TOLERATION IN THE FIGHT FOR IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 118

TOLERATION IN THE FIGHT FOR IRELAND

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The horrid statutes of Anne were not fifty years in force before we had Protestant Lucas repudiating the right of England to subject Ireland to her laws. They were not eighty years in force when we had Protestant Volunteers discharging their cannon in celebration of Irish National Independence; when we had Protestant Wolfe Tone drawing up his declaration of fraternity with his Catholic fellow-countrymen; and when we had the Presbyterians of the North storing up their pikes and guns by tens of thousands to light for Irish freedom on the. field, and making the streets of Belfast ring with the joyous anthem that ' The French were on the sea.'

English policy up to that point had proceeded upon the plain principle of breeding an Irish colony to be the bribed enemies and oppressors of their native fellow-subjects, and superseding every colony that lapsed from that duty by a new colony which ate up the lands and power of its predecessor. Pitt for the first time hit upon the device of utilising the native Catholic millions against the rebellious Protestant and Presbyterian colonies. He could not forgive the Protestants for the Declaration of Independence, nor the Presbyterians for Antrim fight; and, in order to carry the Union, he proceeded to ply the Catholics with the same degrading argument that is pressed upon Protestants at the present moment against Home Rule—namely, that they could not trust their own countrymen not to oppress them; that they must look for emancipation and wisdom and privilege to a stranger Parliament in Westminster. Pitt, of course, betrayed the Catholics, as he had betrayed the Protestants. More Catholic relief was enacted by the Protestant Irish Parliament of 1795 than could be wrung out of the United Parliament for one generation after the Union. There came a day when … continue reading »

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