cracy, a gigantic form, walks the earth, smiting crowns with a hundred hands, and opening for the seduction of their subjects a hundred arms." 'We implored ministers against such an enemy to ally and identify the King with all his people, without distinction of religion.'

6

There were some things in the letter much more questionable than these. No candid man can, I think, deny that acts of illegal, criminal, shameful, and exasperating violence, were, at this time, committed in Ireland with the full sanction of the Government; but it seems to me equally impossible to deny that a conspiracy existed, with which ordinary law was utterly unable to cope, that the prompt disarming of a large section of the people had become imperatively necessary, and that, at a time when a French invasion might at any moment take place, it would have been suicidal madness to permit an unlimited sale of arms. Grattan, however, made no allowance for the enormous difficulties of this situation, and massed together the whole system of 'coercion' in an equal and undiscriminating condemnation. He was not content with denouncing the imprisonment of the middle orders without law; detaining them in prison without bringing them to trial; the transporting them without law, burning their houses, burning their villages, murdering them, preventing the legal meetings of counties to petition his Majesty, and finally, the introduction of practices not only unknown to law, but unknown to civilised and Christian countries.' The Convention Act, the Gunpowder Act, the Insurrection Act, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, the proclamation of General Lake, for disarming the people, were all equally condemned. Many magistrates and officers had, no doubt, acted with excessive violence; but it was absurd and mischievous rant, to accuse the Government of endeavouring 'to blood the magistracy with the poor man's liberty, and

the

employ the rich, like a pack of Government bloodhounds, to hunt down the poor;' it was uncandid and untrue to deny that a spirit of plunder,' as well as of politics,' was abroad, and that a great portion of the outrages that were taking place, were utterly unconnected with any desire for mere 'political reformation;' it was very useless to inveigh against the war at a time when there was no power, either in England or Ireland, that could have stopped it.

A few more sentences will show Grattan's view at its strongest. The trade of Parliament ruins everything; your ministers rested their authority entirely on that trade, till now they call in the aid of military power, to enforce corruption by the sword. The laws. did, in my judgment, afford the Crown sufficient power to administer the country, and preserve the connection with Great Britain, but our ministers have despised the ordinary tract.' 'The historian of these melancholy and alarming times . . . will, if a candid man, close the sad account by observing that, on the whole, the cause of the Irish distraction of 1797 was the conduct of the servants of Government endeavouring to establish, by unlimited bribery, absolute power; that the system of coercion was a necessary consequence and part of the system of corruption; and that the two systems, in their success, would have established a ruthless and horrid tyranny, tremendous and intolerable, imposed on the Senate by influence, and the people by arms.'

6

This remarkable paper closed with a series of eloquent aspirations. May the kingly power, that forms one estate in our Constitution, continue for ever; but let it be, as it professes to be, and as, by the principles and laws of these countries, it should be, one estate only; and not a power constituting one estate, creating another, and influencing a third.

'May the parliamentary Constitution prosper; but

let it be an operative, independent, and integral part of the Constitution, advising, confining, and sometimes directing the kingly power.

May the House of Commons flourish; but let the people be the sole author of its existence, as they should be the great object of its care.

May the connection with Great Britain continue; but let the result of that connection be the perfect freedom, in the fairest and fullest sense, of all descriptions of men, without distinction of religion.

To this purpose we spoke; and speaking this to no purpose, withdrew. It now remains to add this supplication, However it may please the Almighty to dispose of princes or of parliaments, may the liberties of the people be immortal.'1

These words were well fitted to sink deeply into the popular mind. Whether, amid the fever and distraction of the times, they were likely to fulfil any good purpose, is another question. Grattan himself, in after years, reviewed this portion of his career with the transparent candour which was one of his most beautiful qualities. The secession from Parliament appeared to him to have been a simple duty. He and his friends could not approve of the conduct of the United Irishmen nor of that of the Government, and they feared to encourage the former by making speeches against the latter. From the summer of 1795, when the old rulers and the old system came back; when military law was virtually established, and when poor men were transported without trial, the state of Ireland was, in truth, a state of war; the people looked to France, and the Government to arms; rebellion had become almost inevitable; its success would consign Ireland to French despotism and revolution, and its failure would probably be followed

1 Grattan's Miscellaneous Works, pp. 40–64.

by the extinction of all popular influence and control. 6 Our error,' he said, 'was in not having seceded sooner, for the Opposition, I fear, encouraged the United men by their speeches against the Government. . . . There was high treason, certainly, but the measures of the Government were so violent, that no man would sanction them. Nothing could excuse the torture, the whippings, the half hanging. It was impossible to act with them, and in such cases it is always better that a neutral party should retire. We could do no good. We could not join the disaffected party, and we could not support the Government.'

Coming to his letter to the citizens of Dublin, he says that it was considered, at the time, imprudent, and he acknowledged that the charge was a just one. 'It was true; it was well written, but it tended to inflame. I had also written strongly to the Catholics. I had just returned from England, and we smarted under the disappointment of Lord Fitzwilliam's recall. We were angry. It was not wise, but there is no man, who, in a long public life, will not be guilty of some political errors.

1

Except perhaps in Ulster, where matters had been for some time subsiding, the last months of 1797 produced no alleviation in the state of Ireland, and Grattan and the Government differed little about its gravity, though they differed much about its causes and its remedies. Pelham, in a desponding private letter to Portland, complained that the language of the Opposition tended to alienate the people from England, and that absenteeism had a similar effect, but he laid special stress upon the religious distinctions, which will always make the lower class of the people more open to seduction than the same class of men in other coun

1 Grattan's Life, iv. 345–347.

tries, and will make it impossible to expect any permanent security, either in peace or war, without a great military force.' Nothing, he thought, short of an establishment of the Catholic religion, would satisfy them; and he added with more truth, As long as the poor and the rich are of different persuasions in religious matters, there will always be a jealousy between the democratic and aristocratic parts of the Constitution.'1

6

Clare, who knew the country much better, expressed the Government view with force and candour. Emancipation and reform,' he said, 'were far short of the designs of the disaffected; the separation of the country from her Imperial connection with Great Britain, and a fraternal alliance with the French Republic, were the obvious purposes of the insurgents. The Government of Ireland had, by measures necessarily strong, at length quieted that part of the country in which the conspiracy originated. These measures were, to his knowledge, extorted from the nobleman who governed this country; they had been successful, and the state of the North at that day, was a proof of their wisdom. The county from which he had lately returned [Limerick], and which had formerly been a loyal and industrious county, was infested by emissaries from the North, exciting the peasantry to insurrection. Emancipation and reform were not the means which they employed for the seduction of the peasant. The suppression of tithes, the abolition of taxes, and exemption from the payment of rent, were the rewards they promised. Emancipation and reform were only used to delude the better classes.' 'It is one great misfortune of this country,' he said in another speech, 'that the people of England know less of it than they know perhaps of any other nation in

'Pelham to Portland, Sept. 29, 1797.

VOL. IV.

2

Plowden, ii. 652.

2