CH. XXVII. LEONARD MCNALLY. 141 to have been very unlike his father both in character and opinions. McNally was his intimate friend, and by his means saw nearly every letter that arrived from Napper Tandy, and some of those which came from Rowan and Reynolds. The substance of these letters was regularly transmitted to the Government, and they sometimes contained information of much value. Besides this, as a lawyer in considerable practice, constantly going on circuit, and acquainted with the leaders of sedition, McNally had excellent opportunities of knowing the state of the country, and was able to give very valuable warnings about the prevailing dispositions. Few men would have been thought less capable of long-continued deception than this good-humoured, brilliant, and mercurial lawyer; and in times when public feeling ran fiercely against all who were suspected of disloyalty, he was the most constant, and apparently the most devoted, defender of the United Irishmen. Curran, after a friendship of forty-three years, spoke of his 'uncompromising and romantic fidelity,' and Curran's son has left an emphatic testimony to his many endearing traits.' Yet all this time he was in constant secret correspondence with the Government, and there are, I believe, not less than 150 of his letters in the Castle of Dublin. ceived strangely little for his services. Though an excellent lawyer, and a man of much undoubted ability, he was overwhelmed with debts, which were largely due to his supposed politics. In letter after letter he describes himself as reduced to utter destitution; but from time to time he obtained from the Government some small subsidy, which extricated him from his immediate difficulties. It was doled out, however, with a most tardy, penurious, and uncertain hand. At last, his crowning 1 In one of his letters to the Government he writes: Why will not answer my request? I am in deep distress for money. He can inform you of my services. I had no resource but in the assistance of my friends. Everything professional is lost on account of my politics.' (Jan. 9, 1797.) In recommending McNally for a pension, Cooke (if he was the writer of the paper in the Cornwallis papers) adds: He was not much trusted in the rebellion, and I believe has been faithful.' (Cornwallis Cor respondence, iii. 320.) He re 2 The smallness of his subsidies is very remarkable. In one letter he says: P. [Pollock] assured me some considerable time ago that the L. Lnt. had promised me 2001. a year for the life of myself and children, yet I still remain without having this business settled.' (J. W., Sept. 3, 1796.) Shortly after, Pollock writes that J. W. should have some money for Cork. A guinea a week had been stipulated. He has not got anything for the last twenty weeks.' (J. Pollock, July 9, 1796.) reward arrived in the form of a secret pension of 300l. a year, which was disclosed after his death. Had his politics from the beginning been of a different type, his professional talents would probably have raised him to the bench. The interest, the singularity, and the melancholy of his career will certainly be enhanced by reading his letters. Written for the most part in great haste, without regular beginning or ending, but in the most beautiful of handwritings and in the tersest and happiest English, they reveal with great fidelity a strangely composite character, in which the virtues of impulse seemed all to live, though the virtues of principle had wholly gone. Though his revelations were very important, it was evidently his object to baffle plots without injuring individuals, and he retained all the good nature and native kindness of his disposition. He retained also, to a very remarkable degree, the calmness and independence of a most excellent judgment, a rare discrimination in judging the characters of men and the changing aspects of events. From no other quarter did the Government obtain so many useful warnings, and if the advice of McNally had been more frequently listened to, some of the worst consequences of the rebellion might have been avoided. The country was now passing, with a portentous rapidity, into a condition of hopeless moral and political disorganisation, and disaffection was spreading through all classes. The memorial of Wolfe Tone, which had been brought in evidence against Jackson, and which was presented to the French Government in the beginning of 1796, described it as completely ripe for revolution. The Protestants of the Established Church alone, he said, supported England, and they only comprised about 450,000 of the population. The Protestant Dissenters, whom he believed to be twice as numerous, and who formed the most intelligent portion of the middle class, were almost all republicans. Republican ideas had spread widely among the Catholic leaders; and the bulk of the Catholic peasantry, who had been trained from their infancy in an hereditary hatred and abhorrence of the English name,' and were in a condition of the most abject misery, had almost all passed into the organisation of the Defenders. The picture seemed an exaggerated one, but McNally` assured the Government that it was 'justly conceived and accu CH. XXVII. rately written.' MCNALLY'S PICTURE OF IRELAND. 143 The whole body of the peasantry,' McNally said, 'would join the French in case of an invasion, or rise in a mass against the existing Government if any men of condition were to come forward as their leaders; and in either of these events,' it was very doubtful whether the militia or even the regular army could be fully depended on. 'The sufferings of the common people,' he continued, 'from high rents and low wages, from oppressions of their landlords, their sub-tenants, the agents of absentees, and tithes, are not now the only causes of disaffection to Government, and hatred to England; for though these have long kept the Irish peasant in the most abject state of slavery and indigence, yet another cause, more dangerous, pervades them all, and is also indeed almost universal among the middle ranks, by whom I mean the upper classes of artists and mechanics in the cities, and farmers in the country. This cause is an attachment to French principles in politics and religion lately imbibed, and an ardent desire for a republican Government. Rest assured these principles, and this desire to subvert the existing Government of the country, are more strongly rooted, and more zealously pursued by the Roman Catholics, than even by their teachers and newly acquired allies, the Dissenters. A contempt for the clergy universally prevails. Deism is daily superseding bigotry, and every man who can read, or who can hear and understand what is read to him, begins in religion as in politics to think for himself.' This is shown, not only by the language of the peasants, and by the rapid spread of Defenderism, but also by the contempt with which Archbishop Troy's address against the Defenders was generally received, though it was read publicly by the priests from the altars. This address, which, a few years ago, would have operated with the terrors of thunder on an Irish congregation of Catholics, is now scoffed at in the chapels, and reprobated in private. So sudden a revolution in the Catholic mind is easily accounted for. I impute it to the press. The publication of political disquisitions, and resolutions by the societies of United Irishmen of Belfast and Dublin, written to the passions and feelings of the multitude, affected them with electrical celerity. These papers prepared the way for Paine's politics and theology. Several thousand copies of his various writings . were printed at Belfast and Cork, and distributed gratis. I am assured, and I believe it to be true, that in the county of Cork, Paine's works are read by the boys at almost every school, and that in most houses they now supply the place of the Psalter and Prayer Book.'1 The United Irishmen, whose meetings had been forcibly suppressed in 1794, reconstructed their society, in 1795, on a new basis, and it now became distinctly republican and treasonable. An oath of secrecy and fidelity was substituted for the old test, and great precautions were taken to extend and perfect its organisation. The inferior societies, which had at first consisted of thirty-six, were now composed of only twelve members each, and an elaborate hierarchy of superior directing committees was created. There were lower baronial committees, upper baronial committees, district and county committees, and provincial directories, each being formed of delegates from the inferior bodies; and at the head of the whole there was a general executive directory of five members, elected by ballot from the provincial directories, sitting in Dublin, and entrusted with the government of the whole conspiracy. The oath bound the members to form a bond of affection between Irishmen of every opinion, and to endeavour to obtain a full representation of all the people.' This phrase was substituted for an equal representation of the people in Parliament,' which was used in the original test, and the suppression of all mention of Parliament was not without its significance. In order to preserve secrecy, the names of the members of the supreme directory were only communicated to a single member of each provincial directory, and orders were transmitted from committee to committee by a secretary appointed in each. Emissaries were sent out, and much seditious literature disseminated, to propagate the system. A subscription of one shilling a month was paid by every member. Nightly drilling took place in many districts; arms were collected, and the prospect of a French invasion was kept continually in view. According to the Government information, there were sixteen societies in Belfast, a vast number in the counties of 1 J. W., Sept. 12, 1795 (Irish State Paper Office). In order to shorten my references, I may mention that McNally's letters are in the collection 6 of private and confidential correspondence, which was locked up by Lord Castlereagh, and only opened a few years ago. CH. XXVII. GRATTAN'S ADVICE. 145 Antrim, Down, Derry, Armagh, and Dublin, and between two and three thousand in all Ireland. At Cork, the Government was informed, there were, in 1795, about 600 United Irishmen— 'shopkeepers, merchants' clerks, one or two physicians, farmers residing in all parts of the county, and very young men who attend for the pleasure of debate. . . . They are mostly Protestant. The mayor and sheriffs are suspected of being friendly to them.'1 Contempt for the Irish Parliament, and distrust of constitutional agitation, were rapidly spreading. In the beginning of September, Grattan, Ponsonby, Curran, and one or two other leaders of the parliamentary Opposition, had a very private conference with the principal members of the democratic party among the Dissenters and the Catholics, which (probably through the medium of McNally) was speedily reported to the Government. Several of the leading Dissenters were there, and six Catholics, including Keogh and Byrne. Grattan spoke to them of the dangerous state of the country, the spread of Defenderism, and the necessity of forming a plan of action for the next session of Parliament, and he suggested an aggregate meeting of all classes, and an address to the King. The project was received with much coolness, and Grattan soon saw that he would receive no support. He can hardly have been ignorant of the hopes and sympathies of some of those who were before him, and his language to them-even as it appears through the untrustworthy medium of a secret Government report-seems to me, to have been very honourable to him, and excellently calculated to influence the kind of men he was addressing. He said he would not persevere in the plan which he had prepared, since it found so little favour, but he also said, 'every exertion should be made to put an end to the spirit of insurrection, and to resist invasion, as the French would merely treat Ireland in a manner most calculated to weaken England; that they would halloo the lower class against the higher, and make the whole country a scene of massacre; that in a year or two, it would be given up by the French again, to Great Britain, and that the convulsion would be the ruin of the country.' 'My reporter,' 1 First Digest of the Reports on the United Irishmen and Defenders (Record Office). VOL. VII. L |