THE ERA OF INDEPENDENCE—SECOND PERIOD.
The second period of the era of independence may be said to embrace the
nine years extending from the dissolution of the last Volunteer
Convention, at the end of 1784, to the passage of the Catholic Relief
Bill of 1793. They were years of continued interest and excitement,
both in the popular and parliamentary affairs of the country; but the
events are, with the exception of the last named, of a more secondary
order than those of the previous period.
The session of 1785 was first occupied with debates relating to what
might be called the cross-channel trade between England and Ireland.
The question of trade brought with it, necessarily, the question of
revenue; of the duties levied in both kingdoms; of the conflict of
their commercial laws, and the necessity of their assimilation; of the
appropriations to be borne by each, to the general expense of the army
and navy; of the exclusive right of the English East India Company to
the Indian trade;—in short, the whole of the fiscal and commercial
relations of the two countries were now to be examined and adjusted, as
their constitutional relations had been in previous years.
The first plan came from the Castle, through Mr. Thomas Orde, then
Chief Secretary, afterwards Lord Bolton. It consisted of eleven
propositions, embracing every division of the subject. They had been
arrived at by consultation with Mr. Joshua Pim, a most worthy Quaker
merchant, the founder of an equally worthy family; Mr. Grattan, Mr.
Foster, and others. They were passed as resolutions in Ireland, and
sent by Mr. Orde to England to see whether they would be adopted there
also, the second Pitt, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave his
concurrence, but when he introduced to the English Parliament _his_
resolutions—twenty in number—it was found that in several important
respects they differed from the Irish propositions. On being taken up
and presented to the Irish Parliament, in August, the administration
found they could command, in a full House, only a majority of sixteen
for their introduction, and so the whole arrangement was abandoned. No
definite commercial treaty between the two kingdoms was entered into
until the Union, and there can be little doubt that the miscarriage of
the Convention of 1785 was one of the determining causes of that Union.
The next session was chiefly remarkable for an unsuccessful attempt to
reduce the Pension List. In this debate, Curran, who had entered the
House in 1783, particularly distinguished himself. A fierce exchange of
personalities with Mr. Fitzgibbon led to a duel between them, in which,
fortunately, neither was wounded, but their public hostility was
transferred to the arena of the courts, where some of the choicest
_morceaux_ of genuine Irish wit were uttered by Curran, at the expense
of his rival, first as Attorney-General, and subsequently as
Chancellor.
The session of 1787 was introduced by a speech from the throne, in
which the usual paragraph in favour of the Protestant Charter Schools
was followed by another advising the establishment of a general system
of schools. This raised the entire question of education, one of the
most difficult to deal with in the whole range of Irish politics. On
the 10th of April, Mr. Orde—destined to be the author of just, but
short-lived projects—introduced his plan of what might be called
national education. He proposed to establish four great provincial
academies, a second university in some north-western county, to reform
the twenty-two diocesan schools, so richly endowed under the 28th Henry
VIII., and to affiliate on Trinity College two principal preparatory
schools, north and south. In 1784, and again in this very year, the
humane John Howard had reported of the Irish Charter Schools, then half
a century established, that they were "a disgrace to all society." Sir
J. Fitzpatrick, the Inspector of Prisons, confirmed the general
impression of Howard: he found the children in these schools "puny,
filthy, ill clothed, without linen, indecent to look upon." A series of
resolutions was introduced by Mr. Orde, as the basis of better
legislation in the next session; but it is to be regretted that the
proposed reform never went farther than the introduction and adoption
of these resolutions.
The session of 1788 was signalized by a great domestic and a great
imperial discussion—the Tithe question, and the Regency question.
The Tithe question had slumbered within the walls of Parliament since
the days of Swift, though not in the lonely lodges of the secret
agrarian societies. Very recent outbreaks of the old agrarian
combinations against both excessive rents and excessive tithes, in the
Leinster as well as in southern counties, had called general attention
to the subject, when Grattan, in 1787, moved that, if it should appear,
by the commencement of the following session, that tranquillity had
been restored in the disturbed districts, the House would take into
consideration the subject of tithes. Accordingly, very early in the
next ensuing session, he moved for a committee on the subject, in a
three hours' speech, which ranks among the very highest efforts of his
own or any other age. He was seconded by Lord Kingsborough, one of the
most liberal men of his order, and sustained by Curran and Brownlow; he
was opposed by Attorney-General Fitzgibbon, and by Messrs. Hobart,
Browne, and Parsons. The vote was, _for_ the Committee of Inquiry, 49;
_against_ it, 121. A second attempt, a little later in the session, was
equally unsuccessful, except for the moral effect produced out of doors
by another of those speeches, which it is impossible to read even at
this day, without falling into the attitude, and assuming the
intonation, and feeling the heartfelt inspiration of the orator.
The Regency question was precipitated upon both Parliaments by the
mental disorder, which, for the second or third time, attacked George
III., in 1788. The question was, whether the Prince of Wales should
reign with as full powers as if his father were actually deceased;
whether there should be restrictions or no restrictions. Mr. Pitt and
his colleagues contended successfully for restrictions in England,
while Mr. Fox and the opposition took the contrary position. The
English Houses and people went with Pitt, but the Irish Parliament went
for an unconditional regency. They resolved to offer the crown of
Ireland to him they considered _de_ facto their Sovereign, as freely as
they had rendered their allegiance to the incapable king; but the Lord
Lieutenant—the Marquis of Buckingham—declined to transmit their
over-zealous address, and by the time their joint delegation of both
Houses reached London, George III. had recovered! They received the
most gracious reception at Carlton House, but they incurred the
implacable enmity of William Pitt, and created a second determining
cause in his mind in favour of an early legislative union.
The prospect of the accession of the Prince to power, wrought a
wonderful and a salutary change, though temporary, in the Irish
Commons. In the session of 1789, Mr Grattan carried, by 105 to 85, a
two months', in amendment to a twelve-months' supply bill. Before the
two months expired he brought in his police bill, his pension bill, and
his bill to prevent officers of the revenue from voting at elections,
but ere these reforms could be passed into law, the old King recovered,
the necessary majority was reversed, and the measures, of course,
defeated or delayed till better times. The triumph of the oligarchy was
in proportion to their fright. The House having passed a vote of
censure on Lord Buckingham, the Viceroy, for refusing to transmit their
address to the Regent, a threat was now held out that every one who had
voted for the censure, holding an office of honour or emolument in
Ireland, would be made "the victim of his vote." In reply to this
threat, a "Round Robin" was signed by the Duke of Leinster, the
Archbishop of Tuam, eighteen peers, all the leading Whig commoners—the
Ponsonbys, Langrishes, Grattan, Connolly, Curran, O'Neil, Day, Charles
Francis Sheridan, Bowes Daly, George Ogle, etc., etc.—declaring that
they would regard any such proscription as an attack on the
independence of Parliament, and would jointly oppose any administration
who should resort to such proscription. But the bold and domineering
spirit of Fitzgibbon—the leader of the Castle party, then, and long
afterwards—did not shrink before even so formidable a phalanx. The Duke
of Leinster was dismissed from the honorary office of Master of the
Rolls; the Earl of Shannon, from the Vice-Treasurership; William
Ponsonby from the office of Postmaster-General; Charles Francis
Sheridan, from that of Secretary at War, and ten or twelve other
prominent members of the _Irish_ administration lost places and
pensions to the value of 20,000 pounds a year, for their over-zeal for
the Prince of Wales. At the same time, Mr. Fitzgibbon was appointed
Lord Chancellor, a vacancy having opportunely occurred, by the death of
Lord Lifford, in the very midst of the prescriptive crisis. This
elevation transferred him to the Upper House, where, for the remaining
years of the Parliament, he continued to dogmatize and domineer, as he
had done in the Commons, often rebuked, but never abashed. Indeed, the
milder manners of the patrician body were ill suited to resist this
ermined demagogue, whose motto through life was _audacity, again
audacity, and always audacity_. The names of Wolfe, Toler, Corry,
Coote, Beresford, and Cooke, are also found among the promotions to
legal and administrative office; names familiar to the last generation
as the pillars of the oligarchical faction, before and after the Union.
To swamp the opposition peers, the Earls of Antrim, Tyrone, and
Hillsborough were made Marquises of Antrim, Waterford, and Downshire;
the Viscounts Glenawley, Enniskillen, Erne, and Carysfort, were created
Earls of Annesley, Enniskillen, Erne, and Carysfort. Then Judge Scott
became Viscount Clonmel; then the Lordships of Loftus, Londonderry,
Kilmaine, Cloncurry, Mountjoy, Glentworth, and Caledon, were founded
for as many convenient Commoners, who either paid for their patents, in
boroughs, or in hard cash. It was the very reign and carnival of
corruption, over which presided the invulnerable Chancellor—a true
"King of Misrule." In reference to this appalling spectacle, well might
Grattan exclaim—"In a free country the path of public treachery leads
to the block; but in a nation governed like a province, to the helm!"
But the thunders of the orator fell, and were quenched in the wide
spreading waters of corruption.
The Whig Club—an out-of-door auxiliary of the opposition—was a creation
of this year. It numbered the chief signers of the "Round Robin," and
gained many adherents. It exercised very considerable influence in the
general election of 1790, and for the few following years, until it
fell to pieces in the presence of the more ardent politics which
preceded the storm of 1798.
Backed though he was by Mr. Pitt, both as his relative and principal,
the Marquis of Buckingham was compelled to resign the government, and
to steal away from Dublin, under cover of night, like an absconding
debtor. The Chancellor and the Speaker—Fitzgibbon and Foster, Irishmen
at least by birth and name—were sworn in as Justices, until the arrival
of the Earl of Westmoreland, in the ensuing January.
The last two Viceroys of the decade thus closed, form a marked contrast
worthy of particular portraiture. The Duke of Rutland, a dashing
profligate, was sent over, it was thought, to ruin public liberty by
undermining private virtue, a task in which he found a willing helpmate
in his beautiful but dissipated Duchess. During his three years' reign
were sown the seeds of that reckless private expenditure, and general
corruption of manners, which drove so many bankrupt lords and gentlemen
into the market overt, where Lord Castlereagh and Secretary Cooke, a
dozen years later, priced the value of their parliamentary cattle. Lord
Rutland died of dissipation at little over thirty, and was succeeded by
the Marquis of Buckingham (formerly Lord Temple), the founder of the
Irish Order of Chivalry, a person of the greatest pretensions, as a
reformer of abuses and an enemy of government by corruption. Yet with
all his affected superiority to the base arts of his predecessor, the
Marquis's system was still more opposite to every idea of just
government than the Duke's. The one outraged public morals, the other
pensioned and ennobled the betrayers of public trusts; the one
naturalized the gaming-table and the keeping of mistresses as customs
of Irish society; the other sold or allowed the highest offices and
honours of the state—from a weighership in the butter market to an
earl's coronet—to be put up at auction, and knocked down to the highest
bidder. How cheering in contrast with the shameful honours, flaunted
abroad in those shameful days, are even the negative virtues of the
Whig patricians, and how splendid the heroic constancy of Charlemont,
Grattan, Curran, and their devoted minority of honest legislators!
With Lord Westmoreland was associated, as Chief Secretary, Mr. Hobart,
formerly in the army, a man of gay, convivial habits, very
accomplished, and, politically, very unprincipled. These gentlemen,
both favourites of Pitt, adopted the counsellors, and continued the
policy of the late Viceroy. In pursuance of this policy, a dissolution
took place, and the general election of 1790 was ordered. We have
already exhibited the influences which controlled the choice of members
of the House of Commons. Of the one hundred and five great proprietors,
who owned two-thirds of the seats, perhaps a fourth might be found in
the ranks of the Whig club. The only other hope for the national party
was in the boroughs, which possessed a class of freemen, engaged in
trade, too numerous to be bought, or too public spirited to be dictated
to. Both influences combined might hope to return a powerful minority,
and, on this occasion (1790) they certainly did so. Grattan and Lord
Henry Fitzgerald were elected for Dublin, over the Lord Mayor and one
of the Aldermen, backed by the whole power of the Castle; Curran,
Ponsonby, Brownlow, Forbes, and nearly all "the victims of their vote"
were re-elected. To these old familiar names were now added others
destined to equal, if not still wider fame—Arthur Wellesley, member for
Trim; Arthur O'Conor, member for Phillipstown; Jonah Barrington, member
for Tuam; and Robert Stewart, one of the members for the County Down,
then only in his twenty-second year, and, next to Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, lately elected for Athy, the most extreme reformer among
the new members. Arthur O'Conor, on the other hand, commenced his
career with the Court by moving the address in answer to the speech
from the throne!
The new Parliament, which met in July, 1790, unanimously re-elected Mr.
Foster, Speaker; passed a very loyal address, and, after a fortnight's
sitting, was prorogued till the following January. The session of '91
was marked by no event of importance, the highest opposition vote seems
to have been from 80 to 90, and the ministerial majority never less
than 50. The sale of Peerages, the East India trade, the Responsibility
(for money warrants) Bill, the Barren Lands Bill, and the Pension Bill,
were the chief topics. A committee to inquire into the best means of
encouraging breweries, and discouraging the use of spirituous liquors,
was also granted, and some curious facts elicited. Nothing memorable
was done, but much that was memorable was said—for the great orator had
still a free press, and a home audience to instruct and elevate. The
truth is, the barrenness of these two sessions was due to the general
prosperity of the country, more even than to the dexterous management
of Major Hobart and the Cabinet balls of Lord Westmoreland. There was,
moreover, hanging over the minds of men the electric pressure of the
wonderful events with which France shook the Continent, and made the
Islands tremble. There was hasty hope, or idle exultation, or pious
fear, or panic terror, in the hearts of the leading spectators of that
awful drama, according to the prejudices or principles they maintained.
Over all the three kingdoms there was a preternatural calm, resembling
that physical stillness which in other latitude precedes the eruption
of volcanoes.