Forty summers have closed around the United Irishmen since they made catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform the leading measures of their policy. They found all the catholics of Ireland, the great majority of its population, reduced by the operation of the ferocious penal laws, to the condition of slaves, in all things but being vendible, to the very meanest of their protestant countrymen. Not only did the British Government embrace every severity that could waste the vigour of the nation, but all the rights of humanity, and every duty of life were sacrificed by its direction or connivance, provided only that this would promote the self interest, or gratify the rancour of the favoured party.
There was a law of discovery, by which a man who betrayed the confidence of his friend, if he were catholic, possessed himself of that friend’s estate. There was a law which disabled the catholic father to be guardian to his own child, or to educate him. There was a law which made the disobedience or apostacy of the catholic child the means whereby to disinherit his father. There was a law for robbing a catholic of his horse on the highway, if, when interrogated, he confessed his faith. There was a law to prevent the education of catholic children, and to punish catholic teachers as convicts; to banish the catholic clergy, and to hang them if they returned: to prevent catholics from purchasing or inheriting landed estates: from having arms for their defence: to debar them from the profession of the law: to prevent them from holding any office of trust, honour or emolument, voting at elections, or sitting in parliament.
The United Irishmen found their country under government of those laws, and of perhaps a hundred more, all conceived in the same spirit, and all elaborated with consummate skill to rob, harass, and insult a defenceless people. Those statutes, without parallel for their inhumanity, were framed against christians, under pretence of securing the protestant religion. They were enacted by the Irish protestants, political protestants, than whom no sect has cried more loudly against persecution, when protestants were the martyrs. For all this the protestant religion is not persecuting in its nature. The crimes of the dominant party are not justly chargeable upon the protestant religion, though committed in its name. They were bitterly deplored by the United Irishmen of all religions, and by none more than the subject of this memoir, himself a member of the established church, but no abettor of its injustice.
Through all this long persecution, the conduct of England wore a vizor of hypocrisy. It was not the conversion of the Irish it desired, but their spoliation, division and subjection. If united in religion, they might unite for their worldly interest, and a means of weakening them by dissension would be lost. The English mission never had the merit of even being honestly fanatical; it was cold-blooded and crafty. Its conduct was not feebly palliated by the mistaken sincerity of blind zeal, which time might soften and philosophy assuage. It had the more terrestrial motives of insatiable rapacity, the appetite for plunder, and the desire of battening on the green pastures of Ireland. This is the eating canker which neither time nor reason ever cures, and which is now as devouring, where it has the power, as at the first hour.
After the laws had disfranchised four-fifths of the population, all the emoluments of office, all the wealth of the richest church in the world, all the distinctions of power, all the pomp, circumstance, and advantages of dominion, fell into the lap of the favoured few. These men never wished to lessen the pretext of their gains; they never sought the conversion of their helots by any means that ever made proselytes to any cause.
The domestic spoliation of the catholics was the share of the Irish protestants in this wholesale robbery. The spoliation of the Irish nation was the part of England in this boundless plunder: she took the whole trade, prosperity, and independence of Ireland, which the Irish protestants freely surrendered for the license to pillage and tyrannize at home. These wrongs inflicted and endured, begat mutual hatred and frequent collision, and will account for the little union among Irishmen, and the ferocity of character to be found in those districts where the adverse parties came oftenest into contact.
This barter of a nation’s rights for the lucre of a faction, is what was called the protestant ascendancy in church and state. It was also called the British constitution. Against that impious combination of treachery within, and tyranny from without, the United Irishmen pointed their oath of union—“To forward a brotherhood of affection, a community of rights, an identity of interests, and a union of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion.” It was this oath that was prosecuted as a felony, and for which frequent victims were sent to the scaffold.
Emmet did not live to behold the triumph of the catholic cause, that happy accomplishment of one of the great measures to which he devoted fortune and life. But he saw, or thought he saw, all the materials for a successful struggle for freedom, in the internal resources of his beloved Ireland. In his moments of social ease and retirement, he delighted to enumerate those resources. A writer who seems to have known him well, gives us the following conversation between Emmet and his friends while he was maturing his measures for the coming contest.
‘I have seldom spent a happier hour in my life, than I did that evening with Emmet. His manners, his eloquence, and the sincerity, as well as kindness, which breathed through every thing he said, banished reserve on my part, and we all conversed more like long-tried friends than casual acquaintances. We talked of literature, of London, and of politics. My sentiments regarding Liberty—the goddess he idolized—were warm; and, as I spoke with becoming abhorrence of tyranny, he seemed delighted with my opinions. Before we separated he made me promise to call on him that night at his lodgings; and when I did so, about eight o’clock, I was agreeably surprised to find the Exile there before me. After supper the conversation took a political turn, and Emmet, whose mind was then filled with the project of liberating his country, began to expatiate on the ease with which Ireland could throw off the English yoke, and the benefits that would ensue from such a measure.’
‘Your enthusiasm, my friend,’ said I, interrupting him, ‘carries you beyond the bounds of probability; for, in anticipating a revolution in this country, you forget that England calculates on the subjection of Ireland, and that she is able to compel what it is her interest to desire.’