XI.—Grattan's Parliament.By G. P. GoochGrattan's Parliament was born of the American War of Independence and was slain by the French Revolution. Brief as was its life, it forms the most brilliant and interesting episode in Irish history. Never has the ancient and unconquerable spirit of nationality spoken in more eloquent accents than during the years when Grattan, loyal alike to the British connection and to Irish ideals, had won for his countrymen a measure of self-government. Representing only the Protestant minority, clogged with corruption, and containing its full share of selfish and reactionary influences, it was none the less the focus and the mouthpiece of national feeling. Fairly to judge the Grattan Parliament we must not only recall its limitations and errors but contrast its throbbing vitality with the servitude that preceded its foundation and the creeping paralysis which followed its dissolution.A long sleep had succeeded the final expulsion of James II. from Ireland. The penal code was perfected into a system accurately described by Burke as most perfectly fitted to degrade and brutalise the human spirit. Catholic Ireland was voiceless and wholly lacking in political consciousness; and the silence of Protestants was only broken by a rare protest from[pg 291]Molyneux, Swift, or Lucas. If any doubt remained under Poynings' Laws as to the complete dependence on Great Britain, it was set at rest by the Declaratory Act passed at Westminster in 1719. The Viceroys before Townshend only spent a few weeks in Dublin every second year for the biennial sessions of Parliament. The Lords Justices governed the country for its English masters by influence and corruption, and the Irish pension list provided grants too degrading to be charged on English revenues. A new era opened when Flood took his seat in 1759 and organised an Opposition, the programme of which included the limitation of parliaments, the revision of the pension list, the creation of a militia and the independence of the Irish Legislature. The first object was secured in 1768 by the Octennial Act; but at the height of his power and popularity he was captured by the Government, which naturally desired to disarm its most formidable foe. After an interval of independent support, the great orator accepted a salaried office and a seat in the Privy Council in 1775. In the same year Grattan entered Parliament at the age of twenty-nine, and quickly asserted his title to the leadership of the national party which Flood, in an evil moment for himself and his country, had abdicated.The new leader was favoured by circumstances. While Flood clamoured for the suppression of the American revolt, the Presbyterians of the north loudly applauded the colonists, many thousands of whom had recently emigrated from Ulster. The community of interest was fully realised on both sides of the Atlantic; but Ireland asked for political and commercial autonomy, not for independence. With the demand there rapidly emerged the instrument of its realisation. Ireland was almost without troops when France[pg 292]declared war in 1778. When it became clear that the Government were unable to defend the island, the Protestant gentry came forward, and in a few weeks a disciplined and enthusiastic force of 40,000 men was under arms. Though organised for defence, the Volunteers, inspired by Charlemont and Grattan, determined to employ their strength in exacting concessions from the British Government. To use the words of Fox, the American war was the Irish harvest. The larger part of the damage inflicted on Irish commerce and manufactures by the legislation of the prominent partner was irreparable; but something might be saved from the wreck. The menacing aspect of the Volunteers and the panic-stricken despatches from Dublin Castle convinced the North Ministry that there was no alternative but to yield. Foreign and colonial trade was thrown open, the embargo on exports was removed, and Ireland was at last free to make use of her resources.The easy overthrow of commercial restrictions encouraged Grattan to a bolder flight. In 1780 he moved his historic resolution“That no person on earth, save the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, has a right to make laws for Ireland.”The motion was withdrawn after an impressive debate; but when the Volunteer Convention, which met shortly after, unanimously adopted the demand for self-government, the British Ministry surrendered. In April, 1782, the declaration of legislative independence was brought forward by Grattan in one of his noblest orations.“I found Ireland on her knees. She is now a nation. In that character I hail her, and, bowing in her august presence, I say,Esto perpetua!”A new and happier era seemed at last to be opening in the fortunes of Ireland and in her relations with Great Britain.“I[pg 293]am convinced,”wrote Burke to Charlemont in words of gold,“that no reluctant tie can be a strong one, and that a natural, cheerful alliance will be a far more secure link of connection than any principle of subordination borne with grudging and discontent.”Grattan was fully satisfied with the repeal of the Declaratory Act of 1719; but when the demand arose for an express renunciation of the authority of the British Parliament, the Coalition Ministry of Fox and North passed an Act unconditionally recognising the right of the Irish people to be bound only by laws enacted by the King and the Irish Parliament.The Grattan Parliament appeared to enter on its career with a fair capital of good will. Irishmen began to feel that they had a country; and though autonomy had been wrested in an hour of weakness by a show of force, there was no trace of resentment in the debates at St. Stephen's which accompanied the renunciation of power. The new constitution seemed to enable Ireland to work out her own salvation without let or hindrance. But the powers which appeared so ample were in reality strictly limited. In the first place, while the Irish Legislature became in theory the peer of the British Legislature, the Irish Executive—the Lord-Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary—continued to be appointed by and responsible to the British Ministry. Secondly, Irish Bills did not become law till they were sanctioned by the King and sealed by the Great Seal on the advice of British Ministers. Finally, a majority of the Irish Parliament rested not on the free choice of the people or even of the Protestant population, but on the owners of nomination boroughs, most of whom were bound to the Executive by the possession or prospect of titles, pensions or sinecures. Government by patronage survived the Renunciation Act,[pg 294]and reduced the authority of the Grattan Parliament to a shadow. The power of withholding supplies was an empty privilege; for the greater part of the income of the country came from the hereditary revenue, which was independent of Parliament.The difficulties inherent in the novel situation were speedily revealed. It was Grattan's fervent wish that the Volunteers, their emancipating task accomplished, should dissolve and leave the parliament to carry out its work. Flood, on the other hand, who had rejoined the ranks of the Opposition, had less confidence in the sincerity of the British Government, and desired to retain the weapon that had proved so effective, at any rate till a Reform Bill had placed the Legislature in a position to withstand the insidious assaults of the Executive. Parliamentary reform was the natural corollary of the Renunciation Act. Flood laid his proposals before the Volunteer Convention, and, armed with its approval, carried them to College Green. His object was to emancipate parliament from the control of placemen and pensioners and to break the power of the borough-owners by the extension of the franchise. The fault of the measure was that, contrary to the wishes of Grattan, it perpetuated the exclusion of Catholics from political rights. The Executive opposed the Bill on the ground that it emanated from Prætorian bands, though the Volunteers themselves were held in check by British troops. The whole open and secret influence of the Government was exerted, and the proposals were defeated. Reform was the condition of genuine autonomy. Without it the Legislature was clay in the hands of the potter. Though a share of the blame falls to the members who saw their influence endangered, the main responsibility for its defeat lies with the agents of the British Government. Having[pg 295]granted legislative equality, England took care to secure that the Grattan Parliament should possess the shadow but not the substance of power.The next disappointment arose in the sphere not of politics but of commerce. It was the wish both of Pitt, the disciple of Adam Smith, and of Grattan that commercial intercourse between the two countries should be facilitated. But the offer to open the English market was accompanied by a proposal that Ireland should make a definite contribution to Imperial expenditure. She already maintained an army of 15,000 men, a fifth of whom were at the disposal of the British Government while the rest could be employed outside Ireland with the consent of the Dublin Parliament. But Pitt, convinced that free trade with England would stimulate Irish prosperity, felt justified in demanding a share of the increased revenue for the Imperial navy. Grattan disliked the suggestion of anything which could be represented as a tribute, and would have preferred voluntary grants; but he waived his objection, and Pitt's scheme, in the form of resolutions, was approved by the Irish Parliament. At this stage the jealousy of the British commercial classes flamed out, and the scheme, on emerging from the debates at Westminster, was found to have been radically altered. As in its final form it curtailed the independence of the Irish Parliament, Grattan strongly opposed it. A scheme which failed to satisfy England and had lost its friends in Ireland was not worth further effort. Pitt had done his best, but had been overborne by the commercial interests. When the Irish Parliament later declared its readiness to discuss a commercial treaty, it met with no response.Pitt was bitterly disappointed by his failure, and lost a good deal of his interest in Ireland. He adopted[pg 296]the view of successive Lords-Lieutenant that genuine parliamentary reform was incompatible with the supremacy of the Executive.“There can, I think, be little doubt,”pronounces Lecky,“that the prospect of a legislative union was already in his mind, and it was probably the real key to much of his subsequent policy.”Dr. Holland Rose quotes a significant letter of Pitt to the Viceroy, Lord Westmorland, in the autumn of 1792.“The idea of the present fermentation gradually bringing both parties to think of an Union with this country has long been in my mind. I hardly dare flatter myself with the hope of its taking place; but I believe it, though itself not easy to be accomplished, to be the only solution for other and greater difficulties.”Thus the Grattan Parliament never had a fair chance. The dual system could only be worked by mutual good will, and if one of the partners withheld her aid, the experiment was doomed. Pitt was not yet openly hostile; but he allowed his agents in Dublin to shape their own course. He recognised that the root of Irish crime was to be found in the tithe system, and suggested in 1786 that tithes should be commuted; yet when Grattan brought forward proposals with this object he allowed the Executive to defeat them.Pitt's growing dislike of the system of 1782 was reinforced by the action of the Irish Parliament in the Regency crisis. When the King became insane in 1788, the Whigs contended that their patron, the Prince of Wales, should automatically exercise the power of the Crown, while Pitt retorted that it was for Parliament to appoint him Regent, and to define his powers. The Irish Parliament sided with the Whigs, Grattan and the Nationalists on the constitutional ground that Pitt's proposed safeguards were unnecessary[pg 297]in Ireland, the camp-followers in view of the probable change in the source of patronage. The controversy terminated with the King's restoration to health; but the Prime Minister never forgot nor forgave the encouragement rendered to his enemies at the crisis of his fate.Pitt had attempted nothing for Ireland since the failure of his commercial proposals; but the ferment created by the seductive doctrines of the French Revolution determined him to conciliate the Catholics, to whom he had always been friendly and whom he agreed with Burke in regarding as naturally conservative. On being informed of his wishes in 1791 the Irish Government did its utmost to dissuade him, and succeeded in whittling down the concessions till they were scarcely worth granting. Though Flood and Charlemont were immovably opposed to the extension of any kind of political rights to Catholics, and though Grattan always explicitly reserved Protestant ascendency, there was a large body of opinion prepared for a fairly liberal policy; and the new organisation of United Irishmen, founded in 1791 by Wolfe Tone, rested on the recognition of a common effective citizenship. In view of these circumstances, Pitt for the first and last time determined to overrule his agents. The Relief Bill of 1793 enfranchised Catholics on the same terms as Protestants, admitted them to juries, to the magistracy, and to commissions in the Army and Navy, allowed them to receive degrees in Dublin University and to carry arms. This generous measure, which the Executive hated but dared not oppose, passed without difficulty. Though the main merit belongs to Pitt, the acceptance of such far-reaching concessions by a Protestant body is a proof that, left to itself, it was not unwilling to concede substantial instalments of justice[pg 298]to the Catholic majority. Recent attempts to minimise the importance of the Act, on the ground that the franchise without eligibility to Parliament was worthless, misjudge the situation. The measure was hailed by Catholic opinion as a decisive breach with the intolerant traditions of a century; and its easy passage to the Statute-book suggests how different might have been the record and the fate of the Grattan Parliament had Pitt throughout encouraged its more generous intuitions and compelled his agents to support the policy which he knew to be right.The union of the Portland Whigs with Pitt in 1794 seemed to bring further reforms within sight. Grattan travelled to London to discuss the situation, and met Fitzwilliam, who was designed for the Viceroyalty. Fitzwilliam was known to favour Parliamentary Reform and Catholic Emancipation, and the liveliest hopes and fears were entertained of a decisive change of system. On learning from Dublin that there was already open talk of the dismissal of the Chancellor and other members of the Ascendency party, Pitt was deeply annoyed. It would be best, he declared, that Fitzwilliam should not go to Ireland; and, in any case, he must understand that no idea of a new system could be entertained, and that no supporters of the Government should be displaced. Shortly before his departure Pitt and Grenville met Portland, Spencer, Windham and Fitzwilliam to determine the policy to be pursued. No notes were made of the conversation, and the Viceroy left England on January 4th, 1795, without written instructions, though well aware of Pitt's general views and wishes. Three days after landing he dismissed Beresford, the head of the Revenue and an inveterate enemy of Catholic claims, who possessed enormous borough influence and was often[pg 299]described as the King of Ireland. Fitzwilliam afterwards stated that he told Pitt the step might be necessary and that he had acquiesced by his silence. Pitt rejoined that he had no recollection of the incident. In any case a man of such importance should not have been removed without communicating with the Home Government. A few days later the Viceroy informed Portland, the Home Secretary, of the unanimity of Catholics and the readiness of Protestants for a measure of emancipation. Despite pressing and repeated communications, Portland delayed his reply and finally urged him not to commit himself. Next day Pitt wrote censuring the removal of Beresford, but without mentioning the Catholic question. Fitzwilliam replied that Pitt must choose between him and Beresford, and informed Portland that he would not risk a rebellion by deferring the measure. A week later Portland wrote in peremptory terms that Grattan's Bill, which enjoyed the Viceroy's support, must go no further, and on the following day Fitzwilliam was recalled.The Viceroyalty had lasted six weeks; but Fitzwilliam is remembered while the phantom rulers who preceded and followed him are forgotten. The episode has a narrower and a wider aspect. That his dismissals were in contravention of the understanding on which his appointment rested was admitted by his personal and political friends in the Cabinet. But though the Viceroy was guilty of disloyalty to his instructions, a strong case can be made out for his policy. He knew that the prevailing system was thoroughly vicious, and he realised that if a policy of conciliation and reform was to be undertaken it could not be effectively carried out by men who were opposed to it. As Pitt had explicitly vetoed a change of system, it would have been wiser to have refused the post. The aims of the two[pg 300]men were fundamentally different. Though in favour of admitting Catholics to Parliament, Pitt thought it safer to defer emancipation till a Union was accomplished, and therefore determined to preserve Government patronage and control for future emergencies. Fitzwilliam desired to govern Ireland in accordance with Irish ideas, in the spirit of the Constitution of 1782 and with the help of men who were loyal to it. In his recent work,“The End of the Irish Parliament,”Mr. Fisher, who finds nothing to admire in the Grattan Parliament and little in its founder, suggests that the Fitzwilliam crisis was a storm in a tea-cup, and that the main issue involved was the substitution of the Ponsonbys for the Beresfords as the dispensers of patronage. But Irish tradition is in this case a safe guide as to the character and importance of the incident. Ireland instinctively felt, as India was to feel nearly a century later in regard to Ripon, that Fitzwilliam was a friend. The news of his recall was received with delight in Ascendency circles, and elsewhere with consternation. It was taken as a definite rejection of the Catholic claims, and increasing numbers despaired of achieving any real reform by peaceful means. It revealed in a flash that the autonomy of Ireland was a sham. From this point the rebellion of 1798 and the Union were in sight.The new Viceroy, Camden, was an anæmic personality, and with the establishment of Maynooth the tale of reforms came to an end. The uncrowned king of Ireland and the brain of Dublin Castle was Fitzgibbon, who as Attorney-General stood by Pitt in the Regency crisis and had been rewarded by the Chancellorship and the earldom of Clare. In his discriminating study of Clare, the late Litton Falkiner has advanced all that can be said for the ablest and[pg 301]most ruthless of the opponents of the Grattan Parliament, pointing out that he remained on friendly terms with the Opposition till 1789. Wholly destitute of national feeling, Clare openly scoffed at the Catholic Relief Act of 1793, which the Government was compelled to support. It was from him that emanated in 1795 the fatal suggestion that the King could not assent to the repeal of laws affecting Irish Catholics without violating his Coronation oath.“In forcefulness and narrowness, in bravery and bigotry,”writes Dr. Holland Rose with entire truth,“he was a fit spokesman of the British garrison, which was resolved to hold every outwork of the citadel.”With Pitt's glance fixed on Union and Clare in virtual command of the machine, there was no place for Grattan in his own Parliament. He disapproved the revolutionary republicanism of the United Irishmen and the ascendency principles of Dublin Castle, and refused to encourage the one by attacking the other. After a final attempt in 1797 to procure the admission of Catholics to Parliament and to introduce household franchise, he retired into private life, his Letter to the Citizens of Dublin firing a parting shot at the Government.The rebellion of 1798 and the French invasions form no integral part of the history of the Grattan Parliament; but they none the less sealed its doom. In his speech on the Union, Clare frankly confessed that he had been working for the Union since 1793, and he began to urge the policy on Pitt in the same year. Pitt, who had long regarded a Union followed by Catholic Emancipation as the ultimate solution of the Irish problem, was now convinced that further delay was dangerous. In the early part of the eighteenth century the idea of Union was by no means unpopular;[pg 302]but the American war had shaken Ireland from her slumbers, and the debates on the Commercial Propositions and the Regency showed that the Grattan Parliament was jealous of the slightest infringement of the settlement of 1782. But the matter was not to be settled by argument, and no dissolution was allowed. The high-minded Cornwallis, who had succeeded Camden, groaned over his hateful task.“My occupation is most unpleasant, negotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt people under heaven. How I long to kick those whom my public duty obliges me to court! I despise and hate myself every hour for engaging in such dirty work, and am supported only by the reflection that without an Union the British Empire must be dissolved.”There was no national opposition to the measure. The Catholics were won by the promises of Emancipation, though they were not informed that the King had already declared his objections to it insuperable. The main fight was waged by the Ulster Protestants from whom had sprung the Volunteers. When the Irish Parliament met for the last time in January, 1800, a majority had been secured by Cornwallis, Castlereagh, and Clare. Grattan had sought re-election and returned to utter an eloquent protest against the destruction of the body that for ever bears his name. He predicted that the Union would be one of Parliaments, not of peoples. To destroy the Parliament was to destroy an organ of national intelligence, a source and symbol of national life.“The thing it is proposed to buy is what cannot be sold—liberty.”He reiterated his conviction that nature was on the side of autonomy.“Ireland hears the ocean protesting against separation, but she hears the sea likewise protesting against Union.”The warnings of the most spotless of Irish patriots were of[pg 303]no avail. The Grattan Parliament was swallowed up. In his touching words, he watched by its cradle and followed its hearse.There is a good deal to be said for the assertion that after the rebellion of 1798 the continuance of the experiment of 1782 was a source of danger to Great Britain in her life and death struggle with France. But there is no ground for the contention that the constitution itself was intrinsically unworkable. Its congenital weakness was that the Executive was responsible not to the Irish but to the British Parliament. Friction between the Legislature and the Executive was thus inevitable; but with tact and goodwill even this anomaly need not have stopped the working of the machine. What would have happened had the British Ministry unselfishly co-operated with Grattan and the moderate Nationalists to secure urgent political and economic reforms we can but conjecture. But we know only too well the effect of withholding such co-operation. There is scarcely a trace in the voluminous correspondence of the Viceroys, except perhaps the Duke of Rutland, of any consideration for the good of the country over which they ruled. Their mandate was to watch the interest of England. When Cornwallis proposed in 1798 that Castlereagh should become Chief Secretary, the King objected that the post ought to be held by a Briton; but his scruples were allayed by the Viceroy's assurance that his candidate was“so very unlike an Irishman”that the appointment would be perfectly safe. There is no ground whatever for the notion that the Parliament was a wholly corrupt and reactionary body. That Grattan was not prepared to endanger the Protestant Ascendency is true but irrelevant; for he was ready to champion such measures of Parliamentary Reform and[pg 304]Catholic Emancipation as would have transformed Parliament into a tolerable mirror of Irish opinion. There can be little doubt that if the Executive had lent its aid, such measures could have been carried as easily as the Relief Bill of 1793.In his thoughtful and eloquent volume,“The Framework of Home Rule,”Mr. Erskine Childers gently chides Home Rulers for wasting vain regrets on the Grattan Parliament, in which he loses interest after the rejection of Flood's Reform Bill of 1783. No instructed Home Ruler would dream of setting that celebrated body on a pedestal. We know too well that, in the words of Litton Falkiner, it was a parliament of landlords, of placemen, and of Protestants. It was fundamentally conservative and aristocratic. It was ever ready to pass Coercion Acts. It was no more a council of disinterested patriots than the sister assembly at Westminster. On the other hand a large and influential section of its members was eager to purge it of its baser elements.“With every inducement to religious bigotry, it carried the policy of toleration in many respects further than the Parliament of England. With many inducements to disloyalty, it was steadily faithful to the connection. Nor should it be forgotten that it was on the whole a vigilant and intelligent guardian of the material interests of the country.”147Though cabin'd, cribbed, confined, it was at least in some degree an organ of public opinion and a symbol of nationality, as the Third Duma, tame though it be, has stood for the principle of representation in autocratic Russia. The duty of British statesmen was to mend it, not to end it. If Grattan's Parliament was a failure, the Union was a greater failure. For the one experiment recognised, however[pg 305]imperfectly, the separateness of Ireland, while the other started from its denial. To use the jargon of the Ascendency party, Ireland was“loyal”before the Union and“disloyal”after it. The clear moral of those chequered years for latter-day statesmen is that a responsible Executive is of more importance than a co-equal legislature, and that having granted autonomy the British Parliament and British Ministers must strive to render it a success. Pitt's Union was not partnership but subjection. The only true Union between countries so different is to be found in loyal comradeship. Against such a relationship history cannot bear witness, for it has never been tried.[pg 306]
XI.—Grattan's Parliament.By G. P. GoochGrattan's Parliament was born of the American War of Independence and was slain by the French Revolution. Brief as was its life, it forms the most brilliant and interesting episode in Irish history. Never has the ancient and unconquerable spirit of nationality spoken in more eloquent accents than during the years when Grattan, loyal alike to the British connection and to Irish ideals, had won for his countrymen a measure of self-government. Representing only the Protestant minority, clogged with corruption, and containing its full share of selfish and reactionary influences, it was none the less the focus and the mouthpiece of national feeling. Fairly to judge the Grattan Parliament we must not only recall its limitations and errors but contrast its throbbing vitality with the servitude that preceded its foundation and the creeping paralysis which followed its dissolution.A long sleep had succeeded the final expulsion of James II. from Ireland. The penal code was perfected into a system accurately described by Burke as most perfectly fitted to degrade and brutalise the human spirit. Catholic Ireland was voiceless and wholly lacking in political consciousness; and the silence of Protestants was only broken by a rare protest from[pg 291]Molyneux, Swift, or Lucas. If any doubt remained under Poynings' Laws as to the complete dependence on Great Britain, it was set at rest by the Declaratory Act passed at Westminster in 1719. The Viceroys before Townshend only spent a few weeks in Dublin every second year for the biennial sessions of Parliament. The Lords Justices governed the country for its English masters by influence and corruption, and the Irish pension list provided grants too degrading to be charged on English revenues. A new era opened when Flood took his seat in 1759 and organised an Opposition, the programme of which included the limitation of parliaments, the revision of the pension list, the creation of a militia and the independence of the Irish Legislature. The first object was secured in 1768 by the Octennial Act; but at the height of his power and popularity he was captured by the Government, which naturally desired to disarm its most formidable foe. After an interval of independent support, the great orator accepted a salaried office and a seat in the Privy Council in 1775. In the same year Grattan entered Parliament at the age of twenty-nine, and quickly asserted his title to the leadership of the national party which Flood, in an evil moment for himself and his country, had abdicated.The new leader was favoured by circumstances. While Flood clamoured for the suppression of the American revolt, the Presbyterians of the north loudly applauded the colonists, many thousands of whom had recently emigrated from Ulster. The community of interest was fully realised on both sides of the Atlantic; but Ireland asked for political and commercial autonomy, not for independence. With the demand there rapidly emerged the instrument of its realisation. Ireland was almost without troops when France[pg 292]declared war in 1778. When it became clear that the Government were unable to defend the island, the Protestant gentry came forward, and in a few weeks a disciplined and enthusiastic force of 40,000 men was under arms. Though organised for defence, the Volunteers, inspired by Charlemont and Grattan, determined to employ their strength in exacting concessions from the British Government. To use the words of Fox, the American war was the Irish harvest. The larger part of the damage inflicted on Irish commerce and manufactures by the legislation of the prominent partner was irreparable; but something might be saved from the wreck. The menacing aspect of the Volunteers and the panic-stricken despatches from Dublin Castle convinced the North Ministry that there was no alternative but to yield. Foreign and colonial trade was thrown open, the embargo on exports was removed, and Ireland was at last free to make use of her resources.The easy overthrow of commercial restrictions encouraged Grattan to a bolder flight. In 1780 he moved his historic resolution“That no person on earth, save the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, has a right to make laws for Ireland.”The motion was withdrawn after an impressive debate; but when the Volunteer Convention, which met shortly after, unanimously adopted the demand for self-government, the British Ministry surrendered. In April, 1782, the declaration of legislative independence was brought forward by Grattan in one of his noblest orations.“I found Ireland on her knees. She is now a nation. In that character I hail her, and, bowing in her august presence, I say,Esto perpetua!”A new and happier era seemed at last to be opening in the fortunes of Ireland and in her relations with Great Britain.“I[pg 293]am convinced,”wrote Burke to Charlemont in words of gold,“that no reluctant tie can be a strong one, and that a natural, cheerful alliance will be a far more secure link of connection than any principle of subordination borne with grudging and discontent.”Grattan was fully satisfied with the repeal of the Declaratory Act of 1719; but when the demand arose for an express renunciation of the authority of the British Parliament, the Coalition Ministry of Fox and North passed an Act unconditionally recognising the right of the Irish people to be bound only by laws enacted by the King and the Irish Parliament.The Grattan Parliament appeared to enter on its career with a fair capital of good will. Irishmen began to feel that they had a country; and though autonomy had been wrested in an hour of weakness by a show of force, there was no trace of resentment in the debates at St. Stephen's which accompanied the renunciation of power. The new constitution seemed to enable Ireland to work out her own salvation without let or hindrance. But the powers which appeared so ample were in reality strictly limited. In the first place, while the Irish Legislature became in theory the peer of the British Legislature, the Irish Executive—the Lord-Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary—continued to be appointed by and responsible to the British Ministry. Secondly, Irish Bills did not become law till they were sanctioned by the King and sealed by the Great Seal on the advice of British Ministers. Finally, a majority of the Irish Parliament rested not on the free choice of the people or even of the Protestant population, but on the owners of nomination boroughs, most of whom were bound to the Executive by the possession or prospect of titles, pensions or sinecures. Government by patronage survived the Renunciation Act,[pg 294]and reduced the authority of the Grattan Parliament to a shadow. The power of withholding supplies was an empty privilege; for the greater part of the income of the country came from the hereditary revenue, which was independent of Parliament.The difficulties inherent in the novel situation were speedily revealed. It was Grattan's fervent wish that the Volunteers, their emancipating task accomplished, should dissolve and leave the parliament to carry out its work. Flood, on the other hand, who had rejoined the ranks of the Opposition, had less confidence in the sincerity of the British Government, and desired to retain the weapon that had proved so effective, at any rate till a Reform Bill had placed the Legislature in a position to withstand the insidious assaults of the Executive. Parliamentary reform was the natural corollary of the Renunciation Act. Flood laid his proposals before the Volunteer Convention, and, armed with its approval, carried them to College Green. His object was to emancipate parliament from the control of placemen and pensioners and to break the power of the borough-owners by the extension of the franchise. The fault of the measure was that, contrary to the wishes of Grattan, it perpetuated the exclusion of Catholics from political rights. The Executive opposed the Bill on the ground that it emanated from Prætorian bands, though the Volunteers themselves were held in check by British troops. The whole open and secret influence of the Government was exerted, and the proposals were defeated. Reform was the condition of genuine autonomy. Without it the Legislature was clay in the hands of the potter. Though a share of the blame falls to the members who saw their influence endangered, the main responsibility for its defeat lies with the agents of the British Government. Having[pg 295]granted legislative equality, England took care to secure that the Grattan Parliament should possess the shadow but not the substance of power.The next disappointment arose in the sphere not of politics but of commerce. It was the wish both of Pitt, the disciple of Adam Smith, and of Grattan that commercial intercourse between the two countries should be facilitated. But the offer to open the English market was accompanied by a proposal that Ireland should make a definite contribution to Imperial expenditure. She already maintained an army of 15,000 men, a fifth of whom were at the disposal of the British Government while the rest could be employed outside Ireland with the consent of the Dublin Parliament. But Pitt, convinced that free trade with England would stimulate Irish prosperity, felt justified in demanding a share of the increased revenue for the Imperial navy. Grattan disliked the suggestion of anything which could be represented as a tribute, and would have preferred voluntary grants; but he waived his objection, and Pitt's scheme, in the form of resolutions, was approved by the Irish Parliament. At this stage the jealousy of the British commercial classes flamed out, and the scheme, on emerging from the debates at Westminster, was found to have been radically altered. As in its final form it curtailed the independence of the Irish Parliament, Grattan strongly opposed it. A scheme which failed to satisfy England and had lost its friends in Ireland was not worth further effort. Pitt had done his best, but had been overborne by the commercial interests. When the Irish Parliament later declared its readiness to discuss a commercial treaty, it met with no response.Pitt was bitterly disappointed by his failure, and lost a good deal of his interest in Ireland. He adopted[pg 296]the view of successive Lords-Lieutenant that genuine parliamentary reform was incompatible with the supremacy of the Executive.“There can, I think, be little doubt,”pronounces Lecky,“that the prospect of a legislative union was already in his mind, and it was probably the real key to much of his subsequent policy.”Dr. Holland Rose quotes a significant letter of Pitt to the Viceroy, Lord Westmorland, in the autumn of 1792.“The idea of the present fermentation gradually bringing both parties to think of an Union with this country has long been in my mind. I hardly dare flatter myself with the hope of its taking place; but I believe it, though itself not easy to be accomplished, to be the only solution for other and greater difficulties.”Thus the Grattan Parliament never had a fair chance. The dual system could only be worked by mutual good will, and if one of the partners withheld her aid, the experiment was doomed. Pitt was not yet openly hostile; but he allowed his agents in Dublin to shape their own course. He recognised that the root of Irish crime was to be found in the tithe system, and suggested in 1786 that tithes should be commuted; yet when Grattan brought forward proposals with this object he allowed the Executive to defeat them.Pitt's growing dislike of the system of 1782 was reinforced by the action of the Irish Parliament in the Regency crisis. When the King became insane in 1788, the Whigs contended that their patron, the Prince of Wales, should automatically exercise the power of the Crown, while Pitt retorted that it was for Parliament to appoint him Regent, and to define his powers. The Irish Parliament sided with the Whigs, Grattan and the Nationalists on the constitutional ground that Pitt's proposed safeguards were unnecessary[pg 297]in Ireland, the camp-followers in view of the probable change in the source of patronage. The controversy terminated with the King's restoration to health; but the Prime Minister never forgot nor forgave the encouragement rendered to his enemies at the crisis of his fate.Pitt had attempted nothing for Ireland since the failure of his commercial proposals; but the ferment created by the seductive doctrines of the French Revolution determined him to conciliate the Catholics, to whom he had always been friendly and whom he agreed with Burke in regarding as naturally conservative. On being informed of his wishes in 1791 the Irish Government did its utmost to dissuade him, and succeeded in whittling down the concessions till they were scarcely worth granting. Though Flood and Charlemont were immovably opposed to the extension of any kind of political rights to Catholics, and though Grattan always explicitly reserved Protestant ascendency, there was a large body of opinion prepared for a fairly liberal policy; and the new organisation of United Irishmen, founded in 1791 by Wolfe Tone, rested on the recognition of a common effective citizenship. In view of these circumstances, Pitt for the first and last time determined to overrule his agents. The Relief Bill of 1793 enfranchised Catholics on the same terms as Protestants, admitted them to juries, to the magistracy, and to commissions in the Army and Navy, allowed them to receive degrees in Dublin University and to carry arms. This generous measure, which the Executive hated but dared not oppose, passed without difficulty. Though the main merit belongs to Pitt, the acceptance of such far-reaching concessions by a Protestant body is a proof that, left to itself, it was not unwilling to concede substantial instalments of justice[pg 298]to the Catholic majority. Recent attempts to minimise the importance of the Act, on the ground that the franchise without eligibility to Parliament was worthless, misjudge the situation. The measure was hailed by Catholic opinion as a decisive breach with the intolerant traditions of a century; and its easy passage to the Statute-book suggests how different might have been the record and the fate of the Grattan Parliament had Pitt throughout encouraged its more generous intuitions and compelled his agents to support the policy which he knew to be right.The union of the Portland Whigs with Pitt in 1794 seemed to bring further reforms within sight. Grattan travelled to London to discuss the situation, and met Fitzwilliam, who was designed for the Viceroyalty. Fitzwilliam was known to favour Parliamentary Reform and Catholic Emancipation, and the liveliest hopes and fears were entertained of a decisive change of system. On learning from Dublin that there was already open talk of the dismissal of the Chancellor and other members of the Ascendency party, Pitt was deeply annoyed. It would be best, he declared, that Fitzwilliam should not go to Ireland; and, in any case, he must understand that no idea of a new system could be entertained, and that no supporters of the Government should be displaced. Shortly before his departure Pitt and Grenville met Portland, Spencer, Windham and Fitzwilliam to determine the policy to be pursued. No notes were made of the conversation, and the Viceroy left England on January 4th, 1795, without written instructions, though well aware of Pitt's general views and wishes. Three days after landing he dismissed Beresford, the head of the Revenue and an inveterate enemy of Catholic claims, who possessed enormous borough influence and was often[pg 299]described as the King of Ireland. Fitzwilliam afterwards stated that he told Pitt the step might be necessary and that he had acquiesced by his silence. Pitt rejoined that he had no recollection of the incident. In any case a man of such importance should not have been removed without communicating with the Home Government. A few days later the Viceroy informed Portland, the Home Secretary, of the unanimity of Catholics and the readiness of Protestants for a measure of emancipation. Despite pressing and repeated communications, Portland delayed his reply and finally urged him not to commit himself. Next day Pitt wrote censuring the removal of Beresford, but without mentioning the Catholic question. Fitzwilliam replied that Pitt must choose between him and Beresford, and informed Portland that he would not risk a rebellion by deferring the measure. A week later Portland wrote in peremptory terms that Grattan's Bill, which enjoyed the Viceroy's support, must go no further, and on the following day Fitzwilliam was recalled.The Viceroyalty had lasted six weeks; but Fitzwilliam is remembered while the phantom rulers who preceded and followed him are forgotten. The episode has a narrower and a wider aspect. That his dismissals were in contravention of the understanding on which his appointment rested was admitted by his personal and political friends in the Cabinet. But though the Viceroy was guilty of disloyalty to his instructions, a strong case can be made out for his policy. He knew that the prevailing system was thoroughly vicious, and he realised that if a policy of conciliation and reform was to be undertaken it could not be effectively carried out by men who were opposed to it. As Pitt had explicitly vetoed a change of system, it would have been wiser to have refused the post. The aims of the two[pg 300]men were fundamentally different. Though in favour of admitting Catholics to Parliament, Pitt thought it safer to defer emancipation till a Union was accomplished, and therefore determined to preserve Government patronage and control for future emergencies. Fitzwilliam desired to govern Ireland in accordance with Irish ideas, in the spirit of the Constitution of 1782 and with the help of men who were loyal to it. In his recent work,“The End of the Irish Parliament,”Mr. Fisher, who finds nothing to admire in the Grattan Parliament and little in its founder, suggests that the Fitzwilliam crisis was a storm in a tea-cup, and that the main issue involved was the substitution of the Ponsonbys for the Beresfords as the dispensers of patronage. But Irish tradition is in this case a safe guide as to the character and importance of the incident. Ireland instinctively felt, as India was to feel nearly a century later in regard to Ripon, that Fitzwilliam was a friend. The news of his recall was received with delight in Ascendency circles, and elsewhere with consternation. It was taken as a definite rejection of the Catholic claims, and increasing numbers despaired of achieving any real reform by peaceful means. It revealed in a flash that the autonomy of Ireland was a sham. From this point the rebellion of 1798 and the Union were in sight.The new Viceroy, Camden, was an anæmic personality, and with the establishment of Maynooth the tale of reforms came to an end. The uncrowned king of Ireland and the brain of Dublin Castle was Fitzgibbon, who as Attorney-General stood by Pitt in the Regency crisis and had been rewarded by the Chancellorship and the earldom of Clare. In his discriminating study of Clare, the late Litton Falkiner has advanced all that can be said for the ablest and[pg 301]most ruthless of the opponents of the Grattan Parliament, pointing out that he remained on friendly terms with the Opposition till 1789. Wholly destitute of national feeling, Clare openly scoffed at the Catholic Relief Act of 1793, which the Government was compelled to support. It was from him that emanated in 1795 the fatal suggestion that the King could not assent to the repeal of laws affecting Irish Catholics without violating his Coronation oath.“In forcefulness and narrowness, in bravery and bigotry,”writes Dr. Holland Rose with entire truth,“he was a fit spokesman of the British garrison, which was resolved to hold every outwork of the citadel.”With Pitt's glance fixed on Union and Clare in virtual command of the machine, there was no place for Grattan in his own Parliament. He disapproved the revolutionary republicanism of the United Irishmen and the ascendency principles of Dublin Castle, and refused to encourage the one by attacking the other. After a final attempt in 1797 to procure the admission of Catholics to Parliament and to introduce household franchise, he retired into private life, his Letter to the Citizens of Dublin firing a parting shot at the Government.The rebellion of 1798 and the French invasions form no integral part of the history of the Grattan Parliament; but they none the less sealed its doom. In his speech on the Union, Clare frankly confessed that he had been working for the Union since 1793, and he began to urge the policy on Pitt in the same year. Pitt, who had long regarded a Union followed by Catholic Emancipation as the ultimate solution of the Irish problem, was now convinced that further delay was dangerous. In the early part of the eighteenth century the idea of Union was by no means unpopular;[pg 302]but the American war had shaken Ireland from her slumbers, and the debates on the Commercial Propositions and the Regency showed that the Grattan Parliament was jealous of the slightest infringement of the settlement of 1782. But the matter was not to be settled by argument, and no dissolution was allowed. The high-minded Cornwallis, who had succeeded Camden, groaned over his hateful task.“My occupation is most unpleasant, negotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt people under heaven. How I long to kick those whom my public duty obliges me to court! I despise and hate myself every hour for engaging in such dirty work, and am supported only by the reflection that without an Union the British Empire must be dissolved.”There was no national opposition to the measure. The Catholics were won by the promises of Emancipation, though they were not informed that the King had already declared his objections to it insuperable. The main fight was waged by the Ulster Protestants from whom had sprung the Volunteers. When the Irish Parliament met for the last time in January, 1800, a majority had been secured by Cornwallis, Castlereagh, and Clare. Grattan had sought re-election and returned to utter an eloquent protest against the destruction of the body that for ever bears his name. He predicted that the Union would be one of Parliaments, not of peoples. To destroy the Parliament was to destroy an organ of national intelligence, a source and symbol of national life.“The thing it is proposed to buy is what cannot be sold—liberty.”He reiterated his conviction that nature was on the side of autonomy.“Ireland hears the ocean protesting against separation, but she hears the sea likewise protesting against Union.”The warnings of the most spotless of Irish patriots were of[pg 303]no avail. The Grattan Parliament was swallowed up. In his touching words, he watched by its cradle and followed its hearse.There is a good deal to be said for the assertion that after the rebellion of 1798 the continuance of the experiment of 1782 was a source of danger to Great Britain in her life and death struggle with France. But there is no ground for the contention that the constitution itself was intrinsically unworkable. Its congenital weakness was that the Executive was responsible not to the Irish but to the British Parliament. Friction between the Legislature and the Executive was thus inevitable; but with tact and goodwill even this anomaly need not have stopped the working of the machine. What would have happened had the British Ministry unselfishly co-operated with Grattan and the moderate Nationalists to secure urgent political and economic reforms we can but conjecture. But we know only too well the effect of withholding such co-operation. There is scarcely a trace in the voluminous correspondence of the Viceroys, except perhaps the Duke of Rutland, of any consideration for the good of the country over which they ruled. Their mandate was to watch the interest of England. When Cornwallis proposed in 1798 that Castlereagh should become Chief Secretary, the King objected that the post ought to be held by a Briton; but his scruples were allayed by the Viceroy's assurance that his candidate was“so very unlike an Irishman”that the appointment would be perfectly safe. There is no ground whatever for the notion that the Parliament was a wholly corrupt and reactionary body. That Grattan was not prepared to endanger the Protestant Ascendency is true but irrelevant; for he was ready to champion such measures of Parliamentary Reform and[pg 304]Catholic Emancipation as would have transformed Parliament into a tolerable mirror of Irish opinion. There can be little doubt that if the Executive had lent its aid, such measures could have been carried as easily as the Relief Bill of 1793.In his thoughtful and eloquent volume,“The Framework of Home Rule,”Mr. Erskine Childers gently chides Home Rulers for wasting vain regrets on the Grattan Parliament, in which he loses interest after the rejection of Flood's Reform Bill of 1783. No instructed Home Ruler would dream of setting that celebrated body on a pedestal. We know too well that, in the words of Litton Falkiner, it was a parliament of landlords, of placemen, and of Protestants. It was fundamentally conservative and aristocratic. It was ever ready to pass Coercion Acts. It was no more a council of disinterested patriots than the sister assembly at Westminster. On the other hand a large and influential section of its members was eager to purge it of its baser elements.“With every inducement to religious bigotry, it carried the policy of toleration in many respects further than the Parliament of England. With many inducements to disloyalty, it was steadily faithful to the connection. Nor should it be forgotten that it was on the whole a vigilant and intelligent guardian of the material interests of the country.”147Though cabin'd, cribbed, confined, it was at least in some degree an organ of public opinion and a symbol of nationality, as the Third Duma, tame though it be, has stood for the principle of representation in autocratic Russia. The duty of British statesmen was to mend it, not to end it. If Grattan's Parliament was a failure, the Union was a greater failure. For the one experiment recognised, however[pg 305]imperfectly, the separateness of Ireland, while the other started from its denial. To use the jargon of the Ascendency party, Ireland was“loyal”before the Union and“disloyal”after it. The clear moral of those chequered years for latter-day statesmen is that a responsible Executive is of more importance than a co-equal legislature, and that having granted autonomy the British Parliament and British Ministers must strive to render it a success. Pitt's Union was not partnership but subjection. The only true Union between countries so different is to be found in loyal comradeship. Against such a relationship history cannot bear witness, for it has never been tried.[pg 306]
XI.—Grattan's Parliament.By G. P. GoochGrattan's Parliament was born of the American War of Independence and was slain by the French Revolution. Brief as was its life, it forms the most brilliant and interesting episode in Irish history. Never has the ancient and unconquerable spirit of nationality spoken in more eloquent accents than during the years when Grattan, loyal alike to the British connection and to Irish ideals, had won for his countrymen a measure of self-government. Representing only the Protestant minority, clogged with corruption, and containing its full share of selfish and reactionary influences, it was none the less the focus and the mouthpiece of national feeling. Fairly to judge the Grattan Parliament we must not only recall its limitations and errors but contrast its throbbing vitality with the servitude that preceded its foundation and the creeping paralysis which followed its dissolution.A long sleep had succeeded the final expulsion of James II. from Ireland. The penal code was perfected into a system accurately described by Burke as most perfectly fitted to degrade and brutalise the human spirit. Catholic Ireland was voiceless and wholly lacking in political consciousness; and the silence of Protestants was only broken by a rare protest from[pg 291]Molyneux, Swift, or Lucas. If any doubt remained under Poynings' Laws as to the complete dependence on Great Britain, it was set at rest by the Declaratory Act passed at Westminster in 1719. The Viceroys before Townshend only spent a few weeks in Dublin every second year for the biennial sessions of Parliament. The Lords Justices governed the country for its English masters by influence and corruption, and the Irish pension list provided grants too degrading to be charged on English revenues. A new era opened when Flood took his seat in 1759 and organised an Opposition, the programme of which included the limitation of parliaments, the revision of the pension list, the creation of a militia and the independence of the Irish Legislature. The first object was secured in 1768 by the Octennial Act; but at the height of his power and popularity he was captured by the Government, which naturally desired to disarm its most formidable foe. After an interval of independent support, the great orator accepted a salaried office and a seat in the Privy Council in 1775. In the same year Grattan entered Parliament at the age of twenty-nine, and quickly asserted his title to the leadership of the national party which Flood, in an evil moment for himself and his country, had abdicated.The new leader was favoured by circumstances. While Flood clamoured for the suppression of the American revolt, the Presbyterians of the north loudly applauded the colonists, many thousands of whom had recently emigrated from Ulster. The community of interest was fully realised on both sides of the Atlantic; but Ireland asked for political and commercial autonomy, not for independence. With the demand there rapidly emerged the instrument of its realisation. Ireland was almost without troops when France[pg 292]declared war in 1778. When it became clear that the Government were unable to defend the island, the Protestant gentry came forward, and in a few weeks a disciplined and enthusiastic force of 40,000 men was under arms. Though organised for defence, the Volunteers, inspired by Charlemont and Grattan, determined to employ their strength in exacting concessions from the British Government. To use the words of Fox, the American war was the Irish harvest. The larger part of the damage inflicted on Irish commerce and manufactures by the legislation of the prominent partner was irreparable; but something might be saved from the wreck. The menacing aspect of the Volunteers and the panic-stricken despatches from Dublin Castle convinced the North Ministry that there was no alternative but to yield. Foreign and colonial trade was thrown open, the embargo on exports was removed, and Ireland was at last free to make use of her resources.The easy overthrow of commercial restrictions encouraged Grattan to a bolder flight. In 1780 he moved his historic resolution“That no person on earth, save the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, has a right to make laws for Ireland.”The motion was withdrawn after an impressive debate; but when the Volunteer Convention, which met shortly after, unanimously adopted the demand for self-government, the British Ministry surrendered. In April, 1782, the declaration of legislative independence was brought forward by Grattan in one of his noblest orations.“I found Ireland on her knees. She is now a nation. In that character I hail her, and, bowing in her august presence, I say,Esto perpetua!”A new and happier era seemed at last to be opening in the fortunes of Ireland and in her relations with Great Britain.“I[pg 293]am convinced,”wrote Burke to Charlemont in words of gold,“that no reluctant tie can be a strong one, and that a natural, cheerful alliance will be a far more secure link of connection than any principle of subordination borne with grudging and discontent.”Grattan was fully satisfied with the repeal of the Declaratory Act of 1719; but when the demand arose for an express renunciation of the authority of the British Parliament, the Coalition Ministry of Fox and North passed an Act unconditionally recognising the right of the Irish people to be bound only by laws enacted by the King and the Irish Parliament.The Grattan Parliament appeared to enter on its career with a fair capital of good will. Irishmen began to feel that they had a country; and though autonomy had been wrested in an hour of weakness by a show of force, there was no trace of resentment in the debates at St. Stephen's which accompanied the renunciation of power. The new constitution seemed to enable Ireland to work out her own salvation without let or hindrance. But the powers which appeared so ample were in reality strictly limited. In the first place, while the Irish Legislature became in theory the peer of the British Legislature, the Irish Executive—the Lord-Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary—continued to be appointed by and responsible to the British Ministry. Secondly, Irish Bills did not become law till they were sanctioned by the King and sealed by the Great Seal on the advice of British Ministers. Finally, a majority of the Irish Parliament rested not on the free choice of the people or even of the Protestant population, but on the owners of nomination boroughs, most of whom were bound to the Executive by the possession or prospect of titles, pensions or sinecures. Government by patronage survived the Renunciation Act,[pg 294]and reduced the authority of the Grattan Parliament to a shadow. The power of withholding supplies was an empty privilege; for the greater part of the income of the country came from the hereditary revenue, which was independent of Parliament.The difficulties inherent in the novel situation were speedily revealed. It was Grattan's fervent wish that the Volunteers, their emancipating task accomplished, should dissolve and leave the parliament to carry out its work. Flood, on the other hand, who had rejoined the ranks of the Opposition, had less confidence in the sincerity of the British Government, and desired to retain the weapon that had proved so effective, at any rate till a Reform Bill had placed the Legislature in a position to withstand the insidious assaults of the Executive. Parliamentary reform was the natural corollary of the Renunciation Act. Flood laid his proposals before the Volunteer Convention, and, armed with its approval, carried them to College Green. His object was to emancipate parliament from the control of placemen and pensioners and to break the power of the borough-owners by the extension of the franchise. The fault of the measure was that, contrary to the wishes of Grattan, it perpetuated the exclusion of Catholics from political rights. The Executive opposed the Bill on the ground that it emanated from Prætorian bands, though the Volunteers themselves were held in check by British troops. The whole open and secret influence of the Government was exerted, and the proposals were defeated. Reform was the condition of genuine autonomy. Without it the Legislature was clay in the hands of the potter. Though a share of the blame falls to the members who saw their influence endangered, the main responsibility for its defeat lies with the agents of the British Government. Having[pg 295]granted legislative equality, England took care to secure that the Grattan Parliament should possess the shadow but not the substance of power.The next disappointment arose in the sphere not of politics but of commerce. It was the wish both of Pitt, the disciple of Adam Smith, and of Grattan that commercial intercourse between the two countries should be facilitated. But the offer to open the English market was accompanied by a proposal that Ireland should make a definite contribution to Imperial expenditure. She already maintained an army of 15,000 men, a fifth of whom were at the disposal of the British Government while the rest could be employed outside Ireland with the consent of the Dublin Parliament. But Pitt, convinced that free trade with England would stimulate Irish prosperity, felt justified in demanding a share of the increased revenue for the Imperial navy. Grattan disliked the suggestion of anything which could be represented as a tribute, and would have preferred voluntary grants; but he waived his objection, and Pitt's scheme, in the form of resolutions, was approved by the Irish Parliament. At this stage the jealousy of the British commercial classes flamed out, and the scheme, on emerging from the debates at Westminster, was found to have been radically altered. As in its final form it curtailed the independence of the Irish Parliament, Grattan strongly opposed it. A scheme which failed to satisfy England and had lost its friends in Ireland was not worth further effort. Pitt had done his best, but had been overborne by the commercial interests. When the Irish Parliament later declared its readiness to discuss a commercial treaty, it met with no response.Pitt was bitterly disappointed by his failure, and lost a good deal of his interest in Ireland. He adopted[pg 296]the view of successive Lords-Lieutenant that genuine parliamentary reform was incompatible with the supremacy of the Executive.“There can, I think, be little doubt,”pronounces Lecky,“that the prospect of a legislative union was already in his mind, and it was probably the real key to much of his subsequent policy.”Dr. Holland Rose quotes a significant letter of Pitt to the Viceroy, Lord Westmorland, in the autumn of 1792.“The idea of the present fermentation gradually bringing both parties to think of an Union with this country has long been in my mind. I hardly dare flatter myself with the hope of its taking place; but I believe it, though itself not easy to be accomplished, to be the only solution for other and greater difficulties.”Thus the Grattan Parliament never had a fair chance. The dual system could only be worked by mutual good will, and if one of the partners withheld her aid, the experiment was doomed. Pitt was not yet openly hostile; but he allowed his agents in Dublin to shape their own course. He recognised that the root of Irish crime was to be found in the tithe system, and suggested in 1786 that tithes should be commuted; yet when Grattan brought forward proposals with this object he allowed the Executive to defeat them.Pitt's growing dislike of the system of 1782 was reinforced by the action of the Irish Parliament in the Regency crisis. When the King became insane in 1788, the Whigs contended that their patron, the Prince of Wales, should automatically exercise the power of the Crown, while Pitt retorted that it was for Parliament to appoint him Regent, and to define his powers. The Irish Parliament sided with the Whigs, Grattan and the Nationalists on the constitutional ground that Pitt's proposed safeguards were unnecessary[pg 297]in Ireland, the camp-followers in view of the probable change in the source of patronage. The controversy terminated with the King's restoration to health; but the Prime Minister never forgot nor forgave the encouragement rendered to his enemies at the crisis of his fate.Pitt had attempted nothing for Ireland since the failure of his commercial proposals; but the ferment created by the seductive doctrines of the French Revolution determined him to conciliate the Catholics, to whom he had always been friendly and whom he agreed with Burke in regarding as naturally conservative. On being informed of his wishes in 1791 the Irish Government did its utmost to dissuade him, and succeeded in whittling down the concessions till they were scarcely worth granting. Though Flood and Charlemont were immovably opposed to the extension of any kind of political rights to Catholics, and though Grattan always explicitly reserved Protestant ascendency, there was a large body of opinion prepared for a fairly liberal policy; and the new organisation of United Irishmen, founded in 1791 by Wolfe Tone, rested on the recognition of a common effective citizenship. In view of these circumstances, Pitt for the first and last time determined to overrule his agents. The Relief Bill of 1793 enfranchised Catholics on the same terms as Protestants, admitted them to juries, to the magistracy, and to commissions in the Army and Navy, allowed them to receive degrees in Dublin University and to carry arms. This generous measure, which the Executive hated but dared not oppose, passed without difficulty. Though the main merit belongs to Pitt, the acceptance of such far-reaching concessions by a Protestant body is a proof that, left to itself, it was not unwilling to concede substantial instalments of justice[pg 298]to the Catholic majority. Recent attempts to minimise the importance of the Act, on the ground that the franchise without eligibility to Parliament was worthless, misjudge the situation. The measure was hailed by Catholic opinion as a decisive breach with the intolerant traditions of a century; and its easy passage to the Statute-book suggests how different might have been the record and the fate of the Grattan Parliament had Pitt throughout encouraged its more generous intuitions and compelled his agents to support the policy which he knew to be right.The union of the Portland Whigs with Pitt in 1794 seemed to bring further reforms within sight. Grattan travelled to London to discuss the situation, and met Fitzwilliam, who was designed for the Viceroyalty. Fitzwilliam was known to favour Parliamentary Reform and Catholic Emancipation, and the liveliest hopes and fears were entertained of a decisive change of system. On learning from Dublin that there was already open talk of the dismissal of the Chancellor and other members of the Ascendency party, Pitt was deeply annoyed. It would be best, he declared, that Fitzwilliam should not go to Ireland; and, in any case, he must understand that no idea of a new system could be entertained, and that no supporters of the Government should be displaced. Shortly before his departure Pitt and Grenville met Portland, Spencer, Windham and Fitzwilliam to determine the policy to be pursued. No notes were made of the conversation, and the Viceroy left England on January 4th, 1795, without written instructions, though well aware of Pitt's general views and wishes. Three days after landing he dismissed Beresford, the head of the Revenue and an inveterate enemy of Catholic claims, who possessed enormous borough influence and was often[pg 299]described as the King of Ireland. Fitzwilliam afterwards stated that he told Pitt the step might be necessary and that he had acquiesced by his silence. Pitt rejoined that he had no recollection of the incident. In any case a man of such importance should not have been removed without communicating with the Home Government. A few days later the Viceroy informed Portland, the Home Secretary, of the unanimity of Catholics and the readiness of Protestants for a measure of emancipation. Despite pressing and repeated communications, Portland delayed his reply and finally urged him not to commit himself. Next day Pitt wrote censuring the removal of Beresford, but without mentioning the Catholic question. Fitzwilliam replied that Pitt must choose between him and Beresford, and informed Portland that he would not risk a rebellion by deferring the measure. A week later Portland wrote in peremptory terms that Grattan's Bill, which enjoyed the Viceroy's support, must go no further, and on the following day Fitzwilliam was recalled.The Viceroyalty had lasted six weeks; but Fitzwilliam is remembered while the phantom rulers who preceded and followed him are forgotten. The episode has a narrower and a wider aspect. That his dismissals were in contravention of the understanding on which his appointment rested was admitted by his personal and political friends in the Cabinet. But though the Viceroy was guilty of disloyalty to his instructions, a strong case can be made out for his policy. He knew that the prevailing system was thoroughly vicious, and he realised that if a policy of conciliation and reform was to be undertaken it could not be effectively carried out by men who were opposed to it. As Pitt had explicitly vetoed a change of system, it would have been wiser to have refused the post. The aims of the two[pg 300]men were fundamentally different. Though in favour of admitting Catholics to Parliament, Pitt thought it safer to defer emancipation till a Union was accomplished, and therefore determined to preserve Government patronage and control for future emergencies. Fitzwilliam desired to govern Ireland in accordance with Irish ideas, in the spirit of the Constitution of 1782 and with the help of men who were loyal to it. In his recent work,“The End of the Irish Parliament,”Mr. Fisher, who finds nothing to admire in the Grattan Parliament and little in its founder, suggests that the Fitzwilliam crisis was a storm in a tea-cup, and that the main issue involved was the substitution of the Ponsonbys for the Beresfords as the dispensers of patronage. But Irish tradition is in this case a safe guide as to the character and importance of the incident. Ireland instinctively felt, as India was to feel nearly a century later in regard to Ripon, that Fitzwilliam was a friend. The news of his recall was received with delight in Ascendency circles, and elsewhere with consternation. It was taken as a definite rejection of the Catholic claims, and increasing numbers despaired of achieving any real reform by peaceful means. It revealed in a flash that the autonomy of Ireland was a sham. From this point the rebellion of 1798 and the Union were in sight.The new Viceroy, Camden, was an anæmic personality, and with the establishment of Maynooth the tale of reforms came to an end. The uncrowned king of Ireland and the brain of Dublin Castle was Fitzgibbon, who as Attorney-General stood by Pitt in the Regency crisis and had been rewarded by the Chancellorship and the earldom of Clare. In his discriminating study of Clare, the late Litton Falkiner has advanced all that can be said for the ablest and[pg 301]most ruthless of the opponents of the Grattan Parliament, pointing out that he remained on friendly terms with the Opposition till 1789. Wholly destitute of national feeling, Clare openly scoffed at the Catholic Relief Act of 1793, which the Government was compelled to support. It was from him that emanated in 1795 the fatal suggestion that the King could not assent to the repeal of laws affecting Irish Catholics without violating his Coronation oath.“In forcefulness and narrowness, in bravery and bigotry,”writes Dr. Holland Rose with entire truth,“he was a fit spokesman of the British garrison, which was resolved to hold every outwork of the citadel.”With Pitt's glance fixed on Union and Clare in virtual command of the machine, there was no place for Grattan in his own Parliament. He disapproved the revolutionary republicanism of the United Irishmen and the ascendency principles of Dublin Castle, and refused to encourage the one by attacking the other. After a final attempt in 1797 to procure the admission of Catholics to Parliament and to introduce household franchise, he retired into private life, his Letter to the Citizens of Dublin firing a parting shot at the Government.The rebellion of 1798 and the French invasions form no integral part of the history of the Grattan Parliament; but they none the less sealed its doom. In his speech on the Union, Clare frankly confessed that he had been working for the Union since 1793, and he began to urge the policy on Pitt in the same year. Pitt, who had long regarded a Union followed by Catholic Emancipation as the ultimate solution of the Irish problem, was now convinced that further delay was dangerous. In the early part of the eighteenth century the idea of Union was by no means unpopular;[pg 302]but the American war had shaken Ireland from her slumbers, and the debates on the Commercial Propositions and the Regency showed that the Grattan Parliament was jealous of the slightest infringement of the settlement of 1782. But the matter was not to be settled by argument, and no dissolution was allowed. The high-minded Cornwallis, who had succeeded Camden, groaned over his hateful task.“My occupation is most unpleasant, negotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt people under heaven. How I long to kick those whom my public duty obliges me to court! I despise and hate myself every hour for engaging in such dirty work, and am supported only by the reflection that without an Union the British Empire must be dissolved.”There was no national opposition to the measure. The Catholics were won by the promises of Emancipation, though they were not informed that the King had already declared his objections to it insuperable. The main fight was waged by the Ulster Protestants from whom had sprung the Volunteers. When the Irish Parliament met for the last time in January, 1800, a majority had been secured by Cornwallis, Castlereagh, and Clare. Grattan had sought re-election and returned to utter an eloquent protest against the destruction of the body that for ever bears his name. He predicted that the Union would be one of Parliaments, not of peoples. To destroy the Parliament was to destroy an organ of national intelligence, a source and symbol of national life.“The thing it is proposed to buy is what cannot be sold—liberty.”He reiterated his conviction that nature was on the side of autonomy.“Ireland hears the ocean protesting against separation, but she hears the sea likewise protesting against Union.”The warnings of the most spotless of Irish patriots were of[pg 303]no avail. The Grattan Parliament was swallowed up. In his touching words, he watched by its cradle and followed its hearse.There is a good deal to be said for the assertion that after the rebellion of 1798 the continuance of the experiment of 1782 was a source of danger to Great Britain in her life and death struggle with France. But there is no ground for the contention that the constitution itself was intrinsically unworkable. Its congenital weakness was that the Executive was responsible not to the Irish but to the British Parliament. Friction between the Legislature and the Executive was thus inevitable; but with tact and goodwill even this anomaly need not have stopped the working of the machine. What would have happened had the British Ministry unselfishly co-operated with Grattan and the moderate Nationalists to secure urgent political and economic reforms we can but conjecture. But we know only too well the effect of withholding such co-operation. There is scarcely a trace in the voluminous correspondence of the Viceroys, except perhaps the Duke of Rutland, of any consideration for the good of the country over which they ruled. Their mandate was to watch the interest of England. When Cornwallis proposed in 1798 that Castlereagh should become Chief Secretary, the King objected that the post ought to be held by a Briton; but his scruples were allayed by the Viceroy's assurance that his candidate was“so very unlike an Irishman”that the appointment would be perfectly safe. There is no ground whatever for the notion that the Parliament was a wholly corrupt and reactionary body. That Grattan was not prepared to endanger the Protestant Ascendency is true but irrelevant; for he was ready to champion such measures of Parliamentary Reform and[pg 304]Catholic Emancipation as would have transformed Parliament into a tolerable mirror of Irish opinion. There can be little doubt that if the Executive had lent its aid, such measures could have been carried as easily as the Relief Bill of 1793.In his thoughtful and eloquent volume,“The Framework of Home Rule,”Mr. Erskine Childers gently chides Home Rulers for wasting vain regrets on the Grattan Parliament, in which he loses interest after the rejection of Flood's Reform Bill of 1783. No instructed Home Ruler would dream of setting that celebrated body on a pedestal. We know too well that, in the words of Litton Falkiner, it was a parliament of landlords, of placemen, and of Protestants. It was fundamentally conservative and aristocratic. It was ever ready to pass Coercion Acts. It was no more a council of disinterested patriots than the sister assembly at Westminster. On the other hand a large and influential section of its members was eager to purge it of its baser elements.“With every inducement to religious bigotry, it carried the policy of toleration in many respects further than the Parliament of England. With many inducements to disloyalty, it was steadily faithful to the connection. Nor should it be forgotten that it was on the whole a vigilant and intelligent guardian of the material interests of the country.”147Though cabin'd, cribbed, confined, it was at least in some degree an organ of public opinion and a symbol of nationality, as the Third Duma, tame though it be, has stood for the principle of representation in autocratic Russia. The duty of British statesmen was to mend it, not to end it. If Grattan's Parliament was a failure, the Union was a greater failure. For the one experiment recognised, however[pg 305]imperfectly, the separateness of Ireland, while the other started from its denial. To use the jargon of the Ascendency party, Ireland was“loyal”before the Union and“disloyal”after it. The clear moral of those chequered years for latter-day statesmen is that a responsible Executive is of more importance than a co-equal legislature, and that having granted autonomy the British Parliament and British Ministers must strive to render it a success. Pitt's Union was not partnership but subjection. The only true Union between countries so different is to be found in loyal comradeship. Against such a relationship history cannot bear witness, for it has never been tried.[pg 306]
XI.—Grattan's Parliament.By G. P. GoochGrattan's Parliament was born of the American War of Independence and was slain by the French Revolution. Brief as was its life, it forms the most brilliant and interesting episode in Irish history. Never has the ancient and unconquerable spirit of nationality spoken in more eloquent accents than during the years when Grattan, loyal alike to the British connection and to Irish ideals, had won for his countrymen a measure of self-government. Representing only the Protestant minority, clogged with corruption, and containing its full share of selfish and reactionary influences, it was none the less the focus and the mouthpiece of national feeling. Fairly to judge the Grattan Parliament we must not only recall its limitations and errors but contrast its throbbing vitality with the servitude that preceded its foundation and the creeping paralysis which followed its dissolution.A long sleep had succeeded the final expulsion of James II. from Ireland. The penal code was perfected into a system accurately described by Burke as most perfectly fitted to degrade and brutalise the human spirit. Catholic Ireland was voiceless and wholly lacking in political consciousness; and the silence of Protestants was only broken by a rare protest from[pg 291]Molyneux, Swift, or Lucas. If any doubt remained under Poynings' Laws as to the complete dependence on Great Britain, it was set at rest by the Declaratory Act passed at Westminster in 1719. The Viceroys before Townshend only spent a few weeks in Dublin every second year for the biennial sessions of Parliament. The Lords Justices governed the country for its English masters by influence and corruption, and the Irish pension list provided grants too degrading to be charged on English revenues. A new era opened when Flood took his seat in 1759 and organised an Opposition, the programme of which included the limitation of parliaments, the revision of the pension list, the creation of a militia and the independence of the Irish Legislature. The first object was secured in 1768 by the Octennial Act; but at the height of his power and popularity he was captured by the Government, which naturally desired to disarm its most formidable foe. After an interval of independent support, the great orator accepted a salaried office and a seat in the Privy Council in 1775. In the same year Grattan entered Parliament at the age of twenty-nine, and quickly asserted his title to the leadership of the national party which Flood, in an evil moment for himself and his country, had abdicated.The new leader was favoured by circumstances. While Flood clamoured for the suppression of the American revolt, the Presbyterians of the north loudly applauded the colonists, many thousands of whom had recently emigrated from Ulster. The community of interest was fully realised on both sides of the Atlantic; but Ireland asked for political and commercial autonomy, not for independence. With the demand there rapidly emerged the instrument of its realisation. Ireland was almost without troops when France[pg 292]declared war in 1778. When it became clear that the Government were unable to defend the island, the Protestant gentry came forward, and in a few weeks a disciplined and enthusiastic force of 40,000 men was under arms. Though organised for defence, the Volunteers, inspired by Charlemont and Grattan, determined to employ their strength in exacting concessions from the British Government. To use the words of Fox, the American war was the Irish harvest. The larger part of the damage inflicted on Irish commerce and manufactures by the legislation of the prominent partner was irreparable; but something might be saved from the wreck. The menacing aspect of the Volunteers and the panic-stricken despatches from Dublin Castle convinced the North Ministry that there was no alternative but to yield. Foreign and colonial trade was thrown open, the embargo on exports was removed, and Ireland was at last free to make use of her resources.The easy overthrow of commercial restrictions encouraged Grattan to a bolder flight. In 1780 he moved his historic resolution“That no person on earth, save the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, has a right to make laws for Ireland.”The motion was withdrawn after an impressive debate; but when the Volunteer Convention, which met shortly after, unanimously adopted the demand for self-government, the British Ministry surrendered. In April, 1782, the declaration of legislative independence was brought forward by Grattan in one of his noblest orations.“I found Ireland on her knees. She is now a nation. In that character I hail her, and, bowing in her august presence, I say,Esto perpetua!”A new and happier era seemed at last to be opening in the fortunes of Ireland and in her relations with Great Britain.“I[pg 293]am convinced,”wrote Burke to Charlemont in words of gold,“that no reluctant tie can be a strong one, and that a natural, cheerful alliance will be a far more secure link of connection than any principle of subordination borne with grudging and discontent.”Grattan was fully satisfied with the repeal of the Declaratory Act of 1719; but when the demand arose for an express renunciation of the authority of the British Parliament, the Coalition Ministry of Fox and North passed an Act unconditionally recognising the right of the Irish people to be bound only by laws enacted by the King and the Irish Parliament.The Grattan Parliament appeared to enter on its career with a fair capital of good will. Irishmen began to feel that they had a country; and though autonomy had been wrested in an hour of weakness by a show of force, there was no trace of resentment in the debates at St. Stephen's which accompanied the renunciation of power. The new constitution seemed to enable Ireland to work out her own salvation without let or hindrance. But the powers which appeared so ample were in reality strictly limited. In the first place, while the Irish Legislature became in theory the peer of the British Legislature, the Irish Executive—the Lord-Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary—continued to be appointed by and responsible to the British Ministry. Secondly, Irish Bills did not become law till they were sanctioned by the King and sealed by the Great Seal on the advice of British Ministers. Finally, a majority of the Irish Parliament rested not on the free choice of the people or even of the Protestant population, but on the owners of nomination boroughs, most of whom were bound to the Executive by the possession or prospect of titles, pensions or sinecures. Government by patronage survived the Renunciation Act,[pg 294]and reduced the authority of the Grattan Parliament to a shadow. The power of withholding supplies was an empty privilege; for the greater part of the income of the country came from the hereditary revenue, which was independent of Parliament.The difficulties inherent in the novel situation were speedily revealed. It was Grattan's fervent wish that the Volunteers, their emancipating task accomplished, should dissolve and leave the parliament to carry out its work. Flood, on the other hand, who had rejoined the ranks of the Opposition, had less confidence in the sincerity of the British Government, and desired to retain the weapon that had proved so effective, at any rate till a Reform Bill had placed the Legislature in a position to withstand the insidious assaults of the Executive. Parliamentary reform was the natural corollary of the Renunciation Act. Flood laid his proposals before the Volunteer Convention, and, armed with its approval, carried them to College Green. His object was to emancipate parliament from the control of placemen and pensioners and to break the power of the borough-owners by the extension of the franchise. The fault of the measure was that, contrary to the wishes of Grattan, it perpetuated the exclusion of Catholics from political rights. The Executive opposed the Bill on the ground that it emanated from Prætorian bands, though the Volunteers themselves were held in check by British troops. The whole open and secret influence of the Government was exerted, and the proposals were defeated. Reform was the condition of genuine autonomy. Without it the Legislature was clay in the hands of the potter. Though a share of the blame falls to the members who saw their influence endangered, the main responsibility for its defeat lies with the agents of the British Government. Having[pg 295]granted legislative equality, England took care to secure that the Grattan Parliament should possess the shadow but not the substance of power.The next disappointment arose in the sphere not of politics but of commerce. It was the wish both of Pitt, the disciple of Adam Smith, and of Grattan that commercial intercourse between the two countries should be facilitated. But the offer to open the English market was accompanied by a proposal that Ireland should make a definite contribution to Imperial expenditure. She already maintained an army of 15,000 men, a fifth of whom were at the disposal of the British Government while the rest could be employed outside Ireland with the consent of the Dublin Parliament. But Pitt, convinced that free trade with England would stimulate Irish prosperity, felt justified in demanding a share of the increased revenue for the Imperial navy. Grattan disliked the suggestion of anything which could be represented as a tribute, and would have preferred voluntary grants; but he waived his objection, and Pitt's scheme, in the form of resolutions, was approved by the Irish Parliament. At this stage the jealousy of the British commercial classes flamed out, and the scheme, on emerging from the debates at Westminster, was found to have been radically altered. As in its final form it curtailed the independence of the Irish Parliament, Grattan strongly opposed it. A scheme which failed to satisfy England and had lost its friends in Ireland was not worth further effort. Pitt had done his best, but had been overborne by the commercial interests. When the Irish Parliament later declared its readiness to discuss a commercial treaty, it met with no response.Pitt was bitterly disappointed by his failure, and lost a good deal of his interest in Ireland. He adopted[pg 296]the view of successive Lords-Lieutenant that genuine parliamentary reform was incompatible with the supremacy of the Executive.“There can, I think, be little doubt,”pronounces Lecky,“that the prospect of a legislative union was already in his mind, and it was probably the real key to much of his subsequent policy.”Dr. Holland Rose quotes a significant letter of Pitt to the Viceroy, Lord Westmorland, in the autumn of 1792.“The idea of the present fermentation gradually bringing both parties to think of an Union with this country has long been in my mind. I hardly dare flatter myself with the hope of its taking place; but I believe it, though itself not easy to be accomplished, to be the only solution for other and greater difficulties.”Thus the Grattan Parliament never had a fair chance. The dual system could only be worked by mutual good will, and if one of the partners withheld her aid, the experiment was doomed. Pitt was not yet openly hostile; but he allowed his agents in Dublin to shape their own course. He recognised that the root of Irish crime was to be found in the tithe system, and suggested in 1786 that tithes should be commuted; yet when Grattan brought forward proposals with this object he allowed the Executive to defeat them.Pitt's growing dislike of the system of 1782 was reinforced by the action of the Irish Parliament in the Regency crisis. When the King became insane in 1788, the Whigs contended that their patron, the Prince of Wales, should automatically exercise the power of the Crown, while Pitt retorted that it was for Parliament to appoint him Regent, and to define his powers. The Irish Parliament sided with the Whigs, Grattan and the Nationalists on the constitutional ground that Pitt's proposed safeguards were unnecessary[pg 297]in Ireland, the camp-followers in view of the probable change in the source of patronage. The controversy terminated with the King's restoration to health; but the Prime Minister never forgot nor forgave the encouragement rendered to his enemies at the crisis of his fate.Pitt had attempted nothing for Ireland since the failure of his commercial proposals; but the ferment created by the seductive doctrines of the French Revolution determined him to conciliate the Catholics, to whom he had always been friendly and whom he agreed with Burke in regarding as naturally conservative. On being informed of his wishes in 1791 the Irish Government did its utmost to dissuade him, and succeeded in whittling down the concessions till they were scarcely worth granting. Though Flood and Charlemont were immovably opposed to the extension of any kind of political rights to Catholics, and though Grattan always explicitly reserved Protestant ascendency, there was a large body of opinion prepared for a fairly liberal policy; and the new organisation of United Irishmen, founded in 1791 by Wolfe Tone, rested on the recognition of a common effective citizenship. In view of these circumstances, Pitt for the first and last time determined to overrule his agents. The Relief Bill of 1793 enfranchised Catholics on the same terms as Protestants, admitted them to juries, to the magistracy, and to commissions in the Army and Navy, allowed them to receive degrees in Dublin University and to carry arms. This generous measure, which the Executive hated but dared not oppose, passed without difficulty. Though the main merit belongs to Pitt, the acceptance of such far-reaching concessions by a Protestant body is a proof that, left to itself, it was not unwilling to concede substantial instalments of justice[pg 298]to the Catholic majority. Recent attempts to minimise the importance of the Act, on the ground that the franchise without eligibility to Parliament was worthless, misjudge the situation. The measure was hailed by Catholic opinion as a decisive breach with the intolerant traditions of a century; and its easy passage to the Statute-book suggests how different might have been the record and the fate of the Grattan Parliament had Pitt throughout encouraged its more generous intuitions and compelled his agents to support the policy which he knew to be right.The union of the Portland Whigs with Pitt in 1794 seemed to bring further reforms within sight. Grattan travelled to London to discuss the situation, and met Fitzwilliam, who was designed for the Viceroyalty. Fitzwilliam was known to favour Parliamentary Reform and Catholic Emancipation, and the liveliest hopes and fears were entertained of a decisive change of system. On learning from Dublin that there was already open talk of the dismissal of the Chancellor and other members of the Ascendency party, Pitt was deeply annoyed. It would be best, he declared, that Fitzwilliam should not go to Ireland; and, in any case, he must understand that no idea of a new system could be entertained, and that no supporters of the Government should be displaced. Shortly before his departure Pitt and Grenville met Portland, Spencer, Windham and Fitzwilliam to determine the policy to be pursued. No notes were made of the conversation, and the Viceroy left England on January 4th, 1795, without written instructions, though well aware of Pitt's general views and wishes. Three days after landing he dismissed Beresford, the head of the Revenue and an inveterate enemy of Catholic claims, who possessed enormous borough influence and was often[pg 299]described as the King of Ireland. Fitzwilliam afterwards stated that he told Pitt the step might be necessary and that he had acquiesced by his silence. Pitt rejoined that he had no recollection of the incident. In any case a man of such importance should not have been removed without communicating with the Home Government. A few days later the Viceroy informed Portland, the Home Secretary, of the unanimity of Catholics and the readiness of Protestants for a measure of emancipation. Despite pressing and repeated communications, Portland delayed his reply and finally urged him not to commit himself. Next day Pitt wrote censuring the removal of Beresford, but without mentioning the Catholic question. Fitzwilliam replied that Pitt must choose between him and Beresford, and informed Portland that he would not risk a rebellion by deferring the measure. A week later Portland wrote in peremptory terms that Grattan's Bill, which enjoyed the Viceroy's support, must go no further, and on the following day Fitzwilliam was recalled.The Viceroyalty had lasted six weeks; but Fitzwilliam is remembered while the phantom rulers who preceded and followed him are forgotten. The episode has a narrower and a wider aspect. That his dismissals were in contravention of the understanding on which his appointment rested was admitted by his personal and political friends in the Cabinet. But though the Viceroy was guilty of disloyalty to his instructions, a strong case can be made out for his policy. He knew that the prevailing system was thoroughly vicious, and he realised that if a policy of conciliation and reform was to be undertaken it could not be effectively carried out by men who were opposed to it. As Pitt had explicitly vetoed a change of system, it would have been wiser to have refused the post. The aims of the two[pg 300]men were fundamentally different. Though in favour of admitting Catholics to Parliament, Pitt thought it safer to defer emancipation till a Union was accomplished, and therefore determined to preserve Government patronage and control for future emergencies. Fitzwilliam desired to govern Ireland in accordance with Irish ideas, in the spirit of the Constitution of 1782 and with the help of men who were loyal to it. In his recent work,“The End of the Irish Parliament,”Mr. Fisher, who finds nothing to admire in the Grattan Parliament and little in its founder, suggests that the Fitzwilliam crisis was a storm in a tea-cup, and that the main issue involved was the substitution of the Ponsonbys for the Beresfords as the dispensers of patronage. But Irish tradition is in this case a safe guide as to the character and importance of the incident. Ireland instinctively felt, as India was to feel nearly a century later in regard to Ripon, that Fitzwilliam was a friend. The news of his recall was received with delight in Ascendency circles, and elsewhere with consternation. It was taken as a definite rejection of the Catholic claims, and increasing numbers despaired of achieving any real reform by peaceful means. It revealed in a flash that the autonomy of Ireland was a sham. From this point the rebellion of 1798 and the Union were in sight.The new Viceroy, Camden, was an anæmic personality, and with the establishment of Maynooth the tale of reforms came to an end. The uncrowned king of Ireland and the brain of Dublin Castle was Fitzgibbon, who as Attorney-General stood by Pitt in the Regency crisis and had been rewarded by the Chancellorship and the earldom of Clare. In his discriminating study of Clare, the late Litton Falkiner has advanced all that can be said for the ablest and[pg 301]most ruthless of the opponents of the Grattan Parliament, pointing out that he remained on friendly terms with the Opposition till 1789. Wholly destitute of national feeling, Clare openly scoffed at the Catholic Relief Act of 1793, which the Government was compelled to support. It was from him that emanated in 1795 the fatal suggestion that the King could not assent to the repeal of laws affecting Irish Catholics without violating his Coronation oath.“In forcefulness and narrowness, in bravery and bigotry,”writes Dr. Holland Rose with entire truth,“he was a fit spokesman of the British garrison, which was resolved to hold every outwork of the citadel.”With Pitt's glance fixed on Union and Clare in virtual command of the machine, there was no place for Grattan in his own Parliament. He disapproved the revolutionary republicanism of the United Irishmen and the ascendency principles of Dublin Castle, and refused to encourage the one by attacking the other. After a final attempt in 1797 to procure the admission of Catholics to Parliament and to introduce household franchise, he retired into private life, his Letter to the Citizens of Dublin firing a parting shot at the Government.The rebellion of 1798 and the French invasions form no integral part of the history of the Grattan Parliament; but they none the less sealed its doom. In his speech on the Union, Clare frankly confessed that he had been working for the Union since 1793, and he began to urge the policy on Pitt in the same year. Pitt, who had long regarded a Union followed by Catholic Emancipation as the ultimate solution of the Irish problem, was now convinced that further delay was dangerous. In the early part of the eighteenth century the idea of Union was by no means unpopular;[pg 302]but the American war had shaken Ireland from her slumbers, and the debates on the Commercial Propositions and the Regency showed that the Grattan Parliament was jealous of the slightest infringement of the settlement of 1782. But the matter was not to be settled by argument, and no dissolution was allowed. The high-minded Cornwallis, who had succeeded Camden, groaned over his hateful task.“My occupation is most unpleasant, negotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt people under heaven. How I long to kick those whom my public duty obliges me to court! I despise and hate myself every hour for engaging in such dirty work, and am supported only by the reflection that without an Union the British Empire must be dissolved.”There was no national opposition to the measure. The Catholics were won by the promises of Emancipation, though they were not informed that the King had already declared his objections to it insuperable. The main fight was waged by the Ulster Protestants from whom had sprung the Volunteers. When the Irish Parliament met for the last time in January, 1800, a majority had been secured by Cornwallis, Castlereagh, and Clare. Grattan had sought re-election and returned to utter an eloquent protest against the destruction of the body that for ever bears his name. He predicted that the Union would be one of Parliaments, not of peoples. To destroy the Parliament was to destroy an organ of national intelligence, a source and symbol of national life.“The thing it is proposed to buy is what cannot be sold—liberty.”He reiterated his conviction that nature was on the side of autonomy.“Ireland hears the ocean protesting against separation, but she hears the sea likewise protesting against Union.”The warnings of the most spotless of Irish patriots were of[pg 303]no avail. The Grattan Parliament was swallowed up. In his touching words, he watched by its cradle and followed its hearse.There is a good deal to be said for the assertion that after the rebellion of 1798 the continuance of the experiment of 1782 was a source of danger to Great Britain in her life and death struggle with France. But there is no ground for the contention that the constitution itself was intrinsically unworkable. Its congenital weakness was that the Executive was responsible not to the Irish but to the British Parliament. Friction between the Legislature and the Executive was thus inevitable; but with tact and goodwill even this anomaly need not have stopped the working of the machine. What would have happened had the British Ministry unselfishly co-operated with Grattan and the moderate Nationalists to secure urgent political and economic reforms we can but conjecture. But we know only too well the effect of withholding such co-operation. There is scarcely a trace in the voluminous correspondence of the Viceroys, except perhaps the Duke of Rutland, of any consideration for the good of the country over which they ruled. Their mandate was to watch the interest of England. When Cornwallis proposed in 1798 that Castlereagh should become Chief Secretary, the King objected that the post ought to be held by a Briton; but his scruples were allayed by the Viceroy's assurance that his candidate was“so very unlike an Irishman”that the appointment would be perfectly safe. There is no ground whatever for the notion that the Parliament was a wholly corrupt and reactionary body. That Grattan was not prepared to endanger the Protestant Ascendency is true but irrelevant; for he was ready to champion such measures of Parliamentary Reform and[pg 304]Catholic Emancipation as would have transformed Parliament into a tolerable mirror of Irish opinion. There can be little doubt that if the Executive had lent its aid, such measures could have been carried as easily as the Relief Bill of 1793.In his thoughtful and eloquent volume,“The Framework of Home Rule,”Mr. Erskine Childers gently chides Home Rulers for wasting vain regrets on the Grattan Parliament, in which he loses interest after the rejection of Flood's Reform Bill of 1783. No instructed Home Ruler would dream of setting that celebrated body on a pedestal. We know too well that, in the words of Litton Falkiner, it was a parliament of landlords, of placemen, and of Protestants. It was fundamentally conservative and aristocratic. It was ever ready to pass Coercion Acts. It was no more a council of disinterested patriots than the sister assembly at Westminster. On the other hand a large and influential section of its members was eager to purge it of its baser elements.“With every inducement to religious bigotry, it carried the policy of toleration in many respects further than the Parliament of England. With many inducements to disloyalty, it was steadily faithful to the connection. Nor should it be forgotten that it was on the whole a vigilant and intelligent guardian of the material interests of the country.”147Though cabin'd, cribbed, confined, it was at least in some degree an organ of public opinion and a symbol of nationality, as the Third Duma, tame though it be, has stood for the principle of representation in autocratic Russia. The duty of British statesmen was to mend it, not to end it. If Grattan's Parliament was a failure, the Union was a greater failure. For the one experiment recognised, however[pg 305]imperfectly, the separateness of Ireland, while the other started from its denial. To use the jargon of the Ascendency party, Ireland was“loyal”before the Union and“disloyal”after it. The clear moral of those chequered years for latter-day statesmen is that a responsible Executive is of more importance than a co-equal legislature, and that having granted autonomy the British Parliament and British Ministers must strive to render it a success. Pitt's Union was not partnership but subjection. The only true Union between countries so different is to be found in loyal comradeship. Against such a relationship history cannot bear witness, for it has never been tried.
Grattan's Parliament was born of the American War of Independence and was slain by the French Revolution. Brief as was its life, it forms the most brilliant and interesting episode in Irish history. Never has the ancient and unconquerable spirit of nationality spoken in more eloquent accents than during the years when Grattan, loyal alike to the British connection and to Irish ideals, had won for his countrymen a measure of self-government. Representing only the Protestant minority, clogged with corruption, and containing its full share of selfish and reactionary influences, it was none the less the focus and the mouthpiece of national feeling. Fairly to judge the Grattan Parliament we must not only recall its limitations and errors but contrast its throbbing vitality with the servitude that preceded its foundation and the creeping paralysis which followed its dissolution.
A long sleep had succeeded the final expulsion of James II. from Ireland. The penal code was perfected into a system accurately described by Burke as most perfectly fitted to degrade and brutalise the human spirit. Catholic Ireland was voiceless and wholly lacking in political consciousness; and the silence of Protestants was only broken by a rare protest from[pg 291]Molyneux, Swift, or Lucas. If any doubt remained under Poynings' Laws as to the complete dependence on Great Britain, it was set at rest by the Declaratory Act passed at Westminster in 1719. The Viceroys before Townshend only spent a few weeks in Dublin every second year for the biennial sessions of Parliament. The Lords Justices governed the country for its English masters by influence and corruption, and the Irish pension list provided grants too degrading to be charged on English revenues. A new era opened when Flood took his seat in 1759 and organised an Opposition, the programme of which included the limitation of parliaments, the revision of the pension list, the creation of a militia and the independence of the Irish Legislature. The first object was secured in 1768 by the Octennial Act; but at the height of his power and popularity he was captured by the Government, which naturally desired to disarm its most formidable foe. After an interval of independent support, the great orator accepted a salaried office and a seat in the Privy Council in 1775. In the same year Grattan entered Parliament at the age of twenty-nine, and quickly asserted his title to the leadership of the national party which Flood, in an evil moment for himself and his country, had abdicated.
The new leader was favoured by circumstances. While Flood clamoured for the suppression of the American revolt, the Presbyterians of the north loudly applauded the colonists, many thousands of whom had recently emigrated from Ulster. The community of interest was fully realised on both sides of the Atlantic; but Ireland asked for political and commercial autonomy, not for independence. With the demand there rapidly emerged the instrument of its realisation. Ireland was almost without troops when France[pg 292]declared war in 1778. When it became clear that the Government were unable to defend the island, the Protestant gentry came forward, and in a few weeks a disciplined and enthusiastic force of 40,000 men was under arms. Though organised for defence, the Volunteers, inspired by Charlemont and Grattan, determined to employ their strength in exacting concessions from the British Government. To use the words of Fox, the American war was the Irish harvest. The larger part of the damage inflicted on Irish commerce and manufactures by the legislation of the prominent partner was irreparable; but something might be saved from the wreck. The menacing aspect of the Volunteers and the panic-stricken despatches from Dublin Castle convinced the North Ministry that there was no alternative but to yield. Foreign and colonial trade was thrown open, the embargo on exports was removed, and Ireland was at last free to make use of her resources.
The easy overthrow of commercial restrictions encouraged Grattan to a bolder flight. In 1780 he moved his historic resolution“That no person on earth, save the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, has a right to make laws for Ireland.”The motion was withdrawn after an impressive debate; but when the Volunteer Convention, which met shortly after, unanimously adopted the demand for self-government, the British Ministry surrendered. In April, 1782, the declaration of legislative independence was brought forward by Grattan in one of his noblest orations.“I found Ireland on her knees. She is now a nation. In that character I hail her, and, bowing in her august presence, I say,Esto perpetua!”A new and happier era seemed at last to be opening in the fortunes of Ireland and in her relations with Great Britain.“I[pg 293]am convinced,”wrote Burke to Charlemont in words of gold,“that no reluctant tie can be a strong one, and that a natural, cheerful alliance will be a far more secure link of connection than any principle of subordination borne with grudging and discontent.”Grattan was fully satisfied with the repeal of the Declaratory Act of 1719; but when the demand arose for an express renunciation of the authority of the British Parliament, the Coalition Ministry of Fox and North passed an Act unconditionally recognising the right of the Irish people to be bound only by laws enacted by the King and the Irish Parliament.
The Grattan Parliament appeared to enter on its career with a fair capital of good will. Irishmen began to feel that they had a country; and though autonomy had been wrested in an hour of weakness by a show of force, there was no trace of resentment in the debates at St. Stephen's which accompanied the renunciation of power. The new constitution seemed to enable Ireland to work out her own salvation without let or hindrance. But the powers which appeared so ample were in reality strictly limited. In the first place, while the Irish Legislature became in theory the peer of the British Legislature, the Irish Executive—the Lord-Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary—continued to be appointed by and responsible to the British Ministry. Secondly, Irish Bills did not become law till they were sanctioned by the King and sealed by the Great Seal on the advice of British Ministers. Finally, a majority of the Irish Parliament rested not on the free choice of the people or even of the Protestant population, but on the owners of nomination boroughs, most of whom were bound to the Executive by the possession or prospect of titles, pensions or sinecures. Government by patronage survived the Renunciation Act,[pg 294]and reduced the authority of the Grattan Parliament to a shadow. The power of withholding supplies was an empty privilege; for the greater part of the income of the country came from the hereditary revenue, which was independent of Parliament.
The difficulties inherent in the novel situation were speedily revealed. It was Grattan's fervent wish that the Volunteers, their emancipating task accomplished, should dissolve and leave the parliament to carry out its work. Flood, on the other hand, who had rejoined the ranks of the Opposition, had less confidence in the sincerity of the British Government, and desired to retain the weapon that had proved so effective, at any rate till a Reform Bill had placed the Legislature in a position to withstand the insidious assaults of the Executive. Parliamentary reform was the natural corollary of the Renunciation Act. Flood laid his proposals before the Volunteer Convention, and, armed with its approval, carried them to College Green. His object was to emancipate parliament from the control of placemen and pensioners and to break the power of the borough-owners by the extension of the franchise. The fault of the measure was that, contrary to the wishes of Grattan, it perpetuated the exclusion of Catholics from political rights. The Executive opposed the Bill on the ground that it emanated from Prætorian bands, though the Volunteers themselves were held in check by British troops. The whole open and secret influence of the Government was exerted, and the proposals were defeated. Reform was the condition of genuine autonomy. Without it the Legislature was clay in the hands of the potter. Though a share of the blame falls to the members who saw their influence endangered, the main responsibility for its defeat lies with the agents of the British Government. Having[pg 295]granted legislative equality, England took care to secure that the Grattan Parliament should possess the shadow but not the substance of power.
The next disappointment arose in the sphere not of politics but of commerce. It was the wish both of Pitt, the disciple of Adam Smith, and of Grattan that commercial intercourse between the two countries should be facilitated. But the offer to open the English market was accompanied by a proposal that Ireland should make a definite contribution to Imperial expenditure. She already maintained an army of 15,000 men, a fifth of whom were at the disposal of the British Government while the rest could be employed outside Ireland with the consent of the Dublin Parliament. But Pitt, convinced that free trade with England would stimulate Irish prosperity, felt justified in demanding a share of the increased revenue for the Imperial navy. Grattan disliked the suggestion of anything which could be represented as a tribute, and would have preferred voluntary grants; but he waived his objection, and Pitt's scheme, in the form of resolutions, was approved by the Irish Parliament. At this stage the jealousy of the British commercial classes flamed out, and the scheme, on emerging from the debates at Westminster, was found to have been radically altered. As in its final form it curtailed the independence of the Irish Parliament, Grattan strongly opposed it. A scheme which failed to satisfy England and had lost its friends in Ireland was not worth further effort. Pitt had done his best, but had been overborne by the commercial interests. When the Irish Parliament later declared its readiness to discuss a commercial treaty, it met with no response.
Pitt was bitterly disappointed by his failure, and lost a good deal of his interest in Ireland. He adopted[pg 296]the view of successive Lords-Lieutenant that genuine parliamentary reform was incompatible with the supremacy of the Executive.“There can, I think, be little doubt,”pronounces Lecky,“that the prospect of a legislative union was already in his mind, and it was probably the real key to much of his subsequent policy.”Dr. Holland Rose quotes a significant letter of Pitt to the Viceroy, Lord Westmorland, in the autumn of 1792.“The idea of the present fermentation gradually bringing both parties to think of an Union with this country has long been in my mind. I hardly dare flatter myself with the hope of its taking place; but I believe it, though itself not easy to be accomplished, to be the only solution for other and greater difficulties.”Thus the Grattan Parliament never had a fair chance. The dual system could only be worked by mutual good will, and if one of the partners withheld her aid, the experiment was doomed. Pitt was not yet openly hostile; but he allowed his agents in Dublin to shape their own course. He recognised that the root of Irish crime was to be found in the tithe system, and suggested in 1786 that tithes should be commuted; yet when Grattan brought forward proposals with this object he allowed the Executive to defeat them.
Pitt's growing dislike of the system of 1782 was reinforced by the action of the Irish Parliament in the Regency crisis. When the King became insane in 1788, the Whigs contended that their patron, the Prince of Wales, should automatically exercise the power of the Crown, while Pitt retorted that it was for Parliament to appoint him Regent, and to define his powers. The Irish Parliament sided with the Whigs, Grattan and the Nationalists on the constitutional ground that Pitt's proposed safeguards were unnecessary[pg 297]in Ireland, the camp-followers in view of the probable change in the source of patronage. The controversy terminated with the King's restoration to health; but the Prime Minister never forgot nor forgave the encouragement rendered to his enemies at the crisis of his fate.
Pitt had attempted nothing for Ireland since the failure of his commercial proposals; but the ferment created by the seductive doctrines of the French Revolution determined him to conciliate the Catholics, to whom he had always been friendly and whom he agreed with Burke in regarding as naturally conservative. On being informed of his wishes in 1791 the Irish Government did its utmost to dissuade him, and succeeded in whittling down the concessions till they were scarcely worth granting. Though Flood and Charlemont were immovably opposed to the extension of any kind of political rights to Catholics, and though Grattan always explicitly reserved Protestant ascendency, there was a large body of opinion prepared for a fairly liberal policy; and the new organisation of United Irishmen, founded in 1791 by Wolfe Tone, rested on the recognition of a common effective citizenship. In view of these circumstances, Pitt for the first and last time determined to overrule his agents. The Relief Bill of 1793 enfranchised Catholics on the same terms as Protestants, admitted them to juries, to the magistracy, and to commissions in the Army and Navy, allowed them to receive degrees in Dublin University and to carry arms. This generous measure, which the Executive hated but dared not oppose, passed without difficulty. Though the main merit belongs to Pitt, the acceptance of such far-reaching concessions by a Protestant body is a proof that, left to itself, it was not unwilling to concede substantial instalments of justice[pg 298]to the Catholic majority. Recent attempts to minimise the importance of the Act, on the ground that the franchise without eligibility to Parliament was worthless, misjudge the situation. The measure was hailed by Catholic opinion as a decisive breach with the intolerant traditions of a century; and its easy passage to the Statute-book suggests how different might have been the record and the fate of the Grattan Parliament had Pitt throughout encouraged its more generous intuitions and compelled his agents to support the policy which he knew to be right.
The union of the Portland Whigs with Pitt in 1794 seemed to bring further reforms within sight. Grattan travelled to London to discuss the situation, and met Fitzwilliam, who was designed for the Viceroyalty. Fitzwilliam was known to favour Parliamentary Reform and Catholic Emancipation, and the liveliest hopes and fears were entertained of a decisive change of system. On learning from Dublin that there was already open talk of the dismissal of the Chancellor and other members of the Ascendency party, Pitt was deeply annoyed. It would be best, he declared, that Fitzwilliam should not go to Ireland; and, in any case, he must understand that no idea of a new system could be entertained, and that no supporters of the Government should be displaced. Shortly before his departure Pitt and Grenville met Portland, Spencer, Windham and Fitzwilliam to determine the policy to be pursued. No notes were made of the conversation, and the Viceroy left England on January 4th, 1795, without written instructions, though well aware of Pitt's general views and wishes. Three days after landing he dismissed Beresford, the head of the Revenue and an inveterate enemy of Catholic claims, who possessed enormous borough influence and was often[pg 299]described as the King of Ireland. Fitzwilliam afterwards stated that he told Pitt the step might be necessary and that he had acquiesced by his silence. Pitt rejoined that he had no recollection of the incident. In any case a man of such importance should not have been removed without communicating with the Home Government. A few days later the Viceroy informed Portland, the Home Secretary, of the unanimity of Catholics and the readiness of Protestants for a measure of emancipation. Despite pressing and repeated communications, Portland delayed his reply and finally urged him not to commit himself. Next day Pitt wrote censuring the removal of Beresford, but without mentioning the Catholic question. Fitzwilliam replied that Pitt must choose between him and Beresford, and informed Portland that he would not risk a rebellion by deferring the measure. A week later Portland wrote in peremptory terms that Grattan's Bill, which enjoyed the Viceroy's support, must go no further, and on the following day Fitzwilliam was recalled.
The Viceroyalty had lasted six weeks; but Fitzwilliam is remembered while the phantom rulers who preceded and followed him are forgotten. The episode has a narrower and a wider aspect. That his dismissals were in contravention of the understanding on which his appointment rested was admitted by his personal and political friends in the Cabinet. But though the Viceroy was guilty of disloyalty to his instructions, a strong case can be made out for his policy. He knew that the prevailing system was thoroughly vicious, and he realised that if a policy of conciliation and reform was to be undertaken it could not be effectively carried out by men who were opposed to it. As Pitt had explicitly vetoed a change of system, it would have been wiser to have refused the post. The aims of the two[pg 300]men were fundamentally different. Though in favour of admitting Catholics to Parliament, Pitt thought it safer to defer emancipation till a Union was accomplished, and therefore determined to preserve Government patronage and control for future emergencies. Fitzwilliam desired to govern Ireland in accordance with Irish ideas, in the spirit of the Constitution of 1782 and with the help of men who were loyal to it. In his recent work,“The End of the Irish Parliament,”Mr. Fisher, who finds nothing to admire in the Grattan Parliament and little in its founder, suggests that the Fitzwilliam crisis was a storm in a tea-cup, and that the main issue involved was the substitution of the Ponsonbys for the Beresfords as the dispensers of patronage. But Irish tradition is in this case a safe guide as to the character and importance of the incident. Ireland instinctively felt, as India was to feel nearly a century later in regard to Ripon, that Fitzwilliam was a friend. The news of his recall was received with delight in Ascendency circles, and elsewhere with consternation. It was taken as a definite rejection of the Catholic claims, and increasing numbers despaired of achieving any real reform by peaceful means. It revealed in a flash that the autonomy of Ireland was a sham. From this point the rebellion of 1798 and the Union were in sight.
The new Viceroy, Camden, was an anæmic personality, and with the establishment of Maynooth the tale of reforms came to an end. The uncrowned king of Ireland and the brain of Dublin Castle was Fitzgibbon, who as Attorney-General stood by Pitt in the Regency crisis and had been rewarded by the Chancellorship and the earldom of Clare. In his discriminating study of Clare, the late Litton Falkiner has advanced all that can be said for the ablest and[pg 301]most ruthless of the opponents of the Grattan Parliament, pointing out that he remained on friendly terms with the Opposition till 1789. Wholly destitute of national feeling, Clare openly scoffed at the Catholic Relief Act of 1793, which the Government was compelled to support. It was from him that emanated in 1795 the fatal suggestion that the King could not assent to the repeal of laws affecting Irish Catholics without violating his Coronation oath.“In forcefulness and narrowness, in bravery and bigotry,”writes Dr. Holland Rose with entire truth,“he was a fit spokesman of the British garrison, which was resolved to hold every outwork of the citadel.”With Pitt's glance fixed on Union and Clare in virtual command of the machine, there was no place for Grattan in his own Parliament. He disapproved the revolutionary republicanism of the United Irishmen and the ascendency principles of Dublin Castle, and refused to encourage the one by attacking the other. After a final attempt in 1797 to procure the admission of Catholics to Parliament and to introduce household franchise, he retired into private life, his Letter to the Citizens of Dublin firing a parting shot at the Government.
The rebellion of 1798 and the French invasions form no integral part of the history of the Grattan Parliament; but they none the less sealed its doom. In his speech on the Union, Clare frankly confessed that he had been working for the Union since 1793, and he began to urge the policy on Pitt in the same year. Pitt, who had long regarded a Union followed by Catholic Emancipation as the ultimate solution of the Irish problem, was now convinced that further delay was dangerous. In the early part of the eighteenth century the idea of Union was by no means unpopular;[pg 302]but the American war had shaken Ireland from her slumbers, and the debates on the Commercial Propositions and the Regency showed that the Grattan Parliament was jealous of the slightest infringement of the settlement of 1782. But the matter was not to be settled by argument, and no dissolution was allowed. The high-minded Cornwallis, who had succeeded Camden, groaned over his hateful task.“My occupation is most unpleasant, negotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt people under heaven. How I long to kick those whom my public duty obliges me to court! I despise and hate myself every hour for engaging in such dirty work, and am supported only by the reflection that without an Union the British Empire must be dissolved.”There was no national opposition to the measure. The Catholics were won by the promises of Emancipation, though they were not informed that the King had already declared his objections to it insuperable. The main fight was waged by the Ulster Protestants from whom had sprung the Volunteers. When the Irish Parliament met for the last time in January, 1800, a majority had been secured by Cornwallis, Castlereagh, and Clare. Grattan had sought re-election and returned to utter an eloquent protest against the destruction of the body that for ever bears his name. He predicted that the Union would be one of Parliaments, not of peoples. To destroy the Parliament was to destroy an organ of national intelligence, a source and symbol of national life.“The thing it is proposed to buy is what cannot be sold—liberty.”He reiterated his conviction that nature was on the side of autonomy.“Ireland hears the ocean protesting against separation, but she hears the sea likewise protesting against Union.”The warnings of the most spotless of Irish patriots were of[pg 303]no avail. The Grattan Parliament was swallowed up. In his touching words, he watched by its cradle and followed its hearse.
There is a good deal to be said for the assertion that after the rebellion of 1798 the continuance of the experiment of 1782 was a source of danger to Great Britain in her life and death struggle with France. But there is no ground for the contention that the constitution itself was intrinsically unworkable. Its congenital weakness was that the Executive was responsible not to the Irish but to the British Parliament. Friction between the Legislature and the Executive was thus inevitable; but with tact and goodwill even this anomaly need not have stopped the working of the machine. What would have happened had the British Ministry unselfishly co-operated with Grattan and the moderate Nationalists to secure urgent political and economic reforms we can but conjecture. But we know only too well the effect of withholding such co-operation. There is scarcely a trace in the voluminous correspondence of the Viceroys, except perhaps the Duke of Rutland, of any consideration for the good of the country over which they ruled. Their mandate was to watch the interest of England. When Cornwallis proposed in 1798 that Castlereagh should become Chief Secretary, the King objected that the post ought to be held by a Briton; but his scruples were allayed by the Viceroy's assurance that his candidate was“so very unlike an Irishman”that the appointment would be perfectly safe. There is no ground whatever for the notion that the Parliament was a wholly corrupt and reactionary body. That Grattan was not prepared to endanger the Protestant Ascendency is true but irrelevant; for he was ready to champion such measures of Parliamentary Reform and[pg 304]Catholic Emancipation as would have transformed Parliament into a tolerable mirror of Irish opinion. There can be little doubt that if the Executive had lent its aid, such measures could have been carried as easily as the Relief Bill of 1793.
In his thoughtful and eloquent volume,“The Framework of Home Rule,”Mr. Erskine Childers gently chides Home Rulers for wasting vain regrets on the Grattan Parliament, in which he loses interest after the rejection of Flood's Reform Bill of 1783. No instructed Home Ruler would dream of setting that celebrated body on a pedestal. We know too well that, in the words of Litton Falkiner, it was a parliament of landlords, of placemen, and of Protestants. It was fundamentally conservative and aristocratic. It was ever ready to pass Coercion Acts. It was no more a council of disinterested patriots than the sister assembly at Westminster. On the other hand a large and influential section of its members was eager to purge it of its baser elements.“With every inducement to religious bigotry, it carried the policy of toleration in many respects further than the Parliament of England. With many inducements to disloyalty, it was steadily faithful to the connection. Nor should it be forgotten that it was on the whole a vigilant and intelligent guardian of the material interests of the country.”147Though cabin'd, cribbed, confined, it was at least in some degree an organ of public opinion and a symbol of nationality, as the Third Duma, tame though it be, has stood for the principle of representation in autocratic Russia. The duty of British statesmen was to mend it, not to end it. If Grattan's Parliament was a failure, the Union was a greater failure. For the one experiment recognised, however[pg 305]imperfectly, the separateness of Ireland, while the other started from its denial. To use the jargon of the Ascendency party, Ireland was“loyal”before the Union and“disloyal”after it. The clear moral of those chequered years for latter-day statesmen is that a responsible Executive is of more importance than a co-equal legislature, and that having granted autonomy the British Parliament and British Ministers must strive to render it a success. Pitt's Union was not partnership but subjection. The only true Union between countries so different is to be found in loyal comradeship. Against such a relationship history cannot bear witness, for it has never been tried.