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Looking back on this period with the knowledge of the event, no policy can be conceived more fatuous or more disastrous, and no one who impartially studies Irish history can, I believe, doubt that it contributed largely to the two most permanent evils of Irish life-to Catholic disloyalty and to religious animosity. It is quite true that Camden was instructed to do what he could within the lines that were marked out for him to persuade the Catholics of the liberal and conciliatory disposition of the Government. The establishment of a seminary for the education of the priests; a provision for the Catholic parochial clergy, and some measures for the education of the lower class of Catholics were suggested. Nothing was done under the two last categories, but the first measure, which was warmly supported by Grattan, was realised by the establishment of the College of Maynooth. It was utterly impotent to arrest the religious war which was spreading more and more through Ireland, and the growing disloyalty that was sweeping great bodies more and more to rebellion.

Camden was not wholly insensible to the danger, and he does not seem to have widely differed from Lord Fitzwilliam in thinking that in the event of invasion the refusal of all concession to the Catholics might be of the most serious consequence. The quiet of the country,' he wrote, 'depends upon the exertions of the friends of the established Government backed by a strong military force.' 'I confess I am more alarmed at the general want of attachment to Government than at any consequences that may arise from any violent or bigoted attachment to religious opinions.' He thinks, however, that 'all will be quiet if there is no invasion, and if troops are immediately sent.' Fitzgibbon told him that a firm policy would soon re-establish tranquillity, and he believed that the leading Catholic gentry would do nothing to embarrass him. His Chief Secretary

thought so too, and after all that had happened it is curiously significant that it was the evident impression of Pelham that it might still be a desirable thing to follow the example of Fitzwilliam and remove Beresford. There is some chance, he wrote, that the cry will be more in favour of Lord F., and against the Beresfords than in favour of the Roman Catholics. If it should take that turn and that any sacrifices are necessary (which you know I never admit a priori in politics) Pitt must submit to Beresford's removal. I am sorry to say, but I must on such a critical occasion, that Pitt seems more animated about men upon this occasion than he ought to be. I am by no means satisfied with his conduct about Beresford when I met him at his house with Lord Camden. I very much wished to have seen Lord Grenville upon that subject before I left London. . . . I am so confident of being right on the Catholic question that I feel confident also of success, but I fear that we shall be weak upon questions of administration and conduct, in argument at least, and I cannot boldly defend a job even in Ireland.'1

The days of the Irish Parliament were now but few and evil. Three or four times Grattan brought forward the Catholic and the reform questions, but the Government continually refused to yield, and the revolutionary tide surged higher and higher. His speeches at this time, in addition to their extraordinary intrinsic merit, have a special importance from the light they throw on the condition of Ireland in the critical period that preceded the great rebellion. They show in every page his extreme alarm at the dangers of the situation and his belief that a speedy peace and a large measure of parliamentary reform could alone save Ireland from a catastrophe. He believed that the great bulk of the people were fast passing into bitter 1 Pelham to Portland, March 22, 1795.

LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF DUBLIN 209

disaffection, and that a French invasion would be inevitably followed by a most sanguinary rebellion. He dilated on the defencelessness of Ireland; on the neglect which allowed a French fleet carrying a French army to enter unmolested into Bantry Bay; on the shameful supineness shown by the Government in the face of the outrages of the Peep of Day or Orange Boys in Ulster; on the innumerable acts of illegal and exasperating violence committed in the north under General Lake's proclamation; on the growing financial dangers and on the injudiciousness of the new taxes on tea, sugar, and salt, which pressed with special weight upon the poor. An enrolment of a yeoman force exclusively devoted to the defence of Ireland, an absentee tax, and a large measure of parliamentary reform and Catholic Emancipation seemed to him the best remedies; but the Irish Parliament was now almost completely in the hands of the Government, and Grattan seldom counted more than thirty or forty supporters. At last, in the May of 1797, in company with his leading supporters, he formally seceded from Parliament, and when the House was dissolved in the ensuing August he refused to stand, and retired into private life.

He wrote at the same time a letter to the citizens of Dublin' which is one of his most powerful but also one of his most questionable performances. It is a fierce and unsparing condemnation of the whole policy of the Government since the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam. The greater part of it is incontestably true, but as Grattan afterwards very candidly acknowledged 'it was not wise,' 'it tended to enflame,' it was written under the impulse of extreme exasperation. He had found it wholly impossible to cope with the Government during that period of panic. He could not sympathise with the party who were appealing to arms, nor yet with those whose policy was in his opinion driving

VOL. I.

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them to disloyalty. He was guided, too, in a great measure, by the example of Fox, who, when he found his party hopelessly reduced, had retired from the debates; but, unlike Fox, he resigned his seat when he abstained from parliamentary business.

If it were not for the wretched condition of the country, it would have cost him comparatively little to retire from active politics; for he possessed all the resources of happiness that are furnished by a highly cultivated intellect, by the most amiable of dispositions, and the attachment of innumerable friends. All accounts concur in representing him in private life as the simplest and most winning of mortals. The transparent purity of his life and character, a most fascinating mixture of vehemence and benevolence, a certain guilelessness of appearance, and a certain unconscious oddity, both of diction and gesture, gave a peculiar charm and pungency to his conversation. Like his speeches, it was tesselated with epigram and antithesis, full of strokes of a delicate, original, and laconic humour, of curiously minute and vivid delineations of character, of striking anecdotes, admirably though quaintly told. He had seen and observed much, and he possessed a rare insight into character, and a great originality both of thought and of expression. Plunket said of his conversation, that he gave results rather than processes of reasoning. Every sentence was a treasure.'

In early life he had lived much alone, but he came to dread the melancholy of solitude, though he always hated large and mixed assemblies. He was happy in his domestic life; happiest of all when he could gather a few congenial spirits round a small dinner table, or wander with them through the long summer day listening to the hum of the bees among the lime trees, or recalling the figures and the images of the old classical world, or describing with a fine

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and delicate criticism the eloquence and the characters of his great contemporaries. He had a beautiful old-world courtesy to both young and old, and it was noticed that, like Louis XIV., he never failed to return the bow of a child. Few men of great powers who spent a long life in the turmoil of public affairs have ever been so free from the element of personal ambition. Office he refused to take, and his private fortune was more than sufficient for his very moderate wants. Wealth,' he once said, 'makes a man sad. He lives for others who don't care for him. He becomes a steward.' He disliked both the show and the cares of a great country house, but his own home amid the Wicklow Hills, and by the Dargle stream, though neither stately nor spacious according to English measurements, lay in the heart of one of the loveliest valleys in Ireland. He delighted in music and poetry, and his love of nature amounted to a passion, and continued unabated during every portion of his life. In one of Horner's letters there is a charming description of the enthusiasm with which, when an old man, he left London to visit a county which was famous for its nightingales, in order that he might enjoy the luxury of their song. There was about him so much greatness and so much goodness, that he rarely failed to win the love and the veneration of those who came in contact with him, but also so much oddity that he usually provoked a smile. With much mild dignity of manner and great energy of intellect, he combined an almost childlike simplicity and freshness of character. No schoolboy enjoyed with a keener zest a day's holiday in the country; and Curran, who delighted in mimicking his singularities, described him conducting a controversy about

1 Moore states, on the authority of Harry Bushe, that Grattan died possessed of an income of 9,000l. a year, owing 50,0007., having borrowed to purchase.'-Moore's Diary, iii. 220.