GRATTAN, HENRY (1746-182o), Irish statesman, son of James Grattan, for many years recorder of Dublin, was born in Dublin on July 3, 1746. At Trinity college, Dublin, he began a lifelong devotion to classical literature and especially to the great orators of antiquity. He was called to the Irish bar in 1772, but never seriously practised. Like Flood he cultivated his natural genius for eloquence by study of good models, including Boling broke and Junius. Flood influenced Grattan's political aims; and it was through no design on Grattan's part that when Lord Charlemont brought him into the Irish parliament in 1775, in the very session in which Flood damaged his popularity by accepting office, Grattan quickly superseded his friend in the leadership of the national party. His speeches were packed with epigram, and expressed with rare felicity of phrase; his terse and telling sentences were richer in profound aphorisms and maxims of politi cal philosophy than those of any other statesman save Burke; he possessed the orator's incomparable gift of conveying his own enthusiasm to his audience and convincing them of the loftiness of his aims.
The principal object of the national party was to set the Irish parliament free from constitutional bondage to the English privy council. The menacing attitude of the Volunteer Convention at Dungannon greatly influenced the decision of the government in 1782 to resist the agitation no longer. It was through ranks of volunteers drawn up outside the parliament house in Dublin that Grattan passed on April 16, 1782, to move a declaration of the independence of the Irish parliament. "I found Ireland on her knees," Grattan exclaimed, "I watched over her with a paternal solicitude; I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift, spirit of Molyneux, your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation!" After a month of negotiation the claims of Ireland were conceded. The grati tude of his countrymen to Grattan found expression in a parlia mentary grant of £ 1 oo,000, which had to be reduced by one half before he would consent to accept it.
One of the first acts of "Grattan's parliament" was to prove its loyalty to England by passing a vote for the support of 20,000 sailors for the navy. Grattan himself never failed in loyalty to the crown and the English connection. He desired moderate par liamentary reform, and, unlike Flood, he favoured Catholic emancipation. The Irish House of Commons was still subject to the influence of corruption, which the English government had wielded through the Irish borough owners, known as the "under takers," or more directly through the great executive officers. "Grattan's parliament" had no control over the Irish executive. The great majority of the people were excluded as Roman Catho lics from the franchise; two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons were returned by small boroughs at the absolute disposal of single patrons. It was to give stability and true in dependence to the new constitution that Grattan pressed for re form. Having quarrelled with Flood over "simple repeal" Grattan also differed from him on the question of maintaining the Volun teer Convention. He opposed the policy of protective duties, but supported Pitt's commercial propositions in 1785 for estab lishing free trade between Great Britain and Ireland, which, how ever, had to be abandoned.
In general Grattan supported the government for a time after 1782, and in particular spoke and voted for the stringent coercive legislation rendered necessary by the Whiteboy outrages in 1785; but as the years passed without Pitt's personal favour towards par liamentary reform bearing fruit in legislation, he gravitated to wards the opposition, agitated for commutation of tithes in Ire land, and supported the Whigs on the regency question in 1788. In 1792 he succeeded in carrying an Act conferring the franchise on the Roman Catholics; in 1794 in conjunction with William Ponsonby he introduced a reform bill which was even less demo cratic than Flood's bill of 1783. The defeat of Grattan's mild pro posals helped to promote more extreme opinions, which, under French revolutionary influence, were now becoming heard in Ireland.
In 1794 Lord Fitzwilliam became lord-lieutenant of Ireland. It was arranged that Grattan should bring in a Roman Catholic emancipation bill, and that it should then receive government sup port. But finally it appeared that the viceroy had either misunder stood or exceeded his instructions; and on Feb. 19, 1795, Fitzwil liam was recalled. The English cabinet was now determined firmly to resist the Catholic demands, with the result that Ireland rapidly drifted towards rebellion. Grattan warned the Government in a series of masterly speeches of the lawless condition to which Ire land had been driven, but his words were unheeded. He retired from parliament in May 1797, and departed from his customary moderation by attacking the government in an inflammatory "Let ter to the citizens of Dublin." The rebellion of 1798 was sternly and cruelly repressed. The project of a legislative union between the British and Irish parliaments was taken up in earnest by Pitt's government. Grattan from the first denounced the scheme with implacable hostility.
When in 1799 the government brought forward their bill it was defeated in the Irish House of Commons. Grattan was still in retirement. His popularity had temporarily declined, and the fact that his proposals for parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation had become the watchwords of the rebellious United Irishmen had brought upon him the bitter hostility of the govern ing classes. He was dismissed from the privy council; his por trait was removed from the hall of Trinity College; the Merchant Guild of Dublin struck his name off their rolls. But the threatened destruction of the constitution of 1782 quickly restored its author in the affections of the Irish people. On Jan. 15, 1 Boo the Irish parliament met for its last session ; on the same day Grattan secured by purchase a seat for Wicklow; and at a late hour, while the debate was proceeding, he appeared to take his seat. "There was a moment's pause, an electric thrill passed through the House, and a long, wild cheer burst from the galleries." (Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland.) Grattan's strength gave way when he rose to speak and he obtained leave to address the House sit ting. For more than two hours he kept his audience spellbound by a flood of epigram, of sustained reasoning, of eloquent appeal. After prolonged debates Grattan, on May 26, spoke finally against the committal of the bill, ending with an impassioned peroration in which he declared, "I will remain anchored here with fidelity to the fortunes of my country, faithful to her freedom, faithful to her fall." (Grattan's Speeches, iv. 23) . These were the last words spoken by Grattan in the Irish parliament.
For the next five years Grattan took no active part in public affairs; in 18o5 he became a member of the parliament of the United Kingdom. He modestly took his seat on one of the back benches, till Fox brought him forward to a seat near his own, exclaiming, "This is no place for the Irish Demosthenes !" When Fox and Grenville came into power in i8o6 Grattan was offered, but refused to accept, an office in the government. In the follow ing year he showed the strength of his judgment and character by supporting, in spite of consequent unpopularity in Ireland, a meas ure for increasing the powers of the executive to deal with Irish disorder. Roman Catholic emancipation, which he continued to advocate with unflagging energy though now advanced in age, became complicated after 18o8 by the question whether a veto on the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops should rest with the crown.
Grattan supported the veto, but a more extreme Catholic party was now arising in Ireland under the leadership of Daniel O'Con nell and Grattan's influence gradually declined. He seldom spoke in parliament after 181o, the most notable exception being in 1815, when he separated himself from the Whigs and supported the final struggle against Napoleon. His last speech of all, in 1819, contained a passage referring to the union he had so pas sionately resisted, which exhibits the statesmanship and at the same time the equable quality of Grattan's character. His senti ments with regard to the policy of the union remained, he said, unchanged; but "the marriage having taken place it is now the duty, as it ought to be the inclination, of every individual to render it as fruitful, as profitable and as advantageous as possible." He died on June 6, 182o, and was buried in Westminster Abbey close to the tombs of Pitt and Fox. His statue is in the outer lobby of the Houses of Parliament at Westminster. Grattan had married in 1782 Henrietta Fitzgerald, a lady descended from the ancient family of Desmond, by whom he had two sons and two daughters.
The most searching scrutiny of his private life only increases the respect due to the memory of Grattan as a statesman and the greatest of Irish orators. Sydney Smith said with truth of Grattan soon after his death : "No government ever dismayed him. The world could not bribe him. He thought only of Ireland; lived for no other object; dedicated to her his beautiful fancy, his elegant wit, his manly courage, and all the splendour of his astonishing eloquence."'