A hasty glance at the history of Ireland during Thomas Moore's youth will help us to understand how this man with the gentle nature and the sweet lyric gift was the first to rouse English poetry from its engrossed preoccupation with nature, to impress it into the service of liberty, and to give the start to political poetry.
Moore was born in May 1779. The years of his early youth were the period of the revolting events now to be related. From the time when the English Government showed, by the appointment of Lord Camden as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1795), that it had abandoned the humaner policy of 1782, the Society of United Irishmen, a powerful political organisation, which had hitherto aimed at the emancipation of the country by lawful means, completely changed its character. The separation of Ireland from England became its aim; it had dreams of the establishment of an Irish Republic. But there were two powerful elements of dissension in the country itself, namely, the existence of two races, hostile to each other, and the strong animosity in the lower classes between Protestants and Catholics. To put an end to the disturbances and riots which were constantly resulting from these internal dissensions, the Government formed a force of Protestant constabulary, 37,000 strong. These troops were permitted, under the pretence of searching for concealed weapons, to capture, torture, and put to death any unfortunate person whom an enemy, or any ruffian whatever, chose to accuse of suspicious behaviour. Hundreds of unoffending people, who were guilty of no other offence than professing the creed of their fathers, were flogged until they were insensible, or made to stand upon one foot on a pointed stake, or were half hanged, or had the scalp torn from their heads by a pitched cap. Militia and yeomanry, as well as the regular troops, were billeted in private houses; and this billet appears to have been construed as an unlimited license for robbery, devastation, ravishment, and, in case of resistance, murder. It was boasted by officers of rank that within certain large districts no home had been left undefiled; and upon its being remarked that the sex must have been very complying, the reply was that "the bayonet removed all squeamishness."[1]
It was not surprising that the despair induced by such proceedings drove numbers of the most peaceable and sensible Irishmen into the arms of a secret society, which sent Lord Edward Fitzgerald (whose biography Moore wrote with such warm admiration) as its deputy to France, to arrange with General Hoche for the landing of a French army in Ireland at the time appointed for a general rising of the Irish rebels. Grattan, the old, passionless leader of the national party, refused to countenance foreign interference, and retired from public life in despair over the latest plans both of the rulers and the oppressed. The Irish patriots elected a governing body, a species of Directoire, which was negotiating with France for the loan of money and troops, when all its plans were discomfited by the treason of a single Catholic Irishman. His name, which deserves to be remembered, was Reynolds. Moore undoubtedly had this man in his mind when he wrote the description, in The Fire-worshippers, of the base betrayal of the rebel chief to the Mohammedans.[2]
Lord Edward Fitzgerald was in bed when the soldiers forced their way into the house where he lay hidden. A reward of £1000 had been offered for his head. Although undressed, and with no weapon but a sword, he defended himself for a long time against three fully armed English officers, of whom one received three and another fourteen wounds; the third disarmed him with a pistol-shot, and he was taken to prison. Fitzgerald was acquainted with the most distinguished of the French revolutionists; he was a friend of Thomas Paine; and his wife was a charming daughter of Philippe Egalité. He carried on a steady correspondence with France; and had he not died in prison, he would have been executed. It speaks well for Moore's courage and independent judgment, that, though he belonged to a circle in which Fitzgerald was regarded as a traitorous madman, he paid him all the honour due to his heroism.
The rebels having thus lost their leader, the prospect of a general rising was at an end; but the Government took the opportunity to treat persons suspected of sedition with a cruelty bordering on frenzy. Martial law was proclaimed, and those employed to administer it are described by English historians as "a set of ignorant, bloodthirsty ruffians, who first, by torture and promises of pardon, converted Catholic prisoners into witnesses against the accused, and then treated them in the most shameful manner." The first notable man who fell a victim to this species of justice was a peaceable member of the party which desired reform by lawful means, Sir Edward Crosbie. He was hanged, and his body mutilated afterwards. It was not the difference of religion which excited the cruel passions of these torturers, for all the best leaders of the United Irishmen (Fitzgerald, O'Connor, Harvey, Thomas Emmet) were Protestants, who unselfishly embraced the cause of their Catholic countrymen; it was the Anglo-Saxons' old race-hatred of the Celts.
The Government chose as its chief tool a man who was known to be such an ignorant, ferocious partisan that any degree of violence might be expected of him. This was Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, a small proprietor, who in 1799 was appointed High Sheriff. His plan of ingratiating himself with his employers was to seize persons whom he chose to suspect, and, by dint of the lash and threats of instant death, to extort confessions of guilt and accusations of other persons. So abject was the terror of the peasantry who were abandoned to the mercy of this miscreant, that they fell on their knees before him. I give two examples of his manner of proceeding, chosen from the many which were made public during the lawsuit brought against him for having abused his authority—the result of which was, of course, his acquittal with honour.
He received a poor teacher of languages (Wright by name), who, hearing that he was "suspected," had come to the court-house of his own accord, with the order to fall upon his knees and receive his sentence. "You are a Rebel," said the Sheriff, "and a principal in this rebellion. You are to receive five hundred lashes, and then to be shot." The poor man begged for time, and was so rash as to ask for a trial. This aroused Fitzgerald to fury, and Wright was hurried to the flogging-ladders. Fitzgerald himself dragged his fainting victim by the hair, kicked him, and slashed him with a sword. Fifty lashes had been inflicted, when an English Major came up and asked what Wright had done. The Sheriff answered by flinging him a note, taken from Wright's pocket. It was in French, a language of which Fitzgerald was wholly ignorant, and proved to be an excuse for inability to fulfil a professional engagement. Major Riall assured Fitzgerald that the note was perfectly harmless; nevertheless the lash continued to descend until the victim's entrails were visible through the flayed flesh. The hangman was then ordered to apply his thongs to a part of the body which had not yet been torn.
This case of Wright's was one of those which created the greatest sensation during the proceedings against the Irish High Sheriff. But "the trial," says Massey, "would not have been complete had not an Orange parson been called on the part of the defendant to swear that this notorious bloodshedder, who throughout Ireland was called 'flogging Fitzgerald,' was a mild and humane man." The fact that the Government, contrary to the principles of the constitution, had given a special permission at the time of his appointment for the employment of torture, made it easy for him to triumph over all his denouncers. Addressing the jury as defendant, he actually boasted of having flogged several persons under circumstances more aggravated than those before the court. He mentioned one man who had cut his throat to escape the horrors and ignominy of torture. It remains to be told that Judkin Fitzgerald received a special pension as reward of his services, and was, after the Union, made a baron of the United Kingdom.
One more specimen of the proceedings during the suppression of the rebellion must be given; it furnishes an idea of the impressions received by Moore during the years when he was ripening into manhood.—"A part of the Mount Kennedy corps of yeomanry were, on an autumn night in the year 1798, patrolling the village of Delbarg, in the county of Wicklow. Two or three of the party, led by Whollaghan, one of their number, entered the cottage of a labouring man named Dogherty, and demanded if there were any bloody rebels there. The only inmates of the cabin were Dogherty's wife, and a sick lad, her son, who was eating his supper. Whollaghan asked if the boy was Dogherty's son, and, being told that he was—'Then, you dog,' said Whollaghan, 'you are to die here.' 'I hope not,' answered the poor lad; and begged, if there were any charge against him, that he might be tried. Whollaghan, with a volley of abuse, raised his gun and pulled the trigger twice, but the piece missed fire. A comrade then handed him another gun; and the mother rushed at the muzzle to shield her son. In the struggle the piece went off, and the ball broke young Dogherty's arm. When the boy fell, the assassins left the cabin; but Whollaghan returned, and seeing the lad supported by his mother, he cried out: 'Is not the dog dead yet?' 'O yes, sir,' cried the poor woman, 'he is dead enough.' 'For fear he is not,' said Whollaghan, 'let him take this.' And with deliberate aim he fired a fourth time, and Dogherty dropped dead out of his mother's arms. Whollaghan was tried for murder. The real defence was that the prisoner and his companions had been sent out with general orders from their officer to shoot any one they pleased. The court seem to have been of opinion that such orders were neither unusual nor unreasonable. They found 'that the prisoner did shoot and kill one Thomas Dogherty, a rebel'; but acquitted him of any malicious or wilful intention of murder."