LITMIR.BIZ

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Poor House premises be used for a smallpox inoculation campaign. He must have used a direct arm-to-arm infection technique as Edward Jenner did not propose inoculation using cow pox until 1798. The board of the society passed a vote of thanks to Drennan for his efforts.9

      We do know from his correspondence with Reverend William Bruce in Dublin that, politics and Volunteering aside, he was not particularly happy either in his native town or his chosen profession.

      If I leave Belfast, I will never return to it. Do not mistake me I do not like this town. Why should I like what never has behaved as if it liked me? I have not a single friend except among my nearest relations. I have never received a smallest instance of real regard from the friends of my father. Who though they could have no reason to fear me as a rival or dislike me as a man have always been professional friends to me. I know that every profession has a certain portion of servility attached to it. But there is a parasitical species of servitude to men of eminence in our profession which I never will and never can conform to.10

      Whatever about feelings of personal isolation and professional dissatisfaction, Drennan did find solace in his involvement with the Volunteers. He was not content with donning his blue uniform and attending marches, reviews and meetings. He was determined to establish himself as a leading writer in the Volunteer cause.

      The year 1779 proved a very successful year for the Volunteers of Ireland. As the numbers in their ranks grew, they were thanked in the Irish House of Commons for their endeavours in defence of the country. Their crowning achievement that year was the concession by the British government of Free Trade for Ireland. Through their shows of military strength at rallies and marches, the Volunteers had pressured government into this concession. Edmund Burke (1730–1797), the Irish-born British parliamentarian, denounced Lord North for conceding Free Trade and this provided Drennan with the opportunity for his first foray into literary propaganda.

      In April 1780, he published an open letter to Edmund Burke. He was embarking on what was to be a long literary career in which he would, time and again, use the device of writing to well-known public figures and publishing the letters as a way of propagating his radical ideas. In the years that followed, Drennan published letters to King George III, the Earl of Fitzwilliam, William Pitt and C.J. Fox. The purpose of these letters was not to communicate with the recipients but to influence reformist and radical opinion and to establish his literary reputation.

      Burke had been a member of the British House of Commons since 1765. At this point, he was fifty years old and although not in ministerial office, he was one of Britain’s most prominent statesmen. The letter was published at a time when, as one of Burke’s recent biographers suggests, ‘the conflict in the colonies was reaching the apogee of crisis, discontent in Ireland was contributing to popular militancy and public protest was affecting confidence in the British system of government’.11

      Drennan was encouraged by the progress the Volunteers and reform movement was then making in Ireland. However, in his open letter, he condemned Burke because of the latter’s hostile reaction to the positive developments in their native land. Burke had denounced recent British concessions on Irish trade as ‘an unqualified surrender on the part of Lord North’s government’.12 John Bardon succinctly summarised the developments which so encouraged Drennan and alarmed Burke:

      By November of 1799 the Government was helpless before menacing demonstrations of Volunteers, a vigorous campaign against British goods, and a united patriot majority. At the end of the year a beleaguered Tory ministry at Westminster reeling from news of disastrous defeat in America responded … to appeals for immediate concessions. Laws imposed by England on Ireland forbidding the export of Irish wool, glass leather and other goods were removed.13

      Drennan began his letter by accusing Burke of being ‘too patriotic, in other words too much of an Englishman to wish for equality of rights and privileges in every part of the British empire’. He told Burke that his ill-timed and inconsiderate expressions were highly injurious to his native country.14 He accused Burke of being a party man, ‘The party may aim at nothing more than local or partial liberty, a liberty which includes not only the desire for a free government at home but the power of arbitrary rule over every country that might have the misfortune of being connected to Britain.’15

      Drennan declared that there was now ‘a revolution of opinion’ in Ireland which he predicted would force the legislature of Britain ‘ere long to perceive the necessity of getting clear of that wonderful paradox’ which ‘disenfranchises the descendants of Englishmen and robs them of their just interest in the legislative power’.16 It was the common people of Ireland who were leading this revolution in public opinion. ‘The lower ranks of the community [now has] an independence and republicanism of spirit which will have much influence on their future conduct; which will serve to remove that servile awe of estated tyrants which is incident in the lower orders of men; and will secure the free and unbiased election of the representative body.’17

      Given what we know of Burke’s attitude to the lower ranks of the community, Drennan’s boast of the leading role of the lower orders in the agitation for reform would have horrified the honourable member for Bristol.18 It must also have horrified many of Drennan’s comrades in the Volunteer army who regarded themselves in Henry Grattan’s famous phrase as ‘the armed property of Ireland’. Drennan went on to suggest that Burke was among ‘the men in high places of trust who repeatedly and publicly declare that all interference of the people in matters of legislation is libellous and leads to rebellion’.19

      The Irish people would now do one of three things depending on how the Dublin Parliament behaved in this ‘momentous season’. ‘For the people would either guide themselves, or choose new leaders, or repose full confidence in the representative body.’20 However, even if the Dublin Parliament ‘proved sensible to the opinions of the people of Ireland in this crisis they, the people, would not trust all to their senate’.21 No statement could have been more calculated to incense Burke. He never accepted that people had a right to choose new leaders or have any say in how they were governed. For Burke it was for King, Lords and Commons to rule and legislate and for people to obey and do as they were bid by their betters.

      Perhaps Drennan was taunting Burke when he told him, ‘The people have been the prime or rather the sole agents of “the revolution of – 80”’22 which he declared was ‘founded on a broad popular base. Necessity had been the stern rugged nurse’ of Irish patriotism amongst the common people. ‘It grew up in the cottage and the hovel amid sickness and sorrow. Its cradle was tended by famine and it listened to the bitter and unremitting cries of human misery.’23

      Burke always had a horror of the common people whom he infamously referred to in his Reflections on the Revolution in France as ‘the swinish multitudes’.24 However, Drennan expressed enthusiasm for the revolutionary potential of the lower orders and clearly expressed sympathy for their suffering. In this, he was unique even amongst his fellow radicals. Most radicals and reformers sought political rights for the middle classes and the self-made men of trade and religious freedom for oppressed religious sects or confessions. They rarely, if ever, mentioned the conditions of the common people nor suggested reforms that would extend political rights to the poor. Drennan was to make the need to improve the miserable conditions of the lower ranks of people, and their right to involvement in politics and universal education, a consistent theme of his polemics for the rest of his life.

      Burke would have agreed with Drennan’s view of the short-sightedness of England’s traditional approach to Irish trade. ‘It is indeed full time that this great people should relinquish the mean and unenlightened jealousy of a petty shopkeeper and begin to display the amplitude of thought and mercantile sagacity, which can make not only the welfare of friends but even the prosperity of enemies, instruments for promoting its own opulence and grandeur.’25

      They both would have accepted the thrust of David Hume’s famous argument ‘the increase of riches and commerce in any one nation, instead of hurting, commonly promotes the riches and commerce of all its neighbours’.26 Burke had followed this contention in a speech he made on Irish trade two years earlier.27

      There is some validity in Drennan’s claim that Burke was behaving as a party man. Burke had criticised Lord North for conceding

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