An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 Part 51

Burke addressed himself directly to the point on all these questions. He laid aside the much-abused question of right; he did not even attempt to show that right and justice should not be separated, and that men who had no share in the government of a country, could not be expected in common justice to a.s.sist in the support of that country. He had to address those who could only understand reasons which appealed to their self-interest, and he lowered himself to his audience. The question he said was, "not whether you have a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I _may_ do, but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I _ought_ to do."

The common idea about the separation of the States from England, is simply that they resisted a stamp duty and a tax on tea; the fact is, as I have before hinted, that this was simply the last drop in the cup.

Previous to this period, the American colonies were simply considered as objects of English aggrandizement. They were treated as states who only existed for the purpose of benefiting England. The case was in fact parallel to the case of Ireland, and the results would probably have been similar, had Ireland been a little nearer to America, or a little further from England. For many years the trade of America had been kept under the most vexatious restrictions. The iron found there must be sent to England to be manufactured; the s.h.i.+ps fitted out there must be at least partly built in England; no saw-mills could be erected, no colony could trade directly with another colony, nor with any nation except England. This selfish, miserable policy met with a well-deserved fate.

Even Pitt exclaimed indignantly, in the House of Commons: "We are told that America is obstinate--that America is almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that she has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all sentiments of liberty as voluntarily to become slaves, would have been fit instruments to enslave their fellow-subjects."

In 1765 an agitation was commenced in Philadelphia, by Mr. Charles Thompson, an Irishman, who, after ten years devoted to the cause of his adopted country, was appointed the Secretary of Congress. It has been well remarked, that the Irish, and especially the Irish Catholics, were, of the three nationalities, the most devoted to forwarding the Revolution; and we cannot wonder that it was so, since the Government which had driven them from their native land, ceased not to persecute them in the land of their exile.[565] The first naval engagement was fought under the command of Jeremiah O'Brien, an Irishman.[566] John Barry, also an Irishman, took the command of one of the first American-built s.h.i.+ps of war. The first Continental Regiment was composed almost exclusively of Irish-born officers and men, and was the first Rifle Regiment ever organized in the world. Thompson, its first, and Hand, its second colonel, were natives of Ireland. At the siege of Boston the regiment was particularly dreaded by the British.

In 1764 Franklin came to England[567] for the second time, and was examined before the House of Commons on the subject of the Stamp Act. He was treated with a contemptuous indifference, which he never forgot; but he kept his court suit, not without an object; and in 1783, when he signed the treaty of peace, which compelled England to grant humbly what she had refused haughtily, he wore the self-same attire. Well might the immortal Was.h.i.+ngton say to Governor Trumbull: "There was a day, sir, when this step from our then acknowledged parent state, would have been accepted with grat.i.tude; but that day is irrevocably past."

In 1774, Burke was called upon by the citizens of Bristol to represent them in Parliament, and he presented a pet.i.tion from them to the House in favour of American independence; but, with the singular inconsistency of their nation, they refused to re-elect him in 1780, because he advocated Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation.

The same principle of justice which made Burke take the side of America against England, or rather made him see that it would be the real advantage of England to conciliate America, made him also take the side of liberty on the Catholic question. The short-sighted and narrow-minded politicians who resisted the reasonable demands of a colony until it was too late to yield, were enabled, unfortunately, to resist more effectually the just demands of several millions of their own people.

It is unquestionably one of the strangest of mental phenomena, that persons who make liberty of conscience their boast and their watchword, should be the first to violate their own principles, and should be utterly unable to see the conclusion of their own favourite premises. If liberty of conscience mean anything, it must surely mean perfect freedom of religious belief for all; and such freedom is certainly incompatible with the slightest restraint, with the most trifling penalty for difference of opinion on such subjects. Again, Burke had recourse to the _argumentum ad hominum_, the only argument which those with whom he had to deal seemed capable of comprehending.

"After the suppression of the great rebellion of Tyrconnel by William of Orange," writes Mr. Morley,[568] "ascendency began in all its vileness and completeness. The Revolution brought about in Ireland just the reverse of what it effected in England. Here it delivered the body of the nation from the attempted supremacy of a small sect; there it made a small sect supreme over the body of the nation." This is in fact an epitome of Irish history since the so-called Reformation in England, and this was the state of affairs which Burke was called to combat. On all grounds the more powerful party was entirely against him. The merchants of Manchester and Bristol, for whose supposed benefit Irish trade had been ruined, wished to keep up the ascendency, conceiving it to be the surest way of replenis.h.i.+ng their coffers. The majority of Irish landlords, who looked always to their own immediate interest, and had none of the far-sighted policy which would enable them to see that the prosperity of the tenant would, in the end, most effectively secure the prosperity of the landlord, were also in favour of ascendency, which promised to satisfy their land hunger, and their miserable greed of gain. The Protestant Church was in favour of ascendency: why should it not be, since its ministers could only derive support from a people who hated them alike for their creed and their oppressions, at the point of the sword and by the "brotherly agency of the t.i.the-procter," who, if he did not a.s.sist in spreading the Gospel, at least took care that its so-called ministers should lack no luxury which could be wrung from a starving and indignant people?[569]

There were but two acts of common justice required on the part of England to make Ireland prosperous and free. It is glorious to say, that Burke was the first to see this, and inaugurate the reign of concession; it is pitiful, it is utterly contemptible, to be obliged to add, that what was then inaugurated is not yet fully accomplished. Burke demanded for Ireland political and religious freedom. Slowly some small concessions of both have been made when England has feared to refuse them. Had the grant been made once for all with manly generosity, some painful chapters of Irish history might have been omitted from this volume--some moments, let us hope, of honest shame might have been spared to those true-hearted Englishmen who deplore the fatuity and the folly of their countrymen. In 1782 the Irish Volunteers obtained from the fears of England what had been vainly asked from her justice.

Burke's one idea of good government may be summed up in the words, "Be just, and fear not." In his famous _Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe_, written in 1792, upon the question of admitting the Catholics to the elective franchise, he asks: "Is your government likely to be more secure by continuing causes of grounded discontent to two-thirds of its subjects? Will the const.i.tution be made more solid by depriving this large part of the people of all concern or share in the representation?"

His Indian policy was equally just. "Our dealings with India," says an English writer, "originally and until Burke's time, so far from being marked with virtue and wisdom, were stained with every vice which can lower and deprave human character. How long will it take only to extirpate these traditions from the recollections of the natives? The more effectually their understandings are awakened by English efforts, the more vividly will they recognize, and the more bitterly resent, the iniquities of our first connexion with them." The Indian policy of England and her Irish policy might be written with advantage in parallel columns. It would, at least, have the advantage of showing Irishmen that they had been by no means worse governed than other dependencies of that professedly law and justice loving nation.

I have treated, briefly indeed, and by no means as I should wish, of two of the questions of the day, and of Burke's policy thereon; of the third question a few words only can be said. Burke's idea of Reform consisted in amending the administration of the const.i.tution, rather than in amending the const.i.tution itself. Unquestionably a bad const.i.tution well administered, may be incomparably more beneficial to the subject than a good const.i.tution administered corruptly. Burke's great leading principle was: Be just--and can a man have a n.o.bler end? To suppress an insurrection cruelly, to tax a people unjustly, or to extort money from a nation on false pretences, was to him deeply abhorrent. His first object was to secure the incorruptibility of ministers and of members of parliament. When the post of royal scullion could be confided to a member of parliament, and a favourable vote secured by appointing a representative of the people to the lucrative post of turnspit in the king's kitchen, administration was hopelessly corrupt. There were useless treasurers for useless offices. Burke gave the example of what he taught; and having fixed the Paymaster's salary at four thousand pounds a year, was himself the first person to accept the diminished income.

He has been accused of forsaking his liberal principles in his latter days, simply and solely from his denunciations of the terrible excesses of the French Revolution. Such reprobation was rather a proof that he understood the difference between liberty and licentiousness, and that his accusers had neither the intellect nor the true n.o.bility to discriminate between the frantic deeds of men, whose bad pa.s.sions, long indulged, had led them on to commit the crimes of demons, and those n.o.ble but long-suffering patriots, who endured until endurance became a fault, and only resisted for the benefit of mankind as well as for their own.

So much s.p.a.ce has been given to Burke, that it only remains to add a few brief words of the other brilliant stars, who fled across the Channel in the vain pursuit of English patronage--in the vain hope of finding in a free country the liberty to ascend higher than the rulers of that free country permitted in their own.

Moore was born in the year 1780, in the city of Dublin. His father was in trade, a fact which he had the manliness to acknowledge whenever such acknowledgment was necessary. He was educated for the bar, which was just then opened for the first time to the majority of the nation, so long governed, or misgoverned, by laws which they were neither permitted to make or to administer. His poetical talents were early manifested, and his first attempts were in the service of those who are termed patriots or rebels, as the speaker's opinion varies. That he loved liberty and admired liberators can scarcely be doubted, since even later in life he used to boast of his introduction to Thomas Jefferson, while in America, exclaiming: "I had the honour of shaking hands with the man who drew up the Declaration of American Independence." His countryman, Sheridan introduced him to the Prince of Wales. His Royal Highness inquired courteously if he was the son of a certain baronet of the same name. "No, your Royal Highness," replied Moore; "I am the son of a Dublin grocer." He commenced writing his immortal _Melodies_ in 1807, soon after his marriage. But he by no means confined himself to such subjects. With that keen sense of humour almost inseparable from, and generally proportionate to, the most exquisite sensibility of feeling, he caught the salient points of controversy in his day, and no doubt contributed not a little to the obtaining of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation by the telling satires which he poured forth on its opposers. His reflections, addresed to the _Quarterly Review_, who recommended an increase of the Church Establishment as the grand panacea of Irish ills, might not be an inappropriate subject of consideration at the present moment. It commences thus:

"I'm quite of your mind: though these Pats cry aloud, That they've got too much Church, tis all nonsense and stuff; For Church is like love, of which Figaro vowed, That even _too much_ of it's not quite enough."

Nor was his letter to the Duke of Newcastle, who was an obstinate opposer of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, less witty, or less in point at the present time, for the Lords would not emanc.i.p.ate, whatever the Commons might do:

"While intellect, 'mongst high and low, Is hastening on, they say, Give me the dukes and lords, who go, Like crabs, the other way."

Curran had been called to the bar a few years earlier. He was the son of a poor farmer in the county of Cork, and won his way to fame solely by the exercise of his extraordinary talent. Curran was a Protestant; but he did not think it necessary, because he belonged to a religion which professed liberty of conscience, to deny its exercise to every one but those of his own sect. He first distinguished himself at a contested election. Of his magnificent powers of oratory I shall say nothing, partly because their fame is European, and partly because it would be impossible to do justice to the subject in our limited s.p.a.ce. His terrible denunciations of the horrible crimes and cruelties of the soldiers, who were sent to govern Ireland by force, for those who were not wise enough or humane enough to govern it by justice--his scathing denunciations of crown witnesses and informers, should be read at length to be appreciated fully.[570]

Swift's career is also scarcely less known. He, too, was born in Dublin of poor parents, in 1667. Although he became a minister of the Protestant Church, and held considerable emoluments therein, he had the honesty to see, and the courage to acknowledge, its many corruptions.

The great lesson which he preached to Irishmen was the lesson of nationality; and, perhaps, they have yet to learn it in the sense in which he intended to teach it. No doubt, Swift, in some way, prepared the path of Burke; for, different as were their respective careers and their respective talents, they had each the same end in view. The "Drapier" was long the idol of his countrymen, and there can be little doubt that the spirit of his writings did much to animate the patriots who followed him--Lucas, Flood, and Grattan. Lucas was undoubtedly one of the purest patriots of his time. His parents were poor farmers in the county Clare, who settled in Dublin, where Lucas was born, in 1713; and in truth patriotism seldom develops itself out of purple and fine linen.

Flood, however, may be taken in exception to this inference; his father was a Chief Justice of the Irish King's Bench. When elected a member of the Irish House, his first public effort was for the freedom of his country from the atrocious imposition of Poyning's Law. Unfortunately, he and Grattan quarrelled, and their country was deprived of the immense benefits which might have accrued to it from the cordial political union of two such men.

But a list of the great men of the eighteenth century, however brief, would be certainly most imperfect if I omitted the name of the Earl of Charlemont, who, had his courage been equal to his honesty of purpose, might have been enrolled not merely as an ardent, but even as a successful patriot. He was one of the _Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores_,--one of those who came to plunder, and who learned to respect their victims, and to repent their oppressions. It is probable that the nine years which the young Earl spent in travelling on the Continent, contributed not a little to his mental enlargement. On his return from countries where freedom exists with boasting, to a country where boasting exists without a corresponding amount of freedom, he was amazed and shocked at the first exhibition of its detestable tyranny of cla.s.s. A grand procession of peers and peeresses was appointed to receive the unfortunate Princess Caroline; but, before the Princess landed, the d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford was commanded to inform the Irish peeresses that they were not to walk, or to take any part in the ceremonial. The young Earl could not restrain his indignation at this utterly uncalled-for insult.

He obtained a royal audience, and exerted himself with so much energy, that the obnoxious order was rescinded. The Earl's rank, as well as his patriotism, naturally placed him at the head of his party; and he resolutely opposed those laws which Burke had designated as a "disgrace to the statute-books of any nation, and so odious in their principles, that one might think they were pa.s.sed in h.e.l.l, and that demons were the legislators." In 1766, his Lords.h.i.+p brought a bill into the House of Lords to enable a poor Catholic peasant to take a lease of a cabin and a potato-garden; but, at the third reading, the Lords rushed in tumultuously, voted Lord Charlemont out of the chair, and taunted him with being little better than a Papist. The failure and the taunt bewildered an intellect never very clear; and, perhaps, hopelessness quenched the spirit of patriotism, which had once, at least, burned brightly. In fear of being taunted as a Papist, like many a wiser man, he rushed into the extreme of Protestant loyalty, and joined in the contemptible outcry for Protestant ascendency.

The eighteenth century was also rife in Irishmen whose intellects were devoted to literature. It claims its painters in Barrett, who was actually the founder of the Royal Academy in England, and in Barry, the most eminent historical painter of his age; its poets in Parnell, Goldsmith, Wade, O'Keeffe, Moore, and many others; its musician in Kelly, a full list of whose operatic music would fill several pages; its authors in Steele, Swift, Young, O'Leary, Malone, Congreve, Sheridan, and Goldsmith; and its actors in Macklin, Milliken, Barry, Willis, and Woffington.

Sheridan was born in Dublin, in the year 1757. He commenced his career as author by writing for the stage; but his acquaintance with Fox, who soon discerned his amazing abilities, led him in another direction. In 1786 he was employed with Burke in the impeachment of Warren Hastings.

The galleries of the House of Lords were filled to overflowing; peers and peeresses secured seats early in the day; actresses came to learn declamation, authors to learn style. Mrs. Siddons, accustomed as she was to the simulation of pa.s.sion in herself and others, shrieked and swooned while he denounced the atrocities of which Hastings had been guilty.

Fox, Pitt, and Byron, were unanimous in their praise. And on the very same night, and at the very same time, when the gifted Celt was thundering justice to India into the ears of Englishmen, his _School for Scandal_, one of the best comedies on the British stage, was being acted in one theatre, and his _Duenna_, one of its best operas, was being performed in another.

Sheridan died in 1816, a victim to intemperance, for which he had not even the excuse of misfortune. Had not his besetting sin degraded and incapacitated him, it is probable he would have been prime-minister on the death of Fox. At the early age of forty he was a confirmed drunkard.

The master mind which had led a senate, was clouded over by the fumes of an accursed spirit; the brilliant eyes that had captivated a million hearts, were dimmed and bloodshot; the once n.o.ble brain, which had used its hundred gifts with equal success and ability, was deprived of all power of acting; the tongue, whose potent spell had entranced thousands, was scarcely able to articulate. Alas, and a thousand times alas! that man can thus mar his Maker's work, and stamp ruin and wretchedness where a wealth of mental power had been given to reign supreme.

Goldsmith's father was a Protestant clergyman. The poet was born at Pallas, in the county Longford. After a series of adventures, not always to his credit, and sundry wanderings on the Continent in the most extreme poverty, he settled in London. Here he met with considerable success as an author, and enjoyed the society of the first literary men of the day. After the first and inevitable struggles of a poor author, had he possessed even half as much talent for business as capacity for intellectual effort, he might soon have obtained a competency by his pen; but, unfortunately, though he was not seriously addicted to intemperance, his convivial habits, and his attraction for the gaming table, soon scattered his hard-won earnings. His "knack of hoping,"

however, helped him through life. He died on the 4th April, 1774. His last words were sad indeed, in whatever sense they may be taken. He was suffering from fever, but his devoted medical attendant, Doctor Norton, perceiving his pulse to be unusually high even under such circ.u.mstances, asked, "Is your mind at ease?" "No, it is not," was Goldsmith's sad reply; and these were the last words he uttered.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GOLDSMITH'S MILL AT AUBURN]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BANTRY BAY--SCENE OF THE LANDING OF THE FRENCH.]

FOOTNOTES:

[559] _Writers_.--As a general rule, when Irishmen succeed either in literature, politics, or war, the credit of their performances is usually debited to the English; when they fail, we hear terrible clamours of Irish incapacity. Thackeray commences his "_English_ Humourists of the Eighteenth Century" with Swift, and ends them with Goldsmith! I do not suppose he had any intention of defrauding the Celtic race; he simply followed the usual course. Irishmen are, perhaps, themselves most to blame, for much of this is caused by their suicidal deference to a dominant race.

[560] _Order_.--The Presentation Order was founded by Miss Nano Nagle, of Cork.

[561] _Leadbeater.--Annals of Ballitore_, vol. i. p. 50, second edition, 1862. I shall refer to this interesting work again.

[562] _Man_.--The exact words are: "If a man were to go by chance at the same time with Burke, under a shed to shun a shower, he would say: 'This is an extraordinary man.'"--_Boswell's Johnson_, vol. iv. p. 245.

Foster's version is as above.

[563] _Developed_.--Since this sentence was penned, I find, with great satisfaction, that a similar view has been taken by a recent writer. See _Secularia; or, Surveys on the Main Stream of History_, by S. Lucas, p.

250. He opens a chapter on the revolt of the American States thus: "The relations of Great Britain to its colonies, past and present, are an important part of the history of the world; and the form which these relations _may hereafter take, will be no small element in the political future._ Even our Professors of History ... abstain from noticing their system of government, or _the predisposing motives to their subsequent revolt._." The italics are our own. Neglect of the study of Irish history is, I believe, also, one of the causes why Irish grievances are not remedied by the English Government. But grievances may get settled in a way not always satisfactory to the neglecters of them, while they are waiting their leisure to investigate their cause.

[564] _Writer_.--Morley. _Edmund Burke, an Historical Study:_ Macmillan and Co., 1867. A masterly work, and one which every statesman, and every thinker would do well to peruse carefully. He says: "The question to be asked by every statesman, and by every citizen, with reference to a measure that is recommended to him as the enforcement of a public right, is whether the right is one which it is to the public advantage to enforce."--p. 146.

[565] _Exile_.--Maguire's _Irish in America_, p. 355: "It would seem as if they instinctively arrayed themselves in hostility to the British power; a fact to be explained alike by their love of liberty, and _their vivid remembrance of recent or past misgovernment_." The italics are our own. The penal laws were enacted with the utmost rigour against Catholics in the colonies, and the only place of refuge was Maryland, founded by the Catholic Lord Baltimore. Here there was liberty of conscience for all, but here only. The sects who had fled to America to obtain "freedom to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d," soon manifested their determination that no one should have liberty of conscience except themselves, and gave the lie to their own principles, by persecuting each other for the most trifling differences of opinion on religious questions, in the cruelest manner. Cutting off ears, whipping, and maiming were in constant practice. See Maguire's _Irish in America_, p. 349; Lucas'

_Secularia_, pp. 220-246.

[566] _Irishman_.--See Cooper's _Naval History_.

[567] _England_.--He wrote to Thompson, from London, saying that he could effect nothing: "The sun of liberty is set; we must now light up the candles of industry." The Secretary replied, with Celtic vehemence: "Be a.s.sured we shall light up torches of a very different kind." When the Catholics of the United States sent up their celebrated Address to Was.h.i.+ngton, in 1790, he alludes in one part of his reply to the immense a.s.sistance obtained from them in effecting the Revolution: "I presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their revolution and the establishment of their government, or the important a.s.sistance they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic religion is professed."

[568] _Morley_.--_Edmund Burke, an Historical Study_, p. 181.

[569] _People_.--Chesterfield said, in 1764, that the poor people in Ireland were used "worse than negroes." "Aristocracy," said Adam Smith, "was not founded in the natural and respectable distinctions of birth and fortune, but in the most odious of all distinctions, those of religious and political prejudices--distinctions which, more than any other, animate both the insolence of the oppressors, and the hatred and indignation of the oppressed."--Morley's _Edmund Burke_, p. 183.

[570] _Fully_.--See _Curran's Letters and Speeches:_ Dublin, 1865.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

The Volunteers deserted by their Leaders--Agrarian Outrages and their Cause--Foundation of the United Irishmen--Cruelties of the Orangemen--Government Spies and Informers--Lord Moira exposes the Cruelty of the Yeomanry in Parliament--Mr. Orr's Trial and Death--Details of the Atrocities enacted by the Military from a Protestant History--Tom the Devil--Cruelties practised by Men of Rank--Licentiousness of the Army--Death of Lord Edward FitzGerald--The Rising--Martial Law in Dublin--The Insurrection in Wexford--Ma.s.sacres at Scullabogue House and Wexford-bridge by the Insurgents--How the Priests were rewarded for saving Lives and Property--The Insurrection in Ulster--The State Prisoners--The Union.

[A.D. 1783-1800.]