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The Irish conservatives and home rule, 1869-73

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

David Thornley
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Extract

In May 1870 a number of gentlemen met in a Dublin hotel to consider the possibility of reviving the demand for a separate Irish legislature. Out ofthis meeting grew the Home Government Association, and ultimately the Home Rule League of Isaac Butt. A number of political developments had made it possible to revive an agitation which had lain dormant for twenty years; to one of these in particular has been ascribed much of the responsibility forthe founding of the new movement. ‘It may be doubted that there everwas a time since 1800 when Irish protestants as a body belieyed that Irish affairs could be better understood and cared for in a London legislature than in an Irish parliament’, wrote A. M. Sullivan in 1877; concern for their rights, privileges, and possessions as a minority in the midst of adangerous catholic majority, was the real reason why they supported the union system’. It was the contention of Sullivan and other writers on the period that the disestablishment of their church and the invasion of their position on the land by the reforming measures of the liberal administration of 1868 destroyed the compact of mutual self-interest between Irish protestantism and the British legislature, and that the movement which Butt founded in 1870 owed much of its strength to a recrudescence of Irish protestant nationalism. It is the purpose of this paper to subject this contention to a somewhat closer examination than it has hitherto undergone.

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 43 , March 1959 , pp. 200 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1959

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References

1 Sullivan, A.M., New Ireland (14th ed., Glasgow, 1882), p. 328 Google Scholar.

2 Freeman’s Journal, 7 Aug. 1868.

3 There is evidence that a revival of a repeal agitation was already being contemplated and was postponed largely because of the pressing importance of the church demand (Butt in Irish Times, 6 Sept. 1871: Dean O’Brien in Nation, 20 Oct. 1868; HRN [John Dunne],Here and there memories (1896), pp. 218-20; M. Moore, An Irish gentleman (1913), PP. 352-69, etc.).

4 Daily Express , 6 Mar. 1869.

5 Ibid., 2 Mar.

6 Dublin Evening Mail, 11 Mar.

7 Irish Times, 10 Mar.

8 Anderson Diary, National Library of Ireland, MS 5966, 13 Mar.

9 Notable among such declarations for repeal were those of George F. Shaw, F.T.C.D., in Jan. 1869; of Archdeacon Goold of Raphoe in Mar. 1869; of the North Dublin Union and of Alderman Manning and Mr Erson in the Dublin corporation in Jan. 1870; of Major Knox of the Irish Times in the Mallow by-election in the same month; of John W. Switzer in Feb. 1870 in connection with the Longford by-election; of Rev. George McCutchan, rector of Kenmare, in a lecture to the Limerick Young Men’s Society in Apr. 1870; and in connection with the candidature of E. R. King Harmanon home rule principles in the second Longford by-election (Apr. 1870).

10 Limerick Reporter, 12 Apr. 1870.

11 Nation, 13 Mar. 1869.

12 Ibid., 13 Nov.

13 Butt, Ireland’s appeal for amnesty, 1870, pp. 39-40; Freeman’s Journal, 10 Oct. 1869.

14 Nation, 5, 12 Feb. 1870.

15 Ibid., 21 Feb., and Hansard, series 3, cxcix, 1681-1703. Gray and several of his colleagues voted against the bill on the second reading.

16 Martin to Daunt, 9 June 1869, N.L.I., MS 8047.

17 Daunt to Smyth, 8 Apr. 1870, N.L.I., MS 8045.

18 Martin to Butt, 26 May, Butt MSS, N.L.I.

19 Ibid., and Nation, 21 May. To Daunt he described the movement in this early stage as one of the protestant nationalists of Dublin (Daunt Journal), 13 June, N.L.I., MS 3041).

20 Butt to Smyth, 23 May, Smyth MSS, N.L.I., MS 8215.

21 Butt to Smyth, 23 May, Smyth MSS, N.L.I., MS 8215.

22 A. M. Sullivan, New Ireland, 14th ed., pp. 339-41.

23 Sullivan’s classification of these people is, so far as I can ascertain, correct as to religion; his political classifications I have amended in five cases.

24 Nation, 10 Feb. 1877.

25 Men like Dean O’Brien of Limerick, Father Lavelle of Partry and Father Quaid of O’Callaghan’s Mills, O’Neill Daunt, Richard Pigott of the Irishman, John George McCarthy, A. J. Kettle, a leading tenant- right agitator, such advanced nationalists as Patrick Egan, John Denvir, and Joseph Ronayne, and a second liberal M.P., Philip Callan, in addition to William Shaw, M.P. for Bandon, who had attended the Bilton’s Hotel meeting.

26 Dublin Evening Mail, 6, 7, Oct. 1870.

27 Daily Express, 18 May.

28 Ibid., 12 Aug.

29 Ibid., 2 Sept. Even the Irish Times, despite the fact that its editor was a founder member of the association, remained non-committal though kind, so much so that Butt wrote personally to Knox in November asking him to induce his newspaper to approach the association with greater cordiality (Knox to Butt, 5 Nov., Butt MSS, N.L.I.).

30 Nation, 18 Oct. 1871.

31 Shaw to Butt, 6 June 1870, Butt MSS.

32 Nation, 27 May 1871.

33 Limerick Reporter, 15 Apr. 1870; J. Hodnett to Daunt, 16 Apr. 1870, Daunt MSS, N.L.I., MS 8046.

34 Freeman’s Journal, 15 Apr., 12 May 1870.

35 When he had the support of both liberals and nationalists.

36 Dublin Evening Mail, 23 Aug.

37 Daunt Journal, 3 Oct., N.L.I., MS 3041.

38 Ibid., 13, 15 Nov. Only two had signified approval so far—probably Conaty of Cavan (Conaty to Butt, 7 Sept., 1870, Butt MSS), and MacHale.

39 Daunt Journal, 3 Apr. 1871; Leahy to Daunt, 1 Apr. 1871, Daunt MSS, MS 8046.

40 O’Hea to Daunt, 18 Nov. 1870, Daunt MSS, N.L.I., MS 8047.

41 The practical politicians in the association were already urging this course; Dean O’Brien of Limerick, for example, wroteto Butt in November questioning the wisdom of having had Harman in the chair at the last public meeting of the association ‘in a case where themass of the Irish nation, as yet, think the Home Government Association only a Tory dodge to break the ranks of the Liberals, and we want to show thatit is not such a dodge’ (O’Brien to Butt, 23 Nov. 1870, Butt MSS).

42 Sullivan and J. T. Hinds, etc., were the chief agents;Martin himself was not particularly keen to stand (Martin to Daunt, 27 Dec.1870, Daunt MSS. N.L.I., MS 8047).

43 A. M. Sullivan, New Ireland, 14th ed., p. 347.

44 Freeman’s Journal, 2 Jan. 1871.

45 Freeman’s Journal 6 Jan. 1871. The Nation expressed the same idea more brutally: ‘ Henceforth the spell-word of self-rule must be the open Sesame to the constituencies ’(14 Jan.).

46 Nation, 6 Jan.

47 Nation, 4 Feb.

48 Digby to Lalor, 14 Jan.; Lalor to Digby, 19 Jan. (Lalor MSS, N.L.I., MS 8566).

49 Freeman’s Journal, 10 Feb. 1871.

50 This was quite a major election issue at the time.

51 Irish Times, 11 Feb.

52 Dublin Evening Mail, 22 Feb.

53 Dease to Monsell, 14, 15 June 1871, Monsell Papers, N.L.I., MS 8317. The letter is incomplete.

54 Freeman’s Journal, 30 June 1871.

55 Ibid., 6 July; Nation, 15 July.

56 Irish Times, 13 July 1871.

57 Freeman’s Journal, 11 July.

58 Here and there memories, by HRN [John Dunne], pp. 365-6, has some passages on this election, in which Dunne was Butt’s agent.

59 Freeman’s Journal, 18, 20, 21 July 1871. So also did Madden.

60 Irish Times, 5 Sept.

61 Irish Times, 5 Sept. 1871.

62 Ibid.

63 Quoted in Dublin Evening Mail, 9 Sept.

64 Ibid., 12 Sept.

65 Irish Times, 31 Oct. 1871.

66 Nation, 28 Oct.

67 Nation, 9 Sept. 1876.

68 An attitude by no means shared by all his clergy—Bourke to McDonnell, 6 Jan. 1872; McDonnell to Moriarty, 7 Jan., 15 Feb.;McEvilly to Moriarty, 19 Jan.; Delany to Moriarty, 10 Jan.; Jamtes Cr . . .to Moriarty, 7 Jan. (Monsell MSS, N.L.I., MS 8319).

69 Canon McDonnell to Dr Moriarty, 7 Jan. 1872 (ibid.).

70 Dublin Evening Mail, 1 Jan. 1872, etc.

71 Ibid., 13 Jan.

72 Ibid., 6 Feb.; Irish Times, 10 Feb.

73 Freeman’s Journal, 12 Jan.

74 Nation, 1 Feb. 1873.

75 Hansard, series 3, cxcii. 1626-31, etc.

76 Nation, 10 Aug.

77 Martin to Daunt, 19 Feb. 1871, Daunt MSS, N.L.I., MS 8047.

78 Sullivan to Daunt, 6 May 1871, Hickey MSS, N.L.I.

79 Ferguson to Butt, 14 Aug. 1872, Butt MSS.

80 Ferguson to Butt, 2 Oct. 1872, ibid. Home rule in England was nationally organised in the Confederation as early as Feb. 1873 (Nation, 1 Mar. 1873).

81 Ferguson to Butt, 23 Aug. 1872; Barnett to Butt, II Sept. 1872 (Butt MSS).

82 The bill proposed, among other things, to establish a catholic college, but did not provide any state endowment for it.

88 There are some interesting letters on this subject in the Monsell MSS in N.L.I.: S. de Vere to Monsell, 12 Mar. 1873, P. J. Keenan to Monsell, 15 Feb., 2 Mar.; Cardinal Cullen to Monsell, 26 Feb., in MS 8317; E. Dease to Monsell, 22 Feb., Very Rev. C. W. Russell to Monsell, 15 Feb., Canon Farrell to Monsell, 20 Feb. (MSS 8318-9).

84 Dr Woodlock to Butt, 1 Mar., Butt MSS.

85 Hansard, series 3, ccxiv, 1864-68.

86 Sullivan to Daunt, undated, Daunt MSS, N.L.I., MS, 8048.

87 Nation, 8 Mar. 1873.

88 Dease to Monsell, 2 Mar., Monsell’MSS, N.L.I., MS 8317.

89 William Delany to Dease, 1 Mar., ibid.

90 Nation, 13 Jan. 1877.

91 Proceedings of the Home Ruk Conference held at the Rotunda, Dublin, on 18, 19, 20, 21 November 1873 (Dublin, Irish Home Rule League, 1874).

92 Dublin Evening Mail 8 Nov. 1873.

93 Ibid., 22 Nov.