Aftermath of Uprising of 1798

The state of Ireland was lamentable after the close of 1798; the material was as nothing to the moral ruin.

Continuing Ireland Joined to United Kingdom,
our selection from Ireland 1494-1898 by William O’Connor Morris published in 1898. The selection is presented in six easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Ireland Joined to United Kingdom.

Time: 1800

The uprising scarcely made a sign in Connaught; it appeared in Munster in only a few weak gatherings. Ulster, where the conspiracy had been most deeply laid, did not stir during the war in the southeast. The causes of this deserve passing notice. The preparations for a rising had been already prevented; the Presbyterians waited the advent of the French; they resented, too, a quarrel between France and the United States. But the most effective cause of their inaction was this: the struggle in Wicklow and Wexford was one of religions; and the United Irishmen of Ulster stood aloof from a purely Protestant and Catholic conflict which ran counter to their hopes and sympathies. The rebellion of 1798 was almost wholly fought out by Irishmen; it had nearly ceased when troops poured in from England; but it had called out high Irish qualities. By this time Camden had been replaced by Cornwallis, a capable and humane soldier; but a kind of guerilla struggle lingered for a few months among the valleys and hills of Wicklow, the fast ness of the Celtic mountaineers of old.

Nevertheless, the state of Ireland was lamentable after the close of 1798; it left a legacy of blighted hopes and most evil memories. It was not only that fair parts of the country had been ravaged by a barbarous strife; the material was as nothing to the moral ruin. The influences that had, for many years, seemed to lessen the differences of blood and faith, and even to have healed many wounds of the past, had disappeared in an inhuman struggle; the old distinctions had come out, deeply marked as ever; the conflict, if not wholly, had been in the main a war of race, and above all, of religion. The hopeful visions of the United Irishmen had gradually disappeared; the ideal of Grattan had proved impossible; the aspirations of a new era had been as idle as the French dreams of 1789. The ruling orders of Ireland had been made revengeful; the classes beneath them had beheld the prospect of enlarged liberties suddenly withdrawn; the lines of demarcation between the owners and occupiers of the soil, and between Catholic and Protestant, had been greatly widened. This change for the worse, which put the whole country back, was very marked in the Irish Parliament; it had become a mere court to register what the Castle and Clare ordered; the independent party in it had dwindled almost to nothing; and Grattan and his followers, indignant at recent events, unable to check the course of the Government, and saddened at the failure of the hopes of 1782, had seceded from it in anger and despair. Long before this time they had made a last fruitless effort in the cause of Catholic emancipation and Parliamentary reform.

Before the end of the struggle, a French squadron, and a few hundred men, had landed near Killala, on the coast of Mayo. Napoleon had taken the main fleet of France to the East, where it perished in the great battle of the Nile; he had no taste for rebellion, Irish or other; the French Directory sent only an insignificant force to the shores of Ireland. Its leader, Humbert, however, was a brilliant soldier; he routed a body of militia, threefold in numbers, in a combat known as the “Race of Castlebar”; he gave Cornwallis much to do before he was compelled to surrender. Another petty French descent was remark able only for the capture of Wolfe Tone after a sharp engagement. The unfortunate chief of the United Irish movement he had served in the expedition to Bantry and had witnessed the disaster of Camperdown — was doomed to the ignominious death of a felon, though he held the commission of a French general, and only averted his fate by suicide. Tone was un questionably the first of the Irish leaders; he had capacity, re source, true faith in his cause, and patriotism; his figure will live in Irish history. After a few severe examples had been made, the conspirators, who had fallen into the hands of the Irish Government, were amnestied, under not unfair conditions; their lives were spared, but they had to leave the country. They were, none of them, men of marked powers; but some won honor in foreign lands; two or three gallantly followed Napoleon’s eagles; more than one made a name for himself in America. Much in their conduct is to be sternly condemned; yet, at this distance of time, it deserves a kind of sympathy. They had at first only constitutional reforms in view; they were drawn into rebellion in part by the revolutionary ideas of France, but in part by the mistakes of the Irish Government.

The rebellion of 1798 had only just ended, when Pitt began to lay grounds for the Union. The contest had been tardily put down; reinforcements from England had come in late; but we may summarily reject the wicked myths — evil phantoms rising from a field of carnage — that Pitt fomented a rising in arms, and let Irish factions tear each other to pieces in order to promote a measure he had at heart. The Union of Great Britain and Ireland had not only been projected by many able thinkers; it had been in the minds of several English statesmen, ever since the Revolution of 1782. Apart, however, from this, Pitt, it is evident from his letters and speeches, did not thoroughly comprehend the whole reasons that made a union a necessity of state at this time, or perceive the consequences that might flow from it. He saw, as the “Regency Question” had made manifest, that the two legislatures might dangerously clash; he saw, too, the danger of this at a period of war, though, in England’s struggle with Revolutionary France, the Irish Parliament had given him most cordial support.

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