II. 198. July. acknowledgment from Arthur O'Connor himself of CHAP. his negociation with General Hoche, of which so many eminent Whig statesmen had appeared in court to declare him incapable, would not only be a political triumph, but would be materially useful in tranquillising English opinion. It was not that the Government wanted information. They already knew as much, perhaps, as the prisoners could tell them. They wanted to be able to satisfy the world; and no question could any more be raised when the chief actors had admitted their guilt. The Chancellor was in the country. Cornwallis consulted the Chief Justices and the Attorney and Solicitor-General. They were unanimous in objecting to a compromise with men whose guilt was of so dark a dye. They said that if Byrne and Bond were not executed no Irish juries would find again for the Crown in a trial for treason. When the Viceroy objected that under no circumstances was there a hope of a verdict against O'Connor and his companions, he was answered that more than one might perhaps be convicted, and that others could be proceeded against in Parliament.1 An attainder had much to recommend it. If the proceeding was exceptional, the circumstances were exceptional which called for it. It was extremely desirable to show Irish traitors that the cowardice of witnesses and the perjury of jurymen could not always secure them from the consequences of their crimes. But such a measure could be ventured only by a body whose purity of purpose was above possibility of sus 1 Lord Carleton said that several of those who signed the papers, and particularly Dr. MacNeven, might possibly be convicted, and that others might be liable to pains X. BOOK picion. The reputation of the Irish Parliament was not of this unblemished kind, and any high-handed overriding of the forms of justice would only confirm the suspicions already too prevalent in England. 179 July. Cornwallis consented that the law should take effect on Byrne, who was hanged on the day appointed. The execution, however, instead of inducing the prisoners to withdraw their proposal, led them to renew it with increased eagerness. The Chancellor came back at the moment to Dublin. His opinion coincided with that of the Viceroy, and on the approval of Lord Clare the Judges withdrew their opposition. O'Connor and Mac Neven were informed that the offer would be accepted; and Cornwallis, before he knew what they intended to write, could scarcely contain his satisfaction. 'What,' he wrote, 'will the gentlemen who appeared at Maidstone say to this? It is the most complete triumph, both in England and Ireland.' His exultation was diminished when the confession was placed in his hands. The prisoners had stipulated for the publication of it. The composition was O'Connor's. Secure behind a promise of life, they had paraded their treasons before Ireland and the world in a tone of bold bravado. They admitted that they had conspired to raise a rebellion and to introduce a French army, and they declared that they were justified in what they had done. They threatened the British Government with the perpetual enmity of the Irish race, and informed Government and the public either that Ireland must be allowed her own way, or that they must extirpate the population. Cornwallis treated this remark 1 To General Ross, July 30, 1798.' able production as a deliberate insult. He sent a copy of it to the Cabinet. He told the prisoners that they must alter it, or it would not be received as a discharge of their engagement. They refused to make any changes, anticipating that it would be published as it stood. But a Committee of the House of Lords was sitting to enquire into the causes of the rebellion, and as an alternative they agreed to give evidence before it. They answered every question which was put to them with adequate frankness. The tone of insolence remained, but the rhetorical declamation was escaped. The publication of the Committee's report answered the end which Cornwallis desired, and at least exposed with sufficient completeness the value of the insight of the English Liberals into Irish character and Irish affairs. The Cabinet meanwhile had considered the document which Cornwallis had sent over to them, and on the perusal of it were so justly indignant, that before they were aware that the Viceroy had allowed the prisoners to appear before the Committee they had resolved to refuse their sanction to negociation in any form whatever. Even Cornwallis himself they were inclined to blame for his excess of anxiety to excuse and pardon traitors. 'We consider,' the Duke of Portland wrote to him,' that the proposal should not be listened to. The memoir, beyond admission of the writers' criminality, contributes nothing to what we already knew. On the contrary, an air of presumption, arrogance, insolence, and superiority so pervades the whole, that I cannot but feel their conduct to be a great 1 Portland to Cornwallis, Au- dential.' S. P. O. Endorsed' Not gust 15, 1798. Secret and confi CHAP. II. 1798. July. BOOK X. 1798. August. aggravation of their former crime. I ought not perhaps to wonder that men who, in the act of expiating the greatest of all crimes, permit themselves to tell you that you must extirpate or reform, should not see the behaviour of which I complain in the light in which it strikes me. But I cannot but observe that such an opinion, uttered at such a moment, if it is to be received as a testimony of honesty and good faith, is not less so of those dangerous and destructive principles to which the present convulsion of Europe is to be attributed. And so much I fear that nothing but a system of continued unremitting and active opposition can overcome it, that I cannot believe it can be softened by any concession or operated upon by any lenity, unless it is exercised under a conviction on the part of those who experience its benefits that those who use it are able to crush and annihilate the objects on whom it is bestowed. Your Excellency, therefore, must excuse me if I doubt the advantages which your natural disposition inclines you to hope for, from the establishment of a character for extraordinary lenity. I must, though I am sorry to say it, give it you as my opinion that the most desirable idea to establish in Ireland, and that which will lead most readily and surely to the object we have all in view, is that you are possessed of an overwhelming and irresistible power, which can neither be overturned nor shaken, and which is able and ready to punish impartially alike, all offenders against the law. Then I think you may show mercy, and indulge the feelings which are so well known to be congenial to your nature. But till then I fear that acts of lenity must be done with a sparing and distinguishing hand. In the temper which unhappily prevails in Ireland the most amiable motives will be misrepresented and misunderstood, and a conduct suggested by the finest and best of feelings will be attributed to pusillanimity and fear, and be productive of contempt and licentiousness instead of gratitude and attachment. Such, I fear, is human nature in the state of civilisation which it has acquired in Ireland, and such, I fear, it will remain until it is forced to conform itself to a more rigorous and austere observance of civil institutions and the laws of the country.' Had the resolution of the Cabinet been formed more expeditiously, Cornwallis would probably have resigned, and the policy of conciliation would have been suspended. But before the despatch could leave London the faith of the Government had been pledged to the prisoners. Their evidence had been given and printed; it remained only to abide by the agreement, and to inform O'Connor and his friends that if they published their manifesto they would be considered, one and all, as parties to a fresh crime, and be excluded from the benefit of the pardon. The original intention was to allow them to emigrate to America. Mr. Rufus King, the American Minister, after reading the report of the Secret Committee, protested, in the name of the United States, against the introduction there of such pernicious and dangerous miscreants. They were sent to Fort St. George, in Scotland, where they were detained till the Peace of Amiens, and were then released, on condition that they should never return to Ireland. O'Connor went to France; America consented after all to receive Emmett and MacNeven; and in their several places of refuge they continued their implacable animosity against the Government of Great Britain, which had rescued them from the justice of their countrymen. 1 The principles and opinions of these men are, in my view, so dangerous, so false, so utterly inconsistent with any practicable or stable form of government, that I feel it to be a duty to my country to express to your Grace my earnest wishes that the United States may CHAP. II. 1798. August. |