-Dublin Evening Post, January 28, 1800.
^ Ibid., February i and 4
* Ibid., February i.
l68 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
County refusing to call a meeting, the freeholders met at Castleblayney, and addressed Lord Blayney, protesting against reviving the measure as con- trary to " the solemn decision of Parliament and almost unanimous wish of the people," and repro- bated ** the corrupt, insidious, and unconstitutional means " taken to obtain signatures privately in several counties " through all the disgusting ap- proaches of ministerial terror and ministerial in- dulgence." The address was signed by three clergymen : a dissenter, a seceder, and a priest — and by 4,440 others (January 7).^ Roscommon having spoken out, a Unionist protest was got up ; but several alleged signatories declared their names were forged, and Mr. Crofton, M.P., denounced the forgeries and detestable means employed to gain signatures as most odious. ^ In Meath, where Catholics and Protestants were notoriously ad- verse, a similar Unionist declaration was got up ; twenty-five freeholders and landholders detected and denounced the forgery of their names ; ^ and twenty-four others, headed by a parish priest, de- claring they had been duped by false representa- tions, withdrew their names. ^ In Clare, the Catho- lics signed the anti-Union declaration with the Protestants.^ In Cork, a common declaration had been presented ; but later, " to refute a false
^ Dublin Evening Post, February 4.
2 Ibid.y February 6.
3 Ibid., February 25. * Ibid., February 15.
^ See names, Ibid., February 20.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 169
representation," three parishes, with their priests leading, sent forward a separate CathoHc declara- tion.^
In many places the reign of terror was so rigid that Catholics dared not petition. In Wexford, for instance, where they had fought and suffered, as never Vendeans did, the right to petition was forbidden. Edward Hay, a friend of Burke, on his return from England in November, 1799, had thought of it : in one week, in 1795, he had ob- tained over 22,000 signatures against Fitzwilliam's recall, and presented it at the King's levee.
He was threatened, by a Unionist M.P., with immediate arrest, and, having suffered much already, he had to pledge himself not to interfere as a Catholic. 2
Hence the Castle document stands alone. The influence of the Marquess of Waterford got up a Catholic declaration in his district, but in a few weeks he was crying for yeomanry ; the " entire lower class " was about to rise, pikes were pre- paring, forges red-hot. Informants " laughed at the idea of Catholics at Dungannon and elsewhere signing for Union " ; they said " it was better to be hanged than lose their rights, meaning the Union," and that " the Orangemen, so many of them as were averse to the Union, would join the
^Dublin Evening Post, February 18, and April 3.
^ " History of the Insurrection," Introduction, p. xxxiii. Dublin, 1803. Hay was Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and devised a new census scheme. Like most Catholics of position, he had been educated on the Continent, and in culture was much superior to the petty despots of his country
1/0 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
Catholics to prevent it." * They had good reason for that belief.
So vehement, indeed, was the opposition of the Orangemen that, when the Grand Lodge (under influence) sought to dissuade them from discussing it as Orangemen, hinting that their pledge to support " the constitution and laws of the kingdom " was sufficient, many lodges dis- sented. Thus Lodge 439, of which the grand secretary, J. C. Beresford, was master, declared they could not " remain tame and silent spectators of a dangerous project, which we conceive fraught with ruin and disgrace to our country, aiming at the utter extinction of our constitutional freedom and independence." They denounced it as "a base surrender of our glorious constitution," and pledged themselves to resist it by every consti- tutional means. 2 Thirty-six lodges in Armagh and Monaghan, containing 2,400 members, issued a series of strong resolutions repudiating the Union, and bade Orangemen speak out, lest their silence
* Waterford to Castlereagh, September 9, 1799. Lord Alta- mont supplies another example. Writing from Westport House, he admits " the Roman Catholics are keeping back decidedly," but says " the priests have all offered to sign." The truth of this can be tested by the fact that Government was then offering rewards for three priests of adjoining parishes charged with high treason. He had sent round to all the Roman Catholics of property ; " the wish of most of them would be to stand neuter, or perhaps to oppose it if they had any countenance — that is the fact. Several will sign from influence, some from fear, but the majority, I believe, will pretend they have given their opinions already, and can't decently retract them " (" Castle- reagh Correspondence," vol. ii. p. 327).
^ Dublin Evening Post, 1 799.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND IJl
should be misconstrued.^ In Fermanagh, thirteen lodges adopted these resolutions, and other lodges bound themselves also to defend the ** liberties of Ireland " against the " abominable Union."
During the recess there were few public meet- ings, because the sheriffs (Castle nominees) " more studiously discountenanced them." ^ The Govern- ment exercising its usual arts in support of their obnoxious measure, " endeavoured to promote it by intrigue or enforce it by intimidation." ^ The " power of the army " was brought to bear, and also the dread of dismissal on all who held situa- tions.* It was, therefore, possible to get up " clan- destine addresses," ^ b}^ means against which the people protested afterwards. Even a Unionist author of the period confesses that " a great part of the Hibernian nation dreaded the approach of the Union as that of a fiend whose baleful touch would annihilate national dignity and independ- ence," spirit and prosperity.® The enforced silence of the many, as well as the extorted or influenced declarations of a few, served the Unionists. But as the opening of Parliament approached, the popula- tion, knowing the urgency of the case, assembled in meetings — despite refusals of sheriffs — and con- tinued to declare their protest, till protest was hopeless.
^Dublin Evening Post, March 20, 1800.
^Coote, "History of the Union," p. 299. Dublin, 1S02. The author was Unionist, but honest. 3 Ibid., p. 289.
* Ibid., p. 295. «
6 Speech of Mr. (Lord) Grej-, " Pad. Hist.," voL xxxv. p. 66. " Coote, pp. 289-290.
172 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
The first cry of the Government in 1800 was for more secret-service money from England. What they received was insufficient ; they were in great distress for more, and more was sent.^ At various intervals throughout the session the cry was repeated, and the British treasury sent, out of its secret funds, money to pay the corrupted Unionists. The system was not new ; it was adopted, for instance, in Lord Carlisle's viceroyalty, when the secretary explained that their hands were watched in Ireland, and suggested the
1 January 2, letter asking more than the last (;^5,ooo). Money- sent, and more promised. Again, February 27, " No prospect of converts " ; hopes to keep friends true ; "a few votes might have a very injurious effect. We require your assistance, and you must be prepared to enable us to fulfil the expectations which it was impossible to avoid creating at the moment of difficulty." March i, Cooke, " Our demands increase," April 5, duke anxious to send the needful ; " Pitt will continue to let you have from ;;^8,ooo to ;^io,ooo for five years." " Will find out to-night what sum can be sent." May 6, " I do not come quite empty- handed." July 10, " Necessity of supplies — we are in great want.' Blacquiere's business very unpleasant : succeeded in a final adjustment ; " he played the true black." " Some other of our Swiss guards are pressing us hard." July 12, " We shall absolutely require the remainder of what I asked for, namely fifteen (? thousand), to wind up matters, exclusive of the annual arrangement." December 9, required king's letter to convert money saved off civil list to secret service ; pressed to discharge engagements ; also considerable sums borrowed from a person. May 6, 1801, entreats to have money matters settled. Wonders to see " Mr. A(ddington's) secret-service money so limited this year." The sum voted in England M'as less by / 100,000 than the year before ; evidently the difference was due to the great corruptiOxi in Ireland in 1800. When it is also remembered that the Irish national debt, which (according to Wakefield, vol. ii. p. 278) was in 1792 only ;^i,7i8,240, in 1795 only ^3,185,990, increased (under the junto and Cornwallis) to ;^34, 91 1,838 in 1 801, the means of indirect bribery must have been plentiful.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 1 73
Bwindling bargain, that for these secret supplies the treasury might recoup itself by charges, pro- perly English, being put on the Irish establish- ment. ^
A somewhat similar fraud was now likewise perpetrated ; for sums of money, the surplus of an excessive civil list, were secretly allocated to the payment of Unionists who had voted it. When cash was not copious, the Castle borrowed, and was repaid from the British treasury in secret.
Besides mere ready-money bribes, Cornwallis offered sixteen peerages in pledge ; ^ and, in ad- dition to all these, thirteen legal appointments, thirty promises of salaried places, at from £400 to £800, or pensions of from £300 to £500 ; and thirty-five of these bribes were pledged to thirty- five members of Parliament. Three of the pen- sions, nominalty granted to others, were really for members.^ Cornwallis, as Castlereagh urged, did " buy out and secure for ever the fee-simple
1 Eden (Auckland) to Lord Hillsborough, July 15, 1781 ["Most Secret "].
'Cornwallis to Portland, June 17.
^Cornwallis to Portland, February 19, 1801. When the time came for the British Iving and Cabinet to endorse these promises, there was some demur as to certain discreditable persons, but Cornwallis and Castlereagh held out. They were directed to carry the Union, wrote Castlereagh to Camden, June 18, and the Government could not back out of these engagements. He warned the Cabinet through Cooke (June 21), that the business would get blown : "It will be no secret what has been promised ; disappointment will encourage, not prevent disclosures ; and the only effect of such a proceeding on their part will be to add the weight of their testimony to that of the anti-Unionists, in proclaiming the profligacy of the manner by which the Union has been accomplished."
174 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
of Irish corruption " ; and by means of this free- hold of foulness, through his " Swiss guards," who so dunned him, he forced on the Union. Such was the cohort of corruption, daily enlarging as time passed, which confronted the patriot " Army of martyrs." The most splendid bribes pressed on Bushe, Edgeworth, Hardy, Burrowes, and others, were rejected.
Under these circumstances, the session opened on January 15, with many new members in place of others who retired " upon terms." The Viceroy avoided the mention of Union in his speech, but Sir Lawrence Parsons, referring to the words spoken on the abrupt closure of last session, proposed an amendment to the address afhiiming their desire to maintain their independent legislature, which had given freedom and prosperity to the kingdom. He was vigorously supported by Plunket, who exposed the manner in which the few thousand signatures had been obtained for Government addresses, most of them by fear, fraud, and forgery. Fitzgerald, Ponsonby, Moore, and Bushe followed, stating the case against the Union ; and Egan, at seven o'clock in the morning, was referring to the constitution of '82, when Henry Grattan entered.
Worn with long illness, suffering with his nation in mind and in body, he had been induced to appear once more in the field, whose approaches the enemy had seized. He came dressed in the old volunteer uniform, his pistols in his pocket, to show that, if his frame were feeble, his heart was undaunted
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 1 75
and his spirit daring as ever.^ Intense excite- ment thrilled the House, and every member rose out of respect: the author of the Constitution had come to defend it from destruction. Grattan de- livered an admirable speech seated. On a division 96 voted for, 138 against the amendment, giving Government a majority of 42, in reality only 38, for two members (for Clogher) were unseated and replaced by patriots. Immediately on the ad- journment (to February 5) of the House, at ten o'clock a.m., an aggregate meeting of the citizens was held, the high sheriffs presiding, to protest against the Union, and to thank Grattan, Foster, Beresford, and Ogle. This made vain the Castle's hope that the return of Grattan might alarm the more Conservative patriots. The guild of mer- chants met with the same object, and warmly thanked their Roman Catholic fellow-citizens for their manly and patriotic conduct. The yeomanry, Orangemen, and Catholics ^ were called on to form a solid band to resist the Union.
The Castle grew again alarmed. An oppor- tunity for wreaking vengeance on an eminent opponent was discovered. The Marquess of Down- shire was courted, until he resolutely took his
1 Grattan was elected for Wicklow after twelve o'clock on the night of January 15. Henry Tighe got the return, and galloped into Dublin, reached Baggot Street about five o'clock, and roused Grattan. He had been very ill, but was carried in a sedan chair to the House. He expected to be provoked to a duel, and " pistolled off," but braved the danger.
2 The Roman Catholics " are joining the standard of the opposition " (Cornwallis, January 31).
176 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
place with the patriotic opposition. In conjunc- tion with W. B. Ponsonby and the younger Charle- mont, and authorised by thirty-eight county mem- bers, he issued a circular, January 20, stating that petitions to declare the real sense of the free- holders would be expedient, and asking the re- cipient, if he approved, to use his influence to have such a petition " from your county." Some of these went to officers of the Downshire militia, and this was declared a military offence, though Lord Downshire denied that he ever appealed to them as soldiers. The terms of the circular proved his truth. But Cornwallis, feeling " his own influence at stake," ^ got him dismissed as colonel, as Governor of Down, and as privy councillor.
There was no disapprobation when " Sir James May, collector of the port of Waterford, assembled his yeomen on the general parade of that city, and left it to their option whether they would sign in favour of the Union or be shipped to Botany Bay." ^ They signed.
The Castle calculated chances, and felt the case doubtful ; " some of our unwilling supporters " were leaving, being heartened by popular senti- ment. Bribery became more profuse. Castle- reagh calculated on a majority of 64 ; ^ Auckland
1 " Cornwallis Correspondence," p. 179. To Ross : " Whether the measure may appear strong in England, I cannot say, but it is perfectly suited to the genius of Ireland. All our friends say that by this act of vigour I have saved the country and carried the Union " (February 13).
2 MacNevin, Introduction, p, xvii. 1807. 2 To J. King, January 31.
Independent parliament of Ireland 177
wanted a majority of not less than 60.^ When the House met on February 5, Lord Castlereagh outlined the advantages derivable from the measure in his most plausible style. He was strenuously met ; and on a division had but 158 to 115 — a majority of only 43. " When the number of place- men, pensioners, and other influenced members is considered," observes Plowden, " the minister had but slender ground for triumphing." ^ Twelve of the Castle's unwilling friends had voted for the country ; the situation appeared critical.^ Peti- tions came in great numbers from the counties and corporations against the measure ; Pitt wished for counter-petitions, but could only get a miserable few, the Government not daring to risk public meetings.* Nevertheless, the measure was pressed.
1 " Historical Review," voL ii. p. 1024. "Promotions, grants, concessions, arrangements, promises, were lavished with a profusion never before known in that country."
2 To Beresford, February 4.
3 In the Lords, of peers present, Government had a majority of only thirty-four ; proxies of absentees made it forty-nine.
* Castlereagh to Beresford, April 10. Mr. (Lord) Grey, in the English House, aptly compared their conduct to that of Bucking- ham getting the crown for Richard IH :
" Some followers of mine own At lowest end o' the hall hurl'd up their caps, And some ten voices cried, ' God save King Richard ! ' And thus I took the 'vantage of those few. ' Thanks, gentle citizens and friends,' quoth I : * This general applause and cheerful shout Argues your wisdom and your love to Richard.' "
Two-thirds of the county members, and the representatives of all the chief cities and towns, he said, opposed. Of the Unionists, 116 were placemen ; some English generals, without a foot of ground in Ireland, completely depended on Govern- ment. To " pack " Parliament, sixty-three seats had been
12
178 INDEPENDENT PARLUMENT OF IRELAND
In the debates which followed, Foster pointed to the fact that the Irish House included country gentlemen, merchants, lawj^ers, and men of all professions ; removal to London would exclude the commercial and professional elements. Every article was fought against. Proposals w^ere made to address the King, to inform him of the actual feeling of the nation, and again to ask him to dis- solve Parliament and take the sense of the electors on so important a change. The Government re- jected every motion by its hired majority. On May 26 Grattan, having in the meantime been forced into a duel with Corry, opposed the com- mittal of the Union Bill in a memorable speech, and concluded with an eloquent peroration, end- ing thus : " Yet I do not give up my countr}^ I see her in a swoon, but she is not dead ; though in her tomb she lies helpless and motionless, still there is on her lips a spirit of life, and on her cheeks a glow of beauty.
" ' Thou art not conquered ; Beauty's ensign yet Is crimson on thy lips and in thy cheeks, And Death's pale flag is not advanced there.' "
Lord Castlereagh reprobated this as prophetic treason and rebellion,^ but his majority of 45 fell to 37 on a second division this night — a strange
vacated, their holders getting nominal offices. The petition from Down, he adds, was signed by 17,000 ; the counter- petition by only 415. Against the measure 707,000 signed ; for it only 3,000, and some merely asked discussion. Twenty- seven counties and almost all corporations petitioned against it (" Parliamentary History of England," vol. xxxv. p. 66). ^ Cooke to King, May 27.
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 1 79
circumstance, as, indeed, the smallness of the majority at most was remarkable, seeing that fifty-six members held offices " at pleasure." ^ Lord Corry, member for Tyrone, made the final effort of the party, moving a long address to the King against the completion. This was intended as a last protest and appeal to posterity. 2
The independent peers also, about twenty, placed on record their solemn protest. On June 7, the Bill was read in the Commons a third time and passed, after a division, many members, " finding all useless," as Grattan said, " retired with safe con- sciences, but with breaking hearts." At the gate without, Curran, hearing the result, turned to a member of the United Society and in bitter in- dignation exclaimed, " Where are now 3^0 ur thirty thousand men ? "
Evidence had been given " in committee " of decay of trade, owing to the agitation and prospect of the Union. Alderman Darley had fewer men by three-fourths employed in building than the preceding j^ear.^ The export of fine cloths, which had risen from 8,600 yards in 1780, to over a quarter of a million in 178 1, to over a third in 1782, over a half in 1783, to two-thirds in 1784, and to over three-fourths in 1785 ; which had kept a respectable level during the foreign wars, standing at 174,000 in 1796, and 150,000 in 1797 ; — fell to
1 " Comwallis Correspondence," of&cial return, voL iii. p. 243
2 Plowden, Appendix cxxi.
^Dublin Evening Post, "Parliamentary Intelligence," March iS, 1800.
l8o INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
33,000 in 1800, and to 3,800 yards in the first year of union. Coarse cloths shared the same fate. Starting from 494 yards in 1780, they reached 40,000 in three years ; in 1796 they stood at 128,000 yards ; in 1800 at 2,196 ; and in the first Union year at 550. On the other hand, imports from British manufacturers of the finer cloths rose from 539,000 yards in 1796, to 1,265,000 in 1800 ; and of coarse cloths from 1,175,000 to 2,^33,000. They overstocked the market, to ruin the Irish manufactures, and succeeded.
Education suffered ; schools which four or five score young nobles used to frequent decayed and disappeared.^ It was the avowed policy of the Cabinet to discourage the teaching of the Irish " better orders " in Ireland, and to encourage them " to study and take degrees in either of the two English universities," instead of Dublin. ^ This policy succeeded.
The Irish capital, of course, felt the removal of the Parliament most severely. House-property fell, in some cases, to less than a third its former value. ^ Its social life for brilliance has been likened to that of Paris, whilst it was more convivial, but not in- temperate.* The Viceroy held his levee on Sun-
1 Cloncurry, " Personal Recollections, p. 7. 1847.
2 Portland to the Lord-Lieutenant, August 31, 1799 (" Castle- reagh Correspondence "). The primate's bequest of ;^5,ooo for a university in Armagh was therefore let lapse, particularly as " schismatics and separatists " (dissenters) might profit by it.
' Mornington House, bought from Marquess Wellesley in 1 791 for ;^8,ooo, was sold in the year after the LTnion for ;^2,50o, by Cloncurry (" Recollections," p. 8).
* Ibid., and De Latocnaye, " Promenade."
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND l8l
day ; on Sunday afternoon, the magnates as- sembled on the north circular road, on which " magnificent drive I have frequently seen," says Lord Cloncurry, " three and four coaches-and-six, and eight or ten coaches-and-four passing slowly to and fro in a long procession of other carriages, and between a double column of well-mounted horsemen. Of course the populace were there, too, and saluted with friendly greetings, always cordially and kindly acknowledged." ^ In the evenings they promenaded in the Rotunda, tea being served ; while amateur theatres and operas were customary. Letters were cultivated ; publi- cations flourished. With the Parliament the splendour passed away, and Dublin seemed darkened and deserted, as if a plague had smitten it. ** The Unionists are now few in number," ob- serves Wakefield. Castlereagh had settled in Eng- land, his measure accomplished, there he ulti- mately committed suicide. '* Its supporters had withdrawn themselves from public notice, under loads of wealth, that they may enjoy in retire- ment the rewards of the infamous and the corrupt means by which it was effected. "^
1 De Latocnaye and Cloncurry.
2 Wakefield, "Account of Ireland," vol. ii, p. 392. 1812. He was an Englishman and a friend to the Union, but he ab- horred the arts that " spread venality " and taught men " to barter the most sacred rights of their country for personal interests." He scorned to deny the offence or to plead for the malefactors, as recent writers have done. Cornwallis himself was fully conscious of the iniquity of his action. Writing to his friend Ross the previous summer, June 8, he says, " When it is impossible to gratify the unreasonable demands of our
l82 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
Dublin ceasing to exist as a centre of social and of political life for the nation, its position as such a centre was not taken by London. The higher orders, indeed, rapidly melted away, selling their mansions to Government for offices or barracks, to societies, to merchants, or to a mendicity body. They passed out of the country's ken and became aliens.
The majority of the people, repelled from West- minster, turned their political affections once more to France, subsequently to America. The worst of all was that the great force of national senti- ment, which had for a time united the recent colony and the old nation, which always, when fostered, tended to overcome sectarian animosities, was now broken, and the divided sections strove each for its own object, and were taught to regard the neighbour as a foe. Where formerly there was a struggle of political parties, there now ap-
politicians, I often think of two lines of Swift, speaking of the Lord-Lieutenant and the system of corruption ; —
" ' And then at Beelzebub's great hall Complains his budget is too small.' "
The passage in its complete form illustrates his meaning and situation ;
"Thus to effect his monarch's ends, From hell a viceroy devil ascends, His budget with corruption crammed. The contributions of the damned, Which with unsparing hand he strews Through courts and senates as he goes ; And then at Beelzebub's black hall Complains his budget is too small."
INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND 183
peared a struggle of religious sects, and next a war of classes.
Strange to say, the bitterness of the change induced by the Union was felt keenly by those who contrived it. Commissioner Beresford resented the intrusion of English ideas, ^ exposed pretences about increased revenue, ^ and demanded whether it was supposed that Irish noblemen and men of the highest talents, " will tamely and quietly submit to be kicked, overturned, and trampled upon, and that with the highest insult by the new authorities that have been set up ? " ^
This account of the life of the independent Irish Parliament may well end with the words in which its -executioner appraised, after four years' experience, the system set up in its stead : " I do not conceive," he wrote to Lieutenant General Ross, " that the present plan of govern- ing Jr eland by a king's lieutenant acting under a minister's deputy, can long succeed " * — an unexpected prophecy and condemnation which time has verified.
1 1 understand that your treasury has determined to take the management on themselves, and have already made certain regulations. Surely it would be prudent first to understand the nature of our revenue, and the difference that exists between it and that of England. If they proceed solely on English ideas, they will overturn everything ! (Beresford to Auckland. November 2, 1802).
2 Increase was due to the peace and to the removal (by Irish legislation) of the prohibition on distilling with malt ; this made a difference of a million {ibid.).
5 Beresford to Auckland. Nov. 20, 1804.
* Marquess Cornwallis to Lieutenant-General Ross, October 19, 1804.
1
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
IRISH FISHERS OF THE DEEPi
[Perhaps the most remarkable testimony to the superior sagacity of Irish legislators as regards trade-regulations, and to the superior capacity, enterprise and probity of the Irish people in maritime matters is that cited in the following state- ment. The witnesses to the wisdom and ability displaj'^ed are all strangers — English and Scottish — and so be5'ond impeach- ment of partiality. Be it noted also that whilst credit for good laws is due to the colonial Independent Parliament, credit for the splendid enterprise, industry, and honour which created a great commerce is due to the merchants and men of the Irish nation who, driven off the land by penal laws, conquered and captured the harvests of the sea.]
An Island of Floating Fnod
Imagine an immense Island of Food, breaking loose from its moorings and steadily advancing towards an eager multitude of hungering humanity. All eyes are turned, from the farthest headland and beyond, upon the signs that foretell its approach. Over-shadowed above by an ever-shifting cloud of gannets, gulls, and other sea-fowl, pursued by whales and voracious pirates of the deep, the sudden ripphng of the ocean, beaten by innumerable fins, at last announces its arrival.
This is the Grand Shoal. In extent it was estimated, a century ago, to equal the superficies of Great Britain and Ireland. Setting out from the North Seas in
1 This was read, as an inaugural lecture before the National Literary Society, Dublin, Nov. 13, 1905.
187
1 88 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
early spring, this extraordinary moving mass was observable off the coast of Iceland in March : in May its forerunners, the strongest and boldest of the flock, were to be seen where Shetland divides the seas. So vast is the Grand Shoal in length that the main body does not appear till some weeks later, in June, and so great its breadth that the Shetlands divide it, as a ploughshare divides the soil, turning one furrow to the east and another to the west. The former section descends between Britain and the Continent, the latter moves down the irregular coast of Scotland, until meeting Malin Head, they again divide, the lesser eastern shoal passing through the Irish Sea and St. George's Channel, and the western division, shrunken in all its dimensions, drifting down the coasts of Donegal and Connaught.
From this it is plain that Scotland has been placed by Nature in the van, so far as fishing advantages are concerned, whilst Ireland stands second, indeed, but favoured beyond most other countries. That Ireland so favoured should have to complain of her undeveloped fisheries has given rise to some theories touching the inaptitude of the Celt for maritime enterprise, which serve the purpose of critics who base their judgment on fancy rather than on fact. History does not show that the Celts of Brittany have been slow to affront the perils of marine warfare, nor that their kindred of Scotland lag behind. Granting that in the northern- most shires there is a large infusion of stirring Scan- dinavian blood, it should not be overlooked that a similar leaven leavens the Irish nation, whilst of the Celtic element it must be declared that, if heredity count for anything, the section of mankind which pushed its migration the farthest, overseas and into the westernmost isles of the Old World, ought not
APPENDIX 189
to be the least daring on the water. If the Irish fisheries have been for years practically non-existent we must look for a cause somewhere else than in any inherent inaptitude of the Irish nation.
For that they did display aptitude, enterprise, and success, under other conditions is an historical fact, placed beyond possibility of question by the unhesitat- ing testimony of their neighbours of Scotland and of England. So accustomed have we been of late to regard the Irish fishers as miserable dependents on casual aid, for whom the benevolence of the public must be from time to time invoked to save them from perishing, that it comes with the shock of an impro- bable paradox to be told that the activity, enterprise, extent, and success of the Irish fishers were once the admiration and envy of the adjoining islands. That, however, is a truth, but it is a truth which, as will be shown, took its origin with the existence of an inde- pendent Irish Parliament and decayed after its fall.
The Irish Teach Kelp-Making in Scotland
That the Irish had earlier aptitudes in maritime matters is certain. Ho\i^, for instance, was the manu- facture of kelp introduced into Uist and all the neigh- bouring coasts ? About the year 1754, " Mr. Mac Donald, of Boisdale, brought some men from Ireland, for the first time, to teach the natives of Uist how to manufacture sea-weed into kelp. The profits he reaped from this manufacture soon induced others to follow his example, and it soon became an object of great importance all along those coasts." — (Third re- port on the State of the British Fisheries, Appendix II. Note E. Reports of Committees of the House of Com- mons (England) Vol. X. 1785 -1800).
190 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
Irish Fishers Teach the Shetlanders
Scottish fishers now may go farther out to sea than the Irish, but it was otherwise in 1765. In that year Messrs. Crisp and Warren who usually purchased from the landlords and tacksmen of the Shetlands (export- ing the fish in the names of the latter, who were careful to obtain the bounty) made an effort to start a separate enterprise. The Shetla.nd Islands then possessed five hundred fishing boats, the largest holding six, the smallest four fishermen : the latter proceeded a distance of six and the former a distance of twelve leagues from land. Now, to give the new undertaking a superior chance of success, the merchants just named found it necessary to employ " eight Irish wherries, with eight men each " ; these wherries were " about 25 tons burthen each, having each about 40 fishing lines of 54 fathoms in length each line, and they did prosecute in a very dexterous manner the fishing by going further out upon the banks, and two months sooner than the Shetlanders can do in their small boats." — [Ihid. app. No. 9.)
The Shetlanders demurred to this proceeding of the " Irish fishers " as disturbing to the fish, but the principal ground for their dissatisfaction must have lain in the recorded fact that whilst their 500 boats and 2,500 fishers caught 11,274 quintals, the sixty-four Irishmen in their eight wherries secured 1,056 quintals — that is, though the Irish fishermen w^ere but one- fortieth of the total, they captured more than the eleventh part of the entire sea-harvest.
V,
Neglect and Encouragement
Skill and daring these Irish fishers must have owned, and been famed for possessing, other\\ise none would
APPENDIX ^ igi
have fetched them to the far northern isles, there to rival and excel the hardy natives. But their aptitude and energy had not been encouraged, but repressed. Their herring fishery was as completely neglected before the Irish Parliament took it up as it became after that Parliament's extinction. " The great and only profitable fishery in Ireland," remarked a Scottish witness in 1784, " is that of the herring fishery which — till of late years — was totally neglected, but is now encouraged and prosecuted with great vigour." — (Third Report, p. 446.) The manner and means by which this, as well as other branches of industry, was fostered have given occasion for contemptuous censure. Fre- quently the flippant critic may be heard railing at the " bounty system," and protection duties, and the alleged outspringing frauds and abuses, as exhibiting a peculiar Irish idea of encouraging trade. Unlike the ass in the lion's hide, ignorance, speaking in the mask of political science, does not always betray itself to the multitude. In this instance pseudo-scientific ignorance has been peculiarly unjust. By the un- questionable testimony of English and Scottish records it is made clear that the bounties were greater — the protection duties greater — the frauds incomparably greater, and the trade laws much less judicious and worse administered in England and in Scotland than in Ireland ! Probably nothing could be adduced so favourable to the governing capacity of the Irish Parliament as its successful treatment of the Irish Fishery, although this important chapter of history has been altogether overlooked.
The Bounty System in England and Scotland : Its Faults
The Bounty system began in England. Various attempts had been made in the reigns of Charles I
192 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
and Charles II to establish a British Fishery, but they failed ; nothing effective was done until the reign of George II. In 1750 an Act was passed to incorporate a society for the encouragement of the British White Herring Fishery, with a view to the advantage of trade and navigation, the employment of the industrious poor, and the formation of a nursery for seamen. A premium of three per cent, was allowed on the capital employed in the business ; and further, a bounty of 30s. per ton was granted to the owners of all decked vessels or " busses " engaged in the fisher}^ (23 George II). Half a million was forthwith sub- scribed in London and the " Society of the Free British Fishery " founded, which engaged from thirty to forty busses. But, favoured and fostered as it was, it turned out a failure, and would have dissolved had not the Government come to its assistance. Seven years later, in 1757, an additional bounty of twenty shillings was granted ; making in all fifty shillings per ton (30 George II). This kept it afloat a little longer, but it soon after broke up, sold off, and realised a bankrupt divi- dend of seven and a half per cent, on the capital in- vested !
The enterprising towns on the Clyde then took up the business, and, beginning with thirteen busses in 1760, they increased the number to 261 in six years. But in 1766, when this great fleet of busses came sailing into port, their owners were thunderstruck by the news that there was no money to pay the bounty (Third Report, p. 41, a, b) ! The Scottish revenue had run short, and a suspension of payment by the State *^ was the consequence. Year after year the same answer
reached the ruined owners, until in 1770 only nineteen busses proceeded to sea. At last the surviving owners, in general meeting, proposed to accept in future from
APPENDIX 193
Government a composition of thirty shillings per ton, if paid punctually. This was agreed to, and the number of busses rose to 220 in 1778, when it fell away till it reached 153 in the year 1783.
It would be easy to ridicule these efforts, and had the country concerned been Ireland, the jibe would be already written and the moral pointed. " What a remarkable illustration of Irish ideas on political economy is this," it would be said (with respect to the first case), "where a Government not only floats a company, but buoys it up when sinking, and where despite all fosterage the incapacity of the people makes it bankmpt ! " Or again, taking the second case, we should be asked to admire " the utter absence of fore- sight displayed by the improvident Hibernian legis- lators, who, \\ith the promise of large bounties, raised a fishing fleet whose claims outran the revenue, made the State insolvent for years, and ruined the trade ! "
The Irish System Superior
If Ireland did no worse than her neighbours she may claim exemption from censure ; if she did better, then great credit must be given to her legislature and her people for superiority in a department where their alleged incapacity has been a commonplace of censors.
It was not by lavish expenditure of money, but by weU-adapted regulations that the Irish Parliament achieved success. The astonishing fact is that the bounty in Ireland was lower, but whilst lower it was thirty-three per cent, more valuable than the Scotch, because the rules were better framed. Such is the testimony of a competent Scotch witness. He was asked " in what respect the premiums granted by Ireland for encouraging the herring fishery are more
13
194 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
judicious than those granted in England ? " In reply he said : "He only spoke in general, that the Irish Parhament was more liberal than ours respecting the Fishery Laws." This liberality related to restrictions not to finance. " The fisheries," he continued, " are under no unnecessary restraints, and a twenty shilling bounty there is preferable to a thirty shilling bounty on the Hebrides fishery, when all circumstances are considered." Any doubt as to the relative amounts of bounty must be dispelled by his succeeding words : " The Irish Parhament some time ago did not seem to be fully decided with regard to the mode of en- couraging their fishery : they had since resolved to give it every necessary assistance. A very patriotic gentleman with whom he had conversed on that sub- ject declared that if it were found expedient or necessary for the encouragement of the Irish fishery, he would propose in the House of Commons to extend the Irish bounty equal to that of Britain " — (Third report, p. 42). Consequently the bounty granted in Ireland was absolutely less than that granted in Britain !
The Irish More Active
The British law forbade the busses to set sail before August the ist, the Irish permitted theirs to put to sea after March the ist. A week or more was lost to the Scotch busses by a compulsory rendezvous at Campbelltown Bay for Customs examination. They were obhged to be out three months, and, being for- bidden to purchase from the native fishers, to complete their cargoes, they were sometimes delayed four months. All this time " the herrings were passing on to Ireland, where the Irish busses are allowed to purchase cargoes from the country boats, with which they immediately
APPENDIX 195
go to Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Belfast, and other ports engaged in the West India trade, which they are enabled to supply, while the Scottish adventurers return home in fleets, frequently after the West India vessels have left the Clyde and are gone to Cork in order to purchase Irish herrings " — (Third report, pp. 40-41). Thus, although those West Indiamen sailed from the Clyde, the very home of the Scotch busses, they frequently obtained their cargoes in a distant Irish port, because the sagacity of the Irish legislature had more than counteracted the drawback caused by the tardy arrival of the herring off the Irish coast. It may be added that the plan of allowing busses to buy from the country boats was well calcu- lated to diffuse the benefits of the bounty over a large area, stimulate the local fishers, equalise prices, and prevent frauds.
The Irish Fisheries at Home and Abroad
The Irish fishers have long been unable to fish their own seas, or cure the fish they take. Boats from Man, Scotland, Wales and England crowd their bays, and foreign vessels lie off their coast. It was otherwise in the eighteenth century. In 1785 they prosecuted the herring fishery " with great vigour," chiefly off the coast of Donegal. A bounty of twenty shilHngs per ton only was allowed to the busses, with two shillings per barrel on all herrings exported. The busses took out their clearances in June, and were freely permitted to purchase from all native boats, remain as long and return as often as best suited the trade. The bounty covered the season. Their White Fishery was not considerable on the east ; on the west there were cod, ling, hake, tusk, coal-fish, etc., but the coast, being
196 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
exposed, was unfavourable. They had attempted a whale fishery on the south coast, which did not answer. — (Third report, p. 44).
The Irish " Highland Fishery '*
But they were not then confined to their own seas. They had a " Highland Fishery." We find them at the Hebrides. The natives there were very inex- perienced in catching cod and ling, because (for there was a crofters' question then) the circumstances in which they were placed did not admit of their being benefited by their labour. The sea's treasures at their doors were closed to them. Yet " the Irish, who sometimes fish on these coasts in their wherries, ... by the great success they invariably have, abundantly confirm the truth of this observation " — (Third report, pp. 67-68) namely, that this fishing is the most lucrative trade a poor man could adopt in Britain. There was a valuable cod and ling fishery off Barra, which supplied Glasgow and the Clyde ports with dried ling. " The Irish wherries from Rush, near Dublin, also frequent this fishery for the supply of their capital, where they bring a high price."
The Irish teach Fish-Curing in Scotland
The natives of Barra employed only small boats, inadequate to meet the wants of the fishery or the roughness of the sea " Nor do these people," says a witness, " thoroughly understand the proper method of curing. What little knowledge they have acquired in this respect has been picked up from the Irish fishers, the Orkney men, and those from Peterhead, who annually visit the north-west channels." — (Third
APPENDIX 197
report, p. 43.) Irishmen, it will be seen, not only instructed the west coast of Scotland in kelp-making, but also helped it with a knowledge of white fish curing.
The Great Irish Fishery : Newfoundland Banks
They pushed their enterprise farther. " Their great fishery is on the banks of Newfoundland, which in- creases daily," observed a witness in 1785. — (Third Report, p. 44.) This fishery was, in fact, made by the Irish chiefly ; and, singularly enough, by the Catholic Irish. It was long the policy of England to use Newfoundland as a mere temporary fishing station, and to prevent its having a permanent population. In the picturesque words of Mr. William Knox, one of the Under Secre- taries of State for the American department, " The island of Newfoundland had been considered in all former times, as a great English ship moored near the banks during the fishing season for the convenience of the English fishermen. The governor was con- sidered as the ship's captain, and all those who were concerned in the fishery business as his crew, and subject to naval discipline while there, and expected to return to England w^hen the season was over. (Second Report on the State of Trade to Newfoundland, 1793. Reports vol. X. p. 413.)
Singular British Policy
The British Government positively discouraged' settlers, directing the governors to refuse new grants of land, and to reduce the number of residents. It was feared that " instead of being a British fishery it would become a Colonial fisher}^" With this view everything was to be refused which might induce men to reside, and as Lord North expressed it : " What-
19^ INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
ever they loved to have roasted he was to give them raw, and whatever they wished to have raw he was to give them roasted." All fishermen were to have their passage home. But this policy was baffled by two very different causes, namely : the greed of British traders and the defencelessness of Irish Catholics, then rendered homeless in Ireland by the Penal Code.
Irish Fishers Populate Newfoundland
Governor Edwards complained in 1757 that the fishing ships for some time past did not bring with them their proper number of " green men," and broke the good custom of allowing shares instead of wages — " They have had recourse to getting over a great number of Irishmen who, being generally Roman Cathohcs, they use them as they think proper, and seldom pay them any wages, by which many of them are left on the island" — (Third report, p. 433). The consequence was that in 1793 the population of New- foundland was classified into " natives," and " the residents, natives of Ireland," who had brought out wives from Ireland — (Second report, p. 412-413). In the year 1764 the number of passengers from England was 1,639 ' i^'on^ Ireland, 2,451 — the proportion con- tinued with an increased balance from Ireland annually until the year preceding the investigation, 1793. The English generally returned home, whilst the Irish Catholics generally remained ; the hardships of New- foundland seeming a milder alternative than the Penal Code at home, in the earlier years. In the later years the attraction of a population of fellow-countrymen of the same faith, advancing in prosperity and inde- pendence, had no doubt its influence over men who in Ireland had not the full rights of citizenship.
APPENDIX - 199
An Irish Fish-Export Trade
It seems strange to hear of an Irish export trade, now that the dependence of Ireland on imports is so notorious (" Artane Industrial School, near Dublin, imports its fish from Great Grimsby for its 800 inmates " — Letter of Rev. Eugene Davis, April, 1886, Freeman and Cork Examiner). Yet in the days of legislative independence the Irish export trade in herrings, chiefly to the West Indies, was a matter of admiration and some natural envy in the adjacent countries.
The Irish Cured Fish Superior
It is remarkable that, though not so favoured by nature as their neighbours, in the position of their island as regards the herring shoal, the Irish-cured fish soon acquired a superior reputation. Their good name sufficed to secure a higher price. The Irish barrel in 1785, contained only 28 gallons whilst the Scotch held 32. " And, however strange it may appear, yet the reporter," says the official statement "is on all hands assured that the Irish barrels on account of their com- pactness and other circumstances, in all cases sell at an equal or superior price to the Scotch barrels, though the fish be the same ; by which means the Irish sell the the same quantity of fish of the same quality 14 J per cent, dearer than the Scotch." It is not at all credible that purchasers at any time would give more money for smaller bulk merely on account of its compactness. The quality of the article must have been markedly superior.
High Repute of Irish Fish
In recent days it is alleged that Irish purchasers have ofti^n preferred a British brand, even in home
200 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
produce ; in those times, however, on account of the superior character of the Irish name, "it is not an uncommon practice for the Irish to buy Scotch (and foreign (Irish ParHamentary Debates, vol. VII.) fish, pack them into Irish barrels and send them to the West Indies." — (Third report, app. II. p. yS, 1785)- They selected the best, however.
Productiveness
The productiveness of the herring fishery around Ireland varied, as elsewhere, and perhaps the fluctua- tions were owing to its geographical position. In 1785 the Irish caught and cured 35,414 barrels ; subsequently the quantity fell off ; in 1793 only 16,099 barrels were " discharged for bounty " ; but these figures " do not show the actual quantity of herrings caught," a " con- siderable proportion of the fish caught not appearing for discharge " — (Second report, p. 264-265). So states the pro-examiner of fishing bounties at Dublin Custom House in 1795. Certain alterations were made in the fishing laws (25 Geo. Ill) apportioning a bounty of thirty shillings per ton in this way — one-third of it, or ten shillings, was payable on the tonnage of vessels (not exceeding 80 tons) ; the remaining two-thirds was payable on the fish discharged — e.g. four shillings on herrings legally packed in barrels of 32 gallons.
Flourishing Exports to Foreign Lands
The Irish exported their herrings to the Madeiras, and to Antigua, Barbadoes, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts, and other West Indian Islands. Their trade was a flourishing one in spite of fluctuations. "On an annual medium of the six years preceding 1797, 18,647 barrels of herrings were imported from Ireland into
APPENDIX 201
the West Indies" — (Mr. Irving, Inspector-General of the Imports and Exports of Great Britain ; Reports, Vol. X. p. 223). In 1798 they had " still the greatest share of this valuable branch of commerce." — (Mr. Stuart, ibid. p. 248.)
Exceptional Probity of Irish Merchants : Ill-repute of
British Brands
It redounds to the credit of Ireland that this pros- perity was due, not alone to the wisdom of its Legis- lature, but to the probity of its merchants. The at- tempted frauds were few and trifling — exceptionally few. A candid English witness states that owing to the inadequate pay of the revenue officers, and the high bounty (at the time of the Anglo-Scotch Union) of 105, 5d. per barrel on herrings exported from Scot- land— a bounty soon after extended to English exports — all kinds of evil were perpetrated, " Fraud, perjury, and all the tricks which ingenuity could invent to rob the public," occurred ; " some barrels were partly filled up with stones and rubbish ; others, on which the bounty had been paid, were re-landed and again presented for a bounty." This destroyed any repute possessed by British herrings abroad ; " The sale of the British herrings at the European markets was almost entirely lost," and became confined to Britain, Ireland and the West Indies, and still " fraud and abuses are daily practised to a great height, even in the capital (London) itself, in defiance of all laws, checks, and regulations." — (Mr. J. Knox, Third report, p. 45, 1785.)
British Trade Ruined by Frauds
Thirteen years later, the English Inspector-General of imports had similar grounds of complaint. The
202 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
British herring trade was being ruined in its last en- trenchments by fraud ; " I am assured," he said, " by the best authority that there is nothing more frequent than to find in a cargo or parcel of herrings to be ex- ported to the West Indies, a very considerable pro- portion wholly unfit for use immediately on their arrival, or soon after " — (Reports, vol. X. p. 224). Writing in the same year, 1798, the long experienced and principal agent in London of the curers and ex- porters declared that the state in which they generally came to market was by no means creditable " as the herrings did not answer by any means in our West India colonies ; the reputation of the London market suffered much from this, consequently the trade was thrown into the hands o^ the Irish who have still the greater share of this valuable branch of commerce." — (Mr. J. Stuart, ibid. p. 248.)
Enterprise of Irish Merchants
The Irish were not only remarkably honest in trade, they were likewise liberal and highly enterprising. Specially " dexterous in the cod and ling fishery," they welcomed and employed sailors and fishers from Campbelltown and Rothesay, who were skilful in the herring trade — (Mr. Girvain, London, 1800, 6 reports, vol. X. p. 338). They imported "immense quantities of herring from Sweden in 36 gallon casks " — (Mr. G. Stuart, ibid. p. 248), and re-packed them in their more compact barrel, keeping none but the good fish, and using the best salt. They snatched up prize salt even in the port of London from out the hands of British curers. " A few months ago," wrote the London agent quoted, " a cargo of foreign prize salt was brought into this port, and, although strong application was made to the Commissioners of Salt Duties, they would
APPENDIX 20V
^
not grant leave for re-shipping it coastways, for the cure of fish, which was a hard case, especially as it was bought up by an Irish Agent for the cure of herrings in Cork."— (Mr. J. Stuart, p. 248.)
Testimony to Superior Wisdom of Irish Legislation and
Produce
Many witnesses before the Parliamentary Committee bore testimony to the greater breadth, freedom, and sagacity of the Irish legislation as regards the fishery, and pleaded for imitation. The English Inspector- General of Imports and Exports refers to it with eulogy, and to the character of Irish exports, not in this de- partment only, with admiration. The British regula- tions were very inadequate, ' ' Wisdom and sound policy," he wrote, " early pointed out to the planters of Virginia and Marj^land the propriety of suffering no tobacco to be exported from that country which had not previously undergone a thorough inspection by officers appointed and paid by the public. . . . The same system of policy has been adopted in Ireland with respect to beef and pork, and I believe both countries are in no small degree indebted to this regula- tion for the superior quality, character, and price which their respective staple commodities bear in every part of the world." — (Mr. Irving, 224.)
Evils of British Salt Policy
Closely connected with fisheries is the question of salt duties, and the arrangement of the salt duties affords a means of determining the amount of economic sagacity possessed by a Government during their continuance. There were serious complaints to Great Britain from the beginning of the period \vith which
204 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
we are concerned to the end. Harwich fishermen, in 1785, declared that they were sometimes obliged to throw away their whole cargo, amounting to two or three hundred score of fish, because they Were refused salt, duty-free, for curing. They had to pay seven shillings a bushel. Scotch witnesses gave a vivid description of the trammels and prohibition in their country — they could get neither fishery nor rock salt from England, though it was exported freely to " the Irish, Swedes, Danes, and other foreigners." The Scotch had to supply themselves from Portugal and Ireland, their own salt being unfit for preserving herrings in summer or in hot climates. If they ven- tured to use English salt, they should not only give bonds as for other salt, but also they should give security that " if that salt is used for curing fish, those fish must be carried to England before April the 5th, following." Any salt not used, whether part or all, should likewise be returned to England ! — (First Report on the State of the British Fishery, pp. 11-12, 1785.)
Benefits of Irish Salt Policy
The Irish Legislature was liberal, on the other hand. No trammels were imposed on the importation of rock salt. In an age of protection it imposed only three- pence per bushel on the English article. Having always fuel, and finding that this rock salt could be purified at less than one-third the cost of sea salt, the Irish set to work to " manufacture and boil up the British rock salt at a very moderate price."
Salt Smuggling
The result of this liberality was highly favourable to them, seeing that this salt refined from the British
APPENDIX 205
rock salt " can be sold so very much lower than British made salt, as to lay the foundation of a smuggling trade in that article along the West Coast of Britain." It was a very profitable business this smuggling back into England of England's salt from the refineries in Ireland. The Scotch likewise eagerly welcomed it. " At least five hundred thousand persons in Scotland never employ any other than smuggled salt " — (First Report, Dr. Anderson, p. 14). One islander admitted that he alone had thus imported no fewer than 3,880 bushels, or 972 tons, and " as the salt duties were still higher in England the inducements to smuggle were still greater there than in Scotland."
Meat Trade — Salted Provisions
This difference of salt duties told not only on the fish trade, but on the meat trade also. Thus it was complained that, as the law stood, " the inhabitants of Britain were debarred from having any share in the trade of salted provisions. Fresh beef and pork could, indeed, be obtained at the same price in Britain as in Ireland ; the last could be sold for exportation at about nine shillings per barrel cheaper than the first " ; nay, if they were to be used in Britain, they could be sold " fourteen shillings cheaper."
British Policy Injurious to Fisheries
At the close of the period the state of affairs was practically the same as regards the salt laws. English fish-curers had, indeed, the privilege of obtaining a sufficiency of salt, duty free, under a system of bonds and permits ; but so onerous was the system that in London, " it was the constant practice of the trade
2C6 INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND
to pay duty for the salt they used in the fishery, as being on the whole less burthensome than a compliance with the rule as regards duty-free salt." It was but a choice between Scylla and Charybdis, however, for *' such was the weight of the duty that in general the fishermen chose to throw overboard the fish which from detention by contrary winds or other causes, was not likely to arrive fresh at market, than to cure it." No inconsiderable part of the supply intended for London was destroyed in that manner. From six counties of north-western Scotland, in extent more than one-sixth of Great Britain, " the produce of the salt duty has on an average of the last seventeen years (from 1783 to 1800) amounted annually, to no more than £140." This could not solely be attributed to failing fisheries, but rather to the fact that " consider- able quantities of salt " were re-imported from Ireland, without official sanction. — (Second Report on the Laws relating to the salt duties, June, 1801, vol. V. p. 508.) The amended British laws killed their own trade. One Liverpool merchant who had shipped 8,000 tons in the year ending June, 1798, chiefly for the British fisheries, reduced the quantity to 4,000 tons in 1800, though shipping to foreign countries as before. The Liverpool agents shipped on a commission of a shilling per ton ; whereas they had to give a bond or penalty of £60 per ton. — (Third Appendix, 2.)
Advantages of Irish Legislation
The Committee recommended the commutation of the salt duties as better for the fisheries than any system of bounty ; but it is evident that the superior advantages given by the Irish laws in promoting the salt trade weighed with them. " Your committee,"
APPENDIX 207
they said, " cannot but express their apprehensions that this injurious practice (of re-importation) may be carried to a greater extent after the Union of the Three Kingdoms."
Ireland had, in the unequal contest, won by her greater probity, alertness and flexibility of intellect ; afterwards trade regulations, however, were made in Britain, and a great Irish industry, which had excited the admiration of its neighbours, went to rapid ruin.
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