DES KEENAN'S BOOKS ON IRISH HISTORY online version |
The Grail LINKS TO INDIVIDUAL CHAPTERS. CLICK The Grail TO RETURN TO BOOK LIST; CLICK Home Page TO RETURN TO HOME PAGE The Sixth Phase 1823 to 1829[The Grail of Catholic
EmancipationCopyright
© 2002 by Desmond Keenan Click on links below to go the various sections; click on top to return to top of page ***************************************************************************** (April 1823
to June 1825) .......................................
Aftermath of the
‘Algerine Act’ (June to
December 1825) .......................................
The Campaigns of
1826 and 1827 (January
1826 to March 1827) ............................... (March to
December 1827) .................................... (January to
December 1828) ..................................
The Passing of the
Emancipation Act (1829) (January to
March 1829) ......................................... ***************************************************************************** This
phase lasted from the founding of the Catholic Association in March 1823 until
the formation of a strong Tory government under the Duke of Wellington in
April1829, influential enough to persuade the House of Lords and the reluctant
king to pass the Emancipation Act. Unlike the period from 1793 until 1815,
external factors had little influence on the campaign. The great disturbing
factor, the sudden succession of four prime ministers came in the final two
years. The famous Catholic Association was
short-lived, lasting but two years. Those involved in the agitation kept
together and maintained their unity after its suppression. Those who favoured
emancipation, seeing that many Catholics strongly objected to a veto suggested
that instead the Government should be given two other securities, the payment
of the clergy and the raising the qualification for voting in parliamentary
elections. Agitation continued with
ever-greater intensity, and various tactics were invented to circumvent the
suppression of the Catholic Association. Agitation against Emancipation also
developed strongly. The Catholic Association (April 1823 to June 1825)
This association had a comparatively
short life, but the spirit that inspired the movement could not be suppressed,
and those involved carried on the campaign through various expedients. Early in 1823 a meeting was held in Glencullen in Co. Wicklow at the house of a gentleman named
O’Mara who was a friend of both O’Connell and Sheil to explore if there were
grounds on which they could co-operate. This did not mean that they had to like
or trust each other, but to see if there was any formula of words that could
bridge the now quite narrow gap between the vetoists
and anti-vetoists. However desirable to some of an Emancipation
Act entirely without securities, it seemed obvious to most people that a Bill
without some nod in the direction of royal control would never be adopted by
their parliamentary representatives, and would never pass the Commons, let
alone the Lords. On the other hand, O’Connell had come to recognise that the
securities were so watered down as to be no more than a recognition of existing
practice. It was totally pointless striving for an Act without official
securities when the first thing the Pope would do in practice regarding an
appointment was to consult the British Government. The main problem for
O’Connell was to bring his followers around to this position. The
re-establishment of the Catholic Board does not seem to have been an issue.
What was necessary was co-operation before and during Aggregate Meetings. But
under the restless O’Connell it became more than that. [April 1823] According to Purcell O’Gorman the first meeting of the
Catholic Association was held on the The first real meeting (what the Post called a preliminary meeting) of
the Catholic Association took place on 25 April 1823 with Lord Killeen, Fingall’s eldest son in the chair. Fingall retired into
private life, and henceforth his son took his place. (There is a deed in the
Fingall Papers dated 24 Jan 1822 by which the earl, in return for an annuity,
handed over his estate to his son who undertook to pay his father’s debts.)
Both sides were represented. It was proposed to hold an Aggregate Meeting, and
O’Connell proposed reviving the Catholic Board on the grounds that the
Orangemen were organised. (The Orange Order was still in existence, but largely
inactive, and those who were loosely called Orangemen in Dublin, despite
suspicions, do not seem to have taken any steps to co-ordinate their
activities. Joseph Hume, the Whig leader, was particularly suspicious of them
and strongly suspected the Orange magistrates of protecting members of the
Order.) The date for the Aggregate Meeting was fixed for the 10 May. The
gentlemen met again on 30 April under Sir Edward Bellew
to prepare the resolutions for the Aggregate Meeting. O’Connell said, ‘He
thought it the duty of the Aggregate Meeting to pass, on behalf of Mr Plunket, a resolution declaratory of gratitude and
confidence, and couched in as ardent an unqualified terms as the language could
afford (loud applause). He looked upon Mr Plunket as
a perfect martyr to his public duty. He was now actually standing the brunt of
a persecution more audacious, persevering, and malignant than any other being,
even in this country of persecution, had ever before to encounter’ (DEP 3 May 1823). Stripped
of its hyperbolic rhetoric, the speech meant that O’Connell was prepared to
back Plunket’s Bill with its innocuous securities.
Presumably this was the substance of the agreement with Sheil. O’Connell stuck
to his bargain. The reference to the persecution of Plunket
apparently is to an attempt by the Ascendancy faction to get Plunket dismissed. Resolutions to address the king and to
support Plunket were agreed. Not all were anxious to
see the Association or Board revived, but O’Connell pressed hard for it. [May
1823] The Aggregate Meeting was held on Saturday 10 May 1823 in Townsend
Street chapel, with Lord Killeen in the chair. It was resolved to address the
king, and motions of confidence in Plunket and Donoughmore were passed. It was proposed by Nicholas Mahon
and Sheil to form an Association, and it was agreed at O’Connell’s insistence
to meet to form such the following Monday 12 May. Aggregate Meetings still
continued as they always had been, public meetings open to all who chose to
attend, Catholic or Protestant, whether belonging to the Association or not.
From their nature large public meetings are not useful for discussing matters
in detail and so were normally called to assent to a resolution or petition
already agreed in private. Those proposing the resolution could therefore claim
wider public support. On the following day, Sunday 11 May
1823, Archbishop Troy died at his home in Rutland Square, Dublin, aged 84. He
had been a bishop for 47 years and archbishop for 39 Years. He was born in
1739, and became archbishop of Dublin in 1784 having previously been bishop of
Ossory since 1776. His co-adjutor, Archbishop Murray,
automatically succeeded as archbishop of Dublin. He had only to apply to Rome
for the pallium of an archbishop. On Monday 12 May 1823 the gentlemen
met in Dempsey’s tavern in Sackville Street with Lord Killeen in the chair. It
was agreed that the name should be the Catholic Association, that it should
consist of such members who annually subscribe one guinea (about fifty pounds
nowadays), and that Nicholas Mahon should act as treasurer. Purcell O’Gorman,
already confirmed as Catholic Secretary, acted as secretary to the Association.
Forty five gentlemen subscribed before leaving the room (SNL 13 May 1823).Reynolds noted that the original membership
consisted of one viscount, the younger son of a baron, two baronets, a knight,
a Carmelite friar, nineteen barristers, twelve attorneys, three editors of
newspapers, one surgeon, eleven merchants, and ten landed gentlemen. That it
was intended that the Association should be an exclusive one of gentlemen is
clear from the annual subscription. The Association had the drawback that it
was largely a Dublin one, and so could not claim to be a representative one. No
doubt many of its members saw this as an advantage, for it was clearly outside
the scope of the Convention Act. On 13 May a committee consisting of
Sir Edward Bellew, O’Connell, Sheil, E. MacDonnell,
N. Mahon, H. O’Connor, Ronan, Hayes, Scanlan, Lonergan and Calanan was
appointed to draw up rules. Goulburn reported to Peel, Although
Lord Fingall, Sir Edward Bellew and others stated
privately their disapprobation of the Association, they did not conceal that
they dared not set themselves against it (Reynolds). Distrust
might be a better word than disapprobation. Another reason for objecting to a
Catholic Association, shared by the Marquis Wellesley, was that if the
Catholics organised themselves into an association the more extreme Protestants
would do the same. And so it proved. Wellesley wished to suppress it but Parliament
would not vote the necessary powers (Brynn). Whether
Emancipation would have come sooner without O’Connell and the Association is a
point that will never be settled. No doubt it would have come eventually, and
without the divisiveness caused by O’Connell’s Association. During the first
year of its existence there was little enthusiasm for it. On more than one
occasion it lacked a quorum. On one famous occasion O’Connell persuaded two
students from Maynooth who were buying books to stand in for a few moments, as
all clergymen were ipso facto
members, to get a resolution passed. As the others feared, O’Connell used it as
a vehicle to pursue objectives other than petitioning Parliament for
Emancipation. One of his first points was to attack the Dublin Grand Jury for
appointing a Catholic chaplain to Newgate gaol not
approved by the Catholic archbishop. O’Connell itched to attack those he
considered ‘Orangemen’ on every possible pretext while the others did not. On
this particular occasion he had to be told by Nicholas Mahon that the Catholic
Association was not yet in existence (DEP
23 May 1823). In May 1823 Lord Nugent with the
support of Peel introduced Bills to give to English Catholics the same rights
as Irish Catholics. Both passed the Commons but were lost in the Lords. Peel
noted that English Catholics could not vote,
could not become magistrates, and were excluded from more offices than
Irish Catholics. The reason for this was that the Irish Catholic Relief Act
(1793) went further than the earlier English Relief Act. But a Bill was
eventually passed to allow anyone to take a post connected with the Revenue
with only the obligation to take the oath of allegiance. Another Bill was also
passed to allow the Duke of Norfolk, now a Catholic, to exercise his functions
as Earl Marshal of England (Ward III). The Unlawful Oaths Act (1823) was passed
against secret societies. It had the effect of forcing the Loyal Orange Order
to drop their oath. Though this Act was directed against secret oath-bound
societies, whether agrarian terrorists or violent trade unions, the effect on
the Orange Order was just to place it on the same legal footing as the Catholic
Association. The Orange Order met on the 4 August 1823 and dropped all oaths
and secrets except the password (SNL
2 Dec 1823). Earlier in the year, in the course of a debate, Peel said he never
had any contact with any Orange lodge, not even to receive an address. This did
not save him from being called ‘Orange Peel’ by O’Connell. [June 1823] The English Catholic
Association was now formed on the same principles as the Irish one on 2 June
1823 (Ward III). The English Association made
Catholic priests ipso facto
members of the Association, and O’Connell quickly copied this on 14 June. Sheil
proposed that they should not have a vote but was over-ruled. Sheil also with
some foresight proposed that the Association be called the National
Association, implying that Protestants should be admitted equally, and that it
was unwise to depict the campaign as one of Catholics against Protestants, but
his suggestion was not adopted. An early proposal that Protestant members
should not have the vote was not adopted either. The aim of the English Association was to
involve the clergy in any action from the very start, and so to prevent
unseemly rows like those between Milner and Butler. Milner failed to get Rome
to condemn Butler, so he decided in his own diocese to treat him ‘as a rebel to
ecclesiastical authority and a public sinner’ (ibid.). In Ireland the effect
was to draw the Catholic clergy into secular politics, and there they remained
for the next hundred years. The bulk of the rural clergy came from those groups
who backed O’Connell most fervently, and these priests were to become his most
devoted and uncritical lieutenants. It was never O’Connell’s intention to
exclude Protestants, but he certainly believed in an Ireland with a certain
Catholic ‘ascendancy’ with the highest offices in the state going automatically
to Catholics. This was a view which most Irish Catholic priests could support.
O’Connell emphatically did not believe in a secular state. (Indeed his views of
the relationship of the Irish State to the Pope were curiously like those of
Henry VIII.) The
earliest meetings of the Catholic Association were devoted to combating the
Orangemen. There can be little doubt that this was what O’Connell had in mind
when he so enthusiastically promoted the New Association. Mr O’Connor of Mountjoy Square said the chief problem was not with Peel,
who was straightforward in his opposition, nor with the judges, but with the
Grand Juries (DEP 13 May 1823). At
one meeting Sheil proposed to return to an old medieval custom in Ireland where
juries were selected de medietate linguae, six
Irish-speakers and six English-speakers, but now with six Catholics and six
Protestants on each jury. Purcell O’Gorman said that every Catholic gentleman
entitled to bear arms should get a sword and defend himself, another
inappropriate piece of medievalism. In explanation he said that every Catholic
gentleman had a right to defend his
family if attacked by Orangemen. But the fat was in the fire. Goulburn was
suspicious of the Association from the start, but now Plunket
the attorney general would have to take notice. The fatal shadow of Wolfe Tone
still lay over the Catholics regardless of the fact that he was a Protestant. Only
Eneas MacDonnell maintained that the main issue was
being lost sight of, the need to petition Parliament for Emancipation, and he
objected to petitions against Orangemen. Sir John Burke said he favoured
continuing to petition, but admitted that O’Connell was against him. He added
that he was glad O’Connell was not present for he feared the lash of that
gentleman’s superior talent (DEP 12
June 1823). Burdett’s intervention seems to have revived O’Connell’s desire not
to seek Emancipation from an unreformed Parliament. Purcell O’Gorman, the
following February, reported that the Association in its first eleven months
had held 34 regular weekly meetings, and 10 meetings of committees. In view of
the number of times it was inquorate, we can suppose
that few members attended regularly. In
June 1823 the Association drew up a petition to be presented by Henry Brougham
protesting against the evils of the ‘Orange’ administration. This, whether or
not it was intended, included Wellesley and Plunket.
In the ensuing debate the Whigs, faced by Peel who had an encyclopaedic
knowledge of Ireland, found themselves long on grievance and rhetoric but short
of actual facts. They requested that in future they should be supplied with the
facts. The Association undertook to find the facts, at least such facts as
favoured their cause. The grievances were still the same as in 1794, that
Catholics were excluded from trade guilds and corporations of towns, from Grand
Juries, and the magistracy to which they were legally entitled to belong. Yet
the Catholics themselves from 1805 onwards had made admission to Parliament
their principal object. O’Connell was preparing petitions on twelve different
subjects when Parliament rose on 22 July 1823. [September 1823]
Pius VII died after being Pope for 24 years. There were only two Popes since
Pius VII became Pope in 1775, and there were only two Popes between 1831 and
1878. But there were two short-lived Popes between 1823 and 1831 Leo XII 1823
to 1829 and Pius VIII 1829-30.Consalvi ceased to be Secretary of State, being
replaced by Cardinal Somaglia. Consalvi
was made Prefect of Propaganda but died a few weeks later. Consalvi’s
aim in life was to adapt the Church to the modern political scene. Cardinal Somaglia was expected to be elected, but the obscure and
reactionary Cardinal della Genga
was elected. The British Government was glad that none of the cardinals being
promoted by the various Catholic powers was elected (SNL 11 Nov 1823). The new Pope was elected to reverse such advances
towards liberalism as his predecessor had allowed. But papal policy regarding
Ireland remained unchanged. Also, as no matter was referred to Rome by any
party during these brief pontificates, there were no repercussions in Ireland A
funeral service for the late Pope was held in the Catholic chapel of Moorfields just outside the old walls of London. There was
a large crowd of foreign ambassadors, eminent Catholic clergy, and Catholic and
Protestant gentlemen. No Catholic church had survived in the traditional square
mile of the city of London, but a chapel had been built in the ‘fields’ just
outside the walls in 1710. The northern fields were called the ‘moor fields’.
The chapel in Lincoln Inn’s Field was built in 1687. That in Warwick Street in
Soho, the ‘Bavarian chapel’ attached to the Bavarian embassy dated from 1730.
Mass was always said in the chapels attached to the Spanish, Portuguese, and
French embassies. In
Dublin, Archbishop Magee was again at the centre of a row, when the sexton on
his orders forbade a Catholic priest, the redoubtable Dr Michael Blake, to say
prayers at a Catholic funeral in a Protestant cemetery. The Catholic
Association involved itself in this affair also. The row proved to have been based on a
misunderstanding. The archbishop, correctly in canon law, had stated that no
clergyman was to conduct any rite in any Church property, unless that rite and
that clergyman was approved by the bishop. This was just part of the general
tightening up of discipline in the Church of Ireland. A local vicar would no
longer be able to invite a passing clergyman of note to preach. The Catholic
priest in question was aware of this and was merely leading the mourners in
private prayer, which was not forbidden. A law was then passed allowing
Catholics to establish their own cemeteries, but many of them for nearly a
hundred years more insisted on using the family plot in the traditional
cemetery. The Catholic Association continued to meet but
was often inquorate. [January 1824] Lord
Lansdowne became leader of the Whig Party. This party which had drifted in a
rather rudderless fashion under ineffective leaders for twenty years after the
death of Fox began to pull itself together. The effect was to be seen some
years later when Lord Liverpool died and Lansdowne found it possible to bring
his group of supporters to back Canning. Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, Lord
Lansdowne, was Irish by parentage and title but lived in England for his entire
life. As
the Catholic Association appeared to be dying O’Connell proposed the collection
of a ‘Catholic Rent’ from every parish in Ireland to generate adequate funds,
and also to give every parish in Ireland a direct interest in the struggle. A
committee was formed to see if this plan could be put into execution. O’Connell
busied himself with drawing up petitions with regard to various topics like
tithes and vestry cesses.
[February
1824] It seems to have been at a mid-week meeting of the Association in
mid-February when the Association was meeting in a room over Coyne’s bookshop
that O’Connell made up the quorum by persuading two students looking at books
in the bookshop to make it up. His scheme for the Rent was now complete. If one
million Catholics paid a farthing a week or a penny a month or a shilling a
year, the annual sum raised would be £50,000. (Four farthings equal one penny;
twelve pennies equal one shilling. The farthing was the smallest coin, but by
adopting it even sums could be paid for the month and the year.) This
calculation was to mesmerise the Catholic Ultras for many years, and O’Connell
maintained the collection of the Rent until the day he died. In practice the
problem was how to sustain public interest. In times of great excitement the
Rent soared, but then fell rapidly away. To arouse public interest O’Connell
set out the following objectives to be achieved by means of the Rent. Petitions
could be presented from every parish on all sorts of subjects. A London agent
could be maintained to transact their business with Parliament. The liberal
press could be supported by buying advertising space in liberal papers in
Dublin and London. Money could be set aside to pay the fees for Catholics being
tried by Orange magistrates. Then £5,000 could be set aside for Catholic education, £5,000 to educate
priests to go to America, and £5,000 for building schools and chapels. (To get
the modern equivalent multiply the sums by about forty.) He said if the nabob
of Arcot could maintain members in Parliament so too
could the Catholics. He was not saying that seats could be bought, but if they
had money they could be represented (SNL
5 Feb 1824).(O’Connell was the first president of a Catholic Orphan Society
formed by Dr Michael Blake which was supported largely by penny-a-week
subscriptions, Ronan) Organisationally,
by basing the collection on the Catholic parishes it would be comparatively
easy to get from the various bishops the names of the parish priests in their
respective dioceses, and the post towns from which they collected their mail (SNL 10 May 1824). At this period
everyone collected and paid for their letters in the post offices in the post
towns. The Catholic priests would also recommend honest and trustworthy men to
act as local collectors in their parishes. Parliament
opened on 3 February 1824. On 18 February, at a meeting of the Catholic
Association, Mr Frederick Conway was asked to take the chair. The level of
attendance had not improved, but there was much activity among those who did
attend. O’Connell defended the use of abusive language like ‘haughty and
erratic neighbours’ when referring to the English. ‘Was
it not notorious that the Catholic cause never presented so dreary and
unpromising an aspect – an appearance so destitute of hope? This should be met
by some corresponding, some powerful excitement; something which would show
that every vein through which circulates the lifeblood of Irishmen throbs with
anxiety for the removal of Catholic disabilities (hear, hear) and the
attainment of Emancipation’ (SNL 19
Feb 1824). An Aggregate Meeting was held in Townsend
Street chapel on 27 February 1824 with Sir Thomas Esmonde
in the chair. In a speech, one of those present, Stephen Coppinger
referred to Napoleon ‘that bravest and greatest of the sons of men’. ‘Loud and
deafening shouts of applause which lasted a considerable time followed the
mention of this name’. As members of the police as well as reporters from the
press attended these meetings this outburst would have been speedily reported
to the Government. This was apparently before O’Connell and Sheil arrived.
O’Connell, in his speech referred pointedly to the part his family played in
the struggle against Napoleon, and how his relative and friend of his youth was
killed at the siege of San Sebastien fighting under
Wellington. Sixteen resolutions were proposed and adopted (SNL 28 Feb, 2 Mar, DEP 28
Feb 1824). [March 1824]
Various county meetings were held in different parts of the country as the
barristers from Dublin attended the assizes. Plunket
as a Member of Parliament refused to recognise the Association and communicated
with O’Connell as with a single gentleman. Only corporations with charters
could petition as bodies (SNL 21
February 1825). It was claimed that the first petition from any body which was
distinct from a group of parliamentary electors came from the Dublin Trades
Union in the time of Earl Grey’s ministry 1830-32 (Speech of Marcus Costello, SNL 17 February 1832). Donoughmore had no objection to receiving petitions from
the Catholic Association. However the words ‘Catholic Association’ were not
mentioned in the petition. Grey and Brougham advised the Catholics to omit from
their petition any reference to the Established Church, or the need to exclude
Orangemen from the magistracy or from juries, for such references would only
injure their cause. Herein lay the difficulty of trying to get seats in
Parliament, and to remedy lesser abuses at the same time. To get biased
Orangemen removed from the bench or from juries, or to attack the iniquity of
tithes and church cesses, one had to be specific in one’s charge as the Whigs
had pointed out. But pointing them out risked alienating those Protestants
whose support in Parliament was essential. There was the other problem with
O’Connell’s approach and that was that if he and others were to rouse the
masses to enthusiasm in support of the cause it was necessary to use high-flown
and abusive rhetoric. Sir Thomas Wyse later commented that it became necessary
to hold separate meetings of Catholics and Protestants (Wyse). Later still, the
nationalists of Young Ireland deplored the division of Ireland into Catholic
and Protestant. But that was the way O’Connell was. Conway noted that the
Orangemen had never been so numerous or so well organised. Whatever O’Connell
did the Orangemen always strove to surpass him. As the Protestants in most
parts of Ireland were a richer and more cohesive group feeling themselves under
attack they always succeeded in rivalling and surpassing O’Connell’s
activities. But all his life O’Connell preferred rabble-rousing and
Orange-bashing to working with the moderate Protestants. His language had been
noticed by the king also, who in November wrote to Peel saying he was
considering acting like his father and not
allowing the ‘open principle’ in the cabinet. In other words, as under
Spencer Perceval, only those who opposed Emancipation would be allowed into the
cabinet (Ward III). According to Luby, after
Emancipation was finally gained, Stephen Coppinger
told O’Connell, half in jest and half in earnest, that notwithstanding
O’Connell’s efforts to the contrary, they had finally got Emancipation. The
Irish Catholic bishops were at this time petitioning for a better way of
educating Irish children other than by giving money to a Protestant Society,
which many Catholics feared was of a proselytising character. Hence the bait in
the scheme for the Catholic Rent to allocate some of it to Catholic schools.
Much activity of the Association at this time was taken up with refuting a remark
of an MP named North that the Catholic clergy neglected education, and that the
education of Catholic schoolchildren was largely left to hedgeschools
where the Life of Feeney the Robber
and Moll Flanders were used as
textbooks. The charge was not without substance, as the Catholic bishops were
aware, but they also knew that without Government help they could not maintain
any schools, let alone Catholic schools in rural areas (Keenan II). Much effort
too was strangely put into opposing Plunket’s Bill
for cemeteries not under the control of the clergy of any Church. Apparently
the point was that if a Catholic parish provided itself with a new cemetery a
Dissenting clergyman could claim the right to officiate in it. But the
Government did not want to have a multitude of cemeteries in each parish, one
for every denomination. [May 1824] Frederick Conway acted
as secretary to various Catholic meetings in the absence of O’Gorman. [June 1824] O’Connell refused to abate the language of
the Address, so Grey, when presenting it said there was much in it he did not
agree with. Plunket too, in presenting the petition
in the Commons expressed reservation (SNL
3 June 1824). It had been decided in Parliament not to move on the petition
that year, and as Grey pointed out, the Catholics would have plenty of time to
remove the more objectionable phrases. Parliament rose early that year on 25
June. About
this time, O’Connell proposed in the Accounts Committee of the Catholic
Association that an ‘efficient secretary’ should be appointed and paid £160 a
year to relieve Purcell O’Gorman of routine business. One member called Kirwin asked at a meeting of the Association why an
efficient secretary was required at £160 a year when a suitable clerk could be
found for half that money. He referred to the old debts and moved that they be
paid, including the considerable sum due to Edward Hay. His motion was not
seconded. Dwyer was however elected by the Association. The fact was that
O’Connell wanted to employ Dwyer a friend of his whom had to be persuaded to
return from Liverpool in England. O’Connell said that the debts arose under the
Catholic Board, so money from the Catholic Association could not be used to pay
them off. To which Kirwin replied that they were
behaving like litigants, not honourable men (DEP 22, 29 June 1824). Conway in the Post considered that the old debts should be paid, and shortly
afterwards resigned from the office of pro-secretary, but declined to give
reasons. [July 1824] The Association, having
met regularly for 10 months adjourned until October. The Rent was beginning to
come in, and it was no longer a sickly child. Several of the aristocratic party
had written to Dr Curtis warning him not to get too involved with O’Connell as
anything he did would be viewed with suspicion by the Government. He supported
O’Connell in this matter but wished to preserve peace with the aristocratic
faction (Curtis to Dr. Plunket 21 May 1824, Cogan).
Later in the year, with regard to a proposed mission of O’Connell, Sheil, and
Woulfe to London, Curtis wrote to Poynter saying that
O’Connell was the only one of the three he was acquainted with and he had no
hesitation in pronouncing him one of the most sincere and most practical
Catholics I ever knew (Ward III). The Finance Committee of the Catholic
Association, often with Frederick Conway in the chair, continued to meet
weekly. [October 1824] Dr Plunkett of Meath, one
of the bishops involved in the veto controversy in 1799 recommended to his
clergy to collect the Rent. The Dublin
Evening Post noted that the Association now had about 1,000 members and an
income of about £1,000 a month. Dr Curtis and Dr Doyle expressed their
approbation. Archbishop Murray and Dr MacMahon the
co-adjutor of Killaloe joined. Lord Gormanston, Lord Netterville, and
the Earl of Kenmare and his brothers either joined or expressed support. The
third series of full meetings of the Catholic Association commenced on 16
October after the summer break, and meetings were by now quite crowded. It was
proposed to have a new petition ready for the first day of the Parliamentary
session. The
Association moved its regular place of meeting to rooms in the Corn Exchange
which were larger. They leased the upper floor of the Exchange from the Corn
Exchange Committee. (The Corn Exchange was built to allow corn merchants to buy
and sell corn for export on the basis of samples. This avoided the need to pay
the toll to bring the goods into Dublin and to bring them out again.) Here it
was protected from attacks by students from Trinity College, for there were
many Catholic coal porters nearby on the quays, who could be summoned if any
attack were made. The Association had first met in rooms in Capel
Street, and then moved to Home’s Hotel where students from Trinity College were
liable to interrupt. On 27 October 1824 the students tried to raid the new
premises but were driven off by the coal porters. (Some Protestants considered
these porters excessively officious and inclined to get rough with any
strangers who approached O’Connell.) [November 1824] The
first meeting in the Corn Exchange was held on 15 November 1824. On 3 November
1824 Wellington wrote to Peel to say that if they could not get rid of the
Catholic Association civil war in Ireland was inevitable (Ward III). [December 1824] A
Parliamentary Agent living in London was appointed. The person chosen was Eneas MacDonnell, whose chief interest now was in opposing
proselytisers. Luby states that he was appointed
because he was not on friendly terms with O’Connell. The great series of
theological debates between the Catholics and the so-called ‘biblicals’, those who belonged to Protestant Bible
Societies spread over Ireland and proved very popular. The bishops at first
gave their consent, but finding that they were generating more heat than light
tried to stop them. This proved easier said than done for the sport was very
popular. Some Catholics then took to attending Protestant religious meetings
and reading out speeches of Sheil and other Catholics. An
Aggregate Meeting was held in Clarendon Street chapel on 2 December 1824 with
Sir Thomas Esmonde in the chair. O’Gorman reported
that the membership was now 3,000. It was resolved to petition Parliament. It
was also decided to send a mission consisting of O’Connell, Sheil, and Woulfe to
England, with Mr Bric as secretary. In the event they
did not go. It was decided to entrust their petition to Sir Francis Burdett.
The attorney general, Plunket, endeavoured to get
O’Connell tried for seditious speech but the Grand Jury did not find a true
bill. His own rhetoric carried O’Connell away when speaking of his own hero
Bolivar. He never in his life advocated the use of arms, but had he ever done
so an armed mob would have instantly rushed to his side. Later his own
supporters in Young Ireland would deplore the way he spoke as if he intended
leading an army but always backed down. [February 1825] Though
the Catholic Association was flourishing, the Government was considering how to
suppress both it, the Orange Order and the Ribbon Societies. Some of the
supporters of the Catholics in Parliament considered that their Bill would have
a better chance of success if the Catholic Association were dissolved.
Parliament opened on 3 February 1825 and in the King’s Speech, reference was
made to dangerous associations in Ireland and left it Parliament to devise ways
of dealing with them. The associations were those ‘which have adopted
proceedings irreconcilable with the spirit of the Constitution, and calculated,
by exciting alarm, and by exasperating animosities to endanger the peace of
society’ (DEP 8 Feb 1825). (These
were certainly things O’Connell excelled at, and are the reason why most of the
associations he founded were suppressed.) The cabinet had of course already
decided what it was going to do, and Goulburn gave notice of a Suppression
Bill. Wellesley sent to the cabinet proposals for a Catholic Relief Bill to
accompany the suppression of the Association but this was rejected by the
Cabinet (SNL 2 March 1829). Plunket also envisioned the Suppression Bill as an adjunct
to the Relief Bill, and in this spirit he supported Goulburn’s
Suppression Bill. The
members of the Catholic Association were well aware of their danger, and Lord
Killeen took the chair on the 9 February before the greatest gathering yet of
the Association. The next meeting took place on 10 February, with Lord Gormanston in chair. It was resolved to send a large
deputation to London. It was decided to call an Aggregate Meeting and it met on
15 February 1825 in Townsend Street chapel with Lord Killeen in the chair.
Killeen advised caution but Jack Lawless, standing on the altar called on the
meeting to return blow for blow. Living as he did in Belfast Lawless prided
himself on knowing the mind of ordinary Protestants, but as later events were
to show he had no more idea of the mentality of most Ulster Protestants than
O’Connell himself who never went to the North. On the same day O’Connell,
Sheil, Lord Killeen, the Hon. Mr Preston (of the Gormanston
family) and other Catholic gentlemen sailed for England. The
problem facing the Government was how to frame a law which respected freedom of
speech and freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom to criticise
the Government which was the pride of
the British Constitution, without allowing Ireland to degenerate into two armed
hostile camps. Robust criticism of the crown and the Government was permitted
and widespread, and mobs could express their opinions by breaking the windows
of unpopular politicians. Wellington was to have his windows broken over
Emancipation. But there was no danger in England that two sides would arm
themselves to fight a civil war. (Whether orators could rouse up the people of
Ireland to take up arms to a sufficient extent to cause a civil war was never
put to the test.) Goulburn
introduced the Unlawful Societies (Irish) Suppression Act (1825) in the Commons
on 10 February which was intended to, among other things, emend the Convention
Act (1793). He claimed that the Catholic Association was virtually a representative
body, and shielded from the law only by the ingenuity of its promoters. It
could not be denied that O’Connell was seeking to represent every Catholic
parish in Ireland, and to collect a ‘voluntary’ tax from them, which could be
used to attempt the redress of grievances, and he did not confine his
activities to petitioning Parliament for redress (SNL 14 February 1825). Plunket supported
the Bill, saying it was not aimed solely at the Catholic Association, and the
cause of Catholic Emancipation would not be harmed by its suppression. He felt
that the system of collecting the rent, though not illegal, was
unconstitutional. In the
Lords on the same day, Lord Liverpool moved for the setting up of a select
committee to enquire into the state of Ireland. A similar committee was set up
in the Commons. Primate Curtis, Archbishop Murray, Dr Doyle, Lord Killeen,
O’Connell, Sheil, and Anthony Blake were among those called to give evidence on
the state of Ireland before each of the Houses. The English Catholic Association
and the leading Whigs made the Irish delegates welcome. Poynter
organised a welcome for the Irish Catholic ecclesiastics summoned to London for
the Enquiry Committees. [March 1825] On 1 March 1825,
Burdett moved for a committee of the whole House to examine the Catholic
claims. He was supported by Canning, Plunket and
Brougham amongst others. The motion was passed by a majority of thirteen. A
committee of Parliament was appointed to draw up the Bill and included those
just mentioned. O’Connell wrote (7 March) that he was permitted to draw up the
rough draft of the Bill, which would contain no securities. The Government
would pay the clergy, and the threshold for the franchise would be raised from
forty shillings to ten pounds. These additions came to be known as the ‘wings’
for they would help the Bill to fly. O’Connell made no objection. In fact
O’Connell believed that the Ten Pound freeholders were likely to be more
independent of their landlords and less likely to vote as directed by them than
the Forty Shilling freeholders. Not everyone shared O’Connell’s belief, and
considered that the proportion of
Protestants with the franchise would rise with respect to the number of
Catholics. Conway of the Post agreed
with raising the franchise but considered £5 sufficient. The
Unlawful Societies (Irish) Suppression Act (1825) always referred to as the ‘Algerine Act’ received the royal assent on 9 March 1825 to
come into force on Saturday 20 March. On the nickname see Keenan III.) It was
to last two years, and then until the end of the next session of Parliament (SNL 12 July 1827). O’Connell’s
letter was read out at the next meeting of the Catholic Association on 9 March,
though it surprised many, produced no particular reaction. At a meeting on
Wednesday 16 March with Major George Bryan of Jenkinstown
in the chair, Sheil who had returned from London, gave an account of events
there. They first went to Burdett who warmly welcomed them, and he recommended Plunket as the proper sponsor of the Bill. The delegates
said they had no discretion in this matter but allowed Burdett to use his own.
They then went to the House of Common where the question was heard whether
counsel should be heard at the bar of the House with regard to the Suppression
Bill. Sheil praised Plunket for his advocacy on this
point. Next they went to meet the Duke of Norfolk and were warmly welcomed, and
any former suspicions they had of the English Catholics evaporated. Next they
had a meeting with their parliamentary representatives on the best manner to
proceed. These latter wished to defer the Relief Bill until after Easter so
that it should not seem to be connected
with the Government’s Suppression Bill, but O’Connell was for immediate
action. Regarding the ‘wings’ Sheil was of the opinion that if they are
absolutely necessary they should be conceded, especially as the other side had
given up the veto. With regard to payment of the clergy, he had told Peel at
the Select Committee, that Emancipation should precede State Provision, that
the Government should have no part in the appointment of the clergy, and that
the money should be paid out of taxes, not as a Government grant. (The point
seems to have been that it would be an ordinary law of the land, not a special
Government favour.) He and others said it was better to leave matters until the
last meeting of the Association that would be on Friday 18 March. At this
point Jack Lawless entered the fray, claiming, despite what O’Connell claimed,
the Bill differed little from Plunket’s previous Bill.
There was still to be a commission to exclude foreigners and to examine the
credentials of those elected bishops. But what really annoyed him was the
sacrifice of the Forty Shilling freeholders. Here Lawless, the democrat,
differed sharply from O’Connell. O’Connell considered them unreliable because
they were often in debt or in arrears with the rent, they could not afford to
register themselves, and were registered by their landlords if and when needed,
and most landlords expected that those to whom they gave tenancies would vote
as directed by them. Lawless on the other hand valued what was at the time a
quite wide franchise. In theory, a tenant with a lease of four acres for three
lives who could swear that he could sublet an acre at two pounds (forty shillings)
an acre and could swear he was a Forty Shilling freeholder. He did not actually
have to sub-let the land or receive any rent, or get an independent valuation,
but only to swear when registering his vote that he was in a position to do so.
In his evidence to the House of Lords O’Connell considered that by raising the
threshold to £10 much perjury would be avoided. Later, Dr Doyle had to issue
stern warnings against perjury directed at those who wished to register as
freeholders. (The respective theories of Lawless and O’Connell were never
tested, for in the 1828 election, it was only at the end of the first day of
voting when O’Connell was ahead did a landslide in his favour occur. Had he
been behind at the end of the first day a landslide for his opponent was highly
likely.) The
person behind the attack on O’Connell was William Cobbett,
a strongly self-opinionated journalist, whose writings were widely read and
admired at the time despite the fact that he was usually out of touch with
economic reality. Cobbett claimed that O’Connell had
been tricked by the Government, and had sold out the Catholics to get
advancement in his profession. According to Cobbett,
O’Connell had arrived in England on 18 February, and saw Cobbett
on 20th, who then warned him that the Government would try to trick
him. (Cobbett refused to recognise that Lord
Liverpool, the Lord Chancellor, and the Home Secretary were opposed to the
Bill, which was a private measure). On 27 February O’Connell had dined at Mr
Brougham’s with the Duke of Leinster on one side of him, and the king’s brother
the Duke of Sussex on the other. On 2 March O’Connell saw Mr Plunket, and on the following day, visited him again along
with Lord Killeen. Following the first visit O’Connell had visited Cobbett and spoke highly of Plunket.
Cobbett said that this alarmed him for he felt that the blandishments were
having their effect. On 5 March Lawless, who had added himself to the
delegation, complained to Cobbett about the ‘wings’. Cobbett supported Lawless. Further proof of the alleged
sell out could be seen in the fact that Sheil was questioned by one of the
Select Committees regarding a patent of precedence in the courts to be given to
O’Connell (Letter of Cobbett to the People of Ireland
19 July 1825 in SNL 27 July 1825). (Plunket later explained that the proposed patent of
precedence would merely allow precedence in the courts over barristers junior
to him who had been promoted because they were Protestants. It was in
recognition of his outstanding legal talents not his political opinions. When
cases were called in the courts, those involving king’s counsel were called
first.) A letter from Lawless on the alleged sell out was printed in Saunders Newsletter on 18 March 1825. O’Connell was caught in the same trap he had
set for others. In the eyes of Cobbett and Lawless
the evidence was damning. He had sold out to a minister for personal gain. But
O’Connell claimed that State Provision would have brought annually £600.000
into Ireland and the Government would have gained nothing from their
expenditure. Also that the Forty Shilling franchise in actual fact was
worthless. Those in the delegation were split on the matter. There was a
question of taking away a valued right of the poorer classes (i.e. the status it
conferred) for the benefit of a few rich Catholics. Lord Killeen disliked the
wings but probably would not have opposed them. Burdett’s
Bill did in fact provide for a veto and exequatur,
but the commissioners were to be Irish Catholic bishops. Milner opposed this,
but all the others regarded the provisions as harmless (Ward III). The
Catholic Association met for the last time on Friday 18 Mar 1825 with Col.
Butler in the chair and Frederick Conway acting as Secretary. A letter from
O’Connell, unaware of his danger, dated 16 March was read out. He said Lawless
was not a delegate and that the delegates had made no contracts with anyone. He
regarded State Provision as a natural consequence of Emancipation. There was no
intention to alter the franchise where it was held, as in England, in fee
simple, a lease forever with no rent. (The was the original meaning
freeholders, but in Ireland over the centuries, it had been watered down to
mean a tenant subject to rent for an indefinite period like three lives, i.e. until
the death of one of three persons named in the lease, regarded as equivalent to
a lease of 31 years. A lease of 31 years, being a definite period of time,
could not confer the ‘freehold’.) It was not retrospective, so existing
freeholders could continue to exercise their vote, and thirdly, the value would
not exceed £10. (In line with what was said above, this would include all those
who could swear that they had an extra five acres they could let at £2 per
acre. This would have included most tenants with above eight or ten acres.) The
way of computing the forty shilling surplus after all charges on the land was
not clarified at the time. Some farmers considered that if, through their own
labour, the land produced two pounds a year, it counted (DEP 30 April 1825). O’Connell later made plain that his own
preference was for universal suffrage, but this was not on offer. The draft of
the Freeholder Bill made it clear, that
the Irish freehold must consist of ‘lives renewable forever’ (SNL 27 April 1825) Some of
those present wished to discuss the questions raised by Lawless, but a majority
preferred not to mar their last meeting with rows. An Address to the People of
Ireland prepared by Conway was adopted and ordered to be printed. Conway said
it was left to him to propose the last Resolution. He had been an active member
of the Association since the beginning. He proposed that the Association should
adjourn sine die, and this was
adopted. The funds of the Association were to be placed in the hands of Lord
Killeen who would ensure all its debts were paid. In practice, the banker
Nicholas Mahon continued with the administration of the money. A vote of
confidence in O’Connell was passed. Thanks were voted all round. The
Association then dispersed. The Orange Order followed suit. O’Connell
was still in London, being examined by the select committees. He was examined
at length, and his sober and informed replies on all aspects of Irish society
gave great satisfaction to all. He was on his best behaviour, and careful not
to give offence. Many of the leading Whigs were anxious to meet him, and he was
anxious to dispel any fears that he was a wild or erratic person. With regard
to State Provision he said he had consulted certain bishops and priests on the
matter and they were satisfied. The person who was examined a greatest length
by the parliamentary committees regarding the teaching and practice of the
Catholic Church in Ireland was Dr. Doyle. Doyle’s replies are to this day an
excellent source of information on the contemporary practice of the Irish
Church, and by extension of the American Catholic Church where Irish-born and
educated priests were becoming increasingly influential. Burdett’s Bill on
Emancipation was given its first reading on 23 March 1825. There were to be two
other bills, one on the Forty Shilling freeholders and another on State
Provision for the clergy, which were to be introduced separately. [April 1825] Before the Second
Reading was introduced, an Aggregate Meeting of the Catholics was called, and
met on 14 April 1825 in Clarendon Street chapel, with Viscount Gormanston in the chair. Mr Conway read the requisition for
the meeting that was called to address the king, and asked all speakers to keep strictly to the purpose of the
meeting. O’Connell attended the meeting but did not speak until called for by
the crowd. A resolution to address the king was taken and a delegation was
chosen. [May 1825] On 21 April 1825 the
Bill passed its Second Reading as expected by 268 votes to 241, and was carried
on to the Committee Stage on 6 May. It passed the Third Reading on 10 May and
was carried to the Lords. The other two Bills successfully passed the initial
stages. There was great indignation when the
king’s brother, the heir presumptive to the throne, Frederick Augustus,
Duke of York and Albany, spoke out strongly against the Catholics. George III
had fifteen children, but very few
legitimate grandchildren. His eldest son had only one child, who died before
him. The succession to the throne then passed in succession to his next
brothers who had no legitimate issue between them. The next son, the Duke of
Kent was hastily told to marry, and produced the Princess Victoria who became
third in succession after the death of her father. The prospect of the Duke of
York becoming king was far from pleasing. Predictably the Bill was rejected in
the Lords at the Second Reading. It would have been impolite to the Commons to
reject it at its First Reading. The other two Bills were not proceeded with.
Sir John Coxe Hippisley
died on 3 May 1825. [June 1825] Another Aggregate
Meeting was held in Anne Street chapel
on 8 June when the delegates had returned from London. Lord Gormanston took the chair. It was estimated that several
thousand people packed into the chapel and Gormanston,
Sir Edward Bellew, and O'Connell had the greatest
difficulty in getting in. It was resolved to petition again for Emancipation.
Lawless was hissed until O’Connell asked that he be allowed to speak. But his
efforts to get amendments to the Freeholders and State Provision Bills got no
support. Sir Edward Bellew proposed the establishment
of a new Association. Nothing can be read into this as the Resolutions and proposers were agreed in advance. After the meeting, the
crowd drew O’Connell’s carriage to his home in Merrion
Square.
[Top] Aftermath of the ‘Algerine
Act’ (June to December 1825)
Counsellor Bellew
gave it as his opinion that no new association could be formed for the
following reasons. No meeting could assemble for longer than fourteen days, no
delegation could be given even for the purposes of petitioning Parliament, and
no money could be collected except to cover the costs of petitioning (DEP 28 June 1825). If O’Connell had no
reason to found a new association before this he now had one - to prove Bellew
wrong. The reason which he had used two years earlier to prove the necessity of
a Catholic Association, namely that the Protestants had an Orange Association,
was no longer valid, for it too had been suppressed. The Orangemen, in fact,
being the better organised, and more woven into the fabric of society, had lost
more than he had. All that was required now was to follow the lead of Lord Fingall’s party, hold Aggregate Meetings to petition. If
necessary these could assemble for up to fourteen days to arrange resolutions
and petitions and collect money to pay costs. To try to start a new association
would stimulate the Orange faction to organise a better and more effective one.
In the event both Catholics and Protestants started ostensibly charitable
associations neither of which generated much enthusiasm. In both cases they
were probably a waste of time and money. But we suspect the aim for O’Connell
was primarily to prove Bellew, and later Plunket, wrong. As usual with O’Connell his motives
are rarely clear. In the present instance, merely to accept the ‘Algerine Act’ and work within its restrictions would have
played into the hands of Lord Fingall’s faction.
There is no indication at this time that he wished to seize social and
political leadership from the aristocracy, or that he wished to embrace a new
career as a parliamentarian rather than as a judge. But he seems to have been
fascinated with the Rent, and with all he personally expected to be able to
accomplish with it. A private meeting was held on Friday
10 June 1825, following a resolution at the Aggregate Meeting to decide how an
association could be set up which would not fall under the Act. The new
Association met in the Corn Exchange on Wednesday 22 June 1825 and a ballot was
held for a committee of 21. Five lists were circulated and balloting continued from 12 o’clock to 4 p.m. Purcell
O’Gorman, the Secretary said that 321 had balloted and asked for an adjournment
until the morrow to allow him to make the calculation. Mr Sheil secured most
votes namely 317, closely followed by Lord Killeen and Sir John Burke with 313,
Captain Bryan and Nicholas Mahon with 312, Daniel O’Connell with 311 and Sir
Thomas Esmonde
with 309. In the list of 21 the success of the aristocratic party was
noticeable, but then they were always stronger in Dublin. That O’Connell’s
popularity was slightly damaged by the ‘wings’ controversy is shown by the fact
that one of his strongest critics Nicholas Mahon was preferred to him. Neither
Lawless nor Sir Edward Bellew were elected. O’Connell
announced that the new Association would be started after the end of the
parliamentary session and not before, for two reasons. The first was in case
the two Associations would be confused. The other was in case the Government
would rush through new legislation to suppress the new one. The general legal idea behind the
new association was that there were all kinds of associations in existence for
legal purposes. In these gentlemen could combine to attain an end, raise funds,
have regular meetings, and correspond with similar societies, and even form a
national alliance of associations for a similar purpose. These were
associations for the promotion of education, agriculture, science, art, recreation,
and so on. The exceptions were associations for illegal purposes, or for
political purposes. The aim of the latter was to prevent attempts to emulate
the Volunteers National Convention of 1782 or the French National Convention of
1792. [July
1825] Parliament was prorogued on 6 July 1825. On 12 July 1825 a Catholic
meeting was held in the rooms in the Corn Exchange the 21 members presented
their Report, but there was a difficulty because O'Connell had taken home the
draft copy to have a fair copy made out. The committee of 21, having completed
its task dissolved and a committee of 31 was chosen to prepare an Aggregate
Meeting. This
was held in Clarendon Street chapel on 13 July with Lord Gormanston
in the chair and Purcell O’Gorman as secretary. The proposals for the new
association were set out. It must be open to everybody; there must be no oath;
it would have no power of instituting prosecutions in the courts; it would have
no secretary or delegate, or correspond with any other society, or in any way contravene
6 George IV (‘Algerine Act'); nor would it petition
Parliament to remedy any grievances. It could promote peace and concord among
His Majesty’s subjects; encourage education; ascertain the population of
Ireland and the respective numbers of Catholics and Protestants; help to
construct Catholic churches; establish Catholic burial grounds; promote
manufactures, agriculture, and commerce; encourage a liberal press; and rebut
charges made against Catholics. Every person paying one pound could become a
member. Petitions to Parliament would be adopted at one-day Aggregate Meetings
that could adjourn daily for up to
fourteen days, and would have no connection with the New Catholic Association.
The collection of the Rent would continue, but not by the new Association.
O’Connell personally, as a sole person, would be responsible for its collection
and management (SNL 14 July
1825).Sheil made a powerful speech against the Duke of York which gave great
offence, not only to the king his elder brother, but to his younger brother,
William, Duke of Clarence (William IV) neither of whom ever forgave him (Luby). It
is not clear what exactly this association was intended for, except perhaps as
an act of defiance to the Government, and to allow O’Connell to collect and
keep the Rent centrally. Probably, it was envisaged that the Dublin newspapers
would report the meetings, and so provide valuable publicity. The Catholics
later adopted local meetings very successfully, and the Fourteen Day Aggregate
meetings to petition Parliament were more to the point and more effective. But
there seems to have been no objection to its establishment by any party. Sheil
came to the fore at this time and stressed that the Catholics, far from falling
into a moody silence, should step up their campaign of agitation (McCullough).
Predictably, the disbanded Orange Order set up a similar association to promote
the welfare of Orangemen, ‘The Loyal and Benevolent Orange Institution’. The
New Catholic Association met for the first time on 16 July with Mr Redmond in
the chair and Mr Bric secretary for the day. It never
gained the popularity or esteem of the old Association. Moderate Catholics
would have preferred to pursue aims like the promotion of farming or industry
through broader based non-sectarian organisations. The clergy of all
denominations regarded even secular education like the teaching of arithmetic
as falling within their exclusive sphere. While, for Catholic hard-liners, it
was a toothless and ineffective body. Still, it continued to meet until the
expiration of the ‘Algerine Act’ when it changed back
into the Catholic Association. O’Connell noted that the Association could not
correspond with another Association, like the English Catholic Association, but
could correspond with individual members of that body. A rules committee could
be set up to ensure that all their activities remained within the existing law.
Frederick Conway was among those chosen for the committee (SNL 18 July). Cobbett disapproved of the new
Association and kept up his attack on O’Connell, by writing a Letter to the
People of Ireland. He alleged that
before he came to London he was threatened with prosecution for a criminal and
seditious libel. But after he had come to London he sought out Plunket in the House of Commons, allegedly for private
business. But Cobbett believed that O’Connell had
been offered a patent of precedence in the courts to take effect after the
Emancipation Bill was passed. This information he had from Sheil who regarded
it as a proof of the Government’s benevolence. For Cobbett,
this was clear evidence of a sell-out. Whether there was anything in Cobbett’s suspicions is hard to tell. Cobbett
was a man with deeply felt convictions; O’Connell on the other hand usually
gives the impression of being a lawyer using legal tactics which are abandoned
if they are not yielding results. But most of those involved in Ireland just
wished to put the matter into the past. As might have been expected O’Connell
retaliated in kind and abused Cobbett. The two were
well matched when it came to invective. O’Connell said Cobbett
was only funny when he intended being serious. (The Times of London, no friend of Cobbett,
printed an unflattering comment about him referring to ‘ his still incorrigible
habits of lying and swearing and swaggering and libelling and praising without
the slightest regard for truth, propriety, subsequent detection or
self-contradiction’ 6 Jan 1820. The notice on Cobbett
in the DNB does not contradict this
evaluation.) A
meeting of the New Catholic Association held on 30 July with Counsellor O’Brien
in the chair and Frederick Conway as secretary for the day. It was reported
that 151 gentlemen had subscribed as members, and these included Sir Edward Bellew, Sir Thomas Esmonde, and
Nicholas Mahon. A proposal was made to ask for two persons in each parish in
Ireland who would collect the Rent and furnish information. Sir Edward Bellew asked if any uniform had been decided on for the new
Association for he had seen some gentlemen wearing buttons with the inscription
‘New Catholic Association’. He was told that it had been decided that there
would be no common uniform, that the buttons were a private speculation, and
that Mr O’Connell would probably soon cease to wear the uniform he had devised
for the Association. This uniform consisted of a blue frock coat with covered
moulds, an inscribed button under the collar, a buff vest, and white
pantaloons. Mr O’Connell and some other gentlemen had worn it at the last
meeting (SNL 1 August 1825).
O’Connell loved dressing up in uniforms. Any club or society could prescribe a
form of dress to be worn at their meetings or on public occasions like parades.
(It is not clear what exactly the word ‘moulds’ refers to, whether buttons or
piping OED.) [August 1825]
Several meetings were held in August,
but as most of those connected with the bar had dispersed to the various legal
circuits to which they were attached to attend the assizes. (Barristers were
assigned to one of the six circuits, and formed the bar of that Circuit.
O’Connell belonged to the Munster bar, and his appearances in courts outside
Dublin were normally within the Munster circuit. He was best known and received
his greatest support in the counties in Munster that comprised the Munster
circuit. He had little personal contact with gentlemen in the counties
comprising the other circuits.) The Catholic barristers, especially O’Connell
and Sheil, attended and spoke at numerous Catholic meetings in various places.
Sheil never trusted himself to speak extempore, so all his speeches were
carefully prepared. Also, unlike O’Connell, he disliked repeating himself, so
the speech for each meeting required long and careful preparation (DNB). There
was a well-attended meeting on Saturday 20 August in the Corn Exchange where
Lord Gormanston took the chair. When the campaign for
emancipation was over various people claimed to be the originators of the
various strategies adopted. But at this point it would seem to have been Sheil
who suggested plans for a systematic organisation, and for the systematic
co-option of the Catholic clergy in Ireland in the campaign for better
education which was one of the avowed objects of the Association . He began by
proposing to the meeting that the secretary should get the name of every parish
priest in write to him asking for his help. ‘Thus
an individual and personal intercourse will be kept up with every parish
priest, and we shall have an active and powerful agent in every parochial
sub-division of the country. Hitherto
we have been desultory and irregular in our movements – one county petitioned
at one time, another at a different period. There was no accordance in time or
place, nor any simultaneous stirring of the nation’s mind. We must learn to
kneel down together – we must be instructed in this exercise of genuflection;
on the same day and at the same hour let there be a meeting held under the
direction of the parish priest in every closet in Ireland (loud cheers). Offer
to yourselves in anticipation the effect of such a proceeding. The cry for
liberty sent up from the altars of God will reach into the cabinet, make its
way to the throne, echo through the chambers of Westminster, and make even
Eldon start. [ Eldon the Lord Chancellor
of England was an inveterate opponent of the Catholic claims.] But,
I may be asked, can the Association effect all this? Not all. We have no right to petition for the redress of our
grievances, but we are entitled by a specific clause to promote education. We shall array the
clergy for an end which is perfectly legal, and when they have been once
marshalled – when once the political apparatus has been prepared, it will be
the office of another Association which can sit for fourteen days (the period
allowed by law to an association for the redress of grievances to hold its
sittings) to make use of the instruments with which they will have been
previously provided’ (SNL 22 August
1825). A
committee of 7 was appointed to choose members for an education committee as
education was the principal object of the new Association. Among those proposed
for the Education Committee were Primate Curtis, Archbishop Murray, Dr. Doyle,
Lord Killeen, Lord Gormanston, Sir Edward Bellew, O’Connell, Sheil, Nicholas Mahon, Frederick Conway
etc. (DEP 20 Aug 1825). Sheil then
proposed an adjournment of the Association until November, for the absence of
so many gentlemen from the city might show the Association in a poor light. But
an open Committee, which every member might attend, would be held every week. The
potentially valuable work of the Education Committee was negatived
by the action of the Catholic bishops who preferred to treat education as a
private concern, and to negotiate directly with the Government. The Government
decided to negotiate with the bishops and not the Association and the National
Education Act (1831) was based on the negotiations of the Government with the
bishops. The result was that Catholic bishops, priests, brothers and nuns
controlled almost all aspects of Catholic education in the nineteenth century in
a manner inconceivable in the following century. It would seem that a great
opportunity was lost of preventing the decline of education into pure
sectarianism. There was also the fact that O’Connell was extremely reluctant to
spend the money collected for anything but political aims. Activity
of the Committee virtually ceased during the autumn season, but many local
meetings were held throughout the country. [October 1825]
A meeting to petition was held in Co. Louth to petition parliament. Sir Edward Bellew was in the chair. The question of the wings was
raised again, but there was no great feeling against O’Connell. It was pointed
out that Dr Doyle was prepared to concede them, though under protest. A
rather surprising event occurred in October. The Lord Lieutenant, the Marquis
Wellesley, now a widower, married a Catholic woman. After the official wedding
according to the rite of the Established Church, Archbishop Murray performed
the Catholic rite in the vice-regal lodge in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, the official
residence of the Lords Lieutenant. His bride was a granddaughter of Mr Charles
Carroll of Carrollstown, Maryland, the only Catholic
to sign the American Declaration of Independence. Lord Liverpool took no action
against him. The long-standing champion of Catholic interests in the Lords, the
Earl of Donoughmore died and was succeeded in the
title by his brother Lord Hutchinson. Lord Farnham, a leading anti-Catholic,
succeeded him as an Irish representative peer. Lady Farnham was a leading
proponent of the ‘Second Reformation’ in Cavan.
A general election was due the following year, and already moves were
being made to select or oppose candidates. On 29 October 1825 a small meeting, the first since the
adjournment, met, and O’Connell called for a small Aggregate Meeting which
would discuss the procedures for petitioning Parliament. [November 1825] The Little Aggregate
Meeting was held on 2 November in the Corn Exchange. Mr Bric
was called to the chair, and Conway acted as secretary. There was an entrance
fee of one shilling and one penny. (Presumably, though the Irish currency had
just been abolished, the sum was counted in Irish pennies of which 13 Irish
pence made an English shilling, against twelve English pence.) Presumably this
was necessary as the meeting was not to petition but to explain the procedures
for petitioning, and also to ensure it counted as a private not public meeting.
O’Connell proposed concomitant meetings each week, one of the New Catholic
Association, the other of successive meetings to petition. A committee of
eleven was appointed to prepare petitions, including as always now Frederick
Conway. The Little Aggregate Meetings were also called ‘Separate Meetings’.
Though minutes were taken they were not read out and approved at the next
meeting. These Separate Meetings were the most useful in the struggle for
Emancipation for they enabled an organisation to be kept continuously in being.
Any person who missed a meeting would have to ask someone who had attended what
had happened, or get the minutes privately from the secretary. The ‘efficient
secretary’ Ed Dwyer seems to have been retained, for O’Connell made him
responsible for handling cash sent in as Rent. Real public Aggregate Meetings
to adopt petitions, and Fourteen Day Meetings, could of their nature be held
only rarely. [November, December 1825]
A second small Aggregate Meeting was held on 9 November, again in the Corn
Exchange, with Purcell O’Gorman in the chair and Mr FitzSimon
as secretary. The faction led by Nicholas Mahon who opposed the ‘wings’ in all
circumstances still wanted to make a major issue of it, but Sheil defended
O’Connell. The latter still maintained that the freeholder vote was an
illusion, as they were forced to vote for their Orange landlords. Some wanted to
proceed with large provincial meetings, and Fourteen Day Meetings, but
O’Connell said it was necessary for these latter to wait for six months after
the passing of the Act. Little Aggregate Meetings, and meetings of the New
Catholic Association continued alternately throughout November and December,
the one dealing with petitioning and the other with the other business. At a
Little Aggregate Meeting O’Connell had to warn the secretary not to read the
minutes of the previous meeting. Nicholas Mahon continued striving to get a
formal exclusion of the ‘wings’ and Sheil deplored, to loud cheers, the
perpetual raking over of who said what and when. Like Sheil, most gentlemen
seem to have deplored the ‘wings’ but realised
that if their backers in Parliament introduced them they would have to
accept them. It was a strict principle with all MPs and Lords that Parliament
legislated not negotiated. The meetings were usually held on different days,
but O’Connell sometimes called a Separate Meeting before or after an Association
meeting. Jack Lawless found it difficult to keep track of which was which. It
was proposed to revive the Catholic Association for fourteen days in January,
for the purposes of petitioning on various subjects. It was also proposed that
numerous local petitions should be adopted in the various counties, towns and
parishes so that several of them could be presented every day that Parliament
sat. It is not clear who first devised this tactic. It was used on a wide scale
by the campaigners against slavery, and later in the decade by Protestant
groups opposed to Emancipation. The idea put forward by Sheil of getting the
addresses of each parish priest in Ireland made the scheme feasible. (A Catholic Directory covering all the
dioceses in Ireland would not be published for another ten years.) O’Connell
recommended that several different specimen copies of petitions for
Emancipation should be circulated. They should just petition for unqualified
Emancipation and avoid any other topic. On
14 and 15 December 1825 the Leinster Provincial Meeting took place in the
Catholic chapel in Carlow with Lord Killeen in the chair to petition
Parliament. A committee met on the 14th to prepare the petitions. At
the meeting on 15th Dr. Doyle, whose lived in that town entered the
meeting to give his account regarding the ‘wings’. He stated that he had
reluctantly accepted the pensioning of the clergy, but if the Act had passed he
would have resigned rather than accept Government money. Doyle’s exact
reasoning is not very clear. O’Connell considered that the priests could take
the money and act independently of the Government as they always did. Nor was
there any objection to prison chaplains, or army chaplains in India taking
Government money. Nor was there later any objection by most of the clergy to
Catholic priests, Brothers, or nuns taking Government money for schools. Sheil
and O’Connell were present and spoke. It was not exclusively a Catholic
meeting. Sir Henry Parnell and Lord Cloncurry sent apologies (SNL 19. 20 December 1825) On 19
December 1825, at a Separate Meeting, O’Connell stated that the law officers of
the crown were of the opinion that the Catholic Association itself could not
re-assemble even for fourteen days. There was no point in quarrelling with their friends in the present
administration over this point, so he proposed calling the Fourteen Day Meeting
in January, the ‘Catholic Association of 1826’. A requisition calling for such
a meeting was thereupon published in the newspapers under the names of Fingall,
Gormanston,
Killeen, Sir Edward Bellew, the brothers of
the Earl of Kenmare etc.
[Top] The Campaigns of 1826 and 1827 (January 1826 to
March 1827)
[January
1826] The meetings of the New
Catholic Association and the Separate meetings continued regularly. Frederick
Conway was the secretary of the Education Committee of the New Catholic
Association, and kept in touch with some of the Catholic bishops who kept him
informed of the dealings between the bishops and Wellesley’s Education
Commissioners who were charged with implementing the Report of the Commission
of Enquiry into Irish Education. O’Connell still believed that the work of the
New Catholic Association with regard to education was essential, and that the
£50,000 that the Rent would provide would prove a powerful lure for the
Catholic clergy. (When in 1831 the National Board of Education was set up to
partially fund local primary schools, parish priests would have been delighted
to get assistance from the Rent. But by that time the Rent was being used for
other purposes.) Preparations
were being made for the first of the Fourteen Day Meetings. Lawless proposed
that instead of a subscription of £1 to cover the fourteen days, separate
subscriptions for each day should be allowed. For he said that his experience
of Catholic politics enabled him to say that the most pure and honest were to
be found among those who were only able to pay a shilling for their admission.
When it was put to the vote Lawless was defeated by 44 votes to 4. There can be
little doubt that this means that the strongest opponents of the wings, and
supporters of Lawless, were to be found among the tradesmen of Dublin (SNL 12 Jan 1826).O’Connell claimed he
had purchased the first ticket for the new temporary association. The Connaught
Provincial Meeting met on 10 January 1826 in Ballinasloe with Lord Ffrench in
the chair. On the same day a Catholic meeting was held in Monaghan with the
local Catholic bishop in the chair. On
16 January 1826 the ‘Roman Catholic Association for 1826’ met, and Lord Gormanston took the chair on the first day. Lord Fingall
sent his apologies from Cheltenham in England where he was taking the medicinal
waters. Killeen, seconded by O’Connell proposed the Resolutions establishing the
temporary association and they were quickly adopted. A governing committee
consisting of Sir Edward Bellew, Sir Thomas Esmonde, Sir John Burke, the Hon. Mr Preston, the Hon. Mr
Ffrench, and Messrs Sheil, Whyte, Russell, Grainger, Coppinger, and Lawless were appointed. The chair was taken on the second day by Lord
Ffrench, and on the third day by Lord Killeen, and so on. Each session was
occupied to the full. A Resolution calling for unqualified Emancipation without
the ‘wing’s was passed, though Sir Edward Bellew had
a hesitation regarding the clerical wing, for the bishops were divided on the
issue. It was decided to entrust the main petition to Lord Landsdowne
in the Lords and to Sir Francis Burdett in the Commons. Mr Corley said he would
prefer Mr Plunket which nearly made Lawless
speechless. (Lawless put forward a motion condemning Plunket
but it was not seconded.) O’Connell eulogised Plunket.
O’Connell brought forward an alternative petition on the grounds of the breach
of the Treaty of Limerick. (The alleged ‘broken treaty’ of Limerick, like
Cromwell, always had a prominent position in Irish national grievances. It was
not a treaty but a capitulation of a city and was signed by the respective generals and ratified by
William III after the siege of Limerick in 1692. It set out the terms on which
the Jacobite largely Catholic army and their
dependants, besieged in the city, could depart to France keeping their arms,
and fixing a date for their submission to William. On their arrival in France
the Catholic officers offered their services to the French king, as by the
terms of the capitulation they were perfectly free to do. But in doing this
they did not submit to William by the prescribed date.) After the 13th meeting on 29
January 1826, the Association adjourned sine
die. All the meetings were reported at length in the Dublin newspapers (SNL 17 to 30 January 1826). This, the
first of the Fourteen Day Meetings was the most successful. Friction and time
wasted were at a minimum. All were united with regard to the kind of petitions
to be put forward. The whole of the fourteen days were taken up with drafting
petitions, discussing and revising them, and agreeing on strategy. Despite the
efforts of Lawless, the ‘wings’ issue was largely ignored, for it was realised
that while the Catholics might express preferences the wording of the Bills
would be out of their hands. The
Irish Catholic bishops were in Dublin at the same time to discuss their
response to the proposals of the Education Commissioners. O’Connell proposed
that Lord Killeen, Sir Edward Bellew, and the Hon. Mr
Preston should wait on the bishops. The bishops however did not discuss
educational matters with them, and merely furnished them with a copy of their
own resolutions on the subject. (These Resolutions of 1826 were to be a bone of
contention among the Irish bishops for half a century, for some bishops
regarded them as irreducible demands formally endorsed by all the bishops, while other regarded them as optimum
requirements some of which would not be conceded.) The
only incident to mar the harmony arose when Mr Coppinger
wished for a formal reply from the meeting to be sent to a meeting in New York
which expressed sympathy with the ‘oppressed’ Irish Catholics, and suggested
‘separation’ from England as the remedy. This echo of the United Irishmen
displeased many including Killeen, Bellew, O’Connell,
and Sheil. The proposal was put to the vote and defeated ‘ amid a scene of
uproar and confusion which we are unable to describe. O’Connell and Sheil called
for a public repudiation of the word ‘separation’ used by Anthony Marmion of Co. Louth. This
was done by acclamation. Marmion was one of the leaders of those attacking
O’Connell over the wings. The very last thing most Catholics wanted was to have
their movement tainted by association with the United Irishmen (SNL 28 Jan 1826). [February 1826]
Parliament resumed its sittings on 2 February 1826. A full Aggregate Meeting
was held in Clarendon Street chapel on 14 and 15 February 1826 with Lord
Killeen in the chair. The Hon. Mr Brown proposed that the petition be adopted,
and he was seconded by Mr Thomas Wyse. Wyse had had an interesting career after
parting with Ball and Woulfe in Rome in 1816. He travelled widely in the Near
East, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Sicily along with Charles
Barry, the architect of the House of Commons, sketching and measuring temples.
Re-visiting Rome he met Napoleon’s brother Lucien, and married his daughter. He
returned to Ireland in 1825. In a Resolution designed to undo the damage caused
by the unfortunate word ‘separation’ Sir Edward Bellew,
seconded by Mr John O’Brien, expressed the undivided loyalty of the Catholics.
Lawless proposed a motion against the ‘Algerine Act’
that was adopted. The Petition for Emancipation adopted by the Fourteen Day
Meeting was adopted. O’Connell called for a Twelve Day Board, and it was
approved. This was to attend to the forwarding of the petitions to London, and
so was legal (SNL 15, 16 February 1826). In
February a dinner was given to the prospective Liberal candidate for Waterford,
Henry Villiers Stuart , a grandson of the 1st Marquis
of Bute, at which Lord Killeen presided. [March 1826]
The Accounts of the Old Catholic
Association up to 18 March 1825 were published in the Dublin Evening Post. They showed that £8,886 had been collected in
1824, and £10,442 in the first three months in 1825. Cash in hand on that date
was £14, 897 (about £600,000 nowadays; to arrive at this figure the pre-1914
value of the pound is multiplied by forty.) By July 1826 the sum in hand was
reported to be £13,000 and there was considerable discussion if and how it
could be used. [April 1826] On 17 April 1826 Lord Landsdowne presented the general Irish Catholic petition in
the Lords, and paid tribute to the late
Earl of Donoughmore. Grey introduced Lawless’s petition against the ‘Algerine
Act’. Burdett introduced the general petition in the Commons. There were no
motions on the petitions. On
19 April 1826 Dr Milner passed away. He was active to the very end in his
self-imposed task of saving the Catholic Church from itself. Landsdowne
informed the Irish Catholics that if they insisted on an immediate motion on
their petition he would hand over its direction to others. Lord Killeen, Sir
Edward Bellew, and Sheil considered that they should
defer to his judgement. O’Connell and Sir Thomas Esmonde
thought they should press on regardless. It was back to 1805.Without Landsdowne, the support of the senior Whigs in the Lords
would be lost. [May 1826]
An Aggregate Meeting was called for 9 May 1826 to resolve the dispute. It met
in Clarendon Street chapel with Lord Gormanston in
the chair. A committee was appointed to see that a motion, if practicable, was
made in Parliament. A Resolution was passed that they would, at the coming
General Election, support only those candidates who favoured Emancipation. A Mr
Darcy Mahon proposed that £1,000 be given towards the relief of the distressed
weavers in the Dublin Liberties, but was told that a special meeting would have
to be called for this. This was not called by Purcell O’Gorman because of
alleged irregularities in the signatures calling for one. Purcell O’Gorman
received a vote of thanks for refusing to allow Catholic funds to be diverted (SNL 10, 22 May, 1 June 1826). O’Connell
said that one of those who had signed the requisition on behalf of the weavers
was Sir Edward Bellew, a man who had never paid a
penny towards the Rent. Bellew replied that he always
paid in his own parish as they had been instructed to do. A
letter from Joseph Hume MP, a leading Whig, was read out at a meeting saying
the reason for the delay was that a General Election was imminent, and it was
feared several of their supporters might lose their seats if too closely
identified with the Catholic cause. Almost imperceptibly the character of
Protestant objections to Catholic Emancipation were changing. At first it was
chiefly political, a refusal to changed the order established in 1688 when the
Protestant William replaced the Catholic James. But the evangelical movement
was growing stronger almost by the day in England and Ireland. Objections now
tended to be based on the need to combat the religious errors of Popery or to
prevent the encroachments of Popery. Peel, within three years, was to feel the
full force of this wave. The character of Protestant opposition in Ireland was
changing too. Since the coming of the Marquis Wellesley it was no longer the
opposition of an entrenched ruling class, relying on their positions and
patronage to block reform. For the next thirty years, indeed until after the
death of Peel, the old ‘Ascendancy faction’ was to be in opposition. It was now
more strongly than ever based on the religious prejudices of the ordinary grass
roots Protestants. Protestant newspapers now flourished despite the fact that
all Government subsidies were withdrawn from them. The officials in the Irish
Government were now for the most part, and increasingly, in favour of
Emancipation. Within a few years the great majority of the Protestant gentlemen
in the counties were to support the Catholics. [June 1826]
On 2 June 1826 Parliament was dissolved and a General Election was called. Plunket was returned unopposed for Dublin University.
O’Connell was active in some constituencies and wrote to influential people in
others. He and Nicholas Mahon were very active in Dublin County which was
always more liberal than the city. In Dublin county Lord Killeen proposed one
of the candidates. Pro-Catholic candidates made some gains in Ireland but lost
some in England where the strength of the anti-Popery faction was growing. The
over-all balance in the Commons was unchanged, and Lord Liverpool remained
prime minister. The
General Election in Ireland in 1826 is famous for the fact that the Whigs began
to see a slight change in their direction. Ascendancy candidates who had been
entrenched in constituencies like Louth and Waterford for as far as living
memory stretched were seen to be vulnerable. Frequently in the past elections
were uncontested. Contested elections were extremely expensive, and the total
costs had to be borne by the candidate. A preliminary canvass was sometimes
held among the great landowners, to see how they intended voting. If the result
was clear one party might put up two candidates for the two seats, or the two
parties might agree to put up one candidate each, and were declared duly
elected by the sheriff. But if three or more candidates stood for election a
public ballot had to be held. But often the great landowners agreed among themselves
beforehand. The Beresfords had long dominated
Waterford, and the Fosters had controlled Louth. In Waterford Thomas Wyse led
the campaign of Henry Villiers Stuart against
the Tory candidate Lord George
Beresford, and Stuart won. O’Connell joined in the campaign in Waterford. He
was proposed and seconded as a candidate to enable him to address the voters
indicating that he intended to withdraw, and telling them how to cast their
votes. The papers reported the Mrs Bonaparte Wyse accompanied by a few other
ladies sat in the gallery of the courthouse. If the sheriff decided that there
must be a poll, he fixed the date and caused hustings (a raised platform) to be
built outside the courthouse. (Mrs Wyse later left her husband and returned to
France, but Bonaparte was retained by the Wyse family as a given name for over
a century.) It was estimated that Wyse spent £10,000 of his own money on the
election, about £400,000 nowadays. O’Connell did not register himself as a
freeholder and disbursed nothing from the Rent (Reynolds). In
Louth, a Whig gentleman named Alexander Dawson, decided to stand, and Sheil
went to the county to assist him. Sir Edward Bellew
became chairman of Dawson’s election committee and proposed him. The Dublin Evening Post recorded that Lord Oriel
(John Foster) had 397 registered voters among his tenants, Alexander Dawson
130, Sir Edward Bellew 118, and so on (DEP 20 June 1826). Landlords registered
as many tenants as they felt they needed or could afford, and paid their
registration fees. The Tories put up two candidates and the Whigs one. Curtis
wrote to Murray that Sheil had come to an agreement with Foster’s agent only to
put up one candidate. It was the first contested election in Louth for fifty
eight years. The decision to run a Whig candidate was taken only forty eight
hours before the election. As Dawson was not wealthy it was agreed to assist
with his expenses, and to engage Sheil from Dublin as principal speaker.
Alexander Dawson and Leslie Foster were returned, Dawson polling 850 votes,
Foster 550, and Fortescue 544. In Louth 1944 votes
were cast, but many potential voters were not registered or were incorrectly
registered. (Alexander Dawson had 356 votes rejected, Leslie Foster 162, and Mr
Fortescue 106. The Whigs in Louth decided that next
time, with proper organisation, they could take both seats. The Tory candidates
in Waterford and Louth were not particularly anti-Catholic and had objection to
retaining Catholic barristers. But the Whigs sensed that the log-jam was
beginning to break, and with proper organisation many hitherto safe Tory seats
could be taken. Dawson’s total expenses in Louth was put at £2,000.O’Connell
proposed establishing an ‘Order of Liberators’ whose purpose would be to
organise elections. In some counties like Louth, ‘Liberal Clubs’ were formed to
promote the Whig interest. The problem with these was that the gentlemen of the
county were still expected to pay all the expenses, and did not relish the idea
that they would have to pay all the expenses of any candidate the Club put up.
But these were problems for the next decade. Some
of the Ascendancy faction was startled. The Westmeath
Journal called for wholesale evictions of recalcitrant tenants, and distraining for arrears. O’Connell claimed that actions
against the tenants had begun. In Louth Lord Oriel, and Lord Roden the owner of the borough of Dundalk denied that they
had any intention of retaliating. There was an entirely different problem with
regard to evictions, and this was caused by the fact that improving landlords
were commencing to prohibit subletting, for in many parts of Ireland, lands
were let, and then sub-let, and sublet again so that there could be as many as
five landlords in a chain, the pieces of land getting smaller with each
sub-letting. So eventually a farm of 1,000 acres could be parcelled out to
1,000 cultivators each with one acre. Each successive letting was naturally for
shorter and shorter periods. To break the series, when the head lease of
perhaps 99 years expired, the landowner had to evict the head tenant, who
evicted his sub-tenants, who evicted his tenants and so on. Then the landowner
could grant leases, probably to many of the same tenants, with an explicit
clause prohibiting sub-letting. Because a large number of long leases came up
for renewal around the same time, a Sub-Letting Act (1826) was passed in 1826
to regulate the matter ( Keenan II). Or they could evict a tenant at the end of
his freehold lease, and offer him a leasehold in its place. Long leases had
gone out of fashion, and were replaced by shorter leases. As communications
improved so too did the value of agricultural land. Many landlords who had
granted long leases at fixed rents found they derived no profit from the high
prices for agricultural produce during the War, all of which went to the
tenant. For this reason also evictions followed by short leases were preferred
by landowners. Some could be offered land without a lease, and became
tenants-at-will who could be evicted if ever the rent was not paid. Eviction
was an emotive term, but it could amount to little more than a notice of
eviction to compel the tenant to accept a more disadvantageous lease such as
leasehold for freehold. The
other problem was caused by the fact that in the case of almost all tenants the
first half year’s rent was not claimed, but remained due. This was called a
‘hanging gale’ and the landlord could call it in at any time. Because of these
two factors, the uncertainty regarding the renewal of the lease, and the
hanging gale that could be called in at any time, most tenants preferred to
humour their landlords. O’Connell was perfectly aware of this, and knew that
the Forty Shilling freeholders were most vulnerable to landlord pressure. The
resumption of land into the landowners’ hand was unconnected with elections,
and proceeded steadily throughout the nineteenth century. But it was always
possible for an unscrupulous person like O’Connell to cry that the landlords
were evicting. On the other hand, if a tenant was badly in arrears, and his
chief use to the landlord was that he would vote as directed, if he failed so
to do he was likely to be evicted. As O’Connell argued, a steady tenant with a
£10 freehold, and his rent paid up to date was unlikely to be evicted, for
landlords would be very unwilling to evict steady tenants. There was also the
point that while the rent was due to the landlord, it was collected by his
agent, and that the agent, for this or any other reason might proceed with
eviction notices. From notices in the newspapers it would seem that in Louth
Baron Foster and Lord Roden stepped in to prevent
evictions for the time being. Alexander Dawson confirmed that in Louth the
landowners were not evicting, but their ‘agents and understrappers’
were (DEP 31 August 1826). Indeed,
any evicted tenant could claim that he was being evicted because he voted
according to his conscience, and claim recompense from O’Connell’s Rent. It was
always possible that a tenant and his landlord could collude to get the rent
paid up to date. O’Connell refused to allow any of his Rent to be used to
recompense alleged victims, and proposed that a separate collection should be
made to assist them. [July 1826]
At a meeting in July O’Connell expressed the hope that the clergy would help in
the collection of the Rent. Lawless feared that any attempt to directly involve
the Catholic clergy might provoke a backlash among moderate Protestants, but
O’Connell said that if they did not undertake the relief they could be charged
with betraying the people into misery (SNL
10 July 1826). He was determined however
that the funds of the Old Catholic Association should be protected, and a
special rent organised by the New Catholic Association should be used. Sheil
suggested that Catholic ladies could be used to collect the Rent, as Protestant
ladies distributed Bibles, and the Catholic ladies of Dublin had displayed
great activity in getting Turnerelli’s altar erected
in the new church in Marlborough Street. Later, in 1828, strict rules were
drawn up; only those recommended by their parish priests could get relief; the
lease and the landlord’s receipts for the previous twelvemonths must be
produced; the recipient must enter into bail with some solvent person to repay
the loan within a reasonable time; the parish priest should decide how much the
applicant himself could pay; and finally the parish priest should decide if the
distraint was normal, or whether it was solely due to
voting against the landlord’s expressed wish (SNL 12 Aug 1828). Collection of the New Catholic Rent or Freehold
Rent commenced in July. But, as usual activity came virtually to an end until
the holiday season was over. It was O’Connell’s custom, after the summer
assizes to retire to his home in Kerry and remain there until the law courts
re-opened for the autumn term. [August, September 1826] Reporting on
the progress of the Catholic census, Conway had to report little success. This
was an interesting project, for estimates regarding the ratio of Catholics to
Protestants ranged from 6 to 1 to 3 to 1. Speculations regarding the revenues
of the Established Church were equally vague. Of course, few at that time
considered that if Catholics outnumbered Protestants by three to one they
should have three quarters of the seats in Parliament. For Protestants had at
least three quarters of the wealth, and so paid three quarters of the taxes.
That the mob or hoi polloi, just because it outnumbered the rich, should decide
the taxes and public spending was a view ruled out by Aristotle, and his view
was accepted by succeeding generations. That was why, in the Middle Ages, to be
allowed even to vote for a member of Parliament, one should have a freehold
with at least forty shillings of taxable revenue. (The first decennial census
which included a question on religious allegiance was in 1861 when it was found
that Protestants formed 25% of the population. This was however after massive
emigration following the famine and the growth of industrial towns in
Protestant Ulster. But a study of a particular parish in the west of Ireland
showed the Protestants in the 1820’s formed 2.8% of the population, while by
1900 they numbered 2.7% (Keenan III)). At a meeting of the New Catholic Association
Sheil called for an Aggregate Meeting to allow the spending of some of the
£13,000 in the old funds on the freeholders. It was agreed to reimburse
freeholders in the four constituencies where the greatest efforts had been made
to evict the old Tories, namely, Waterford, Louth, Westmeath, and Cavan, and
that sums of £150, £100, £100, and £50 pounds respectively should be allocated
to them. An Aggregate Meeting was held in Clarendon Street chapel on 7
September 1826, with Nicholas Mahon in the chair for the purpose of devising
means to assist the freeholders and if necessary to vote £1,500 from the old
Fund for their relief. O’Connell did not turn up, and Sheil said he was
embarrassed by the absence of the person chiefly responsible for collecting the
money. They were also aware that he could always think of a plausible legal
reason why money could not be paid for purposes he disapproved of. However Sheil’s Resolution to pay £1,500 to the New Catholic
Association out of the old Fund, for the purpose of relieving the freeholders
was passed. The collection for the freeholders continued through the autumn and
more than enough to pay the sums required was collected. By the end of November
nearly £3,000 was paid to claimants in the four counties (DEP 28 Oct 1826). The New Catholic Rent for the last week in
October was £396 and remained at this high level for the rest of the year. [October 1826] During a meeting in
October 1826, Surgeon Wright entered and announced the tragic death of Edward
Hay. He was living in abject poverty and had gone into the garden to chop
firewood. A splinter entered his hand and the wound turned septic. The surgeon
ordered a bread poultice to be made, but Hay refused to allow his children’s
bread to be used for the purpose. There was in fact no food in his house, and
no money set aside for his funeral. He left a widow and eight children. From
the discussion that followed it appeared that most people believed that he had
a small personal income. Also, a subscription had been raised for him but he
refused to take charity. Lord Killeen said he had been anxious to help him, and
Counsellor Bric expressed the common feeling that if
they had known of his circumstances they could have done something to help him.
Hay in fact died from his own proud refusal to be helped. O’Connell
characteristically refused to allow any part of the £13,000 to be used to
assist his widow. Sheil noted that in 1811 a sum of £500 had been voted for Hay
but never paid. A subscription was started to assist his widow and orphans. [November 1826]
Reynolds noted that in 1826, no fewer than 28 of the 32 counties met to
petition Parliament. With the autumn it was time to meet to agree petitions to
the new Parliament which would open in 1827. At a Little Aggregate Meeting on 1
November 1826 O’Connell called for another Fourteen Day Meeting to petition. In
the course of a speech Sheil referred to the Rev. Sir Harcourt Lees the
strongly anti-Catholic pamphleteer, and said he would venture a parody of Pope: ‘Say
what revenge on Harcourt can be had, To
old for vengeance, for reproof too mad. Upon
a priest your sword you cannot draw, From
Orangemen you cannot have the law. Uncaged then let the harmless
monster rage, Safe in
his madness, party, cloth, and age’ (2 Nov 1826). Another
meeting was held on 3 November to agree the Resolutions for the Fourteen Day
Meeting. A
full two-day Aggregate Meeting was held on 15 and 16 November 1826 in Clarendon
Street chapel, with Lord Killeen in the chair on both days to prepare for the
second Fourteen Day Meeting. This commenced on 17 November but got off to a
slow start. The first day was poorly attended and was taken up with notices of
Resolutions. Attendance was again poor on the second day. Much time was taken
up with discussions of domestic issues such as whether the London Agent, Eneas MacDonnell was worth the money paid him. Lawless
again wanted a shilling admission fee per session. O’Connell proposed a
‘mission’ to England to explain the Catholic case. Petitions on ‘Orange’
juries, on repeal of the ‘Algerine Act’, on the Forty
Shilling Freeholders, and one by Lawless on the revenues of the Established
Church were proposed. O’Connell reintroduced his petition based on the Treaty
of Limerick. An address by Thomas Wyse to the people of England was adopted.
After the 11th session on the fourteenth day, the Association ran
out of time. Despite considerable wasting of time on domestic matters which may
have been inevitable because of the lack of a proper forum, the second Fourteen
Day Meeting seems to have been also a success. The
new Parliament opened on 21 November 1826, but adjourned almost immediately.
About this time Leslie Foster who had been returned in Louth claimed that the
ordinary Catholic voters did not support the Catholic Association because they
had returned Vesey Fitzgerald in Clare who had voted to suppress the Association.
Fitzgerald was however a long time supporter of the Catholics. Nor were all the
Catholic leaders desolated to see the Association suppressed (DEP 19 Dec 1826).O’Connell was trying to
interest the Catholic hierarchy in his plan for a Catholic school system
supported entirely by a Catholic Rent, but not as he pointed out from the
£13,000. The bishops had met to consider the progress of their negotiations
with the Marquis Wellesley, and were unwilling to break them off for this
highly speculative venture. An attempt had been made by the Catholic bishops a
few years earlier to establish an independent Catholic school system without
Government support, but it had collapsed. Archbishop MacHale later adopted in
his own diocese a system of Catholic schools entirely independent of Government
assistance, and he ended with the worst schools in Ireland. His successor
speedily reversed his policy. The
£13,000 invested in various funds continued to fascinate people, but O’Connell
was determined that it should not be frittered away on other people’s projects.
A priest wrote to the Dublin Evening Post warning other priests not
to heed O’Connell’s ‘specious pretensions’
with regard to the Rent. He had enlisted their services three years
before, promising money for schools and for sending out missionaries, but they
never saw a penny of it. Instead he was holding on to it and setting it out at
usury (DEP 2 Jan 1827). [January 1827]
The year commenced with the death of the heir presumptive to the throne, the
Duke of York, on 2 January. The Duke of Clarence was next in line, and after
him Victoria the daughter of the deceased Duke of Kent. Clarence was much more
likely to favour the Catholics, but he had not voted consistently on the point. A
third Fourteen Day meeting was held from 17 to 30 January 1827, though many
felt it was unnecessary. It was reported that Lord Landsdowne
and Sir Francis Burdett had agreed to present the petitions. Stephen Coppinger again raised the question of a vote of thanks to
the support of the friends of civil and religious liberty in Washington D.C. It
is likely that some of these were former United Irishmen. The question of the
revival of Ribbonism was raised, and Sheil, in a
speech recalled the fact that though the Revolutionary French wanted Wolfe Tone
to start up or fan a campaign of agrarian terrorism to tie down the British
army he refused, and he believed it would be an utter disaster to Ireland if
attempted. (Memoirs of Wolfe Tone had
recently been published DNB) He went
on the commend the work of Tone when he was Secretary to the Irish Catholics,
and his belief that if the delegates in 1793 had stood firm they could have
obtained complete Emancipation. The Irish Catholics now were totally united,
but circumstances had changed. The Irish bishops today were unwilling to use
excommunication against political opinions in the way Dr Troy who feared the
spread of Deist opinions did in 1796. There was now no danger of a discontented
peasantry and a French invasion because of the use of steamships. Sheil’s precise point is not clear, but in a rather
wandering speech he seems to have referred to the possibility of a French
‘steam invasion’ raised about this time by a British naval officer, but his
argument discounts its success (Tipperary
Free Press 3 Jan 1827. The small successes of the French fleet in 1796 and
1798 were the result storms blowing off the superior British fleet). It
resulted in his being summoned to appear before a court, informations
having been sworn against him before magistrates. The case dragged on to the
summer until Plunket, the Irish attorney general, was
promoted to be Lord Chancellor, and the new attorney general dropped the
charge. Archbishop
Murray sent the petitions of the Irish bishops to Lansdowne and Plunket. [February 1827]
Parliament re-assembled after the Christmas recess on 8 February 1827. It was
to prove an exciting year with three different prime ministers after
Liverpool’s unbroken fourteen years in office. On 14 February Landsdowne presented the Irish petition in the Lords, but
said he had no motion to propose at the moment.
On 17 February 1827 Lord Liverpool was found unconscious, and Burdett,
at the request of the Whig leaders, delayed presenting the petition in the
Commons until it became clear if there would be a new ministry under a new
prime minister. Liverpool, now paralysed, resigned, though he lingered on as an
invalid for nearly two years. The question was whom the king would ask to form
a ministry. Wellesley thought it would be him, but nobody else did. It could be
Canning or Landsdowne. If either of these, would they
get a majority to follow them? Canning had caught a chill at the Duke of York’s
funeral from which he never entirely recovered. He was recuperating in Brighton
when Liverpool had his stroke. Canning at first suggested to the king that he
should attempt to construct an all-Protestant ministry under Peel or
Wellington. Presumably this was done for tactical reasons to get the question
settled in advance. Peel and Wellington declined to form such a ministry, which
they knew could not command a majority in the Commons. All three were prepared
to support a neutral ministry like Liverpool’s, but the question was who would
succeed Liverpool. The king asked Lord Eldon to form an anti-Catholic ministry,
but Peel refused to serve under him (Ward III). According to Canning’s
biographer Wellington and Peel rather overplayed their hand and left an
impression in the king’s touchy mind that they were trying dictate to him. So
he sent for Canning. Wellington was to remember this lesson when he became
prime minister. If the king got the impression that his ministers were trying
to dictate policy to him he would dig in his heels (‘Canning’ DNB). The king’s command to Canning to
form a new administration was not given until 10 April. [March 1827] Petitions
poured in from all sides. Plunket presented several
including the one from the Irish
bishops. Lord Nugent presented one from the English Catholics with 23,000
signatures. It was noted that 168 petitions were received against Emancipation
to 98 in favour. The anti-Popery campaigners in England and Ireland were
getting their act together. This was an entirely predictable result of O’Connell’s insistence on high-profile
campaigning. On
5 March 1827 Burdett moved: That the
House is deeply impressed with the necessity of taking into immediate
consideration the laws imposing civil disabilities on His Majesty’s Roman
Catholic subjects with a view to their relief. Plunket
made a masterly speech in support. He claimed that if the Act of Union had not
been passed the Irish Parliament would have long since passed a Relief Bill by
a majority of two to one. If any attempt were made to deprive Englishmen of
their privileges they would see Ira leonum vincula recusantium (the anger of lions refusing to be
chained). The climax of the debate was the speech of Canning, still Foreign
Minister. He maintained the need for some securities, but said he was not a
‘security grinder’. The king, he felt, should have some say in the appointment of
Catholic bishops, but there was no need to manufacture securities against
imaginary difficulties. Rather surprisingly the motion was
defeated by four votes. Why this happened is not clear. The Times of London thought that the
uncompromising speeches of O’Connell and Sheil were responsible. The Dublin Evening Post noted that it was
the largest vote ever in favour of the Catholics for there were 560 MPs
present. The indications are that the anti-popery faction in England was
whipping in its vote. Peel had persuaded the king to keep
the barely conscious Liverpool as prime minister until the vote on the Catholic
Question was safely passed. As narrated earlier, the king finally asked Canning
to form a ministry. Liverpool’s carefully constructed and balanced ministry
promptly fell apart. There were 41 resignations from the anti-Emancipation
faction including Wellington, Peel, Eldon, Sidmouth,
and Bathurst. Canning had therefore to
turn to the Whigs (Ward III). Landsdowne, Brougham,
and Burdett were brought in. In all 12 members of the new cabinet out of 15
were favourable to the Catholics.
[Top] Canning and Goderich (March to December 1827)
[March 1827]
Landsdowne became Home Secretary in place of Peel.
Wellesley was left in Dublin for the time being, but William Lamb (later
Viscount Melbourne) who had been married to Lady Caroline Ponsonby
replaced Goulburn. (She was the only daughter of the Earl of Bessborough, and sister of Lord Duncannon. She had become
involved with Lord Byron whom she memorably described as ‘mad, bad, and
dangerous to know’. In 1824 she separated from her husband). Plunket expected to become the new Lord Chancellor of
Ireland, and resigned from the position of attorney general. The new attorney
general dropped the case against Sheil. He was offered the position of English
Master of the Rolls, but the English bar objected. So he remained without
office for the time being. Lord Manners resigned but the king at first refused
to accept his resignation. He last sat in court in July and was replaced by Sir
Anthony Hart, an Englishman with no political opinions., who took up office in
November. Wellesley at last managed to get Lord Norbury
to resign as Chief Justice of Common Pleas, and this position was given to Plunket. He was at the same time given a United Kingdom
peerage to allow him to sit and speak in the House of Lords as Baron Plunket. King George was by this time in his life close to
his father’s opinions regarding the Catholics, and he wished not only to retain
Manners to also to remove Wellesley. Wellesley was left in place for the time
being. Canning wished to transfer him and make him ambassador to Vienna, but
Wellesley wished to stay. The Marquis of Anglesey was Canning’s choice for Lord
Lieutenant. On
15 March 1827 Sir Edward Bellew died, and was
succeeded by his son, Sir Patrick Bellew (later 1st
Baron Bellew). Sir Edward was born in 1760, and
succeeded to the baronetcy in 1795. In 1793 he had applied to be appointed a
magistrate, but John Foster blocked his appointment. He was soon after
appointed, and acted firmly as a magistrate in the disturbed period from 1798
to 1803. He was a member of every Catholic association or committee from 1805.
Frederick Conway noted that his moderate opinions had made him unpopular for
several years with his more fiery compatriots. ‘He was the more obnoxious [to
them] on this account because he was a man of very considerable talent and a
ready and sensible speaker. He, however, never allowed himself to be disgusted
at the very unceremonious treatment he at times received, and we had the
satisfaction of assisting with him at the formation of the Catholic
Association’ (open letter of Conway to Lord Lansdowne when the magistracy was
refused to his son DEP 9 June 1827). Some
interesting figures regarding the accounts of the New Catholic Association in
its first year were published in the Dublin
Evening Post. Ulster had contributed £541, Leinster £2390, Munster £1730
and Connaught £651. A further £367 came from overseas, mainly from England,
America, and France. Expenditure amounted to £773 in Ulster, £1610 in Leinster,
£1217 in Munster, and £164 in Connaught. Most of this expenditure was on the
publishing of Resolutions of various meetings. £448 was spent on advertising of
meetings and postage, and £422 on stationery, advertising and the Secretary’s
salary. Of the Ulster total about £500 came from the largely Catholic counties
of Monaghan and Cavan, and those with large Catholic populations namely Armagh
and Donegal. The average for these counties was £125. The largely Protestant
counties contributed virtually nothing, and it seems that the clergy in those
counties considered collecting the Rent inadvisable. Leinster excluding Dublin
averaged £150 per county, Connaught £130 while Munster averaged £290. Of this
Waterford contributed £666 and Tipperary £495 leaving an average for the other
Munster counties £142. Dublin city contributed £715 and county Meath £334.
O’Connell once jibed that the whole province of Connaught contributed less than
the salary of the London agent, a Connaughtman, but
the figures show that the contributions were not particularly low. Connaught
was the poorest of the provinces. [April 1827]
The Irish Catholic bishops were hardening in their attitude towards public disputations
with the ‘biblicals’. Primate Curtis followed the
lead of Murray and Doyle in prohibiting them in their dioceses. The
irrepressible Lawless however decided to stage a monster disputation in the
great round hall of the Rotunda in Dublin. O’Connell took the chair on one of
the days, while other Catholic laymen like Thomas Wyse and C. Fitzsimon took the chair on other days. The newspapers
printed the debates at length. (These debates were merely rehashes of
theological disputes of the previous three centuries.) Conway in an open letter
to Lord Landsdowne informs him that ‘the Orange bludgeoneer, the Ascendancy, and the ‘Saints’ were all in
common parlance called Orangemen’ (DEP
30 June 1827. Though the contemporary ironic use of the term ‘saint’ was with
regard to anti-slavery campaigners, it is clear that Conway associates with
them Methodist or evangelical preachers, members of bible societies, and
promoters of the Second Reformation who were notorious for their anti-Popery
sentiments. Later he refers to the ‘saints’ trying to establish conventicles in army barracks and navy ships. Conway was
himself a Protestant.) By the middle of April the character
of the new administration that Canning had succeeded in putting together was
now clear. The Dublin Evening Post on
14 April 1827 announced the resignations of Eldon, Wellington, Peel, Sidmouth,
etc, and said Goulburn’s resignation was expected.
(The full new cabinet was not published in Dublin until 1 May.) The vast
majority of those who accepted office were in favour of Emancipation, so the
measure could be a Government one not a private one. This was the condition
that Wellington had always believed was necessary. For the Government,
especially if backed by the king, to secure a majority, could use patronage and
honours distributed to those who were only slightly opposed. Early in April a
requisition for an Aggregate Meeting was published, signed by, among others,
Primate Curtis, and almost all of the Catholic nobility. O’Connell wanted the
Aggregate Meeting postponed until times became clearer. But Sheil, Curtis and
the nobility got their way. [May 1827]
The meeting duly held on 1 May 1827 in Clarendon Street chapel, with Sir Thomas
Esmonde in the chair was one of the largest ever
held. Four resolutions were passed, one on the necessity of continuing to
petition. It is not precisely clear why this was called, but O’Connell had
stirred things up by calling for Repeal as well as Emancipation (Luby SNL 13 Mar
1827). Killeen was very anxious that they should get their petition for
Emancipation ready. Sheil wanted the New Catholic Association to adjourn sine die to ease Canning’s problems, but
O’Connell got this altered to an adjournment for six weeks. Sheil’s
point was that the less there was of agitation in Ireland the easier it would
be for Canning to coax reluctant lords. O’Connell’s view was that without the
pressure of continuous agitation Canning would prefer to do nothing. O’Connell
never seemed able to see the bigger picture. Canning, in a speech in the Commons on 1 May
said he was treating the subject as an open one as his predecessor had. [June 1827]
At a Separate Meeting in June O’Connell proposed giving support to Canning.
Lawless wanted a petition to the king asking for the removal of Manners from
the Lord Chancellorship on the grounds that he had refused to appoint Sir
Patrick Bellew as a magistrate in Louth. Manners had
already tendered his resignation along with the others, but the king had
refused to accept it. This caused a delay in making the new appointment, by
which time Plunket had accepted the lesser office of
a judgeship. Saunders Newsletter
stated that Manners ‘acted solely on the principle of suppressing parliamentary
or political influence with the bar’ (SNL
1 Aug 1827). Sir Edward Bellew had been a magistrate
in county Louth for thirty years. According to the Post, his son was refused because he was a member of the New
Catholic Association. John Foster (Baron Oriel) advised Manners in this matter. At
a meeting of the New Catholic Association on 30 June O’Connell recited the
words from Byron’s Childe Harold that
he was to repeat frequently. ‘Hereditary
bondsmen, know ye not Who
would’st be free themselves must strike the blow’. The
words are in themselves ambiguous with regard to the use of violence. He
himself was always strongly opposed to it, but many of his supporters and
opponents took the words literally. He believed, or professed to believe, that
if the anti-Catholics had formed the administration there would have been civil
war in Ireland. Conway found this view exaggerated (DEP 3, 7 July 1827). The rumour was now circulating in Dublin that
Anglesey was to replace Wellesley after Christmas (Anglesey had succeeded
Wellington as Master General of the Ordnance on the latter’s resignation.) The
New Catholic Association continued to meet regularly, but the Rent had fallen
off. [July 1827] A full Aggregate Meeting was held on 5 July 1827 in Clarendon Street chapel with Lord Killeen in
the chair. Resolutions to petition for full Emancipation and the Repeal of the
Test and Corporation Acts were passed. These latter excluded nonconformist
Protestants as well as Catholics from public offices. Mr Lamb, the new Secretary arrived
in Dublin. The Rent had fallen to £10 per week. A Mr Howley,
a Roman Catholic barrister, was appointed Assistant Barrister in county Clare.
This was a public appointment. The barristers were appointed to assist the
local magistrates who were unlearned in the law, at their quarter sessions. It
was a position open to Catholics, but apparently no Catholics were appointed to
the office before the arrival of Wellesley (DEP
23 Aug, 15 Nov 1827). [August 1827] George Canning, to the astonishment of all Europe,
died suddenly on 8 August 1827. There was consternation among the Irish
Catholics. The Dublin Evening Post
noted the exultation of the Orange faction. In an open letter to Lord Landsdowne, Conway wrote, ‘This
city yesterday, My Lord, was filled with exulting placards by the Orange
faction, announcing in positive terms the demise of the Prime Minister’. He
continued by saying that some of the High Ascendancy were disgusted by this
exhibition (DEP 7 Aug 1827). The
rejoicing over Canning’s death was premature. Frederick Robinson, Viscount Goderich (later Earl of Ripon), the former private
secretary of the Earl of Hardwicke and MP for the
Irish borough of Carlow, was persuaded to undertake the office of prime
minister. He was totally unable to stand up to Wellington and his supporters in
the House of Lords, and wanted to bring Wellesley and Lord Holland into the
cabinet to assist him. Wellesley was due to depart from Dublin and to be
succeeded by the Marquis of Anglesey, who as Lord Henry Paget
had run away with Henry Wellesley’s wife, whom he married after her divorce.
(Henry Wellesley was the youngest brother of Wellington and Wellesley.) Angelsey had been in charge of the British cavalry at
Waterloo, where he lost a leg, and had angered the Catholics some years earlier
by saying that the cavalry should be used against them. He had an Irish estate at Carlingford
in county Louth. He was supposed to be anti-Emancipation in order to balance
the pro-Emancipation Irish Secretary. The first of Anglesey’s household arrived
in August 1827, but it was not until February 1828 that the reluctant Wellesley
finally departed. Cobbett
decided to attack Lawless, and in memorable language denounced ‘the folly, the
consummate, the oaf-like, the
idiot-like…or jackass-supposed stupidity of this Irish Catholic Association’.
Their crime? Supporting Canning. [Autumn
1827] The meetings of the New Catholic Association and the Separate
Meetings continued, but with no sense of urgency. Questions like emigration,
sub-letting, burial grounds, a census of Ireland, the conditions of Catholic
soldiers, the repeal of the Test Act, the Vestry Act, agrarian terrorism, the
alleged frauds of the biblicals, and education were
discussed. There was little sign of the storm of enthusiasm which was shortly
to break. The New Catholic Association could discuss Catholics grievances but
could do nothing about them. To get up a petition meant holding several
Separate Meetings. Some people too felt that they should desist from agitation
for a while in case Catholics made themselves obnoxious. Others felt that if
petitioning were not continued, the whole question would stagnate as happened
between 1817 and 1823. The New Catholic Association had paid out £5,400 for the
relief of freeholders threatened with eviction [over £200,000 in modern money].
How many of these were actually threatened with eviction is anybody’s guess.
The Association’s debts amounted to £1,400. At a Separate Meeting on 22
September 1827, Conway and Sheil brought forward a Resolution to continue
petitioning. [December
1827] An Aggregate Meeting was held on 19 December 1827 with Lord Killeen
in the chair. It was resolved to petition for Emancipation. A Resolution by
Lawless that they should petition for the reform of Parliament was not
seconded. Gash asserted that the Catholics had not pressed their claims under
Canning and Goderich but resumed their campaigning
when Wellington became prime minister, but this is not quite accurate. The
defeat by four votes followed by the retirement of Liverpool did cause a pause
while the Catholics took stock of the first real change in Parliament since
1807, when a premature pressing of their claims resulted in the Whigs being
excluded from office for over twenty years. But the decision to continue the
campaign was taken before the resignation of Goderich.
There were however in Dublin rumours of possible ministerial changes even
involving the resignation of Goderich. No doubt that
the return of Peel and Wellington added zest to the campaign. A Fourteen Day
Meeting was called for January 1828 (SNL
20 Dec 1827). A Separate Meeting was held on 24 December to prepare the
petitions, and another on 27 December when it was decided to hold a Fourteen
Day Meeting in January . Goderich,
in preparation for bringing in an Emancipation Bill renewed the contacts of the
Government with the Holy See. Wellington apparently allowed the contacts to
continue until June 1828 when Peel definitely ended them (SNL 2 April, 27 Nov 1828, citing St. James Chronicle of London).Goderich
had great difficulty in controlling the members of his cabinet, and like
Wellington found the infighting between members of the Government distasteful.
[Top] The Campaign of 1828 (January to December 1828)
[January
1828] On 8 January 1828 Goderich
resigned. The king sent for the Duke of Wellington, though many had expected a
Whig ministry under Lord Landsdowne, for Canning’s
Tory supporters had more in common with the Whigs than with the extreme Tories.
Neither Wellington, nor Peel who joined him, relished the task, realising how
difficult it would be to get and retain majorities in the two Houses of
Parliament. The king, in asking Wellington to form a ministry excluded nobody
but Lord Grey, and stipulated that the Government should not bring in an
Emancipation Bill. In other words the policy of Lord Liverpool was to be
followed. Wellington and Peel were confident that any such Bill brought in by
the opposition would be blocked in the Lords. Wellington got promises of
support from Canning’s followers but had to promise concessions on the Corn
Laws. These had been introduced after the Napoleonic Wars to assist farmers in
the post-war depression by excluding imports of corn. Though helping the
farmers they kept bread dear. The duke was not happy with the Canningites, and especially William Huskisson
who was anxious to reduce the Corn Laws. He was a relatively young man, being
then only 59, and it was expected that he would remain prime minister until his
death. (He was only 46 when he fought his last and greatest battle. Napoleon
was the same age.) Peel accepted the office of Home Secretary and was also put
in charge of the Commons as Leader of the House. Anglesey, who was going to
Ireland to take up his appointment, was retained there for the moment.
Wellesley refused to join his brother’s ministry. Parliament was due to open on
22 January, but due to the changed in the ministry this was put off until 29
Jan 1828. The hopes of the Orange faction in
Ireland soared. But the Catholic campaign of the previous year was again taken
up and even extended. Sheil had proposed that simultaneous meeting should be
held all over Ireland, preferably in every parish on the same day, 13 January
1828 to demand Emancipation. O’Connell claimed that 1500 such meetings had been
held. The Dublin Evening Post, more
cautiously, said that they were very numerous. As
Sheil had envisaged the simultaneous meetings generated enormous enthusiasm
among the Catholics and corresponding alarm among the Protestants. The Fourteen Day Association for
1828 commenced, with the first meeting with Lord Killeen in the chair held on
17 January. O’Connell proposed the drafting of petitions (1) in favour of the
English Dissenters, (2) for Emancipation full and unqualified, (3) against the
Vestry Bill, (4) against the Sub-Letting Act, (5) on the proper implementation
of the Treaty of Limerick, (6) for money for liberal education, (7) against
grants of public money to proselytisers, (8) on abuses with regard to juries,
and (9) on abuses in Orange-controlled corporations and boroughs. He also
brought forward a motion that the Irish bishops be requested to compose a prayer to soften the hearts of
their rulers. Nicholas Mahon seconded. Lawless, however, said he was not
inclined to treat the question with ribaldry or insincerity for he was
perfectly acquainted with the
conscientious feelings and with the religious character of the gentleman who
had brought the matter to their notice. But he considered that such a matter
should be left to the clergy. (The bishops replied that suitable prayers were
already available for this purpose, but each individual bishop could if he
wished compose a special one for use in his own diocese.) On 24 January Lawless
proposed a motion that they would not support any candidate who voted against
them in Parliament. O’Connell remarked, ‘Mr Lawless happened to be right once
in his life, he would not say by chance, but he was right’ (SNL 1 Jan 1828). The Fourteen Day
Meeting ended on 30 January, and much business had to be abandoned. The Rent,
always a barometer of Catholic feeling, soared
to £600 a week. Greville,
the political diarist said that Sheil and O’Connell detested each other, but
had to work together. Lawless also detested O’Connell and did everything he
could to thwart him. O’Connell, though opposed by a powerful faction in the
Association was all-powerful in country areas. He and Sheil recognised that
they had to work together until Emancipation was achieved, for if the Catholics
were to split again they would lose all credibility, and lose all sympathy
among the Protestants. Again according to Greville,
Dr Doyle was another person who disliked O’Connell. He also noted that
O’Connell claimed he could keep the country quiet for another year, but Doyle
doubted this. Greville considered that Archbishop
Murray was clever, but not as ambitious as Doyle (Greville).
In any case, Murray having reached the grade of archbishop and ‘primate of
Ireland’ had nothing further to aspire to. The archbishop of Armagh was
‘primate of All Ireland’, and had precedence except in the ecclesiastical
province of Dublin. Of Doyle, Anglesey remarked, ‘He was a clever man, full of
information, and full of prejudice, and full of condemnation of that in others’
(PRONI). Doyle was perhaps the ablest, and most energetic of the Irish Catholic
bishops in the first half of the century, and it was a great pity that his
university education was cut short. He was an indefatigable reader, and largely
self-taught. He would have benefited immensely if he had been exposed for
several years to the company of men of great learning and experience of the
world. (Charles Greville, a grandson of the Duke of
Portland on his mother’s side, moved in the highest circles. He managed the
racing stables of the Duke of York. For forty years he kept diaries, and always
tried to get the most accurate inside information.) Wellington
did not change the Irish Government for the moment. Both Anglesey and William
Lamb were retained. The cabinet was almost equally divided on the Catholic
question that was still an ‘open’ one. Lamb’s estranged wife, Lady Caroline
Lamb, died at this time. [February 1828]
The parliamentary session commenced on
29 January, and throughout February the Catholics held numerous meetings, and
petitions poured into Parliament. Not all of these petitions were with regard
to Emancipation. Petitions for the emendation of the Sub-Letting Act and for
assistance with education were presented. Lord John Russell gave notice of a
motion on the Test and Corporation Acts. He was the third son of the sixth Duke
of Bedford, the former Lord Lieutenant, and had stayed in Dublin during his
father’s brief residence. The repeal of these Acts would allow Dissenters to
take office. The effects of the repeal would also apply to Catholics, but as
Wellington explained, they would still be excluded from office by the
obligation to take the Oath of Supremacy. Some of the Whig lords wished the
wording of Russell’s Bill to be changed to allow Jews to sit in Parliament, but
Wellington replied that since the Reformation English law did not recognise
that class of person. Once again parliamentary tactics required that the easier
Act be introduced first. This time the attempt was successful, and the Act
passed both Houses and received in due course the royal assent. The matter was
largely symbolic for Dissenters could take various offices under various
Indemnity Acts [March 1828]
Anglesey arrived in Dublin on 1 March and commenced an investigation of the
Catholic Association. On 6 March 1828 Sir Francis Burdett presented the Irish
General Petition for Emancipation, and gave notice that he would move on it on
29 April. He proceeded to make himself agreeable to the Catholics. He invited
Archbishop Murray to dine, and Lord and Lady Killeen to a vice-regal drawing
room, a formal reception to which ladies could be invited. This did not at all
please the Orange faction that had been so anxious to get rid of Wellesley. He
told the cabinet that he did not think the ‘Algerine
Act’ need be renewed. Even in parts like Tipperary disturbed by agrarian crime
the police and army were in control. He suggested that the building of military
roads and police barracks would be useful. (A new Irish police force armed with
muskets had been established by Goulburn.) In the Commons Sir Henry Parnell
asked for copies of the Treaty of Limerick so that they could discuss the
matter intelligently. Peel, as ever, the master of his brief, argued for the
restricted interpretation, but Thomas Spring Rice argued that his contemporary
ancestor, Sir Stephen Rice had claimed that the exclusion of Catholics from
Parliament breached the treaty (Sir Stephen Rice 1637 to 1715, Chief Baron of
the Irish Exchequer under James II). The new Lord Chancellor, Sir Anthony Hart,
issued seventy commissions of the peace, many of them to Catholics. [April 1828]
On 19 April 1828 Anglesey’s son Lord Paget with two
other lords attended a meeting of the Catholics. The visit was purely out of
curiosity, but Lamb was warned by the cabinet not to upset the Protestants too
much. The cabinet had reason for this warning for denunciations of Anglesey and
Lamb from the Ascendancy faction were pouring into London. At
this very inopportune moment agrarian terrorism flared up again so that Sheil
asked: What
is it that makes the lower orders execute these horrors, and what is
worse, makes them believe that they are
almost justified in their perpetration?
(loud cries of Hear, Hear). It is no
longer a reproach to die upon the scaffold, and an execution in Tipperary is
designated by the mitigated appellation of a funeral….The worst and most
striking feature in all the dreadful deeds
which have taken place is the conviction in the minds of the people that
they but execute a sentence, which however severe is regarded as just. Every
expedient that legislative ingenuity could devise or official alacrity could
execute had been tried. Insurrection Acts, Special Commissions, and special
delegations of counsel had been almost every year resorted to – yet nothing substantial for the real subjugation
of the evil has yet been accomplished (SNL
28 April 1828). He
proposed Emancipation as the remedy. The Catholic clergy and the Catholic lay
leaders actively supported the Government in trying to put down
terrorism.(Sheil would have been horrified to learn that even in the twenty
first century his words could be repeated almost verbatim in both parts of
Ireland.) [May
1828] Finally, on 8 May Burdett, seconded by Brougham, introduced his
motion, ‘That the House resolve itself
into a Committee…’, which was the necessary prelude to a debate on the Catholic
question. Burdett noted that Canning had died and Plunket
had gone to the Lords. He based his argument this time on the terms of the
Treaty of Limerick, and dealt with Peel’s restrictive interpretation. He was
supported by Spencer Perceval junior, the son of the former prime minister, by Huskisson and Sir John Newport. Peel in his reply defended
his interpretation of the Treaty. No fewer than 612 MPs turned up for the vote, and the motion was
passed by a majority of six. Of the Irish MPs who were present 61 were in
favour and 32 against, but of the county MPs 46 were in favour and 16 against.
Clearly the bulk of the opposition in Ireland was in the corporations and
boroughs. Burdett
and Brougham got together with Peel, the Leader of the House, to decide how to
proceed. (In the twelve years that Castlereagh was Leader of the House he
always supported the Catholics and arranged parliamentary business in their
favour. Peel was under no obligation to follow his example.) The first thing to
be done was to frame a motion that the House in Committee could debate, and
this was agreed. Burdett wished to get the concurrence of the Lords that some
adjustment should be made to the laws concerning Catholics, before sending up
the Bill the following session. This would mean postponing the introduction of
the Catholic Bill in the Commons until the next session. The decision of the
House in Committee would be communicated to the Lords and their assent
obtained, perhaps with some modifications. On 19 May Wellington appointed a committee of the Lords to discuss matters
with the proposers of the Bill. These were to report
back to the Lords on 9 June 1828. Wellington was coming round to the view that
the Lords should not provoke a constitutional crisis by annually rejecting a
Bill sent up from the Commons and which the country agreed to. (In the
following decade he urged the impropriety of the hereditary House totally
blocking legislation passed by the elected House, and so caused the
constitutional clash to be deferred for eighty years until 1911.) The Times of London commented that even Lord
Eldon was no longer speaking of perpetual exclusion, but of terms and
conditions. Wellington
was in considerable trouble over an entirely different matter, and it was to
show that although he could command generals, he was totally unable to control
cabinet ministers and retain their loyalty. It had been agreed that two corrupt
boroughs should be disfranchised, and their seats in parliament re-allocated.
The obvious candidates were two of the new large manufacturing towns such
as Manchester that had no representation
in Parliament. Wellington and Huskisson disagreed and
the latter resigned. He was followed by the rest of Canning’s supporters who
then joined the Whigs. (This did not affect the arithmetic on the Catholic
Question, but added greatly to the electoral credibility of the Whigs and led
to the Whig victory in the General Election two years later.) Those who
followed Huskisson were Lord Dudley, Lord Palmerston, Mr Grant, and Mr Lamb. But the resignation of Huskisson from the Board of Trade meant there was a vacancy
in the cabinet, and Wellington appointed William Vesey Fitzgerald an MP for
county Clare to the vacant position. As this was an office of profit under the
crown, Fitzgerald had to resign his seat and seek re-election in accordance
with the rules at that time. Fitzgerald was a long-term supporter of the
Catholics. Lord Francis Leveson-Gower, a younger son
of the Marquis of Stafford, became Irish Secretary in Lamb’s place. The
Catholics continued to meet in Dublin. A Separate Meeting was called to
consider repealing the motion of Lawless
that they should oppose every MP who voted against them. MacDonough
states that this was done at the request of Lord John Russell who was anxious
not to antagonise moderate opinion in Parliament. The Irish leaders were
divided. Lawless defended his resolution, while O’Connell attacked it. Sheil
said he had no hand in ‘concocting’ the original resolution, but to withdraw it
meant approving of Wellington. Others thought that Wellington was doing well in
the circumstances in controlling his own hard-liners (SNL 3 May 1828). An Aggregate Meeting was held in Clarendon Street Chapel on 20 May with Lord Killeen in the
chair. The Resolutions were of a very general nature. Anglesey
wrote that there was much agitation but no revolutionary spirit in Clare. He
told Peel that he had authorised £10,000 for roads in the distressed and
disturbed districts, and that he had tried to get Sir Harcourt Lees from
raising unnecessary alarms. [June 1828]
The discussion in the Lords commenced on 9 June 1828. Wellington said that for
him the matter was not one of principle, but of political expediency. He quoted
the concordat of the Pope with Hanover that gave the king a say in episcopal
appointments, and he did not see how this could be reconciled with election by
chapters (SNL 12 June 1828). Plunket argued that Catholics could sit in the Irish
Parliament up to the reign of William III simply by taking the Oath of
Supremacy demanded by Elizabeth I, for this was understood in a purely secular
sense. The exclusion of Catholics from parliament was merely the result of
events in the reign of James II. (The Catholic Parliament in the reign of James
II (1685 to 1690 in Ireland) aimed at making Ireland Catholic, was followed by
a Protestant Parliament in the reign of William III after 1690, aimed naturally
enough at excluding the Catholics.) The
proposal of an agreement with the Commons was rejected by the Lords on
10 June., but Burdett and Brougham approved of
Wellington’s speech, where he said no principle was involved. On 12
June the refusal of the Lords was debated in the Commons. Burdett
expressed the wish that the Catholics would be patient, and would continue to petition.
He commended the fact that the prime minister had rejected all ancient
theological and historical arguments, and rested his case solely on common
sense, justice and expediency. Brougham agreed that the question was now one
purely of political expediency. In other words the Government had to decide if
less harm would be done by siding with the Catholics against the growing band
of Protestant extremists. The
Catholic meetings continued in Dublin. At a Separate Meeting on 4 June Lawless
proposed the adoption of Anglesey’s son, Lord George Paget,
for Louth. On 7 June there was a rumour in Dublin that Vesey Fitzgerald was
going to the Board of Trade, but as he had voted for the Catholic measure his
seat was not threatened directly by Lawless’s
resolution. O’Connell however, at meetings on 14 and 16 June remarked that he
had voted for the ‘Algerine Act’ that was shortly to
lapse, and proposed backing a Whig candidate in Clare. But he said he would not
be able to assist personally because of the press of private business. He would
personally contribute £50 to the election fund (SNL 16, 17 June 1828). The programme of simultaneous meetings,
Aggregate Meetings and provincial meetings for the coming December was
outlined.(Anglesey claimed later that he and Wellesley had prohibited
simultaneous meetings. It is not clear under what Act these proclamations were
made; in the event no more simultaneous meetings were held.) Meanwhile,
Dr Doyle on 19 June wrote a lengthy and rather preachy letter to Wellington on
the Securities. He considered that if inequitable laws were removed there would
be no need for the priests to attempt to use political influence, so the
removal of those laws should be tried first before introducing ‘novelties’.
Once again this was missing the point, for the Securities were introduced
primarily to allay the fears of the extreme Protestants regardless of what the
priests were doing or not doing (SNL
25 June 1828). Rumours continued that a Concordat was being negotiated (SNL 13 Sept 1828). The
sheriff of Clare appointed 30 June as polling day. Fitzgerald asked Sheil to be
his assessor (legal advisor), but Sheil declined. It was expected that
O’Connell’s old friend Major MacNamara who had been
his second in the duel with D’Esterre would be the Whig
candidate. O’Gorman Mahon
and Tommy Steele, being from Clare, were expected to organise the canvass, and
get out the Catholic vote. Lawless wanted to know if it was certain that MacNamara was standing. O’Connell replied at a Separate
Meeting on Monday 23 June that MacNamara was
standing, and if he did not stand he himself would stand in order to test the
law on the matter. This idea of running a Catholic Candidate to test the law
was not new and had been advocated by some Catholic lawyers before this. O'Connell’s
remark that he would stand himself was greeted with laughter, and he obviously
had not intended it seriously. He said he was determined to put up a Catholic
candidate in some county where they had support, and where the interests of a
friend of civil and religious liberty were not interfered with. If this tactic
were to be adopted there were two obvious places where it could be attempted.
Lord Killeen, strongly back by the majority of the local gentlemen could be
asked to stand in Meath, or Henry Charles Howard, Earl of Surrey in a pocket
borough owned by his father the Duke of Norfolk. A committee of 21 was selected
to supervise funds and to make advances of money. Suddenly,
an announcement appeared in an obscure mercantile newspaper, the Dublin Mercantile Advertiser on the same day Monday 23 June, but was not
picked up by the other papers until it re-appeared in the Dublin Evening Post the following day. This
gentleman (MacNamara) having declined however, were
have now to state upon authority that
the county will be contested notwithstanding, and that Mr O’Connell will offer
himself to the constituency of Clare as a candidate for the representation… It
is impossible adequately to describe the sensation that this announcement
caused in Dublin yesterday [Sunday] (DMA
23 June 1828). There
are several questions raised by this announcement. Why was there no general
knowledge of the decision until it was re-printed in the Post on Tuesday? Did O’Connell definitely commit him self on
Sunday, and then only hint at standing on Monday? Then on Tuesday he finds it
an accepted fact from which he cannot retreat? Where was the decision made and
to whom was it divulged? How did Saunders
Newsletter, usually very well informed, fail to print it on Monday? How was
it that Conway, who attended most Catholic meetings did not hear about it until
it appeared in the Advertizer?
Or was Conway at that time connected with the Advertizer (he later owned it)
and printed the news in the first paper he was connected with. Why did O’Connell
say at the meeting on Monday that he was glad that MacNamara
was standing? According to Ward O’Connell was persuaded to stand by Sir David
Rosse, a Dublin wine merchant. Cusack says that Rosse
told Mr Fitzpatrick who told Conway. When exactly did news that MacNamara was not standing arrive and who knew it? Two meetings were held, both in the
Corn Exchange, on Tuesday 24 June. One
was the O’Connell’s Grand Chapter of the Order of Liberators, described
as ‘A Voluntary Association of Irishmen for purposes legal and useful to
Ireland’. The other was the adjourned Separate Meeting. Charles Mahon, who styled himself The O’Gorman
Mahon, reported on his mission to Clare. Richard
Scott said that MacNamara had only said he would
oppose Fitzgerald in a general election. There were cries for O’Connell and he
said he was willing to stand if called on, but not at his own expense (SNL 26 June 1828). The following day £5,000 was voted
from the £13,000 and O’Connell announced his plans. (The courts sat only in the
mornings, and most other gentlemen dealt with their business at that time of
the day also. Afternoons were available for meetings, while dinners and other entertainments took place in the evening.) When the courts
rose on Saturday he would go to Clare with O’Gorman Mahon. A letter from Dr Doyle pledged support. Sheil,
Counsellor Roynane, and the Rev. Thomas Maguire the controversialist, were also to go to Clare and
address the electorate in different parts of the county. Separate or Adjourned
Meetings were held every day that week. There was much discussion whether if he
was elected he could take his seat. O’Connell claimed to have found a legal
loophole. English legislation on the subject did not apply to Ireland, while
Irish legislation did not apply to Westminster. However, as Wellington had
recently pointed out, anyone wishing to take his seat would have to take the
oath that Catholics could not take. But it was good stuff to put in a speech.
An English newspaper claimed that it was Mr Blake, Wellesley’s friend, who had
discovered this supposed loophole, but others attributed the interpretation to
Charles Butler . Steel and Mahon
dashed round the large county constituency. It was stated that the latter was
addressing meetings in chapels in the middle of the night, with people being
dragged out of their beds to hear him. O’Connell with Purcell O’Gorman timed his departure from Dublin so as to arrive in
Ennis on the morning of the election. (Presumably the
urgent legal business was handed over to his junior, Michael O’Loughlen, to deputise for him.) Crowds lined nearly the
whole route. Anglesey moved troops and artillery southward as a precaution. But
O’Connell had stressed that there was to be absolutely no violence, no
retaliation if attacked, and no truckling with the secret societies, for he
knew that the anti-Popery press would seize on any incident. Reporters
descended from all sides on Ennis, the county town of
county Clare. It was about 15 miles from Limerick, which in turn was 75 miles
to Dublin. Though Ennis was a post town, the post was
slow, so newsagents hired post-chaises to bring news back to Dublin. There was
a regular stage coach from Dublin to Limerick, but O’Connell on his way down
travelled by private post chaise. On the morning of election day
Monday 30 June crowds of Forty Shilling freeholders ‘in grey coats and corduroy
inexpressibles’ gathered in the Catholic committee
rooms. (Inexpressibles were trousers or
breeches, words not to be used in polite
company.) The sheriff opened the election proceedings on Monday 30 June in the
court house in Ennis. Reporters were admitted early
and then the court room was packed with the supporters of both parties. O’Gorman Mahon proposed O’Connell
and Tommy Steel seconded. After speeches on the other side the sheriff put the
question and O’Connell was declared elected on a show of hands. Fitzgerald
demanded a poll, and the sheriff ordered that the ballot commence at 10 a.m.
the following day. The piece in the court house was largely a bit of theatre, for
there was no way of telling which of those who raised their hands were
registered freeholders. But a poor showing by O’Connell’s followers would have
doomed his chances, for few would vote for him unless he had at least an equal
chance of winning. Why throw away the lease on your farm? The sheriff had then to order the
erection of hustings outside the courthouse. This was a raised platform of
sufficient size with room for tables and chairs to hold the sheriff, the Clerk
of the Peace with his list of registered and sworn voters and his bible for
administering the anti-bribery oath, an official assessor or assistant
barrister to decided on disputed qualifications of the voters, the candidates,
their agents and the voter who had to be visible to the assembled crowd and who
had to state his choice in a loud clear voice. [July
1828] The poll commenced on Tuesday
1 July. An election could take several days for the voters had to come from all
over the county. When a proper canvass was done all supporters of each candidate were identified. Voters
pledged to either party were brought in beforehand and lodged in the town at
the candidate’s expense. He was expected to provide food and drink to all his
supporters with a princely bounty. (There were always tricksters who got their
food and drink from one candidate and then voted for the other. This was
supposed to be funny.) However, here no proper canvass had been done
beforehand. People like Sheil in the outlying districts, when they had
identified those likely to vote for their candidate with a degree of firmness,
gathered them into bodies to walk to the county town, stopping of course at
various places for liquid refreshment supplied by the candidate’s agents. There
were many costs in an election but treating the voters was the most urgent one.
Numerous Catholic priests lent their assistance to bring in their flocks to
vote (Ward III). (For a humorous description of an Irish election of the period
the reader is referred to Lover’s Handy
Andy published in 1839.) On the morning of the election O’Connell’s
agents claimed to have 3,000 registered voters along with their women and
children in town and expected him to win by 50 to 1. By 3 p.m. O’Connell had
117 votes and Fitzgerald 82, but when the polling for the day ended at 6 p.m.
Fitzgerald and almost made up lost ground. At the end of the first day’s voting
O’Connell’s supporters had cast 200 votes and Fitzgerald’s 194. O’Connell was
slightly ahead and the confidence of the freeholders grew that he would win.
The next day the landslide commenced. We can reasonably suppose that if
Fitzgerald had been ahead at the end of the first day the landslide would have
been in the opposite direction. Fitzgerald was popular with the Catholics and
had constantly supported them. At 2 p.m. on Wednesday O’Connell was 167 ahead,
and at 6 p.m. 316 ahead. By the fifth day, Friday, it was estimated that
O’Connell was polling 10 to 1 and was ahead by 2027 to Fitzgerald’s 936. On
Saturday 5 July Fitzgerald asked the assessor to rule that O’Connell as a
Catholic could not be elected, but he decided that he could be elected even if
he could not take his seat. Polling resumed and there was time only for eight
votes to be cast before the end of the day, 6 for O’Connell and 2 for
Fitzgerald. As the law at the time required that the election must be
terminated when fewer than 20 votes were cast on a given day, the sheriff
declared the polling concluded. Fitzgerald conceded defeat. He said that he
hoped that the result of the election would bring about Emancipation, a cause
that he had always favoured. He did not object to the contest, nor did he
believe that any man should be prevented from standing on account of his
religion. He had prolonged the contest to the last day on legal advice so that
the opinion of the voters of the county should be tested to the fullest. Sheil,
Steel, and O’Gorman Mahon
all expressed their esteem for Fitzgerald. He could still have petitioned
parliament to have the qualifications of O’Connell’s supporters examined by
Parliament in detail, and no doubt could have could have had the majority
against him considerably reduced, but almost certainly not overturned his majority. (The next decade
was to see a great increase both in registering voters and checking on other
voters’ qualifications, leases and values, and petitions against the results of
the ballots.) A seat was found for Fitzgerald at Newport in Cornwall early in
the following year. In 1831 he was elected for the borough of Ennis. He succeeded to the Irish peerage in 1832, and in
1835 Peel obtained an English peerage for him. Back in Dublin the Catholic meetings
continued in a state of great anxiety. In a manner inconceivable today, the
people of Dublin were entirely ignorant of what was happening in Clare. A swift
and overwhelming victory had been expected, so depression set in when there was
no news of it. No news was dispatched until after the voting on Tuesday. The
news that O’Connell was ahead by six votes arrived in Dublin on Wednesday and
was published in the papers on Thursday. Saunders
Newsletter on Thursday carried the reports from Ennis
on Monday and Tuesday in the same edition on Thursday (SNL 3 July 1828). A Separate Meeting was held on Tuesday 1 July and
crowds gathered to hear if there was any news from Clare but there was none.
Another meeting was held on Thursday, and again it was reported that there was
no news. (Presumably the last edition of Saunders
Newsletter which contained the news that O’Connell was ahead by 6 votes had
not been printed by the time the meeting started. Morning newspapers ran off
several editions on their hand-presses between midnight and midday, after which
the evening papers took over.) At a Separate Meeting on Friday a letter from
O’Connell to his wife was read out saying that victory was assured, for nearly
all Fitzgerald’s voters had polled, and he had many in reserve. On Saturday the
New Catholic Association met, and after it had concluded its business the
Separate Meeting was formed with a different chairman. Lord Killeen appeared
for the first time that week and was greeted with cheers. He confessed that he
had been worried that the great popularity of Fitzgerald would result in a
defeat for O’Connell, which would retard the Catholic cause. The narrow
majority for O’Connell at the end of the first day, showed that he was right to
have worries. Killeen was not alone in believing that the Catholics should have
a second barrel ready in case the first shot was ineffective. It was reported
that £4,000 had been collected in nine days for election expenses, besides a
further £1,000 subscribed at a meeting in London. The London newspapers were by
now filled with the sensational result, which eclipsed the Russian invasion of
Turkey for news value. The newspapers continued to report the events of the
previous week in Clare, the details of what happened on Thursday, Friday, and
Saturday not being printed until the following Monday (SNL 7 July). (The Russian attack across the Danube was reported in Saunders on Monday 30 June.) The Catholics celebrated O’Connell’s
victory with great enthusiasm. These ended in an anti-climax. O’Connell could
not try to take his seat until the sheriff’s writ reached the Speaker of the
House of Commons. On 16 July the Speaker ruled that a petition against the election
could not be presented until after the arrival of the writ. Spring Rice noted
that with the rising of Parliament the ‘Algerine
Act’, against which he had voted would expire. In any case there was no point
in trying to raise a major issue during the last days of the session.
Parliament rose on 28 July. It would seem that this campaign was
not pre-meditated, and what commenced as a half-joke on O’Connell’s part was
taken seriously, and most people overlooked the risk to the tenants. There were
numerous advantages in putting up Lord Killeen to contest county Meath. He was
altogether more acceptable to the Protestants, to the Government and to the
king, and the risk to the freeholders who would be largely voting in accordance
with their landlords’ instructions would be minimised. We can also be sure that
O’Connell was aware of this fact but realised that if he did not seize his
chance Lord Killeen would emerge as the undisputed leader of the Catholics, and
that he himself would have to reconcile himself to a career at the bar. Anglesey
wrote on 16 July to the cabinet that he did not apprehend the tranquillity of
the country to be immediately endangered, and there was no necessity for new
laws to strengthen the arm of Government. On 26 July
he wrote that most people were now convinced that the question must be adjusted
at no too distant future (Ward II). On the 29th July he wrote that
though he was prepared to put down rebellion under any circumstances, he would
not consent to govern the country much longer under the existing laws. Ward
concluded that Peel was strongly influenced by the prospect of virtually a
class struggle in Ireland with the landlords on one side and the peasants led
by the priests on the other. Nor could he appeal to the country in an election,
for while he might have some gains in England he would lose most Irish
constituencies. (Of course, if violence had actually broken out the priests and
O’Connell would have been instantly shouldered aside.) On 31 July 1828 Anglesey
reported to the cabinet, It
seems agreed on all sides that the public feeling was never at so high a pitch
as it is at present. The language of both parties is violent in the extreme and
both appear ripe for action. The organisation of the Catholics is very
complete. They carry banners. They form and they march by words and in good
order, but they commit no outrage, and I discourage interference or display of
both the military and the constabulary… The Brunswickers are rivalling the Association in violence and
in Rent. Two Associations and two rents are formidable. The Brunswick
establishment is not very flattering to the king, or to his ministers, or to
his army, since it seems it necessary to take the whole under its especial
protection… The
Catholics are persuaded that the Brunswickers will
bring on collision if they can with a view of committing the Government against
them (SNL 8 May 1829). Anglesey
set out the options There may be rebellion. You may put
to death thousands. You may suppress it, but it will only put off the day of
compromise. The present order of things cannot, must not last. There are three modes of proceeding, First,
that of trying to go on as we have done, Secondly,
to adjust the question by concession, and such guards as may be deemed
indispensable, Thirdly,
to put down the Association and to crush the power of the priests. The
first I hold to be impossible, the second practicable and advisable, the third
is only possible by supposing that you can reconstruct the House of Commons,
and to suppose that is to suppose that you can totally alter the feelings of
those who send them there (Maxwell). Both
Peel and Wellington came to the same conclusion, but Peel felt that if the
matter were proceeded with he would be bound to resign from Parliament. The use
of the term ‘Brunswickers' is interesting. The term
refers to the Orange or Ascendancy faction, and about this time, for no very
clear reason, began to be applied to the faction and their organisations. The
name is derived from that of the royal family, George IV being George of
Brunswick or von Braunschweig.
As Anglesey observed, it was not very flattering to the king for them to take
him under their protection. It was highly predictable that when the Catholics
built up an organisation and collected a Rent, the Orange faction would do the
same. Orange demonstrations annually reached a peak on 12 July, the anniversary
of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. (The battle was fought on 1 July according
to the Old Calendar, which became 12 July when Britain adopted the New Calendar
in 1751, and removed eleven days to come into line with the Gregorian
Calendar). Excitement would have reached new peaks this year after the news of
the Catholic victory in Clare on 5 July. Collection of money began. The ending
of the ‘Algerine Act’ benefited the Orange faction
perhaps more than the Catholics, for their skilled lawyers had devised ways
round it. The Catholics, in order to try to calm the situation, decided that
there would be no triumphal entry of O’Connell into Dublin. The Enniskillen Reporter said that armed
bodies of young Protestants ensured that no tar barrels were lit in
Enniskillen. Meetings of the New Catholic
Association and Separate Meetings continued through the rest of July. The Rent
on the week ending 12 July was £2,705. O’Connell resumed his interrupted
business in the courts during the assizes. At a meeting of the New Catholic
Association on 26 July O’Connell declared that the ‘Algerine
Act’ had expired and he was standing in the old Catholic Association. (He seems
to have anticipated the proroguing of Parliament). When that Act was passed he
had promised to drive a coach and six through it, and he had kept his word. He queried why the Orangemen in
Enniskillen were armed, a man in the crowd replied it was because the Ribbonmen
were armed. The Ribbonmen were the Catholic agrarian terrorists along the
Ulster border. O’Connell said he had not been supported in Clare by the
Catholic bishop and a dean, and that O’Gorman Mahon had taken 75 voters away from a priest who was
leading them to vote for Fitzgerald (SNL
28 July 1828). O’Connell got to see Anglesey which caused busy rumours to
circulate in Dublin. Anglesey later explained that he was only part of a
deputation whose ostensible aim was to ask for an enquiry into a certain murder
on 12 July (SNL 8 May 1829). The Rent
for the last week in July was £2,297. There was a report in the strongly
Protestant Evening Packet of an
attack on Goulburn’s
police in Fermoy in county Cork (EP 24 July 1828). These attacks by
Catholic mobs on parties of policemen were to become common, and were often
attended by fatalities. The Catholic Association deplored such attacks and did
everything it could to prevent them. But the Protestants saw them as another
example of the type of criminal behaviour that would result if the Catholics
were not kept under strict Protestant control [August
1828] The Meetings of the New Catholic Association continued but the Rent
rapidly fell to a quarter of what it had been. Strict conditions were drawn up
to try to prevent false claims by those who said they were threatened with
eviction in Clare. The Catholic Association under its old name resumed meeting
on 16 August, but as O’Connell had departed to Kerry on his annual holiday
there was little business to transact. The ‘New’ was simply dropped from its
title. Matters were very different on the
Protestant side. A Brunswick Club had been established in London and was
privately approved by the king, who had by this time completely turned against
the Catholics. George Dawson, MP for Derry, who was
married to Peel’s sister, made a speech giving some indication that he
considered that some concessions should be made to the Catholics. It was
believed, wrongly, that this speech was inspired by Peel, who was immediately
denounced as a traitor to the cause (O’Connell DNB, SNL 18, 22, 25 Aug. 1828). Brunswick Clubs were formed everywhere,
the first being in Dublin in August (SNL
28 Aug. 1828). Saunders reported the
‘establishment in Dublin of the Brunswick Constitutional Club of Ireland on the
same principles as the London Club of which the Marquis of Chandos
is secretary’ (SNL 22 August 1828).
Almost immediately a Brunswick club was formed in Sligo. The use of the name
club seems to have been fortuitous. According to Dr Johnson in his famous
dictionary, a club was an assembly of good fellows meeting under certain
conditions. The original purposes of clubs in England were convivial, but could
be formed by people with a particular connection as with horse racing, the theatre,
or for particular purposes like gambling. They were perfectly legal. According
to Saunders it was a better word than
association because of the recent connotations of the latter. The Packet noted that every speech by the
member for Clare fanned the spread of the Protestant societies. Wellington and Peel realised that
Parliament would not grant emergency powers on the issue, and that it was
undesirable if not impossible to hold down the Catholics by force. Wellington
was less impressed by the Catholic Association which he did not think was
contemplating rebellion, than by the Protestants of Ulster who were
pressing for a definite settlement on
their own lines. He cautiously approached the king on 1 August, showing him
Anglesey’s letter, and he promptly became ill. It is suspected that he, like
his father suffered from porphyria and that attacks
were brought on by stress. He was often drunk or stupefied by laudanum, and the
Duke of Cumberland was always urging him to resist. Wellington just wished at
this stage for permission to discuss the question in cabinet. Wellington
discussed the matter with Peel. He proposed to Peel the annual suspension of
the laws, plus an exclusion from voting on particular issues like the
Established Church, together with payment of the clergy. Peel however replied
on 11 that they were inadequate. ‘There
would be an advantage in the sincere and honest attempt to settle the question
on just principles…There is upon the whole less of evil in making a decided
effort to settle the Catholic question than in leaving it, as it has been left,
an open question – the Government being undecided with respect to it, and
paralysed in consequence of that indecision upon many occasions particularly
requiring promptitude and energy of action’ (Ward III). He
was also against State Provision for the clergy that was no security and
implied recognising the Holy See. He also thought the franchise should be
raised (Gash I). It was the Protestant bishops who finally put paid to payments
to the clergy (DNB Wellington). Peel
realised that if strife broke out in Ireland amounting to a civil war the
Government must be united in any action it would take. There might be a need to
send in the army, embody the militia, and disband the unreliable
Protestant-sympathising yeomanry. Wyse noted that after the electoral victory
in Clare efforts were made to develop the separate Ribbon conspiracies into an
effective fighting force. These would be the natural leaders of the Catholics
if they felt they were to be attacked by the Protestants We may doubt that they
had any plans to carry Emancipation by force. Unlike the much later Home Rule
movement or the earlier United Irish movement there was noting in Emancipation
to benefit the leaders of agrarian conspiracies. F or the moment Peel
dissociated himself from any attempt to arrive at a solution, leaving
Wellington to handle the matter alone. Wellington described how he dealt with
the king, I make it a rule never to interrupt
him, and when by turning the conversation he tries to get rid of a subject in
the way of business he does not like I let him talk himself out, and then
quietly put before him the matter in question, so that he cannot escape from it
(Maxwell). It
would seem that the king’s desire to recall Anglesey dates from this letter.
Nor could a general election be held for it was considered that gains in
Ireland would be matched by losses in England. Jack Lawless considered that he was
a person who understood the Ulster Protestants, and decided to proceed through
Ulster to explain the exact effects of the victory in Clare to them. He could
also try to enlist the supporters of O'Connell against Ribbonism,
and insist that Catholics must display no violence, and not retaliate if
attacked. Whether Lawless misunderstood
the people north of the Boyne, the traditional boundary of Ulster, or
they misunderstood him can be discussed at length. This was a personal project
of Lawless though the Catholic Association had discussed it. O’Connell was at
this time in Cork, but mentioned the fact in a letter. [September
1828] Lawless addressed a great and enthusiastic meeting, composed largely
one supposes of Catholics in the town of Kells in county Meath. A report about
Lawless, the Northern Missionary, and the meeting in Kells was made to the
Catholic Association on 6 September, so presumably his mission had some
endorsement from the Association if not from O’Connell. Next he held a
triumphal meeting in Collon, county Louth. This was the seat of John Foster,
Baron Oriel, who had just died on 23 August 1828. Holding a rally in Collon at
that time was both tasteless and provocative, but Lawless never impressed one
as being particularly sensitive. It was claimed in the newspapers that 30,000
people accompanied him into Collon. He proceeded to Carrickmacross
in county Monaghan, where it was claimed that 250,000 people met him. Lawless
found that the people of a local small town called Ballybay
were smarting under the innocent blood recently shed there, and he was told
that there was ‘a vulgar and ferocious rabble in that town led by a sanguinary
fool’. (Obviously, this rabble and fool were Protestants, who would have used
identical language to describe Lawless and his followers.) Lawless was invited
to lead his great assembly through the town of Ballybay,
whether the Protestants objected by force or not. The Catholics of Ballybay saw in the immense assembly of Lawless a way of
retaliating with safety, but Lawless would have none of it. When the Catholic
mob surrounded his carriage to force him to go through Ballybay,
he got on to a horse and galloped off. He proceeded to Castleblaney
followed by the Catholic clergy. He discussed plans for public safety with the
local army officer, General Thornton, but the
Catholic mob was very disappointed with him (SNL 27 Sept 1828). Reports were coming in from Tipperary that the
Catholics were preparing to march on those towns that contained Orangemen.
O’Connell wrote a letter to the People of Tipperary from his home at Derrinane in Kerry, urging them to hold no large meetings,
and no secret meetings. They should appoint ‘pacificators’ to try to make peace
between Catholics and Protestants (SNL
8 Oct. 1828). There were reports too that the Orangemen in Armagh and Down were
arming themselves against Lawless. Both sides clearly saw him as the general of
the Catholic army. Brunswick Clubs were being formed
everywhere and steps were being taken to restore the Grand Orange Lodge of
Dublin, and the Grand Orange Lodge of Ulster to co-ordinate the activities of
the county organisations. The Orange Order in England was reformed under the
Duke of Cumberland, the king’s brother, and in Ireland under the Earl of
Enniskillen. Anglesey in September went to co. Louth to visit his estates at
Carlingford. Anglesey wrote to Peel on 20
September that there was reason to fear that the priests and agitators had lost
control of the infuriated people, on 23 September 1828 saying that some strong
action would soon have to be taken, and on 26 September that he would soon have
to proclaim some counties on his own authority (SNL 8 May 1829, Memoirs of
Sir Robert Peel). On 24 September Anglesey wrote to Wellington, that he was
persuaded that a Catholic Bill would pass at this time, on as good terms, and
with little opposition from either the bishops or the agitators. Wellington
replied that the only possible settlement was as a Government measure, and
because of the king’s mind this was impossible (Ward II). [October
1828] A Catholic priest from Newry, co Down wrote, ‘Every Orange town in
the North is like a camp, and the gunsmiths’ shops are engaged in cleaning up
the old and making new instruments of death’. He believed that the yeomanry
should be disarmed, and advised that Lawless should not attempt to advance
further north. (The yeomanry were voluntary forces raised in 1797 to serve in
their own localities. They were supposed to disband after 1815, but in strongly
Orange areas did not, but remained legal bodies.) By 1828 most of those serving
in the yeomanry were strong Protestants. Anglesey issued a circular to the
counties to find out how many yeomanry units were still under arms. The returns
showed that there were over 13,000 yeomen in Ulster, about 3,500 in Leinster
and about 1,500 each in Munster and Connaught. (There was no overt attempt by
the Catholic secret societies to procure arms and recruits but we can be sure
they did both, especially in places where the Orangemen were openly arming.) The Catholic Association recalled
Lawless to Dublin to report. Anglesey proclaimed some counties, prohibiting
meetings and assemblies ‘ for no purpose known to law’, but in such general
terms that it was impossible to say who he was aiming at. Lawless maintained
that it was the fault of Lord Rossmore who as
governor of the county failed to use the military to keep order among the
Orangemen. Rossmore was a strong supporter of the
Catholics and had contributed to the Catholic Rent. The county governor had
charge of the militia of the county. Lawless saw himself as conducting a purely
political campaign, and if anyone took up arms against him they should be
arrested and disarmed by the army. Nobody else saw his campaign like that.
Lawless wrote to Leveson-Gower to say that he did not
think his meetings came under the proclamation, but the Secretary replied that
it was left to the local magistrates, if they have good reason to think a
particular assemblage ‘is calculated to alarm and terrify His Majesty’s
subjects they are to prevent such meeting’. There was no special anti-terrorist
legislation in force at the time, so the proclamation was issued under the
normal laws. A warrant was made out for the arrest of Lawless stating ‘that on
23 September last he had headed 20,000 men to the amazement, dismay, terror,
and astonishment of his Majesty’s subjects’. A member of the Catholic
Association said that Lawless’s claim that he had
‘taken Collon’ was provocative (SNL
17 Oct 1828). Lawless was arrested and Nicholas Mahon
and Michael Staunton, a newspaper proprietor stood as
sureties. The
English Whig peer Lord Ebrington wrote that he wished
to be enrolled as a member of the Catholic Association, not because he always
approved of its acts but because of the Brunswickers.
Lord Nugent, whose mother and whose title was Irish,
wrote to his constituents warning them against forming a Brunswick club. ‘The
Irish Brunswick clubs, which are formed for a practical purpose – that of exciting civil war in order to
restore the waning ascendancy of an illegal faction, I view with alarm and
detestation’ (SNL 24 Oct 1828). That
of course was not how the Brunswickers saw
themselves, but rather as defenders of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which ‘
gave us religion, and freedom and laws’. A meeting of the freeholders of Kent
in England was called by the sheriff of that county at Penenden
Heath on 24 October to oppose concessions to the Catholics. Sheil acquired a
small freehold property in the county to enable him to speak, and when given
permission by the sheriff addressed the meeting. As usual with open-air
meetings few could hear the speaker, but the shorthand reporters for the
newspapers were positioned close to the speaker to record and print the
speeches. The anti-Catholic Resolution was declared passed by the sheriff after
a show of hats (SNL 27, 28 Oct 1828).
Dr Murray and Dr Doyle were in Paris in connection with property belonging to
the Irish colleges and it was reported that they had meetings with the papal
nuncio to France over the text of the oath of loyalty. Reports came from Rome
that the Government had made contacts with the Pope. (Neither Wellington nor
Peel had any contact with the Holy See, but neither did they stop the contacts made by Goderich). How much truth there was in these reports nobody
knew, but in the heated atmosphere of the time, the rumours were seized on
avidly. The Rent continued at two or three hundred pounds a week, which was
good, but did not indicate any particular ferment among the Catholics. At the beginning of October Anglesey
asked for two extra battalions of troops, and one was landed in Belfast in the North and the other at
Waterford in the South. He then wrote that he was confident he could deal with
the Catholics and the Brunswickers simultaneously.
There was this great difference between the two sides. The extreme Protestants
who joined the Brunswickers formed a united body,
united under military officers and many of the nobility and gentry of the
counties for a single purpose – to defend themselves if attacked. The Orange
Order had succeeded largely in its purpose of channelling working-class
Protestant anger into legal ways. No leader on the Catholic side ever succeed
in doing that. The Catholics in the Catholic Association corresponded to the
moderate Protestants. But vast numbers of Catholics were as likely to follow
the agrarian secret society leaders drawn from their own class as they were the
Catholic nobility and gentry in the Catholic Association. There was the problem
too of the kind of violent rhetoric used by many speakers in the Catholic
Association. As Anglesey noted, the language
was ‘so nicely measured and so equivocal as to admit of an explanation
that might be strained into an excess of loyalty’. (An example, taken from
later in century, of rhetoric about crimes of landlords crying out to heaven
for vengeance, and the speaker then expressing surprise when one of his hearers
actually shot the landlord.) As Doyle had pointed out earlier, the Catholics of
Ireland had this conviction that the Irish were a deeply-wronged people wound
up to a pitch to see the wrongs righted. As the expedition of Lawless showed,
many Catholics considered that direct violent action was called for.
Fortunately, at the time, there was no alternative politically-motivated
movement calling for a violent insurrection. [November
1828] Wellington was coming to the conclusion that Anglesey should be
removed. He taxed him on 11 November for not removing Tommy Steele and O’Gorman Mahon from the
magistracy for their blatantly partisan actions in the Clare election. They
wore green ribbons on a day when a breach of the peace might be expected.
(Wearing Orange ribbons had long been prohibited in the army, militia, and
yeomanry.) His failure to act in this matter was causing difficulties with the
king who daily complained that the peace was being breached in Ireland. Clearly
Cumberland was furnishing the king with accounts of every breach of the peace
in Ireland. Anglesey replied on 14th rebutting the charges made
against Steel and Mahon, saying that though their
language was indecorous it was not illegal, and there was a precedent in an
Orange magistrate wearing orange ribbons. O’Gorman Mahon had attended a meeting called by the sheriff for the
purpose of forming a Brunswick club and was refused admittance, and this was
the root of the complaints against him (SNL
8 May 1829).Wellington’s complaints to Anglesey at this time seem rather
captious. He was irritated by the king’s incessant and detailed complaints, and
was disinclined to trust and defend Anglesey’s judgement. One can only assume
that the long-buried matter of the elopement had never been forgotten or
forgiven. (According to Longford, Wellington was a man who did not easily
forget and forgive.) Anglesey’s replies, given later in full in a debate in the
House of Lords, show him to have been a well-informed and reasonable
administrator. Among the complaints against him was that he had met Lord
Cloncurry who had once been a United Irishman and who had once attended a
meeting of the Catholic Association. But then Anglesey does not appear to have
recognised how even his most innocuous activities were being scrutinised in the
ever-increasingly hostile atmosphere of anti-Popery circles in London. By
November 108 separate Brunswick Constitutional Clubs had been formed. (In
Ireland where one side copied from the other it was no surprise to find the
system of Clubs being later adopted by the Young Ireland movement.) One of Wellington’s problems in
dealing with Anglesey was that he knew from experience that no secret could be
kept in Dublin. And he did not wish to say anything until he had obtained some
measure of consent from the king. Anglesey was now openly favouring the
Catholics, which caused the niggardly complaints to London. But Anglesey failed
to take any hints. The
Catholic Association found itself embroiled in an internal dispute as to
whether Catholics should practise ‘exclusive dealings’ i.e. not to trade with
or employ those who disagreed with them, which meant most Protestants, though
they claimed that the action would not be directed against Protestants as such.At a
meeting of the Catholic Association on 20 November, with regard to those who
were to go to London, Lawless proposed proper delegates whose expenses would be
paid by the Association, not individual gentlemen who paid their own expenses. To
which O’Connell replied pointedly, that if there were a delegated mission he
would not be on it. At a meeting on 25th O’Connell said the purpose
of the mission to England were merely to inform, and it had no authority to
negotiate or bargain (SNL 21, 26 Nov
1828). No
national Catholic newspaper had ever been founded in Ireland. (Dr John
England’s adventure into journalism had been purely local.) In November,
Richard Barrett, a Protestant, launched The
Pilot to support O’Connell. It was a rather worthy, turgid and one-sided
newspaper, which supported O’Connell until his death. O’Connell’s speeches were
printed in full in them. In print they are stupefyingly
boring, but may have been more effective if read aloud to groups of Catholics
as was the common practice. O’Connell always supplied Barrett with copies. [December 1828] At a meeting of the
Catholic Association on 2 December 1828, O’Connell got the motion on exclusive
dealing quashed. On the 4 December the results of the ballot to choose
gentlemen for the mission to England were announced. The voting seems to have
been solely on the names on O’Connell’s list. 105 votes were cast and O’Connell
got 97 votes, Sheil 94, Wyse 91, O’Gorman Mahon 82, and there
were 5 other gentlemen. (It seems to have been assumed that some of the
Catholic nobles at least would go, so they were not voted for.) It was suggested that Purcell O’Gorman should be added to the list, and this was agreed.
Lawless then entered and asked that the vote be set aside, and another one held
‘on fair, broad, and honest principles’. O’Connell had no sympathy for him. He
said he had stayed until eight o’clock, while Lawless, anxious about his dinner
had left the meeting at five o’clock. One suspects that O’Connell took
advantage of Lawless’s absence to hold the ballot on
the single list presented before Lawless could return with his own list. Mr
Dwyer said Lawless’s name was not put on the list
because he insisted that his expenses be paid (SNL 5 Dec 1828). Not for the first or last time, Honest Jack was
out-manoeuvred. At 10 p.m. O’Connell moved the order of the day, preventing a
vote on exclusive dealing. The old question of the securities was again
revived. Many gentlemen like Lord Killeen, and Thomas Wyse were unwilling to
go, not seeing any point in it, and as Killeen pointed out it would only
diminish the impact of O'Connell's appearance in Parliament. Wyse
later recalled a disquieting development in the Catholic movement. It was
at the Provincial Meeting in Connaught in 1828 that the Catholics first ceased
to invite the Protestants as guests to their meetings. There were good reasons
for the alteration. It placed both parties at their ease: the consequences were
important (Wyse). The
question was how could Catholic orators denounce Protestants in round terms if
there were Protestants present who wished to assist them. The struggle for many
Catholics was not how to get a handful of representatives into Parliament, but
how to displace the Protestants from every elected office in Ireland, so that
they, not the Protestants, could control the political rackets. (It was a
problem that never went away.) The unreal expectations generated in the run-up
to Emancipation contributed to the feeling of disillusionment when a handful of
Catholics were eventually elected to Parliament, and a handful of Catholics
were appointed to public offices. An Aggregate Meeting was held in Clarendon Street chapel on 16 December 1828 with Lord
Killeen in the chair, to adopt resolutions for the coming session of
Parliament. Dr Curtis, the primate, on the advice of his friends, decided to
write to Wellington, whom he had assisted at Salamanca. The Duke replied
politely expressing hope of a settlement, but also of a period of calm in Ireland,
and hoped that the question could be buried in oblivion for a time. As the
letter had been franked in the prime minister’s office, everyone in Drogheda
soon knew that he had written to the primate who resided there. Curtis had no
option but to make the letter public, which annoyed Wellington who considered
the matter private. Curtis wrote to explain. The Dublin Evening Post printed the letter, but put in ‘the settlement’
instead of ‘a settlement’ implying that the Duke had agreed to Emancipation and
was preparing a Bill. Curtis informed Anglesey who thanked him (23 Dec.) and
said it was the first inkling he had of His Grace’s intentions, and urged that
all constitutional methods should be used to advance the cause. Anglesey was
recalled on 28 December. His recall had been on the cards for some months but
in the excited atmosphere, but many felt it was because of his letter to
Curtis, but this letter was not published until after he had received his
recall. He left in January but Northumberland did not arrive until March1829. Leveson-Gower and the
attorney general, Joy, called on him and told him that Dublin was in a ferment.
Both parties remembered the recall of Fitzwilliam.
Anglesey showed them his letter to Curtis and allowed them to publish it (SNL 2, 3 Jan 1829). This had the effect
of calming matters.
[Top] The Passing of the Emancipation Act (1829)
(January to March 1829)
[January
1829] The end came with astonishing suddenness. Before Parliament opened
Peel decided to change his stance and assist Wellington. He was also persuaded
not to resign from Parliament, but to stay to see the measure through. The 1829
Act was drafted by Peel and was a model of simplicity, clarity, and
comprehensiveness. In principle, Catholics would be allowed to vote in all
elections and could be admitted into all offices unless they involved patronage
in the Church of England. (The effects of these were greater in England than in
Ireland, for Catholics in England did not have the vote, and were excluded from
more offices.) There would be no
concordat with Rome, no payment of the
clergy, nor commissions to approve bishops nor examine correspondence. The
threshold for freehold voters would be raised from forty shillings (two pounds)
to ten pounds. (The sum of forty shillings for elections in Ireland was set by
an Act of 33 Henry VIII, but it was traditional for jury service long before
that.) Allowing for the inflations in Tudor times and
at other times it was estimated that ten pounds was the equivalent of the
medieval two pounds. Others added niggling conditions like the expulsion of the
Jesuits that were never put into effect. Wellington told Peel on 17 January
1829 that the mind of the king was so opposed to Emancipation that if he did
not stay in office he did not see how the measure could be passed. Peel agreed
to stay and assist. Wellington, thus fortified, was able to approach the king
and get permission to discuss the measure in cabinet. The rest of the cabinet
fell into line behind Peel. Wellington was successful so far that the king
allowed consideration of Emancipation by Parliament to be included in the
King’s Speech at the opening of Parliament. The Duke of Northumberland was
appointed to take Anglesey’s place. He was a moderate Tory who had opposed
Emancipation in the past, but had abstained in 1825, and was happy to back a
measure introduced by Wellington. He also asked that his term of office should
not exceed two years. This year there were no series of
meetings to petition for Emancipation. Attention was focussed on O’Connell’s
entry into Parliament. The Catholic Association continued to meet, though there
was no much to discuss at the moment. The Rent was back to over £600 a week. [February
1829] Parliament was opened on 5 February, not by the king, but by
commissioners. Included in the King’s Speech which sets out the programme for
that session were the words, His
Majesty recommends…that you should take into your deliberate consideration the
whole condition of Ireland and that you should review the laws that impose disabilities
on His Majesty’s Roman Catholic subjects. This in
itself meant no more than that the king agreed that the matter should be
discussed, and George doubtless comforted himself with the solid majority of
peers in the Upper House who could be relied on to oppose it. Still less did he
commit himself to sign the Bills. Fitzgerald’s petition against the
election in Clare was rejected on the first day because of defect of form, but
he was given leave to emend it and re-present it. Wellington had to get the Bill
through both Houses, stave off the furious challenge of the English extreme
anti-Popery Protestants, and finally to persuade the king to sign. Clearly a
Suppression of Associations Bill would have to be passed to get the main
measure through Parliament. Though this might annoy O’Connell who wished to use
the Association for his own purposes, Killeen and Sheil saw that, if the main
Bill were passed, the Catholic Association had outlived its usefulness. Even
O’Connell saw this and proposed that the Association be dissolved when complete
Emancipation had been conceded (SNL 6
Feb 1829). But it was the plan of the Government to suppress it as a means of
getting the main Bill passed. The dropping of the proposed concordat removed
one of the planks of the anti-Popery faction, though the Pope would not have
placed any difficulties in the way of a concordat. Peel to the utter dismay of those
who had regarded him as the bulwark of Protestantism, took personal charge of
the three proposed Bills, to suppress the Catholic Association, to emancipate
the Catholics, and to raise the franchise. But Peel, like William Pitt, held
that to maintain a consistent attitude amid changed circumstances was ‘ to be a slave to the most idle vanity’.
In a speech to Parliament on the King’s Speech (5 February) Peel set out the
Government’s programme. He gave his reasons for the Government’s change of
stance. Since 1807 there had been five general elections to elect the House of
Commons. Four of these parliaments had passed resolutions favouring the relief
of Catholics. For a long time it had been possible to construct ministries
which balanced the interests of Catholics and Protestants. It was no longer
possible to do this. The Government therefore determined to restore law and order
by suppressing the Catholic Association. Then it would reject any partial
solution of the Catholic Question, and would limit restrictions only to what
was essential to safeguard the Established Churches. He would not enter into
the question of Securities at the moment (SNL
9 Feb 1829). The next day he gave notice of
his intention to introduce The Dangerous Associations Suppression Act
(1829). O’Connell with his entourage was
proceeding through England. It had been decided not to attempt entrance to Parliament
until the result of Fitzgerald’s petition was known, which would be at least a
week after Parliament sat. He wrote to the Catholic Association from Shrewsbury
in England on 8 February not to disband the Association until Emancipation had
been conceded. This letter was read out at a meeting of the Catholic
Association on 10 February with James O’Connell in the chair. But some of the
members present favoured a dissolution to anticipate the Act. Sheil said the
advice of Anglesey, Lord Holland (nephew of Charles James Fox), Maurice
Fitzgerald (the Knight of Kerry), Sir John Newport, and Henry Brougham was to
dissolve immediately. But I come here sustained by a far
greater influence. I come here with two and twenty mitres (hear!)… The Catholic
hierarchy are at this moment in Dublin – the Catholic bishops have authorised
me (I lay emphasis on the word) to come down to you (loud and universal
cheering) and state their opinions…I stand here as the delegate of your
hierarchy; it is their strong and universal desire that the Catholic
Association should be immediately dissolved. Sheil
was strongly backed by Lord Killeen. Killeen said he had been the first
chairman of the Association. When he had come to Dublin on his way to London he
had some doubts about the propriety of an immediate dissolution, but from
conversations he had had, and information he had received he was decidedly
convinced the sooner they dissolved the better. Having been at the first
meeting of the Association he would like to be there at the last. O’Connell’s son wanted an
adjournment for two days until another letter was received from his father.
There was a general cry of ‘Dissolve, dissolve’. Sheil said that the majority
wished to dissolve immediately but Lawless denied this. Sheil then proposed an
adjournment for two days. It was also proposed that the accounts should be made
up to date and published. Killeen was then called to the chair, according to
the custom of the time, to thank the chairman of the meeting. He then set out
for London to join O’Connell’s party. On 12 February 1829 the Catholic
Association assembled for the last time. Sir Thomas Esmonde
was called to the chair. A letter from O’Connell was read out advising against
dissolution. Sheil considered it their duty to smooth Wellington’s path. Credit
must be given to Mr Peel despite his past words and actions. The primary object
of the Association was to achieve Emancipation. He proposed a resolution ‘That
the Catholic Association do stand dissolved upon its rising today’. There were
some speakers against the motion, but on being put there were few dissentients (SNL
13 Feb 1829). What precisely was O’Connell’s aim in delaying the dissolution
that he knew to be essential and inevitable is not clear, nor what benefit
there would be in a few days delay. The Rent
for the week was £915. Another letter told of the arrival
of O’Connell at Butt’s Hotel in Dover Street, Piccadilly in London on 10
February. He was accompanied by a priest, the Rev Mr. Michael Doyle, of the
church of St Michael and St John in Dublin as his chaplain, Mr O’Gorman, Mr O’Gorman Mahon, Mr D. Bellew, and Mr
Murphy. On the way they were greeted with many threats and shouts of ‘No
Popery’ and had to threaten to fire their pistols. It was typical of O’Connell
to bring a Catholic priest as a chaplain. To play down the religious aspect on
the grounds that it was solely a matter of civil liberty and not an assertion
of belief was not his way (SNL 13 February 1829). On 10 February 1829 Peel introduced
the Dangerous Associations Suppression Act (1829). He said the principal defect
of the 1825 [Algerine] Act was that it made so many
exceptions in favour of agriculture, commerce, and religion that it proved
ineffective. Peel’s remedy was to give power to the Lord Lieutenant to decide
if an Association was dangerous and to interdict it. He proposed allowing the
same officer to select two magistrates who would have power to institute
enquiries and to summon the parties before them. He also proposed banning the
collection of money in the form of a Rent. He considered that only moderate
penalties would be required, and that the Act need not be permanent. The
consummate ability and good sense of Peel are evident. This was to be shown
again when he opened the ranks of the Conservative Party to Catholics a few
years later. Another excellent speaker for the Bill was John Doherty the Irish
Solicitor General who gave details of why the 1825 Act was not renewed. The
cabinet was divided on the subject, so it was unlikely that the 1825 Act could
be extended. The Government had watched closely the activities of the Catholic
Association, but had concluded that any attempt to prosecute individual members
of it might fail in the courts and would be worse than useless. It would
irritate without putting down members of the Association, and it was a matter
of extreme difficulty to draw up an indictment of seven million people (SNL 14 Feb 1829). The Bill mentioned the Catholic
Association by name and said it was to be ‘utterly suppressed and prohibited’.
Power was to be given to the Lord Lieutenant ‘to prohibit and suppress any
association, assembly, or meeting of persons in Ireland’. He was also allowed
to prohibit paying money to any such suppressed Association. Any conviction
under this Act not to be removable by certiorari
or otherwise. The Act was to be in force perpetually with regard to the
Catholic Association and with regard to the rest for one year, and then to the
end of the next session of Parliament. The clause against certiorari meant that appeals to higher courts were excluded. The
strength of this Bill lay in the fact that the Lord Lieutenant could decide
immediately and with being subject to a legal challenge what association or
assembly was unlawful, whether or not the organisers of the meetings intended
to act illegally. The dangerous character of the Catholic Association lay in
the inflammatory language used by some of the speakers including O’Connell even
though they might for example argue that their language was no worse than that
of Cobbett. The danger arose from using such language
in particular circumstances, and it was left to the Lord Lieutenant to decide
in particular cases. The vast majority of associations dealing with education,
religion, agriculture, commerce, etc. would be unaffected. The Whigs were
unhappy about giving such arbitrary power to the Lord Lieutenant even for a
short period. Innumerable petitions for and
against Emancipation were presented. The anti-Popery faction in England was now
well-organised, and determined to prevent the passage of the Relief Bill.
According to Ward there were 957 petitions against the Catholics and 357 for
(Ward II). Wellington introduced the Suppression Act in the Lords. Moving the
Second Reading on 19 February he said, He believed that he was justified in stating
that in the original institution and form of the society calling itself the
Roman Catholic Association, there was nothing illegal. The constitution of that
Association was not illegal, buts its illegality proceeded from its acts. Those
illegal acts consisted principally in the levy of a tax on His Majesty’s Roman
Catholic subjects, under the name of Rent, and by the extreme violence of
language and sentiment calculated to create great heartburnings
and jealousies among His Majesty’s Irish subjects. There were other illegal
measures of a subordinate character. Treasurers were appointed for receiving
and collecting the tax denominated the ‘Rent’, and measures were taken to
effect the complete organisation of the Roman Catholic population, which
organisation could certainly have been used for no good purpose…The Roman
Catholic Association too affected to assume the character of government, and
exercised much of that authority which ought only to belong to a government…a
considerable part of that tax, for instance, was applied to election purposes. He did not deny that it was the duty
of every man to watch over the administration of the country, but he could
never admit that such a right ought to be exercised by a self-elected association,
having large sums of money at its command, and employing that money in
promoting its own views, in exciting litigation, and increasing agitation and
discontent among His Majesty’s subjects (SNL
23 Feb 1829). There
seems to be two main points in this argument. The first and more reasonable one
was that the excesses of language used stirred up animosities and excited
hatred against another group of His Majesty’s subjects. The other was that in
actual practice, if not in its written constitution, it was totally against the
Convention Act. The Convention Act was aimed at preventing rival to Parliament.
The Catholic Association was aimed at collecting a tax, and the tax money was
aimed at securing control of the Irish seats in Parliament. It was not an
argument, as Joy recognised, that would stand up in court as the manifest
breach of an existing law, but his argument was that means had been found to
circumvent the intentions of the framers of the Convention Act. He did not
state in so many words that the Rent was an enforced tax. One can be sure that
in many rural areas only a very brave Catholic could stand against the
pressures to contribute. But the large fluctuations of the Rent show that it
was to a large extent voluntary. (A claim that O’Connell’s later Repeal Rent
was an enforced tax would be much more credible. It was similar to the enforced
obligation of everyone in a mining town to contribute to the miners’ strike
fund – either contribute or leave town.) Two of the king’s brothers, the Dukes
of Clarence and Sussex, declared their support
for the Emancipation. During the Third Reading in the Lords on 24 February Anglesey said they should drop
the Suppression Bill. The Catholic Association was no longer in existence, and
the Brunswick clubs only existed to oppose the Catholic Association. They
should not join an act of grace with an ungracious act. He paid tribute to the
good intentions of the Brunswickers including some of
the noble lords present, but as governor of Ireland he did not need their
assistance and found them only an additional nuisance to control. And now let me say one word – one
parting word – concerning the
Association. That body was composed of men of the first genius and abilities in
Ireland. Amongst them were many ardent, violent, speculative spirits all
writhing under galling wrongs. They have been violent, irritating, offensive,
insulting – frequently dealing in
unjustifiable personalities. But had it not one redeeming character? I say it
had and that so important a one, that it may be considered as an equivalent – a set off against all its
vices and its errors (SNL 28 Feb
1828). The
Dangerous Associations Suppression Act (1829) passed its Third Reading in the
Lords on 24 February, was signed by the king and became effective immediately. Meanwhile, Wellington had to do
without the services of Peel. He felt himself bound in conscience to resign his
seat at Oxford, where the Established Church was entrenched, and sought the
stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds on 20 February. This was nominally an
office of profit under the crown. Members of Parliament could not resign or
even depart from Parliament while it was in session without royal permission.
To resign, a Member of Parliament asked the king for the stewardship that
traditionally was always granted. Several MPs could be granted the stewardship
successively in a single day. To regain his seat, Peel had to seek re-election
in Oxford. Sir John Inglis immediately after him
sought the stewardship so that he could contest the seat in Oxford against him.
The anti-Popery faction was ready for him and Inglis
defeated him by 143 votes. In great secrecy another MP was induced to resign
and Peel got elected for Westbury before his
opponents could arrive with an opponent from London. He took his seat in
Parliament again on 3 March. (Inglis is however
chiefly remembered for denouncing the colleges of the new university in Ireland
‘as a gigantic scheme of godless education’ whence was derived the phrase
‘godless colleges’. There were no chairs of divinity in them, and he wished
them under the control of the clergy of the Established Church.) An English newspaper, the Morning Chronicle of London claimed that
the No Popery frenzy was drawing rapidly to a close. In England and Scotland there was an
almost complete separation of the classes, with the upper and educated classes
on one side and the poorer and uneducated on the other. Nine tenths of
newspaper readers in England and Scotland are favourable to the measure. Of the
others while it is true that they can read, they rarely read newspapers, but
only the occasional act or tract that
corresponds with their prejudices (Cited in Saunders
Newsletter 2 April 1829). Anglesey presented a petition in the
House of Lords signed by two dukes, 17 marquesses, 26
earls, 11 viscounts, 2 counts, 22 barons, 35 baronets, 52 MPs and over 2,000
persons of other ranks all of whom were personally interested in the
tranquillity of Ireland. He again expressed his disapproval of the Suppression
Bill. Plunket however said that he had nothing
against the present leaders of the Association but they had created a
formidable organisation that could be used by other people for other purposes. Plunket had a point. If Emancipation were not conceded
there was no guarantee that O’Connell, Sheil, Killeen and the other moderate
leaders would be left in control. He also pointed out that the Irish Government
under Wellesley and Anglesey had only interfered twice with Catholic meetings
in Ireland, once by Wellesley and once by Anglesey to prohibit simultaneous
meetings. He was less tolerant than Anglesey of the Brunswick clubs in which he
said sedition and treason were openly discussed, and the noble lord had paid
the Protestant Rent. Lord Longford replied he had paid no Rent, but merely his
subscription, to which Plunket said there was no
difference for the money was subscribed for political purposes. He went on to
say that the Brunswickers by their actions deserved
fully half the credit for bringing in Emancipation. The Catholics had the
excuse of having suffered long continued
and most grievous wrongs, while the Brunswickers
lorded it over their fellow men by the possession of an odious monopoly. The
Catholics, unlike the Brunswickers, had never taken
arms into their hands, nor had they ever declared that the king had forfeited
his right to the throne (SNL 2 , 3
March 1829). Presumably the idea was that the Brunswickers
revolted all moderate Protestant opinion and made the Catholics in comparison
look tolerable. (The Brunswickers could reply that
even if the Catholic Association had no guns the Ribbonmen had.) [March
1829] On 3 March 1829 Peel gave notice that he would bring in an
Emancipation Bill. Peel was no sooner back in Parliament than he was nearly out
of office again. The following day the king sent for Wellington, Peel, and
Lyndhurst the Lord Chancellor to demand an explanation. The Duke of Cumberland
had been absent from England since the beginning of the year, which was the
reason Wellington and Peel had been able to get the king thus far. He now
returned though Wellington bluntly requested him to stay away and not
interfere. He now persuaded the king that an anti-Catholic ministry could be
formed. The king said he refused his consent to the repeal of the transubstantiation Test Act, and any modification of the oath of
supremacy. The three ministers tendered their resignations, and all except
Wellington considered that they were turned out of office. But at 8 p.m. that
night the king sent a letter to Wellington telling him to continue with the
proposed measure. Wellington wrote back at midnight calling the king’s
attention to the cabinet minute of 2nd and asked his approval. The
messenger was sent galloping through the night to Windsor outside London. The
king replied from his bed at 7.15 a.m. the following day approving the minute.
Wellington knew and the king realised that there was no possibility, unlike in
the days of the Duke of Portland, of forming an anti-Catholic ministry
(Maxwell, SNL 6 Mar 1829).On the same
day Fitzgerald’s petition was re-presented and a committee was appointed to
examine it. It commenced its work the following day. On 5 February 1829 Peel introduced
the Catholic Relief Act (1829) in a crowded House and spoke for four hours
again displaying his mastery of detail. Scotland as well as Ireland and England
would be included in the Bill. It would be based on the principles or civil
equality and civil right, but with some safeguards for the Established
Churches. The only oath required would be the oath of loyalty. The only civil
offices from which Catholics would be excluded were those of the Lord
Chancellor of England, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland or Regent of the Kingdom.
(Both of these exercised patronage in the Churches. With regard to Regent, if
the king and the Duke of Clarence died before the Princess Victoria came of
age, a Regent would have to be appointed.) He said they could not stay where
they were but must either go forward or go back. He recalled that Pitt wanted
unqualified Emancipation but was unable to carry the cabinet with him. He then
recounted in great detail the history of the previous thirty years. With
regard to Securities, they would be such as would apply to Catholic and
Protestant alike, and would consist in raising the qualification for the
franchise to £10. On the question of freehold he did not intend to deal with
land tenure in Ireland. By freehold in Ireland was meant a leasehold for more
than one life. He would just insist on a bona
fide freehold of ten pounds a year. Replying to a question why the Irish
freehold should not be made the same as the English one, Peel replied that the
English system allowed more abuses. One could have the freehold of a piece of
mountain on which all rights like grazing or turbary were reserved to others,
so the property, though valueless was still legally a freehold. Nor did he wish
to deal with the franchise in corporate towns that were derived from their
individual charters. But the ten pounds of income would also apply. All freeholders
would have to be registered in advance, after proof, with the assistant
barrister of the county. This latter was a minor but important change.
Previously they were registered with the Clerk of the Peace for the county, a
local appointment. Assistant barristers were Government appointees, who were
never appointed to their native counties. He rejected the old Securities,
partly because it would mean recognising a foreign jurisdiction in England, and
also because opinion was against paying Catholic clergymen. There would be no
inspection of correspondence with Rome for it was no more the business of the
Government than to inspect the correspondence of the Wesleyan
Methodists (SNL 9 March 1829). There
were other clauses added which everyone disregarded knowing they would never be
enforced, the banning of robes and ceremonies outside churches, the prohibition
on using ecclesiastical titles, and restrictions on Jesuits and friars. (Peel
had no intention of chasing more than one hare at a time, but leaving the franchise
in the towns unchanged would benefit the Protestants, while the Catholics could
expect to win the rural constituencies of the counties. These were was his
intentions set out in his speech; minor modifications were introduced in the
Bill and during the ensuing debate.) It was a masterly solution, but the
great question remains unanswered, Why did it take Peel so long to arrive at
it, or at least to declare for it? It is reasonable to assume that Peel had
given considerable thought to the problem and had arrived at his own solution
long before, and that it was not thought up in three months. Brougham commended
the proposals as ‘simple, efficacious, and unclogged with anything with which
the Roman Catholics could reasonably be dissatisfied’. O’Connell found several
things to be dissatisfied with, principally the raising of the threshold of the
franchise. Also the fact that the franchise in the boroughs, the strongholds of
Orangeism, was left largely unchanged. (This was
partly remedied a few years later by the Irish Reform Act (1832) which followed
the Great Reform Act in England, and opened up the boroughs to all freemen of
the borough.) Ward noted that the Relief Bill was essentially a civil one and
did not deal with specifically religious grievances. These were the legal
validity of Catholic marriages, the right of Catholic soldiers to their own
worship, and regarding Catholic charities as ‘superstitious usages’. The penal
laws on these points differed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and would have
required three separate Acts to deal with them, and indeed were gradually
tackled over the next century in various pieces of legislation. The biggest
criticism must be the unnecessary clause such as those dealing with male
religious (but not female), the wearing or robes etc., which were largely
ignored in the Catholic parts of Ireland. William Lamb succeed to his father’s
title and took his seat in the House of Lords on 1 February 1829 as Viscount
Melbourne, the name by which he is always remembered. The committee on
Fitzgerald’s petition reported rapidly on 6 March, declaring that Daniel
O’Connell was duly elected. Election committees could drag on for months as
individual voters were summoned before it, but here there was just one
question, Could a Roman Catholic be elected to Parliament as opposed to taking
his seat in Parliament? The answer was a simple Yes. The Protestant ultras were becoming
a problem. After they had been out-witted by Peel at Westbury they kept up their furious campaign in the newspapers
against the Bill. Wellington decided to put a stop to it after a particularly
outrageous comment by the Earl of Winchelsea. This
English nobleman was a leader of the evangelicals in England, and often spoke
in Exeter Hall their great centre in London. He wrote to a friend that
Wellington ‘under the cloak of some coloured show of zeal for the Protestant
religion, carried on an insidious design for the infringement of our liberties,
and the introduction of Popery into every department of state’. The duke
replied with a challenge, and the duel took place on 21 March 1829, the duke’s
second being Sir Henry Hardinge. The earl assumed
that a few shots fired in the air would redeem honour but Wellington insisted
on a full apology. The duke fired and missed, afterwards Winchelsea
fired in the air and apologised. Thereafter the language of the anti-Popery
faction was toned down. The country was astonished to find its prime minister
fighting a duel in the midst of a crisis, but Wellington’s biographer remarked
that for him it was just another exercise to dislodge an enemy. O’Connell got little support for his
opposition to the Qualification of Freeholders (Ireland) Bill to raise the
qualification to £10. Following the usual practice if two or more principles were
introduced into a bill, the relief of Catholics, and the raising of the
qualification, they were introduced as separate bills so the principles could
be debated separately. In the later stages, concerned with the details they
could be amalgamated. In this case they were not amalgamated and three separate
bills were passed. Nor did the religious orders get much support in their
efforts to remove the clauses against them, probably because nobody took the
threat seriously. Most of the prejudice against the religious orders in the
cabinet came from the duke. His experience of religious orders was in the
Peninsula and he did not like what he saw. Dr Doyle had been similarly
unimpressed. (Both the reforms of the religious orders and the stripping of
their property in the nineteenth century had not then commenced. Peel was not
terrified of the Irish Jesuits he had met. Nor could anyone be who had dealt
with Archbishop Troy or Dr Doyle. While the Bills were in progress
Vesey Fitzgerald took his seat as MP for Newport, a pocket borough of the Duke
of Northumberland, and took part in the debate, and played a leading part along
with Peel in getting the Bills passed. He said he had never criticised the
freeholders for voting as they did. Peel insisted on retaining the clause ‘who
shall be elected after the passing of
this Act’ doubtless to avoid making the Act retrospective, though some Irish
Members wanted it deleted. O’Connell was called away on urgent business to
Downpatrick in county Down. The two Bills passed their Third Reading in the
Commons on 30 March, and the following
day Peel accompanied by 100 MPs brought them up to the Lords. Two
royal dukes, Clarence and Sussex, assisted Wellington, Anglesey, and Plunket, with the help of the Whigs to get the Bills through
the Lords and passed its First Reading on 31 March. [April 1829]
Wellington announced that the Second Reading of the Emancipation Bill would be
two days later as the peers had all the relevant facts before them for two
months. On Thursday 2 April 1829 the Second Reading commenced. The Bill was
opposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Protestant Archbishop of
Armagh, as also by the Archbishop of
York and the Bishop of Durham. The vote was taken on Saturday 4 April and the
Second Reading passed with a majority of 105. The result of the vote was
greeted with tremendous cheers that lasted several minutes (SNL 7 April 1829). The Third Reading
passed on 10 April. Those
who opposed the Relief Bill had not yet exhausted their strategies, and an
Address signed by most of the Irish Protestant bishops was presented to the
king at Windsor. An attempt to organise a march from London to Windsor failed.
Lord Eldon declared that he would never consent. On
the other side various petitions were presented against the Disqualification of
Freeholders Bill, but could get no further because of the absence of a
parliamentary sponsor. One of these was from Jack Lawless and O’Gorman Mahon asking to be heard
at the bar of the House against the disqualification. Landsdowne
wished the Act not to be retrospective. The proposed Bill in 1825 was not
retrospective. This was not allowed, though it would take time to re-register
all the voters. Wellington
still had to deal with the king who had declared that he would not sign such a
Bill even if it passed both Houses. It was over a hundred years since a monarch
had refused to sign a Bill that had passed both Houses. The Protestant bishops
almost to a man supported him, as did Cumberland. The king appealed to his
conscience to the astonishment of Harriet Arbuthnot,
a lady friend of Wellington and diarist, who said it was well known that he had
not got one. The various officers in the royal household however supported
Wellington. Support for Wellington came from an unlikely source. The
Marchioness Conyngham, the close lady friend of the
king, pressed him to sign. The king gave way, but rather than sign he gave the
royal assent by commission (Longford II). The Act was due to come into force
from 23 April 1829. |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright Desmond J. Keenan, B.S.Sc.; Ph.D. ;.London, U.K.
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