of the king, lords, and commons of Ireland. They passed two resolutions drafted by Grattan which revealed the great distance they had traveled toward nationalism. "We hold the right of private judgment in matters of religion to be equally sacred in others as in ourselves; that as men, as Irishmen, as Christians, and as Protestants, we rejoice in the relaxation of the penal laws against our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and that we conceive the measure to be fraught with the happiest consequences to the union and prosperity of the inhabitants of Ireland."

Here was an expression of public opinion which even a privately-owned parliament could not ignore. "We know our duty to our sovereign, and are loyal; we know our duty to ourselves, and are resolved to be free." This moderation of the Volunteers, plus the proposed repeal of most of the penal laws, created an irresistible mood in Ireland. Lord Portland, the new viceroy, declared that it was no longer a question of the aroused parliament of Ireland. It was "the whole of this country." Fox insisted that there was only one thing to do: "to meet Ireland on her own terms and give her everything she wanted in the way in which she seemed to wish for it." On January 22, 1783, Ireland -that is, colonial Ireland-enacted its perfect auton

omy, "hereby declared to be established and ascertained forever, and shall at no time hereafter be questioned or questionable." After this achievement, but before the parliament was reformed, the Volunteers ceased to have influence.

"Ireland is a nation," exulted Grattan in full emotion. "In that character I hail her, and bowing in her august presence, I say, "Esto perpetua!"

The "perpetua" parliament lasted about seventeen years

CHAPTER VIII

THE ANGLO-IRISH PARLIAMENT

1

E now enter on a drama with four main con

WT flicting personages: the "English interest," the

Anglo-Irish interest, the submerged native Irish, and the suppressed dissenters in Northeast Ulster.

The drama falls into three acts.

From 1782 to

the French Revolution there was no serious social conflict inside Ireland. The native Irish made no stir, neither did the dissenters. The chief struggle was that of the Anglo-Irish parliament to overcome English jealousy and achieve commercial emancipation. But a great change in the mind and soul of Ireland took place with the French Revolution. From 1791 to 1798 the drama became political, with the native Irish returning to the stage under the leadership of Protestant radicals and Presbyterian republicans. Against these radicals and republicans, with the Catholic masses in the rear, stood the "independent" parlia

ment and the English government. At first the Government inclined to temporize. It planned to emancipate the Catholics. But with the aggressiveness of the radicals and republicans it soon changed its tactics. The radicals were disloyal. They desired French intervention. And gradually their society, the United Irishmen, became a revolutionary body, with the plan of establishing an Irish republic. It was this program, and the danger that it threatened to British imperialism so long as the native Irish had to be submerged, that decided Pitt to bring about the union of the British and Anglo-Irish parliaments.

The second act was mainly occupied with leading up to this union, in spite of the wishes of the Anglo-Irish. A great help in this direction was the revival of social and religious antagonism in Northeast Ulster. The educated Presbyterian was, as a rule, a republican, and desirous of a united Ireland. But in the rural districts there was latent rivalry and hostility among Catholics and Presbyterians, and out of this came the Defenders and the Orangemen. The Orangemen gave efficient aid to British imperial policy. When the United Irishmen had extended their organization, the Government provoked a leaderless rebellion, and then turned the Orange militia loose on the Southern peasantry. The fright

fulness was so great that the viceroy and the military commanders sickened at it, but it paved the way for the short third act in this chapter of history: the "independent" parliament was destroyed.

2

The "independent" parliament began, however, without any apprehension of English treachery. A feeling of intense gratitude to England pervaded it. One of its first acts was to vote £100,000 to the navy, and a contribution of 20,000 men. The fact that these naval recruits were sometimes countrymen knocked down and lashed and dragged on board the ships of his Majesty's fleet did not lessen the surging loyalty which filled the breasts of Grattan and his friends. These statesmen gloried, to tell the truth, in the strange sensation of legislative freedom. And because they felt free they felt generous, especially to the country which had

freed them.

One of the first results of this emotion was a body of the most amiable and enlightened municipal legislation. To make Dublin into a handsome capital, the second city of the empire, was the ambition of the young parliament, and such public buildings as the custom-house and the viceregal lodge (of which the