each with full powers of legislation, under the same Crown; that Crown not
being invested with authority to control and harmonize the action of the
two Parliaments, but being a Crown upon a cushion or little more. The
commercial and even the international relations of the two Parliaments
might point different ways. There might be a divergence on a question of
peace or war; one Parliament declaring for war, the other refusing to vote
the supplies. On general questions, such as commercial and criminal law,
opposition was possible to any extent; and considering the feelings
towards each other with which the partners set out, was not unlikely to
occur. Ireland might even refuse currency to English coin. The monarchical
link itself was not quite firm. On the question of the regency, when
George III. went mad, the two Parliaments did actually fly apart; the
Irish Parliament recognizing, while the British Parliament refused to
recognize, the claim of the Prince of Wales to the regency by virtue of
his birth. Only the king's recovery averted a collision. Adopted in haste
and in a rush of revolutionary ardour, the system was in fact unworkable
and must have ended in confusion. Grattan was unquestionably true to
British connection. But Grattan was not Ireland, and even he had led in no
very loyal attitude the defiance of the British Parliament on the regency
question. His statesmanship can hardly have been profound if he fancied
that the constitution of 1782 would work.
It is moreover always to be borne in mind that this Parliament was the
Parliament of a Protestant ascendancy, representing not one-quarter of the
people of Ireland, and that with all its high talk of independence, it
still owed, and knew that it owed, to British protection its power, its
privileges, its political pelf, perhaps even the safe possession under the
Act of Settlement of lands on which the disinherited still cast a longing
and vindictive eye.
How then was the policy of Ireland to be kept from breaking away from that
of Great Britain? The practical answer was, by corruption, the means of
which at the command of the Castle were, besides office, sinecures, some
of them very rich; commands in the army; pensions; bishoprics, with other
Church patronage; and peerages. The peerages, though lavishly created,
seem to have retained their value. The Parliament, the body on which
corruption had to operate, was a Parliament of rotten boroughs, the
nominations for which were sold in open market. The House of Commons
continued to swarm with placemen and pensioners, whose votes were at the
command of government. In the House of Lords the Anglican bishops were
strong.
Appended to a report made to Pitt on the political situation in Ireland is
the following schedule of corruption:--
"H---- H----, son-in-law to Lord A----, and brought into Parliament
by him. Studies the law; wishes to be a commissioner of barracks, or
in some similar place. Would go into orders and take a living.
"H---- D----, brother to Lord C----. Applied for office; but, as no
specific promise could be made, has lately voted in opposition. Easy
to be had if thought expedient. A silent, gloomy man.
"L---- M----, refuses to accept L500 per annum; states very high
pretensions from his skill in House of Commons management; expects
L1,000 per annum. N.B.-- Be careful of him.
"J---- N----, has been in the army and is now on half pay; wishes a
troop of dragoons on full pay. States his pretensions to be fifteen
years' service in Parliament. N.B.--Would prefer office to military
promotion; but already has, and has long had, a pension. Character,
especially on the side of truth, not favourable.
"R---- P----, independent, but well disposed to government. His four
sisters have pensions; and his object is a living for his brother.
"T---- P----, brother to Lord L----, and brought in by him. A captain
in the navy; wishes for some sinecure employment."
XI
There was no lack, say apologists of the Irish Parliament, of useful
legislation on subjects with which a landed gentry was qualified to deal.
There was a fatal lack of legislation on one momentous subject with which
a land-owning gentry ought to be qualified to deal, but from which the
Irish Parliament resolutely turned its eyes. For half a century before the
union, that body steadfastly abstained from inquiring into the causes of
disaffection among the peasantry. It even repressed a report upon the
subject which the chairman of the committee had begun to read.
The condition of the peasantry was still horrible and heartrending. The
revolution of 1782, by loosening the fetters of trade, had brought
increase of prosperity to the merchant and manufacturer. It had brought no
relief to the tiller of the soil. A little before this Arthur Young had
travelled in Ireland and had been shocked at seeing the insolent despotism
of the petty country gentlemen, whom he called the vermin of the kingdom,
over their serfs; the horsewhip freely used, the serf not daring to lift
his hand in defence, the total denial of legal redress, since a justice of
the peace presuming to issue a summons would at once have been called out.
Landlords of consequence had assured Young that many of their cotters
would think themselves honoured by having their wives and daughters sent
for to the bed of their masters. He had even heard of the lives of people
being made free with. The middleman and the tithe-proctor were ruthless as
ever. To the payment of tithes a drop of bitterness had been added by the
exemption, through an abuse of political influence, of the grazing farms,
which left the whole burden of maintaining a hostile Church on the back of
the cotter. The peasantry, on the other hand, maddened by suffering, took
a fearful revenge on the oppressor or his agents. Agrarian murder and
outrage prevailed. There were cruelties worse than murder. Middlemen and
tithe-proctors were "carded"; that is, lacerated with boards full of nails
drawn down their backs, buried up to their necks in pits full of thorns,
made to ride on saddles stuck with spikes, their ears and noses cut off. A
clergyman was met riding in great agony with his head wrapped up; his ears
and cheeks were found nailed to a post. That the Irish when excited are
capable of dark atrocities is a feature of their character which it is
useless to disguise. Debility when excited is apt to be most cruel. The
trait showed itself plainly in the hamstringing of soldiers and the
houghing of cattle, as well as in the torturing of middlemen and
tithe-proctors. Law and police were paralyzed. The peasantry were one vast
conspiracy bound together by awful pledges, the betrayal of which was
death. No evidence could be obtained though there might be plenty of
eye-witnesses. Perjury in the common cause was no sin.
It was supposed that the Whiteboys had their meetings in Catholic chapels.
But there is no ground for taxing the Catholic Church as a body with any
share in the criminal part of the movement. The Catholic clergy of Ireland
were then, as they are now, a peasant clergy, sympathizing with their
class. They depended on that class for their stipends. Some of them their
sympathy might betray into complicity, more or less active, with agrarian
crime. More of them might be guilty of failure to exert their religious
authority as ministers of the sacraments, the confessional, and death-bed
absolution, on the side of law. But their record on the whole appears to
have been as clear as, considering what persecution they had undergone,
and that the law was their enemy as well as the enemy of the peasant, it
was reasonable to expect.
The mansion of an unpopular landlord became a besieged fortress.
Absenteeism of course increased. To a rather later date belongs the story
of an agent who, having complained to his absentee landlord that his life
had been threatened, received the reply, "Tell the villains that they need
not hope to intimidate me by shooting you."
"I am well acquainted," said a statesman not oversensitive to popular
wrongs, "with the Province of Munster, and I know that it is
impossible for human wretchedness to exceed that of the miserable
tenantry of that province. I know that the unhappy tenantry are
ground to powder by relentless landlords. I know that far from being
able to give the clergy their just dues, they have not food and
raiment for themselves; the landlord grasps the whole. Sorry I am to
add that, unsatisfied with present extortion, some landlords have
been so base as to instigate the insurgents to rob the clergy of
their tithes, not in order to alleviate the distresses of the
tenantry, but that they might add the clergy's share to the cruel
rack-rents already paid. Sir, I fear it will require the utmost
ability of Parliament to come to the root of these evils. The poor
people of Munster live in a more abject state of poverty than human
nature can be supposed able to bear. Their miseries are intolerable;
but they do not originate with the clergy; nor can the legislature
stand by and see them take the redress into their own hands. Nothing
can be done for their benefit while the country remains in a state of
anarchy."
The miseries might not originate with the clergy, but the popular wrath
did originate specially with the exactions of the tithe-proctor. Grattan
proposed commutation. But then the tithe of pasture agistment, as it was
called, could no longer have been evaded. That simple reform was put off
for more than a generation, with the most calamitous results.
Dublin was gay, mansions rose, claret flowed, wit sparkled, the dance went
round. Nor was there lack of social polish or of culture of the classical
kind. On the other hand, there were extravagance, waste, and debt. Wild
and spendthrift characters appear among the leaders and mirrors of
society. Beauchamp Bagenal, as Sir Jonah Barrington tells us, "had visited
every capital of Europe, and had exhibited the native original character
of the Irish gentleman at every place he visited. In the splendour of his
travelling establishment, he quite eclipsed the petty potentates with whom
Germany was garnished. His person was fine, his manners open and generous,
his spirit high, and his liberality profuse. During his tour, he had
performed a variety of feats which were emblazoned in Ireland, and
endeared him to his countrymen. He had fought a prince; jilted a princess;
intoxicated the doge of Venice; carried off a duchess from Madrid; scaled
the walls of a convent in Italy; narrowly escaped the Inquisition at
Lisbon; concluded his exploits by a celebrated fencing match at Paris; and
he returned to Ireland with a sovereign contempt for all continental men
and manners, and an inveterate antipathy to all despotic kings and
arbitrary governments."
Duelling was the social law. The attorney-general fought a duel; the
provost of Trinity College fought a duel. Refusal of a challenge was
social death. The viceroy's secretary, when challenged by a disappointed
applicant for place, deemed it necessary to go to the field of honour.
Robert Fitzgerald was so addicted to duelling that he wore a chain shirt
under his vest.
What can have produced such characters? Was it anything in Irish blood or
air, or was it the absence of the commercial element with its sobering
influence? The story of Robert Fitzgerald, nephew of the bishop of Derry,
seems to bespeak a wild domestic despotism exercised by the squires.
Fitzgerald is said to have confined his father in a cave with a muzzled
bear. He put to death one of his household, for which, however, he was
hanged. The matrimonial adventurer from Ireland was also a figure well
known in the sister isle.
Of intellectual fruit there was not much except oratory, pamphlets, and
pasquinades. Swift was an Englishman born in Ireland and banished to the
place of his birth. Burke's genius as well as his physiognomy was one-half
Irish, and his Irish half had its share in that splendid but mischievous
outburst, his essay on the French Revolution. His heart turned to Ireland,
and some of his best thought was given to her case. But he hardly belongs
to the Irish Pantheon.
Oratory, both Parliamentary and forensic, flourished. Grattan, Flood,
Yelverton, Foster, Fitzgibbon (afterwards Lord Clare), Curran, are great
names in their different ways. Nor was the oratory all in the style
supposed to be Hibernian. Foster's style, for example, was grave and
weighty. So generally was that of Flood.
In Parliament there were lively scenes. Grattan and Flood having parted
company in politics, and Flood having defamed Grattan, Grattan poured upon
Flood a furious torrent of the most personal invective; telling him that
his talents were not so great as his life was infamous; that he had been
silent for years and silent for money; that he might be seen passing the
doors like a guilty spirit waiting the moment at which he might hop in and
give his venal vote; that he was a kettledrum, battering himself into
popularity to catch the vulgar; that he might be seen hovering over the
dome like an ill-omened bird of night, with sepulchral note and broken
beak (Flood having a broken nose); and winding up by telling him in the
face of the country, before all the world, and to his beard, that he was
not an honest man. Flood retorted with equal fury, and a wild scene
ensued. It is not difficult to believe in the genius or the patriotism of
these orators; but it is difficult to believe in their unimpassioned
wisdom.
The Penal Code had ere this lost much of its cruelty. Time, security, and
intercourse had softened the feeling of the Protestants against the
Catholics, whose passive loyalty had been proved by their inaction when
Great Britain was twice invaded by Stuart pretenders. The most odious
enactments of the code, those which involved personal degradation and
outrage on family affection, had fallen into desuetude or been evaded.
Protestant friends would hold land for a Catholic in confidential trust,
and ostensibly assume the guardianship of his children, leaving the real
guardianship to the kin. The attempts of informers to take advantage of
forfeitures were discouraged by the courts. Protestant fanaticism was
dying out everywhere except in rural Ulster, and was giving way among the
educated to indifference and even to scepticism. The spirit of Voltaire
was abroad. Chesterfield, as viceroy, brought it with him, laughing at
religious intolerance, and saying that the only Catholic of whom he was
afraid was the reigning beauty of Dublin. The whole system of the Catholic
Church, though still nominally subsisting only by connivance, was openly
and securely carried on. Conspicuous Mass houses were built. The Catholic
hierarchy and priesthood were forming friendly relations with a government
which had once designated all Catholics as enemies. Catholics of the upper
class educated in France came back from the land of the Encyclopaedists
tinctured with its liberalism. Catholics were admitted by connivance into
Trinity College. A central committee had been formed to guard Catholic
interests, which in the penal era would have been treason. After 1782,
relief bills were passed. Catholicism was recognized by law. All
restrictions upon the maintenance of the hierarchy, freedom of ordination,
or additions to the priesthood were abrogated. Catholics were made capable
of acquiring property in land, though under the guise of leases for nine
hundred and ninety-nine years. The Gavelling Act, passed to break up
their estates, was repealed. It was unfortunately too late to restore the
Catholic gentry, which had been decimated by the Penal Law. In 1783 a bill
was passed opening to Catholics the profession of the law in all its
branches and grades except the rank of king's counsel and the judicial
bench, repealing the law against the intermarriage of Catholics with
Protestants, that against foreign emigration, that making an Anglican
license necessary for schools, and that restricting the number of
apprentices permitted in Catholic trade. The laws against the possession
of arms and the exclusion from command in the army were left. Otherwise of
the Penal Code the political disabilities almost alone remained.
The principal relief bill was introduced by Sir Hercules Langrishe, the
friend and correspondent on Irish politics of Burke, who pleaded the cause
of the Irish Catholics with all the vehemence of his nature, a measure of
sympathy with the religion probably mingling in his heart with love of
freedom and justice. Burke had less feeling for the grievances of
Protestant Dissenters or of Anglican clergymen liberally inclined, who
sought the relaxation of tests. He afterwards sent his son, whose ability
he fondly overrated, as his representative to Ireland, in the affairs of
which the aspiring youth meddled, and with farcical results.
The Presbyterians of Belfast had before this been relieved of the Test Act
and their other religious bonds and humiliations. But the relief had come
too late to turn them into good friends of the Anglican Church or of
British connection. Revolutionary and republican sentiment had, with
religious scepticism, taken root in Belfast.
The revolution of 1782 had not been democratic. The Volunteers were
property holders and their leaders were peers. But the withdrawal of the
Volunteers was not followed by political calm. Among the populace of
Dublin, especially, excitement continued and showed itself detestably by
hamstringing British soldiers. The cry was now for two drastic measures of
change: the political emancipation of the Catholics, and a reform of
Parliament substituting freedom of election for nomination and clearing
the legislature of pensioners and placemen. The two combined evidently
meant death to Protestant ascendancy and to oligarchy, both of which
naturally shrank from suicide.
The struggle grew fierce, and now not only was the American Revolution
fresh in recollection, but the French Revolution, advancing with thunder
tread, was filling the minds of the people everywhere, and especially
those of the oppressed and suffering, with vague visions and hopes of
change. Even to the hovel of the Irish serf, a vague hope, not of a
society regenerated on the principles of Rousseau, but of deliverance from
the middleman, from the tithe-proctor, and from the English connection,
which he thought was at the bottom of all his sufferings, had begun to
make its way.
Of reform, the leader was Grattan. Opposition to reform found a mighty
champion in Fitzgibbon, afterwards Lord Clare, a strong man, fearless as
he was able, and a very powerful speaker, but violent and overbearing, as
well as reactionary to a degree which charms the reactionary historian.
Fitzgibbon had a very coarse but rather effective shield-bearer in Dr.
Duigenan, the son of a Catholic farmer intended for the priesthood, but
captured by the Protestant clergyman of his parish.
Grattan and the reform party failed to get admission for Catholics to
Parliament. They failed to purify the House itself by substituting free
election for nomination boroughs, or by the effective exclusion of
pensioners and placemen from the House. They succeeded in extending the
electoral franchise to all holders, whether Catholic or Protestant, of
forty-shilling freeholds. Unfortunately, they could hardly have done worse
than by giving political power to the mass without its natural leaders.
Protestant demagogues playing for the Catholic vote were certain to
appear. Another bad effect of the measure was the multiplication of cotter
holdings by land-owners who would absolutely control the cotter's vote. On
the other hand, to ask the Protestant oligarchy to part with its exclusive
possession of Parliament was to ask it, not only to resign power, but even
to cast a shadow on its property, for the Act of Settlement had hardly
even yet become perfectly sacred as the title-deed of proprietary right.
Not all the advocates of Parliamentary reform were in favour of Catholic
emancipation. Flood among others was opposed to it.
Of the British government Pitt was now absolute master. Early in his reign
he had glanced at Irish politics and it seems had thought of union. But
the Channel was still wide and Irish government was still left to the
Castle. Pitt, however, had tendered Ireland a commercial agreement framed,
like his commercial treaty with France, in the spirit of the first
statesman who read Adam Smith. Introduced by him with great ability and at
first with general acceptance, his measure in the end was wrecked by a
combination of British protectionism, Whig faction, and Irish jealousy on
the subject of legislative independence; to the last of which Fox, carried
away by faction, scrupled not to appeal. Commercial union would have
strengthened the political connection, and by furthering commercial
prosperity might have done something to allay Irish discontent. Latterly,
Pitt's thoughts had been engrossed by the struggle with France. They were
now turned perforce to the political state of Ireland, which was evidently
becoming very perilous; at that time, unfortunately, with no happy result.
The Whigs opposed to the French Revolution, Portland, Spencer,
Fitzwilliam, and Windham, had coalesced with Pitt without renouncing their
general principles, which they wished to apply to Ireland, regarding that
field, it seems, as especially their own. At their instance Fitzwilliam
was sent over as viceroy, believing, and it seems with reason, that he
bore Catholic emancipation and general reform in his hand; though he had
no written instructions, nor, it appears, any verbal instructions
sufficiently clear. He went hastily to work, opened his budget of
concessions prematurely, and too promptly brandished the besom of
administrative reform, dismissing from office one of the great
place-hunting house of Beresford, which by assiduous intrigue had filled
the public service with its nominees. The Beresford carried his plaint to
the headquarters of the Tory party in London, and told Pitt that
Fitzwilliam was turning out all the faithful supporters of the government.
What followed is still a mystery. There was a long, unaccountable, and
apparently inexcusable silence on the part of Portland, broken at last by
disclaimer, rebuke, and recall. Fitzwilliam, stung to fury at this
treatment, trampled on official rules and did serious mischief by his
publication of confidential letters betraying an incipient design of
union, which to Irish patriotism at that time was maddening. At the bottom
of all the misunderstanding and trouble was the king, into whose miserable
mind had been instilled, it appears by Fitzgibbon, the belief that by
consenting to Catholic emancipation he would break his coronation oath.
The two great Tory lawyers, Eldon and Kenyon, to their honour, told the
king the truth. It seems probable, however, that the union of the
coalition government was imperfect, as that of coalition governments is
apt to be, and that this may be the account both of the want of clearness
in Fitzwilliam's original instructions and of the strange silence, ending
at last in an abrupt dismissal, which ensued.
Fitzwilliam left Dublin amidst passionate demonstrations of popular
disappointment and grief. His place was taken by Lord Camden, one of the
Tory section of the Pitt government, who came to face Irish rebellion
aided by Revolutionary France, while England, placed in extreme peril by
French victories and the secession of her allies, was struggling for her
life and was unable to afford military support to the government of
Ireland.