THE ERA OF INDEPENDENCE—EFFECTS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IN
IRELAND—SECESSION OF GRATTAN, CURRAN, AND THEIR FRIENDS, FROM
PARLIAMENT, IN 1797.
The era of independence which we have desired to mark distinctly to the
reader's mind, may be said to terminate in 1797, with the hopeless
secession of Grattan and his friends from Parliament. Did the events
within and without the House justify that extreme measure? We shall
proceed to describe them as they arose, leaving the decision of the
question to the judgment of the reader.
The session of 1793, which extended into July, was, besides the
Catholic Relief Bill, productive of other important results. Under the
plea of the spread of French principles, and the widespread
organization of seditious associations—a plea not wanting in
evidence—an Arms Act was introduced and carried, prohibiting the
importation of arms and gunpowder, and authorizing domiciliary visits,
at any hour of the night or day, in search of such arms. Within a month
from the passage of this bill, bravely but vainly opposed by Lord
Edward Fitzgerald, and the opposition generally, the surviving
Volunteer corps, in Dublin and its vicinity, were disbanded, their
arms, artillery, and ammunition taken possession of either by force or
negotiation, and the very wreck of that once powerful patriot army
swept away. In its stead, by nearly the same majority, the militia were
increased to 16,000 men, and the regulars from 12,000 to 17,000—thus
placing at the absolute control of the Commander-in-Chief, and the
chiefs of the oligarchy, a standing army of 33,000 men. At the same
period, Lord Clare (he had been made an earl in 1792), introduced his
Convention Act, against the assemblage in convention of delegates
purporting to represent the people. With Grattan only 27 of the Commons
divided against this measure, well characterized as "the boldest step
that ever yet was made to introduce military government." "If this bill
had been law," Grattan added, "the independence of the Irish
Parliament, the emancipation of the Catholics, and even the English
revolution of 1688, could never have taken place!" The teller in favour
of the Convention Act was Major Wellesley, member for Trim, twenty
years later—Duke of Wellington! It became and still remains the law of
Ireland.
Against this reactionary legislation we must credit the session of '93,
besides the Catholic Relief Bill and the East India Trade Bill, with
Mr. Grattan's Barren Lands Bill, exempting all newly reclaimed lands
from the payment of tithes for a period of seven years; Mr. Forbes's
Pension Bill, limiting the pension list to 80,000 pounds sterling per
annum, and fixing the permanent civil list at 250,000 pounds per annum;
and the excellent measure of the same invaluable member, excluding from
Parliament all persons holding offices of profit under the crown,
except the usual ministerial officers, and those employed in the
_revenue service_. This last salvo was forced into the bill by the
oligarchical faction, for whose junior branches the revenue had long
been a fruitful source of provision.
Parliament met next, on the 21st of January, '94, and held a short
two-months' session. The most remarkable incidents of these two months
were the rejection of Mr. George Ponsonby's annual motion for
parliamentary reform, and the striking position taken by Grattan,
Curran, and all but seven or eight of their friends, in favour of the
war against the French republic. Mr. Ponsonby proposed, in the spirit
of Flood's plan ten years earlier, to unite to the boroughs four miles
square of the adjoining country, thus creating a counterpoise to the
territorial aristocracy on the one hand, and the patrons of boroughs on
the other; he also proposed to extend the suffrage to every tradesman
who had served five years' apprenticeship, and gave each county _three_
instead of two members, leaving intact, of course, the forty-shilling
freehold franchise. Not more than 44 members, however, divided in
favour of the new project, while 142 voted against it! Had it passed,
the parliamentary history of the next six years could never have been
written.
It was on this Reform bill, and on the debate on the address, that
Grattan took occasion to declare his settled and unalterable hostility
to those "French principles," then so fashionable with all who called
themselves friends of freedom, in the three kingdoms. In the great
social schism which had taken place in Europe, in consequence of the
French revolution of 1789-'91, those kingdoms, the favourite seat of
free inquiry and free discussion, could not hope to escape. The effects
were visible in every circle, among every order of men; in all the
churches, workshops, saloons, professions, into which men were divided.
Among publicists, most of all, the shock was most severely felt; in
England it separated Burke and Windham from Fox, Erskine, Sheridan, and
Grey; in Ireland it separated Grattan and Curran from Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, Arthur O'Conor, Addis Emmet, Wolfe Tone, and all those
ardent, able, and honest men, who hailed the French, as the forerunner
of a complete series of European republics, in which Ireland should
shine out, among the brightest and the best.
Grattan, who agreed with and revered Burke, looked upon the
"anti-Jacobin war," as a just and necessary war. It was not in his
nature to do anything by halves, and he therefore cordially supported
the paragraph in the address pledging Ireland's support to that war. He
was a constitutionalist of the British, not of the French type. In the
subsequent Reform debate he declared that he would always and ever
resist those who sought to remodel the Irish constitution on a French
original. He asserted, moreover, that great mischief had been already
done by the advocates of such a design, "It"—this design—"has thrown
back for the present the chance of any rational improvement in the
representation of the people," he cried, "and has betrayed a good
reform _to the hopes of a shabby insurrection_." Proceeding in his own
condensed, crystalline antithesis, he thus enlarged on his own
opinions: "There are two characters equally enemies to the reform of
Parliament, and equally enemies to the government—the leveller of the
constitution, and the friend of its abuses; they take different roads
to arrive at the same end. The levellers propose to subvert the King
and parliamentary constitution by a rank and unqualified democracy—the
friends of its abuses propose to support the King and buy the
Parliament, and in the end to overset both, by a rank and avowed
corruption. They are both incendiaries; the one would destroy
government to pay his court to liberty; the other would destroy liberty
to pay his court to government; but the liberty of the one would be
confusion, and the government of the other would be pollution."
We can well understand that this language pleased as little the United
Irishmen as the Castle. It was known that in private he was accustomed
to say, that, "the wonder was not that Mr. Sheares should die on the
scaffold, but that Lord Clare was not there beside him." He stood in
the midst of the ways, crying aloud, with the wisdom of his age and his
genius, but there were few to heed his warnings. The sanguine innovator
sneered or pitied; the truculent despot scowled or menaced; to the one
his authority was an impediment, to the other his reputation was a
reproach. It was a public situation as full of conflict as man ever
occupied, and we are not astonished, on a nearer view, that it led,
after three years hoping against hope, to the despairing secession of
1797.
A bright gleam of better things shot for an instant across the gloomy
prospect, with which the year '94 closed for the country. Lord
Westmoreland was recalled, and Lord Fitzwilliam, largely connected with
Ireland by property, and one of the most just and liberal men in
England, was to be his successor. The highest expectations were
excited; the best men congratulated each other on the certain promise
of better times close at hand; and the nation, ever ready to believe
whatever it wished to believe, saw in prospect, the oligarchy
restrained, the patriots triumphant, and the unfinished fabric of
independence completed, and crowned with honour.
This new reign, though one of the shortest, was one of the most
important Ireland ever saw. Lord Fitzwilliam, the nephew of Lord
Rockingham, the first to acknowledge the constitution of 1782, had
married a Ponsonby; he was a Burke whig—one of those who, with the Duke
of Portland, Earl Spencer, and Mr. Windham, had followed the "great
Edmund," in his secession from the Fox-and-Sheridan majority of that
party, in 1791. Pitt, anxious to conciliate these new allies, had
brought them all into office in 1794—Earl Fitzwilliam being placed in
the dignified position of President of the Council. When spoken of for
the Viceroyalty he wrote to Grattan, bespeaking his support, and that
of "his friends, the Ponsonbys;" this letter and some others brought
Grattan to London, where he had two or three interviews with Pitt, the
Duke of Portland, and Lord Fitzwilliam. Better still, he made a
pilgrimage to Beaconsfield, and had the benefit of the last advice of
the aged Burke. With Pitt he was disappointed and dissatisfied, but he
still hoped and expected great good from the appointment of Lord
Fitzwilliam to the office of Viceroy. It seems to have been fully
understood that the new Lord Lieutenant would have very full powers to
complete the gracious work of Catholic emancipation: with this express
understanding, Mr. Grattan was pressed to accept the Chancellorship of
the Exchequer, but steadily declined; he upheld in that position Sir
Henry Parnell, an old personal, rather than political friend, one of a
family of whom Ireland has reason to retain a grateful recollection. He
was, however, with Ponsonby, Curran, and others of his friends in both
Houses, added to the Privy Council, where they were free to shape the
measures of the new administration. At the King's levee, on the 10th of
December, when Lord Fitzwilliam was sworn in, the aged Burke, in deep
mourning for his idolized son, attended; Grattan was so much spoken to
by the King as to draw towards him particular attention; Mr. Pitt, the
Duke of Portland, and other ministers, were present. All took and held
the tone that complete emancipation was a thing settled: Burke
congratulated Grattan on the event, and the new Viceroy was as jubilant
and as confident as anybody, that the great controversy was at length
to be finally closed under his auspices.
On the 4th of January, Lord Fitzwilliam reached Dublin; and on the 25th
of March he was recalled. The history of these three months—of this
short-lived attempt to govern Ireland on the advice of Grattan—is full
of instruction. The Viceroy had not for a moment concealed his
intention of thoroughly reforming the Irish administration. On his
arrival at the Castle, Mr. Cooke was removed from the Secretaryship,
and Mr. Beresford from the Revenue Board. Great was the consternation,
and unscrupulous the intrigues of the dismissed. When the Parliament
met at the end of January, Grattan assumed the leadership of the House
of Commons, and moved the address in answer to the speech from the
throne. No opposition was offered—and it passed without a division.
Immediately, a bill granting the Catholics complete
emancipation—rendering them eligible even to the office of Chancellor,
withheld in 1829—was introduced by Grattan. Then the oligarchy found
their voices. The old cry of "the Church in danger" was raised,
delegations proceeded to London, and every agency of influence was
brought to bear on the King and the English cabinet. From the tenor of
his letters, Lord Fitzwilliam felt compelled in honour to tell Mr.
Pitt, that he might choose between him and the Beresfords. He did
choose—but not till the Irish Parliament, in the exuberance of its
confidence and gratitude, had voted the extraordinary subsidy of 20,000
men for the navy, and _a million, eight hundred thousand pounds,
towards the expenses of the war with France!_ Then, the popular Viceroy
was recalled amid the universal regrets of the people. The day of his
departure from Dublin was a day of general mourning, except with the
oligarchical clique, whose leaders he had so resolutely thrust aside.
To them it was a day of insolent and unconcealed rejoicing; and, what
is not at all uncommon under such circumstances, the infatuated
partisans of the French revolution, rejoiced hardly less than the
extremest Tories, at the sudden collapse of a government equally
opposed to the politics of both. Grattan, than whom no public man was
ever more free from unjust suspicion of others, always remained under
the conviction that Pitt had made merely a temporary use of Lord
Fitzwilliam's popularity, in order to cheat the Irish out of the
immense supplies they had voted; and all the documents of the day,
which have since seen the light, accord well with that view of the
transaction. Lord Fitzwilliam was immediately replaced by Lord Camden,
whose Viceroyalty extended into the middle of the year 1798: a reign
which embraced all that remains to us to narrate, of the Parliamentary
politics of the era of Independence.
The sittings of Parliament were resumed during April, May, and June,
but the complete emancipation bill was rejected three to one—155 to 55;
the debates were now marked, on the part of Toler, Duigenan, Johnson,
and others, with the most violent anti-Catholic spirit. All this tended
to inflame still more the exasperated feeling which already prevailed
in the country between Orangemen and Defenders. Thus it came, that the
High Court of Parliament, which ought to have been the chief school of
public wisdom—the calm correcting tribunal of public opinion—was made a
principal engine in the dissemination of those prejudices and passions,
which drove honest men to despair of constitutional redress, and
swelled the ranks of the secret political societies, till they became
co-extensive with the population.
The session of 1796 was even more hopeless than the immediately
preceding one. A trade motion of Grattan's on the address commanded
only 14 votes out of 140; in the next session his motion in favour of
equal rights to persons of all religious creeds, obtained but 12 votes
out of 160! From these figures it is clear that above a third of the
members of the House no longer attended; that of those who did attend,
the overwhelming and invariable majority—ten to one—were for all the
measures of repression and coercion which marked these two sessions.
The Insurrection Act, giving power to the magistrates of any county to
proclaim martial law; the Indemnity Act, protecting magistrates from
the consequences of exercising "a vigour beyond the law;" the Riot Act,
giving authority to disperse any number of persons by force of arms
without notice; the Suspension of the _habeas corpus_ (against which
only 7 members out of a House of 164 voted)—all were evidences to
Grattan, that the usefulness of the House of Commons, as then
constituted, was, for the tune, lost or destroyed. It is quite clear
that he came to this conviction slowly and reluctantly; that he
struggled against it with manly fortitude through three sessions; that
he yielded to it at length, when there was no longer a possibility of
resistance,—when to move or to divide the House, had become a wretched
farce, humiliating to the country, and unworthy of his own earnest and
enthusiastic patriotism.
Under these circumstances, the powerless leader and his devoted staff
resolved to withdraw, formally and openly, from further attendance on
the House of Commons. The deplorable state of the country, delivered
over to an irresponsible magistracy and all the horrors of martial law;
the spread among the patriotic rising generation of French principles;
the scarcely concealed design of the Castle to goad the people into
insurrection, in order to deprive them of their liberties; all
admonished the faithful few that the walls of Parliament were no longer
their sphere of usefulness. One last trial was, however, made in May,
1797, for a reform of Parliament. Mr. George Ponsonby moved his usual
motion, and Curran, Hardy, Sir Lawrence Parsons, Charles Kendall Bushe,
and others, ably supported him. The division was 30 to 117. It was on
this debate, that Grattan, whose mournful manner contrasted so strongly
with his usual enthusiasm, concluded a solemn exposition of the evils
the administration were bringing on the country, by these affecting
words:—"We have offered you our measure—you will reject it; we
deprecate yours—you will persevere; having no hopes left to persuade or
to dissuade, and having discharged our duty, we shall trouble you no
more, _and after this day shall not attend the House of Commons_." The
secession thus announced was accomplished; at the general election, two
months later, Grattan and his colleague, Lord Henry Fitzgerald, refused
to stand again for Dublin; Curran, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Arthur
O'Conor, and others, followed his example. A few patriots, hoping
against hope, were, however, returned, a sort of forlorn hope, to man
the last redoubt of the Constitution. Of these was William Conyngham
Plunkett, member for Charlemont, Grattan's old borough, a
constitutionalist of the school of Edmund Burke, worthy to be named
among the most illustrious of his disciples.
In the same July, on the 7th of the month, on which the Irish elections
were held, that celebrated Anglo-Irish statesman expired at
Beaconsfield, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. His last
thoughts—his last wishes, like his first—were with his native land. His
regards continued fixed on the state of Ireland, while vision and
faculty remained. His last efforts in writing and conversation were to
plead for toleration, concession and conciliation towards Ireland. The
magisterial gravity of Burke was not calculated to permit him to be
generally popular with an impulsive people, but as years roll on, and
education extends its dominion, his reputation rises and brightens
above every other reputation of his age, British or Irish. Of him no
less truly than powerfully did Grattan say in the Imperial Parliament,
in 1815: "He read everything, he saw everything, he foresaw everything.
His knowledge of history amounted to a power of foretelling; and when
he perceived the wild work that was doing in France, that great
political physician, intelligent of symptoms, distinguished between the
access of fever and the force of health; and what other men conceived
to be the vigour of her constitution, he knew to be no more than the
paroxysm of her madness; and then, prophet-like, he denounced the
destinies of France, and in his prophetic fury, admonished nations."