and individuals and to hereby offer a reward of five guineas, for the conviction of each of the first twenty persons, illegally armed and assembled as aforesaid.22
For Drennan, this brutal incident was a major setback and of course, he had supported and perhaps even helped in arming the Catholics of the Newry Volunteers. He knew that Lord Charlemont and Brownlow would hold a meeting to discuss the atrocity and would ask, ‘why should we tolerate, why should we commit arms and rights to such savages as these Catholics?’ For Drennan this was not the central question; rather, he would ask ‘Why did you make them and keep them savages? For that they are such is without question. All this will put off the day of general freedom – the barbarians and Mr. Burke, and this island will be the last redeemed in all Europe.’23
It is not clear why Drennan mentions Edmund Burke in this context. Burke’s son Richard had recently been engaged by the Catholic Committee as its agent. Richard’s main advisor was, of course, his father. The elder Burke had always argued that the best way to bind Irish Catholics to the Empire was to extend toleration, including the acceptance of Catholics into the British armed forces. Burke was advocating a war against Revolutionary France and he believed that further toleration of the Catholics was unavoidable. He was pleased with the way the Irish Catholics had ‘proceeded with deference and submission to the law, notwithstanding the endeavours of neighbouring countries suggesting to them to wrest [toleration] by force and violence’.24 We cannot be sure what Burke meant by ‘neighbouring countries’ but he was already concerned that what he called the ‘French disease’ had altered the minds of the Irish Catholics that ‘they will not in future bear the lash of Tyranny and oppression’.25
The law was changed to permit the recruitment of Catholics into the army and navy. Within a matter of months after the outbreak of the war with France in 1793, twenty-two new regiments were raised in Ireland.26 By the following year, Irish Catholics made up one third of the strength of the British army. In one theatre of the war alone, the West Indies, 43,000 Irish soldiers perished between 1794 and 1801.27 Had any Irish Catholics who had not been recruited into the army, or the militia, been found in possession of arms during those years, they faced imprisonment, transportation or execution. Both Drennan and Burke agreed that Catholics should have the right to bear arms but for different reasons. Drennan believed that Catholic and Protestant Irishmen should have the right to bear arms to defend their country and their civil and religious liberties. Burke believed that Irish Catholics should have the right to bear arms to defend the British Empire.
8
A BENEVOLENT CONSPIRACY
Drennan’s negative views of the Whig Club hardened as he observed its activities in Dublin. He dismissed it as ‘an eating and drinking aristocratical society without any fellow feeling with the commonality. When the people come forward these men draw back, and when they come forward, the People are lifeless and there is no strength in them’.1
Theobald Wolfe Tone also derided what he called ‘the puny efforts of the Whig Club’ and lamented that they had turned their faces against parliamentary reform.2 In the winter of 1790, Tone invited Drennan, Joseph Pollock, Thomas Addis Emmet, Thomas Russell, John Stack and Whitley Stokes to form a political club which met in Trinity College. Stack and Stokes were Fellows of the College. However, there was a lethargy amongst the radicals at this point and the ‘great things’ which Tone hoped for from his club did not materialise.3
However, the unfolding dramas in France and reaction to those events in Ireland soon breathed life, energy and a new-found enthusiasm into the radicals. Tone tells us that when ‘the French Revolution was “about twelve months in progress” [autumn of 1790] ... at length Mr. Burke’s famous invective appeared; and this in due season produced Paine’s reply which he called “Rights of Man”. This controversy and the gigantic events which gave rise to it changed in an instance the politics of Ireland’.4
In May 1791, Drennan revived his plan for a club of conspiratorial radicals. He wrote to Sam McTier in the hope that Sam would discuss the idea with his friends in Belfast. Drennan told Sam that he much desired that a society be instituted having much of the secrecy and somewhat of the ceremony of freemasonry. He envisaged:
A benevolent conspiracy – a plot of the people – no Whig Cub. No party title – the Brotherhood, its name – the rights of man and the greatest happiness of the greatest number its end5 – its general end real independence to Ireland and republicanism its particular purpose ... Communication with the leading men in France, in England and America so as to cement the shifting sand of republicanism into a body.6
Sam showed this letter in confidence to several gentlemen in Belfast, most of whom approved very much of it. The people with whom McTier consulted were not just a random group of friends or acquaintances. Nancy Curtin tells us McTier’s discussions were with men of substance as they were ‘a secret committee of Volunteers who constituted an advance democratic party in the radical town of Belfast. The leader of this group of eleven radical Dissenters was Samuel Neilson a prosperous linen merchant and also the son of a Presbyterian minister’.7
One person not associated with the secret committee, whom McTier brought into his confidence, was the newly arrived assistant Minister to Rosemary Lane, William Bruce. Bruce did not at all approve of the idea. He told Sam that he had argued against secrecy when Drennan first proposed the idea years earlier. Sam decided not to show the letter to Dr Haliday because he believed he would pass it on to Charlemont who most likely would not like the proposal. In Sam’s view, Haliday merely ‘wished to stand well with Charlemont and was greatly prejudiced against the Catholics’.8
In the same letter, Sam reported the rejoicing in Belfast at the news of the arrest of the King of France. Drennan felt that Martha, despite her illness, must be interested in this development. For his part, he was delighted to see ‘the sovereign in the common sewer, and [as] Burke would say the fish woman in the sovereignty’.9
At about this time, preparations were underway in Belfast for a celebration of the second anniversary of the fall of the Bastille on 14 July 1791. The secret committee had asked Sam to draw up declarations or resolutions to be considered for what they hoped would be the most numerous gathering of Volunteers ever in Belfast. He knew that he had been asked only in the hope of getting something from his brother-in-law’s pen. He begged Drennan to let him know if he would oblige and how soon they could expect it.10 The last line in Sam’s letter must have encouraged Drennan for it read, ‘if your club, brotherhood takes place we will immediately follow your example’.11
Drennan replied with a draft resolution which he felt might be ‘too spirited’ for Sam and his group to assent to. However, he warned that he would not agree to any alteration to his draft. He was sorry that he had not room to express the necessity of conciliating the interests of Catholics and Protestants at present. He told Sam that the aristocratic Catholics, led by Lords Kenmare and Fingal, were in a treaty with the government. They had been told that ‘if they kept their fellow Catholics quiet that they would eventually get similar indulgences as the English Catholics had been given’. Drennan believed this was designed to divide the two great bodies, the Catholics and the Presbyterians, ‘particularly at this time when Burke had foolishly licked up such a spirit and the “French disease” seemed so catching’.12 If the government were to deliver on its promises Drennan suggested:
‘In giving a sop to Cerberus13 he will fall asleep’. If they do not, then the democratic part of the Catholics will have double energy and it is probably [sic] they will carry the whole body with them ... If therefore the Presbyterians come forward by drawing up some articles as a base, as it were, of amity and alliance between the two bodies in a common cause, this common agreement, this point of union, would shock government more than anything.14
He suggested that ‘14 July would be a good occasion for the northerners to show the Catholics that they were liberal enough to allow them their rights of entering the bar, of being justices of the peace and magistrates, their right to carry arms and also the right to the franchise.’15 As he reminded Sam, ‘when the Catholics were armed in the Newry Volunteers, they were at the mercy of any rogue or rascal who could have them subject to a fine of £50 or £100 and imprisonment for six months, if a firelock be found in their houses’.16