That such would be the consequence of this measure, administration were solemnly warned. It was urged on them, but without effect, that in every country where the freedom of remonstrance and complaint was denied, secret conspiracy or open insurrection took the place of angry but harmless petition. Italy was mentioned; and it was said, rather with the spirit of a prophet than a politician, that if this bill passed, Ireland would become more infamous for private assassination than Italy itself. The Society of United Irishmen was not yet become a clandestine or an illegal body—but it was foretold, that this bill would create clandestine and seditious meetings: for it was easy to see, that when discontented people were prevented from uttering their complaints, they would substitute other modes of redress for angry publication. But with the administration of Ireland, or the Irish House of Commons of that day, advice and remonstrance were vain. They boldly ventured on a measure of which these consequences were foreseen, yet now profess to wonder why such consequences have happened. On the folly of their counsels, then, the people of Ireland are justified in charging the assassinations—the sedition—the conspiracy, which have disgraced their country: they are not the native growth of her soil! They have been begotten only by insolence and injury upon the stifled indignation of a volatile and feeling people!
But the Convention act was not the only measure to which the party abusing the powers of government in Ireland resorted, to tame or to irritate the Irish people. The Gunpowder Bill, prior in order and time, which deprived the Irish subject in a great measure of the constitutional power of self-defence, prepared the minds of the people for receiving the full impression of the Convention act, which narrowed another of his rights. The attempt to annihilate the independence of the country, by insisting on the right of Britain to choose a regent for Ireland, and the subsequent attempt of the same kind in 1785 to substitute a commercial boon for the right of self-government, had already gone far toward producing a tendency to irritation in the people, which these more vital attacks completed.
Nor did even these measures, insidious, violent, and unconstitutional as they were, produce so much discontent as the tone and the spirit in which they were tarried into execution. The most insulting imputations on the loyalty, and even on the intellect of the nation, were daily made by the needy adventurers, whom chance, or perhaps infamous services, had raised to a place in the administration. The public prints were polluted by the foulest calumny against every man who had the virtue and the courage to oppose a system which he foresaw must eventually terminate in the ruin of the country. Some of the basest of mankind, distinguished, however, by more than usual talents for perversion and invective, were appointed to conduct those publications which were paid by the public money for abusing the national character. The Whig Club, consisting of noblemen and gentlemen who, by possessing large property and extensive connections in the country, felt themselves bound to oppose the mad measures of men who, as they were mostly foreigners, had no interest but to turn the present moment to most advantage, were held up to the public, both in and out of Parliament, as enemies to the tranquillity of the state, and anxious only, at all events, to raise themselves to power.
The conduct of administration to the Whig Club, indeed, deserves peculiar confederation, as it evinces, in the fullest manner, that it was not the irregular or unconstitutional proceedings of this or that body of men—of the Volunteer Convention, or of the United Irish Society—but the measures which these bodies recommended, against which the influence and force of government was turned. The Whig Club had formed themselves on the most constitutional and moderate principles. Their object was to obtain for the people of Ireland, by a concentration of their parliamentary influence and exertions, those laws by which the British constitution was guarded, against the encroachments of the executive power; and by the want of which in Ireland, her constitution seemed to have but a precarious existence at the pleasure of the Court. Such were a Pension Bill, for limiting the influence resulting to the Crown by an indefinite power of granting pensions—a Place Bill, to secure the independence of the House of Commons, by making the acceptance of office by a member a vacation of his seat—a Responsibility Bill, by which the men intrusted with the management of the public treasure, or enjoying high official situations in the government of the country, should be responsible to Parliament for their conduct and advice. These were the measures which the Club undertook at their formation to press upon minister. They subsequently adopted others on which the sense of the people became too generally known to be at all doubtful. The question of reform and Catholic emancipation they did not take up, until the nation called for them in a manner which proved the concession of them to be essential to the peace of the country.
Of the constitutionality of those measures which the Whig Club originally espoused, no man could entertain a doubt. They were the law of England. The manner in which these measures were urged by the Whig Club was equally constitutional. They brought them before Parliament by bill and by motion, supported by arguments which were answered only by majorities consisting of those placemen and pensioners, those borough members and irresponsible officers, against whose parliamentary existence they were levelled. This constitutional pursuit of constitutional measures—how did the Irish administration treat it? By imputing the worst motives to those by whom they were proposed—by impeaching their loyalty to their Sovereign—by the most open and bold avowal of the existence, and the necessity of corruption in the government—by the most contumelious indifference for the public voice, and, finally, by affixing the most disgraceful and irritating marks of suspicion on every nobleman and man of property in either house of Parliament, who dared to support those pretensions of the people to the benefits of the British constitution. The removal of that good and estimable character, the Earl of Charlemont, from the office of Governor of the County of Armagh—an office which might be considered as hereditary in his family, and to which his estate in that county gave him a kind of indefeasible right, is one instance of a number. It will ever be remembered as a damning proof of the foolish and wicked malignity of the Irish administration against the friends of the Irish people.
These arts of the Castle, however, were unable to counteract or repress the persevering effects of the Whig Club. It is not necessary in this place to enter into a defence of the motives of that body in thus contending for the interests of the public. It is sufficient that the measures which they patronized were in a high degree beneficial to the Irish nation; and whether they urged them from a wish to raise themselves to office, or from a principle of pure patriotism, was to the public immaterial. That they supported them zealously and faithfully, from whatever motive, was indubitable. So zealously and faithfully indeed did they exert themselves, that the very same men who had for years made a constant and violent opposition to those measures, exhausting every epithet of reprobation which the English language afforded, both against them and their supporters, yet at last found themselves obliged to concede them to the unrelaxing vigour of these gentlemen, supported by the general sense of the country. It is the concession of these measures that the friends of the Irish junto call "CONCILIATION!" These are the favours which they say Ireland has received, and which they contend ought for ever to have silenced popular complaint, and put a period to the demands of the country! Had they been yielded at an earlier time, before the long, long irritation which the obstinate refusal of them for several successive years had produced, they would have been received with gratitude by the nation, and the effect would have been general tranquillity and content. But the Irish administration knew neither how to concede nor withhold—their resistance was without strength, and their concessions without kindness. Like the Roman King and the Sybils, they withheld the price of public content, until the people, aggravated by refusal, insisted on still higher terms; and, indeed, rose in their demands, beyond what an administration, bankrupt in character and confidence, were able to grant them. What a Minister of comprehensive mind and enlarged views would have granted to the people with magnanimity at once, and what if thus granted, would have taken the tongue from discontent, and left disaffection no handle to use against the peace of the country, the Irish administration conceded piece-meal—one little measure after another—reluctantly and with hesitation; thus teaching the people that what was granted could not be withheld, and that the same means which had extorted one concession from the weakness of government would be equally successful in extorting others. Nay, at the very moment when they were yielding those measures to the perseverance of opposition, supported by the public sense, they continued to load those very men by whole exertions they had been obtained with scurrilous and foul invective; and while with one hand they affected to conciliate the people, with the other they scattered the seeds of disaffection widely through the land by the most inflammatory and ill-judged libels upon the country and its claims. Thus, in the hands of those men, the benignity of the Sovereign was perverted into an instrument of discontent, and those rich concessions which, if judiciously administered, would have bound Ireland to Britain by indissoluble ties, were made means of exciting in numbers of the inhabitants of that country a deep hatred of the British name and connection.
When Englishmen contemplate for a moment this picture of the "conciliation" which the Irish nation has received with so much ingratitude, it is possible they may conclude that nothing has happened which might not have reasonably been expected. Possibly they will think it not unnatural that the people should have received, with little sense of obligation, measures which were never conceded until they came to form only a small part of what was demanded as rights—and that they should rather feel indignant at the insult and abuse heaped on them by a few contemptible and obscure adventurers, than acknowledge gratitude for benefits long kept back, and, at length, reluctantly yielded.
I have dwelt thus long on the early conduct of the Irish administration for two reasons—the one to vindicate the people of Ireland from the insolent charge made against them by their enemies—"That conciliation had been tried in vain with that sottish and discontented people—that they had not intellect to understand, nor gratitude to acknowledge benefits—and that, therefore, the present system of unconstitutional coercion and deprivation was resorted to of necessity:"—the other was to shew, that whatever discontent has been recently shewn in Ireland, whatever crimes have been committed for political purposes, had their remote origin in that system by which the powers of government had been abused in Ireland for several years back. Whether I have succeeded in this attempt, I leave to Englishmen, who know and value freedom and constitution, to determine. For myself I shall only say, that my mind is incapable of feeling a greater degree of moral certainty, than that the people of Ireland are innocent of causeless discontent and of ingratitude; and that all the evils which now lacerate that unhappy country, (for the mere suppression of present discontents will not end the danger,) and threaten the mutilation of the empire, are the necessary and inevitable effects of the wicked system adopted by the weak, hot-headed, and petulant men to whom the administration of Ireland was entrusted, operating upon a generous and loyal but irritable and warm people.
But had the Irish junto rested at the point to which we have now come in describing their system, Ireland would not now have to appeal for pity or for aid to the British nation. It is the subsequent measures to which they resorted, and for which no precedent is to be found in the history of this or any other country pretending to laws, or rights, or constitution, that we complain of. It is by these that Ireland has been lashed into madness, and driven to crimes and to follies which her sober reason would have looked at with detestation. It shall be now my business to advert to those measures—to shew that they have generally preceded those crimes of the people which are alledged to have produced them—that they have been severe and desperate beyond what the necessity of the case called for—that their probable result will be a military despotism—that they cannot tranquillize the country but by the destruction of every degree of constitutional liberty—that, therefore, the people of Great Britain are interested in preventing the progress of that system in Ireland—and, finally, that if the two great objects of the public in Ireland were honestly and fully conceded, and if the people were re-instated in the blessings of the constitution by the establishment of a mild and just administration, peace and content would be restored to the country, disaffection would vanish, and the connection of the two islands become closer and more permanent than ever.
I have already mentioned the Convention and Gunpowder Acts, and the discontent which these laws had excited. Administration felt, that on these questions there was but one opinion amongst the people of Ireland. They perceived, that though these acts were of the strongest kind, their operation would not be adequate to the suppression of the existing and encreasing discontent; and they therefore resorted to a device, which, having been but too often and too successfully tried in Ireland on former occasions, would, it was hoped, be equally successful at present. A religious feud was excited, and suffered to rage without check or intermission, until it nearly desolated a whole county. Some petty quarrels had, a considerable time back, taken place in the county of Armagh, between a few Catholics and Presbyterians, which, however, produced no serious mischief, and were almost instantly terminated either by the interposition of the magistrates, or by the mutual compromise of the parties. Subsequent to this, the county of Armagh enjoyed the most profound tranquillity, until about this period a party started up on the sudden, without visible motive, without provocation, and, to the surprize of the people in Ireland, commenced a most outrageous and unaccountable persecution of the Catholic inhabitants. It would shock the ears of an Englishman, and, perhaps, exceed his belief, were I to give a minute detail of the ferocious barbarities which were committed by this party. It may suffice to say, that under the name of Orange-men, and under colour of attachment to the constitution and affection for the Protestant establishment, they not only burned the houses and destroyed the persons of numbers of the unfortunate Catholics in the heat of blood and fervour of outrage, but with a cool and settled system proceeded to banish the whole of them. Entire districts were proscribed in a night. Labels were affixed on all the Catholic houses in a village, with the words "To Connaught or to Hell!" Nor was the threat vain;—for in numberless instances where the unfortunate inhabitants refused to obey the mandate, their habitations were pulled down or burned by these bravadoes of the constitution, happy if they thus escaped personal destruction. In many cases these outrages were accompanied by plunder; but plunder did not seem to constitute any part of the system under which the Orange-men acted, unless perhaps the plunder of arms, to deprive the Catholics of which was one of their proposed objects.