636 Plunket1 s Bill, — Peel in Ireland [1814-23

at a defeat the whole blame of which could be laid on their opponents. Petitions were still presented ; by Grattan and Plunket jointly, in 1815 and 1819; after the former's death, by Plunket alone. In 1821 Plunket revived the Bill of eight years before, and carried it through all its stages in the Lower House, which was now only anxious to have done with the question. But the Veto clauses were left in the Bill; for which reason Catholic petitions were presented against it in the course of the debates. Plunket replied with a lofty denunciation of religious bigotry; and O'Connell returned the compliment by describing Plunket's Bill as " more penal and persecuting than any or all the statutes passed in the most bigoted period of Queen Anne or of the first two Georges." The Lords not unnaturally declined to accept a measure of Catholic Relief which was thus described by Catholics. That the Commons would deprive the Lords of their excuse by sending up a new Bill for unconditional Relief seemed in the last degree unlikely. The Parliamentary Emancipationists were now brought, like the Board, to an impasse.

O'Connell's persistent refusal of a compromise has been censured by good judges. Yet it would be unfair to tax him with an ill-conditioned eagerness to humiliate Parliament, to extort by force the relief which might have been obtained through peaceful methods. His object was not to injure England, but to unite Ireland. For this purpose he relied upon agitation; but in 1821 he was ready to substitute a political for the religious watchword, to agitate for Reform and let Emancipation wait for the birth of a new representative system. He could not have accepted the Veto without alienating the Bishops, the priests, and all the more ignorant Catholics. Emancipation, if obtained at this cost, would be worse than useless to the Irish people; it would have left them permanently divided in three factions instead of two. The policy which O'Connell pursued, though often defended in language which was gratuitously offensive and unjust to those who differed from it, was sounder from a national point of view than the Vetoist alternative which at first sight appeared to have an overwhelming weight of argument in its favour.

His faith in the soundness of his decision was severely tried between 1814 and 1823. When Peel was residing in Ireland as Chief Secretary (1812-8), he could boast that he had "almost forgotten" the question of Relief. He asked Parliament to turn from so barren a subject to the more useful work of legislating against agrarian crime, and from 1814 onwards applied the medicine of coercion to disturbed districts. For the practical object which he had in view, his reforms were excellent; a special constabulary, stipendiary magistrates, statutory power to proclaim centres of agrarian crime, the choice of better magistrates and better sheriffs. Regarding the Catholic leaders as a set of factious demagogues, he used without scruple the most doubtful

1821-5] Committees of enquiry 637

weapons in the official armoury to strengthen the Protestant ascendancy. His correspondence at this time reveals to us glimpses of a subsidised press, of Irish boroughs managed in the Tory interest, of patronage systematically employed to buy support. Though his language on the subject of Emancipation was less violent than that of the older generation of his party, the Catholics were right in regarding him as the most formidable opponent of their cause. But his system outlived his term of office, which came to an end simply because he grew sick of the sordid methods by which alone the ascendancy could be maintained.

The visit of George IV to Ireland (1821) produced, as it was intended to produce, a number of false hopes. The Catholics celebrated the event with Conciliation dinners, at which they and Orangemen of consequence exchanged embraces. O'Connell is said to have presented the King at his departure with a laurel wreath, kneeling as he did so in the surf; there is better warrant for the temporary existence of a Royal Georgian Club, founded by the Liberator and intended to dine six times a year in token of a nation's gratitude. Lord Liverpool maintained the illusion by sending out Lord Wellesley as Viceroy and conferring the office of Attorney-General on Plunket. But simultaneously Goulburn, an able and bigoted supporter of the ascendancy, received the Chief Secretaryship. There was in fact to be a semblance of compromise without an iota of concession. Perceiving at last how they had been duped, and at the same time deprived by coercion of the ordinary means of attacking the Government, the Catholics abandoned themselves to despondency. " At the beginning of 1823," says Sheil, " an entire cessation of Catholic meetings had taken place. We sat down like galley-slaves in a calm."

These reverses were not altogether unmerited. O'Connell and the Vetoists alike had been more concerned to promote a political campaign than to discover remedies for the worst evils of their country. It was left for the English Parliament to probe the economic situation. The committees that sat to collect evidence on this subject in 182-4 and 1825 opened questions which Irish orators had touched superficially or not at all. It was proved that the secret societies and the agrarian outrages, which had rendered it necessary since the Union to keep Ireland almost continuously under a coercive regime, were due to rackrents, to the tyranny of tithe-proctors and middlemen, to the habitual absence of the great proprietors, to the cowardice and want of public spirit which characterised the squireen class. The committees reported that the wages of hired labour stood in Ireland at a half or a third of the English rate ; that the demand for labour was small and stationary, while the number seeking employment had increased and were increasing ; that thousands were in search of work which not one in ten could hope to obtain. They found that, in this state of things, the peasantry chiefly depended for food upon potato patches of which the

638 Economic distress. — Secret societies [1824-5

rents, owing to reckless competition, ranged as high as £10 an acre: that these holdings were continually being subdivided to such a point that the produce, even in good years, barely sufficed to keep the tenant and his family from starvation. Witnesses from every part of the south and west quoted harrowing instances of a poverty which they saw no hope of relieving, while the population continued to increase and to be dependent on the land for a livelihood. It was necessary to encourage the investment of private capital in Irish industries ; to drive the people into new employments by means of restrictions upon sub-letting; and, until these employments developed, to encourage emigration as a counsel of despair. But capital would not migrate to Ireland while agrarian crime defied repression. The difficulty of repression was due to the general mistrust and hatred of all constituted authorities. Witness after witness was asked to state whether the religious question had any real connexion with the distress which had been described. The answers gave the impression that Emancipation would do nothing for the peasant* unless it were accompanied by the reduction or abolition of tithe.

This, however, was only half, and the less important half, of the truth. The resentment of the peasantry against the law and the landlords, against drivers, proctors, and middlemen, was exacerbated by religious feuds. The confiscations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had saddled the Catholic masses with Protestant landlords; the police, the magistrates, the laws themselves, were regarded as the instruments of Protestant tyranny. There were prophecies in circulation, under the names of Pastorini and Columbkill and McAuliffe, which predicted the speedy expulsion of all Protestants from Ireland. The Ribbon Societies, though primarily agrarian in their objects, admitted no Protestant to membership and lived in a state of constant feud with the Orange clubs, from which all Catholies were similarly excluded. In some of the Rock Societies the neophytes took an oath "to fight knee-deep in Orange blood for the restoration and continuation of the long-promised liberty to the Catholic Church." No general conspiracy of Catholics existed. It was doubtful whether the Rock and Ribbon Societies received orders from central executives ; it was certain that such orders, if received, were but imperfectly obeyed. The better class of priests denounced all secret societies. The Catholic Board habitually warned the people against recourse to lawless violence. Middle-class Catholics saw in the agitation an assault upon the principle of private property, and were no less eager than the Protestants for vigorous repression. Still the agrarian movement remained in many respects a religious movement, into the vortex of which the new generation of priests, drawn from peasant homes and educated at Maynooth, were gradually being drawn. These men were too nearly on the same level with their flocks to act as a restraining influence. If they identified themselves with the spirit of revolt, they had before them the prospect of unbounded popularity ; if they resisted

1822-^3] The famine and its results 639

that spirit, they ran the risk of losing fees and stipends, or, still worse, of being treated as pariahs and traitors.

The people could not be helped, while they continued to look askance at every overture from Government. The surest way of gaining their confidence was to concede Emancipation immediately and without conditions. This would at once dispel the worst suspicions. It would give the Irish Catholics a confidence in the Imperial legislature which Grattan's Parliament had never won from them. It would diminish the outcry for separation of the two countries. It would add the copingstone to the policy which had produced the Union; it would lay the foundation of a more prosperous era in Irish history. By yielding in the question of Relief, England would gain the opportunity of offering immediately and freely what O'Connell's party could only present as a goal to be reached by a long and painful struggle. But England's refusal to seize the opportunity is O'Connell's justification. Before the Committees began to sit, the Ministry and Parliament had already decided to cut the Gordian knot by a new Insurrection Act (1822). The famine of the same year was alleviated by the generosity of English subscribers and by a Parliamentary grant. Half a milllon was thus raised for the benefit of the distressed — a conclusive proof that the goodwill of England was genuine and active. But neither in the famine year, nor when maturer enquiries had made it possible to frame comprehensive measures of Relief, did English legislators show themselves disposed to attack the problem as a whole. The Act of 1823, which introduced permissive commutation of tithes, was valuable as an instalment of reform; but it was the last word of the Liverpool Administration on the subject of Irish reform.

It was therefore no mere accident that the famine year became the starting-point of a new agitation which, unlike those of the past, assumed a genuinely national aspect. In the face of this great calamity the Vetoists and anti-Vetoists made common cause once more. Sheil, the Vetoist leader, made a complete surrender of his previous policy. He agreed with O'Connell to treat the Relief movement merely as a step towards larger aims, and to accept Relief only in that unqualified form which would unite the peasant and the priest in sympathy with the politician. Other means having failed, the priest and the peasant must be called in to fight the battle of the nation. The new programme originated with O'Connell. He imparted it to Sheil early in 1823; and without much delay they agreed upon their plan of action. On April 25 they persuaded a meeting of Dublin Catholics to vote the establishment of a new Association, " a body of confidential friends to whom the people of Ireland could look for counsel." The first reported meeting of the new Association was held on May 12; on Saturday, May 24, the rules suggested by O'Connell were finally adopted, and the agitation was launched upon its course.

640 A new Association. The Catholic Rent [18234

The essence of the new policy may be stated as association without illegality, and agitation without physical force. It was necessary to evade the laws, but easy for a lawyer of O'Connell's experience to do so. The chief obstacle was still the Convention Act; another Act of 1823, which was directed primarily against the administering of unlawful oaths, had also to be taken into account. Both were frustrated by making the Association public in its procedure and non-representative in its composition. Any man, whether Protestant or Catholic, might enrol himself as a member by paying a subscription of one guinea. The meetings, held weekly upon Saturday afternoon, were thrown open to reporters; the minutes and the list of members were kept in constant readiness to be inspected by anyone who asked for them. The object of the meetings was to prepare petitions and to collect evidence as to the grievances of Irish Catholics. The first petition, which was drawn by Sheil, received approval on June 14 and was presented to Parliament in the same month. But the difficulty was to sustain the enthusiasm of the members. At the outset the Association enrolled some fifty or sixty members, and decided that ten should constitute a quorum. But it often happened that a quorum failed to appear; on February 21, 1824, was passed the significant resolution " that in future the chair be taken at any time between the hours of three and five o'clock as soon as ten members be present " —an amendment of the original rule under which the meeting adjourned at half-past three if no quorum had yet appeared. O'Connell, who was indefatigable in attendance, would sometimes go out into the streets and bring back with him any Catholic acquaintance whom he could find, in order to complete the quorum. On one occasion, only eight members having presented themselves, he descended into the bookseller's shop over which the meetings were held, and impressed two Maynooth students who were total strangers to him.

These students deserve a niche in history; it was their attendance which enabled a meeting (described in the minutes as " numerous and respectable ") to vote the institution of a Catholic Rent (Feb. 4, 1824). The idea had originated with Lord Kenmare in 1785; and an attempt to apply it in 1812 had been one of the reasons which led to the proclamation of the Board. But it had never yet been presented in so popular a form as that which it now received. O'Connell proposed that every Catholic, even the poorest, should be invited to subscribe at least a penny a month, or a shilling a year. The fund, he said, would amply suffice to promote the objects of the Association; and it would demonstrate that the people were behind the movement.

The success of the scheme showed that O'Connell understood his countrymen. The towns took the lead in levying the Rent, and from first to last contributed about two-thirds of the sums collected. But the country followed the example of the towns with unmistakable enthusiasm ; and the most backward districts showed an unexpected power of