From The Historic Case for Irish Independence by Darrell Figgis
34. Yet, despite the immediate failure of Emmet's attempt, the country was in a state of deep unrest.
That unrest only awaited the expression and organisation that could alone be given to it by effectual leadership.
A leader now arose who raised the cry of Catholic Emancipation. During the last years of the Dublin Parliament the franchise had been granted to Catholics on the same basis as to Protestants, but it had effected nothing. It had, in the first place, no opportunity of exercise before that Parliament was annulled. Moreover, the constituency of the Parliament was mainly of borough seats that lay in the gift of single landowners. Lastly, inasmuch as Catholics were unable themselves to sit in Parliament, they could but have been represented by men who, under the circumstances, signified nothing to them.
Neither then, nor in the elections for the London Parliament early in the new century, did they evince the least interest in the matter. Parliaments after the English model were foreign to their instincts of a National Polity. Their thoughts were towards other things; and when Daniel O'Connell arose, with the voice and instinct of leadership, they rallied to him. Through that whole period it is clear that leader and people meant different things. He created an organisation through the country that gave the people a sense of power. He sought to focus their immediate demand upon religious and civil freedom. Supported by his organisation, the Catholic Association, he stood as candidate for a parliamentary election; and the electors, trusting his leadership, came now to record their votes for him. To an open ballot, that meant almost certain eviction, they came, despite the threats of their landlords. And they returned their candidate, so pronouncing an open challenge.
Once again the difference between leader and people was manifest. His challenge was for an immediate end, which he had defined to himself. That end, however, conveyed little to the nation. For the first time most of them had exercised this right in a new polity, and to send their leader to an assembly in a foreign capital signified little to them. Therefore, their challenge was menacing and symbolic; and the Viceroy wrote to London saying he could not answer for the consequences if Catholic Emancipation were longer delayed. Reluctantly then, and perforce, in 1829, the measure was granted, and Catholics were admitted to the English Parliament and all but the highest positions. The first step on the road had been won. It had been won, not by assent to the forms of the English constitution. That to the nation had been but the symbol of a revolt that, reacting from the uplifting of a symbol, had aroused the whole people, who looked to the new leader for guidance. As the Duke of Wellington asserted in giving his reluctant consent to religious and civil emancipation, he was compelled to do so by the prospect of facing "civil war in Ireland" as an alternative. For, said he, "that agitation really means something short of rebellion; that and no other is the exact meaning of the word. It is to place the country in that state in which its Government is utterly impracticable, except by means of overawing military force." In a word, English ministers for the time baffled the people's larger expectation by granting their leader's immediate demand.
Truelove's Journal: A Bookshop Novella
From a sad, comfortless childhood Giles Truelove developed into a reclusive and uncommunicative man whose sole passion was books. For so long they were the only meaning to his existence. But when fate eventually intervened to have the outside world intrude upon his life, he began to discover emotions that he never knew he had.
A story for the genuine booklover, penned by an Irish bookseller under the pseudonym of Ralph St. John Featherstonehaugh.
FREE download 23rd - 27th May
Annals of the Famine in Ireland
Annals of the Famine in Ireland, by Asenath Nicholson, still has the power to shock and sadden even though the events described are ever-receding further into the past. When you read, for example, of the poor widowed mother who was caught trying to salvage a few potatoes from her landlord's field, and what the magistrate discovered in the pot in her cabin, you cannot help but be appalled and distressed.
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger
This book, the prequel to Annals of the Famine in Ireland cannot be recommended highly enough to those interested in Irish social history. The author, Mrs Asenath Nicholson, travelled from her native America to assess the condition of the poor in Ireland during the mid 1840s. Refusing the luxury of hotels and first class travel, she stayed at a variety of lodging-houses, and even in the crude cabins of the very poorest. Not to be missed!
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Henry Ford Jones' book, first published in 1915 by Princeton University, is a classic in its field. It covers the history of the Scotch-Irish from the first settlement in Ulster to the American Revolutionary period and the foundation of the country.
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
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