The American Revolution had a marked effect on Ireland. To subdue the revolt in America, the British re-deployed troops stationed in Ireland to the American colonies. In 1778, the French threatened to invade Ireland. Off the coast of Belfast, American naval commander John Paul Jones defeated a British warship, the Drake. Volunteer militias formed throughout Ireland. The crisis forced the British to allow the homegrown militias to bear arms. This nascent organization of volunteers was fiercely pro-American. They found an opportunity with the revolution in America and the threat of invasion by France to persuade Britain to loosen the shackles of law that had bound Ireland for centuries. The Volunteer Movement grew in strength forcing Britain to change its policies on the trade of Irish glassware and woolens in 1780. Two years later, the Volunteers persuaded the government to repeal two laws. Poyning’s Law required a British stamp of approval on all Irish legislation. The Declaratory Act of 1719 allowed Britain to make laws for its colonies.[1]
In 1759, some disenfranchised aristocrats formed the Catholic Committee in Dublin. They hoped to coordinate efforts to repeal the Penal Laws.[2] In 1774, the Committee denounced the Pope’s influence over their political views. The Committee assumed the British enacted the penal laws fearing Roman Catholic disloyalty. The submissive Committee opposed the American rebellion. Carey described them as a “cringing” and “servile” group. In contrast, Presbyterian clerics used their pulpits to proclaim the glory of the revolution in America.[3]
McDonnell wrote tracts on the Catholic cause, and Carey became interested in the injustices of Ireland’s Penal Code.[4] He read as many books and pamphlets on it as he could find. He wrote a pamphlet entitled “The urgent necessity of an immediate repeal of the whole Penal Code against the Roman Catholics” in 1781.
On November 10, 1781 he placed advertisements in the Dublin Evening Post and Faulkner’s Dublin Journal. He also circulated handbills in Dublin. Some were posted on the doors of chapels.[5] He used inflammatory phrases like, “At a time when America, by a desperate effort has nearly emancipated herself from slavery…” and “…when the tyranny of a British Parliament over Ireland, has been annihilated by the intrepid spirit of Irishmen…” Almost sixty prominent Catholics condemned these advertisements as “disloyal and seditious.”[6] They shocked Irish parliament and the Catholic Committee. These Catholics sought minor revisions to the Penal Code.[7] The Irish Parliament was on the verge of granting them.
“I was as complete a green horn as was ever brought into trouble by the crude productions of his pen.”[8]
Mathew Carey
Both houses of the Irish Parliament used Carey’s advertisement as proof that Catholics harbored treasonable sentiments toward the Protestant Ascendancy. The Catholic Committee publicly denounced the advertisement. They offered a sizable reward for the disclosure of the author’s identity, and hired lawyers to prosecute him.
Distressed by his son’s actions, Christopher Carey tried to stop publication and distribution of the pamphlet. He bargained with the Catholic Committee offering to destroy the offending pamphlets if they would stop prosecuting his son. A preliminary version of the pamphlet still exists in a collection of Carey’s writings.[9] In this pamphlet, Carey first wrote that government should represent all citizens, not only the elite. He argued that including Roman Catholics in the Irish government would promote national unity. He would return to themes railing against faction and promoting national unity throughout his lifetime. He also argued that historians writing for the Protestant Ascendancy had unfairly portrayed Roman Catholics in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. He would revisit that theme in 1819, when he published Vindiciae Hibernicae or Ireland Vindicated.[10] He lauded Catholic efforts at loyalty with the Test Oath of 1774. The Irish government, he argued, was not returning that loyalty. He wrote that was why “very few opulent catholics” had taken the Oath.[11]
Later in life writing his Autobiography, Carey reflected “I was as complete a green horn as was ever brought into the crude productions of his pen.”[12] Fiery phrases in his advertisement, handbills and pamphlet failed to persuade the Catholic Committee and the Irish Parliament. Carey’s “crude productions of his pen” provoked both the government and the Catholic Committee setting back the cause he passionately supported.
Christopher Carey’s efforts to persuade the Catholic Committee were also futile. The Committee insisted on prosecuting his son. That forced Mathew into hiding. A few days later, he slipped out of Dublin bound for Paris, armed with a letter of introduction to a Catholic priest.[13]
ERA OF A REVOLUTION | Carey Became an Apprentice to Benjamin Franklin in Paris
[1] Edward C. Carter II, “The Political Activities of Mathew Carey, Nationalist, 1760-1814,” PhD Dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1962, 6a-6b.
[2] Maurice J. Bric, “Mathew Carey, Ireland, and the ‘Empire for Liberty’ in America, Early American Studies, V.11, N. 3 (Fall, 2013) 409, ff 17.
[3] David A Wilson, United Irishmen, United States: Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) 15, Carey, Autobiography, 5.
[4] Carter, “The Political Activities of Mathew Carey,” 8-9.
[5] Maurice J. Bric, “Mathew Carey” 412-3.
[6] Maurice J. Bric, “Mathew Carey” 413.
[7] Mathew Carey, Autobiography, (Brooklyn, Research Classics, 1942) 4-5.
[8] Carey, Autobiography, 6.
[9] Located at the Library Company of Philadelphia.
[10] For further discussion and insight into Carey’s earliest writings, see Maurice J. Bric, “Mathew Carey, Ireland, and the ‘Empire of Liberty’ in America, Early American Studies, V. 11, N. 3, (Fall, 2013) 405-413.
[11] Bric, “Mathew Carey,” 410.
[12] Carey, Autobiography, 6.
[13] Carey, Autobiography, 6.