Henry Grattan

Blended with Catholics

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The youth of the Kingdom too, they who in a few years must determine this question, they have decided for the emancipation, with a liberality which is natural to youth, and a sagacity which is peculiar to years — and they will sit soon in these seats, blended with Catholics, while we, blended with Catholics, shall repose in the dust. Another age shall laugh at all this.

In 1793 the Catholic Relief Act was passed, allowing Catholics who took an oath and fulfilled the other criteria to vote. This was the latest step in a long slow process eroding the Penal Laws. However it still fell a great deal short of what Tone had argued for in his Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland.

On 4th May 1795 Henry Grattan proposed “A bill for the relief of His Majesty’s Roman Catholic Subjects”. This would have allowed Catholic MPs. The young that Grattan refers to are the students of Trinity, who presented an address in favour of Catholic emancipation. The bill was rejected 155 to 84.

Full Catholic Emancipation had to wait until 1829, nine years after Grattan’s death.

Spirit of Swift – spirit of Molyneux

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I am now to address a free people. Ages have passed away , and this is the first moment in which you could be distinguished by that appelation. I have spoken on the subject of your liberty so often, that I have nothing to add, and have only to admire by what heaven-directed steps you have proceeded, until the whole faculty of the nation is braced up to the act of her own deliverance. I found Ireland on her knees – I watched over her with an eternal solicitude, and have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to Liberty. Spirit of Swift – spirit of Molyneaux – your genius has prevailed – Ireland is now a nation – in that new character I hail her; and bowing to her august presence, I say, Esto perpetua.

Printed version of the speech of Henry Grattan, 16th April 1782 in the event of the Irish Parliament gaining legislative independence. (It’s likely the invocation of William Molyneux and Jonathan Swift was not in the original spoken version.) Eighteen years later “Grattan’s Parliament” ended with the Act of Union.

(Biography of Henry Grattan, information on politics and administration in Ireland 1770-1815, via UCC. )