Slike strani
PDF
ePub

CHAP. VII.

New Registration of Freeholders in Ireland-Mr. O'Connell's Address to the Electors of Clare The Catholic Rent voted to support him -He is elected without Opposition-Alarming State of IrelandThe Magistrates of Tipperary request the Renewal of the Insurrection Act-Disturbances among the Manufacturers in EnglandSpitalfields, Macclesfield, Coventry, Barnsley Court Martial arising out of the Battle of Navarino.

[ocr errors]

HE Act, which disfranchised only 93 were registered. It was

Tthe forty shilling freeholders of estimated that not more than one

Ireland, provided that a new enrolment of the freeholders who still retained a qualification, should take place as soon as possible after the commencement of the Act. This important business was proceeded in with all the despatch which the forms of the statute allowed, and the result was a very serious change in the lists of the electors. The notices given of an intention to register were not so numerous as might have been anticipated from the hosts of small freeholders who used to be marched up to the poll. Even of those who gave notice, a large proportion carried the application no farther, conscious that their claims would not bear the strict scrutiny to which they were now to be subjected; and of those who came forward to the scrutiny, another large proportion were, in every county, found to be wanting. In many instances the people displayed no disposition to register; and their landlords had difficulty in bringing them into court. In Cavan 650 notices of enrolment had been given from five baronies; but only 137 claimants presented themselves; and, of these,

[ocr errors]

third even of those who served notices would succeed in being enrolled. The exclusion of the lower freeholders promised to alter greatly the relation in which the remain-, ing electors would stand to those who had hitherto commanded the representation. The strength of the landlords had hitherto lain in the "forties," the lowest class of freeholders now admitted were not altogether so dependent; and a still more useful consequence seemed likely to be, that, as the shoals of the forty-shilling men were now removed, even the tenpound electors would find it difficult to beat out of the field those who were rated still higher. The mass of unthinking, obedient matter, on which the will of the landlords could operate at pleasure, was greatly diminished; what remained was of a somewhat better quality in itself, and was brought more nearly to a level with that which might be supposed to have a will of its own. Neither did the new arrangement appear to threaten any injury to the Protestants, in so far as the number of voters was concerned; for, in general, the poorest class of free

[ocr errors]

holdhers had contained a much greater proportion of Catholics than of Protestants, and the former, therefore, were, in comparison, the greater losers.

While the registration was going on, Mr. O'Connell was taking measures to secure his re-election for the county of Clare, to which the vote of the House of Commons had sent him back. So soon as that vote was passed, he addressed a long letter to the electors, in which he described both Parliament and the ministers by terms very different from those which, when he pleaded his cause in the House of Commons, had gained him credit as a temperate and moderate-minded person. He spoke of himself and his constituents as the conquerors of the government; he spoke of the government as faithless and insulting. "The House of Commons," said he, "have deprived me of the right conferred on me by the people of Clare. They have, in my opinion, unjustly and illegally deprived me of that right; but from their decision there is no appeal, save to the people. I appeal to you. In my person the county of Clare has been insulted. The brand of degradation has been raised to mark me, because the people of Clare fairly selected me. Will the people of Clare endure this insult, now that they can firmly, but constitutionally, efface it for ever? Electors of the county of Clare, to you is due the glory of converting Peel and conquering Wellington. The last election for Clare is admitted to have been the immediate and irresistible cause of producing the Catholic Relief Bill.' You have achieved the religious liberty of Ireland. Another such victory in Clare, and we shall attain the

[ocr errors]

political freedom of our beloved country." That victory, he told them was still necessary to prevent Catholic rights and liberties from being "sapped and undermined by the insidious policy of those men who, FALSE TO THEIR OWN PARTY, CAN NEVER BE TRUE ΤΟ US and who have yielded, not to reason, but to necessity, in granting us freedom of conscience." "A sober, a moral, and a religious people cannot continue slaves; they become too powerful for their oppressors: their moral strength exceeds their physical powers; and their progress towards prosperity is in vain opposed by the Peels and the Wellingtons of society. These poor strugglers for ancient abuses yield to a necessity which violates no law, and commits no crime; and having once already succeeded by these means, our next success is equally certain, if we adopt the same virtuous and irresistible means." Such was the language in which this representative of the feelings and interests of Ireland already spoke of the granters of emancipation; this was the first sample of the gratitude and affection, which, in the Catholic body, were to take the place of hostility and insult! The Relief bill itself did not escape his censure, and the prohibition contained in it against the growth of the monastic orders, he frankly declared, would not be obeyed. "I trust I shall be the instrument of erasing from the Statute-book that paltry imitation of the worst and still-existing portion of French Jacobinism-a miserable imitation, which pretends to do that which nature and religion forbid to be done-to extinguish monastic orders in Ireland. While it is law, its penalties

will be submitted to, but let me add, as a matter of fact, that its mandate will most assuredly not be obeyed. It was formerly death in Ireland to be a friar, and the Irish earth is still scarcely dry from the blood of martyred friars; the friars multiplied in the face of death. Oh for the sagacity of Peel, and the awful wisdom of Wellington, that meditate to suppress monastic orders in Ireland by a pecuniary penalty, and the dread of a foreign mission, under the name of banishment."-The grounds on which he claimed the voice of the county, now that the stalking horse of religious inequality was removed, were simply, that whatever the county wished, or ought to wish, he would take care should be done, and that no other man could do it. He would accomplish the repeal of the disfranchisement act, which was "a direct violation of the Union;" of the Sub-letting act, which " was calculated to make the poor more wretched, and render the destitute more miserable;" and of the Vestry-bill, which "enabled a few Protestants to tax at their fancy the property of Catholics." He would assail the system of "Grand Jury jobbing, and Grand Jury assessment:" He would procure an equitable distribution of church property between the poor on the one hand, and the really laborious portion of the Protestant clergy on the other: He would struggle hard to cleanse the Augean stables of the law, "for which Herculean task," said he, "my professional habits give me peculiar facilities:" He would procure for every Catholic rector of a parish, a parochial house, and an adequate glebe: He would make manifest the monstrous in

justice that had been done to the Jesuits, and the monastic orders: He would labour for the improvement of their river, and the construction of a harbour; He would wage war on the East India Charter: He would strain every nerve in the cause of parliamentary reform: He would provide for Ireland a system of Poor-laws containing every thing that was good, and not a particle of any thing that could be detrimental, no not even to the pockets of those who were to pay. Of these, and many other matters, his language was, if you wish to see them done, "send me to parliament. If the gentry of Clare are desirous to have as their representative a man who is able and most desirous to protect in Parliament their properties and permanent interests, let them do me the honour to elect me. But let them not lay the flattering unction to their souls, that they can, without an independent man of business as their representative, postpone the introduction of the English system of poor-laws."

A

So soon as he took the field, what was termed an 66 Aggregate Meeting" of the Catholics took place, to consider what steps should be adopted to forward his re-election. This was nothing else than a meeting of the Catholic Association. It was held in the old Association rooms; it was held for old Association purposes. large sum of the Catholic rent still remained on hand; this meeting was held, and was followed by others, to consider how that fund should be disposed of-and only the Catholic Association could dispose of that fund. The very first thing done by the meeting was to vote 5000l. of the rent, as an aid to Mr. O'Connell in standing for the

county of Clare. This was the very thing which they had done in 1828. The one was as much an act of the Catholic Association as the other had been-and was in the very face of that law suppressing it, with which the Relief bill had been so pompously introduced. The vote was strongly opposed by some members, on the ground that such a mode of appropriating the money was not among the objects for which it had been contributed; and Mr. Eneas M'Donnell gave the treasurers warning, that, if they applied any part of these monies towards such a purpose, it would be at their own peril. Mr. M'Donnell probably acted from resentment; but the very cause of his resentment was, the actings of this revived Catholic Association. He had put in a claim to be remunerated from the fund for what he had done and suffered in the Catholic cause. That claim was rejected; but it was rejected only after a debate of three days, regularly adjourned from day to day; and these meetings took place under the very eye of the government without interruption.

The election did not excite much interest, for Mr. O'Connell was not opposed. It was preceded and accompanied, however, by the usual quantity of "triumphant entries" as they were called; that is, assemblages of large crowds of people, to whom were addressed the usual quantity of bad speeches, in which inflammatory abuse was mixed up with low buffoonery and sheer blackguardism. In one of these orations, delivered on his entry into Ennis, he said, "The fortyshilling elective franchise has been taken from you, and the 101. substituted in its stead. You will give me an opportunity of having

re

that franchise-that right stored. I promised you religious freedom, and I kept my word. The Catholics are now free, and the Brunswickers are no longer their masters--and a paltry set they were to be our masters. They could turn up the white of their eyes to heaven, but at the same time they put their hands very slily into your pockets. They would discount God Almighty for the ready money. The Brunswick Clubs of Dublin have sent down one, a miniature in flesh, poor Bumbo and his land-calf brother, to disfranchise the brave freeholders, and crooked-eye Fitzgerald swore to it; but I call on the gentry of Clare to separate themselves from the disgraceful Dublin bloodhounds, and join what is intended for the good of the people. The question is no longer a question between Protestant and Catholic-that is at an end-it is now who is a good or a bad man. If you thus decide, which will you choose, Bumbo or me? I hope you will rub off the foul stain of any connection with those bloodhounds, and ratify the former election. What good did any member ever before in Parlia ment do for the county of Clare, except to get places for their nephews and cousins, &c.? What did I do? I procured for you emancipation. Does the Sub-letting Act oppress? I shall not be six months in Parliament until all your oppression shall be done away with."

This was language fitted to excite, but not to mitigate angry passions; used too, not in the heat of a contested election, but when he was allowed to walk the course undisturbed. He did not conceal his ulterior views. Whenever he could find an opportunity, he made.

a speech; and whenever he made a speech, he announced his great object now to be, a repeal of the Union with England, and the means by which he was to seek it, that same organization of the people to which his majesty's government had lately told the empire, it was impossible for them to say no. "We have now," said he, at Youghall, "a brighter era opened to us, and I trust that all classes of my countrymen will join together, and, by forming one general firm phalanx, achieve what is still wanting to make Ireland what it ought to be. Ireland had her 1782-she shall have another 1782. Let no man tell me it is useless to look for a repeal of the odious Union-that blot upon our national character. I revere the Union between England and Scotland; but the Union which converted Ireland into a province, which deprived Ireland of her Parliament-it is for the repeal of that measure we must now use all the constitutional means in our power. That Union which engenders absenteeism, and the thousand other evils which naturally flow in its train. We are bound to England by the golden link of the crown, and far be it from me to weaken that connection by my present observations; I want no disseveration; but I want, and must have, a repeal of that cursed measure, which deprived Ireland of her senate, and thereby made her a dependant upon British aristocracy, and British intrigue, and British interests. I may perhaps be told that to attempt a repeal of the Union would be chimerical. I pity the man who requires an argument in support of the position that Ireland wants her parliament; and that individual, who pronounces the attainment of

such a consummation to be Utopian, is reminded of the Catholic Question. Look at the Catholic cause; do I not remember when it was difficult to procure a meeting of five Catholics to look for a restoration of our then withheld rights! I recollect when we, agitators, were almost as much execrated by our fellow slaves as we were by our oppressors. For the attainment of the repeal of the Union I shall have the co-operation of all classes and grades in society; the Orangeman of the north, the Methodist of the south, and the quiet, unpresuming Quaker, who may think his gains shall be thereby augmented—all shall be joined in one common cause-1 -the restoration of Ireland's Parliament." "I am now on my way to Dublin; nor shall I be there a fortnight, when a society, having for its title "Seventeen Hundred and Eightytwo," shall be formed. I dare say I shall have but a few persons enrolled in it at the first; but like the mighty oak, which spreads and overshadows the desert, resisting for centuries the most furious blasts of the elements, so shall "Seventeen Hundred and Eightytwo" extend its influence throughout Ireland, nor cease till her Parliament be restored; her sons be of one creed; all joined in the common cause of seeing old Ireland great and glorious amongst the nations of Europe."—In another and earlier oration, delivered at Carrick-on-Suire, he had said— "what was to be done for Ireland. The contentions of religion were over-freedom was obtained-they never desired more-they never were base enough to be contented with less-the people shall no longer be misrepresented-what was done in one county, another

« PrejšnjaNaprej »