CHAPTER XII. CATHOLIC REVIVALISM-DAWN OF O'CONNELL-MAYNOOTH COLLEGE IN THE ASCENDANT—“ NO POPERY" MANIFESTATIONS-MR. PERCEVAL IN OFFICE. PITT TT and Fox had departed from the scene, but George III. was they did not suffer that to render them entirely passive. As they gradually recovered from their signal defeat in 1803, they collected their forces afresh, and, forced into additional energy by the untimely death of Fox, they persevered in holding meetings in Dublin during the winter of 1806-7. These meetings were nominally illegal, but they managed to hold them without serious interruption, and eventually appointed a committee of twenty-one to draw up another petition. Amongst that committee we find mentioned for the first time the name of Daniel O'Connell, then in the preparatory stage of his eventful career, and the movement he then took part in was mild enough to prevent any suspicion of ulterior designs of any magnitude. The petition agreed upon by O'Connell, in conjunction with that committee of his first confederates, merely complained that the Catholics were excluded from many of the most important offices of trust, power, and emolument in the country, whereby they were made to appear like aliens and strangers in their native land; that not less than four-fifths of the inhabitants were made a distinct people, and placed in a position of degrading inferiority towards the rest, and that from the uniform and peaceable behaviour of the Roman Catholics of Ireland for a long series of years, it appeared reasonable and expedient to relax the disabilities and incapacities under which they laboured; and that it must tend not only to the cultivation and improvement of the kingdom, but to the prosperity and strength of all his Majesty's dominions, that his Majesty's subjects of all denominations should enjoy the blessings of a free constitution, and should be bound to each other by mutual interest and mutual affection. This petition was presented by the Earl of Fingall and Mr. Grattan, and caused consternation amongst the ministers, of whom Lord Grenville was still the head, and amongst whom Fox, though dead in the body, was alive in the spirit. The ministerial difficulty arose from a conflict of circumstances. A majority of the Cabinet were in favour of making concessions, but they were aware they would not be assented to by the King. They, in common with some historians of the day, probably believed the King was mad; while the Opposition, with some other historians, probably thought he was never more sensible. Under the perplexing circumstances, ministers tried a compromise. Maynooth College, from that time, comes into prominence. The early policy of the English government having been to degrade the Catholics into the greatest ignorance by placing every possible obstacle in the way of Catholic education in Ireland, the natural result was that Catholic parents and Catholic youth, where there was any ambition to acquire scholastic distinction, were compelled to resort to continental countries, especially France, for opportunities of education denied to them at home. The French Revolution introduced a new element. It was observed that young men, seeking education, went abroad Irish Catholics and possibly royalists, and often came home French freethinkers and probably republicans. To obviate this, the English government of 1795 not only granted permission for the superior education of Catholics, but established and endowed the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth, the real object being, not so much to educate Catholics as to keep out French principles, which had been imported in consequence of divinity students resorting to Paris, where they were too apt to learn matters not expedient to be known in Ireland; amongst other things (poor misguided youths !), MAYNOOTH COLLEGE. ΙΟΙ that it was not so very miserable for every man to be his own landlord, and that country people really could be pretty comfortable even without paying tithes. So Maynooth College was established, and' Maynooth College was endowed, and the compromise resorted to by Lord Grenville was to again augment the endowment from £8,000 to the very considerable amount of £13,000. Upon this Mr. Perceval came prominently upon the scene, and opposes the increase with all his might, and the government was hard put to it to defend their proposal. Lord Howick, in his advocacy of the increase, disclosed its real motive with charming candour. He said it was on the large principle of connecting the Irish Catholic with the State, and that it was particularly necessary just then to promote the domestic education of the Catholic clergy, as an institution of great extent had been formed at Paris, at the head of which was a Dr. Walsh, a person of considerable notoriety, with a view to re-establish the practice of Irish Catholic education at that place, and to make that education the channel of introducing and extending the political influence of the French Government in Ireland. These arguments prevailed, and the increased amount was granted. Thereupon Mr. Perceval got up a "No Popery" agitation, in the midst of which ministers ventured, in a spirit of further concession to the petitioners, to introduce the "Catholic Officers Bill," to enable Catholics to hold commissions in the army and navy. To Mr. Perceval this was too atrocious. He continued his agitation with renewed vigour, advertised in the newspapers that the Church was in danger, communicated his sentiments to the Dukes of York and Cumberland, who, with Lord Eldon in complete harmony, aroused the King to such a wakefulness concerning public affairs that he actually inquired of Lord Howick, "What is going on in the House of Commons?" On Lord Howick saying that the "Catholic Officers Bill" was to go on, he expressed his dislike of the measure, and, next day, his Majesty said he must look out for new servants, and afterwards call upon them to resign. Ministers offered to drop the objectionable bill, but that would not satisfy his Majesty. He proved his madness or good. sense to such a degree that he required ministers, as a condition of remaining in office, to pledge themselves that they would never more bring forward any measure respecting papists. They declined to give the pledge, and they were immediately superseded by Lord Liverpool, Mr. Perceval, as a reward for his disinterested Protestant enthusiasm, becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer, with Eldon for Lord Chancellor, Castlereagh as Minister of War, the Duke of Richmond Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards Duke of Wellington) as Chief Secretary. This was a bad time for Catholics. They were accused of complicity with the Threshers (though there is reason to conclude that neither was in the least associated with the other), referred to in the last chapter, and were given to understand that they must submit. To put down Threshers and Catholics, and to carry matters generally with as high a hand as possible, another Insurrection Act and another Arms Act, and other like lively government, carried events on until 1810, and so the first decade of the Union was nearly got over. CHAPTER XIII. FIRST NOTE OF REPEAL. OR nearly ten years the United Parliament had had all the power and responsibility of governing or misgovering Ireland. The Irish people had never sanctioned the Union, and had never lost an opportunity of protesting against it; but it is very remarkable that, until the tenth year of the century, no distinct effort was made to repeal the Union. There had been the wild and undisciplined, and comparatively harmless, explosion of the unsubstantial bubble blown by Emmett, but there is no reliable evidence that his efforts were approved of by any substantial portion of the nation, as his adherents were limited to a mere handful of restless spirits; and his followers, so far as he had any, were nameless waifs, destitute of power to do anything worth speaking of, and almost as destitute of any tangible conviction of what they wanted, or how they proposed to get it. Emmett's movement was the blind, helpless upheaval of a remnant of suffering humanity, without coherence or definite purpose, unredeemed by the avowed approval of anybody entitled to represent any influential portion of the nation, and may be pronounced out of the argument. So far from seriously proposing to repeal the Union, the leading Catholics, whatever they may have thought, disavowed any such object, and appeared to regard the subject with complacent indifference. They virtually stated in their petitions that if the special grievances they complained of were redressed, they were not unwilling to accept the redress from any quarter. They, in effect, declared their entire willingness to be governed by the United Parliament, if such government proved to be better or even as good as that of the Irish Parliament had |