the persevering effects of the Whig Club. It is not necessary in this
place to enter into a defence of the motives of that body in thus
contending for the interests of the public. It is sufficient that the
measures which they patronized were in a high degree beneficial to the
Irish nation; and whether they urged them from a wish to raise
themselves to office, or from a principle of pure patriotism, was to
the public immaterial. That they supported them zealously and
faithfully, from whatever motive, was indubitable. _So_ zealously and
faithfully indeed did they exert themselves, that the very same men who
had for years made a constant and violent opposition to those measures,
exhausting every epithet of reprobation which the English language
afforded, both against them and their supporters, yet at last found
themselves obliged to concede them to the unrelaxing vigour of these
gentlemen, supported by the general sense of the country. It is the
concession of these measures that the friends of the Irish junto call
"CONCILIATION!" These are the favours which they say Ireland has
received, and which they contend ought for ever to have silenced popular
complaint, and put a period to the demands of the country! Had they been
yielded at an earlier time, before the long, long irritation which the
obstinate refusal of them for several successive years had produced,
they would have been received with gratitude by the nation, and the
effect would have been general tranquillity and content. But the Irish
administration knew neither how to concede nor withhold--their
resistance was without strength, and their concessions without kindness.
Like the Roman King and the Sybils, they withheld the price of public
content, until the people, aggravated by refusal, insisted on still
higher terms; and, indeed, rose in their demands, beyond what an
administration, bankrupt in character and confidence, were able to grant
them. What a Minister of comprehensive mind and enlarged views would
have granted to the people with magnanimity at once, and what if thus
granted, would have taken the tongue from discontent, and left
disaffection no handle to use against the peace of the country, the
Irish administration conceded piece-meal--one little measure after
another--reluctantly and with hesitation; thus teaching the people that
what was granted could not be withheld, and that the same means which
had extorted one concession from the weakness of government would be
equally successful in extorting others. Nay, at the very moment when
they were yielding those measures to the perseverance of opposition,
supported by the public sense, they continued to load those very men by
whole exertions they had been obtained with scurrilous and foul
invective; and while with one hand they affected to conciliate the
people, with the other they scattered the seeds of disaffection widely
through the land by the most inflammatory and ill-judged libels upon the
country and its claims. Thus, in the hands of those men, the benignity
of the Sovereign was perverted into an instrument of discontent, and
those rich concessions which, if judiciously administered, would have
bound Ireland to Britain by indissoluble ties, were made means of
exciting in numbers of the inhabitants of that country a deep hatred of
the British name and connection.
When Englishmen contemplate for a moment this picture of the
"conciliation" which the Irish nation has received with so much
ingratitude, it is possible they may conclude that nothing has happened
which might not have reasonably been expected. Possibly they will think
it not unnatural that the people should have received, with little sense
of obligation, measures which were never conceded until they came to
form only a small part of what was demanded as rights--and that they
should rather feel indignant at the insult and abuse heaped on them by a
few contemptible and obscure adventurers, than acknowledge gratitude for
benefits long kept back, and, at length, reluctantly yielded.
I have dwelt thus long on the early conduct of the Irish administration
for two reasons--the one to vindicate the people of Ireland from the
insolent charge made against them by their enemies--"That conciliation
had been tried in vain with that sottish and discontented people--that
they had not intellect to understand, nor gratitude to acknowledge
benefits--and that, therefore, the present system of unconstitutional
coercion and deprivation was resorted to of necessity:"--the other was
to shew, that whatever discontent has been recently shewn in Ireland,
whatever crimes have been committed for political purposes, had their
remote origin in that system by which the powers of government had been
abused in Ireland for several years back. Whether I have succeeded in
this attempt, I leave to Englishmen, who know and value freedom and
constitution, to determine. For myself I shall only say, that my mind is
incapable of feeling a greater degree of moral certainty, than that the
people of Ireland are innocent of causeless discontent and of
ingratitude; and that all the evils which now lacerate that unhappy
country, (for the mere suppression of present discontents will not end
the danger,) and threaten the mutilation of the empire, are the
necessary and inevitable effects of the wicked system adopted by the
weak, hot-headed, and petulant men to whom the administration of Ireland
was entrusted, operating upon a generous and loyal but irritable and
warm people.
But had the Irish junto rested at the point to which we have now come in
describing their system, Ireland would not now have to appeal for pity
or for aid to the British nation. It is the subsequent measures to which
they resorted, and for which no precedent is to be found in the history
of this or any other country pretending to laws, or rights, or
constitution, that we complain of. It is by these that Ireland has been
lashed into madness, and driven to crimes and to follies which her sober
reason would have looked at with detestation. It shall be now my
business to advert to those measures--to shew that they have generally
preceded those crimes of the people which are alledged to have produced
them--that they have been severe and desperate beyond what the necessity
of the case called for--that their probable result will be a military
despotism--that they cannot tranquillize the country but by the
destruction of every degree of constitutional liberty--that, therefore,
the people of Great Britain are interested in preventing the progress of
that system in Ireland--and, finally, that if the two great objects of
the public in Ireland were honestly and fully conceded, and if the
people were re-instated in the blessings of the constitution by the
establishment of a mild and just administration, peace and content would
be restored to the country, disaffection would vanish, and the
connection of the two islands become closer and more permanent than
ever.
I have already mentioned the Convention and Gunpowder Acts, and the
discontent which these laws had excited. Administration felt, that on
these questions there was but one opinion amongst the people of Ireland.
They perceived, that though these acts were of the strongest kind, their
operation would not be adequate to the suppression of the existing and
encreasing discontent; and they therefore resorted to a device, which,
having been but too often and too successfully tried in Ireland on
former occasions, would, it was hoped, be equally successful at present.
A religious feud was excited, and suffered to rage without check or
intermission, until it nearly desolated a whole county. Some petty
quarrels had, a considerable time back, taken place in the county of
Armagh, between a few Catholics and Presbyterians, which, however,
produced no serious mischief, and were almost instantly terminated
either by the interposition of the magistrates, or by the mutual
compromise of the parties. Subsequent to this, the county of Armagh
enjoyed the most profound tranquillity, until about this period a party
started up on the sudden, without visible motive, without provocation,
and, to the surprize of the people in Ireland, commenced a most
outrageous and unaccountable persecution of the Catholic inhabitants. It
would shock the ears of an Englishman, and, perhaps, exceed his belief,
were I to give a minute detail of the ferocious barbarities which were
committed by this party. It may suffice to say, that under the name of
Orange-men, and under colour of attachment to the constitution and
affection for the Protestant establishment, they not only burned the
houses and destroyed the persons of numbers of the unfortunate Catholics
in the heat of blood and fervour of outrage, but with a cool and settled
system proceeded to banish the whole of them. Entire districts were
proscribed in a night. Labels were affixed on all the Catholic houses in
a village, with the words "To Connaught or to Hell!" Nor was the threat
vain;--for in numberless instances where the unfortunate inhabitants
refused to obey the mandate, their habitations were pulled down or
burned by these bravadoes of the constitution, happy if they thus
escaped personal destruction. In many cases these outrages were
accompanied by plunder; but plunder did not seem to constitute any part
of the system under which the Orange-men acted, unless perhaps the
plunder of arms, to deprive the Catholics of which was one of their
proposed objects.
With what reason the Irish administration were charged with having
clandestinely excited, or culpably connived at the excesses of these
men, the people of England may determine when they hear that the
magistracy of that country remained for many months inactive spectators
of these scenes; nay, indeed, in some cases, are said to have given
countenance and support to the offenders, by executing the laws with the
most inflexible rigour against the Catholics when they happened to fall
into any casual error in repelling the attacks of their persecutors,
while these latter were left in the enjoyment of perfect impunity.
But this is not the only circumstance which may assist an Englishman to
judge how far the Irish administration participated in the guilt of
these disturbances--there is another which seems pretty decisive on
this point; and that is, that notwithstanding this palpable and
notorious misconduct of the Armagh magistracy, not one man was turned
out of the commission for his negligence and connivance on those
occasions! What apology did the Irish Chancellor offer for not removing
those magistrates?--"That better men could not be found in the country!"
This feud, so malignant in its origin, and so destructive in its
progress, was possibly expected to have weakened the efficacy of the
popular sentiment against the Irish Ministers, by throwing the different
religious descriptions to a consideration of their respective and
peculiar interests. It produced a very contrary effect. The persecution
commenced against the Catholics in Armagh, alarmed the Catholics in
every quarter of the country; and when they saw such enormities
committed against them with impunity, if not with the approbation of the
Castle, they naturally apprehended that a general persecution was
designed. They knew, however, that the great body of the Protestants in
Ireland were too enlightened to assist in such a scheme--for they had
already experienced that the rigour of old prejudices was abated, and
that men now began to consider each other rather as men than as
religionists.--But they also knew the character of the administration;
and the recent transactions in Armagh and elsewhere, taught them, that
though they had no reason to fear persecution from the great body of
their Protestant fellow-subjects, they were yet not exempt from danger.
These fears suggested the necessity of drawing still more closely the
bond of union between them and their countrymen of other persuasions.
The Protestants met them half way in their advances toward a conjunction
of interests--for they perceived, that though the present blow was
struck against the Catholics, yet the warfare of administration was not
against them only, but against the constitution, against the people,
their privileges, and their interests.
Had these been the only consequences that followed this dreadful
experiment, the partial evil would have been compensated by the union
which it produced. But this was not the case. The alarm which the Armagh
persecution produced on the minds of the enlightened Catholics, and on
the lower orders of that description were very different. In the former
it produced a desire to unite more closely with his Protestant brethren,
in order to form by their conjunction the stronger barrier against the
apprehended assault of the Irish Cabinet upon both. In the latter, it
excited a fear of extermination, which resolved itself into the most
violent and unjustifiable measures, of what they considered personal
defence--The Orange-men had deprived the Catholics of their arms--the
lower order of Catholics co-operating in many instances with their
Protestant neighbours of the same rank, who detested the conduct of
Orange-men, betook themselves to retaliate on those whom they considered
suspected characters. The robbery of arms became a general measure of
safety, and those who exerted themselves in this way obtained the name
of Defenders--a body of men, whom that administration which suffered the
Orange-men to violate the laws with impunity, followed with the utmost
severity of legal punishment.
No man who values the interests of society, or knows the value of peace
and good order in a community, can be supposed for a moment to justify
the intemperate and incautious conduct of those deluded men. If such
licence as they usurped were permitted, human society must be dissolved,
and man be thrown back to a state of savage nature. But on the other
hand, no man who has any regard for truth, or who enjoys a capacity of
distinguishing between different ideas, can deny, that the crimes of the
Defenders were provoked by the preceding crimes of the Orange-men, and
that those powers which, contrary to justice, were suffered to lie
dormant against the one class, whose guilt was original and unprovoked,
were exercised without mercy against the latter; whose errors were the
ebullition of untaught nature repelling in an untaught way, the most
wanton and unparalleled aggression.
There were some collateral circumstances which contributed to give full
effect to the impression which the enormities of the Orange society were
calculated to make on the minds of the lower orders. The severity with
which administration had followed the United Irishmen by dispersing
their meetings, seizing their papers, and prosecuting as libels every
publication which emanated from them, had driven them to the necessity
of meeting secretly, and admitting members into their society in a
private and mysterious manner. Between secret meetings and conspiracy
the interval is small--between meeting secretly for constitutional
purposes and meeting to alter or overthrow the constitution, the
interval is perhaps still less. Whether the objects or the United Irish
societies were at this period unconstitutional or not, it is certain the
meetings were clandestine, and that of the lower class of people numbers
flocked to them who were admitted only on condition of taking an oath to
be true to the body--_i. e._ to keep its secrets, and to devote
themselves to the pursuit of the two great popular objects--Catholic
Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform. The impression which the minds of
the lower order of the people would be apt to receive at the discussion
of these meetings cannot be considered as very likely to mitigate their
zeal in opposition to the persecutors of the Catholics, or to form their
minds to receive with patient forbearance the severities which were now
every where exercised indiscriminately against the United Irishmen and
Defenders--terms which, in the indiscriminating language of the senate
and the Castle, were considered as synonymous.
In considering the effect which the extensive and secret meetings of the
United Irishmen produced on the dispositions of the lower people it is
not necessary to ascertain whether the designs of that body were or were
not treasonable. It is sufficient that were they precisely limited to
their professed objects, emancipation and reform, the effect of them on
the mass of the public by whom they were constituted must be adverse to
the system which administration had adopted, and which they now began to
force on the nation by means the most unjustifiable.
If this statement of facts, which I have now submitted to the English
nation, as demonstrative that the Irish administration were themselves
the authors of those enormities which they have since made a pretext for
introducing fire and sword through the country--if this statement, I
say, be true, and I defy any part of it to be disproved, their guilt and
the emptiness of the pretences by which they have endeavoured to screen
it, are incontrovertible:
What was the next measure of administration? The Insurrection Act. The
outrages which commenced in Armagh, and had been but too successfully,
though faintly, imitated in several parts of the country, administration
now affected to consider as incurable by any of the ordinary powers with
which the law invested the executive authority. A law was therefore
propounded and adopted, by which any district which the magistrates of
it might think proper to declare in a state of disturbance, or in
immediate danger of becoming so, (phrases so vague that it required but
little artifice to make them applicable at that time to any county in
the kingdom,) was put into such a state of regimen, that any individual
magistrate might on his own authority, without trial or proof, seize the
person of any inhabitant and send him to serve on board his Majesty's
fleet--_i. e._ transport him for life.
In such districts the privileges of the constitution with respect to
liberty, and I may add, life, were completely suspended; for whether
under pretended authority derived from this act, or from the
superabundant zeal of the military protectors of the public peace, who
were employed to assist in the execution of it, numbers fell, either by
being shot at their own doors, or by the newly-invented process of
strangulation, adopted to procure confession of crimes which perhaps had
never been committed, or the accusation of others, whose innocence might
have made it impossible to convict them by other evidence.
Without entering into a more minute detail of the disgusting enormities
or the sufferings to which this measure gave birth, I may safely refer
it to the judgement of men accustomed to enjoy the uninterrupted
blessings of British law and liberty, whether the infliction of this
measure on the people of Ireland was not of itself enough to aggravate
feelings already irritated into discontent the most alarming. I do not
mean surely to justify assassination or treason, but I appeal to men who
have the feelings of freemen, whether to see a father, a brother, or a
son, fall, perhaps innocently, under the bayonet of a military
executioner, or transported for life from his helpless family and
nearest connections--it may be without guilt, because the punishment was
inflicted without trial--may not in some degree account for, though it
cannot justify, the shocking crimes which have, since the introduction
of that measure, been committed by individuals in Ireland? A magistrate
who exerts himself in carrying this law into effect, and who, in
obedience to the will of the legislature, sends numbers of his
countrymen from the soil in which they drew breath, and the connections
which make life dear to them, merely because he suspects their loyalty,
does that which, being legal, ought not to induce on him either odium or
punishment; but while human nature shall continue to be composed of its
present materials, there will be found men among the people over whom he
exerts such authority, whose vindictive passions will be apt to mark him
as their victim. In many deplorable instances has this been verified in
Ireland. The Insurrection Act was adopted to prevent such enormities;
unhappily it but encreased, greatly encreased, the black catalogue.
I ask unprejudiced men, whether these measures, carried into execution
against a people who from the recent acquisition of independence felt
much of the pride and sensibility of freedom, were not most likely to be
attended with the consequences which have followed? What then, I ask,
must have been the effect of that measure, at which freedom and justice
feels still more abhorrence--a legal indemnity for all crimes committed
against the people, under colour of preserving the peace? Good heavens!
was it not enough that a law was passed which left the subjects' liberty
and person at the mercy of the magistrates--but must the military or
civil tyrant be protected _by_ law _against_ law, in the perpetration
of acts which even by the spirit of that act would be illegal and
oppressive? The first Bill of Indemnity Was designed to protect my Lord
Carhampton, who had played the part of a self-created Dictator in
Ireland. What the particular measures pursued by his Lordship were, I
shall not enumerate. They are known, and I believe will be remembered by
both countries. He is indemnified for his zeal; and his measures,
instead of quieting, have been unfortunately found to have produced a
contrary effect. From that time to the present, Bills of Indemnity have
become an established part of the system of government in Ireland; so
that he who can contrive means to cover the most malicious and
oppressive crimes by the easy pretext of securing the public peace, may
rest as firmly on an act to indemnify him in the succeeding session, as
the public creditor may depend on the passing of the money bills.
In enumerating these successive steps which have been taken in Ireland,
professedly to tranquillize the country, but which have operated only to
render it outrageous, I might have mentioned the appointment and the
recall of my Lord Fitzwilliam. But in speaking to the people of England
it were superfluous to dwell on that event; for with the circumstances
of _that_, _they_, as well as the people of Ireland, are acquainted. I
shall therefore content myself with saying, that of the many irritating
measures which have goaded Ireland, the recall of my Lord Fitzwilliam
was the most mischievously efficacious. With that nobleman, Hope fled
from the country. What has since followed has been the counsel of
Despair. By that event it was placed beyond doubt, that the Cabinets of
the two countries formed a junction against reform--against the
restoration of the constitution to Ireland--and against a mitigation of
the coercive system. If treason have spread widely through the
country--if the friends of the French system have become numerous, it
must be since that insulting act of the British Cabinet told the people,
that if they felt the pressure of present evils, or looked for a further
extension of constitutional rights, their hope must be turned to another
quarter than to the influence of the British connection.
By the operation of the measures which I have now described, the Irish
people and the Irish administration were put at issue. The system to
which the Castle had resorted to silence murmur, had produced
outrage--the measures which they took to punish outrage had created
conspiracy, assassination, and, in many instances, treason. Throughout
the whole process of discontent, I have shewed that administration were
aggressors, and that the irregularities which have followed were but the
reaction of an high and irritable spirit in the people, compressed by
coercion, which left no vent to its feelings but in acts of private or
public violence.