Part 93

Eventually the Society of United Irishmen became a revolutionary organization which sought, by the help of the French, to make Ireland an independent republic. The sprigs of shamrock or shamrock-colored badges displayed by these men gave a new significance to "the wearing of the green." By this time many Protestants had withdrawn from the organization, and many Catholics refused to ask help from the French revolutionary party, who were hostile to all churches and to all religion.

See a quotation from the famous Irish song, "The Wearin' o' the Green," in the "Shan Van Vocht," in the "Heroic Ballads," published by Ginn and Company.

Then a devoted band of Catholics in the south of Ireland resolved to rise and, trusting to their own right arms, to strike for independence. A frightful rebellion broke out (1798), marked by all the intense hatred springing from rival races and rival creeds, and aggravated by the peasants' hatred of oppressive landlords. Both sides perpetuated horrible atrocities. The government employed a large force of Orangemen, or extreme Protestants, to help suppress the insurrection. They did their work with remorseless cruelty.

Orangemen: the Protestants of the north of Ireland, who had taken the side of William of Orange in the Revolution of 1688-1689 (S499). They wore an orange ribbon as their badge, to distinguish them from the Catholic party, who wore green badges.

562. Union of Great Britain and Ireland, 1800; Emmet.

Matters now came to a crisis. William Pitt, son of the late Earl of Chatham (S550), was Prime Minister. He believed that the best interests of both Ireland and England demanded their political union. He devoted all his energies to accomplishing the work. The result was that in the last year of the eighteenth century the English Government succeeded, by the most unscrupulous use of money, in gaining the desired end. Lord Cornwallis, acting as Pitt's agent, confessed with shame that he bought up a sufficient number of members of the Irish Parliament to secure a vote in favor of union with Great Britain. In 1800 the two countries were joined--in name at least--under the title of the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."

The first Parliament of the United Kingdom met in 1801.

Pitt used all his powerful influence to obtain for Ireland a full and fair representation in the united Parliament (1801). He urged that Catholics as well as Protestants should be eligible for election to that body. But the King positively refused to listen to his Prime Minister. He even declared that it would be a violation of his coronation oath for him to grant such a request. The consequence was that not a single Catholic was admitted to the Imperial Parliament until nearly thirty years later (S573).

Two years after the first Imperial Parliament met in London the Irish patriot, Robert Emmet, made a desperate effort to free his country (1803). To his mind the union of England with Ireland was simply "the union of the shark with its prey." He staked his life on the cause of independence; he lost, and paid the forfeit on the scaffold.

But notwithstanding Emmet's hatred of the union, it resulted advantageously to Ireland in at least two respects. First, more permanent peace was secured to that distracted and long-suffering country. Secondly, the Irish people made decided gains commercially. The duties on their farm products were removed, at least in large degree, and the English ports hitherto closed against them were thrown open. The duties on their manufactured goods seem to have been taken off at that time only in part. Later, absolute freedom of trade was secured.

See May's "Constitutional History of England," Lecky's "England in the Eighteenth Century"; but compare O'Connor Morris's work on "Ireland, from 1798 to 1898," p.58.

563. "The Industrial Revolution" of the Eighteenth Century; Material Progress; Canals; the Steam Engine, 1785.

The reign of George III was in several directions one of marked progress, especially in England. Just after the King's accession the Duke of Bridgewater constructed a canal from his coal mine in Worsley to Manchester, a distance of seven miles. Later, he extended it to Liverpool; eventually it was widened and deepened and became the "Manchester and Liverpool Ship Canal." The Duke of Bridgewater's work was practically the commencement of a system which has since developed to such a degree that the canals of England now extend nearly 5000 miles, and exceed in length its navigable rivers. The two form such a complete network of water communication that it is said no place in the realm is more than fifteen miles distant from this means of transportation, which connects all the large towns with each other and with the chief ports.

In the last half of the eighteenth century James Watt obtained the first patent (1769) for his improved steam engine (S521), but did not succeed in making it a business success until 1785. The story is told that he took a working model of it to show to the King. His Majesty patronizingly asked him, "Well, my man, what have you to sell?" The inventor promptly answered, "What kings covet, may it please your Majesty,--POWER!" The story is perhaps too good to be true, but the fact of the "power" could not be denied,--power, too, not simply mechanical, but, in its results, moral and political as well.

This story is told also of Boulton, Watt's partner. See Smile's "Lives of Boulton and Watt," p.1. Newcomen had invented a rude steam engine in 1705, which in 1712 came into use to some extent for pumping water out of coal mines. But his engine was too clumsy and too wasteful of fuel to be used by manufacturers. Boulton and Watt built the first steam-engine works in England at Soho, a suburb of Birmingham, in 1775; but it was not until 1785 that they began to do sufficient business to make it evident that they were on their way to success.

Such was the increase of machinery driven by steam, and such were the improvements made by Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton in machinery for spinning and weaving cotton, that much distress arose among the hand spinners and hand weavers. The price of bread was growing higher and higher, while in many districts skilled operatives working at home could not earn by their utmost efforts eight shillings a week. They saw their hand labor supplanted by great cotton mills filled with machinery driven by "monsters of iron and fire," which never grew weary, which subsisted on water and coal, and never asked for wages.

Led by a man named Ludd (1811), the starving workmen attacked a number of these mills, broke the machinery to pieces, and sometimes burned the buildings. The riots were at length suppressed, and a number of the leaders executed; but a great change for the better was at hand, and improved machinery driven by steam was soon to remedy the evils it had seemingly created. It led to an enormous demand for cotton. This helped to stimulate cotton growing in the United States of America as well as to encourage the manufacture of cotton in Great Britain.

Up to this period the north of England had remained the poorest part of the country. The population was sparse, ignorant, and unprosperous. It was in the south that improvements originated. In the reign of Henry VIII, the North fought against the dissolution of the monasteries (SS352, 357); in Elizabeth's reign it resisted Protestantism; in that of George I it sided with the so-called "Pretender" (S535).

But steam transformed an immense area. Factories were built, population increased, cities sprang up, and wealth grew apace. Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham, Leicester, Sheffield, and Liverpool made the North a new country. (See Industrial Map of England, p.10.) Lancashire is the busiest cotton-manufacturing district in Great Britain, and the saying runs that "what Lancashire thinks to-day, England will think to-morrow." So much for James Watt's POWER and its results.

564. Discover of Oxygen (1774); Introduction of Gas (1815).

Notwithstanding the progress that had been made in many departments of knowledge, the science of chemistry remained almost stationary until (1774) Dr. Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen, the most abundant, as well as the most important, element in nature.

That discover "laid the foundation of modern chemical science." It enlarged our knowledge of the composition of the atmosphere, of the solid crust of the earth, and of water. Furthermore, it revealed the interesting fact that oxygen not only enters into the structure of all forms of animal and vegetable life, but that no kind of life can exist without it. Finally, Priestley's great discovery proved to be of direct practical utility, since the successful pursuit of innumerable trades and manufactures, with the profitable separation of metals from their ores, stands in close connection with the facts which his experiments with oxygen made known.

As intellectual light spread, so also did material light. In London, up to near the close of the reign of George III, only a few feeble oil lamps were in use. Many miles of streets were dark and dangerous, and highway robberies were frequent. At length (1815) a company was formed to light the city with gas. After much opposition from those who were in the whale-oil interest the enterprise succeeded. The new light, as Miss Martineau said, did more to prevent crime than all the Government had accomplished since the days of Alfred. It changed, too, the whole aspect of the English capital, though it was only the forerunner of the electric light, which has since changed it even more.

The sight of the great city now, when viewed at night from Highgate archway on the north, or looking down the Thames from Westminster Bridge, is something never to be forgotten. It gives one a realizing sense of the immensity of "this province covered with houses," which cannot be got so well in any other way. It bring to mind, too, those lines expressive of the contrasts of wealth and poverty, success and failure, inevitable in such a place:

"O gleaming lamps of London, that gem the city's crown, What fortunes lie within you, O lights of London town! . . . . . . . . . . . O cruel lamps of London, if tears your light could drown, Your victims' eyes would weep them, O lights of London town."

From the play, "The Lights of London."

The same year in which gas was introduced, Sir Humphry Davy invented the miner's safety lamp. Without seeking a patent, he generously gave his invention to the world, finding his reward in the knowledge that it would be the means of saving thousands of lives wherever men are called to work underground.

565. Steam Navigation, 1807, 1819, 1840.