The Irish Protestants had an unanswerable case against England—that is, as between them and her—on this matter of disestablishment. It was, on her part towards them, an open, palpable, and flagitious breach of faith—breach of formal treaty in fact. The articles of the Union in 1800 expressly covenanted that the maintenance of the Irish Church establishment was to be one of the cardinal, fundamental, essential, and everlasting conditions of the deed. Mr. Gladstone snapped his fingers at such considerations. “Mind, you thereby repeal and annul the Union,” cried Irish conservatives. “We will kick another crown into the Boyne,” said Parson Flanagan at an Orange meeting. “We have held by this bargain with you with uneasy consciences,” said and wrote numbers of sincere Irish Protestants; “break it, and we break with you, and become Irishmen first and before everything.”
It was rightly judged by thoughtful observers that, though noisy braggarts of the Parson Flanagan
class would not only let the crown alone, but would cringe all the more closely by England’s side even when the church was swept away, there was much of sober earnestness and honest resolve in what hundreds of Protestant laymen (and even clergymen) spoke upon this issue. Yes, though the bulk of Irish Protestants would prove unequal to so rapid a political conversion, even under provocation so strong, there would still be a considerable movement of their numbers towards, if not into, the Irish camp. Time, moreover, and prudent and conciliatory action on the part of their Catholic countrymen, would be always increasing that rapprochement.
And so in the very chaos and disruption and upheaval of political elements and parties in Ireland from 1868 to 1870 there was, as by a mysterious design of Providence, a way made for events and transformations and combinations which otherwise would have been nigh impossible.
The church was disestablished; Irish Protestants were struck with amazement and indignation. England had broken with them; they would unite with Ireland. But, alas! no; this was, it seemed, impossible. They could never be “Fenians.” No doubt they, after all, treasured in their Protestant hearts the memory, the words, and, in a way, the principles of their great coreligionists, Grattan and Flood, Curran and Charlemont. In this direction they could go; but towards separation—towards an “Irish republic,” towards disloyalty to the crown—they would not, could not, turn their faces. These men belonged in large part to a class, or to classes, never since 1782 seen joining a national movement in any great numbers. They were men of high position; large landed proprietors,
bankers, merchants, “deputy-lieutenants” of counties, baronets, a few of them peers, many of them dignitaries of the Protestant church, some of them fellows of Trinity College. Such men had vast property at stake in the country. They saw a thousand reasons why Irishmen alone should regulate Irish affairs, but they would hold by a copartnership with Scotland and England in the empire at large. This, however, they concluded, was not what the bulk of their countrymen was looking for; and so it almost seemed as if they would turn back and relapse into mere West-britonism as a lesser evil for them than a course of “rebellion” and “sedition.”
At this juncture there appeared upon the scene a man whose name seems destined to be writ large on the records of a memorable era in Irish history—Isaac Butt.
When, on Friday evening, the 15th of September, 1865, the British government seized the leading members of the Fenian Society and flung them into Richmond jail, it became a consideration of some difficulty with the prisoners and their friends how and by whom they should be defended. In one sense they had plenty of counsel to choose from. Such occasions are great opportunities for briefless advocates to strike in, like ambitious authors of unacted plays who nobly offer them to be performed on Thanksgiving day or for some popular public charity. No doubt the prisoners could have had attorneys and lawyers of this stamp easily enough; but it was not every man whom they would trust equally for his ability and his honesty. Besides, there was the money difficulty. The crown was about to fight them in a costly law duel. To retain men
of the front rank at the bar would cost thousands of pounds; to retain men of inferior position would be worse than useless. Could there be found amongst the leaders of the Irish bar even one man bold enough and generous enough to undertake the desperate task and protracted labor of defending these men, leaving the question of fee or remuneration to the chance of funds being forthcoming? What of the great advocates of the state trials of 1843 and 1848? Holmes—clarum et venerabile nomen—dead! Shiel—gone too; Whiteside—on the bench; O’Hagan—also a judge; Sir Colman O’Loghlen—a crown prosecutor; Butt—yes, Butt, even then in the front rank, the most skilful, the boldest, the most eloquent, and most generous of them all—he is just the man! Where is Butt?
Where, indeed? He had to be searched and sought for, so utterly and sadly had a great figure silently disappeared from the forum. Thirty years before Isaac Butt was the young hope of Protestant conservatism, the idol of its salons. He had barely passed his majority when he was elected to the professorship of Political Economy in Trinity College; and, at an age when such honors were unprecedented, was elevated to a “silk-gown,” as Queen’s Counsellor at the bar. Yet there was always about young Butt an intense Irishism; he was a high-spirited Protestant, a chivalrous conservative; but even in that early time the eagle eye of O’Connell detected in him an Irish heart and a love of the principles of liberty that would yet, so he prophesied, lead Butt into the ranks of the Irish people. The English Tory leaders enticed him over to London, and sent him into Parliament for one of their boroughs—Harwich.