“Again we shall address you, when the time is near that parliament is to assemble, and ask of you to announce to your representatives your opinions. We shall carefully make use of the intervening time to collect and concentrate the expression of your sentiments respecting each particular point of policy that should be pressed upon your members’ attention, as well as respecting the great leading principles of the national movement. Thus shall the ‘Council of National Distress and National Safety’ come to its labours with materials prepared and suitably digested, and thus be enabled all the readier and speedier to take, boldly and explicitly, its decisions and resolves, and maintain them firmly, undauntedly, and perseveringly in the British House of Commons. Thus shall the Irish members best show themselves to be worthy of the high trust with which they have been honoured, and of the far higher and prouder distinction of being again, and at no distant time, deputed to represent their beloved country in her restored native parliament.”
The representation that the relief England had given to the people was stinted, was a vile calumny, showing the utter want of principle of the party from which it emanated. The intimation that it was not the intention of government to do more; that the “stinted relief” which England gave was “out;” and that nothing but ruin remained, although rich England was at hand to save, if she were only charitable and just,—was well calculated to keep up disaffection in the public mind.
The success of the repealers at the elections might be supposed as tending to quiet the country, as it afforded a constitutional medium of expressing their views. But it had not that effect: the desire to procure arms which showed itself in 1846 continued through 1847, and notwithstanding the great distress so generally felt, the expenditure of money upon aggressive weapons was in some parts of the country larger than in the previous year.
BITTER DISPUTES BETWEEN “OLD IRELAND” AND “YOUNG IRELAND.”
The Young Irelanders were encouraged by the death of O’Connell to believe that they could take the lead in public affairs among the Roman Catholics, and they supposed that the Protestant population were more likely to listen to arguments in favour of an effort to achieve national independence, coming from them, than they were to hearken to the old repeal arguments from the Old Irelanders. In this they were disappointed; notwithstanding that several of the leaders were Protestants, no considerable number of that persuasion followed the new faction. The true tendency of that agitation was seen by the Protestants, who rather prepared to resist both the Old Ireland and Young Ireland parties, in the struggle which might be brought about by a coalition of these parties. Such a coalition was the policy of the Young Ireland party; but they made the doctrine of physical force a sine qua non in the creed of the coalesced parties; and the Old Irelanders, still clinging to the policy of their deceased chief, refused the terms. John O’Connell and his adherents were then made the objects of unsparing ridicule by the literati of the new party, and the lampoons and caricatures of which the chairman and committee of Conciliation Hall were the victims, told upon the people, and gradually insinuated a contempt for the weak and vacillating policy, as it was described, by which they were guided. The party of John O’Connell, as when under the guidance of his father, was not slow to resort to physical violence, whenever there was a chance of doing so with impunity, while they continued to proclaim the sanctity and permanent obligation of the O’Connell doctrine of moral force. The Young Irelanders endeavoured to reunite Irishmen to lift the arm of a manly and brave revolt against English connection. The Old Irelanders had no objection to kill scripture-readers, break church windows, waylay Protestants, and maltreat them at market or fair, and riotously disperse the assemblages of Young Irelanders, while they preached passive resistance as alone justifiable to the government. Of course the leaders of Old Ireland denounced all breakers of the laws; but when outrages were committed, especially on Young Irelanders or Protestants, they palliated them, or denied them in the face of evidence which was conclusive. John O’Connell found himself in a hurricane of political passion, which he could not quell, and through which he had neither power nor skill to direct his course. By the end of the year he found the reins of authority slipping through his hands; Smith O’Brien and his compeers were rampant; and Ireland, stained with blood, blackened with pestilence, exhausted by famine, raged with impotent fury against the imperial government and Great Britain: in all the folly of domestic faction, she was pitied and scorned by Great Britain when she supposed herself feared. There were no men amongst the leaders of the disaffected in Ireland to command the respect of England, in that sense which a dominant nation respects the power of a rival, or of an insurgent province. The wish became very extensive in Great Britain that all Irish grievances should be redressed, and that in every respect Ireland should be placed on a footing with the other portions of the United Kingdom, if in any a sense of injustice were experienced; but to the honest menaces of the Young Irelanders, and the hypocritical reliance on moral persuasion of Conciliation Hall, the people of Great Britain only gave their ear from curiosity, perfectly regardless of any power which any faction or union of factions might put forth. Great Britain awaited the outburst of passion which was in Ireland so rapidly coming to a crisis,’ as unmoved as the crag abides the eddies of the current which bubble and burst against it.
GENERAL STATE OF AFFAIRS IN GREAT BRITAIN.
This year was one which, in many respects, tested the power and resources of Great Britain. In her colonies she had conflicts to wage of great magnitude. Ireland was smitten with famine and disease, and turbulent. In the Highlands of Scotland the hardy peasantry suffered from the scarcity of provisions caused by the failure of the potato and other crops during 1846.
The commercial embarrassments of the year were felt from the beginning, and continued, with more or less pressure, to the close. From the operations of various causes, money was dear both on the European and American continents. Early in January, so severely was this circumstance felt in Paris, that the Bank of France applied to that of England for aid, which was granted; but the consequence, of course, was a rapid rise in the rate of interest in Great Britain and Ireland. This continued until all speculative transactions were paralysed. The timely increase in the price of accommodation by the Bank of England did much to mitigate the evils of the crisis. These were produced by recent bad harvests, and the failure of the potato crop. The great extent to which railway transactions had been carried, and the consequent drainage of capital; the wild speculations which began to prevail in France, and were so marvellously developed in England, also conduced to the monetary disturbance. Besides the operation of all these causes, there was an uneasy feeling on the continent connected with political affairs, which communicated itself to England, and made capitalists timid.