SELECT SPEECHES

OF THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE

RICHARD LALOR SHEIL.

SPEECH UPON THE MEMOIRS OF THEOBALD WOLFE TONE, MADE AT THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION.

THIS book—the life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, who was guilty of a distempered love of Ireland (he had great talents, and with an adventurous spirit combined an undaunted determination)—contains much matter, in which a Catholic can find instruction, from which a British minister ought to derive a warning, while to a Protestant proprietor it cannot fail to afford a theme, on which, if he shall often reflect, his frequent meditation will not be misapplied. I introduce the subject with some abruptness; but it is as well that any preliminary expatiation should be avoided, and that I should proceed at once to the topics, to which it is my intention to direct your notice. I shall advert in the first instance to the observations made by Wolfe Tone upon the policy which he conceived it to be wise, on the part of the Catholics of Ireland, to pursue. He states in a diary kept by him in Paris, that General Clarke, the son of an Irishman, and who was afterwards created Duke de Feltre, expressed to him an opinion, that the system which was called Chouannerie in France, and which is analogous in many respects to the Rockism of this country, might be usefully resorted to in Ireland, and that the people, through such means, might be familiarised with arms, and prepared for a general co-operation with an invading force. This suggestion was indignantly repudiated by Wolfe Tone, who justly observes, that agrarian combinations lead

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to crimes as unavailing for any political purpose as they are morally odious, and produce a barbarous and irregular disturbance, which the government regard without alarm, and which affords an opportunity for the enactment of coercive laws, whenever it suits their purpose to resort to them. Tone alludes to another important topic, the disunion of the Catholics amongst themselves, and the secession of the Catholic gentry from the people. He laments these unfortunate incidents, and inveighs against the unhappy spirit of pusillanimous compliance, which characterised the Catholic leaders in the bargain which they were induced to strike with the government in 1793. He states himself to be fully convinced that if, in the midst of the embarrassments of the ministry, with war without, and disaffection within, the men who negotiated on the part of the Catholics of Ireland had adopted the peremptory tone which the condition of the country would have enabled them to assume, the minister would have been compelled to yield, and a measure of complete and unqualified enfranchisement would have been extorted from him. This remark is well founded; I am sure that our interests as well as our honour will be always most effectually consulted by a bold, uncompromising course; that the men at the head of the people must rely upon the people, and nothing but the people, for the accomplishment of every national purpose, and that whenever they shall be weak enough to listen to the false blandishments of power, they will discover that a sacrifice of principle is sure to be followed by a relinquishment of their real interests, and that of their own unwise cunning, as well as of the craft of their antagonists, they will infallibly prove the victims. So much for that portion of this book, which relates more immediately to the course which it befitted the leaders of the Irish Catholics in 1793, in the opinion of Theobald Wolfe Tone, to have adopted. I turn to a topic of deeper interest—to a portion of the narrative contained in these memoirs, calculated to awaken in the mind of an English statesman reflections of a very serious kind, and in which I ventured to say, that practical admonition was to be found. In 1795, Theobald Wolfe Tone was compelled to retire from Ireland to the United States, where he had at first an intention of settling; there in the bosom of his family, with a wife whom he adored, and children who shared in his idolatry for their incomparable mother, he might have led a long and prosperous life, if he knew how to form a just estimate of felicity, and could have appreciated the opportunities of happiness with which he was encompassed. But ambition, or perverted patriotism, was among many passions paramount to every other: he was pursued by the recollec

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tions of Ireland: the memory of his country became a malady of his heart and in the idealism of exile the scenes of oppression which he had witnessed, and at which his blood had boiled, rose with all the distinctness of unimpaired reality before him. The phantasms with which men condemned to leave their country are disastrously haunted, are, to men like Tone, prompters of great enterprise. There gradually grew up in his mind a design as adventurous as any of which the romance of history has left us an example. He formed the determination to strike a blow at England, where he knew that she was most vulnerable, and to invite the French republic to become his auxiliary in an enterprise which should put the British empire to hazard. Full of a purpose, which at first view appeared to be as extravagant as it was criminal, he set sail from America, and arrived at Havre on the first of February, 1796. Having reached Paris, he found himself in a state which men less ardent, and with less fixedness of intent would have looked upon as desperate: he failed for a considerable time in obtaining access to any man in authority, and the little money in his possession was almost expended. He was without friends, without resources of any kind, and could scarcely express himself in the language of the country. It is, indeed, difficult to conjecture a state more utterly hopeless than that to which he was reduced. Yet, in the desolation of a great metropolis, he was upheld by that unalterable purpose, from which the aliment of his soul was derived. At last he obtained an interview with the minister of war. His chief credentials, the documents on which he grounded his claim to the confidence of Charles Lecroix, were two votes of thanks, which he had received as their secretary from the Catholics of Ireland. Although Lecroix had never heard of him before, he was struck by his project, and sent him to General Clarke, whose family was connected with Ireland; but Clarke entertained such strange notions about the country from which his father had emigrated, that he inquired from him, whether Lord Clare was likely to co-operate with the French, and whether the Duke of York would accept the sovereignty of Ireland, in the event of its conquest by the French republic. Tone perceived that little could be effected with Clarke, and determined to go directly to the President of the Directory, who was no other than the celebrated Carnot, to whose genius the marvellous successes of France were in a great measure to be ascribed. An interview was obtained, in which the victorious mathematician listened to the enthusiastic Irishman, with a not very unnatural distrust in the feasibility of his project. He slowly acceded to it, and it was proposed by the French Government to send two thousand men to

Ireland. His reasoning was so cogent, that he prevailed upon the Directory to resolve upon an expedition of eight thousand men, with fifty thousand stand of arms; but Hoche, who enjoyed the highest military reputation, having been named to the chief command of the invading army, insisted on its being increased from eight to fifteen thousand men, with a large park of artillery, and arms sufficient to supply the insurgent population. The French Directory acceded to this requisition, and that large force, conveyed by seventeen ships of the line, sailed from Brest. While every good citizen must concur in the unqualified condemnation of the man, at whose instance the French Government embarked in an undertaking which, if it had been successful, would have entailed irretrievable calamity upon his country, yet, when we look back at the circumstances in which Wolfe Tone was placed, and consider the difficulties with which he had to struggle, that his achievement was a most extraordinary one, must be acknowledged. How must his heart have beaten when he beheld that great armament, with its vast sails dilated in some sort by his own aspiring spirit, steering its course to the island where his cradle was rocked, where the bones of his fathers were deposited, on whose green hills his eyes had first rested, and on whose lofty peaks, against which the Atlantic breaks in thunder, he felt assured that his triumphant standard would be unfurled. Happily for England, these visions of victory, when almost embodied in a fatal realization, were dispelled by the winds, called so justly "the only unsubsidized allies of England;" and by those auxiliaries, on which England cannot rely for ever, the want of wisdom and of foresight in the Government, and the want of an army to defend the country, when it was left wholly unprotected, was supplied. The French fleet was dispersed by a storm;-Hoche was blown out of his course with seven ships of the line; but ten sail of the line, with six thousand troops, reached the Irish coast. Wolfe Tone says that they were so near that he could have pitched a biscuit on shore. A landing might have been at once effected, but the Directory had given orders that the fleet should proceed to Bantry Bay. Ten ships of the line did proceed there, with a force which might have marched to Dublin, and lay for five days in a harbour on the Irish coast. It is a most remarkable circumstance that in the absence of Hoche, the command of the army should have devolved upon Grouchy, in reference to whom these words are set down in the diary kept by Wolfe Tone: "all now depends upon Grouchy." After the lapse of nineteen years, upon the 18th of June, 1815, in what an agony of hope the great emperor directed his glass to the horizon in search of those battalions which he had

This suggestion Tone treated as an absurdity.

confided to the same questionable soldier, expecting, to the last, that in the distance he should behold his eagles upon the wing to his rescue. That Grouchy was an instrument of Providence it may not be irrational to think, but that such implements of safety will always be provided it is not an article of faith to believe. Grouchy did not land; and Ireland was preserved. I have done with the incidents in the Memoirs of Wolfe Tone. His subsequent history, the two expeditions which he afterwards planned, and the last scene in his eventful life, in which he resorted to what Edmond Burke has called "the sharp antidote against disgrace," to avoid the doom which, for those who are guilty of having failed, is proverbially destined,-are full of painful interest; but for the purpose which has induced me to advert to this book what I have said of it is sufficient. That purpose is different from that which may, perhaps, be imputed to me. But what I deeply deprecate, I may be permitted honestly to apprehend, and I own that the perusal of this book has excited in my mind an alarm, to which I think myself justified in giving expression. The voice of admonition is grating to the ear, but the reflections suggested by this volume ought not to be suppressed, however disinclined a minister may be to listen to them. I believe this country to be exposed to the most serious risks, in consequence of the fatal policy which the government are pursuing ; I consider their security to be false, and believe them to be treading on the edge of a fearful peril. Who that sees the sleep walker advancing to the precipice, would heed how rudely he might awaken him, if by boldly grasping him he can drag him from the gulf?

In the year 1796, the Catholic population of this country did not exceed three millions; it amounts to double that number. In 1796, the French republic had not recanted its profession of infidelity, and was deeply stained with the blood of martyred priests and pontiffs. The throne of France is occupied by a sovereign anointed with legitimacy; the altar has been rebuilt, and the ancient Catholic Church lifts up its mitred and apostolic head. Attractive relations have arisen, where an intercept was created by many repulsive circumstances. The application of steam in naval warfare deserves to be taken into account, and more especially by Mr. Canning, who recently told us that modern science had "taken from the winds their proverbial fickleness." To that eminent man I would more peculiarly commend the memoirs of Wolfe Tone. He cannot fail to recollect, that not very long ago, when he made it his boast that from the recesses in which they were immured, he could let loose the popular passions, and sweep the French monarchy in a hurricane away, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, and Monsieur Hyde de Neuville, and Monsieur de