Benjamin Franklin thought that the Irish parliament could potentially be an ally of the American colonies in seeking independence from Britain. Once America began to struggle free, Franklin also believed that a direct trade agreement could be reached between the United States and Ireland by means of a formal commercial treaty. The first American consular office established in Ireland would report in 1790 that ‘no country in Europe contains more real friends to America … who rejoice more in her rising prospects’ than Ireland.62 The Irish parliament of the day, however, was never the potential friend to America that Franklin believed. Simon Harcourt, a former British ambassador to Paris and the English lord lieutenant of Ireland, had persuaded the Irish parliament to send 4,000 troops to put down the American struggle for independence and also to raise an Irish volunteer force to defend the English colony in Ireland in these soldiers’ absence. Thereafter, William Eden, a member of the British imperial board of trade who had attempted to outfox the Americans, decided upon being appointed leader of the Irish administration to remove the restrictions on direct trade between Ireland and the colonies solely in an effort to defeat the French naval blockade of supplies to the British troops.63 Once it became clear that this strategy had failed and it had lost its American colonies, the British imperial parliament passed three acts to set down rules for the Irish administration. The supremacy of the British Privy Council in all legal matters was reaffirmed. Although it was stated that the British parliament did not legislate directly for Ireland, it was ruled that the Irish parliament must enact any legislation relating to overseas trade that had been adopted in the imperial parliament.64
Some absentee landowners in Ireland were in favour of abolishing the Irish parliament altogether, considering it irrelevant compared to the ever-growing economic needs of the empire. Through espousing such politics, some Irishmen such as George Macartney became governors of the British West Indies, Ireland, the East India Company and the Cape of Good Hope, as well as a British ambassador to China.65 Similar motives inspired William Eden’s move, as a British Privy Councillor and vice-treasurer for Ireland, in creating a Bank of Ireland in 1783. Although nominally a national bank, it was actually a sister bank to the Bank of England and was governed by a former British diplomat. He had been able to establish his own bank in Ireland upon marrying the daughter of a wealthy London banker and buying a sugar plantation in the British West Indies.66 Henceforth, plantation owners in Dublin as well as in the rising new northern town of Belfast were able to manage their West Indies plantations from afar and, in turn, use this wealth to create in their hometowns new chambers of commerce that had a decidedly imperial focus.67 Meanwhile, Britain’s response to Catholic petitions to have their liberties restored was to allow them to serve in the British army and to permit some to vote whilst still denying them a right to sit in parliament. Purposively, a state-funded Catholic seminary college was created at Maynooth in order to make the historic Irish Colleges on the European continent redundant while a Jesuit college was established at Stonyhurst, England to serve as a launching pad for wealthy Irish Catholics to enter the British diplomatic service.68
A group of republican clubs known as the Society of United Irishmen had called for the reform of the Irish parliament to make it a representative national assembly that would include Irishmen of all religious denominations. This demand, however, came from outside the Irish parliament, mostly from journalists, minor merchants and some volunteers. Ultimately, the potential impact of the United Irishmen initiative was neutralised by the lack of any effective platform after the disbandment of the Catholic petition movement and the outlawing of volunteering. A wealthy Londoner who had experience of British diplomatic work suggested to the United Irishmen that they cultivate links with revolutionary France. This same man, however, had also been the leader of the University of Cambridge branch of the freemasons, a fraternity that was an instrument of the British Empire’s military networks and foreign policy intrigues.69 Thereafter, the United Irish movement became an underground movement that involved British intelligence operatives whose sole purpose was to manipulate Irish political circumstances in order to bring about an Act of Union between Britain and Ireland.70 As a result, the United Irish leaders, perhaps mostly notably Lord Edward FitzGerald, a great admirer of the United States who renounced his aristocratic title upon befriending Thomas Paine in Paris,71 effectively became the victims of a conspiracy. Although not an admirer of the United States, Theobald Wolfe Tone would later be described by many as a founder of Irish nationalism. In his writings, he espoused the novel idea of an Irish parliament being a neutral in Britain’s wars whilst also acting as an eloquent United Irish advocate for Catholic liberties. However, Tone’s subsequent career, upon being persuaded to join the French army and promote two minor French invasion attempts of Ireland, was an unmitigated disaster that can best be described as a mere footnote to the French revolutionary wars.72
The chief architect of the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland in 1800 was Robert Stewart, a Dublin Presbyterian who converted to Anglicanism at Cambridge University so that he could intermarry with the British aristocracy, acquire the new title of Viscount Castlereagh and inherit family seats in both the British and Irish parliaments. Castlereagh would become famous internationally for organising a diplomatic alliance with Prussia and Russia to defeat Napoleonic France and subsequently chairing the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) to redraw the map of Europe. In Ireland, however, he was widely denounced for provoking and suppressing (in a very draconian fashion) an ill-advised rebellion in the summer of 1798 and subsequently bribing MPs into accepting his union proposals.73 Meanwhile, expatriated Irishmen had little bearing on either the revolutionary wars or Castlereagh’s attempts to contain them. The loyalty of a century-old Irish brigade in the French army to the Bourbon dynasty had led to its disbandment in 1792. Reflecting Robert Emmet’s brief attempt to organise another Irish rebellion that year, a Napoleonic Irish Legion was formed in 1803 that carried on its flag an image of a crownless harp and the inscription ‘L’independence d’Irlande’, but this legion would not survive the restoration of Bourbon monarchical rule in 1815.74 Among those United Irishmen who survived the British intelligence war with France were some who found a better life in the United States. This included a future American consul to France as well as men who, upon entering academic or professional life in America, formed pioneering (and non-denominational) Irish American voluntary organisations that championed the cause of full political liberties for Catholics not only in America but also in Britain and Ireland.75
During Castlereagh’s term as foreign secretary (1812–20), British governments under Prime Minister Lord Liverpool broke promises made to Irish politicians at the time of the Act of Union that Ireland would retain a distinct exchequer. Lord Liverpool abolished all Irish customs houses, in the process making all Irish ports mere extensions of that of the city of Liverpool, where new shipping companies now carried all trade to and from Ireland and all customs were collected. This engendered Dublin’s dramatic economic decline and also quickly put an end to Cork, Limerick and Galway’s status as Atlantic ports.76 Traditional Irish links with the European continent also declined rapidly. Some interest in French soldiering would remain in Ireland up until the 1870s, when there were Irish celebrations of the choice of Marshal Patrice de MacMahon as the first president of the Third Republic. However, like the Franco-Irish composer Augusta Holmes’ miliantly nationalist symphonic piece Irlande (1882), this was essentially an echo of purely
