Henry Grattan

Henry Grattan

Henry Grattan (3 July 1746 – 6 June 1820) was a member of the Irish House of Commons and a campaigner for legislative freedom for the Irish Parliament in the late 18th century. He opposed the Act of Union 1800 that merged the Kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain.

Early life

A member of the Anglo-Irish elite of Protestant background, Grattan was a distinguished student at Trinity College, Dublin where he began a lifelong study of classical literature, and was especially interested in the great orators of antiquity. Like his friend Henry Flood, Grattan worked on his natural eloquence and oratory skills by studying models such as Bolingbroke and Junius. After studying at the King's Inns, Dublin and being called to the Irish bar in 1772 he never seriously practised law but was drawn to politics influenced by Flood. He entered the Irish Parliament for Charlemont in 1775 sponsored by Lord Charlemont, just as Flood had damaged his credibility by accepting office. Grattan quickly superseded Flood in the leadership of the national party not least because his oratorical powers were unsurpassed among his contemporaries.

In the Irish Parliament

Catholics and Presbyterians - who together made up a large majority of the Irish population - were completely excluded from public life at this time under the Penal Laws, in force in Ireland from 1691 until the early 1780s. The Viceroy and the wealthiest part of the Anglican Church of Ireland minority made all political decisions in Ireland until 1800.

The politicians of the national party now fought for the Irish parliament, not with the intention of liberating the Catholic majority, but to set the Irish parliament free from constitutional bondage to the British privy council. By virtue of Poyning's Law, a celebrated statute of King Henry VII of England, all proposed Irish legislation had to be submitted to the privy council for its approval under the great seal of England before being passed by the Irish parliament. A bill so approved might be accepted or rejected, but not amended. More recent British acts had further emphasized the complete dependence of the Irish parliament, and the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords had also been annulled. Moreover, the British Houses claimed and exercised the power to legislate directly for Ireland without even the nominal concurrence of the parliament in Dublin. This was the constitution which William Molyneux and Swift had denounced, which Flood had attacked, and which Grattan was to destroy, becoming leaders of the Patriot movement.

The Irish House of Commons by Francis Wheatley (1780) shows Grattan (standing on right in red jacket) addressing the House.

The menacing attitude of the Irish Volunteer Convention at Dungannon greatly influenced the decision of the government in 1782 to resist the agitation no longer. It was through ranks of volunteers drawn up outside the parliament house in Dublin that Grattan passed on 16 April 1782, amidst unparalleled popular enthusiasm, to move a declaration of the independence of the Irish parliament. "I found Ireland on her knees," Grattan exclaimed, "I watched over her with a paternal solicitude; I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift, spirit of Molyneux, your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation!" After a month of negotiation the claims of Ireland were conceded. The gratitude of his countrymen to Grattan was shown by a parliamentary grant of £100,000, which had to be reduced by half before he would accept it.

Grattan then asked for the British House of Commons to reconfirm the London government's decision, and on 22 January 1783 the final Act was passed by parliament in London, including the text:

Be it enacted that the right claimed by the people of Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by his Majesty and the Parliament of that kingdom, in all cases whatever shall be, and is hereby declared to be established and ascertained for ever, and shall at no time be questioned or questionable.

In September of the same year, Grattan became a member of the Privy Council of Ireland. He was expelled in 1798, but was re-admitted on 9 August 1806.

"Grattan's Parliament"

One of the first acts of Grattan's parliament was to prove its loyalty to the Constitution by passing a vote for the support of 20,000 sailors for the navy. Grattan was loyal to the crown and the English connection. He was, however, anxious for moderate parliamentary reform, and, unlike Flood, he favored Catholic emancipation. It was evident that without reform the Irish House of Commons would not be able to make much use of its newly-won independence. Though now free from constitutional control, it was still subject to the influence of corruption, which the English government had wielded through the Irish borough owners, known as the "undertakers", or more directly through the great executive officers. Grattan's parliament had no control over the Irish executive. The lord lieutenant and his chief secretary continued to be appointed by the English ministers; their tenure of office depended on the vicissitudes of English, not Irish, party politics; the royal prerogative was exercised in Ireland on the advice of English ministers.

The House of Commons was unrepresentative of the Irish people at a time when democracy was rare in Europe. The majority were excluded either as Roman Catholics or as Presbyterians; two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons were returned by small boroughs at the disposal of individual patrons, whose support was bought by the distribution of peerages and pensions. It was to give stability and true independence to the new constitution that Grattan pressed for reform. Having quarrelled with Flood over simple repeal, Grattan also differed from him on the question of maintaining the Volunteer Convention. He opposed the policy of protective duties, but supported Pitt's famous commercial propositions in 1785 for establishing free trade between Great Britain and Ireland, which, however, had to be abandoned owing to the hostility of the British mercantile classes. Grattan supported the government for a time after 1782, and spoke and voted for the stringent coercive legislation rendered necessary by the Whiteboy outrages in 1785; but as the years passed without Pitt's personal favour towards parliamentary reform resulting in legislation, he gravitated towards the opposition, agitated for commutation of tithes in Ireland, and supported the Whigs on the regency question in 1788. In 1790 Gratten stood for Dublin City, a seat he held until 1798. In 1792 he succeeded in carrying an Act conferring the franchise on the Roman Catholics; in 1794 in conjunction with William Ponsonby, he introduced a reform bill which was even less democratic than Flood's bill of 1783. He was as anxious as Flood had been to retain the legislative power in the hands of men of property, for he had through the whole of his life a strong conviction that while Ireland could best be governed by Irish hands, democracy in Ireland would inevitably turn to plunder and anarchy. At the same time he desired to admit the Roman Catholic gentry of property to membership of the House of Commons, a proposal that was the logical corollary of the Relief Act of 1792.

The defeat of Grattan's mild proposals helped to promote more extreme opinions, which, under French revolutionary influence, were now becoming heard in Ireland. The Catholic question had rapidly become of the first importance, and when a powerful section of the Whigs joined Pitt's ministry in 1794, and it became known that the lord-lieutenancy was to go to Lord Fitzwilliam, who shared Grattan's views, expectations were raised that the question was about to be settled in a manner satisfactory to the Irish Catholics. Such seems to have been Pitt's intention, though there has been much controversy as to how far Lord Fitzwilliam had been authorized to pledge the government. After taking Grattan into his confidence, it was arranged that the latter should bring in a Roman Catholic emancipation bill, and that it should then receive government support. But finally it appeared that the viceroy had either misunderstood or exceeded his instructions; and on 19 February 1795, Fitzwilliam was recalled. In the outburst of indignation, followed by increasing disaffection in Ireland, which this event produced, Grattan acted with conspicuous moderation and loyalty, which won for him warm acknowledgments from a member of the British cabinet.

That cabinet, however, doubtless influenced by the wishes of the king, was now determined to firmly resist the Catholic demands, with the result that the country rapidly drifted towards rebellion. Grattan warned the government in a series of masterly speeches of the lawless condition to which Ireland had been driven. He could now count on no more than forty followers in the House of Commons, and his words were unheeded. In protest he retired from parliament in May 1797, and departed from his customary moderation by attacking the government in an inflammatory Letter to the citizens of Dublin.

Rebellion and Union

Gillray's 1798 cartoon of Henry Grattan

At this time antipathy towards the Anglican elite in Ireland was such that men of different faiths were ready to combine for common political objects. Thus the Presbyterians of the north, who were mainly republican in sentiment, combined with a section of the Roman Catholics to form the organization of the United Irishmen, to promote revolutionary ideas imported from France; and a party prepared to welcome a French invasion soon came into existence. Thus stimulated, the increasing disaffection culminated in the 1798 rebellion. The Presbyterian-Catholic rebellion in Ulster was overshadowed by a more traditional Catholic uprising in Wexford which was characterised by some indiscriminate sectarian massacres of Protestants. Grattan was cruelly lampooned by James Gillray as a rebel leader for his liberal views and his stance against a political union with Britain.

Almost immediately, the project of a legislative union between the British and Irish parliaments, which had been from time to time discussed since the beginning of the 18th century, was taken up in earnest by Pitt's government. Grattan denounced the scheme with implacable hostility. As a result of the sectarian massacres in Wexford and the emancipation promised by the Act of Union, Presbyterians in Ulster formed an alliance with Anglicans which in time became known as Ulster unionism.

The constitution of Grattan's parliament offered no security, as the differences over the regency question had made evident that in matters of imperial interest the policy of the Irish parliament and that of Great Britain would be in agreement and at a moment when Britain was engaged in a life and death struggle with France it was impossible for the ministry to ignore the danger, recently emphasized by the fact that the independent constitution of 1782 offered no safeguard against armed revolt. The nature of the rebellion in Wexford put an end to the growing reconciliation between Roman Catholics and Presbyterians, and the island divided anew into two hostile factions. To those whose understanding of Irish history is limited to the twentieth century it may seem curious that it was from the Protestant Established Church, and particularly from the Orangemen, that the bitterest opposition to the union proceeded. The proposal found support among the Roman Catholic clergy and especially the bishops, while in no part of Ireland was it received with more favor than in the city of Cork. This attitude of the Catholics was caused by Pitt's encouragement of the expectation that Catholic emancipation, the commutation of tithes, and the endowment of the Catholic priesthood, would accompany or quickly follow the passing of the measure.

When in 1799 the government brought forward their bill it was defeated in the Irish House of Commons. Grattan was still in retirement. His popularity had declined, and the fact that his proposals for parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation had become the watchwords of the rebellious United Irishmen had brought him the bitter hostility of the governing classes. He was dismissed from the privy council; his portrait was removed from the hall of Trinity College; the Merchant Guild of Dublin struck his name off their rolls. The threatened destruction of the constitution of 1782 quickly restored its author to his former place in the affections of the Irish people. The parliamentary recess had been employed by the government in securing by lavish corruption a majority in favour of their policy. On 15 January 1800 the Irish parliament met for its last session; on the same day Grattan secured by purchase a seat for Wicklow Borough; and at a late hour, while the debate was proceeding, he appeared to take his seat, and was cheered from the galleries. Grattan's strength gave way when he rose to speak, and he obtained leave to address the House sitting. Nevertheless his speech was a superb effort of oratory; for more than two hours he kept them spellbound. After prolonged debates Grattan, on 26 May, spoke finally against the committal of the bill, ending with an impassioned peroration in which he declared, "I will remain anchored here with fidelity to the fortunes of my country, faithful to her freedom, faithful to her fall." These were the last words spoken by Grattan in the Irish parliament.

The bill establishing the union was carried through its final stages by substantial majorities. One of Grattan's main grounds of opposition to the union had been his dread of seeing the political leadership in Ireland pass out of the hands of the landed gentry; and he prophesied that the time would come when Ireland would send to the united parliament a hundred of the greatest rascals in the kingdom. Like Flood before him, Grattan had no leaning towards democracy; and he anticipated that by the removal of the centre of political interest from Ireland the evil of absenteeism would be intensified.

In the British Parliament

For the next five years, Grattan took no active part in public affairs; it was not till 1805 that he became a Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Malton. He modestly took his seat on one of the back benches, till Fox brought him forward, exclaiming, "This is no place for the Irish Demosthenes!" His first speech was on the Catholic question and all agreed with the description of his speech by the Annual Register as one of the most brilliant and eloquent ever made within the walls of parliament. When Fox and William Grenville came into power in 1806 Grattan, who sat at this time for Dublin City, was offered, but refused to accept, an office in the government. In the following year he showed the strength of his judgment and character by supporting, in spite of consequent unpopularity in Ireland, a measure for increasing the powers of the executive to deal with Irish disorder. Roman Catholic emancipation, which he continued to advocate with unflagging energy though now advanced in age, became complicated after 1808 by the question whether a veto on the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops should rest with the crown.

Grattan supported the veto, but a more extreme Catholic party was now arising in Ireland under the leadership of Daniel O'Connell, and Grattan's influence gradually declined. He seldom spoke in parliament after 1810, the most notable exception being in 1815, when he separated himself from the Whigs and supported the final struggle against Napoleon. His last speech of all, in 1819, contained a passage referring to the union he had so passionately resisted, which exhibits the statesmanship and at the same time the equable quality of Grattan's character. His sentiments with regard to the policy of the union remained, he said, unchanged; but the marriage having taken place it is now the duty, as it ought to be the inclination, of every individual to render it as fruitful, as profitable and as advantageous as possible.

Death and legacy

In the following summer, after crossing from Ireland to London when out of health to bring forward the Irish question once more, he became seriously ill. On his death-bed he spoke generously of Castlereagh, and with warm eulogy of his former rival, Flood. He died on 6 June 1820, and was buried in Westminster Abbey close to the tombs of Pitt and Fox. His statue is in the outer lobby of the Houses of Parliament at Westminster. Grattan had married in 1782 Henrietta Fitzgerald, a lady descended from the ancient family of Desmond, by whom he had two sons and two daughters.

The most searching scrutiny of his private life only increases the respect due to the memory of Grattan as a statesman and the greatest of Irish orators. His patriotism was untainted by self-seeking; he was courageous in risking his popularity for what his sound judgment showed him to be the right course. As Sydney Smith said with truth of Grattan soon after his death: "No government ever dismayed him. The world could not bribe him. He thought only of Ireland; lived for no other object; dedicated to her his beautiful fancy, his elegant wit, his manly courage, and all the splendour of his astonishing eloquence."

Bibliography

Modern

• Mansergh D. Grattan's failure Parliamentary Opposition and the People in Ireland (2005) Irish Academic Press ISBN 0-7165-2815-0
• McDowell R.B. Grattan A Life (2001) Lilliput Press ISBN 1-901866-72-6
• Kelly J. Henry Grattan (1993) Dundalgan Press

Earlier

• Henry Grattan jnr. Memoirs of the Life and Times of the Right Hon. H. Grattan Vol. 1Vol.2(5 vols., London, 1839-1846);
• Grattan's Speeches (ed by H. Grattan, junr., 1822);

Irish Part. Debates; WEH Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth century (8 vols., London, 1878-1890) and Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland (enlarged edition, 2 vols., 1903).
For the controversy concerning the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam see, in addition to the foregoing, Lord Rosebery, Pitt (London, 1891); Lord Ashbourne, Pitt: Some Chapters of his Life (London, 1898); The Pelham Papers (Brit. Mus. Add. Manuscripts 33118); Carlisle Correspondence; Beresford Correspondence; Stanhope Miscellanies; for the Catholic question, W Anshurst, History of Catholic Emancipation (2 vols., London, 1886); Sir Thomas Wyse, Historical Sketch of the late Catholic Association of Ireland (London, 1829); W. J. MacNeven, Pieces of Irish History (New York, 1807) containing an account of the United Irishmen; for the volunteer movement Thomas MacNevin, History of the Volunteers of 1782 (Dublin, 1845); Proceedings of the Volunteer Delegates of Ireland 1784 (Anon. Pamph. Brit. Mus.).

See also F Hardy, Memoirs of Lord Charlemont (London, 1812); Warden Flood, Memoirs of Henry Flood (London, 1838); Francis Plowden, Historical Review of the State of Ireland (London, 1803); Alfred Webb, Compendium of Irish Biography (Dublin, 1878); Sir Jonah Barrington, Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation (London, 1833); WJ O'Neill Daunt, Ireland and her Agitators; Lord Mountmorres, History of the Irish Parliament (2 vole., London, 1792); Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III (4 vols., London, 1845 and 1894); Lord Stanhope, Life of William Pitt (4 vols., London, 1861); Thomas Davis, Life of JP Curran (Dublin, 1846) this contains a memoir of Grattan by DO Madden, and Grattan's reply to Lord Clare on the question of the Union; Charles Phillips, Recollections of Curran and some of his Contemporaries (London, 1822); JA Froude, The English in Ireland (London, 1881); JG McCarthy, Henry Grattan: an Historical Study (London, 1886); Lord Mahon's History of England, vol. vii. (1858). With special reference to the Union see Castlereagh Correspondence; Cornwallis Correspondence; Westmorland Papers (Irish State Paper Office).

References

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Henry Grattan

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs

External links

• Chapter on Henry Grattan in The Story Of Ireland, by Emily Lawless, 1896
• 1782 Caricature of Henry Grattan by James Gillray