BOOK 1793. June. to join in demanding a measure without which they would find the franchise useless to them.1 They informed the people of Ireland' that in declaring war against the Revolution, England was declaring war against liberty. They bade them 'Assemble, assemble, and with the voice of injured millions demand their rights;' and having felt the strength which agitation gathered from having at its head a representative Assembly, they invited Ireland to choose another, this time a true national association, which traitors should have no power to mislead; and they chose for the place of meeting, not Dublin, where Fitzgibbon might have them in his grasp, but Athlone, far away in the country, in the heart of the faithful Catholic population. Parliament was still in session, busy with its Responsibility Bill and its new Civil List. The Catholic Committee had not been dissolved that its place might be taken by another and more dangerous Assembly of a similar kind. The Athlone Parliament would be composed of the most violent agitators in Ireland, and if allowed to meet would provide the anarchists with an organised Directory. On July 8 Fitzgibbon introduced a Bill into the House of Lords. declaring the assemblage of bodies of men calling themselves representatives under any pretence whatsoever to be thenceforth illegal. The glamour of '82 had not yet entirely vanished. Patriotic sensibility was wounded by a measure which reflected on the great Dungannon meeting. The Duke of Leinster and Lord Charlemont fought against it in one House. Grattan, in the other, spoke of it as the boldest step yet made to introduce military government. 1 Proceedings of the United Irishmen, June 7, 1793. Patriotic oratory, though it could still enchant, could no longer wholly make men blind. Tom Conolly, who was drunk when he rose to speak, said that although he must vote with his friends, he heartily approved of the resolution which the Castle was showing. The Bill was carried, the teller for the Government in the Commons being Arthur Wellesley; and the meeting of a fresh Convention, which in the distracted state of the country 'would have been an engine of mischief almost irresistible,' was thus prevented.1 With the Convention Bill the session which had restored the Catholics to the Constitution came to an end. The concession of the franchise, in itself so momentous, was accompanied by the surrender of those irregular methods by which England had hitherto controlled the independence of Parliament. The millions to whose 'unfailing loyalty' these gracious measures were designed as a reward had received them in a manner which anyone who knew Ireland could have foretold with certainty. The Irish peasant, like some half-tamed animal, docile under restraint, and obedient and uncomplaining when governed with firmness and justice, if let loose and told to be his own governor flies with a blind instinct at the hand which has unlocked his chains. Pitt and Dundas, partly misled by Burke, deceived partly by their own theories, partly feeling their way by a tortuous road towards a Union, had taken a step which made the Union a certainty, but no less certainly made inevitable, as preliminary to it, a desperate and bloody insurrection.2 1 'Major Hobart to Evan Nepean, July 20.' VOL. III. I 2 Major Hobart left Ireland at the close of this session, to be CHAP. II. 1793. SECTION III. BOOK VIII. 1793. THE air was charged with revolution. Each week brought news from France which set the patriots' pulses bounding. Lord Moira, who was now the hope of the Irish incendiaries, allowed himself to play with their expectations. They gave him a dinner in created Lord Hobart, and to be sent as Governor to Madras. Richard Burke was so indignant at an appointment which he regarded as a sign of the Cabinet's approval of Hobart's conduct in Ireland, that he actually remonstrated with Dundas, and sent Hobart a copy of what he had said, with a very curious letter: 'Brighton, October 28. 'My Lord,-On the entrance to a political and criminatory discussion, to disclaim motives of personal animosity is a proceeding that may be liable to inconvenience. It may appear like mean affectation, or an ungenerous desire to extenuate the hostility which necessarily belongs to adverse discussions. On the other hand, not to disclaim those motives is to forego the satisfaction warranted by the most vulgar example of doing my part at least to divest the contests we engage in from every mixture of private asperity. The former inconvenience seems to me to be the least. I do not, therefore, hesitate to assure your lordship that I act on the present occasion solely upon public grounds, and without any resentful recollection of any occurrence in Ireland less pleasant which might be attributed to your lordship. I allude particularly to the treatment I reIceived in the House of Commons on the day of Sir Hercules Langrishe's proposition. And if there is anything in my letter to Mr. Dundas which may appear peculiarly invidious and offensive to you, it does not proceed from personal ill will, but is, as I conceive, necessitated by the circumstances which do not allow me to remit anything of the strength of my case. In the next place, I have to assure your lordship that the sole objection I have to your appointment to the Government of Madras is that it operates as a sanction and ratification to those measures which I feel myself under an indispensable obligation to criminate, as the only means to obviate the ill effects upon the peace and welfare of Ireland, upon his Majesty's Government there, and upon the unity and strength of the empire. Mr. Dundas will inform your lordship that I have never ceased to represent the measures of your Government in the same point of view that I do now, which, if he has not informed you of, it is not my fault; and if your lordship will recollect the conversation I had the honour of having with you at your Moira, not II. 1793. Dublin, and an ardent orator spoke allusively of the CHAP. great work which might lie before him. disclaiming the possibility, replied, that when he appeared it would be as a rainbow to notify to distant countries that the tempest was over.'1 But for the present the Convention Bill, backed by the militia, drove in the disaffection. The United Irishmen confessed themselves baffled, but 'vowed revenge.' Hamilton Rowan was reported as having grown 'morose, sullen, and determined.' Thomas Muir, who was tried afterwards at Edinburgh for treason, had paid the society a visit in Dublin. The society in return voted an address to their Scotch brethren, and Rowan was sent over in charge of it. A prosecution was already hanging over him for a treasonable address. The Chancellor, finding forbearance thrown away, sent a warrant after him to Scotland. He was house in the Phoenix Park, you will not be surprised that I arraign your conduct criminally, and particularly in the capacity of a servant of the Crown. Many other measures have since occurred which I have the misfortune of considering in a still more serious point of view. Your late appointment is no further the occasion of the step I am now taking than that it hastens the execution of a first intention to render these affairs the subject of public discussion in this kingdom; and as, by the marked recognition of the measures of the Irish Government implied by that appointment, it induces me to lodge a series of criminal charges against that Government in the person of your lordship. 'After what I have said at the beginning it is almost unnecessary for me to express that I do not de- 'I have the honour to be, &c., Hobart, enclosing the letter to 1 'Major Hobart to Evan Ne- BOOK arrested, brought back, tried, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment, and to pay a fine of 500l. VIII. 1794. There was now an interval of calm. The conspirators were frightened. The session of 1794 was a blank. The Opposition in Parliament was disheartened and divided, all but the most reckless patriots having been sobered by the bloodshed of the past summer. William Ponsonby tried a Reform Bill again. It was extinguished by a decisive division of 142 to 44. The revolutionary peace party was equally unsuccessful. Grattan had promised Parnell that if the Place and Pension Bills were conceded, he would make no further 'vexatious opposition.' He redeemed his word by speaking in favour of the war and by repeating what he had said in 1782, that in a foreign contest Ireland was bound to stand or fall with Great Britain. The authority of Grattan was decisive with all who were not consciously disloyal.2 The supplies were voted. All necessary business was hurried over, and in the general desire to leave the Executive untrammelled, Parliament was prorogued on March 25. The Executive had need to be free. Driven from the open field, the United Irishmen were now preparing for rebellion. The eye of the Castle was on them. From the very first, traitors among themselves carried their most secret whispers to the Secretary. Every step on which they ventured was known, but so known only that it could be watched, not interfered with. Informers' evidence was not producible in a court of justice. Occasionally the conspirators were 1 E. Cooke to Evan Nepean, February 7, 1794.' S. P. O. 2 I never saw greater marks of chagrin painted on countenances than on those of Geo. Ponsonby, Curran, Egan, and the lawyers in opposition, when Grattan declared his resolution to support the war.'— Ibid. |