From Reform to Revolution: The Intersection of Political-Economic and Enlightenment Ideologies in the Eighteenth-Century Evolution of Irish Patriotism

The Irish Rebellion of 1798 fundamentally originated in the political-economic conflict which developed between various ideologies of Whig political economy in the British Empire in the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-centuries. This conflict came to a head in the latter half of the eighteenth-century as the public sphere in Ireland expanded and the populous developed a greater degree of influence in politics. In its most general definition, Whig political-economic ideology in the eighteenth-century consisted of increased state intervention in the pursuit of inciting labor-wealth creation and civil development, financed through the strengthening of a credit-based economic system. By the late-eighteenth century, this economic philosophy had become normative in the British metropole; what was primarily contested now was the degree and extent such aims should or could be sought across the empire. Irish Patriotism, in its political-economic element, sought these aims within Ireland through Irish Parliamentary autonomy. Proponents of this political-economic objective in Ireland initially utilized constitutional arguments for legislative independence but over the course of the eighteenth-century grew to include natural rights justifications for the same economic aims. For eighteenth-century Irish Patriots, Whiggish political-economic development could only be assured in perpetuity through the same strengthening of the credit-based economic system in Ireland as it had been strengthened in England. Legislative autonomy was thereby necessary to ensure economic stability through Irish Parliamentary accountability. The most accountable state, as it was perceived by the Patriots, would be the one which had the greatest degree of representation of all its citizens. In delving into the long term development of the political-economic and sociopolitical ideologies which would go on to define the Society of United Irishmen and Irish Patriotism of the 1790s, this essay establishes a more clear evolutionary line which provides evidence for the authenticity of enlightened Patriot ideology. The Irish Patriot platform, as it was popularly consolidated by the Volunteers and later adopted by the Society of United Irishmen, evolved over the course of the eighteenth-century to fuse Whiggish political-economic ideology and enlightenment sociopolitical philosophy in pursuit of regionalist-autonomous ideological ends, particularly legislative independence and free trade. Understanding these concepts is vital to understanding the uprising of 1798 as a failed revolution which developed alongside – not because of – other enlightened revolutions of the late eighteenth century.