XXI. 1828. CHAP. absence is a feature in the existing circumstances of the owes its parentage to heavy wrong operating on deeply 1 Ann. Reg. their swords for his recreation. 141. 118. lic Associa derate the little better than a box in an amphitheatre, from whence his Majesty's Ministers may survey the business of blood." 1 At length appearances became so threatening, especially The Catho- in Tipperary, where the people were on the verge of intion inter surrection, that the able leaders of the Association, who feres to mo- were aware how soon they would be crushed in the field transports. by the military strength of England, deemed it necessary to interfere to moderate the movement. Notwithstanding all their boasts, they were well aware that their millions would only be an incumbrance in the field, from the impossibility of arming or feeding such multitudes. "In a week,” said Mr Sheil, "they would cut us down." It was wisely resolved, therefore, to postpone the insurrection XXI. 1828. which had been so often threatened, and trust only to CHAP. agitation, and the display of vehement popular excitement. The Association accordingly passed resolutions condemning the meetings lately held in Tipperary, "humbly imploring" the Catholic clergy to co-operate with them in carrying this resolution into effect; calling on Mr O'Connell to exert his deserved influence over the people of Tipperary, in deterring them from holding such meetings. He immediately obeyed the injunction, and issued an address to the people of the county of Tipperary, conjuring them to discontinue these alarming assemblages.* Such was the influence which he possessed with the peasantry, and so perfect the system of organisation and discipline to which, under the direction of their priests, they had been brought, that a vast assemblage of not less than fifty thousand persons in Tipperary, arrayed in uniform equipments, with flags and drums, was arrested by single messengers of the Association, bearing copies of his address, who met the bodies which were pouring into the town. In one place only, at Castletown, where they 1 Ann. Reg. were not so met, a collision took place with the police, 143; Mar the barracks were attacked, and the police obliged to seek 477, 478. safety in flight.1 1828, 141, tineau, i. vernment Encouraged by this movement on the part of their op- 119. ponents, the Cabinet at length gave symptoms of life. On Proclama1st October a proclamation came forth from the Lord- tion of GoLieutenant, enjoining that to be done which the Associ- against the ation had already enjoined to be done for them. ings such as those which had taken place in Tipperary meetings. Meet- Oct. 1, 1828. "Obey the laws; follow the advice of the Catholic Association; listen to the counsels I will give you ; discontinue those large meetings; avoid secret societies and illegal oaths; contribute according to your means to that sacred and national fund the Catholic Rent; cultivate your moral duties; attend seriously and solemnly to your holy and divine religion. You will then exalt yourselves as men and Christians. Bigotry and oppression will wither from amongst us. A parental Government, now held out to us, will compensate for centuries of misrule. I adjure you, however great may be your irritation, not to commit any breach of the peace, which is just the very thing by which your enemies would be delighted, and which would rive the hearts of your friends with unutterable agony."-Mr O'Connell's Address, Sept. 26, 1828; Ann. Reg. 1828, 142. XXI. 1828. CHAP. were denounced as illegal, and the magistrates were called on to suppress them. It was unnecessary. The meetings had already disappeared at a more powerful voicethat of Mr O'Connell. Mr Lawless was held to bail for his heading of the Monaghan meeting, but no ulterior proceedings were adopted. With such success were the efforts of the Association and Mr O'Connell to regulate the movement attended, that early in October he said, at a meeting of the Association: "We had taken care to render Tipperary so tranquil that a single policeman was scarcely required to preserve the peace. There the proclamation of Government was issued, but we had quieted 1828, 141; the country before it came forth, and the Government but heel-tapped the work which had already been done by the Catholic Association." 1 1 Ann. Reg. Martineau, i. 478. 120. Penenden Oct. 24. These proceedings in Ireland, and, above all, the deMeeting on cisive evidence which had been afforded of the entire and Heath. thorough control which the leaders of the Catholics had obtained over the whole body, excited the greatest alarm in England; and the friends of the Protestants condemned Government in no measured terms for permitting the agitation to go on, and not at once putting it down. by the arrest and trial of its leaders. Meetings were held in various places to give expression to this feeling; and one on Penenden Heath, in Kent, on October 1, was so remarkable as to deserve especial notice. It was attended by twenty thousand persons, for the most part of a very superior class; and a motion condemnatory of the proceedings in Ireland, and expressing their "inviolable attachment to those Protestant principles which have proved to be the best security for the civil and religious liberty of the kingdom," was carried on the motion of the Earl of Winchelsea, seconded by Sir E. Knatchbull, the county member, by a large majority. Similar meet 2 Ann. Reg. ings were held in Leeds, Leicester, and other places.2 1828, 145. These meetings immediately became the object of the most violent abuse by the whole Catholic party in Eng land and Ireland, who unhesitatingly condemned that as treason and revolution which was only a slight imitation of their own example. CHAP. XXI. 1828. 121. vain urges rous mea lics. If Ireland, however, was thus falling into a state of pacific anarchy and smothered insurrection, to which The King in there is perhaps no parallel to be found in any other age more vigoor country, it was not without the most vigorous opposition suresagainst on the part of the chief magistrate of the State that the the Cathochange was going forward. The King strongly urged the adoption of decisive measures against the Roman Catholics. He disapproved of the Association Bill as too inefficient, and, in particular, impressed upon his Ministers his opinion of the necessity of acting decidedly on occasion of Mr Lawless's crusade into the north of Ireland in the autumn of 1848. So strongly was his Majesty's opinion expressed on this point, that he afterwards said to Lord Eldon, in a confidential interview, "that everything was revolutionary; that the condition of Ireland had not been taken into consideration; that the Association Bill had passed both Houses before he had seen it; that it was a very inefficient measure, compared to those which he had himself in vain recommended; that he had frequently suggested the necessity of putting down the Roman Catholic Association, and suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, especially at the time that Lawless made his march; that he was in the condition of a person with a pistol presented to his breast; that he had nothing to fall back upon; that he had been deserted by the aris- 1 Eldon's tocracy who had supported his father; and that every- 83, 84. thing was tending to revolution." 1 Life, iii. 122. with which But although the King thus felt and spoke as became a king of England, and with the hereditary courage of Difficulties his race, when he urged a more vigorous course upon his the question Ministers, yet they, being charged with the execution of was beset. the laws, had a very different task to perform, and were beset with difficulties which were not so obvious to one in his exalted station. They had to consider, not merely what XXI. 1828. CHAP. was in itself wise, and, if practicable, would at once have remedied the existing disorders, but what was really practicable under existing circumstances. They experienced now the force of the eternal truth, that a constitutional monarchy, when united the strongest, is, when disunited, the weakest of all governments. So divided was not only Ireland, but Great Britain, upon this question, that it had become more than doubtful whether any means of coercion really remained to the executive. The unhappy extension of English institutions to a people wholly unsuited for their reception, had rendered Government in Ireland almost powerless. If prosecutions were tried, the necessity of unanimity in juries, in a country where it was hopeless to expect it, rendered it almost certain they would fail. If a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was attempted, it was more than doubtful whether, in a House of Commons now equally divided on the Catholic question, it would be carried; and if carried, it was quite certain that its execution would give rise to endless heats and animosities. O'Connell was already powerful enough; there was no need of augmenting his sway by stretching out to him the crown of martyrdom. If a dissolution was resorted to, an increase of anti-Catholic members might be expected in Great Britain; but would they not be more than neutralised by thirty or forty seats which would certainly be changed in Ireland, and, under the newborn. influence of the priesthood, filled with the most violent Romish revolutionists? It was quite certain that the Liberals of every shade would unite together, both in and out of Parliament, to keep alive the agitation in both islands, and drive home a wedge in the Cabinet by which they hoped to split asunder the Administration, and terminate the ascendancy of Tory counsels in the Government. Even the army, if matters came to extremities, was not to be entirely relied on; for although the fidelity of the officers in every arm might confidently be trusted, and the cavalry, almost entirely composed of |