RITE & REASON:The egalitarian ideals of 18th-century Irish republicanism can serve as a corrective to our present state, writes JOHN MARSDEN
THE FINANCIAL crisis has thrown a spotlight upon Irish society that shows all is far from well.
If we hold to the republican ideal we would do well to revisit its origins in the fertile tradition of 18th-century Irish republicanism.
A seminal figure in the dissemination of republican ideas was James Harrington, whose defence of the English Commonwealth was set out in his Oceana of 1656.
Themes such as the opposition of virtue and corruption, the idea of the public good and responsible citizenship were articulated by Harrington, who held that human beings are invested by God with natures that fitted them for self-rule and made them citizens rather than subjects.
He often called this “reason” or “virtue”, and his whole discussion is reliant upon the notion of people being made in the image of God.
Harrington’s republicanism had an influential supporter in Francis Hutcheson who taught at a Dissenting academy in Dublin in the 1720s and later became professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow.
Through Hutcheson the republican civic humanist tradition was mediated to the Presbyterian clergy and educated classes.
Much of the language and culture of opposition in the Volunteer and United Irish movements can be traced to Hutcheson.
His moral philosophy was rooted in an estimation of human nature that stressed the human capacity for moral goodness. The predisposition to virtue is implanted in our natures, “such that no education, false principles, depraved habits can entirely root this out,” he said. He taught a doctrine of resistance, deemed to be justified when government had betrayed the trust of the people.
It was also recognised that a contract theory of government implied the involvement of the majority, and thus the case for the inclusion of Catholics in reform aspirations gained ground.
Within the United Irish Society the expression of the republican ideal often incorporated religious themes.
Many Presbyterian clergy saw the victory of liberty in France and Ireland’s subjection to tyranny as part of the same struggle. “We must think that the final overthrow of the Beast, or opposing power, is almost at the door,” declared Rev Ledlie Birch, “a prelude to the peaceful reign of a 1,000 years.”
This millenarian perspective was not confined to Presbyterians.
Thomas Russell, an associate of Wolfe Tone, linked the biblical hope for a “new age” with his republican faith in the triumph over despotism of justice, liberty and virtue. Russell’s egalitarianism was informed by a religious conviction concerning the dignity of human persons which implied rights of a social as well as a political nature.
He insisted that since all people are endowed by God with “the same passions and the same reason as the great”, they are qualified “for the same liberty, happiness and virtue”.
Russell was part of a wider network within the United Irish Society moving policy in radical directions. This circle included James Hope and Henry Joy McCracken, who were keen to address the plight of the labouring classes.
As well as attacking the corruption of government by patronage and the awarding of massive pensions from public funds, measures of social improvement were seen as the natural accompaniment of the extension of democracy.
This republican tradition has much to say to Ireland of the financial crisis. While there is an international dimension to this crisis, we contracted a virulent strain of the malaise through blind faith in the free market and failure to maintain regulatory balance.
Too often when Government Ministers are quizzed about our difficulties the response is basically that, bad as it is, if we can get the numbers right, we can fix the economy. No recognition here of where greed and exclusive reliance on the market has led us.
Mary Harney’s infatuation with a pre-Obama US-style health system is another example of the fawning worship of the free market. The other scandal we put up with is the way social exclusion is allowed to replicate itself over the generations.
To avoid the erosion of civility that goes with idolatrous adherence to the market we must heed Hutcheson’s charge that “Tyranny, Faction, a Neglect of Justice, a Corruption of Manners, and any thing which occasions the Misery of the Subjects, destroys this national Love, and the dear Idea of a COUNTRY.”
John Marsden is Church of Ireland Dean of St Brigid’s Cathedral, Kildare