Irish Patriot Party | |
|---|---|
| Leader | Henry Flood (1760s–1780s) Henry Grattan (1780s–1800) |
| Founded | c. 1760 |
| Dissolved | c. 1803 |
| Merged into | British Whig Party |
| Headquarters | Dublin,Kingdom of Ireland |
| Ideology | Whiggism Irish nationalism Irish autonomy Catholic emancipation (factional) Irish autonomy Classical liberalism Free trade |
| Political position | Centre tocentre-left |
| Slogan | "The channel forbids union; the ocean forbids separation" |
TheIrish Patriot Party, also referred to as theIrish Whigs, was an informal political grouping in theIrish House of Commons during the 18th century. They were primarily supportive ofWhig concepts of personal liberty combined with an Irish identity that rejected full independence but advocated strong self-government within theBritish Empire.
Due to the discriminatorypenal laws, theIrish Parliament at the time was exclusivelyAnglican Protestant. Their main achievement was theConstitution of 1782, which gave Ireland legislative independence.
In 1689, a short-lived "Patriot Parliament" had sat in Dublin beforeJames II, and briefly obtainedde facto legislative independence, while ultimately subject to the English monarchy. The parliament's membership mostly consisted of land-owning Roman CatholicJacobites who lost the ensuingWar of the Grand Alliance in 1689–91.
The name was then used from the 1720s to describe Irish supporters of the British Whig party, specifically the Patriot faction within it.Swift's "Drapier's Letters" and earlier works byDomville,Molyneaux andLucas are seen as precursors, deploring the undue control exercised by the British establishment over the Irish political system. In contrast with the 1689 parliament, this movement consisted of middle-class Protestants. The appointed senior political and church officials were usually English-born.
The "Money Bill dispute" of 1753–56 arose from the refusal ofHenry Boyle, an MP andChancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland, to allow an Irish revenue surplus to be paid over to London. Supported by theEarl of Kildare andThomas Carter, Boyle was dismissed by the viceroyDorset, and then appealed to public opinion as a defender of Irish interests. In 1755 thenext viceroy arranged a favourable compromise, and Boyle was re-instated and createdEarl of Shannon.[1]
It was also used to describe Irish allies of the Patriot Whigs ofWilliam Pitt the Elder in the 1750s and 1760s. The philosophy was that their legal and trading benefits, and personal freedoms of being of English origin derived from theMagna Carta, and more so theBill of Rights that arose from the 1688Glorious Revolution, were absent for those living in Ireland. TheDependency Act 1719 was considered particularly contentious.
In the latter half of the 18th century some influential but relatively small grouping of Irish politicians emerged who called themselves the Irish Patriot Party. It was led in its early years byHenry Flood who was succeeded byHenry Grattan, who inspired the party for most of its life.
Its members came to prominence during theAmerican War of Independence when they pushed for legislative independence for Ireland. With the possible threat of invasion by France in 1778, a large militia had been formed known as theIrish Volunteers. In the absence of the regular garrison, they served largely as a bargaining tool for the Irish patriot politicians in their bid to gain greater powers from London, without having to fire a shot in anger. Similar to the American colonists before 1776, they arranged local "non-importation agreements" in 1779, where the signatories undertook not to buy British goods as a form ofBoycott protest. Their aim was complete self-government.
The youngJonah Barrington recalled the "military ardour which seized all Ireland, when the whole country had entered into resolutions to free itself forever from English domination. The entire kingdom took up arms, regiments were formed in every quarter, the highest, the lowest, and the middle orders, all entered the ranks of freedom, and every corporation, whether civil or military, pledged life and fortune to attain and establish Irish independence."
"My father had raised and commanded two corps—a dragoon regiment called the Cullenagh Rangers, and the Ballyroan Light Infantry. My elder brother commanded the Kilkenny Horse and the Durrow Light Dragoons. The general enthusiasm caught me, and before I well knew what I was about, I found myself a military martinet and a red-hot patriot. Having been a university man, I was also considered to be, of course, a writer, and was accordingly called on to draw up resolutions for volunteer regiments all over the county."[2]
In April 1782, Grattan argued against compromise and secured autonomy. The Dublin parliament voted him £100,000 in thanks, of which he accepted £50,000.[3] Fearing a similarsecession to the one that had just lost them theThirteen American colonies, the British government agreed to their demands.George Washington had announced provocatively to the Irish, "Your cause is identical with mine".[4]
Such was the influence of Grattan that the subsequent eighteen years of greater legislative independence were known asGrattan's Parliament, with the odiousDependency Act 1719 repealed by theRepeal of Act for Securing Dependence of Ireland Act 1782. The sympatheticFox-North Coalition government in London agreed that the Irish parliament would legislate exclusively for Ireland. Having support from the Irish parliament and the British government. "Wanting the fullest constitutional agreement on the new status of Ireland, Grattan also sought and obtained a further Declaratory Act from theParliament of Great Britain that was passed on 22 January 1783, which included this formula:
The only remaining constitutional link between the monarchies of Ireland and Britain was the Crown, represented by the viceroy. Grattan's view was that a beneficial link should be maintained with Britain and compared his policy to Ireland'sgeographic situation in a neat formula: "TheChannel forbids union; theocean forbids separation".
The reformist Patriots struggled in the following years to gain anything approaching a majority on social reform issues in theIrish House of Commons, but in 1793, another Catholic Relief Act was passed. In 1789 the reformist element formally established the "Irish Whig Party" but soon lost goodwill in London for its views on theRegency crisis.
The French Revolution emphasised the Patriots' divisions. The major reform of theRoman Catholic Relief Act 1793 allowed Catholics to vote, to practice as lawyers, to act asgrand jurors and to enterTrinity College Dublin as students, but this reform had to be pushed along by London, no doubt to Grattan's embarrassment. Opponents of this reform spoke of the need to protect a "Protestant Ascendancy". The 1793 Act was based on the BritishRoman Catholic Relief Act 1791. A short-livedCatholic Irish Brigade was formed in 1794 from refugee royalist officers from the formerly FrenchIrish Brigade.
The growth of the radicalUnited Irish movement from 1791 upstaged Grattan by calling for a complete break with Britain and full emancipation for all religions in a new republic. Given its support for France in the War of theFirst Coalition, it was outlawed in 1795.
In 1795, the London government sponsored reforms, to head off trouble, by repealing theHearth tax and funding a Catholic seminary in the form ofSt Patrick's College, Maynooth. However, earlier in the year it had quickly recalled the new viceroyLord Fitzwilliam, who had intended to effect further Catholic reliefs and to appoint Grattan to the administration. The sacking of FitzWilliam and the imposition ofmartial law in March 1797 caused Grattan and his supportive group of MPs to withdraw from parliament in May 1797, and by then the civil unrest caused by the army, the militia, theOrange Order, theDefenders and theUnited Irishmen had made Ireland ungovernable.
The unsuccessful1798 rebellion launched in May 1798 by the republicanUnited Irishmen seriously damaged the Patriot cause. Although most liberal Patriots opposed the rebellion, they became tarnished by association, and support dropped for them in Britain. Some Patriot MPs of the 1780s, such asJames Napper Tandy andLord Edward FitzGerald, had become United Irish leaders in the 1790s. The Rebellion, which had been launched in coordination with a French invasion, provoked the British government ofWilliam Pitt into pushing through the 1800Act of Union, merging the parliaments of Ireland and Great Britain into the new "United Kingdom". Naturally, the Patriots opposed this in heated debates in 1799 and 1800.
Following theAct of Union 1800, the Irish Parliament was abolished. A few Irish Patriots took up seats in the new unifiedBritish House of Commons in London, under the notional leadership of Grattan. Within a few years, they had become almost entirely submerged within theBritish Whig Party, with whom they were allied, and disappeared from the political landscape.
Grattan's advocacy of liberal-minded moderateIrish nationalist self-rule with links to Britain had a resonance over the following century. It was taken up byDaniel O'Connell'sRepeal Association in the 1830s that intended to repeal the Act of Union; by theYoung Ireland movement in the 1840s; and later by theIrish Parliamentary Party (IPP) that campaigned for the restoration ofHome Rule in Ireland. The IPP and its successors dominated the political scene in Ireland for decades until its defeat by the fully secessionistSinn Féin movement in the1918 general election.
