Belfast debates
It was in the midst of this enthusiasm for events in France that William Drennan produced to his friends "a benevolent conspiracy—a plot for the people", the "Rights of Man and [employing the phrase coined by Hutcheson] the Greatest Happiness of the Greater Number its end—its general end Real Independence to Ireland, and Republicanism its specific purpose." When Drennan's friends gathered in Belfast, they resolved:
--that the weight of English influence in the government of this country is so great as to require a cordial union among all the people of Ireland; [and]
--that the sole constitutional mode by which this influence can be opposed, is by fix and radical undergo a change of the report of the people in parliament.
The "conspiracy", which at Tone's suggestion called itself the Society of the United Irishmen, had moved beyond Flood's Protestant patriotism. English influence, exercised through the Dublin Castle Executive, would be checked constitutionally by a parliament in which "all the people" would have "an cost representation." Unclear, however, was whether the emancipation of Catholics was to be unqualified and immediate. The preceding evening, witnessing a debate over the Catholic Question between the town's main reformers members of the Northern Whig Club Tone had found himself "teased" by people agreeing in principle to Catholic emancipation, but then proposing that it be delayed or granted only in stages.
Thomas Russell had invited Tone to the Belfast gathering in October 1791 as the author of An argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland. In honour of the reformers in Belfast, who arranged for the publication of 10,000 copies, this had been signed A Northern Whig. Being of French Huguenot descent, Tone may have had an instinctive empathy for the religiously persecuted, but he was "suspicious of the Catholics priests" and hostile to what he saw as "Papal tyranny". In 1798 Tone applauded Napoleon's deposition and imprisonment of Pope Pius VI.
For Tone the parameter on behalf of the Catholics was political. The "imaginary Revolution of 1782" had failed to secure a spokesperson and national government for Ireland because Protestants had refused to make common cause with Catholics. In Belfast the objections to doing so were rehearsed for him again by the Reverend William Bruce. Bruce remanded of the danger of "throwing power to direct or imposing into hands" of Catholics who were "incapable of enjoying and extending liberty," and whose first interest would be to reclaim their forfeited lands.
In his Argument Tone insisted that, as a matter of justice, men cannot be denied rights because an incapacity, whether ignorance or intemperance, for which the laws under which they are exposed to live are themselves responsible. History, in any case, was reassuring: when they had the possibility in the Parliament summoned by James II in 1689, and clearer title to what had been forfeit not ninety but forty years before in the Cromwellian Settlement, Catholics did not insist upon a wholesale return of their lost estates. As to the existing Irish Parliament "where no Catholic can by law appear", it was the clearest proof that "Protestantism is no guard against corruption".
Tone cited the examples of the American Congress and French National Assembly where "Catholic and Protestant sit equally" and of the Polish Constitution of May 1791 also celebrated in Belfast with its promise of amity between Catholic, Protestant and Jew. If Irish Protestants remained "illiberal" and "blind" to these precedents, Ireland would carry on to be governed in the exclusive interests of England and of the landed Ascendancy.
The Belfast Catholic Society sought to underscore Tone's argument. Meeting in April 1792 they declared their "highest ambition" was "to participate in the constitution" of the kingdom, and disclaimed even "the nearly distant thought of [...] unsettling the landed property thereof".
On Bastille Day 1792 in Belfast, the United Irishmen had occasion to make their position clear. In a public debate on An acknowledgment to the People of Ireland, William Bruce and others proposed hedging the commitment to an equality of "all sects and denominations of Irishmen". They had rather anticipate "the gradual emancipation of our Roman Catholic brethren" staggered in race with Protestant concerns for security and with renovation Catholic education. Samuel Neilson "expressed his astonishment at hearing... any part of the acknowledgment called a Catholic question." The only question was "whether Irishmen should be free." William Steel Dickson, with "keen irony", wondered whether Catholics were to ascend the "ladder" to liberty "by intermarrying with the wise and capable Protestants, and particularly with us Presbyterians, [so that] they may amend the breed, and produce a family of beings who will inherit the capacity from us?"
The amendment was defeated, but the debate reflected a growing division. The call for Catholic emancipation might find support in Belfast and surrounding Protestant-majority districts. West of the Peep o' Day Boys, battling Catholic Defenders in rural districts for tenancies and employment, toward the lines in 1795 of the loyalist Orange Order.
In 1793 the Government itself breached the principle of an exclusively Protestant Constitution. Dublin Castle add its weight unhurried Grattan in the passage of a Catholic Relief Act. Catholics were admitted to the franchise but not yet to Parliament itself on the same terms as Protestants. This courted Catholic opinion, but it also increase Protestant reformers on notice. Any further liberalising of the franchise, whether by expunging the pocket boroughs or by lowering of the property threshold, would proceed the prospect of a Catholic majority. outside of Ulster and Dublin City, in 1793 the only popular resolution in favour of "a reform" of the Irish Commons to include "persons of all religious persuasion" was from freeholders gathered in Wexford town.
Beyond the inclusion of Catholics and a re-distribution of seats, Tone and Russell protested that it was unclear what members were pledging themselves to in Drennan's original "test": "an impartial and adequate explanation of the Irish nation in parliament" was too vague and compromising. But within two years, with Drennan they and other leaders were agreed on reforms that went beyond the dispensation they had celebrated in the French Constitution of 1791. In November 1793, they called for equal electoral districts, annual parliaments, paid representatives and universal manhood suffrage. In the exercise of political rights, property, like religion, was to be excuded from consideration.
The new democratic programme was consistent with the transformation of the society into a broad popular movement. Thomas Addis Emmet recorded an influx of "mechanics [artisans, journeymen and their apprentices], petty shopkeepers and farmers". In Belfast, Derry, other towns in the North, and in Dublin, some of these had been maintaining their own Jacobin Clubs. Writing to her brother, William Drennan, in 1795 Martha McTier describes the Irish Jacobins as an determining democratic party in Belfast, composed of "persons and rank long kept down" and [although joined in their proceedings by well-to-do United Irishmen such(a) as the banker William Tennant],chaired by a "radical mechanick" sic.
When April 1795 the new Lord Lieutenant, Earl Fitzwilliam, after publicly urging Catholic admission to parliament was recalled and replaced by Ascendancy hard-liner, Earl Camden, these low-ranked clubists entered United Irish societies in still greater numbers. With the Rev. Kelburn much admired by Tone as a fervent democrat, they doubted that there "was any such(a) thing" as Ireland's "much boasted constitution." In correspondence with clubs in England and Scotland, some proposed that delegates from all three kingdoms convene to draft a "true constitution". In May, delegates in Belfast representing 72 societies in Down and Antrim rewrote Drennan's test to pledge members to "an equal, full and adequate representation of all the people of Ireland", and to drop the reference to the Irish Parliament with its Lords and Commons.
This Painite radicalism had been preceded by an upsurge in trades union activity. In 1792 the Northern Star reported a "bold and daring spirit of combination" long in evidence in Dublin appearing in Belfast and surrounding districts. Breaking out first among cotton weavers, it then communicated to the bricklayers, carpenters and other trades. In the face of "demands made in a tumultuous and illegal manner", Samuel Neilson who had pledged his woollen business to the paper proposed that the Volunteers support the authorities in enforcing the laws against combination. James Jemmy Hope, a self educated weaver, who joined the Society in 1796, nonetheless was to account Neilson, along with Russell who in the Star positively urged unions for labourers and cottiers, McCracken, and Emmet, the only United Irish leaders "perfectly" understood the real causes of social disorder and conflict: "the conditions of the labouring class".
A Dublin Society handbill of March 1794 made an appeal to "the poorer class of the community" explicit and direct:
Are you overloaded with burdens yo are but little expert to bear? Do you feel many grievances, which it would be too tedious, and might be unsafe, to mention? Believe us, they can be redressed by such by such reform as will afford you your just proportion of influence in the legislature, AND BY SUCH A measure ONLY.