744 Chapter XXX
them was that “an Irish democratic republic, or rather anarchy, must be the first
and instant consequence of our separation.” Such a republic, allied to France, he
said, would bring chaos not to Ireland only, but to England. “It is part of our own
tenement which is in flames, and we come in absolute contact with this pestilent
contagion.” Even in England, in 1799, “internal discontent, or speculative error, or
the secret machinations of French corruption and English treason, or popular
hope” would all be aroused and amplified if both an Irish and a French republic lay
across the narrow seas. The old order in Ireland, in its old form, could not be main-
tained. But the Anglican supremacy in the smaller country, together with the ex-
isting order in Britain itself, would emerge safer and more secure, reconfirmed and
reinvigorated by their union.^63
So republicanism in both islands succumbed to the forces or persuasions of the
establishment. The movement was not only defeated, but in a way almost forgot-
ten. The United Irish attempt at a revolution fell into the category of lost causes, its
memory kept alive by circles of devotees, but its once living significance generally
disregarded. A historian of the United Irish found herself unable even to make a
list of towns in which lodges had existed, since records had been destroyed, and
local annalists had drawn a discreet veil over these embarrassing forebears.^64 In
Great Britain, when a democratic radicalism gathered strength again after 1830,
there was a certain hesitation, even by men who had lived through both phases, to
refer back to the days of the London Corresponding Society, to a time when dem-
ocratic ideas had been tainted by sympathy for another country’s revolution, and
for a government with which Britain was at war. It came to be believed in some
quarters that the disaffected had been not very numerous, and not very reputable.
Here was another victory for the levée en masse of the people of quality.
It is tempting to look once more into the mail pouches by which the far- flung
members of the British aristocracy were held together. Late in 1798 Lord Morn-
ington, as he made his preparations against the Sultan of Mysore, and fretted
about Jacobinism in his native Ireland, and the future of his own large estates
there, received a communication sent to him months before by William Eden,
Lord Auckland. It was the same Auckland who had urged upon Grenville, in
1792, the need of making Britons aware of their special blessings. Writing in
April, Auckland had to admit that the news from Ireland was very bad. But in
England the outlook was better. “With respect to this good old island,” said Auck-
land, “I can say with extreme pleasure and confidence that I have never seen it so
rightly disposed. There certainly exist in London, Manchester and other places,
clubs and secret societies of men connected and affiliated as ‘United English’ on
grounds of the wildest and bloodiest democracy. But they are few in number, and
composed of the refuse of mankind.”^65
Vae victis!
63 Parliamentary History, X X XIV, 771–72.
64 Jacob, 5.
65 The Wellesley Papers: The Life and Correspondence of Richard Colley Wellesley, Marquess Wellesley... ,
2 vols. (London, 1914), I, 52–53.