Historical and Political Essays

W >> William Edward Hartpole Lecky >> Historical and Political Essays

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The commercial restraints formed part of a protective policy which was
at that time general in Europe, and which was severely felt in the
American colonies. Though it did not absolutely originate in, it was
greatly intensified by, the Revolution, which gave the manufacturing
and commercial classes a new power in English government. The linen
manufacture was spared, but the total destruction by law of the
flourishing woollen manufacture, followed by a number of restrictions
imposed on other branches of industry, deprived Ireland of her most
promising sources of wealth, drove great multitudes of energetic
Protestants out of the country, and threw the people more and more
upon the soil as almost their sole means of support.

The penal laws against the Catholics accompanied or closely followed
the commercial restraints. The blame of them may be divided with some
equality between the Government of England and the Parliament of
Ireland. It was the Irish Parliament which enacted these laws, but an
English Act first made the Irish Parliament exclusively Protestant,
and the whole legislation was carried at a time when the Irish
Parliament was completely dependent, and incompetent even to discuss
any measure without the previous approbation of the English
Government. In order to judge this legislation with equity, it must be
remembered that in the beginning of the eighteenth century restrictive
laws against Protestantism in Catholic countries, and against
Catholicism in Protestant ones, almost universally prevailed. The laws
against Irish Catholics were, on the whole, less stringent than those
against Catholics in England. They were largely modelled after the
French legislation against the Huguenots, but persecution in Ireland
never approached in severity that of Louis XIV., and was absolutely
insignificant compared with that which had extirpated Protestantism
and Judaism from Spain. The code, however, was not mainly the product
of religious feeling, but of policy, and in this respect it has been
defended in its broad outlines, though not in all its details, by such
Irishmen as Charlemont, Flood, and Parsons. They argued that at the
close of a long period of savage civil war it was absolutely necessary
for a small minority, who found themselves in possession of the
government and land of the country, to deprive the conquered and
hostile majority of every element of political and military strength.
This was the real object of the code. It was a measure of self-defence
justified by necessity and by the fact that it produced in Ireland for
the space of about eighty years the most perfect tranquillity.

There is much truth in these considerations, but it is also true that
the penal code produced more pernicious moral, social, and political
effects than many sanguinary persecutions. In other countries
disqualifying or persecuting laws were directed against small
fractions of the nation. In Ireland they were directed against the
bulk of the community. Being supported by little or no genuine
religious fanaticism or proselytising ardour, they made few
Protestants except in the upper orders, where many conformed in order
to keep their land or to enter professions; but they drove nearly all
the best and most energetic Catholics to the Continent; they
discouraged industry; closed the door of knowledge; taught the people
to look upon law as something hostile to religion; introduced
division and immorality into families by the rewards they offered to
apostasy; and condemned the whole country to poverty and impotence by
fatally depressing the great majority of its people. Under the
influence of the penal laws the Catholics inevitably acquired the
vices of serfs, and the Protestants the vices of monopolists. A great
portion of the code was pronounced, with good reason, to be flagrantly
opposed to the articles of the Treaty of Limerick, and it completed
the work of the confiscations by making the landlord class in Ireland
almost wholly Protestant, while the great majority of the tenantry
were Catholics.

There was a moment, however, in the beginning of the century when the
whole current of Irish history might easily have changed. Scotland had
suffered, like Ireland, from the protective policy that followed the
Revolution, and her independent Parliament had retaliated by measures
which threatened the speedy separation of the two crowns, and soon led
to a legislative Union. In Ireland such a Union was ardently desired
by enlightened Irishmen, and there is every reason to believe that it
could then have been carried with universal consent. The Catholics
were perfectly passive, and would gladly have accepted a change which
withdrew them from the direct government of the conquerors in a recent
civil war. The Protestants had as yet no distinctively national
feeling, and a legislative Union would have emancipated their industry
and added enormously to their security. Molyneux, the first great
champion of the legislative independence of Ireland, emphatically
declared that he and those who thought with him would gladly have
accepted the alternative of a Union, and both the Irish Houses of
Parliament voted addresses in favour of such a measure. If it had
been carried, Ireland would have been at least saved from the evils
that rose from the commercial restrictions and from the extreme
jobbing that grew up around the local legislature, and she would,
perhaps, have been saved from some parts of the penal code. But the
golden opportunity was lost. The English commercial classes dreaded
Irish competition in their markets, and the petition of the Irish
legislature was disregarded.

Nearly seventy years of quiet followed. The establishment of the
Hanoverian dynasty, the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745, the
different wars in which England was engaged, left Ireland absolutely
undisturbed. The House of Commons then sat for a whole reign and met
only every second year. It was completely subservient to the English
Privy Council, and it consisted so largely of nomination boroughs that
a few great nobles commanded a decisive preponderance, and they
practically conducted the government and administered the patronage of
Ireland. There was great jobbing and corruption, but taxation, on the
whole, was exceedingly light, and there was no tendency to throw it
unduly on the poor, or to create in Ireland any of the many feudal
burdens that prevailed in France and Germany. The practical evil most
felt was the system of tithes for the support of the Protestant
establishment, and it was aggravated by a very unfair exemption of
pasture land, and also by the prevailing system of farming out tithes
to a class of men known as tithe proctors. In the country districts
all power was concentrated in the hands of the landlords, who, with
many faults and under many difficulties, at least succeeded in
attaining a large measure of genuine popularity.

There was an Irish army of twelve thousand men, but the greater part
of it was always sent abroad in time of war, and Ireland was then
often left with not more than five thousand soldiers. No militia and
no constabulary force existed, but when Whiteboy or other disturbances
arose, the landlords put themselves at the head of their tenantry, and
usually succeeded in suppressing them. Law was very little observed;
industrial virtues were at the lowest ebb; there was abundance of
drunkenness, idleness, turbulence, neglect of duty, extreme ignorance,
and extreme poverty; but there was not much real oppression or
religious bigotry, and there were no signs of political disturbance or
conspiracy. After a few years the portions of the penal code which
restricted the Catholic worship became a dead letter, and Catholic
chapels were everywhere rising on the Protestant estates. The
monopoly, however, of place and power continued, though the legal
profession was full of professing converts. The theological
temperature in both sects had greatly subsided. Land was usually let
by the owner on long leases, and at very low rents, to tenants who
almost invariably divided and sublet their tenancies.

At a later period of the century, when population pressed closely on
subsistence, the system of middlemen produced a fierce competition
which raised rent in the lower grades to an enormous height, but this
evil was less felt with a scanty population, and the hierarchy of
tenants at least saved the landlords from the dangerous isolation
which their circumstances tended to produce. Arthur Young, who
examined the condition of the country very carefully between 1776 and
1778, perceived great signs of growing prosperity, especially in the
towns, and, although agriculture was far behind that of England, he
found a considerable number of active, intelligent, and improving
landlords. In the opinion of Young the rental of Ireland was unduly
and unnaturally low, but he urged the landlords to exercise a more
direct and controlling influence over their estates, and he
recommended them, for this purpose, to give leases for shorter periods
and gradually to abolish the system of middlemen and subletting.

In the north there was a powerful, intelligent Protestant community,
with a strong leaning to republicanism. They were chiefly
Presbyterians, and they resented bitterly the commercial restrictions
and the obligation of paying tithes to an Episcopal church. The Irish
Parliament was so constituted that they had no political power at all
equivalent to their importance, and, like the Presbyterians in
England, they were burdened by the Test Act, and their marriages were
only valid if celebrated in the Established Church. The great power of
the bishops, both in the Privy Council and in the House of Lords,
formed a very serious obstacle to church reform. In all classes of
Protestants, however, in the closing years of George II., there was a
strong resentment at the political subjection of Ireland, and a
determination to obtain, if possible, those constitutional rights
which the Revolution of 1688 had secured for England.

It is impossible, within the narrow limits assigned to me, to give
even a sketch of the successive stages by which the independence of
the Irish Parliament was established. The movement began with the
Octennial Act, limiting the duration of Parliament, and it came to
full maturity during the war of the American Revolution. Among the
Irish Catholics there appears to have been absolutely no sympathy with
the American cause, but Ulster Protestantism was enthusiastically on
the side of America. Presbyterians from Ulster bore a considerable
part in the American armies, and under the influence of American
example public opinion in Ireland rapidly advanced. The great
Volunteer movement of 1778 and the following years was originated by
the fact that the Government could supply no troops for the defence of
Ulster at a time when it was in imminent danger of attack from France.
The Protestant gentry called their people to arms; and a great
Protestant force was created, which not only secured the country
against foreign danger and maintained the most perfect internal order,
but also exercised a decisive influence over Irish politics. Volunteer
conventions were assembled which represented both property and
educated Protestant opinion much more truly than the borough
Parliament, and which loudly demanded free trade and Parliamentary
independence. Grattan made himself the mouthpiece of the popular
feeling; and the English Government and Parliament yielded to the
demand. The whole system of commercial restraints, which prevented
Ireland from developing her resources and trading with foreign
countries and the British colonies, was abolished, leaving the
commercial intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland to be
regulated by special Acts. The power of the Privy Council over
legislation was abolished. The appellate jurisdiction of the Irish
House of Lords was restored, and, above all, the sole competence of
the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland to legislate for Ireland was
recognised. The Irish Parliament nearly at the same time made great
steps towards uniting the people by relieving the Presbyterians from
the Test Act and from the restrictions on their marriages, and the
Catholics from those parts of the penal code which chiefly restrained
their worship, their education, and their industry. At the same time
the Protestant monopoly of political power and of the higher offices
remained.

Ireland thus found herself in possession of a Parliament which was, in
name at least, perfectly independent. It was a purely Protestant
Parliament, elected by Protestants, consisting mainly of landlords and
great Protestant lawyers, and representing pre-eminently the property
of the country. It was intensely and exclusively loyal, and always
ready to adopt far more stringent coercive measures against anarchy
and sedition than have ever been adopted by an Imperial Parliament. It
included many men of great talents and great liberality, and through
the county constituencies and the representatives of the chief towns
educated public opinion was seriously felt within its walls; but the
large majority of its members sat for nomination boroughs within the
control of the government, and places and pensions were inordinately
multiplied for the purpose of securing a majority.

Could this constitution last? In framing the course of foreign and
Imperial policy, in all questions of peace or war, of negotiations or
alliances, the Irish Parliament had no voice. Yet it might in time of
war, by withholding its concurrence, withdraw the whole weight of
Ireland from the forces and fatally dislocate the policy of the
Empire. It might pursue a commercial policy absolutely inconsistent
with Imperial interests, and bring Ireland into intimate commercial
connection with the enemies of England; and if English party spirit
extended to Ireland and ran in opposite directions in the two
legislatures, a collision was inevitable. The Lord Lieutenant and
Chief Secretary, who administered the government of Ireland, were
appointed by a British Ministry representing the dominant British
party; the counsels of the Irish Government were framed in a British
Cabinet; the royal consent was given to every Irish Bill under the
Great Seal of Great Britain and upon the advice of a British Minister.
If a machine so constituted could work as long as it was in the hands
of a small and undoubtedly loyal and largely influenced class, could
it work if Parliamentary reform made the Irish Parliament subject to
the fierce and fluctuating tides of popular opinion? above all, if
Catholic enfranchisement brought a vast, ignorant, and possibly
seditious element into political life?

It was the recorded opinion of each successive Lord Lieutenant who
administered the Irish Government after 1782 that it could not, and
that it must sooner or later end either in a union or a separation.
They said this, though they fully acknowledged the perfect loyalty
hitherto shown by the Irish Parliament; the liberality with which it
voted its supplies; the care with which it subordinated its particular
measures to the general interests of the Empire. The failure--not
solely or even mainly through Irish fault--of an attempt to establish
a fixed commercial arrangement between England and Ireland, and a
difference between the British and Irish Parliaments on the Imperial
question of a regency, strengthened the opinion of the English
Government, and for many years before the Union was enacted it was in
contemplation. On the two great and pressing questions at issue this
policy exercised a powerful influence. The Government obstinately
resisted every serious attempt to reform the Parliament, lest they
should lose that controlling power which they believed to be essential
to the permanence of the connection. On the Catholic question their
views were more fluctuating, but their dominant impression was that
emancipation could only be safely conceded in an Imperial Parliament,
and that it ought to be reserved as a boon which might one day make a
legislative Union acceptable to the Irish people.

In Ireland, or at least in Protestant Ireland, the idea of a Union was
now intensely unpopular, but the reformers in the Irish Parliament
were seriously divided. Flood and Charlemont desired Parliamentary
reform on a purely Protestant basis. They believed that this would
include in political life the bulk of the property, loyalty,
intelligence, and energy of the country, and that the Irish Catholics
could not for a long period be safely admitted to political power.
Grattan, on the other hand, believed that it was the first interest of
Ireland to efface the political distinction between the two creeds and
nations, and that an introduction of a certain proportion of Catholic
gentry into the Irish Parliament would be in the highest degree
beneficial. He, at the same time, always taught that Ireland was
utterly unfit for democracy, and that under her peculiar conditions no
policy could be more disastrous than one which would 'destroy the
influence of landed property'; 'set population adrift from the
influence of property'; subvert or weaken the guiding influence of the
loyal and educated. When the United Irishmen proposed a Reform Bill
which would have made the Irish Parliament a purely democratic body,
Grattan denounced it with the greatest vehemence. 'This plan of
personal representation,' he said, 'from a revolution of power, would
speedily lead to a revolution of property, and become a plan of
plunder as well as a scene of confusion.... Of such a representation
the first ordinance would be robbery, accompanied with the
circumstance incidental to robbery, murder.' He believed, however,
that with a substantial property qualification independent
constituencies might be formed which would safely represent the best
elements of both creeds.

The denial of parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation, and the
refusal of the Irish Parliament to deal with the still more pressing
question of tithes, produced much disaffection; but still the country
was steadily improving, and no serious danger was felt till the French
Revolution burst upon Europe. In every country it stimulated the
smouldering elements of disorder. In few countries was its influence
more fatal than in Ireland. I have very lately described at length the
terrible years of growing conspiracy, anarchy, and crime; of
fluctuating policy, and savage repression, and revived religious
animosity, and maddening panic, deliberately and malignantly fomented,
that preceded and prepared the rebellion. It is sufficient here to say
that in the beginning of 1798 three provinces were organised to assist
a French invasion. But at the last moment the leaders were betrayed
and arrested; the French did not arrive; the rebellion was almost
confined to a few Leinster counties, and it broke out without leaders
and without a plan. In most places the rebels proved to be wretched
bands of marauders intent only on plunder, and, although they
committed many murders, they were utterly incapable of meeting the
loyalists in the field. But in Wexford, priests put themselves at the
head of the movement and turned it into a religious war, deriving its
main force from religious fanaticism, and waged with desperate courage
and ferocity. The massacre of Protestants on Vinegar Hill, in
Scullabogue Barn, and on Wexford Bridge, and the general character
the rebellion in Leinster assumed, at once and for ever checked all
that tendency to rebellion which had so long existed among the
Protestants of Ulster. Some twenty thousand persons perished before
the flame was extinguished. The repression was as savage as the
rebellion, and it left Ireland torn by fiercer religious animosities
than at any period since the Restoration.

It will dispel many illusions if the reader will remember that the
great Irish rebellion was directed mainly against the Irish
Parliament, and that it received its death-blow from Irish loyalists
acting under that Parliament before any assistance arrived from
England. The conspiracy began among Protestants and Deists, who aimed
at a union of sects for the purpose of obtaining a democratic
republic. It turned into a war which was scarcely less essentially
religious than the wars of the Cevennes or of the Anabaptists. Yet two
great Catholic provinces remained quiet during the struggle, and a
great proportion of the loyalist force which crushed the rebellion
consisted of Catholic militia.

The English Government thought that the time had now come for carrying
a legislative Union, and, in the eyes of Lord Cornwallis at least, one
of its chief recommendations was that it would take the government of
Ireland out of the hands of the triumphant party, and would make
Catholic emancipation a possibility. The Catholic bishops were sounded
and found to be very favourable. They declared their full willingness
to accept an endowment for the priesthood and to give the English
Government a right of veto on episcopal appointments, and they warmly,
efficiently, and unanimously supported the Union. The great majority
of the Catholic landed gentry and probably of the lower priests were
on the same side; but in general the Catholic laity seem to have
shown little interest and to have taken little part in the contest. In
Dublin, Catholics as well as Protestants were generally hostile, but
Catholic Cork was decidedly favourable, and an assurance that the
Government desired to carry emancipation in an Imperial Parliament
proved sufficient to prevent any serious Catholic opposition. The
United Irishmen seem to have witnessed rather with pleasure than the
reverse the dethronement of the body which had defeated them, and the
Presbyterians showed scarcely any interest in the question.

Yet outside the ranks of the Catholic clergy the measure found few
active supporters, while the Protestants of the Established Church
were in general ardently and passionately hostile. The great majority
of the county members and the great preponderance of petitions were
against the Union, and the opposition to it, which was led by Foster,
Grattan, Parsons, and Plunket, comprised nearly all the independent
and unbribed talent in Parliament. The very eminent ability of that
small group of Protestant gentlemen never flashed more brightly than
in the closing scenes, and there was a moment when the attitude of the
Orangemen and the yeomanry was so menacing that the Government were
seriously alarmed. But a lavish distribution of peerages and places
purchased a majority, and the troops stationed in Ireland were too
numerous for armed opposition to be possible. In truth, however, no
opposition beyond the dimensions of a riot was to be feared. Outside
Dublin, Catholic, Presbyterian, and seditious Ireland remained almost
indifferent. Even before the measure had passed, opposition speakers
complained bitterly that they were deserted by popular support; and it
is a memorable fact that in the general election that followed the
Union not a single Irish member of Parliament was defeated because he
had voted for it.

Pitt intended the Union to be immediately followed by measures
admitting the Catholics into the Imperial Parliament, paying the
priests, and commuting the tithes. If these three measures, or even if
the last two (which were, in truth, the most important), had been
promptly carried, the Union might have become popular. The Catholic
question had, of late, been greatly mismanaged. The chief men who
directed the government in Ireland were bitterly opposed to any
concession of political power to the Catholics, but the views of the
English Ministers had been materially changed. They desired above all
things to separate the Catholics from the United Irishmen, and in 1793
they forced upon their reluctant advisers in Ireland an Act which
extended the suffrage to the vast ignorant Catholic masses, though it
left the Catholic gentry still excluded from Parliament. Two years
later Lord Fitzwilliam was sent over with instructions to postpone the
question if possible, but with authority, as he believed, to carry
emancipation if it could not be postponed, and he found the Irish
Parliament perfectly prepared to pass it. But the opposition of the
King and a question of patronage produced a fatal division and led to
the recall of the Viceroy. The passions aroused by the rebellion
greatly increased the difficulties of admitting Catholics to a
separate Parliament, but there is clear evidence that at the time of
the Union the Irish Protestants were in favour of their admission into
the Imperial one. The dispositions of the King were well known, but it
was believed that, if the scheme of Pitt was submitted to him as the
matured policy of a united Cabinet, he must have yielded. It is well
known how the plan was prematurely revealed; how Pitt resigned office
when the King refused his consent; how the agitation of the question
threw the King into an access of insanity; and how Pitt then promised
that he would not again raise it during the reign. Pitt's conduct on
this occasion is, and probably always will be, differently judged.
There can be but one opinion of its calamitous effect upon Irish
history.

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