124 Chapter VI
discussion of the American problem. Irish developments had a more than Irish
significance.
When one speaks of Ireland at this time it is the Anglo- Irish who are meant.^23
They were colonists in a way, Protestant descendants of the English and Scotch
who had occupied Ireland in the seventeenth century, and who now constituted
about a fifth of the population. Although in 1756 there was formed a Catholic
Committee which later became important, the notable thing about the Catholic
and native Irish in the mid- century was their silence. The Anglo- Irish in part gov-
erned and in part ignored the indigenous population. They enjoyed a certain au-
tonomy with respect to Great Britain, so that in a formal constitutional sense
Anglo- Ireland offered a model which many in England, after the repeal of the
Stamp Act, thought might be suitable for America. The Irish Parliament has been
briefly described in Chapter II. It was scarcely representative even of the Anglo-
Irish. But it levied the Irish taxes, and it passed laws for Ireland, subject to control
by the government at Westminster. It maintained 12,000 soldiers of the British
army in Ireland at Irish expense; there were also certain pensions and sinecures
defrayed from the Irish revenue, but available for enjoyment in England. Ireland
recognized the right of the British Parliament to regulate external trade. Anglo-
Irish discontent matured slowly, and flared up only when encouraged by the
American Revolution. In some ways, however, it preceded that of either England
or America. In Charles Lucas the Irish had “a Wilkes before Wilkes.” In Moly-
neux they had a writer who as long ago as 1698 had contended for the equality of
the Irish Parliament with the British, as Americans in the 1760’s came to do for
their own assemblies. They had had their Declaratory Act in 1719. By mid- century
they were beginning to chafe at the trade regulations, which were, for Ireland, very
severe. Designed to protect English manufacturers, the regulations permitted the
export of Irish linens, but forbade any export of woolens, glass, and a number of
other items from Ireland, or the levy of import taxes on English goods.
An Anglo- Irish “colonial nationalism,” as Irish historians call it, thus accompa-
nied the rise of an American colonial nationalism in the 1760’s. As in America, the
defeat of the French brought it to the surface. After 1763 the Anglo- Irish no lon-
ger had to fear French invasion, or the mass rising of the native Irish in collabora-
tion with French invaders. Anglo- Irish demands for reform were increasingly
heard. Anglo- Irish and Americans were conscious of common interests; the
Americans read Molyneux and Lucas, and Irishmen told one another in their Par-
liament that the “cause of America is yours.” With thousands of Presbyterian Irish
emigrating to America every year, a larger proportion of the Protestant Irish than
of the English had friends and relatives in America at this time.
The Lord Lieutenant sent over in 1767, Viscount Townshend (brother of the
Townshend of the “Townshend Acts”), was the first viceroy permanently to reside,
or to be instructed by the British government to make concessions to reformers.
Townshend, aided by Lucas and the reformers, put the Octennial Act through the
23 For Ireland at this time see R. B. McDowell, Irish Public Opinion, 1750–1800 (London, 1943),
9–51; M. Kraus, “America and the Irish Revolutionary Movement in the 18th Century,” in R. B. Mor-
ris, ed., The Era of the American Revolution (N.Y., 1939); G. O’Brien, Economic History of Ireland in the
18th Century (Dublin and London, 1918); E. Curtis, History of Ireland (London, 1936).