MR. LECKY'S LAST VOLUMES.*
[SECOND NOTICE.]
The larger portion of Mr. Lecky's sixth volume is devoted to tracing the course of events in Ireland, from the establishment of the legislative independence of the Irish Parliament by the repeal of the Declaratory Act of George I.—the Act under which the legislative and judicial supremacy of England had been asserted—down to the beginnings of that revolutionary disaffection which ended in the Great Rebellion of 1798, and the Act of Union which the Rebellion made an imperative necessity. This period, covering the years from 1789 to 1793, has been described by Mr. Lecky himself as "a period not of salient or dramatic interest." The times when great forces are at work in the world, and when the history of a nation is being made not by the slow accretions of years, bat daily, almost hourly, in the deeds of great men and in the shock of wars and revolutions, naturally give far more scope for the historian than those in which the influences that are to shake the fabric of society are only being matured for action. Ireland during the eleven years treated of in this volume was passing through a period of comparative inaction,—a period, however, in which were developing those anarchical tendencies that in the last years of the century brought Ireland to a condition of social disin- tegration for which there is hardly a parallel, except in France during the Terror. It is in this period that the Volunteers degenerated into the mere armed rabble to which the National Guard is the only possible analogy. It is the period in which both the Orange Lodges and the United Irishmen have their origin. In a word, it is the period in which the troubles that perplex us to this day in Ireland first had their birth. But though this is the case, to disentangle the threads in the skein of events is more than ordinarily difficult. Though the material is by no means scanty—indeed, it is over-plentiful—it is extremely hard to make a record of the time living, or even intelligible, to the ordinary reader. Mr. Lecky has contrived, however, with wonderful skill, to make his readers realise the impotent agitations and vacant restlessness which followed the triumph of 1782, and preceded the catastrophe of '98.
Perhaps the most striking portion of the Irish chapters in this volume is that in which Mr. Lecky brings out in strong relief the Conservative, anti-democratic, anti-Jacobin character • A History of Ertylmul in. the Eighteenth Cad ury. By William Edward Hart- ?Ole Leery. Volumes V.-VI. Leaden, Longmans, Green, and Go. 1887.
of Grattan's public acts and opinions. It was Grattan who so imaginatively described the French Revolution as the " Gallic
plant whose fruit is death, though it is not the tree of know- ledge ;" and by whom "the levelling theory of government"
was looked on with the most unqualified hatred and disgust. The following is Mr. Lecky's eloquent summary of Grattan's position in regard to the political Constitution which he regarded as suitable to Ireland
"He always believed that a country with social and religious divisions, and antecedents of property such as exist in Ireland, is totally unfit for democracy, and be clearly saw that to govern Ireland on democratic principles would load to political ruin. Although he strenuously maintained that religious belief should not form the line of political division or exclusion, he was in one sense a strong advocate for Protestant ascendency. At every period of his life he contended that Ireland could only be well governed when its political system was so organised that the direction and control of the country was in the hands of Irish property and Irish genet). We have already seen how he denounced the profligate manner in which peerages were bestowed, on the ground that it was destroying the moral authority of an influence which was exceedingly necessary in Ireland. In one of his speeches, he pre- dicted that the attempts to pervert and disgrace tho peerage were certain to lead men to desire its extinction, and declared that a Minister who pursued such a course was a pioneer to the leveller, for he was demolishing the moral influences that support authority, rank, and subordination. In another, he asserted that 'no country was ever tem- perately or securely conducted without an Upper Chamber.' In a third, he declared that, bad as was the existing state of Irish representation, he would prefer it to the system of personal and individual repre- sentation advocated by the United Irishmen, which would destroy the influence of landed property,' and thus give up the 'vital and fundamental articles of the British Constitution ;' and he proceeded to predict with a terrible distinctness what an Irish Parliament would be if it were disconnected from the property of the country. This plan of personal representation,' he said, ' from a revolution of power, would speedily lead to a revolution of property, and become a plan of plunder, as well as a scene of confusion. For if you transfer the power of the State to those who have nothing in the country, they
will afterwards transfer the property Of such a represents. tins, the first ordinance would be robbery, accompanied with the circumstance incidental to robbery, murder.'"
No one, after reading this, can well dispute that Grattan knew the nature of his fellow-countrymen. The picture he draws will certainly fit without much alteration the Parliament which the present representatives of Ireland would form, were they col- lected together on College Green.
The means by which the beginnings of the agitation for the reform of Parliament and Catholic Emancipation were conducted are skilfully traced by Mr. Lecky. Wolfe Tone's earliest appear- ance in the world of politics was in the publication of the pam- phlet which started the Reform agitation, and advocated, in order to obtain it, a close alliance between Catholics and Protestants. Wolfe Tone stands out in Irish history as the archetype of the modern Nationalist. Be is the true Fenian. It was he who first formulated the doctrine that is announced so passionately and so savagely by the Nationalists of our own day,—the doctrine that "the prevailing and unchangeable passion between Ireland and.England is the passion of hate." The phrase is Mr. Sexton's, not ours. To use Wolfe Tone's own words, the hatred of Eng- land had sunk so deep into his heart that "it was rather an instinct than a principle." It was be, too, who first put Mr. Parnell's resolution "to destroy the last link that keeps Ireland bound to England" into definite shape, and in his autobiography he has laid down as one of his first objects the breaking of the connection with England. A statement of his political aims quoted by Mr. Lecky in a footnote might stand for the real platform of the Nationalists of to-day. Mr. Patrick Ford, Mr. Egan, and Mr. Sheridan would certainly accept the following without demur, even if Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. Sexton should for the momept think it more discreet to repudiate it " To subvert," says Wolfe Tone, "the tyranny of our execrable Government, to break the connection with England (the never- failing source of all our political evils), and to assert the inde- pendence of my country,—these were my objects." It is, then, not to be wondered at that among all ardent Nationalists, the name of the founder of the United Irishmen should be regarded with veneration as that of the noblest of Irish heroes.
As soon as the English Government began to see that by Catholic Emancipation they would gain for the English connec- tion the help of a very considerable body of native gentry and of the middle class, they began to press upon the Irish Executive the wisdom of a gradual emancipation of the Catholics from the degrading disabilities, social and political, under which they laboured. The wisdom of such a course seems early to have taken hold of Pitt. Out of this notion wan developed that of the Union. When Pitt found that the official Irish Protestants
were too selfish and too shortsighted to yield up their privileges, it became obvious to him that the best means of preserving Ireland from civil strife, and of maintaining the connection with England, was a union of the two Kingdoms. Mr. Lecky has discovered the first occasion on which Pitt broached the notion of union as a possible solution of the Irish Question. In a despatch to Westmoreland, dated November 18th, 1792, he says :—" The idea of the present fermentation gradually bringing both parties to think of an union with this country has long been in my mind. I hardly lime flatter myself with the hope of its taking place; but I believe it, though itself not easy to be accomplished, to be the only solution for other and greater difficulties." He goes on to point out how, under each circumstances, the giving of votes to the Catholics would not be dangerous, and how the Protestant interest would be at the same time secured, " because the decided majority of the supreme Legislature would necessarily be Protestant, and the great ground of argu- ment on the part of the Catholics would be done away; as com- pared with the rest of the Empire, they would become a minority." Could Pitt have carried the Union when the idea first occurred to him, the history of Ireland might have been very different. Catholic Emancipation would have been passed thirty years earlier, and the horrors of that Rebellion which tiaa left so many traces on Irish history, might never have taken place.
It is impossible to do anything like justice to the many and -carious facts connected specially with the Irish Parliamentary system that throng Mr. Lecky's pages. For instance, his account of the monstrous corruption that disgraced Grattan's so-called ' independent" Parliament, as it had disgraced its predecessors —out of a total national revenue of 21,600,000, one-eighth of the sum was paid in various ways to the Members of Par- liament—though full of interest, must be left uncommented on. Nor can we find space to notice the picturesque features of the period covered by Mr. Lecky's Irish chapters, though the famous Bishop who, as Earl of Bristol, held the See of Derry, and spent its vast revenues with more than princely splendour, and whose overweening love of popularity and power made him take a share in the later developments of the Volunteer move- ment very inconsistent with the position of a loyal subject, forms a curious and interesting study. The disgraceful close of fio strange a life renders this extraordinary man's career singularly striking and dramatic in effect. Very picturesque is the account -of how the Bishop entered Dublin in 1783 in Royal state, "dressed entirely in purple, with diamond knee and shoe buckles, and with long gold tassels hanging from his white gloves, sitting in an open carriage drawn by six noble horses, caparisoned with purple ribands." It sounds more like the fifteenth than the eighteenth -century, to hear of a Bishop assuming such state and magnificence.
We cannot, we regret to say, find space for any account of the very interesting chapters in which Mr. Lecky describes with the utmost minuteness and faithfulness of detail the diplomatic situation out of which arose the war with France. Much of the matter is entirely new, and the whole history of these transac- tions as told by Mr. Lecky, is presented in a perfectly different light from that to which we are accustomed. We believe that Mr. Lecky's account is the true one, and that Pitt's action was throughout moderate and wise; that his determination was, if possible, to remain neutral in the struggle, and specially to abstain from all interference with the internal affairs of France; and that the war of 1793 was, in fact, forced upon him by the French. With this slight reference to his chapters on the beginnings of the great war, we mast leave our notice of Mr. Lecky's valuable and fascinating volumes.
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