WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 1273: BITTER DISPUTES BETWEEN “OLD IRELAND” AND “YOUNG IRELAND.”
By Edward Farr
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

History - BritishHistory - Modern (1750+)History - RoyaltyHistory - Warfare

About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

BITTER DISPUTES BETWEEN “OLD IRELAND” AND “YOUNG IRELAND.”

The Young Irelanders were encouraged by the death of O’Connell to believe that they could take the lead in public affairs among the Roman Catholics, and they supposed that the Protestant population were more likely to listen to arguments in favour of an effort to achieve national independence, coming from them, than they were to hearken to the old repeal arguments from the Old Irelanders. In this they were disappointed; notwithstanding that several of the leaders were Protestants, no considerable number of that persuasion followed the new faction. The true tendency of that agitation was seen by the Protestants, who rather prepared to resist both the Old Ireland and Young Ireland parties, in the struggle which might be brought about by a coalition of these parties. Such a coalition was the policy of the Young Ireland party; but they made the doctrine of physical force a sine qua non in the creed of the coalesced parties; and the Old Irelanders, still clinging to the policy of their deceased chief, refused the terms. John O’Connell and his adherents were then made the objects of unsparing ridicule by the literati of the new party, and the lampoons and caricatures of which the chairman and committee of Conciliation Hall were the victims, told upon the people, and gradually insinuated a contempt for the weak and vacillating policy, as it was described, by which they were guided. The party of John O’Connell, as when under the guidance of his father, was not slow to resort to physical violence, whenever there was a chance of doing so with impunity, while they continued to proclaim the sanctity and permanent obligation of the O’Connell doctrine of moral force. The Young Irelanders endeavoured to reunite Irishmen to lift the arm of a manly and brave revolt against English connection. The Old Irelanders had no objection to kill scripture-readers, break church windows, waylay Protestants, and maltreat them at market or fair, and riotously disperse the assemblages of Young Irelanders, while they preached passive resistance as alone justifiable to the government. Of course the leaders of Old Ireland denounced all breakers of the laws; but when outrages were committed, especially on Young Irelanders or Protestants, they palliated them, or denied them in the face of evidence which was conclusive. John O’Connell found himself in a hurricane of political passion, which he could not quell, and through which he had neither power nor skill to direct his course. By the end of the year he found the reins of authority slipping through his hands; Smith O’Brien and his compeers were rampant; and Ireland, stained with blood, blackened with pestilence, exhausted by famine, raged with impotent fury against the imperial government and Great Britain: in all the folly of domestic faction, she was pitied and scorned by Great Britain when she supposed herself feared. There were no men amongst the leaders of the disaffected in Ireland to command the respect of England, in that sense which a dominant nation respects the power of a rival, or of an insurgent province. The wish became very extensive in Great Britain that all Irish grievances should be redressed, and that in every respect Ireland should be placed on a footing with the other portions of the United Kingdom, if in any a sense of injustice were experienced; but to the honest menaces of the Young Irelanders, and the hypocritical reliance on moral persuasion of Conciliation Hall, the people of Great Britain only gave their ear from curiosity, perfectly regardless of any power which any faction or union of factions might put forth. Great Britain awaited the outburst of passion which was in Ireland so rapidly coming to a crisis,’ as unmoved as the crag abides the eddies of the current which bubble and burst against it.