Flood, his eloquence had almost as much effect as in Ireland, and where
he was regarded by all parties with the deepest respect and regard. His
heart, however, remained firmly anchored to its old home, and all his
recollections in his old age centred around these earlier struggles. He
died in 1820, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. One more quotation
from Sydney Smith sums up the man for us in a few words: "The highest
attainments of human genius were within his reach, but he thought the
noblest occupation of a man was to make other men happy and free, and in
that straight line he kept for fifty years, without one side-look, one
yielding thought, one motive in his heart which might not have laid open
to the view of God or man." A generation which produced two such men as
Henry Grattan and Edmund Burke might well be looked back to by any
country in the world as the flower and crown of its national life. There
have not been many greater or better in the whole chequered history of
the human race.
L.
THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS.
The revolt of the English Colonies in America, although it evoked no
disloyalty, had a strong and unforeseen influence upon the equally
English colony in Ireland. It would have been strange had it not done
so. The circumstances of the two colonies--looking at Ireland merely in
that light--were in many respects all but identical. If England could
tax America without the consent of its representatives, then, equally it
could tax Ireland, in which case the long struggles lately waged by
Flood, Grattan, and others in the Irish Parliament over Money Bills
would be definitely decided against it. Compared to Ireland, America
indeed had little to complain of. The restrictions which held back Irish
commerce still existed in almost all their pristine force. The woollen
trade, save for some very trifling home consumption, was practically
dead; even the linen trade, which had been promised encouragement, had
hitherto hardly received any. Bounties had been offered, on the
contrary, to English woollen manufacturers, and duties levied on Irish
sail-cloth, which had effectually put a stop to that important branch of
the trade. Another cause had also affected commerce seriously. The
manufacturers of the north, were almost to a man Presbyterian, and the
laws against Presbyterians had been pressed with almost as much severity
as against Catholics. Under the rule of Archbishops Boulter, Hoadly, and
Stone, who had in succession governed the country, the Test Act had been
employed with a suicidal severity, which had driven thousands of
industrious men to join their brethren in America, where they could
worship in peace, and where their presence was before long destined to
produce a formidable effect upon the impending struggle.
The whole condition of the country was miserable in the extreme.
Agriculture was at the lowest possible ebb. The Irish farmers, excluded
from the English and all foreign markets, were reduced to destitution.
Land was offered at fourteen and twelve years' purchase, and even at
those prices found no buyers. Many of the principal landowners were
absentees, and though the rents themselves do not seem as a rule to have
been high, the middlemen, by whom the land was commonly taken, ground
the wretched peasants under them to powder with their exactions. While
everything else was thus steadily shrinking, the pension list was
swelling until it stood not far short of £100,000. The additional troops
recently raised in Ireland had been sent to America, and their absence
had left the country all but defenceless. In 1779, an attempt was made
to carry out a levy of militia, in which Prostestants only were to be
enrolled, and an Act passed for the purpose. It failed utterly, for so
miserably bankrupt was the condition of the Irish Government, that it
was found impossible to collect money to pay the men, and the scheme in
consequence had to be given up.
It proved, however, to be the parent of a really successful one. In the
same year a volunteer movement sprang into sudden existence. Belfast had
been left empty of troops, and was hourly in fear of a French descent,
added to which it was harassed by the dread of a famous pirate of the
period, called Paul Jones. Under these circumstances its citizens
resolved to enrol themselves for their own defence. The idea, once
started, flew through the country like wild-fire. The old fighting
spirit sprang to sudden life at the cry to arms. After three-quarters of
a century of torpor all was stir and animation. In every direction the
gentry were enrolling their tenants, the sons of the great houses
officering the corps and drilling their own retainers. Merchants, peers,
members of Parliament all vied with one another, and in a few months'
time nearly 60,000 men had been enrolled.
Although a good deal alarmed at the rapidity of this movement, the
Government could not very well refuse to let the country arm in its own
defence, and 16,000 stand of arms, which had been brought over for the
projected militia, were after a while distributed. The greatest pride
was felt in the completeness and perfection of the equipments. Reviews
were held, and, for once, national sentiment and loyalty seemed to have
struck hands.
[Illustration: JAMES CAULFIELD, EARL OF CHARLEMONT, COMMANDER OF THE
IRISH VOLUNTEERS. (_From an etching after a picture by Hogarth_.)]
Hardly, too, were the volunteers enrolled before it began to be felt
what a power was thus conferred upon that party which had so long
pleaded in vain for the relief of Ireland from those commercial
disabilities under which it still laboured. Although the whole tone of
the volunteers was loyal, and although their principal leader, Lord
Charlemont, was a man of the utmost tact and moderation, it was none the
less clear that an appeal backed by 60,000 men in arms acquired a weight
and momentum which no previous Irish appeal had ever even approached.
In October of the same year Parliament met, and an amendment to the
address was moved by Grattan, demanding a right of free export and
import. Then Flood rose in his place, still holding office, and proposed
that the more comprehensive words Free Trade should be adopted. It was
at once agreed to and carried unanimously. Next day the whole House of
Commons went in a body to present the address to the Lord-Lieutenant,
the volunteers lining the streets and presenting arms as they went by.
The Government were startled. Lord Buckinghamshire, the Lord-Lieutenant,
wrote to England to say that the trade restrictions must be repealed, or
he would not answer for the consequences. Lord North, the Prime
Minister, yielded, and a Bill of repeal were brought in, allowing
Ireland free export and import to foreign countries and to the English
Colonies. When the news reached Dublin, the utmost delight and
excitement prevailed. Bonfires were lit, houses in Dublin illuminated,
the volunteers fired salvoes of rejoicing, and addresses of gratitude
were forthwith forwarded to England.
The next step in the upward progress has been already partially
described in the chapter dealing with Grattan. At the meeting of
Parliament in 1782, the Declaration of Rights proposed by him was
passed, and urgently pressed upon the consideration of the Government.
The moment was exceptionally favourable. Lord North's Ministry had by
this time fallen, after probably the most disastrous tenure of office
that had ever befallen any English administration. America had achieved
her independence, and England was in no mood for embarking upon fresh
struggle with another of her dependencies. In Ireland the Ulster
volunteers had lately met at Dungannon, and passed unanimous resolutions
in favour of Grattan's proposal, and their example had been speedily
followed all over Ireland. The Whig Ministry, now in power, was known to
be not unfavourable to the cause which the Irish patriots had at heart.
A Bill was brought forward and carried, revoking the recent Declaratory
Acts which bound the Irish Parliament, and giving it the right to
legislate for itself. Poynings' Act was thereupon repealed, and a number
of independent Acts, as already stated, passed by the now emancipated
Irish Parliament. The legislative independence was an accomplished fact.
The objects of the volunteers' existence was now over. The American war
was at an end, the independence of the Parliament assured, and it was
felt therefore, by all moderate men, that it was now time for them to
disband. Flood, who had now again joined the patriotic party, was
strongly opposed to this. He pressed forward his motion for "simple
repeal," and was supported by Lord Bristol, the Bishop of Derry, a
scatter-brained prelate, who had been bitten by a passion for military
glory, and would have been perfectly willing to see the whole country
plunged into bloodshed. A better and more reasonable plea on Flood's
part was that reform was the crying necessity of the hour, and ought to
be carried while the volunteers were still enrolled, and the effect
already produced by their presence was still undiminished. Grattan also
desired reform, but held that the time for carrying it was not yet ripe.
A vehement debate ensued, and bitter recriminations were exchanged. A
convention of volunteers was at the moment being held in Dublin, and
Flood endeavoured to make use of their presence there to get his Reform
Bill passed. This the House regarded as a menace, and after a violent
debate his Bill was thrown out. There was a moment during which it
seemed as if the volunteers were about to try the question by force of
arms. More prudent counsels, however, prevailed, and, greatly to their
credit, they consented a week later to lay down their arms, and retire
peaceably to their own homes.
LI.
DANGER SIGNALS.
The significant warnings uttered by Flood and others against the danger
of postponing reform until the excitement temporarily awakened upon the
subject had subsided and the volunteers disbanded, proved,
unfortunately, to be only too well justified. Where Flood, however, had
erred, had been in failing to see that a reform which left three-fourths
of the people of the country unrepresented, could never be more than a
reform in name. This error Grattan never made. During the next ten or
twelve years, his efforts were steadily and continually directed to
obtaining equal political power for all his fellow-countrymen alike.
Reform was indeed the necessity of the hour. The corruption of
Parliament was increasing rather than diminishing. From 130 to 140 of
its members were tied by indissoluble knots to the Government, and could
only vote as by it directed. Most of these were the nominees of the
borough-owners; many held places or enjoyed pensions terminable at the
pleasure of the king, and at the smallest sign of insubordination or
independence instant pressure was brought to bear upon them until they
returned to their obedience.
Although free now to import and export from the rest of the world no
change with regard to Ireland's commercial intercourse with Great
Britain had as yet taken place. In 1785, a number of propositions were
drawn up by the Dublin Parliament, to enable the importation of goods
through Great Britain into Ireland, or _vice versa_, without any
increase of duty. These propositions were agreed to by Pitt, then Prime
Minister, and were brought forward by him in the English House of
Commons. Again, however, commercial jealousy stepped in. A number of
English towns remonstrated vehemently; one petition despatched to the
House alone bearing the signature of 80,000 Lancashire manufacturers.
"Greater panic," it was said at the time, "could not have been expressed
had an invasion been in question." The result was, that a number of
modifications were made to the propositions, and when returned to
Ireland, so profoundly had they been altered, that the patriotic party
refused to accept them, and although when the division came on, the
Government obtained a majority it was so small that the Bill was allowed
to drop, and thus the whole scheme came to nothing.
Outside Parliament, meanwhile, the country was in a very disturbed
state. Long before this local riots and disturbances had broken out,
especially in the south. As early as 1762, secret societies, known under
the generic name of Whiteboys, had inspired terror throughout Munster,
especially in the counties of Cork, Limerick, and Tipperary. These
risings, as has been clearly proved by Mr. Lecky, had little, if any,
connection with either politics or religion. Their cause lay, as he
shows, on the very surface, in the all but unendurable misery in which
the great mass of the people were sunk.
[Illustration: RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE. (_From an engraving by Jones
after Romney_.)]
Lord Chesterfield, one of the few Lord-Lieutenants who had really
attempted to understand Ireland, had years before spoken in
unmistakeable language on this point. Subletting was almost universal,
three or four persons standing often between the landowner and the
actual occupier, the result being that the condition of the latter was
one of chronic semi-starvation. So little was disloyalty at the root of
the matter, that in a contemporary letter, written by Robert Fitzgerald,
the Knight of Kerry, it is confidently asserted that, were a recruiting
officer to be sent to the district, the people would gladly flock to the
standard of the king, although, he significantly adds, "it seems to me
equally certain that if the enemy effects a landing within a hundred
miles of these people, they will most assuredly join them[16]."
The tithe system was another all but unendurable burden, and it was
against the tithe proctors that the worst of the Whiteboy outrages were
committed. That these outrages had little directly to say to religion
is, however, clear, from the fact that the tithe system was nearly as
much detested by the Protestant landowners as by their tenants. In the
north risings of a somewhat similar character had broken out chiefly
amongst Protestants of the lower classes, who gathered themselves into
bands under the name of "Oak boys" and "Steel boys." The grievances of
which they complained being, however, for the most part after a while
repealed, they gradually dispersed, and were heard of no more. In the
south it was otherwise, and the result has been that Whiteboy
conspiracies continued, under different names, to be a terror to the
country, and have so continued down to our own day.
[16] "History of England in the Eighteenth Century," vol. iv. p. 340.
As long as the volunteers remained embodied there was an all but
complete cessation of these local disturbances, but upon their
disbandment they broke out with renewed force. Many too of the
volunteers themselves, who, although disbanded, retained their arms,
began to fall under new influences, and to lose their earlier
reputation. "What had originally," in Grattan's words, "been the armed
property of Ireland, was becoming its armed beggary." A violent
sectarian spirit, too, was beginning to show itself afresh, although as
yet chiefly amongst the lowest and most ignorant classes. A furious
faction war had broken out in the North of Ireland, between Protestants
and Roman Catholics. The former had made an association known as the
"Peep-of-day boys," to which the latter had responded by one called the
"Defenders." In 1795 a regular battle was fought between the two, and
the "Defenders" were defeated with the loss of many lives. The same year
saw the institution of Orange Lodges spring into existence, and spread
rapidly over the north. Amongst the more educated classes a strongly
revolutionary feeling was beginning to spread, especially in Belfast.
The passionate sympathy of the Presbyterians for America had awakened a
vehemently republican spirit, and the rising tide of revolution in
France, found a loudly reverberating echo in Ireland, especially amongst
the younger men. In 1791 in Belfast, the well-known "Society of United
Irishmen" came into existence and its leaders were eager to combine this
democratic movement in the north with the recently reconstructed Roman
Catholic committee in Dublin. All these, it is plain, were elements of
danger which required careful watching. The one hope, the one necessity,
as all who were not blinded by passion or prejudice saw plainly, lay in
a reformed Parliament--one which would represent, no longer a section,
but the whole community. To combine to procure this, and to sink all
religious differences in the common weal, was the earnest desire of all
who genuinely cared for their country, whether within or without the
Parliament. Of this programme, the members even of the United Irishmen
were, in the first instance, ardent exponents, and their demands,
ostensibly at least, extended no further. In the words of the oath
administered to new members, they desired to forward "an identity of
interests, a communion of rights, and a union amongst Irishmen of all
religious persuasions, without which every reform in Parliament must be
partial, not national, inadequate to the wants, delusive to the wishes,
and insufficient for the freedom and happiness of the country."
LII.
THE FITZWILLIAM DISAPPOINTMENT.
The eagerness shown at this time by the principal Irish Protestants to
give full emancipation to their Roman Catholic countrymen is eminently
creditable to them, and stands in strong relief to the bitterness on
both sides, both in earlier and latter times. By 1792 there seems to
have been something almost like unanimity on the subject. What reads
strangest perhaps to our ears, 600 Belfast Protestant householders
warmly pressed the motion on the Government. In a work, published six
years earlier, Lord Sheffield, though himself opposed to emancipation,
puts this unanimity in unmistakable words. "It is curious," he says, "to
observe one-fifth or one-sixth of a nation in possession of all the
power and property of the country, eager to communicate that power to
the remaining four-fifths, which would, in effect, entirely transfer it
from themselves."
[Illustration: ("A man of importance.") THE EARL OF MOIRA. _By
Gillray_.]
The generation to which Flood, Lucas, and Lord Charlemont had belonged,
and who were almost to a man opposed to emancipation, was fast passing
away, and amongst the more independent men of the younger generation
there were few who had not been won over to Grattan's view of the
matter. In England, too, circumstances were beginning to push many, even
of those hitherto bitterly hostile to concession, in the same direction.
The growing terror of the French Revolution had loosened the bonds of
the party, and the hatred which existed between the Jacobins and the
Catholic clerical party, inclined the Government to extend the olive
branch to the latter in hopes of thereby securing their support. Pitt
was personally friendly to emancipation, and in December, 1792, a
deputation of five delegates from the Catholic convention in Dublin was
graciously received by the king himself, and returned under the
impression that all religious disabilities were forthwith to be
abolished. Next month, January, 1793, at the meeting of the Irish
Parliament, a Bill was brought in giving the right of voting to all
Catholic forty-shilling freeholders, and throwing open also to Catholics
the municipal franchise in the towns. Although vehemently opposed by the
Ascendency, this Bill, being supported by the Opposition, passed easily
and received the royal assent upon April 9th.
It was believed to be only an instalment of full and free emancipation
soon to follow. In 1794, several of the more moderate Whigs, including
Edmund Burke and Lord Fitzwilliam, left Fox, and joined Pitt. One of the
objects of the Whig members of this new coalition was the admission of
Irish Roman Catholics to equal rights with their Protestant
fellow-country men. To this Pitt at first demurred, but in the end
agreed to grant it subject to certain stipulations, and Lord Fitzwilliam
was accordingly appointed Lord-Lieutenant, and arrived in Ireland in
January, 1795.
His appointment awakened the most vehement and widely expressed delight.
He was known to be a warm supporter of emancipation. He was a personal
friend of Grattan's, and a man in whom all who had the interests of
their country at heart believed that they could confide. He had himself
declared emphatically that he would "never have taken office unless the
Roman Catholics were to be relieved from every disqualification." He was
received in Dublin with enthusiastic rejoicings. Loyal addresses from
Roman Catholics poured in from every part of Ireland. Large supplies
were joyfully voted by the Irish Parliament, and, although he reported
in a letter to the Duke of Portland that the disaffection amongst the
lower orders was very great, on the other hand the better educated of
the Roman Catholics were loyal to a man. For the moment the party of
disorder seemed indeed to have vanished. Grattan, though he refused to
take office, gave all the great weight of his support to the Government,
and obtained leave to bring in an Emancipation Bill with hardly a
dissentient voice. The extreme Jacobine party ceased apparently for the
moment to have any weight in the country. Revolution seemed to be
scotched, and the dangers into which Ireland had been seen awhile before
to be rapidly hastening, appeared to have passed away.
Suddenly all was changed. On February 12th, leave to bring in a Bill for
the admission of Roman Catholics to Parliament was moved by Grattan. On
February 9th, a letter reached Lord Fitzwilliam from Pitt, which showed
that some changes had taken place in the intentions of the Government,
but no suspicion of the extent of those changes was as yet entertained.
On February 23rd, however, the Duke of Portland wrote, "by the king's
command," authorizing Lord Fitzwilliam to resign. The law officers and
other officials who had been displaced were thereupon restored to their
former places. Grattan's Bill was hopelessly lost, and all the elements
of rebellion and disaffection at once began to seethe and ferment again.
What strikes one most in studying these proceedings is the curious folly
of the whole affair! Why was a harbinger of peace sent if only to be
immediately recalled? Why were the hopes of the Roman Catholics, of the
whole country in fact, raised to the highest pitch of expectation, if
only that they might be dashed to the ground? Pitt no doubt had a very
difficult part to play. George III. was all his life vehemently opposed
to the admission of Roman Catholics to Parliament. Two of the officials
whom Fitzwilliam had dismissed, Cooke, the Under Secretary of State, and
Beresford, the Chief Commissioner of Customs, were men of no little
influence, and Beresford, immediately upon his arrival in England had
had a personal interview with the king. That Pitt knew how critical was
the situation in Ireland is certain. He was not, however, prepared to
resign office, and short of that step it was impossible to bring
sufficient pressure to bear upon the king's obstinacy. His own
preference ran strongly towards a Union of the two countries, and with
this end in view, he is often accused of having been cynically
indifferent as to what disasters and horrors Ireland might be destined
to wade through to that consummation. This it is difficult to conceive;
nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the rising of four years later
dated from this decision, and was almost as directly due to it as if the
latter had been planned with that object.
From this point the stream runs darkly and steadily to the end. Lord
Fitzwilliam's departure was regarded by Protestants and Catholics alike
as a national calamity. In Dublin shops were shut; people put on
mourning, and his carriage was followed to the boat by lamenting crowds.
Grattan's Bill was of course lost, and the exasperation of the Catholics
rendered tenfold by the disappointment. "The demon of darkness," it was
said, "could not have done more mischief had he come from hell to throw
a fire-brand amongst the people."