Part 19

It is memorable that, in the subsequent convulsion, not one of those men of blood displayed the solitary virtue of the ruffian--courage. They lived in subterfuge, and they died in shame. Some of them perished by the rope, not one of them fell by the sword. The leaders begged their lives, betrayed their dupes, acknowledged their delinquencies, and finished their days beyond the Atlantic, inflaming the hostility of America, libelling the government by which their lives were spared, and exemplifying the notorious impossibility of reforming a rebel but by the scaffold.

Attempts have been made, of late years, to raise those men into the reputation of heroism; they might as justly have been raised into the reputation of loyalty. No sophistry can stand against the facts. Not one of them took the common hazards of the field: they left the wretched peasantry to fight, and satisfied themselves with harangues. Even the poetic painting of Moore cannot throw a halo round the head of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. This hero walked the country in woman's clothes, to be arrested in his bed, and perish in a prison. Tone cut his throat. Irishmen are naturally brave; but it is no dishonour to the nation to know that treason degrades the qualities of nature, and that conscience sinks the man of nerve into the poltroon.

It was among the singular instances of good fortune which saved Ireland in her crisis, that Lord Castlereagh assumed the duties of Irish Secretary. Uniting mildness of address with known determination, he was a favourite in the House of Commons, which in those days was proud of its character alike for manners and intrepidity. His indefatigable vigilance, and even the natural vigour of his time of life, rendered him adequate to services and labours which might have broken down the powers of an older man, and which must have been declined by the feeble health of his predecessor, Pelham, who still actually retained the office. Even his family connexion with the Viceroy may have given him a larger share than usual of the immediate confidence of government.

Under all circumstances, he was the fittest man for the time. He protected the country in the most difficult period of its existence. There was but one more service to secure Ireland against ruinous change--the rescue of her councils from the dominion of the mob; and it was his eminent fortune to effect it, by the Union.

There is the most ample evidence, that neither parliamentary reform nor Catholic emancipation were the true objects of the United Irishmen. The one was a lure to the malcontents of the north, the other to the malcontents of the south. But the secret council of the conspiracy--determined to dupe the one, as it despised the other--had resolved on a democracy, which, in its day of triumph, following the steps of France, would, in all probability, have declared itself infidel, and abolished all religion by acclamation. Party in the north pronounced its alliance with France, by commemorating, with French pageantry, the anniversary of the Revolution. The remnants of the old volunteer corps were collected at this menacing festival, which lasted for some days, and exhibited all the pomp and all the insolence of Paris. Emblematic figures were borne on carriages drawn by horses, with republican devices and inscriptions. On one of those carriages was a figure of Hibernia, with one hand and foot in shackles, and a volunteer presenting to her a figure of Liberty, with the motto, "The releasement of the prisoners from the Bastille." On another was the motto,--"Our Gallic brethren were born July 14th, 1789. Alas! we are still in embryo." Another inscription was--"Superstitious jealousy the cause of the Irish Bastille; let us unite and destroy it." The portrait of Franklin was exhibited among them, with this inscription,--"Where Liberty is, there is my country." Gunpowder and arms were put in store, pikes were forged, and treasonous addresses were privately distributed throughout the country.

It is to be observed, that those acts occurred _before_ the accession of Lord Castlereagh to office: their existence was the result of that most miserable of all policies--the sufferance of treason, in the hope that it may die of sufferance. If he had guided the Irish councils in 1792 instead of in 1794, the growing treason would have either shrunk from his energy, or been trampled out by his decision.

It has been the custom of party writers to charge the secretary with rashness, and even with insolence. The answer is in the fact, that, until the year in which the revolt became imminent, his conduct was limited to vigilant precaution--to sustaining the public spirit--to resisting the demands of faction in the House--and to giving the loyal that first and best creator of national courage--the proof that, if they did not betray themselves, they would not be betrayed by their government.

In 1798, the rebellion was ripe. The conspirators had been fully forewarned of their peril by the vigour of public measures. But, disgusted by the delays of France,--conscious that every hour was drawing detection closer round them; and still more, in that final frenzy which Providence suffers to take possession of men abusing its gifts of understanding,--they at last resolved on raising the flag of rebellion. A return of the rebel force was made by Lord Edward Fitzgerald, stating the number of _armed_ men in Ulster, Leinster, and Munster, at 279,896! and the 23d of May was named as the day of the general insurrection.

Government now began to act. On the 12th of March, it arrested the whole body of the delegates of Leinster, assembled in committee in the metropolis. The seizure of their papers gave the details of the treason. Warrants were instantly issued for the arrest of the remaining leaders, Emmett, M'Nevin, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and others. We hasten on. A second committee was formed; and again broken up by the activity of the government. The French agency was next extinguished, by the arrest of O'Connor, the priest Quigley, and others, on the point of leaving England for France. Seizures of arms were made, the yeomanry were put on duty, the loyalists were formed into corps, armed, and disciplined.

Lord Edward Fitzgerald had escaped, and a reward of £1000 was put upon his head. On the 19th of May, only four days before the outbreak, he was arrested in an obscure lodging in Dublin, stabbed one of his captors in the struggle, was himself wounded, and died in prison of his wound.

During this most anxious period, the life of every leading member of government was in imminent peril. Plots were notoriously formed for the assassination of the commander-in-chief, and the chancellor; but Lord Castlereagh was obviously the especial mark for the conspirators. In scorn of this danger, he gallantly persevered; and, on the 22d of May, the very night before the commencement of the insurrection, he brought down to the House the following message from the Lord-lieutenant:--

"That his excellency had received information, that the disaffected had been daring enough to form a plan, for the purpose of possessing themselves, in the course of the _present week_, of the metropolis; of seizing the seat of government, and those in authority within the city. That, in consequence of that information, he had directed every military precaution to be taken which seemed expedient; that he had made full communication to the magistrates, for the direction of their efforts; and that he had not a doubt, by the measures which would be pursued, that the designs of the rebellious would be effectually and entirely crushed."

To this message the House of Commons voted an immediate answer,--"That the intelligence thus communicated filled them with horror and indignation, while it raised in them a spirit of resolution and energy." And, for the purpose of publicly showing their confidence and their determination, the whole of the Commons, preceded by the speaker and the officers of the House, went on foot, two by two, in procession through the streets, to the castle, to carry up their address to the Viceroy.

Lord Castlereagh, during this most anxious period, was in constant activity, keeping up the correspondence of his government with the British Cabinet and the generals commanding in Ireland. But, the correspondence preserved in the Memoirs is limited to directions to the military officers--among whom were the brave and good Abercromby, and Lake, Moore, and others who, like them, were yet to gain their laurels in nobler fields.

The rebellion, after raging for six weeks in the south, and exhibiting the rude daring of the peasantry, in several desperate attacks on the principal towns garrisoned by the army, was at length subdued by Lord Cornwallis; who, at once issuing an amnesty, and acting at the head of a powerful force, restored the public tranquillity. This promptitude was fortunate; for in August a debarkation was made by General Humbert in the west, at the head of eleven hundred French troops, as the advanced guard of an army. This force, though absurdly inferior to its task, yet, by the rapidity of its marches, and the daring of its commander, revived the spirit of insurrection, and was joined by many of the peasantry. But the whole were soon compelled to lay down their arms to the troops of the Viceroy. Scarcely had they been sent to an English prison, when a French squadron, consisting of a ship of the line and eight frigates, with 5000 troops on board, appeared off the northern coast. They were not left long to dream of invasion. On the _very next day_, the squadron under Sir John Borlase Warren was seen entering the French anchorage. The enemy were instantly attacked. The line-of-battle ship, the Hoche, with six of the frigates, was captured after a sharp cannonade; and among the prisoners was found the original incendiary of the rebellion, Wolfe Tone, bearing the commission of a French adjutant-general. On his trial and sentence by a court-martial in Dublin, he solicited to be shot as a soldier, not hanged as a felon. But there was too much blood on his head to alter the forms of law for a villain who had returned for the express purpose of adding the blood of thousands to the past. To escape being hanged, he died by his own hand, deplorably, but suitably, closing a life which honesty and industry might have made happy and honourable, by the last and only crime which he could have added to the long list of his treasons.

The administration of Lord Castlereagh was now to be distinguished by another national service of the highest order. The British government had been awakened, by the rebellion, to the _necessity of a union_. The object of the rebels was to separate the two islands by violence: the danger pointed out the remedy, and the object of government was to join them indissolubly by law. The measure had been proposed nearly a century before, by the peerage of Ireland themselves, then shrinking from a repetition of the war of James II., and the sweeping confiscations of the popish parliament. The measure was twice proposed to the British cabinet, in 1703 and 1707. But the restless intrigues of party in the reign of Anne occupied all the anxieties of a tottering government; and the men who found it difficult to float upon the surge, thought themselves fortunate to escape the additional gusts, which might come ruffling the waters from Ireland. The Volunteer armament, with the example of America, if not actually inflaming Ireland to revolution, yet kindling a beacon to every eye which sought the way to republicanism, again awoke the cabinet to the necessity of a union. The regency question, in which the Irish parliament attempted to divide, not only the countries, but the crown--placing one half on the head of the Prince of Wales, and the other half on the head of the King--again startled the cabinet. But, as the peril abated, the means of protection were thrown by. The hurricane of France then came, and dashed against every throne of Europe, sinking some, shattering others, and throwing clouds, still pregnant with storm and flame, over the horizon of the civilised world. But the vices of France suddenly extinguished the European perils of Revolution. The democracy which, proclaiming universal peace and freedom, had summoned all nations to be present at the erection of a government of philosophy, was seen exulting in the naked display of cruelty and crime. In place of a demigod, Europe saw a fiend, and shrank from the altar on which nothing was to be accepted but the spoil and agonies of man.

Those facts are alluded to, simply to extinguish the gross and common charge, that the British cabinet fostered the rebellion, only to compel the country to take refuge in the Union. It is unquestionable, that the wisdom of its policy had been a maxim for a hundred years; that the plan was to be found in the portfolio of every cabinet; that all administrative foresight acknowledged that the time _must_ come when it would be inevitable, yet put off the hour of action; that it haunted successive cabinets like a ghost, in every hour of national darkness, and that they all rejoiced at its disappearance at the return of day. But when rebellion broke out in Ireland itself--when it was no longer the reflection from the glare of American democracy, nor the echo from the howl of France; when the demand of separation was made by the subjects of the British crown, in the sight of England--the necessity was irresistible. There was no longer any alternative between binding in fetters, and binding in law. Then the resolve of Pitt was made, and its performance was committed to the hands of a fearless and faithful man. Ireland was relieved from the burden of a riotous and impoverished independence, and England was relieved from the contemptible policy of acting by party, which she despised, and paying a parliament to protect a constitution.

But we must hasten to other things. There was, of course, an infinite outcry among all the tribes who lived upon popular corruption. In closing the gates of the Irish parliament, they had been shut out from the mart where they had flocked night and day to sell their influence, their artifices, and themselves. The voluntary slave-trade was broken up; and the great dealers in political conscience regarded themselves as robbed of a right of nature. The kings of Benin and Congo could not be more indignant at the sight of a British cruiser blockading one of their rivers. The calamity was universal; the whole body of parliamentary pauperism was compelled to work or starve. The barrister was forced to learn law; the merchant to turn to his ledger; the country gentleman, who had so long consoled himself for his weedy fallows, by the reflection that, if they _grew_ nothing else, they could at least grow forty-shilling voters, found "Othello's occupation gone." The whole flight of carrion-crows, whom the most distant scent of corruption brought upon the wing; all the locust race, which never alighted, but to strip the soil; the whole army of sinecurism, the countless generation of laziness and license, who, as in the monkish days, looked to receiving their daily meal at the doors of the treasury, felt the sudden sentence of starvation.

But this, too, passed away. Jobbery, a more than equivalent for the exemption of the land from the viper, became no longer a trade; faction itself, of all existing things the most tenacious of life, gradually dropped off; the natural vitality of the land, no longer drained away by its blood-suckers, began to show itself in the vigour of the public mind; peace did its office in the renewal of public wealth, and perhaps the happiest years of Ireland were those which immediately followed the Union. If Ireland was afterwards overshadowed, the cause was to be found in that sullen influence which had thrown Europe into darkness for a thousand years.

Lord Castlereagh was now advanced an important step in public life. Mr Pelham, who from ill health had long been an absentee, resigned his office. The services of his manly and intelligent substitute had been too prominent to be overlooked. A not less trying scene of ministerial courage and ability was about to open, in the proposal of the Union; and no man could compete with _him_ who had extinguished the rebellion.

A letter from his friend Lord Camden (November 1798) thus announced the appointment:--"Dear Castlereagh,--I am extremely happy to be informed by Mr Pitt that the wish of the Lord-lieutenant that you should succeed Mr Pelham (since he has relinquished the situation of secretary) has been acceded to by the King and his ministers; and that the consent of the English government has been communicated to Lord Cornwallis."

On the 22d of January, a message to the English House of Commons was brought down, recommending the Union, on the ground of "the unremitting industry with which the enemies of the country persevered in their avowed design of separating Ireland from England." On the 31st, Pitt moved eight resolutions as the basis of the measure. Sheridan moved an amendment, which was negatived by one hundred and forty to fifteen votes. In the Lords, the address in answer to the message was carried without a division. It was clear that the question in England was decided.

In Ireland the discussion was more vehement, and more protracted; but the decision was ultimately the same. Parliament went the way of all criminals. It must be allowed, that its scaffold was surrounded with popular clamour, to an extraordinary extent. It faced its fate with national haughtiness, and vigorously proclaimed its own virtues to the last. But, when the confusion of the scene was over, and the scaffold was moved away, none lingered near the spot to wring their hands over the grave.

The unquestionable fact is, that there was a national sense of the unfitness of separate legislatures for two countries, whose closeness of connexion was essential to the existence of both. The Protestant felt that, by the fatal folly of conceding votes to the popish peasantry--votes amounting to universal suffrage--parliament must, in a few years, become popish in all but the name. The landlords felt that, the constant operation of party on the peasantry must rapidly overthrow all property. The still more enlightened portion of society felt that every hour exposed the country more perilously to civil commotion. And even the narrowest capacity of judging must have seen, in the smoking harvest, ruined mansions, and slaughtered population of the revolted counties, the hazard of trusting to a native parliament; which, though it might punish, could not protect; and which, in the hour of danger, could not stir hand or foot but by the help of their mighty neighbour and fast friend.

If, in the rebellion, a wall of iron had been drawn round Ireland, and her constitution had been left to the defence furnished by her parliament alone, that constitution would have been but a cobweb; parliament would have been torn down like a condemned building; and out of the ruins would have been instantly compiled some grim and yet grotesque fabric of popular power--some fearful and uncouth mixture of legislation and vengeance: a republic erected on the principles of a despotism; a temple to anarchy, with the passions of the rabble for its priesthood, and the fallen heads of all the noble, brave, and intellectual in the land, for the decorations of the shrine.

The cry of Repeal has revived the recollection of the parliament; but the country has refused to recognise that cry as national, and even the echo has perished. It was notoriously adopted, not for its chance of success, but for its _certainty_ of failure. It was meant to give faction a _perpetual_ pretext for mendicancy. But the mendicant and the pretext are now gone together. A few childish people, forgetting its uselessness and its errors, alone continue to whine over it--as a weak parent laments the loss of a son whose life was a burden to him, and whose death was a relief. The Union was one of the highest services of Lord Castlereagh.

In corroboration of those sentiments, if they could require any, it is observable how rapidly the loudest opponents of the measure lowered their voices, and adopted the tone of government. Plunket, the ablest rhetorician of the party--who had made his opposition conspicuous by the ultra-poetic extravagance, of pledging himself to swear his sons at the altar, as Hamilcar swore Hannibal to Roman hostility--took the first opportunity of reconciling his wrath to office, and settled down into a chancellor. Foster, the speaker, who had led the opposition, received his salary for life without a pang, and filled the office of chancellor of the Irish exchequer. Bushe, the Cicero of the house, glowing with oratorical indignation, condescended to be chief-justice. All the leaders, when the battle was over, quietly slipped off their armour, hung up sword and shield on their walls, put on the peace costume of handsome salary, and subsided into title and pension.

No one blamed them then, nor need blame them now. They had all been _actors_--and who shall reproach the actor, when the lamps are put out and the audience gone, for thinking of his domestic meal, and dropping into his bed? Nature, like truth, is powerful, and the instinct of the lawyer _must_ prevail.

One man alone "refused to be comforted." Grattan, the Demosthenes of Ireland, for years kept, without swearing it, the Carthaginian oath, which had slipped out of the mind of Plunket. He talked of the past with the rapt anguish of a visionary, and eschewed human occupation with the rigid inutility of a member of La Trappe. Grattan long continued to linger in Ireland, until he was hissed out of his patriotic romance, and laughed into England. There, he found, that he had lost the better part of his life in dreams, and that the world demanded evidence that he had not lived in vain. Fortunately for his own fame, he listened to the demand; forgot his sorrows over the dead in the claims of the living; threw in his share to the general contribution of the national heart against the tyranny of Napoleon; and by some noble speeches vindicated the character of his national eloquence, and left an honourable recollection of himself in that greatest temple of fame and free minds which the world has ever seen--the parliament of England.

Lord Castlereagh, on the final dissolution of the Irish legislature, transferred his residence to London, where (in July 1802) he took office under the Addington ministry as President of the Board of Control--an appointment which, on the return of Pitt, he retained, until (in 1805) he was placed by the great minister in the office of secretary for the war and colonial department.

The death of Pitt (1806) surrendered the cabinet to the Whigs, and Lord Castlereagh retired with his colleagues. The death of Fox soon shook the new administration, and their own imprudence broke it up, (1807.) The Grey and Grenville party were superseded by Perceval; and Lord Castlereagh returned to the secretaryship at war, which he held until 1809, when his duel with Canning caused the retirement of both.

In the Memoir, the circumstances of this painful transaction are scarcely more than referred to; but the reply to a letter from Lord Castlereagh to the King, distinctly shows the sense of his conduct entertained in the highest quarter.

"The King has no hesitation in assuring Lord Castlereagh that he has, at all times, been satisfied with the zeal and assiduity with which he has discharged the duties of the various situations which he has filled, and with the exertions which, under every difficulty, he has made for the support of his Majesty's and the country's interest.