SECTION V. A FEW more words of prelude are necessary before we enter on the remarkable administration which was to form an epoch in Irish history. It has been sufficient so far to notice the general drift of the stream, on the surface of which individuals are seen occupied in paltry schemes to improve their own fortunes, not one of them as yet, however, with sufficient power to influence materially the policy or the fate of the country. The practical force in the Parliament was in the hands of a few families, who nominated the majority of the representatives. No questions had as yet been stirred on which the people were passionately interested; and minor scandals had been made use of only as a means of embarrassing the Government. On the edge of a great change, we pause for a moment to notice a few persons, some of whom had made themselves felt already as troublesome, and were about to pass to the front of the stage; some still obscure and unheard of, but meditating in the enthusiasm of passionate youth on Ireland's miseries, and dreaming of coming revolutions. First in rank was the Duke of Leinster, and individually the first in influence. The House of Kildare was the most powerful in Ireland, and the head of it was the natural leader of the Irish people. But the Kildares, at all periods of their history, preferred to rule alone or not at all. Many times the Viceroys had attempted to draw them into combination with other parties, but always without success. The Duke of Bedford laboured hard with the reigning Earl, but CHAP. I. BOOK V. the Earl refused to work with the Ponsonbies. Once only, for a few months, he tried the office of Lord Justice, and had retired, leaving the field to his rivals; while his ambition had been gratified, and his mortification soothed, by special distinction in the peerage. In 1761 he was made a marquis. In 1766 he was created duke, being then about fifty-six years old, the one duke of which Ireland could boast. He was married to a daughter of the Duke of Richmond, and was the father of seventeen children, one of whom, born in 1763, and thus three years old when Lord Townshend came to Dublin, became known to the world thirty-five years later as Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Lord Shannon's father, the reader will remember as Henry Boyle, Speaker of the House of Commons, who, after heading the opposition to the Government, sold his patriotism for an earldom and a pension, His son Richard, who succeeded to the title in 1764, was a politician of his father's school, under forty, with his life still before him, married to Speaker Ponsonby's daughter, and aiming steadily with the Ponsonby alliance at controlling the Castle, and dispensing the patronage of ministers. He had enormous wealth, and in private made an honourable use of it. Arthur Young, who visited him at Castle Martyr in 1771, speaks with unusual enthusiasm of his merit as an Irish landlord. Next in consequence to Lord Shannon was the Speaker, the Right Honourable John Ponsonby, second brother of the Earl of Bessborough. The Duke of Devonshire had been twice Viceroy-in 1737 and 1743. Lord Hartington was Viceroy in 1755. The long presence of the Cavendish family I. at the Castle was favourable to the Ponsonby for- CHAP. tunes. Lord Bessborough married one of the duke's daughters, and was Lord Justice in 1756. John Ponsonby married another, became Speaker when Boyle was raised to the peerage, and was made Lord Justice also. The links of the family compact are easily visible. The virtual sovereigns of Ireland threatened to become hereditary. From this John Ponsonby came George, afterwards friend of his country and Lord Chancellor, who was now a boy of eleven. Of the House of Commons' orators who had made names must be mentioned 1. Mr. Hely Hutchinson, a barrister of large practice, who had risen in his profession through a seat in Parliament, and had become known as a patriot orator. Speaking and voting against Government, less on principle than as the surest road to advancement, on the appropriation of the surplus, the Pension and the Septennial Bills, Mr. Hutchinson had shown that he could be dangerous. In practical business he had made himself really useful, so far as was compatible with attention to himself. 2. Mr. Sexton Pery, a lawyer also, and the son of a Limerick clergyman, represented his native city. He, too, was a patriot, and had earned impatient notice in the letters of Viceroys and Secretaries. He had been tempted with the Solicitor-Generalship, and had refused it. It was assumed that, like others, he was purchasable, but the Government had not yet discovered at what price he could be secured. 3. A third barrister, remarkable in himself, and remarkable as the father of a more celebrated son, was John Fitzgibbon. He, like Pery, came from BOOK V. Limerick, but from the cabin of a Catholic peasant. The Fitzgibbons were of Norman blood, once wealthy and powerful, but now reduced by forfeitures, and there remained of them only a few families, renting their few acres of potato garden on the estates of their ancestors. Young John, in defiance of the law, had been sent to Paris to be educated, and was intended for a priest. He had no taste for the priestly calling. The Catholic religion itself became incredible to him. He went to London, found means of studying law, and brought himself into notice, while still keeping his terms, by publishing a volume of Reports. Admitted to the Irish bar, he rose early into practice, realized a considerable fortune, and bought a large estate at Mountshannon, in his native county. He sat in Parliament for Newcastle, in the county of Dublin, and he stood almost alone in desiring nothing which Castle favour could give, aspiring to no rank, and content with the wealth which he had earned. To a Government which had aimed at ruling Ireland by honest methods, the elder Fitzgibbon would have been an invaluable servant; to the Halifaxes and Northumberlands, though he never stooped to factious opposition, he was an object of suspicion and dislike. John Fitzgibbon the younger, who grew to be Chancellor and Earl of Clare, was born in 1748, and was now gaining his early laurels at Trinity College. Noticeable, however, beyond all his contemporaries, already prominent in the House of Commons, already concentrating in himself the passionate hopes of all young generous-minded Irishmen, was the celebrated Henry Flood. Like the Like the younger Fitzgibbon, Flood was born into a position which secured him from เ I. the temptation of making politics a trade. His father, CHAP. Warden Flood, was Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and as Attorney-General had amassed considerable property. Henry, the eldest son, was born in 1732. He passed without particular distinction through the Irish University. From Dublin he went as a gentleman commoner to Oxford, where he became noted rather as an ornamental youth of letters than as an aspirant for University honours. Irish genius runs naturally to words. Henry Flood was a student of Demosthenes, and his special ambition was to be an orator. His enslaved and unhappy country weighed upon his spirits. She was in bondage; the chains cramped her limbs, and therefore she was miserable. She pined for liberty, and liberty, as Flood understood it, was the child of eloquence.' Not by hard attention to the facts of life; not by submission to the inflexible laws which must be obeyed before they will be our servants; not by patient undoing the triple stranded cord of idleness, extravagance, and anarchy, in which the object of his affection was truly held in servitude; not by these, but on the short bright road of bounding oratory lay Ireland's path towards redemption. Let parliamentary eloquence breathe into the souls of her people, and the foul enchantment would disappear, and Ireland would rise up in her native loveliness. With these ideas in him, and with an estate of 5,000l. a year to fall to him on his father's death, Henry Flood, being then twenty-seven years old, entered Parliament as member for Kilkenny in 1759. He was re-elected on the King's death for the same county, and, with a handsome figure, a rich sonorous voice, and a mind stored with the phrases which millions of young Irish hearts were then VOL. II. |