1828] LORD ANGLESEY URGES CONCESSIONS

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possible nor, if possible, desirable. He advised, on the contrary, that the measure should not be for a moment lost sight of; that by every constitutional and peaceful method the cause should be forwarded.1 But before this correspondence was published Lord Anglesey had received his letters of recall. On January 18 he left Ireland, amidst signs of regret once paralleled before and once since. Two days afterwards a meeting was held in the Rotunda, at which it was seen how large a mass of Protestant feeling joined with Catholic in urging a reasonable compromise. The meeting resulted in the formation of a society in which Catholic and Protestant were associated on equal terms.2

When Parliament met on February 6, 1829, the king's speech made it clear that a settlement had been arranged. The speech regretted the continuance in Ireland of an association dangerous to the public peace, and advised Parliament to consider the removal of civil disabilities of Catholics consistently with the maintenance of establishments in Church or State. These were institutions which must ever be held sacred in this Protestant kingdom.

What the settlement was to be was soon seen. On February 10 Peel brought in a Bill for the suppression of the Catholic Association; and on March 5 he proposed a resolution that the House should form into committee to consider the laws imposing disabilities on Catholics. His proposals were, first, that the oath required of members of Parliament should be so altered that Catholics should be capable of taking it; secondly, the disfranchisement of the 40s. freeholders. The freehold conferring the franchise must be of the value of £10. It would not be conferred,

1 Lord Anglesey's letter was dated December 23. But it was not published till two or three days after the letter of recall, dated December 28, had been received (see Wyse, vol. ii. p. 27; and Appendix, pp. ccxiii-ccxix. See also "House of Lords Debates," May 4, 1829). Long before this, Peel and Wellington had been dissatisfied with Lord Anglesey's overt sympathies with the popular cause (see "Wellington's Despatches," 2nd series, vol. iv.).

2 This society, called "Friends of Civil and Religious Freedom," was instituted by Mr. Wyse. The events which followed rendered its continuance unnecessary (see Wyse, vol. ii. p. 57).

as hitherto, by a lease for life. And it must be proved by registration before an assistant-barrister.1

2

In his various speeches on the subject Peel defined his attitude. The time had come, he said, for concession. They must not be afraid of being afraid. The state of Ireland could not be looked on without fear; to affect not to fear it would be to affect insensibility to the welfare of the country. "I have for years," he said, "attempted to maintain the exclusion of the Roman Catholics. I resign the struggle because I think it can no longer be advantageously maintained. Can we rely on coercion? We have tried it for three years out of four ever since the Union. In 1825 we passed a law to suppress the Catholic Association. That law has been futile. Through the law now before us Lord Eldon says he can drive a donkey-cart. What is the inference? That there exists a spirit too subtle for compression; a bond of union which penal statutes cannot dissolve. . . . We cannot replace the Roman Catholics in the position in which we found them when the relaxation of penal laws began. We have given them the opportunity of acquiring education, wealth, and power. We have removed with our own hands the seal from the vessel in which a mighty spirit was enclosed; but, like the genius in the fable, it will not return to its narrow confines, and enable us to cast it forth to the obscurity from which we evoked it."

Much to the same purpose, though briefer, were Wellington's words in the Upper House. Resistance, he said, meant civil war. The state of things in Ireland could not be touched by force. The leaders of the disaffected knew well that they were not strong enough to wrestle with the king's Government, and, being sensible and able men, and well aware of the materials on which they worked, the state of things might continue for years without an opportunity

1 These proposals were embodied in two Bills. The only offices from which Catholics would now remain excluded would be tnose of Regent, Viceroy, Lord Chancellor of England, and of Ireland, and endowments connected with Church patronage or universities.

2 Speech, February 5, 1829.

3 "Parliamentary Debates," 1829, April 2.

1829]

PEEL'S EMANCIPATION BILL

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of putting it down. And even had he the means of putting it down, he would hesitate. He had seen more of war than most members of the House, and much of it civil war; and if he could avoid by any sacrifice whatever even a month of civil war in the country to which he was attached, he would yield his life in order to do it.

The Bill, embodying Peel's resolutions, was read for the first time on March 10. After two days' debate, the second reading was carried on March 18, by 353 to 180; and the third reading on March 30, by 320 to 142. In the Lords, the majority for the Bill on the second reading was 217 against III; and the Bill was read a third time on April 10. On May 15 O'Connell presented himself in the House, claiming to take the oath newly enacted. A debate took place, and on the 18th he was heard at the bar. It was decided by 190 votes against 116 that, having been elected before the change in the law, he must take the former oath. On his refusal to do this, a new writ was issued, and he was elected by the new constituency in July. Extreme irritation, which might well have been spared,1 was caused in Ireland by this delay.

The battle was over; what were the losses and the gains? That a few Catholic landowners should sit in Westminster was not a result so important as to justify the enormous expenditure of energy by which it had been attained. That Irish Catholics could now be members of corporations was far more to the purpose. It was well, too, that a Catholic could now be a king's counsel and a judge, unless, indeed, the prizes of the legal profession were to deaden civic zeal for the mass of social and agrarian reform that yet remained unaccomplished. It was a still greater

1 Peel ("Memoirs," part. i. p. 308) explains the course taken. "It was not from paltry jealousy or personal pique," he says. The difficulties were very great. "The king was hostile, the Church was hostile, a majority, probably, of the people of Great Britain was hostile to concession." As late as March 4 ministers were summoned to Windsor, and told by the king that he could not possibly consent to an alteration of the Oath of Supremacy. They tendered their resignations and retired. Late that evening the king sent a message to Wellington, requesting them to withdraw their resignations and proceed with the Bill (see "Peel's Memoirs," part i. pp. 282 et seq.).

thing that O'Connell's persistent struggle to avoid the interference of Government in episcopal appointments had been successful, and that the priesthood were not to be emasculated by a regium donum.

Against these gains, real, though exaggerated, were to be set the disfranchisement of the 40s. freeholders and the suppression of the Catholic Association; securities, as these measures were called by the Government of the day, though the light that after years have thrown on the facts may lead us to doubt whether they were not rather guarantees of insecurity.

To Englishmen the disfranchisement seemed a simple and natural course. Of giving agricultural labourers a vote in England or in Scotland no practical reformer dreamed. Why, then, should it be given in Ireland to men equally poor and ignorant? They did not see that when, of two nations utterly opposed in almost every circumstance of economic and social structure, one was to be governed from the metropolis of the other, the first condition of success was that the opinions and feelings of the distant nation. should be accurately represented. The mass of the Irish people consisted of tillers of the soil, holding a peculiar relation both to their priests and to their landlords. The body of small freeholders, forming about a fifth part of the adult manhood of the nation,1 represented this mass without overwhelming other classes and interests. The abuses that had crept into the mode of registering the claim to vote were susceptible of an easy remedy. To annihilate the political existence of this large section of the nation was deliberately to blind the eyes of the governors of Ireland as to the thoughts and desires of those they ruled.

Of the suppression of the Association nearly the same may be said. It had acted for five years the part of a local parliament, strictly subordinate to the official Parliament, in London, for whom it performed the invaluable service of telling what the large majority of the Irish nation thought and wanted. It was not, like the Orange society or the

1 Valuable information as to the numbers of 40s. freeholders will be found in Wyse's "History," vol. ii. Appendix, pp. cxi-cxix.

1800-1829]

ESTIMATE OF ITS VALUE

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Brunswick clubs, knit together by secret oaths or secret signs; nor was it limited, like them, to a religious sect. It willingly received Protestants as well as Catholics; it held its meetings in the face of day.

Outrage had ceased with its establishment, and revived after its destruction. Irritation at the mass of grievances that remained unredressed took shape in secret societies pledged to violence, and Government was reduced to depend for its information on the anonymous press or on the irresponsible clerks of the Castle.

In suppressing the Association and disfranchising the freeholders, England burnt two of the volumes offered by the Irish Sybil. The full price would be asked for what remained.