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86-464: The format of the magazine was always essentially the same, each issue consisting of about sixteen pages typeset in three columns. Illustrations were rarely included. The periodical would feature several book reviews, with the leading article being a book review occupying two or three pages. Feature sections included "Original Correspondence" and a social column as well as notice of theatre productions. An "Original Poetry" section consisted of work sent in by

172-464: A poetry literary magazine published in the United Kingdom is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . See tips for writing articles about magazines . Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page . William Paulet Carey William Paulet Carey (1759 – 21 May 1839) was an Irish art critic and publicist, known also as an engraver and dealer. In 1792 he joined

258-475: A Miss Lennon. One of his daughters, Elizabeth Sheridan Carey, wrote a volume of poems called Ivy Leaves , privately printed in 1837. [REDACTED]  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain :  Stephen, Leslie , ed. (1887). " Carey, William Paulet ". Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 9. London: Smith, Elder & Co. William Drennan William Drennan (23 May 1754 – 5 February 1820)

344-526: A bill brought forward by Henry Grattan to repeal the last of the Penal Laws , that which prevented Catholics from being sworn in as members of parliament. But this was at the cost of his position. After just six months in post, Fitzwilliam was recalled to London. Drennan wanted it to be "the business of every Irishman to cultivate the democratic spirit, which the Presbyterians first infused into them". But it

430-499: A further document, outlining in greater detail the same proposition: an "Irish Brotherhood" that would overcome "the distinctions of rank, of property, and of religious persuasion" through a programme of public education and correspondence with like-minded societies in throughout Ireland, Britain and France. At its first meeting in Belfast in October 1791, the "conspiracy", calling itself at

516-465: A mass audience who also appreciated the weekly publication giving "a spontaneity which the monthlies and quarterlies could not acquire" and the low price of only eight pence , with circulation reaching four thousand copies a week. A favourable review in The Literary Gazette meant almost certain success for writers and publishers, but a mixed review could be disastrous. This article about

602-558: A middle and a mediating rank had rapidly grown up in the Catholic community" producing an "enlargement of mind", "energy of character" and "self dependence". Already in 1790, Drennan had made it clear to Bruce that he was committed to Ireland's "total separation" from Great Britain and therefore willing to vouch for the Catholic majority. He had written to Bruce: ... it is my fixed opinion that no reform in parliament, and consequently no freedom, will ever be attainable by this country, but by

688-687: A paper that ran to 1795 carrying the United Irish message of a democratic union of "Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter". In 1792, he printed William Drennan 's Address to the Volunteers which urged defiance of the law banning the Volunteer militia movement and its political conventions. In 1793 he also published W. Todd Jones's Reply to an anonymous writer from Belfast , in which Jones, MP for Lisburn (1783-1790), defended his uncompromising advocacy of emancipation and reform. Carey did not fit easily into

774-653: A prosecution for seditious libel . The printing of Drennan's Address in December caused Carey further trouble with the Dublin administration. His creditors called in their debts, he sold the Star to Randal McAllister, and went into hiding. An attempt to get help from the United Irishmen led to his arrest and release on bail in March 1793. With a wife and a family he could not easily flee

860-553: A republic than Ireland". In opposition to "the supposed alliance" between the Presbyterians and the Catholics, he anticipated "a coalition of the Protestant gentry and the Catholics of consequence ..., an alliance to keep everything much as it is". In January 1795, in the hope of binding Catholics to the cause of reform, he went so far as to support a call to resist the French. Convinced that

946-404: A spiritual partner, from a Unitarian family, "liberal in her mind and of a democratical turn in politics". In September 1803, just three days before Emmet's trial, their four-month daughter took ill and died. In 1806, his financial independence, secured by an inheritance from a cousin, Drennan gave up his faltering medical practice in Dublin and, with Sarah, moved back to Belfast. In the wake of

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1032-672: A split in the Catholic Committee. Led by Lord Kenmare, The more conservative and clerical members publicly withdrew. Although a clash with McKenna made his first application to join the United Irishmen problematic, he joined their Dublin Society in the new year, committing himself to an alliance with northern Presbyterians to secure full and immediate Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform. With his brother James, Carey began to publish Rights of Irishman, or National Evening Star ,

1118-435: A total separation from Britain. ... I believe a reform must lead rapidly to a separation and a separation to a reform. The Catholics in this country are much more enlightened and less under the trammels of a Priesthood than is imagined—it is improper to keep up religious controversy, when all should make a common cause, and it is said that you take up too much time speaking against Popery . Yet Drennan harboured his doubts. In

1204-459: A town meeting "to facilitate and render less expensive the means of acquiring education; to give access to the walks of literature to the middle and lower classes of society; [and] to make provision for the instruction of both sexes... " in a new institution. His old nemesis William Bruce , now principal of the Belfast Academy , mocked Drennan's proposed system of governance. He compared it to

1290-633: A visiting physician to the Belfast Charitable Society poor house, in 1782 he proposed smallpox variolation , the practice, then widespread, of inoculating the skin of healthy people with smallpox to prevent a more serious case of the disease. (Sixteen years later Edward Jenner advertised the much safer practice of using cowpox for this purpose, with a paper on his own inoculation experiments in England). In 1783, Drennan moved to Newry , and in 1789 to Dublin where he quickly became involved in

1376-628: The Literary Gazette . Carey saluted the talent of Francis Chantrey the sculptor in the Sheffield Iris , in 1805. At the end of 1816 he praised the graphical work of William Blake , then little known, and wondered aloud what posterity would make of his lack of patrons; the significant unsigned obituary of Blake in the Literary Gazette in 1827 is tentatively assigned to Carey. He praised Washington Allston and his work Uriel Standing in

1462-428: The 1798 rebellion and its bloody suppression, Drennan resolved to "be content to get the substance of reform more slowly" and with "proper preparation of manners or principles"." As a token of this resolve, in Belfast he led a group of Belfast merchants, and professional gentlemen, including the banker and former United Irishman (and state prisoner), William Tennent and his brother Dr. Robert Tennent , in persuading

1548-568: The Catholic Defenders , across the Irish midlands. At the first meeting of the Society in Dublin in November 1791 Drennan won unanimous consent for his draft of a solemn declaration or test to be entered into by every member. I, - AB in the presence of God, do pledge myself to my country, that I will use all my abilities and influence in the attainment of an impartial and adequate representation of

1634-574: The Duke of Brunswick at Verdun , it was "no time to weigh nice points of morality"--"if a boat escapes from a wreck be sinking with the weight of men, some of them ought to be thrown to the sea". When January 1793 Louis XVI , as citizen Capet, was guillotined, Drennan regarded it as "necessary to save the French Republic", although certain to serve Britain by making war with France popular. His sister, however, confessed herself "turned, quite turned, against

1720-455: The French constitution which, together, they had celebrated in 1791: "so full of checks that it will not move". The sovereign body of the institution was an annual general meeting of subscribers. They elected both boards of managers and visitors, but with a complicated system of rotation "to preclude the possibility of the management falling into the hands of a few individuals". The academic direction

1806-557: The Marquess of Buckingham , and published it under the pseudonym "Scriblerus Murtough O'Pindar" He did the copperplates in Geoffrey Gambado 's (Henry William Bunbury's) Annals of Horsemanship (Dublin, 1792). He also made several plates for a collection of ethical maxims, the Morals of Horace translated by Elizabeth Grattan in Dublin in 1785. In 1806 Carey wrote a pamphlet in defence of

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1892-715: The Princess of Wales ; in 1820 he published two other pamphlets, The Conspiracies of 1806 and 1813 against the Princess of Wales linked with the atrocious conspiracies of 1820 against the Queen of England [ sic ] , and The Present Plot showed by the Past . In 1834 he contributed to The Analyst , a Birmingham quarterly journal. He wrote also: An unfinished work was a Life of John Boydell . Carey's first wife Dorothy died in 1791, shortly after his eldest son. He married again in 1792, to

1978-619: The Society of United Irishmen in Dublin, but feeling unsupported as he himself faced charges of sedition, in 1794 he testified in the government case against the United Irishman William Drennan . In England, he spent half a century promoting British art, most of his writings being distributed gratuitously. Carey was born into an Irish Catholic family in Dublin , the brother of John Carey and Mathew Carey . His father Christopher Carey

2064-692: The University of Glasgow , a centre of the Scottish Enlightenment . Through his father's mentor, the Irish moral philosopher Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), a new generation of Scottish thinkers had drawn on the republican ethos of Presbyterian resistance to royal and episcopal imposition to defend what Drennan called "the restless power of reason". Consistent with a popularisation of Hutcheson by his friend in Edinburgh Dugald Stewart that linked individual conscience in matters of faith with

2150-521: The Volunteers . Ostensibly formed to secure Ireland against a French invasion, the Volunteer companies were soon arming and parading in support of the "inalienable rights" of Irishmen. A convergence of Volunteers upon Dublin in 1782 helped Henry Grattan secure London's recognition of Ireland's legislative independence, but failed in 1783 to secure parliamentary reform. Drennan came to national attention with

2236-434: The "Emerald Isle". William Drennan (an Anglicization of the Irish clan name Ó Draighnáin) was born in the manse of First Presbyterian Church, Rosemary Street, Belfast, in 1754. He was the son of Reverend Thomas Drennan (1696-1762) and Anne Lennox (1718-1806). With his older sisters Martha ( Martha McTier ) and Nancy, he was one of only three of their eleven children who survived infancy. Like his father, Drennan studied at

2322-451: The 1820s until the end of the 1840s, The Literary Gazette had unprecedented power and influence. While the reviewers in the influential quarterlies tended to write political tracts rather than describing the book they were supposed to be reviewing, Jerdan as a professional journalist had no interest in promoting political ideology, and his practice was to include extensive quotations from the book being reviewed. This reading material attracted

2408-677: The Arts of Design . He sold items from his collection, one of the purchasers being John Neagle . Carey died in Birmingham on 21 May 1839, aged 80. Carey produced some satirical and political engravings for the 1784 British general election , working with William Holland of Drury Lane. In 1787 he turned to Ireland and the matter of religion, Arthur O'Leary and William Campbell , who had joined sides in controversy with Richard Woodward . In 1789 he collected his political verse in The Nettle , aimed at

2494-497: The Dublin Society whether it was from Catholic Committee members or from the "Inner Society", "Protestant but National", that Drennan had formed as a hedge against a Catholic sell-out of political reform in favour of emancipation alone. Carey was furiously cross-examined by John Philpot Curran , but according to Durey, Carey had done nothing to embroider the truth. Drennan was nonetheless acquitted. Having published his side of

2580-534: The Dublin Society. He was unusual in the United Irishmen, for example, in that he took the side of the journeymen in the contemporary labour agitation. Politically, he was aligned with James Napper Tandy and John Binns . In November 1792 Carey reprinted from the United Irishmen's Northern Star , published in Belfast , a paragraph on local rejoicing at the outcome of the Battle of Valmy , and Arthur Wolfe warned him of

2666-618: The French," and feared that the Revolution was "all farther than ever from coming to good". For Drennan, the greater problem presented by the course of the French Revolution was not the violence but the impact on Catholic opinion of the overturning of religion. The Catholics, he advised Martha, "are still more religionists than politicians, and the Presbyterians more politicians than religionists". While Presbyterians might be enamoured of "general liberty and equality", for Catholics their creed

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2752-487: The Irish nation implied that not only Catholics but also " every woman , in short every rational being shall have equal weight in electing representatives", Drennan did not care to disabuse him. He pleaded only for a "common sense" reading of the United Irish commitment to a democratic franchise. It might be "some generations", he proposed, before "habits of thought, and the artificial ideas of education" are so "worn out" that it would appear "natural" that women should exercise

2838-414: The Irish nation in parliament: and as a means of absolute and immediate necessity in accomplishing this chief good of Ireland, I shall do whatever lies in my power to forward a brotherhood of affection, an identity of interests, a communion of rights, and a union of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion, without which every reform must be partial, not national, inadequate to the wants, delusive to

2924-517: The Magazine contained a '"Letter addressed to a Young Nobleman Just Entering Upon the Possession of a Great Estate'". The piece was clearly aimed at the new Marquis of Downshire who had just come of age. It attacked absentee landlords who "riot in the wantonness of luxury" while leaving management of their estates to an agent, "whose principle business is to ingratiate himself with his master, by squeezing

3010-468: The Presbyterian Synod within the ranks of democracy". His suspicions appeared confirmed when, in 1816, it was reported that at a St. Patrick's Day dinner board members and staff had raised a succession radical toasts to Drennan for his services to the cause of Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary reform, to the French and South American Revolutions , and to "The exiles of Erin" under "the wing of

3096-589: The Presbyterian clergy (Drennan denounced the acceptance of regium donum grants) and the "long-drawn-out pointless and wasteful folly" of the war with France (for which he continued to pillory the late Edmund Burke as "the trumpet"). Consistent with his father's teaching from the pulpit of Belfast's First Presbyterian, on religious matters Drennan deferred to conscience rather than to doctrine, or to civil authority. In this light "Christianity properly called" had, in his view, "scarcely appeared on this earth since

3182-494: The Roman Catholics who are ten times more numerous as Presbyterians ten times as much power". Bruce recalled that, in his fifth Letter of Orellana , Drennan himself had cautioned that "the Catholics of this day are absolutely incapable of making good use of political liberty". Drennan denied inconsistency. The "circumstances of the times as well as the persons" had changed "in the very manner wished for": "to commercial interest,

3268-415: The Society convinced William to testify against Drennan with a generous offer of compensation. In 1794 he was the chief witness in the treason trial of Drennan. On that occasion, he identified himself as a United Irishman, and may well have felt that in testifying to Drennan's authorship he was not entirely betraying his own democratic ideals. Michael Durey suggests that Carey was hostile to elite leadership in

3354-493: The Society rather than accept the presence of Dr. James MacDonnell. In the wake of Robert Emmet's abortive rising , in 1803 MacDonnell made a public subscription for the capture of Thomas Russell , who had been their mutual friend and was subsequently hanged. Instead, with Templeton, Robert Tennent and the dissident Quaker John Hancock, Drennan began publication of the Belfast Monthly Magazine. The journal (which

3440-737: The Sun to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1818. Carey brought James Montgomery the poet into prominence. After a visit to Cork in 1824, he wrote letters in the Cork and Dublin papers to promote the work of John Hogan the sculptor. Hogan was then able to visit Italy, to study art. Carey settled in Birmingham in about 1834. He spent time in Philadelphia, about 1836 to 1838, when he spoke there on National and Commercial Utility and Profit of

3526-530: The Union he objected not only to the regnium donum for Presbyterian ministers but (aligning himself with Daniel O'Connell in the Veto Controversy ), also to acceptance, as a condition for final Catholic Emancipation, of a British Crown veto in the papal appointment of Irish bishops. At the same time, Drennan retained his distrust of a distinct, organised, Catholic interest, such as had begun to re-emerge under

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3612-520: The United Irishmen. In part, this appears to have been a concern for her brother's safety, but also an aversion, greater than Drennan's, to revolutionary violence. When news reached them of the September 1792 massacres in Paris, Drennan proposed that "the murder of the prisoners is one of those things which must be openly condemned and perhaps tacitly approved". With the enemies of the Revolution triumphant under

3698-727: The Volunteers, an address, published under the name of Marcus in The Rights of Irishmen paper in Dublin called on all active citizen-soldiers to stand to arms. Drennan was the suspected author. He was also being investigated for knowledge of meetings between his friend Archibald Hamilton Rowan (who had fled the country) and an agent of the French Committee of Public Safety , the Reverend William Jackson . Following his successful defence at trial by John Philpot Curran in June 1794, and as

3784-509: The collective right to resist oppressive government, Drennan was later to cite John Locke 's Treatises on Government as his "prime authority on politics". After graduating with an MA from Glasgow, Drennan studied medicine in Edinburgh under the experimental chemist Joseph Black and William Cullen "the most influential physician of his generation". He then returned to Belfast in 1778 and set up practice specialising in obstetrics . As

3870-514: The country. Expecting more support from the Society than he received, Carey complained in a letter sent under a pseudonym to and was expelled from the Society in November 1793. This move followed exhaustive attempts by Carey to have the Society stand bail for him (so that he could leave without requiring his friends to pay the surety). Durey argues that Carey accurately analysed the use of the existing funds, to support leaders of higher social rank than he had. A government agent working undercover in

3956-519: The death of Christ". He had no sympathy at all for the Sabbatarianism that was the mark of Old Light and evangelical Protestantism: "the abolition of Sunday" he suggested, "would be a blessing". In 1792 Drennan proposed: "My toast should be-- The Sovereignty of the People- -not of any party; the ascendancy of Christianity, not of any Church". Rejecting anything indicative of religious establishment, after

4042-400: The democratic cause, is signed "Marcus". New evidence suggests that this was Drennan. While alerted, following her brother's arrest, that her letters were being opened and read by the authorities, McTier refused to be cowed, assuring Drennan that "in these times I never will be gagged". Yet she often advised caution, seeming to welcome her brother's growing distance from the inner counsels of

4128-474: The direction of a French-assisted insurrection, Drennan nonetheless tasks the Lord Lieutenant with averting a "rude and revolutionary collision". He directs Fitzwilliam's immediate attention to reform: "full and final" Catholic Emancipation, the promotion of manufactures to provide employment for the landless, and a system of "universal education" that can "assimilate all religions".  But this, he concedes,

4214-445: The follies, and the crimes of past and present administrations, in perpetuating a distinctness, a separating instead of an associating spirit". He proposed organising the campaign through Emancipation Clubs "where the Protestant and Catholic should sit alternatively and a Catholic and Protestant chairman [would be] elected in their turn". As in the 1790s, while he deemed Catholic emancipation essential, Drennan's overriding goal remained

4300-494: The gulf of a prison". From his days in Edinburgh Drennan sustained a faithful forty-year correspondence with his sister Martha McTier . She read, sometimes in advance of her brother, most of the radical writers of her time, including Paine, William Godwin , Mary Wollstonecraft , and Laetitia Barbauld . It may be a testament to his sister's influence that when William Bruce protested that an "impartial" representation of

4386-412: The heavily garrisoned capital in which no rebel demonstration proved possible. But while "the authorities did not molest him in any way in the run-up or aftermath of the 1798 Rebellion ", this was not at the price of Drennan retiring his pen. The "Marcus letters", published in Dublin in 1797–8, include the appeal to women,. accused Fitzwilliam's successor, John Pratt, 1st Marquess Camden , of bringing to

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4472-462: The kingdom are formed into "a political party" in "league... against the population of the country". In calling for "equality of suffrage" and "constitutional democracy", "the people in the North of Ireland" are not, as the Lord Lieutenant may have been given to suppose, "infected by what are called French principles". Rather they are "obstinately attached to the principles of Locke as put into practice at

4558-401: The leadership began to seriously consider prospects for an insurrection, Drennan appears to have dropped out of the inner counsels of the United Irishmen. To his sister Martha McTier Drennan wrote: "Is it not curious... that I, who was one of the patriarchs of the popular societies, should... be excluded and treated as a frigid neutralist, until I... throw myself, as other patriot suicides, into

4644-516: The leadership of Daniel O'Connell in the course of the Veto Controversy. In campaigning to remove the remaining sacramental barriers to their participation in Parliament and the higher offices of state, Catholics might help restore a sense of public spirit to Irish society, but not if they determined to do so exclusively by their own efforts. He cautioned Catholics against replicating "the errors,

4730-589: The lower ranks against the officers. During the Irish Rebellion of 1798 he left Ireland in June, for self-preservation, returning later. Carey left Dublin for England permanently, around the middle of 1799. A dealer in pictures, prints, and other works of art, he was one of the main agents used by John Leicester, 5th Baronet in the formation of his collection. For some years he had an establishment in Marylebone Street, London. He became chief art critic to

4816-545: The moderation of the established Catholic Committee , in October 1791, with some forty like-minded radicals, Carey helped form the Catholic Society with Theobald McKenna as their secretary. They published the Declaration of the Catholic Society of Dublin to promote unanimity among Irishmen and remove religious prejudices , written by McKenna, demanding total repeal of the penal laws as a matter of right. The declaration caused

4902-461: The name of God and nature" it should " separate ". Drennan was taken by surprise in Dublin by Robert Emmet 's aborted attempt to renew the insurrection in July 1803. What, before the extensive nature of the planning and preparation was known, appeared to have been little more than a bloody street brawl, struck Drennan as a "mad business". But he remained loyal to Emmet's family, attending old Mrs Emmet who

4988-524: The object of many of the Catholic members was "selfish" (i.e. focused on emancipation rather than constitutional reform), with Thomas Addis Emmet , Drennan had promoted a secret "inner Society" in Dublin (the McTiers in Belfast were to tell no one) which was " Protestant but National ". "The Catholics", he wrote, "may save themselves, but it is the Protestants must save the nation". In the Dublin Society, Drennan

5074-456: The only plot afoot in Ireland is "the plot of Protestant Ascendancy" to represent Presbyterians as Jacobins engaged in "a reformer, republican and regicide plot", and to "stitch together" the " Catholic Committee , Defenders , United Irishmen,... French emissaries and a monstrous tail of et ceteras" as a "scarecrow". Conscious as he was that opinion among the United Irish and Defenders was running in

5160-564: The patriotic and democratic politics of the capital agitated by news of the Revolution in France . Sharing the sympathies of many Ulster Presbyterians (few without kindred in the colonies ), Drennan greeted news of Britain's first defeat in the American War of independence ( Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga in 1777) as cause to "congratulate the people of Belfast and all mankind". He joined

5246-586: The people of Ireland only massacre, rape, desolation and terror. In January 1799 Drennan published an open letter to the British Prime Minister William Pitt assailing his proposals to abolish the Kingdom of Ireland and to incorporate the country with England under the Crown at Westminster . If Ireland was to face "the cruel alternative of uniting forever with England, or separate forever", then "in

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5332-674: The public as his "fellow slaves" and to the British Viceroy urging "full and final" Catholic emancipation . After the suppression of the 1798 Rebellion , he sought to advance democratic reform through his continued journalism and through education. With other United Irish veterans, Drennan founded the Belfast [later the Royal Belfast] Academical Institution . As a poet, he is remembered for his eve-of-rebellion When Erin First Rose (1795) with its reference to Ireland as

5418-437: The public, the poets being called "Correspondents", as well as some work by staff writers. Advertisements filled the last two pages, which were used by publishers to publicise books. The magazine also occasionally featured news of subjects of interest such as archaeological discoveries, inventions, art exhibitions, architecture and the sciences. William Paulet Carey and Walter Henry Watts acted as art critics. At its peak from

5504-409: The publication in 1784 and 1785 of his Letters of Orellana, an Irish Helot in the Belfast News Letter . Addressed to his "fellow slaves", they were the earliest expressions of his support for political engagement with the country's Catholic majority. If the Irish parliament remained an almost exclusively an Anglican ( Church of Ireland ) assembly in the pocket of the Kingdom's largest landowners it

5590-436: The reasons for the willingness of the Catholic printer William Paulet Carey —a committed democrat equally suspicious of the Committee Catholics —to testify (truthfully) in May 1794 to the physician's authorship of the Volunteer address. Drennan tried to revive his dwindling medical practice. He had become a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in Dublin in 1790 but due, he believed, to his "dabbling in politics", he

5676-537: The republican eagle" in the United States. Despite the resignations of the board members present (Drennan at the time was in England), including Robert Tennent the presiding chairman, it was several years before the government was persuaded to restore its grant of £1,500. When Drennan had first returned from Dublin in 1807, William Bruce attempted a reconciliation. He proposed Drennan to his Belfast Literary Society , but Drennan declined. His friend John Templeton (the "father of Irish botany") had already withdrawn from

5762-456: The revolution [The Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England]... and illustrated in the plains of America". Consistent with "the fundamental article of the British Constitution that holds taxation to be "inseparable" from representation", where people are denied legislative power they have "the same reason to complain as the Americans had lately, on the other side of the Atlantic, or as the Catholics had at our doors". Fitzwilliam publicly endorsed

5848-495: The same rights as men. But he allowed that, until that day, "neither women nor reason should have their full and proper influence in the world". The paper of the Dublin society, The Press , published two direct addresses to Irish women, both of which "appealed to women as members of a critically-debating public". The first (21 December 1797), signed "Philoguanikos", was probably that of the paper's founder, Arthur O'Connor . The second (1 February 1798), calling on women to rally for

5934-502: The spirit of Volunteerism in Belfast and its Presbyterian hinterland, Drennan proposed to his friend Samuel McTier a benevolent conspiracy—a plot for the people—no Whig club—no party title—the Brotherhood its name—the Rights of Man and [employing the phrase coined by Hutcheson] the Greatest Happiness of the Greater Number its end—its general end Real Independence to Ireland, and Republicanism its particular purpose. In June, Drennan circulated in Dublin, and forwarded to McTier in Belfast

6020-455: The story in late 1794, Carey spent some time in Philadelphia in 1795, and then came back to Dublin to run a government-subsidised paper, the General Evening Post (later the Volunteer Packet ). Its sale dwindled, according to Francis Higgins , to under 20 copies, and intimidation was used against those selling it or buying space for advertisements. Carey took part in the yeomanry volunteer force, and there ran into trouble, thought to be inciting

6106-408: The suggestion of Theobald Wolfe Tone , the Society of the United Irishmen , resolved on the complete emancipation of Catholics and an "equal representation of all the people" in parliament. Employing, as Drennan had proposed "much of the secrecy and somewhat of the ceremonial of Free-Masonry", the Society spread rapidly across the Presbyterian districts of the north, to Dublin and, in alliance with

6192-403: The uttermost farthing of rack-rent out of the starved bellies of a laborious and industrious tenantry". Other, more regular, themes included the need for a general education system, freedom of the press, and abolition of the slave trade. But Drennan's chief preoccupations remained the government's failure to deliver on the promise of political equality for Catholics, its corrupting "courtship" of

6278-564: The wake of the April 1793 Catholic Relief Act , he complained privately that the Catholic Committee in Dublin had "two strings to their bow", one to deal with the government, the other to treat with the Society: and its strategy was to go with the one that would promise and deliver the most. In May 1793 Drennan was arrested on a charge of sedition. In response to the government's suppression of

6364-685: The wishes, and insufficient for the freedom and happiness of this country. In February 1792 Drennan was identified as the author in the pages of the Belfast Newsletter by his father's successor in the pulpit of the First Presbyterian in Rosemary Street, William Bruce . Bruce saw the test as going far beyond what the town had celebrated in the American and French revolutions: Drennan was proposing universal suffrage. In Ireland, this would "give

6450-614: Was a baker and newspaper owner. Of two other brothers, James became a newspaper editor in Philadelphia . Carey studied drawing at the Royal Dublin Society 's school. He began life as a painter and then became an engraver. After an accident to his eyes he had to abandon his career in art. He edited in Dublin the Sentimental and Masonic Magazine (1792–95). Stirred by news of revolution and reform in France and dissatisfied with

6536-460: Was an Irish physician and writer who moved the formation in Belfast and Dublin of the Society of United Irishmen . He was the author of the Society's original " test " which, in the cause of representative government, committed "Irishmen of every religious persuasion" to a "brotherhood of affection". Drennan had been active in the Irish Volunteer movement and achieved renown with addresses to

6622-533: Was because no counterweight could be found in the absence of the great body of the nation that the English-dependant "feudality" had dispossessed. Now was the time for patriot Churchmen and Presbyterians to display "zeal in politics and moderation in religion" and as Irishmen, "nurtured by the same maternal earth", to join with Catholics in a "sacred compact". In May 1791, as news of revolution in France, and its spirited defence by Thomas Paine , revived

6708-578: Was but a "bill for partial reform". In Ireland, he noted, the aristocracy had "seconded" the "revolution of '82". But directly represented in one house of parliament, the Lords , they continue to control the other. Two-thirds of the Irish Commons are returned "by less than one hundred persons" [in the case of Belfast and its two MPs by the Marquess of Donegall ] Having "the whole return of members to serve in parliament", men of "rank, fortune and connection" in

6794-632: Was clear that in Drennan this was not a spirit that a liberal Viceroy might satisfy. Drennan believed that the right to representation should no more depend on property than upon a sacramental test. In making "the poor and the rich reciprocally dependent", only a universal franchise recognises the "action and reaction of self-interest" as a "constant and universal" principle of public welfare. When United Irish leadership still at liberty sought to muster their members in arms in May and June 1798, Drennan continued in Dublin,

6880-486: Was equally suspicious of the party of Napper Tandy , regarding both Tandy ("always running to the Catholics"") and his plebeian following as unreliable. He also saw Tone, Thomas Addis Emmet , and Thomas Russell , leading proponents of a union with the agrarian secret societies, the Defenders , as "entwined in Catholic trammels". Drennan's creation within the Dublin Society of a "private junto" has been suggested as one of

6966-483: Was likewise entrusted not to a Principal or a Headmaster, but rather to a group of senior teachers sitting as the Board of Masters. Drennan also proposed that discipline would rely on "example" rather than on the "manual correction of corporal punishment". He was doubtlessly inspired by a man he described as having dedicated his life to banishing "fear and drudgery from junior education", David Manson . Manson, whose portrait

7052-553: Was never admitted to the Fellowship. Yet undaunted, in January 1795 he addressed to the newly arrived Lord Lieutenant , William Fitzwilliam , at Dublin Castle , a fifty-six-page "letter". More copies were to sell in Belfast and the North (for which, Drennan confessed, the letter was "chiefly designed") than any pamphlet of the period save Paine's Rights of Man . The letter insists that

7138-449: Was still their "first object". To her husband Samuel, Drennan suggested that this was the "true cause" of disunity between Presbyterians and Catholics: "the former love the French openly and the Catholics almost to a man hate them secretly. And why? Because they have overturned the Catholic religion in that country and threaten to do so throughout the world." In September 1793 he was of the opinion that Siberia might be "better suited to be

7224-739: Was to die then days before a sentence of death was passed on her son, and helping his sister Mary Anne Holmes whose husband was detained. With his own sister, Martha, Drennan shared disgust at the subscription made by Dr. James MacDonnell in Belfast to the reward for the capture of Emmet's confederate, their mutual friend Thomas Russell . In a poem sketched for Martha, Epigraph-on the Living (October 1803), Drennan decries "a man who could subscribe To hang that friend at Last Whom future history will describe The Brutus of Belfast." On 8 February 1800, Drennan made "his own union With England": he married Sarah Swanwick from Shropshire . She was, he assured his sister,

7310-490: Was to hang in the new institution, in the 1760s had taught children literacy in his Donegall Street school "without the discipline of the rod" and on "the principle of amusement". The Belfast Academical Institution was otherwise non-denominational, but opened in 1814 with a collegiate department that, for the first time in Ireland, allowed for the certification of candidates for the Presbyterian ministry. Lord Castlereagh immediately discerned "a deep-laid scheme again to bring

7396-400: Was to run for 77 issues) promised that while "intemperate political discussion would be excluded", where facts give rise "to those political differences that agitate the public mind", in "the spirit of true constitutional patriotism" "explanation" would be provided. Drennan found the opportunity for such explanation not only in commentary, but in biographical sketches and book reviews. In 1809

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