Society of United Irishmen - Foundation

Foundation

During the 1780s, a few liberal members of the ruling Protestant Ascendancy known as the Irish Patriot Party had promoted expanding the franchise and increasing Catholic and Presbyterian rights in Ireland. This movement was led by the Irish Volunteers and Henry Grattan's parliament; though the movement made headway with several partial Catholic emancipation bills between 1778 and 1784, it stalled thereafter until 1793. This frustrated many Irishmen who believed that the Protestant Ascendancy was uniformly under the control of Britain and therefore not looking out for Irish interests. Some of these Irishmen became convinced that the Irish Parliament would never accept Parliamentary Reform while still under the control of a Protestant Ascendancy. However, it was an external event that got things underway.

Thomas Paine and his Rights of Man were extremely influential in promoting this ideal in Ireland. In September, 1791, Irishman Theobald Wolfe Tone published "Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland" which maintained that religious division was a tool of the elite to...(balance) the one party by the other, plunder and laugh at the defeat of both" and put forward the case for unity between Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter. Tone's pamphlet was hugely influential. Tone and friend Thomas Russell became passionate fighters for Catholic Rights. A group of nine Belfast Presbyterians interested in reforming Irish Parliament read Tone's pamphlet and liked his ideas. They invited Tone and Russell to Belfast where the group met on October 14, 1791. At this first meeting, the group, which became known as the United Irishmen, passed the following three resolutions:

1. That the weight of English influence in the Government of this country is so great as to require a cordial union among all the people of Ireland, to maintain that balance which is essential to the preservation of our liberties and the extension of our commerce
2. That the sole constitutional mode by which this influence can be opposed is by a complete and radical reform of the people in Parliament
3. That no reform is just which does not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion.

All attendees at the first meeting were Protestant. Two (Theobald Wolfe Tone and Thomas Russell) were Anglicans and the rest Presbyterian; most were involved in the linen trade in Belfast. Along with Tone and Russell, the men involved were: William Sinclair, Henry Joy McCracken, Samuel Neilson, Henry Haslett, Gilbert McIlveen, William Simms, Robert Simms, Thomas McCabe and Thomas Pearce.

The movement became supporters of the Catholic Committee, which had been working to get Catholic Emancipation bills through Parliament, repeal the remaining Penal Laws and abolish the Tithe laws. This was to remove legal disabilities and was not an endorsement of Catholicism itself, as the United Irishmens' revolutionary allies in France were dechristianizing their new state. Their ultimate goal was to separate religion from politics.

Up to 1792, the Society was in line with Henry Grattan's views but came to differ with him as to the best method of reform. Grattan followed Edmund Burke and felt that a gradual continuation of reform was the best course. This reform was opposed by the Protestant Ascendancy majority (elected by a few thousand men) and usually by the viceroy who was appointed by the government in London. The Society planned for a democratic system with 300 constituencies where all adult males were enfranchised and inevitably a break with London.