In the year 1796, the father of the young member had been raised to the earldom of Londonderry, and his son became Viscount Castlereagh. In the next year his career as a statesman began; he was appointed by Lord Camden, (brother-in-law of the second Earl of Londonderry,) Keeper of the Privy Seal of Ireland.
The conduct of the Irish administration had long wanted the first quality for all governments, and the indispensable quality for the government of Ireland,—firmness. It has been said that the temper of the Irish is Oriental, and that they require an Oriental government. Their wild courage, their furious passion, their hatred of toil, and their love of luxury, certainly seem but little fitted to a country of uncertain skies and incessant labour. The Saracen, transported to the borders of the Atlantic, might have been the serf, and, instead of waving the Crescent over the diadems of Asia, might have been cowering over the turf-fire of the Celt, and been defrauded of the pomps of Bagdad and the spoils of Jerusalem. The decision of one of the magnificent despotisms of the East in Ireland might have been the true principle of individual progress and national renown. The scimitar might have been the true talisman.
But the successive British administrations took the false and the fatal step of meeting the wild hostility of Ireland by the peaceful policy of England. Judging only from the habits of a country trained to the obedience of law, they transferred its quiet formalities into the midst of a population indignant at all law; and, above all, at the law which they thought of only as associated with the swords of the soldiers of William. The government, continually changing in the person of the Viceroy, fluctuated in its measures with the fluctuation of its instruments; conceded where it ought to have commanded; bartered power, where it ought to have enforced authority; attempted to conciliate, where its duty was to have crushed; and took refuge behind partisanship, where it ought to have denounced the disturbers of their country. The result was public irritation and cabinet incapacity—a continual rise in the terms of official barter, pressing on a continual helplessness to refuse. This could not last—the voice of the country was soon an uproar. The guilt, the folly, and the ruin, had become visible to all. The money-changers were masters of the temple, until judicial vengeance came, and swept away the traffickers, and consigned the temple to ruin.
When we now hear the cry for the return of the Irish legislature, we feel a just surprise that the memory of the old legislature should have ever been forgotten, or that it should ever be recorded without national shame. We should as soon expect to see the corpse of a criminal exhumed, and placed on the judgment-seat of the court from which he was sent to the scaffold.
The Marquis of Buckingham, once a popular idol, and received as viceroy with acclamation, had no sooner dared to remonstrate with this imperious parliament, than he was overwhelmed with national rebuke. The idol was plucked from its pedestal; and the Viceroy, pursued by a thousand libels, was glad to escape across the Channel. He was succeeded by the Earl of Westmoreland, a man of some talent for business, and of some determination, but by no means of the order that "rides the whirlwind, and directs the storm." He, too, was driven away. In this dilemma, the British cabinet adopted the most unfortunate of all courses—concession; and for this purpose selected the most unfitting of all conceders, the Earl Fitzwilliam—a man of no public weight, though of much private amiability; sincere, but simple; honest in his own intentions, but perfectly incapable of detecting the intentions of others. His lordship advanced to the Irish shore with conciliation embroidered on his flag. His first step was to take the chief members of Opposition into his councils; and the immediate consequence was an outrageousness of demand which startled even his simple lordship. The British cabinet were suddenly awakened to the hazard of giving away the constitution by wholesale, and recalled the Viceroy. He returned forthwith, made a valedictory complaint in parliament, to which no one responded; published an explanatory pamphlet, which explained nothing; and then sat down on the back benches of the peerage for life, and was heard of no more. The Earl was succeeded by Lord Camden, son of the celebrated chief-justice, but inheriting less of the law than the temperament of his father. Graceful in manner, and even aristocratic in person, his councils were as undecided as his mission was undefined. The aspect of the times had grown darker hour by hour, yet his lordship speculated upon perpetual serenity. Conspiracy was notorious throughout the land, yet he moved as tranquilly as if there were not a traitor in the earth; and on the very eve of a conflagration, of which the materials were already laid in every county of Ireland, he relied on the silent spell of the statute-book!
The secretary, Mr Pelham, afterwards Lord Chichester, wanted the meekness, or disdained the short-sightedness of his principal; and, on the first night of his official appearance in the House, he gave at once the strongest evidence of his own opinion, and the strongest condemnation of the past system; by boldly declaring that "concessions to the Catholics seemed only to increase their demands; that what they now sought was incompatible with the existence of a British constitution; that concession must stop somewhere; and that it had already reached its utmost limit, and could not be allowed to proceed. Here he would plant his foot, and never consent to recede an inch further."
The debate on this occasion continued during the night, and until eight in the morning. All that fury and folly, the bitterness of party and the keenness of personality, could combine with the passionate eloquence of the Irish mind, was exhibited in this memorable debate. The motion of the popish advocates was lost, but the rebellion was carried. The echo of that debate was heard in the clash of arms throughout Ireland; and Opposition, without actually putting the trumpet to their lips, and marshalling conspiracy, had the guilty honour of stimulating the people into frenzy, which the Irishman calls an appeal to the god of battles, but which, in the language of truth and feeling, is a summons to all the sanguinary resolves and satanic passions of the human mind.
The secretary, perhaps foreseeing the results of this night, and certainly indignant at the undisciplined state of the legislative council, suddenly returned to England; and Lord Castlereagh was appointed by his relative, the Viceroy, to fill the post of secretary daring his absence. The rebellion broke out on the night of the 23d of May 1798.
In the year 1757, a committee was first established for the relief of Roman Catholics from their disabilities by law. From this justifiable course more dangerous designs were suffered to follow. The success of republicanism in America, and the menaces of war with republican France, suggested the idea of overthrowing the authority of government in Ireland. In 1792, his Majesty's message directed the repeal of the whole body of anti-Romanist statutes, excepting those which prohibited admission into parliament, and into thirty great offices of state, directly connected with the confidential departments of administration. The Romish committee had already extended their views still farther. The well-known Theobald Wolfe Tone was their secretary, and he prepared an alliance with the republicanised Presbyterians of the north, who, in 1791, had organised in Belfast a club entitled "The United Irishmen."