Lecture Ten Wednesday 13th April
Swift, Colonial Nationalism, The Catholic Question and Patriot Politics .
Throughout the 18th century the orthodox British view of the Anglo-Irish relationship was that Ireland was an English colony. Ireland being treated as a subordinate kingdom with an inferior parliament met with firm rejection on the part of most Protestant Irishmen. They considered Ireland to be a ‘sister’ or ‘brother’ kingdom to England, possessed of a parliament that was or ought to be co-equal with the English Parliament, and with none of the attributes of inferiority and subordination attendant on the word ‘Colony’.
Many Protestants wrote on this issue, the more famous of them were Jonathan Swift and William Molyneux. The latter was the pioneer of the ideas of colonial nationalism in his pamphlet The case of Ireland Stated (1698).
From taking us his position as Dean of St Patrick’s in 1714, until he died in 1745, Swift wrote approximately 70 pamphlets on Irish affairs.
The topics of his pamphlets ranged from toleration of dissent (of which he was opposed to); attempts to establish a Bank of Ireland; economic reforms and, most important to this lecture, he wrote extensively on the constitutional status of Ireland where he rejected any English law or behaviour which treated Ireland as either a colony or as been a ‘dependent kingdom’ without the same full and equal rights as citizens in England.
His earliest writings on the constitutional status of Ireland were contained in a pamphlet entitled The Story of the Injured Lady (1707). Written in the form of a personalised allegory, in which a Lady (Ireland) complains to a friend about her seduction and betrayal by her suitor (England) who finally abandons her for a less deserving mistress (Scotland).
The Lady’s story is one of moral and political outrage:
I must confess which shame, that I was undone by the common arts practised upon all easy credulous virgins, half be force and half by consent, after solemn vows and protestations of marriage. When he had once got possession, be soon began to play the usual part of a too fortunate lover, affecting on all occasions to show his authority and act like a conqueror.
In his Answer to the Injured Lady, written as an imaginary reply, the Lady’s friend gives her the advice which anticipates the themes of Swift’s pamphlets for the next 20 years.
First: That you family and tenants have no dependence upon the said gentleman, further that by the old agreement, which obligeth you to have the same steward, and to regulate your household by such methods as you shall both agree to.
Secondly: that you will not carry your goods to the market of his town, unless you please, not to be hindered from carrying them anywhere else.
Thirdly: that the servants you pay wages to shall live at home, or forfeit their places.
Fourthly: that whatever lease you make to a tenant, it shall not be in his power to break it.
Here are the four basic and related principles on the constitutional question which Swift and many of those colonial nationalists in Ireland strove to attain; constitutional equality based on mutual agreement; freedom of trade, elimination of absenteeism, and legal control over Ireland’s natural resources.
In part this assertion of Ireland’s ‘rights’ stemmed from Protestant resentment at the casual and insensitive way that England legislated on behalf of the dependency.
Of particular areas of contention were the wholesale disposal of Irish jobs in the church, army and the law to Englishmen (that is protestants born in England as opposed to being born in Ireland).
Also of concern was the use of the Irish pension fund to reward Englishmen and other ‘foreigners’, and royal mistresses. There was also the question of the English government’s disposal of Irish peerages to people who had no connection whatsoever with Ireland.
On top of this was the fact that England began to enact a series of laws imposing restrictions on Irish commerce.
This resentment was to play a big part in the growing Protestantism nationalism that was evolving in Ireland of the period. This process was assisted by two further things;
The first of these was protestant confidence that they in fact constituted ‘the whole people of Ireland’ or the ‘Irish nation’.
The second was protestant anxiety as they were well aware that they constituted a minority on the island of Ireland. Not only were they surrounded by many enemies but the English government also viewed them as inferiors with many of the attributes of the native Irish.
This emergence of an Irish Protestant nationalism held grave dangers for the future of Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland for the protestant claim that the ‘natural rights’ inherent in all mankind were denied them could conceivably and justifiably be appropriated by Irish Catholics as well.
More seriously, however, was that Irish Protestant assertions of Ireland’s rights provoked suspicion among British politicians who held that Irish Protestants secretly nourished hopes of Independence or, as Sir Robert Warpoole put it, ‘to shake off their dependency on England’.
The Catholic Question
This perception created strong misgivings in successive British governments concerning the reliability and loyalty of Irish protestants and, as a result, by the 1760s, the British government began to reappraise its own relationship with and attitude towards the Catholics of Ireland.
Whereas it was never the intention of the government to replace the Protestant Ascendancy with a Catholic one in Ireland, nevertheless some British ministers began to see merit in cultivating a good understanding with Irish Catholics.
It might well have been the case that they did this only to keep Irish Protestants in line.
The money bill dispute of the 1750s (known as Wood’s halfpence dispute) had a massive impact on British thinking towards the Ascendancy in Ireland. The legal and constitutional battle over the pence was the first outward show of public and popular opposition among Irish Protestants to the abuses of English rule in Ireland.
The causes of the dispute can be summarised in that the British government gave a patent to the kings mistress who passed it on to an Englishman (Wood) to mint copper coins with which to flood the market in Ireland.
Protestants in Ireland objected to this and it developed into a patronage wrangle between the Irish Protestant Henry Boyle and some British politicians. Boyle made a stand on political and constitutional grounds and brought the dispute to the country at large. This had the affect of setting Boyle up as the protector of the liberties of Ireland and throughout the country numerous patriot clubs began to emerge.
All of which combined to generate and create a heightened political consciousness that was looked upon in a bad light from England.
If Boyle had sought to appeal to new groups in Ireland so too could the British government who could look to the Presbyterians or to the Catholics with a view to threatening the ascendancy position of Irish Protestants.
Developments in favour of Catholics in Ireland.
(1) In the history of the catholic question this money bill dispute of the 1750s was a watershed for it sowed dissension between Irish protestants and British politicians and brought division to the former. In doing so it gave Irish Catholics an opportunity to stand up and it comes as no surprise to learn that by 1760 a Catholic Committee had been formally set up in Dublin.
Like so many other times in Ireland’s history in relation to Catholics, the first 20 years or so of the Catholic Committee’s existence was characterised by internal petty disputes between Catholic gentry and merchants; between town and country; between clergy and laity. The result of which was that Catholics perhaps had to wait longer than they might have for the complete relaxation of the Penal Laws.
(2) Another development in favour of Catholicism was that by the 1760s in England, at least among the governing classes, anti-Catholicism had ebbed considerably. This must be seen in light of international events which were seeing the final collapse of the Stuart cause and the expulsion of the Jesuits from many countries in Europe, and by the eventual defeat of France in the 7 years war (1756-1783).
A shared anti-Catholicism had been a cementing bond between English and Irish Protestants but its erosion on the English side meant that Irish Protestants would have to increasingly explain and justify the penal laws in terms that could be understood by British ministers.
(3) Another reason for the decline in anti-Catholicism was military requirements and the religious composition of the emerging British Empire.
Up to this point the threat of war between England and other European countries usually ushered in periods whereby the penal laws were strictly enforced. Now, however, the opposite was the case as the British government needed to tap into the extra manpower that Catholic Ireland could provide. Consequently Catholics were once again accepted into the ranks of the British armed imperial forces.
It is no accident that the major Catholic relief acts of the late 18th century were rushed through usually in time of war as this was used as an inducement for the Catholics to join the army.
Between 1774 and 1795 the legal position of Catholics in Irish society was so transformed as to merit the use of the word revolution. From being allowed to swear an oath of loyalty to the protestant state in 1774, by 1795 that same Protestant state was actively involved in subsidising the education of Catholic seminarians at Maynooth, and also by this latter date Catholics could vote in the counties on the same term as Protestants, pursue careers in the professions, worship freely, found educational establishments and buy, sell and bequeath land on the same terms as Irish Protestants.
By 1800 no one could deny that Irish Catholics were the ‘whole people of Ireland’.
Central to this transformation was the decisive shift in the balance of the Anglo-Irish relationship which had occurred by the 1760s. The military requirements of the new Empire, the decline in anti-Catholicism in England all prompted a reappraisal on the British side of their traditional policies in Ireland.
Accordingly from 1770 onwards English ministers began to sponsor the Catholics of Ireland and to urge the progressive dismantling of the penal laws.
The outbreak of hostilities in the American colonies followed in 1778 by war with Spain and France led the British government to secretly draw up a series of catholic relief acts for England, Scotland and Ireland – the prime purpose of which was to allow and encourage Catholic recruitment into the armed forces.
It was not intended that potential recruits would benefit from the terms of the proposed relief acts, rather it was hoped that by appeasing their priests and those Catholic gentry who had so far managed to survive would be the main beneficiaries of the relief acts and that they would then use their influence to ensure that Catholics volunteered to join the ranks of the British Army.
This was to be the background to the Catholic Relief act of 1778 which offered Irish Catholics substantial concessions, especially where the possession of land was concerned. It seemed to the government that the protestants or Presbyterians could not be trusted as they openly declared their support for the American Colonists. In total, contrast, the Catholics could not profess their loyalty enough and the government came to see them as loyal subjects.
Contemporaries saw these policies of the British government favouring Catholics only to the extent that they were playing the ‘Catholic Card’ in order to make Irish Protestants aware of the realities of the situation and what might happen if they continued their support of the American Colonists and for their Protestant Nationalism.
As Lord Charlemount put it; the administration
‘Finding the protestants growing into strength, dreaded their spirit and wished perhaps to temper it by popish connection; or what is still more probable because less refined, government was now induced to court the papists by their fear of the protestants’.
In 1782 the second round of pro-Catholic offers were brought out which promised major concessions on Catholic worship and religious orders. (This was known by contemporaries as he ‘race for the catholic’).
It was no coincidence that this legislation was offered at the same time as Irish Protestants were looking for legislative independence. It must also be seen as British attempts to keep the Catholics from joining with the Protestants in the Volunteering movement that was emerging in Ireland at this time.
This failed because once again Irish Catholics were to make the wrong choice when they made it known that they would be ready to join the Protestant Ascendancy in the Volunteers.
The pro-Catholic resolution which issued from the Dungannon meeting of Volunteers in February 1872 clearly signalled to the Catholics in Ireland a desire for a united front in the struggle to end constitution subordination to England.
The British government, deprived of its catholic card (the Volunteers’ spousal of catholic rights had trumped it) could no longer resist the constitutional demands being voiced from Ireland. As long as they had the Catholics in their grasp by the offers of various relief acts, the British government could have continued to ignore the demands being made from Ireland for legislative independence. Once the Catholics had decided to throw in their lot with the Volunteers, however, the government had to give in to the constitutional demands from Ireland. This resulted in the Constitution of 1782 being granted coupled with the Catholic Relief Act of the same year.
What happened over the next two decades, was that once again Catholics had chosen the wrong side. Had they continued to allow themselves to be courted by the British government in its attempts to keep Irish Protestant demands for legislative independence down, it is quite possible that the rebellion of 1798 might never had happened and full Catholic Emancipation might have been granted some 50 years earlier that it actually was when Daniel O’Connell achieved this in the 19th century.
As it happened the tentative unity between the various religious interests in Ireland, which had made irresistible the demand for an end to legislative subordination did not last long.
The ‘patriots’ soon fell out among themselves over the need to copper fasten their victory by obtaining further British denials of constitutional supremacy. The ending of the American war also ushered in a period where Volunteering lost most of its main justification.
Additionally, no sooner had the constitution of 1782 been granted but the parliament in Ireland began to divide mainly over the issues of making the parliament more representative of the people.
There was a parliamentary reform movement between 1783 and 1785 but it did not get very far, mainly for two reasons.
Those ascendancy gentry who had supported the move for a change in the constitutional arrangements between Ireland and England, did not want to see their positions within parliament and landed society diminished by making the parliament more representative of the many other economic and religious interest groups in Ireland.
Additionally the British government viewed with alarm the prospects of a reformed Irish parliament as they looked upon it as a threat to the connection between Britain and Ireland.
This coupled with the collapse of the parliamentary reform movement in England seriously damaged the campaign in Ireland for parliamentary reform. What killed it was what later became known as that was that from an early date, no matter that the parliament in Ireland had courted the Catholics to get the constitution act passed, it was never their intention to reform parliament to the extent that Catholics would be included in parliament.
Understandably Catholics soon became disillusioned with their recent allies and began once again to look to the British government for concessions. One of the more prominent of the protestant reformers (William Drennan) stated that ‘the Roman Catholic question was our ruin’. However, he also said that for reform to succeed in Ireland it was necessary to obtain the full participation of the catholic body. In this conclusion lay the origins of the United Irishmen.
For the rest of the 1780s the Catholic question as a political issued seemed to be pushed into the background. A form of Catholic resurgence did continue, however, especially in relation to the appointment of bishops and of the British government’s attempts to exercise some control over it (The Catholic church in Ireland was one of the few in Europe that was beyond government control)
A series of anti catholic pamphlets came out (such as The present state of the Church of Ireland, 1787) indicating that Irish Catholics could never be loyal to their protestant king and that they would always be a threat to the Protestant Ascendancy. There was also a sign of catholic confidence when instead of remaining quite, which they had done for much of the century, Bishop James Butler of Cashel published his Justification of the tenets of the Roman Catholic religion.
But if one Penal Era was drawing to a close, another was just beginning, for the revolution that broke out in France in 1789 ushered in another period of turmoil in Ireland.
Initially the coming of the revolution in France and all the slogans and warlike noises that emanated from it had seemed to offer to the Catholics the opportunity of obtaining another instalment towards emancipation but a combination of factors, not least of which was the growing sectarianism in the countryside by the various secret societies coupled with the opposition of the Irish parliament soon saw to it that concessions were soon to come to an end.
Before they did however, in 1792 a relief act was passed which dealt mainly with admitting Catholics to the legal profession. In 1793 the final relief act of the 18th century was passed which restored to Catholics the 40 shilling. county franchise were those who held freeholds of more than 40s per year value could take part in elections. Additionally, they were, under certain conditions, allowed once again to bear arms.
The concessions to Catholics in 1792 and 1793 were a product of fear rather than philanthropy.
Throughout Europe the Catholic Church had come down firmly on the side of counter revolution and, in view of the coming struggle with France, the British government, under Pitt, were convinced that it was important to gain the goodwill and loyalty of Irish Catholics as part of what was then there policy ‘to connect all lovers of order and good government in a union of resistors to all the abettors of anarchy and misrule’.
What this meant in practice was that the threatened alliance between the Catholics and Presbyterians in Ireland in pursuit of parliamentary reform and catholic emancipation had to be nipped in the bud.
From 1795 Ireland was gradually engulfed in a murderous sectarian war that reached its highpoint in the summer of 1798. Repression rather than concession became the order of the day and for the Catholics of Ireland a new era of Penal Laws was introduced with the Insurrection Act of 1796
Why did the cycle of concessions to Catholics come to an end in 1793?
It seems certain that Pitt called a halt because he was aware that the King (George III) was growing restless with this policy. Perhaps the spiralling sectarian violence in Ireland made Pitt think again what he was unleashing by his concessions to Catholics. He also came to the conclusion that as he could not control the Irish parliament that the best way to proceed was to find a way to get rid of it and this could only be achieved by a union.
Only a Union offered a way out of the impasse. For this reason there could be no question of Catholics being permitted to sit in parliament, for the British Prime Minister (Pitt) was convinced that that action would render a union unobtainable.
Throughout the 18th century the ‘Catholic Card’ had been used by various British governments with varying degrees of effectiveness to remind Irish protestants of their vulnerability in the face of catholic numbers. Protestants had left themselves open to such tactics by developing a nationalism which appeared to be essentially anti-English, and by maintaining discriminatory laws against Presbyterians which had the effect of dividing Protestantism.