The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed / In an Address to the People of England, in Which It Is Proved by Incontrovertible Facts, That the System for Some Years Pursued in That Country, Has Driven It into Its Present Dreadful Situation
REBELLION,
&c. &c
FELLOW SUBJECTS,
It is always a bold undertaking in a private individual to become the advocate of a suffering people. It is peculiarly difficult at the present moment to be the advocate of the people of Ireland, because there are among them men who have taken the power of redress into their own hands, and committed acts of outrage and rebellion which no sufferings could justify, and which can only tend to aggravate ten-fold the other calamities of their country. Deeply impressed, however, as I am with a conviction that these difficulties stand in my way, I shall yet venture to state to Englishmen the case of Ireland. In doing so, I rest not on a vain confidence in my own strength, but on the nature of the cause I plead; for I am convinced, that when the train of measures which have led that miserable country into its present situation shall be fully disclosed, it will be but little difficult to rouze the people of England not merely to commiserate a distressed country, but excite them to exert their constitutional endeavours, as head of the British empire, to avert the destruction of its principal member.
There is another circumstance which gives me hope. The people of England at this hour feel themselves much more interested in what concerns Irishmen, than they have ever done at any former period. Whatever mischiefs may have resulted to human society from that kind of philosophic illumination by which modern times are distinguished, one certain good at least has been produced by it—men have become better acquainted—the bond of a common nature has been strengthened—and each country begins to feel an interest in the concerns of every other. It is not to a more extensive personal intercourse, or to the creation of any new principles of political union, that this is to be attributed. It is owing solely to an increased communication of sentiment and feeling—to a knowledge which has diffused itself through the world that the human mind is every where made of the same materials, and that on all the great questions which concern man's interest in society, the men of every country think alike. Hence has arisen an increased sympathy between nations—if not between those who govern them, at least between those by whom they are constituted; and hence too has it followed, that those national antipathies which had so long debased and afflicted mankind, are now become less strong and rancorous; and, it may be reasonable to hope, will one day be known no more.
It is not, however, on the influence of this nascent principle of philanthropy among nations that I ground my principal hope, when I call on Englishmen to hear with an ear of kindness and concern the complaint of a sister-country. I resort to a still more powerful principle—I shall call on them as a people famed even in barbarous times for those feelings of generosity and compassion, which are inseparable from valour—I shall call on them as a FREE people, to watch with caution the progress of despotism toward their own shores, stalking in all its horrors of murder, pillage, and flames, through the territory of a neighbour—I shall call even on their INTEREST, to save from utter ruin, political, commercial, and constitutional, the most valuable member of the British empire! If Englishmen look with horror on the enormities of France, I will call on them to let crimes of as black a dye perpetrated in Ireland meet their share of detestation. If they who subvert the good order of society—who overleap the bounds fixed by the law of Nature itself to guard the liberty, life, and property of individuals against the spoiler, be fit objects of reprobation, I shall turn the eyes of all the good and wise in England toward that faction by whose counsels and whose deeds the fairest island in the British empire has been made a theatre on which lawless outrage has played its deadly freaks!
When I speak in terms thus strong of that system under which the people of Ireland have suffered for some years, and by which they have been goaded into acts of folly and madness which no good man is either able or inclined to defend, let me not too early be charged with declamation. There are some cases in which no language can be declamatory because no words can aggravate them. If I shall not shew before I conclude this address that the case of Ireland is one of them, let me then be branded with the epithet of empty talker!
It will not be necessary for me, in stating to the people of England the calamities under which Ireland smarts, and the causes which produced them, to go farther back than that period at which she became, nominally at least, an independent country. What remains of her history before that period the honour of both countries calls on us to forget—a mistaken but overbearing principle of domination and monopoly on one hand, fed and strengthened by a servile and base acquiescence on the other, constitute the outline of the sketch—an idle and beggared populace, a jobbing legislature, proscriptions, penal laws, &c. &c. are the disgusting materials with which it must be filled. That Time should quickly draw his veil over such a scene, and cover it with oblivion would be the natural wish of every British and Irish heart, were it not that scenes still more disgraceful to both countries and more calamitous to one of them have succeeded—scenes which force the mind to revert with regret to those days of poverty and peace, when, as there existed little wealth to excite avarice, and little spirit to aggravate the ambition of party, that little remained inviolate, and the miserable cabin, though filled with objects of disgusting wretchedness, was yet the secure covering and castle of its humble owner.—How different his present situation! when in laying down his head at night he fears lest before morning he shall be rouzed by the cries of his family in flames, or dragged from his bed by military ruffians, to be hanged at his own door!
Forgetting then the many causes of discontent with the people of England which existed in Ireland prior to the year 1782, I shall call the attention of this country to only those transactions which have taken place since that time—and indeed to many of those transactions it would not be necessary to advert at all, were it not for that minute and elaborate detail which has been made of them by a well known public character in a late publication,1 for the purpose of proving that Ireland deserved what she suffered—that she has been always sottishly discontented and basely ungrateful. But I call on Englishmen to judge impartially for themselves—nor let the confident assertion or bold recrimination of an accused man pre-occupy their decision on the merits and the sufferings of an unhappy people.
It will scarcely be denied at this day, that the people of Ireland did right in calling for the independence of their legislature in the year 1782, and in pressing that claim on the British minister, until he yielded to its force.—It is admitted that Ireland, on that occasion, while she armed herself to repel the foes of Britain, while her population poured to her shores to resist the insulting fleet of the enemy, and preserve her connexion with the empire, acted with the proper and true spirit of a brave and loyal people in calling on the British Parliament for a renunciation of that claim to rule her which was originally founded only on her weakness, and was supported by no other argument than power. While this then is admitted, let it be remembered, that they who opposed this just claim of Ireland to be free, must have been the advocates of a slavish system—and that the people of Ireland might fairly entertain doubts of the sincere attachment of such men to her cause.—Let it be remembered, that the men who said to a country struggling for the legitimate power of governing for itself, "You have no right to make your own laws—you are materials fit only to be governed by strangers," were not men in whom that country, when she succeeded in the struggle, could place much confidence. In fact, she did not confide in them. It was thought necessary to watch attentively the measures of men who had reluctantly assented to the manumission of their country, and who were believed to have such a deeply rooted attachment to the principles of the old court, that they would lose no opportunity of re-inducing upon the nation those bonds which she had broken only by a combination of fortunate circumstances, concurring with her own efforts.
In this consciousness of the danger with which they were surrounded from false friends, originated that doubt which is now charged on the people of Ireland as a first proof of wanton discontent—I mean a doubt about the validity of the simple repeal of the 6th Geo. III. as an act of renunciation. Discontent on this subject arose and became general in Ireland almost immediately on the repeal of that obnoxious statute; and from the zeal and warmth with which it was attempted to beat it down, did for a time put the kingdom in a ferment. The men