Ireland-Comparative tranquillity after 1783-Recall of lord Fitzwilliam-United IrishmenIrish Directory-Commencement of the Rebellion-Suppression of the Rebellion-Marquis Cornwallis Lord-Lieutenant-Landing of a French force under Humbert-Surrender of the French-Napper Tandy-The Union proposed-Desire of the government for the relief of the Catholics-Debates on the Union in the British and Irish Parliaments-Lord Castlereagh-Corruption of the Irish Parliament-Grattan returns to his seat in the Irish House of Commons-Articles of the Union proposed-Arguments for and against the UnionThe Union completed. THE great legislative measures for the relief of Ireland, which were passed in the period from 1779 to 1783, were succeeded by an interval of comparative quiet.+ The question of Parliamentary Reform was indeed agitated in 1784 and in 1790, but without any approach to success in the divisions of the Lords and Commons who sat at Dublin. The general evils of the Representation were similar in principle to those of England. "Of three hundred members," said Mr. Grattan, "above two hundred are returned by individuals; from forty to fifty are returned by ten persons; several of the boroughs have no resident elector at all; and, on the whole, two-thirds of the representatives in the House of Commons are returned by less than one hundred persons. But previous to 1793 there was an especial evil in the Representation of Ireland. Three-fourths of the people *The last Chapter, commencing at page 346, was erroneously headed XXI. instead of XX. + See ante, vol. vi. p. 443. Grattan's speech, Feb. 11, 1793. 362 RECALL OF LORD FITZWILLIAM. [1795. were Roman Catholics, paying their proportion of taxes, without any share in the representation or any control of the expenditure. Roman Catholics were excluded from the Irish Parliament by an English Act of 1691, the fourth year of the reign of William and Mary. By the Act of the first year of George II. they were deprived of the right of voting at elections. In 1793 Roman Catholics were admitted, by an Act of the Irish Parliament, to the exercise of the elective franchise. That the agitation for the removal of other civil disabilities would cease was scarcely to be expected. In 1795 Mr. Fox wrote, "To suppose it possible that now that they are electors they will long submit to be ineligible to Parliament, appears to me to be absurd beyond measure.' ." There were other particulars in which Roman Catholics laboured under serious disadvantages. The laws of exclusion from many offices in great part remained. There was a partial change in the English cabinet in 1794, by the introduction of three important statesmen, who, formerly attached to the party of Mr. Fox, seceded from him on questions connected with the French Revolution. Earl Fitzwilliam became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Before his actual appointment it was a complaint against him that "he has pledged himself too far to recede, with respect to a total new system both of men and measures." Great is the consternation when lord Fitzwilliam enters upon his office. Loud is "the creaking which some of the old worm-eaten furniture makes at its removal." § Lord Fitzwilliam, who arrived in Dublin on the 4th of January, 1795, immediately displaced, with compensation, some of the holders of office who were the most hostile to the plan which he contemplated for the government of Ireland. He entered upon his functions in the belief that the ministry would impose no restrictions upon him in carrying forward a full measure of Catholic emancipation. On the 12th of February, Grattan obtained leave, in the Irish House of Commons, to bring in a bill for the repeal of all the remaining disqualifications of Catholics. A fortnight later, earl Fitzwilliam was recalled, and earl Camden appointed in his place. The moderate Catholics anticipated the most disastrous results from a measure so decided on the part of the British cabinet. Dr. Hussey, the friend and correspondent of Burke, wrote to him on the 26th of February:-"The disastrous news of earl Fitzwilliam's recall is come, and Ireland is now on the brink of a civil war." || He adds, with a temper as admirable as it was rare, Every man that has anything to lose, or who loves peace and quiet, must now exert himself for the salvation of the country, and to keep the turbulent in order." Although disappointed in their hopes, the Catholics, as a body, were not those whose turbulence most required to be kept down. A most formidable association, under the denomination of United Irishmen, was now being organized. Burke describes them as "those who, without any regard to religion, club all kinds of discontents together, in order to produce all kinds of disorders." By the end of 1796, this organization was becoming truly Lord Grenville to Thomas Grenville-" Court and Cabinets," vol. iii. p. 314. § Burke "Correspondence," vol. iv. p. 271-Letter to Dr. Hussey, Feb. 4, 1795. 1797.1 UNITED IRISHMEN-IRISH DIRECTORY. 363 dangerous. "Many thousands, I am assured," writes Dr. Hussey to Burke, "are weekly sworn through the country, in such a secret manner and form as to evade all the law in those cases."* In connection with some of the leaders of the United Irishmen, the expedition to Bantry Bay, in December, 1796, was undertaken. Through 1797 the northern districts were in a disturbed state. Houses were broken into and arms seized by bands of nightly marauders. At funerals, and at gatherings for football and other games, large numbers collected and marched in military array. The government was alarmed; the passions of those who professed sentiments of loyalty were roused; severity and intimidation, the dangerous remedies for discontent, were alone resorted to; martial law took the place of civil justice. The administrators of martial law were undisciplined troops of yeomanry, headed by ignorant and reckless officers. They made the government odious by their cruel oppressions. The remedy for disturbance was the stimulant to insurrection. From the couch from which he never expected to rise, Burke dictated the great lesson of true statesmanship at such a crisis: "The first duty of a State is to provide for its own conservation. Until that point is secured, it can preserve and protect nothing else. But, if possible, it has greater interest in acting according to strict law than even the subject himself. For, if the people see that the law is violated to crush them, they will certainly despise the law. They, or their party, will be easily led to violate it, whenever they can, by all the means in their power. Except in cases of direct war, whenever government abandons law, it proclaims anarchy."+ In August, 1797, the military severities of the north of Ireland were discontinued. The disturbances had there ceased. The schemes of rebellion, to be seconded by the landing of a French army, received a great discomfiture by the victory of Duncan, off Camperdown. But the efforts of the United Irishmen contemplated a wider field than the province of Ulster. The executive power of this extensive organization was a Directory. Its five members were Arthur O'Connor, lord Edward Fitzgerald (brother to the duke of Leinster), Oliver Bond, a merchant, Dr. Mac Nevin, a Catholic gentleman, and Thomas Addis Emmett, a barrister. The plans of a general insurrection were disclosed to the Irish government, and arrests of the Leinster delegates, and of Bond, Mac Nevin, and Emmett were effected in March, at the house of Bond, in Dublin. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was absent from the meeting. O'Connor and O'Coigley, a priest, were in England, discussing plans of sedition with "The London Corresponding Society." They were arrested on a charge of high treason, and were tried at Maidstone on the 21st of May, when O'Connor was acquitted, and O'Coigley was convicted, and was executed. The vacancies in the Irish Directory were filled up, and a general rising on the 23rd of May was determined upon. The government had, on the 30th of March, issued a declaration that a traitorous conspiracy had manifested itself in acts of open rebellion, and that orders had been issued to the officers commanding his majesty's forces to employ them, with the utmost vigour and decision, for the suppression of the conspiracy, and for the disarming of the rebels, by the most summary and effectual measures. The agitations of Ireland had gradually proceeded to such an excess, on Burke-"Correspondence," vol. iv. p. 372. + Ibid. vol. iv. p. 393. 364 COMMENCEMENT OF THE REBELLION. [1798. either side, that they had ceased to be matter of compromise or of argument. The Whig leaders in the Irish Parliament had adopted a measure which, however rightly intended, amounted to a declaration that the contest was to be decided by physical force. On the 15th of May, 1797, Mr. Ponsonby brought forward a motion for the fundamental reform of the representation, upon the principle that all disabilities on account of religion be for ever abolished; that the privilege of returning members in the present form should cease; and that every county should be divided into districts, each consisting of 6000 houses, and each returning two members to Parliament. The government held this maxim: "You must subdue before you reform." It was on this occasion that Mr. Grattan said, "We have offered you our measure; you will reject it. We deprecate yours; you will persevere. Having no hope left to persuade or dissuade, and having discharged our duty, we shall trouble you no more, and after this day shall not attend the House of Commons." The true leaders of the people had abdicated. They were left to be acted upon by those who would have handed over their country to the French Directory. The people, left to the guidance of frantic enthusiasts, were to be betrayed by spies, to be tortured, to be plundered and massacred by a native army, which, upon taking the field in February, 1798, under the command of Sir Ralph Abercrombie, was declared by him to be "in a state of licentiousness which must render it formidable to every one but the enemy." Lord Edward Fitzgerald had remained concealed for two months. He might have escaped had he been less obstinate in his attempt to carry through the plan of a general insurrection. On the 19th of May, when a party of military surrounded the house in Dublin where he was hidden, and their officer exhibited the warrant for his arrest, he madly resisted; mortally wounded a magistrate who accompanied the soldier, and was himself shot by major Sirr, the town-major of Dublin. Lord Edward died of his wounds on the 5th of June. In the meantime the insurrection broke out in the immediate neighbourhood of Dublin. A night attack on the city was projected by the United Irishmen. Two brothers, of the name of Sheares, and other chiefs, were arrested on the 23rd of May. A large number of insurgents were collecting on the north and south of the metropolis. An immediate attack was expected. The garrison and the yeomanry were under arms during that night, stationed in the cattle-market. The scene has been described with some humour : "All the barristers, attorneys, merchants, bankers, revenueofficers, shopkeepers, students of the university, doctors, apothecaries and corporators, of an immense metropolis, in red coats, with a sprinkling of parsons, all doubled up together amidst bullock-stalls and sheep-pens, awaiting, in profound darkness, for invisible executioners to dispatch them without mercy, was not a situation to engender much hilarity." Yet in this motley assemblage there was hilarity. "The danger was considered imminent, the defence impracticable, yet there was a cheerful, thoughtless jocularity, with which the English nation, under grave circumstances, are totally unacquainted." The rebels had learnt that the yeomanry of Dublin were ready to receive them, and had deferred their attack, after destroying the mail * Sir Jonah Barrington-"Historic Memoirs," vol. ii. p. 258. 1798. SUPPRESSION OF THE REBELLION. 365 coaches that were approaching the city. Skirmishes between bands of rebels and the soldiery were then taking place daily. Martial law was proclaimed. The insurrection appeared to be somewhat quelled, when it broke out with unexpected fury in the county of Wexford. It was headed by a fanatical priest, John Murphy, who, in the progress of his military career, had persuaded his followers that he was invulnerable. The rebels were generally successful when they fought in small bodies. There were great conflicts, which might be termed battles; but the system of these armed bands was little fitted for encounters with regular troops. They were in want of ammunition. Round stones and balls of hardened clay were the substitutes for bullets. They endeavoured to make their own gunpowder, which of course failed in explosive force. By a rapid onset they sometimes seized the cannon of the royal troops, which they contrived to fire with lighted wisps of straw. Armed with the pike, they were, nevertheless, very formidable. Had they submitted to any command, the rebellion might have had other results than a sanguinary struggle, in which either side was disgraced by a ferocity which had all the attributes of barbarism. They chose their stations on hills with a commanding prospect. Here they slept in the open air, both sexes intermingled, for many women were amongst them. Their commissariat was of the rudest description. When they could seize a herd of bullocks, or a solitary cow, they cut the carcase to pieces, without removing the hide, and each cooked the mangled lumps of flesh after his own fashion. Weather of unusual warmth and dryness was favourable to this rude campaigning." It would be tedious, as well as useless, to enter into details of the lamentable conflicts of the rebellion that commenced on the 23rd of May, and was almost entirely suppressed by the end of June in the districts where it had most raged. Wexford surrendered to the insurgents on the 30th of May; but it was retaken by sir John Moore on the 21st of June. The principal battles were those of Arklow, Ross, and Vinegar Hill, near Enniscorthy, which town had surrendered to the rebels. On the 21st of June general Lake attacked the main body of the rebels at Vinegar Hill; dispersed them; and they never again rallied. The desolation of the districts to which this rebellion was confined, and particularly that of the county of Wexford, was excessive. The sum demanded by the loyalists as compensation for the destruction of their property was nearly a million and a quarter, of which Wexford claimed one half. The massacres, the military executions, were frightful. No quarter was given to the rebels; and when the contest assumed the sanguinary character of a religious warfare, the cry of revenge on "the bloody Orange dogs" was the signal for excesses which can better be imagined than described. Earl Camden had been recalled, to give place to marquis Cornwallis, who was appointed to the offices of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and Commander-inChief. He arrived in Dublin on the 20th of June. He found that troops had been landed from England; and that general Lake's arrangements for attacking the rebels on the 21st had rendered it unnecessary that he himself should proceed immediately to join the army. One of his first acts was tc interfere to prevent the rash and often unjust severities of inferior officers of VOL. VII.-210. Gordon-" |