TWO:Hitherto the United Irishmen had obtained little support from the Catholics, who were entirely out of sympathy with the Protestantism of one section of the party, and the irreligion of Wolfe Tone and his immediate associates. They preferred to look to the British Government, and especially to Pitt who was known to be favourable to the Catholic claims. But the Protestants in the Irish Parliament were too strong for him, and only a few remedial measures were passed and those inconsiderable in extent. In 1792 Sir Hercules Langrishe, with the consent of the Government, succeeded in carrying a Bill which admitted Catholics to the profession of the law, removed restrictions on their education, and repealed the Intermarriage Act. In 1793 the Irish Secretary, Major Hobart, succeeded, after much Government pressure, in carrying a second Catholic Relief Bill, admitting Catholics to the grand juries, magistracy, and finally to the franchise, though not to Parliament. Further than that Pitt could not be induced to go. He would neither consent to the admission of Catholics to Parliament, nor would he consent to a measure of Parliamentary reform, though the state of the representation was about as rotten as could possibly be conceived. From an inquiry instituted some years earlier it appeared that out of a House of 300 members 124 were nominated by 53 peers, while 91 others were chosen by 52 commoners. The British ascendency was, in fact, maintained by a system of organised corruption and place-holding, which failed only when religious bigotry carried the day.
TWO:Poland, abandoned to her own resources, made a brave but ineffectual defence. The Russians received several severe checks in their advance. At Zadorsk, at Palorma, and finally at Dulienska, the Poles fought them gallantly. At the last-named battle, on the 17th of July, the heroic Kosciusko made terrible havoc of the Russian lines, and was only prevented from utterly routing them by his flank being turned by another arrival of Russians, whom the Emperor Francis, of Austria, had allowed to march through Galicia. The Russians advanced to Warsaw, took regular possession of it, and of all the towns and military[399] forts throughout the country. They dismissed the patriot officers of the army, and dispersed the army itself in small divisions into widely-separated places. They abolished the new Constitution, thrust the burgher class again out of their newly-acquired privileges, and put the press under more ignominious restrictions than before. They confiscated the estates of nobles who had advocated the new reforms. Both Catherine and her Ministers treated the idea of any partition of Poland as the most groundless and ridiculous of notions. They pointed to the invasion of Germany already by Custine, the French Revolutionary general, and justified the temporary occupation of Poland as necessary to the security of both Poland and the neighbouring states. We must leave the three robber Powers, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, therefore, gloating over their prey, and ready to rend it asunder, in order to continue the narrative of the wild explosion of France.[See larger version]
