The revolutionary leaders in their subsequent confessions referred the conduct of the peasantry simply to the want of orders from head-quarters. The organisation had been deranged by the Belfast arrests. The appearance of the French was a surprise. The impression among the local committees was that the expedition had been postponed, or was not to be looked for till the spring. The insurrection was intended to be sudden; local independence of action had been strictly forbidden; and the French fleet had departed before it had been thoroughly understood to have arrived.

The explanation was correct as far as it went, but it was not the whole truth. It had been shown also that the mass of the people, if left to themselves, were not spontaneously disaffected to the British connection. As an agrarian conspirator the Irish peasant is effectively dangerous. He clings to his home and his land. He has a keen consciousness of injustice; and when the law has been his enemy he has not scrupled to avenge his own wrongs, often with the ferocity of a savage. Politically he allows himself to be worked upon by scoundrels, who flatter his hopes and play upon his grievances. He talks, he shouts, he affects to conspire for a cause in which, nevertheless, in his heart he has little belief, and for which, so long as he is left unplundered, in his heart he cares not at all. Political disaffection in Ireland has been the work, on the one hand, of the representatives of the old disinherited families-the Kernes and Gallowglasses of one age, the Rapparees of the next, the houghers and ravishers of a third; on the other, of the restless aspirations of the Catholic clergy, who refuse to live on even terms with other religious

CHAP.

I.

1797. January.

BOOK

IX.

1797.

January.

communities, who have compelled the so-called heretics to pare their claws and draw their teeth, and have thus maddened themselves in secret by brooding over their imagined wrongs. On the back of these, and bred out of misgovernment, have come the political adventurers-the Lucases, the Floods, the Grattans, the Wolfe Tones, the O'Connells-who have used the discontent and oppression of their countrymen as instruments of a wild ambition after an impossible national independence; and working in a country where neglect and tyranny had gone handin-hand, where laws were so unjust that Nature herself rejected them, and where the people were singularly susceptible of rhetorical appeals to their emotions, these elements might and did create a state of things which appeared on the surface like universal national hostility.

The appearance was not the reality.

The peasant in the British army fights by the side of his Scotch and his English companions, and the enemy knows no difference between them, save that where the fray is hottest the Irishman is first to the front. Enlisted in the police corps, he is the most loyal servant of order, and faces undismayed the fiercest frenzy of men of his own blood and creed. In the militia, in the approaching rebellion, the instinct of the soldier was stronger than the seductions to which he seemed to have yielded. For the most part he was found true to his colours, if false to his nationalist oath. Physically brave, he is morally a coward. In his own cabin at home he sinks before the terrorism of the secret societies. He consents to be sworn, because he is marked for vengeance if he refuses. He will give no evidence in court, because

he knows that the English Government cannot, or will not, protect him; while the power that will punish him is at his door. He clings to his creed and to his farm. The appeals of demagogues to his superstition, or their denunciations of his oppressors, make him drunk for the moment like whisky, and he becomes capable of the most horrible atrocities. But this is not his real nature. He is too shrewd to believe in the illusions with which he allows himself to play. So long as disloyalty can gain its ends by the help of the assassin or the incendiary, there is a vile minority in Ireland who will shrink from no atrocity; and so long as he is himself treated with injustice, the peasant will look on with indifference or with secret sympathy. But he will fight in the field only in the ranks of a legitimate force, under orders from the officers of a lawful government. When left to his own impulses he allows himself to be guided by his natural chief, the owner of the soil on which he lives. Let the law and the landlord become his friends indeed, and the instinct will then turn to active loyalty, and the field of Irish agitation will cease to yield a harvest.

CHAP.

I.

1797. January.

BOOK
IX.

1797. January.

of

CHAPTER II.

THE SECESSION OF THE OPPOSITION.

SECTION I.

A PARLIAMENTARY Opposition is the most finished product of modern political genius. The functions of it are to teach the people that they are ruled by men who are unfit for the position which they occupy, and are pursuing measures impolitic and mischievous. The Opposition is assumed by the theory to consist persons who are the intellectual and moral equals of those whom they denounce, and are prepared to take their places, if they can persuade a majority in Parliament to agree with them. Men of ability and character will not advocate a cause which has not elements of justice and wisdom in it; and the result is, that either the two parties in the State must divide between them the principles of political administration, each when in power consciously regarding but half the truth-doing what it ought not to do, or leaving undone what it ought to do, to avoid trespassing upon its rival's province or else each must of deliberate purpose blind one of its eyes, lay aside its better knowledge, consent to be a representative of passion, prejudice, and ignorance.

Each party also when in Opposition must assist in bringing Government itself into contempt by holding up those who hold the reins to public ridicule or

detestation. Under the Plantagenets and Tudors differences of opinion between leading statesmen were confined to the Committee of Privy Council, which was composed of men of rank and intelligence, irrespective of the complexion of their views. The Cabinets of Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth contained Conservatives and Radicals, Anglicans and Puritans, Catholics and Protestants. Difficult questions were argued in private like the plan of a campaign in a council of war, and the passions and conceits of the multitude were not blown into a flame by hearing the measures taken by the Administration publicly reprobated by persons of accredited consideration. To the world outside the Government appeared undivided, and thus commanded the respect and submission which the rank and file of an army pay to their officers.

The public, no doubt, experience a general satisfaction when the debates of their rulers are submitted

to their own judgment. They can test the abilities of their representatives; they can pass their own criticisms on the questions submitted for discussion; and at times, when deeper passions are asleep, when the motives at work are the common forces of selfishness, and dangers are to be anticipated rather from the intrigues of individuals or of classes, than from a false choice of policy, the advantages of the modern system may for a time outweigh its evils.

As certainly in times of excitement, when reason is unseated by passion, and large masses of men become possessed with illusions under which, like sheep, they bleat but one senseless note, and can be driven. in multitudes where any barking demagogue desires to misdirect them, a constitutional Opposition must be composed of materials different from any of which we

CHAP.

II.

1797.

January.