world." The addressers "auspicate happiness and glory to the human race;" success to the armies of France," as "the advanced guard of the world;""freedom and prosperity to the people of France," (with an intimation of regret that 66 a rash opposition to the irresistible will of the public had, in some instances, maddened a disposition otherwise mild and magnanimous, and turned energy into ferocity")—and "long life and happiness to the King of the French" (who was guillotined just six months afterwards). They likewise voted, all but unanimously-some stiff-necked Presbyterians of the Haliday, Bruce, and Charlemont school still " doubting as to the expediency, though agreeing in the principle❞— an address to the people of Ireland, with a strong religious-equality paragraph. The day ended, according to our joyous and jovial Head-Pacificator, with

"Dinner at the Donegal Arms-Everybody as happy as a King-Huzza! God bless everybody!-Stanislaus Augustus!-GEORGE WASHINGTON !-Beau jour-Home, God knows how or when-Huzza!-God bless everybody again, generally-Bed, with THREE TIMES THREE-Sleep at last."

This Fourteenth-July commemoration—rather, the European events which it celebrated, the sympathies which it cemented, the aspirations which it fostered, and the changed relations of religious parties which it indicated, produced a potent effect on the Catholics of Ireland. It made them less Catholic and more Irish. It matured among them that democratic spirit and power whose rise and earlier progress we have already noted, and whose further movements we are now to trace. In this spirit they elected their Convention, despite all the thunders of grand-jury denunciation, and the protestations and secession of their own prelacy and aristocracy. Of this spirit the Convention, so elected, was now to be the organ and mouthpiece. Nothing was ever more felicitously timed and circumstanced than this Catholic Convention. When its sittings commenced (2nd of December, 1792) the government was at its weakest, and the nation at its strongest. Dumourier was driving the Prussians before him out of France; the funds were coming down, as every post brought tidings of some new success of the arms of Republican France, enhancing the probabilities of a speedy beginning of that war which all men saw must begin, sooner or later; the Irish ministry were paralysed, and could not interfere-the British minister was prudent, and would not. Events had, for once, given the Catholics of Ireland everything their own way-and they knew it it was their first chance for centuries, and they improved it; the victims of the Penal Code had got a voice in the world at last-and they spoke.

On the very first meeting of the new Catholic parliament, it was clear that old things had passed away. No longer the self-appointed agents of a despised and degraded caste, meeting in holes and corners, existing on sufferance and breathing by connivance-but the publicly-elected delegates and spokesmen of three millions of people-they at once discarded their old slavish ways of doing business, and went to the work of their emancipation with the energy and boldness of men who were self-emancipated already. Their first act was to prepare a petition to the King, praying, not for any elective franchise, corporate privilege, or other such special" boon," but for JUSTICE-simple, absolute, and immediate. Not without much hesitation and delay, and dubious pondering of expediencies and possibilities, was the thing done-but done it was, unanimously and by acclamation.

"We have been asked," said a member, "what shall we do in case of a refusal? I will not, when I look round me, suppose a refusal. But, if such an event should take place, our duty is obvious. We are to tell our constituents; and they, not we, are to determine. We will take the sense of the whole people, and see what they will have done."*

The petition to the King being agreed on, the next question was the mode of transmitting it. Through what channel should they send their petition? Again the answer was ready, after a while, after more of hesitation, delay, and doubt :-" TAKE your petition to the King: if you would have your business done, Go—if not, send." It was a bold measure. It was quite without a precedent—all previous Irish Catholic addresses to royalty having been transmitted (or left untransmitted) through Dublin Castle. It was a vote of censure on his Majesty's Irish advisers. It was a declaration of want of confidence in the Viceroy and the vice-regal administration. It was, in fact, refusing to recognise the existence of the government which had, for a century past, refused to recognise their existence. Everything was done that Dublin Castle could do, to avert the blow. "Influential individuals" were given to understand, that if the petition were sent through the usual channel, the Irish ministry would instantly despatch it by express, and back it with the strongest recommendations. At first the Convention wavered. It was agreed that they should wait half an hour, for the result of one more interview between the Castle people and the influential individuals. Wonderfully were the times and the men changed! "The very men," says Tone, "who, a few months before, could not obtain an answer at the Castle, sat with their watches in their hands, minuting that government which had repelled them with disdain." The answer not coming in time, and not proving satisfactory when it did come, the Convention voted, without more waiting, that the petition should go direct to Majesty; and five of their body were appointed as delegates to go to London, and see it safely lodged in Majesty's hands.

The five delegates-Edward Byrne, John Keogh, Christopher Dillon Bellew, James Edward Devereux, and Sir Thomas French, with Tone to accompany them as secretary-fitly represented the power which commissioned them. Another bold measure was soon forthcoming, to overawe Dublin Castle yet more completely, and administer wholesome suggestion to the meditations of the British Minister. As there was no packet-boat ready for sailing in Dublin harbour, it occurred to the delegates that they might as well take their journey by way of Belfast; which would afford a convenient opportunity for strengthening the union of Irishmen, and renewing their vows of fraternisation with their Protestant Dissenting friends in the north. Accordingly, to Belfast they went; and at Belfast they were received in a way which fully justified their expectations, and which could not be without its effect on ministerial opinion. On their departure, the horses were taken from their carriage; they were drawn to the place of embarkation_by_the Protestant Dissenting people, and sent on their way rejoicing, with Protestant acclamations ringing in their ears. It seemed dreadfully imprudent in our delegates, thus to mix themselves up with men who were notoriously out of favour with the constituted authorities; nothing could be more calculated to "embarrass his Majesty's go

*Tone's "Memoirs," vol. i., p. 108.

vernment." But the Catholics of Ireland had served their apprenticeship in the great political lesson, that ministerial embarrassment is the short and sure way to popular success. "Let our delegates," it was said, "if they are refused, return by the same route.”

On the arrival of the deputation in London, their first business was to acquaint the Home Secretary (Mr. Dundas) with the object of their mission, and to request the naming of a day and hour when they might wait on him with a copy of their petition, for royal perusal before delivery. An appointment was made accordingly; the delegates met the Minister; a long conversation ensued; they were heard with particular attention, and bowed out with abundant politeness. Still there was a difficulty. The secretary wished to break the fall of the government in Ireland. He would take charge of the petition, and deliver it safely into the royal hands. But the delegates were firm: they had not come all that way-round by Belfast, too-for the pleasure of seeing Mr. Secretary Dundas: diplomacy on the one side was met by doggedness on the other. At length the Minister was obliged to concede the point (honest Earl Moira having promised that, if necessary, he, as a peer, would ask an audience of the Sovereign, and introduce the deputation himself), and on Wednesday, the 2nd of January, 1793, the five delegates were PRESENTED AT ST. JAMES'S, by Mr. Dundas, with the regular forms, and, with their own hands, delivered into the King's own hands the humble petition of his Majesty's three millions of Catholic subjects in Ireland. They made a "splendid appearance," says their secretary, "and met with what is called, in the language of courts, a most gracious reception."

Before leaving England, the delegates obtained a farewell audience of the Minister, in order to learn, if they could, his intentions, and to acquaint him once more, and once for all, with those of the Catholic people of Ireland. The interview did not absolutely satisfy them, and yet they did not exactly see cause for being dissatisfied. Great plainness of speech on their part, almost amounting to an intimation of the conditional and contingent quality of Irish Catholic allegiance, was met by due official caution and "delicacy" on the side of the Secretary of State. He was careful, as is the way with Secretaries of State, to avoid "committing himself" to particulars; yet his generalities were pleasant to hear; and he even went the length of assuring the deputation that "his Majesty was sensible of their loyalty and attachment to the principles of the constitution—that, in consequence, they should be recommended in the speech from the throne at the opening of the impending session-and that ministers in England desired approbation and support from them only in proportion to the measure of relief afforded." The assurance was not, in point of definiteness, quite what they could have wished; yet it was perhaps more than they might have expected from the dignity and reserve of ministerial diplomacy—and at any rate it was all that could be got. Putting all things together-the gracious royal reception, with the fair-seeming ministerial assurances-the delegates conceived that they could not do else than vote the result of their mission" satisfactory."

Here, for the present, we leave the Irish Catholics and their ambassadors in enjoyment of the gracious reception and the satisfactory assurancesthe hard-earned reward of one of the best-timed and most happily managed agitations that history has to show. How far the satisfactory prospect was

realised in a satisfactory result, we shall learn in a future chapter. Meanwhile, things looked well. The Irish Papists had found their way to court; they had breathed the air of Whitehall and St. James's; they had seen the King and talked with the Minister; they had appealed from the tyranny of domestic legislation to the Cæsar of the imperial crown, and their appeal had been graciously received. On the whole, the Irish Papists seemed in a fair way to get their existence recognised by the constitution, and their right to breathe duly provided for by act of parliament.

CHAPTER VII.

SESSION OF 1793-IRISH PAPISTS AT DUBLIN CASTLE-NEGOCIATION, CONCESSION, AND COERCION-THE SECRET COMMITTEE—THE LAST OF

THE VOLUNTEERS-GUNPOWDER AND CONVENTION BILLS-ULTERIOR VIEWS.

MR. SECRETARY DUNDAS kept his word. On the 10th of January, 1793, the Lord-Lieutenant opened parliament in Dublin, with a speech containing the following "conciliation" paragraph:

"I have it in particular command from his Majesty to recommend it to you, to apply yourselves to the consideration of such measures as may be most likely to strengthen and cement a general union of sentiment among all classes and descriptions of his Majesty's subjects, in support of the established constitution. With this view, his Majesty trusts that the situation of his Majesty's Catholic subjects will engage your serious attention, and in the consideration of this subject he relies on the wisdom and liberality of his parliament."

The Irish Papists, then, had not been at St. James's for nothing. They had moved the British minister-to move the Crown-to move the Irish minister to move parliament, to recant its ascendency resolutions of the previous session; to grant, without more words, the claims which, the year before, it had refused to listen to, even to the extent of letting an humble petition lie quietly on the table; to set at nought the protestations, and addresses, and menaces of corporations and grand juries, headed by Commons' Speakers and Lord Chancellors, and to admit the three millions of Popish outlaws within the pale of the Protestant constitution. The parliament of College-Green was now under orders from Dublin Castle and St. James's to surrender at discretion to the parliament of Back-Lane.

At the commencement of this session of 1793, all looked well for the Catholics of Ireland. They were in a position to carry everything their own way. They had but to ask with sufficient boldness and pertinacity, and they were sure of receiving. The government was completely paralysed; much hurt, and still more frightened. The Prussians had been swept out of France; Dumourier was in Brabant, with Holland undefended before him, and London not so remote but that the contingency of invasion came within the range of possibilities, and was worthy of ministerial consideration; public credit tottered; the funds were falling; the popular cry for Reform was rising; war was plainly inevitable and near; all

the elements of ministerial" embarrassment" had collected themselves into one dense and formidable mass of all-but insurmountable difficulty-and the allegiance of three millions of people in Ireland was not to be lightly hazarded. It was no time to stand upon consistency: Protestant ascendency, though a good thing in its way, was scarcely worth the price of an Irish rebellion on the eve of a European war. Accordingly, this session of 1793 began as no Irish parliamentary session had ever begun before; with large promises and unbounded professions on the part of government, and even with performances, at the amplitude of which (judging by comparison with the past) the Whig Opposition were fairly carried off their feet with astonishment and delight. Place bills, pension bills, responsibility bills-which, session after session for some seven years, the Opposition had been hopelessly fighting for, in the face of thundering majorities-were now frankly accepted, and brought forward as government measures. The Opposition could now scarcely propose a thing without being agreeably surprised by the intelligence that his Majesty's ministers had, or soon would have, a bill of their own ready that would answer the purpose better. Even in such a matter as the amending and liberalising of the law of libel, Mr. Grattan found himself forestalled by his Majesty's Attorney-General, who politely requested that his measure might be allowed the precedence. The question of parliamentary reform itself was surrendered, without a division and without a debate. Parliament had not sat five days before the House of Commons came to an unanimous vote to form itself, on an early day, into a committee of the whole house, to inquire into the state of the representation.

Thus passed off the first parliamentary week of the year 1793, in the pleasantest way imaginable. Everything that anybody proposed for the good of the country was unanimously agreed to by both sides of the house. Opposition took holiday; there was, in truth, nothing to oppose, the ministry was so reasonable and complaisant. Country gentlemen," says Hardy, "could scarcely believe their ears or their eyes; such deeds, or rather, such professions of high parliamentary emprise, seemed to carry them back to the days of antique chivalrous patriotism. 'Whence does

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all this benignity flow?' said Lord Charlemont, at this time, to the author of these memoirs; I doubt very much if Monsieur Dumourier ever heard of a parliamentary reform, and yet I am almost tempted to suspect him of having some share in what is now going forward,” ”* The Whig lord's suspicion was shrewd and sagacious; and it would have been wise in all Whigs, Papists, and others interested in ministerial embarrassment, to improve, without loss of time, their own and Monsieur Dumourier's good fortune. It was a beautiful and pleasant beginning this, of the session of 1793; but might it not turn out too good to last?

Meanwhile, how was the Catholic question going on? The demand had been for justice-the justice of total, immediate, and unconditional emancipation; the promise had been of large and liberal concession-Catholic gratitude and support were to be commensurate with the amount of relief afforded. At what rate was performance proceeding?

Great is the force of use and wont. It is said that negro insurrections in our sugar islands, during the old days of slavery (the story has good an

"Memoirs of the Earl of Charlemont," vol. ii., p. 304.