An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800

by Mary Francis Cusack

On the 1st of January, 1801, a new imperial standard was exhibited on London Tower, and on the Castles of Dublin and Edinburgh. It was formed of the three crosses of St. George, St. Patrick, and St. Andrew, and is popularly known as the Union Jack. The fleur de lis and the word France were omitted from royal prerogatives and titles; and a proclamation was issued appointing the words Dei Gratia, Britaniarum Rex, Fidei Defensor. The Dublin Gazette of July, 1800, contained the significant announcement of the creation of sixteen new peerages. The same publication for the last week of the year contained a fresh list of twenty-six others. Forty-two creations in six months were rather an extensive stretch of prerogative; and we cannot be surprised if the majority of the nation had more respect for the great untitled, whose ancestry were known, and were quite above accepting the miserable bribe of a modern peerage.

Strangely enough, from the very day on which the Union was proclaimed, the Catholic question became a ministerial difficulty. Pitt's administration failed on this very point, although it had seemed invincible a few weeks before. The obstinacy of the King, which, indeed, almost amounted to a monomania, was the principal cause. He made it a personal matter, declared it the "most jacobinical thing he had ever heard of;" and he informed the world at large that he would consider any man who proposed it his personal enemy. Pitt resigned. Opinions varied as to his motives. He returned to office in 1804, having promised that he would not again press the subject; and he adhered to his determination until his death. The Irish nobles, who had worked hardest to carry the Union, were somewhat disappointed as to the result. Lord Clare was told by the Duke of Bedford, that the Union had not transferred his dictatorial powers to the Imperial Parliament. He retired to Ireland deeply chagrined, and was soon borne to his grave, amid the revilings of the people whom he had betrayed. Lord Castlereagh, who had been less accustomed to command, and had less difficulty in stooping to conquer, succeeded better with his English friends, and in a few years he ruled the cabinets of Europe; while the Iron Duke, another Irishman, dictated to their armies.

In 1803 the flame of insurrection again broke out, and again French aid was expected, and the expedition ended in disappointment. Napoleon himself regretted that he had turned his armies towards Egypt, instead of towards Ireland. Emmet's career was brief, and would probably have been almost forgotten, but for his famous speech at the moment of receiving sentence, and for the history of his love and her devoted attachment to his memory.

In 1805 Grattan entered the Imperial Parliament, at the request of Fox. An English constituency was found for him. At the same time, Plunket was brought into the house by Pitt; and thus these two famous men, the one so full of the brilliant, and the other so full of the powerful, gifts of mental science, again pleaded their country's cause together, and in perfect harmony, though differing on some political points. When Grattan first rose to address the British Senate, there was a hushed attention to his every word; as his eloquence kindled with his subject, there were suppressed murmurs of approbation; when he had concluded, there were thunders of applause. His subject was a petition from the Irish Catholics, which was presented to both Houses in 1805. The division gave 339 to 124 against going into committee; still it was something gained, when Englishmen even listened to Irish grievances, or made some effort to understand them.

The Veto was now suggested. The object of this was to allow the crown a passive voice, if not an active one, in the nomination of Catholic bishops. Happily for the Catholic Church in Ireland, the proposal was steadily rejected, though with a determination which brought even members of the same Church into collision. Connexion with the State might have procured temporal advantages, but they would have been in truth a poor compensation for the loss of that perfect freedom of action so essential to the spiritual advancement of the Church.

The Duke of Richmond came to Ireland in 1807, with Sir Arthur Wellesley as Chief Secretary. The young man, whose fame was yet unattained, showed himself as clearheaded in the cabinet as in the camp. He made every attempt to suppress the party demonstrations which have been the curse of Ireland, and induced the Wexford people to discontinue their annual celebration of the battle of Vinegar Hill. If he could have suppressed a few other anniversaries in the north, it would have been a blessing to the United Kingdom. In 1806 Mr. Grattan was returned for Dublin, and generously refused the sum of £4,000, which his constituents had collected to pay his expenses. The Catholic question was now constantly coming up, and more than one cabinet was formed and dissolved according to the views of the different members on that matter. A new element of vitality had been introduced by the relaxation of the penal laws. Men were no longer afraid to ask for a grace which they wanted, lest they should lose a grace which they had. The people found that they might speak their real opinions without apprehensions of attempts at conversion in the shape of pitchcaps and half-hangings; and when the people were ready for a leader, the leader was ready for the people; and Daniel O'Connell took the place in the guidance of the Irish nation, which he will never lose in their memory and in their affections.

The history of Ireland and the life of O'Connell are convertible terms for five-and-forty years. O'Connell represented Ireland, and Ireland was represented by O'Connell. We have had our great men and our good men, our brave men and our true men; but, to my poor thinking, the greatest of our men was O'Connell—for who ever approached him in his mighty power of ruling a nation by moral suasion only? the best of our men was O'Connell, for who dare assert that he was ever unfaithful to his country or to his country's faith? the bravest of our men was O'Connell, equally fearless in every danger, moral or physical; and the truest of our men was O'Connell, dying of a broken heart in a faraway land, because he saw his country's cause all but ruined—because he knew that with his failing breath one of his country's surest helpers would pass from her for ever. A thoughtfully written "History of the life and Times of O'Connell," by some one really competent to do justice to the subject, is much wanted. I believe that posterity will do justice to his memory as one of the best and noblest patriots which the world has ever seen—a justice which as yet has been scarcely accorded to him as fully as he has merited. Had O'Connell accomplished no other work for Ireland than this—the giving of a tone of nationality and manliness to the people—he had accomplished a most glorious work. He taught Irishmen that chains do not make the slave, but rather the spirit in which the chains are worn. He awoke, in the hearts of his countrymen, that love of freedom, which is the first step towards making a successful effort to obtain it. He showed them how they might intimidate their oppressors without injuring themselves—a lesson eminently necessary where the oppressors are incomparably more powerful than the oppressed.

The sept of O'Connell, from which this noble man was descended held a prominent position among the early Milesian clans. Pure Celtic blood ran in his veins; the fire of Celtic wit sparkled in his utterances; the lighthearted happiness of a Celtic spirit guided his actions; and the undaunted bravery of a Celtic warrior's courage looked out of his clear beaming eye. A nobleman, in truth, was Daniel O'Connell—a nobleman of whom any nation might justly be proud—a nobleman to whom we must hope that Ireland will yet raise some monument of enduring fame. The O'Connell sept were driven from their ancestral homes, in 1172, by Raymond, Strongbow's son-in-law. Their territory lay along the Shannon. They were now compelled to take refuge in a wild and desolate part of Kerry, too wild and too desolate to attract English cupidity. A MS. is still preserved in the British Museum, written by one of the O'Connell family; it is in the Irish language, and bears date 1245. In this document mention is made of a Daniel O'Connell, who proceeded to the north of Ireland, at the head of a large body of men, to resist an invading force. The Celts were successful; and when they had won the day, the chieftain and his vanquished foes feasted together. In 1586 Richard O'Connell was High Sheriff of Kerry; but, from the accession of William III., until the illustrious Liberator obtained some degree of freedom for his country, all the O'Connells were prescribed from positions of emolument, for having held with unswerving fidelity to the old faith.

O'Connell was born on the 6th of August, 1775, "the very year," as he himself says, in a letter to the Dublin Evening Post, "in which the stupid obstinacy of British oppression forced the reluctant people of America to seek for security in arms, and to commence that bloody struggle for national independence, which has been in its results beneficial to England, whilst it has shed glory, and conferred liberty, pure and sublime, on America." He was educated at St. Omers, and it is said manifested some inclination for the priesthood; but there can be no doubt that his vocation lay in another direction, as he was incomparably too deeply religious and too thoroughly honest not to have obeyed the call of God at any cost, had such a favour been vouchsafed to him. It is said, whatever his dislike of physical force may have been in after-life, that he unquestionably knew how to use the argumentum baculinum in his early days; and that more than one student was made to feel the effects thereof, when attempting ill-natured jokes on the herculean Celt. During his residence abroad he had some opportunities of witnessing the fearful effects of the French Revolution; and it is probable that a remembrance of these scenes, added to his own admirably keen common sense, saved him from leading his countrymen on to deeds of open violence. He was called to the Irish bar in the memorable year of 1798. For some time he failed to obtain practice; for who would confide their case to a young Catholic lawyer, when the fact of his creed alone would be sufficient to condemn his client in the eyes of Protestant juries, judges, and attorneys? His maiden speech was made in opposition to the Union, even as his life was spent in the most strenuous efforts to obtain the reversal of that most fatal measure. A meeting was held in the Royal Exchange, Dublin, at the close of the year 1799, to petition against it; but even as O'Connell was denouncing, in his most eloquent language, the new attempt at national degradation, Major Sirr and his file of military rushed into the apartment, and separated the assembly. O'Connell now retired into private life, and, with the marvellous foresight of true genius, devoted himself to storing up that forensic knowledge which he felt sure he should one day use for the benefit of his countrymen.

One of the most important instances in which O'Connell's legal acumen saved the lives of his countrymen, is known as the "Doneraile Conspiracy;" and as all the facts are eminently illustrative of the history of Ireland at that period, and of the character and abilities of one of her most distinguished sons, I shall relate the circumstances. Several Protestant gentlemen in the neighbourhood of Doneraile, had been making those abortive efforts to "convert" their tenants from Popery, which usually end in no small amount of ill-feeling on both sides; another of these gentlemen, with equal zeal and equal want of common sense and common humanity, had devoted himself to hunting out real or supposed rebels. This gentleman had at last brought on himself an armed attack, for which he deserved little pity. He contrived, however, to capture one of his assailants, who, of course, was hung. The gentlemen having thus excited the unfortunate peasantry, pointed to the results of their own folly as though these results had been the cause of it; and an informer came forward, who, with the usual recklessness of his atrocious class, accused some of the most respectable farmers of the district of having entered into a conspiracy to murder the Protestant gentlemen,—a cruel return certainly had it been true, for their earnest efforts to convert the natives from "the errors of Popery to those of the Protestant Church." A special commission was sent down; the wildest excitement prevailed on all sides; and, as was usual in such cases, the bitterest prejudice against the unfortunate accused. The Solicitor-General led for the crown: the defence was a simple denial. In such cases the examination of the approvers is the great point for the accused, and should be confided to the ablest counsel. One of the unfortunate prisoners was a respectable farmer, aged seventy, of whom the highest character was given. But it was all in vain; after five minutes' deliberation, the jury gave in the verdict of guilty. As the men were to be made an "example of," they were sentenced to be hanged in six days. This was on Saturday. The next lot of prisoners was to be tried at nine o'clock on Monday morning. There was one universal cry for "O'Connell," from the great multitude who knew these poor victims were perfectly innocent. On Saturday night a farmer mounted the best horse that could be found in Cork, and, after a night of incessant riding, he reached Derrynane Abbey on Sunday morning at nine o'clock. His name was William Burke: let it be transmitted with all honour to posterity! He told his errand to one who never listened unmoved to the tale of his country's sorrows and wrongs; and he assured O'Connell that, unless he were in Cork by nine next morning, the unfortunate prisoners, "though innocent as the child unborn," would all be hanged. The great man at once prepared for his journey; and so wild was the joy of Burke, so sure was he that there would now be a hope, if not a certainty, of justice, that only the earnest entreaties of O'Connell could induce him to remain a few hours to rest his weary horse. On the same good horse he set out again, and reached Cork at eight o'clock on Monday morning, having travelled 180 miles in thirty-eight hours. Scouts had been posted all along the road to watch the man's return: even as he passed through each little village, there was an anxious crowd waiting the word of life or death. "O'Connell's coming, boys!" was enough; and a wild cheer, which rent the very mountains, told how keenly an act of justice could be appreciated by the most justice-loving people upon earth. And O'Connell did come. He has himself described the sensations of that midnight journey, through all the autumn beauties of the most beautiful scenery in the United Kingdom. And then he exclaims: "After that glorious feast of soul, I found myself settled down amid all the rascalities of an Irish court of justice."