Is Ulster Right?

by Anonymous

"Many Protestants may think the Church presumptuous in decreeing their marriages valid or invalid according as they have or have not complied with certain conditions. As the Church cannot err, neither can she be presumptuous. She alone is judge of the extent of her power. Anyone validly baptised, either in the Church or among heretics, becomes thereby a subject of the Roman Catholic Church."

But whilst politicians were amusing themselves with fervid but useless oratory in Parliament, stirring events were taking place elsewhere. To trace in these pages even a bare outline of the main incidents of those terrible years is impossible; and yet without doing so it is not easy to obtain a correct view of the tangled skein of Irish politics at the time. In studying any history of the period, we cannot but be struck by observing on the one hand how completely in some respects circumstances and ideas have changed since then; it is hard to realize that Ulster was for a time the scene of wild disorder-assassination, arson, burglary and every form of outrage-brought about mainly by a society which claimed to be, and to a certain extent was, formed by a union of the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic parties-whilst the south and west remained fairly orderly and loyal. And yet on the other hand we find many of the phenomena which have been characteristic of later periods of Irish political agitation, already flourishing. Boycotting existed in fact, though the name was not yet invented; also nocturnal raids for arms, the sacking of lonely farmhouses, the intimidation of witnesses and the mutilation of cattle. Again, we see all through the history of Irish secret societies that their organization has been so splendid that the ordinary law has been powerless against them; for witnesses will not give evidence and juries will not convict if they know that to do so will mean certain ruin and probable death; and yet those same societies have always possessed one element of weakness: however terrible their oaths of secrecy have been, the Government have never had the slightest difficulty in finding out, through their confidential agents, everything that has taken place at their meetings, and what their projects are.

As early as 1785 there had been two societies carrying on something like civil war on a small scale in the north. How they originated, is a matter of dispute; but at any rate before they had long been in existence, the religious element became supreme-as it does sooner or later in every Irish movement; whatever temporary alliances may be formed for other reasons, religion always ultimately becomes the line of cleavage. In this case, the "Peep of Day Boys" were Protestants, the "Defenders" Roman Catholic. Some of the outrages committed by the Defenders were too horrible to put in print; many Roman Catholic families fled the country on account of the treatment which they received from the Peep of Day Boys, and took refuge among their co-religionists in the south.

But now a greater crisis was at hand. The terrible upheaval of the French Revolution was shaking European society to its foundation. The teaching of Paine and Voltaire had borne fruit; the wildest socialism was being preached in every land. Ulster had shown sympathy with Republican ideas at the time of the American War of Independence; and now a large number of the Presbyterians of Belfast eagerly accepted the doctrines of Jacobinism. Nothing can sound more charmingly innocent than the objects of the United Irish Society as put forward publicly in 1791; the members solemnly and religiously pledged themselves to use all their influence to obtain an impartial and adequate representation of the Irish nation in Parliament; and as a means to this end to endeavour to secure the co-operation of Irishmen of all religious persuasions. Some writers have tried to make out that if the Relief Act of 1793 had been extended in 1795 by another Act enabling Roman Catholics to become Members of Parliament; and if a Reform Bill had been passed making the House of Commons really representative, the society would never have been anything but a perfectly legal and harmless association. Of course it is always possible to suggest what might have been; but in this case it is far more probable that if Parliament had been so reformed as to be a fair reflex of the opinion of the country, it would immediately have passed a resolution declaring Ireland a Republic and forming an alliance with France; for whatever objects were stated in public, the real guiding spirits of the United Irish Society from the beginning (as of other societies of a later date with equally innocent names) were ardent republicans, who joined the society in order to further those views; it is absurd to suggest that men who were actually in correspondence with the leaders of the Directory and were trying to bring about an invasion from France in order to aid them in establishing a Republic on Jacobin lines would have been deterred by the passing of a Bill making it lawful for Roman Catholics to sit in Parliament. Nor again is it reasonable to contend that earnest-minded Roman Catholics would, in consequence of the failure of such a Bill to become law, have rebelled against a Government under which they were able to exercise their religion in peace and which was at that moment founding and endowing a College for the training of candidates for the priesthood, in favour of one which had confiscated the seminaries and was sending the priests to the guillotine. The fact seems to have been that the society was formed by Presbyterians, for political reasons; they tried to get the Roman Catholics to join them, but the lower class Roman Catholics cared very little about seats in Parliament; so the founders of the society cleverly added abolition of tithes and taxes, and reduction of rents, to their original programme; this drew in numbers of Roman Catholics, whose principles were really the very antithesis of Jacobinism.

It is a fair instance of the confusion which has always reigned throughout Irish politics, that after the Relief Act of 1793 had been passed, the Catholic Committee expressed their jubilation by voting £2,000 for a statue to the King, and presenting a gold medal to their Secretary, Wolfe Tone, who was at that moment scheming to set up a Jacobin Republic.

This celebrated man, Wolfe Tone, was not unlike many others who have posed as Irish patriots. Hating the very name of England, he schemed to get one appointment after another from the English Government-at one time seeking to be put in command of a filibustering expedition to raid the towns of South America, at another time trying for a post in India; hating the Pope and the priests, he acted as Secretary to the Catholic Committee; then hating Grattan and the Irish Parliament and everything to say to it, he showed his patriotism by devoting his energies to trying to persuade the French Republican Government to invade Ireland.

On the 21st of September, 1795, an incident occurred which, though apparently trivial at the time, was destined to be of great historical importance. Ulster had now for some time been in a state bordering on anarchy; not only were the secret societies constantly at war, but marauding bands, pretending to belong to one or other of the societies, were ravishing the country. Something like a pitched battle was fought between the Protestants and the Defenders, in which the Defenders, although they were the stronger party and made the attack, were utterly routed. In the evening, the victors agreed to form themselves into a society which should bear the name of William of Orange. There had previously been some societies called by that name; but this was the foundation of the Orange Society of the present day. The oath which at first was taken by every member of the society was to defend the king and his heirs so long as he or they support the Protestant ascendancy. (This conditional form of oath of allegiance has long since been abolished.) It was industriously circulated by the United Irishmen that the actual words of the oath were: "I will be true to the King and Government and I will exterminate as far as I am able the Catholics of Ireland." There is no evidence, however, that any words of the kind ever formed part of an oath prescribed by the Orange Society; and those who make the statement now must be aware that they are repeating a calumny.

After this time, the quarrel gradually tended more and more to become a religious one; the Peep of Day Boys becoming merged in the Orange Society, and the Protestants slowly withdrawing from the United Irish Society; on the other hand, the Defenders ultimately coalesced with the United Irishmen and thus, by an illogical combination of inconsistent forces, formed the party which brought about the terrible rebellion.

The close of the year 1796 was one of the most critical moments in the history of England. On the continent the power of republican France under the genius of Napoleon and his generals was sweeping all before it. England was in a state of bankruptcy, and almost as completely isolated as she had been in the time of Elizabeth. Wolfe Tone and his Irish plotters saw their opportunity as clearly as their predecessors had in the times of Edward Bruce and Philip II. They laid a statement of the condition of Ireland before the French Government which, though as full of exaggerations as most things in Irish history, was sufficiently based on fact to lead the French Government to believe that if a French force were landed in Ireland, the Irishmen in the British Army and Navy would mutiny, the Yeomen would join the French, and the whole of the North of Ireland would rise in rebellion.