Page 284 - Demo

284
Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
“Talking politics with one of the mill-men...go to his cabin to drink whisky with him. A wife and two children. Says ‘I think liberty worth risquing life for. In a cause of that sort I think I should have courage enough from reflexion to brave death.’ One of his children was climbing on his knee. ‘as for my part,’ says he, ‘it does not much signify now as to myself but it grieves me to breed up these children to be slaves. I would gladly risqué all to prevent that.’ When will a man of fortune in Ireland reason thus?”
Thomas Russell
So with the support of the people, the United Irish movement spread throughout the land-but it was the speed with which it spread that most alarmed those in authority. The reasons for this were as follows. In 1795, William Wentworth Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl of Fit- zwilliam, was sent to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant. Thought to have been both honest and agreeable, Fitzwilliam was heralded as being the man who would finally introduce Catholic Emancipation, and because of this, he made, as one commentator said ‘All Ireland jubilant.’
Furthermore, because of the standing in which he was held, he also received huge sup- port in both men and money to assist England in her cause against France. But within three months the English Parliament renaged on its promises, recalled the conciliatory Fitzwil- liam, and appointed the bitterly hostile Charles Pratt, Ist Earl of Camden in his place. Cam- den immediately re-instated all those dismissed by Fitzwilliam and pursued a reactionary policy which initially roused and incensed the Catholic community and in turn the great body of Liberal Protestants.
This was one cause of the sudden forward leap of the United Irishmen, who in their progress became a secret, oathbound society, who adopted a military organisation, and
f