A Nation of Politicians: Gender, Patriotism, and Political Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland

4 The New Magna Carta: Voluntary Association, the Crowd, and the Uses of Official Political Culture

4 The New Magna Carta Voluntary Association, the Crowd, and the Uses of Official Political Culture While the consumption practices of ordinary men and women were a central focus of the patriot campaign for free trade, a variety of other means were promoted to pressure the British administration to concede patriot demands: the formation of associations ; the issuing of addresses, instructions, and petitions; and the violence of the crowd. The years 1778–79 witnessed an unprecedented degree of association for both the extension of trading rights and the defense of the nation. Military forms of association were initially the preserve of respectable Protestant men. However, association based around the politics of consumption was characterized as a way of overcoming sectarian, social, and political divides and of forging a patriotism that was truly national. Although free-trade associations were often initiated by such solidly Protestant and gentry-dominated bodies as county grand juries, respectable Catholics were encouraged to subscribe , while correspondents in newspapers also lauded the patriotism of others excluded from the political nation, including lower-class Protestants and women. The free-trade campaign has received much attention from historians and has often been seen as a turning point in the creation of an “Irish” national identity. However, it is usually examined in relation to its parliamentary expression or with regard to its consequences forAnglo-Irish relations.1 Although aspects of the popular dimensions of this movement have been studied, the rhetoric of inclusion and the relationship 106
between “respectable” patriotism and those outside the political nation have not received the consideration they deserve.2 This chapter focuses on these elements of the campaign by examining three distinct but related aspects of the extraparliamentary agitation for free trade: voluntary association, the appropriation of instruments of official political culture by the opposition patriot movement, and the politics of the Dublin crowd. It argues that the political language of association and free trade, as articulated through such media as newspapers, pamphlets, ballads, petitions, poems, and handbills, was crucial in redefining the limits of political participation and offering new models of citizenship. Political languages do not simply reflect social experience or gendered and national identity but also serve to actively constitute it.3 The formal political nation excluded the vast majority of the population based on religion, gender, or economic status. The sphere of voluntary association was represented as a space where extraparliamentary solidarities could be formed for patriotic purposes. At the same time, the representative structures of national and local government, such as the parliament and the grand jury, were hardly marginal to this campaign. The appeal to the culture of official politics, as well as the use of unofficial means, generated heated debates over the nature and legitimacy of the “people” interfering in the politics of the nation. No aspect of this involvement was more controversial than the often violent participation of the Dublin crowd. While a focus on spectacular crowd interventions can be criticized for producing an episodic account of popular politics, I argue that the actions of the crowd reveal both underlying assumptions of duly constituted authority as well as the relation of the crowd to the broader aims of the patriot movement.4 Rather than focusing on the well-worn topic of debate and allegiances within Parliament, I examine how these three aspects of this campaign intersected and the ways in which the campaign for “free trade” by these disparate groups transformed understandings of the political nation. Print, Patriotism, and Association Letters to the press advocating the consumption of Irish manufactured goods, as the last chapter suggests, initially concentrated on influencing the consumption habits of the elite through the language of deference . “Hibernicus” argued that in order to improve Ireland’s economic position, readers “must enter into Association to give that preference to The New Magna Carta 107 [Ireland’s] own manufacture of every kind which [would] create consumption .” But he addressed his pleadings in particular “to the great”: “Let me conjure them to assist poor Ireland in promoting its manufactures . Let me intreat them not to use English goods, when they can get manufactures of their own country. We have cloths and silks; we have tabinets and poplins in which they may appear with Splendor.”5 Besides such traditional appeals, other types of pressure were applied to encourage the elite to do their patriotic duty. The Hibernian Journal noted, “We are assured that the manufacturers of...