Handbook of Home Rule: Being Articles on the Irish Question

by Unknown

Thus by degrees those who sat in the Irish Houses came to feel both that they had a country, and that their country had claims upon them. The growth of a commercial interest in the Roman Catholic body must have accelerated the growth of this idea, as that interest naturally fell into line with the resistance to the English prescriptive laws. But the rate of progress was fearfully slow. It was hemmed in on every side by the obstinate unyielding pressure of selfish interests: the interest of the Established Church against the Presbyterians; the interest of the

Protestant laity, or tithe-payers, against the clergy; the bold unscrupulous interest of a landlords' Parliament against the occupier of the soil; which, together with the grievance of the system of tithe-proctors, established in Ireland through the Whiteboys the fatal alliance between resistance to wrong and resistance to law, and supplied there the yet more disastrous facility of sustaining and enforcing wrong under the name of giving support to public tranquillity. Yet, forcing on its way amidst all these difficulties by a natural law, in a strange haphazard and disjointed method, and by a zigzag movement, there came into existence, and by degrees into steady operation, a sentiment native to Ireland and having Ireland for its vital basis, and yet not deserving the name of Irish patriotism, because its care was not for a nation, but for a sect. For a sect, in a stricter sense than may at first sight be supposed. The battle was not between Popery and a generalized Protestantism, though, even if it had been so, it would have been between a small minority and the vast majority of the Irish people. It was not a party of ascendency, but a party of monopoly, that ruled. It must always be borne in mind that the Roman Catholic aristocracy had been emasculated, and reduced to the lowest point of numerical and moral force by the odious action of the penal laws, and that the mass of the Roman Catholic population, clerical and lay, remained under the grinding force of many-sided oppression, and until long after the accession of George III. had scarcely a consciousness of political existence. As long as the great bulk of the nation could be equated to zero, the Episcopal monopolists had no motive for cultivating the good-will of the Presbyterians, who like the Roman Catholics maintained their religion, with the trivial exception of the Regium Donum, by their own resources, and who differed from them in being not persecuted, but only disabled. And this monopoly, which drew from the sacred name of religion

its title to exist, offered through centuries an example of religious sterility to which a parallel can hardly be found among the communions of the Christian world. The sentiment, then, which animated the earlier efforts of the Parliament might be Iricism, but did not become patriotism until it had outgrown, and had learned to forswear or to forget, the conditions of its infancy. Neither did it for a long time acquire the courage of its opinions; for, when Lucas, in the middle of the century, reasserted the doctrine of Molyneux and of Swift, the Grand Jury of Dublin took part against him, and burned his book.[84] And the Parliament,[85] prompted by the Government, drove him into exile. And yet the smoke showed that there was fire. The infant, that confronted the British Government in the Parliament House, had something of the young Hercules about him. In the first exercises of strength he acquired more strength, and in acquiring more strength he burst the bonds that had confined him.

"Es machte mir zu eng, ich mussie fort."[86]

The reign of George IV. began with resolute efforts of the Parliament not to lengthen, as in England under his grandfather, but to shorten its own commission, and to become septennial. Surely this was a noble effort. It meant the greatness of their country, and it meant also personal self-sacrifice. The Parliament which then existed, elected under a youth of twenty-two, had every likelihood of giving to the bulk of its members a seat for life. This they asked to change for a maximum term of seven years. This from session to session, in spite of rejection after rejection in England, they resolutely fought to obtain. It was an English amendment which, on a doubtful pretext; changed seven years to eight. Without question some acted under the pressure of constituents; but only a minority of the members

had constituents, and popular exigencies from such a quarter might have been bought off by an occasional vote, and could not have induced a war with the Executive and with England so steadily continued, unless a higher principle had been at work.

The triumph came at last; and from 1768 onwards the Commons never wholly relapsed into their former quiescence. True, this was for a Protestant House, constituency, and nation; but ere long they began to enlarge their definition of nationality. Flood and Lucas, the commanders in the real battle, did not dream of giving the Roman Catholics a political existence, but to their own constituents they performed an honourable service and gave a great boon. Those, who had insincerely supported the measure, became the dupes of their own insincerity. In the very year of this victory, a Bill for a slight relaxation of the penal laws was passed, but met its death in England.[87] Other Bills followed, and one of them became an Act in 1771. A beginning had thus been made on behalf of religious liberty, as a corollary to political emancipation. It was like a little ray of light piercing its way through the rocks into a cavern and supplying the prisoner at once with guidance and with hope. Resolute action, in withholding or shortening supply, convinced the Executive in Dublin, and the Ministry in London, that serious business was intended. And it appeared, even in this early stage, how necessary it was for a fruitful campaign on their own behalf to enlarge their basis, and enlist the sympathies of hitherto excluded fellow-subjects.

It may seem strange that the first beginnings of successful endeavour should have been made on behalf not of the "common Protestantism," but of Roman Catholics. But, as Mr. Lecky has shown, the Presbyterians had been greatly depressed and distracted, while the Roman Catholics had now a strong position in the commerce of the country,

and in Dublin knocked, as it were, at the very doors of the Parliament. There may also have been an apprehension of republican sentiments among the Protestants of the north, from which the Roman Catholics were known to be free. Not many years, however, passed before the softening and harmonizing effects, which naturally flow from a struggle for liberty, warmed the sentiment of the House in favour of the Presbyterians.

A Bill was passed by the Irish Parliament in 1778, which greatly mitigated the stringency of the penal laws. Moreover, in its preamble was recited, as a ground for this legislation, that for "a long series of years" the Roman Catholics had exhibited an "uniform peaceable behaviour." In doing and saying so much, the Irish Parliament virtually bound itself to do more.[88] In this Bill was contained a clause which repealed the Sacramental Test, and thereby liberated the Presbyterians from disqualification. But the Bill had to pass the ordeal of a review in England, and there the clause was struck out. The Bill itself, though mutilated, was wisely passed by a majority of 127 to 89. Even in this form it excited the enthusiastic admiration of Burke.[89] Nor were the Presbyterians forgotten at the epoch when, in 1779-80, England, under the pressure of her growing difficulties, made large commercial concessions to Ireland. The Dublin Parliament renewed the Bill for the removal of the Sacramental Test. And it was carried by the Irish Parliament in the very year which witnessed in London the disgraceful riots of Lord George Gordon, and forty-eight years before the Imperial Parliament conceded, on this side the Channel, any similar relief. Other contemporary signs bore witness to the growth of toleration; for the Volunteers, founded in 1778, and originally a Protestant body, after a time received Roman Catholics into their ranks.