Part 582

"The year 1795 is very memorable in Irish history, as the year of the formation of the Orange Society, and the beginning of the most serious disturbances in the county of Armagh. … The old popular feud between the lower ranks of Papists and Presbyterians in the northern counties is easy to understand, and it is not less easy to see how the recent course of Irish politics had increased it. A class which had enjoyed and gloried in uncontested ascendency, found this ascendency passing from its hands. A class which had formerly been in subjection, was elated by new privileges, and looked forward to a complete abolition of political disabilities. Catholic and Protestant tenants came into a new competition, and the demeanour of Catholics towards Protestants was sensibly changed. There were boasts in taverns and at fairs, that the Protestants would speedily be swept away from the land and the descendants of the old proprietors restored, and it was soon known that Catholics all over the country were forming themselves into committees or societies, and were electing representatives for a great Catholic convention at Dublin. The riots and outrages of the Peep of Day Boys and Defenders had embittered the feeling on both sides. … Members of one or other creed were attacked and insulted as they went to their places of worship. There were fights on the high roads, at fairs, wakes, markets, and country sports, and there were occasionally crimes of a much deeper dye. … In September 1795 riots broke out in this county [Armagh], which continued for some days, but at length the parish priest on the one side, and a gentleman named Atkinson on the other, succeeded in so far appeasing the quarrel that the combatants formally agreed to a truce, and were about to retire to their homes, when a new party of Defenders, who had marched from the adjoining counties to the assistance of their brethren, appeared upon the scene, and on September 21 they attacked the Protestants at a place called the Diamond. The Catholics on this occasion were certainly the aggressors, and they appear to have considerably outnumbered their antagonists, but the Protestants were better posted, better armed, and better organised. A serious conflict ensued, and the Catholics were completely defeated, leaving a large number—probably twenty or thirty—dead upon the field. It was on the evening of the day on which the battle of the Diamond was fought, that the Orange Society was formed. It was at first a league of mutual defence, binding its members to maintain the laws and the peace of the country, and also the Protestant Constitution. No Catholic was to be admitted into the society, and the members were bound by oath not to reveal its secrets. The doctrine of Fitzgibbon, that the King, by assenting to Catholic emancipation, would invalidate his title to the throne, was remarkably reflected in the oath of the Orangemen, which bound them to defend the King and his heirs, 'so long as he or they support the Protestant ascendency.' The society took its name from William of Orange, the conqueror of the Catholics, and it agreed to celebrate annually the battle of the Boyne. In this respect there was nothing in it particularly novel. Protestant associations, for the purpose of commemorating the events and maintaining the principles of the Revolution, had long been known. … A very different spirit, however, animated the early Orangemen. The upper classes at first generally held aloof from the society; for a considerable time it appears to have been almost confined to the Protestant peasantry of Ulster, and the title of Orangemen was probably assumed by numbers who had never joined the organisation, who were simply Peep of Day Boys taking a new name, and whose conduct was certainly not such as those who instituted the society had intended. A terrible persecution of the Catholics immediately followed. The animosities between the lower orders of the two religions, which had long been little bridled, burst out afresh, and after the battle of the Diamond, the Protestant rabble of the county of Armagh, and of part of the adjoining counties, determined by continuous outrages to drive the Catholics from the country. Their cabins were placarded, or, as it was termed, 'papered,' with the words, 'To hell or Connaught,' and if the occupants did not at once abandon them, they were attacked at night by an armed mob. The webs and looms of the poor Catholic weavers were cut and destroyed. Every article of furniture was shattered or burnt. The houses were often set on fire, and the inmates were driven homeless into the world. The rioters met with scarcely any resistance or disturbance. Twelve or fourteen houses were sometimes wrecked in a single night. Several Catholic chapels were burnt, and the persecution, which began in the county of Armagh, soon extended over a wide area in the counties of Tyrone, Down, Antrim, and Derry. … The outrages continued with little abatement through a great part of the following year. As might have been expected, there were widely differing estimates of the number of the victims. According to some reports, which were no doubt grossly exaggerated, no less than 1,400 families, or about 7,000 persons, were driven out of the county of Armagh alone. Another, and much more probable account, spoke of 700 families, while a certain party among the gentry did their utmost to minimise the persecutions."

_W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter 27 (volume 7)._

{1782}

IRELAND: A. D. 1798-1800. The Legislative Union with Great Britain.

"No sooner had the rebellion been suppressed than the Government proposed, to the Parliament of each country, the union of Great Britain and Ireland under a common legislature. This was no new idea. It had frequently been in the minds of successive generations of statesmen on both sides of the Channel; but had not yet been seriously discussed with a view to immediate action. Nothing could have been more safely predicted than that Ireland must, sooner or later, follow the precedent of Scotland, and yield her pretensions to a separate legislation. The measures of 1782, which appeared to establish the legislative independence of Ireland, really proved the vanity of such a pretension. … On the assembling of the British Parliament at the commencement of the year [1799], the question of the Union was recommended by a message from the Crown; and the address, after some opposition, was carried without a division. Pitt, at this, the earliest stage, pronounced the decision at which the Government had arrived to be positive and irrevocable. … Lord Cornwallis [then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland] also expressed his conviction that union was the only measure which could preserve the country. … The day before the intended Union was signified by a royal message to the English Parliament, the Irish Houses assembled; and the Viceroy's speech, of course, contained a paragraph relative to the project. The House of Lords, completely under the control of the Castle, agreed to an address in conformity with the speech, after a short and languid debate, by a large majority; but the Commons were violently agitated. … An amendment to the address pledging the House to maintain the Union was lost by one vote, after the House had sat twenty-one hours; but, on the report, the amendment to omit the paragraph referring to the Union was carried by a majority of four. … When it was understood that the Government was in earnest … there was little difficulty in alarming a people among whom the machinery of political agitation had, for some years, been extensively organised. The bar of Dublin took the lead, and it at once became evident that the policy of the Government had effected a union among Irishmen far more formidable than that which all the efforts of sedition had been able to accomplish. The meeting of the bar included not merely men of different religious persuasions, but, what was of more importance in Ireland, men of different sides in politics. … However conclusive the argument in favour of Union may appear to Englishmen, it was difficult for an Irishman to regard the Union in any other view than as a measure to deprive his country of her independent constitution, and to extinguish her national existence. Mr. Foster, the Speaker, took this view. … Sir John Parnell, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, followed the Speaker. Mr. Fitzgerald, the Prime Serjeant, a law officer of the Crown, was on the same side. Ponsonby, the leader of the Whigs, was vehement against the scheme; so was Grattan; so was Curran. Great efforts were made by the Government to quiet the Protestants, and to engage the Catholics to support the Union. These efforts were so far successful that most of the Orange lodges were persuaded to refrain from expressing any opinion on the subject. The Catholic hierarchy were conciliated by the promise of a provision for the clergy, and of an adjustment of the Tithe question. Hopes were held out, if promises were not actually made, to the Catholic community, that their civil disabilities would be removed. … If the Union was to be accomplished by constitutional means, it could be effected only by a vote of the Irish Parliament, concurring with a vote of the English Parliament; and if the Irish assembly were to pronounce an unbiased judgment on the question of its extinction, it is certain that a very small minority, possibly not a single vote, would be found to support the measure. … The vote on the address was followed, in a few days, by an address to the Crown, in which the Commons pledged themselves to maintain the constitution of 1782. The majority in favour of national independence had already increased from five to twenty. … The votes of the Irish Commons had disposed of the question for the current session; but preparations were immediately made for its future passage through the Irish Houses. The foremost men in Ireland … had first been tempted, but had indignantly refused every offer to betray the independence of their country. Another class of leading persons was then tried, and from these, for the most part, evasive answers were received. The minister understood the meaning of these dubious utterances. There was one mode of carrying the Union, and one mode only. Bribery of every kind must be employed without hesitation and without stint."

_W. Massey, History of England: Reign of George. III., chapter 38 (volume 4)._

"Lord Cornwallis had to work the system of 'negotiating and jobbing,' by promising an Irish Peerage, or a lift in that Peerage, or even an English Peerage, to a crowd of eager competitors for honours. The other specific for making converts was not yet in complete operation. Lord Castlereagh [the Irish Chief Secretary] had the plan in his portfolio:—borough proprietors to be compensated; … fifty barristers in parliament, who always considered a seat as the road to preferment, to be compensated; the purchasers of seats to be compensated; individuals connected either by residence or property with Dublin to be compensated. 'Lord Castlereagh considered that £1,500,000 would be required to effect all these compensations.' The sum actually paid to the borough-mongers alone was £1,260,000. Fifteen thousand pounds were allotted to each borough; and 'was apportioned amongst the various patrons.' … It had become a contest of bribery on both sides. There was an 'Opposition stock-purse,' as Lord Castlereagh describes the fund against which he was to struggle with the deeper purse at Whitehall. … During the administration of Lord Cornwallis, 29 Irish Peerages were created; of which seven only were unconnected with the question of Union. Six English Peerages were granted on account of Irish services; and there were 19 promotions in the Irish Peerage, earned by similar assistance." The question of Union was virtually decided in the Irish House of Commons on the 6th of February, 1800. Lord Castlereagh, on the previous day, had read a message from the Lord Lieutenant, communicating resolutions adopted by the parliament of Great Britain in the previous year. "The question was debated from four o'clock in the afternoon of the 5th to one o'clock in the afternoon of the 6th. {1783} During that time the streets of Dublin were the scene of a great riot, and the peace of the city was maintained only by troops of cavalry. … On the division of the 6th there was a majority of 43 in favour of the Union." It was not, however, until the 7th of June, that the final legislative enactment—the Union Bill—was passed in the Irish House of Commons. The first article provided "that the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland should, upon the 1st of January, 1801, be united into one kingdom, by the name of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The United Kingdom was to be represented in one and the same parliament. In the United Parliament there were to be 28 temporal Peers, elected for life by the Irish Peerage; and four spiritual Peers, taking their places in rotation. There were to be 100 members of the Lower House; each county returning two, as well as the cities of Dublin and Cork. The University returned one, and 31 boroughs each returned one. Of these boroughs 23 remained close boroughs till the Reform Bill of 1831. … The Churches of England and Ireland were to be united. The proportion of Revenue to be levied was fixed at fifteen for Great Britain and two for Ireland, for the succeeding twenty years. Countervailing duties upon imports to each country were fixed by a minute tariff, but some commercial restrictions were to be removed."

_C. Knight, Popular History of England, volume 7, chapter 21._

"If the Irish Parliament had consisted mainly, or to any appreciable extent, of men who were disloyal to the connection, and whose sympathies were on the side of rebellion or with the enemies of England, the English Ministers would, I think, have been amply justified in employing almost any means to abolish it. … But it cannot be too clearly understood or too emphatically stated, that the legislative Union was not an act of this nature. The Parliament which was abolished was a Parliament of the most unqualified loyalists; it had shown itself ready to make every sacrifice in its power for the maintenance of the Empire, and from the time when Arthur O'Connor and Lord Edward Fitzgerald passed beyond its walls, it probably did not contain a single man who was really disaffected. … It must be added, that it was becoming evident that the relation between the two countries established by the Constitution of 1782 could not have continued unchanged. … Even with the best dispositions, the Constitution of 1782 involved many and grave probabilities of difference. … Sooner or later the corrupt borough ascendency must have broken down, and it was a grave question what was to succeed it. … An enormous increase of disloyalty and religious animosity had taken place during the last years of the century, and it added immensely to the danger of the democratic Catholic suffrage, which the Act of 1793 had called into existence. This was the strongest argument for hurrying on the Union; but when all due weight is assigned to it, it does not appear to me to have justified the policy of Pitt."

_W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter 32 (volume 8)._

ALSO IN: _T. D. Ingram, History of the Legislative Union._

_R. Hassencamp, History of Ireland, chapter 14._

_Marquis Cornwallis, Correspondence, chapters 19-21 (volumes 2-3)._

_Viscount Castlereagh, Memoirs and Correspondence, volumes 2-3._

IRELAND: A. D. 1801. Pitt's promise of Catholic Emancipation broken by the king.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1801-1806.

IRELAND: A. D. 1801-1803. The Emmet insurrection.

"Lord Hardwicke succeeded Lord Cornwallis as viceroy in May [1801]; and for two years, so far as the British public knew, Ireland was undisturbed. The harvest of 1801 was abundant. The island was occupied by a military force of 125,000 men. Distant rumours of disturbances in Limerick, Tipperary, and Waterford were faintly audible. Imports and exports increased. The debt increased likewise, but, as it was met by loans and uncontrolled by any public assembly, no one protested, and few were aware of the fact. Landlords and middlemen throve on high rents, and peasants as yet could live. … Early in 1803 the murmurs in the southwest became louder. Visions of a fixed price for potatoes began to shape themselves, and the invasion of 'strangers' ready to take land from which tenants had been ejected was resisted. The magistrates urged the viceroy to obtain and exercise the powers of the Insurrection Act; but the evil was not thought of sufficient magnitude, and their request was refused: Amidst the general calm, the insurrection of Robert Emmett in July broke like a bolt from the blue. A young republican visionary, whose brother had taken an active part in the rebellion, he had inspired a few score comrades with the quixotic hope of rekindling Irish nationality by setting up a factory of pikes in a back street of Dublin. On the eve of St. James's Day, Quigley, one of his associates, who had been sowing vague hopes among the villages of Kildare, brought a mixed crowd into Dublin. When the evening fell, a sky-rocket was fired. Emmett and his little band sallied from Marshalsea Lane into St. James's Street, and distributed pikes to all who would take them. The disorderly mob thus armed proceeded to the debtors' prison, which they attacked, killing the officer who defended it. Emmett urged them on to the Castle. They followed, in a confused column, utterly beyond his power to control. On their war they fell in with the carriage of the Chief Justice, Lord Kilwarden, dragged him out, and killed him. By this time a few handfuls of troops had been collected. In half an hour two subalterns, with fifty soldiers each, had dispersed the whole gathering. By ten o'clock all was over, with the loss of 20 soldiers and 50 insurgents. Emmett and Russell, another of the leaders who had undertaken the agitation of Down and Antrim, were shortly afterwards taken and executed; Quigley escaped. Such was the last reverberation of the rebellion of 1798, or rather of the revolutionary fervour that led the way to that rebellion, before it had been tainted with religious animosity. Emmett died as Shelley would have died, a martyr and an enthusiast; but he knew little of his countrymen's condition, little of their aspirations, nothing of their needs. He had no successors."

_J. H. Bridges, Two Centuries of Irish History, part 3, chapter 2._

"Emmet might easily have escaped to France if he had chosen, but he delayed till too late. Emmet was a young man, and Emmet was in love. 'The idol of his heart,' as he calls her in his dying speech, was Sarah Curran, the daughter of John Philpot Curran. … Emmet was determined to see her before he went. He placed his life upon the cast and lost it. … The White Terror which followed upon the failure of Emmet's rising was accompanied by almost all the horrors which marked the hours of repression after the rebellion of '98. … The old devil's dance of spies and informers went merrily forward; the prisons were choked with prisoners."

_J. H. McCarthy, Ireland Since the Union, chapters 5-6._

ALSO IN: _R. R. Madden, The United Irishmen, their Lives and Times, volume 3._

_J. Wills, History of Ireland in the Lives of Irishmen, volume 6, pages 68-80._

{1784}

IRELAND: A. D. 1811-1829. O'Connell and the agitation for Catholic Emancipation and the Repeal of the Union. Catholic disabilities removed.