Irish Patriot Party

The Irish Patriot Party was the name of a number of different political groupings in Ireland throughout the 18th century. They were primarily supportive of

The name was then used from the 1720s to describe Irish supporters of the British Whig party, specifically the Patriot faction within it. Swift's "Drapier's Letters" and earlier works by Domville, Molyneaux and Lucas are seen as precursors, deploring the undue control exercised by the British establishment over the Irish political system. In contrast with the 1689 parliament, this movement consisted of middle-class Protestants. The appointed senior political and church officials were usually English-born.

The "

In the latter half of the 18th century some influential but relatively small grouping of Irish politicians emerged who called themselves the Irish Patriot Party. It was led in its early years by Henry Flood who was succeeded by Henry Grattan, who inspired the party for most of its life.

Limited success

Its members came to prominence during the

• They also wanted
  Navigation Acts. Merchants had to sell through England and could not trade directly with other countries or even the rest of the British Empire
  . A host of Irish goods were banned from export including wool. Reforming the Navigation Acts in December 1779 was the Patriots' most useful achievement, and fostered a modest economic boom in the 1780s.
• While the Patriots and the viceroy Lord Lieutenant of Ireland led Irish administration often disagreed strongly on how the country should be governed, they shared a belief that Ireland should have greater self-government. Controls such as Poynings' Law were abolished.
• From 1780, the Irish Parliament refused to vote for taxes to support the British government in and out of Ireland.

The young Jonah Barrington recalled the "military ardour which seized all Ireland, when the whole country had entered into resolutions to free itself for ever from English domination. The entire kingdom took up arms, regiments were formed in every quarter, the highest, the lowest, and the middle orders, all entered the ranks of freedom, and every corporation, whether civil or military, pledged life and fortune to attain and establish Irish independence."

"My father had raised and commanded two corps—a dragoon regiment called the Cullenagh Rangers, and the Ballyroan Light Infantry. My elder brother commanded the Kilkenny Horse and the Durrow Light Dragoons. The general enthusiasm caught me, and before I well knew what I was about, I found myself a military martinet and a red-hot patriot. Having been a university man, I was also considered to be, of course, a writer, and was accordingly called on to draw up resolutions for volunteer regiments all over the county."^[2]

In April 1782, Grattan argued against compromise and secured autonomy. The Dublin parliament voted him £100,000 in thanks, of which he accepted £50,000.^[3] Fearing a similar secession to the one that had just lost them the Thirteen American colonies, the British government agreed to their demands. George Washington had announced provocatively to the Irish, "Your cause is identical with mine".^[4]

Such was the influence of Grattan that the subsequent eighteen years of greater legislative independence were known as

• From 1783 to 1784 the Patriots could not agree on how far and how fast the
  Penal Laws restricting Ireland's Roman Catholics should be reformed. Conservatives (including Flood) pointed to the Relief Act of 1778 and felt that enough had been reformed, but liberals like Grattan wanted to reform the tithe
  tax laws and to include Catholics in parliament. This division generally led to conservative majorities against reform until 1793.
• The viceroy increased the conservative majority by wielding patronage when required; MPs were effectively bribed by being given sinecure posts with large salaries.
• Grattan mistakenly preferred an opposition role and allowed the viceroy to nominate a conservative administration that was generally nicknamed the "Junta". He failed to reform the tithe laws in 1788 that were generally unpopular with poorer Catholics.
• Ireland's new right to free trade led to a dispute with Portugal in 1780–87; Irish exports were embargoed while English exports were not. Some Patriots unsuccessfully advocated declaring war on Portugal, which has been historically allied to England.^[5] The dispute emphasized Ireland's complete reliance on the Royal Navy to protect its overseas trade and merchant shipping.

The reformist Patriots struggled in the following years to gain anything approaching a majority on social reform issues in the Irish House of Commons, but in 1793 another Catholic Relief Act was passed. In 1789 the reformist element formally established the "Irish Whig Party" but soon lost goodwill in London for its views on the Regency crisis.

French Revolution

The French Revolution emphasised the Patriots' divisions. The major reform of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793 allowed Catholics to vote, to practice as lawyers, to act as grand jurors and to enter Trinity College Dublin as students, but this reform had to be pushed along by London, no doubt to Grattan's embarrassment. Opponents of this reform spoke of the need to protect a "Protestant Ascendancy". The 1793 Act was based on the British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791. A short-lived Catholic Irish Brigade was formed in 1794 from refugee royalist officers from the formerly French Irish Brigade.

The growth of the radical

In 1795, the London government-sponsored reforms, to head off trouble, by repealing the

The unsuccessful

Act of Union

Following the

Legacy

Grattan's advocacy of liberal-minded moderate

• Patriot Whigs
• Protestant Nationalist

References

Sources

• McDowell, R. B. (1979). Ireland in the age of imperialism and revolution, 1760–1801.