It was this arrogance in the Castle servants, the result of their conscious strength in corruption, that scouted with contempt and insult, out of the Irish House of Commons in 1795, the petition of three millions of Catholics, fully and impartially represented. Was not this an aggression of administration against the people? And yet the partisans of that administration—nay, the first mover in it, has had the confidence to assert, that the discontents and tumults of the people preceded the measures of which they complain. Englishmen will determine, whether the Irish nation, consisting principally of Catholics, had or had not reason to be disgusted with the administration of the government under which they lived, when by the influence of that administration not only their wishes were not consulted, not only their general sense disregarded, but even their supplications spurned without a hearing from that body which professed to be, and which ought to be, their representatives.
If it be granted that such conduct in the popular representation of a nation was calculated to excite discontent and destroy confidence, what followed that transaction must have had a much more powerful tendency to alienate the affection of the people, and produce those direful consequences which are now boldly said to have arisen unprovoked. When the Irish Catholics perceived, from the manner in which their petition for the elective franchise was treated, that in the Irish House of Commons they were not to look for friends, they resorted to the Throne. The supplications which had met only with contumely when addressed to the Irish Commons, was received with favour by a British King, acting with the advice of a British Cabinet. In the next session, the speech from the throne recommended to the Irish Parliament to take into their consideration the situation of the King's Catholic subjects. No sooner was this hint received from the British Cabinet, than those very men, who but last year pledged their lives and fortunes to perpetuate the exclusion of the Irish Catholics from the privileges of freemen, because to admit them to share those privileges would be a subversion of the constitution and establishment, surrendered that opinion with as much promptness and facility as they had shewn violence and rancour in taking it up. Without any petition from the Catholics, without any change of circumstances, except the declaration of the will of the British Cabinet, that privilege which was last year refused with so much harshness and disdain, was this year spontaneously conceded!
Will any man who knows any thing of men and of the feelings and motives which actuate them, assert that there was any thing in this concession which should attach more firmly the Irish Catholics to the Irish House of Commons? Will he say that this was one of those gracious measures which an enlightened legislature would adopt to soften the exasperation of national discontent? Probably he will rather say, it was fitted to evince more strongly than ever the necessity of reforming the constitution of that assembly, which, from the inconsistency of its measures, appeared evidently the instrument of a foreign will, not the authentic organ of the national sense.
Let him, or them whose hot folly, whose rank bigotry, or whose petulant and stolid zeal led the Irish Commons into this disgraceful and contemptible situation, feel the blush of shame and confusion burn their cheek, when they reflect on these scenes. Let them, while it is yet in their power, atone to their offended country for the fatal consequences of their advice, before those records which are to inform future ages impress on their names for ever the indelible character of—PUBLIC ENEMY.
In speaking of these transactions I have not attended to chronological accuracy. There were other measures to which the administration of Ireland had resorted to prop up their power, and form a substitute for that legitimate strength which is to be found only in the chearful support of a contented people—there were other measures which they adopted to beat down the public voice, and overbear the general sense of the nation. Among these were wanton prosecutions of innocent and respectable men, sometimes for libels, which all publications were construed to be that dared to talk of reform as a good measure, or of constitutional rights as things to be desired; others for crimes of a deeper die—for sedition and for treason. The evidence adduced in support of these charges were often the vilest of the rabble, whose testimony on the trials was discredited even by themselves, and the prisoners discharged, to the honour of themselves and the detestation of their accusers. Such was the case of the Drogheda merchants, on whose trial came out proofs of subornation and perjury which would shock credibility. These, however, were but venial errors, compared with those more mortal sins against the constitution and against common right, with which the Irish administration stands charged—sins, which including a violation of general and vital principles, may be fairly reckoned among those great and leading causes which have reduced Ireland to the dreadful state of discontent and disorder in which she now stands.
Of these, one was the Convention Bill—a measure proposed by administration, and adopted by the Parliament of that day, for the avowed purpose of preventing the Catholics from collecting the sense of their body on a petition to Parliament, or to the Throne, for the elective franchise. This bill, if it did not annihilate a popular right, certainly narrowed it to a degree which, in a great measure, under the then existing circumstances, destroyed its efficacy. It had been one of the special pleading tricks of the Irish Court, when the people expressed their sense on particular measures, if there happened to be any variations of mode or sentiment in the application of different bodies, to take occasion, from these variations, to reject the whole as inconsistent. This scheme had been practised with much plausibility on the question of reform. No reform, they contended, was practicable, which would content the nation; because of the many petitions which had been presented from the different counties, cities, and towns in the country, and of the many plans which had been proposed, no two were found perfectly to correspond—as if when the general sense of the people was fully expressed, no attention should be paid to it, because there was not to be found in the various expressions of that sense that perfect coincidence which on a general question of morals or politics it is absolutely impossible to attain. It had also been boldly and shamelessly asserted by administration, in opposition to the most general and public declaration of the Catholic body, that the claim of the elective franchise was only the suggestion of a few turbulent agitators, and that the great bulk of the Catholics had neither solicitude nor desire about the matter. To give the lie to this hardy and absurd assertion, the Catholics resolved upon a measure which would put the matter beyond doubt, and by collecting into a focus the sense of their body, and expressing that sense in a simple and explicit manner, would take from their enemies the two great arguments by which they had defeated the popular applications for reform. Administration, however, were too vigilant to suffer the Catholics to get hold of this powerful weapon. The Convention Bill, by which all representative assemblies were made illegal, and punishable with the severest penalties, proposed in haste, and passed with precipitation, deprived them of the only means of giving to the legislature that simple and indubitable declaration of the general sense, which, however, the legislature insisted on as a necessary preliminary to hearing their complaints.
Here certainly was another of those measures which without any crime in the people of Ireland was levelled at one of their most valuable privileges. Let the people of England judge, whether under the circumstances I have mentioned, it was not likely to wound deeply the feelings of three-fourths of his Majesty's Irish subjects—and, combined as it was with the insulting rejection of the Catholic petition, and the subsequent concession, at the instance of the British Cabinet, of that favour which was refused to Irish supplication—let Englishmen say, whether it may not fairly be reckoned among the wanton and unprovoked causes of the present discontents.
The Convention Bill, however mischievous it may have been by aggravating the discontent which had already spread through the mass of the people, was yet more mischievous by stopping up that channel through which popular discontent discharges itself with most safety—that of petition and remonstrance. So little effect had been found to result from the petitions of individuals in the legislature on any of the great questions which in any degree interfered with the system adopted by administration, and in which they seemed resolved to persevere, that it was thought futile and absurd to resort to that mode of stating complaint or soliciting redress. If a corporation petitioned, they were answered only by an observation on the manner in which the petition was obtained, by contrasting it with other petitions procured by Castle influence, or by some sarcastic remark on their profession or character. If a body of citizens petitioned, they were porter-house politicians or bankrupt traders. There remained, therefore, no way in which the people could lay their complaints before the legislature, with any hope of relief, but in that general way of a representative body, which, while it gave weight and consistency to their application, obviated those pitiful arts by which the Castle continued to elude and frustrate the wishes of the people. The Convention Bill, by rendering that mode impracticable, compressed the public discontents, and while it encreased the irritation, left no vent to its violence but in assassination and conspiracy.