(Author of "The End of the Irish Parliament"; Editor of the _Northern
Whig_)
When Pitt commended his proposals for the Union to "the dispassionate
and sober judgment of the Parliament of Ireland," he argued that such a
measure was at once "transcendently important" to the Empire, and
"eminently useful" to the true interests of Ireland. Lord Clare, as an
Irishman, naturally reversed the order, but his compelling points were
the same:--To Ireland the Union was a "vital interest," which at the
same time "intimately affected the strength and prosperity of the
British Empire." From that day to this the two fundamental arguments for
the Union of Great Britain and Ireland have remained unchanged, and they
apply with ever-growing force to the existing situation at home and
abroad. But the argument from history has, perhaps, been a little
neglected of late, and calls for at least a passing notice.
Popular oratory will have it that England has always been keen and
aggressive in regard to the incorporation of Ireland within the Empire,
but as a matter of fact, the very opposite has been the case. From the
time of Pope Adrian's Bull, _Laudabiliter_, in 1154, which granted to
Henry II. the Lordship of Ireland, but which Henry left unemployed for
seventeen years, to that of the Irish petition for a legislative Union
in 1703, which remained unanswered for nearly a century, vacillation and
hesitation rather than eagerness for aggression have been the
characteristic marks of English policy in Ireland. Far-sighted statesmen
could point out the benefits to Ireland from such a connection, but as
a rule it was the presence of actual foreign danger that forced the
British Parliament to act. For four centuries the Lordship of the
English Kings over Ireland was largely nominal. It was only when the
religious quarrels of the sixteenth century became acute that the
Tudors--already alarmed at the action of the Irish Parliament in
recognising and crowning a pretender in Dublin Castle--found themselves
compelled to assert direct Kingship.
From that time till the legislative Union every enemy of England could
safely count on finding a foothold and active friends in Ireland. It is
much too late in the day to indulge in any recriminations on this score.
The issues were the most tremendous that have divided Europe; each side
was passionately convinced of the rightness and justice of its cause.
There were, in Pitt's words relating to a later day, "dreadful and
inexcusable cruelties" on the one side, and "lamentable severities" upon
the other, just as there were all over Europe. But in the case of
Ireland every evil was exaggerated and every danger intensified by the
system of dualism which encouraged resistance from within and invited
interference from without. For England and English liberty it was more
than once a question of existence or extinction, and the knowledge of
the constant danger from the immediate west did not tend to sweeten the
situation.
In Elizabeth's time the menace was from Spain; Spanish forces twice
succeeded in effecting a landing on the Irish coast, and were welcomed
by the inhabitants. Spain was then the most powerful enemy of England
and of civil and religious liberty all the world over; Elizabeth was
declared by the Pope to have forfeited the crown of England, and if the
Armada had been successful at sea, the Spanish army in England would
have found enthusiastic supporters in Ireland. Later on it was in
Ireland, and by the aid of subsidies from an Irish Parliament, that
Strafford raised 10,000 men to invade Scotland and England in support of
Charles I. against his Parliament, and, incidentally, to drive the
Scottish settlers out of Ulster. As the Articles of Impeachment put it,
his object in raising the Irish army was "for the ruin and destruction
of England and of his Majesty's subjects, and altering and subverting
the fundamental laws and established Government of this Kingdom."
Strafford fell, but the insurrection and massacre of 1641 were the
natural result of his intrigues with the Irish Parliament and the Irish
chiefs. It was under the impression of this manifest danger that
Cromwell--a century and a half before his time--abolished the Dublin
Parliament and summoned Irish representatives to the first United
Parliament at Westminster.
As the power of Spain declined, France came to be the chief menace to
England and to the peace of Europe. Again Ireland instinctively allied
herself with the enemy. Tyrconnel now played the part of Strafford, and
with the aid of French troops and French subsidies, and a sympathetic
Irish Parliament, endeavoured to destroy the Ulster Plantation, and make
Ireland a jumping-off place for the invasion of England. The Irish
Parliament, in the meantime, did its part by confiscating the estates of
the settlers, driving out the Protestant clergy, and outlawing English
sympathisers by name in "the hugest Bill of Attainder which the world
has seen."[3] It was the successful defence of Derry and Enniskillen by
the Scotch and English colonists that saved Ireland and gave King
William and his troops the foothold that enabled them to save England,
too, in the Irish campaign of the following year.
Not the least remarkable instance of the use to which separate
Parliaments within the Kingdom could be put for the ruin of England
occurred during the activity of James the Second's son, the so-called
"Old Pretender." In 1723 his chief adviser, the Earl of Mar, presented
to the Regent of France a memorial setting out in detail a project for
betraying Britain into the power of France by dismembering the British
Parliament.[4] The Irish Parliament, in close alliance with a restored
Scottish Parliament, was to be used to curb the power of England. "The
people of Ireland and Scotland," according to Mar, "are of the same
blood and possess similar interests," and they should thus always be
allied against England and oppose their "united strength"--backed, of
course, by that of France--to any undue growth of the English power. The
scheme came to nothing, but if the Pretender had possessed a little more
energy and capacity; if the French Court had been in earnest, and if
Ireland and Scotland had each possessed a separate Parliament, "with an
executive responsible to it," and with the control of a national
militia, the story of 1745 might have ended differently.
It is necessary that these facts should be kept in mind when complaint
is made of the oppressive and demoralising Irish Penal Code. That Code
no one defends now, although it was lauded at the time by Swift as a
bulwark of the Church against the Catholics on the one hand, and the
Presbyterians on the other. It was the product of a cruel and bigoted
age, and at its worst it was less severe than similar laws prevailing
against Protestants in those parts of the Continent where the Roman
Church held sway.[5] Spain and France were at that time vastly more
powerful, populous, and wealthy countries than England: England was
never free from the dread of foreign invasion, and to the would-be
invader Ireland always held a guiding light and an open door.
Finally, it must also be remembered that at a time when the chances
seemed fairly even, as between William and England on the one hand, and
James and France on the other, the Prince of Orange, accustomed to the
German way of settling such differences, had made formal offer to
Tyrconnel of a working compromise--the free exercise of their religion
to the Irish Catholics: half the Churches of the Kingdom: half the
employments, civil and military, if they pleased, and even the moiety of
their ancient properties. "These proposals," says the Chevalier Wogan,
Tyrconnel's nephew and confidant, who is our informant, "though they
were to have had an English Act of Parliament for their sanction, were
refused with universal contempt." In other words, the party which with
the assistance of France still hoped to obtain all, refused to be
content with half. It is true that Wogan, in the letter from which we
have quoted,[6] after stating that the exiles, "in the midst of their
hard usage abroad, could not be brought to repent of their obstinacy,"
justifies their refusal by the way in which the Articles of Limerick
were afterwards disregarded by the Irish Parliament. But this is
evidently an argument of retrospective invention, and it may fairly be
argued that the position would have been very different if peace on
equal terms had been made on the direct authority of the King before
Aughrim rather than by his deputies after Limerick.