THE ACT OF UNION

When the Peace of Amiens was signed — truce would be a better word, for Napoleon was not likely to stop the course of French aggrandizement — Pitt was no longer in office. To under­stand the reason of his resignation we must go back and describe the effect of the war on Ireland.

The grant of legislative independence had not united the nation as had been expected; the Catholics, who had had a large share in the victory and outnumbered the Protestants by twelve to one, were still excluded from Parliament. The Protestant minority's determi­nation to keep all power to itself had reawakened the religious feuds; Catholic "Defenders" and Protestant "Deep-o'Day Boys" were practically at war. But the success of the French Revolution put new heart into the opposition; one more attempt was made to unite Irishmen in a national movement against a government which was scandalously corrupt and ready to vote exactly as English bribery and English interests demanded. In 1791 Wolfe Tone, a Protestant Lawer, founded the society of the "United Irishmen" with the definite object of breaking away from England altogether. This society, which included Protestants and Catholics among its members, corresponded with the revolutionary leaders in France in the same way as did similar societies in England. Alarmed by Tone's success, Pitt, although he himself was interested in complete union with Ireland, persuaded the first Parliament to grant the Cath­olics with suffrage, while they were still excluded from Parliament and office. Grattan was opposed to the revolutionary movement, and he together with his supporters and followers — most of the Protestant and many of the Catholic gentry — hailed with satisfac­tion and hope the appointment of Earl Fitzwilliam as Lord Lieuten­ant (1795). But the English party in Ireland was too strong for any removal of Catholic disabilities by constitutional means; within two months Fitzwilliam was recalled, to the great disappointment of all Irish patriots.

His withdrawal was followed by the outbreak of religious war in Armagh; a Catholic victory led to the foundation of the Orange Society by the Protestants; armed mobs fought with hardly any interference from the government. The United Irishmen now sent Wolfe Tone and Lord Edward Fitzgerald to ask for French help. The unsuccessful expedition of General Hoche, sent by the Direc­tory in 1796, has been already referred to; all we need to say here is that had he landed, he would have found very little support; Ireland as a whole regained loyal. But in the following year the government was confronted by a conspiracy in Ulster, purely political and chiefly Protestant in its nature, and by a general rising of the Catholic peasantry, almost entirely economic in its origin; yet as slight be expected, the Republicans of Ulster had really very little in com­mon with the small cultivators in Leinster, who were finding the burden of the little system intolerable.

The energy, and in too many instances the barbarous cruelty, of the government crushed out the conspiracy in Ulster; but the sav­agery of the repression led to a premature rebellion elsewhere. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was betrayed before the day appointed for the rising (May 23, 1798), and the rebels were almost without leaders.

Robert Emmet

Irish patriot Robert Emmet tried to lead an armed rebellion against Dublin Castle in Dublin, Ireland, in 1803, but before reaching the castle his small band of men was dispersed by British troops. Emmet was captured, convicted of treason, and hanged.

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One of the fervent and outstanding rebels was young Robert Emmet (1778-1803), youngest son of Robert Emmet, physician to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, a very great patriot. He was born in Dublin in 1778, and entered Trinity College in October 1793, where he had a distinguished academic career, showing special interest and abilities for mathematics and chemistry, and acquiring a repu­tation as an orator. But he removed his name from the college books in April 1798 without taking a degree, as a protest against the inquisitorial examination of the political views of the students con­ducted at the university. Thus leaving a learned career, he turned to the political activity, he was at this time already to a great extent in the secrets of the United Irishmen — his brother Thomas Addis Emmet was one of the active leaders. One of Emmet's friends was Thomas Moore, also a student of the University in Dublin, afterwards a famous poet, author of series of little poems "Irish Melo­dies". One day Moore was playing on the piano the old melody "Let Erin remember", and Emmet started up exclaiming passionately, "Oh, that I were at the head of 20,000 men marching to that air!"

It was a struggle in which both sides resorted to sheer barba­rism. Wexford was occupied by the rebels, who had their headquar­ters at Vinegar Hill. The rebellion had now resolved itself into a religions war, and although its nominal leader was Bagenal Harvey, a Protestant, the real power was in the hands of the priests. An attack on New Ross was repulsed with heavy loss; a further defeat at Arklow decided the issue of the rebellion. Catholic excesses in Leinster had alienated the Protestant Republicans of Ulster, and that province, already disarmed, gave no help to the rebels. So far the Irish government had received no help from England, but after Arklow General Lake was reinforced by English troops; with these he finally defeated the rebels at Vinegar Hill and stamped out all resistance with fearful severity. When all was over the long-expect­ed help arrived from France; General Humbert landed in Killana Bay with about a thousand men. Reinforced by the Irish, he at­tacked a superior force of 5000 men at Castelbar and utterly routed it; but when Lake met him with overwhelming numbers at Ballina-muck he had to surrender.

The Irish made another attempt in 1802, when Emmet arrived to Ireland from France, and received information being in Dublin that seventeen counties were ready to take up arms if a successful effort was made in Dublin. For some time Emmet remained con­cealed in his father's house making preparations. A large number of picks were collected and stored in Dublin during the spring of 1803, but fire arms and ammunition were not plentiful. So the attempt ended with no result.

Emmet made his escape; a detachment of soldiers dispersed his followers. After hiding for some days in the mountains he went to • the house of his bride, where on the 25-th of August Emmet was seized and arrested. He was tried for treason, and was hanged on the 20-th of September 1803. Before his execution Emmet said in his famous speech that he did not want any inscription to be written on his grave, because he was not to be named till Ireland is free. And his friend, poet Thomas Moore, hinted at Robert Emmet in one of his "Irish Melodies":

"Oh! Breathe not his name; let it sleep in the shade

Where cold and unhonoured his relics are laid'

Sad, silent and dark, be the tears that we shed,

As the night-dew that falls on the grass o'er his head

But the night-dew that falls, tho' in silence it weeps,

Shall brighten with verdure the grave where he sleeps.

And the tear that we shed, tho' in secret it rolls,

Shall long keep his memory green in our souls."

The danger to which the Empire had been exposed by the rebellion of 1798 persuaded Pitt to press for a real Union with Ireland. The chief obstacle to it was the Irish Parliament, which was not likely to vote for its own distraction, but by lavish bribery its opposition was at last bought off, and in 1800 the Act of Union was passed. Four Irish bishops and twenty-eight elective Irish peers were given seats in the House of Lords, and a hundred Irish mem­bers were returned to the British House of Commons; commercial equality with England was ratified for Ireland; and the Established Church of Ireland was declared one with the Church of England. The Irish Catholics did not prevent the Union, and it was due to the fact that they were led to believe that it would be followed immedi­ately by Catholic emancipation. Pitt certainly supported their claims and proposed to his Cabinet a measure for relieving them from their disabilities. But the king had persuaded himself that such a measure would violate his coronation oath, and therefore absolutely refused to consider it. Pitt had no option but to resign, and thus the Peace of Aliens was concluded during the premiership of his successor, Addington.

All these events were not so easy for the Irish Patriots, of course; they felt themselves offended, and they did not want to lose their ancient culture. But many of the patriots were imprisoned and transported as convicts in awful conditions across the ocean. Just at that time, as we already know, England lost her colony America. And in 1787 King George III in his speech to Parliament announced that "a plan had been formed... for transportation a number of con­victs in order to remove the inconvenience which arose from the crowded state of the gaols." So Australia was founded on 26 January 1788 when the First Fleet of prisoners and their military gaolers landed at Sydney Cove. For the first fifty years or so of its existence "white" Australia was primarily an increasingly extensive gaol. So many members of the Ireland rioters were transported there.

In those days most people in Great Britain, as elsewhere, were illiterate, and newspapers were few and expensive. In large British cities the function of the modern popular daily was performed by street-ballads. These "broadsides" ballads on separate sheets of paper often gave the latest news of the day in even less accurate and more colourful form than is usual for modern evening newspapers. They wrote about murders, rapes, hangings, riots, and victories; the sailors of the street ballads sold their "copies" for penny each, and sang their contents to the passers-by.

They sang:

"The loss of America what can repay?

New colonies seek for at Botany Bay."

"For a general good make a general sweep,

The beauty of life in good order to keep,

With night-prowling hateful disturbers away,

And send the whole tribe unto Botany Bay.

Ye chiefs, who go out on this naval exploit,

The work to accomplish, and set matters right,

To Ireland be kind, call at Cork on your way,

And take some White Boys unto Botany Bay."

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