The Commercial Restraints of Ireland
by John Hely-Hutchinson · English · Gutenberg #38841 · 473,746 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Commercial Restraints of Ireland
Author: John Hely-Hutchinson
Editor: W. G. Carroll
Release date: February 12, 2012 [eBook #38841]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
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COMMERCIAL RESTRAINTS OF IRELAND.
[Illustration: FROM A PAINTING BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.]
THE COMMERCIAL RESTRAINTS OF IRELAND
CONSIDERED IN A SERIES OF LETTERS TO A NOBLE LORD, CONTAINING
AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE AFFAIRS OF THAT KINGDOM. DUBLIN, 1779.
BY JOHN HELY HUTCHINSON,
PROVOST OF TRINITY COLLEGE, ETC.
"----the best exposition which exists of the poisonous forces which had
so long been working in the country."--_Froude._
"This valuable and rare book is, perhaps, the best ever written on the
subject of Irish trade, and the restrictions put upon it by
England."--_Mr. Blackburne._
Re-Edited,
WITH A SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE, INTRODUCTION,
NOTES, AND INDEX,
BY W. G. CARROLL, M.A.
S.S. BRIDE'S AND MICHAEL LE POLE'S, DUBLIN.
DUBLIN
M. H. GILL & SON, 50 UPPER SACKVILLE STREET
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO., STATIONERS'-HALL COURT.
1882
"Good Heaven! for what peculiar crimes,
Beyond the guilt of former times,
Is Ireland ever doom'd by fate
To groan beneath Oppression's weight."--_Baratariana._
"If your vessel is frequently in danger of foundering in the midst of a
calm, if by the smallest addition of sail she is near oversetting, let the
gale be ever so steady, you would neither reproach the crew nor accuse the
pilot or the master; you would look to the construction of the vessel and
see how she had been originally framed and whether any new works had been
added to her that retard or endanger her course."--_Commercial
Restraints._
PRINTED BY M. H. GILL AND SON, 50 UPPER SACKVILLE-ST., DUBLIN.
The Publishers desire to express their best thanks to the Provost and
Senior Fellows of Trinity College for their kindness in lending the
Library copy of the "Commercial Restraints," and the portrait of Provost
Hely Hutchinson, by Sir Joshua Reynolds; also for the extracts from the
College Register, and for free access to the Matriculation and Judgment
Books.
The Publishers have, likewise, to acknowledge their obligation to Sir
Samuel Ferguson for the courteous favour of the fac-simile of Provost
Hutchinson's autograph which underlines the frontispiece.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Life ix
Notes:
(A) The Hutchinson Family lxxix
(B) Dr. Leland lxxxv
(C) Dr. Duigenan lxxxvii
(D) Grattan and Fitzgibbon's College Course lxxxix
(E) Lists of the Secretaries of State, Chancellors
of the Exchequer, Speakers of the Irish House
of Commons, and Chief Secretaries xciv
Introduction xcix
Commercial Restraints 1
Appendix 165
Index 169
LIFE OF PROVOST HELY HUTCHINSON.
THE RIGHT HON. JOHN HELY HUTCHINSON, author of the "Commercial
Restraints," was certainly one of the most remarkable men that this
country ever produced; and he took, amidst an unequalled combination of
brilliant rivals, a very prominent part in the most interesting and
splendid period of Ireland's internal history. He was, according to Dr.
Duigenan, a man of humble parents. He entered Trinity College as a
Pensioner, in the year 1740, under the name John Hely,[1] and after his
marriage he adopted the name Hutchinson, on succeeding to the estate of
his wife's uncle.
In 1744 he obtained his B.A., and Duigenan admits that in his
Undergraduate Course he won some premiums at the quarterly examinations.
In 1765 he was presented with the degree of LL.D. _Honoris Causa_. The
_College Calendar_, in the list of Provosts, has, "1774. The Rt. Hon. John
Hely Hutchinson, LL.D., educated in Trin. Coll., Dublin, but not a Fellow;
admitted Provost by Letters Patent of George III., July 15; Member of
Parliament for the City of Cork, and Secretary of State. Died Provost,
Sep. 4, 1794, at Buxton."[2]
This is all the mention which the published records of the College make
of, perhaps, its most celebrated Provost. The Calendar is inaccurate as to
the year of his matriculation, and it does not even tell that he was the
author of the "Commercial Restraints"--its memorial notices being
extremely scanty and brief; but in other contemporary writings we find
several notices of him, unfavourable and favourable. He was called to the
Bar in 1748; King's Counsel, 1758; Member for Lanesborough as John Hely
Hutchinson of Knocklofty, 1759;[3] in 1760 he received, in a silver case,
the freedom of Dublin for his patriotic services in parliament.[4] He was
Member for Cork City as John Hely Hutchinson of Palmerston, and afterwards
as Right Hon., 1761; Prime Serjeant, sometimes going Judge of Assize, and
Privy Councillor, 1761; Alnager,[5] 1763; Major in a Cavalry Regiment,
which, when threatened with a court-martial for non-attendance to duty, he
sold forthwith for L3,000; Provost and Searcher of Strangford,[6] 1774;
Principal Secretary of State, 1777;[7] M.P. for Taghmon, 1790; died 1794
(according to the _College Calendar_ at Buxton, and according to the
_Gentleman's Magazine_ in Dublin). He was also Treasurer of Erasmus
Smith's Board, and one of the Commissioners for inquiring into Education
Endowments, and he strove perseveringly but fruitlessly to obtain besides
the Chancellorship of the Exchequer.
The most important and most historic of all these appointments was the
Provostship, and it is in connection with the Provostship that we know
most about him. He won the high office, for which, in regard of any sort
of learning, he was totally disqualified, by a dexterous intrigue with the
Chief Secretary of the day, Sir John Blacquiere; and those who cared most
for Hutchinson considered that the manoeuvre was an unwise one for him.
It forfeited his assured prospects at the Bar, and it fastened on him the
odious imputation of an insatiable avarice. The appointment, moreover, was
regarded as an affront and an injury by the body over which he was placed.
Fellows and Scholars in various ways resented the indignity, and
Hutchinson had to face a very surly temper inside the walls. He faced it
with a light heart, and triumphed over it; but it often turned on him, and
stung him. He considered that it was well worth the cost; for in the first
place it was an appointment for life; and then he had not to give up his
lucrative practice in the law courts, which Froude says was worth nearly
L5,000 a year; and in fact he never ceased to angle for the Mastership of
the Rolls. In the next place, he got in addition a splendid town
residence, on which eleven thousand pounds had just been expended; he got
an income of two thousand one hundred a year; he got a very wide
patronage, and he calculated on getting the control of the parliamentary
representation of the University, which at that time was in the hands of
the Fellows and Scholars. This last object would have been an immense
acquisition for him; but he failed to win the game, the playing of which
led him, according to Duigenan and others, into some of his most
reprehensible courses.
As has been said above, in the rivalries of public life Hutchinson was
pitted against a phalanx of as able men as ever appeared together in any
country; and most of these men he supplanted and surpassed. They avenged
themselves by lampooning him, and they were masters in the art. The
Provost was assailed in prose and in verse, in couplet and in cartoon, in
newspapers and pamphlets, in the "Lachrymae Academicae," "Baratariana," and
"Pranceriana;" and these two last _pasquinades_ are unique in English
literature. Their satire is as broad and as wounding as that of Junius,
while it is often far more finished and playful; and there is no other
instance of so many men of the same ability and station being combined in
such a mosaic of detraction.[8]
"BARATARIANA," so called from Sancho Panza's island-kingdom, was written
in verse and in prose, and it appeared originally as letters in the
_Freeman's Journal_, which at that time, previous to its removal to
"Macaenas' Head" in Bride-street, was published over St. Audeon's Arch.[9]
The principal writers of these letters were Sir Hercules Langrishe,[10]
Flood, Grattan, Yelverton, Gervase Bushe, and Philip Tisdall. The volume
is "a collection of pieces published during the administration of Lord
Townshend," and in it the Lord Lieutenant figures as "Sancho," Anthony
Malone as "Don Antonio," Provost Andrews as "Don Francesco Andrea del
Bumperoso," and Hely Hutchinson under the various titles of "Don John
Alnagero, Autochthon, Terrae Filius, Monopolist, Single Session, and
Serjeant Rufinus." It was in one of these papers that Grattan, with an
audacious drollery, drew his celebrated character of Lord Chatham, as a
privileged extract from a manuscript copy of Robertson's forthcoming
"History of America." The description given by Langrishe of Hutchinson,
who was not Provost at that time, is: "He talks plausibly and with full
confidence, and whatever Pro-consul is deputed here Rufin immediately
kidnaps him into a guardianship, and like another Trinculo erects himself
into a viceroy over him. His whole elocution is alike futile and
superficial. It has verdure without soil, like the fields imagined in a
Calenture. He has great fluency, but little or no argument. He has some
fancy, too, but it serves just to wrap him into the clouds and leave him
there, while he holds himself suspended, planing and warbling like a lark,
without one thought to interrupt the song. If he has any forte it is in
vituperation or abuse. In 1766 he defeated the first Militia Bill.[11] His
first stride in apostasy was supporting the Privy Council Money Bill in
1767 [for opposing which Anthony Malone[12] had previously lost the Prime
Serjeancy in 1754, and the Chancellorship of the Exchequer[13] in 1761;]
his next was in defending the motion for the additional regiments, whereby
we were treated like a ravaged country, where contributions are levied to
maintain the very force that oppresses it." For these ministerial services
Hutchinson got the Prime Serjeancy, with an extra salary of L500 a year.
In the next session he was useful to the Crown in regard of the Pensions
Enquiry Bill and the Embargo Corn Bill, and was rewarded with the
sinecure Alnager's place, worth L1,000 a year. He was made a Privy
Councillor, got the reversionary grant of the Principal Secretaryship of
State, and the commission of a half-pay majority, and was what Primate
Stone termed "a ready-money voter." "He got more," says Flood, "for
ruining one kingdom than Admiral Hawke got for saving three."[14] The
"List of the Pack," one of the rhymes in the volume, has:
"Yet Tisdal unfeeling and void of remorse,
Is still not the worst--Hely Hutchinson's worse;
Who feels every crime, yet his feeling denies,
And each day stabs his country, with tears in his eyes."
Philip Tisdall, in "Baratariana," gives the following humorous description
of Hutchinson: "He is jealous of me, and as peevish as an old maid. I love
to tease him. I endeavour to put him on as odious ground as I can in
parliament, and then I am the first to complain to him that Government
should expose their servants to so much obloquy without occasion. I
magnify to him the favours and confidence I receive from Government, and
my correspondence with Rigby, which nettles him to the heart. He is too
finical for Lord Townshend, who makes very good sport of him. One day he
dined at the Castle, and when the company broke up, Lord Townshend, who
pretended to be more in liquor than he was, threw his arms about his neck
and cried out, 'My dear Tisdall, my sheet anchor, my whole dependence!
don't let little Hutchinson come near me; keep him off, my dear friend;
keep him off--he's damned tiresome.' At other times His Excellency makes
formal appointments to dine at Palmerston[15] at a distant day. The Prime
Serjeant invites all the officers of State; Mrs. Hutchinson is in a
flurry; they send to me for my cook; and after a fortnight's bustle, when
dinner is half spoiled, His Excellency sends an excuse, and dines with any
common acquaintance that he happens to meet in strolling about the streets
that morning. This g'emman has a pretty method enough of expressing
himself, indeed, but in points of law there are better opinions. My
friend, the late Primate, who knew men, said, that the Prime Serjeant was
the only person he had ever met with who got ready money, in effect, for
every vote he gave in parliament. He has got among the rest the reversion
of my Secretary's office; but I think I shall outlive him."[16]
Another note in "Baratariana" records that Tisdall, whose Government
salaries exceeded L5,000 a year, had also a reversion of the Alnager's
place, with its L1,000 a year, on the death of Hutchinson; and this
mutuality of Reversions, no doubt, accounts for the warm affection that
subsisted between Hutchinson and Tisdall. Blacquiere got the Alnagership
as the price of the Provostship, as before mentioned. Besides the
Alnagership Hutchinson was obliged also to resign the Prime Serjeancy,
which was given to Dennis; but even in regard of emolument the Provostship
was well worth these two sacrifices, the united income of which was only
L1,300. He retained his sinecure of L1,800 a year, and the State
Secretaryship, and he was further compensated by the sinecure office of
Searcher of the Port of Strangford, with a patented salary of L1,000 a
year for his own life and the lives of his two elder sons. He had thus
altogether, besides his lucrative practice at the Bar and his own estate,
about L6,000 a year, together with the Provost's House, while his eldest
son was Commissioner of Accounts, with L500 a year, and with the reversion
of the Second Remembrancership of the Exchequer, worth L800 a year, and
his second son had a troop of dragoons.[17]
"PRANCERIANA" derives its title from "Prancer," or "Jack Prance," the
nickname which was given to the Provost,
"Restorer of the art of dancing,
And mighty prototype of prancing,"
from his effort to establish in the College a riding and dancing-school,
in imitation of the Oxford schools.
"Each college duty shall be done in dance,
And hopeful students shall not walk, but prance."
The articles were originally published in the _Hibernian Journal_ and
_Freeman's Journal_,[18] and the two volumes, which appeared in 1776, were
announced as "A collection of fugitive pieces published since the
appointment of the present Provost." The collection was dedicated to "J-n
H-y H-n, Doctor of Laws, P.T.C., late Major in the Fourth Regiment of
Horse, Representative in the late and present Parliament of the city of
Cork, one of his Majesty's Counsel at Law, Reversionary Remembrancer of
the Exchequer, Secretary of State, one of His Majesty's Most Honourable
Privy Council, and Searcher, Packer, and Gauger of the Port of
Strangford."[19]
It attacks the Provost all round with every asperity; it mocks his want of
learning by calling him "the Potosi of Erudition;" it makes fun of his
riding and dancing-schools; and it ridicules his boasted college reforms.
Alluding to his efforts to banish card-playing there is the rhyme--
"You bag and baggage made them pack
Old Whist, and Slam that Saucy jack,
Ombre, Quadrille, Pope Joan, Piquet,
And Brag and Cribbage--cursed set."
It is obliged to admit, however ungraciously, that the Provost effected
some improvements. He obtained from the Erasmus Smith board, of which he
was treasurer, the L200 a year for the oratory and composition
premiums,[20] as well as the L2,500 for building the theatre, which
Duigenan declares the College did not want. He established also the Modern
Languages Professorships, the latter-day English Parliament treatment of
which is such a curious passage in the history of the University.
"Pranceriana" admits, too, that by the Provost the park was walled in,[21]
and that common rooms inside the walls, supplied with coffee and papers,
were provided for the students; that "tardies" [i.e. returns of students
as passing into College between 9 and 12 P.M.] were lessened, that
"chapels" required to be attended by them were increased, and that the
calling of examination rolls was finished by eight o'clock in the morning,
the hours of the Quarterly Examination being at that time from 8 to 12,
A.M., and 2 to 4, P.M. Hutchinson was unquestionably very arbitrary and
offensive in some of his regulations, but whether he was right or wrong he
met the same cynical measure in "Pranceriana."[22]
The "LACHRYMAE," published in 1777, was the work of Dr. Duigenan alone (see
note B), and in it he gives full fling to his hatred of the Provost. It is
an able and envenomed indictment, and the author hits his victim with the
utmost roughness. He accuses the Provost of violating every clause of the
Provost's oath, and of being guilty of every possible abuse of his high
office; he, moreover, defames Dr. Leland (see note C), and the other
Fellows who were or became civil and courteous to the Provost. Duigenan
acknowledges that he set himself to be insolent to the Provost; he tells
what brave plans of defiance and revenge he formed, and how, after all,
the Provost punished him and put him down.
The "Lachrymae" records all this in piquant and entertaining fashion; and,
besides being damaging to the Provost's character, it is interesting still
as a sort of College Calendar of the period, giving antiquarian
information of much value concerning the administration, economies, and
discipline of the College a hundred years ago. It begins with reciting the
naked and unprincipled manoeuvre with Sir John Blacquiere, the Chief
Secretary[23] to Lord Lieutenant Harcourt, by which Hutchinson, a layman,
was appointed Provost, by virtue of the Crown's dispensing with the
Statute which required the office to be filled by a Doctor or Bachelor in
Divinity. Blacquiere's origin, Duigenan says, was like the source of the
Nile, only to be guessed at, and Blacquiere himself was insolent,
illiterate, and avaricious. On the death of Provost Andrews, in 1774, he
recommended as his successor John Hely Hutchinson, who resigned in his
patron's favour the office of Alnager, which Blacquiere ere long farmed
out at L1,200 per annum.
Duigenan says that whilst the bargain was in agitation Blacquiere
represented the Provostship as much more valuable than it was. He adds
that Hutchinson "complained loudly that he had been bitten," and that to
make the best of a bad bargain he took in hands the College Estate.
Henry Flood was an eager candidate for the Provostship, and was put off
with a vice-treasurership, and a salary of L3,500 a year. Blacquiere would
have given him the Provostship if he could have paid a higher price than
Hutchinson; and "he would have sold it to a chimney-sweeper if he had been
the highest bidder." Duigenan says that all he knew of Flood was that he
had been bought by Blacquiere, but he had no doubt that he would have made
a better Provost than Hutchinson.[24] His disgust against Hutchinson is so
intense that it overrides his sour nationality and his jealousy for the
rights of the body to which he belonged; and he declares that he would
have preferred the appointment of an Oxford or Cambridge clergyman.
In the _Gazette_ announcement of Hutchinson's appointment his "LL.D." was
puffed, but Duigenan strips the degree of all merit by explaining that it
was only an "honorary" one--that it had no Academic significance--that
every member of the Irish Parliament had a customary right to it--that it
had just been conferred on an ignorant carpenter, one John Magill[25]--and
that, as the climax of the prostitution, he himself, Duigenan, in his
capacity of Regins Professor of Civil Law, had officially presented
Blacquiere for the honour![26]
Non-fellow, unlearned, and layman as he was, Hutchinson got the
Provostship, and he was not long in finding out that the constitution of
the college afforded a sphere for energy which precisely suited him. By
the "New Statutes," i.e., the Charter and Statutes drawn up by Archbishop
Laud, the Provost possessed, or was supposed traditionally to possess,[27]
almost absolutely, the management of the college estates, the disposal of
its revenues, the nomination of fellows and scholars, and the power of
rewarding and punishing fellows and scholars. The choice of parliamentary
representatives for the University rested--not as since the Reform Act,
with the registered Masters of Arts and Ex Scholars at large--with the
corporate body of the fellows and scholars for the time being, all of whom
were in a great degree subject to the statutable powers and underhand
influence of the Provost. The body consisted of twenty-two fellows and
seventy scholars. The College was the only asylum in the kingdom for
friendless merit, and Duigenan knew five contemporary bishops who had been
fellows.[28] All its usefulness and all its glories were swept away by the
appointment of "Mr."--for he would not call him Dr.--Hutchinson.
Duigenan explains that it took five years' hard study to get a fellowship;
that the juniors were subject to incessant toil and irksome bondage as
tutors, and that their single compensating prospect was co-option. The
income of the juniors was only L40 a year, but the seniors at that time
handed over to them the pupils to help their scanty maintenances.[29] The
"Natives' Places" were held by Scholars who were Irish born, and who
succeeded to the Places by seniority and diligent attendance on college
duties.
Sizarships were given by nomination, the Provost claiming eight
nominations to one of each of the senior fellows, the previous system of
election by examination having been superseded by Hutchinson. There was
not one of these departments in which, according to Duigenan, Provost Hely
Hutchinson did not traffic--and Duigenan's statements are borne out by the
evidence before the parliamentary committee.[30] It was the same with
"non-coing," i.e., allowing money in lieu of commons in the hall; the same
in the matter of chambers, the same in regard of leaves of absence, the
same in regard of fines, and the same in everything. In all these matters
benefits were given to those who would vote for the Provost's sons, and
rights were refused to those who would not so vote. The Fellows in those
days used to have to purchase their rooms from the college--they could be
compelled by the Provost to attend the lectures of the professors, and
Duigenan says that the Provost once ordered him to leave the law courts to
attend one of these lectures. Fellows had the right of visiting the
students' rooms--they used to chum together--they used to be allowed to
borrow money from the College, and under this arrangement Duigenan owed
L300, while Leland and others owed more.
From the time of the "Glorious Revolution" none but Fellows had ever been
made Provosts, although during that period five Provosts had been
appointed. Dr. Andrew's Fellowship was a sort of excuse for appointing
him, although he was a layman; and Duigenan, in calculating the pecuniary
losses which he sustained through Hutchinson, intimates that a similar
dispensation might have been exercised towards himself if in due course he
had succeeded to his Senior Fellowship. These losses he sets down at
L3,000 actual, and L6,000 on the calculation of contingencies. The
Provostship was worth L2,100 a year, besides a splendid residence. A
Senior-Fellowship, we are told, was worth L700 a year; a
Junior-Fellowship, including pupils, L200; Scholars had free commons, and
there were thirty Native Places, with L20 a year each additional; the
Beadle of the University had L20 a year; the Porters L5 a year, with
clothes and food in the hall. On an average two Fellowships became vacant
every three years. All these particulars Duigenan gives, and they all are
made to serve as counts in his indictment of the Provost.
Hutchinson had the College estates surveyed, and Duigenan makes a grievous
complaint of this proceeding. He says the survey cost the College two
thousand pounds, and that it was an iniquitous device for raising the
College rents upon improvements that had been effected by the tenants.[31]
He declares that from the rent-raising there resulted beggary,
discontent, and emigration. The renewal fines were divided into nine
parts, of which two went to the Provost, and one to each of the seven
seniors. In the year 1850, the fines were transferred to the College
account, and the Senior Fellows were compensated out of the "Cista
communis."[32]
The "LACHRYMAE" tells how the Provost got the large old college plate
melted down, and turned into a modern service, destroying the engraved
coats-of-arms and names of the donors, at an expense to the college of
L400.[33] He soon after had it moved out to Palmerston House, and
Duigenan does not seem to feel at all sure about its honest return. Most
of the Fellows were in the Provost's power by being married, and Duigenan
says that he used the power tyrannically.[34] A Fellow going out on a
living was allowed only five months' benefit of salary.[35]
Duigenan seems to hold the Provost responsible for the "mean and decayed"
condition of the chapel, and he more than once rails at him for being of
mean parentage.[36] He finds that since the time of Charles I. no
Provost, except Hutchinson and his predecessor, had ever sat in the House
of Commons. He is obliged to admit that Dr. Andrews' conduct in private
life was somewhat too loose and unguarded for a Provost; but still he was
better than Hutchinson, though he was told that the latter was a good
husband and father. Mr. Hutchinson might be a good husband and father,
"but no one would think the better of a wolf because the beast was kind to
its mate and cubs." Hutchinson had destroyed the seclusion and retirement
of the college by infesting its walks and gardens with his wife, adult
daughters, infant children with nurses and go-carts, and military officers
on prancing horses. He had endeavoured to institute a riding-school and a
professorship of horsemanship after the example of Oxford, and he had
desecrated the Convocation or Senate Hall by making it a fencing-school.
Duelling had become the fashion among the students under the influence of
the Provost's evil example, and the college park was made the ground for
pistol practice.[37]
We are told further by Duigenan that the number of students then on the
college books was 598, of whom 228 were intern.[38] We see by the _Liber
Munerum Hiberniae_ that by 1792 the number of students had so much
increased, consequently on the liberal education spirit of Grattan's
parliament, that a King's Letter was obtained raising the quarterly
examination days from two to four. In the following year was the King's
Letter directing the admission of Catholics to degrees on taking the oath
of Abjuration and Allegiance, in accordance with the Act of the Irish
Parliament, and in 1794 appears the first "R. C." entry (Thomas
Fitzgerald, of Limerick) on the College Matriculation Books. From that
date onward the religious denomination of pupils has always been recorded.
"PRANCERIANA," i.e., probably Duigenan, asserts that the Provost, on the
eve of the second election in which his son was returned, offered to
supply to a voter amongst the candidates for Fellowship a copy of the
questions which he was to give in Moral Science for the ensuing
examinations;[39] and Duigenan openly says that the Provost was determined
that no one should be elected a Scholar who would not previously promise
to vote as he should direct him.
He kept an electioneering agent inside the walls, a spy and a
corrupter,--"in short, the Blacquiere of Mr. Hutchison." Duigenan gives a
long list of the Provost's insolences to himself and to other members of
the body. He resisted marriage dispensations to the Fellows who were his
opponents, while he procured them for his creatures--Leland and Dabzac.
On the death of Shewbridge the Fellow, which was attributed to Hutchison's
refusing him leave to go to the country for change of air, the students
defied the Provost's order for a private interment at 6 o'clock in the
morning. They had the bell rung, had a night burial and a torchlight
procession, attended the funeral in mourning, and afterwards broke into
the Provost's house.
In the first year of his office the Provost dispersed a meeting of the
Scholars and some of the Fellows that was held by advertisement at Ryan's
in Fownes-street, "the principal tavern in the city," for the purpose of
nominating candidates for the representation of the University against the
Provost's nominees.
Duigenan goes on to relate how Hutchinson discharged the various duties of
the high office which he had acquired by the traffic above stated. He made
an exhibition of his ignorance at a Fellowship Examination by suggesting
that Alexander the Great died in the time of the Peloponessian War; but
ridiculous a figure as he made in the Scholarship and Fellowship
Examinations, he would not withdraw from them, because unless he examined
he could not vote or nominate at the election of the Scholars and Fellows.
This nomination power was with him a darling object in the execution of
his electioneering projects of making the College a family borough, and he
abstained from no methods to effectuate his scheme.
We are told at length how the Provost, with the consent of a majority of
the Board, deprived Berwick of his Scholarship for absence, because
Berwick would not vote for his son, and how the Visitors, on appeal,
restored him.[40] How he deprived Mr. Gamble of the buttery clerkship, and
replaced him, on the threat of an appeal, suggested and drawn up by
Duigenan. How the Provost refused Mr. FitzGerald, a Fellow, leave to
accompany his sick wife to the country, and tried to provoke FitzGerald's
hot temper. The Provost's cruelties and injuries to Duigenan himself knew
no limits. He says, that for the purpose of keeping him from being
co-opted, the Provost had the Board Registry falsified, that he set the
porters to watch him, that he persecuted him, and mulcted him in the
buttery books, for sleeping out of college without leave. He relates that
he was attacked by the Provost's gang, and was obliged in consequence to
wear arms; and that, finally, Hutchinson compelled him to go out on the
Laws' Professorship on a salary which was raised to L460 a year.[41]
The "Lachrymae Academicae" shows how Duigenan spent the leisure hours of his
enforced retirement.
It was dedicated to King George III. Duigenan had "dragged this Cacus (the
Provost) from his den," and he appealed to the Duke of Gloucester as
Chancellor, and to the archbishops of Armagh and Dublin as Visitors, to
rescue the college out of the hands of this worse than Vandalic destroyer,
this molten calf, and pasteboard Goliath. As this remedy might fail, from
the uncertainty of all events in this world, Duigenan pointed out two
other remedies, the application of which lay with the King. One was to
have the Provost's patent voided by a _scire facias_, and the other was to
deprive him of all power, authority, or revenue in the college, during his
life. His authority was to be transferred to the Board, and his revenue to
be appropriated to pay for the new building. These suggestions were not
adopted, but the _Lachrymae_ did not by any means fall still-born from the
press. It produced a powerful sensation within the walls and in outer
circles.
On the 19th of July it was censured by the Board in the following
resolution:--
"Whereas, a pamphlet hath lately been published in the city of Dublin,
with the title of "Lachrymae Academicae," to which the name of Patrick
Duigenan, LL.D., is prefixed as author, traducing the character of the
Right Honourable the Provost and some respectable Fellows of this society,
and misrepresenting and vilifying the conduct of the said Provost and
Fellows, and the government of the said college, without regard to truth
or decency.
"Resolved by the Provost and Senior Fellows that the author and publishers
of the said pamphlet shall be prosecuted in the course of law, and that
orders to that purpose be given to the law agent of the college.
"Ordered that the said resolution be published in the English and Irish
newspapers."--[_Extract from College Register, July 19, 1777._]
The censure was officially published in the _Dublin Journal_, and in
_Saunders' News Letter_; whereupon Duigenan inserted in the _Freeman_ the
following advertisement:--
"Whereas, a false and malicious advertisement has been inserted in the
_Dublin Journal_, and in _Saunders' News Letter_, containing a resolution
of the Board of Trinity College, Dublin, relative to a book written and
published by me, entitled, 'Lachrymae Academicae; or, the present deplorable
state of the College of the Holy and undivided Trinity, of Queen
Elizabeth, near Dublin.' It is necessary to inform the public that the
said resolution was carried at the Board by the votes of Drs. Leland,
Dabzac, Wilson, and Forsayeth (the very same persons who voted for the
unstatutable deprivation of Mr. Berwick), against the opinions of Mr.
Clement, the Vice-Provost, of Dr. Murray, and Dr. Kearney. It is also
necessary to observe that three of these gentlemen who voted for the
above resolution are persons whom I have declared my intention, in my
book, of accusing, before the Visitors, of having committed unstatutable
crimes; which intention I shall most certainly execute.[42] And I do
hereby pledge myself to the public that I will effectually prosecute at
law every one of the junto for the said scurrilous advertisement, and the
resolution therein contained.
"PAT. DUIGENAN,
"Chancery Lane, July 21st, 1777."
"N.B.--Dr. Murray signed the said advertisement officially as Registrar of
the College, who is obliged to sign resolutions of the majority of the
Board. He strenuously opposed the resolution therein contained, and the
insertion of it in the Public Prints."
Besides these Board proceedings, the "Lachrymae" led to a plentiful crop of
litigation in the Courts. In Michaelmas Term, 1777, in the King's Bench,
Serjeant Wood moved for an information against Duigenan at the suit of the
Provost on account of the defamation in the "Lachrymae," and the
application was granted. The same time Barry Yelverton, on the part of Dr.
Arthur Browne, Fellow, and Member for the University, moved for an
information against the _Hibernian Journal_, and Fitzgibbon moved for
informations against two persons for challenging Duigenan. Applications
granted.
In 1778 Counsellors Smith, Burgh, &c., showed cause on behalf of Dr.
Duigenan against making absolute the Rule for information against the
"Lachrymae," when Judge Robinson dismissed the case, saying that it had
already taken up fifteen days of the public time, and that he "left the
School to its own correctors."[43]
In 1776, Duigenan insulted the Provost in the Four Courts, and the
Provost, disdaining Duigenan, called upon Tisdall to make him responsible
for his follower's conduct. He told Tisdall to consider that he had
insulted him with a view to provoke a challenge. This was the occasion on
which Duigenan threatened to bulge the Provost's eye. Tisdall at once
applied for an information against him in the King's Bench. Seventeen
counsel were engaged in the cause.
Hutchinson argued his own case before the Court with consummate ability.
He delivered a most masterly speech, and offered an apology for calling
Tisdall an old scoundrel and an old rascal. He did not recollect having
used these expressions, but if he did use them, it was out of Court. He
referred pathetically to all the annoyance and ridicule that he was
undergoing by pamphlets and in the public press; and he excused his
appearing in his own defence by the circumstance that his lawyers were
harassed in attendance on the six different suits promoted against him on
very unaccountable motives.
The Court of King's Bench made the rule against him absolute, but the
proceedings collapsed in consequence of Tisdall's death.[44]
Duigenan says that Hutchinson was once publicly chastised by a gentleman
whom he had affronted, but we have no other account of the circumstance.
Duigenan makes out that he was a coward as well as a tyrant and impostor,
and he compares him to "Cacofogo," the usurer in Beaumont and Fletcher's
play.
In 1789, the Provost supported Grattan in the Regency Bill, and in the
motions connected with it. For this he was liable to be dismissed from the
lucrative offices which he held under the Crown, and to save himself from
this penalty he signed the "Round Robin" of the twenty peers and
thirty-seven commoners who were in a similar predicament. This famous
instrument which was drawn up in the Provost's house, pledged the
co-signers to stand or fall together, and bound them as a body "to make
Government impossible" if the Viceroy, Lord Buckingham, were to venture to
punish any of them. Fitzgibbon, then Attorney-General, mercilessly crushed
and humbled the "Parliamentary Whiteboys;" he made the synagogue of Satan
come and worship before his feet,[45] and the most abject of the recreants
was the Provost.[46]
To secure the control of the parliamentary representation of the
University was, as has been said, one of Hutchinson's dearest plans. The
pursuit of it led him, according to all accounts, into some of his most
dishonourable and vindictive actions, and after all he won but temporary
and chequered success in the ambitious experiment. In the prosecution of
these election aims, the Provost stuck at nothing. He had agents and
emissaries everywhere; and through them as well as by his own direct
efforts he instituted an all-pervading system of corruption. He knew how
to make subtle but palpable advances to the voters that were under his
eye, and to tamper at the same time with their friends and parents at a
distance. He ransacked every department of Academic life so as to be
expert at turning the whole system of collegiate rewards and punishments
into an organised instrumentality for bribery. All the emoluments,
rewards, and conveniences of the college were reserved for those who
promised their vote to the Provost, and all the obsolete and vexatious
disciplines were enforced against those who were disposed to assert their
independence in exercising the franchise. By an unscrupulous use of both
his patronage, and his powers as Returning Officer, he was enabled to get
two of his sons returned for the University, but he saw powerful and
damaging petitions against both of them. In 1776, he returned his eldest
son Richard against Tisdall, the Attorney-General. Tisdall lodged a
petition in June, which the House ordered to be considered in July, but
before that day the Parliament was prorogued, and did not meet again till
October in the following year. Meanwhile, Tisdall died; the petition was
moved by Madden and King, and ultimately, in March, 1778, the Select
Committee unseated Hutchinson. John Fitzgibbon conducted the petition,
and thereby established his position as a lawyer. He was elected for the
University in Hutchinson's room, and the foundation of his coming
greatness was laid.[47]
Richard Hutchinson, it maybe observed, fell back on Sligo, to which he had
been elected at the same time that he was elected for the University, and
where he seems to have escaped another petition by choosing the University
constituency. In the debate as to whether a new writ should be issued for
Sligo, in 1778, the Provost took a forward part, and bewailed that he "was
forced to go there out of his sick bed to defend his son." The Gravamina
of the College petition of 1778 were almost identical with those of the
petition of 1790, and while Parliament was unseating the Provost's son,
the Court of Common Pleas was dealing with the Provost himself. The Rev.
Edward Berwick, whose case is related in the "Lachrymae," took an action
against the Returning Officer for refusing his vote. The Court, overruling
the Provost's objection, made an order that the Plaintiff should have
liberty to inspect all the College books that could be of use to him in
his suit. The verdict was against the defendant, without costs.[48]
After the disastrous parliamentary petition of 1778, the Provost took no
family part in the College elections until the year 1790, when his second
son Francis was returned. His return led to a parliamentary inquiry; and
the case, which is fully reported, is a very interesting passage in the
history of the College and of Hutchinson.[49]
The committee, consisting of fourteen members, besides the chairman, W.
Burston, Esq., was chosen on the 14th day of Feb., 1791, and on it sat,
amongst the others, the Hon. Arthur Wesley (Duke of Wellington), Right
Hon. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and Right Hon. Denis Daly.
There were two petitions, one by Laurence Parsons, Esq., the defeated
candidate, and the other by some scholars and other electors of the
borough. The sitting member was the Hon. Francis Hely Hutchinson, and the
returning officer was his father the Provost. There was a powerful bar.
Beresford Burston, Michael Smith (afterwards Master of the Rolls), Peter
Burrowes, and William Conyngham Plunket, were for the petitioners;
Tankerville Chamberlain (afterwards Judge of the Queen's Bench), and Luke
Fox (afterwards judge), were for the sitting member; and Robert Boyd
(afterwards Judge of King's Bench), and Denis George, Recorder of Dublin
(and afterwards Baron of the Exchequer), were for the Provost. The total
constituency was 92, and out of these "84 and no more" tendered their
votes. Arthur Browne was returned at the head of the poll by 62 votes,
Parsons had 43, and Hutchinson 39. The Provost, on the scrutiny, reduced
Browne's votes to 51, Parsons' to 34, and his son's to 36, thus returning
his son by a majority of two over Parsons. Against this return the
petitioners set forth that the Provost received for his son the votes of
several persons who had no right to vote; that he refused for Parsons the
votes of several who were legally entitled to vote; that on the scrutiny,
he received illegal evidence; that he acted as agent for his son, and by
undue means procured votes for him; that he exerted his prerogative
antecedently to the election for the purpose of illegally influencing the
electors; and that by illegal and partial scrutiny he reduced the number
of the votes for Parsons below the number of the votes for his son.
Burston stated the case, and referred to the election of 1776, when the
Provost's eldest son was unseated for undue influence. He gave numerous
instances of the Provost's abuse of his powers in the matters of
"non-coing" and leaves of absence. He complained of his rejecting votes on
the ground of minority on the evidence chiefly of the Matriculation-book.
Amongst the witnesses examined were the Very Rev. Wensley Bond, Sch.,
1761, Dean of Ross; G. Miller, Fellow (and afterwards Master of Armagh
Royal School); William Magee, Fellow and Junior Dean (and afterwards
Archbishop of Dublin); Toomy, a scholar (and afterwards Professor of
Medicine); Dr. Marsh, Fellow, and Registrar of the college; Whitly Stokes,
Fellow (and afterwards Professor of Physic), &c. &c.
The examination of the witnesses brought out a great many curious and
interesting facts relative to college men and college administration a
hundred years ago. For instance, Mr. Fox, in arguing against the right of
Scholars, being minors, to vote, referred to the election of 1739, when
Alexander MacAulay, Dean Swift's nominee,[50] was elected against Philip
Tisdall; and when the election was set aside by the House of Commons on
account of the vote of Mr. Sullivan[51] (afterwards Professor of Laws),
who, being elected a Fellow at nineteen years of age in 1738, was a minor
when he voted.
Plunket and Smith argued on the other side that Scholars, being minors,
were entitled to their votes, and that these votes were allowed in the
contested election of 1761, when Lord Clonmel ran French against the
Attorney General, Tisdall, on account of the latter's hesitancy about the
Octennial Bill. It was argued further that the Matriculation-book was not
legal evidence as to age, inasmuch as "boys without any sanction gave in
their ages older than they really were, from a desire to be thought men."
Finally, the committee resolved unanimously that Fellows and Scholars,
though minors, have a right to vote for members to represent the
University.
Mr. Miller[52] deposed that he was applied to by the Provost for his vote,
and that he was offered a copy of the Provost's fellowship examination
questions in Morality,[53] "an advantage," said Burrowes, "which would
have made a docile parrot appear superior to Sir Isaac Newton." Three of
the senior fellows voted for Hutchinson at the election. Toomey, a
Scholar, was a Catholic, and refused to vote because the Junior Fellows
could prove that he was a Catholic, and would take his pupils from him. He
would not conform, although the Provost's eldest son pressed him, and told
him that his own ancestors were Catholics and had conformed, and that he
himself would be a Catholic if he lived in a Catholic country. Toomey knew
that Casey, a Scholar, was a Catholic, and that he was chapel roll-keeper,
attended college chapel twenty times a week, and partook of the
Sacrament. Toomey "did not vote at the election because his vote would be
of no use as he was a Roman Catholic."[54] James Hely, a Scholar, was a
Catholic in Limerick, and had conformed in St. Werburgh's Church, in
Dublin, to the Rev. Mr. L'Estrange, curate. The petitioners strove to
disqualify Hely "for Popery," but his conformity was admitted by the
committee.
Mr. Graves, Fellow (afterwards Professor of Divinity and Dean of Ardagh),
had voted for Hutchinson, and he believed that the Provost did declare to
the Senior Fellows that he would nominate him to the Fellowship even
against the majority of the Board. Dr. Hales' pupils were worth L500 or
L600 a year to him;[55] and on his resignation the Provost claimed the
power of distributing his pupils amongst the other Fellows. Hales had
sixty or seventy pupils. Fellow-commoners paid L12, pensioners L6, per
annum. It was deposed by another witness that the Provost nominated Mr.
Ussher to a Fellowship in 1790--and it is so stated in the
Calendar--although he had but two votes amongst the Senior Fellows, and
those two were Drs. Kearney and Barrett.
Mr. Magee, Junior Dean, stated, that after his election to Fellowship he
was desirous to go to the bar, and that the dispensation was prevented by
the Provost. Shortly before the election, however, the Provost offered to
obtain the dispensation for him, with commons money and the usual
allowance, if he would either vote for Hutchinson or go out of the way.
Magee declined both proposals, and lost the dispensation; but probably he
got on as well in the Church as he would have succeeded at the Bar. In the
course of Mr. Magee's examination the following passage occurred:
"Counsel--Is not Dr. Fitzgerald a warm man? Magee--There are other warm
men in college besides Dr. Fitzgerald. Counsel--I perceive there are." Mr.
Toomy, a Scholar of the house, acknowledged that he was a Catholic. He
told about "Regulators' Places" for Sizars, worth about L16 a year, and
about "Natives' Places" for Scholars worth the same, and the
electioneering use which the Provost made of these appointments. Mr.
Stordy, the college clerk, told a great deal about the system of
"non-coing." A Scholar's non-co was worth L16 a year, and a Fellow's was
worth, for one half year, 7s. 7d. a week, and for the other half, 8s. 6d.
a week, or about L21 a year. Dr. Marsh, Senior Fellow, was twice refused
leave of absence by the Provost. The Provost gave the Vice-Chancellor's
rooms to his own supporters. A Scholar could have leave for thirty-two
days, and a fellow for sixty-three.[56] By Yelverton's Act, Trinity
College students could be called to the bar three years before
non-graduates.
Mr. Whitley Stokes, Fellow, gave instances of the Provost's partiality at
the election.
Mr. Fox opened the case for the sitting Member, and maintained that there
was no instance of undue influence, and he was followed by Mr. Boyd on the
part of the Provost. Then Mr. Plunkett spoke to evidence, against the
Provost and the sitting Member. The Recorder replied for the Provost in
very eulogistic terms, mentioning his seven Under-Graduate premiums, his
college reforms, improvements, &c. He disparaged the made-up arithmetical
evidence of Miller and Magee, and was followed by Mr. Chamberlaine for the
sitting Member. Mr. Burrowes closed the argument in a very eloquent
speech, which was as severe on the Provost as the "Lachrymae" or
"Pranceriana" was. It is noticeable, by the way, that Duigenan took no
part in the petitions, and that he was neither employed in the case nor
even named in the examination. Burrowes said that Miller's rejection of
the Provost's offer of his questions was "a moral miracle." It was
Miller's third attempt for fellowship.
Burrowes "lamented the necessity of the odious investigation which exposed
to public view the disgraceful and disastrous state of the
University--condoning the undue influence would make the college as
corrupt as any pot-walloping borough--the University would be shortly
depopulated, and its only remaining trace would be the octennial
convention of an unresisted Provost, and unresisting electors, to return
suitable representatives to Parliament, and celebrate the festival of
banished literature and vanquished public spirit. The decay of the
University in such an event, would be desirable; its honours ought to be a
brand of disgrace in society, and the contaminated Scholar ought to become
a despised and abandoned citizen." Burrowes was full of pride and loyalty
for the old place. He was himself an Ex-Scholar,[57] as were also amongst
the lawyers in the case Beresford Burston, Plunket, Smith, Fox, and Boyd;
and he was jealous for the honour of the Academic prize. "Some of the most
important officers in the state," he exclaimed, "are filled by men who
were Scholars of the University; in the learned professions the most
eminent men have in their youth been Scholars. The most respectable
divines, the most eminent lawyers, a considerable number of the Judges of
the land, have been Scholars. Every individual of the eight lawyers[58]
who appeared before this Committee have been Scholars of the
University."[59] Burrowes closed his speech:--"I sit down assured you
cannot pronounce the Honourable Francis Hely Hutchison to have been duly
elected." Forty-one witnesses were produced by the petitioners, of whom
ten were Fellows and thirteen Scholars. The Hutchisons produced six
witnesses--no Fellow, one Scholar, and a lady.
The Committee sat from the 14th February to the 24th March, when, by a
majority of one, including the double vote of the chairman, it resolved
(Wellington and Lord E. Fitzgerald voting in the minority) "That the Hon.
Francis Hely Hutchinson had made use of no undue influence; that he was
duly elected a burgess to represent the University in the present
Parliament; and that the Provost, as Returning Officer of the University,
acted legally and impartially at and before the election."
Perhaps the most significant fact evolved by the investigation was that
some of the Scholars were Catholics, the Statutes and the Anglican
Sacrament notwithstanding. There was no reserve in the statement, and no
remark on it was made by any member of Committee.[60] The point was not
brought forward in the petition, nor pressed by any of the Council, except
in the case of one Scholar, whose conformity was accepted by the
Committee. In fact the "Popery" seems to have been taken quite as an
understood thing,[61] and this coincides entirely with the famous
declaration of Fitzgibbon. In 1782, speaking on Gardiner's Bill, in the
Irish House of Commons, as Member for the University, he asserted that
"the University of Dublin was already open, by connivance, and that no
religious conformity was required." It is not easy to reconcile this with
the then existing regulations for students as well as for Scholars, and in
that debate the Provost did not speak exactly in this strain. On the
contrary, he lamented that the religious disabilities did exist, and he
was urgent for a King's Letter to give the Catholics equality in the
University, under a Theological Professor of their own.[62]
That debate, it may be noticed, is memorable for the cordial and
consenting speeches of the Provost and of the two Members for the
University, Hussey Burgh and Fitzgibbon. They all were in favour of
Catholic relief, especially in the matter of education, and they all would
have opened the College freely and liberally to Catholics. It was in this
debate that Hussey Burgh protested against the Irish Bishops' practice of
ordaining men on Scotch degrees. The Provost warmly thanked Burgh for
sustaining the right and the dignity of the University. He said that the
number of yearly degrees had risen from 95 to 109, and that Trinity
College Graduates could be supplied for as many curacies as had the legal
allowance of L50 a year.[63]
Plunket was very indignant at the miserable bribery and corruption that
were administered by the Provost, but he had not a word to say against the
deeper and wider corruption that was ingrained in the sectarian
exclusiveness of the constitution of the place. How could he say anything,
being himself in the same condemnation? He was the son of a Unitarian
minister;[64] and is said to have lived and died an Unitarian, and still
he was a Scholar of the House.
In 1790, a very able pamphlet, suggested by Provost Hutchison's despotic
_regime_, was published anonymously, entitled: "An Inquiry how far the
Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, is invested with a negative on the
proceedings of the Senior Fellows by the Charter and Statutes of the
College."
The pamphlet is traditionally ascribed to the Rev. G. Miller, F.T.C.D.,
who gave such important evidence before the parliamentary committee; and,
substantially, it is based upon the arbitrary acts of the Provost, which
were brought out before the committee, and which are more fully stated in
the "Lachrymae" and "Pranceriana."
The "Enquiry" asserts that the Provost claimed and exerted a negative upon
all Board proceedings; and that in the election of Fellows and Scholars he
had not only a negative but a final affirmative. The writer maintains that
this, although the traditional, was not the true sense of the Statutes;
and that by the Statutes the Provost had no greater power than the head of
any other Corporation. He argues very closely and clearly to this purpose
in regard of elections especially, from the grammatical meaning of "_una
cum_" and "_cum_;" and he shows that what the Statute requires is merely
the _presence_ of the Provost, and that then, like the rest, he is bound
by a majority decision. The writer is more subtle and less convincing in
his solution of the last clause of the statute beginning "_Quod si
primo_."[65]
Mr. Miller submitted a statement of the case for legal opinion, and
obtained opinions supporting his own view from Sir William Scott (Lord
Stowel), Sir Michael Smith, (Baron of the Exchequer and Master of the
Rolls), Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough), Arthur Wolfe (Lord Kilwarden, Lord
Chief Justice), and others.
The three questions were: (1) Had the Provost an absolute negative on
Board Proceedings? (2) Was he concluded by the concurring votes of five
Senior Fellows? (3) Could he nominate Fellows and Scholars to the
exclusion of a candidate by a majority of the electors?
The first and third were answered in the negative; and the second in the
affirmative by all the lawyers.[66]
While all these people were amusing themselves anatomising the Provost, he
was not by any means silent on his own side. Besides his speeches in
Parliament and his utterances at the Privy Council and at the Board, he
had recourse to the public press. He sent a vindication of himself to the
_Hibernian Journal_, which Duigenan says was the beginning of all the
writing. The Provost also published by Leathley, Bookseller to the
University, a pamphlet entitled, "Regulations made in Trinity College
since the appointment of the Provost," and "Pranceriana" says that the
unlucky pamphlet was withdrawn promptly after the attack made upon it in
the _Hibernian_. It was for this attack that the Provost had the editor of
the journal, Mr. James Mills, ducked under the College pump. This
smashing article is No. 27 in the "Pranceriana Collection," and it
certainly is a notable piece of criticism. It was attributed to the pen of
Malone, the editor of "Shakespeare." It is, perhaps, worth mentioning
here, that as the College Library was without a copy of the Provost's book
until the year 1853, so it was without a copy of "Pranceriana" until the
year 1880. _Trinitas incuriosa suorum!_ The copy of the "Pranceriana" in
the Library is the Second Edition, 1784, with the Appendix of 1776.
All the foregoing testimonies are damaging to the Provost's memory; but it
is only fair to remember that all of them are the utterances of men who
were his envious and unscrupulous personal enemies. In some respects John
Hely Hutchinson was bad enough, but the most abiding charge against him is
that of greediness and place-traffic; and in this transgression it is
probable that he only sinned more deeply than most of the public men
around him. He certainly was audacious in his demands, but he was a king
in jobbery. What Duigenan does not at all account for is, how Hutchinson
was able to drive all these flourishing bargains, and to hold such high
place under various administrations and in the teeth of combining
rivalries--and still this is a circumstance that ought, biographically, to
be accounted for. The etiology is supplied in other contemporary sources,
written in a more discerning spirit--and it is this, that the Provost was
a man of immense ability, and of rare personal ascendency. He possessed,
moreover, in a signal degree, the undaunted personal courage which, as
mentioned further on,[67] was inherited by his sons and grandson; although
Duigenan, who was himself very much of the Bob Acre type, refuses him even
this credit, and mocks his sham duels.[68] He knew how to make himself
both dreaded and desired by the Government, for he could be either its
greatest help or its most formidable opponent. He knew the men he had to
deal with, and he dealt with them according to the knowledge.
We have descriptions of the Provost in many contemporary works, and these
descriptions, while they make no secret of his rapacity, present a strong
reverse side to the "Pranceriana" picture.[69]
Thus Hardy[70] says: "John Hely Hutchinson, father to the Earl of
Donoughmore and Lord Hutchinson, introduced a classical idiom into the
House of Commons. No member was ever more extolled than he was on his
first appearance there. He opposed Government on almost every question,
but his opposition was of no long continuance. As an orator his expression
was fluent, easy, and lively; his wit fertile and abundant; his invective
admirable, not so much from any particular energy of temperament or
diction, as from being always unclogged with anything superfluous, or
which could at all diminish the justness and brilliancy of its colouring.
It ran along with the feelings of the House and never went beyond them....
The consequence of this assumed calmness was that he never was stopped....
The members for a long time remembered his satire, and the objects of it
seldom forgave it.... In his personal contests with Mr. Flood (and in the
more early part of their parliamentary careers they were engaged in many)
he is supposed to have had the advantage.... To Flood's anger, Hutchinson
opposed the powers of ridicule; to his strength he opposed refinement; to
the weight of his oratory an easy, flexible ingenuity, nice
discrimination, and graceful appeal to the passions. As the debate ran
high, Flood's eloquence alternately displayed austere reasoning and
tempestuous reproof; its colours were chaste but gloomy; Hutchinson's, on
the contrary, were of 'those which April wears,' bright, various, and
transitory; but it was a vernal evening after a storm, and he was esteemed
the most successful because he was the most pleasing.... Mr. Gerrard
Hamilton (than whom a better judge of public speaking has seldom been
seen) observed that in his support of Government Hutchinson had always
something to say which gratified the House. 'He can go out in all
weathers, and as a debater is therefore inestimable.' He had attended much
to the stage, and in his younger days he lived on great habits of intimacy
with Quin, who admired his talents and improved his elocution.... He never
recommended a bad measure, nor appeared a champion for British interest in
preference to that of his own country. He was not awed into silence; he
supported the Octennial Bill, the Free Trade Bill, and the Catholic
Bill.... His acceptance of the Provostship of Trinity College was an
unwise step.... After a long enjoyment of parliamentary fame it was then
said that he was no speaker, and after the most lucrative practice at the
Bar that he was no lawyer.... His country thought far otherwise, and his
reputation as a man of genius, and an active, well-informed statesman,
remained undiminished to the last. He left the opposition in 1760, and
took the Prime Serjeancy.... In private life he was amiable, and in the
several duties of father and husband most exemplary. In 1789, on the
debate about the Prince of Wales's regency, Grattan opposing the
administration was supported with great ability by Hutchinson, then
Secretary of State. In the Lords, Lord Donoughmore took the same side. In
1792, in the debate on Langrishe's Bill for the restoration of the
elective franchise to Irish Catholics, Hutchinson's two sons (Francis
[?], afterwards Lord Donoughmore, and the one afterwards Lord Hutchinson)
voted in the minority with the patriots."
The _Gentleman's Magazine_ (1794) says that he was a wondrously gifted man
and one of the most remarkable persons that this country ever produced. At
the same time it calls him a rank courtier, and recites most of the
"Pranceriana" and "Lachrymae" tattle against him.
Grattan and Grattan's son held a very high opinion both of his genius and
of his fidelity to the interests of Ireland. Both of the Grattans, on the
other hand, had a horror of Duigenan, as a truculent and coarse vulgarian.
It is in Grattan's "Life" that we are told about Duigenan's threatening in
the Law Courts to "bulge the Provost's eye," and it is there that Curran's
epigram on Duigenan's oratory is preserved.[71]
Grattan says that Hutchinson supported every honest measure--all the main
and essential ones, such as the Claim of Right, Free Trade, the Catholic
Bills, Reform, and the Pension Bill. "_He was the servant of many
governments, but he was an Irishman notwithstanding._" He possessed
greater power of satire than any man of his day, and Grattan quotes Horace
Walpole's anecdote about his habit of annoying Rigby and the Government
when he wanted to make himself disagreeable to them. At other times he was
immensely useful to the Government. Grattan considered that his chief
fault was want of openness and directness of character, together with love
of self-advancement. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Grattan, and took a
prominent part in demanding for him the national presentation in 1782.
Taylor[72] says that Hutchinson was a very effective Provost, that he
restored the discipline of the place, and that to him the University owes
the improvement of the modern languages professorships. Taylor adds that
he was a man of an enlightened mind and extended views, and that it is
now admitted his views were consonant with the best principles of
education.
Lord North knew Hutchinson's peculiarity well, and he said that "if
England and Ireland were given to him he would want the Isle of Man for a
potato garden." The Duke of Rutland, Lord Lieutenant here in 1784, formed
a similar estimate, when he wrote that "the Provost had always some object
in view, and that his objects were not generally marked with the character
of moderation and humility."[73]
Dr. Wills[74] gives Provost Hely Hutchinson a very high place amongst the
eminent men of the country, and mentions his eloquence and college reforms
as well as his greed.
Even Mr. Froude,[75] who vastly dislikes himself and his sons, is
constrained to call him the "able and brilliant Hely Hutchinson," and to
tell of his "meridian splendour." He quotes Lord Lieutenant Townshend's
statement that he was "the most popular man in parliament to conduct a
debate."
The famous Colonel Isaac Barre,[76] who, as he got Scholarship in 1744,
was a college class-fellow of Hutchinson, gives the following description
of him in 1768:--"When the Army Augmentation Bill was introduced by Tom
Connoly, it was opposed by Sexten Pery on constitutional grounds, and by
the Attorney General (Tisdall) on grounds that left him free to support
the Bill afterwards if it were his interest to do so.[77]
"The Prime Serjeant (Hutchinson)" says Barre "was not so prudent[78] (as
Tisdall), and opposed it in a long, languid speech, full of false
calculations; among the rest this curious one, that adding L40,000 per
annum to the national expense was, in fact, adding a million to its debt,
and that the nation, in the next session, would be L1,800,000 in debt. If
all this is true, how will he have the impudence to support this measure
hereafter? But, indeed, he has contradicted himself three or four times in
the course of this session upon this subject.[79] He talks now of being
dismissed. His profit by his employment is trifling, not above three or
four hundred a year.[80]
"He is personally disliked, a mean gambler--not one great point in
him--and exceedingly unpopular in this country. I must tell you a short
anecdote which put him very much out of temper. The day after the first
division he came to Council in a hackney chair, which happened,
unluckily, to be No. 108 (the number of the majority). A young officer at
the Castle wrote under the number of the chair, "COURT" in large
characters, and at the top a coronet was drawn.[81]
"He denied positively in the beginning of his speech, any bargain or terms
proposed by him at the Castle, but was not believed.... As far as I am
able to judge," continues Barre, "this country is manageable easily
enough. The prevailing faction exists only by your want of system in
England. They have no abilities, and their present and only friend,
Hutchinson (for Tisdall is quite broken), cannot be depended on for a
moment."
In the last volume (vol. viii.) of the "Historical Manuscripts Report" we
find some very interesting mentions of Hutchinson in the letters that
passed between "Single Speech" Hamilton and Edmund Sexten Pery. Both of
these eminent men entertained a high opinion of, and a sincere personal
regard for, the Provost. In 1771, Hamilton, who was Chancellor of the
Irish Exchequer, and had been Chief Secretary to two Lord Lieutenants
(Lords Halifax and Northumberland) wrote to Pery, the Speaker[82] of the
House:--"As long as you and Andrews and Hutchinson are in being and
business, Ireland will never want attractions sufficient to make me prefer
it to a situation of 'more splendour and greater influence.'"
Two years later, Hamilton wrote to Pery about the collapse of the
negotiations for his resigning the Exchequer Chancellorship in
Hutchinson's favour, and begged that Hutchinson would not again require
him to sacrifice his own solid and substantial interests. Another letter,
dated 1779, says that Flood was eagerly canvassing for the post, and that
Hutchinson was discontented. The Chancellorship was not given to either of
the rivals--it was given to Foster, who was afterwards Speaker; and
Hutchinson accordingly failed to score a second triumph over "the
generous-minded, ornamental, sonorous-voiced Henry Flood, who was
eclipsing his meridian splendour."[83]
In 1777 the Corporation of Dublin petitioned the Provost and Board for a
free education for the son of the deceased patriot, Dr. Lucas. The College
authorities responded in a literal spirit, and generously granted to the
lad not only a remission of fees, but free rooms and free commons as
well.[84]
In 1779, were published the "Commercial Restraints," which in its original
shape was, a contribution to Lord Lieutenant Buckinghamshire as to the
best method of extricating the country from its discontent and troubles.
Froude says (vol. ii., p. 223), that it was the most important of all the
opinions gathered by the Viceroy, and that it earned Hutchinson's pardon
from Irish patriotism for his subserviency to the Court and Lord
Townshend. The work is an extremely able review of the whole history and
condition of our native Irish trade and industries, and it is as loyal in
its nationality as it is able. It is the only specimen we have to show us
the Provost as a writer and as an economist, and it certainly secures him
a high place in these two estimates.
In this aspect the work possesses a great biographical value, inasmuch as
it serves to complete the likeness of the Provost, and the complement
which it supplies falls in line with the best features of the original.
Although his sentences are often slovenly and sometimes ungrammatical, he
could write forcibly and clearly, as well as speak persuasively and
rhetorically; he could make facts and figures deliver their lesson; he
could summon up the ghost of the past to illustrate and enforce the duties
of the present; he could enwrap a message of peace in a mantle of warning;
and when no selfish interest intervened he could fling his sword into the
scale that was freighted with his country's welfare.
During Hutchinson's Provostship His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant, Lord
Buckinghamshire, went in state to the University, and was received at the
entrance of the Old Hall by the Provost and Fellows. At his entrance, Dr.
Kearney made an eloquent oration; at the printing office, where H. E. was
entertained with a view of the artists, another oration was delivered by
Mr. Hutchinson, youngest (?) son of the Provost; at the Anatomy and
Philosophical Rooms addresses were delivered by the Hon. Dr. Decourcy, son
of Lord Kinsale, and the Hon. Mr. Jones, son of Lord Ranelagh. Thence he
went to the Library, where an excellent oration was made by Dr. Leland,
the Librarian, Orator, and Professor. H. E. afterwards dined in the New
Hall with the Provost and Fellows, and numbers of the nobility and
gentry. The elegance of the entertainment cannot be described, and is
imagined to stand the College in no less than L700.[85]
In 1791 a Visitation by Lord Chancellor Lord Clare as Vice-Chancellor, and
Dr. Fowler, Archbishop of Dublin, was held in the New Theatre, at the
instance of the Provost, in reference to the complaint of Mr. Allen of
having been unjustly kept out of Fellowship in 1790. The Visitors ruled
that the question was not open to discussion, in consequence of the length
of time which had elapsed. The Provost then brought forward his claim to
the negative power over the proceedings of the Board, and was replied to
by Drs. Kearney and Brown. The Provost argued from the Statutes and
especially from the _Una cum Praeposito_ clauses, and spoke for three hours
and a half with great ability. Mr. Miller spoke on behalf of the Junior
Fellows, touching their right to retain the emoluments of their pupils
when they went out on livings. Miller was rebuked by the Chancellor for
accusing the Provost of wanting to turn the disposal of pupils into a
matter of patronage. The Rev. Mr. Burrowes and Mr. Magee spoke on the same
side. Magee was personal, and on the Provost's protest the Chancellor
stopped him. The Visitors declined to decide whether the Provost has an
arbitrary election negative at the election of Fellows and Scholars; they
ruled that the Provost has the power of disposing of pupils; and that he
is bound by the majority of the Board. The Lord Chancellor bewailed the
internal dissensions, alluded to his "own education in the College, and
declared that there was not another University in Europe better
calculated for the great purposes of promoting virtue and learning." The
Visitation lasted three days.
In 1792, Hutchinson saw the Gardiner-Hobart Catholic Relief Bill carried,
and three days after, the 26th of February, he saw the House of Parliament
burned. On the 1st of March following Sir John Blacquiere repaid the
University for its honorary degree by moving the thanks of the house to
the College students for their spirited exertions in extinguishing the
fire; and by suggesting that in acknowledgment of the daring bravery of
the youths their old privilege of right of admission to the gallery should
be restored to them. Mr. Hutchinson, the Member for the University,
acknowledged the compliment with becoming pride and dignity. The Provost's
last reported appearance in parliament was on the 6th of July, 1793, when
he spoke in support of the Bill for the Charitable Musical Society. In the
previous month, on one of the Militia Bills, he defended his son Francis
from a rebuke of Mr. Secretary Hobart, though he voted against the son.
In that his last session, he saw carried--and along with Grattan, Forbes,
Yelverton, Gardiner, and the other Liberals helped to carry--the Place,
Pensions, Barren Land, and India Trade Acts. He introduced the bills for
the Parliament grant of L1,300 to establish the College Botanical Gardens,
and he earnestly supported Knox's Bill for admitting Catholics to
Parliament.
He presided at the Board of Trinity College for the last time on the 25th
of August this same year. His health was giving way, and his old enemy,
the gout, was prevailing against him.
In the political side of his career Hutchinson saw a wondrous change in
the meaning and method of Irish parliamentary life. When he began (1759)
to take part in public affairs, the Irish parliament was at about its
lowest level of degradation. Having been abolished by Cromwell and
re-created by Charles II., it had become from the time of the Restoration
little else than an office for registering and levying the English orders
for pensions and salaries, and for passing the Money Bills. Poyning's Act
and the 6th of George I. were in such active operation that the Government
asserted the power of originating and altering the Money Bills, and that
Anthony Malone was dismissed first from the Prime Serjeancy and later from
the Exchequer Chancellorship for denying his right. A few years later,
Lord Lieutenant Townshend, came over here for the express purpose of
smashing the Irish Junto, and he smashed it by the simple process of
taking the bribery into his own hands,[87] and making it, what Sir Arthur
Wellesley[88] forty years after found it, an English state department.[89]
He was so indignant with the Commons for rejecting an altered Money Bill
that he entered a protest on the Lords' Journal and prorogued the
Parliament.[90] Down to Hutchinson's time the Lord Lieutenants were
absentees, and the Lords Justices were the centre of the Junto of
"Undertakers" who undertook to the English Government to manage business
here--i.e. "their own business"--on their own conditions. In the National
Senate there was no national or intellectual life, and scarcely a name has
survived in history.
There are no Reports of debates until the year 1781; for over 50 years
scarcely a single important measure was passed;[91] place holders in
parliament were multiplied, and the pension and salary lists increased in
proportion.[92] To lessen the balance available for this bribery, the
surplus revenue was expended in local and private jobs.[93] The Mutiny Act
was perpetual; parliaments ran for the monarch's life, judges held at
pleasure, Catholics were debarred the franchise and education; Anglican
State Protestantism was built up by cruelty and crime, complaints of
grievances were met by commendations of the Charter Schools, and the
trade and industries of the country were suffered, without remonstrance,
to lie strangled under the jealous and grasping commercial restraints
imposed by the English Parliament.
All these things Hely Hutchinson saw when he first looked out on the field
of Irish administration; and before he died he saw most of these
reproaches swept away by the operation of the courage, and intellect, and
vigour which, contemporaneously with himself, found their way into the
Commons House. Sexten Pery was a few years before him, and "Sexten Pery,"
says Grattan, "was the original fountain of all the good that befell
Ireland." Flood entered parliament the same year as Hutchinson, Hussey
Burgh, and Gardiner a few years later, and then came Yelverton and
Grattan, and by the power of these resolute anti-Englishers the face of
the country was changed. They found Ireland a child, and they watched her
growth from infancy to arms, and from arms to liberty. They led the
Volunteers to victory, and wrung back a portion of the people's rights
from the frightened oppressor.[94]
To this change Hutchinson directly, and still more indirectly,
contributed. He quickened the parliamentary tone, and lifted its level. He
was the father of the cultivated style of oratory which henceforward
characterised the debates; he was the best debater in the house, and,
after Grattan, the finest speaker. He could patriotise, and he could
philippise; and whether he patriotised or philippised, he did it
formidably and efficiently. He was venal, but he feared no man's face; he
was a ready-money voter, but he could go out in all weathers. He
trafficked, without satiety, in patents and sinecures for himself and his
sons, but he insisted on Free Trade for Ireland.[95]
Take him for all in all, and the first John Hely Hutchinson certainly
presents a very rare combination of striking features. He was a
representative man of a remarkable age, and he sprung out of the
conditions of a period which he very much helped to mould. He was endowed
with leading abilities, and was disfigured by hideous blemishes. From an
humble start in life he made his way to the high places of the field, and,
without any surroundings, he raised himself to be a living power in the
State. He was mighty in speech, in courage, in council, and in
achievement; and he could be craven, vindictive, corrupting, and paltry.
In invective he was unequalled; and he was more sorely scorched by
ridicule and rebuke than any man of his day. He lived in perpetual
discords and in endless schemes, and the success which, in the main,
followed him was chequered by bitter defeats and mortifications. He
enjoyed a splendid fortune, maintained a lordly style, and wielded vast
influence, and not a single generous action is recorded of him. Negligent
of learning, he became the head of the University in one of its periods of
peculiar brilliancy, and, having for twenty years drawn its revenues and
exploited its resources, he is not named in its list of benefactors. He
reared a numerous, affectionate, gifted, and successful family, and he
founded a peerage.[96]
However unprincipled Hutchinson was in his bargainings with the Castle, he
was often sound and straight on national and Catholic questions. He was an
enthusiastic admirer of Grattan, and, on essential matters touching the
interests and dignity of the country, he gave Grattan a cordial and
effective support. The proudest passage in his life was the day (16th
April, 1782) when, as Principal Secretary of State, he read out to the
Irish Parliament the king's message, practically conceding
independence.[97] There is not in Anglo-Irish history another event of
equal grandeur; and Hely Hutchinson's Provostship for ever and inseparably
connects the College with the climax of a triumph over English arrogance
and obstinacy which, in the main, was won by a phalanx of her own sons
when the prince of all the land led them on.[98]
* * * * *
The Will of "John Hely Hutchinson, His Majesty's Principal Secretary of
State," made in 1788--proved and probate granted in November, 1794, by the
Right Worshipful Patrick Duigenan, Doctor of Laws, Commissary, and so
forth, is in the Public Record Office.
There are seven codicils of various dates, down to the year of the
Provost's death. He says that no man ever had better or more dutiful and
affectionate children--God bless them all--and amongst them he left L5,000
to each of his two eldest daughters, with 5 per cent. interest, and L4,000
to each of the two younger. He left L5,000 to his son Francis, as engaged
at the time of his marriage, and to his sons John, Abraham, Christopher,
and Lorenzo L4,000 each; L500 to Jane, eldest daughter of his worthy
friend, Dr. Wilson. If any children should die before 21, or marriage,
their share was to go amongst the younger children, but so as no younger
child was to have more than L5,000 on the whole. All his real and personal
estate,[99] subject to the foregoing legacies, he left to his
dearly-beloved son, Lord Donoughmore, his sole executor. He was to raise
the portions of the two younger daughters to L5,000, if the estate could
afford it. His office in the Port of Strangford he considered part of his
personal estate, having purchased it with the knowledge and at the desire
of the Irish Government;[100] and he included it in the bequest to Lord
Donoughmore for the lives in being. In a codicil (1789) he bequeathed L200
each to John, and to Abraham and Christopher while they shall continue at
the Temple. Later codicils mention that some of these sums had been paid
in full, and the legacies were accordingly revoked. He left his books on
Morality, Divinity, and Poetry to Abraham, the law books to Francis, and
the rest of his books to John. In a codicil of 1794, he left to Abraham
"whose health is delicate," L100 a year till he shall obtain a net income
of L200 yearly by some ecclesiastical preferment, this being in addition
to the former legacy.[101] To his butler he left L20 a year, and to
another servant L20. He desired his manuscript essay towards a history of
the College[102] to be published, being first perused by his son, Lord
Donoughmore.[103] He directed his body to be opened, and to be laid by his
late dear wife.
* * * * *
The following Will which laid the foundation of the fortunes of the family
is also in the Public Record Office:--
"The last Will and Testament of Richard Hutchinson of Knocklofty, in the
county of Tipperary, Esq. Whereas I have this day executed a deed, whereby
it appears that there are several sums now affecting my estate, and
amounting in the whole to the sum of ten thousand nine hundred and
fifty-two pounds four shillings and a farthing; and whereas Ann Mauzy,
widow, and Lewis Mauzy, her son, have agreed to accept the sum of four
thousand pounds in lieu of all their claims and demands. Now it is my will
that such personal fortune as I now, or at the time of my death shall be
possessed of shall be applied, in the first place, towards paying and
discharging such sums of money as John Hely Hutchinson, Esq., shall think
proper to pay the said Ann Mauzy, provided the same does not exceed the
said sum of four thousand pounds; and the rest and residue of my personal
estate and fortune if anything shall remain, I bequeath to my beloved
niece, Christian Hely Hutchinson.
"Witness my hand and seal, this fourth day of August, one thousand seven
hundred and fifty-seven.
"RICHARD HUTCHINSON."
NOTES.
NOTE A. Page x.
THE HUTCHINSON FAMILY.
The Provost left six sons and four daughters. Five of the sons took
degrees in the University, viz.:--
Richard Hely--on an Oxford Ad Eundem--B.A. 1775, M.A. 1780, LL.B. and
LL.D. 1780.
Francis Hely--B.A. 1779, M.A. 1783.
Christopher Hely--B.A. 1788.
Abraham Hely--B.A. 1788, M.A. 1791; and Lorenzo Hely--B.A. 1790.
RICHARD HELY, the eldest son, and the first Lord Donoughmore, was a
Commissioner of Accounts, Second Remembrancer, Chief Commissioner of
Excise, Commissioner of Customs, Commissioner of Stamps, and
Postmaster-General.
In 1776, he was elected simultaneously representative for Sligo and for
the University (against the Attorney-General, Philip Tisdall), and chose
the latter. He was unseated by parliamentary committee as not duly
elected; and, in 1777, he was re-elected for Sligo without a new writ. In
the University he was replaced by John Fitzgibbon (Earl of Clare). In 1783
he was M.P. for Taghmon. In 1788, he succeeded to the title, on the death
of his mother, and served in the Upper House, while his father and his two
brothers were in the Commons. In 1794, according to the custom of the
times, he raised a regiment, and got the command of it for his celebrated
brother John.
FRANCIS HELY was returned for the University in the election of 1790. In
the following year took place the celebrated petition against his return,
which is related in page xlii, &c. In 1799, he was member for Naas, and
was re-elected in 1800, on having been appointed to the office of
collector for the Port of Dublin. In 1792, on the debate on receiving the
Catholic petition in connection with Langrishe's Bill for giving, or
giving back, the franchise, &c., to the Catholics, Mr. Froude says that:
"Francis Hutchinson, the Provost's second son, soared into nationalist
rhetoric. 'When the pride of Britain was humbled in the dust,' he said,
'her enemies led captive the brightest jewel of the imperial crown torn
from her diadem, at the moment when the combined fleets of the two great
Catholic powers of Europe threatened a descent upon our coasts, from whom
did we derive our protection then?'... 'We found it in the support of
three millions of our fellow-citizens, in the spirit of our national
character--in the virtue of our Catholic brethren.' The motion for the
petition was lost by 208 votes to 23, and Langrishe's Bill was
carried."--[_English in Ireland_, vol. iii., p. 53.]
Sir Jonah Barrington, in his "Personal Sketches." tells of the duel which
Francis had at Donnybrook with Lord Mountmorris in 1798, in which his
lordship was wounded.
CHRISTOPHER HELY was called to the Bar, but never much relished the
profession, being altogether of a military turn. In 1795 he was elected
member for Taghmon, county Wexford, in the Irish parliament on his
father's death; and after the Union he represented Cork city in the
Imperial parliament. He was Escheator of the Province of Munster. He was
an earnest champion of the Catholic claims, as were also his father and
brothers; he was a thorough supporter of the liberal policy of Lord
Lieutenant Fitzwilliam; he mistrusted Lord Lieutenant Camden and Pitt, and
he opposed the Union scheme. He is, however, far more celebrated as a
soldier than as a lawyer or politician, and in 1796 he resigned his seat.
He adored his brother John, rivalled his brilliant courage, and served
under him and with him at home and abroad with great distinction. He
joined him in Ireland as a volunteer on the breaking out of the
disturbances in 1798; but both of the brothers speedily got disgusted with
the odious work, as did Cornwallis, and Moore, and Abercrombie, and Lake,
and every other high-minded soldier, including Colin Campbell, afterwards
in the tithe war. John soon got ordered off to Flanders, under
Abercrombie, to fight the French; and thither Christopher followed him,
and was wounded at the battle of Alkmar. Christopher followed John also to
Egypt, and afterwards on his mission to St. Petersburgh, and to Berlin.
Christopher, on his own account, fought in the Russian ranks against the
French, and was badly wounded by Benningsen's side at the battle of Eylau,
in 1807. He fought also at the battle of Friedland. He died at Hampsted in
1825--[_Suppl. Biog. Univer._] It is worth noticing that this invaluable
biographical dictionary makes a mistake in regard of the Castlebar battle
in 1798, and a mistake of a kind that is not usual in French historians in
affairs that concern the military glory of France. At Castlebar the French
were victorious, and the Hutchinsons and the English troops were defeated
disgracefully. The _Biog. Univer._, however, under "_Christophe Elie
Hutchinson Cinquieme fils de Jean Elie Hutchinson, Prevot de l'Universite
de Dublin_," says: "_Il eut part a l'affaire de Castlebar et fit
prisonniers les deux Generaux Francais Lafontaine et Sorrazin au moment ou
environne par leur corps il se croyait et devoit se croire perdu, et
s'acquit ainsi l'estime de General en Chef Lord Cornwallis_." The writer
confounds Castlebar with Ballinamuck.
ABRAHAM HELY was Commissioner of Customs, and Port duties, according to
the Lib. Mun. and Sir Bernard Burke; and a clergyman, according to his
father's will.
Lorenzo Hely took Holy Orders.
Besides these five the Provost had a son--his second born--
JOHN HELY HUTCHINSON, the most distinguished of all. He was born in 1757,
and entered the army in 1774, the year in which his father was made
Provost. In 1789 he became M.P. for Taghmon, county Wexford, on his
brother Richard's call to the upper house, and in 1790 he became member
for Cork city (the father going to Taghmon), and continued so until the
Union. In 1792, in the debate on receiving the Catholic Petition,
"Prominent amongst their (Catholic) champions was Colonel Hutchinson, the
Provost's son, who inherited his father's eloquence without his
shrewdness. He talked the Liberal cant of the day, which may be compared
instructively with the modern Papal syllabus."--[_Froude_, vol. iii., p.
53.]
Mr. Froude cannot have read this speech. It is a fervid denunciation of
the penal laws, and of their cruelties and mischief; and it does not "talk
either Liberal cant or Papal syllabus." Colonel Hutchinson's two speeches
on the Petition and on Langrishe's Bill, even as summarised in the Irish
Parliamentary Report, are enlightened, able, and eloquent oratory. He was
for complete emancipation. His liberal address to the Cork constituency,
in 1796, is given by Plowden.
Hutchinson was an enthusiastic admirer of Lafayette, and of his ardent
principles of popular liberty. When in Paris he attached himself closely
to the general, and served on his personal staff.
During the troubles of 1798 he was employed here at the head of his
brother's regiment, under Abercrombie. He sat in the Irish parliament in
1800, and voted for the Union!--[_Webb, and Barrington's "Black List."_]
He commanded against the French at Castlebar, and he shared in the
humiliating defeat which Humbert's handful of men, supported by a body of
Irish peasantry, inflicted on the royal army. Hutchinson was unable to
stay the panic. His troops, which had signalised and enervated themselves
by their licentious brutalities on a defenceless population, broke and
fled--as Abercrombie foretold they would do--before the enemy. Their rout
was as complete as it was disgraceful, and the barbarities which they
committed on their retreat were diabolical. Hutchinson afterwards had the
satisfaction of taking part in the affair at Ballinamuck, county Longford,
where the French, including Generals Humbert, Sorrazin, and La Fontaine,
laid down their arms.--[_Cornwallis's Correspondence_, vol. ii., p. 396;
_Knight's History of England_, vol. vii., p. 367; _Haverty's History of
Ireland_, p. 760; _and Bishop Stock's Narrative of Killala_.]
Hutchinson left the sickening Irish scenes, along with Abercrombie, for
Flanders, in the Duke of York's expedition. After that he accompanied
Abercrombie to Egypt as second in command, and on his death at Aboukir he
succeeded as chief. He was reinforced from home, and by Sir David Baird's
expeditionary contingent from India, took Alexandria and Cairo, and drove
Menou and the French out of Egypt. For these distinguished achievements he
was created Lord Hutchinson of Alexandria and Knocklofty; and,
notwithstanding these achievements, he was never again employed in war
service by the English Government. He made no secret of his anti-Toryism,
and this was enough to ensure his rejection by a Government that selected
the Chathams and Burrards. Lord Hutchinson was afterwards employed on some
high diplomatic commissions at St. Petersburg and Berlin, and in these his
independence of judgment was not altogether palatable to the London
authorities. In 1825, on the death of his eldest brother, he succeeded to
the Donoughmore title and estates, which, on his death without issue, in
1832, passed to his nephew, the third peer, better known as "Lavalette
Hutchinson."
This JOHN HELY HUTCHINSON, the third of the name, was born in Wexford, in
1788. Having served through the Waterloo campaign, he was, on the allied
occupation of Paris, in 1815, quartered there as Captain of the First
Regiment of Grenadiers of the Guards. While there, in 1816, he, together
with Lieutenant Bruce of his own regiment, and the celebrated Sir R.
Wilson, effected Lavalette's escape from France, after his deliverance
from the Conciergerie by the romantic devotion and bravery of his wife.
The three friends were prosecuted in Paris for this violation of the law.
They declined to insist on their right of having half the jury English,
and trusted themselves entirely to the honour of the Frenchmen. They
admitted what was charged against them, and were condemned in the mild
sentence of three months' imprisonment, and the costs of the prosecution.
Captain Hutchinson, on the trial, told how he had lodged Lavalette in his
own chambers for one night, supplied him with an English officer's costume
from a Paris tailor, procured passes, and on horseback escorted to the
frontier Lavalette, who was in a carriage with Wilson. He was willing to
give a distinct answer to any fair question about himself, but he
peremptorily refused to say anything that would compromise anyone else. He
declared that there was not a particle of political animus in the
adventure. The French historians tell how the chivalrous young Irishman's
exploit was applauded by the whole nation, and how, on the trial, his
manly and gracious bearing captured the court, which had to find him
guilty of the deed that he acknowledged and related. Sir R. Wilson had
been aide-de-camp to Hutchinson's uncle the general. [_Biog. des Contemp.
and The Accusation, Examination, and Trial of Wilson, Hutchinson, and
Bruce._]
Captain Hutchinson succeeded to the title in 1832. He lived and died at
Palmerston, and in Chapelizod church a memorial tablet is erected to him,
with the following inscription:--"Sacred to the memory of John Hely
Hutchinson, third Earl of Donoughmore, Knight of St. Patrick, Lord
Lieutenant of the county of Tipperary, and a Privy Councillor, having
served his country in the Peninsular War and the Senate; and his country
in troublous times. He died on the 12th of September, 1851, in the 64th
year of his age, loved, respected, and regretted by all who knew him. This
tablet has been erected in the church where he usually worshipped to
record his many virtues by his widow."
In Chapelizod churchyard there is a tombstone inscribed: "Beneath this
stone rest the earthly remains of Mrs. Hely Hutchinson; departed this life
1st June, 1830, aged 72 years.
Between the Provost and his four sons they represented, for over 40 years,
11 constituencies, and besides this, one was in the Irish and English, and
another in the English House of Lords.
The names of the Provost and of his son Richard are on the roll of the
Irish M.P.'s (1783-90) which Dr. Ingram has had framed and hung up in the
Fagel wing of the College Library.
The present Lord Donoughmore, who is sixth in descent from the Provost,
was one of the European Commission for organising Eastern Roumelia under
the Berlin Treaty, and he is also the originator of the Lords' Committee
of inquiry on the Irish Land Act. His lordship's father, in 1854, moved
the second reading of Lord Dufferin's Liberal "Leasing Powers, and
Landlord and Tenant Bills;" and in 1865 he made an able speech in the
House of Lords on the grievances of the officers of the East India
Company's army. He had previously served as a soldier with distinction in
the East, and was always listened to with deserved attention by the
peers.--[_Lord Dufferin's Speeches and Addresses._]
NOTE B. Page xxi.
DR. LELAND.
DUIGENAN'S disparaging mention of Dr. Leland is one of the most spiteful
and unjust of his utterances. There does not seem to be any proof that
Leland was guilty of any Academic disloyalty in being or becoming friendly
to the Provost, and outside this indictment the celebrity of his varied
intellectual distinctions added greatly to the lustre and dignity of the
College. He was probably the best classical scholar of the country; he was
an eloquent and popular preacher, constantly advocating the charities of
the city, and although he did not contribute to either _Baratariana_ or
_Pranceriana_ he was the most learned Irish author of the period. Dr.
Thomas Leland was born in Dublin in 1722, and was educated in Sheridan's
famous school in Capel-street. He entered College in 1737, got Scholarship
in 1741, and Fellowship in 1746. In 1746 he was appointed Southwell
lecturer in St. Werburgh's Church. He was Erasmus Smith Professor of
Oratory and Modern History in the University, Librarian, Chaplain to Lord
Lieutenant Townshend, Prebendary of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and Rector of
Rathmichael, which living he exchanged for St. Anne's, Dublin, with the
Vicar, Dr. Benjamin Domville Barrington. In 1781 he resigned his Senior
Fellowship and retired on Ardstraw, which he held by dispensation along
with St. Anne's until his death, in 1785. He was a vehement opposer of
pluralists until he became himself a pluralist. He published a
"Translation of Demosthenes," "The History of Philip of Macedon," and "The
History of Ireland" in three volumes, quarto. This last-named history is
really a work of very superior merit. Leland supported the English in the
spirit of Primate Boulter; and like Delany, he may have hunted for a
bishopric from the English Government; but as a historian, he gave an
honest and able record. No one need set out more fairly and forcibly the
rapacity of our Irish Reformationists, the frauds of Strafford, and the
barbarities of Cromwell. His book was furthermore quite a novelty in
regard of fresh material, and would be almost worth re-editing. After
Leland's death three volumes of his sermons were published, by
subscription, by M'Kenzie of Dame-street, and the list of subscribers
contains the names of Provost Hutchinson, the Vice-Provost, many of the
Fellows, the Library, bishops, judges, peers, members of parliament, and
most of the celebrities of the day, but it does not contain the name of
Patrick Duigenan.
Concerning the "History of Ireland," Leland's greatest work, we see by the
recently-issued Historical Manuscripts Commission Report, that it was
Charles O'Connor of Belanagare, the then most capable recordist of
Ireland, who moved him (1767) to undertake it "because he has abilities
and philosophy equal to the task." O'Connor writes again, that "we
undoubtedly have [in Trinity College Library], by Dr. Leland's care, the
best collection of old annals now in these islands. That learned and
worthy gentleman has made me free of the College Library." In another
letter O'Connor says: "Dr. Leland is now librarian, and promises me a warm
room and all the liberty I can require relative to the College MSS., which
are now a noble collection, indeed." It was Charles O'Connor who made Lord
Lyttleton and Dr. Leland acquainted with each other, and we do not find it
recorded that the English peer was of any service to the Irish scholar,
although Dr. Leland generously supplied his lordship with valuable
historical information for his history of Henry II.; and that, when he
himself was engaged in describing the same events in his own work.--[See
_Life_ prefixed to Sermons, and vol. viii. of _Hist. Man. Com. Reports_,
1881, p. 486.]
Dr. Johnston had a high regard for Dr. Leland, and he wrote to him a
letter of personal thanks for the Dublin University's honorary LL.D. in
1765. Johnston complained to O'Connor that Leland "begins his history too
late," and that he should have been more exact in regard of "the times,
for such there were, when Ireland was the school of the West, the quiet
habitation of sanctity and literature." It was the chance mention of
Leland's history that drew from Johnston the indignant exclamation "The
Irish are in a most unnatural state, for we see there the minority
prevailing over the majority. There is no instance, even in the ten
persecutions, of such severity as that which the Protestants of Ireland
have exercised against the Catholics."--[_Boswell._]
In the _Anthologia Hibernica_ for March, 1793, vol. i., p. 165, there is a
notice of Leland which sharply disparages his "History of Ireland." The
notice is otherwise friendly and appreciative, and it quotes Dr. Parr's
eulogy on Dr. Leland.
His "History of Ireland" closes with the surrender of Limerick in 1691,
and Hutchinson was correct in stating ("Letter 3," p. 23, _ante_) that
Ireland had no professed historian of its own since that era, and that
history furnished very imperfect and often partial views of her affairs.
NOTE C. Page xxi.
DR. DUIGENAN.
DR. PATRICK DUIGENAN, more familiarly termed "Paddy," was one of the most
remarkable men enumerated in the list of the Fellows of Trinity College.
He was the son of the Master of St. Bride's Parish School, and, doubtless,
he received his early education in the school which, in his father's days,
was kept first in Golden-lane and afterwards in Little Ship-street. In
allusion to this, Watty Coxe's Journal twits him with the diploma of "St.
Bride's College." From St. Bride's Parish School the lad Patrick was sent
to St. Patrick's Cathedral School, then presided over by Mr. Sheills (or
Shiel), and thence in the year 1753 he entered Trinity College, as a
Sizar. Whether he obtained the Sizarship by competition or by nomination
we do not find recorded; but _quocunque modo_ a sizar he entered, and next
to him on the form sat another sizar stripling, Barry Yelverton,
afterwards an usher in Buck's School in North King-street, and
subsequently Lord Chief Baron and Lord Avonmore.[104] In 1756, Duigenan
obtained Scholarship; in 1761, Fellowship; and in 1776, he retired on the
Professorship of Laws, having been, in fact, turned out by Provost
Hutchinson. He was M.P. for Armagh, King's Advocate-General, Privy
Councillor, Vicar-General, and Judge of the Prerogative Court. He was a
blustering and honest man; a fanatical anti-Catholic and a fierce
Unionist, and he is accordingly hero-worshipped by Mr. Froude. He was a
hanger-on, first of Philip Tisdall, and then of Lord Clare.
Wills, in his "Distinguished Irishmen," says that Duigenan was the son of
the parish clerk of St. Werburgh's; and Dr. Madden, in his "United
Irishmen," gives a letter saying the same, and that the father died a
Catholic. There is no foundation for either of these assertions. Hugh
Duigenan, the father, died St. Bride's parish schoolmaster, and he, as
well as his wife Priscilla, was buried in St. Bride's churchyard. It is
said in the "Life of Curran" that Duigenan once avowed in the House of
Commons that he was the son of a parish clerk, and if so the father must
have held that office in Derry before he came to Dublin. Dr. Maddens
contributor says that Duigenan was appointed to St. Bride's School through
the influence of Fitzgibbon, the father of Lord Clare. This is quite
probable, as the Fitzgibbons lived in the parish--in Stephen-street, and
many of the family were baptised in the church and buried in the
graveyard. There may be truth in the tradition that the father was
originally a Catholic and conformed. Grattan says that Duigenan was
educated for the Roman Catholic priesthood; that he was a hanger-on of
Tisdall: that his manner of speaking resembled that of a mob-man in the
last stage of agony; and Curran said his "_oratory was like the unrolling
of a mummy, nothing but old bones and rotten rags_," and that he had a
vicious way of "gnawing the names of papists." He was employed by
Castlereagh to administer the Union bribe of a million and a half, and in
1807 he was employed by Sir Arthur Wellesley, then Chief Secretary, to
negotiate about the Charter Schools and the Irish Protestant bishops.[105]
He was also one of the Public Record Commissioners.
His first wife was a Miss Cusack, a Catholic, and to her, in regard of
religious matters he was most indulgent. This was the only instance of
toleration that Duigenan was ever known to show. In 1799 he supported
Toler's (Lord Norbury) Indemnity Bill, freeing all who in 1798 had
committed illegal acts against the people. It must have cost him some
trouble of mind when, as Vicar-General in 1783, he had to license Dr.
Betagh's Catholic School in Fishamble-street, as well as some other
Catholic Schools, in obedience to Gardiner's Catholic Relief Act of the
previous year. His second wife was the widow of Hepenstal, the "Walking
Gallows." Duigenan died at Sandymount in 1816, and bequeathed his fortune
to his first wife's nephew, Baron Smith. It was a brave thing of Duigenan
when he had become a prominent man to go and reside in Chancery-lane
amongst the lawyers, within a stone's throw of the lane in which he was
reared as a poor boy; and it was not less brave of him to be a liberal
subscriber to St. Bride's parish school. He was not ashamed to look back
at the rock whence he was hewn. Very few parvenus have this sort of
nobility.
NOTE D. Page lxxiv.
The life-long competition between Fitzgibbon and Grattan was so individual
and so keen, and commenced so early, that the following quotations from
the College books, now for the first time given, will probably be
interesting. Can any other University produce a corresponding record?
The two splendid rivals, it will be remembered, carried far into public
life their early friendship. Fitzgibbon was as earnest as Grattan for
Irish parliamentary independence. He was one of Grattan's most fervid
eulogists, and it was Grattan that got him made Attorney-General in 1785.
Their first serious difference was on the Navigation Act in 1786; three
years later they fell out finally on the Regency Bill.
EXTRACTS FROM THE MATRICULATION BOOK, T.C.D.
"1763.
"John Fitzgibbon, F.C., June 6th (next class). Educated by Mr. Ball.
Tutor--Mr. Law. Class begins July 8th, 1763.
"Brought over to this class, with five others, John Fitzgibbon, F.C.
"1763.
"Henry Grattan, F.C., Nov. 1st, 6 a.m. Educated by Dr. Campbell.
Tutor--Mr. Law."
These entries show that Fitzgibbon and Grattan entered college the same
year, under the same college tutor, and that they were in the same class.
They graduated in the same Commencements. They were, moreover, in the same
division, sitting within two of each other, Fitzgibbon, from his earlier
entrance, sitting above Grattan in the hall. This proximity gives even a
quicker interest to their neck and neck race, as detailed in the following
record of their examination judgments:--
EXTRACTS FROM THE EXAMINATION BOOK, T.C.D.
"1764.
"Hilary Term--Junior Freshmen.
"1st Division--Mr. Stock, Examiner.
"Mr. Fitzgibbon, 3 V.B. 1 B. (i.e., Valde Bene and Bene).
"Mr. Grattan, V.B. in omnibus. Praemium.
"Easter Examinations, May, 1764.
"8th Division--Mr. Smyth, Examiner.
"Mr. Grattan, V.B. in omn. Certificate.
"Names of scholars who missed (i.e., did not go in for) the
Examination.
"Mr. Fitzgibbon.
"Trinity Term.
"1st Division--Mr. Connor, Examiner.
"Mr. Fitzgibbon, 3 V.B., 1 B. Praemium.
"Mr. Grattan, V.B. in omnibus. Certificate.
"Remarkably diligent at Greek Lecture--
"Mr. Grattan.
"Michaelmas Examinations, October 19th, 1764.
"1st Division--Mr. Connor, Examiner.
"Mr. Fitzgibbon, V.B. in omnibus. Certificate.
"Mr. Grattan, 3 V.B., 1 B.
"1765.
"Hilary Term Examinations--Senior Freshmen.
"1st Division--Mr. Smyth, Examiner.
"Mr. Fitzgibbon, V.B. in omn. Praemium.
"Mr. Grattan, 3 V.B., 1 B.
"Hilary Term--Senior Freshmen.
"Mr. Fitzgibbon, Th. for G.L.
"Mr. Grattan, Th. for G.L.
"Easter Term Examinations, April, 1765.
"1st Division--Mr. Lucas, Examiner.
"Mr. Fitzgibbon, V.B. in omn. Certificate.
"Mr. Grattan, V.B. in omn. Praemium.
"Trinity Term Examinations, June 21st, 1765.
"1st Division--Mr. Stock, Examiner.
"Mr. Grattan, senior, 5 V.B. Certificate.
"Missed the Examination--Mr. Fitzgibbon.
"Easter and Trinity Terms--Senior Freshmen.
"Mr. Fitzgibbon, Th. for G.L.
"Mr. Grattan, senior, Th. for G.L.
[N.B.--"Th." means _thanks_, "Rem. Th." _remarkable thanks_, and
"G.L." _Greek_ and _Latin_.]
"Michaelmas Examinations, October 21st, 1765.
"Mr. Smyth, Examiner.
"Log. Math. Gr. Lat. Th.
"Mr. Fitzgibbon, V.B. in omnibus. Certificate.
"Mr. Grattan, senior, 4 V.B., 1 B. (in Th.)
"Michaelmas Term--Junior Sophisters.
"Mr. Fitzgibbon, Rem. Th. for G.L.
"1766.
"Christmas Examinations (generally called 'Hilary'), January 20th,
1766.
"Junior Sophisters--Mr. Law, Examiner.
"Log. Math. Astr. Phys. Eth. Gr. Lat. Th.
"Mr. Fitzgibbon, 5 V.B., optime in Ethics. Praemium.
"Mr. Grattan, senior, V.B. in omnibus.
"Easter Examinations, April 18th, 1766.
"Mr. Forsayeth, Examiner.
"Mr. Fitzgibbon, 5 V.B., 2 B.
"Mr. Grattan, senior, 2 V.B., 3 B. (2 blanks).
"Michaelmas Term Examinations (Degree Examination), October 20th,
1766.
"Mr. Forsayeth, Examiner.
"Candidates.
"Mr. Fitzgibbon, 5 V.B., 1 S.B., 2 B.
"Mr. Grattan, V.B. all through."
This table of judgments bears out Archbishop Magee's statement in his
funeral sermon on Lord Clare, that Grattan was best in the first and
Fitzgibbon in the closing years of their college course; while Grattan
came to the front again at the Degree Examination. The table exhibits also
the old system of awarding examination premiums in T.C.D.; and it shows
the then curriculum in the Sophister year. It shows also that
Fellow-Commoners obtained their B.A. degree on a shortened Academic
course. Grattan entered in November, 1763, he answered for his degree in
October, 1766, i.e., at the close of his Junior Sophister year--and he
took his B.A. in Spring, 1767.
The Matriculation Book shows that Fitzgibbon was educated at Ball's famous
school, under the old Round Tower, in Great Ship-street.[106] Grattan was
educated in the same school along with Fitzgibbon, and was removed from it
shortly before entrance, as his "Life" tells, and as the Matriculation
Book also shows. Fitzgibbon was born in 1749, and, therefore, was only
fourteen or fifteen years of age when he was collaring Grattan, who was
three years his senior. Fitzgibbon was reared in his father's house,[107]
in Stephen-street, and Grattan was reared within a few yards of him, in
his father's house in Chancery-lane. In the same school, at the same time,
were educated Macaulay Boyd, one of the reputed authors of Junius' Letters
(son of Alexander Macaulay, who lived in Great Ship-street); Sir Samuel
Bradstreet, the steady patriot, who procured "Habeas Corpus" for Ireland,
and who lived in the same street; and John Forbes, who lived in the same
street with the Fitzgibbons, was a thorough supporter of Grattan, a
forward champion of Catholic claims, and the resolute and successful
assailant of the Pension List.
The University conferred its LL.D. _Honoris Causa_ on
Fitzgibbon--notwithstanding his anti-Hutchinson performances. It had no
honorary degree for Grattan, and the loss is to its own muster-roll of
fame. The name would have honoured and ennobled the Register.
NOTE E.
PRINCIPAL SECRETARIES OF STATE--CALLED ALSO PRINCIPAL SECRETARIES OF THE
COUNCIL, AND KEEPERS OF THE PRIVY SIGNET OR PRIVY SEAL--FROM THE
RESTORATION.
1661, Sir Paul Davys; 1678, Sir John Davys; 1690, Sir R. Southwell; 1702,
Sir E. Southwell and his son, 1775, Thomas Carter (Master of the Rolls);
1760, Philip Tisdall (Attorney-General); 1777, John Hely Hutchinson
(Provost, &c.); 1795, Lord Glentworth; 1796, Hon. Thomas Pelham; 1797,
Robert Stewart (Castlereagh); 1801, Charles Abbott (afterwards Speaker of
English House of Commons, and Lord Colchester.)
IRISH CHANCELLORS OF THE EXCHEQUER.
1761, William Yorke--_vice_ Anthony Malone; 1763, William Gerard Hamilton
("Single Speech"); 1784, John Foster (Speaker, &c.); 1785, Sir John
Parnell; 1799, Isaac Corry; 1804, John Foster; 1806, Sir John Newport;
1807, John Foster; 1811, Wellesley Pole; 1812, William Fitzgerald; 1817,
Nicholas Vansittart.
SPEAKERS OF THE IRISH HOUSE OF COMMONS SINCE THE RESTORATION.
1661, Sir Audley Mervin; 1692, Sir R. Levinge, H.M.'s Solicitor-General;
1695, Rt. Hon. Robert Rochfort, Attorney-General; 1703, Broderick Allen;
1710, Hon. John Forster; 1715, Rt. Hon. Wm. Connolly; 1729, Sir Ralph
Gore; 1733, Hon. Henry Boyle (Lord Shannon); 1756, Rt. Hon. John Ponsonby;
1771, Rt. Hon. Edmund Sexton Pery (Lord Pery); 1785, Rt. Hon. John
Foster.
CHIEF SECRETARIES TO LORD LIEUTENANTS.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
_Year._ | _Chief Secretary._ | _Lord Lieutenant._
---------|----------------------------|-----------------------------
1703. | Sir E. Southwell (also | Duke of Ormonde.
| Principal Secretary of |
| State). |
| |
1707. | Joshua Dawson. | Lord Pembroke.
| |
1709. | George Bubb Doddington | Lord Wharton.
| (also Clerk of the Pells). |
| |
1711. | ---- Southwell. | Duke of Ormonde again.
| |
1713. | Sir John Stanley. | Duke of Shrewsbury.
| |
1724. | Thomas Clutterbuck. | Lord Carteret.
| |
1731. | Walter Carey. | Duke of Dorset.
| |
1738. | Edward Walpole, and | Duke of Devonshire.
| Nicholas Bonfoy. (This |
| was the Mr. Walpole who |
| had the escapade with the |
| notorious Letitia |
| Pilkington). |
| |
1740. | Henry Legg, and Nicholas | Do. Do.
| Bonfoy. |
| |
1742. | Lord Duncannon and | Do. Do.
| Nicholas Bonfoy, Esq. |
| |
1745. | B. Liddell (a Cornish | Lord Chesterfield.
| M.P.), and William Bristow.|
| |
1747. | ---- Wayte. | Lord Harrington.
| |
1751. | Lord G. Sackville (also | Duke of Dorset again.
| Clerk of the Council, and |
| Keeper of Phoenix Park). |
| |
1755. | Robert Maxwell. | Marquis of Hartington.
| |
1757. | Richard Rigby (also Master | Duke of Bedford.
| of the Rolls). |
| |
1761. | "Single Speech" Hamilton | Lord Halifax.
| (also Chancellor of the |
| Exchequer). |
| |
1763. | Hamilton again, and Lord | Lord Northumberland.
| Drogheda. |
| |
1765. | Edward Thurlow. | Lord Weymouth, who did
| | not come.
| |
1765. | Lord Beauchamp. | Lord Hertford.
| |
1766. | Lord Aug. Hervey. | Lord Bristol (did not come).
| |
1767. | Sir G., afterwards Lord | Marquis Townshend.
| McCartney (Governor of |
| Madras), and Lord Fk. |
| Campbell. |
| |
1772. | Sir John Blacquiere (also | Lord Hartcourt.
| Alnager, and afterwards |
| Lord Blacquiere). |
| |
1777. | Sir Rd. Heron (his | Lord Buckinghamshire.
| Excellency's land agent; |
| also Searcher, Packer, and |
| Gauger of the Port of |
| Cork). |
| |
1780. | W. Eden (afterwards Lord | Lord Carlisle.
| Auckland). |
| |
1782. | Colonel Fitzpatrick. | Duke of Portland.
| |
" | Lord Grenville (also Chief | Lord Temple, Buckingham.
| Remembrancer, with L4,000 |
| a year). |
| |
1783. | Thomas Pelham and William | Lord Northington.
| Wyndham. |
| |
1784. | Thomas Orde (afterwards | Duke of Rutland.
| Lord Bolton). |
| |
1787. | Alleyne Fitzherbert | Marquis of Buckingham again.
| (afterwards Lord St. |
| Helens). |
| |
1790. | Major Hobart (afterwards | Lord Westmoreland.
| Lord Buckinghamshire). |
| |
1795. | Syl. Douglas (Lord | Lord Fitzwilliam.
| Glenbervie). |
" | G. Damer (afterwards Lord | Lord Camden.
| Milton). T. Pelham |
| (afterwards Lord |
| Chichester). |
| |
1798. | Lord Castlereagh. | Lord Cornwallis.
| |
1801. | Charles Abbott (afterwards}|
| Speaker of English House }|
| of Commons, and Lord }|
| Colchester); W. Wickham; }|
| Sir Evan Napean }|
| (Treasurer of Irish }| Lord Hardwick.
| Exchequer); Nicholas }|
| Vansittart (afterwards }|
| Lord Bexley); Charles Long}|
| (afterwards Lord }|
| Farnborough). }|
| |
1801. | W. Elliott. | Duke of Bedford.
| |
1807. | Sir A. Wellesley, Robert }|
| Dundas (afterwards Lord }|
| Melville), Wellesley Pole }|
| (also Chancellor of the }| Duke of Richmond.
| Irish Exchequer, and }|
| afterwards Lord }|
| Maryborough). }|
| |
1812. | Sir R. Peel. | Lord Whitworth.
| |
1818. | Charles Grant (Lord | Lord Talbot.
| Glenleg). |
| |
1821. | Henry Goulburn. | Marquis Wellesley.
| |
1827. | W. Lamb (Lord Melbourne). | Do. Do.
| |
1828. | Lord F. Levenson Gower | Marquis of Anglesey and Duke
| (Lord Ellesmere). | of Northumberland.
| |
1830. | Sir H. Hardinge (afterwards| Marquis of Anglesey again.
| Lord Hardinge). |
| |
" | Edward Stanley (Lord | Do. Do.
| Derby). |
| |
1833. | Cam Hobhouse, E. J. | Marquis of Wellesley again.
| Littleton (Lord Hatherton.)|
| |
1834. | Sir H. Hardinge again. | Lord Haddington, and Lord
| | Mulgrave, and Lord Fortescue.
| |
" | G. F. W. Howard (Lord |
| Carlisle). |
| |
1841. | Lord Elliott (Earl St. | Lord De Grey.
| Germains). |
| |
1845. | Sir Thos. Freemantle. | Lord Heytesbury.
| |
1846. | Lord Lincoln. | Lord Bessborough.
| |
" | Henry Labouchere. | Do. Do.
| |
1847. | Sir William Somerville. | Lord Clarendon.
| |
1853. | Lord Naas. | Lord Eglinton.
| |
1854. | Sir John Young. | Lord St. Germains.
| |
1855. | Edward Horsman, and Hon. | Lord Carlisle.
| H. Herbert. |
| |
1858. | Lord Naas. | Lord Eglinton again.
| |
1860. | Edward Cardwell. | Lord Carlisle again.
| |
1862. | Sir R. Peel. | Lord Carlisle.
| |
1865. | Do. Do. | Lord Kimberley.
| |
1866. | Chichester Fortescue | Do. Do.
| (afterwards Lord |
| Carlingford). |
| |
1867. | Lord Naas (afterwards Lord | Duke of Abercorn.
| Mayo). |
| |
1868. | Chichester Fortescue again.| Lord Spencer.
| |
1871. | Marquis of Hartington. | Do. Do.
| |
1873. | Sir M. H. Beach. | Duke of Abercorn again.
| |
1879. | James Lowther. | Duke of Marlborough.
| |
1880. | W. E. Forster. | Lord Cowper.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
N.B.--It is instructive to note how very few of the here-mentioned eighty
Chief Secretaries, the persons mainly entrusted with the government of the
country for 180 years, belonged to the country, or had any real knowledge
of its condition and requirements. If the other kingdoms of the earth were
administered on this principle, the "_quam parva sapientia_" would excite
no astonishment.
INTRODUCTION.
Although this work was published anonymously, there never was any question
as to who was its author. It was always known to be the production of
Provost Hely Hutchinson, and its first appearance was greeted with two
different sorts of reception. It was burned by the Common Hangman so
effectually, that Mr. Flood said he would give a thousand pounds for a
copy and that the libraries of all the three branches of the legislature
could not produce a copy[108]--and at the same time it "earned Mr. Hely
Hutchinson's pardon from Irish patriotism for his subserviency to the
Court and Lord Townshend."[109] The book was the outcome of the stubborn
inability of English rulers to interpret the face of this country; and the
first sketch of the publication was the papers which the author
contributed to Lord Lieutenant Buckinghamshire in 1779 as to the cause of
the existing ruin here and as to its cure. The purport of the Letters was
to exhibit, calmly and seriously, and as by a friend to both countries,
the grievous oppressions which the greedy spirit of English trade
inflicted on the commerce, industries, and manufactures of Ireland during
the century and a quarter that extended from the Restoration of Charles
II. to the rise of Grattan. The author draws all his statements from the
Statute Books and Commons Journals of both kingdoms, while he does not
fail to support his own conclusions and comments by State Papers and
Statistical Returns that possess an authority equal to that of the
Statutes. He lays the whole length and breadth of the position steadily
and searchingly before the Viceroy's eyes. He shows him that the then
state of Ireland teemed with every circumstance of national poverty, while
the country itself abounded in the conditions of national prosperity. Of
productiveness there was no lack; but land produce was greatly reduced in
value; wool had fallen one half, wheat one third, black cattle in the same
proportion, and hides in a much greater. There were no buyers, tenants
were not to be found, landlords lost one fourth of their rents, merchants
could do no business, and within two years over twenty thousand
manufacturers in this city were disemployed, beggared, and supported by
alms. All this was after a period of fourscore years of profound internal
peace--and the question was, what was the cause of it?
This is what the author sets himself to investigate in the Letters, and in
regard of sweep of survey, historic retrospect, statistical quotation, and
close economic comment, the investigation leaves little to be desired. The
Provost is anxious, in the first place, to point out that it was not
absentee rents, salaries, profits of offices, and pensions that caused the
decline--and this forestalling admonition is no more than what might be
expected from a man who was such an insatiable trafficker in places, and
salaries, and profits, and pensions. He admits that these things made the
decline more rapid, but a "more radical" cause was to be assigned for a
malady that arose out of the constitution itself. He maintains that
Ireland was flourishing, prosperous, and wealthy under James and Charles
I., and that after the Restoration it was one of the most improved and
improving spots in Europe. This is a somewhat poetical view, especially
when we remember how Strafford ruined the landowners and destroyed the
wool trade; but wretched as was the condition of the people under the
Stuarts, it may have been less unendurable than the condition under "a
succession of five excellent sovereigns." In truth, talking about the
perpetually developed prosperity of the Irish people under the several
successions of English misrule is the very irony of pharisaism, although
the recital is a stereotyped phrase of English officials from the Tudor
_employes_ down to those of our own days,[110] none of whom ever fail to
find "the strings of the Irish harp all in tune." In some periods the
distress may have been more intense than in others, and in all periods
there were not wanting instances of individual aggrandisement--but the
general wretchedness remained fast fixed. England has been a constant
source of woe to Ireland, and suffering is the badge of all our tribe. In
any strict assize Hutchinson would be laughed out of Court for essaying to
plead the wealth and prosperity of Ireland directly after the devastations
of the Carews and Mountjoys, after the Desmond and Ulster confiscations
and evictions, and after the Cromwellian atrocities. Hutchinson knew quite
well what the condition of the people was all through; but it suited him,
rhetorically, to cut out a corner of the picture and to colour that corner
very highly. Graziers used to make a good thing of their cattle and of
their wool, and economic returns of their exports showed pleasant balance
sheets; but graziers were not the Irish people any more than Manchester is
England now. In fact, they were chiefly English landowners here, and the
extent of their exports is only the measure of the misery which they left
unpitied and unrelieved. This, however, was not the philosophy which
Hutchinson wanted to preach; and he was far too clear-headed a man to make
a mistake as to what he wanted to say. He accordingly lays hold on the
figures that set off his argument, and out of fancy premises he draws a
solid conclusion which in no sense needed such controvertible data. What
was certain was that Ireland possessed the conditions of prosperity, and
that it teemed with actual poverty. The question was, what caused this
contradiction? The answer was, England caused it; and this is the answer
which Hutchinson plainly and nakedly gives. In all the rest of his
book--i.e. from Letter III. to the close--he sustains this thesis with a
directness that cannot be gainsayed or resisted. Having related the
efforts of Strafford--one of the most malignant enemies that Ireland ever
encountered--to crush the wool trade here in the time of Charles I.,
Hutchinson comes to the acts of the English under Charles II. and William
III.
Charles, so far as he could have a liking for anything outside his
pleasures, had a liking for Ireland; and William feeling that he had
already done Ireland wrong enough, was disposed at last to be merciful and
liberal towards her; but both of the kings were overborne by their English
parliaments.
In 1663, the English Act "for encouragement of Trade"! contained an
insidious clause, imposing a penalty of L2 on each head of Irish cattle,
and 10_s._ on each sheep imported into England between July and December.
In 1666, the "Act against importing cattle from Ireland and other places
beyond seas, and fish taken by foreigners" was passed, and to annoy the
king the importation was termed a "nuisance."[111] This Act was made
perpetual by the "Act of 1678, prohibiting the importation of cattle from
Ireland." This latter Act was not repealed until the 5th of George III.,
when the permission was granted for seven years; the permission was made
perpetual by the 16th of the same reign.
Carte[112] relates at length and with an honest sympathy with Ireland, the
whole incident of 1663-8. He tells how the Duke of Ormond, who was then
Lord Lieutenant here, together with his valiant son, Lord Ossory, strove
manfully for this country, and how he prevailed with the king to delay the
obnoxious measure. He mentions also Ormond's noble enterprise in
establishing at Clonmel the flourishing Walloon woollen manufactory. Carte
records likewise how, in 1666, the Dublin people, when scant of money by
virtue of English jealousy, sent over a contribution of 30,000 fat oxen to
feed the Londoners who had suffered by the great fire, and how
ungraciously the generous boon was received by the ill-mannered English
victuallers and by their bribed spokesmen in high places.[113]
Notwithstanding this benevolence of the Irish people, the English
persisted in ruining their cattle trade, and before the end of William's
reign they passed a further law to ruin the Irish woollen trade. This was
in 1699, and the long depression and degradation which resulted from it
prove, says Hutchinson, "this melancholy truth, that a country will sooner
recover from the miseries and devastations occasioned by war, invasion,
rebellion, and massacre, than from laws restraining the commerce,
discouraging the manufactures, fettering the industry, and, above all,
breaking the spirit of the people."
This melancholy truth the Provost goes on to illustrate and enforce, and
he does this by reciting the facts from the beginning, and from year to
year continually, as they are recorded in the journals of Parliament. The
restriction of the cattle trade in 1666, when the people, in reliance on
the continuance of the trade, had greatly increased their live-stocks,
compelled the Irish to develop their wool trade. They had been encouraged
by their English rulers to devote their energies to this industry, because
the "country was so fertile by nature, and so advantageously situated for
trade and navigation." Suddenly a Bill was introduced into the English
parliament in 1697 and passed in 1699, restraining the exportation of
woollen manufactures from Ireland, and beseeching His Majesty "in the most
public and effectual way that may be, to declare to all his subjects of
Ireland, that the growth and increase of the woollen manufacture hath
long, and will ever be, looked upon with jealousy by all his subjects of
this [England] kingdom," and further "to enjoin all those he employed in
Ireland to make it their care and use their utmost diligence, to hinder
the exportation of wool from Ireland except to be imported hither [to
England], and for the discouraging the woollen manufacture," &c. To this
address King William gave the ever memorable reply: "_I shall do all that
in me lies to discourage the woollen trade in Ireland, and to encourage
the linen manufacture there;[114] and to promote the trade of England_;"
and he wrote to the Lords Justices over here to have a measure to that
effect passed in the Irish parliament. The Lords Justices accordingly made
"a quickening speech" to both Houses; a Bill for their acceptance was
transmitted from the Castle, and the Irish parliament, in which the
Williamite influence was dominant, passed the measure that annihilated the
industry and prosperity of their country.[115] By this law an additional
duty of twenty per cent. was imposed on broadcloth, and of ten per cent.
on all new draperies except friezes; and the law which was enacted in
January, 1699, was to be in force for three years. This law, prohibitive
as it was, did not, however, satisfy England. In the June of the same year
the English parliament passed a perpetual law, not overtaxing but
expressly prohibiting the exportation from Ireland of all goods made of
or mixed with wool, except to England and Wales, and with the licence of
the Revenue Commissioners. Previous English Acts had made the duties on
the importation into England practically prohibitive, and therefore the
last Act operated as a suppression of exportation. The Irish were already
prevented from importing dye-stuffs from the colonies, and from exporting
their woollen manufactures thither. What England wanted was, not a fair
competition with Ireland, but a monopoly; she was resolved to prevent
Ireland not merely from underselling her in foreign markets, but from
selling there at all.
The natural and actual result of this exorbitant greed was that the Irish
people were driven to have recourse to the method of "running the wool,"
i.e. smuggling it away to foreign markets. The severest penalties were
enacted by the British legislature and by the Irish House of Commons
against this practice, but they were enacted in vain. It was impossible to
seal up a country of whose thirty-two counties nineteen are maritime and
the rest washed by fine rivers that empty themselves into the sea. The
wool running prevailed to an immense extent, and by means of it France,
Germany, and Spain were able to undersell England in the foreign markets,
and England lost millions of pounds by virtue of the Irish contraband
supplies. The market price of Europe mocked the English importation
duties, and more than defeated the prohibition. At last, in 1739, after
forty years of oppression here and loss to herself, England relaxed the
severity of the restrictions, and as her own House of Commons Journal
acknowledges, this relaxation was made for the benefit of the English
woollen manufactures. For the twenty-three years that succeeded King
William's pledge to ruin the best trade in this country, there is an
unvaried record of the depression and misery of the Irish people, and
during all this period and in the face of all this acknowledgment, there
was not even a proposal of any law, saving one about casks for butter and
tallow, to encourage our manufactures, or to tolerate our trade, or to let
the country revive. There was a native parliament here, and why did they
exhibit this wondrous apathy? "Because," says our author, "it was well
understood by both Houses of Parliament that they had no power to remove
those restraints which prohibited trade and discouraged manufactures, and
that any application for that purpose would at that time have only
offended the people on one side of the Channel without bringing any relief
to those on the other."
In 1723, the petition of the woollen weavers and clothiers of Dublin
forced from the Lord Lieutenant in his speech from the throne a
recommendation to find out some employment for the poor, but neither
petition nor speech produced any effect. From 1723 to 1729 the distress
continued; in the latter year it was aggravated by a famine. The scarcity
was caused not by any blight of the land produce, but by the despair of
the farmers; for when exportation is prohibited, and the manufacturing
class at home is without employment and without money to buy, farmers will
abandon tillage and dearth must ensue. In a few years more there was
another scarcity of food, and then the Lord Lieutenant congratulated the
country on the success of the linen trade, and recommended the
encouragement of tillage. Nothing, however, was done to alter the
conditions on which the improvement of the tillage depended, "because the
Commons said that the evil was out of their reach and that the poor were
not employed because they were discouraged by restrictive laws from
working up the materials of the country." Thus matters went on from bad to
worse until after the peace of 1745, when there came an influx of money,
by which the debt that had been contracted for England's Jacobite war of
1715 was paid off in 1754, and the result of this discharge was increased
burdens on the country without any accompanying relief to commerce and
industries. The Treasury balance led, in 1753, to a dispute as to the
right of disposing of it between the King and the Commons; and this
dispute was the first beginning of parliamentary life in Ireland.[116] To
get rid of the redundancy and to leave the less for English pensions and
Government salaries, works of local improvement were undertaken, and these
undertakings, so far as they were carried out, helped to give employment
and to stimulate agriculture.
This, however, was but a partial and insufficient remedy for the universal
distress, and small as it was, it was obtained against the will of the
English Government. No real relief was conferred on the country, and
within a couple of years more the revenue fell off, and L20,000 was voted
for the relief of the poor.
In 1757[117] it was thought an amazing feat when Pery carried his Land
Carriage and Coal Acts; and then, in 1761, came the augmentation of the
army.[118] On the breaking out of the Spanish war, there was a fresh vote
of credit, and still no relief to manufacturers or to agriculturists. This
distress, caused by English-made laws, Hutchinson points out, produced the
White Boys, and for the cure of this distress an increased attention to
the Charter Schools was recommended. By 1771 the National Debt had largely
increased, while income had diminished, and in a couple of years more the
linen trade was rapidly declining, while pensions and charges on the
establishment were greatly increased.
The Provost dwells on the illustrative fact, that, whether the Debt was
increased or diminished, and however much the pensions and salaries were
multiplied, the distress and wretchedness of the body of the people
continued the same. The linen manufacture for a while prospered, and
afforded a limited relief in a few places; but tillage was declining, and
destitution was all round. The distress was noticed in the House, but
nothing effectual was attempted, and Hutchinson cannot refrain from
exclaiming: "Can the history of any other fruitful country on the globe,
enjoying peace for fourscore years, and not visited by plague or
pestilence, produce so many recorded instances of the poverty and
wretchedness, and of the reiterated want and misery of the lower orders of
the people? There is no such example in ancient or modern story. If the
ineffectual endeavours by the representatives of those poor people to give
them employment and food, had not left sufficient memorials of their
wretchedness; if their habitations, apparel, and food, were not sufficient
proofs, I should appeal to the human countenance for my voucher, and rest
the evidence on that hopeless despondency that hangs on the brow of
unemployed industry."
All these restrictions were enacted by England, not from any actual loss
that she had sustained by Irish competition, but from an apprehension of
loss. Hutchinson shows how groundless the apprehension was, and he
protests against the iniquity of sacrificing the happiness of a great and
ancient kingdom, and the welfare of millions of its people, to guard
against an imagined decrease in the value of English land. If
wool-spinning was cheaper in Ireland than in England, that was because the
Irish operatives had to live on food--"potatoes and milk, or more
frequently water"[119]--with which the English would not be content; but
wages and the cost of producing would increase with the opening of trade,
and with the increase of manufactures. England's greedy monopoly was
sinking the Irish people, while fair trade would really lessen the cheap
labour competition which the English masters professed to dread. An open
wool trade in Ireland would, moreover, be mainly carried on by English
capitalists and by English shipping, just as in ancient Egypt, China, and
Hindostan, the export trade used to be conducted by foreigners; and just
as in the victualling trade of Ireland, the natives were but factors to
the English. On every side, therefore, the English themselves suffered as
much by the restrictions as the Irish, and they would be, if they could
but see it, proportionate gainers by the removal of the restrictions.
Hutchinson goes on to show that England gets one-third of the wealth of
Ireland, and that she would get more than the half of the benefit of the
wool trade; but that even so the country would be the better for the small
share of the gains that would be allowed to remain with her. Agriculture
would be encouraged, and manufactures would be promoted; and there would
be a circulation of money amongst the people. Taxes were proportionately
heavier in Ireland than in England, when the annual earnings, expenditure,
rentals, circulating specie, and personal property of the two countries
were compared. The English were mistaken in some of the calculations on
which they grounded the commercial restrictions, and they would be
commercial gainers by the removal of the restrictions; but it was not for
the benefit of England, and it was for the benefit of Ireland, that the
Provost demanded free and open commerce for the produce and manufactures
of this country. This was what he claimed and argued for, and this was
what he very largely helped to obtain for Ireland; and this was the
service that won him back a great deal of the popularity which he had
forfeited by his hired subserviency to the English party.
There is a good deal of repetition in the Provost's book as we have it,
but this is accounted for by the fact that the book was originally
published in the form of letters.[120] The repetitions, moreover, are not
altogether artistic blemishes, for they are made to intensify, and, as it
were, to multiply, the identical facts by presenting them in fresh
connections. This is notably the case in regard of the Provost's doublings
back on the wool trade, and on the linen trade, and on England's dealings
with Ireland in regard of both these trades. After the destruction of the
cattle trade these were the two sources of industry left to this country,
and therefore the record of the treatment and evolution of these trades is
in fact the history of the commercial relations between England and this
country. The Provost accordingly takes the wool and the linen trade as the
fixed pillars of his discourse, and he interpolates the spaces between
them with coincident statistics that illustrate his thesis. It is thus
that in page 83 he comes back to the wool trade to show the falsehood of
the English trade returns, which asserted that the trade "was set up here
since the reduction of Ireland" by Cromwell. The trade had been a
flourishing one in this country from the time of Edward III. Then in the
Sixth Letter the Provost takes up the linen trade again, for the purpose
of showing more emphatically, in the first place, that it was forced on
Ireland as an equivalent for the loss of the wool trade; in the second
place, that it was not at all an equivalent--and in the third place, that
England before long broke her stipulations with this country, and so
_discouraged_ the hemp and linen manufacture of Ireland, that the Irish
had to abandon the flax culture altogether. In 1705, leave was given to
Ireland to export some sorts of linen to the colonies, but leave was not
given to bring back dye stuffs or other colonial produce. In 1743,
bounties were offered on exports of Irish linen, provided they were
shipped from English ports; but there was already a duty of thirty per
cent. on _foreign_ linen imported into England; and thus Ireland was, of
course, deprived of the colonial and other markets. Not till 1777 were the
American markets opened to Ireland, and by that time the emigration of the
Ulster linen-workers had become so enormous, that America was, in fact, a
rival in the trade. What words can more offensively and more bitterly
express the oppression of the country than this leave to trade with other
countries? It took Grattan and Hussey Burgh "with their coats off," and it
took the Volunteers with their motto "Free Trade, or ----," to sweep away
this badge of slavery. All the time England was multiplying pensions and
salaries here; she was levying taxes and draining rents; and, as
Hutchinson clearly puts it, Ireland "was paying to Great Britain double
the sum that she collects from the whole world in all the trade which
Great Britain allows her. It would be difficult to find a similar
instance in the history of mankind." Again and again the Provost comes
back to point out the open tyranny and the underhand unfairness of
England's commercial legislation for this country, and in the Seventh
Letter he repeats that this legislation was a departure from the policy
which was guaranteed by Magna Charta, and which had prevailed from the
time of Edward III. When a supposed compensation was afterwards offered,
it was no more than what Ireland had had before, and the liberty granted
by Queen Anne was merely allowing us to do in regard of one manufacture
what had previously been a right in every instance.
"At this earlier period, then," says Hutchinson, "the English commercial
system and the Irish, so far as it depended upon the English statute law,
was the same; and before this period, so far as it depended upon the
common law and Magna Charta, it was also the same."
"This was the voice of nature," he adds, "and the dictate of sound and
generous policy; it proclaimed to the nations that they should not give to
strangers the bread of their own children; that the produce of the soil
should support the inhabitants of the country; that their industry should
be exercised on their own materials, and that the poor should be employed,
clothed, and fed.
"This policy was liberal, just, and equal; it opened the resources and
cultivated the strength of every part of the empire."
From this liberal and profitable policy, however, England departed towards
the close of the seventeenth century, and manifold were the wrongs which
the departure inflicted on this country. The Provost details these wrongs
with the indignation of a patriot; he rails at the oppression which, by
depriving the people of liberty, robbed them of half their vigour; but
still as a courtier and as a Government man, he was able to "_revere that
conquest which has given to Ireland the Common Law and the Magna Charta of
England_." Why he revered the Conquest, when the Common Law and Magna
Charta failed to protect the welfare of Ireland, the Provost does not
state. Two things stand out clearly throughout the treatise--one is that
Ireland, both as a producer and as a consumer, has been immensely
profitable to England; and the other is that England has been the source
of vast evil and suffering to Ireland. The purport of "The Commercial
Restraints" is to set forth these two great truths, and the record may be
read now without prejudice on one side of the Channel, and without panic
or passion on the other. The teaching of the book ought to be palpable
enough for the men of the present day. It ought to convince Englishmen
that it is time for them to distrust their "resources of civilisation,"
and to let this country prosper; and it ought to remind Irishmen that they
are the best judges of what they want, and that their road to prosperity
is independence of English conceit, together with a sturdy development of
their own native resources.
In and since Provost Hutchinson's time Ireland has won vast conquests from
her oppressor, and she has won them all by the same weapon--firm and
constitutional discontent. She has much to win still, and she will surely
win it by the same method, while outside that method she is powerless.
Free Trade and Parliamentary Independence were won without shedding a drop
of blood, and the conditions of the fight for what is required now are far
more propitious and hopeful than they were a century ago. Then, Ireland
had to contend with an obstinate king, a wrong-headed minister, and a
greedy nation; now, all these things are changed. The men of '82, no
doubt, had at their back the Irish Volunteers that England feared, and
there are no Irish Volunteers now; their place, however, is supplied by a
more coercive force, and that force is the spirit of justice which is
spreading through the Liberals of England, and is fed by the Liberals of
Ireland. But even supposing that all these demands touching land,
education, and autonomy, were granted, there still remains another object
for Irishmen to work out, namely, the recreation of their home industries
and manufactures. The land, after all, is not everything--all the people
cannot live by it and out of it--and, as Hutchinson observes, no one
industry is sufficient to maintain a numerous population in prosperity and
comfort.
In past times, as a couple of months ago the Lord Lieutenant at Belfast,
and Mr. Fawcett at Shoreditch, were saying,[121] all these industries in
the country were prohibited by unjust and iniquitous legislation, and by a
mass of vexatious restrictions; but there are no prohibitions now, and the
country abounds with the conditions and materials of prosperity. Bishop
Berkeley wrote, when the prohibiting laws had been seventy years in
operation, and when the force that swept them away had not yet begun to
breathe in the country. He regarded the laws with despair, and piteously
bemoaned the destitution and degradation in which the people were fixed.
His earnest exhortation to them was to compensate themselves for the loss
of the foreign trade by developing home industries and manufactures; and
he asked[122] whether the natives might not be able to effect their own
prosperity and elevation, even though "there was a wall of brass a
thousand cubits high round this kingdom?"
Lord Clare, in his Union speech, declared that Ireland made more progress
in her eighteen years of freedom than ever nation made in the same period;
and it will be now for the working-men of this generation to show that, in
enterprise and trades-craft they are not degenerate from their half-taught
forefathers who won Fitzgibbon's testimony. There is every ground for
confident anticipation, that this year's National Exhibition will
profoundly and widely strengthen the effort for the revival of our Native
Industries, and it is with the desire to contribute somewhat to the
all-important and patriotic impulse that "The Commercial Restraints of
Ireland" is now reproduced by the publishers.
THE COMMERCIAL RESTRAINTS OF IRELAND CONSIDERED.
First Letter.
_Dublin, 20th Aug., 1779._
MY LORD,
You desire my thoughts on the affairs of Ireland, a subject little
considered, and consequently not understood in England. The Lords and
Commons of Great Britain have addressed his Majesty to take the distressed
and impoverished state of this country into consideration; have called for
information and resolved to pursue effectual methods for promoting the
common strength, wealth, and commerce of both kingdoms, and his Majesty
has been pleased to express in his speech from the throne his entire
approbation of their attention to the present state of Ireland.
The occasion calls for the assistance of every friend of the British
Empire, and those who can give material information are bound to
communicate it. The attempt, however, is full of difficulty; it will
require more than ordinary caution to write with such moderation as not to
offend the prejudices of one country and with such freedom as not to wound
the feelings of the other.
The present state of Ireland teems with every circumstance of national
poverty. Whatever the land produces is greatly reduced in its value: wool
is fallen one-half in its usual price, wheat one-third, black cattle of
all kinds in the same proportion, and hides in a much greater. Buyers are
not had without difficulty at those low rates, and from the principal
fairs men commonly return with the commodities they brought there; rents
are everywhere reduced--in many places it is impossible to collect
them;--the farmers are all distressed, and many of them have failed; when
leases expire tenants are not easily found; the landlord is often obliged
to take his lands into his own hands for want of bidders at reasonable
rents, and finds his estate fallen one-fourth in its value. The merchant
justly complains that all business is at a stand, that he cannot discount
his bills, and that neither money nor paper circulates. In this and the
last year above twenty thousand manufacturers in this metropolis were
reduced to beggary for want of employment, they were for a considerable
length of time supported by alms, a part of the contribution came from
England and this assistance was much wanting from the general distress of
all ranks of people in this country. Public and private credit are
annihilated, Parliament, that always raises money in Ireland on easy
terms, when there is any to be borrowed in the country, in 1778, gave
L7-1/2 per cent. in annuities, which, in 1773 and 1775, were earnestly
sought after at L6, then thought to be a very high rate. The expenses of a
country nearly bankrupt must be inconsiderable; almost every branch of the
revenue has fallen, and the receipts in the Treasury for the two years
ending Lady-day, 1779, were less than those for the two years ending
Lady-day, 1777, deducting the sums received on account of loans in each
period, in a sum of L334,900 18_s._ 9-1/2_d._ There was due on the 25th of
March last, on the establishments, and for extraordinary expenses, an
arrear amounting to L373,706 13_s._ 6-1/2_d._; a sum of L600,000 will
probably be now wanting to supply the deficiencies on the establishments
and extraordinary charges of government, and an annual sum of between
L50,000 and L60,000 yearly to pay interest and annuities. In the last
session L466,000 was borrowed. If the sum wanting could now be raised,
the debt would be increased in a sum of above L1,000,000 in less than
three years; and if the expenses and the revenues should continue the same
as in the last two years, there is a probability of an annual deficiency
of L300,000. The nation in the last two years has not been able to pay for
its own defence: a militia law passed in the last session could not be
carried into execution for want of money. Instead of paying forces
abroad,[123] Ireland has not been able in this year to pay the forces kept
in the kingdom: it has again relapsed into its ancient state of
imbecility, and Great Britain has been lately obliged to send over money
to pay the army[124] which defends this impoverished country.
Our distress and poverty are of the utmost notoriety; the proof does not
depend solely upon calculation or estimate, it is palpable in every public
and private transaction, and is deeply felt among all orders of our
people.
This kingdom has been long declining. The annual deficiency of its
revenues for the payment of the public expenses has been for many years
supplied by borrowing. The American rebellion, which considerably
diminished the demand for our linens; an embargo on provisions continued
for three years,[125] and highly injurious to our victualling trade; the
increasing drain of remittances to England for rents, salaries, profits of
offices, pensions and interest, and for the payment of forces abroad, have
made the decline more rapid, but have not occasioned it.
If we are determined to investigate the truth we must assign a more
radical cause; when the human or political body is unsound or infirm it is
in vain to inquire what accidental circumstances appear to have occasioned
those maladies which arise from the constitution itself.
If in a period of fourscore years of profound internal peace any country
shall appear to have often experienced the extremes of poverty and
distress; if at the times of her greatest supposed affluence and
prosperity the slightest causes have been sufficient to obstruct her
progress, to annihilate her credit, and to spread dejection and dismay
among all ranks of her people; and if such a country is blessed with a
temperate climate and fruitful soil, abounds with excellent harbours and
great rivers, with the necessaries of life and materials of manufacture,
and is inhabited by a race of men, brave, active, and intelligent, some
permanent cause of such disastrous effects must be sought for.
If your vessel is frequently in danger of foundering in the midst of a
calm, if by the smallest addition of sail she is near oversetting, let the
gale be ever so steady, you would neither reproach the crew nor accuse the
pilot or the master; you would look to the construction of the vessel and
see how she had been originally framed and whether any new works had been
added to her that retard or endanger her course.
But for such an examination more time and attention are necessary than
have been usually bestowed upon this subject in Great Britain, and as I
have now the honour to address a person of rank and station in that
kingdom on the affairs of Ireland I should be brief in my first audience,
or I may happen never to obtain the favour of a second.
I have the honour to be, my Lord, &c.
Second Letter.
_Dublin, 23rd August, 1779._
MY LORD,
If there is any such permanent cause from which the frequent distresses of
so considerable a part of the British Empire have arisen, it is of the
utmost consequence that it should be fully explained and generally
understood. Let us endeavour to trace it by its effects; these will
manifestly appear by an attentive review of the state of Ireland at
different periods.
From the time that King James the First had established a regular
administration of justice in every part of the kingdom, until the
rebellion of 1641, which takes in a period of between thirty and forty
years, the growth of Ireland was considerable.[126] In the Act recognising
the title of King James, the Lords and Commons acknowledge, "that many
blessings and benefits had, within these few years past, been poured upon
this realm;"[127] and at the end of the Parliament, in 1615, the Commons
return thanks for the extraordinary pains taken for the good of this
republic, whereby they say: "We all of us sit under our own vines, and the
whole realm reapeth the happy fruits of peace."[128] In his reign the
little that could be given by the people was given with general
consent,[129] and received with extraordinary marks of royal favour. He
desires the Lord Deputy to return them thanks for their subsidy, and for
their granting it with universal consent,[130] and to assure them that he
holds his subjects of that kingdom in equal favour with those of his other
kingdoms, and that he will be as careful to provide for their prosperous
and flourishing state as for his own person.
Davis, who had served him in great stations in this kingdom, and had
visited every province of it, mentions the prosperous state of the
country, and that the revenue of the Crown, both certain and casual, had
been raised to a double proportion. He takes notice how this was effected
"by the encouragement given to the maritime towns and cities, as well to
increase the trade of merchandize as to cherish mechanical arts;" and
mentions the consequence, "that the strings of this Irish harp were all in
tune."[131]
In the succeeding reign, Ireland, for fourteen or fifteen years, appears
to have greatly advanced in prosperity. The Commons granted in the session
of 1634 six entire subsidies, which they agreed should amount in the
collection to L250,000,[132] and the free gifts previously given to King
Charles the First at different times amounted to L310,000.[133] In the
session of 1639 they gave four entire subsidies, and the clergy eight; the
customs, which had been farmed at L500 yearly in the beginning of this
reign, were in the progress of it set for L54,000.[134]
The commodities exported were twice as much in value as the foreign
merchandize imported, and shipping is said to have increased an
hundred-fold.[135] Their Parliament was encouraged to frame laws conducive
to the happiness of themselves and their posterities, for the enacting and
"consummating" whereof the king passes his royal word, and assures his
subjects of Ireland that they were equally of as much respect and dearness
to him as any others.[136]
In the Speaker's speech in 1639, when he was offered for approbation to
the Lord Deputy, he mentions the free and happy condition of the people of
Ireland, sets forth the particulars, and in enumerating the national
blessings, mentions as one "that our in-gates and out-gates do stand open
for trade and traffic;"[137] and as the Lord Chancellor declared his
Excellency's "high liking of this oration," it may be considered as a fair
account of the condition of Ireland at that time. When the Commons had
afterwards caught the infection of the times, and were little disposed to
pay compliments, they acknowledge that this kingdom, when the Earl of
Strafford obtained the government, "was in a flourishing, wealthy, and
happy estate."[138]
After the Restoration, from the time that the acts of settlement and
explanation had been fully carried into execution to the year 1688,
Ireland made great advances, and continued for several years in a most
prosperous condition.[139] Lands were everywhere improved; rents were
doubled; the kingdom abounded with money; trade flourished to the envy of
our neighbours; cities increased exceedingly; many places of the kingdom
equalled the improvements of England; the king's revenue increased
proportionably to the advance of the kingdom, which was every day growing,
and was _well established in plenty and wealth_;[140] manufactures were
set on foot in divers parts; the meanest inhabitants were at once enriched
and civilized; and this kingdom is then represented to be the most
improved and improving spot of ground in Europe. I repeat the words of
persons of high rank, great character, and superior knowledge, who could
not be deceived themselves, and were incapable of deceiving others.
In the former of these periods Parliaments were seldom convened in
Ireland; in the latter, they were suspended for the space of twenty-six
years; during that time the English ministers frequently showed
dispositions unfavourable to the prosperity of this kingdom; and in the
interval between those two periods it had been laid waste, and almost
depopulated by civil rage and religious fury. And yet, after being blessed
with an internal peace of ninety years, and with a succession of five
excellent sovereigns, who were most justly the objects of our affection
and gratitude, and to whom the people of this country were deservedly
dear; after so long and happy an intercourse of protection, grace, and
favour from the Crown, and of duty and loyalty from the subjects, it would
be difficult to find any subsequent period where so flattering a view has
been given of the industry and prosperity of Ireland.
The cause of this prosperity should be mentioned. James, the first Duke of
Ormond, whose memory should be ever revered by every friend of Ireland, to
heal the wound that this country had received by the prohibition of the
export of her cattle to England, obtained from Charles the Second a
letter[141] dated the 23rd of March, 1667, by which he directed that all
restraints upon the exportation of commodities of the growth or
manufacture of Ireland to foreign parts should be taken off, but not to
interfere with the plantation laws, or the charters to the trading
companies, and that this should be notified to his subjects of this
kingdom, which was accordingly done by a proclamation from the Lord
Lieutenant and Council; and at the same time, by his Majesty's permission,
they prohibited the importation from Scotland of linen, woollen, and other
manufactures and commodities, as drawing large sums of money out of
Ireland, and a great hindrance to its manufactures. His Grace successfully
executed his schemes of national improvement, having by his own constant
attention, the exertion of his extensive influence, and the most princely
munificence, greatly advanced the woollen and revived[142] the linen
manufactures, which England then encouraged in this kingdom as a
compensation for the loss of that trade of which she had deprived it, and
this encouragement from that time to the Revolution had greatly increased
the wealth and promoted the improvement of Ireland.
The tyranny and persecuting policy of James the Second,[143] after his
arrival in Ireland, ruined its trade and revenue; the many great
oppressions which the people suffered during the revolution had occasioned
almost the _utter desolation_ of the country.[144] But the nation must
have been restored in the reign of William to a considerable degree of
strength and vigour; their exertions in raising supplies to a great
amount, from the year 1692 to the year 1698, are some proof of it. They
taxed their goods, their lands, their persons, in support of a prince whom
they justly called their deliverer and defender, and of a government on
which their own preservation depended. Those sums were granted,[145] not
only without murmur, but with the utmost cheerfulness, and without any
complaint of the inability, or representation of the distressed state of
the country.
The money brought in for the army at the revolution gave life to all
business, and much sooner than could have been expected retrieved the
affairs of Ireland. This money furnished capitals for carrying on the
manufactures of the kingdom. Our exports increased in '96, '97, and '98,
and our imports did not rise in proportion, which occasioned a great
balance in our favour; and this increase was owing principally to the
woollen manufacture. In the last of those years the balance in favour of
Ireland in the account of exports and imports was L419,442.[146]
But in the latter end of this reign the political horizon was overcast,
the national growth was checked, and the national vigour and industry
impaired by the law made in England restraining, in fact prohibiting, the
exportation of all woollen manufactures from Ireland. From the time of
this prohibition no parliament was held in Ireland until the year 1703.
Five years were suffered to pass before any opportunity was given to apply
a remedy to the many evils which such a prohibition must necessarily have
occasioned. The linen trade was then not thoroughly established in
Ireland; the woollen manufacture was the staple trade, and wool the
principal material of that kingdom. The consequences of this prohibition
appear in the session of 1703.[147] The Commons[148] lay before Queen Anne
a most affecting representation, containing, to use their own words, "a
true state of our deplorable condition," protesting that no groundless
discontent was the motive for that application, but a deep sense of the
evil state of their country, and of the farther mischiefs they have reason
to fear will fall upon it if not timely prevented. They set forth the vast
decay and loss of its trade, its being almost exhausted of coin, that they
are hindered from earning their livelihoods and from maintaining their
own manufactures, that their poor have thereby become very numerous; that
great numbers of Protestant families have been constrained to remove out
of the kingdom, as well into Scotland as into the dominions of foreign
princes and states, and that their foreign trade and its returns are under
such restrictions and discouragements as to be then become in a manner
impracticable, although that kingdom had by its blood and treasure
contributed to secure the plantation trade to the people of England.
In a further address to the Queen,[149] laid before the Duke of Ormond,
then Lord Lieutenant, by the House, with its Speaker, they mention the
distressed condition of that kingdom, and more especially of the
industrious Protestants, by the almost total loss of trade and decay of
their manufactures, and, to preserve the country from utter ruin, apply
for liberty to export their linen manufactures to the plantations.
In a subsequent part of this session[150] the Commons resolve that, by
reason of the great decay of trade and discouragement of the manufactures
of this kingdom, many poor tradesmen were reduced to extreme want and
beggary. This resolution was _nem. con._, and the Speaker, Mr. Broderick,
then his Majesty's Solicitor-General, and afterwards Lord Chancellor, in
his speech at the end of the session[151] informs the Lord Lieutenant,
that the representation of the Commons was, as to the matters contained in
it, the unanimous voice and consent of a very full house, and that the
soft and gentle terms used by the Commons in laying the distressed
condition of the kingdom before his Majesty, showed that their complaints
proceeded not from querulousness, but from a necessity of seeking redress,
He adds: "It is to be hoped they may be allowed such a proportion of trade
that they may recover from the great poverty they now lie under;" and in
presenting the bill of supply says, the Commons have granted it "in time
of extreme poverty." The impoverished state of Ireland, at that time,
appears in the speech from the throne at the conclusion of the session, in
which it is mentioned that the Commons could not then provide for what was
owing to the civil and military lists.[152]
The supply given for two years, commencing at Michaelmas, 1703,[153] was a
sum not exceeding L150,000, which, considering that no Parliament was held
in Ireland since the year 1698, is at the rate of L30,000 yearly,
commencing in 1699, and ending in the year 1705.
The great distress of Ireland, from the year 1699 to the year 1703, and
the cause of that distress, cannot be doubted.
Let it now be considered, whether the same cause has operated since the
year 1703. In the year 1704[154] it appears, that the Commons were not
able, from the circumstances of the nation at that time, to make provision
for repairing the necessary fortifications; or for arms and ammunition for
the public safety: and the difficulties which the kingdom then laboured
under, and the decay of trade appear by the addresses of the Commons[155]
to the Queen, and to the Duke of Ormond, then Lord Lieutenant, who was
well acquainted with the state of this country; by the Queen's
answer,[156] and the address of thanks for it.
In the year 1707,[157] the revenue was deficient for payment of the army
and defraying the charges of government, and the Commons promise to supply
the deficiency "as far as the present circumstances of the nation will
allow."
In 1709, it appears,[158] by the unanimous address of the Commons to the
Lord Lieutenant, that the kingdom was in an impoverished and exhausted
state: in 1711,[159] they express their approbation of the frugality of
the Queen's administration, by which their expenses were lessened, and by
that means the kingdom preserved from taxes, which might have proved too
weighty and burdensome. In their address to the Lord Lieutenant at, the
close of the session, they request that he should represent to her
Majesty, that they had given all the supplies which her Majesty desired,
and which they, in their present condition, were able to grant:[160] and
yet those supplies amounted, for two years, to a sum not exceeding
L167,023 8_s._ 5_d._;[161] though powder magazines, the council chamber,
the treasury office, and other offices were then to be built.
From the Short Parliament of 1713, nothing can be collected, but that the
House was inflamed and divided by party dissensions, and that the fear of
danger to the succession of the present illustrious family, excluded every
other consideration from the minds of the majority.
This last period, from the year 1699 to the death of Queen Anne, is marked
with the strongest circumstances of national distress and despondency.
The representatives of the people, who were the best judges, and several
of whom were members of the House of Commons before and after these
restraints, have assigned the reason. No other can be assigned.
That the woollen manufactures were the great source of industry in
Ireland, appears from the Irish statute of the 17th and 18th of Charles
II., ch. 15;[162] from the resolutions of the Commons, in 1695,[163] for
regulating those manufactures, the resolutions of the Committee of Supply
in that session;[164] and from the preamble to the English statute of the
10th and 11th of William III., ch. 10; in which it is recited, that great
quantities of those manufactures were made, and were daily increasing in
Ireland, and were exported from thence to foreign markets.
Of the exportation of all those manufactures the Irish were at once
totally deprived: the linen manufacture, proposed as a substitute, must
have required the attention of many years before it could be thoroughly
established. What must have been the consequences to Ireland in the
meantime the journals of the Commons in Queen Anne's reign have informed
us. Compare this period with the three former, and you will prove this
melancholy truth: that a country will sooner recover from the miseries and
devastation occasioned by war, invasion, rebellion, massacre, than from
laws restraining the commerce, discouraging the manufactures, fettering
the industry, and above all breaking the spirits of the people.
It would be injustice not to acknowledge that Great Britain has, for a
long series of years, made great exertions to repair the evils arising
from these restraints. She has opened her great markets to part of the
linen manufacture of Ireland; she has encouraged it by granting, for a
great length of time, large sums of her own money[165] on the exportation
of it; and under her protection, and by the persevering industry of our
people, this manufacture has attained to a great degree of perfection and
prosperity, in some parts of this country. If the kind and constant
attention of that great kingdom with which we are connected, to this
important object; or if the lenient course of time had at length healed
those wounds, which commercial jealousy had given to the trade and
industry of this country, it would not be a friendly hand to either
kingdom that would attempt to open them: but, if upon every accident they
bleed anew, they should be carefully examined, and searched to the bottom.
If the cause of the poverty and distress of Ireland in the reign of Queen
Anne has since continued to operate, though not always in so great a
degree, yet sufficient frequently to reduce to misery, and constantly to
check the growth and impair the strength of that kingdom, and to weaken
the force and to reduce the resources of Great Britain; that man ought to
be considered as a friend to the British Empire who endeavours to
establish this important truth, and to explain a subject so little
understood. If in this attempt there shall appear no intention to raise
jealousies, inflame discontents, or agitate constitutional questions, it
is hoped that those letters may be read without prejudice on one side of
the water, and without passion or resentment on the other.
I have the honour to be, my Lord, &c.
Third Letter.
_Dublin, 25th August, 1779._
MY LORD,
To an inquirer after truth, history, since the year 1699 furnishes very
imperfect and often partial views of the affairs of Great Britain and
Ireland. The latter has no professed historian of its own since that era,
and is so slightly mentioned in the histories of the former kingdom, that
it seems to be introduced rather to show the accuracy of the accomptant,
than as an article to be read and examined; pamphlets are often written to
serve occasional purposes, and with an intention to misrepresent; and
party writers are not worthy of any regard. We must then endeavour to find
some other guide, and look into the best materials for history, by
considering the facts as recorded in the journals of Parliament; these
have evinced the poverty of Ireland for the first fourteen years of this
century. That this poverty continued in the year 1716, appears by the
unanimous address of the House of Commons to George the First.[166] This
address was to congratulate his Majesty on his success in extinguishing
the rebellion, an occasion most joyful to them, and on which no
disagreeable circumstance would have been stated, had not truth and the
necessities of their country extorted it from them. A small debt of
L16,106 11_s._ 0-1/2_d._,[167] due at Michaelmas, 1715, was, by their
exertions to strengthen the hands of Government in that year, increased at
midsummer, 1717, to a sum of L91,537 17_s._ 1-5/8_d._,[168] which was
considered as such an augmentation of the national debt, that the Lord
Lieutenant, the Duke of Bolton, thought it necessary to take notice in his
speech from the throne, that the debt was considerably augmented, and to
declare at the same time that his Majesty had ordered reductions in the
military, and had thought proper to lessen the civil list.
There cannot be a stronger proof of the want of resources in any country,
than that a debt of so small an amount should alarm the persons entrusted
with the government of it. That those apprehensions were well founded,
will appear from the repeated distresses of Ireland, from time to time,
for many years afterwards. In 1721, the speech from the throne,[169] and
the addresses to the king and to the Lord Lieutenant, state, in the
strongest terms, the great decay of her trade, and the very low and
impoverished state to which she was reduced.
That this proceeded, in some measure, from calamities and misfortunes
which affected the neighbouring kingdoms, is true: but their effects on
Ireland, little interested in the South Sea project, could not be
considerable. The poverty under which she laboured arose principally from
her own situation. The Lord Lieutenant says there is ground to hope that
in this session such remedies may be applied as will restore the nation to
a flourishing condition; and the Commons return the king thanks for giving
them that opportunity to consider of the best methods for reviving their
decayed trade and making them a flourishing and happy people.
But it is a melancholy proof of the desponding state of this kingdom, that
no law whatever was then proposed for encouraging trade or manufactures,
or to follow the words of the address, for reviving trade, or making us a
flourishing people, unless that for amending the laws as to butter and
tallow casks deserves to be so called. And why? Because it was well
understood by both Houses of Parliament that they had no power to remove
those restraints which prohibited trade and discouraged manufactures, and
that any application for that purpose would at that time have only
offended the people on one side of the channel without bringing any relief
to those on the other. The remedy proposed by Government, and partly
executed, by directing a commission under the Great Seal for receiving
voluntary subscriptions[170] in order to establish a bank, was a scheme to
circulate paper without money; and considering that it came so soon after
the South Sea Bubble had burst, it is more surprising that it should have
been at first applauded,[171] than that it was, in the same session,
disliked, censured, and abandoned.[172] The total inefficacy of the remedy
proved however the inveteracy of the disease, and furnishes a farther
proof of the desperate situation of Ireland, when nothing could be thought
of for its relief, but that paper should circulate without money, trade,
or manufactures.[173]
In the following session of 1723, it appears that the condition of our
manufacturers, and of the lowest classes of our people, must have been
distressed, as the Duke of Grafton, in his speech from the throne,
particularly recommends to their consideration the finding out of some
method for the better employing of the poor;[174] and though the debt of
the nation was no more than L66,318 8_s._ 3-1/4_d._,[175] and was less
than in the _last_ session,[176] yet the Commons thought it necessary to
present an address to the king, to give such directions as he, in his
great goodness, should think proper, to prevent the increase of the debt
of the nation. This address was presented[177] by the House, with its
Speaker, and passed _nem. con._, and was occasioned by the distressed
state of the country, and by their apprehensions that it might be further
exhausted by the project of Wood's halfpence: it could not be meant as any
want of respect to their Lord Lieutenant, as they had not long since
returned him thanks for his wise conduct and frugality in not increasing
the debt of the nation.[178] This address of the Commons, and the Lord
Lieutenant's recommendation for the better employing the poor, seems to be
explained by a petition of the woollen drapers, weavers, and clothiers of
the city of Dublin (the principal seat of the woollen manufacture of
Ireland) in behalf of themselves and the other drapers, weavers, and
clothiers of this kingdom, praying relief in relation to the great decay
of trade in the woollen manufacture.[179]
But this address had no effect; the debt of the nation in the ensuing
session of 1725, was nearly doubled.[180] In the speeches from the throne,
in 1727, Lord Carteret takes notice of our success in the linen trade, and
yet observes, in 1729, that the revenue had fallen short, and that thereby
a considerable arrear was due to the establishment.
But notwithstanding the success of the linen manufacture,[181] Ireland was
in a most miserable condition. The great scarcity of corn had been so
universal in this kingdom in the years 1728 and 1729, as to expose
thousands of families to the utmost necessities, and even to the danger of
famine; many artificers and housekeepers having been obliged to beg for
bread in the streets of Dublin. It appeared before the House of Commons
that the import of corn for one year and six months, ending the 29th day
of September, 1729, amounted in value to the sum of L274,000, an amazing
sum compared with the circumstances of the kingdom at that time! and the
Commons resolved that public granaries would greatly contribute to the
increasing of tillage, and providing against such wants as have frequently
befallen the people of this kingdom, and hereafter may befall them, unless
proper precautions shall be taken against so great a calamity.
The great scarcity which happened in the years '28 and '29, and frequently
before and since, is a decisive proof that the distresses of this kingdom
have been occasioned by the discouragement of manufactures. If the
manufacturers have not sufficient employment, they cannot buy the
superfluous produce of the land; the farmers will be discouraged from
tilling, and general distress and poverty must ensue. The consequences of
the want of employment among manufacturers and labourers must be more
fatal in Ireland than in most other countries; of the numbers of her
people it has been computed that 1,887,220 live in houses with but one
hearth, and may therefore be reasonably presumed to belong for the most
part to those classes.
In the year 1731[182] there was a great deficiency in the public revenue,
and the national debt had considerably increased. The exhausted kingdom
lay under great difficulties by the decay of trade, the scarcity of
money, and the universal poverty of the country, which the Speaker
represents[183] in very affecting terms, in offering the money bills for
the royal assent, and adds, "that the Commons hope, from his Majesty's
goodness, and his Grace's _free_ and _impartial_ representation of the
state and condition of this kingdom, that _they_ may enjoy a _share_ of
the blessings of public tranquillity by the increase of their trade, and
the encouragement of their manufactures."
But in the next session, of 1733, they are told in the speech from the
throne, what this share was to be. The Lord Lieutenant informs them that
the peace cannot fail of contributing to their welfare, by enabling them
to improve those branches of trade and manufactures[184] which _are
properly their own_, meaning the trade and manufacture of linen. Whether
this idea of property has been preserved inviolate will hereafter appear.
The years '40 and '41 were seasons of great scarcity, and in consequence
of the want of wholesome provisions great numbers of our people perished
miserably, and the speech from the throne recommends it to both Houses to
consider of proper measures to prevent the like calamity for the future.
The employment of the poor and the encouragement of tillage are the
remedies proposed[185] by the Lord Lieutenant and approved of by the
Commons, but no laws for those purposes were introduced, and why they were
not affords matter for melancholy conjecture. They could not have been
insensible of the miseries of their fellow-creatures, many thousands of
whom were lost in those years, some from absolute want, and many from
disorders occasioned by bad provisions. Why was no attempt made for their
relief? Because the Commons knew that the evil was out of their reach,
that the poor were not employed because they were discouraged by
restrictive laws from working up the materials of their own country, and
that agriculture could not be encouraged where the lower classes of the
people were not enabled by their industry to purchase the produce of the
farmer's labour.
For above forty years after making those restrictive laws[186] Ireland was
always poor and often in great want, distress, and misery,[187] though the
linen manufacture had made great progress during that time. In the war
before the last, she was not able to give any assistance. The Duke of
Devonshire, in the year 1741, takes notice from the throne, that during a
war for the protection of the trade of all his Majesty's dominions there
had been no increase of the charge of the establishment; and in the year
1745, the country was so little able to bear expense, that lord
Chesterfield discouraged and prevented any augmentation of the army,
though much desired by many gentlemen of the House of Commons, from a
sense of the great danger that then impended. An influx of money after the
peace, and the further success of the linen trade, increased our wealth,
and enabled us to reduce by degrees, and afterwards to discharge the
national debt. This was not effected until the first of March, 1754.[188]
This debt was occasioned principally by the expenses incurred by the
rebellion in Great Britain in the year 1715; an unlimited vote of credit
was then given.[189] From the lowness of the revenue, and the want of
resources, not from any further exertions on the part of the kingdom in
point of expense, the debt of L16,106 11_s._ 0-1/2_d._, due in 1715, was
increased at Lady-day,[190] 1733, to L371,312 12_s._ 2-1/2_d._ That
Government and the House of Commons should for such a length of time have
considered the reduction and discharge of this debt as an object of so
great importance, and that nearly forty years should have passed before
the constant attention and strictest economy of both could have
accomplished that purpose, is a strong proof of the weakness and poverty
of this country, during that period.
After the payment of this debt, the wealth and ability of Ireland were
greatly overrated, both here and in Great Britain. The consequences of
this mistaken opinion were increased expenses on the part of government
and of the country, more than it was able to bear. The strict economy of
old times was no longer practised. The representatives of the people set
the example of profusion and the ministers of the Crown were not backward
in following it. A large redundancy of money in the Treasury, gave a
delusive appearance of national wealth. At Lady-day, 1755, the sum in
credit to the nation was L471,404 5_s._ 6-3/8_d._,[191] and the money
remaining in the Treasury of the ordinary unappropriated revenue on the
29th day of September, 1755,[192] L457,959 12_s._ 7-1/8_d._ But this
great increase of revenue arose from an increase of imports, particularly
in the year 1754, by which the kingdom was greatly over-stocked, and which
raised the revenue in that year L208,309 19_s._ 2-1/4_d._ higher than it
was in the year 1748, when the revenue first began to rise
considerably;[193] and though what a nation spends is one method of
estimating its wealth, yet a nation, like an individual, may live beyond
its means, and spend on credit which may far exceed its income. This was
the fact as to Ireland in the year 1754, for some years before and for
many years after; it appeared in an inquiry before the House of Commons in
the session of 1755, that many persons had circulated paper to a very
great amount, far exceeding not only their own capitals,[194] but that
just proportion which the quantity of paper ought to bear to the national
specie.[195] This gave credit to many individuals, who without property
became merchant importers, and at the same time increased the receipts of
the Treasury and lessened the wealth of the kingdom. At the very time that
so great a balance was in the Treasury, public credit was in a very low
way, and the House of Commons was employed in preparing a law to restore
it. In '54 and '55 three principal banks[196] failed, and the legislature
took up much time in inquiring into their affairs, and in framing laws for
the relief of their creditors.[197] Yet in this session, the liberality of
the House of Commons was excessive. The redundancy in the Treasury had, in
the session of 1753, occasioned a dispute between the Crown and the House
of Commons on the question whether the king's previous consent was
necessary for the application of it. They wished to avoid any future
contest of that kind, and were flattered to grant the public money from
enlarged views of national improvements. The making rivers navigable, the
making and improving harbours, and the improvement of husbandry and other
useful arts, were objects worthy of the representatives of the people; and
had the faithfulness of the execution answered the goodness of the
intention in many instances, the public in general might have had no great
reason to complain. Many of those grants prove the poverty of the country.
There were not private stocks to carry on the projects of individuals, nor
funds sufficient for incorporating and supporting companies, nor profits
to be had by the undertakings sufficient to reimburse the money necessary
to be expended. The Commons therefore advanced the money, for the benefit
of the public; and it can never be supposed that they would have continued
to do so for above twenty years, if they were not convinced that there
were not funds in the hands of individuals sufficient to carry on those
useful undertakings, nor trade enough in the kingdom to make adequate
returns to the adventurers.
Having gone through more than half the century, it is time to pause. In
this long gloomy period, the poverty of Ireland appears to have been
misery and desolation, and her wealth a symptom of decline and a prelude
to poverty; the low retiring ebb from the spring-tide of deceitful
prosperity, has left our shores bare, and has opened a waste and desolate
prospect of barren sand, and uncultivated country.
I have the honour to be, my Lord, &c.
Fourth Letter.
_Dublin, 27th August, 1779._
MY LORD,
The revenue, for the reasons already given, decreased in 1755,[198] fell
lower in 1756, and still lower in '57. In the last year the vaunted
prosperity of Ireland was changed into misery and distress; the lower
classes of our people wanted food;[199] the money arising from the
extravagance of the rich was freely applied to alleviate the sufferings of
the poor.[200] One of the first steps of the late Duke of Bedford's
administration--and which reflects honour on his memory--was obtaining a
king's letter, dated 31st March, 1757, for L20,000, to be laid out as his
Grace should think the most likely to afford the most speedy and effectual
relief to his Majesty's poor subjects of this kingdom. His Grace, in his
speech from the throne, humanely expresses his wish, that some method
might be found out to prevent the calamities that are the consequences of
a want of corn, which had been in part felt the last year, and to which
this country had been too often exposed; the Commons acknowledge that
those calamities had been frequently and were too sensibly and fatally
experienced in the course of the last year, thank his Grace for his early
and charitable attention to the necessities of the poor of this country in
their late distresses, and make use of those remarkable
expressions,--"that they will most cheerfully embrace[201] every
_practicable_ method to promote tillage."[202] They knew that the
encouragement of manufactures were the effectual means, and that these
means were not in their power.
The ability of the nation was estimated by the money in the Treasury, and
the pensions on the civil establishment, exclusive of French, which at
Lady-Day, 1755, were L38,003 15_s._, amounted at Lady-Day, '57, to L49,293
15_s._[203]
The same ideas were entertained of the resources of this country in the
session of 1759. Great Britain had made extraordinary efforts, and engaged
in enormous expenses for the protection of the whole empire. This country
was in immediate danger of an invasion. Every Irishman was agreed that she
should assist Great Britain to the utmost of her ability, but this ability
was too highly estimated. The nation abounded rather in loyalty than in
wealth.[204] Our brethren in Great Britain, had, however, formed a
different opinion, and, surveying their own strength, were incomplete
judges of our weakness. A Lord Lieutenant of too much virtue and
magnanimity to speak what he did not think, takes notice from the throne,
"of the prosperous state of this country, improving daily in its
manufactures and commerce."[205] His Grace had done much to bring it to
that state, by obtaining for us some of the best laws[206] in our books of
statutes. But this part of the speech was not taken notice of, either in
the address to his Majesty or to his Grace, from a House of Commons well
disposed to give every mark of duty and respect, and to pay every
compliment consistent with truth. The event proved the wisdom of their
reserve. The public expenses were greatly increased, the pensions on the
civil establishment exclusive of French, at Lady-Day, 1759, amounted to
L55,497 5_s._;[207] there was, at the same time a great augmentation of
military expense.[208] Six new regiments and a troop were raised in a very
short space of time. An unanimous and unlimited address of confidence to
his Grace,[209] a specific vote of credit for L150,000,[210] which was
afterwards provided for in the Loan Bill[211] of that session, a second
vote of credit in the same session for L300,000,[212] the raising the rate
of interest paid by Government, one per cent., and the payment out of the
Treasury[213] in little more than one year of L703,957 3_s._
1-1/2_d._,[214] were the consequences of those increased expenses. The
effects of these exertions were immediately and severely felt by the
kingdom. These loans could not be supplied by a poor country, without
draining the bankers of their cash; three of the principal houses,[215]
among them stopped payment; the three remaining banks in Dublin discounted
no paper, and, in fact, did no business. Public and private credit, that
had been drooping since the year 1754, had now fallen prostrate. At a
general meeting of the merchants of Dublin, in April, 1860, with several
members of the House of Commons, the inability of the former to carry on
business was universally acknowledged, not from the want of capital, but
from the stoppage of all paper circulation, and the refusal of the
remaining bankers to discount the bills even of the first houses. The
merchan
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