The Catholics were a good deal dispirited in 1805, by the overwhelming majority by which their petition of that year was refused to be referred to a committee. In 1806, they contented themselves with simply addressing the Duke of Bedford, on his arrival at Dublin. In 1807, the "No-Popery Cabinet," by the result of the elections, was placed in possession of an immense majority—a fact which excluded all prospects of another change of government. But the Committee were too long accustomed to disappointments to despair even under these reverses. Early in the next session their petition was presented by Mr. Grattan in the Commons, and Lord Donoughmore in the Lords. The majority against going into committee was, in the Commons, 153; in the Lords, 87. Similar motions in the session of 1808, made by the same parties, were rejected by majorities somewhat reduced, and the question, on the whole, might be said to have recovered some of its former vantage ground, in despite of the bitter, pertinacious resistance of Mr. Perceval, in the one House, and the Duke of Portland, in the other.
The short-lived administration of Mr. Fox, though it was said to include "all the talents," had been full of nothing but disappointment to his Irish supporters. The Duke of Bedford was, indeed, a great improvement on Lord Hardwicke, and Mr. Ponsonby on Lord Redesdale, as Chancellor, and the liberation of the political prisoners confined since 1803 did honour to the new administration. But there the measures of justice so credulously expected, both as to persons and interests, ended. Curran, whose professional claims to advancement were far beyond those of dozens of men who had been, during the past ten years, lifted over his head, was neglected, and very naturally dissatisfied; Grattan, never well adapted for a courtier, could not obtain even minor appointments for his oldest and staunchest adherents; while the Catholics found their Whig friends, now that they were in office, as anxious to exact the hard conditions of the Veto as Castlereagh himself.
In truth, the Catholic body at this period, and for a few years subsequently, was deplorably disorganized. The young generation of Catholic lawyers who had grown up since the Relief Act of '93 threw the profession open to them, were men of another stamp from the old generation of Catholic merchants, who had grown up under the Relief Act of 1778. In the ten years before the Union, the Catholic middle class was headed by men of business; in the period we have now reached, their principal spokesmen came from "the Four Courts." John Keogh, the ablest, wisest and firmest of the former generation, was now passing into the decline of life, was frequently absent from the Committee, and when present, frequently overruled by younger and more ardent men. In 1808, his absence, from illness, was regretted by Mr. O'Connell in an eloquent speech addressed to the Committee on the necessity of united action and incessant petitions. "Had he been present," said the young barrister, "his powers of reasoning would have frightened away the captious objections" to that course, "and the Catholics of Ireland would again have to thank their old and useful servant for the preservation of their honour and the support of their interests." It was a strange anomaly, and one which continued for some years longer, that the statesmen of the Catholic body should be all Protestants. A more generous or tolerant spirit than Grattan's never existed; a clearer or more fearless intellect than Plunkett's was not to be found; nobler and more disinterested friends than Ponsonby, Curran, Burroughs and Wallace, no people ever had; but still they were friends from without; men of another religion, or of no particular religion, advising and guiding an eminently religious people in their struggle for religious liberty. This could not always last; it was not natural, it was not desirable that it should last, though some years more were to pass away before Catholic Emancipation was to be accomplished by the union, the energy and the strategy of the Catholics themselves.
CHAPTER III.
ADMINISTRATION OF THE DUKE OF RICHMOND (1807 TO 1813).
Charles, fourth Duke of Richmond, succeeded the Duke of Bedford, as Viceroy, in April, 1807, with Lord Manners as Lord Chancellor, John Foster, Chancellor of the Exchequer—for the separate exchequer of Ireland continued to exist till 1820—and Sir Arthur Wellesley as Chief Secretary. Of these names, the two last were already familiar to their countrymen, in connection with the history of their own Parliament; but the new Chief Secretary had lately returned home covered with Indian laurels, and full of the promise of other honours and victories to come.
The spirit of this administration was repressive, anti-Catholic and high Tory. To maintain and strengthen British power, to keep the Catholics quiet, to get possession of the Irish representation and convert it into a means of support for the Tory party in England, these were the leading objects of the seven years' administration of the Duke of Richmond. Long afterwards, when the Chief Secretary of 1807 had become "the most high, mighty and noble prince," whom all England and nearly all Europe delighted to honour, he defended the Irish administration of which he had formed a part, for its habitual use of corrupt means and influence, in arguments which do more credit to his frankness than his morality. He had "to turn the moral weakness of individuals to good account," such was his argument. He stoutly denied that "the whole nation is, or ever was corrupt;" but as "almost every man of mark has his price," the Chief Secretary was obliged to use corrupt influences "to command a majority in favour of order;" however the particular kinds of influence employed might go against his grain, he had, as he contended, no other alternative but to employ them.
With the exception of a two months' campaign in Denmark—July to September, 1807—Sir Arthur Wellesley continued to fill the office of Chief Secretary, until his departure for the Peninsula, in July, 1808. Even then he was expressly requested to retain the nominal office, with power to appoint a deputy, and receive meanwhile the very handsome salary of 8,000 pounds sterling a year. In the wonderful military events, in which during the next seven years Sir Arthur was to play a leading part, the comparatively unimportant particulars of his Irish Secretariate have been long since forgotten. We have already described the general spirit of that administration: it is only just to add, that the dispassionate and resolute secretary, though he never shrank from his share of the jobbery done daily at the Castle, repressed with as much firmness the over-zeal of those he calls "red-hot Protestants," as he showed in resisting, at that period, what he considered the unconstitutional pretensions of the Catholics. An instance of the impartiality to which he was capable of rising, when influenced by partisans or religious prejudices, is afforded by his letter dissuading the Wexford yeomanry from celebrating the anniversary of the battle of Vinegar Hill. He regarded such a celebration as certain "to exasperate party spirit," and "to hurt the feelings of others;" he, therefore, in the name of the Lord-Lieutenant, strongly discouraged it, and the intention was accordingly abandoned. It is to be regretted that the same judicious rule was not at the same time enforced by government as to the celebration of the much more obsolete and much more invidious anniversaries of Aughrim and the Boyne.
The general election which followed the death of Fox, in November, 1806, was the first great trial of political strength under the Union. As was right and proper, Mr. Grattan, no longer indebted for a seat to an English patron, however liberal, was returned at the head of the poll for the city of Dublin. His associate, however, the banker, La Touche, was defeated; the second member elect being Mr. Robert Shaw, the Orange candidate. The Catholic electors to a man, under the vigorous prompting of John Keogh and his friends, polled their votes for their Protestant advocate; they did more, they subscribed the sum of 4,000 pounds sterling to pay the expenses of the contest, but this sum Mrs. Grattan induced the treasurer to return to the subscribers. Ever watchful for her husband's honour, that admirable woman, as ardent a patriot as himself, refused the generous tender of the Catholics of Dublin. Although his several elections had cost Mr. Grattan above 54,000 pounds—more than the whole national grant of 1782—she would not, in this case, that any one else should bear the cost of his last triumph in the widowed capital of his own country.
The great issue tried in this election of 1807, in those of 1812, 1818, and 1826, was still the Catholic question. All other Irish, and most other imperial domestic questions were subordinate to this. In one shape or another, it came up in every session of Parliament. It entered into the calculations of every statesman of every party; it continued to make and unmake cabinets; in the press and in every society, it was the principal topic of discussion. While tracing, therefore, its progress, from year to year, we do but follow the main stream of national history; all other branches come back again to this centre, or exhaust themselves in secondary and forgotten results.
The Catholics themselves, deprived in Ireland of a Parliament on which they could act directly, were driven more and more into permanent association, as the only means of operating a change in the Imperial legislature. The value of a legal, popular, systematic, and continuous combination of "the people" acting within the law, by means of meetings, resolutions, correspondence, and petitions, was not made suddenly, nor by all the party interested, at one and the same time. On the minds of the more sagacious, however, an impression, favourable to such organized action, grew deeper year by year, and at last settled into a certainty which was justified by success.