English deceit can rule us no more, Bigots and knaves are scattered like spray; Tories and Whigs grew pale with dismay Burst the cry forth, "Orange and Green must carry the day." No Pretender, Never to falter and never betray; With an Amen We swear it again, Orange and Green shall carry the day. 225 Such were the strains that aroused the spirit of Young Ireland, and of Old Ireland also. Their moral was selfreliance, internal union, and the extinction of sectarian animosities. In that moral I thoroughly concurred. We had in the Repeal Association many Protestant members, of whose conscientious attachment to their own religious belief I never entertained a doubt. Those men had a noble, generous, well-deserved trust in their Catholic countrymen. Enemies themselves to the political ascendency of Protestantism, they felt no fears of Catholic ascendency in the event of Repeal. Their principle, and ours, was the thorough political equality of all. For myself, I must be permitted to say this: I am a Catholic, deeply convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith, and claiming for Catholics the fullest equality of citizenship with Protestants. Yet, while recog Q nising the infinite importance of the Catholic faith in a spiritual point of view, I feel that, in a temporal aspect, Home Government is so much more important than Catholic privilege, that if I were reduced to the alternative I should greatly prefer to have Ireland governed by an exclusively Protestant Irish Parliament than by an exclusively Catholic English or Imperial Legislature. On a balance of advantages and disadvantages the scale would immensely preponderate in favour of self-legislation, even although clogged with the drawback of Catholic disability. Should any theological enthusiast find fault with this opinion, I would remind him that the Catholic aggregate meeting, held in Dublin in 1795, unanimously declared that they would resist even their own emancipation if offered as the price of an Union. And O'Connell said something not dissimilar when he announced on the 13th of January, 1800, that he would prefer "the penal code in all its pristine horrors to the Union, as the lesser and more sufferable evil." Young Ireland was ardent and eager. Her fiery vehemence was a useful ingredient in our great Constitutional warfare, so long as it was tempered with the judgment and experience of her elder friend and namesake. Old Ireland had been the victor in one prolonged and hard-fought contest -a triumph due to her wisdom, her virtue, and her perseverance. The sagacity of the one, restraining but not extinguishing the impetuous ardour of the other, produced a combination of qualities which would have been resistless in their union, if the demons of jealousy and division, followed by the crushing evils of the famine, had not dashed the councils and paralysed the strength of men whose movement, so long as they acted in concert with each other, had so fair a prospect of success. Davis's jubilant hopes of an Orange accession to the national cause were premature. It is not easy to extirpate the inveterate anti-national venom that festers in the Orange heart. The existence in Ireland of the Orange institution presents a strange and melancholy spectacle to every intelligent lover of his country. It seems at first as unaccountable as it is unnatural, that a body of men should detest the great mass of their countrymen, and glory in the degradation of their country. Elsewhere, we do not see the bitter animosities of a distant century kept alive by noisy and insolent annual celebrations. These displays, they allege, are intended to assert their "principles;" which principles are manifested Davis's Hopes of Orange Aid premature. 227 by outbursts of hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. Their outbursts are associated with vociferous boasts of their devotion to "a free, open Bible," and loud professions of religious fervour. This pretext of religion suggests the clerical source of their anti-social virulence. Davis not improbably founded his hope of an Orange contingent to the National ranks on the fact that in 1800 many of the Orange lodges had passed spirited anti-Union resolutions,* and he may have deemed it possible that the anti-Union feeling of that period might survive in the Orangemen of 1842. On the other hand, there was the fact that the Orange institution was founded in 1795 as an anti-Catholic organisation; that the sectarian bigotry of its members was constantly inflamed by furious anti-Catholic sermons from State Church pulpits, and equally furious harangues from Orange platforms; there was also the important fact that the State clergy, who must have felt their position insecure as monopolists of the whole ecclesiastical State property of a Catholic country, felt interested in stimulating the ferocious zeal of the Orange adherents of the State Church by fiery appeals to their antiCatholic prejudices; and finally, that the Orangemen, thus influenced, were unlikely to unite in a national movement which appeared to them to be a Catholic movement, because Catholics formed the large majority of the nation. I know not what proportion of the Presbyterian community belonged to the Orange institution. Presbyterians * The following Resolutions, passed by Orange lodges in 1800, are identical in spirit with many others: "LODGE 391, WATTLE BRIDGE, CO. FERMANAGH, 1st of March, 1800. "That, strongly attached to the Constitution of 1782-a settlement ratified in the most unequivocal manner, so far as the faith of nations is binding-we should feel ourselves criminal were we to remain silent while an attempt is made to extinguish it. That, impressed with every loyal sentiment towards our gracious Sovereign, we trust that the measure of a legislative Union, which is contrary to the sense of all Orangemen and the nation at large, will be relinquished. "JOHN MOORE, Master." "LODGE No. 883, AT NEWTOWNBARRY, 16th February, 1800. "That Orangemen ought to come forward as Orangemen and Irishmen and declare their sentiments against a legislative Union, which now, or at any other time, would be of the most fatal and pernicious consequences to the real liberty of Ireland. "EDMUND BEATTY, Master. had been extensively involved in the insurrectionary movements that preceded the Union. Lord Castlereagh contemplated "an increased provision for their clergy" as a good mode of buying them for the Court. The Regium Donum was accordingly swelled up to a large amount; and the patriotic ardour which had characterised the Presbyterians disappeared. The Nation first appeared on the 15th of October, 1842, John O'Connell had, 1 think, returned to town, but Mr. Ray and I were still pursuing our missionary avocations. The result of the missions on the Repeal Rent was remarkable. The week before we set forth to the provinces the rent was £45 14s. 8d. The week after our return it reached £235. CHAPTER XXIII. REPEAL DEBATED IN THE DUBLIN CORPORATION. distance. ACRES.-By my valour, then, Sir Lucius, forty yards is a good I tell you, Sir Lucius, the farther off he is, the cooler I shall take my aim. SIR LUCIUS.-Faith, then, I suppose you would aim at him best if he were out of sight? ACRES.-No, Sir Lucius; but I should think forty, or eight-andthirty yards. Do, my dear Sir Lucius, let me bring him down at a long shot. The Rivals. O'CONNELL'S next step was to bring the Repeal Question into the Dublin Corporation. Early in February, 1843, he gave notice that on Tuesday, the 21st of the month, he would move a resolution affirmatory of the right of Ireland to a resident Parliament, and the necessity of repealing the Union. Shortly prior to the 21st, he suddenly announced the postponement of his motion for a week. The Tory members of the Corporation complained of being unfairly treated. Alderman Butt declared that he had remained in town at much personal inconvenience in order to oppose the motion, and strongly remonstrated against the postponement. O'Connell, however, was inexorable, whereupon there was a sort of triumphant growl among the opposite party, who said that he only manoeuvred to get Butt out of town, from a well-grounded fear of discussing the merits of Repeal with so able an adversary. The postponement was useful. Had the discussion taken Public Curiosity excited. 229 place on the day originally fixed, it would have passed off as a matter of course, without exciting half the interest it afterwards created. But, by putting it off, an additional fillip was given to the public mind. The anti-Repealers alleged that O'Connell was shrinking from Butt; the Repealers indignantly denied the accusation. People upon both sides were thus set talking about the matter, and the public curiosity was wound up to a pitch of intensity when the day for the discussion arrived. O'Connell had planned this, in order to give additional éclat to the discomfiture he intended for the anti-Repealers. And a signal triumph he achieved. The Unionists had long been in the habit of saying, "O'Connell and his party have always kept out of the way of discussing this question-if we had them face to face we could expose their delusions." They had now got an opportunity of realising their boast. The Assembly House in William Street was crowded to the utmost. A vast concourse of people thronged the street without, unable to obtain admittance, yet rooted to the spot by the interest which the question awakened in all breasts. Twice or thrice in the course of the day I passed through the crowd, and the people invariably asked me how Repeal was getting on, and who was speaking now, with as eager an anxiety as if the success of the Repeal in the Dublin Corporation would secure its final and immediate triumph. O'Connell's opening speech occupied four hours and ten minutes. He had arranged the whole subject under nine distinct propositions. These were: I. The capability and capacity of the Irish nation for an independent Legislature. II. The perfect right of Ireland to have a domestic Parliament. III. That that right was fully established by the transactions of 1782. IV. That the most beneficial effects to Ireland resulted from her parliamentary independence. V. The utter incompetence of the Irish Parliament to annihilate the Irish Constitution by the Union. VI. That the Union was no contract or bargain; that it was carried by the grossest corruption and bribery, added to force, fraud, and terror. VII. That the Union produced the most disastrous results to Ireland. |