composing petitions, and generally directing public opinion towards parliamentary reform.
The National Conventions had little practical result. Already some “among the volunteers were sensible, that … an attempt to gain their object by compulsion must be hopeless, without the co-operation of the Romanists, and that in case of success by this assistance, the Protestant interest in Ireland would be annihilated. The Convention saw clearly the dilemma to which it was reduced; but they chose what appeared to them the least of two evils, and rather than call in the aid of the great body of Romanists … they submitted quietly and tamely to the chastisement of that government whose authority they had insulted, and in a manner defied; incurring by this means the censure of the moderate for their violence, and of the violent for their moderation.”4 It was this dilemma that, very quickly, “annihilated” the moderate party, and there were those in the North who would not tolerate such a choice.
In Belfast the Volunteers were dominated by the progressive element and were enthusiastically sympathetic to Catholic enfranchisement. This was the year, 1784, in which the 1st Belfast Company attended the opening of the first Roman Catholic Church to be built in the town – a gesture of goodwill considered by the more cautious reformers to be unnecessarily cordial.5 Throughout the country Protestant support for Catholic enfranchisement was partial and prompted generally by considerations of expediency, but in Belfast it was directed by genuinely altruistic motives; here, for the first time were Irishmen prepared to struggle not only for their own liberty, but for that of their Catholic brothers, who since the Penal enactments had enjoyed no legal status in the country at all.
Until the reign of Anne all sections in Ireland had enjoyed the franchise to the same limited extent, but on account of the insecurity of the Protestant succession after the Revolution and the supposed Stuart sympathies of the Catholics in Ireland, legislation of the utmost severity was enacted against the Catholics from time to time between 1697 and 1746. These laws made it extremely difficult for Catholics to practise their religion and severely restricted their freedom to acquire land; they were forbidden to have their own schools and heavy penalties were inflicted on those who sent their children to be educated abroad; they were debarred from the professions [except medicine], from parliament and all public offices and from the franchise. Such abuse of power naturally encouraged the practice of every kind of evasive deception by the Catholics, and fostered the abominable system of proselytising and informing among the Protestants. It should be remembered that Dissenters, practically all Presbyterians, suffered also, though to a lesser extent. The Test Act of 1704 made it necessary for all persons holding public appointments to take Communion in the Established Church within three months of their assuming office. As a result, of the twelve aldermen of the city of Derry, ten Presbyterians were dismissed, as were fourteen of the twenty-four burgesses. In Belfast eight of the thirteen burgesses were Presbyterians and had to forfeit their seats. There were similar dismissals from the Bench and other official bodies; no Presbyterians could legally conduct a school, in many instances land would not be let to Presbyterian tenants6 and if magistrates so wished, church services could be declared illegal and the building of churches prohibited.
The position of the presbyterian ministers had been further complicated by the refusal of some to take the Oath of Abjuration, not wishing to be bound to the heirs of the House of Hanover, thus laying themselves open to a charge of Jacobitism, with which they had no sympathy at all.
As the years went by and fears of Jacobite risings diminished, penal legislation against both Dissenters and Catholics tended to fall into abeyance. In 1780 the Test Act was repealed and two years earlier the first considerable Catholic Relief Bill was passed: but, while the plight of the Catholics was vastly improved and they were acquiring positions of importance in trade, the pro-fessions and the Army remained closed to them and they were still denied all share in the government of the country.
In no part of Ireland was the Catholic population so sparse as in Antrim and Down, and according to an assessment of the population of Belfast in 1756 there were in the town 7,993 Protestants and 556 Catholics. It is true to say that the growing sympathy in Belfast for the Catholic cause was based entirely on grounds of political morality and social justice; but it is also true that in no other part of the country was there so little ground for fearing Catholic action, and that in spite of the dreadful memories of 1641. Indeed so late as 1791 Tone himself wrote that the people of Belfast know “wonderfully little” about the Catholics.7
In 1784 the Belfast Volunteers invited to their rank
persons of every religious persuasion, firmly convinced that a general Union of ALL the inhabitants of Ireland is necessary to the freedom and prosperity of this Kingdom, as it is congenial to the Constitution.8
This was a significant and radical move. Nowhere in the three kingdoms had such a gesture of tolerance been made. These Presbyterian Volunteers were groping their way towards a genuine brotherhood of man, based, in their case, on complete religious freedom. Five years had yet to pass before the people of France made their momentous stand in the name of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, which was to be hailed with rejoicing in Belfast.
It is necessary to review the causes which led to the intense sympathy felt in Ulster for the French Revolution, for, while the connection between France and other parts of Ireland through religious ties, trade, and the Irish refugees is well known, the closeness of the relationship with the North is not always appreciated.
William III, as compensation for the destruction of the Irish wool trade by the English parliament, had encouraged Huguenot families to settle in Ireland in the beginning of the century in order to develop the linen industry. [It is said that 6,000 Huguenots came to Ireland. A large proportion settled in and near Lisburn, Co. Antrim.] This they had done with conspicuous success in Ulster, and by now occupied positions of importance and great respect. There were also considerable trading connections between Belfast and France – for example members of the Black family were long-term residents in Bordeaux in connection with the wine business; we have seen, too, how Captain McCracken, once a prisoner in French hands, had insisted on his children becoming proficient in the French language, and there were many other such links. But the intense interest to be felt in Ulster for the French Revolution, while it was encouraged and fed by these contacts, was due to the religious and intellectual condition of the rising middle class around Belfast.
The Plantation of Ulster in the beginning of the seventeenth century, by English and Scottish settlers under government direction, did not include the counties of Antrim and Down. Down had been planted somewhat earlier by the private enterprise of two hard-headed Scots, Montgomery and Hamilton; and the McDonnells of Antrim, though Catholics themselves, had no scruples about importing Scottish Presbyterians to develop their lands. Consequently, by the middle of the seventeenth century there was a considerable Scottish population in the north-east corner of Ulster. This continued to be augmented by a stream of religious refugees from Scotland, Presbyterian extremists for the most part who, for one reason or another, found themselves subjected in their own country to disciplinary measures which they were anxious to avoid. Covenanters, Burghers, Antiburghers, Seceders – people who did not understand the meaning of compromise – sailed from the coasts of Cantyre and Ayr to the harbours of Antrim, the route from time immemorial of a two-way traffic between shores that are seldom out of sight. [It is said that 50,000 Scots came to Ulster in the years following 1690.9] Here, in the Antrim hinterland they settled, pursuing their independent courses unmolested. Through time some became integrated in the general Presbyterian community, others maintained their separateness with the tenacity of the persecuted, and all of them acted as a stimulus to an independence of mind that already existed.
In addition to this religious intensity, perhaps indeed because of it, there was widespread interest in the new philosophical thought. Locke’s writings were well known, there was close contact with the Scottish philosophers, Rousseau had his admirers even in the country towns, and when Paine published The Rights of Man it was at once hailed in Belfast with rapture, becoming in Wolfe Tone’s phrase “the Koran of Belfescu”. So, throughout
