Part 69

In supporting these resolutions, Grattan cited England's dealings with America, to show what Ireland too might effect by claiming her just rights. … The Earl of Carlisle became Viceroy in 1781, with Mr. Eden as Secretary. Viewing England's embroilment in war—in America, in India, with France, and Spain, and Holland—the Irish Volunteers, whose numbers had swelled, Grattan said, to well-nigh 100,000 men, held meetings and reviews in various parts of the country. … The 16th of April, 1782, was a memorable day for Dublin. On that date, in a city thronged with Volunteers, with bands playing, and banners blazoned with gilded harps fluttering in the wind, Grattan, in an amendment to the Address which was always presented to the King at the opening of Parliament, moved, 'That Ireland is a distinct Kingdom, with a separate Parliament, and that this Parliament alone has a right to make laws for her.' On the 17th of May, the two Secretaries of State, Lord Shelburne in the Lords, and Charles James Fox in the Commons of Great Britain—proposed the repeal of the 6th of George I., a statute which declared the right of the English Parliament to make laws for Ireland. The English Government frankly and fully acceded to the demands of Ireland. Four points were granted—

(1) an Independent Irish Parliament; (2) the abrogation of Poynings' Law, empowering the English Privy Council to alter Irish Bills; (3) the introduction of a Biennial Mutiny Bill; (4) the abolition of the right of appeal to England from the Irish law courts.

These concessions were announced to the Irish Parliament at once: in their joy the Irish Houses voted £100,000, and 20,000 men to the navy of Great Britain. Ireland had at last achieved political freedom. Peace and prosperity seemed about to bless the land. … That there might be no misunderstanding as to the deliberate intention of the English Parliament in granting Irish legislative independence, Lord Shelburne had passed an Act of Renunciation, declaring that 'the Right claimed by the people of Ireland, to be bound only by laws enacted by His Majesty and the Parliament of that Kingdom, is hereby declared to be established and ascertained for ever, and shall at no time hereafter be questioned or questionable.' During the same session (1782), the two Catholic Relief Bills proposed by Luke Gardiner, who afterwards became Viscount Mountjoy, were passed. These measures gave Catholics the right to buy freeholds, to teach schools, and to educate their children as they pleased. The Habeas Corpus Act was now extended to Ireland; and marriages by presbyterian ministers were made legal."

_W. F. Collier, History of Ireland for Schools, period 5, chapter 3._

"Had the Irish demanded a complete separation it would have been yielded without resistance. It would have been better had it been. The two countries would have immediately joined on terms of equality and of mutual confidence and respect. But the more the English Cabinet gave way the less were the Irish disposed to press their advantage. A feeling of warm attachment to England rapidly took the place of distrust. There never existed in Ireland so sincere and friendly a spirit of spontaneous union with England as at this moment, when the formal bond of union was almost wholly dissolved. From the moment when England made a formal surrender of her claim to govern Ireland a series of inroads commenced on the various interests supposed to be left to their own free development by that surrender. Ireland had not, like England, a body of Cabinet Ministers responsible to her Parliament. The Lord Lieutenant and the Irish Secretary held their offices and received their instructions from the English minister. There was greater need than ever before for a bribed majority in the Irish Commons, and the machinery for securing and managing it remained intact."

_W. A. O'Conor, History of the Irish People, book 4, chapter 2, section 2 (volume 2)._

"The history of these memorable eighteen years [1782-1800] has never been written, and yet these years are the … key to Irish political opinion in the 19th [century]. The Government which granted the constitution of 1782 began to conspire against it immediately. They had taken Poynings' Act away from the beginning of its proceedings, and they clapped it on to the end of its proceedings, as effectually as if the change had not been made. They developed in the Irish mind that distrust of all government which has made it so turbulent and so docile—turbulent to its administrators, docile to its popular leaders."

_J. E. Thorold Rogers, Ireland (A. Reid, editor), p. 25._

ALSO IN: _W. E. H. Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland: Henry Grattan._

_J. G. MacCarthy, Henry Grattan._

IRELAND: A. D. 1784. Peep-o'-Day Boys and Defenders.

"Disturbances … commenced in the north between two parties called Peep-o'-Day Boys and Defenders. They originated in 1784 among some country people, who appear to have been all Protestants or Presbyterians; but Catholics having sided with one of the parties, the quarrel quickly grew into a religious feud, and spread from the county of Armagh, where it commenced, to the neighbouring districts of Tyrone and Down. Both parties belonged to the humblest classes of the community. The Protestant party were well armed, and assembling in numbers, attacked the houses of Catholics under pretence of searching for arms; insulting their persons, and breaking their furniture. These wanton outrages were usually committed at an early hour in the morning, whence the name of Peep-o'-Day Boys; but the faction was also known as 'Protestant Boys,' and 'wreckers,' and ultimately merged in the Orange Society."

_M. Haverty, History of Ireland, p. 722._

IRELAND: A. D. 1793. Passage of the Catholic Relief Bill.

"On February 4 (1793) Hobart [Chief Secretary] moved for leave to bring in his Catholic Relief Bill, and stated the nature of its provisions. It was of a kind which only a year before would have appeared utterly impossible, and which was in the most glaring opposition to all the doctrines which the Government and its partisans had of late been urging. … This great measure was before Parliament, with several intermissions, for rather more than five weeks. … {1779} The vast preponderance of speakers were in favour of relief to Catholics, though there were grave differences as to the degree, and speakers of the highest authority represented the genuine Protestant feeling of the country as being in its favour. … Few things in Irish parliamentary history are more remarkable than the facility with which this great measure was carried, though it was in all its aspects thoroughly debated. It passed its second reading in the House of Commons with only a single negative. It was committed with only three negatives, and in the critical divisions on its clauses the majorities were at least two to one. The qualification required to authorise a Catholic to bear arms was raised in committee on the motion of the Chancellor, and in addition to the oath of allegiance of 1774, a new oath was incorporated in the Bill, copied from one of the declarations of the Catholics, and abjuring certain tenets which had been ascribed to them, among others the assertion that the infallibility of the Pope was an article of their faith. For the rest the Bill became law almost exactly in the form in which it was originally designed. It swept away the few remaining disabilities relating to property which grew out of the penal code. It enabled Catholics to vote like Protestants for members of Parliament and magistrates in cities or boroughs; to become elected members of all corporations except Trinity College; to keep arms subject to some specified conditions; to hold all civil and military offices in the kingdom from which they were not specifically excluded; to hold the medical professorships on the foundation of Sir Patrick Dun; to take degrees and hold offices in any mixed college connected with the University of Dublin that might hereafter be founded. It also threw open to them the degrees of the University, enabling the King to alter its statutes to that effect. A long clause enumerated the prizes which were still withheld. Catholics might not sit in either House of Parliament; they were excluded from almost all Government and judicial positions; they could not be Privy Councillors, King's Counsel, Fellows of Trinity College, sheriffs or sub-sheriffs, or generals of the staff. Nearly every post of ambition was still reserved for Protestants, and the restrictions weighed most heavily on the Catholics who were most educated and most able. In the House of Lords as in the House of Commons the Bill passed with little open opposition, but a protest, signed among other peers by Charlemont, was drawn up against it. … The Catholic Relief Bill received the royal assent in April, 1793, and in the same month the Catholic Convention dissolved itself. Before doing so it passed a resolution recommending the Catholics 'to co-operate in all loyal and constitutional means' to obtain parliamentary reform. … The Catholic prelates in their pastorals expressed their gratitude for the Relief Bill. The United Irishmen on their side issued a proclamation warmly congratulating the Catholics on the measure for their relief, but also urging in passionate strains that parliamentary reform was the first of needs."

_W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter 25 (volume 6)._

IRELAND: A. D. 1793-1798. Organization of the United Irishmen. Attempted French invasions. The rising of '98.

"Nothing could be less sinister than the original aims and methods of the Society of United Irishmen, which was conceived in the idea of uniting Catholics and Protestants 'in pursuit of the same object—a repeal of the penal laws, and a (parliamentary) reform including in itself an extension of the right of suffrage.' This union was founded at Belfast, in 1791, by Theobald Wolfe Tone, a young barrister of English descent, and, like the majority of the United Irishmen, a Protestant. Some months later a Dublin branch was founded, the chairman being the hon. Simon Butler, a Protestant gentleman of high character, and the secretary a tradesman named James Napper Tandy. The society grew rapidly, and branches were formed throughout Ulster and Leinster. The religious strife of the Orange boys and Defenders was a great trouble to the United men, who felt that these creed animosities among Irishmen were more ruinous to the national cause than any corruption of parliament or coercion of government could possibly be. Ireland, united, would be quite capable of fighting her own battles, but these party factions rendered her contemptible and weak. The society accordingly set itself the impossible task of drawing together the Defenders and the Orange men. Catholic emancipation—one of the great objects of the union—naturally appealed very differently to the rival parties: it was the great wish of the Defenders, the chief dread of the Orangemen. Both factions were composed of the poorest and most ignorant peasantry in Ireland, men whose political views did not soar above the idea that 'something should be done for old Ireland.' The United Irishmen devoted themselves to the regeneration of both parties, but the Orangemen would have none of them, and the Protestant United men found themselves drifting into partnership with the Catholic Defenders. To gain influence with this party, Tandy took the Defenders' oath. He was informed against; and, as to take an illegal oath was then a capital offence in Ireland, he had to fly for his life to America. This adventure made Tandy the hero of the Defenders, who now joined the union in great numbers; but the whole business brought the society into disrepute, and connected it with the Defenders, who, like the Orange boys, were merely a party of outrage. … One night in the May of '94 a government raid was made upon the premises of the union. The officers of the society were arrested, their papers seized, the type of their newspaper destroyed, and the United Irish Society was proclaimed as an illegal organisation. Towards the close of this year all need for a reform society seemed to have passed. Fitzwilliam was made viceroy, and emancipation and reform seemed assured. His sudden recall, the reversal of his appointments, the rejection of Grattan's Reform Bill, and the renewal of the old coercive system, convinced the United men of the powerlessness of peaceful agitation to check the growth of the system of government by corruption. They accordingly reorganised the union, but as a secret society, and with the avowed aim of separating Ireland from the British empire. The Fitzwilliam affair had greatly strengthened the union, which was joined by many men of high birth and position, among them lord Edward Fitzgerald, brother of the duke of Leinster, and Arthur O'Connor, nephew to lord Longueville, both of whom had been members of the House of Commons. … But the ablest man of the party was Thomas Addis Emmet, a barrister, and the elder brother of Robert Emmet. {1780} The society gradually swelled to the number of 5,000 members, but throughout its existence it was perfectly riddled with spies and informers, by whom government was supplied with a thorough knowledge of its doings. It became known to Pitt that the French government had sent an Englishman, named Jackson, as an emissary to Ireland. Jackson was convicted of treason, and hanged, and Wolfe Tone was sufficiently implicated in his guilt … to find it prudent to fly to America. But before leaving Ireland he arranged with the directors of the union to go from America to France, and to try to persuade the French government to assist Ireland in a struggle for separation. While Tone was taking his circuitous route to Paris, government, to meet the military development of the society, placed Ulster and Leinster under a stringent Insurrection Act; torture was employed to wring confession from suspected persons, and the Protestant militia and yeomanry were drafted at free quarters on the wretched Catholic peasantry. The barbarity of the soldiers lashed the people of the northern provinces into a state of fury. … In the meantime the indomitable Tone—unknown, without credentials, without influence, and ignorant of the French language—had persuaded the French government to lend him a fleet, 10,000 men, and 40,000 stand of arms, which armament left Brest for Bantry Bay on the 16th December, 1796. Ireland was now in the same position as England had been when William of Orange had appeared outside Torbay. Injustice, corruption, and oppression had in both cases goaded the people into rebellion. A calm sea and a fierce gale made the difference between the English patriot of 1688 and the Irish traitor of 1796. Had the sea been calm in the Christmas week of '96, nothing could have stopped the French from marching on to Dublin, but just as the ships put in to Bantry Bay, so wild a wind sprang up that they were driven out to sea, and blown and buffetted about. For a month they tossed about within sight of land, but the storm did not subside, and, all chance of landing seeming as far off as ever, they put back into the French port."

_Wm. S. Gregg, Irish History for English Readers, chapter 23._

"After the failure of Hoche's expedition, another great armament was fitted out in the Texel, where it long lay ready to come forth, while the English fleet, the only safeguard of our coasts, was crippled by the mutiny at the Nore. But the wind once more fought for England, and the Batavian fleet came out at last only to be destroyed at Camperdown. Tone was personally engaged in both expeditions, and his lively Diary, the image of his character, gives us vivid accounts of both. The third effort of the French Government was feeble, and ended in the futile landing of a small force under Humbert. … In the last expedition Tone himself was taken prisoner, and, having been condemned to death, committed suicide in prison. … It was well for Ireland, as well as for England, that Tone failed in his enterprise. Had he succeeded, his country would for a time have been treated as Switzerland and the Batavian Republic were treated by their French regenerators, and, in the end, it would have been surely reconquered and punished by the power which was mistress of the sea. … But now that all is over, we can afford to say that Tone gallantly ventured his life in what naturally appeared to him, and would to a high-spirited Englishman under the same circumstances have appeared, a good cause. One of his race had but too much reason then to 'hate the very name of England,' and to look forward to the burning of her cities with feelings in which pity struggled with revenge for mastery, but revenge prevailed. … From the Republicans the disturbance spread, as in 1641, to that mass of blind disaffection and hatred, national, social, agrarian, and religious, which was always smouldering among the Catholic peasantry. With these sufferers the political theories of the French Revolutionists had no influence; they looked to French invasion, as well as to domestic insurrection, merely as a deliverance from the oppression under which they groaned. … The leading Roman Catholics, both clerical and lay, were on the side of the government. The mass of the Catholic priesthood were well inclined to take the same side, They could have no sympathy with an Atheist Republic, red with the blood of priests, as well as with the blood of a son of St. Louis. If some of the order were concerned in the movement, it was as demagogues, sympathizing with their peasant brethren, not as priests. Yet the Protestants insisted on treating the Catholic clergy as rebels by nature. They had assuredly done their best to make them so. … No sooner did the Catholic peasantry begin to move and organize themselves than the Protestant gentry and yeomanry as one man became Cromwellians again. Then commenced a Reign of Terror scarcely less savage than that of the Jacobins, against whom Europe was in arms, as a hideous and portentous brood of evil, the scourge and horror of the whole human race. The suspected conspirators were intimidated, and confessions, or pretended confessions, were extorted by loosing upon the homes of the peasantry the license and barbarity of an irregular soldiery more cruel than a regular invader. Flogging, half-hanging, pitch-capping, picketing, went on over a large district, and the most barbarous scourgings, without trial, were inflicted in the Riding-house at Dublin, in the very seat of government and justice. This was styled, 'exerting a vigour beyond the law;' and to become the object of such vigour, it was enough, as under Robespierre, to be suspected of being suspect. No one has yet fairly undertaken the revolting but salutary task of writing a faithful and impartial history of that period; but from the accounts we have, it appears not unlikely that the peasantry, though undoubtedly in a disturbed state, and to a great extent secretly organized, might have been kept quiet by measures of lenity and firmness; and that they were gratuitously scourged and tortured into open rebellion. When they did rebel, they shewed, as they had shewn in 1641, what the galley-slave is when, having long toiled under the lash, he contrives in a storm to slip his chains and become master of the vessel. The atrocities of Wexford and Vinegar-Hill rivalled the atrocities of Portnadown. Nor when the rebellion was vanquished did the victors fail to renew the famous feats of Sir Charles Coote and of the regiment of Cole. We now possess terrible and overwhelming evidence of their sanguinary ferocity in the correspondence of Lord Cornwallis, who was certainly no friend to rebels, having fought against them in America, but who was a man of sense and heart, most wisely sent over to quench the insurrection, and pacify the country. … {1781} The murders and other atrocities committed by the Jacobins were more numerous than those committed by the Orangemen, and as the victims were of higher rank they excited more indignation and pity; but in the use of torture the Orangemen seem to have reached a pitch of fiendish cruelty which was scarcely attained by the Jacobins. … The Jacobin party was almost entirely composed of men taken from the lowest of the people, whereas among the Irish terrorists were found men of high social position and good education."

_Goldwin Smith, Irish History and Irish Character, pages 166-175._

ALSO IN: _R. R. Madden, The United Irishmen, their Lives and Times._

_Theobald Wolfe Tone, Memoirs._

_Marquis Cornwallis, Correspondence, chapter 19 (volume 2)._

_A. Griffiths, French Revolutionary Generals, chapter 16._

_Viscount Castlereagh, Memoirs and Correspondence, volume 1._

_W. H. Maxwell, History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798._

IRELAND: A. D. 1795-1796. Formation of the Orange Society. Battle of the Diamond. Persecution of Catholics by Protestant mobs.