Part 2 — Chapter III. (These four articles abrogated by the four articles following them, 118-122.) Article 118. The Federal Constitution may at any time be amended. (continued 84)

W. K. Sullivan, part 1, of Two Centuries of Irish History chapter 1.

"The members of the House of Commons were almost all new men, completely inexperienced in public business and animated by the resentment of the bitterest wrongs. Many of them were sons of some of the 3,000 proprietors who without trial and without compensation had been deprived by the Act of Settlement of the estates of their ancestors. To all of them the confiscations of Ulster, the fraud of Strafford, the long train of calamities that followed were recent and vivid events. … It will hardly appear surprising to candid men that a Parliament so constituted and called together amid the excitement of a civil war, should have displayed much violence, much disregard for vested interests. Its measures, indeed, were not all criminal. By one Act which was far in advance of the age, it established perfect religious liberty in Ireland. … By another Act, repealing Poynings' law, and asserting its own legislative independence, it anticipated the doctrine of Molyneux, Swift, and Grattan. … A third measure abolished the payments to Protestant clergy in the corporate towns, while a fourth ordered that the Catholics throughout Ireland should henceforth pay their tithes and other ecclesiastical dues to their own priests and not to the Protestant clergy. The Protestants were still to pay their tithes to their own clergy. … Several other measures—most of them now only known by their titles—were passed for developing the resources of the country or remedying some great abuse. … If these had been the only measures of the Irish Parliament it would have left an eminently honourable reputation. But, unfortunately, one of its main objects was to re-establish at all costs the descendants of the old proprietors in their land, and to annul by measures of sweeping violence the grievous wrongs and spoliations their fathers and their grandfathers had undergone. The first and most important measure with this object was the repeal of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation. … The preamble asserts that the outbreak of 1641 had been solely due to the intolerable oppression and to the disloyal conduct of the Lords Justices and Puritan party, that the Catholics of Ireland before the struggle had concluded had been fully reconciled to the sovereign, that they had received from the sovereign a full and formal pardon, and that the royal word had been in consequence pledged to the restitution of their properties. This pledge by the Act of Settlement had been to a great extent broken, and the Irish legislators maintained that the twenty-four years which had elapsed since that Act had not annulled the rights of the old proprietors or their descendants. They maintained that these claims were not only valid but were prior to all others, and they accordingly enacted that the heirs of all persons who had possessed landed property in Ireland on October 22, 1641, and who had been deprived of their inheritance by the Act of Settlement, should enter at once into possession of their old properties. … The long succession of confiscations of Irish land which had taken place from the days of Mary to the Act of Settlement had been mainly based upon real or pretended plots of the owners of the soil, which enabled the Government, on the plea of high treason, to appropriate the land which they desired. In 1689 the great bulk of the English proprietors of Irish soil were in actual correspondence with William, and were therefore legally guilty of high treason. The Irish legislators now proceeded to follow the example of the British Governments, and by a clause of extreme severity they pronounced the real estates of all Irish proprietors who dwelt in any part of the three kingdoms which did not acknowledge King James, or who aided, abetted or corresponded with the rebels, to be forfeited and vested in the Crown, and from this source they proposed to compensate the purchasers under the Act of Settlement. … The measure of repeal, however, was speedily followed by another Act of much more sweeping and violent injustice. The Act of Attainder, which was introduced in the latter part of June, aimed at nothing less than a complete overthrow of the existing land system in Ireland. A list divided into several groups, but containing in all more than 2,000 names, was drawn up of landowners who were to be attainted of high treason. … {1773} Few persons will question the tyranny of an Act which in this manner made a very large proportion of the Irish landlords liable to the penalties of high treason, unless they could prove their innocence, even though the only crime that could be alleged against them was that of living out of Ireland in a time of civil war. … It is … a curious illustration of the carelessness or partiality with which Irish history is written, that no popular historian has noticed that five days before this Act, which has been described as 'without a parallel in the history of civilised countries,' was introduced into the Irish Parliament, a Bill which appears, in its essential characteristics, to have been precisely similar was introduced into the Parliament of England; that it passed the English House of Commons; that it passed, with slight amendments, the English House of Lords; and that it was only lost, in its last stage, by a prorogation. … These facts will show how far the Irish Act of Attainder was from having the unique character that has been ascribed to it. It is not possible to say how that Act would have been executed, for the days of Jacobite ascendency were now few and evil. The Parliament was prorogued on the 20th of July, one of its last Acts being to vest in the King the property of those who were still absentees."

W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter 6 (volume 2).

While James' Irish Parliament sat, "sufficient men had presented themselves to form fifty regiments of infantry and a proportionate number of cavalry. But … these levies were undisciplined, and their officers, with few exceptions, were without military training and experience. There were no arsenals, and in the government stores only about 1,000 serviceable firearms were found; there was no artillery and no supply of ammunition. … What coin was in circulation was small in quantity and debased in quality. James's Government issued a brass coinage, which had no currency outside the kingdom, and even within it practically circulated only among the partisans of James, and could not consequently help in purchasing arms, ammunition, and military stores, which had to be imported from without. Under such unfavourable circumstances the war began. The first campaign comprised the siege, or rather blockade, of Derry—for the Irish, having no artillery, could not undertake a regular siege—which was gallantly defended by the Scoto-English colonists; the check of Mountcashel by the Enniskilleners, who had followed the example of Derry; the landing of Schomberg with an army of Dutch, French Protestants, and English, who went into winter quarters near Dundalk, where he lost nearly half his troops from sickness; and, lastly, the military parade of James, who marched out from Dublin, and, failing to force Schomberg to fight, went into winter quarters himself. The result of the campaign was the successful defence of Derry, and the signal exhibition of James's incapacity as a general. At the opening of the second campaign, an exchange of troops was made between James and Louis XIV., with the view of giving prestige to the cause of the former. Six thousand French troops, under a drawing-room general, the well-known Comte de Lauzun, arrived in Ireland, and the same ships carried back an equal number of Irish troops—the brigade of Mountcashel, the best-trained and best-equipped body of troops in the Irish army. … The wasted army of Schomberg was strengthened by the arrival of William himself on June 14, 1690, with a considerable force. The united armies, composed of the most heterogeneous materials, one-half being foreigners of various nationalities, amounted to between 36,000 and 48,000 men. … To meet William, James set out from Dublin with an army of about 23,000 men. The French troops and the Irish cavalry were good, but the infantry was not well trained, and the artillery consisted only of twelve field-pieces. The battle took place on July 1, 1690, at the passage of the River Boyne, a few miles above Drogheda [the rout of James's army being complete and its loss about 1,500 men. William lost but 500; but the number included Schomberg, one of the great soldiers of his age. James was among the first in the flight, and he scarcely paused until he had put himself on board of a French frigate and quitted Ireland forever]. The Irish fell back on Dublin and thence retired behind the line of the Shannon. About 20,000 half-armed infantry and about 3,500 horse concentrated at Limerick. The English having failed in taking Athlone, the key of the upper Shannon, William gathered together about 38,000 men in the neighbourhood of Limerick. Lauzun having declared that Limerick could not be defended, and might be taken with roasted apples, withdrew with the whole of the French troops to Galway, to await the first opportunity of returning to France. On August 9, 1690, William moved his whole army close to the town and summoned the garrison to surrender; but having failed, with a loss of 2,000 men, to carry the town by assault, he raised the siege and went to England. The third and last campaign began late in 1691. The Irish received many promises of assistance from Louis XIV., but his ministers fulfilled few or none of them. With scarcely any loss of men, and with a small expenditure of stores and money, the Irish war enabled Louis to keep William and a veteran army of 40,000 men out of his way. … The campaign opened in the beginning of June with the advance of Ginkel [William's general] on Athlone. The chief defence of the place was the River Shannon, the works being weak, and mounting only a few field-pieces; yet so obstinately was the place defended that, but for the discovery of a ford, and some neglect on the part of D'Usson, who commanded, it is probable that the siege would have been raised. As it was, Ginkel became master of the heap of ruins. … St. Ruth [the French officer commanding the Irish] moved his camp to Aughrim [or Aghrim], and there was fought the final battle of the war on Sunday, July 12, 1691. … St. Ruth was killed at a critical moment, and his army defeated, with a loss of about 4,000 men, the English loss being about half that number. Part of the defeated Irish infantry retreated to Galway; but the bulk of the troops, including the whole of the cavalry, fell back on Limerick, which surrendered, after a gallant resistance, in October, 1691."

W. K. Sullivan, part 1 of Two Centuries of Irish History, chapter 1.

ALSO IN: Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapters 12, 16 and 17.

W. H. Torriano, William the Third, chapters 5 and 21-23.

J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland, chapter 3 (volume 1).

W. A. O'Conor, History of the Irish People, book 3, chapter 3 (volume 2).

Sir J. Dalrymple, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, part 2, books 2-5 (volume 2).

{1774}

IRELAND: A. D. 1691. The Treaty of Limerick and its violation.

The surrender of Limerick was under the terms of a treaty—or of two treaties, one military, the other civil—formally negotiated for the terminating of the war. This Treaty of Limerick was signed, October 3, 1691, by Baron De Ginkel, William's general, and by the lords justices of Ireland, on behalf of the English, and by Sarsfield and other chieftains on behalf of the Irish. "Its chief provisions were: 'The Roman Catholics of this kingdom shall enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as are consistent with the laws of Ireland; or as they did enjoy in the reign of King Charles II.; and their Majesties, as soon as their affairs will permit them to summon a Parliament in this kingdom, will endeavour to procure the said Roman Catholics such further security in that particular as may preserve them from any disturbance upon the account of their said religion. All the inhabitants or residents of Limerick, or any other garrison now in the possession of the Irish, and all officers and soldiers now in arms under any commission of King James, or those authorized by him to grant the same in the several counties of Limerick, Clare, Kerry, Cork, and Mayo, or any of them, and all the commissioned officers in their Majesties' quarters that belong to the Irish regiments now in being that are treated with and who are not prisoners of war, or having taken protection, and who shall return and submit to their Majesties' obedience, and their and every of their heirs shall hold, possess, and enjoy all and every their estates of freehold and inheritance; and all the rights, titles, and interest, privileges and immunities, which they, or every or any of them, held, enjoyed, and were rightfully and lawfully entitled to in the reign of King Charles II.' … A general pardon was to be granted to all persons comprised within the treaty, and the Lords Justices and the generals commanding King William's army were to use their best endeavours to get the attainders of any of them attainted repealed. … In the copy of the rough draft engrossed for signature the following words, 'and all such as are under their protection in the said counties,' which immediately followed the enumeration of the several counties in the second article, were omitted. This omission, whether the result of design or accident, was, however, rectified by King William when confirming the treaty in February, 1692. The confirming instrument stated that the words had been casually omitted; that the omission was not discovered till the articles were signed, but was taken notice of before the town was surrendered; and that the Lords Justices or General Ginkel, or one of them, had promised that the clause should be made good, since it was within the intention of the capitulation, and had been inserted in the rough draft. William then for himself did 'ratify and confirm the said omitted words.' The colonists, or at all events the 'new interests'—that is, those who shared or expected to share in the confiscations—were indignant at the concessions made to the native race."

W. K. Sullivan, part 1 of Two Centuries of Irish History, chapter 1.

"The advantages secured to Catholics by the Treaty of Limerick were moderate. But when the flower of the Irish army had withdrawn to France, and the remnant could be hanged without ceremony, they began to look inordinate. The parliament of Cromwellian settlers and Government officials in Dublin having excluded Catholic members, by requiring from them an oath of abjuration, in direct infringement of one of the articles of surrender, were free to proceed at their discretion. They first passed a stringent statute depriving Catholics of arms, and another ordering all 'Popish archbishops, bishops, vicars-general, deans, Jesuits, monks, friars, and regulars of whatever condition to depart from the kingdom on pain of transportation,' and then proceeded to consider the treaty. They … resolved by a decisive majority not to keep the conditions affecting the Catholics. William … struggled for a time to preserve his honour; but it is not convenient for a new king to be in conflict with his friends, and after a time he gave way. … In Ireland the Treaty of Limerick can never be forgotten; it is one of the title deeds of the Irish race to their inheritance in their native land. For more than a century its sordid and shameless violation was as common a reproach to England on the Continent as the partition of Poland has been a reproach to Russia in our own day."

Sir C. G. Duffy, Bird's-Eye View of Irish History, revised edition, pages 155-156 (or book 1, chapter 4, of "Young Ireland").

"The Protestant rancour of parliament was more powerful than the good will of the prince. The most vital articles of the capitulation were ignored, especially in all cases where the Catholic religion and the liberties granted to its professors were concerned; and 4,000 Irish were denounced as traitors and rebels,—by which declamation a fresh confiscation of 1,060,000 acres was immediately effected. … It has been calculated that in 1692 the Irish Catholics, who quadrupled the Protestants in number, owned only one-eleventh of the soil, and that the most wretched and unproductive portion."

A. Perraud, Ireland under English Rule, introduction, section 8.

IRELAND: A. D. 1691-1782. The peace of despair. A century of national death. Oppression of the Penal Laws.

"By the military treaty [of Limerick], those of Sarsfield's soldiers who would were suffered to follow him to France; and 10,000 men, the whole of his force, chose exile rather than life in a land where all hope of national freedom was lost. When the wild cry of the women who stood watching their departure was hushed, the silence of death settled down upon Ireland. For a hundred years the country remained at peace, but the peace was a peace of despair. The most terrible legal tyranny under which a nation has ever groaned avenged the rising under Tyrconnell. The conquered people, in Swift's bitter words of contempt, became 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' to their conquerors; but till the very eve of the French Revolution Ireland ceased to be a source of terror and anxiety to England."

J. H. Green, Short History of England, chapter 9, section 8.

"In Ireland there was peace. The domination of the colonists was absolute. The native population was tranquil with the ghastly tranquillity of exhaustion and of despair. There were indeed outrages, robberies, fireraisings, assassinations. But more than a century passed away without one general insurrection. During that century, two rebellions were raised in Great Britain by the adherents of the House of Stuart. But neither when the elder Pretender was crowned at Scone, nor when the younger held his court at Holyrood, was the standard of that House set up in Connaught or Munster. {1775} In 1745, indeed, when the Highlanders were marching towards London, the Roman Catholics of Ireland were so quiet that the Lord Lieutenant could, without the smallest risk, send several regiments across Saint George's Channel to reinforce the army of the Duke of Cumberland. Nor was this submission the effect of content, but of mere stupefaction and brokenness of heart. The iron had entered into the soul. The memory of past defeats, the habit of daily enduring insult and oppression, had cowed the spirits of the unhappy nation. There were indeed Irish Roman Catholics of great ability, energy and ambition; but they were to be found everywhere except in Ireland,—at Versailles and at Saint lldefonso, in the armies of Frederic and in the armies of Maria Theresa. One exile became a Marshal of France. Another became Prime Minister of Spain. If he had staid in his native land he would have been regarded as an inferior by all the ignorant and worthless squireens who had signed the Declaration against Transubstantiation. … Scattered over all Europe were to be found brave Irish generals, dexterous Irish diplomatists, Irish Counts, Irish Barons, Irish Knights … who, if they had remained in the house of bondage, could not have been ensigns of marching regiments or freemen of petty corporations. These men, the natural chiefs of their race, having been withdrawn, what remained was utterly helpless and passive. A rising of the Irishry against the Englishry was no more to be apprehended than a rising of the women and children against the men."

Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 17.

"An act of 1695 'deprived the Roman Catholics of the means of educating their children, either at home or abroad, and of the privilege of being guardians either of their own or of any other person's children.' Another Act of the same year deprived the Roman Catholics of the right of bearing arms, or of keeping any horse which was worth more than £5. An Act of 1697 ordered the expulsion of every Roman Catholic priest from Ireland. The Parliament, which had imposed these disabilities on Irish Roman Catholics, proceeded to confirm the Articles of Limerick, or 'so much of them as may consist with the safety and welfare of your Majesty's subjects of this kingdom,' and by a gross act of injustice omitted the whole of the first of these articles, and the important paragraph in the second article which had been accidentally omitted from the original copy of the Treaty, and subsequently restored to it by letters patent under the Great Seal. Reasonable men may differ on the propriety or impropriety of the conditions on which the surrender of Limerick was secured; but it is difficult to read the story of their repudiation without a deep sense of shame. Three other acts relating to the Roman Catholics were passed during the reign of William. An Act of 1697 forbade the intermarriage of Protestants and Papists. An Act of 1698 prevented Papists from being solicitors. Another Act of the same year stopped their employment as gamekeepers. William died; and the breach of faith which he had countenanced was forgotten amidst the pressure of the legislation which disgraced the reign of his successor. Two Acts passed in this reign, for preventing the further growth of Popery, were styled by Burke the 'ferocious Acts of Anne.' By the first of these Acts a Papist having a Protestant son was debarred from selling, mortgaging, or devising any portion of his estate: however young the son might be, he was to be taken from his father's hands and confided to the care of a Protestant relation. The estate of a Papist who had no Protestant heir was to be divided equally among his sons. The Papist was declared incapable of purchasing real estate or of taking land on lease for more than thirty-one years. A Papist was declared incapable of inheriting real estate from a Protestant. He was disqualified from holding any office, civil or military. With twenty exceptions, a Papist was forbidden to reside in Limerick or Galway. Advowsons the property of Papists were vested in the Crown. Religious intolerance had now apparently done its uttermost. … But the laws failed. Their severity insured their failure. … The first of the ferocious Acts of Anne was almost openly disregarded. … Its failure only induced the intolerant advisers of Anne to supplement it with harsher legislation. The Act of 1704 had deprived the Papist of the guardianship of his apostate child. An Act of 1709 empowered the Court of Chancery to oblige the Papist to discover his estate, and authorized the Court to make an order for the maintenance of the apostate child out of the proceeds of it. The Act of 1704 had made it illegal for a Papist to take lands on lease; the Act of 1709 disabled him from receiving a life annuity. An Act of 1704 had compelled the registry of priests. The Act of 1709 forbade their officiating in any parish except that in which they were registered. These, however, were the least reprehensible features in the Act of 1709. Its worst features were the encouragement which it gave to the meaner vices of human nature. The wife of a Papist, if she became a Protestant, was to receive a jointure out of her husband's estate. A Popish priest abandoning his religion was to receive an annuity of £30 a year. Rewards were to be paid for 'discovering' Popish prelates, priests, and schoolmasters. Two justices might compel any Papist to state on oath where and when he had heard mass, who had officiated at it, and who had been present at it. Encouragement was thus given to informers; bribes were thus held out to apostates; and Parliament trusted to the combined effects of bribery and intimidation to stamp out the last remnant of Popery. The penal code, however, was not yet complete. The armoury of intolerance was not yet exhausted. An Act of George I. disabled Papists from serving in the Irish militia, but compelled them to find Protestant substitutes; to pay double towards the support of the militia, and rendered their horses liable to seizure for militia purposes. By Acts of George II. the Papists were disfranchised; barristers or solicitors marrying Papists were deemed Papists; all marriages between Protestants and Papists were annulled; and Popish priests celebrating any illegal marriages were condemned to be hanged. By an Act of George III. Papists refusing to deliver up or declare their arms were liable to be placed in the pillory or to be whipped, as the Court should think proper. Such were the laws which the intolerance of a minority imposed on the majority of their fellow-subjects. Utterly unjust, they had not even the bare merit of success. … {1776} 'The great body of the people,' wrote Arthur Young [1780], 'stripped of their all, were more enraged than converted: they adhered to the persuasion of their forefathers with the steadiest and the most determined zeal; while the priests, actuated by the spirit of a thousand inducements, made proselytes among the common Protestants in defiance of every danger. … Those laws have crushed all the industry and wrested most of the property from the Catholics; but the religion triumphs; it is thought to increase.'"

S. Walpole, History of England from 1815, chapter 8 (volume 2).

ALSO IN: R. R. Madden, Historical Notice of Penal Laws against Roman Catholics.

A. Perraud, Ireland under English Rule: introduction.

E. Burke, Letter to a Peer of Ireland on the Penal Laws (Works, volume 4).

E. Burke, Fragments of a Tract on the Popery Laws (Works, volume 6).

A. J. Thébaud, The Irish Race, chapter 12.

IRELAND: A. D. 1710. Colonization of Palatines in Munster.

See PALATINES.

IRELAND: A. D. 1722-1724. Wood's halfpence. The Drapier's Letters.

"A patent had been given [1722, by the Walpole administration] to a certain William Wood for supplying Ireland with a copper coinage. Many complaints had been made, and in September, 1723, addresses were voted by the Irish Houses of Parliament, declaring that the patent had been obtained by clandestine and false representations; that it was mischievous to the country; and that Wood had been guilty of frauds in his coinage. They were pacified by vague promises; but Walpole went on with the scheme on the strength of a favourable report of a committee of the Privy Council; and the excitement was already serious when (in 1724) Swift published the Drapier's Letters, which give him his chief title to eminence as a patriotic agitator. Swift either shared or took advantage of the general belief that the mysteries of the currency are unfathomable to the human intelligence. … There is, however, no real mystery about the halfpence. The small coins which do not form part of the legal-tender may be considered primarily as counters. A penny is a penny, so long as twelve are change for a shilling. It is not in the least necessary for this purpose that the copper contained in the twelve penny pieces should be worth or nearly worth a shilling. … At the present day bronze worth only twopence is coined into twelve penny pieces. … The effect of Wood's patent was that a mass of copper worth about £60,000 became worth £100,800 in the shape of halfpenny pieces. There was, therefore, a balance of about £40,000, to pay for the expenses of coinage. It would have been waste to get rid of this by putting more copper in the coins; but if so large a profit arose from the transaction, it would go to somebody. At the present day it would be brought into the national treasury. This was not the way in which business was done in Ireland. Wood was to pay £1,000 a year for fourteen years to the Crown. But £14,000 still leaves a large margin for profit. 'What was to become of it. According to the admiring biographer of Sir R. Walpole the patent had been originally given by Lord Sunderland to the Duchess of Kendal, a lady whom the King delighted to honour. … It was right and proper that a profit should be made on the transaction, but shameful that it should be divided between the King's mistress and William Wood, and that the bargain should be struck without consulting the Irish representatives, and maintained in, spite of their protests. The Duchess of Kendal was to be allowed to take a share of the wretched halfpence in the pocket of every Irish beggar. A more disgraceful transaction could hardly be imagined, or one more calculated to justify Swift's view of the selfishness and corruption of the English rulers. Swift saw his chance and went to work in characteristic fashion, with unscrupulous audacity of statement, guided by the keenest strategical instinct. … The patent was surrendered, and Swift might congratulate himself upon a complete victory. … The Irish succeeded in rejecting a real benefit at the cost of paying Wood the profit which he would have made, had he been allowed to confer it."

L. Stephen, Swift (English Men of Letters), chapter 7.

ALSO IN: Dean Swift, Works (Scott's edition), volume 6.

Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, chapter 13 (volume 2).

J. McCarthy, History of the Four Georges, chapter 15.

IRELAND: A. D. 1760-1798. Whiteboys. Oak Boys. Steel Boys. Peep of Day Boys. Catholic Defenders.

"The peasantry continued to regard the land as their own; and with the general faith that wrong cannot last forever, they waited for the time when they would once more have possession of it. 'The lineal descendants of the old families,' wrote Arthur Young in 1774, 'are now to be found all over the kingdom, working as cottiers on the lands which were once their own.' … With the growth of what was called civilization, absenteeism, the worst disorder of the country, had increased. … The rise in prices, the demand for salt beef and salt butter for exportation and for the fleets, were revolutionizing the agriculture of Munster. The great limestone pastures of Limerick and Tipperary, the fertile meadow universally, was falling into the hands of capitalist graziers, in whose favour the landlords, or the landlords' agents, were evicting the smaller tenants. … To the peasantry these men were a curse. Common lands, where their own cows had been fed, were inclosed and taken from them. The change from tillage to grazing destroyed their employment. Their sole subsistence was from their potato gardens, the rents of which were heavily raised, while, by a curious mockery of justice, the grass lands were exempt from tithe, and the burden of maintaining the rectors and vicars of the Established Church was cast exclusively on the Catholic poor. Among a people who are suffering under a common wrong there is a sympathy of resentment which links them together without visible or discoverable bond. In the spring of 1760 Tipperary was suddenly overrun by bands of midnight marauders. Who they were was a mystery. Rumours reached England of insurgent regiments drilling in the moonlight; of French officers observed passing and repassing the Channel; but no French officer could be detected in Munster. The most rigid search discovered no stands of arms, such as soldiers use or could use. This only was certain, that white figures were seen in vast numbers, like moving clouds, flitting silently at night over field and moor, leaving behind them the tracks of where they had passed in levelled fences and houghed and moaning cattle; where the owners were specially hateful, in blazing homesteads, and the inmates' bodies blackening in the ashes. Arrests were generally useless. The country was sworn to secrecy. {1777} Through the entire central plains of Ireland the people were bound by the most solemn oaths never to reveal the name of a confederate, or give evidence in a court of justice. … Thus it was long uncertain how the movement originated, who were its leaders, and whether there was one or many. Letters signed by Captain Dwyer or Joanna Meskell were left at the doors of obnoxious persons, ordering lands to be abandoned under penalties. If the commands were uncomplied with, the penalties were inexorably inflicted. … Torture usually being preferred to murder, male offenders against the Whiteboys were houghed like their cattle, or their tongues were torn out by the roots."

J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland, book 5, chapter 1 (volume 2).

The Whiteboys took their name from the practice of wearing a white shirt drawn over their other clothing, when they were out upon their nocturnal expeditions. "The Oak Boy movement took place about 1761-2. … The injustice which led to the formation of the 'Oak Boys,' one of the best known of the colonial societies, was duty work on roads. Every householder was bound to give six days' labour in making and repairing the public roads; and if he had a horse, six days' labour of his horse. It was complained that this duty work was only levied on the poor, and that they were compelled to work on private job roads, and even upon what were the avenues and farm roads of the gentry. The name Oak Boys, or Hearts of Oak Boys, was derived from the members in their raids wearing an oak branch in their hats. The organization spread rapidly over the greater part of Ulster. Although the grievances were common to Protestant and Catholic workmen, and there was nothing religious in the objects or constitution of the Oak Boys, the society was an exclusively Protestant body, owing to the total absence at the period of any association between the Protestants and Catholics. … The Steel Boys, or Hearts of Steel Boys, followed the Oak Boys [about 1771]. They also were exclusively Protestant; the origin of this organization was the extravagance and profligacy of a bad landlord, the representative of the great land thief, Chichester, of the Plantation of King James I. … The Oak Boys and Steel Boys did not last long."

W. K. Sullivan, part 1 of Two Centuries of Irish History, chapter 5, with foot-note.

The landlord here referred to, as having provoked the organization of the Steel Boys, was the Marquis of Donegal. "Many of his Antrim leases having fallen in simultaneously, he demanded £100,000 in fines for the renewal of them. The tenants, all Protestants, offered the interest of the money in addition to the rent.' It could not be. Speculative Belfast capitalists paid the fine and took the lands over the heads of the tenants, to sublet. … The most substantial of the expelled tenantry gathered their effects together and sailed to join their countrymen in the New World. … Between those who were too poor to emigrate, and the Catholics who were in possession of their homes, there grew a protracted feud, which took form at last in the conspiracy of the Peep of Day Boys; in the fierce and savage expulsion of the intruders, who were bidden to go to hell or Connaught; and in the counter-organization of the Catholic Defenders, which spread over the whole island, and made the army of insurrection in 1798."

J. A. Froude, The English in Ireland, book 5, chapter 2, section 6 (volume 2).

IRELAND: A. D. 1778-1794. Concession of Legislative independence by the so-called Constitution of 1782.

"England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity. Over in the American colonies Mr. Washington and his rebels were pressing hard upon the troops of King George. More than one garrison had been compelled to surrender, more than one general had given up his bright sword to a revolutionary leader. On the hither side of the Atlantic the American flag was scarcely less dreaded than at Yorktown and Saratoga. … Ireland, drained of troops, lay open to invasion. The terrible Paul Jones was drifting about the seas; descents upon Ireland were dreaded; if such descents had been made the island was practically defenceless. An alarmed Mayor of Belfast, appealing to the Government for military aid, was informed that no more serious and more formidable assistance could be rendered to the chief city of the North than might be given by half a troop of dismounted cavalry and half a troop of invalids. If the French-American enemy would consent to be scared by such a muster, well and good; if not Belfast, and for the matter of that, all Ireland, must look to itself. Thereupon Ireland, very promptly and decisively, did look to itself. A Militia Act was passed empowering the formation of volunteer corps—consisting, of course, solely of Protestants—for the defence of the island. A fever of military enthusiasm swept over the country; north and south and east and west men caught up arms, nominally to resist the French, really, though they knew it not, to effect one of the greatest constitutional revolutions in history. Before a startled Government could realise what was occurring 60,000 men were under arms. For the first time since the surrender of Limerick there was an armed force in Ireland able and willing to support a national cause. Suddenly, almost in the twinkling of an eye, Ireland found herself for the first time for generations in the possession of a well-armed, well-disciplined, and well-generalled military force. The armament that was organised to insure the safety of England was destined to achieve the liberties of Ireland. … All talk of organisation to resist foreign invasion was silenced; in its place the voice of the nation was heard loudly calling for the redress of its domestic grievances. Their leader was Charlemont; Grattan and Flood were their principal colonels."

J. H. McCarthy, Ireland Since the Union, chapter 3.

"When the Parliament met, Grattan moved as an amendment to the Address, 'that it was by free export and import only that the Nation was to be saved from impending ruin'; and a corps of Volunteers, commanded by the Duke of Leinster, lined Dame Street as the Speaker and the Commons walked in procession to the Castle. Another demonstration of Volunteers in College Green excited Dublin a little later on, and (15th November, 1779) a riotous mob clamoured for Free Trade at the very doors of the House. … These events resulted in immediate success. Lord North proposed in the British Parliament three articles of relief to Irish trade—

(1) to allow free export of wool, woollens, and wool-flocks; (2) to allow a free export of glass; (3) to allow, under certain conditions, a free trade to all the British colonies.

{1778}

When the news reached Ireland excessive joy prevailed. … But this was only a beginning. Poynings' Law, and the 6th of George I., required to be swept away too, so that Ireland might enjoy not only Free Trade, but also Self-government. Grattan moved his two famous resolutions:—

1. That the King, with the consent of the Lords and Commons of Ireland, is alone competent to enact laws to bind Ireland.

2. That Great Britain and Ireland are inseparably united under one Sovereign.

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.

"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.

"There is much reason to believe that almost from the commencement of his career" Daniel O'Connell, the great Irish agitator, "formed one vast scheme of policy which he pursued through life with little deviation, and, it must be added, with little scruple. This scheme was to create and lead a public spirit among the Roman Catholics; to wrest emancipation by this means from the Government; to perpetuate the agitation created for that purpose till the Irish Parliament had been restored; to disendow the Established Church; and thus to open in Ireland a new era, with a separate and independent Parliament and perfect religious equality. It would be difficult to conceive a scheme of policy exhibiting more daring than this. The Roman Catholics had hitherto shown themselves absolutely incompetent to take any decisive part in politics. … O'Connell, however, perceived that it was possible to bring the whole mass of the people into the struggle, and to give them an almost unexampled momentum and unanimity by applying to politics a great power that lay dormant in Ireland—the power of the Catholic priesthood. To make the priests the rulers of the country, and himself the ruler of the priests, was his first great object. … There was a party supported by Keogh, the leader in '93, who recommended what was called 'a dignified silence'—in other words, a complete abstinence from petitioning and agitation. With this party O'Connell successfully grappled. His advice on every occasion was, 'Agitate, agitate, agitate!' and Keogh was so irritated by the defeat that he retired from the society." O'Connell's leadership of the movement for Catholic Emancipation became virtually established about the beginning of 1811. "He avowed himself repeatedly to be an agitator with an 'ulterior object,' and declared that that object was the repeal of the Union. 'Desiring, as I do, the repeal of the Union,' he said in one of his speeches, in 1813, 'I rejoice to see how our enemies promote that great object. … They delay the liberties of the Catholics, but they compensate us most amply because they advance the restoration of Ireland. By leaving one cause of agitation, they have created, and they will embody and give shape and form to, a public mind and a public spirit.' … Nothing can be more untrue than to represent the Repeal agitation as a mere afterthought designed to sustain his flagging popularity. Nor can it be said that the project was first started by him. The deep indignation that the Union had produced in Ireland was fermenting among all classes, and assuming the form, sometimes of a French party, sometimes of a social war, and sometimes of a constitutional agitation. … It would be tedious to follow into minute detail the difficulties and the mistakes that obstructed the Catholic movement, and were finally overcome by the energy or the tact of O'Connell. … Several times the movement was menaced by Government proclamations and prosecutions. Its great difficulty was to bring the public opinion of the whole body of the Roman Catholics actively and habitually into the question. … All preceding movements since the Revolution (except the passing excitement about Wood's halfpence) had been chiefly among the Protestants or among the higher order of the Catholics. The mass of the people had taken no real interest in politics, had felt no real pain at their disabilities, and were politically the willing slaves of their landlords. For the first time, under the influence of O'Connell, the great swell of a really democratic movement was felt. The simplest way of concentrating the new enthusiasm would have been by a system of delegates, but this had been rendered illegal by the Convention Act. On the other hand, the right of petitioning was one of the fundamental privileges of the constitution. By availing himself of this right O'Connell contrived, with the dexterity of a practised lawyer, to violate continually the spirit of the Convention Act, while keeping within the letter of the law. Proclamation after proclamation was launched against his society, but by continually changing its name and its form he generally succeeded in evading the prosecutions of the Government. These early societies, however, all sink into insignificance compared with that great Catholic Association which was formed in 1824. The avowed objects of this society were to promote religious education, to ascertain the numerical strength of the different religions, and to answer the charges against the Roman Catholics embodied in the hostile petitions. It also 'recommended' petitions (unconnected with the society) from every parish, and aggregate meetings in every county. The real object was to form a gigantic system of organisation, ramifying over the entire country, and directed in every parish by the priests, for the purpose of petitioning and in every other way agitating in favour of emancipation. The Catholic Rent [a system of small subscriptions—as small as a penny a month—collected from the poorest contributors, throughout Ireland] was instituted at this time, and it formed at once a powerful instrument of cohesion and a faithful barometer of the popular feeling. … The success of the Catholic Association became every week more striking. The rent rose with an extraordinary rapidity [from £350 a week in October to £700 a week in December, 1824]. The meetings in every county grew more and more enthusiastic, the triumph of priestly influence more and more certain. The Government made a feeble and abortive effort to arrest the storm by threatening both O'Connell and Sheil [Richard Lalor] with prosecution for certain passages in their speeches. … The formation of the Wellington Ministry [Wellington and Peel, 1828] seemed effectually to crush the present hopes of the Catholics, for the stubborn resolution of its leader was as well known as his Tory opinions. Yet this Ministry was destined to terminate the contest by establishing the principle of religious equality. … On the accession of the Wellington Ministry to power the Catholic Association passed a resolution to the effect that they would oppose with their whole energy any Irish member who consented to accept office under it. … {1785} An opportunity for carrying the resolution into effect soon occurred. Mr. Fitzgerald, the member for Clare, accepted the office of President of the Board of Trade, and was consequently obliged to go to his constituents for re-election." O'Connell entered the lists against him. "The excitement at this announcement rose at once to fever height. It extended over every part of Ireland, and penetrated every class of society. The whole mass of the Roman Catholics prepared to support him, and the vast system of organisation which he had framed acted effectually in every direction." For the first time, the landlords found that the voting of their tenants could not be controlled. Fitzgerald withdrew from the contest and O'Connell was elected. "Ireland was now on the very verge of revolution. The whole mass of the people had been organised like a regular army, and taught to act with the most perfect unanimity. … The Ministers, feeling further resistance to be hopeless, brought in the Emancipation Bill, confessedly because to withhold it would be to kindle a rebellion that would extend over the length and breadth of the land."

W. E. H. Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland: O'Connell.

"Peel introduced the Relief Bill on the 5th March [1829]. The king had given to it a reluctant assent. At the last hour, the intrigues of Eldon and the Duke of Cumberland had so far influenced his weak and disingenuous mind that he withdrew his assent to his ministers' policy, on the pretence that he had not expected, and could not sanction, any modification of the Oath of Supremacy. He parted from his ministers with kisses and courtesy, and, for a few hours their resignation was in his hands. But with night his discretion waxed as his courage waned; his ministers were recalled, and their measure proceeded. In its main provisions it was thorough and far-reaching. It admitted the Roman Catholic to Parliament, and to all lay offices under the Crown, except those of Regent, Lord Chancellor, whether of England or of Ireland, and Lord Lieutenant. It repealed the oath of abjuration, it modified the oath of supremacy. … It approximated the Irish to the English county franchise by abolishing the forty-shilling freeholder, and raising the voters' qualifications to £10. All monasteries and institutions of Jesuits were suppressed; and Roman Catholic bishops were forbidden to assume titles of sees already held by bishops of the Church of Ireland. Municipal and other officials were forbidden to wear the insignia of their office at Roman Catholic ceremonies. Lastly, the new Oath of Supremacy was available only for persons thereafter to be elected to Parliament"—which nullified O'Connell's election at Clare. This petty stroke of malice is said to have been introduced in the bill for the gratification of the king. The vote in the Commons on the Bill was 353 against 180, and in the Lords 217 to 112. It received the Royal assent on the 13th of April.

J. A. Hamilton, Life of Daniel O'Connell, chapter 5.

ALSO IN: J. McCarthy, Sir Robert Peel, chapters 2-7.

W. J. Fitzpatrick, Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell, with notices of his Life and Times, volume 1, chapters 1-5.

W. J. Amherst, History of Catholic Emancipation.

W. C. Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel, volume 1, chapters 16-18 and volume 2, chapters 1-2.

IRELAND: A. D. 1820-1826. Rise of the Ribbon Society.

"Throughout the half-century extending from 1820 to 1870, a secret oath-bound agrarian confederacy, known as the 'Ribbon Society,' was the constant affliction and recurring terror of the landed classes of Ireland. The Vehmgericht itself was not more dreaded. … It is assuredly strange—indeed, almost incredible—that although the existence of this organisation was, in a general way, as well and as widely known as the fact that Queen Victoria reigned, or that Daniel O'Connell was once a living man; although the story of its crimes has thrilled judge and jury, and parliamentary committees have filled ponderous blue-books with evidence of its proceedings, there is to this hour the widest conflict of assertion and conclusion as to what exactly were its real aims, its origin, structure, character, and purpose. … I long ago satisfied myself that the Ribbonism of one period was not the Ribbonism of another; that the version of its aims and character prevalent amongst its own members in one county or district differed widely from that existing elsewhere. In Ulster it professed to be a defensive or retaliatory league against Orangeism. In Munster it was at first a combination against tithe-proctors. In Connaught it was an organisation against rack-renting and evictions. In Leinster it often was mere trade-unionism. … The Ribbon Society seems to have been wholly confined to small farmers, cottiers, labourers, and, in the towns, petty shopkeepers, in whose houses the 'lodges' were held. … Although from the inception, or first appearance, of Ribbonism the Catholic clergy waged a determined war upon it … the society was exclusively Catholic. Under no circumstances would a Protestant be admitted to membership. … The name 'Ribbon Society' was not attached to it until about 1826. It was previously known as 'Liberty Men'; the 'Religious Liberty System'; the 'United Sons of Irish Freedom'; 'Sons of the Shamrock'; and by other names. … It has been said, and probably with some truth, that it has been too much the habit to attribute erroneously to the Ribbon organisation every atrocity committed in the country, every deed of blood apparently arising out of agrarian combination or conspiracy. … But vain is all pretence that the Ribbon Society did not become, whatever the original design or intention of its members may have been, a hideous organisation of outrage and murder. … There was a period when Ribbon outrages had, at all events, a conceivable provocation; but there came a time when they sickened the public conscience by their wantonness. The vengeance of the society was ruthless and terrible. … From 1835 to 1855 the Ribbon organisation was at its greatest strength. … With the emigration of the labouring classes it was carried abroad, to England and to America. At one time the most formidable lodges were in Lancashire."

A. M. Sullivan, New Ireland, chapter 4.

IRELAND: A. D. 1831. Establishment of National Schools.

See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.—IRELAND.

IRELAND: A. D. 1832. Parliamentary Representation increased by the Reform Bill.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1830-1832.

{1786}

IRELAND: A. D. 1840-1841. Discontent with the results of the Union. Condition of the people. O'Connell's revival of agitation for Repeal.

"The Catholics were at length emancipated in 1829; and now, surely, their enemies suggested, they must be contented and grateful for evermore? Perverse must the people be who, having got what they asked, are not satisfied. Let us see. What they asked was to be admitted to their just share, or, at any rate to some share, of the government of their native country, from which they had been excluded for five generations. But on the passing of the Emancipation Act not a single Catholic was admitted to an office of authority, great or small. The door was opened, indeed, but not a soul was permitted to pass in. There were murmurs of discontent, and the class who still enjoyed all the patronage of the State, the Church, the army, the magistracy, and the public service, demanded if there was any use in attempting to conciliate a people so intractable and unreasonable? The Catholic Association, which had won the victory, was rewarded for its public spirit by being dissolved by Act of Parliament. Its leader, who had been elected to the House of Commons, had his election declared void by a phrase imported into the Emancipation Act for this special purpose. The forty-shilling freeholders, whose courage and magnanimity had made the cause irresistible, were immediately deprived of the franchise. By means of a high qualification and an ingeniously complicated system of registry, the electors in twelve counties were reduced from upwards of 100,000 to less than 10,000. Englishmen cannot comprehend our dissatisfaction. … Emancipation was speedily followed by a Reform of the House of Commons. In England a sweeping and salutary change was made both in the franchise, and in the distribution of seats; but Ireland did not obtain either the number of representatives she was demonstrably entitled to by population and resources, or such a reduction of the franchise as had been conceded to England. The Whigs were in power, and Ireland was well-disposed to the party. … But the idea of treating Ireland on perfectly equal terms, and giving her the full advantage of the Union which had been forced on her, did not exist in the mind of a single statesman of that epoch. After Emancipation and Reform, O'Connell had a fierce quarrel with the Whigs, during which he raised the question of Ireland's right to be governed exclusively by her own Parliament. The people responded passionately to his appeal. The party of Protestant Ascendancy had demanded the Repeal of the Union before Emancipation, but that disturbing event altered their policy, and they withheld all aid from O'Connell. After a brief time he abandoned the experiment, to substitute for it an attempt to obtain what was called 'justice to Ireland.' In furtherance of this project he made a compact with the Whigs that the Irish Party under his lead should support them in parliament. The Whigs in return made fairer appointments to judicial and other public employments, restrained jury packing, and established an unsectarian system of public education; but the national question was thrown back for more than a generation. In 1840-1 O'Connell revived the question of Repeal, on the ground that the Union had wholly failed to accomplish the end for which it was said to be designed. Instead of bringing Ireland prosperity, it had brought her ruin. The social condition of the country during the half-century, then drawing to a close was, indeed, without parallel in Europe. The whole population were dependent on agriculture. There were minerals, but none found in what miners call 'paying quantities.' There was no manufacture except linen, and the remnant of a woollen trade, slowly dying out before the pitiless competition of Yorkshire. What the island chiefly produced was food; which was exported to richer countries to enable the cultivator to pay an inordinate rent. Foreign travellers saw with amazement an island possessing all the natural conditions of a great commerce, as bare of commerce as if it lay in some byeway of the world where enterprise had not yet penetrated. … The great proprietors were two or three hundred—the heirs of the Undertakers, for the most part, and Absentees; the mass of the country was owned by a couple of thousand others, who lived in splendour, and even profusion; and for these the peasant ploughed, sowed, tended, and reaped a harvest which he never shared. Rent, in other countries, means the surplus after the farmer has been liberally paid for his skill and labour; in Ireland it meant the whole produce of the soil except a potato-pit. If a farmer strove for more, his master knew how to bring him to speedy submission. He could carry away his implements of trade by the law of distress, or rob him of his sole pursuit in life by the law of eviction. He could, and habitually did, seize the growing crop, the stools and pots in his miserable cabin, the blanket that sheltered his children, the cow that gave them nourishment. There were just and humane landlords, men who performed the duties which their position imposed, and did not exaggerate its rights; but they were a small minority. … Famines were frequent, and every other year destitution killed a crowd of peasants. For a hundred and fifty years before, whoever has described the condition of Ireland—English official, foreign visitor, or Irish patriot—described a famine more or less acute. Sometimes the tortured serfs rose in nocturnal jacquerie against the system; and then a cry of 'rebellion' was raised, and England was assured that these intractable barbarians were again (as the indictment always charged) 'levying war against the King's majesty.' There were indeed causes enough for national disaffection, but of these the poor peasant knew nothing; he was contending for so much miserable food as would save his children from starvation. There were sometimes barbarous agrarian murders—murders of agents and bailiffs chiefly, but occasionally of landlords. It would be shameful to forget that these savage crimes were often the result of savage provocation. … The country was naked of timber, the cabins of the peasantry were squalid and unfurnished. Mr. Carlyle reproves a lazy, thriftless people, who would not perform the simple operation of planting trees; and Mr. Froude frowns upon cottages whose naked walls are never draped by climbing roses or flowering creepers. But how much more eloquent is fact than rhetoric? The Irish landlords made a law that when the tenant planted a tree it became not his own property but his master's; and the established practice of four-fifths of the Irish landlords, when a tenant exhibited such signs of prosperity as a garden, or a white-washed cabin, was to reward his industry by increasing his rent. {1787} Peasants will not plant or make improvements on these conditions, nor, I fancy, would philosophers. … It was sometimes made a boast in those days that rank, property, station, and professional success distinguished the minority in Ireland who were imperialists and Protestants. It was not an amazing phenomenon, that those upon whom the law had bestowed a monopoly of rank, property, and station, for a hundred and fifty years, should have still maintained the advantage a dozen years after Emancipation. It was a subject of scornful reproach that the districts inhabited by Protestants were peaceful and prosperous, while the Catholic districts were often poor and disorderly. There is no doubt of the facts; the contrast certainly existed. But the mystery disappears when one comes to reflect that in Down and Antrim the Squire regarded his tenantry with as much sympathy and confidence as a Squire in Devon or Essex, that their sons were trained to bear arms, and taught from the pulpit and platform that they belonged to a superior race, that all the local employments, paid out of the public purse, were distributed among them, that they had certain well understood rights over their holdings on which no landlord could safely trench, and that they met their masters, from time to time, in the friendly equality of an Orange lodge; while in Tipperary, the farmer was a tenant at will who never saw his landlord except when he followed the hounds across his corn, or frowned at him from the bench; whose rent could be raised, or his tenancy terminated at the pleasure of his master; who, on the smallest complaint, was carried before a bench of magistrates, where he had no expectation, and little chance, of justice; and who wanted the essential stimulus to thrift and industry, the secure enjoyment of his earnings. As a set-off to this long catalogue of discouragements, there were two facts of happy augury. In 1842 half a million of children were receiving education in the National Schools under a system designed to establish religious equality, and administered by Catholic and Protestant Commissioners. And the Teetotal movement was at its height. Thousands were accepting every week a pledge of total abstinence from Father Mathew, a young priest whom the gifts of nature and the accidents of fortune combined to qualify for the mission of a Reformer. … There was the beginning of political reforms also. The Whigs sent a Lord Lieutenant and Chief Secretary to Ireland who, for the first time since the fall of Limerick, treated the bulk of the nation as the social and political equals of the minority. The minority had been so long accustomed to make and administer the laws, and to occupy the places of authority and distinction, that they regarded the change as a revolt; and Lord Mulgrave and Thomas Drummond as the successors of Tyrconnel and Nugent. In the interval, since Emancipation, a few Catholics were elected to Parliament, two Catholic lawyers were raised to the bench, and smaller appointments distributed among laymen. … The exclusion of Catholics from juries was restrained, and the practice of appointing partisans of too shameful antecedents to public functions was interrupted. … It was under these circumstances that O'Connell for the second time summoned the Irish people to demand a Repeal of the Union."