A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People?: England 1783-1846 (New Oxford History of England) by Boyd Hilton

Author:Boyd Hilton [Hilton, Boyd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ISBN-13: 9780198228301, Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2007-12-13T09:43:36+00:00

384

the crisis of the old order

the second blow: catholic emancipation

The Catholic Association had been founded by Daniel O’Connell and Richard

Lalor Shiel in May 1823. It was partly a response to the increasingly active

and semi-secret Orange societies whose remit was to advance the cause of

Protestantism in Ireland, but it broke new ground by levying a tax (‘Catholic

rent’) on its members, thereby binding them fiscally to the cause. To the

Anglican Bishop of Limerick, ‘the system of collection [was] a complete system of organization. In each parish . . . a “Master” is appointed; he appoints deputy Masters for each townland; they collect from the people, and take down their

names, reporting to the Master; the Master to the Priest, &c. &c.’ ‘In Dublin’, he added, ‘a system of terror has lately commenced’, with the names of all who refused to pay, including Protestants, being entered on a ‘proscription list’.⁴⁹

In March 1825 the Government legislated to suppress all Irish associations on

the grounds that they were usurping the authority of Parliament, even imitating its forms and procedures. Though their target was the Catholic Association,

the pretence of even-handedness marked a symbolic break from a policy of

automatically favouring the Protestant cause.⁵⁰ O’Connell sidestepped the ban

by forming a New Catholic Association (July 1825), ostensibly for worship, charity, education, agriculture, and other permitted activities, but really to continue the political work of the old Association. A patient and determined mobilizer

with a capacious knowledge of local politics, he organized his supporters—

mainly priests, gentry, professional men, and shopkeepers—into Liberal

clubs in eighteen counties, with the intention of persuading Catholic forty-

shilling freeholders to defy their (mainly) Protestant landlords. This was despite the fact that he had little faith in their actually doing so, and was ready to go along with Plunket’s proposal to disfranchise them in return for Catholic

emancipation. This pragmatic willingness to pursue alternative strategies was

typical, and may have owed something to O’Connell’s experience as a successful barrister.

In one special sense, his politics were passive. He was inured to adverse or otherwise unpleasing decisions being handed down by an exterior authority; only momentarily would these depress or irritate him. There were always other cases, other means. This strange amalgam of acquiescence and resilience, of cutting losses and planning their recoupment—the professional’s carapace hardened by the years of practice—was the very stamp of his political behaviour.⁵¹

As it happened, O’Connell underestimated the forty-shillingers. At the general election of 1826, which has been called ‘the great turning point in Irish popular ⁴⁹ Bishop Jebb to R. H. Inglis, 18 Jan. 1825, Canterbury Cathedral Archive, Inglis Papers, U210/3/1.

⁵⁰ Oliver MacDonagh, The Hereditary Bondsman: Daniel O’Connell 1775–1829 (1988), 215.

⁵¹ Ibid. 188.

catholic emancipation

385

politics’,⁵² gains for anti-Catholic candidates in three nomination boroughs

counted for nothing as against six for pro-Catholic candidates, half of them

in the popular and hard-fought county constituencies of Monaghan, Waterford,

and Louth. Even at the time Shiel commented that ‘Ireland has been to a large

extent revolutionised’. In England a modest Protestant backlash led to net

gains of sixteen MPs, but this was many fewer than had been expected, nor could they all be taken at face value.

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