 A popular history of Ireland, from the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics, Book XI. From the Assession of George I to the Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland. By Thomas Darcy McGee. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Last Years of Queen Anne had been years of intrigue and preparations with the Jacobite leaders throughout the three kingdoms. At their heads stood Ormond, the second and last Duke of his name, and with him were associated at one stage or another of his design, Bowlingbroke, Orore, Bishop Atterbury, and other influential persons. It was thought that had this party acted promptly on the death of the Queen, and proclaimed James III, or the Pretender, as he was called by the partisans of the new dynasty, the act of secession might have remained a dead letter, and the stewards recovered their ancient sovereignty. But the partisans of the Elector were the first in the field, and King George was accordingly proclaimed, on the 1st of August, at London, and on the 6th of August, at Dublin. In Dublin, where serious apprehensions of a Jacobite rising were entertained, the proclamation was made by the glare of torches at the extraordinary hour of midnight. Two or three arrests of insignificant persons were made, and letters to Swift being found on one of them, the dean was thought by his friends to be in some danger. But it was not correct to say, as many writers have done, that he found it necessary to retire from Dublin. The only inconvenience he suffered was from the hootings and revilings of the Protestant rabble in the street, and a brutal threat of personal violence from a young nobleman, upon whom he revenged himself in a characteristic petition to the House of Lords for protection against the said Lord. Pretending not to be quite sure of his assailant, he proceeds to explain, Your petitioner is informed that the person who spoke the words above mentioned is of your lordship's house, under the style and title of Lord Blaney, whom your petitioner remembers to have introduced to Mr. Secretary Addison in the Earl of Wharton's Government, and who have done him other good offices at that time, because he was represented as a young man of some hopes and a broken fortune. The entire document is a curious picture of the insolence of the ascendancy party of that day, even towards dignitaries of their own church, who refused to go to all lengths in the only politics they permitted or tolerated. It was while smarting under these public indignities, and excluded from the society of the highest class in his own country, with two or three exceptions, that Swift laid the foundations of his own and his country's patriotism, among the educated middle class of the Irish capital. From the college and the clergy he drew Dr. Sheridan, ancestor of six generations of men and women of genius, Drs. Delany, Jackson, Halsham, Walsley, Stopford, afterwards Bishop of Cloyne, and the three Reverend Brothers Grotton. In the city he selected as his friends and companions four other Grottons, one of whom was Lord Mayor, another physician to the castle, one a schoolmaster, the other a merchant. Do you know the Grottons, he wrote to the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Cartere, then pray obtain their acquaintance. The Grottons, my Lord, can raise ten thousand men. Among the class represented by this admirable family of seven brothers, and in that of the tradesmen immediately below them, of which we may take his printers, waters and Faulkner for types, Swift's haughty and indignant denunciations of the oligarchy of the hour produced striking effects. The humblest of the community began to raise their heads and to fix their eyes steadily on public affairs and public characters. Questions of currency, of trade, of the administration of justice and of patronage were earnestly discussed in the press and in society, and thus by slow but gradually ascending steps a spirit of independence was promoted, where hitherto only servility had reigned. The obligations of his co-temporaries to Swift are not to be counted simply by what he was able to originate or to advocate in their behalf, for not much could be done in that way, in such times and in such a position as his, but rather in regard to the enemies and maligners of that people whom he exposed and punished. To understand the value of his example and inspiration we must read over again his castigations of Wharton, of Burnett, of Bolter, of Witschid, of Allen, and all the leaders of the oligarchy in the Irish Parliament. When we have done so we shall see at once how his imperial reputation, his personal position, and every faculty of his powerful mind were employed a light to combat injustice and prescription, to promote freedom of opinion and of trade, to punish the abuses of judicial power, and to cultivate and foster a spirit of self-reliance and economy among all classes, especially the humblest. In his times and in his position, with a castig entangling his course, what more could have been expected of him? The Irish Parliament met in 1715, elected according to the then usage for the lifetime of the King, commenced its career by an act of attainder against the pretender, accompanied by a reward of fifty thousand pounds for his apprehension. The Lord's Justices, the Duke of Grafton and the Earl of Galway, recommended in their speech to the Houses that they should cultivate such unanimity among themselves as at once to put an end to all other distinctions in Ireland but that of Protestant and Papist. In the same speech, and in all the debates of that reign, the Catholics were spoken of as the common enemy, and all who sympathized with them as enemies of the Constitution. But as far as this Parliament was from all our ideas of what a national legislature ought to be, it was precisely at this period when the administration could not be worse that the foundation was late of the great contest for legislative independence, which was to continue through three generations and to constitute the main staple of the Irish history of this century. In the year 1717 the English House of Lords entertained and decided as a court of last resort an appeal from the Irish courts already passed on by the Irish Lords in the famous real estate case of Ansley versus Sherlock. The proceeding was novel and was protested against in the English House at that time by the Duke of Leeds and in the Irish by the majority of the whole House. But the British Parliament, not content with claiming the power, proceeded to establish the principle by the Declaratory Act, 6th George I, for securing the dependence of Ireland on the Crown of Great Britain. This statute, even more objectionable than the law of poinings, continued unrepeal till 1782, notwithstanding all the arguments and all the protests of the Irish Patriot Party. The Lords of Ireland, unsupported by the bigoted and unprincipled oligarchy in the Commons, were shorn of their appellate jurisdiction and their journals for many years contained few entries of business done beyond servile addresses to successive viceroys and motions of adjournment. In their session of 1723 the ascendancy party in the Commons proceeded to their last extreme of violence against the prostrate Catholics. An act was introduced founded on eight resolutions, further to prevent the growth of popery. One of these resolutions, regularly transmitted to England by the viceroys, promised that every priest arrested within the realm should suffer the penalty of castration. For the first time a penal law was rejected with horror and indignation by the English Privy Council and the whole elaborate edifice, over-weighted with these last propositions, trembled to its base. But though badly shaken it was yet far from coming down. Do not the corruptions and villainies of men, said Swift to his friend Delaney, eat your flesh and exhaust your spirits? They certainly not at the heart of the courageous dean, but at the same time they excited rather than exhausted his spirits. In 1720 he resumed his pen as a political writer in his famous proposal for the universal use of Irish manufacturers. Waters, the printer of this piece, was indicted for a seditious libel before Chief Justice Witschad, the immortal Cornem Nobis of the dean's political ballads. The jury were detained eleven hours and set out nine times to compel them to agree on a verdict. They at length finally declared they could not agree, and a null prost was soon after entered by the crown. This trial of Swift's printer in 1720 is the first of a long series of duels with the crown lawyers, which the Irish press has since maintained with as much firmness and self-sacrifice as any press ever exhibited. And it may be said that never, not even under martial law, was a conspicuous example of civic courage more necessary or more dangerous. Brown, Bishop of Cork, had been in danger of deprivation for preaching a sermon against the well-known toast to the memory of King William. Swift was threatened, as we see, a few years earlier with personal violence by a wig lord and pelted by a Protestant rabble for his supposed Jacobitism. His friend Dr. Sheridan lost his monster living for having accidentally chosen as his text on the anniversary of King George's coronation sufficient for the days the evil thereof. Such was the intolerance of the oligarchy towards their own clergy. What must it have been to others? The attempt to establish a national bank and the introduction of a debased copper coinage, for which a patent had been granted to one William Wood, next employed the untiring pen of Swift. The half-penny controversy was not, as is often said, a small matter. It was nearly as important as the bank project itself. Of the one hundred thousand pounds worth coined, the intrinsic value was shown to be not more than six thousand pounds. Such was the storm excited against the patentee that his Dublin agents were obliged to resign their connection with him, and the royal letter's patent were unwillingly cancelled. The bank project was also rejected by Parliament, adding another to the triumphs of the invincible dean. During the last years of this reign, Swift was the most powerful and popular person in Ireland, and perhaps in the Empire. The freedom with which he advised Carteret and the viceroy, and remonstrated with Walpole, the premier, on the misrule of his country, was worthy of the ascendancy of his genius. No man of letters, no churchman, no statesman of any country in any age, ever showed himself more thoroughly independent in his intercourse with men of office than Swift. The vice of Ireland was exactly the other way, so that in this respect also the patriot was the liberator. Rising with the rise of public spirit, the great churchman, in his fourth letter, in the assumed character of M. B. Drapier, confronted the question of legislative independence, alluding to the pamphlet of Mullano, published thirty years before, he pronounced its arguments invincible, and the contrary system the very definition of slavery. The remedy, he concludes, addressing the Irish people, is wholly in your own hands, and therefore I have digressed a little in order to refresh and continue that spirit so seasonably raised among you. And to let you see that by the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country, you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England. For this letter also, the printer, Harding, was indicted, but the Dublin grand jury, infected with the spirit of the times, unanimously ignored the bill. A reward of three hundred pounds was then issued from the castle for the discovery of the author, but no informer could be found base enough to betray him. For a time, however, to escape the ovations he despised, and the excitement which tried his health, Swift retired to his friend Sheridan's cottage on the banks of Loch Romer in Coven, and there recreated himself with long rides about the country, and the composition of the travels of the immortal Gulliver. Sir Robert Walpole, alarmed at the exhibition of popular intelligence and determination evoked by Swift, committed the Government of Ireland to his rival, Lord Carteray, whom he was besides not sorry to remove to a distance, and appointed to the Sea of Armagh, which fell vacant about the time of the currency dispute, Dr. Hugh Bolter, Bishop of Bristol, one of his own creatures. This prelate, a politician by taste and inclination, modeled his policy on his patrons, as far as his more contracted sphere and inferior talents permitted. To buy members in market overt, with peerages or secret service money, was his chief means of securing a parliamentary majority. An Englishman by birth and education, the head of the Protestant establishment in Ireland, it was inevitable that his policy should be English and Protestant, in every particular. To resist, depress, disunite, and defeat the believers in the dangerous doctrines of Swift and Molyneux was the sole rule of his nearly twenty years political supremacy in Irish affairs, 1724 to 1742. The master of a princely income, endowed with strong passions, unlimited patronage, and great activity, he may be said to have reigned rather than led, even when the nominal vice-royalty was in the hands of such able and accomplished men as Lords Carteray, Dorset, and Devonshire. His failure in his first state trial against Harding, the printer, nothing discouraged him. He had come into Ireland to secure the English interest by uprooting the last vestiges of popery and independence, and he devoted himself to those objects with persevering determination. In 1727, the year of George I's decease, he obtained the disenfranchisement of Catholic electors by a clause quietly inserted without notice in a bill regulating elections, and soon after he laid the foundations of those nurseries of proselytism, the charter schools. The accession of King George II in 1727 led to no considerable changes, either in England or Ireland. Sir Robert Walpole continued supreme in the one country and primate bolter in the other. The Jacobites, disheartened by their ill success in 1715, and repelled rather than attracted by the austere character of him they called King James III, made no sign. The new king's first act was to make public the declaration he had addressed to the Privy Council of his firm resolution to uphold the existing constitution in church and state. The Catholic population, beginning once more to raise their humble heads, thought this a suitable occasion to present a humble and loyal address of congratulation to the Lord's justices in the absence of the viceroy. Lord Devlin and several of their number accordingly appeared at the castle and delivered their address, which they begged might be forwarded to the foot of the throne. No notice whatever was taken of this document, either at Dublin or London, nor were the class who signed it permitted by law to testify their allegiance to the sovereign, for fifty years later, down to 1778. The Duke of Dorset, who succeeded Lord Cartere as viceroy in 1731, unlike his immediate predecessor, refrained from suggesting additional severities against the Catholics. His first term of office, two years, was almost entirely occupied with the fiercest controversy which had ever waged in Ireland between the established church and the Protestant dissenters. The ground of the dispute was the sacramental test, imposed by law upon the members of both houses and all burgesses and councillors of corporate towns. By the operations of this law, when rigidly enforced, Presbyterians and other dissenters were as effectually excluded from political and municipal offices as Catholics themselves. Against this exclusion it was natural that a body so numerous and possessed of so much property, especially in Ulster, should make a vigorous resistance. Relying on the great share they had in the Revolution, they endeavored, though ineffectually, to obtain under King William the repeal of the Test Act of King Charles II. Under Queen Anne they were equally unsuccessful, as we may still read with interest in the pages of Swift, Defoe, Tennyson, Voice and King. Swift, especially, brought to the controversy not only the zeal of a churchman, but the prejudices of an Anglo-Irishman against the newcomers in the North. He upbrades them in 1708, as glad to leave then barren hills of Lockaber for the fruitful veils of Down and Antrim, for their parsimony and their clannishness. He denied to them, with bitter scorn, the title they had assumed of Brother Protestants, and as to the papus, whom they affected to despise, they were, in his opinion, as much superior to the dissenters, as a lion, though chained and clipped of its claws, is a stronger and nobler animal than an angry cat, at liberty to fly to the throats of true churchmen. The language of the Presbyterian champions was equally bold, denunciatory and explicit. They broadly intimated, in a memorial to Parliament, that under the operation of the test they would be unable to take up arms again, as they had done in 1688, for the maintenance of the Protestant secession, a covert menace of insurrection which Swift and their other opponents did not fail to make the most up. Still farther to embarrass them, Swift got up a paper making out a much stronger case in favour of the Catholics than of their brethren, the dissenters, and the controversy closed, for that age, in the complete triumph of the established clergy. This iniquitous deprivation of equal civil rights, accompanied with the onerous burden of tithes falling heaviest on the cultivators of the soil, produced the first great Irish exodus to the North American colonies. The tithe of Augustement, or pastridge, lately abolished, had made the tithe of tillage more unjust and unequal. Outraged in their dearest civil and religious rights, thousands of the Scotto-Irish of Ulster, and the Malaysian and Anglo-Irish of the other provinces, preferred to encounter the perils of an Atlantic flighting, rather than abide under the yoke and lash of such an oligarchy. In the year 1729, 5,600 Irish landed at the single port of Philadelphia. In the next ten years they furnished to the Carolinas and Georgia the majority of their immigrants. Before the end of this reign, several thousands of heads of families, all bred and married in Ireland, were rearing up a free posterity along the slopes of the Blue Ridge in Virginia and Maryland, and even as far north as the valleys of the Hudson and the Merrimack. In the ranks of the thirteen United Colonies, the descendants of those nonconformists were to repeat, for the benefit of George III, the lesson and example their ancestors had taught to James II, at Innis Kilin and at Derry. Swift, with all his services to his own order, disliked and was disliked by them. Of the bishops he has recorded his utter contempt in some of the most cutting couplets that even he ever wrote. Bolter, he detested. Narcissus March, he despised. With Dr. King of Dublin, Dr. Bolton of Cashill, and Dr. Hort of Tom, he barely kept up appearances. Except Stern, Bishop of Clogger, Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, and Stopford, his successor, he entertained neither friendship nor respect for one of that order. And, on their part, the right reverend prelates cordially reciprocated his antipathy. They resisted his being made a member of the linen board, a justice of the peace, or a visitor of Trinity College. Had he appeared amongst them in Parliament as their peer, they would have been compelled to accept him as a master, or combine against him as an enemy. No wonder, then, that successive viceroy's shrank from nominating him to any of the meters which death had emptied. The original sin of his birth was aggravated in their eyes by the actual sin of his patriotism. No wonder the sheets of paper that littered his desk, before he sunk into his last, sad scene of dotage, were found scribbled all over with his favorite lines. Better we all were in our graves than live in slavery to slaves. But the seeds of manly thought he had so broadly sown, though for a season hidden even from the side of the sower, were not dead, nor undergoing decay. With something of the prudence of the founder, the Patriot Party, as the opposition to the Castle Party began to be called, occupied themselves at first with questions of taxation and expenditure. In seventeen twenty-nine, the Castle attempted to make it appear that there was a deficit. That, in short, the country owed the government the large sum of two hundred and seventy-four thousand pounds. The Patriots met this claim by emotion for reducing the cost of all public establishments. This was the chosen ground of both parties, and a more popularly intelligible ground could not be taken. Between retrenchment and extravagance, between high taxes and low, even the least educated of the people could easily decide, and thenceforward, for upwards of twenty years, no session was held without a spirited debate on the supplies and the whole subject of the public expenditure. The Duke of Devonshire, who succeeded the Duke of Dorset as viceroy in seventeen thirty-four, contributed by his private munificence and lavish hospitalities to throw a factitious popularity round his administration. No Dublin tradesman could find it in his heart to vote against the nominee of so liberal a nobleman, and the public opinion of Dublin was, as yet, the public opinion of Ireland. But the Patriot Party, though unable to stem successfully the tide of corruption and seduction thus let loose, held their difficult position in the legislature with great gallantry and ability. New men had arisen during the dotage of Swift, who revered his maxims and intimated his prudence. Henry Boyle, speaker of the House of Commons, afterwards Earl of Shannon, Anthony Malone, son of the confraire of Sir Toby Butler, and afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Edward O'Brien, member for Clare, and his son Sir Lucius, member for Ennis, were the pillars of the party. Out of doors the most active spirit among the Patriots was Charles Lucas, a native of Clare, who, from his apothecary shop in Dublin, attempted, not without both talents, zeal, and energy, to play the part of Swift at the press and among the people. His public writings, commenced in seventeen forty-one, brought him at first persecution and exile, but they afterwards conducted him to the representation of the capital and an honourable niche in his country's history. The great event, which may be said to divide into two epics, the reign of George II, was the daring invasion of Scotland in seventeen forty-five by the young pretender, Charles Edward. This brave and unfortunate prince, whose adventures will live forever in Scottish song and romance, was accompanied from France by Sir Thomas Sheridan, Colonel O'Sullivan, and other Irish refugees, still fondly attached to the House of Stuart. It is not to be supposed that these gentlemen would be without correspondence in Ireland, nor that the state of that country could be a matter of indifference to the astute advisers of King George. In reality, Ireland was almost as much their difficulty as Scotland, and their choice of a viceroy, at this critical moment, showed at once their estimate of the importance of the position and the talents of the man. Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, a great name in the world of fashion, in letters, and in diplomacy, is especially memorable to us for his eight months' viceroyalty over Ireland. That office had been long the object of his ambition, and he could hardly have attained it at a time better calculated to draw out his eminent administrative abilities. By temper and conviction opposed to persecution, he connived at Catholic worship under the very walls of the castle. The sour and jaundice bigotry of the local oligarchy he encountered with Beaumont and Relery. The only dangerous papest he had seen in Ireland, he declared to the King on his return, was the celebrated beauty of that religion, Miss Palmer. Relying on the magical effect of doing justice to all classes and seeing justice done, he was enabled to spare four regiments of troops for the war in Scotland, instead of demanding additions to the Irish garrisons. But whether to diminish the influence which his brilliant administration had created in England, or through the machinations of the oligarchy, still powerful at Dublin, within ten days from the decisive battle of Culloden, he was recalled. The fruits of his policy might be already observed, as he walked on foot, his countess on his arm, to the place of embarkation, amid the acclamations of all ranks and classes of the people, and their affectionate prayers for his speedy return. End of Chapter 2. Read by Cibella Denton. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 3 of Popular History of Ireland, Book 11 by Thomas Darcy McGee. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. The Last Jacobite Movement. The Irish Soldiers Abroad. French Expedition under Thoreau or O'Farrell. The mention of the Scottish insurrection of 1745 brings naturally with it another reference to the history of the Irish soldiers in the military service of France. This year was, in truth, the most eventful in the annals of that celebrated legion, for while it was the year of Fontenoy and victory on the one hand, it was, on the other hand, the year of Culloden and defeat. The decisive battle of Fontenoy, in which the Franco-Irish troops bore so decisive a part, was fought on the 11th of May 1745. The French army, commanded by Sax and accompanied by King Louis, leaving 18,000 men to besiege Namur and 6,000 to guard the Shelt, took a position between that river and the Allies, having their centre at the village of Fontenoy. The British and Dutch, under the King's favourite son, the Duke of Cumberland, were 55,000 strong, the French 45,000. After a hard day's fighting, victory seemed to declare so clearly against France that King Louis, who was present, prepared for flight. At this moment, Marshal Sax ordered a fresh charge by the seven Irish regiments under Counts Dillon and Thoman. The tide was turned, beyond expectation, to the cry of Remember Limerick. France was delivered, England checked, and Holland reduced from a first to a second-rate power upon that memorable day. But the victory was dearly bought. One-fourth of all the Irish officers, including Count Dillon, were killed, and one-third of all the men. The whole number slaying on the side of France was set down at 7,000 by English accounts, while they admitted for themselves alone 4,000 British and 3,300 Hanoverians and Dutch. For most of all, says the just-minded Lord Mayhan, were the gallant brigades of Irish exiles. It was this defeat of his favourite son, which rung from King George II the oft-quoted malediction on the laws which deprived him of such subjects. The expedition of Prince Charles Edward was undertaken and conducted by Irish aid, quite as much as by French or Scottish. The chief parties to it, besides the old Marquis of Tully-Bardine and the young Duke of Perth, were the waters' father and son, Irish bankers at Paris, who advanced 180,000 leavers between them, Walsh, an Irish merchant at Nantes, who put a privateer of 18 guns into the venture, Sir Thomas Geraldine, the pretender's agent at Paris, Sir Thomas Sheridan, the prince's preceptor, who, with Colonel Zosulovan and Lynch, Captain O'Neill, and other officers of the brigade, formed the staff, on which, Sir John MacDonald, a Scottish officer in the Spanish service, was also placed. Fathers Kelly and O'Brien volunteered in the expedition. On the 22nd of June, 1745, with seven friends, the prince embarked in Walsh's vessel, the Dutel, at St. Nazaire, on the Loire, and on the 19th of July landed on the northern coast of Scotland, near Moidart. The Scottish chiefs, little consulted or considered beforehand, came slowly and dubiously to the landing-place. Under their patriarchal control there were still in the kingdom about 100,000 men and about one-twelfth of the Scottish population. Clan Ronald, Cameron of Lockeel, the Laird of MacLeod, and a few others, having arrived, the royal standard was unfurled on the 19th of August at Glenfinnan, where, that evening, 1,200 men, the entire army, so far, were formed into camp, under the orders of O'Sullivan. From that day until the day of Culloden, O'Sullivan seems to have maneuvered the prince's forces. At Perth, at Edinburgh, at Preston, at Manchester, at Culloden, he took command in the field, or in Garrison, and even after the sad result, he adhered to his sovereign son with an honourable fidelity which defied despair. Charles, on his part, placed full confidence in his Irish officers. In his proclamation after the Battle of Preston, he declared it was not his intention to enforce on the people of England, Scotland, or Ireland a religion they disliked. In a subsequent paper, he asks, Have you found reason to love and cherish your governors as the fathers of the people of Great Britain and Ireland? Has a family upon whom a faction unlawfully bestowed the diadem of a rightful prince retained a due sense of so great a trust in favour? These and other proclamations betrayed an Irish pen, probably Sir Thomas Sheridan's. One of Charles's English adherents, Lord Elko, who kept a journal of the campaign, notes, complainingly, the Irish influence under which he acted. The prince and his old governor, Sir Thomas Sheridan, are especially objected to, and the Irish favourites are censured in a body. While at Edinburgh, a French ship containing some arms, supplies, and Irish officers arrived, at the same time efforts were made to recruit for the prince in Ireland, but the agents being taken in some cases, the channel narrowly watched, and the people not very eager to join the service, few recruits were obtained. The Irish and France, as if to cover the inaction of their countrymen at home, strained every nerve. The waterses and O'Brien of Paris were liberal bankers to the expedition. Into their hands, James exhausted his treasury to support his gallant son. At Fontainebleau, on the 23rd of October, Colonel O'Brien, on the part of the prince, and the Marquis Stargusson for Louis XV, formed a treaty of friendship and alliance, one of the clauses of which was that certain Irish regiments and other French troops should be sent to sustain the expedition. Under Lord John Drummond, a thousand men were shipped from Dunn-Kirk, and arrived at Montrose in the Highlands about the time that Charles had penetrated as far south as Manchester. The officers, with the prince, here refused to advance on London with so small a force. A retreat was decided on, the sturdy defence of Carlisle and victory of Fall-Kirk checked the pursuit, but the overwhelming force of the Duke of Cumberland compelled them to evacuate Edinburgh, Perth, and Glasgow, operations which consumed February, March, and the first half of April, 1746. The next plan of operation seems to have been to concentrate into the western Highlands with Inverness for headquarters. The town Charles easily got, but Fort George, a powerful fortress built upon the site of the castle where Macbeth was said to have murdered Duncan, commanded the lock. Stapleton and his Irish captured it, however, as well as the neighbouring Fort Augustus. Joined by some Highlanders, they next attempted Fort William, the last fortress of King George in the north, but on the 3rd of April were recalled to the main body. To cover Inverness, his headquarters, Charles resolved to give battle. The chosen ground, flanked by the River Narn, was spotted with marsh and very irregular. It was called Culloden, and was selected by O'Sullivan. Brigadier Stapleton and Colonel Kerr reported against it as a field of battle, but Charles adopted O'Sullivan's opinion of its fitness for Highland warfare. When the preparations for battle began, many voices exclaimed, We'll give Cumberland another fontanoy. The Jacobites were placed in position by O'Sullivan at once their adjutant and quartermaster general, and as the burgers of Preston thought, a very likely fellow. He formed two lines, the Great Clans being in the 1st, the Ogilvies, Gordons and Murrays, the French and Irish in the 2nd. Four pieces of cannon flanked each wing, and four occupied the centre. Lord George Murray commanded the right wing, Lord John Drummond the left, and Brigadier Stapleton the reserve. They mustered in all less than 5,000 men. The British formed three lines, ten thousand strong, with two guns between every second regiment of the 1st and 2nd line. The action commenced about noon of April 16th, and before evening half the troops of Prince Charles lay dead on the field, and the rest were hopelessly broken. The retreat was pel-mel, except where a troop of the Irish pickets, by a spirited fire, checked the pursuit, which a body of dragoons commenced after the McDonald's, and Lord Louis Gordons' regiments did similar service. Stapleton conducted the French and Irish remnant to Imbranesce, and obtained for them by capitulation fair quarter and honourable treatment. The unhappy Prince remained on the field almost to the last. It required, says Mr. Chambers, all the eloquence and indeed all the active exertion of O'Sullivan to make Charles quit the field. A cornet in his service, when questioned on the subject at the point of death, declared he saw O'Sullivan, after using in treaties in vain, turn the head of the Prince's horse and drag him away. From that night forth, O'Sullivan, O'Neill, and a poor sedan carrier of Edinburgh, called Burke, accompanied him in all his wanderings and adventures among the Scottish islands. At Long Island they were obliged to part company, the Prince proceeding alone with Miss Flora MacDonald. He had not long left when a French cutter hoeved in sight and took off O'Sullivan, intending to touch at another point, and take in the Prince and O'Neill. The same night she was blown off the coast, and the Prince, after many other adventures, was finally taken off at Badenoc, on the fifteenth of September, 1746, by the euro, a French armed vessel, in which Captain Sheridan, son of Sir Thomas, Mr. O'Baron, a lieutenant in the French army, and two other gentlemen had adventured in search of him. Poor O'Neill, in seeking to rejoin his master, was taken prisoner, carried to London, and is lost from the record. O'Sullivan reached France safely, where, with Stapleton, Lynch, and the Irish and Scotch officers, he was welcomed and honoured of all brave men. Such was the last struggle of the stewards. For years after the popular imagination in both countries clung fondly to Prince Charles, but the cause was dead. As if to bury it forever, Charles, in despair, grew dissipated and desponding. In 1755, the British Jacobites sent Colonel McNamara, as their agent, to induce him to put away his mistress, Miss Walsingham, a demand with which he haughtily refused to comply. In 1766, when James III died at Avignon, the French King and the Pope refused to acknowledge the Prince by the title of Charles III. When the latter died at 1788 in Rome, Cardinal York contended himself with having a metal struck, with the inscription, Henry Kiss the Ninth, Anglais Rex. He was the last of the stewards. Notwithstanding the utter defeat of the Scottish expedition and the scatterment of the surviving companies of the Brigade on all sorts of service from Canada to India, there were many of the exiled Irish and France, who did not yet despair of a national insurrection against the House of Hanover. In the year 1759, an imposing expedition was fitted out at Brest under Admiral Confloss and another at Duncurt, under Commodore Therrat, whose real name was O'Farrell. The former, soon after putting to sea, was encountered at Quiberon by the English under Hawke and completely defeated, but the latter entered the British Channel unopposed and proceeded to the appointed rendezvous. While cruising in search of Confloss, the autumnal equinox drove the intrepid Therot into the northern ocean and compelled him to winter among the frozen friths of Norway and the Orkneys. One of his five frigates returned to France, another was never heard of, but with the remaining three he emerged from the Scottish Islands and entered Lochfoyle early in 1760. He did not, however, attempt a landing at Derry, but appeared suddenly before Carrick-Fergus on the 21st of February and demanded its surrender. Placing himself at the head of his marines and sailors, he attacked the town, which after a brave resistance by the commandant, Colonel Jennings, he took by assault. Here for the first time, this earlier Paul Jones heard of the defeat of his Admiral, after levying contributions on the rich burgesses and proprietors of Carrick-Fergus and Belfast, he again put to sea. His ships, battered by the wintry storms which they had undergone in northern latitudes, fell in near the Isle of Man with three English frigates, just out of Port under Commodore Elliot. A gallant action ensued, in which Therot, or O'Farrell, and three hundred of his men were killed. The survivors struck to the victors, and the French ships were towed in a sinking state into the Port of Ramsey. The life thus lost in the joint service of France and Ireland was a life illustrative of the Irish refugee class, among whom he became a leader. Left an orphan in childhood, O'Farrell, though of a good family, had been bred in France in so menial condition that he first visited England as a domestic servant. From that condition he rose to be a dexterous and successful captain in the contraband trade, so extensive in those times. In this capacity he visited almost every port of either channel, acquiring that accurate knowledge which, added to his admitted bravery and capacity, placed him at length at the head of a French squadron. Throughout the expedition, says Lord Mayhan, the honour and humanity of this brave adventurer are warmly acknowledged by his enemies. He fought his ship, according to the same author, until the hold was almost filled with water and the deck covered with dead bodies. End of Chapter 3. Read by Savella Denton. For more free audio books or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 4 of Popular History of Ireland, Book 11 by Thomas Darcy McGee. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Reign of George II concluded. Malone's leadership. The Earl of Harrington, afterwards Duke of Devonshire, succeeded Lord Chesterfield in the government in 1746. He was provided with the Prime Minister in the Person of the New Archbishop of Armagh, Dr. George Stone, whose character, if he was not exceedingly columnated by his contemporaries, might be compared to that of the worst politicians of the worst ages of Europe. Originally the son of the jailer of Winchester, he had risen, by dint of talents and audacity, to receive from the hands of his sovereign the illustrious dignity of Primate of Ireland. But even in this exalted office the abominable vices of his youth accompanied him. His house, at Lexlip, was once a tavern and a brothel, and crimes which are nameless were said to be habitual under his roof. May the importation of Ganymedes into Ireland be soon discontinued, was the public toast, which disguised under the transparent gauze of a mythological illusion the infamies of which he was believed to be the patron. The prurient page of Churchill was not quite so scrupulous, and the readers of the satire entitled The Times will need no further key to the horrible charges commonly received on both sides of the channel against Primate Stone. The viceroyalty of Ireland, which had become an object of ambition to the first men in the empire, was warmly contested by the Earl of Harrington and the Duke of Dorset. The former, through his stand-hope influence and connections, prevailed over his rival, and arrived in Ireland warmly recommended by the popular Chesterfield. During his administration, Primate Stone, proceeding from one extreme to another, first put forward the dangerous theory that all surplus revenue belonged of right to the Crown, and might be paid over by the vice treasurers to his majesty's order without authority of parliament. At this period, notwithstanding the vicious system of her land-tenures and her recent losses by immigration, Ireland found herself in possession of a considerable surplus revenue. Like wounds and bruises in a healthy body, the sufferings and deprivations of the population rapidly disappeared under the appearance even of improvement in the government. The observant Chesterfield, who continued through life warmly attached to the country, in which his name was remembered with so much affection, expresses to his friend, Chevenix, Bishop of Waterford in 1751, his satisfaction at hearing that Ireland improves daily, and that a spirit of industry spreads itself to the great increase of trade and manufacturers. This newborn prosperity, the primate and politicians of his school, would have met by an annual depletion of the treasury, instead of assisting its march by the reduction of taxes and the promotion of necessary public works. The surplus was naturally regarded by the Patriot Party in the light of so much national capital. They looked upon it as an improvement fund for the construction of canals, highways, and breakwaters. For the encouragement of the linen and other manufacturers, and for the adornment of the capital with edifices worthy of the chief city of a flourishing kingdom. The leader of the Patriot Party, Anthony Malone, was compared at this period by an excellent authority to a great sea in a calm. He was considered, even by the fastidious Lord Shelburne, the equal in oratory of Chatham and Mansfield. He seems to have at all times, however, sunk the mere orator in the statesmen, and to have used his great powers of argument even more in council than in the arena. His position at the bar, as prime sergeant, by which he took precedence even of the Attorney General, gave great weight to his opinions on all questions of constitutional law. The roistering country gentlemen who troubled their heads but little with anything besides dogs and horses, pistols and clare, felt secure in their new-fledged patriotism under the broad aegis of the law extended over them by the most eminent lawyer of his age. The speaker of the commons, Henry Boyle, aided and assisted Malone, and when left free to combat on the floor, his high spirit and great fortune gave additional force to his example and confidence to his followers. Both were men too cautious to allow their adversaries any parliamentary advantage over them, but not so their intrepid co-ajutor out of doors, Apothecary Lucas. He, like Swift, rising from local and municipal grievances to questions affecting the Constitution of Parliament itself, was, in 1749, against all the efforts of his friends in the House of Commons declared by the majority of that house to be an enemy to his country, and a reward was accordingly issued for his apprehension. For a time he was compelled to retire to England, but he returned to celebrate in his Freeman's Journal the humiliation of the primate and the defeat of the policy both of Lord Harrington and his successor, the Duke of Dorset. This nobleman resolved to cast his predecessor into the shade by the brilliancy of his success, proceeded to take vigorous measures against the Patriots. In his first speech to Parliament in 1751, he informed them his majesty consented to the appropriation of the surplus revenue by the House of Commons, and a clause was added to the annual supply bill in the English Council containing the same obnoxious word, consent. On this occasion, not feeling themselves strong enough to throw out the bill, and there being no alternative but rejection or acceptance, the Patriots permitted it to pass under protest. But the next session, when a similar addition was made, the Commons rejected the supply bill altogether by a majority of 122 to 117. This was a measure of almost revolutionary consequence, since it left every branch of the public service unprovided for, for the ensuing twelve months. Both the advisers of the King in England and the vice-roy in Ireland seemed by their insane conduct as if they desired to provoke such a collision. Malone's patent of precedence as prime sergeant was cancelled, the speaker was dismissed from the privy council, and the surplus revenue was withdrawn from the vice-treasurer by a king's letter. The indignation of the Dubliners at these outrages rose to the utmost pitch. Stone, Healy, Hutchinson, and others of the castle party were waylaid and menaced in the streets, and the vice-roy himself hooded wherever he appeared. Had the popular leaders been men less cautious or less influential, the year 1753 might have witnessed a violent revolutionary movement. But they planted themselves on the authority of the Constitution, they united boldness with prudence, and they triumphed. The primate and his creatures raised against them in vain the cuckoo cry of disloyalty, both in Dublin and London. The English wigs long engaged themselves in a similar struggle with the overgrown power of the Crown, sympathized with the Irish opposition, and offended their motives both in society and in Parliament. The enemies of the Dorset family as naturally took their part, and the duke himself was obliged to go over to protect his interest at court, leaving the odious primate as one of the Lord's justices. At his departure his guards were hardly able to protect him from the fury of the populace, to that waterside to which Chesterfield had walked on foot, seven years before, amid the benedictions of the same people. The Patriots had at this crisis a great addition to their strength, in the Assession of James, the Twentieth Earl of Kildare, successively Marquis and Duke of Lentster. This nobleman, in the prime of life, married to the beautiful Emily Lennox, daughter of the Duke of Richmond, followed Dorset to England, and presented to the King, with his own hand, one of the boldest memorials ever addressed to a sovereign by a subject. After reciting the past services of his family in maintaining the Imperial connection, he declared himself the organ of several thousands of his Majesty's lead subjects, as well the nobles as the clergy, the gentry, and the commonality of the kingdom. He dwells on the peculation and extravagance of the administration under the diumerate of the viceroy and the primate, which he compares with the League of Strafford and Lod. He denounces more especially Lord George Sackville, son to Dorset, for his intermeddling in every branch of administration. He speaks of Dr. Stone as a greedy churchman who affects to be a second Woolsey in the Senate. This high-toned memorial struck with astonishment the English ministers, who did not hesitate to hint that in a rain less merciful it would not have passed with impunity. In Ireland it raised the hearty earl to the pinnacle of popular favour. A medal was struck in his honour, representing him guarding a heap of treasure with a drawn sword, and the motto, Touch Not, says Kildare. At the opening of the next Parliament he was a full hour making his way among the enthusiastic crowd, from his house in Kildare Street to College Green. In little more than a year the Duke of Dorset, whom English ministers had in vain endeavored to sustain, was removed, and the primate, by his Majesty's orders, was struck from the list of privy councillors. Lord Harrington, now Duke of Devonshire, replaced the disgraced and defeated Dorset, and at once surrounded himself with advisers from the ranks of the opposition. The earl of Kildare was his personal and political friend, and his first visit on arriving was paid at Carton. The speaker, Mr. Boyle, the earl of Besborough, head of the popular family of the Posenbees, and Mr. Malone, were called to the privy council. Lucas, exalted rather than injured by years of exile, was elected one of the members for the City of Dublin, and the whole face of affairs promised a complete and salutary change of administration. After a year in office, Devonshire returned to England in ill health, leaving Lord Kildare as one of the Justices, an office which he continued to fill, till the arrival in September 1756 of John, 4th Duke of Bedford, as Lord Lieutenant, with Mr. Rigby, a good four-bottle man as Chief Secretary. The instructions of the Duke of Bedford, dictated by the genius and wisdom of Chatham, were to employ all softening and healing arts of government. His own desire, as a Whig, at the head of the Whig families of England, was to unite and consolidate the same party in Ireland, so as to make them a powerful auxiliary force to the English Whigs. Consistently with this design, he wished well to the country he was sent to rule, and was sincerely desirous of promoting measures of toleration. But he found the Patriots distracted by success, and disorganized by the possession of power. The Speaker, who had struggled so successfully against his predecessors, was in the upper house as Earl of Shannon, and the Chair of the Commons was filled by John Posenbe of the Bestborough family. The Posenbe following, and the Earl of Kildare's friends, were at this period almost as much divided from each other in their views of public policy, as either were from the party of the primate. The Posenbe party, still directed by Malone, wished to follow up the recent victory on the money bills by a measure of Catholic relief, attacks upon absentees, and a reduction of the pension lists, shamelessly birthing beyond all former proportion. Lord Kildare and his friends were not then prepared to go to such lengths, though that high-spirited nobleman afterwards came into most of these measures. After endeavoring in vain to unite these two interests, the Duke of Bedford found, or fancied himself compelled, in order to secure a parliamentary majority to listen to the overtures of the obsequious primate, to restore him to the council and to leave him, together with his old enemy, Lord Shannon, in the situation of joint administrators, during his journey to England in 1758. The Earl of Kildare, it should be remarked, firmly refused to be associated with stone on any terms, or for any time, long or short. The closing of this important reign is notable for the first Catholic meeting held since the reign of Queen Anne. In the spring of 1757, four hundred respectable gentlemen attended by mutual agreement at Dublin, among whom were Lords Devlin, Taff and Fingle, the antiquary Charles O'Connor of Balenegar, the historian of the Civil Wars, Dr. Currie, and Mr. Wise, a merchant of Waterford, the ancestor of a still better known laborer in the same cause. The then recent persecution of Mr. Saul, a Dublin merchant, of their faith, for having harbored a young lady whose friends wished to coerce her into a change of religion, gave particular significance to this assembly. It is true the proceedings were characterized by caution, amounting almost to timidity, but the unanimous declaration of their loyal attachment to the throne, at a moment when French invasion was eminent, produced the best effect, and greatly strengthened the hands of the clan bristles, posambies, malones, dallas, and other advocates of an enlarged toleration in both houses. It is true no immediate legislation followed, but the way was prepared for future ameliorations by the discretion and tact of the Catholic delegates of 1757. They were thenceforth allowed at least the right of meeting and petitioning, of which they had been long deprived, and the restoration of which marks the first step in their gradual recovery of their civil liberties. In 1759 a rumour broke out in Dublin that a legislative union was in contemplation by the primate and his faction. On the 3rd of December the citizens arose en masse and surrounded the houses of parliament. They stopped the carriages of members and obliged them to swear opposition to such a measure. Some of the Protestant bishops and the Lord Chancellor were roughly handled. A privy councillor was thrown into the river, the Attorney General was wounded and obliged to take refuge in the college. Lord Itchakin was abused till he said his name was O'Brien when the rage of the people was turned into acclamations. The speaker, Mr. Posenby, and the Chief Secretary, Mr. Rigby, had to appear in the porch of the House of Commons, solemnly to assure the citizens that no union was dreamed of, and if it was proposed that they would be the first to resist it. Public spirit had evidently grown bold and confident, and we can well believe Secretary Rigby, when he writes to the Elder Pitt, that the mob declared, since they have no chance of numbers in the House, they must have recourse to numbers out of doors. End of Chapter 4. Read by Cibela Denton. For more free audio books or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 5 of Popular History of Ireland, Book 11 by Thomas Darcy McGee. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. A session of George III. Flood's Leadership. Octenial Parliaments Established. George III, grandson of the late King, commenced in October 1760, at the age of two and twenty, one of the longest rains in British history. Including the period of the Regency, he reigned over his empire nearly sixty years, an extraordinary term of royal power, and quite as extraordinary for its events as for its extreme length. The great movement of the Irish mind at the beginning of this reign was the limitation of the duration of Parliament hitherto elected for the King's life. This reform, long advocated out of doors, and by the more progressive members within the House, was reserved for the new Parliament under the new reign. To this Parliament were returned several men of great promise, men of a new generation nurtured in the School of Swift and Malone, but going even beyond their masters in their determination to liberate the legislature of their country from the undue influence of the Crown and the Castle. Among those new members were three destined to national celebrity, Dr. Lucas, Mr. Husey Berg, and Mr. Dennis Bulls Daily, and one destined to universal reputation, Henry Flood. This gentleman, the son of a former Chief Justice, intermarried into the powerful oligarchical family of the Bears Fords, was only in his twenty-eighth year when first elected member for Kilkenny, but in point of genius and acquirements he was even then the first man in Ireland, and one of the first in the Empire. For a session or two he silently observed the forms of the House, preparing himself for the great contest to come, but when at last he obtained the ear of his party he was heard to some purpose. Though far from advocating extreme measures he had abundant boldness, he was not open to the objection leveled against the leader of the past generation, Mr. Malone, of whom Gratton said, he was a colony bread man and he feared to bring down England upon Ireland. The Duke of Bedford vacated the viceroyalty in 1761 and Lord Halifax took his place. In the first parliamentary session Dr. Lucas introduced his resolutions limiting the duration of parliament to seven years, a project which Flood afterwards adopted and mainly contributed to carry. The heads of the bill embodying these resolutions were transmitted to London by the Lord Lieutenant, but never returned. In 1763 under the government of the Marquis of Hartford similar resolutions were introduced and carried, but a similar fate awaited them. Again they were passed and again rejected, the popular dissatisfaction rising higher and higher with every delay of the reform. At length in the session of 1767 the Septennial Bill, as it was called, was returned from England, changed to Octennial and with this alteration it passed into law in February 1768. A new parliament the same year was elected under the new act, to which all the friends of the measure were triumphantly returned. The faithful Lucas, however, survived to success little better than two years. He died amid the very sincere regrets of all men who were not enemies of their country. At his funeral the Paul was born by the Marquis of Kildare, Lord Charlemont, Mr. Flood, Mr. Hussie Berg, Sir Lucius O'Brien and Mr. Pozenby. Lord Halifax and his Chief Secretary, Mr. Hamilton, known to us as the single-speech Hamilton of literary history, received very graciously the loyal addresses presented by the Catholics soon after his Majesty's Assession. In a speech from the Throne the viceroy proposed but was obliged to abandon the proposition to raise six regiments of Catholics under their own officers to be taken into the service of Portugal, the ally of Great Britain. His administration was otherwise remarkable neither for its length nor its importance, nor is there anything else of consequence to be mentioned of his lordship, except that his nephew and Chief Secretary had the honour to have Edmund Berg for his private secretary and them as fortunate to offend him. During the government of the Marquis of Hartford and his successor Lord Townsend, appointed in 1768, the Patriot Party contended on the ground of rendering the judges independent, diminishing the pension list and modifying the law of poinings, requiring heads of bills to be sent into England and certified by both privy councils before they could be passed upon by the legislature. The question of supply and that of the duration of Parliament being settled, these reforms were the next objects of exertion. When we know that the late King's Mistresses, the Queen Dowager of Prussia, Prince Ferdinand and other connections of the royal family, equally alien to the country, were pensioners to the amount of thousands of pounds annually on the Irish establishment, we can understand more clearly the bitterness of the battle Mr. Flood and his colleagues were called upon to fight in assailing the old system. But they fought it resolutely and perseveringly. Death had removed their most unscrupulous enemy, Primate Stone, during the Hartford administration, and the improved tone and temper of public opinion would not tolerate any attempt to raise up a successor of similar character. Lord Townsend, an old campaigner and bon vivant, was expressly chosen as most capable of restoring the old system of government by closeting and corruption, but he found the Ireland of his day very materially altered from the defenceless province which Stone and Dorset had attempted to cajole or to coerce twenty years before. The Parliament of 1769, the first limited parliament which Ireland had seen since the Revolution, proved in most respects worthy of the expectations formed of it. John Pausenby was chosen speaker, and Flood regarded, around him, well-filled benches and cheering countenances. The usual supply bill was passed and sent up to the castle, but on its return from England was found to be altered, fifteen thousand men, among other changes, being charged to the Irish military establishment, instead of twelve thousand as formerly. The Commons, resolute to assert their rights throughout the bill, as had been done in 1753, and the Lord Lieutenant, protesting in the House of Lords against their conduct, ordered them to be prorogued. Prorogation followed prorogation till February 1771, the interval being occupied in closeting and coquettting with members of the opposition, in the creation of new places, and the disposal of them to the relatives of those capable of being bought. No one was surprised when the houses reassembled to find that a bare majority of the Commons voted a fulsome address of confidence to the Lord Lieutenant. But this address, Speaker Pausenby indignantly refused to present. He preferred resignation to disgrace, and great was the amazement and indignation when his friend, Mr. Perry, elected by a bare majority, consented to take the post, no longer a post of honour. In justice to Mr. Perry, however, it must be added that in the chair, as on the floor of Parliament, he still continued the Patriot, that if he advanced his own fortunes it was not at the expense of the country, that some of the best measures passed by this and the subsequent Parliament owed their final success, if not their first suggestion, to his far-seeing sagacity. The methods taken by Lord Townsend to affect his ends, not less than those ends themselves, aroused the spirit and combined the ranks of the Irish opposition. The press of Dublin teamed with Philip Picks and satires upon his creatures and himself. The wit, the scholarship, the elegant fancy, the irresistible torrent of eloquence, as well as the popular enthusiasm, were against him, and in 1772, born down by these combined forces, he confessed his failure by resigning the sort of state into the hands of Lord Harcourt. The new viceroy, according to custom, began his reign by taking an exactly opposite course to his predecessor, and ended it by falling into nearly the same errors and abuses. He suggested an absentee tax, which was introduced by flood, but rejected through the preponderating influence of the landed aristocracy. In preparing the tables of expenditure, he had caused arrears amounting to two hundred and sixty-five thousand pounds and an annual increase of one hundred thousand pounds to be added to the estimates. Moreover, his supply bill was discovered, at the second reading, to extend over two years instead of one, a discovery which occasioned the greatest indignation. Flood raised his powerful voice in mourning, not unmingled with menace. Berg declared that if any member should again bring in such a bill, he would himself move his expulsion from the house, while George Ogle, member for Wexford, proposed that the bill itself should be burned before the porch by the common hangmen. He was reminded that the instrument bore the great seal, to which he boldly answered that the seal would help to make it burn the better. It was not thought politic to take notice of this revolutionary retort. End of Chapter 5. Read by Cibella Denton. For more free audio books or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 6 of Popular History of Ireland, Book 11 by Thomas Darcy McGee. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Flood's leadership. State of the country between 1760 and 1776. England was engaged in two great wars during the period of flood supremacy in the Irish Parliament, the Seven Years' War, concluded by the Peace of Paris in 1763, and the American War, concluded by the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. To each of these wars, Ireland was the second largest contributor, both as to men and money, and by both she was the severest sufferer in her manufacturers, her provision trade, and her general prosperity. While army contracts and all sorts of military and naval expenditure, in a variety of ways, returned to the people of England, the produce of their taxes, the Irish had no such compensation for the burdens imposed on their more limited resources. The natural result was that the incipient prosperity which Chesterfield hailed with pleasure in 1751 was arrested in its growth, and fears began to be seriously entertained that the country would be driven back to the lamentable condition from which it had slowly and laboriously emerged during the reign of George II. The absence of employment in the towns through the laboring classes more and more upon the soil for sustenance, while the landlord legislation of the period threw them as helplessly back upon other pursuits than agriculture. Agrarian injustice was encountered by conspiracy, and for the first time in these pages we have to record the introduction of the diabolical machinery of secret oath-bound associations among the Irish peasantry. Of the first of these combinations in the southern counties, a cotemporary writer gives the following account. Some landlords in Munster, he says, have let their lands to cottagers far above their value, and to lighten their burden allowed commonage to their tenants by way of recompense. Afterwards, in despite of all equity, contrary to all compacts, the landlords enclosed these commons, and precluded their unhappy tenants from the only means of making their bargains tolerable. The peasantry of Waterford, Cork and other southern counties met in tumultuous crowds and demolished the new enclosures. The oligarchical majority took their usual cue on such occasions. They pronounced at once that the cause of the riots was treason against the state. They even obtained a select committee to inquire into the cause and progress of the Pope's insurrection in Munster. Although the London Gazette on the authority of royal commissioners declared that the rioters consisted indiscriminately of persons of different persuasions, the castle party would have it another Pope-ish plot. Even Dr. Lucas was carried away by the passions of the hour, and acclaimed against all lenity as cowardly and criminal. A large military force under the Marquis of Dragheda was accordingly dispatched to the south. The Marquis fixed his headquarters at Clogheed in Tipperary, the parish priest of which was the Reverend Nicholas Sheehy. The majesty of the county, especially Sir Thomas Maud, William Bagnell, John Bagwell, Daniel Toller, and Parson Hewittson, were among the chief maintainers of the existence of a Pope-ish plot to bring in the French and the pretender. Father Sheehy had long been fixed upon as their victim, largely connected with the minor gendry educated in France, young, popular, eloquent and energetic, a stern denouncer of the licentious lives of the squires and of the exacting tithes of the Parsons. He was particularly obnoxious. In 1763 he was arrested on a charge of high treason for drilling and enrolling white boys, but was acquitted. Towards the close of that year, Bridge, one of the late witnesses against him, suddenly disappeared. A charge of murder was then laid against the priest of Clogheed, and a prostitute named Dunlia, a vagrant land named Lonergan, and a convicted horse-stealer called Tuhi, were produced in evidence against him, after he had lain nearly a year in prison heavily fettered. On the twelfth of March 1765 he was tried at Clonmel, on this evidence, and notwithstanding an alibi was proved, he was condemned and beheaded on the third day afterwards. Beside the old ruined church of Sandrigan, his well-worn tomb remains till this day. He died in his thirty-eighth year. Two months later, Edward Chihi, his cousin, and two respectable young farmers, named Buxton and Ferrell, were executed under a similar charge and upon the same testimony. All died with religious firmness and composure. The fate of their enemies is notorious, with a single exception they met death's violent, loathsome and terrible. Maude died insane, bagwell in idiocy. One of the jury committed suicide, another was found dead in a privy, a third was killed by his horse, a fourth was drowned, a fifth shot, and so through the entire list. Tuhi was hanged for felony, the prostitute Dunlia fell into a cellar and was killed, and the lad Lonergan, after enlisting as a soldier, died of a loathsome disease in a Dublin infirmary. In 1767 an attempt to revive the plot was made by the Munster oligarchy without success. Dr. McKenna, Bishop of Coyne, was arrested but enlarged. Mr. Nagel, of Garnavilla, a relative of Edmund Burke, Mr. Robert Keating, and several respectable Catholic gentlemen were also arrested. It appears that Edmund Burke was charged by the ascendancy party with having sent his brother Richard, recorder of Bristol, and Mr. Nagel, a relation on a mission to Munster, to levy money on the Popesh body for the use of the white boys, who were exclusively papists. The fact was that Burke did originate a subscription for the defense of the second batch of victims, who, through his and other exertions, were fortunately saved from the fate of their predecessors. Contemporaneous with the white boys were the northern agrarians, called Hearts of Steel, formed among the absentee Lord Downshir's tenants in 1762. The oak boys, so-called from wearing oak leaves in their hats, and the pipade boys, the precursors of the Orange Association. The infection of conspiracy ran through all Ireland, and the disorder was neither short-lived nor trivial. Right boys, defenders, and a dozen other denominations descended from the same evil genius, whoever he was, that first introduced the system of signs, and passwords, and midnight meetings, among the peasantry of Ireland. The celebrated society of united Irishmen was the highest form which that principle and our politics ever reached. In its origin it was mainly a Protestant organization. From the first, the Catholic bishops and clergy strenuously opposed these secret societies. The bishop of Cloyne issued a repravatory pastoral. Father Arthur O'Leary employed his facile pen against them, the bishop of Ossary, and thematized them in his diocese. Priests in Kildare, Kilkenny, and Munster were often in personal danger from these midnight legislators. Their chapels had been frequently nailed up, and their bishops had been often obliged to remove from one neighborhood to another to prevent worse consequences. The infatuation was not to be stayed. The evil was engrafted on society, and many a long year and woeful scene and blighted life and broken heart was to signalize the perpetuation of secret societies among the population. These startling symptoms of insubordination and lawlessness, while they furnished plausible pretext to the advocates of repression, still further confirmed the Patriot Party in their belief that nothing short of a free trade in exports and imports and a thorough system of retrenchment in every branch of the public service could save the nation from bankruptcy and ruin. This was Flood's opinion, and he had been long recognized as the leading spirit of the party. The aged Malone, true to his principles of conciliation and constitutionalism to the last, passed away from the scene in the midst of the exciting events of 1766. For some years before his death, his former place had been filled by the younger and more vigorous member for Kilkenny, who, however, did not fail to consult him with all the deference due to his age, his services, and his wisdom. One of his last official acts was presiding over the committee of the whole house, which voted the American contingent, but rejected the admission of German troops to supply their place. End of Chapter 6. Read by Cibella Denton. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 7 of Popular History of Ireland, Book XI by Thomas Starcy McGee. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Groton's Leadership. Free Trade and the Volunteers. The revolt of the American colonies against the oppressive legislation of the British Parliament was the next circumstance that deeply affected the constitutional struggle in which the Irish Parliament had so long been engaged. The similarity in the grievances of Ireland and the colonies, the close ties of kindred established between them, the extent of colonial commerce involved in the result, contributed to give the American Declaration of Independence more importance in men's eyes at Dublin than anywhere else out of the colonies, except perhaps London. The first mention made of American affairs to the Irish legislature was in Lord Townsend's message in 1775, calling for the dispatch of four thousand men from the Irish establishment to America and offering to supply their place by as many foreign Protestant or German troops. The demand was warmly debated. The proposition to receive the proffered foreign troops was rejected by a majority of thirty-eight, and the contingent for America passed on a division upon Floyd's plea that they would go out merely as four thousand armed negotiators. This expression of the great parliamentary leader was often afterwards quoted to his prejudice, but we must remember that at the time it was employed no one on either side of the contest had abandoned all hopes of accommodation, and that the significance of the phrase was rather pointed against Lord North than against the colonies. The four thousand men went out, among them Lord Rodin, afterwards Lord Moira, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and many others, both officers and men who were certainly no enemies of liberty or the colonies. Some slight relaxation of the commercial restrictions which operated so severely against Irish industry were made during the same year, but these were more than counterbalanced by the embargo on the export of provisions to America imposed in February 1776. This arbitrary measure imposed by Ordering Council was so near being censured by the Parliament then sitting that the House was dissolved a month afterwards and a new election ordered. To meet the new Parliament it was thought advisable to send over a new viceroy, and accordingly Lord Buckingham's share entered into office with Sir Richard Herron as Chief Secretary. In the last session of the late Parliament a young protege of Lord Charlemont, he was only in his twenty-ninth year, had taken his seat for the borough of Charlemont. This was Henry Gratton, son of the Recorder of Dublin, and grandson of one of those Grattons who, according to Dean Swift, could raise ten thousand men. The youth of Gratton had been neither joyous nor robust. In early manhood he had offended his father's conservatism. The profession of the law, to which he was bred, he found irksome and unsuited to his tastes. Society as then constituted was repulsive to his oversensitive spirit, and hithed Spartan ideal of manly duty. No letters are sadder to read than the early correspondence of Gratton till he had fairly found his inspiration in listening and raptured to the eloquent utterances of Charlemont or comparing political opinions with such a friend as flood. At length he found a seat in the House of Commons, where, during his first session, he spoke on three or four occasions, chiefly, modestly, and with good effect. There had been no sitting during 1776 nor before October of the following year. It was therefore in the sessions from seventy-eight to eighty-two inclusive that this young member raised himself to the head of the most eloquent men in one of the most eloquent assemblies the world has ever seen. The fact of Mr. Flood, after fourteen years of opposition, having accepted office under Lord Harcourt's administration, and defended the American expedition and the embargo, had greatly lessened the popularity of that eminent man. There was indeed no lack of ability still left in the ranks of the opposition. For Berg, Daley, and Yelverton were there. But for a supreme spirit like Gratton, whose burning tongue was ever fed from his heart of fire, there is always room in a free Senate. How many soever able and accomplished men may surround him. The fall of 1777 brought vital intelligence from America. General Burgoyne had surrendered at Saratoga, and France had decided to ally herself with the Americans. The effect in England and in Ireland was immense. When the Irish houses met, Mr. Gratton moved an address to the king in favour of retrenchment and against the pension list, and Mr. Daley moved and carried an address deploring the continuance of the American War, with a governmental amendment assuring his majesty that he might still rely on the services of his faithful commons. The second Catholic Relief Bill authorized papers to loan money on mortgage, to lease lands for any period not exceeding 999 years, to inherit and bequeath real property, so limited, passed, not without some difficulty into law. The debate had been protracted by adjournment after adjournment over the greatest part of three months. The main motion had been further complicated by an amendment repealing the Test Act in favour of dissenters, which was fortunately engrafted on the measure. The vote in the commons, in favour of the bill so amended, was 127 yeas to 89 nays, and in the lords 44 contents to 28 noncontents. In the English House of Commons, Lord Nugent moved, in April, a series of resolutions raising the embargo on the Irish provision trade, abolishing, so far as Ireland was concerned, the most restrictive clauses of the Navigation Act, both as to exports and imports, with the exception of the article of tobacco. Upon this, the manufacturing and shipping interest of England, taking the alarm, raised such a storm in the towns and cities that the Ministry of the Day were compelled to resist the proposed changes, with a few trifling exceptions. But Granton had caught up, on the other island, the cry of free trade, and the people echoed it after their orator, until the whole empire shook with the popular demand. But what gave pith and power to the Irish demands was the enrolment and arming of a numerous volunteer force, rendered absolutely necessary by the defenceless state of the kingdom. Mr. Flood had long before proposed a national militia, but being in opposition and in the minority, he had failed. To him and to Mr. Perry, as much as to Lord Charlemont and Mr. Granton, the Militia Bill of 1778, and the Noble Army of Volunteers, equipped under its provisions, owed their origin. Whether this force was to be a regular militia, subject to martial law, or composed of independent companies, was for some months a subject of great anxiety at the castle. But necessity at length precipitated a decision in favor of volunteer companies to be supplied with arms by the state, but drilled and clothed at their own expense, with power to elect their own officers. The official announcement of this decision, once made, the organization spread rapidly over the whole kingdom. The Ulster Corps, first organized, chose as their commander the Earl of Charlemont, while those of Lenster elected the Duke of Lenster. Simultaneously, resolutions against the purchase of English goods and wares were passed at public meetings, and by several of the corporate bodies. Lists of the importers of such goods were obtained at the custom houses, and printed in hand-bills, to the alarm of the importers. Swift's sardonic maxim, to burn everything coming from England except the coals, began to circulate as a toast in all societies, and the consternation of the castle, at this resurrection of the redoubtable dean, was almost equal to the apprehension entertained of him while living. While the castle was temporizing with both the military and the manufacture movement, in a vague expectation to defeat both, the press, as is usual in such national crises, teamed with publications of great fervor and ability. Dr. Jeb, Mr., afterwards Judge Johnson, Mr. Pollock, Mr. Charles Sheridan, Father Arthur O'Leary, and Mr. Dobbs M.P., were the chief workers in this Department of Patriotic Duty. Cheered, instructed, restrained within due bounds by these writings and the reported debates of Parliament, the independent companies proceeded with their organization. In July 1779, after all the resources of prevarication had been exhausted, arms were issued to the several recognized corps, and the Irish volunteers became in reality a national army for domestic protection and defense. When this point was reached, Mr. Gratton and his friends took anxious counsel as to their future movements. Parliament was to meet on the 12th of October, and in that sweet autumnal month, Gratton, Berg, and Daly met upon the seashore, near Bray, in view of one of the loveliest landscapes on earth, to form their plan for the session. They agreed on an amendment to the address and answer to the royal speech, demanding in explicit terms free export and import for Irish commerce. When Parliament met and the address and amendment were moved, it was found that Flood, Berg, Hutchinson, and Gardner, though all holding offices of honor and emolument under the government, would vote for it. Flood suggested to substitute the simple term free trade, and with this and one other verbal alteration suggested by Berg, the amendment passed with a single dissenting voice. The next day the speaker, Mr. Perry, who was all along in the confidence of the movers of the amendment, Daly, Gratton, Berg, Flood, Hutchinson, Pausenby, Gardner, and the whole house, went up with the amended address to the castle. The streets were lined with volunteers, commanded in person by the Duke of Lenster, who presented arms to the patriotic commons as they passed. Most of the leading members wore the uniform of one or other of the national companies, and the people saw themselves at the same moment under the protection of a patriotic majority in the legislature and a patriotic force in the field. No wonder their enthusiastic cheers rang through the quarters of the castle with a strangely jubilant and defiant emphasis. It was not simply the spectacle of a nation recovering its spirit, but recovering it with all military eclat and pageantry. It was the disarmed, armed and triumphant, a revolution not only in national feeling, but in the external manifestation of that feeling. A change so profound stirred sentiments and purposes even deeper than itself, and suggested to the ardent imagination of Gratton the establishment of entire national independence, saving always the rights of the crown. The next day the houses, not to be outdone in courtesy, voted their thanks to the volunteers for their just and necessary exertions in defense of their country. End of Chapter 7. Read by Cibella Denton. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 8 of Popular History of Ireland, Book 11 by Thomas Darcy McGee. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Gratton's leadership. Legislative and judicial independence established. The task which Mr. Gratton felt called upon to undertake was not revolutionary in the usual accepted sense of the term. He was a monarchist and a wig in general politics, but he was an Irishman, proud and fond of his country, and a sincere lover of the largest religious liberty. With the independence of the judiciary and the legislature, with freedom of commerce and of conscience, he would be well content to stand by the British connection. The sea, he said in his lofty, figurative language, protests against union, the ocean against separation. But still, within certain legal limits, this task was revolutionary, and was undertaken under all the discouragements incident to the early stages of great constitutional reforms. Without awaiting the action of the English Parliament in relation to free trade, a public-spirited citizen of Dublin, Alderman James Horan, demanded an entry at the Custom House for some parcels of Irish woolens which he proposed exporting to Rotterdam, contrary to the prohibitory enactment on the 10th and 11th of William III. The commissioners of customs applied for instructions to the castle, and the castle to the Secretary of State, Franklin's friend, Lord Hillsborough, for the moment a collision similar to that which had taken place at Boston on a not dissimilar issue seemed eminent. A frigate was stationed off-houth, with instructions, it was said, to intercept the prohibited woolens, but Alderman Horan, by the advice of his friends, allowed his application to remain on the Custom House files. It had served its purpose of bringing home practically to the people the value of the principle involved in the demand for freedom of exports and imports. At the same time that this practical argument was discussed in every circle, Mr. Groton moved in the House of Commons in amendment to the supply bill. At this time it is inexpedient to grant new taxes. The government divided the House, but to their mortification found only forty-seven supporters, for Groton's amendment there were a hundred and seventy. A subsequent amendment against granting duties for the support of the Loan Fund was also carried by one hundred and thirty-eight to one hundred. These adverse votes were communicated with great trepidation by the Lord Lieutenant to the British administration. At length Lord North thought it essential to make some concessions, and with this view he brought in resolutions, declaring the trade with the British colonies in America and Africa and the free export of glass and woolens opened to the Irish merchant. A week later similar resolutions were passed in the Irish Commons, and in February 1780 a free trade in the sense in which it had been demanded was established by law, placing Ireland in most respects as to foreign and colonial commerce on inequality with England. In February the Vice Roy again alarmed the British administration with the reported movement for the repeal of pointing's law, the statute which required heads of bills to be transmitted to and approved in England, before they could be legislated upon. He received in reply the royal commands to resist every means in his power any attempted change in the constitution, and he succeeded in elucidating from the House of Lords and address strongly condemnatory of the misguided men who sought to raise such groundless jealousies between the two kingdoms. But the Patriot commoners were not to be so deterred. They declared the repeal of pointing's act and the Sixth of George I to be their ultimatum, and notices of motion to that effect were immediately placed on the journals of the House of Commons. In the early days of April, Groton, who more than any of our orators, except perhaps Burke, was sensitive to the aspects of external nature and imbued with the poetry of her works, retired from the city to his uncle Dean Marley's house, Selbridge Abbey, formerly the residence of Swift's ill-fated Vanessa. Along the banks of that river, he said many years afterwards, amid the groves and bowers of Swift and Vanessa, I grew convinced that I was right. Arguments unanswerable came to my mind, and what I then presage confirmed me in my determination to persevere. With an enthusiasm intensified and restrained, but wonderful in the fire and grandeur of its utterance, he rose in his place, on the nineteenth of the month, to move that the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland are the only powers competent to enact laws to bind Ireland. He was supported by Hussie Berg, Yelverton, and Forbes. Flood favored postponement, and laid the foundation of his future estrangements from Groton. Daily was also for delay. Fitzgibbon, afterwards Lord Clare, Provost Hutchinson, and John Foster, afterwards Lord Oriole, resisted the motion. The Castle Party moved an amendment that there being an equivalent resolution already on the journals of the House, alluding to one of the resolutions against Stafford's tyranny in 1641, a new resolution was unnecessary. This amendment was carried by 136 to 79, thus affirming the formula of independence adopted in 1641, but depriving Groton of the honor of putting it, in his own words, on the record. The substantial result, however, was the same. The nineteenth of April was truly what Groton described it, a great day for Ireland. It is with the utmost concern, writes the viceroy next day to Lord Hillsborough, I must acquaint your lordship that, although so many gentlemen expressed their concern that the subject had been introduced, the sense of the House against the obligation of any statutes of the Parliament of Great Britain within this kingdom is represented to me to have been almost unanimous. Ten days later, a motion of Mr. Yelverton's to repeal Poyning's law, as far as related to the Irish Privy Council's supervision of heads of bills, was negative by 130 to 105. During the remainder of the session the battle of independence was fought on the mutiny bill. The viceroy and the chief secretary, playing the game of power, were resolved that the influence of the crown should not be diminished, so far as the military establishments were concerned. Two justices of the peace in Sligo and Mayo, having issued writs of habeas corpus in favour of deserters from the army, on the ground that neither the British Mutiny Act nor any other British statute was binding on Ireland, unless confirmed by an act of its own legislature, brought up anew the whole question. Lord North, who, with all his proverbial tact and good humour in the House of Commons, always pursued the most arbitrary policy throughout the empire, proposed a perpetual mutiny bill for Ireland, instead of the annual bill in force in England. It was introduced in the Irish House of Commons by Mr. Gervais Parker Bush, and by a vote of two to one, postponed for a fortnight. During the interval the British authorities remained obdurate to argument and remonstrance. In vain the majority of the Irish privy councillors advised concession. In vain Flood, who was consulted, pointed out the futility of attempting to force such a measure. It was forced, and under the cry of loyalty, a draft bill was carried through both houses, and remitted to England in June. Early in August it was returned, on the twelfth it was read a first time, on the sixteenth a second, and it was carried through committee by one hundred and fourteen to sixty-two. It was at this emergency the volunteers performed the second act of their great drama of Ireland's liberation. A series of reviews were held, and significant addresses presented to Lord Camden, then on a visit to the country, Lord Charlemont, Mr. Flood, and Mr. Gratton. On the reassembling of Parliament in August, when the bill was referred to, Mr. Gratton declared that he would resist it to the last, that if it passed into law he and his friends would succeed, and would appeal to the people in a formal instrument. A new series of corporation and county meetings was conveyed by the Patriot Party, which warmly condemned the Perpetual Mutiny Act, and as warmly approved the Repeal of Pointings Act, and the Sixth of George I, questions which were all conceived to be intermixed together, and to flow from the assertion of a common principle. Parliament being prorogued in September only through the whole controversy back again to the furnace of the popular agitation. The British government tried a lavish distribution of titles and a change of viceroy's, Lord Carlyle being substituted in December for Lord Buckingham, but the spirit abroad was too general and too earnest to be quelled by the desertion of individuals, however numerous or influential. With Lord Carlyle came as Chief Secretary Mr. Eden, afterwards Lord Auckland. He had been with his Chief, a Peace Commissioner to America, two years before, and had failed. He was an intriguing and accomplished man, but he proved himself as unequal as Heron or Rigby to combat the movement for Irish independence. Parliament was not again called together till the month of October 1781, the interval being busily occupied on both sides with endeavours to create and sustain a party. Soon after the meeting, Mr. Grotten, seconded by Mr. Flood, moved for a limitation of the Mutiny Bill, which was lost. A little later Mr. Flood himself introduced a somewhat similar motion, which was also outvoted two to one. And again during the session Mr. Yelverton, having abandoned his promised motion against Poyning's law on news of Lord Cornwallis's surrender reaching Dublin, Flood took it up, moved it, and was defeated. A further measure of relief for Roman Catholics introduced by Mr. Gardner, author of the Act of 1778, and warmly supported by Grotten, was resisted by Flood in the One House and Lord Charlemont in the Other. It miscarried, and left another deposit of disagreement between the actual and the former leader of the Patriot Party. Still no open rupture had taken place between the two Patriot orators. When the Convention of the Volunteers was called at Dunn Ganon for the 15th of February 1782, they consulted at Charlemont House as to the resolutions to be passed. They were agreed on the constitutional question. Grotten, of his own generous free will, added the resolution in favour of emancipation. 242 delegates, representing 143 corps, unanimously adopted the resolutions so drafted, as their own, and from the old headquarters of Hugh O'Neill sent forth anew an unequivocal demand for civil and religious liberty. The example of Ulsters soon spread through Ireland. A meeting of the Lester Volunteers, Mr. Flood in the Chair, echoed it from Dublin. The Munster Corps endorsed it unanimously at Cork. Lord Klan-Recard summoned together those of the western counties at Portumna, and historic spot, suggestive of striking associations. Strengthened by these demonstrations of public opinion, Mr. Grotten brought forward, on the 22nd of February, his motion declaratory of the Rights of Ireland. An amendment in favour of a six-month postponement of the question was carried, but on the 16th of April, just two years from his first effort on the subject, the Administration of Lord North having fallen in the meantime, the orator had the satisfaction of carrying his address declaratory of Irish legislative independence. It was on this occasion that he exclaimed, I found Ireland on her knees. I watched over her with a paternal solicitude. I have traced her progress from injury to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of swift, spirit of mullinue. Your genius has prevailed. Ireland is now a nation. In that new character I hail to her, and bowing to her august presence, I say, esto perpetua. Never was a new nation more nobly heralded into existence. Never was an old nation more reverently and tenderly lifted up and restored. The houses adjourned to give England time to consider Ireland's ultimatum. Within a month it was accepted by the new British Administration, and on the 27th of May, the new Whig Viceroy, the Duke of Portland, was authorised to announce from the throne the establishment of the judicial and legislative independence of Ireland. End of Chapter 8. Read by Cibela Denton. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 9 of Popular History of Ireland, Book XI by Thomas Darcy McGee. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. The Era of Independence. First Period. The accession of the Rockingham Administration to power in 1782 was followed by the recall of Lord Carlyle and the substitution as Viceroy of one of the leading lords of the Whig Party. The nobleman selected to this office was William Henry, III Duke of Portland, afterwards twice prime minister, then in the prime of life possessed of a very ample fortune uniting in his own person the two great Whig families of Bentonc and Cavendish. The policy he was sent to represent at Dublin was undoubtedly an imperial policy, a policy which looked as anxiously to the integrity of the empire as any Tory cabinet could have desired, but it was in most other respects a policy of conciliation and concession dictated by the enlarged wisdom of Burke and adopted by the magnanimous candor of Fox. Yet by a generous people, who always find it more difficult to resist a liberal than an illiberal administration, it was in reality a policy more to be feared than welcomed. For its almost certain effects were to divide their ranks into two sections, a moderate and an extreme party, between whom the national cause, only half established, might run great danger of being lost almost as soon as it was won. With the Duke of Portland was associated as Chief Secretary Colonel Fitzpatrick of the old Ossary family, one of those Irish wits and men of fashion who formed so striking a group in the middle and later years of King George III. As the personal and political friend of Flood, Charlemont and Gratton, and the first Irish secretary for several administrations, he shared the brilliant ovation with which the Duke of Portland was received, on his arrival at Dublin, but for the reason already mentioned, the imperial in so far as opposed to the national policy found an additional advantage in the social successes and great personal popularity of the new secretary. The critical months which decided the contest for independence, April and May, passed over fortunately for Ireland. The firmness of the leaders in both houses, the energy especially of Gratton, whose cry was no time, no time, and the imposing attitude of the volunteers carried the question. Lord Rockingham and Mr. Fox, by letter, the new viceroy and secretary in person, had urged every argument for adjournment and delay. But Gratton's ultimatum was sent over to England, and finally and formally accepted. The demands were five. One. The repeal of the Sixth George I. Two. The repeal of the Perpetual Mutiny Act. Three. An act to abolish the alteration or suppression of bills. Four. An act to establish the final jurisdiction of the Irish courts in the Irish House of Lords. Five. The repeal of Poyning's Law. This was the constitutional charter of 1782, which restored Ireland for the first time in that century to the rank and dignity of a free nation. Concession once determined on the necessary bills were introduced in both Parliament simultaneously and carried promptly into law. On the 27th of May, the Irish houses were unable to congratulate the viceroy that no constitutional question any longer existed between the two countries. In England it was proclaimed no less explicitly by Fox and his friends that the independency of the two legislatures was fixed and ascertained forever. But there was, unfortunately, one ground for dispute still left, and on that ground Henry Flood and Henry Gratton parted, never to be reconciled. The elder patriot, whose conduct from the moment of his retirement from office, in consequence of his free trade vote and speech in 79, had been, with occasional exceptions, arising mostly from bodily infirmity, as energetic and consistent, as that of Gratton himself, saw no sufficient constitutional guarantee in mere acts of Parliament repealing other acts. He demanded express renunciation of legislative supremacy on the part of England, while Gratton maintained the sufficiency of simple repeal. It is possible, even in such noble natures as these men had, so strangely are we constituted, that there was a latent sense of personal rivalry, which prompted them to grasp each at the larger share of patriotic honour. It is possible that there were other and inferior men who exasperated this latent personal rivalry. Flood had once reigned supreme until Gratton eclipsed him in the sudden splendour of his career. In scholarship and ingenious the elder patriot was, taken all in all, the full peer of his successor, but Gratton had the national temperament, and he found his way more readily into the core of the national heart. He was the man of the later, the bolder and the more liberal school, and such was the rapidity of his movements, that even Flood, from 79 to 82, seemed to be his follower, rather than his co-adjuder. In the hopeful crisis of the struggle, the slower and more experienced statesmen was for the moment lost sight of. The leading motions were all placed or left in the hands of Gratton by the consent of their leading friends. The bills repealing the Mutiny Act, the Sixth George I, and Pointing's Law, were entrusted to Berg, Yelverton, and Forbes. The thanks of the House were voted to Gratton alone after the victory, with the substantial addition of fifty thousand pounds to purchase for him an estate, which should become an enduring monument of the national gratitude. The open rupture between the two great orators followed fast on the triumph of their common efforts. It was still the first month, the very honeymoon of independence. On the thirteenth of June Mr. Gratton took occasion to notice in his place that a late British act relating to the importation of sugars was so generally worded as apparently to include Ireland, but this was explained to be a mere error of the Clark, the result of haste, and one which would be promptly corrected. Upon this Mr. Flood first took occasion to moot the insufficiency of simple repeal and the necessity of express renunciation on the part of England. On the nineteenth he moved a formal resolution on the subject, which was superseded by the order of the day, but on the nineteenth of July he again moved, at great length and with great power of logical and historical argument, for leave to bring in an Irish Bill of Rights, declaring the sole and exclusive right of the Irish Parliament to make all laws in all cases whatsoever external and internal. He was supported by Sir Simon Bradstreet, Mr. English and Mr. Walsh, and opposed by Gratton, who in one of his finest efforts proposed a counter-resolution, that the legislature of Ireland is independent and that any person who shall, by writing or otherwise, maintain that a right in any other country to make laws for Ireland internally or externally exist or can be revived, is inimical to the peace of both kingdoms. This extreme position, pointing out all who differed from himself as public enemies, the mover, however, withdrew and substituted in its stead the milder formula that leave was refused to bring in the Bill because the sole and exclusive right of legislation in the Irish Parliament in all cases, whether externally or internally, had been already asserted by Ireland, and fully, finally, and irrevocably acknowledged by the British Parliament. Upon this motion, Flood did not think it advisable to divide the House, so it passed without a division. But the moot point thus voted down in Parliament disquieted and alarmed the minds of many out-of-doors. The volunteers as generally sided with Flood as the Parliament had sided with Groton. The lawyer corps of the City of Dublin, containing all the great names of the legal profession, endorsed the constitutional law of the Member for Kilkenny. The Belfast volunteers did likewise, and Groton's own corps, in a respectful address, urged him to give his adherence to the views of the best-informed body of men in the kingdom, the lawyer's corps. Just at that moment, Lord Abbingdon, in the English House of Lords, gave notice of a mischievous motion to assert the external supremacy of the English Parliament, and Lord Mansfield, in the King's Bench, decided an Irish appeal case, notwithstanding the recent statute establishing the judicial independence of the Irish courts. It is true the case had been appealed before the statute was passed, and that Lord Abbingdon withdrew his motion for want of a seconder. But the alarm was given, and the popular mind in Ireland, jealously watchful of its newborn liberties, saw in these attempts renewed cause for apprehension. In opposition to all this suddenly awakened suspicion and jealousy, Groton, who naturally enough assumed his own interest in preserving the new constitution to be quite equal to those who cast doubts on its security, invariably held one language. The settlement already made, according to his view, was final. It was an international treaty. Its maintenance must depend on the ability and disposition of the parties to uphold it, rather than on the multiplication of declaratory acts. Ireland had gone to England with a charter, not for a charter, and the nation which would insist upon the humiliation of another was a foolish nation. This was the lofty light in which he viewed the whole transaction, and in this light it must be added he continued to view it till the last. Many of the chief English and Irish jurists of his time, Lord Camden, Lord Kenyon, Lord Erskine, Lord Kilwarden, judges Chamberlain, Smith, and Kelly, Sir Samuel Romley, Sir Arthur Piggott, and several others, agreed fully in Groton's doctrine that the settlement of 82 was final and absolute, and terminated all British jurisdiction over Ireland. But although these are all great names, the instinct of national self-preservation may be considered in such critical moments more than a counterpoise to the most matured opinions of the oracles of the law. Such must have been the conviction also of the English Parliament, for immediately on their meeting in January 1783, they passed the act of renunciation, 23rd George III, expressly declaring their admission of the exclusive rights of the Parliament and courts of Ireland in matters of legislature and judicature. This was Flood's greatest triumph. Six months before his doctrine obtained but three supporters in the Irish Commons, now at his suggestion and on his grounds, he saw it unanimously affirmed by the British Parliament. On two other questions of the utmost importance, these leading spirits also widely differed. Groton was in favour of, and Flood opposed to, Catholic Emancipation, while Flood was in favour of, and Groton at that moment opposed to, a complete reform of parliamentary representation. The Catholic question had its next great triumph after Flood's death, as will be mentioned further on, but the history of the Irish reform movement of 1783, 84 and 85 may best be disposed of here. The reformers were a new party rising naturally out of the popular success of 1782. They were composed of all but a few of the more aristocratic corps of the volunteers, of the townsmen, especially in the seaports and manufacturing towns, of the admirers of American example, of the Catholics who had lately acquired property and recognition, but not the elective franchise, of the gentry of the second and third degree of wealth overruled and overshadowed by the greater lords of the soil. The substantial grievance of which they complained was that of the three hundred members of the House of Commons only seventy-two were returned by the people, seventy-three peers having the power to nominate one hundred and twenty-three and secure the election of ten others, while fifty-two commoners nominated ninety-one and controlled the choice of four others. The constitution of what ought to have been the people's house was therefore substantially in the hands of an oligarchy of about a hundred great proprietors bound together by the spirit of their class, by intermarriage, and by the hereditary possession of power. The use this exorbitant influence within reasonable bounds was the just and wise design to which flood dedicated all his energies after the passage of the act of renunciation and the success of which would certainly have restored him to complete equality with Gratton. In the beginning of seventeen eighty-three the famous coalition ministry of Lord North and Mr. Pox was formed in England. They were at first represented at Dublin Castle for a few months by Lord Temple, who succeeded the Duke of Portland and established the Order of Knights of St. Patrick, and then by Lord Northington, who dissolved Parliament early in July. A general election followed and the Reform Party made their influence felt in all directions. County meetings were held, conventions by districts and by provinces were called by the reforming volunteers in July, August, and September. The new Parliament was to be opened on the fourteenth of October and the volunteers resolved to call a convention of their whole body at Dublin for the tenth of November. The Parliament met according to summons, but though searching retrenchment was spoken of, no promise was held out of a constitutional reform. The limitation of the regular troops to a fixed number was declared advisable, and a vote of thanks to the volunteers was passed without demure. But the proceedings of the houses were soon eclipsed by the portentious presence of the Volunteer Convention. One hundred and sixty delegates of corps attended on the appointed day. The royal exchange was too small to accommodate them, so they adjourned to the Rotunda, accompanied by mounted guards of honour. The splendid and eccentric Bishop of Derry, Earl of Bristol, had his dragoon guards. The courtly but anxious Charlemont had his troop of horse. Flood, tall, emaciated in solemn to sadness, was hailed with popular acclamation. There also marched the popular Mr. Day, afterwards Judge, Robert Stewart, father of Lord Castle Ray, Sir Richard Musgrove, a reformer also in his youth, who lived to confound reformed with rebellion in his old age. The Earl of Charlemont was elected president of this imposing body, and for an entire month Dublin was divided between the extraordinary spectacle of two legislatures, one sitting at the Rotunda and the other at College Green, many members of each being members of the other, the uniform of the volunteers sparkling in the houses, and the familiar voices of both houses being heard deliberating and debating among the volunteers. At length, on the 29th of November, after three weeks laborious gestation, Flood brought before Parliament the plan of reform agreed to by the Convention. It proposed to extend the franchise to every Protestant free-holder, possessed of a lease worth forty shillings yearly, to extend restricted borough constituencies by annexing to them neighbouring populist parishes, that the voting should be held on one and the same day, that pensioners of the Crown should be incapable of election, that members accepting office should be subject to re-election, that a stringent bribery oath should be administered to candidates returned, and finally that the duration of Parliament should be limited to three years. It was indeed an excellent Protestant reform bill, for though the Convention had received Father Arthur O'Leary with military honours, and contained many warm friends of Catholic rites, the majority were still intolerant of religious freedom. In this majority it is painful to have to record the names of Flood and Charlemont. The debate which followed the introduction of this proposed change in the Constitution was stormy beyond all precedent. Grotten, who just one month before, October 28th, had that fierce, vituporative contest with Flood familiar to every schoolboy in its worst and most exaggerated form, supported the proposal. The law officers of the Crown, Fitzgibbon, Yelverton, Scott, denounced it as an audacious attempt of armed men to dictate to the House its own Constitution. The cry of privilege and prerogative was raised, and the measure was rejected by 157 to 77. Flood, weary in mind and body, retired to his home. The Convention which out-sat the House, adjourned amid the bitter indignation of some and the scarcely concealed relief of others. Two days later they met and adopted a striking address to the throne and adjourned sin a day. This was, in fact, the last important day of the volunteers as a political institution. An attempt a month later to reassemble the Convention was dexterously defeated by the President, Lord Charlemont. The regular army was next session increased to 15,000 men. 15,000 pounds were voted to clothe and equip a rival force, the militia, and the Parliament, which had three times voted them its thanks, now began to look with satisfaction on their rapid disorganization and disbandment. This perhaps is the fittest place to notice the few remaining years of the public life of Henry Flood. After the session of 1785, in which he had been out-voted on every motion he proposed, he retired from the Irish Parliament and allowed himself to be persuaded at the age of 53 to enter the English. He was elected for Winchester and made his first essay on the new scene on his favorite subject of representative reform. But his health was undermined. He failed, except on one or two occasions, to catch the year of that fastidious assembly and the figure he made there somewhat disappointed his friends. He returned to Kilkenny to die in 1791, bequeathing a large portion of his fortune to Trinity College to enrich its manuscript library and to found a permanent professorship of the Irish language. He was an oak of the forest, said Groton, too old to be transplanted at fifty. He was a man, said one who also knew him well, Sir Jonah Barrington, of profound abilities, high manners and great experience in the affairs of Ireland. He had deep information and extensive capacity and a solid judgment. In his own magnificent ode to fame, he has pictured his ideal of the patriot orator who finds some consolation amid the unequal struggle with the enemies of his country, foreign and domestic, in a prophetic vision of his own renown. Unhappily, the works of this great man come down to us in a fragmentary state as those of Chatham, but enough remains to enable us to class him amongst the greatest masters of our speech, and as far as the drawbacks allowed among the foremost statesmen of his country. It is painful to be left in doubt as we are whether he was ever reconciled to Groton. The presumption from the silence of their co-temporaries is that they never met again as friends. But it is consoling to remember that in his grave the survivor rendered him that tribute of justice which almost takes the undying sting out of the Philippic of 1783. It is well to know also that one of Groton's latest wishes over the years after the death of Flood, when he felt his own last hours approaching, was that it should be known that he did not speak the vile abuse reported in the debates in relation to his illustrious rival. The best proof that what he did say was undeserved is that that rival's reputation for integrity in public spirit has survived even his terrible onslaught. End of Chapter 9 Read by Cibella Denton For more free audiobooks or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org