Theobald Wolfe Tone

Theobald Wolfe Tone, commonly known as Wolfe Tone (June 20, 1763 - November 19, 1798) was a leading figure in the United Irishmen Irish independence movement and is regarded as the father of Irish republicans. He died, by cutting his own throat, following an illness after being sentenced to death for his part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

Early years

The son of a coach-maker, Tone studied in the Trinity College, Dublin and attended the Inns of Court in London. As a student, he married the former Matilda Witherington; they had two sons and a daughter.

Politician

Disappointed at finding no notice taken of a wild scheme for founding a military colony in Hawaii which he had submitted to William Pitt the Younger, Tone turned to Irish politics. An able pamphlet attacking the administration of the marquess of Buckingham in 1790 brought him to the notice of the Whig club; and in September 1791 he wrote a remarkable essay over the signature "A Northern Whig," of which 10,000 copies were said to have been sold.

The principles of the French Revolution were at this time being eagerly embraced in Ireland, especially among the Presbyterians of Ulster, and two months before the appearance of Tone's essay, a meeting had been held in Belfast, where republican toasts had been drunk with enthusiasm, and a resolution in favour of the abolition of religious disqualifications had given the first sign of political sympathy between the Roman Catholics and the Protestant dissenters of the north. The essay of "A Northern Whig" emphasized the growing breach between Whig patriots like Henry Flood and Henry Grattan, who aimed at Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform without breaking the connection with England, and the men who desired to establish a separate Irish republic. Tone expressed contempt for the constitution which Grattan had so triumphantly extorted from the British government in 1782; and, himself an Anglican, he urged co-operation between the different religious sects in Ireland as the only means of obtaining complete redress of Irish grievances.

Society of the United Irishmen

In October 1791 Tone converted these ideas into practical policy by founding, in conjunction with Thomas Russell (1767-1803), Napper Tandy and others, the Society of the United Irishmen. The original purpose of this society was no more than the formation of a political union between Roman Catholics and Protestants, with a view to obtaining a liberal measure of parliamentary reform. It was only when it was obvious that this was unattainable by constitutional methods that the majority of the members adopted the more uncompromising opinions which Wolfe Tone held from the first, and conspired to establish an Irish republic by armed rebellion.

Tone himself admitted that with him hatred of England had always been "rather an instinct than a principle", though until his views should become more generally accepted in Ireland he was prepared to work for reform as distinguished from revolution. But he wanted to root out the popular respect for the names of Charlemont and Grattan, transferring the leadership to more militant campaigners. Grattan was a reformer and a patriot without democratic ideas; Wolfe Tone was a revolutionary whose principles were drawn from the French Convention. Grattan's political philosophy was allied to that of Edmund Burke; Tone was a disciple of Georges Danton and Thomas Paine.

It is important to note the use of the word 'united'. This was what particularly alarmed the British aristocracy in Westminster as they saw the Catholic population as the greatest threat to their power in Ireland. However, Tone's ideas would have been very difficult to apply to the real situation in Ireland as the Catholics had different concerns of their own, these usually being having to pay the tithe bill to the Anglican Church of Ireland and the huge amounts they had to pay in order to lease land from the Protestant Ascendancy. Eighteenth century Ireland was a sectarian state, ruled by a small Anglican minority, over a majority Catholic population, whose ancestors had been dispossessed of land and political power in the 17th century Plantations of Ireland. This was in part also an ethnic division, the Catholics being descended from native Irish and the Protestants from English settlers. Such sectarian animosity undermined the United Irishmen movement: two secret societies from Ulster fought against each other, the Peep O'Day Boys, who were made up mostly of Protestants, and the Defenders, who were made up of Catholics. These two groups clashed frequently throughout the latter half of the 18th century and sectarian violence worsed in the county Armagh area from the mid 1790s. This undermined Wolfe Tone's movement as it suggested that Ireland couldn't be united and that religious prejudices were too strong. In addition, the militant Protestant groups, including the newly founded Orange Order, could be mobilised against the United Irishmen by the British authorities.

However, democratic principles were gaining ground among the Catholics as well as among the Presbyterians. A quarrel between the moderate and the more advanced sections of the Catholic Committee led, in December 1791, to the secession of sixty-eight of the former, led by Lord Kenmare; and the direction of the committee then passed to more violent leaders, of whom the most prominent was John Keogh, a Dublin tradesman. The active participation of the Catholics in the movement of the United Irishmen was strengthened by the appointment of Tone as paid secretary of the Roman Catholic Committee in the spring of 1792. Despite his desire to emancipate his fellow countrymen, Tone had very little respect for the Catholic faith (a view shared by many subsequent Irish republicans). When the legality of the Catholic Convention in 1792 was questioned by the government, Tone drew up for the committee a statement of the case on which a favourable opinion of counsel was obtained; and a sum of £1500 with a gold medal was voted to Tone by the Convention when it dissolved itself in April 1793. Burke and Grattan were anxious that provision should be made for the education of Irish Roman Catholic priests in Ireland, to preserve them from the contagion of Jacobinism in France; Wolfe Tone, "with an incomparably juster forecast", as Lecky observes, "advocated the same measure for exactly opposite reasons." He rejoiced that the breaking up of the French schools by the revolution had rendered necessary the foundation of St Patrick's College, Maynooth, which he foresaw would draw the sympathies of the clergy into more democratic channels (he was unaware that the government was financing the college).

Revolutionary in exile

In 1794 the United Irishmen, persuaded that their scheme of universal suffrage and equal electoral districts was not likely to be accepted by any party in the Irish parliament, began to found their hopes on a French invasion. An English clergyman named William Jackson, who had imbibed revolutionary opinions during his long stay in France, came to Ireland to negotiate between the French committee of public safety and the United Irishmen. Tone drew up a memorandum for Jackson on the state of Ireland, which he described as ripe for revolution; the memorandum was betrayed to the government by an attorney named Cockayne, to whom Jackson had imprudently disclosed his mission; and in April 1794 Jackson was arrested on a charge of treason.

Several of the leading United Irishmen, including Reynolds and Hamilton Rowan, immediately fled the country; the papers of the United Irishmen were seized, and for a time the organisation was broken up. Tone, who had not attended meetings of the society since May 1793, remained in Ireland until after the trial and suicide of Jackson in April 1795. Having friends among the government party, including members of the Beresford family, he was able to make terms with the government, and in return for information as to what had passed between Jackson, Rowan and himself, he was permitted to emigrate to the United States, where he arrived in May 1795. Living at Philadelphia, he wrote a few months later to Thomas Russell expressing unqualified dislike of the American people, whom he was disappointed to find no more truly democratic in sentiment and no less attached to authority than the English; he described George Washington as a "high-flying aristocrat," and he found the aristocracy of money in America still less to his liking than the European aristocracy of birth.

Tone did not feel himself bound by his agreement with the British government to abstain from further conspiracy; and finding himself at Philadelphia in the company of Reynolds, Rowan, and Tandy, he went to Paris to persuade the French government to send an expedition to invade Ireland. In February 1796 he arrived in Paris and had interviews with De La Croix and Carnot, who were impressed by his energy, sincerity, and ability. A commission was given him as adjutant-general in the French army, which he hoped might protect him from the penalty of treason in the event of capture by the English; though he himself claimed the authorship of a proclamation said to have been issued by the United Irishmen, enjoining that all Irishmen taken with arms in their hands in the British service should be instantly shot; and he supported a project for landing a thousand criminals in England, who were to be commissioned to burn Bristol, England and commit other atrocities. He drew up two memorials representing that the landing of a considerable French force in Ireland would be followed by a general rising of the people, and giving a detailed account of the condition of the country.

Hoche's expedition and the 1798 rebellion

The French Directory, which possessed information from Lord Edward FitzGerald and Arthur O'Connor confirming Tone, prepared to despatch an expedition under Louis Lazare Hoche. On December 15, 1796, the expedition, consisting of forty-three sail and carrying about 14,000 men with a large supply of war material for distribution in Ireland, sailed from Brest. Tone, who accompanied it as "Adjutant-general Smith," had the greatest contempt for the seamanship of the French sailors, who were unable to land due to severe gales. They waited for days off Bantry Bay, waiting for the winds to ease, but eventually gave it up. Returning to France, Tone served for some months in the French army under Hoche; and in June 1797 he took part in preparations for a Dutch expedition to Ireland, which was to be supported by the French. But the Dutch fleet was detained in the Texel for many weeks by unfavourable weather, and before it eventually put to sea in October, only to be crushed by Duncan in the battle of Camperdown, Tone had returned to Paris; and Hoche, the chief hope of the United Irishmen, was dead. Napoleon Bonaparte, with whom Tone had several interviews about this time, was much less disposed than Hoche had been to undertake in earnest an Irish expedition; and when the rebellion broke out in Ireland in 1798 he had started for Egypt. When, therefore, Tone urged the Directory to send effective assistance to the Irish rebels, all that could be promised was a number of small raids to descend simultaneously on different points of the Irish coast. One of these under General Humbert succeeded in landing a force near Killala, County Mayo, and gained some success in Connacht (particularly at Castlebar) before it was subdued by Lake and Charles Cornwallis. Wolfe Tone's brother Matthew was captured, tried by court-martial, and hanged; a second raid, accompanied by Napper Tandy, came to disaster on the coast of Donegal; while Wolfe Tone took part in a third, under Admiral Bompard, with General Hardy in command of a force of about 3000 men, which encountered an English squadron near Lough Swilly on October 12, 1798. Tone, who was on board the Hoche, refused Bompard's offer of escape in a frigate before the action, and was taken prisoner when the Hoche was forced to surrender.

Death

When the prisoners were landed a fortnight later, Sir George Hill recognized Tone in the French adjutant-general's uniform. At his trial by court-martial in Dublin, Tone made a speech avowing his determined hostility to England and his intention "by fair and open war to procure the separation of the Two countries," and pleading in virtue of his status as a French officer to die by the musket instead of the rope. He was, however, sentenced to be hanged on November 12, 1798. Before this sentence was carried out, he suffered a fatal neck wound, self-inflicted according to contemporaries, from which he died several days later at the age of 35 in Provost's Prison, Dublin, not far from where he was born.

Legacy

"He rises," says William Lecky the 19th century historian, "far above the dreary level of commonplace which Irish conspiracy in general presents. The tawdry and exaggerated rhetoric; the petty vanity and jealousies; the weak sentimentalism; the utter incapacity for proportioning means to ends, and for grasping the stern realities of things, which so commonly disfigure the lives and conduct even of the more honest members of his class, were wholly alien to his nature. His judgment of men and things was keen, lucid and masculine, and be was alike prompt in decision and brave in action."

In his later years he overcame the drunkenness that was habitual to him in youth (a revealing entry in his diary while in France read simply; "Drunk again."); he developed seriousness of character and unselfish devotion to the cause of patriotism; and he won the respect of men of high character and capacity in France and Holland. His journals, which were written for his family and intimate friends, give a singularly interesting and vivid picture of life in Paris in the time of the Directory. They were published after his death by his son, William Theobald Wolfe Tone (1791 - 1828), who was educated by the French government and served with some distinction in the armies of Napoleon, emigrating after Waterloo to America, where he died, in New York City, on October 10, 1828 at the age of 37. His mother, Matilda (or Mathilda) Tone also emigrated to the United States, and she is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

Tone has been adopted by Irish republicans since the Young Ireland movement of the 1840s as an iconic figure, -the "father of Irish republicanism". In particular, two of his quotes are often referred to by modern republicans:

"To unite Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter under the common name of Irishmen in order break the connection with England, the never failing source of all our political evils, that was my aim".

"If the men of property will not support us, they must fall. Our strength shall come from that great and respectable class, the men of no property".

Every summer, Irish Republicans of various political and paramilitary groupings hold commemorations at Tone's grave in Bodenstown, County Kildare.

Sources

Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone by himself, continued by his son, with his political writings'', edited by W. T. Wolfe Tone (2 volumes., Washington, 1826), another edition of which is entitled
Autobiography of Theobald Wolfe Tone, edited with introduction by R. Barry O'Brien (2 vols., London, 1893);
Lives of the United Irishmen by R. R. Madden, (7 vols., London, 1842);
Compendium of Irish Biography by Alfred Webb,(Dublin, 1878);
History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, by W. E. H. Lecky, vols. iii., iv., v. (cabinet ed., 5 vols., London, 1892).
Wolfe Tone's Provost Prison, by Patrick Denis O'Donnell, in The Irish Sword, no. 42, Volume XI, Military History Society of Ireland, Dublin, 1973.
Wolfe Tone: Suicide or Assassination, by Patrick Denis O'Donnell, in Irish Journal of Medical Science, no. 57, Dublin, 1997 (with Dr. T. Gorey)
Original text from http://1911encyclopedia.org

External links

"Speech of Theobold Wolf Tone to the Court-Martial" and "Matilda Tone", from the Memoirs of William Sampson (attorney)
Find-A-Grave biography

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