SECTION III.

TIMES were changed since the Viceroys looked with dread to the meeting of Parliament, uneasily counted their resources and compared them with the expectant pack whose voracity they must satisfy or look for a Short Supply Bill. Tamed out of their patriotism by the unpleasant outcome of it, which now threatened their estates and even their lives, the Irish Members assembled at the beginning of 1796 with but one desire, to strengthen the hands of the Executive. Lord Camden, in opening the session, dwelt naturally on the treasonable organization which was overspreading the island. Grattan attempted, as usual, an amendment on the Address, but he was listened to with impatience, and voted down with emphasis. The House was eager to learn how Government proposed to deal with the United Irish

men.

The Attorney-General announced that he should ask for a Bill of Indemnity for Carhampton and the Connaught magistrates, to stop impending prosecutions. Further, he intended to introduce a Bill to repress conspiracy to murder. “Assassination,"

he said, "had become as familiar as fowling." Mag

1 "Whereas, in the year 1795 several parts of the kingdom were disturbed by treasonable insurrection, and the lives and properties of many peaceable and faithful subjects destroyed. And whereas, to preserve the public peace, magistrates and other officers have apprehended and sent suspected persons out of the kingdom, have seized arms and entered houses, and done divers acts not justifiable according to law, all suits for things done to preserve the public peace since January 1, 1795, shall be void," &c. 36 George III. cap. 6.

istrates were murdered. Police were murdered. Witnesses were murdered to prevent their appearance in court, or were murdered after they had appeared, to deter others from doing the same. He proposed to give the magistrates summary power to deal with vagrants. He should invite Parliament to make the administering treasonable oaths a capital offence; and, a more considerable and most important innovation, to make the written deposition of a witness who might be murdered after he had given it, evidence to lay before a jury. As a preliminary the Attorney-General proposed a resolution that the present power of magistrates was inadequate to the emergency. To this one voice only was raised in opposition. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, with his French wife,1 were rapidly verging towards treason. As yet within the limits of the Constitution and in his place in Parliament, Lord Edward protested against coercion, and insisted that if grievances were removed the people would return to their allegiance.

More prudent, more plausible than Fitzgerald, Mr. Grattan made a counter-attack upon the Orangemen. "Much," he exclaimed, "had been said of the Defenders, nothing of the new version of the Lord George Gordon riots, of the bigotry of the Protestant banditti, who, being of the religion of the State, had with the greater audacity committed the most horrid murders, massacreing in the name of God, exercising despotic powers in the name of liberty." Curran followed with the patriot phalanx in his rear, clamoring that 1,400 Catholic families had been forcibly expelled from their homes in Armagh.

1 Pamela, daughter of Madame de Genlis and, as was supposed, the Duke of Orleans.

The Government was silent. The Orangemen, however, were not undefended.

Mr. Verner, a gentleman of the incriminated county, rose to say that half the stories to which he had listened were monstrous fictions. “The Orangemen were members of the Established Church, loyal to the King, and well-affected to the Constitution. If they had come in collision with the Catholics in Armagh, the Catholics were themselves the cause. They had been robbing Protestants of their arms; they had been assembling, in their own language, "to destroy man, woman, and child of them." Under a pretence of making peace they had fallen on the Protestants without notice. They had been beaten, and had been beaten ever since, as often as they had tried the experiment. Of those who had left the country many had been concerned in outrages, and were afraid of arrest. Others had sold their interest in their farms and had emigrated to get cheap land in Connaught. The Orangemen had been accused of many crimes. They had not threatened the lives of magistrates, or destroyed cattle, or burnt the houses of those who attempted to enforce the laws. In some instances they had acted improperly, but not till they had been goaded beyond the forbearance of human nature." 1

In a country on the edge of a dangerous rebellion, a society which had formed itself spontaneously in defence of the existing Constitution might naturally have expected encouragement. The Orangemen had shown no antipathy to the Catholics till the Catholics had begun to arm themselves in the face of the law. Experience had taught the Protestants too well the

1 Irish Debates, 1796.

probable meaning of the universal eagerness for muskets and powder among those who were forbidden to possess such things. If they had taken on themselves to enforce the law it was because the Government was apathetic or incapable, and the Government had but to adopt the strength of the Orange Lodges lying at its feet to convert it into the most powerful instrument for the repression of disorder of all kinds. The militia were corrupt, the army feeble. Of these the United Irishmen had no fear. The Orangemen they made no secret of their fearing most deeply. Samuel Neilson, the most determined and dangerous of the United leaders, told a supposed confederate, who was a spy of the Castle, that "he was in far greater dread of the Orangemen than of the soldiers." 66 They were very powerful and very desperate."1 Had Camden bravely made the Orangemen his allies, treason would have crept back into its den and been heard of no more. Unhappily, under constitutional governments spontaneous loyalty is the last virtue which obtains recognition. The friend who is a friend on principle can be relied on as a forlorn hope, however coldly looked upon. The supposed business of constitutional governments is not to encourage the good, but to conciliate the bad if necessary by the sacrifice of the deserving. Lord Camden, yielding to the cant of Liberalism, affected deeper indignation at the disorders of the Orangemen than the outrages of the Catholic assassins. He admitted to Portland that if France interfered he believed Ireland to be lost. He had 19,000 militia, but he could not trust them. He knew that rebellion was intended. He knew the leaders, yet he could

1 "Secret information, July 30, 1796.”—S. P. O. Irish MSS.

not act upon his evidence. He doubted whether any force which he could raise in the kingdom could be depended on, yet in the very same dispatch he took credit to himself for the zeal with which he was acting "against the party of Dissenters named Orangemen." Though not aimed against the Government," he regarded the Orange combination "as more dangerous than direct conspiracy." They "justly irritated the Catholics," he said, "and gave a pretence to the disaffected.”1

66

The Orange disturbances were pleaded skilfully as one reason, among others, for the powers which the Attorney-General demanded. The Indemnity Bill was then passed without difficulty, the Assassination Bill,2 and a third Act of still graver consequences for the better suppression of insurrections, which, if an Act of Parliament was all that was needed, would have sufficed to restore peace. But, as Mr. Brown, of the College, observed, the thing needed was not so much new statutes as the enforcement of the laws already existing.

1 "To Portland, August 6, 1796."-S. P. O. The nervous anxiety of Camden to avoid offending the Catholics was shown curiously in another instance during the session. Lord Athlone, the descendant and representative of Ginkel, had fallen into penury in Holland. George III. recommended him for a pension on the Irish Establishment, and Camden displeased the King by declining to propose Lord Athlone's name. He thus defends himself to Portland:

"I will not conceal from your Grace that political considerations influenced my opinion. The very nature of the grant, and the reason for it, are so connected with the Protestant cause in this kingdom, that, although I personally wished to show, not only every attention, but every liberality, towards those who supported it then, as much as I do every encouragement to those who support it now, I yet thought that in a session where so much useful unanimity has been shown, when the Catholic question appeared to be asleep, it was not wise to bring forward a measure which might have the appearance of a degree of triumph on the subject."—"To Portland, March 8, 1796." — S. P. O.

2 36 George III. 27.

8 lbid. cap. 20.