movement among the ships at the Nore. It began on board the 'Sandwich,'
the flagship of Admiral Buckner. As in the former case, delegates from
the seamen met on board the 'Sandwich,' but the chief management of the
mutiny fell absolutely into the hands of a seaman called Parker, a man
of good education, and at one time an officer in the navy, but whose
abilities as a leader were spoiled by his arrogant assumption of
dictatorial power. Under his influence the demands of the mutineers
assumed a political character; they required a revision of the Articles
of War, an increase of prize-money, and the dismissal of officers not
agreeable to the ships' companies. All efforts to bring the men to
reason were unavailing. Lord Spencer himself, the First Lord of the
Admiralty, had an interview with Parker, but was met with nothing but
insult. After this the mutineers fired upon some frigates who would not
join them, and blockaded the Thames. It became necessary to take
vigorous measures. Bills were passed without opposition strengthening
the hands of Government, and making it felony to hold intercourse with
the mutinous ships. Ships were got ready, the navigation of the Thames
was rendered difficult by the removal of marks, and batteries were
erected along the river. Cut off from the shore, and finding no sympathy
among the fleets at Portsmouth and Plymouth, nor among even the most
advanced radicals on shore, although they were joined by the fleets of
Admiral Duncan, the mutineers began to give way. Ship after ship slipped
her cable and escaped from the mutinous fleet, and on the 15th of June
the 'Sandwich' herself was brought within range of the batteries. Parker
was at once apprehended, sentenced to death, and hanged. But though the
firmness of the Government had secured them complete victory, they were
too conscious of the real abuses in the navy to be severe. Only four or
five executions followed.
[Sidenote: Real loyalty of the sailors.]
The great peculiarity of the mutiny was the ease with which it was
ultimately suppressed and the proofs of underlying loyalty which are
visible throughout it. In the Channel fleet all the offers of the
Admiralty, and even of Parliament, were regarded as delusive till the
King's own sign manual was exhibited, upon which all signs of mistrust
at once vanished. When one of the ships threatened to leave the fleet
and join the French, the guns of the rest of the mutinous fleet were at
once turned upon it, and it was carefully blockaded by guard-boats; and
again, so far from sympathizing with the mutineers of the Nore, the
sailors of the Channel fleet, after their return to allegiance, wrote to
the delegates declaring that their conduct was a scandal to the British
navy. Even at the Nore, where the mutiny had taken a more political
form, every ship but one struck the red flag and hoisted the royal
ensign on the King's birthday, and within a few weeks of the suppression
of the disaffection, the battle of Camperdown, one of the severest
engagements of the time, was chiefly won for England by the crews of the
lately insurgent fleet.
[Sidenote: Disorganization of the French Government.]
It was well for England that the Government of France was at this time
so disorganized that no vigorous effort could be made to take advantage
of her deplorable condition. The place of the assignats had been taken
by another form of paper money called "mandats," but these too had been
rejected by the people, who could no longer be brought to believe in
paper money of any description. Forced to have recourse to the use of
specie, the Directory had also found itself compelled to have recourse
to the old means of raising money; compulsory loans were established,
the receipts of future years anticipated, the national goods sold for
whatever they would fetch, and money raised at the most ridiculous
interest. These financial arrangements gave rise to much nefarious
speculation and stock-jobbing; the business of the army to still more;
and the newly enriched speculators, emancipated from the pressure of the
terror and devoid of all the nobler sentiments of republicanism, were a
mere set of selfish voluptuaries. In such a dissolution of morality and
public spirit it was plain that the royalists had their chance, and in
the year 1797 sufficient members of their party were elected to change
the majority of the two councils. The representative body immediately
entered into a struggle with the executive Directory; and in that
Directory were Barras, a revolutionary at heart though the leader of all
the dissoluteness of the time, Barthélemy, the negotiator of Basle, who
appears to have been royalist in his tendencies, and Carnot, an upright
republican, but yet under the influence of the dread of the old terror.
It was plain that if the Revolution was to be saved it must be done by
violent means, and Rewbell and Laréveilière, the remaining directors,
with the assistance of Barras, determined to save it at the cost of a
_coup d'état_ carried out by the army. On the night of the 18th
Fructidor (Sept. 4, 1797), Carnot and Barthélemy, with fifty of the
obnoxious majority, were arrested, and all chance of a royalist reaction
was for the time over. Bonaparte was now convinced that the ultimate
fate of France must be with the army, in other words, that it must lie
with himself, but with great wisdom he determined to wait the turn of
events.
[Sidenote: Negotiations at Lisle.]
While the parties were thus struggling in France, and there seemed a
chance of an entire change of feeling, the English ministry, very
seriously anxious for peace, again opened negotiations. The
Preliminaries of Léoben had in fact removed what should have been the
sole difficulty; it was ridiculous that England should continue to hold
out on the subject of the Low Countries when Austria had herself entered
into a private treaty to abandon them. A passport was therefore
demanded, and, somewhat unfortunately, Lord Malmesbury was again fixed
upon as the negotiator. He went to Lisle, presented his plan of a
treaty, and had every reason to believe that all was going well. England
consented to restore all her conquests with the exception of the Isle of
Trinidad, the Cape of Good Hope, and Ceylon. But this was at the very
moment when the quarrel was at its height in Paris; intent upon its own
affairs, the Directory suffered the negotiations to drag on, and when
at length the republican party won their victory on the 18th Fructidor,
the negotiations were suddenly broken off on the old ground that
Malmesbury had not got full authority. The real reason is obvious,--the
party in power, who relied on the army, knew that the power of the army
was immensely increased by a state of war.
[Sidenote: Battle of Camperdown. Oct. 11, 1797.]
The termination of the negotiations was at once followed by a vigorous
continuation of the war. Lord Malmesbury had been but a few weeks in
England when the Dutch fleet found itself ready at length to sail from
the Texel. But the delay--caused by the weather, the absence of Hoche,
and the factions of Paris--had almost deprived it of its terrors. Even
when the greater part of his fleet had been in mutiny in the Thames,
Duncan had maintained the appearance of a blockade; keeping his two
faithful ships within sight of the land, he had kept up so regular a
succession of signals, as though sending his orders to a fleet outside,
that the Dutch never found out that there were only two ships watching
them. When at length they sailed Duncan's fleet outnumbered theirs by
one ship. He had withdrawn for an instant to Yarmouth roads to refit,
but apprised in time, he was enabled to fall upon the Dutch fleet before
it had left the coast of Holland. He contrived, although the enemy was
in close order, to come between them and the shore, and after a close
combat, which recalled the old days of the rivalry between England and
Holland, by four o'clock on the 11th of October he had succeeded in
capturing the flagship of Admiral Winter, together with seven other
ships of the line, two 56-gun ships, and two frigates. The bold
manœuvre of passing between the enemy and the shore was a source of
some danger, as the fleets drifted close inland during the action, but
Duncan skilfully saved both his own fleet and his prizes. The action was
watched by crowds from the Dutch shore. This battle put an end to the
danger of immediate invasion, though it seems to have inspired the
French with a determination to carry on that invasion on a larger scale
in the following year, when great preparations were made under the
personal superintendence of Bonaparte.
[Sidenote: Peace of Campo Formio. Oct. 17.]
The breach of negotiations at Lisle was followed on the 17th of October
by the completion of the Peace of Campo Formio, which had been begun by
the Preliminaries of Léoben. This peace secured to France the possession
of Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine, and the Ionian Isles, and
acknowledged the establishment of the Cisalpine Republic, consisting of
the provinces conquered in Italy from the Austrians, the Pope, and
Venice; while Austria received in exchange Venice itself and its eastern
provinces, Friuli, Istria, and Dalmatia. France thus lay not only
triumphant in Europe, but with the Rhine for its frontier, and for
outposts four republics pledged to uphold its revolutionary ideas. But
in acquiring this position the rights of peoples had been trampled upon,
Switzerland had been appended to France, the occupation of Rome had
seemed to give colour to the assertion that the Revolution was
atheistical, and the whole turn of events was such as to justify, even
to necessitate, subsequent European interference.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Complications attending Irish difficulties.]
The peculiar manner in which Ireland has been conquered, peopled, and
managed, renders questions regarding this country most intricate and
difficult. There is seldom a single interest to be traced which is not
crossed by numerous side winds, which render the development of
political questions crooked and complicated. The Roman Catholic
interest, the Protestant interest, the old Irish interest, the
Anglo-Irish interest, the interest of the English ascendancy, the claims
of the Presbyterians as contrasted with the National Church, are
constantly crossing and recrossing. At no time was this complication so
great or this difficulty so insoluble as in the years which followed the
breaking out of the French Revolution.
[Sidenote: Necessity for the Union.]
There is one thing, however, which tends to throw a certain light upon
the conduct of the Government of England during these years of
difficulty. Pitt and his more intimate friends had already firmly
decided in their own minds that one cure only was possible for Irish
evils--a close and complete legislative union with England. The action
of the Whig Government in 1782 had been ostensibly in exactly the
opposite direction; the triumph of Grattan and the volunteers had been
won when legislative disunion was granted, and what we should now speak
of as Home Rule established. The party which triumphed on that occasion
was not the Irish party, or the Catholic party, but the Protestant
aristocracy. The anti-national character and exclusive nature of the
party in power was shown by the rejection of all Pitt's efforts at
parliamentary reform. The independent Irish Parliament was indeed full
of able speakers; men who carried the art of rhetoric and of clothing
little thought in magnificent language to the highest pitch. But it is
not unfair to take as a sample of the practical excellence of the
management of what we may speak of as the Home Rulers, the condition of
the Foundling Hospital in Dublin. It was a noble institution; about
£16,000 a year was spent on it; 120 noblemen and wealthy gentry were on
its committee; yet after just ten years of Irish management, a committee
of inquiry reported that out of upwards of 2000 infants yearly consigned
to its care, the average that survived was 130. They were sent up in
scores, in open baskets, from distant parts of Ireland, and arrived
crushed and half lifeless, to be tossed aside, without care or inquiry,
into the kennel. Twenty-one committee-men formed a quorum, yet never
once, except when places were to be given away, had that quorum met, and
for years the treasurer, to whom the management had been confided, had
been absolutely bedridden. All that can be alleged in excuse for the bad
management, of which this is a sample, is that the Constitution of 1782
had not been thoroughly tried. Deprived by law of its power in the Irish
Parliament, yet conscious of the impossibility of allowing the country
to act as if completely independent, the Government had had recourse to
indirect influence for establishing its power. While the franchise and
the representation, all official places and all professions, except the
medical profession, were exclusively confined to the Protestants, who
were also the possessors of nineteen-twentieths of the soil, Government
had found it possible by bribery, direct or indirect, to command a
constant majority in Parliament of those who were eager to uphold the
English connection and the Protestant ascendancy. But the very fact of
its thus acting had placed a considerable portion of the Protestant
population in opposition to Government.
[Sidenote: Irish opposition to Government.]
Among the Protestants themselves there were formed two great parties,
who may be called roughly Whigs and Tories; on the one side those
placemen and pensioners who supported the English Government, and on the
other those aristocratic families and connections (probably by no means
purer or higher-minded than their opponents) who wished, as the Whig
aristocracy had wished in England, to be masters of the Government, and
to rule Ireland almost as a separate nation. Of these great connections
the typical men were, of the Tories, the family of the Beresfords, led
by the ability of Fitzgibbon the Chancellor, and of the Whigs, the
family of the Ponsonbys, led by the genius of Grattan. Around the
Opposition party there naturally collected those men who were really
reformers at heart, and the Opposition was thus enabled to use cries and
watchwords which were not only specious and plausible, but which really
touched the great evils of the country. The first of these evils was the
preposterous amount of Government influence; and the obvious way in
which that influence might be reached was by a reform of Parliament, for
nothing could be more abominable than the arrangement by which members
were elected. It was worse even than in England; by far the larger
number of seats were either private or Government property, and nominees
were appointed under distinct conditions, and their votes secured by
distinct and well-understood bargains; every man's price and every man's
expectation were actually entered like a list of merchandise in the
Government books. A second point was the fact, that not only all
political power, but till the year 1793 almost all social position was
denied to the Roman Catholics. On the first of these points the
opponents of Government were agreed; they were perfectly willing, for
the sake of injuring Government, to press constantly for a large reform
bill. On the second point there was a far greater difference of opinion.
Grattan, though himself a Protestant and a friend to the Protestant
ascendancy, was great enough to urge constantly the relief of his
Catholic fellow-countrymen; but the great majority of his friends,
however much they might from time to time for political purposes uphold
the Catholic claims, were in fact thoroughly opposed to anything which
would injure their own Protestant ascendancy. There was thus a sort of
show of union between the Protestant nationalists and the Catholics, but
at heart disunion and dislike.
[Sidenote: Grievances of the peasantry.]
Meanwhile, whatever effect upon the Protestant population Home Rule may
have had, it had not in the slightest degree alleviated the position of
the Irish peasants. Their landlords were still Englishmen, Protestants,
conquerors, and harsh landlords. The Church of England still demanded
its tithes. The aristocracy and gentry had neglected their duties till,
as has been well said, they forgot they had duties to perform; they were
hopelessly corrupt, both morally and politically. The independence which
the peasantry were taught by the inflated language used in Parliament to
believe they had already acquired seemed to them a bitter deception; and
their belief in the villany of the rulers who had tricked them, and in
the complete slavery and hardship of their own position as Roman
Catholics, was envenomed by the expressions which the Opposition allowed
itself to use in its assaults on Government. They were thus ripe for
rebellion. Indeed, for many years they had been filling Ireland with
outrages. All sorts of combinations had been made against
rent-collectors and tithe-proctors. In Munster arose the Society of the
White Boys and the followers of Captain Right. Combinations were also
directed against the farmers of taxes, who most shamelessly abused their
position. Absenteeism was the curse of Ireland. While the middleman of
the absentee landlord racked the wretched cotter for his rent, the
middleman of the absentee parson racked him for his tithes. They were in
the habit of taking their payments in interest-bearing bonds, and when
the wretched peasant was unable to meet those bonds, he became
practically the slave of the tithe farmer, who compelled him to do his
farm work for him as the price of his forbearance to put the law in
execution.
[Sidenote: Weakness of the executive.]
The executive machinery of the Government in Ireland was not strong
enough to keep order. The outrages of the Catholics had frequently to be
met by the voluntary efforts of their enemies, which soon degenerated
into counter-outrages. Thus there arose in Munster a constant cruel war
between the two religions. In the north of Ireland it was worse, for the
hatred between the religions was there more pronounced. In dread of
outrages similar to those of the south, the Protestants began, in the
roughest and most illegal manner, to deprive the Catholics of arms,
which indeed they had no right to carry; and the Catholics were driven
to form themselves into lawless societies under the name of Defenders,
in opposition to which there arose, about the year 1790, the
organization of the Orange Lodges; and there, too, a cruel civil war
began to be waged.
[Sidenote: Effect of the French Revolution in Ireland.]
While Ireland was in this miserable condition, while the liberty which
the wretched peasantry had been promised had entirely disappeared, while
the upper classes of all parties seemed in the last degree degraded, and
the ascendancy of the useless and tyrannical Church fixed for ever, the
great news of the French Revolution came. Even in more sober England
men's hearts were stirred within them at the promise of the emancipation
of the human race; among the suffering passionate Irish, with their
impulsive and sanguine dispositions, the effect was far greater. But the
class who were at first chiefly influenced by it were not the Roman
Catholics--although, no doubt, for them too it seemed to promise at
least a share in the franchise,--but the Northern Presbyterians and
Dissenters, republican from their origin, and, from the very nature of
their religious creed, equally oppressed with the Catholics by a proud
and dominant Church, and more keenly alive to that abominable system of
government which touched the Protestant more nearly than the Catholic,
because he alone had any share in it. Ulster, and especially the town
of Belfast, were the great centres of the republican and Jacobin
feelings, together with Dublin, where, as was natural, the more lively,
ambitious, and freethinking elements of society were chiefly to be
found.
[Sidenote: Difficulties of the Government.]
There were thus to be somehow handled and managed by Government a
strong, vicious, reckless, constitutional opposition, in connection with
a few men honestly desiring the legislative independence of Ireland,
and, as a necessary step, thorough parliamentary reform;--secondly, a
great body of Catholics, of which the higher and more respectable part
desired the gradual alleviation of their position, and joined with the
Opposition, not from dislike to the English connection, but because the
supporters of Government influence seemed inclined to refuse every
demand; and of which the lower part, in wild misery and excitement, was
waging a lawless war both in the north and south;--and thirdly, a very
considerable body of men, dissenters of the North, and freethinkers of
Dublin, who, touched by the influence of the French Revolution, desired
an entire overthrow of the Government, and were willing to throw
themselves into the arms of France for the destruction of the English
connection.
[Sidenote: Formation of the Society of United Irishmen.]
It is plain that of these sections two were chiefly dangerous--the Roman
Catholic peasant, who hated the Protestant, and the republican
Protestant, who hated the Government and hated the Catholic also. While
these were separate it might be possible to play off one against the
other. In this the few reckless men who desired a complete change of
Government saw the cause of their weakness. The most prominent of these
was Wolfe Tone, a young barrister, the son of a Dublin coachmaker, who
for personal reasons as he openly confessed--because certain suggestions
of his had not been well received in England--was the determined enemy
of everything English. Nominally a Protestant, really a freethinker, to
him, and to several others like him, religious disputes appeared merely
ridiculous; and the brilliant idea seized him of uniting those two
sections of people which were really dangerous to England--the Northern
Republican and the National Roman Catholic--and of thus forming the
great Society of the United Irishmen. It was plain that great
difficulties must arise in realizing such a scheme. Much as the
Protestants of Ulster hated England, they undoubtedly hated Catholics
more; much as the Catholics hated England, undoubtedly they hated
Protestants more. Still, it might be the policy of both parties to bury
for a time their great hatred, and to make common cause on that point
which they had in common. Wolfe Tone and his republican friends,
entirely careless of religion, formed an excellent connecting link. It
was with this view that he betook himself to Belfast, to take advantage
of a great celebration to be held there in honour of the anniversary of
the destruction of the Bastille, and there established his Society, as
he seems already to have done in part in Dublin. Its ostensible views as
put forward in the programme were, that the weight of English influence
was so great as to require the cordial union of the people of Ireland to
maintain liberty, that the only constitutional way of opposing that
influence was reform of Parliament, and that no reform was practicable
which did not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion. Tone
hoped, by thus setting prominently forward the advantages which each
party was desirous of gaining, to win the adhesion of both.
[Sidenote: Disunion among the Catholics.]