CHAPTER II

ROBERT EMMET'S INSURRECTION

Robert Emmet Plans an Insurrection.-In speaking of the Rebellion of 1798 mention has been made of Thomas Addis Emmet, one of the United Irishmen, who, arrested before the outbreak, escaped a capital sentence, and ended his days in exile. He had a younger brother, Robert, who in 1798 was a student of Trinity College, Dublin. Robert adopted with enthusiasm the French Revolutionary principles, and enunciated them so openly that he was expelled from the University and noted to the Castle authorities as a dangerous person.

He was admitted into the confidence of the United Irishmen, who still pinned their faith to an armed insurrection aided by the French. It was as their agent that young Emmet visited the Continent in 1800. While in France he had interviews with Napoleon, and with other men in authority, but the promises of assistance for an Irish rising which he received appear to have been vague. Nevertheless when, in 1802, he returned to Ireland he had already determined to risk all, and to prepare for another rebellion.

He appears to have believed that he might count on support from the Continent; but that any positive engagement was made as to when this support would be forthcoming, or any information given as to what would be its nature and extent, has never been proved.

The sanguine temperament of Robert Emmet led him, however, to assume that all would go as he wished, and soon after his return he began his preparations. The associates whom he gathered round him were not numerous, and those who were prominent were mostly people of comparatively humble condition. It is certain that other persons of more importance were involved in the plot, but, fortunately for themselves, their names did not transpire.

Preparations and Plans of Emmet.-In April, 1802, Dr. Emmet died, and Robert employed the small legacy of £2,000 which he inherited from him in hiring two houses in Dublin, to be used as depôts for arms, and in purchasing materials for their manufacture. Amongst those in his confidence were several skilled workmen, and by their help gunpowder, hand-grenades and particularly great numbers of pikes were made ready.

The plan was to seize Dublin Castle by surprise, whilst the Pigeonhouse fort and some of the barracks were to be attacked at the same time by other parties of the Insurgents.

Emmet could scarcely have failed to be struck with the extent to which the United Irishmen's organisation had been honeycombed with spies, and to have drawn from this the lesson that the fewer persons admitted into the confidence of the leaders of a conspiracy the better. The secrecy which he maintained had, however, its disadvantages. It could hardly be expected that those who knew little or nothing beforehand of what was intended should be willing, when the insurrection actually broke out, to follow without question wherever they were led, and be ready to obey, like disciplined troops, the orders of almost unknown commanders.

To what extent the young leader succeeded in keeping his secret is not clear. There were certainly some spies amongst his followers, but, notwithstanding this, the information in the hands of the Government appears not to have been detailed. This was the case, even after an accidental explosion which took place at one of Emmet's depôts had put the authorities more on the alert (July 16th, 1803).

Attempts at organisation had been made in Dublin and the neighbourhood, and even in more distant parts of Ireland, but if the ultimate results can be taken as a criterion, the work had not been efficient. The Insurrection: Its Failure: Trial and Execution of Emmet.Emmet felt that, after the Patrick Street explosion, he must act quickly if he were to act at all. The evening of Saturday, July 23rd, was fixed for the rising. About nine o'clock Emmet, with some of his trusty lieutenants and followed by about a hundred men, of whom many had pikes, but very few firearms, sallied out into Thomas Street. Their young leader, waving his sword, called on the people to follow him and strike a blow for liberty. Great numbers of persons were in the street, enjoying the fresh air of the summer evening. Most of them merely stared. Those who listened and followed were chiefly loungers and vagabonds, ready enough for plunder, but little suited for any enterprise of regular or honourable warfare. Emmet realised that to attempt an attack on the Castle was impossible, and he proposed to the crowd to lead them out to the Wicklow mountains, where they might await reinforcements. But the city roughs had no mind to go to the Wicklow mountains. They would not go; they would not obey any orders; they were a mob pure and simple. They murdered an unfortunate orderly who happened to be riding by; they dragged Chief Justice Kilwarden from his carriage, and butchered him and his nephew. How much of this Emmet waited to see is uncertain, but at least he saw enough

to fill him with sorrow and despair. He fled back whence he had come, and then made his way to his own cottage at Rathfarnham, some three miles distant.

For a couple of hours the street remained in the hands of the mob Then a force of a few hundred soldiers came and dispersed the people. About twenty soldiers are said to have been killed, and perhaps fifty insurgents. In other parts of the city those who were to have aided Emmet waited in vain his message to join him with their followers. Finally they learned or inferred a failure and dispersed, to conceal themselves as best they could.

Numbers of persons were arrested, but Emmet himself was not captured for a long time. It is probable that he might have made his escape from the country, had not his affection for Sarah Curran, the lady to whom he was engaged, induced him to linger in the neighbourhood of Dublin to see and bid her farewell. He was traced finally to a house at Harold's Cross, just outside the city, and was there arrested on August 25th.

He was tried at Green Street Court by a special Commission, and was "defended " by a wretch named Leonard MacNally, a spy, as was afterwards discovered, in the pay of the Government. But, in any case, a defence, however skilful, would have been of little use; the facts were too well known and too easily proved. In a speech, the touching eloquence of which has made it justly famous, Emmet explained the principles on which he had acted, the hopes which had inspired him, the goal at which he aimed. The darkness of the autumn evening had already fallen when the judge pronounced on the prisoner the sentence of death. At midnight he was escorted back to prison, and about noon next day (September 20th) he was hanged on a scaffold erected close to St. Catherine's Church in Thomas Street. He was only twenty-five of age at the time of his death.

years

Of the nineteen persons tried for participation in the insurrection, seventeen were executed.

Robert Emmet achieved no material gain for his country; rather the contrary, for severe Coercion Acts were the immediate consequence of his abortive rebellion. Nevertheless, in the hearts of the men and women of Ireland his name has remained enshrined, more intimately, and with deeper love than that of many who gave long lives of strenuous, self-sacrificing, faithful service to her cause. Around him is the halo which rarely anywhere, but most rarely, perhaps, amongst peoples whose national history has been predominantly one of defeat, is denied to youth made eternal by death, joined to lofty patriotism, and ending in tragic failure.

CHAPTER III

GENERAL STATE OF IRELAND IN THE EARLY PART OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The Poor. The population of Ireland at the time of the passing of the Act of Union is estimated as something between 4 and 4 millions. In spite of the wave of relative prosperity which marked the closing decades of the eighteenth century, there was much poverty, both in the urban and in the rural districts. The land laws, in many of their worst features, remained still unreformed, but long leases or freeholds could now be given to Catholics. A freehold of 40s. in annual value conferred the franchise on its possessor, and as Catholics were now (since 1793) voters, astute landlords considered it their interest to increase their own political weight by the multiplication of such tenures.

There was a good deal of tillage, and corn continued to be exported, till the abolition of the corn-laws in the 'forties produced its effect. The dead-meat trade and its subsidiary industries, such as tanning, as well as dairy-farming, occupied many. The casual worker, whether in town or country, suffered much from unemployment. During the winter especially there was, of course, little farm work. As the century advanced, the town artisan found the struggle for existence rendered harder and harder by the increasing pressure of population, and consequently of competition. No laws were in existence to protect him from the rapacity of employers in regard to hours, conditions of work or wages. Combinations of workmen for their mutual protection were illegal.

The Catholics.-The Catholics were no longer a negligible factor in public life. They had begun, with ever-increasing boldness, to demand their rights. Though little hampered now in their private affairs, they were still excluded from practically all important offices. In some cases, as in that of membership of Parliament, mayoralties, privy councillorships, etc., what was practically a positive law shut them out; in others, their exclusion was merely a matter of custom; thus, for many legal positions they were eligible, but we hear that, in 1826, of the 2,000 officers administering law in Ireland, only thirty-nine were Catholics. This state of things continued long after the "Emancipation Act " of 1829.

Education. In some of the larger cities, as notably in Dublin and Cork, Catholic poor schools had been founded, which were attended by great numbers of scholars and seem to have been generally very well managed. Rural education remained, in fact, much the same as it had been in the darkest days of the penal laws; although it was now more diffused and was permitted by the law, instead of being merely connived at. Little or no attention was paid in the schools to the cultivation of the native tongue; nor was the case better in the new college of Maynooth. In the towns Catholic primary schools, mostly under the management of clerics, began to be founded. In 1814, the Jesuits opened Clongowes Wood, the first exclusively lay secondary school for boys in Ireland since the penal times. Maynooth College (founded 1796 with a State endowment of £8,000 a year) was primarily intended for the education of the clergy. Catholic girls were still, as earlier, generally educated by governesses at home, or in convents.

A goodly number of schools, such as the Royal Schools, Erasmus Smith's School, and others, many of them dating from the seventeenth century, continued to provide for the needs of the members of the Established Church. Trinity College, Dublin, remained, till the 'forties, the only University in Ireland.

Social Life: Secret Societies: The Police.-The social life of Dublin suffered severely by the withdrawal of the Parliament. Peers and commoners took up their residence in London during the sessions, spending the rest of the year in their country estates. The stately mansions in which they had lived remained unoccupied, until finally let for public offices or charitable institutions. Many even sank to the condition of tenement houses.

Still, in some respects, there was progress. Mail coaches, stage coaches and comfortably-fitted passenger boats on canals were at the service of travellers. Packet boats crossed almost daily to England and Scotland; the first steamer began to ply in 1816. The postal service was improved.

The prediction that, if the Union were once accomplished, Irish discontents would disappear of themselves, and the country settle down to peaceful industry, was not realised. Political and social unrest was rife in almost every part of Ireland, and, as a remedy, a long series of Insurrection Acts, Arms' Acts, suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act and so forth, extended almost unbroken over the first forty years of the century.

Secret societies were active in many counties. Feuds of all kinds, sometimes between families or trades, sometimes between districts, led to furious encounters, especially at fairs, which often resulted in loss of life.