prepare and bring in the same. But Marquis of Rockingham amongst the whether from a conviction that the relief to the Dissenters was not of equal urgency with that proposed to be granted to the Roman Catholics, or that the British cabinet had hitherto expressed no opinion or inclination in their favour, the measure was remitted to another session. The Catholic Bill did not propose to let the Catholics have arms, horses, education, a seat in Parliament, a vote at elections, a right to sit upon juries, or entrance into municipal corporations; but, slender as was the concession, it was bitterly opposed, and that even by "Patriots," who had no wider idea of Patriotism than the measure of the Protestant interest. On the 5th June, 1778, five divisions were had upon the bill in the Irish House: each was carried in the affirmative, by a small majority; and on the 15th of the same month there were three divisions. The Protestants throughout the kingdom were taking the alarm, and petitions were pouring in from the corporations. On this 15th of June, for example, a petition from the mayor, sheriffs, common council, freemen, freeholders, and other Protestant inhabitants of the city of Cork, was presented against the bill. number, pressed on the Parliament of England the propriety of granting to the Irish nation the liberty of exporting their produce, with the extraordinary exception of their woollens, which formed a principal ingredient. Lord Weymouth, however, resisted so dangerous a concession to the claims of Ireland; and the only compromise which was effected was an Export Bill, with the special exceptions of woollens and cottons. The Bristol merchants, who appear through the whole history of English avarice and tyranny to have been influenced by a policy pre-eminently mean, selfish, and grasping-the genuine spirit of paltry trade-went so far as to heap insults on their representative, Edmund Burke, for supporting the measure. In the meantime the Irish Parliament, in its session of 1788, had passed a "militia bill," to authorize the formation of volunteer forces for defence of the country French and American privateers were sweeping the seas and the British channel; the wide extent of the Irish coast was left exposed without defence, and there began to be very general alarm in the seaport towns. Mr. Flood had formerly proposed a national militia, but the On the 16th, on motion to resolve into idea was not then favoured by the Governcommittee of the whole to take the heads ment, and it failed. The militia bill of of the bill into further consideration, the this year was not opposed by the adminiHouse divided, and the motion was stration; probably they little thought to defeated. On the 18th, the House sat in what proportions the militia would develop committee over these heads of a bill till itself, and how far it would extend its three o'clock in the morning, and on the aims; but it immediately occurred to the 19th till four o'clock. At last, on the Patriots, that while the English Parlia20th, Mr. Gardiner was ordered to attend ment was peddling and higgling over the his excellency the lord-lieutenant with miserable and grudging relaxations of the said heads of a bill, and desire the Ireland's commercial restraints, here was same might be transmitted into Great a gracious opportunity presenting itself Britain in due form. Thus, after the for exercising such a resistless pressure severest contest, with the full and un- upon England, in her hour of difficulty equivocal approbation of the Government, and danger (England's difficulty being the general support of the Patriots, and then, as always, Ireland's opportunity), the unanimous accord of the British as would compel her to yield, not only a legislature in a similar indulgence to the free-trade, but a free Parliament: and Roman Catholics of England, were these the former, they knew, would never be heads of a bill carried through the Irish fully assured without the latter. It was House of Commons by the small majority now that public spirit in Ireland, of nine. Upon the third reading of this instead of colonial, began to be truly bill in the House of Lords, the contents national, and this chiefly by the strong with their proxies were 36, and the not impulse and inspiration of Henry Gratcontents were 12. On the 14th of August tan, who saw, in the extension of the the lord-lieutenant put an end to the volunteering spirit, a means of combining session. the two discordant elements of the Irish people into one nation, and elevati Catholics to the rank of citizens, not by the insidious "boons" of the English, but through the cordial combination and amalgamation of the Irish for their common defence. It was for some months The British ministry soon saw cause to extend their policy of conciliation, and to assent to some very trifling relaxations of the restrictions upon Irish trade and commerce. Some intelligent and patriotic Englishmen, Lord Newhaven and the the anxiously considered and debated at the Castle whether the forces which were to be raised, under the new law, were to be a true militia, and therefore subject to martial law, or to be composed of independent volunteer companies, choosing their own officers. But this question was soon settled by the people themselves, who were rapidly forming themselves into the latter kind of organization, and who evidently felt that they were arming, not so much against the foreign enemy as against the British Government. The volunteering began at Belfast. In August, 1778, the people of that town were alarmed by stories of privateers hovering near: they remembered their imminent peril at the time of Thurot's expedition, and at once began to organize and arm volunteer companies, as they had done before on that memorable occasion. At the same time the "sovereign" of the town, Mr. Stewart Burke, wrote to the Irish Secretary, urging that some troops should be sent down. He received this naced with invasion; and therefore quite as little in a condition to resist a great national military organization, no matter what form that might assume. In fact, after the example of Belfast, the whole country now rushed to arms. It was a scene of wild and noble excitement. Crowds thronged the public places of resort, anxious and resolved: in every assembly of the people the topic was "defence of the country;" and if there were many who from the first felt that the country had but one enemy in the world from whom it needed defence (that is, England), the reflection only heightened their zeal in promoting the national armament. On the 1st December, 1778, the people of Armagh entered into voluntary armed associations, and offered the command to Lord Charlemont. He at first refused; because, as lord-lieutenant of the county, he might at any time be called on to command the militia: but his lordship soon saw that volunteering was the irresistible order of the day; and that not to be a Volunteer would soon amount to being nobody at all in "SIR,-My Lord-Lieutenant having Ireland. Probably, also, he was influreceived information that there is reason enced by the more powerful will and to apprehend that three or four privateers deeper sagacity of his friend Grattan; in company may in a few days make and in January, 1779, he assumed comattempts on the northern coasts of this mand of the Armagh Volunteers.* kingdom; by his excellency's command, I give you the earliest account thereof, in order that there may be a careful watch, and immediate intelligence given to the inhabitants of Belfast, in case any party from such ships should attempt to answer land. "DUBLIN CASTLE, August 14, 1778. The greatest part of the troops being encamped near Clonmel and Kinsale, his excellency can at present send no further military aid to Belfast than a troop or two of horse, or part of a company of invalids; and his excellency desires you will acquaint me by express whether a troop or two of horse can be properly accommodated in Belfast, so long as it may be proper to continue them in that town, in addition to the two troops now there. I have, etc., "RICHARD HERON." This is but one of many communications which passed at the time between the Government and the authorities of Belfast. In most of them, the former express their satisfaction at the spirit of the volunteer companies then formed or about to be formed; with no sincerity, as we shall see presently. It was evident, then, that the Government was in no condition to defend Ireland, if Ireland had really been me The Government of the day soon saw itself powerless to resist this potent movement. It, however, concealed its apprehensions for the present, under the mask of gratitude for the loyal zeal of the people. Loyal as undoubtedly the institution was-loyal even to the prejudices which Government must have wished to foster, for one of their earliest celebrations was the Battle of the Boynet-the English interest trembled, at what their appalled imagination seemed to be the infancy of revolution. Thus, whilst the wretched Government, unable to discharge its functions, and resigning the defence of the country to the virtue and valour of her children, looked on in angry amazement at the daily increasing numbers of the Volunteers, their training into discipline, their martial array and military celebrations, the great officers of the executive were planning how best they might settle *Stuart's History of Armagh. MacNevin's VoIunteers. Plowden. Hardy's Charlemont. Sir Jonah Barrington, Rise and Fall, etc. The authorities for the history of the Volunteers are innumerable, and will only be cited for some special fact. July 1, 1779.-"Our three volunteer companies paraded in their uniform with orange cockades, and fired three volleys with their usual steadiness and regularity, in commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne."-Hist. Collections relative to the Town of in its birth the warlike spirit of the Volunteers), wore scarlet and white; other people. In May, 1779, we find a letter of Lord Buckinghamshire to Lord Weymouth, which clearly proves the fears and hypocrisy of Government, and the alarming progress of the armament. "Upon receiving official intimation that the enemy meditated an attack upon the northern parts of Ireland, the inhabitants of Belfast and Carrickfergus, as Government could not immediately afford a greater force for their protection than about sixty troopers, armed themselves, and by degrees formed themselves into two or three companies; the spirit diffused itself into different parts of the kingdom, and the numbers became considerable, but in no degree to the amount represented. Discouragement has, however, been given on my part, as far as might be without offence at a crisis when the arm and good-will of every individual might have been wanting for the defence of the state." Lord Buckinghamshire, in another part of the same letter, attributes the rapid increase in the ranks of the Volunteers to an idea that was entertained amongst the people that their numbers would conduce to the attainment of political advantages for their country. All motives conduced to the same end, and that end--the armed organization of Ireland-was rapidly approaching. The fire of the people, and their anxiety to enter the ranks of the national army, may be judged from the fact, that in September, 1779, the return of the Volunteers in the counties of Antrim and Down, and in and near Coleraine, amounted to: Of these, the great majority were fully equipped and armed-and glittered in the gay uniform of the Volunteers. Some few companies were, however, unarmed, even up to a later period, until the pressure on Government compelled them to distribute the arms intended for the militia to worthier hands. The uniforms of the Volunteers were very various, and of all the colours of the rainbow. The uniform of the Lawyer's corps was scarlet and blue, their motto, "Pro aris et fucis;" the Attorney's regiment of Volunteers was scarlet and Pomona green; a corps called the Irish Brigade, and composed principally of Catholics, (after the increasing liberality of the day had permitted them to become regiments of Irish Brigades wore scarlet faced with green, and their motto was " Vor populi suprema lex est; the Goldsmith's corps, commanded by the Duke of Leinster, wore blue, faced with scarlet and a professional profusion of gold lace. The "Irish Volunteers" were at first a Protestant organization exclusively. It was only by degrees and with extreme jealousy that its ranks were afterwards opened to those of the proscribed race It might seem, indeed, that the Catholics would have been justified in taking no interest in the movement, and that they had little to hope from any change. They were not yet citizens, and if permitted to breathe in Ireland, it was by connivance, and against the law. Even the most zealous of the new Volunteers, who were now springing to arms for defence of Ireland, were, with some illustrious exceptions, their most determined and resolute foes. But, plunged in poverty and ignorance as they were, despoiled of rank, and arms, and votes, they yet seem to have felt instinctively that a movement for Irish independence, if successful, must end in their emancipation. They had grown numerous, and many of them rich, in the midst of persecution; and, notwithstanding the penal laws against education, many of the Catholics were in truth the best educated and accomplished persons in the island. These instructed and thoughtful Catholics could see very well-what Grattan also saw, but what most Cromwellian squires and Williamite peers could not see-that if Ireland should still pretend "to stand upon her smaller end," she would not long stand against England. Then they were naturally a warlike race; and, it must be added to their credit, that the late small and peddling relaxations in the Penal Code, urged on by the British minister in order to conciliate them to the English interest, had signally failed. The English interest, as they felt, was the great and necessary enemy of all Ireland, and of every one of its inhabitants, and so it was very soon apparent that the armed Protestant Volunteers would have at their back the two millions of Catholic Irish. There is in the dark records of the depravity of the Government of that day a singular document, which, while it attests the patriotism and zeal of the Catholics, illustrates the base and vile spirit which repelled their loyalty and refused their aid. The Earl of Tyrone wrote to one of the Beresfords, a member of that grasping patrician family, which had long ruled the country,* that the rian, or revolutionary movement. Thus, Catholics in their zeal were forming they adopted a system of officering their themselves into independent companies, army, which gave a pledge that no anarand had actually begun their organiza- chical idea had place in their thoughts. tion; but that, seeing the variety of con- The soldiers elected their own commandsequences which would attend such an ers; and whom, says MacNevin, whom event, he had found it his duty to stop did they choose? "Whom did this demotheir movement! Miserable Government cratic army select to rule their councils -unable to discharge its first duty of and direct their power? Not the low defence, and trembling to depute them to ambitious-not the village vulgar brawler the noble and forgiving spirit of a gallant-but the men who, by large possessions, people! The Catholics of Limerick, lofty character, and better still, by virtue forbidden the use of arms, subscribed and and by genius, had given to their names made a present of £800 to the treasury of a larger patent than nobility. Flood and the Volunteers. Grattan, Charlemont and Leinster-the chosen men in all the liberal professions During all this time "the Castle" looked on in silent alarm. Even so late as May, the orators who led the Patriot party 1779, when the Volunteer companies num- in the House of Commons-the good, the bered probably twenty thousand men, the high, the noble; these were the officers lord-lieutenant gravely considered whether who held unpurchased honours in the Voit were still possible to disperse and disarm lunteers. We may well look back, with them by force. In one of his letters to mournful pride, through the horrid chaos Lord Weymouth† he says-"The seizing where rebellion and national ruin rule the of their arms would have been a violent murky night, to this one hour of glory expedient, and the preventing them from-of power uncorrupted, and opportuniassembling without a military force im- ties unabused." practicable; for when the civil magistrate will rarely attempt to seize an offender suspected of the most enormous crimes, and when convicted, convey him to the place of execution without soldiers; nay, when in many instances persons cannot be put into possession of their property, nor, being possessed, maintain it without such assistance, there is little presumption in asserting, that, unless bodies of troops had been universally dispersed, nothing could have been done to effect this. My accounts state the number of corps as not exceeding eight thousand men, some without arms, and in the whole, very few who are liable to a suspicion of disaffection." It is difficult to arrive at any accurate statement of the numbers of the Volunteers within the first year of their organization. There have been both exaggerative and depreciative estimates. We have seen that the lord-lieutenant, in June, 1779, had supposed their force to be only 8000; yet in the very next month had yielded to them a demand which it would have been vitally important to the Government to refuse them. And as will be always the case, where the money of Government can command the venal crew of writers, the most elaborate falsehood and the most insulting ridicule were poured upon the heads of those by whose exertions the national cause was so nobly maintained. In Lloyd's Evening Post, an article appeared on the 7th of July, stating that the numbers of the Volunteers had been monstrously exaggerated; that no call could bring into the field twenty thousand men; that persons of all ages were enrolled and put on paper; that every gentleman belonged to two, and most of them to five or six different corps, and that by this ubiquity and divisibility of person, the muster-rolls of the companies were swelled. Doubtlessly there But a spirit of great moderation reigned was some exaggeration in the representaover the councils of this armed nation. tion of the numbers occasionally made; It was, in the hands of those leaders, any-but a competent authority, commenting thing rather than a republican, or agra- on this article, states, that at this time there were 95,000. But in the next month, the same viceroy communicates to the same minister, that, by advice of the Privy Council of Ireland, he had supplied the Volunteers with part of the arms intended for the militia. This was really giving up the island into the hands of the Volunteers. The leaders of that force at once felt that they might do what they would with Ireland-for a time. After the delivery of the arms, the numbers of Volunteers rapidly and greatly increased. May 28, 1779. Grattan's Life: cited by MacNevin. † May 24, 1779. In the ranks of the Volunteers there were, in point of fact, very many Catholics 16,000 stand of arms were delivered to the from a very early period of the movement; Volunteers at this time. but they were there by connivance, as they were everywhere else. But in the next year, after meetings of Volunteers had passed resolutions in favour of Catholic rights, the young men of that religion began to swell the numbers of many corps. Some corps were composed altogether of Catholics: and when the Dungannon Convention came, the Volunteer army was at least 75,000 strong. tion is the more important to be observed, because modern "free traders" in Ireland and in England have sometimes appealed to the authority of the enlightened men who then governed the Volunteer movement as an authority in favour of abolishing import and export duties. The citation is by no means applicable. tory nullification of Poyning's Law, which required the Irish Parliament to submit the heads of their bills to the English Privy Council before they could presume to pass them-these were, in few words, the two great objects which the leaders of the Volunteers kept now steadily before them. It must be here observed, that the idea and the term "free trade," as then During the summer of 1799, an event understood in Ireland, did not represent occurred, which immensely stimulated what the political economists now call the volunteering spirit:-the combined free trade. What was sought, was a refleets of France and Spain entered the lease from those restrictions on Irish Channel in overwhelming force, which the trade imposed by an English Parliament, British could not venture to encounter and for the profit of the English people the vessels passing between England and This did not mean that imports and ex Ireland were placed under the protection ports should be free of all duty to the of convoys; Paul Jones, with his little state, but only that the fact of import or squadron, fought and captured, within export itself should not be restrained by sight of the English coast, the Serapis, foreign laws, and that the duties to be deman-of-war, and Scarborough frigate, rived from it should be imposed by Irewith many vessels under their convoy; in land's own Parliament, and in the sole short, there was another alarm of inva-interest of Ireland herself. This distincsion, both in England and in Ireland. MacNevin, in his History of the Volunteers, says with a cool naïveté, which is charming, that this "was fortunate for the reputation of the Volunteers, for the purpose of establishing their fidelity to the original principle of their body," which principle was defence of the country against a foreign enemy. Most of the The first measure to convince England Volunteers knew well that their only that Ireland was entitled to an unrestricted foreign enemy was England, and that trade, was the "non-importation agreeFrance, Spain, and America would have ment," which many of the Volunteer been most happy to deliver them from corps, as well as town corporations, that enemy. They knew, also, that the solemnly adopted by resolutions, during only use of the Volunteer force, in prac- the year 1779. Although there were tice, was likely to be the wrestling of frequent debates in the British Parliatheir national independence from Eng- ment this year on the subject of modifyland. However, the new alarm aided, ing the laws prohibiting the export of cotand seemed to justify the volunteering. tons, woollens, and provisions, from IreTherefore, the delegates of 125 corps of land, yet it was but too plain that the Volunteers, all of them men of rank and rapacious spirit of British commerce, and character, waited on the lord-lieutenant the menacing, almost frantic, opposition with offers of service in such manner as given to all consideration of such measure, shall be thought necessary for the safety by petitions, which sounded more like and protection of the kingdom.' The threats, coming from the great centres of offer was accepted, but very coldly, and trade in England, Manchester, Glasgow, without naming "Volunteers." Liverpool, and Bristol, would render all redress hopeless from that quarter. The non-importation agreements became popular, and the people of many towns and counties were steadily refusing to wear or use in their houses any kind of wares coming from England. The town of Galway had the honour of leading the way in this movement: the example was immediately followed by corps of Volunteers in many counties; and as the VolunArming-Reviews.-Charlemont.-Briberies of teers were already the fashion, women Buckingham.-Carlisle.-Viceroy. CHAPTER XIX. 1779-1780. Free Trade and Free Parliament.-Meaning of "Free Trade."-Non-importation agreements Rage of the English-Grattan's motion for free trade.-Hussey Burgh.-Thanks to the Volunteers.-Parade in Dublin.-Lord North yields. -Free Trade Act.-Next step.-Mutiny Bill The 19th of April-Declaration of Right.-De feated in Parliament, but successful in the country.-General determination.-Organizing. To force from reluctant England a Free sustained their patriotic resolution, and ladies of wealth began to clothe themselves exclusively in Irish fabrics. The |