Part 3

These arts of the Castle, however, were unable to counteract or repress the persevering effects of the Whig Club. It is not necessary in this place to enter into a defence of the motives of that body in thus contending for the interests of the public. It is sufficient that the measures which they patronized were in a high degree beneficial to the Irish nation; and whether they urged them from a wish to raise themselves to office, or from a principle of pure patriotism, was to the public immaterial. That they supported them zealously and faithfully, from whatever motive, was indubitable. _So_ zealously and faithfully indeed did they exert themselves, that the very same men who had for years made a constant and violent opposition to those measures, exhausting every epithet of reprobation which the English language afforded, both against them and their supporters, yet at last found themselves obliged to concede them to the unrelaxing vigour of these gentlemen, supported by the general sense of the country. It is the concession of these measures that the friends of the Irish junto call "CONCILIATION!" These are the favours which they say Ireland has received, and which they contend ought for ever to have silenced popular complaint, and put a period to the demands of the country! Had they been yielded at an earlier time, before the long, long irritation which the obstinate refusal of them for several successive years had produced, they would have been received with gratitude by the nation, and the effect would have been general tranquillity and content. But the Irish administration knew neither how to concede nor withhold--their resistance was without strength, and their concessions without kindness. Like the Roman King and the Sybils, they withheld the price of public content, until the people, aggravated by refusal, insisted on still higher terms; and, indeed, rose in their demands, beyond what an administration, bankrupt in character and confidence, were able to grant them. What a Minister of comprehensive mind and enlarged views would have granted to the people with magnanimity at once, and what if thus granted, would have taken the tongue from discontent, and left disaffection no handle to use against the peace of the country, the Irish administration conceded piece-meal--one little measure after another--reluctantly and with hesitation; thus teaching the people that what was granted could not be withheld, and that the same means which had extorted one concession from the weakness of government would be equally successful in extorting others. Nay, at the very moment when they were yielding those measures to the perseverance of opposition, supported by the public sense, they continued to load those very men by whole exertions they had been obtained with scurrilous and foul invective; and while with one hand they affected to conciliate the people, with the other they scattered the seeds of disaffection widely through the land by the most inflammatory and ill-judged libels upon the country and its claims. Thus, in the hands of those men, the benignity of the Sovereign was perverted into an instrument of discontent, and those rich concessions which, if judiciously administered, would have bound Ireland to Britain by indissoluble ties, were made means of exciting in numbers of the inhabitants of that country a deep hatred of the British name and connection.

When Englishmen contemplate for a moment this picture of the "conciliation" which the Irish nation has received with so much ingratitude, it is possible they may conclude that nothing has happened which might not have reasonably been expected. Possibly they will think it not unnatural that the people should have received, with little sense of obligation, measures which were never conceded until they came to form only a small part of what was demanded as rights--and that they should rather feel indignant at the insult and abuse heaped on them by a few contemptible and obscure adventurers, than acknowledge gratitude for benefits long kept back, and, at length, reluctantly yielded.

I have dwelt thus long on the early conduct of the Irish administration for two reasons--the one to vindicate the people of Ireland from the insolent charge made against them by their enemies--"That conciliation had been tried in vain with that sottish and discontented people--that they had not intellect to understand, nor gratitude to acknowledge benefits--and that, therefore, the present system of unconstitutional coercion and deprivation was resorted to of necessity:"--the other was to shew, that whatever discontent has been recently shewn in Ireland, whatever crimes have been committed for political purposes, had their remote origin in that system by which the powers of government had been abused in Ireland for several years back. Whether I have succeeded in this attempt, I leave to Englishmen, who know and value freedom and constitution, to determine. For myself I shall only say, that my mind is incapable of feeling a greater degree of moral certainty, than that the people of Ireland are innocent of causeless discontent and of ingratitude; and that all the evils which now lacerate that unhappy country, (for the mere suppression of present discontents will not end the danger,) and threaten the mutilation of the empire, are the necessary and inevitable effects of the wicked system adopted by the weak, hot-headed, and petulant men to whom the administration of Ireland was entrusted, operating upon a generous and loyal but irritable and warm people.

But had the Irish junto rested at the point to which we have now come in describing their system, Ireland would not now have to appeal for pity or for aid to the British nation. It is the subsequent measures to which they resorted, and for which no precedent is to be found in the history of this or any other country pretending to laws, or rights, or constitution, that we complain of. It is by these that Ireland has been lashed into madness, and driven to crimes and to follies which her sober reason would have looked at with detestation. It shall be now my business to advert to those measures--to shew that they have generally preceded those crimes of the people which are alledged to have produced them--that they have been severe and desperate beyond what the necessity of the case called for--that their probable result will be a military despotism--that they cannot tranquillize the country but by the destruction of every degree of constitutional liberty--that, therefore, the people of Great Britain are interested in preventing the progress of that system in Ireland--and, finally, that if the two great objects of the public in Ireland were honestly and fully conceded, and if the people were re-instated in the blessings of the constitution by the establishment of a mild and just administration, peace and content would be restored to the country, disaffection would vanish, and the connection of the two islands become closer and more permanent than ever.

I have already mentioned the Convention and Gunpowder Acts, and the discontent which these laws had excited. Administration felt, that on these questions there was but one opinion amongst the people of Ireland. They perceived, that though these acts were of the strongest kind, their operation would not be adequate to the suppression of the existing and encreasing discontent; and they therefore resorted to a device, which, having been but too often and too successfully tried in Ireland on former occasions, would, it was hoped, be equally successful at present. A religious feud was excited, and suffered to rage without check or intermission, until it nearly desolated a whole county. Some petty quarrels had, a considerable time back, taken place in the county of Armagh, between a few Catholics and Presbyterians, which, however, produced no serious mischief, and were almost instantly terminated either by the interposition of the magistrates, or by the mutual compromise of the parties. Subsequent to this, the county of Armagh enjoyed the most profound tranquillity, until about this period a party started up on the sudden, without visible motive, without provocation, and, to the surprize of the people in Ireland, commenced a most outrageous and unaccountable persecution of the Catholic inhabitants. It would shock the ears of an Englishman, and, perhaps, exceed his belief, were I to give a minute detail of the ferocious barbarities which were committed by this party. It may suffice to say, that under the name of Orange-men, and under colour of attachment to the constitution and affection for the Protestant establishment, they not only burned the houses and destroyed the persons of numbers of the unfortunate Catholics in the heat of blood and fervour of outrage, but with a cool and settled system proceeded to banish the whole of them. Entire districts were proscribed in a night. Labels were affixed on all the Catholic houses in a village, with the words "To Connaught or to Hell!" Nor was the threat vain;--for in numberless instances where the unfortunate inhabitants refused to obey the mandate, their habitations were pulled down or burned by these bravadoes of the constitution, happy if they thus escaped personal destruction. In many cases these outrages were accompanied by plunder; but plunder did not seem to constitute any part of the system under which the Orange-men acted, unless perhaps the plunder of arms, to deprive the Catholics of which was one of their proposed objects.

With what reason the Irish administration were charged with having clandestinely excited, or culpably connived at the excesses of these men, the people of England may determine when they hear that the magistracy of that country remained for many months inactive spectators of these scenes; nay, indeed, in some cases, are said to have given countenance and support to the offenders, by executing the laws with the most inflexible rigour against the Catholics when they happened to fall into any casual error in repelling the attacks of their persecutors, while these latter were left in the enjoyment of perfect impunity.

But this is not the only circumstance which may assist an Englishman to judge how far the Irish administration participated in the guilt of these disturbances--there is another which seems pretty decisive on this point; and that is, that notwithstanding this palpable and notorious misconduct of the Armagh magistracy, not one man was turned out of the commission for his negligence and connivance on those occasions! What apology did the Irish Chancellor offer for not removing those magistrates?--"That better men could not be found in the country!"

This feud, so malignant in its origin, and so destructive in its progress, was possibly expected to have weakened the efficacy of the popular sentiment against the Irish Ministers, by throwing the different religious descriptions to a consideration of their respective and peculiar interests. It produced a very contrary effect. The persecution commenced against the Catholics in Armagh, alarmed the Catholics in every quarter of the country; and when they saw such enormities committed against them with impunity, if not with the approbation of the Castle, they naturally apprehended that a general persecution was designed. They knew, however, that the great body of the Protestants in Ireland were too enlightened to assist in such a scheme--for they had already experienced that the rigour of old prejudices was abated, and that men now began to consider each other rather as men than as religionists.--But they also knew the character of the administration; and the recent transactions in Armagh and elsewhere, taught them, that though they had no reason to fear persecution from the great body of their Protestant fellow-subjects, they were yet not exempt from danger. These fears suggested the necessity of drawing still more closely the bond of union between them and their countrymen of other persuasions. The Protestants met them half way in their advances toward a conjunction of interests--for they perceived, that though the present blow was struck against the Catholics, yet the warfare of administration was not against them only, but against the constitution, against the people, their privileges, and their interests.

Had these been the only consequences that followed this dreadful experiment, the partial evil would have been compensated by the union which it produced. But this was not the case. The alarm which the Armagh persecution produced on the minds of the enlightened Catholics, and on the lower orders of that description were very different. In the former it produced a desire to unite more closely with his Protestant brethren, in order to form by their conjunction the stronger barrier against the apprehended assault of the Irish Cabinet upon both. In the latter, it excited a fear of extermination, which resolved itself into the most violent and unjustifiable measures, of what they considered personal defence--The Orange-men had deprived the Catholics of their arms--the lower order of Catholics co-operating in many instances with their Protestant neighbours of the same rank, who detested the conduct of Orange-men, betook themselves to retaliate on those whom they considered suspected characters. The robbery of arms became a general measure of safety, and those who exerted themselves in this way obtained the name of Defenders--a body of men, whom that administration which suffered the Orange-men to violate the laws with impunity, followed with the utmost severity of legal punishment.

No man who values the interests of society, or knows the value of peace and good order in a community, can be supposed for a moment to justify the intemperate and incautious conduct of those deluded men. If such licence as they usurped were permitted, human society must be dissolved, and man be thrown back to a state of savage nature. But on the other hand, no man who has any regard for truth, or who enjoys a capacity of distinguishing between different ideas, can deny, that the crimes of the Defenders were provoked by the preceding crimes of the Orange-men, and that those powers which, contrary to justice, were suffered to lie dormant against the one class, whose guilt was original and unprovoked, were exercised without mercy against the latter; whose errors were the ebullition of untaught nature repelling in an untaught way, the most wanton and unparalleled aggression.

There were some collateral circumstances which contributed to give full effect to the impression which the enormities of the Orange society were calculated to make on the minds of the lower orders. The severity with which administration had followed the United Irishmen by dispersing their meetings, seizing their papers, and prosecuting as libels every publication which emanated from them, had driven them to the necessity of meeting secretly, and admitting members into their society in a private and mysterious manner. Between secret meetings and conspiracy the interval is small--between meeting secretly for constitutional purposes and meeting to alter or overthrow the constitution, the interval is perhaps still less. Whether the objects or the United Irish societies were at this period unconstitutional or not, it is certain the meetings were clandestine, and that of the lower class of people numbers flocked to them who were admitted only on condition of taking an oath to be true to the body--_i. e._ to keep its secrets, and to devote themselves to the pursuit of the two great popular objects--Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform. The impression which the minds of the lower order of the people would be apt to receive at the discussion of these meetings cannot be considered as very likely to mitigate their zeal in opposition to the persecutors of the Catholics, or to form their minds to receive with patient forbearance the severities which were now every where exercised indiscriminately against the United Irishmen and Defenders--terms which, in the indiscriminating language of the senate and the Castle, were considered as synonymous.

In considering the effect which the extensive and secret meetings of the United Irishmen produced on the dispositions of the lower people it is not necessary to ascertain whether the designs of that body were or were not treasonable. It is sufficient that were they precisely limited to their professed objects, emancipation and reform, the effect of them on the mass of the public by whom they were constituted must be adverse to the system which administration had adopted, and which they now began to force on the nation by means the most unjustifiable.

If this statement of facts, which I have now submitted to the English nation, as demonstrative that the Irish administration were themselves the authors of those enormities which they have since made a pretext for introducing fire and sword through the country--if this statement, I say, be true, and I defy any part of it to be disproved, their guilt and the emptiness of the pretences by which they have endeavoured to screen it, are incontrovertible:

What was the next measure of administration? The Insurrection Act. The outrages which commenced in Armagh, and had been but too successfully, though faintly, imitated in several parts of the country, administration now affected to consider as incurable by any of the ordinary powers with which the law invested the executive authority. A law was therefore propounded and adopted, by which any district which the magistrates of it might think proper to declare in a state of disturbance, or in immediate danger of becoming so, (phrases so vague that it required but little artifice to make them applicable at that time to any county in the kingdom,) was put into such a state of regimen, that any individual magistrate might on his own authority, without trial or proof, seize the person of any inhabitant and send him to serve on board his Majesty's fleet--_i. e._ transport him for life.

In such districts the privileges of the constitution with respect to liberty, and I may add, life, were completely suspended; for whether under pretended authority derived from this act, or from the superabundant zeal of the military protectors of the public peace, who were employed to assist in the execution of it, numbers fell, either by being shot at their own doors, or by the newly-invented process of strangulation, adopted to procure confession of crimes which perhaps had never been committed, or the accusation of others, whose innocence might have made it impossible to convict them by other evidence.

Without entering into a more minute detail of the disgusting enormities or the sufferings to which this measure gave birth, I may safely refer it to the judgement of men accustomed to enjoy the uninterrupted blessings of British law and liberty, whether the infliction of this measure on the people of Ireland was not of itself enough to aggravate feelings already irritated into discontent the most alarming. I do not mean surely to justify assassination or treason, but I appeal to men who have the feelings of freemen, whether to see a father, a brother, or a son, fall, perhaps innocently, under the bayonet of a military executioner, or transported for life from his helpless family and nearest connections--it may be without guilt, because the punishment was inflicted without trial--may not in some degree account for, though it cannot justify, the shocking crimes which have, since the introduction of that measure, been committed by individuals in Ireland? A magistrate who exerts himself in carrying this law into effect, and who, in obedience to the will of the legislature, sends numbers of his countrymen from the soil in which they drew breath, and the connections which make life dear to them, merely because he suspects their loyalty, does that which, being legal, ought not to induce on him either odium or punishment; but while human nature shall continue to be composed of its present materials, there will be found men among the people over whom he exerts such authority, whose vindictive passions will be apt to mark him as their victim. In many deplorable instances has this been verified in Ireland. The Insurrection Act was adopted to prevent such enormities; unhappily it but encreased, greatly encreased, the black catalogue.

I ask unprejudiced men, whether these measures, carried into execution against a people who from the recent acquisition of independence felt much of the pride and sensibility of freedom, were not most likely to be attended with the consequences which have followed? What then, I ask, must have been the effect of that measure, at which freedom and justice feels still more abhorrence--a legal indemnity for all crimes committed against the people, under colour of preserving the peace? Good heavens! was it not enough that a law was passed which left the subjects' liberty and person at the mercy of the magistrates--but must the military or civil tyrant be protected _by_ law _against_ law, in the perpetration of acts which even by the spirit of that act would be illegal and oppressive? The first Bill of Indemnity Was designed to protect my Lord Carhampton, who had played the part of a self-created Dictator in Ireland. What the particular measures pursued by his Lordship were, I shall not enumerate. They are known, and I believe will be remembered by both countries. He is indemnified for his zeal; and his measures, instead of quieting, have been unfortunately found to have produced a contrary effect. From that time to the present, Bills of Indemnity have become an established part of the system of government in Ireland; so that he who can contrive means to cover the most malicious and oppressive crimes by the easy pretext of securing the public peace, may rest as firmly on an act to indemnify him in the succeeding session, as the public creditor may depend on the passing of the money bills.

In enumerating these successive steps which have been taken in Ireland, professedly to tranquillize the country, but which have operated only to render it outrageous, I might have mentioned the appointment and the recall of my Lord Fitzwilliam. But in speaking to the people of England it were superfluous to dwell on that event; for with the circumstances of _that_, _they_, as well as the people of Ireland, are acquainted. I shall therefore content myself with saying, that of the many irritating measures which have goaded Ireland, the recall of my Lord Fitzwilliam was the most mischievously efficacious. With that nobleman, Hope fled from the country. What has since followed has been the counsel of Despair. By that event it was placed beyond doubt, that the Cabinets of the two countries formed a junction against reform--against the restoration of the constitution to Ireland--and against a mitigation of the coercive system. If treason have spread widely through the country--if the friends of the French system have become numerous, it must be since that insulting act of the British Cabinet told the people, that if they felt the pressure of present evils, or looked for a further extension of constitutional rights, their hope must be turned to another quarter than to the influence of the British connection.