The breach of negotiations at Lisle was followed on the 17th of October by the completion of the Peace of Campo Formio, which had been begun by the Preliminaries of Léoben. This peace secured to France the possession of Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine, and the Ionian Isles, and acknowledged the establishment of the Cisalpine Republic, consisting of the provinces conquered in Italy from the Austrians, the Pope, and Venice; while Austria received in exchange Venice itself and its eastern provinces, Friuli, Istria, and Dalmatia. France thus lay not only triumphant in Europe, but with the Rhine for its frontier, and for outposts four republics pledged to uphold its revolutionary ideas. But in acquiring this position the rights of peoples had been trampled upon, Switzerland had been appended to France, the occupation of Rome had seemed to give colour to the assertion that the Revolution was atheistical, and the whole turn of events was such as to justify, even to necessitate, subsequent European interference.
Complications attending Irish difficulties.
The peculiar manner in which Ireland has been conquered, peopled, and managed, renders questions regarding this country most intricate and difficult. There is seldom a single interest to be traced which is not crossed by numerous side winds, which render the development of political questions crooked and complicated. The Roman Catholic interest, the Protestant interest, the old Irish interest, the Anglo-Irish interest, the interest of the English ascendancy, the claims of the Presbyterians as contrasted with the National Church, are constantly crossing and recrossing. At no time was this complication so great or this difficulty so insoluble as in the years which followed the breaking out of the French Revolution.
Necessity for the Union.
There is one thing, however, which tends to throw a certain light upon the conduct of the Government of England during these years of difficulty. Pitt and his more intimate friends had already firmly decided in their own minds that one cure only was possible for Irish evils—a close and complete legislative union with England. The action of the Whig Government in 1782 had been ostensibly in exactly the opposite direction; the triumph of Grattan and the volunteers had been won when legislative disunion was granted, and what we should now speak of as Home Rule established. The party which triumphed on that occasion was not the Irish party, or the Catholic party, but the Protestant aristocracy. The anti-national character and exclusive nature of the party in power was shown by the rejection of all Pitt's efforts at parliamentary reform. The independent Irish Parliament was indeed full of able speakers; men who carried the art of rhetoric and of clothing little thought in magnificent language to the highest pitch. But it is not unfair to take as a sample of the practical excellence of the management of what we may speak of as the Home Rulers, the condition of the Foundling Hospital in Dublin. It was a noble institution; about £16,000 a year was spent on it; 120 noblemen and wealthy gentry were on its committee; yet after just ten years of Irish management, a committee of inquiry reported that out of upwards of 2000 infants yearly consigned to its care, the average that survived was 130. They were sent up in scores, in open baskets, from distant parts of Ireland, and arrived crushed and half lifeless, to be tossed aside, without care or inquiry, into the kennel. Twenty-one committee-men formed a quorum, yet never once, except when places were to be given away, had that quorum met, and for years the treasurer, to whom the management had been confided, had been absolutely bedridden. All that can be alleged in excuse for the bad management, of which this is a sample, is that the Constitution of 1782 had not been thoroughly tried. Deprived by law of its power in the Irish Parliament, yet conscious of the impossibility of allowing the country to act as if completely independent, the Government had had recourse to indirect influence for establishing its power. While the franchise and the representation, all official places and all professions, except the medical profession, were exclusively confined to the Protestants, who were also the possessors of nineteen-twentieths of the soil, Government had found it possible by bribery, direct or indirect, to command a constant majority in Parliament of those who were eager to uphold the English connection and the Protestant ascendancy. But the very fact of its thus acting had placed a considerable portion of the Protestant population in opposition to Government.
Irish opposition to Government.
Among the Protestants themselves there were formed two great parties, who may be called roughly Whigs and Tories; on the one side those placemen and pensioners who supported the English Government, and on the other those aristocratic families and connections (probably by no means purer or higher-minded than their opponents) who wished, as the Whig aristocracy had wished in England, to be masters of the Government, and to rule Ireland almost as a separate nation. Of these great connections the typical men were, of the Tories, the family of the Beresfords, led by the ability of Fitzgibbon the Chancellor, and of the Whigs, the family of the Ponsonbys, led by the genius of Grattan. Around the Opposition party there naturally collected those men who were really reformers at heart, and the Opposition was thus enabled to use cries and watchwords which were not only specious and plausible, but which really touched the great evils of the country. The first of these evils was the preposterous amount of Government influence; and the obvious way in which that influence might be reached was by a reform of Parliament, for nothing could be more abominable than the arrangement by which members were elected. It was worse even than in England; by far the larger number of seats were either private or Government property, and nominees were appointed under distinct conditions, and their votes secured by distinct and well-understood bargains; every man's price and every man's expectation were actually entered like a list of merchandise in the Government books. A second point was the fact, that not only all political power, but till the year 1793 almost all social position was denied to the Roman Catholics. On the first of these points the opponents of Government were agreed; they were perfectly willing, for the sake of injuring Government, to press constantly for a large reform bill. On the second point there was a far greater difference of opinion. Grattan, though himself a Protestant and a friend to the Protestant ascendancy, was great enough to urge constantly the relief of his Catholic fellow-countrymen; but the great majority of his friends, however much they might from time to time for political purposes uphold the Catholic claims, were in fact thoroughly opposed to anything which would injure their own Protestant ascendancy. There was thus a sort of show of union between the Protestant nationalists and the Catholics, but at heart disunion and dislike.
Grievances of the peasantry.
Meanwhile, whatever effect upon the Protestant population Home Rule may have had, it had not in the slightest degree alleviated the position of the Irish peasants. Their landlords were still Englishmen, Protestants, conquerors, and harsh landlords. The Church of England still demanded its tithes. The aristocracy and gentry had neglected their duties till, as has been well said, they forgot they had duties to perform; they were hopelessly corrupt, both morally and politically. The independence which the peasantry were taught by the inflated language used in Parliament to believe they had already acquired seemed to them a bitter deception; and their belief in the villany of the rulers who had tricked them, and in the complete slavery and hardship of their own position as Roman Catholics, was envenomed by the expressions which the Opposition allowed itself to use in its assaults on Government. They were thus ripe for rebellion. Indeed, for many years they had been filling Ireland with outrages. All sorts of combinations had been made against rent-collectors and tithe-proctors. In Munster arose the Society of the White Boys and the followers of Captain Right. Combinations were also directed against the farmers of taxes, who most shamelessly abused their position. Absenteeism was the curse of Ireland. While the middleman of the absentee landlord racked the wretched cotter for his rent, the middleman of the absentee parson racked him for his tithes. They were in the habit of taking their payments in interest-bearing bonds, and when the wretched peasant was unable to meet those bonds, he became practically the slave of the tithe farmer, who compelled him to do his farm work for him as the price of his forbearance to put the law in execution.