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TWO ESSAYS ON IRELAND

BY

SIR JOHN POPE HENNESSY, K.C.M.G.

THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED

WITH HIS PERMISSION

TO THE

RIGHT HON. LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL, M.P.

LONDON

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE

1885

"The Tory party are the natural allies of the Irish people.”

DISRAELI.

BODLEIAN

7 DE C35

OXFORD

(The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.)

LORD BEACONSFIELD'S IRISH POLICY.

LORD BEACONSFIELD referred more than once to the fact that those who professed to be the special admirers of Pitt after his death were those who seemed most to misunderstand his policy. Pitt clubs were formed to preserve the remnant of the penal laws. Whatever was anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, favouring coercion, or restrictive in commerce, was associated with the name of Pitt. Students of history owe something to Lord Beaconsfield for pointing this out and for showing how those pseudo-Conservatives of a past generation-for nearly forty years, from 1806-were chary of quoting the actual words of the leader they misrepresented.

Until the Young England party arose the socalled Pittites had it all their own way. It answered the purposes of the Irish Whigs to join in distorting the true policy of Pitt. Five-sixths of Pitt's Irish policy was carefully ignored by the Irish Liberals and the Irish Orangemen-in other words, by all the Irish politicians of that time. The name

B

of Pitt was associated with the repression of Irish self-government in 1800, with that impolitic Act which Edmund Burke foretold would not be for the mutual advantage of the two kingdoms. The statesmanlike measures Pitt had long before that proposed for the settlement of commercial questions between England and Ireland, his successful contests with the Orangemen when he destroyed nine-tenths of the penal laws in 1793, the denunciation of Pitt by the Grand Masters of the Irish lodges, and the praise bestowed on his Emancipation Acts by Wolfe Tone -all these were forgotten. The painful and humiliating part he was compelled to play in connection with the so-called Union was unexplained, and it was convenient to both sides after his death to let it remain unexplained. Nearly sixty years after Pitt's death some members of the House of Commons were startled on hearing Lord Robert Cecil (now the Marquis of Salisbury) quoting a speech of William Pitt in favour of a generous policy to Ireland.

Strange to say, Lord Beaconsfield himself has shared a similar fate. The somewhat unwise ladies and gentlemen who talk in Mayfair or in Pall Mall about the sword of Cromwell seek to justify the repressive measures of the great Protector by an appeal to Lord Beaconsfield. Their knowledge of history is certainly accurate as far back as the letter to the Duke of Marlborough, of March 1880, but it does not go much further back. It would seem as

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