Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 397, November 1848

The conduct of the Irish administration had long wanted the first quality for all governments, and the indispensable quality for the government of Ireland, – firmness. It has been said that the temper of the Irish is Oriental, and that they require an Oriental government. Their wild courage, their furious passion, their hatred of toil, and their love of luxury, certainly seem but little fitted to a country of uncertain skies and incessant labour. The Saracen, transported to the borders of the Atlantic, might have been the serf, and, instead of waving the Crescent over the diadems of Asia, might have been cowering over the turf-fire of the Celt, and been defrauded of the pomps of Bagdad and the spoils of Jerusalem. The decision of one of the magnificent despotisms of the East in Ireland might have been the true principle of individual progress and national renown. The scimitar might have been the true talisman.

But the successive British administrations took the false and the fatal step of meeting the wild hostility of Ireland by the peaceful policy of England. Judging only from the habits of a country trained to the obedience of law, they transferred its quiet formalities into the midst of a population indignant at all law; and, above all, at the law which they thought of only as associated with the swords of the soldiers of William. The government, continually changing in the person of the Viceroy, fluctuated in its measures with the fluctuation of its instruments; conceded where it ought to have commanded; bartered power, where it ought to have enforced authority; attempted to conciliate, where its duty was to have crushed; and took refuge behind partisanship, where it ought to have denounced the disturbers of their country. The result was public irritation and cabinet incapacity – a continual rise in the terms of official barter, pressing on a continual helplessness to refuse. This could not last – the voice of the country was soon an uproar. The guilt, the folly, and the ruin, had become visible to all. The money-changers were masters of the temple, until judicial vengeance came, and swept away the traffickers, and consigned the temple to ruin.

When we now hear the cry for the return of the Irish legislature, we feel a just surprise that the memory of the old legislature should have ever been forgotten, or that it should ever be recorded without national shame. We should as soon expect to see the corpse of a criminal exhumed, and placed on the judgment-seat of the court from which he was sent to the scaffold.

The Marquis of Buckingham, once a popular idol, and received as viceroy with acclamation, had no sooner dared to remonstrate with this imperious parliament, than he was overwhelmed with national rebuke. The idol was plucked from its pedestal; and the Viceroy, pursued by a thousand libels, was glad to escape across the Channel. He was succeeded by the Earl of Westmoreland, a man of some talent for business, and of some determination, but by no means of the order that "rides the whirlwind, and directs the storm." He, too, was driven away. In this dilemma, the British cabinet adopted the most unfortunate of all courses – concession; and for this purpose selected the most unfitting of all conceders, the Earl Fitzwilliam – a man of no public weight, though of much private amiability; sincere, but simple; honest in his own intentions, but perfectly incapable of detecting the intentions of others. His lordship advanced to the Irish shore with conciliation embroidered on his flag. His first step was to take the chief members of Opposition into his councils; and the immediate consequence was an outrageousness of demand which startled even his simple lordship. The British cabinet were suddenly awakened to the hazard of giving away the constitution by wholesale, and recalled the Viceroy. He returned forthwith, made a valedictory complaint in parliament, to which no one responded; published an explanatory pamphlet, which explained nothing; and then sat down on the back benches of the peerage for life, and was heard of no more. The Earl was succeeded by Lord Camden, son of the celebrated chief-justice, but inheriting less of the law than the temperament of his father. Graceful in manner, and even aristocratic in person, his councils were as undecided as his mission was undefined. The aspect of the times had grown darker hour by hour, yet his lordship speculated upon perpetual serenity. Conspiracy was notorious throughout the land, yet he moved as tranquilly as if there were not a traitor in the earth; and on the very eve of a conflagration, of which the materials were already laid in every county of Ireland, he relied on the silent spell of the statute-book!

The secretary, Mr Pelham, afterwards Lord Chichester, wanted the meekness, or disdained the short-sightedness of his principal; and, on the first night of his official appearance in the House, he gave at once the strongest evidence of his own opinion, and the strongest condemnation of the past system; by boldly declaring that "concessions to the Catholics seemed only to increase their demands; that what they now sought was incompatible with the existence of a British constitution; that concession must stop somewhere; and that it had already reached its utmost limit, and could not be allowed to proceed. Here he would plant his foot, and never consent to recede an inch further."

The debate on this occasion continued during the night, and until eight in the morning. All that fury and folly, the bitterness of party and the keenness of personality, could combine with the passionate eloquence of the Irish mind, was exhibited in this memorable debate. The motion of the popish advocates was lost, but the rebellion was carried. The echo of that debate was heard in the clash of arms throughout Ireland; and Opposition, without actually putting the trumpet to their lips, and marshalling conspiracy, had the guilty honour of stimulating the people into frenzy, which the Irishman calls an appeal to the god of battles, but which, in the language of truth and feeling, is a summons to all the sanguinary resolves and satanic passions of the human mind.

The secretary, perhaps foreseeing the results of this night, and certainly indignant at the undisciplined state of the legislative council, suddenly returned to England; and Lord Castlereagh was appointed by his relative, the Viceroy, to fill the post of secretary daring his absence. The rebellion broke out on the night of the 23d of May 1798.

In the year 1757, a committee was first established for the relief of Roman Catholics from their disabilities by law. From this justifiable course more dangerous designs were suffered to follow. The success of republicanism in America, and the menaces of war with republican France, suggested the idea of overthrowing the authority of government in Ireland. In 1792, his Majesty's message directed the repeal of the whole body of anti-Romanist statutes, excepting those which prohibited admission into parliament, and into thirty great offices of state, directly connected with the confidential departments of administration. The Romish committee had already extended their views still farther. The well-known Theobald Wolfe Tone was their secretary, and he prepared an alliance with the republicanised Presbyterians of the north, who, in 1791, had organised in Belfast a club entitled "The United Irishmen."

The combination of the Romanist of the south and the dissenter of the north was rapidly effected. Their mutual hatreds were compromised, for the sake of their common hostility to Church and State. Upwards of 100,000 men in arms were promised by the north; millions, to be hereafter armed, were offered by the south; agents were despatched to urge French expeditions; correspondences were held with America for aid; the whole machinery of rebellion was in full employment, and a civil war was already contemplated by a group of villains, incapable of any one of the impulses of honourable men.

It is memorable that, in the subsequent convulsion, not one of those men of blood displayed the solitary virtue of the ruffian – courage. They lived in subterfuge, and they died in shame. Some of them perished by the rope, not one of them fell by the sword. The leaders begged their lives, betrayed their dupes, acknowledged their delinquencies, and finished their days beyond the Atlantic, inflaming the hostility of America, libelling the government by which their lives were spared, and exemplifying the notorious impossibility of reforming a rebel but by the scaffold.

Attempts have been made, of late years, to raise those men into the reputation of heroism; they might as justly have been raised into the reputation of loyalty. No sophistry can stand against the facts. Not one of them took the common hazards of the field: they left the wretched peasantry to fight, and satisfied themselves with harangues. Even the poetic painting of Moore cannot throw a halo round the head of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. This hero walked the country in woman's clothes, to be arrested in his bed, and perish in a prison. Tone cut his throat. Irishmen are naturally brave; but it is no dishonour to the nation to know that treason degrades the qualities of nature, and that conscience sinks the man of nerve into the poltroon.

It was among the singular instances of good fortune which saved Ireland in her crisis, that Lord Castlereagh assumed the duties of Irish Secretary. Uniting mildness of address with known determination, he was a favourite in the House of Commons, which in those days was proud of its character alike for manners and intrepidity. His indefatigable vigilance, and even the natural vigour of his time of life, rendered him adequate to services and labours which might have broken down the powers of an older man, and which must have been declined by the feeble health of his predecessor, Pelham, who still actually retained the office. Even his family connexion with the Viceroy may have given him a larger share than usual of the immediate confidence of government.

Under all circumstances, he was the fittest man for the time. He protected the country in the most difficult period of its existence. There was but one more service to secure Ireland against ruinous change – the rescue of her councils from the dominion of the mob; and it was his eminent fortune to effect it, by the Union.

There is the most ample evidence, that neither parliamentary reform nor Catholic emancipation were the true objects of the United Irishmen. The one was a lure to the malcontents of the north, the other to the malcontents of the south. But the secret council of the conspiracy – determined to dupe the one, as it despised the other – had resolved on a democracy, which, in its day of triumph, following the steps of France, would, in all probability, have declared itself infidel, and abolished all religion by acclamation. Party in the north pronounced its alliance with France, by commemorating, with French pageantry, the anniversary of the Revolution. The remnants of the old volunteer corps were collected at this menacing festival, which lasted for some days, and exhibited all the pomp and all the insolence of Paris. Emblematic figures were borne on carriages drawn by horses, with republican devices and inscriptions. On one of those carriages was a figure of Hibernia, with one hand and foot in shackles, and a volunteer presenting to her a figure of Liberty, with the motto, "The releasement of the prisoners from the Bastille." On another was the motto, – "Our Gallic brethren were born July 14th, 1789. Alas! we are still in embryo." Another inscription was – "Superstitious jealousy the cause of the Irish Bastille; let us unite and destroy it." The portrait of Franklin was exhibited among them, with this inscription, – "Where Liberty is, there is my country." Gunpowder and arms were put in store, pikes were forged, and treasonous addresses were privately distributed throughout the country.

It is to be observed, that those acts occurred before the accession of Lord Castlereagh to office: their existence was the result of that most miserable of all policies – the sufferance of treason, in the hope that it may die of sufferance. If he had guided the Irish councils in 1792 instead of in 1794, the growing treason would have either shrunk from his energy, or been trampled out by his decision.

It has been the custom of party writers to charge the secretary with rashness, and even with insolence. The answer is in the fact, that, until the year in which the revolt became imminent, his conduct was limited to vigilant precaution – to sustaining the public spirit – to resisting the demands of faction in the House – and to giving the loyal that first and best creator of national courage – the proof that, if they did not betray themselves, they would not be betrayed by their government.

In 1798, the rebellion was ripe. The conspirators had been fully forewarned of their peril by the vigour of public measures. But, disgusted by the delays of France, – conscious that every hour was drawing detection closer round them; and still more, in that final frenzy which Providence suffers to take possession of men abusing its gifts of understanding, – they at last resolved on raising the flag of rebellion. A return of the rebel force was made by Lord Edward Fitzgerald, stating the number of armed men in Ulster, Leinster, and Munster, at 279,896! and the 23d of May was named as the day of the general insurrection.

Government now began to act. On the 12th of March, it arrested the whole body of the delegates of Leinster, assembled in committee in the metropolis. The seizure of their papers gave the details of the treason. Warrants were instantly issued for the arrest of the remaining leaders, Emmett, M'Nevin, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and others. We hasten on. A second committee was formed; and again broken up by the activity of the government. The French agency was next extinguished, by the arrest of O'Connor, the priest Quigley, and others, on the point of leaving England for France. Seizures of arms were made, the yeomanry were put on duty, the loyalists were formed into corps, armed, and disciplined.

Lord Edward Fitzgerald had escaped, and a reward of £1000 was put upon his head. On the 19th of May, only four days before the outbreak, he was arrested in an obscure lodging in Dublin, stabbed one of his captors in the struggle, was himself wounded, and died in prison of his wound.

During this most anxious period, the life of every leading member of government was in imminent peril. Plots were notoriously formed for the assassination of the commander-in-chief, and the chancellor; but Lord Castlereagh was obviously the especial mark for the conspirators. In scorn of this danger, he gallantly persevered; and, on the 22d of May, the very night before the commencement of the insurrection, he brought down to the House the following message from the Lord-lieutenant: —

"That his excellency had received information, that the disaffected had been daring enough to form a plan, for the purpose of possessing themselves, in the course of the present week, of the metropolis; of seizing the seat of government, and those in authority within the city. That, in consequence of that information, he had directed every military precaution to be taken which seemed expedient; that he had made full communication to the magistrates, for the direction of their efforts; and that he had not a doubt, by the measures which would be pursued, that the designs of the rebellious would be effectually and entirely crushed."

To this message the House of Commons voted an immediate answer, – "That the intelligence thus communicated filled them with horror and indignation, while it raised in them a spirit of resolution and energy." And, for the purpose of publicly showing their confidence and their determination, the whole of the Commons, preceded by the speaker and the officers of the House, went on foot, two by two, in procession through the streets, to the castle, to carry up their address to the Viceroy.

Lord Castlereagh, during this most anxious period, was in constant activity, keeping up the correspondence of his government with the British Cabinet and the generals commanding in Ireland. But, the correspondence preserved in the Memoirs is limited to directions to the military officers – among whom were the brave and good Abercromby, and Lake, Moore, and others who, like them, were yet to gain their laurels in nobler fields.

The rebellion, after raging for six weeks in the south, and exhibiting the rude daring of the peasantry, in several desperate attacks on the principal towns garrisoned by the army, was at length subdued by Lord Cornwallis; who, at once issuing an amnesty, and acting at the head of a powerful force, restored the public tranquillity. This promptitude was fortunate; for in August a debarkation was made by General Humbert in the west, at the head of eleven hundred French troops, as the advanced guard of an army. This force, though absurdly inferior to its task, yet, by the rapidity of its marches, and the daring of its commander, revived the spirit of insurrection, and was joined by many of the peasantry. But the whole were soon compelled to lay down their arms to the troops of the Viceroy. Scarcely had they been sent to an English prison, when a French squadron, consisting of a ship of the line and eight frigates, with 5000 troops on board, appeared off the northern coast. They were not left long to dream of invasion. On the very next day, the squadron under Sir John Borlase Warren was seen entering the French anchorage. The enemy were instantly attacked. The line-of-battle ship, the Hoche, with six of the frigates, was captured after a sharp cannonade; and among the prisoners was found the original incendiary of the rebellion, Wolfe Tone, bearing the commission of a French adjutant-general. On his trial and sentence by a court-martial in Dublin, he solicited to be shot as a soldier, not hanged as a felon. But there was too much blood on his head to alter the forms of law for a villain who had returned for the express purpose of adding the blood of thousands to the past. To escape being hanged, he died by his own hand, deplorably, but suitably, closing a life which honesty and industry might have made happy and honourable, by the last and only crime which he could have added to the long list of his treasons.

The administration of Lord Castlereagh was now to be distinguished by another national service of the highest order. The British government had been awakened, by the rebellion, to the necessity of a union. The object of the rebels was to separate the two islands by violence: the danger pointed out the remedy, and the object of government was to join them indissolubly by law. The measure had been proposed nearly a century before, by the peerage of Ireland themselves, then shrinking from a repetition of the war of James II., and the sweeping confiscations of the popish parliament. The measure was twice proposed to the British cabinet, in 1703 and 1707. But the restless intrigues of party in the reign of Anne occupied all the anxieties of a tottering government; and the men who found it difficult to float upon the surge, thought themselves fortunate to escape the additional gusts, which might come ruffling the waters from Ireland. The Volunteer armament, with the example of America, if not actually inflaming Ireland to revolution, yet kindling a beacon to every eye which sought the way to republicanism, again awoke the cabinet to the necessity of a union. The regency question, in which the Irish parliament attempted to divide, not only the countries, but the crown – placing one half on the head of the Prince of Wales, and the other half on the head of the King – again startled the cabinet. But, as the peril abated, the means of protection were thrown by. The hurricane of France then came, and dashed against every throne of Europe, sinking some, shattering others, and throwing clouds, still pregnant with storm and flame, over the horizon of the civilised world. But the vices of France suddenly extinguished the European perils of Revolution. The democracy which, proclaiming universal peace and freedom, had summoned all nations to be present at the erection of a government of philosophy, was seen exulting in the naked display of cruelty and crime. In place of a demigod, Europe saw a fiend, and shrank from the altar on which nothing was to be accepted but the spoil and agonies of man.

Those facts are alluded to, simply to extinguish the gross and common charge, that the British cabinet fostered the rebellion, only to compel the country to take refuge in the Union. It is unquestionable, that the wisdom of its policy had been a maxim for a hundred years; that the plan was to be found in the portfolio of every cabinet; that all administrative foresight acknowledged that the time must come when it would be inevitable, yet put off the hour of action; that it haunted successive cabinets like a ghost, in every hour of national darkness, and that they all rejoiced at its disappearance at the return of day. But when rebellion broke out in Ireland itself – when it was no longer the reflection from the glare of American democracy, nor the echo from the howl of France; when the demand of separation was made by the subjects of the British crown, in the sight of England – the necessity was irresistible. There was no longer any alternative between binding in fetters, and binding in law. Then the resolve of Pitt was made, and its performance was committed to the hands of a fearless and faithful man. Ireland was relieved from the burden of a riotous and impoverished independence, and England was relieved from the contemptible policy of acting by party, which she despised, and paying a parliament to protect a constitution.

But we must hasten to other things. There was, of course, an infinite outcry among all the tribes who lived upon popular corruption. In closing the gates of the Irish parliament, they had been shut out from the mart where they had flocked night and day to sell their influence, their artifices, and themselves. The voluntary slave-trade was broken up; and the great dealers in political conscience regarded themselves as robbed of a right of nature. The kings of Benin and Congo could not be more indignant at the sight of a British cruiser blockading one of their rivers. The calamity was universal; the whole body of parliamentary pauperism was compelled to work or starve. The barrister was forced to learn law; the merchant to turn to his ledger; the country gentleman, who had so long consoled himself for his weedy fallows, by the reflection that, if they grew nothing else, they could at least grow forty-shilling voters, found "Othello's occupation gone." The whole flight of carrion-crows, whom the most distant scent of corruption brought upon the wing; all the locust race, which never alighted, but to strip the soil; the whole army of sinecurism, the countless generation of laziness and license, who, as in the monkish days, looked to receiving their daily meal at the doors of the treasury, felt the sudden sentence of starvation.

But this, too, passed away. Jobbery, a more than equivalent for the exemption of the land from the viper, became no longer a trade; faction itself, of all existing things the most tenacious of life, gradually dropped off; the natural vitality of the land, no longer drained away by its blood-suckers, began to show itself in the vigour of the public mind; peace did its office in the renewal of public wealth, and perhaps the happiest years of Ireland were those which immediately followed the Union. If Ireland was afterwards overshadowed, the cause was to be found in that sullen influence which had thrown Europe into darkness for a thousand years.

Lord Castlereagh was now advanced an important step in public life. Mr Pelham, who from ill health had long been an absentee, resigned his office. The services of his manly and intelligent substitute had been too prominent to be overlooked. A not less trying scene of ministerial courage and ability was about to open, in the proposal of the Union; and no man could compete with him who had extinguished the rebellion.

A letter from his friend Lord Camden (November 1798) thus announced the appointment: – "Dear Castlereagh, – I am extremely happy to be informed by Mr Pitt that the wish of the Lord-lieutenant that you should succeed Mr Pelham (since he has relinquished the situation of secretary) has been acceded to by the King and his ministers; and that the consent of the English government has been communicated to Lord Cornwallis."