1794.

CONDITION OF IRELAND.

87

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

IRELAND-THE REBELLION-THE UNION..

THE state of Ireland had, for some time, been a subject of anxious consideration to the Ministry. While they watched, with intense satisfaction, the rapid decay of that great army of volunteers, which had suddenly risen to a height hardly compatible with the authority of a regular Government, the French Revolution gave a new impulse to Irish discontent. The causes of Irish disaffection were manifold, and some of them were deeply seated in the social and political constitution of the country. There were also grievances which Ireland shared in common with her imperial sister. Each island had a Parliament, the representative branch of which was imperfect and corrupt. The British system, however, was capable of reform and restoration; but the Irish system was, throughout, incurable and rotten. In England, there were many close boroughs, and there were also many open boroughs. Every county comprised a numerous body of yeomen and freeholders, who returned gentlemen of the first figure and fortune. There were a few constituencies with whom men of ability and public spirit usually found favour. But in Ireland, all the boroughs were close; the counties were, for the most part, as close as the boroughs; nor was there any Middlesex or Westminster, to send up members who would speak with the voice of the people, and expose the delinquencies of power. There was, indeed, no want of loud vaunting patriotism in the

88 CORRUPTION OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. CH. XXXVIII.

House of Commons; but there were only two men in the Irish Parliament who could, undoubtedly, be called disinterested and upright lovers of their country. These were Lord Charlemont and Henry Grattan. With the exception of the small minority composing the ostensible opposition, every Irish member had his price, and this price was, in each case, ascertained by a careful appraisement, made by the principal minister at Dublin, and communicated by him, in the shape of a semi-official paper, to the head of the Government in London.* Hence the country was governed, and indeed governable only, through this corrupt agency, and the whole patronage of the Crown in Ireland was dispensed through the foul channel of Parliament. Nay, so degraded had the Irish administration become, and so contemptible in the eyes of English statesmen, that whenever a job was too gross to bear even the imperfect light shed upon such transactions in England, it was transferred to the Irish establishments.† Disreputable men and women were placed upon the Irish pension list, or had annuities charged upon the revenues of the Irish establishments. In more than one instance, Irish peerages were given to persons who would now be sufficiently rewarded by knighthood. The standard of public morality in Ireland has never been so high as in this country; but the Irish Parliament was a scandal, which a people with any sense of shame must have felt to be intolerable. A theme so fertile of declamation as parliamentary reform was not neglected by a nation of rhetoricians. The question was frequently discussed, with great fervour, both within and without the walls of Parliament; and

* Vol. iii. 117, 118. More than one-third of the Irish House of Commons consisted of placemen and pensioners.

I have before me a letter from the Duke of Rutland to Pitt, remonstrating against an

intention to create a loan contractor on the Stock Exchange, an Irish peer, the reason being that the contractor was a preprietor of an English borough.— Bolton Papers.

1

1794. RELIGIOUS DISSENSIONS IN IRELAND.

89

at one time, when the debate was conducted under the bayonets of the volunteers, there seemed to be a possibility that a reform of Parliament would really take place; but this alarm passed away, and public affairs relapsed into their old routine. If the faulty state of the representation had been the only, or the principal, grievance of which Ireland had to complain, a vigorous minister might have applied a remedy. He could have remodelled the whole system; or taken the more decisive course of abolishing an assembly which never could rise above the level of a debating club, or exercise functions of much more importance than those of a provincial vestry. But the grievance which mainly affected the peace and prosperity of Ireland lay beyond the reach of any political remedy. Religious dissension had always more or less distracted that unhappy island. The English Catholics, diminished, scattered, and overwhelmed by the wealth, the power, and the dominant will of the Reformed Church, had long ceased to struggle with adverse fortune; but in Ireland the Romanists were the majority of the population, and comprised a large proportion, if not the majority, of the old nobility and landed gentry. An equal participation of civil rights with the Protestant minority, which itself was almost equally divided between the Presbyterians and the members of the Anglican Church, was not unreasonably demanded by the united Catholic body. They had extorted some small concessions from time to time; by the Act of 1793 many of the most important disabilities, which attached to them, were removed, and they were admitted to the exercise of the elective franchise. It followed, almost of necessity, that urgent efforts were made by the Catholics to complete their emancipation from civil disability. Here, however, they encountered the vehement opposition, not only of the zealous Protestants and the old exclusive ruling party, but of a large section of liberal politi

90 CATHOLIC QUESTION-UNITED IRISHMEN. CH. XXXVIII.

cians, including such men as Lord Charlemont, who voted against some parts of the Act of 1793, even as going too far. After the French Revolution, the Catholic question became complicated with the question of parliamentary and administrative reform, with the question of separation from England, with the question of expelling the English race, with the question of an Irish Republic. Several associations had been formed, after French and English fashion, for the promotion of these different objects; but the Society of the United Irishmen, founded in 1791, comprised, as its name imports, most of the floating elements of Irish mischief.

Remedial mea

Besides the Catholic Relief Act, several other just and liberal measures were passed in the sures in Ireland. session of 1793. The odious Hearth Tax was repealed. Placemen and pensioners who had hitherto infested the House of Commons were, to a great extent, excluded. The pension list was reduced by one-third. No charge was thenceforth to be placed on the Irish revenue without the sanction of the Irish executive. Fox's libel law was adopted. Grattan and his friends, who hated democracy only less than political corruption and injustice, and who desired only to walk freely within the sphere of the British constitution, went heartily with these measures. But this wise and patriotic party was very small. The old dominant faction, whose only principles of government were Protestant ascendancy, patronage, and bribery, were necessarily opposed to every measure of concession and reform; while the revolutionists were impatient at the removal of any particular cause of discontent, and of any policy calculated to cement the union with Great Britain.

Treasonable pro

The measures of 1793, therefore, were jects of French unproductive of good; and the malconinvasion. tents only increased their efforts-alarmed at the prospect of humane legislation and honest

1794.

PATRIOTIC PARTY IN IRELAND.

91

administration in Ireland. The absolute and immediate emancipation of the Catholics, together with a parliamentary reform on the basis of unrestricted suffrage, were put forward as the pretexts for rebellion. The office bearers and leaders of the United Irishmen, Hamilton Rowan, Napper Tandy, and Wolfe Tone, were, meanwhile, either by action, correspondence, or personal communication, arranging with the French Directory and the French General the plan of a descent upon the island.

In 1794, the accession to office of the Duke of Portland and his friends led to an attempt Duke of Porttowards a change of system in the admi- land's policy. nistration of Ireland. It was proposed that Lord Westmoreland, who was entirely in the hands of the old corrupt Castle party, should be removed from the lieutenancy, and that a successor should be sent over to form other connections, and introduce a different policy. Pitt discouraged this proposal, even at the hazard of a breach with his new colleagues.* He was averse to any change of system; or even to a change of placemen in Ireland. Lord Westmoreland's recall, too, he insisted, must be contingent on the possibility of making an arrangement which would provide him with a suitable office to compensate him for the one of which he was to be deprived. Lord Fitzgibbon, the Irish Chancellor, though a man of great ability, was, on account of his domineering temper and intolerant policy, the most unpopular minister in Ireland. It was proposed to dismiss him. But Pitt positively refused to remove Fitzgibbon on any terms. Lord Camden, the son of Chatham's devoted friend and follower, was designated by Pitt for the new Lord Lieutenant. After much discussion, the ascendancy of the first minister was maintained; the Whig lords yielded every point but one. The Lord President,

* Windham to Pitt.-LORD STANHOPE'S Life of Pitt, vol. ii.