CHAP. X.]

It

On the 3d of October 1691, as we have said, the Treaty of Limerick, including provisions favourable to the Catholics, was signed. On the 22d of the same month, the English parliament decreed that Irish members of both Houses should take the oaths of supremacy; an enactment which excluded Catholics from both the Irish Houses of parliament. King William forgot his pledge to recommend the liberties of the Catholics to the attention of parliament. Three years after that pledge was given, and when nothing had been done to redeem it, a set of enactments was passed which left the Romanists in such a condition that the wonder is that they did not spring at the throats of their oppressors, and peril everything for a savage revenge. All Catholics were disarmed, and the priests banished: that much might have been borne; but the whole body were deprived of all means of educating their children, and were prohibited from being the guardians, not only of other people's children, but of their own. As this was endured, other privations followed in 1704. Every son who would turn Protestant might now succeed to the family estate, which was stringently secured to him. A boy of ten years old, or younger, might thus dispossess his family, if he declared himself a Protestant. A Catholic could no longer purchase land, or enjoy a long lease, or make more than a certain income by his land, or marry a Protestant, or take his place in a line of entail, or hold any office, civil or military, or vote at elections, or, except under certain conditions, dwell in Limerick or Galway. Five years after, more penalties were added; and again in the next reign. Any son of a Catholic might bring his father into chancery, force him to declare on oath the value of his property, and to settle such an allowance upon the family informer as the court should decree, not only for the father's life, but the son's. This was a zeal for religion indeed, which could slight morality, and set up a new commandment in the place of the old one, which enjoins honour to father and mother. Catholics keeping schools were to be prosecuted as convicts; and papists were bound to furnish Protestant watchmen for the towns, and horses for the militia. Any priest celebrating marriage between a papist and a Protestant was to be hanged. No Catholics were to enter the profession of the law;

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and any lawyer marrying a Catholic was to be held a papist. If it makes the heart sick now to read these things, done little more than a century ago, and done in the name of the religion professed by both parties, what must it have been to have endured them? What must have been the interior of Catholic households in those days? If the blessing of education had been left them, we might understand their patience; and we can but hope that circumstances were to them an education sufficient for their needs; for the children did not rise against their parents, nor the oppressed against their oppressors. There was no rebellion during the series of years which added weight to the oppression with every new parliament. These Catholic households had, in the absence of learning, their faith, which they found sufficient to bind them together in love, to strengthen them against temptation, and under poverty; to nerve them to courage, and fortify them for endurance. Thus it was at the time, while the spirit of confessorship was fresh and strong among them. But it is the first-fruits of adversity only, or chiefly, that are blessed. In course of time, the enforced ignorance began to tell upon the mind, and the unrelieved oppression upon the temper, of the Catholic body; and we see the results now in those moral defects of the Irish which perpetuate their social miseries after the oppression has been removed. It should be remembered, on the other hand, that the spirit of the Reformation, which attributed all the evils in the world to papistry, had not died out; that the memory of the worst days of the Inquisition was fresh, and the horror of the Gunpowder Plot, and the dread of the Stuarts. It was a mistake to suppose that the evils which took place under the prevalence of the Catholic faith were all attributable to that faith; and it was another mistake to suppose that any faith can be extirpated by persecution; but those were not days of philosophical statesmanship; and it would be unreasonable to look for the springing up of political philosophy by the light of Guy Fawkes's lantern, on the footsteps of successive Pretenders.

The first dawn of promise of better days appears to have followed upon the quietness of the Irish in the two Stuart rebellions. While Scotland and the north of England were up in arms, the Catholics of Ireland gave no trouble; and the Brunswick sovereigns were gratified and grateful. It was during their reigns that the Catholics had been deprived of the franchise; but that act had been an adverting again to a political from a religious ground. The English faction had for some time been becoming Irish in its habits and predilections. As Mr Burke said: "The English, as they began to be domiciliated, began also to recollect that they had a country; what was at first strictly an English interest, by faint and almost insensible degrees, but at length openly and avowedly, became an independent Irish interest.' The government feared a union between the two classes of Irish residents, which might become formidable to English rule; and they rendered the Catholic class politically powerless, by depriving them of the only remnant of social influence they still held-the franchise. But, when the Irish

remained quiet during the two rebellions, they procured for themselves a degree of good-will from the English government which opened the way for their final emancipation. Their quietness was called 'loyalty;' a term which it would be no credit to them to accord; for they owed no faith to a sovereignty which had kept none with them, but had humbled them from the rank of subjects to that of slaves. By whatever name it may be called, their demeanour obtained for them some countenance from George II. and his minister, Walpole; and in 1757 they first reappeared as a distinct moving body in the state-presenting an address at Dublin Castle, during the viceroyalty of the Duke of Bedford.

The restraining system' continued, however, without material relaxation, for twenty years longer. By that time, a young champion of liberty had risen up, ready to make use of, and to ripen, a better state of ideas and feelings than had existed in the days of his fathers. By lapse of time, men's minds had become enlarged, and their hearts freed from some old fears and hatreds; and Grattan was one to make the most of improved facilities, and to win over the best minds to the right side. After obtaining the removal of some restrictions on Irish commerce, he carried in the Irish parliament, in 1780, the memorable resolution: That the king's most excellent majesty, and the Lords and Commons of Ireland, are the only competent power to make laws to bind Ireland.' Many disqualifying statutes were repealed in the few subsequent years; and the admission of Catholics to a freer possession and disposal of land was the cause of that development of agriculture to which Ireland owes the greater part of the improvement in her material resources from that day to this. Some students of history look upon this year 1780 as the date of an Irish revolution as important to the Irish as that of 1688 had been to Great Britain. Like most revolutions, it was achieved by the use of irregular instruments. It is not our business here to give over again the history of the Irish volunteers; but merely to point to them and their agency, as a precedent which must be kept in view when we come to the contemplation of future volunteer associations in Ireland. The volunteers of the last century achieved a great work with little or no damage or discredit; they were repeatedly thanked by parliament; they were honoured and praised by the best part of society, in both England and Ireland; and there can be no reasonable wonder, after this, at the formation of future volunteer societies, when further liberties had to be contended for, and must, in the nature of things, be won. From the date of the victories of 1780, it was certain that the questions of Irish and Catholic disqualifications could never again be put aside. Complete equality with Englishmen and Protestants, or complete separation, was thenceforth assured to the Catholics of Ireland. The English government had relinquished, under whatever compulsion, the function of oppressor. There could be no rest now till it assumed that of liberator. And till the liberation was accomplished, there was no rest. During the interval of delay, the mind of the sovereign was perturbed-once to the

point of insanity; every cabinet was first distracted, and then broken up; and parliament was agitated by the perpetual renewal of the Catholic demand for justice, and the spectacle of the gradual strengthening of the claim which could never more be got rid of.

By this time, it must be remembered, the Catholics had largely increased in numbers. It is disputed whether, in 1800, there was any increase at all in the numbers of the Protestants in Ireland during the preceding half-century; and it is certain that, from two to one, the Catholics had then become four to one. The penal laws had tended to banish the Catholics from the towns, and drive them into a rural life-too often sordid as their hopes, and wild as their despair. There in their recklessness, and under the influence of their priests-who always promote marriage to the utmost-the population had increased at an unusually rapid rate. The wise saw, at the end of the last century, that the Catholic question had become, in fact, a physicalforce question. It had long been said, by a succession of writers and speakers, that the Catholics would obtain their liberties only by the fears and the wants of their oppressors; and now it began to be clear, with their numbers thickening on the Irish soil, and foes gathering against England on the continent, that the time was coming for the fears of government to act. The rebellion of 1798 shewed, to every man living at the time, what cause the government had for fear, and what its fears led it to do. Those fears led to the Act of Union in 1800, which act was agreed to by the people of Ireland on a virtual pledge from Mr Pitt that the Catholic disabilities should be removed. There is no doubt that Mr Pitt purposed what he was held to have promised; but he pledged himself to more than he could accomplish. He promised more, on behalf both of king and parliament, than either was willing to perform. The king scrupled about the coronation oath, with regard to which he declared that his mind had been made up ever since he came to the throne in 1760. As he had done his part in repealing penal laws in 1778 and 1793, it was hardly to be supposed that he would make a stand in his course of concession at the point now reached; but Mr Pitt had not formally ascertained that he would not; and a vigorous stand indeed was now made.

With regard to the coronation oath, the fact is, that it was framed at a time when Catholics sat in both Houses of parliament in Ireland, and when they were eligible to all offices, civil and military. The oath was taken by King William two years before the disqualifying statutes of his reign were passed. Much more might be said about the intent, scope, and terms of the coronation oath, shewing that it did not bear upon the question of the exclusion of the Catholics; but the fact of the date is enough. The king, George III., however, was not one to discern things that differ, or to admit facts which opposed his opinions. So, when Lord Melville endeavoured to shew him that his oath did not disqualify him for improving the legislation of the country, the king stopped him with the words: None of your Scotch metaphysics!'

CHAP. X.]

According to his own notion, he settled the matter by the well-known declaration, which went to Pitt's heart, that he should consider any man his personal enemy who proposed any measure of relaxation of the Catholic disabilities. He was not enlightened enough to know that the affairs of nations cannot wait on the ignorance of kings. There were too many who helped to keep him in the dark, by applauses of his conscientiousness, and pleas on behalf of his perverted sense of responsibility. There were too many who, finding every ground of reasoning, political and religious, cut from under them, by the advance of time and enlightenment, clung to the one remaining plea-that the king must not be vexed. Pitt was too wise to class himself with any of these; but yet he could not follow what he clearly saw to be the right. He had, by some carelessness, brought himself into a difficulty which was too strong for him. Even he, who took upon himself more responsibilities than any other man of his day would have ventured to assume, was overcome by the force of the dilemma in which he found himself placed. The king's tendency to insanity formed the peculiarity of the case. The man who saw the case so clearly-the pressing nature of the Catholic claims, and the requisitions of his own honour in regard to them— writhed under the anguish of having driven the king into madness, and shrank from the risk of causing a repetition of the calamity, though millions. of wronged subjects were waiting for their promised rights, and his own honour was importunate for satisfaction. It was a cruel position; and any man may be freely pitied who finds himself in it, however he came there. The king,' says Lord Malmesbury (March 7, 1801), 'in directing Willis to speak or write to Pitt, said: "Tell him I am now QUITE recovered from my illness; but what has he not to answer for, who is the cause of my having been ill at all?" This, on being repeated, affected Pitt so deeply, that it immediately produced the letter mentioned above, and brought from him the declaration of his readiness to give way on the Catholic question.' Pitt's letter 'was most dutiful, humble, and contrite.' Here was one side of his difficulty. The other was, in Lord Malmesbury's words: 'While all these arrangements are making at home, all public business is at a stand; we forget the host of enemies close upon us, and everybody's mind thinks on one object only, unmindful that all they are contending about may vanish and disappear, if we are subdued by France.'

The danger was imminent of the Irish uniting with the French against that throne which the king declared would become the right of the House of Savoy, if he violated the coronation oath; and imminent the danger remained when Mr Pitt came in again in 1804. But he had had too terrible a fright ever to recover his courage; and he avoided the question during the short remainder of his life. In 1807, there was much stir about it, and the subject was brought forward in parliament, in the belief, authorised by some of the ministers, that the king had become apathetic about this, as about other public affairs; but, when appealed to for his

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opinion, by the enemies of emancipation, he shewed himself as determined and as anxious as ever; and Lord Camden intimated to Lord Malmesbury that he conceived himself to have given a sort of pledge to Pitt, 'that the question should not be mooted during the king's life.' Lord Camden himself was, 'like many others, not so much against the principle of emancipation, as because the king had declared himself.' Foolish and wrong as such a reason was, it was one which tended to keep the Catholics from rebellion. If they could really believe that their emancipation was awaiting the death of an infirm man of sixty-eight, they might well have patience, in the hope of obtaining what they wanted by law, instead of by violence. And their condition was no longer one which it was difficult to endure from day to day, though it was such as they could not acquiesce in as permanent. At that time, in 1807, their disabilities were these.

The Catholics of Ireland could not sit in either House of parliament. No Catholic could be a guardian to a Protestant; and no priest could be a guardian at all. No Catholic could present to an ecclesiastical living, though Protestant Dissenters, and even Jews, could do so. Catholics were allowed to have arms only under certain restrictions; and no Catholic could be employed as a fowler, or keep any arms or warlike stores, for sale or otherwise. The pecuniary qualification of Catholic was higher than that of Protestant jurors. The list of offices, state and municipal, to which Catholics were ineligible, is long; and they were practically excluded from the public service. They were also liable to the penalties of the severest of the old laws, if they did not punctually exempt themselves by taking the oath and declaration prescribed by 13 and 14 George III. c. 3. Their legal disabilities occasioned incalculable suffering in their social relations-legal degradation being always an invitation to the baser part of society to inflict insult and privation which cannot be retaliated. There was a systematic exclusion of Catholics from juries in Ireland; and in some districts abso lutely a banishment of them from the soil. Every Catholic was so effectually excommunicated, in certain parts of Ireland, that he could not preserve his property, or remain on the spot; and if he happened to die before he could effect his removal, the passing-bell was jerked into a merry measure. Some wretched facts of this nature were related, not only at a general meeting of Catholics held in April 1807, but by Protestant noblemen and magistrates residing in Ireland; one of whom, Lord Gosford, chief-magistrate of the county of Armagh, published a statement whose date alone could make us believe that it belongs to the present century. Still, as there appeared to be hope after the death of a man of sixty-eight, the Catholics did not rebel.

In 1808, both Houses of parliament refused to entertain the subject of Catholic emancipation, under existing circumstances. On that occasion, Mr Grattan first introduced the proposition of the veto, afterwards so much discussed; according to which the king was to have power to put his veto upon the nomination of Catholic bishops. Mr Grattan spoke as by authority; but a large portion of the Catholic

body disapproved of the offer, and it occasioned much dissension among them. During Mr Perceval's administration, broken up by his death in 1812, it had been a principle of his cabinet to resist the Catholic claims; but the resistance was based on no ground of principle, but only on the plea of unfavourable circumstances. Still, therefore, the Catholics might wait. But they were disposed to prepare for a change of circumstances, and, if possible, to hasten matters a little; so they enlarged the numbers, powers, and scope of their Catholic committee, which met, debated, issued circulars, and originated action, and then dissolved itself, from year to year. A vain war was waged against this committee in 1811 and 1812, by the Irish government, on the ground of the Convention Act of 1793. But the Catholics continued to carry through their meetings, and carry out their objects; and parliament refused to interfere against them, while declining to act in favour of the body they represented.

Mr

The time was now past for constructing cabinets on the principle of opposition to the Catholic claims. From this time it became an open question; and it proved as troublesome and unmanageable as open questions of pressing importance always are. Canning directly spoke out, and obtained a majority on his motion, that early in the next session the House should take the subject into its most serious consideration, with a view to a practical settlement. But before the next session, there was a new parliament, and the pledge of the old one was lost.

Now that the subject had obtained admission to parliament, arose the difficulties which were sure to spring up about the details of any measure of emancipation. The dissensions and discussions now began about how to proceed, about the securities which were offered or required, the safeguards which must be provided against foreign influence, the limitations as to office and function necessary at home, and all those matters of arrangement which indicated to men of business that some years must probably yet elapse before any effectual measure could be obtained, while they indicated to men of sagacity that this was the beginning of the end-that the final stage of the struggle was entered upon. The scruples of the sovereign were no longer in the way it was supposed, rightly or wrongly, that no difficulty would be found with the prince-regent: almost as soon as Lord Liverpool entered office, he became convinced that concessions must be made in no long time; and before his health failed, he is known to have contemplated the necessity of retiring, to enable Mr Canning to carry Catholic emancipation. Every one saw that the shuffling expedient of sending over to Ireland administrations composed half and half of pro and anti-Catholic men could not answer for any length of time. It was clear that the crisis was coming; but the interval was painful and dangerous -painful for the delay of right-doing, and the obstinate clinging to wrongful power; and dangerous to the political character of all concerned. Lord Castlereagh and Mr Canning went on, session after session, moving the hearts and minds of the House and the country with pictures of the state of Ireland and of the Catholic mind; but nothing seemed to

come of it. Men grew weary of so much talk with so little deed. By the time they had arrived at the session of 1820, accusations were all abroad against these two statesmen; accusations of insincerity and of cowardice; because it was believed that if they chose to make this a cabinet question, it could be carried at once. They were accused of being bought off by the blandishments of the court, and the amenities of the other section of the cabinet. Lord Castlereagh soon after slipped away beyond the reach of human censure. How it told upon Mr Canning was indicated by the extraordinary quarrel between him and Mr Brougham in the session of 1823. In 1824, the aspect of the affairs of the Catholics was this, to a liberal and enlightened Churchman: We are sorry we have nothing for which to praise administration on the subject of the Catholic question. . . . . Looking to the sense and reason of the thing, and to the ordinary working of humanity and justice, when assisted, as they are here, by self-interest and worldly policy, it might seem absurd to doubt of the result. But looking to the facts and the persons by which we are now surrounded, we are constrained to say that we greatly fear that these incapacities never will be removed, till they are removed by fear. What else, indeed, can we expect when we see them opposed by such enlightened men as Mr Peel, faintly assisted by men of such admirable genius as Mr Canning; when royal dukes consider it as a compliment to the memory of their fathers to continue this miserable system of bigotry and exclusion; when men act ignominiously and contemptuously on this question, who do so on no other question. . . . . We repeat again, that the measure never will be effected but by fear. In the midst of one of our just and necessary wars, the Irish Catholics will compel this country to grant them a great deal more than they at present require, or even contemplate. We regret most severely the protraction of the disease, and the danger of the remedy; but in this way it is that human affairs are carried on.'

....

And what was it that was in the way of the emancipation of the Catholics? This was the question of all others that it was, at the time, the most difficult to get answered. Was it the political or religious ground that was taken now? There could be no fear, in 1824, that the Irish wanted to bring in the French, or to bring in the Stuarts, or to dethrone the House of Brunswick in favour of any royal house designated by the pope. There could be no idea, in this century, of massacres for the faith, or of gunpowder-plots, or of Smithfield fires, or of an inquisition in England. And surely there could not be, in our day, any notion of converting five or six millions of Catholics from a false to a true faith by a system of exclusion and insult. How was it? What was the avowed ground of the opponents of the Catholic claims?

Catholics; and they shewed no signs of religious proselytism. The truth was, there was no longer any_common_ground on which the opposition was conducted. Every opponent had his own plea; and the pleas were, for the most part, mere words. One talked of the coronation oath, following the lead of the Duke of York; though it was known that the king did not recognise that impediment. Another spoke of the compact with Ireland, according to which the Protestant Church was to be exclusively favoured by the state. Another had no confidence in the Catholics. Others dreaded letting in the influence of the pope. Others talked of 'the mysterious and sublimed union of Church and State being a sacred subject, that soars above the ken of worldly policy;' and of its being an ethereal essence, that sanctifies and gives a character of perpetuity to our state.' All these difficulties, misty and unsubstantial, were sure to be wafted away by the first strong breeze of danger. And so were the impediments which were, in fact, the most real-those arising from habit. The habit of considering the Catholics excluded, inferior, dangerous, kept under by the wisdom of our ancestors, was in fact the main obstacle to their emancipation. That which was afterwards ascertained and avowed was true now-that the real difficulty lay, not with kings, princes, and cabinets, but with the people of England, before whom the question had never yet been fairly brought. Nothing was so likely to bring the question before them as danger; and therefore it was that the advocates of the Catholics were justified in predicting, as they did from century to century, that fear would prove at last the emancipating power. Another means of presenting the matter fully to the popular mind began now, however, to come into full operation. The press was brought into action in a curious manner, on behalf of the struggling party. While the sons of Catholic gentry in Ireland were excluded from many lines by which eminence might be reached, they naturally flocked to the career of the law. While in London, training for the bar, many of them were glad to eke out their scanty resources by such profitable employment as they could find for their leisure hours, which was not incompatible with their business and their station; and a large proportion of reporters for the London press at this time consisted of young Irish barristers. Those who reported the parliamentary debates naturally gave prominence to such as affected the Catholic question; and for some years before that question was settled, they indefatigably reported whatever was said upon it, excluding for its sake, when there was not room for everything, any other subject whatever. Those who are at present familiar with Irish newspapers are amused to see how many columns of parliamentary intelligence are filled with Irish affairs, while those of England, Scotland, and the colonies are crowded into a corner; and thus it was when the Catholic question was approaching its crisis. By this accident or method, the British people were led to suppose that Catholic affairs occupied much more of the time and attention of the two Houses than they really did; and were brought, accordingly, to devote more

thought and feeling to the great Catholic subject than they otherwise would. Everything being thus in train, the events of 1825 began their march, in the eyes of an attentive and anxious nation.

The king's speech, delivered by commission on the 3d of February, after congratulating parliament on the prosperity of the country, expressed gratification that this prosperity extended to Ireland, and that the outrages which had formerly prevailed had of late almost ceased. 'It is therefore,' continued the speech, the more to be regretted that associations should exist in Ireland, which have adopted proceedings irreconcilable with the spirit of the constitution, and calculated, by exciting alarm, and by exasperating animosities, to endanger the peace of society, and to retard the course of national improvement. His majesty relies upon your wisdom to consider, without delay, the means of applying a remedy to this evil.'

This is the speech of which Lord Eldon wrote: 'To-day we have cabinet in Downing Street, and council at Carlton House, to try if we can make a good speech for the king. But there are too many hands at work to make a good thing of it, and so you will think, I believe, when you read it. I don't much admire the composition or the matter of the speech. My old master, the late king, would have said that it required to be set off by good reading. It falls to my lot to read it, and I should read it better if I liked it better.'

A part of this speech, a very small part, caused long and vehement debate in parliament. That small part was the letter 's' affixed to the word association. The question was, whether the reprobation expressed related to the great new Catholic Association just arisen in Ireland, and was therefore a blow aimed expressly at the Catholics, or whether it included the Orange clubs which were in great force at that time. The Catholic Association claimed the credit of having quieted the outrages of Ireland, and asserted their right to honour accordingly; while their enemies clamoured for their suppression, on the ground of the adjuration by which they had quieted Ireland. This adjuration was: 'By the hate they bore the Orangemen, who were their natural enemies, and by the confidence they reposed in the Catholic Association, who were their natural and zealous friends, to abstain from all secret and illegal associations and Whiteboy disturbances and outrages.' Whether that letter 's' was a gloss or a reality, it is certain that the Catholic Association filled a space in the view of the ministry and the country which left little room for clubs of inferior magnitude. Let the proposed measures be carried, said Mr Brougham, and the Catholic Association will be put down with one hand, while the Orange societies will receive only a gentle tap with the other.'

The Catholic Association had held its first open meeting in January of the preceding year; and in the following May, Mr Plunket had declared, on being questioned in the House, that the government was closely watching its proceedings. The great avowed object of the association was the preparation of petitions to parliament; but, during a course of