THE INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENT. THE REGENCY QUESTION. THE COMMENCEMENT OF
THE REBELLION.
That Ireland increased in prosperity rapidly towards the end of the
eighteenth century, there is no doubt. Politicians will say that this
prosperity came from the increased powers gained by the Parliament in
1782; economists will reply that that had little if anything to say
to it; far more important causes being the abolition of trade
restrictions and the relaxation of the Penal Laws, which encouraged
people to employ their money in remunerative works at home instead of
having to send it abroad. It may sound somewhat Hibernian to mention
the rise in rents, as another cause of prosperity; yet anyone who
knows Ireland will admit that it is not impossible; and it was
certainly put forward gravely by writers of the period who were by no
means biassed towards the landlord interest. Thus McKenna, writing in
1793, says:--
"In several parts of Ireland the rents have been tripled
within 40 years. This was not so much the effect as the cause
of national prosperity; ... before the above-mentioned period,
when rent was very low and other taxes little known, half the
year was lavished in carousing. But as soon as labour became
compulsory, fortunes have been raised both by the tenantry and
landlords, and civilization has advanced materially."
There was also another cause of prosperity, which modern economists
cannot look on with much favour. It was the policy of the Irish
Government to grant enormous bounties for the development of various
industries, especially the growth of corn. This no doubt gave much
employment, promoted the breaking up of grass lands, the subdivision
of farms and the erection of mills; and so long as the price of corn
was maintained, brought much prosperity to the country, and thus was
indirectly one cause of the enormous increase of population, which
rose from about 2,370,000 in 1750, to about 4,500,000 in 1797. But
when, during the nineteenth century, prices fell, the whole structure,
built on a fictitious foundation, came down with a crash.
Not long after the Irish Parliament had acquired its independence, a
controversy arose which, although it had no immediate result, yet
was of vast importance on account of the principle involved. The king
became insane. It was necessary that there should be a Regent, and it
was obvious that the Prince of Wales was the man for the post. But
the British constitution contained no provision for making the
appointment. After much deliberation, the English Parliament decided
to pass an Act appointing the Prince Regent and defining his powers,
the Royal assent being given by Commission. The two houses of the
Irish Parliament, however, without waiting for the Prince to be
invested with the Regency in England, voted an address to him asking
him to undertake the duties of Regent, without naming any limitations.
As the king recovered almost immediately, the whole matter ended in
nothing; but thoughtful men realized what was involved in the position
which the Irish Parliament had taken up. Grattan's resolution was
to the effect that in addressing the Prince to take upon himself
the government of the country the Lords and Commons of Ireland were
exercising an undoubted right and discharging an indispensable duty to
which in the emergency they alone were competent. By the Act of Henry
VIII the King of England was _ipso facto_ King of Ireland. An Irish
Act of William and Mary declared that the Crown of Ireland and all the
powers and prerogatives belonging to it should be for ever annexed to
and dependent on the Crown of England. And the Act of 1782 made the
Great Seal of Great Britain necessary to the summoning of an Irish
Parliament and the passing of Irish Acts. Now did the words "King"
and "Crown" merely refer to the individual who had the right to wear
a certain diadem, or did they include the chief executive magistrate,
whoever that might be--King, Queen or Regent? It was ably contended by
Lord Clare that the latter was the only possible view; for the Regent
of Great Britain must hold the Great Seal; and so he alone could
summon an Irish Parliament; therefore the Irish Parliament in choosing
their Regent had endangered the only bond which existed between
England and Ireland--the necessary and perpetual identity of the
executive. If the Irish Parliament appointed one person Regent and the
English Parliament another, separation or war might be the result; and
even as it was, the appointment of the Prince with limited powers in
England and unlimited in Ireland, must lead to confusion. But more
than that; suppose that the House of Brunswick were to die out, and
another Act of Settlement were to become necessary, might not the
Irish Parliament choose a different sovereign from the one chosen by
England? Constitutional lawyers recollected that such a difficulty
nearly arose between Scotland and England, but was settled by the Act
of Union; and that it was the recognition of Lambert Simnel by the
Irish Parliament that was the immediate cause of the passing of
Poyning's Act; and saw what the revived powers of the Irish Parliament
might lead to.
Although the Parliament had now become independent, there was still
nothing like a responsible ministry as we now understand it, and the
government managed to maintain its control, partly by the peculiar
composition of the Parliament (to which I have already referred), and
partly by the disposal of favours. And it cannot be denied that the
Parliament passed much useful legislation. Two questions, however,
were now coming forward on which the whole political condition of the
country depended, and which were closely entwined with one another.
The first was the reform of the legislature, so as to make the House
of Commons a really representative body; the second was the final
abolition of the Penal Laws. As to reform, the Parliament was
naturally slow (did any political assembly in the world ever divest
itself of its own privileges without pressure from without?); but as
to the abolition of the Penal Laws there was a cordiality which is
remarkable, and which is seldom referred to by the Nationalist writers
of the present day when they discourse about the Penal Laws. With
regard to social matters--such as admission to Corporations, taking
Degrees at the University, and holding medical professorships,--there
was hardly any hesitation; the political question, however, was more
difficult. In both England and Ireland at that time a forty-shilling
freehold gave a vote. That was a matter of slight importance in
England, as the number of small freeholders was limited, land being
usually let for a term of years. In Ireland, however, the ordinary
arrangement was for peasants to hold their scraps of land for life;
and land having recently increased in value enormously, a large
proportion of these were of the value of forty shillings. Hence, the
whole constituency would be altered; thousands of new electors, all of
them poor and illiterate, would be added in many constituencies;
and the representation of the country would at once pass into Roman
Catholic hands. To fix a higher qualification for Roman Catholics than
for Protestants would be not to abolish but to perpetuate the Penal
Laws; to deprive the existing voters of the franchise was out of the
question; hence the franchise was granted but not without considerable
hesitation on the part of the more thoughtful members. On the other
hand it was urged with great force that to give these privileges to
the uneducated mass but to continue the disabilities of the Roman
Catholic gentry by not allowing them to sit in Parliament was absurd.
The proposal to abolish the religious test in the case of Members of
Parliament was, however, defeated.
Looking back, with the light of later history to aid us, it is
interesting to see how much more correct were Lord Clare's predictions
of the future than Grattan's. Grattan (as I have already explained),
taking his ideas from his lay friends among the cultured classes, and
seeing the decline of the Papal influence on the continent, considered
that anyone who regarded Popery as a political influence of the future
totally misunderstood the principles which then governed human action;
for controverted points of religion (such as belief in the Real
Presence) had ceased to be a principle of human action. He maintained
that the cause of the Pope, as a political force, was as dead as that
of the Stuarts; that priestcraft was a superannuated folly; and
that in Ireland a new political religion had arisen, superseding
all influence of priest and parson, and burying for ever theological
discord in the love of civil and religious liberty. Clare, who was
not only a shrewder observer but a much more deeply read man, realized
that in order to find out what would guide the Roman Catholic Church
in the future one must look not at the passing opinions of laymen but
at the constitution of the Church; he foresaw that if the artificial
supports which maintained the Protestant ascendancy were removed, the
mere force of numbers would bring about a Roman Catholic ascendancy;
and in enumerating the results of that he even said that the time
would come when the Church would decide on all questions as to
marriage.
In order to show how far Lord Clare's expectations have been verified,
I will quote, not the words of an Orange speaker or writer, but of
an eminent Roman Catholic, the Rev. J.T. McNicholas, O.P., in his
recently published book on "The New Marriage Legislation" which, being
issued with an _Imprimatur_, will be received by all parties as a work
of authority. He says:--
"Many Protestants may think the Church presumptuous in
decreeing their marriages valid or invalid according as they
have or have not complied with certain conditions. As the
Church cannot err, neither can she be presumptuous. She alone
is judge of the extent of her power. Anyone validly baptised,
either in the Church or among heretics, becomes thereby a
subject of the Roman Catholic Church."
But whilst politicians were amusing themselves with fervid but useless
oratory in Parliament, stirring events were taking place elsewhere.
To trace in these pages even a bare outline of the main incidents of
those terrible years is impossible; and yet without doing so it is not
easy to obtain a correct view of the tangled skein of Irish politics
at the time. In studying any history of the period, we cannot but be
struck by observing on the one hand how completely in some respects
circumstances and ideas have changed since then; it is hard to realize
that Ulster was for a time the scene of wild disorder--assassination,
arson, burglary and every form of outrage--brought about mainly by a
society which claimed to be, and to a certain extent was, formed by a
union of the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic parties--whilst the south
and west remained fairly orderly and loyal. And yet on the other hand
we find many of the phenomena which have been characteristic of later
periods of Irish political agitation, already flourishing. Boycotting
existed in fact, though the name was not yet invented; also nocturnal
raids for arms, the sacking of lonely farmhouses, the intimidation of
witnesses and the mutilation of cattle. Again, we see all through the
history of Irish secret societies that their organization has been so
splendid that the ordinary law has been powerless against them; for
witnesses will not give evidence and juries will not convict if they
know that to do so will mean certain ruin and probable death; and yet
those same societies have always possessed one element of weakness:
however terrible their oaths of secrecy have been, the Government
have never had the slightest difficulty in finding out, through
their confidential agents, everything that has taken place at their
meetings, and what their projects are.
As early as 1785 there had been two societies carrying on something
like civil war on a small scale in the north. How they originated,
is a matter of dispute; but at any rate before they had long been in
existence, the religious element became supreme--as it does sooner
or later in every Irish movement; whatever temporary alliances may be
formed for other reasons, religion always ultimately becomes the line
of cleavage. In this case, the "Peep of Day Boys" were Protestants,
the "Defenders" Roman Catholic. Some of the outrages committed by
the Defenders were too horrible to put in print; many Roman Catholic
families fled the country on account of the treatment which they
received from the Peep of Day Boys, and took refuge among their
co-religionists in the south.
But now a greater crisis was at hand. The terrible upheaval of the
French Revolution was shaking European society to its foundation. The
teaching of Paine and Voltaire had borne fruit; the wildest socialism
was being preached in every land. Ulster had shown sympathy with
Republican ideas at the time of the American War of Independence; and
now a large number of the Presbyterians of Belfast eagerly accepted
the doctrines of Jacobinism. Nothing can sound more charmingly
innocent than the objects of the United Irish Society as put forward
publicly in 1791; the members solemnly and religiously pledged
themselves to use all their influence to obtain an impartial and
adequate representation of the Irish nation in Parliament; and as a
means to this end to endeavour to secure the co-operation of Irishmen
of all religious persuasions. Some writers have tried to make out that
if the Relief Act of 1793 had been extended in 1795 by another Act
enabling Roman Catholics to become Members of Parliament; and if
a Reform Bill had been passed making the House of Commons really
representative, the society would never have been anything but a
perfectly legal and harmless association. Of course it is always
possible to suggest what might have been; but in this case it is far
more probable that if Parliament had been so reformed as to be a fair
reflex of the opinion of the country, it would immediately have passed
a resolution declaring Ireland a Republic and forming an alliance with
France; for whatever objects were stated in public, the real guiding
spirits of the United Irish Society from the beginning (as of other
societies of a later date with equally innocent names) were ardent
republicans, who joined the society in order to further those views;
it is absurd to suggest that men who were actually in correspondence
with the leaders of the Directory and were trying to bring about an
invasion from France in order to aid them in establishing a Republic
on Jacobin lines would have been deterred by the passing of a Bill
making it lawful for Roman Catholics to sit in Parliament. Nor again
is it reasonable to contend that earnest-minded Roman Catholics would,
in consequence of the failure of such a Bill to become law, have
rebelled against a Government under which they were able to exercise
their religion in peace and which was at that moment founding and
endowing a College for the training of candidates for the priesthood,
in favour of one which had confiscated the seminaries and was sending
the priests to the guillotine. The fact seems to have been that the
society was formed by Presbyterians, for political reasons; they tried
to get the Roman Catholics to join them, but the lower class Roman
Catholics cared very little about seats in Parliament; so the founders
of the society cleverly added abolition of tithes and taxes, and
reduction of rents, to their original programme; this drew in numbers
of Roman Catholics, whose principles were really the very antithesis
of Jacobinism.
It is a fair instance of the confusion which has always reigned
throughout Irish politics, that after the Relief Act of 1793 had been
passed, the Catholic Committee expressed their jubilation by voting
£2,000 for a statue to the King, and presenting a gold medal to their
Secretary, Wolfe Tone, who was at that moment scheming to set up a
Jacobin Republic.
This celebrated man, Wolfe Tone, was not unlike many others who have
posed as Irish patriots. Hating the very name of England, he schemed
to get one appointment after another from the English Government--at
one time seeking to be put in command of a filibustering expedition to
raid the towns of South America, at another time trying for a post in
India; hating the Pope and the priests, he acted as Secretary to the
Catholic Committee; then hating Grattan and the Irish Parliament and
everything to say to it, he showed his patriotism by devoting his
energies to trying to persuade the French Republican Government to
invade Ireland.
On the 21st of September, 1795, an incident occurred which, though
apparently trivial at the time, was destined to be of great historical
importance. Ulster had now for some time been in a state bordering
on anarchy; not only were the secret societies constantly at war,
but marauding bands, pretending to belong to one or other of the
societies, were ravishing the country. Something like a pitched battle
was fought between the Protestants and the Defenders, in which the
Defenders, although they were the stronger party and made the attack,
were utterly routed. In the evening, the victors agreed to form
themselves into a society which should bear the name of William of
Orange. There had previously been some societies called by that name;
but this was the foundation of the Orange Society of the present day.
The oath which at first was taken by every member of the society was
to defend the king and his heirs so long as he or they support the
Protestant ascendancy. (This conditional form of oath of allegiance
has long since been abolished.) It was industriously circulated by
the United Irishmen that the actual words of the oath were: "I will be
true to the King and Government and I will exterminate as far as I am
able the Catholics of Ireland." There is no evidence, however, that
any words of the kind ever formed part of an oath prescribed by the
Orange Society; and those who make the statement now must be aware
that they are repeating a calumny.
After this time, the quarrel gradually tended more and more to become
a religious one; the Peep of Day Boys becoming merged in the Orange
Society, and the Protestants slowly withdrawing from the United Irish
Society; on the other hand, the Defenders ultimately coalesced
with the United Irishmen and thus, by an illogical combination of
inconsistent forces, formed the party which brought about the terrible
rebellion.
The close of the year 1796 was one of the most critical moments in the
history of England. On the continent the power of republican France
under the genius of Napoleon and his generals was sweeping all before
it. England was in a state of bankruptcy, and almost as completely
isolated as she had been in the time of Elizabeth. Wolfe Tone and his
Irish plotters saw their opportunity as clearly as their predecessors
had in the times of Edward Bruce and Philip II. They laid a statement
of the condition of Ireland before the French Government which,
though as full of exaggerations as most things in Irish history, was
sufficiently based on fact to lead the French Government to believe
that if a French force were landed in Ireland, the Irishmen in the
British Army and Navy would mutiny, the Yeomen would join the French,
and the whole of the North of Ireland would rise in rebellion.
Accordingly a French fleet of forty-three sail, carrying about 15,000
troops, sailed from Brest for Bantry Bay. No human power could have
prevented their landing; and had they done so, they could have
marched to Cork and seized the town without any difficulty; the United
Irishmen would have risen, and the whole country might have been
theirs. But the same power which saved England from the Armada of
Catholic Spain 200 years before now shielded her from the invasion of
republican France. Storms and fogs wrought havoc throughout the French
fleet. In less than a month from the time of their starting, Wolfe
Tone and the shattered remains of the invading force were back at
Brest, without having succeeded in landing a single man on the Irish
shore.
Had this projected invasion taken place fifty years before, amongst
the French troops would have been the Irish brigade, who were always
yearning for the opportunity of making an attack on their native land.
But half a century had caused strange changes; the Irish brigade had
fallen with the collapse of the French monarchy; and some of the few
survivors were now actually serving under King George III.
It was a remarkable fact that no one in the neighbourhood of Bantry
showed the slightest sympathy with the Frenchmen. The few resident
gentry, the moment the danger was evident, called together the
yeomanry and organized their tenantry to oppose the foe--though the
utmost they could have done would have been to delay the progress
of the invaders for a little at the cost of their own lives; and the
peasantry did all in their power to support their efforts.
If it is possible to analyse the state of political feeling at
this time, we may say that first there was a very limited number of
thoughtful men who saw that after the Acts of 1782 and 1793 either
separation or union was inevitable, and who consequently opposed all
idea of parliamentary reform, because they thought it would tend to
separation and make union more difficult. A second party (a leading
member of which was Charlemont) approved of the existing state of
things, and believed that it could be continued; a third (of which
Grattan was one) fondly imagined that all would go smoothly if only a
Catholic Relief Bill and a Reform Bill were carried, and so directed
all their efforts towards those objects; and a fourth believed that
no reform would be granted without pressure, and so were ready even to
work up a rebellion in order to obtain it; but that was a very small
party at best, and was soon carried away by the whirlwind of those
revolutionists who cared nothing about the Parliament then sitting
in Dublin, or about any other possible Parliament which might own
allegiance to the King of England, for their real aim was to sever
Ireland from England altogether and establish a separate republic. As
Wolfe Tone wrote: "To break the connection with England and to assert
the independence of my country were my objects."
It is this party that is represented by the Nationalists of to-day,
except that when they look for foreign aid, their hopes lie in the
direction of Germany rather than France. I know that this remark may
call forth a storm of denials from those who judge by the speeches
which Nationalist leaders have made in England when trying to win the
Radical vote, or in the Colonies when aiming at getting money from
people who had not studied the question. But I judge not by speeches
such as those, but by statements continually put forward by political
writers and orators when they have cast off the mask and are
addressing their sympathizers in Ireland and America:--
"The Nationalists of Ireland stand for the complete
independence of Ireland, and they stand for nothing else. In
the English Empire they have no part or lot, and they wish to
have no part or lot. We stand for the Irish nation, free
and independent and outside the English Empire."--(_Irish
Freedom_.)
"Our aim is the establishment of an Irish Republic, for the
simple and sole reason that no other ending of our quarrel
with England could be either adequate or final. This is the
one central and vital point of agreement among all who are
worthy of the name of Irish Nationalists--that Ireland is
a separate nation--separate in thought, mind, in ideals and
outlooks. Come what may, we work for Ireland as separate from
England as Germany is separate."--(Ib.)
"Year by year the pilgrimage to the grave of Theobald Wolfe
Tone grows more significant of the rising tide of militant and
uncompromising Nationalism, more significant of the fact that
Young Ireland has turned away from the false thing that has
passed for patriotism, and has begun to reverence only the
men and the things and the memories that stand for Ireland an
independent nation. Paying tribute to the memory of men
like Tone, lifting up the language of Ireland from the mire,
linking up the present with the old days of true patriotic
endeavour--these are the doings that will eventually bring our
land from the mazes of humbug into the clear dawn that heralds
Nationhood."--(_The Leinster Leader_.)
"The object aimed at by the advanced National party is the
recovery of Ireland's national independence and the severance
of all political connection with England."--(_J. Devoy_.)
"In the better days that are approaching, the soil of Ireland
will be populated by a race of Irishmen free and happy and
thriving, owning no master under the Almighty, and owning no
flag but the green flag of an independent Irish nation."--(_W.
O'Brien, M.P._)
"In supporting Home Rule for Ireland we abandon no principle
of Irish nationhood as laid down by the fathers in the Irish
movement for independence, from Wolfe Tone and Emmett to John
Mitchell, and from Mitchell to Kickham and Parnell."--(_J.
Redmond_.)
"Our ultimate goal is the national independence of our
country."--(Ib.)
"In its essence the National movement is the same to-day as it
was in the days of Hugh O'Niell, Owen Roe, Emmett, or of Wolfe
Tone."--(Ib.)
"We are as much rebels to England's rule as our forefathers
were in '98."--(Ib.)
"I remember when Parnell was asked if he would accept as a
final settlement the Home Rule compromise proposed by Mr.
Gladstone. I remember his answer. He said 'I believe in the
policy of taking from England anything we can wring from her
which will strengthen our hands to go for more.'"--(Ib.)
"When we have undermined English misgovernment we have paved
the way for Ireland to take her place among the nations of the
earth. And let us not forget that that is the ultimate goal
at which all we Irishmen aim. None of us, whether we be
in America or in Ireland, or wherever we may be, will be
satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which keeps
Ireland bound to England."
(_C.S. Parnell_.)
"I know there are many people in America who think that the
means which we are operating to-day for the good of Ireland
are not sufficiently sharp and decisive ... I would suggest
to those who have constituted themselves the censors of our
movement, would it not be well to give our movement a fair
chance--to allow us to have an Irish Parliament that will give
our people all authority over the police and the judiciary
and all government in the nation, and when equipped with
comparative freedom, then would be the time for those who
think we should destroy the last link that binds us to England
to operate by whatever means they think best to achieve that
great and desirable end? I am quite sure that I speak for the
United Irish League in the matter."
(_J. Devlin, M.P._)
"What was it, after all, that Wolfe Tone, and Fitzgerald, and
Mitchell, and Smith O'Brien, and O'Meagher Condon, and Allen,
Larkins and O'Brien, and all the other gallant Irishmen strove
for, who from generation to generation were inspired with
the spirit of revolution? ... In what respect does our policy
differ from the purpose of these men?"--(Ib.)
"In my opinion, and in the opinion of the vast majority of the
advanced Nationalists of Ireland, the Repeal of the Union
is not the full Nationalist demand; separation is the full
Nationalist demand; that is the right on which we stand, the
Nationalist right of Ireland."--(_J. Dillon, M.P._)
"I should never have dedicated my life to this great struggle
if I did not see at the end the crowning and the consummation
of our work--a free and independent nation."--(Ib.)
"We aim at nothing else than establishing a new nation upon
the map of Europe."--(_Dr. Douglas Hyde_.)
"If there is any man in this audience who says to us as
representing that Parliamentary movement--'I don't believe
in your Parliamentary ideas, I don't accept Home Rule, I go
beyond it; I believe in an independent Irish nation'--if any
man says this, I say that we don't disbelieve in it. These
are our tactics--if you are to take a fortress, first take the
outer works."--(_T.M. Kettle, M.P._)
"We want to carry on the work that the Fenians tried to do to
a triumphal issue. The Fenians stood for an Irish Republic,
and so do we. No policy which left England in control of the
Irish Nation could be regarded as final. There is only one
way, and that is to get the absolute and complete independence
of Ireland, free from English rule and English domination. The
Fenians did not go to the Prime Minister for concessions.
No: they started into arms, and if people of the present
day believed in that they should arm themselves to get
the independence of Ireland."--(_B. Hobson_, speaking at a
demonstration at Cork, on the anniversary of the "martyrdom"
of Allen, Larkins, and O'Brien.)
"Should the Germans land in Ireland, they will be received
with willing hearts and strong hands, and should England be
their destination, it is to be hoped that they will find time
to disembark 100,000 rifles and a few score of ammunition for
the same in this country, and twelve months later this Ireland
will be as free as the Lord God meant it should be."--(_Major
McBride_, who organized an Irish force to aid the Boers
against England, and has consequently been appointed to a
municipal inspectorship by the Corporation of Dublin.)
"I appeal to you most earnestly to do all in your power to
prevent your countrymen from entering the degraded British
army. If you prevent 500 men from enlisting you do nearly as
good work, if not quite so exciting, as if you shot 500 men on
the field of battle, and also you are making the path smoother
for the approaching conquest of England by Germany."--(Ib.)