Such is a brief outline of the Fitzwilliam affair. No event could have been more unfortunate. It led Irish patriots and the Whigs at Westminster to inveigh against the perfidy and tyranny of Pitt. He was unable to publish documents in his own defence, while Fitzwilliam crowned his indiscretions by writing two lengthy letters charging the Cabinet with breach of faith and Beresford with peculation. Nominally private, they were published at Dublin, with the result that Pitt and Camden were held up to execration and contempt. On reviewing this question, we may conclude that Pitt erred in not procuring from Fitzwilliam a written statement that he would make no sweeping changes at Dublin, either in regard to men or measures, without the consent of the Cabinet. It is, however, clear that Ministers regarded the verbal understanding with Fitzwilliam as binding; for Grenville, Portland, Spencer, and Windham sided with Pitt in this painful dispute, Portland's chilling behaviour to the Earl on his return marking his disapproval of his conduct.
Never did a Lord-Lieutenant enter on his duties under auspices more threatening than those besetting the arrival of Camden on 31st March 1795. After the swearing-in ceremony the passions of the Dublin mob broke loose. Stones were flung at the carriages of the Primate and Fitzgibbon. The rabble then attacked the Speaker's residence and the Custom House, and not till two of their number fell dead under a volley of the soldiery did the rioters disperse. The rebellion which Fitzwilliam predicted on his departure seemed to be at hand.
Camden, on whom this storm was to burst three years later, was not a strong man. He entered on his duties doubtfully and before long sent requests for his recall on account of his family concerns. He might well quail at the magnitude of his task. His instructions bade him by all available means discourage the claims of the Catholics, and rally the discouraged Protestants. Thereafter he might conciliate the Catholics by promising relief for their parochial clergy, the foundation of a seminary for the training of their priests, and some measure of education for the peasantry. The instructions ended thus: "Moderate, soothe, conciliate these jarring spirits. We have great confidence in your judgment, firmness, discretion."[480] The despatch refutes the oft-repeated assertion that the Ministry sought to inflame the animosities of Protestants and Catholics in order to force on the Union. That was the outcome of the whole situation; but in the spring of 1795 Ministers hoped to calm the ferment, which they rightly ascribed to the imprudence of Fitzwilliam. Their forecast for a time came true. In the first debates at Dublin the lead given by Camden's able Secretary, Pelham, served to close the schism in the Protestant ranks. Despite the vehement efforts of Grattan, his Bill for the admission of Catholics was thrown out by a majority of more than one hundred; and Ireland entered once more on the dreary path of reaction.
In the hope of softening the asperities of Irish life, Pitt favoured the plan of founding a seminary for the training of Catholic priests in Ireland. The proposal was alike one of justice and expediency; of justice, because the expense of training Irish priests in foreign seminaries had been a sore burden to their co-religionists; and of expediency, because the change promised to assuage the anti-British prejudices of the priests. Moreover, amidst the sweeping triumph of secularism in France and Belgium, most of the seminaries frequented by Irish youths had disappeared. The chief objections urged against the scheme were the narrowness of view certain to result from the curriculum of a semi-monastic institution, and the desirability of educating priests at Trinity College along with Protestants. On these grounds we must regret Pitt's decision to found a separate training college, albeit at first intended for the education of lay youths as well. The considerations above set forth, however, prevailed; and the chief legislative result of the year 1795 at Dublin was the charter establishing Maynooth College. Undoubtedly it was the outcome of Pitt's desire to pacify Catholic Ireland; but the unhappy conditions of the ensuing period told heavily against success. Indeed, as Wolfe Tone predicted, that institution fostered insular patriotism of a somewhat narrow type.
The trend of things in the years 1795–7 set steadily towards rebellion. The discontent was most threatening among the sturdy Presbyterians of Ulster, chafed as they were by the exaction of tithes by the Protestant Established Church. The founders and the ablest leaders of the League of United Irishmen were Protestants. For a time they aimed merely at a drastic measure of Parliamentary Reform similar to that advocated by English Radicals. But the disappointment of the hopes of Grattan and Irish Whigs in the spring of 1795 exasperated all sections of reformers and impelled the League towards revolutionary courses. Sops like Maynooth they rejected with scorn; and at the close of that year, after the passing of certain repressive measures, their organization became secret; they imposed an oath on members and gradually devised means for organizing the whole of Ireland in brotherhoods, which by means of district and county delegations, carried out the behests of the central committee at Dublin.
Yet their system was far from absorbing the whole of the nation. The vivacity of the Celt and the hardness of the Saxon tell against close union; and where the two races dwell side by side, solidarity is a dream. Now, as always, in times of excitement the old animosities burst forth. The Catholic peasantry banded together in clubs, known as Defenders, to glut their hatred upon Protestant landlords and tithe-reaping clergy. Their motives seem in the main to have been agrarian rather than religious; but, as in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught the dividing lines between landlords and peasants were almost identical with those between Protestants and Catholics, the land feud became a war of creed. The ensuing horrors, midnight attacks, cattle-maiming, and retaliation by armed yeomanry, exerted a sinister influence upon Ulster, where the masses were fiercely Protestant. Certain of the Catholic villages were ravaged by Protestant Peep o' Day Boys, until the Irishry fled in terror to the South or West, there wreaking their vengeance upon squires and parsons. By degrees the Peep o' Day Boys became known as Orangemen, whose defiant loyalty sometimes caused concern to Camden and Pitt; while the Defenders joined the better drilled ranks of United Ireland, which therefore became a preponderatingly Catholic body.
Thus affairs revolved in the old vicious circle. Feuds, racial, religious, and agrarian, rent Ireland asunder. Disputes about land have ever sunk deep into the brooding imagination of the Celt; and the memories of holdings absorbed, or of tithes pitilessly exacted in lean years, now flashed forth in many a deed of incendiarism or outrage. To Camden there appeared to be only one means of cure, coercion. An Indemnity Act was therefore passed to safeguard squires and yeomen who took the law into their own hands. Then followed the Insurrection Act, for disarming the disaffected, and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act for strengthening the arm of the law.
The outcome was that the United Irishmen turned towards France. Even in the year 1793 the Republic sent agents into Ireland to stir up revolt. Nothing definite came of those efforts, except that a section of Irish patriots thenceforth began to strive for separation from Great Britain. Early in 1796 Wolfe Tone proceeded to Paris to arrange for the despatch of a French auxiliary corps. On 20th April General Clarke, head of the Topographical Bureau at the War Office, agreed to send 10,000 men and 20,000 stand of arms. The mercurial Irishman encountered endless delays, and was often a prey to melancholy; but the news of Bonaparte's victories in Italy led him to picture the triumph of the French Grenadiers in Ireland.[481]
Another interesting figure is that of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Sprung from the ancient line of the Geraldines, and son of the Duke of Leinster, he plunged into life with the gaiety and bravery of a Celt. After serving with distinction in the British army in America he returned, became a member of the Irish Parliament, and in 1790 during the acute friction with Spain, received from his uncle, the Duke of Richmond, an introduction to Pitt, who offered him the command of an expedition against Cadiz. Nothing came of the proposal; but the incident reveals the esteem in which the chivalrous young officer was held. He soon married Pamela, the reputed daughter of the Duke of Orleans and Mme. de Genlis, whence he himself was often dubbed "Egalité." The repressive policy of Camden made him a rebel; and in May 1796 he made his way to Hamburg, hoping to concert plans for a French invasion. There he was joined by Arthur O'Connor, who impressed Reinhard with a sense of ability and power. Together the two Irishmen travelled to Basle, where they induced Barthélemy to favour their scheme. Meanwhile the French Directory entered into the plan of Wolfe Tone; the mission of Fitzgerald had no direct result, apart from the revelation of his plan to a travelling companion, who had been the mistress of a British Minister, and now forwarded a description of it to London.[482]
Meanwhile Wolfe Tone had sketched the outline of the enterprise to Clarke and General Hoche, predicting to the latter, the commander-elect, that he would "amputate the right hand of England for ever."[483] As is well known, Hoche's expedition to Bantry Bay at the close of the year 1796 was an utter failure; and the sterner spirits in Ulster believed that the French had designed that it should end so. The malcontents therefore relaxed their efforts for a time, until, in the spring following, the mutinies in the British fleet aroused new hopes. It seems probable that their intrigues had some effect on events at the Nore. In quick succession United Ireland despatched to Paris two delegates, named Lewins and McNevin, to concert plans for another landing. The Directory sent an agent to treat with the League. Fitzgerald met him in London, and declared that the Irish Militia and Yeomanry would join the French on their landing. The United Irishmen also sought help from Spain.[484]