THE UNION—A RECORD OF INIQUITY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 47, 19 March 1886, Page 7

THE UNION— A RECORD OF INIQUITY.

♦ I.— ITS HISTORY.

(By AChillbs O'Neill Daunt, in the Dublin Freeman.) The cause of self-government, always dear to the great mass of the Irish people, has now acquired a momentum which forces it into universal discussion in the Three Kingdoms. Four-fifths of as demand it, not as a measure of bounty or benevolence from England, but as the restitution of a vital national right, of which in 1800 we were infamously defrauded. Its advocates have been assailed with every species of falsehood and misrepresentation. We All know bow the rabid Tories of the North of Ireland boasted that Ulster was what is called " solid " for the Legislative Union. It wu held forth as being unanimous against the right of Ireland to govern herself. It was trumpeted as the Imperial Province, quite ready to a man to embark in civil war to enforce the legislative slavery of Ireland. These boasts were discounted by us at their U-ae value. They were not new to us. We had beard them before. Ulster was to have broken out in civil war to reeist Catholic Emancipation. The State Church was not to be disestablished until 200,000 Orangemen should know the reason why ; and in conformity with all these menaces tho unbroken strength of Ulster was now to have been marshalled in awful resistance to Parnellism. How pleasantly the Ulster elections have pierced tiie great windbag I Ulster hat now returned a majority of Home Rulers to Parliament— seventeen members against sixteen ; and the seventeen would have been twenty if not for the inefficiency or inexperience of the persons who managed the registries— a mischance which of course will be corrected before the next election. I have said that we the Home Rulers have been misrepresented. The small but boisterous minority who wish to keep Ireland in fetters pretend to identify Home Rule with separation from England. The illusttious Grattan was no separatist. O'Conneli waa no separatist. Yet both these leaders, while thoroughly loyal to the Crown, were earnest advocates of un independent Irish Legislature. Many will probably remember Grattan's words — " Let Ireland's political destiny follow her geographical position. We have the sea protesting against union, and the ocean protesting against separation." What we want — what we have a right to possess, and what we are determined to obtain — is the government of Ireland by the Sovereiga of the Empire through an Irish Ministry and an Irish Parliament. I have adverted to Ulster and its Orange and Tory inhabitants. Now it has been shown by the elections that Ulster is more than half Nationalist ; and it may well be hoped that our northern province may become universally so, when we call to mind that Dungannon was the place whence emanated the glorious Declaration in 1782, which we, Home Rulers, are proud to adopt as our own — " We know our duty to our sovereign, and are loyal. We aluo know our duty to ourselves, aud are resolved to be free I" The names subscribed to that Declaration are those of the Protestant gentry, whose descendants can assuredly assign no valid reason wby they should be apostates from the grand constitutional principle — at once loyal and national— which it announced. If I have hopos that the rayd of common sense may yet p'netrato tie dense mi'-ta of Orange prejudice, they are founded on thefacs tt\*t among the most spirited opponents of the Uaiou in 1800 were the Orangemen themselves. As a sample of the resolutions passed by several lodges, permit me to give tbe followiug — " Orange Lodge, No 883, at Newtownbarry, 16th Feb. 1800— Besolved— That Orangemen ought to come forward as Orangemen and Irishmen to declare their sentiments against a legislative Union which now or at any other time would be of the most fatal and pernicious consequence to the real liberty of Ireland.— Edmund Beatty, master ; Willoughby Bustard, dep ; Alexander M'Claughry, sec. " Here in another Orange resolution, which, besides being valuable as an indication of the national spirit evoked among the brethren by the atrocious attack upon the Irish Constitution, has also the value of attesting the national prosperity which the Union waa designed to destroy — " Lodges Noi. 780 and 785, Dublin, 11th March, 1800— Resolved— That the Constitution of 1782, under which our country has advanced to greatness with uncommon rapidity, is that which, as Orangemen, we have Bworn to defend, aud will inviolably maintain and we are determined to co-operate with all our fellow-subjects in every legal and j roper method to oppose so destructive a measure. — J. Charles, secretary." I shall only quote one more extract ; it is from the resolutions of Lodges 391, held at Wattle Bridge, county Fermanagh, Ist March, 1800. And I may here remark that the county Fermanagh in our own time has gallantly re-affirmed the principles enunciated by the Orangemen of 85 years ago — " Resolved — That strongly attached to the Constitution of 1782, a settlement ratified in the most unequivocal manner, so far as the faith of nations is binding, we should feel ourselves criminal were we to remain silent while an attempt is made to extinguish it. That, impressed with every loyal sentiment towards our gracious Sovereign, we trust that the measure of the legislative Union, which is contrary to the sense of all Orangemen and of the nation at large, will be reliquished.— John Moore, master." Unhappily it waa not reliquished. The bitter hatred of Ireland by which it was prompted was a motive too powerful with its authors to permit them to abandon it. The criminal mode of its accomplishment is an unanswerable proof of that hatred. Tbe oceans of Irish blood that were shed in the rebellion of 1798 (a rebellion designedly fomented by Pitt and his blood-thirsty confederates), the gigantic bribery employed to purchase votes in its favour— these things remain in imperishable record as showing the animus of its authors. My father, in an article in the Westminster Review of last October, has demonstrated that tbe murderous machinations of Pitt and his fellowconspirators were incomparably worse than the murderour* machina-

tfoM of the miscreant James Oarer and bis gang. Pitt knew that be ooald not carry the Union onless the strength of Ireland should first be broken by ciTil war. Hence bis agents employed every species of persecution to lash the people into insurrection. Marquis Cornwallis was appointed Viceroy. He arrived on the 20th of June, 1798. Although his business was to carry the Union, yet he was sufficiently humane to condemn the sanguinary anarchy which the policy of Pitt had produced. That policy had blown into a raging flame the mouldering embers of old animosities which had been gradually dying out His Excellency was accused of treating the insurgents with too much lenity. The "loyalist" malpractices which he tried to check, and his interference with which was resented by the perpetrators, are thus described by himself in a letter to General Boss dated 15th April, IT99— v TTv? v write M** yon reall J believed there was any foundation for all the lies and nonsensical clamour about my lenity. On my arrival in this country I put a stop to the burning of bouses and mnrder of the inhabitant* by the yeomen or any other persons who delighted in that amusement, to the flogging for the purpose of extorting confession, and to free quarters, which comprehended universal rape and robbery throughout the country." Elsewhere Lord Cornwallis complains of "the ferocity of our troops, who delight in murder." In a letter to General Boss, dated 16th November, 1799, his Excellency distinctly attributes the rebellion to the violence and cruelty which had been employed to provoke it. Hia words are these :— " You will hare seen by the addresses both in the north and south that my attempt to moderate that violence and cruelty which has once driven, and which, if tolerated must again soon drive this wretched country into rebellion, ip not reprobated by the voice of the country, although it has appeared so culpable in the eyes of the absentees." Pitt had made Ireland a shambles of carnage. He did so although solemnly warned of the inevitable consequences of his Policy by Earl Fitzwilliam, who was Viceroy at the commencement of 1795, and who told Pitt's Cabinet, in a well-known letter to the Duke of Portland, that the course pursued by Pitt would raise a flame which it would require the force of arms to keep down. I omit, because the quotations would exceed the limits I have prescribed to myself in this paper, the many testimonies which show the diabolical means employed to sting the Irish people into armed resistance. I content myself with saying, that no historical fact can be better established than this— that the Bebellion of 1798 was designedly provoked in order to paralyse the Irish nation into inability to resist the Union with effect. After the Union had been forced upon us, we find Cornwallis writing to Castlereagh— "The rebellion assisted in carrrying the Union." Of course it did, and this was Pitt's motive in fomenting it. It is with awe and horror that we contemplate the Satanic wickedness of a powerful Minister, who, in the seclusion of his Cabinet, deliberately plans the destruction of Irish constitutional rights, and whose agencies for that purpose are thus described in page 47 of the letters of the late General Cockburn. The General gives an account of the document prepared for Lord Moira to substantiate his charges against the Government of that date. He says :—: — " They (the documents) contained details of the most horrible outrages on the people ; of cruelty and foul deeds that, perhaps, after all it may be as well to have now effaced from Irish records of violence ; and although the people were in many cases liriven to retaliation, it was not before murder, burning, destruction of property (often on suspicion of being suspected), and flogging, drove them to desperation. ' Really, when the Union is the offspring of such infamous parentage, it would be miraculous if its results were not as detrimental to Ireland as for 85 years we have found them. It was and is, as Mr. Lecky calls it, a crime of the deepest turpitude ; and being so. it is a bit of extravagant impudence in our neighbours across the Channel to suppose we can possibly submit to it without perpetual protest and perpetual efforts to recover the National liberties of which it deprived us. Lord Salisbury said some time ago that Ireland was more disaffected than she had been in the reign of George the Second. The Union is enough to account for any amount of disaffection. Yet our British neighbours talk as if it could possibly be endurable ! The Edinburgh JtevU'w for January. 1882. gives expression to a very common feeling when it says that the Irish become more difficult to govern exactly in proportion to the liberality of their treatment, — and "we (British) become less successful in governing, exactly in proportion to our more conciliatory attitude." Why what business have they to govern us at all ? I can answer the reviewer by quoting the prophetic words of Mr. Peter Burrowes in the Irish Parliament :—: — " When, said h<\ '• I take into account the hostile feelings generated by this'foul attempt, by bribery, by treason, and by force, to plunder a nation of its liberties in the hour of its distress, I do not hesitate to pronounce that every sentiment of affection for Great Britain will perish if this measure pass, and that instead of uniting the nations it will be the commencement of an era of inextinguishable animosity." Our experience of 85 years demonstrates the accuracy of Mr. Burrowes' forcast. Among the English people generally the densest ignorance prevails of the real nature of the Union, of the unspeakable horrors of its origion, and of the chronic disturbance and misery it entails upon Ireland. We call for its repeal— that is to say, we claim our indefensible right. Our British neighbours claim a right to resist our demand, just as a highwayman might claim a right to retain the booty he has taken. We proclaim our allegiance to the Crown, but we owe no allegiance to England, any more than England owes allegiance to Ireland. We are loyal to Queen Victoria, and earnestly desire that her Majesty should resume her ancestral right to govern Ireland through an Irish Parliament. This is miscalled separation — the disintegration of the Empire. Now, I affirm that the hateful

TZT^SfS}*? Unioa m • disintegrating measure, because, as foretold in 1800, it creates and exasperates international animosity. On the other Hand£l affirm that Repeal of the Union is a consolidating measure, because it would substitute a connection of honour and prosperity for one of servitude and misery. We hear great boasts about maintaining the integrity of the Empire. Now, what is it that our assailants denominate Imperial integrity f This thing which they call integrity has been known in Ireland, as depletion of our national wealth, destruction to our manufactures, enormous taxation, recurring famines, consequent popular wretchedness, fifty coercion acts to keep down the disturbances resulting from misery, monstrous decrease of our people between deaths by starvation and flight to other lands, absenteeism of Irish talent, as well as of Irish proprietors— all this complication of disaster and disgrace is, we are told, the integrity of the Empire, we deny that it is integrity. We say that it is replete with all the elements of disruption. Then, what is it that our opponents stigmatise as separation ? Simply a restoration of our legislative rights— rights which the English Kings, Lords, and Commons solemnly pledged themselves in 1783 to respect in all time coming. Is the Empire disrupted because Canada has her free Parliament ? Is it disrupted because Australia has her free Parliament, or became there are some fifteen or sixteen Legislatures in as many colonies? Then, why should an Irish Parliament involve disruption f Was the Empire disrupted before 1800 J Was it disrupted when the Viceroy, in 1782, told the Irish Parliament that the best bond of connection between England and Ireland was the faithful observance of the compact tnen established between the two nations T This scarecrow of disruption is the merest pretext ; it is the pretext of persons, whether English or domestic, who veil their real hatred of Ireland under a profession of seal for the Empire. They also tell us— some of them, at least— that our desire for the restoration of our Parliament is merely a bit of Bentinoentahsm. It is something more than a matter of sentiment. The leading principle of the Union is the subjugation and robbery of Ireland ; the results are horrible disorder, sporadic outbreaks of disloyalty, and the expulsion of millions of the Irish population. But I should be sorry to deny that it is largely a matter of sentiment. Sentiment is a potent stimulant to action, and it would not be easy to exaggerate the baseness of the wretch who is destitute of the sentiment of love for his country, pride in her honour, resentment for her wrongs, and indignation at their authors. " Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land ? Whose heart has ne'er within him burned As home his footsteps he has turned, From wandering on a foreign strand ? If such there be, go — mark him well, For him no ministrel raptures swell ; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim Despite these titles, power, and pelf, The wretch concentred all in self. Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly vying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung." This poetic malediction suggests an inadequate posthumous penalty for anti-National basenes-. Ihe euemies uf our liberty are not forgotten. Their memorj , as Tom Moore said, is embalmed in the gall of our hearts. If the^r names are preserved by the greatness of their crimes — if we do not forget Pitt, the suicide Castlereagh, Clare, and their accomplice?, we are. <ni the other hand, bound to cherish with reverential gratitude the memory of the gallant band who in 1800 stood fast by Ireland ia her final struggle. We do not forget that Sir John Parnell. the relative of the Irish leader, was dismissed from the Chancellorship of the Irish Exchequer by the Union Government in punishment of his inflexible fidelity to the interest of bis country . We do not forget the noble stand of the Speaker of our House of Commons, the Right Honourable John Foster, whose magnificent speech against the Union, delivered on the 11th April, 1799, was given to me by my father as one of my earliest studies. We do not forgei Goold nor Plunkett, nor Barrington, nor many another faithful member of tne band at whose head stands the greatest of them all— the illustrious Henry Grattan. The names of Foster and Grattan sugcest one of the most practical topics connected with the Union — us financial provisions. Foster, who had been Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer before his appointment to the office of Speaker, was especially qualified by his official experience and his strong sagacity to di»cern and expose the dishonest projects of the Government. Grattan said, " Kobbery and taxes ever follow conquest— the nation that loses her liberty loses her revenues." The financial fr.md embodied in the Act of Union has frequently been the subject of complaint. I shall try to give an outline of its nature in my next paper.

Don't use stimulants, but nature's braia and nerve food — Hop Bittejs. Beware of all except made by American Co. See. There is just now a kind of mild English scare in Paris. Great Britain possesses a few rocky islets within gunshot of the French coast ; and, with a view to rend-iing them defensible, she has lately set about the construction on them of some unall forts. But half-a-iozen French newspaper editors discover a very different reason for the armaments of perfidious Albion. Tne Ecrehous Rocks are not far from Cherbourg ; consequently the new forts, the power of which is liberally exaggerated by the alarmists, are. of course, being erected in order to cover the landing on French territory of an English force destined to seize tie great Kormmdy arsenal. Our Gallic neighbours may be expected to charge us next with haibouring a design for the reconquest of those lands over which William I. held sway. — St. James's Gazette.