measures which they had already tried to smother the discontents of the
people, and to repress those violent and illegal consequences of it, had
not only proved ineffectual, but had aggravated, to a most alarming
height, the mischiefs which they were sottishly expected to remedy. In
almost every part of the country the most extreme disorder prevailed. It
was not now a Volunteer Convention, consisting of men of known loyalty
and great stake in the country, meeting to petition for reform--it was
not now a Catholic Convention sitting in Dublin, pursuing open and
constitutional measures to obtain elective franchise, or a full
admission to the privileges of the constitution--it was not, I say,
such bodies as these that administration had to cope with. They had put
down those. Other more numerous and more dangerous difficulties were now
to be encountered. The populace of the country was now organized, and an
_imperium in imperio_ formed, which, from its privacy and the numbers of
which it consisted, was truly alarming. The professed objects of this
society, the most singular which perhaps had ever been formed in any
country, still continued what they originally were--Reform and
Emancipation. But papers were found which were supposed to prove, that
their designs were more dangerous and more extensive; and a letter from
a Mr. Tone, which clearly expressed a treasonable opinion respecting a
separation of the two countries was taken as full evidence that this was
the sentiment of the society at large, consisting, as was believed, of
not less than 600,000 men. Whatever might be _their_ real designs, it
was certain, that the conduct of the Orange-men of Armagh had been
successfully imitated by the peasantry in many parts of Ireland. The
plunder of arms was carried on systematically; the quantity taken was
known to be considerable; and in the proclaimed districts several
magistrates who had been active in transporting suspected persons, &c.
&c. had been assassinated.
In this critical moment, the best and wisest men in Ireland, gentlemen
possessed of the most extensive property in the country, and at the same
time of character above the slightest imputation of disaffection or
loyalty, urged on administration the necessity of changing that system
which had been found to produce such horrible effects. They urged, that
the great body of the nation was loyal--that even of the United Irishmen
the greater part wished only for the admission of the Catholics and
reform--and that to concede these would throw such a weight into the
scale of government as would effectually tranquillize the country.
Administration, however, took up the contrary opinion, and decided on a
continuation of coercive measures. They pretended, that the people of
Ireland were rebels, and that with rebels conciliation should not be
tried. They assumed, in the first place, that all the United Irishmen
were traitors--in the second, that that society comprehended the great
body of the people, or that those who were not of that body approved
heartily of all the measures which had been carried on for some years
back by the Irish Cabinet. No account was made of that great and
respectable class of men who, while they looked with detestation on
those acts of insubordination, of assassination, and treason, which had
followed the adoption of the present system, contemplated with the most
unqualified reprobation that system itself. Determined, therefore, to
scourge the nation out of that ill temper into which the scourge had
driven it, what step did administration fix on? They send a military
force under General Lake to the province of Ulster, and enjoin him to
act at his discretion for disarming the freemen of the North, and
enforcing content and tranquillity at the point of the bayonet!
It is not necessary to waste much reasoning on this measure. The
constitution prescribes the interposition of the sword only in cases of
open insurrection or rebellion. If the province of Ulster was in that
state, what indignation must not the two countries feel at the wicked
pertinacity of the Irish Cabinet in a system which led to that issue? If
it were not in rebellion, what punishment could be too great for those
who resorted without necessity to that last and dreadful remedy--a
military force vested with discretionary powers, for disorders properly
within the cognizance of the civil magistrate? But the administration
justify themselves by the plea, that the proceedings of these United
Irishmen were too subtle and cautious to be met by the ordinary
exertions of the civil power, though they were not yet in open
rebellion. They must take the praise, therefore, of having created a new
species of opposition to established government, hitherto unknown, by
directing, without intermission, the force of the state not against open
violence, but against political principle; by warring, not with men
whose aim was anarchy and plunder, but men skilled in, and zealous for,
the perfection of the representative system.
But I deny that Ulster was in such a state as to justify the measure
that was then taken--for it was not in open and avowed rebellion, nor
was the system of the disorderly people in that province either too
subtle or too strong for an active magistracy, constitutionally aided by
the military. The disturbances amounted to nothing more than the
assemblage now and then of parties of people on the original principle
of the Orange-men (who to the disgrace of legislature, have, in a
certain place, more than once, been called the friends of the
constitution,) breaking houses and plundering arms; and I contend, that
with a proper force left always at the disposal and under the direction
of active magistrates, those individual acts of outrage might have been
prevented. The pretext, that the magistrates were terrified from acting
by frequent assassination, is empty--courage is not exclusively the
boast of the military in Ireland; and every country in which the
Insurrection Act has been carried into operation has produced numbers of
magistrates who dared to meet all the odium and all the danger which the
execution of that unpopular act imposed on them.
Under this Proclamation, Gen. Lake deprived of arms not only the
traiterous and the disaffected, but the loyal and most zealous friends
of the constitution. Where arms were expected and not found, a very new
mode of trial was instituted. The suspected or accused person was
suspended by the neck until the process of strangulation was nearly
completed. He was then let down, and if he was still pertinacious, the
touchstone was again tried, until he either confessed or accused others.
In other cases, it was ascertained what quantity of arms should be
brought in by a certain village or district--if the full quantity could
not be produced by the inhabitants, their habitations were reduced to
ashes to detect the concealment. These seem to have been ordinary modes
of proceeding under the military system; there were others more
irregular and eccentric which the zeal of the soldiers frequently
prompted them to indulge in.
Of the system thus steadily pursued by the Irish administration, the
Irish legislature expressed their most hearty and zealous
approbation.--Throughout the whole train of violent measures to which
the Irish administration resorted, the Irish Parliament went with them
_pari passu_. Without stopping to enquire whether this co-operation of
the legislature tended rather to reconcile the people to the system than
to encrease the discontents which it was naturally calculated to
produce, it is certain that some very celebrated characters, whose
opinions in this case deserve to be respected, had declared the most
decided disapprobation of at least that part of it which related to the
military. The conduct of my Lord Moira, in the Parliament of both
countries, himself a soldier, an Irish nobleman, and one possessed of
such a stake in the country as must make him anxious for its welfare
and its peace, has already perhaps inclined the British public to doubt
whether the enormities practised under that system were tolerable in any
country. The manly and candid opinion of the brave old Abercrombie,
"That the conduct of the army in Ireland was calculated to make them
formidable only to their friends," must have also had its weight in
ascertaining the merits of that system. That the feelings and the honour
of that venerable officer did not suffer him longer to remain in the
command of the Irish army, Ireland will long have reason to lament. The
influence of even _one_ such mind on Irish politics would have produced
the most important benefits.
For some time the administration boasted that they had at length found
the way to quiet the country. In fact, the operations of the military in
Ulster did reduce that province to a state of peace, and no disturbance
existed but what the army itself created. Less violent and
unconstitutional measures would have prevented acts of outrage--but
neither this, nor any measure of coercion, could have eradicated
discontent. As the infliction of the military system produced a gloomy
quiet in one part of the island, the disturbances broke out with much
encreased enormity in other parts of the country.--The South, hitherto
tranquil, and which at the moment of danger, when the enemy appeared on
the coast a few months before, exhibited the most enthusiastic spirit of
zeal and loyalty, now became convulsed by partial risings to an alarming
degree. The interior of the country, the King's and Queen's County, the
County of Kildare, and even the vicinity of the metropolis, the Counties
of Wicklow and of Dublin, were now in as bad a state as the pacified
North had ever been. Every reasonable man, who believes that nothing can
be produced without a producing cause, must attribute this change of
temper in the South and other parts of the country to some circumstance
which did not exist at the time of the invasion; and that circumstance
could only be the introduction of the military system--of the efficacy
of which administration had so much vaunted. But powerful as they
supposed that system to be, they were not inclined to depend on its
efficacy, such as they had tried it. They therefore now resorted to a
measure which has hitherto been used only by irritated victors over
perfidious and vanquish'd enemies--they sent them troops, not to disarm
the inhabitants of a district, or to act with discretionary powers for,
what was now a general pretext for violence of every species, the
preservation of the public peace; but permanently to live at free
quarters on all the inhabitants of those counties which were in what was
called a disturbed state. Under this measure, excesses were committed
which Ireland, much as she had suffered, had not yet witnessed. It was
not the burning of a peasant's house, or the strangulation of one or two
individuals in a village, which struck the eye of a spectator--but the
houses of the most respectable farmers in the country, nay, houses of
gentlemen of large fortune, and, in many instances, of the most approved
loyalty, converted into barracks by the soldiery--the females of the
family flying from the insults of these new guests, who rioted on the
provision, emptied the cellars of their unwilling hosts, and when they
had exhausted the house which they occupied sent their mandate to the
neighbourhood to bring in a fresh stock!
At this point I stop--for here the fate of Ireland comes to its crisis.
This measure was in operation not three weeks, when the rebels, the
traitors, or the people of Ireland, to the sorrow of every friend to
peace, to the Irish name, and to the British connection, stood forth in
opposition to the King's troops. The scene of blood is now opened.
Ireland is wasting her vital strength in convulsion; and whether victory
or defeat await them, humanity, loyalty, and patriotism must weep over
the event!
When I solicit the people of England attentively to consider that long
train of harsh and hideous measures which I have now enumerated, and
which have brought Ireland into this lamentable condition--when I call
on them to examine with anxious care the motives in which they
originated, and the end to which they lead--I call on them to attend to
that in which they are deeply interested. In my mind they have been
adopted but for one purpose--to raise on the broad basis of CORRUPT
INFLUENCE a system of government, which, under the form of the British
constitution, should stand independent of, and in opposition to, the
sense of the nation. I rest this opinion on two grounds--The one is,
because each successive measure taken up by administration to counteract
the wishes of the people, carried in it features of despotism, which in
a free country the necessity of the case could not call for. Every bill
of pains and penalties to which they resorted involved and asserted a
general and permanent principle, or gave the Executive a general and
extraordinary power, inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution,
though the occasions which gave rise to those measures were but partial
or transient. I refer for instances to the Convention Act, the
Insurrection Act, the Gunpowder Act, and the Press Bill, a measure
which, in my enumeration of the violent steps taken by the Irish
government, escaped me, though perhaps it is, of all the dreadful
groupe, the most prominent and most fatal to liberty and the
constitution.--The other reason on which my opinion rests is, because
administration have persevered in that system without making any one
effort to allay discontent or satisfy the moderate and loyal part of the
community by the concession of any of those measures on which the heart
of the nation was fixed--because they have gone on in opposition to the
sense of the best men in the empire to force the people of Ireland, or
the discontented part of it, into open and avowed rebellion, rather than
try any means to prevent that catastrophe by conciliating
measures--because this intention was avowed and gloried in[2]--and,
finally, because from the outset of their career they have resorted to
military coercion in every case where they could find, or create, the
slightest pretence for the use of that dreadful engine.
The flame which by these means has been kindled in Ireland can be
extinguished but in one of two ways--either the rebels aided by the
power of France will succeed in wresting Ireland from the British
connection, or the military force with which the Irish government is
entrusted will stifle in blood the discontents of the country. Of the
first there is happily no danger. The numbers of the insurgents is much
too small to endanger the connection, and that moderate and loyal party,
which administration have hitherto treated with contempt, is too strong
and too much attached to the present form of government, notwithstanding
what they had suffered, either to be overcome by the force, or seduced
by the artifice of disaffection, to forego their allegiance. There
remains then only the other alternative--and of that what will be the
effect? Rebellion will be quelled by power, but the existing causes of
discontent--those causes which through a long series of petty conflicts
have at length terminated in the present dreadful issue, will remain
rankling in the bosom of the country. Conscious of its force,
administration will, with an high hand, bear still more hard on the
constitutional rights of the people--at least against those rights which
are calculated to guard them against the tyranny of an ambitious
faction. Knowing the hatred which the Irish nation bear to the set who
have heaped on her head those calamities under which she now groans, and
of which centuries will not remove the effects, will the Irish
administration, think you, resign that extraordinary unconstitutional
force which in course of the struggle they have acquired? Impossible! If
we can reason at all on the event, it is most reasonable to believe,
that the military system which shall have subdued the discontents of
Ireland, will continue to govern it. Will it be for the safety, or for
the honour of England that her sister country should be a military
despotism?
In one event only, then, does there appear to be a gleam of hope that
Ireland may yet become a free, happy, and contented member of the
British empire--and that is, in a suppression of the present
insurrection--in a change of the men by whom the affairs of Ireland have
been for some years so abominably administered--and in a change of that
system which has hitherto been pursued by them. If Englishmen value
their own liberty, which the contiguity of despotism must always hazard,
or feel sympathy for the sufferings of an unfortunate people, whose
attachment to Britain has been proved during the course of an anxious
and changeful century, to these objects will they direct their efforts.
Already thousands of the people of Ireland have fallen in the
contest--and yet the standard of rebellion is erect. More of the blood
of Ireland must be shed, before Ireland, under the present system, is
restored to peace. A military chief governor has been sent over, not to
appease but to subdue. He _may_ subdue--but is it the pride of a British
King to rule a depopulated, a desolated, and a discontented country?
Will fire and sword restore content and confidence to the land? Will the
slaughter of a hundred thousand of the people of Ireland reconcile the
survivors to that system of mal-government which they have risen to
oppose? Will the faction which has provoked this scene of slaughter,
become more popular by the carnage they have occasioned?
Englishmen!--your fellow subjects of Ireland now call on you to
consider the case of a distracted country, as that of brethren united by
the tie of a common nature, and by the still closer tie of a common
Sovereign; both entitled to the advantages of the same constitution,
each depending, in some measure, on the others strength. For one hundred
years you have found in the people of Ireland a faithful and firm
friend--though for much of that period we laboured under the most
distressing disadvantages, destitute of the means of wealth, and aliens
from the most important benefits of the British constitution, we have
yet borne our sufferings with patient and uncomplaining attachment to a
British Sovereign, and to the British cause. In our poverty we still
contributed to the exigencies of the empire. When an extension of our
means enabled us to give more largely towards the common stock, we
poured forth our blood and treasure in the cause of Britain with more
than the zeal of brothers. In our fallen state, with an island reeking
with blood, and the sword at our throat, directed by an administration
in the best and in the worst of times hostile to Ireland, we call upon
you to assist in rescuing our country from utter and irretrievable
ruin--we implore you to interfere for us with our common Sovereign--to
solicit at his paternal hand the removal of those wicked men, who by
abusing the confidence of their Sovereign, and sacrificing their duty to
his people, to the gratification of ambitious views or native
malevolence, have belied the Irish nation; and by their obstinate and
relentless cruelty have driven it to madness. We conjure you to think of
us as of men enamoured of liberty and animated by that zealous
attachment to monarchy, limited by law, which has given immortality to
the name of Englishmen--though at the same time, as of men, among whom
many have been hurried into unpardonable indiscretions while the great
body remain a loyal, though a suffering people.--In a word, we solicit
your sympathy as brethren, and your influence as fellow subjects, with
the common Father of both kingdoms, to save four millions of people from
the insulting tyranny of Ministers who have abused their powers, and,
instead of the mild genius of the British constitution, have governed by
the galling despotism of a military mob!
FINIS.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Vide Irish Chancellor's speech on Lord Moira's motion.
[2] See Mr. J. Claud Beresford's Speeches in the House of Commons during
the session of 1797.