VIII. BOOK in the Cabinet, whom he accused of manoeuvring for a Union, and quoted as proof a passage from a secret 1795. despatch of the Duke of Portland.1 Fitzgibbon asked Pelham plainly if he was to understand that the suspicion was well-founded. Pelham for himself denied it. He had the strongest objection to a Union, he said, on account of the effect which the Irish members might produce on the British Parliament. If that was so, Fitzgibbon said, Lord Camden would do well to remove public anxiety by an explicit declaration on meeting Parliament. Pelham had, of course, much to hear. He learnt how artificially the Emancipation question had been forced forward by Grattan's agitation. The Catholics, 'if they had not been invited to come forward, were very willing to have remained quiet.' He was shown an inflammatory letter from Burke declaring that the Catholics must have Emancipation, that Parliament would be disgraced by postponing it, and that England some day would gain popularity at the Protestants' expense by promoting it. 'The evil of all this,' said Pelham, 'is the general mistrust of English Government, and the advantage given to the disaffected, who represent the connection with Great Britain as the source of all the evils that attend the country 1 The letters were distributed among Lord Fitzwilliam's friends, and are now in general circulation. One passage is much talked of here. It is a quotation from a confidential despatch from your Grace, in which you say that deferring this question would be the means of doing a greater service to the British empire than it has been capable of receiving since the Revolution. The The people have been construction put on these words by many people (though falsely, in my opinion) is that the intention of ministers was to keep the Catholic question alive, and in suspense, till a peace, and then employ it as a means of forming a union between the two countries.'-'Pelham to the Duke of Portland, March 30. Secret.' S. P. O. brought forward so often as the instrument of intimidation, and the Government has yielded so readily, that they naturally think that they have an adverse interest, and that they have the means of carrying anything.' 1 Lord Camden followed in a week. He landed at Blackrock on the 31st of March. The streets were quiet as he entered Dublin. At the Castle he was sworn in as usual by the Lords Justices. His arrival became known during the ceremony, and as the Lords Justices drove away when it was over they were received at the gates by a dense and angry crowd. Stones were thrown at the Primate's carriage. Fitzgibbon, who was an object of far more serious hatred, was attacked by a knot of welldressed, dangerous-looking men, who evidently meant mischief. The coachman lashed his horses and broke through them. They made for his house in Ely Place by a short cut, and were there before him. As he drove up heavy paving-stones were flung through the carriage window, one of which struck the Chancellor on the forehead. Passers-by, or the police, whom Grattan had not yet extinguished, gathered round and protected him from further mischief. The mob surged off and attacked the Speaker's house and the Custom House. They were at last fired on by the troops. Two were killed, and the rest sullenly dispersed. It was an ominous reception. The revolutionary politicians, disappointed in their hope of obtaining their object through the imbecility of the English Government, evidently intended to show that if not conceded they meant to take it. 1 'Pelham to the Duke of Portland, April 6.' S. P. O. CHAP. II. 1795. March. BOOK 1795. Keogh and Byrne returned from London to report that they had gone on a bootless errand. Keogh, finding that plausibility and smooth speeches would serve his turn no longer, rose to the height which Wolfe Tone desired, and declared in the Catholic Committee that Ireland must now be roused to assert her rights. The Protestant peers and country gentlemen, on the other hand, gave Camden the assurance which Portland instructed him to demand of them, and promised their cordial co-operation in resisting further encroachments. The ground being thus cleared, and the first effects of the shock having passed off, the suspended session recommenced. Lord Camden was not allowed to give the assurance which Fitzgibbon desired. The Union, in fact, was and long had been Pitt's object; the Cabinet agreed with him; and Camden, if not Pelham, was in the secret.1 Grattan, as the father of the independence of the Irish Parliament, came again to the front. The victory had been snatched from him at the moment when he believed it won. He saw his country again about to relapse under a regimen like Lord Westmoreland's. He rose on the 21st of April to move for a committee to enquire into the state of the nation, and to deprecate the return of the pernicious and profligate system' which had made Ireland a disgrace before the world. He had been reproached with the violence of his language in replying to the address of the Catholic Committee. He protested that he had said nothing' so blasted as the horrid declaration, worthy of the corrupt lips of a herald of profligacy, that certain parliamentary provisions were defensible or expedient to purchase the members of the House.' He reasserted that the recall of Fitzwilliam was a dagger planted in the Irish heart. He stood in his place to meet inquiry and confront his enemies. The mob in the galleries shouted applause, but the House, relieved from fear of Pitt, had regained its courage. Mervyn Archdall said calmly that Lord Westmoreland had done more for Ireland than all the Viceroys from Strafford to Fitzwilliam. With robust sense he denounced the word Emancipation as applicable to the Catholics. 'Emancipation meant that a slave was set free. The Catholics were not slaves. Nothing more absurd had ever been said since language had been abused for the delusion of mankind.' Forcing a division, Mr. Grattan found himself in a minority of more than a hundred. On the 24th Pelham introduced a proposal for the establishment of a Catholic college. It was opposed by the Patriots, partly because it might allay the sense of disappointment which they desired to exasperate— partly as tending to divide the Catholics and Protestants, whom they wished to combine in the interest of a common nationality.1 The Government carried 1 'Grattan presented a petition in opposition "from his majesty's Roman Catholic subjects of Ireland." VOL. III. L He set forth "the inexpedience of CHAP. II. 1795. April. BOOK VIII. 1795. May. their point without difficulty, and an Act was passed for the foundation and endowment of a Catholic academy, which has since become known as Maynooth.1 The battle had still to be fought over the Emancipation Bill. Grattan had announced that he should persist with it. It had been read a first time on the 24th of April without opposition, as the Cabinet had directed. On the 4th of May it came on a second time. The debate lasted through a long May day, through the night, and till ten o'clock the following morning. The arguments of the advocates and the opponents, with the light on them of eighty years' experience, can still be read without fatigue. 'History,' said the Solicitor-General (Toler), in rising to move the rejection of the Bill, 'shows that we cannot allow an imperium in imperio or that rival and sovereign authority which the Roman Catholic be excluded, inasmuch as it tended Strongly advocating mixed edu- were instructed together in the This petition has been sometimes century. The Catholic spirit is no doubt more modest and tolerant when held in subjection, and becomes arrogant and encroaching when indulged. But this petition, and Grattan's connection with it, had nothing to do with liberal sentiment. The hope of the party of revolution was the union of Catholics and Protestants. The aim of England was to prevent the union from being accomplished. The motion for the establishment of the college, on one side, and for the opposition to it, on the other, were both exclusively political. 1 35 George III., cap. 21. The original design was for the education of lay students as well as priests. |