Weakness of the executive.
The executive machinery of the Government in Ireland was not strong enough to keep order. The outrages of the Catholics had frequently to be met by the voluntary efforts of their enemies, which soon degenerated into counter-outrages. Thus there arose in Munster a constant cruel war between the two religions. In the north of Ireland it was worse, for the hatred between the religions was there more pronounced. In dread of outrages similar to those of the south, the Protestants began, in the roughest and most illegal manner, to deprive the Catholics of arms, which indeed they had no right to carry; and the Catholics were driven to form themselves into lawless societies under the name of Defenders, in opposition to which there arose, about the year 1790, the organization of the Orange Lodges; and there, too, a cruel civil war began to be waged.
Effect of the French Revolution in Ireland.
While Ireland was in this miserable condition, while the liberty which the wretched peasantry had been promised had entirely disappeared, while the upper classes of all parties seemed in the last degree degraded, and the ascendancy of the useless and tyrannical Church fixed for ever, the great news of the French Revolution came. Even in more sober England men's hearts were stirred within them at the promise of the emancipation of the human race; among the suffering passionate Irish, with their impulsive and sanguine dispositions, the effect was far greater. But the class who were at first chiefly influenced by it were not the Roman Catholics—although, no doubt, for them too it seemed to promise at least a share in the franchise,—but the Northern Presbyterians and Dissenters, republican from their origin, and, from the very nature of their religious creed, equally oppressed with the Catholics by a proud and dominant Church, and more keenly alive to that abominable system of government which touched the Protestant more nearly than the Catholic, because he alone had any share in it. Ulster, and especially the town of Belfast, were the great centres of the republican and Jacobin feelings, together with Dublin, where, as was natural, the more lively, ambitious, and freethinking elements of society were chiefly to be found.
Difficulties of the Government.
There were thus to be somehow handled and managed by Government a strong, vicious, reckless, constitutional opposition, in connection with a few men honestly desiring the legislative independence of Ireland, and, as a necessary step, thorough parliamentary reform;—secondly, a great body of Catholics, of which the higher and more respectable part desired the gradual alleviation of their position, and joined with the Opposition, not from dislike to the English connection, but because the supporters of Government influence seemed inclined to refuse every demand; and of which the lower part, in wild misery and excitement, was waging a lawless war both in the north and south;—and thirdly, a very considerable body of men, dissenters of the North, and freethinkers of Dublin, who, touched by the influence of the French Revolution, desired an entire overthrow of the Government, and were willing to throw themselves into the arms of France for the destruction of the English connection.
Formation of the Society of United Irishmen.
It is plain that of these sections two were chiefly dangerous—the Roman Catholic peasant, who hated the Protestant, and the republican Protestant, who hated the Government and hated the Catholic also. While these were separate it might be possible to play off one against the other. In this the few reckless men who desired a complete change of Government saw the cause of their weakness. The most prominent of these was Wolfe Tone, a young barrister, the son of a Dublin coachmaker, who for personal reasons as he openly confessed—because certain suggestions of his had not been well received in England—was the determined enemy of everything English. Nominally a Protestant, really a freethinker, to him, and to several others like him, religious disputes appeared merely ridiculous; and the brilliant idea seized him of uniting those two sections of people which were really dangerous to England—the Northern Republican and the National Roman Catholic—and of thus forming the great Society of the United Irishmen. It was plain that great difficulties must arise in realizing such a scheme. Much as the Protestants of Ulster hated England, they undoubtedly hated Catholics more; much as the Catholics hated England, undoubtedly they hated Protestants more. Still, it might be the policy of both parties to bury for a time their great hatred, and to make common cause on that point which they had in common. Wolfe Tone and his republican friends, entirely careless of religion, formed an excellent connecting link. It was with this view that he betook himself to Belfast, to take advantage of a great celebration to be held there in honour of the anniversary of the destruction of the Bastille, and there established his Society, as he seems already to have done in part in Dublin. Its ostensible views as put forward in the programme were, that the weight of English influence was so great as to require the cordial union of the people of Ireland to maintain liberty, that the only constitutional way of opposing that influence was reform of Parliament, and that no reform was practicable which did not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion. Tone hoped, by thus setting prominently forward the advantages which each party was desirous of gaining, to win the adhesion of both.
But the Catholics themselves were not a wholly united body. Unable to find any more legitimate means of making themselves heard, they had, since 1782, intrusted their interests to a central committee at Dublin, consisting of some of the most important nobility and gentry of their party, as well as of others of a more violent stamp. The temper of the English Government was such, that fairly friendly relations subsisted between it and the Bishops and more educated part of the Catholics. Pitt was himself a friend to the Catholic claims in England. Many of the restrictions had been already removed from the Catholics in England and in Scotland, and neither Pitt nor the chief members of his Cabinet thought it impossible that the emancipation of the Irish should proceed by the same steps as in England. This feeling was rendered much stronger by the French Revolution. It seemed impossible that the dogmatic and highly organized Roman Church should become the champion of disorder and atheism, and Pitt hoped by attaching them to himself to find in them a support against the spread of the revolutionary principles which were his great dread. The Catholics thus became an object of contention to the extreme parties; on the one side the Nationalists and United Irishmen sought to win them by holding out hopes of regaining their supremacy by reform of Parliament, and of a consequent alienation from English policy which might well involve a complete change in the Act of Settlement, and the restoration of much property to its old Roman Catholic owners; and on the other side the English Government attempted to outbid its rivals, and to attach the Catholics more closely to the English interests, by granting them immediately a large measure of relief. As was natural, this auction terminated in a split among the Catholics themselves. In 1791 a portion of the Committee sent up very reasonable demands in a petition, signed by upwards of sixty names. These petitioners represented the moderate and better part of the Catholics, who would have been willing to accept the legitimate offers of the English Government; but the majority, inspired by the revolutionary feelings of the time, and eagerly desirous for the complete restoration of their position, refused to acknowledge the petition as their own, and drove the sixty signatories from the Committee. They then proceeded to play directly into the hands of Wolfe Tone, entering into close connection with the revolutionary society at Belfast, which they no doubt intended to use as a cat's-paw only, until they should attain that complete Catholic ascendancy, which could scarcely fail to result from a thorough Reform Bill if connected with the removal of religious disabilities.