be left of their old Protestant constitution. Denis Browne, Langrishe, M. Fitzgerald, and Ruxton supported the Bill. Pelham interposed to stimulate bigotry, avowing that he would exclude all Dissenters and Catholics to preserve the Protestant Establishment in Church and State. Sir Lawrence Parsons trenchantly exposed the trickery of the Cabinet, on which he fastened the full responsibility. It sought to make a puppet of Parliament. "In 1792," he said, "a majority decided against giving any further privileges to the Catholics. In 1793 the same majority passed the Catholic Bill. At the beginning of this session every one believed that a majority would have voted for this Bill; every one believes that a majority will vote against it now: and should the English ministers in the next session wish it should pass, who does not believe that a majority will vote for it then?" All this was manifestly true, but it suited the Cabinet to keep up the state of irritation and discontent Parsons deprecated. The gates of knowledge and opulence had been opened to the Catholics; those of power and the constitution could not be closed without force, said George Knox, in a remarkable speech. "Take, then, your choice: re-enact your penal laws; risk a rebellion, a separation, or a union; or pass this Bill." After a lengthy debate, in which the advocates of the measure displayed exceptional eloquence, instinct with noble thought, based on sound reasoning and great research, the division was taken and the Bill rejected by 155 to 84. The coercive hand of the British Cabinet, by that vote, closed the opening gates of the constitution against the majority of the nation for thirty-four years. Their administrators in the Castle, with a view to render the Irish Parliament odious as well as contemptible, and to make Irishmen resign themselves to the idea of Union, then proceeded to inflame sectarian rancour and to dragoon the country into rebellion. To stir up or foster religious discord was, indeed, an ancient and favourite resource of the party of misrule. Lord Deputy 1 66 Parliamentary Debates," vol. xv. p. 361. 1795] STIMULATING SECTARIANISM 145 Strafford lauded the benefits derived from "emulations fomented underhand" between Protestants and Catholics.1 Primate Boulter lamented that the worst of a certain affair was that "it unites Protestants and Papists, and if that reconciliation takes place, farewell to English influence in Ireland." In exactly the same spirit, Westmoreland had written to Dundas that "every step of conciliating the two descriptions of people that inhabit Ireland diminishes the probability of that object to be wished—a union with England" (December 12, 1792). He too grieved over the extension of a spirit of conciliation towards Catholics on the part of Irish Protestants, but still hoped they might be roused by "a big word from England, of her determination to support the Protestant Establishment." 2 His policy having been adopted, the big word spoken, the country placed under the Ascendency triumvirate - Fitzgibbon, Foster, and Beresford, with Camden as a figure-head-operations began. Το counteract the harmonious co-operation of Irishmen, emissaries were sent into the country, especially to Armagh County, where the local sectarian feud had subsided into comparative peace. It was "rekindled by secret agents, and converted into a ferocious warfare of religious contention." 3 The poor Catholic peasants were expelled their farms, and ordered "to hell or Connaught;" a witness testifies that numbers of them were seen wandering about the country, hungry, half naked, and infuriated. He sometimes heard of over a dozen Catholic houses being wrecked or destroyed in one 1 Strafford, Letter to the Lord Treasurer, July 19, 1634. 2 Westmoreland to Dundas, December 12, 1792. * Plowden, "History of Ireland," vol. i. p. 16. Dublin, 1811. Mr. Plowden, an English supporter of the Union, was engaged by the British minister to write a history of the period; his inflexible honesty displeased, and was rebuked by Mr. Addington (Grattan, "Memoir," vol. v. pp. 233-236). Rev. Dr. Dickson, Presbyterian minister of Down and Armagh, fully corroborates him: "During the years 1795 and 1796, when public provocations did not succeed, private emissaries were sent abroad to circulate alarms and provoke jealousies" (between Catholics and Presbyterians). He exposed them, and was charged with sedition and threatened ("Narrative,” P. 31). K night.1 Colonies of the Ascendency faction were given their lands and crops. Magistrates fomented the persecution, and the highest officials aided and abetted it for electioneering purposes. So patronised and encouraged, the penal faction showed themselves, as Grattan said, “a banditti of murderers, committing massacre in the name of God, and exercising despotic power in the name of liberty." They proceeded uncensured until an unexpected event occurred. The landowners, when the time came for letting the farms in the devastated districts, found to their dismay that few bidders appeared, and of these not one offered more than about half what the persecuted Papist had given.3 Thus their misconduct brought a heavy mulct. Thirty of the magistrates came together on December 28, 1795, at the call of Lord Gosford, governor of the county, to declare that Armagh was in a state of uncommon disorder," and to stay "the progress of the persecution now carried on by an ungovernable mob against the Roman Catholic inhabitants of this county." Lord Gosford, in his written address, stated that "neither age, nor sex, nor acknowledged innocence" obtained mercy. "Confiscation of all property and immediate banishment" were the doom of every Catholic. There was no parallel for the horrors and cruelty of a proscription by which "more than half the inhabitants of a populous county" were "deprived at one blow of the means as well as the fruits of their industry," and driven out "in the midst of an inclement season." He would despise himself if, in presence of such sights, he kept silence "under any intimidation." The "intimidation" came from the Castle, where his lordship's conduct was denounced as "extraofficious and unwarrantable." 4 Yet this was the man who had been made governor of the county to mortify the patriot Charlemont. Colonel Craddock, in whom the 1 "Report of Committee on the Orange Institution," Mr. Christie, a Friend. In Edinburgh Review, 1836. 3 Edward Hay, M.R.I.A., "History of the Insurrection, 1803," p. 39. 4 Plowden (Post-Union), "History of Ireland," vol. i. p. 37. 1811. 1795] THE "LUTTRELLADES" 147 Government had "confidence," was sent to the district, assisted by General Nugent; he considered the matter, but "could see no possible way the troops could be employed." He therefore asked for his recall, whilst admitting that the Protestants were guilty of "barbarous practices" which ought to be put down. When Papists ventured to linger, some had their roof-trees cut, and were smothered in the ruins; into the cabins of some a dozen shots were fired in the direction of the bed. Others were shot when attempting to escape. Those who escaped fled to the adjoining counties, and even to Connaught, where Mr. Martin and Lord Altamont gave refuge to them, and to some Protestants who wished for a quiet life.2 The rumours of the wrongs committed had sped swiftly over the country, and the sight of the impoverished victims increased the alarm and indignation thus aroused. As a consequence, "Defenderism" had spread widely, and the Catholic peasantry banded themselves together in secret societies and strove to arm themselves by all means, lawful or not. The Castle junto had the gratification of seeing that such proceedings alarmed the country gentlemen, whose imaginations were kept excited by the ordinary methods of official exaggerations. Carhampton was despatched to the west on the trail of the victims, and his exploits there contrasted most remarkably with the inaction of Craddock in Armagh. Whilst the summer assizes in Leinster had been noticeable for the number of convictions and executions,-in Connaught, Lord Carhampton forestalled the judges. He entered the jails, took out of custody numbers of untried prisoners, and banished them out of the country. Magistrates imitated him, and, without permitting any defence, often without even the formality of a sworn information, had the hapless people transported. It was computed that nearly 1300 untried, and therefore presumably innocent, persons were sent to 1 February 22, 1796. "Parliamentary Debates," vol. xvi. p. 112. 2 De Latocnaye, Promenade d'un Français dans l'Irlande, p. 290. Dublin, 1797. 361 Parliamentary Debates," vol. xvi. p. 50. serve out their lives on board the fleet. The victims were to be seen passing to the seaports "tied down on carts, in the bitterest agonies, crying out incessantly for trial, but crying in vain." 1 The session of 1796 opened with sinister signs. Grattan, having criticised the recent administration, moved an amendment to the address, asking for commerical equality. He was immediately assailed by a creature of the Castle. He should be impeached for sedition, said Archdall; he had dared, in replying to a Catholic address, to say they should "instantly embrace and greatly emancipate." Here, "if sedition is not meant, it is at least expressed." Whoever talked of impeaching Lord Westmoreland, let him remember there was a present Executive, and first think and tremble for his own neck.2 This indicated the tone of the ruling faction (echoed again and again during the session), and only fourteen voted with Grattan. Next, as some of the victims of oppression had appealed to the law courts to right them, the attorney-general introduced a Bill "to indemnify certain magistrates and others," who, he admitted, "might have acted against the forms and rules of law. This barred out the wronged and plundered people from all redress; but even that was not enough. Carhampton's outrages should not be merely condoned, but made operative law. This was done by a Bill nominally to prevent insurrections, tumults, and riots, which the attorney-general himself declared was "a bloody penal code," repugnant to his feelings.3 The administering unlawful oaths was made felony of death; no house was safe from search at any 1 MacNeven's "Pieces of Irish History," T. A. Emmet's "Essay," p. 134. Carhampton and the magistrates, says the petition of the Whig Club to the king, formed themselves into a kind of revolutionary tribunal, where "these men sat without law, tried without law, sentenced without law, and punished without law, not a few individuals, but hordes, tribes, and generations of country people, sent on board a tender, often on this principle, that if tried before a court of law they would probably be acquitted. His Majesty has heard the effect of this policy in the mutiny of the fleet." The courts-martial, in 1798, on board the Cambridge, Gladiator, and Diomede, bear witness to the same consequence (Report of Committee of Secrecy, 1799). 24 Parliamentary Debates," vol. xvi. p. 7. 3 Ibid., p. 18. |
