The United Irishmen

On 14th July 1791 the Volunteers and leading citizens of Belfast had formed a great circle inside the quadrangle of the White Linen Hall and there they unanimously agreed to a Declaration to the National Assembly of France:

'We meet this day to commemorate the French Revolution, that the remembrance of this day may sink deeply into our hearts…with a sympathy which binds us to the human race in a brotherhood of interest, of duty, and of affection…
… if we be asked, what is the French Revolution to us? We answer; -- MUCH.
Much as Men. – It is good for human nature that the grass grows where the Bastile stood. We do rejoice at an event which seemed the breaking of a charm that held universal France in a Bastile of civil and religious bondage…
AS IRISHMEN. We too have a country, and we hold it very dear – so dear to us its Interest, that we wish all Civil and Religious Intolerance annihilated in this land…
Go on then – Great and Gallant People! – to practise the sublime philosophy of your legislation…and not by conquest, but by the omnipotence of reason , to convert and liberate the World – a world whose eyes are fixed on you; whose heart is with you; who talks to you with all her tongues. You are, in very truth, the Hope of this World…'

The success of the French in ending despotic power in their country – so far, with comparatively little loss of life – seemed to demonstrate to Belfast radicals that rapid political change was possible. Certainly this was the view a group of young Protestants who met in Peggy Barclay’s tavern in Crown Entry on Friday 14th October 1791.

They invited up from Dublin Theobald Wolfe Tone, a lawyer who had deeply impressed northern reformers with his pamphlet An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland. Tone gave them a name for their new organisation: the Society of United Irishmen;

'In the present great aera of reform, when unjust governments are falling in every quarter of Europe…when all government is acknowledged to originate from the people…we think it our duty, as Irishmen, to come forward, and state what we feel to be our heavy grievance, and what we know to be its effectual remedy.
WE HAVE NO NATIONAL GOVERNMENT – we are ruled by Englishmen, and the servants of Englishmen…Such an extrinsic power…can be resisted with effect solely by unanimity, decision, and spirit in the people, - qualities which may be most exerted most legally, constitutionally, and efficaciously, by that great measure essential to the prosperity and freedom of Ireland – AN EQUAL REPRESENTATION OF ALL THE PEOPLE IN PARLIAMENT...
Impressed by these sentiments, we have agreed to form an association, to be called THE SOCIETY OF UNITED IRISHMEN; and we do pledge ourselves to our country, and mutually to each other, that we will steadily support, and endeavour by all due means to carry into effect the following Resolutions –
First, resolved. – 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 …
Second. – that the sole constitutional mode by which this influence can be opposed, is by a complete and radical reform of the representation of the people in parliament.
Third. – That no reform is practicable, efficacious, or just, which shall not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion.

All the founder members were Protestants. Dr William Drennan, an obstetrician who first planned the society, was the son of a Presbyterian minister in Rosemary Street; the secretary, Roberts Simms, owned a papermill in Ballyclare; Thomas McCabe was a watch and clockmaker in Belfast; Samuel Neilson had a woollen warehouse in Bridge Street; Samuel McTier, married to Drennan’s sister Martha, was an unsuccessful businessman; and Henry Joy McCracken, son of a Rosemary Street sea captain, was a commercial traveller in cotton. These men were not revolutionaries, at least, not yet. They passionately believed that they would win the day by argument, by the force of reason.

The Society rapidly spread to towns close to Belfast, amongst Presbyterian farmers in Antrim and Down, to Dublin and beyond. To promote the radical cause in 1792 the United Irishmen launched the Northern Star, with Samuel Neilson as editor, and this soon became the most widely read newspaper in Ireland.

Wolfe Tone found these Belfast reformers remarkably ignorant of their fellow Catholic Irish men and women; yet what drove them forward was a fervent determination to win political rights for Catholics. In addition, Belfast Protestants knew little enough about the culture of the Irish-speaking people of the countryside. It was a new-found fascination with this exotic culture that led them to organise a uniquely important event – the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792.