The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume VI Part 23

There is no hope for the body of the people of Ireland, as long as those who are in power with you shall make it the great object of their policy to propagate an opinion on this side of the water that the ma.s.s of their countrymen are not to be trusted by their government, and that the only hold which England has upon Ireland consists in preserving a certain very small number of gentlemen in full possession of a monopoly of that kingdom. This system has disgusted many others besides Catholics and Dissenters.

As to those who on your side are in the opposition to government, they are composed of persons several of whom I love and revere. They have been irritated by a treatment too much for the ordinary patience of mankind to bear into the adoption of schemes which, however _argumentatively_ specious, would go _practically_ to the inevitable ruin of the kingdom. The opposition always connects the emanc.i.p.ation of the Catholics with these schemes of reformation: indeed, it makes the former only a member of the latter project. The gentlemen who enforce that opposition are, in my opinion, playing the game of their adversaries with all their might; and there is no third party in Ireland (nor in England neither) to separate things that are in themselves so distinct,--I mean the admitting people to the benefits of the Const.i.tution, and a change in the form of the Const.i.tution itself.

As every one knows that a great part of the const.i.tution of the Irish House of Commons was formed about the year 1614 expressly for bringing that House into a state of dependence, and that the new representative was at that time seated and installed by force and violence, nothing can be more impolitic than for those who wish the House to stand on its present basis (as, for one, I most sincerely do) to make it appear to have kept too much the principle of its first inst.i.tution, and to continue to be as little a virtual as it is an actual representative of the commons. It is the _degeneracy_ of such an inst.i.tution, _so vicious in its principle_, that is to be wished for. If men have the real benefit of a _sympathetic_ representation, none but those who are heated and intoxicated with theory will look for any other. This sort of representation, my dear Sir, must wholly depend, not on the force with which it is upheld, but upon the _prudence_ of those who have influence upon it. Indeed, without some such prudence in the use of authority, I do not know, at least in the present time, how any power can long continue.

If it be true that both parties are carrying things to extremities in different ways, the object which you and I have in common, that is to say, the union and concord of our country _on the basis of the actual representation_, without risking those evils which any change in the form of our legislature must inevitably bring on, can never be obtained.

On the part of the Catholics (that is to say, of the body of the people of the kingdom) it is a terrible alternative, either to submit to the yoke of declared and insulting enemies, or to seek a remedy in plunging themselves into the horrors and crimes of that Jacobinism which unfortunately is not disagreeable to the principles and inclinations of, I am afraid, the majority of what we call the Protestants of Ireland.

The Protestant part of that kingdom is represented by the government itself to be, by whole counties, in nothing less than open rebellion. I am sure that it is everywhere teeming with dangerous conspiracy.

I believe it will be found, that, though the principles of the Catholics, and the incessant endeavors of their clergy, have kept them from being generally infected with the systems of this time, yet, whenever their situation brings them nearer into contact with the Jacobin Protestants, they are more or less infected with their doctrines.

It is a matter for melancholy reflection, but I am fully convinced, that many persons in Ireland would be glad that the Catholics should become more and more infected with the Jacobin madness, in order to furnish new arguments for fortifying them in their monopoly. On any other ground it is impossible to account for the late language of your men in power. If statesmen, (let me suppose for argument,) upon the most solid political principles, conceive themselves obliged to resist the wishes of the far more numerous, and, as things stand, not the worse part of the community, one would think they would naturally put their refusal as much as possible upon temporary grounds, and that they would act towards them in the most conciliatory manner, and would talk to them in the most gentle and soothing language: for refusal, in itself, is not a very gracious thing; and, unfortunately, men are very quickly irritated out of their principles. Nothing is more discouraging to the loyalty of any description of men than to represent to them that their humiliation and subjection make a princ.i.p.al part in the fundamental and invariable policy which regards the conjunction of these two kingdoms. This is not the way to give them a warm interest in that conjunction.

My poor opinion is, that the closest connection between Great Britain and Ireland is essential to the well-being, I had almost said, to the very being, of the two kingdoms. For that purpose I humbly conceive that the whole of the superior, and what I should call _imperial_ politics, ought to have its residence here; and that Ireland, locally, civilly, and commercially independent, ought politically to look up to Great Britain in all matters of peace or of war,--in all those points to be guided by her.--and, in a word, with her to live and to die. At bottom, Ireland has no other choice,--I mean, no other rational choice.

I think, indeed, that Great Britain would be ruined by the separation of Ireland; but as there are degrees even in ruin, it would fall the most heavily on Ireland. By such a separation Ireland would be the most completely undone country in the world,--the most wretched, the most distracted, and, in the end, the most desolate part of the habitable globe. Little do many people in Ireland consider how much of its prosperity has been owing to, and still depends upon, its intimate connection with this kingdom. But, more sensible of this great truth, than perhaps any other man, I have never conceived, or can conceive, that the connection is strengthened by making the major part of the inhabitants of your country believe that their ease, and their satisfaction, and their equalization with the rest of their fellow-subjects of Ireland are things adverse to the principles of that connection,--or that their subjection to a small monopolizing junto, composed of one of the smallest of their own internal factions, is the very condition upon which the harmony of the two kingdoms essentially depends. I was sorry to hear that this principle, or something not unlike it, was publicly and fully avowed by persons of great rank and authority in the House of Lords in Ireland.

As to a partic.i.p.ation on the part of the Catholics in the privileges and capacities which are withheld, without meaning wholly to depreciate their importance, if I had the honor of being an Irish Catholic, I should be content to expect satisfaction upon that subject with patience, until the minds of my adversaries, few, but powerful, were come to a proper temper: because, if the Catholics did enjoy, without fraud, chicane, or partiality, some fair portion of those advantages which the law, even as now the law is, leaves open to them, and if the rod were not shaken over them at every turn, their present condition would be tolerable; as compared with their former condition, it would be happy. But the most favorable laws can do very little towards the happiness of a people, when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them. Men do not live upon blotted paper. The favorable or the hostile mind of the ruling power is of far more importance to mankind, for good or evil, than the black-letter of any statute. Late acts of Parliament, whilst they fixed at least a temporary bar to the hopes and progress of the larger description of the nation, opened to them certain subordinate objects of equality; but it is impossible that the people should imagine that any fair measure of advantage is intended to them, when they hear the laws by which they were admitted to this limited qualification publicly reprobated as excessive and inconsiderate. They must think that there is a hankering after the old penal and persecuting code. Their alarm must be great, when that declaration is made by a person in very high and important office in the House of Commons, and as the very first specimen and auspice of a new government.

All this is very unfortunate. I have the honor of an old acquaintance, and entertain, in common with you, a very high esteem for the few English persons who are concerned in the government of Ireland; but I am not ignorant of the relation these transitory ministers bear to the more settled Irish part of your administration. It is a delicate topic, upon which I wish to say but little, though my reflections upon it are many and serious. There is a great cry against English influence. I am quite sure that it is Irish influence that dreads the English habits.

Great disorders have long prevailed in Ireland. It is not long since that the Catholics were the suffering party from those disorders. I am sure they were not protected as the case required. Their sufferings became a matter of discussion in Parliament. It produced the most infuriated declamation against them that I have ever read. An inquiry was moved into the facts. The declamation was at least tolerated, if not approved. The inquiry was absolutely rejected. In that case, what is left for those who are abandoned by government, but to join with the persons who are capable of injuring them or protecting them as they oppose or concur in their designs? This will produce a very fatal kind of union amongst the people; but it is an union, which an unequal administration of justice tends necessarily to produce.

If anything could astonish one at this time, it is the war that the rulers in Ireland think it proper to carry on against the person whom they call the Pope, and against all his adherents, whenever they think they have the power of manifesting their hostility. Without in the least derogating from the talents of your theological politicians, or from the military abilities of your commanders (who act on the same principles) in Ireland, and without derogating from the zeal of either, it appears to me that the Protestant Directory of Paris, as statesmen, and the Protestant hero, Buonaparte, as a general, have done more to destroy the said Pope and all his adherents, in all their capacities, than the junto in Ireland have ever been able to effect. You must submit your _fasces_ to theirs, and at best be contented to follow with songs of gratulation, or invectives, according to your humor, the triumphal car of those great conquerors. Had that true Protestant, Hoche, with an army not infected with the slightest tincture of Popery, made good his landing in Ireland, he would have saved you from a great deal of the trouble which is taken to keep under a description of your fellow-citizens obnoxious to you from their religion. It would not have a month's existence, supposing his success. This is the alliance which, under the appearance of hostility, we act as if we wished to promote.

All is well, provided we are safe from Popery.

It was not necessary for you, my dear Sir, to explain yourself to _me_ (in justification of your good wishes to your fellow-citizens) concerning your total alienation from the principles of the Catholics. I am more concerned in what we agree than in what we differ. You know the impossibility of our forming any judgment upon the opinions, religious, moral, or political, of those who in the largest sense are called Protestants,--at least, as these opinions and tenets form a qualification for holding any civil, judicial, military, or even ecclesiastical situation. I have no doubt of the orthodox opinion of many, both of the clergy and laity, professing the established religion in Ireland, and of many even amongst the Dissenters, relative to the great points of the Christian faith: but that orthodoxy concerns them only as _individuals_. As a _qualification_ for employment, we all know that in Ireland it is not necessary that they should profess any religion at all: so that the war that we make is upon certain theological tenets, about which scholastic disputes are carried on _aequo Marte_, by controvertists, on their side, as able and as learned, and perhaps as well-intentioned, as those are who fight the battle on the other part. To them I would leave those controversies. I would turn my mind to what is more within its competence, and has been more my study, (though, for a man of the world, I have thought of those things,)--I mean, the moral, civil, and political good of the countries we belong to, and in which G.o.d has appointed your station and mine. Let every man be as pious as he pleases, and in the way that he pleases; but it is agreeable neither to piety nor to policy to give exclusively all manner of civil privileges and advantages to a _negative_ religion, (such is the Protestant without a certain creed,) and at the same time to deny those privileges to men whom we know to agree to an iota in every one _positive_ doctrine which all of us who profess the religion authoritatively taught in England hold ourselves, according to our faculties, bound to believe. The Catholics of Ireland (as I have said) have the whole of our _positive_ religion: our difference is only a negation of certain tenets of theirs. If we strip ourselves of _that_ part of Catholicism, we abjure Christianity. If we drive them from that holding, without engaging them in some other positive religion, (which you know by our qualifying laws we do not,) what do we better than to hold out to them terrors on the one side, and bounties on the other, in favor of that which, for anything we know to the contrary, may be pure atheism?

You are well aware, that, when a man renounces the Roman religion, there is no civil inconvenience or incapacity whatsoever which shall hinder him from joining any new or old sect of Dissenters, or of forming a sect of his own invention upon the most anti-christian principles. Let Mr. Thomas Paine obtain a pardon, (as on change of ministry he may,) there is nothing to hinder him from setting up a church of his own in the very midst of you. He is a natural-born British subject. His French citizenship does not disqualify him, at least upon a peace. This Protestant apostle is as much above all suspicion of Popery as the greatest and most zealous of your sanhedrim in Ireland can possibly be.

On purchasing a qualification, (which his friends of the Directory are not so poor as to be unable to effect,) he may sit in Parliament; and there is no doubt that there is not one of your tests against Popery that he will not take as fairly, and as much _ex animo_, as the best of your zealot statesmen. I push this point no further, and only adduce this example (a pretty strong one, and fully in point) to show what I take to be the madness and folly of driving men, under the existing circ.u.mstances, from any _positive_ religion whatever into the irreligion of the times, and its sure concomitant principles of anarchy.

When religion is brought into a question of civil and political arrangement, it must be considered more politically than theologically, at least by us, who are nothing more than mere laymen. In that light, the case of the Catholics of Ireland is peculiarly hard, whether they be laity or clergy. If any of them take part, like the gentleman you mention, with some of the most accredited Protestants of the country, in projects which cannot be more abhorrent to your nature and disposition than they are to mine,--in that case, however few these Catholic factions who are united with factious Protestants may be, (and very few they are now, whatever shortly they may become,) on their account the whole body is considered as of suspected fidelity to the crown, and as wholly undeserving of its favor. But if, on the contrary, in those districts of the kingdom where their numbers are the greatest, where they make, in a manner, the whole body of the people, (as, out of cities, in three fourths of the kingdom they do,) these Catholics show every mark of loyalty and zeal in support of the government, which at best looks on them with an evil eye, then their very loyalty is turned against their claims. They are represented as a contented and happy people, and that it is unnecessary to do anything more in their favor.

Thus the factious disposition of a few among the Catholics and the loyalty of the whole ma.s.s are equally a.s.signed as reasons for not putting them on a par with those Protestants who are a.s.serted by the government itself, which frowns upon Papists, to be in a state of nothing short of actual rebellion, and in a strong disposition to make common cause with the worst foreign enemy that these countries have ever had to deal with. What in the end can come of all this?

As to the Irish Catholic clergy, their condition is likewise most critical. If they endeavor by their influence to keep a dissatisfied laity in quiet, they are in danger of losing the little credit they possess, by being considered as the instruments of a government adverse to the civil interests of their flock. If they let things take their course, they will be represented as colluding with sedition, or at least tacitly encouraging it. If they remonstrate against persecution, they propagate rebellion. Whilst government publicly avows hostility to that people, as a part of a regular system, there is no road they can take which does not lead to their ruin.

If nothing can be done on your side of the water, I promise you that nothing will be done here. Whether in reality or only in appearance I cannot positively determine, but you will be left to yourselves by the ruling powers here. It is thus ostensibly and above-board; and in part, I believe, the disposition is real. As to the people at large in this country, I am sure they have no disposition to intermeddle in your affairs. They mean you no ill whatever; and they are too ignorant of the state of your affairs to be able to do you any good. Whatever opinion they have on your subject is very faint and indistinct; and if there is anything like a formed notion, even that amounts to no more than a sort of humming that remains on their ears of the burden of the old song about Popery. Poor souls, they are to be pitied, who think of nothing but dangers long pa.s.sed by, and but little of the perils that actually surround them.

I have been long, but it is almost a necessary consequence of dictating, and that by s.n.a.t.c.hes, as a relief from pain gives me the means of expressing my sentiments. They can have little weight, as coming from me; and I have not power enough of mind or body to bring them out with their natural force. But I do not wish to have it concealed that I am of the same opinion, to my last breath, which I entertained when my faculties were at the best; and I have not held back from men in power in this kingdom, to whom I have very good wishes, any part of my sentiments on this melancholy subject, so long as I had means of access to persons of their consideration.

I have the honor to be, &c.

END OF VOL. VI.