Vol. 2: Mahony, Robert.

Type: Article

Mahony, Robert. ‘The Pamphlet Campaign against Henry Grattan in 1797-99’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 2 (1987), pp 149-166.

This article discusses the anti-Grattan pamphlet campaign following Grattan’s withdrawal from the Irish House of Commons in May 1797, and his subsequent Address to the Citizens of Dublin. Grattan’s apparent ‘desertion’ of his post and inconsistencies regarding his reform proposals sparked the attacks, which lasted nearly two years. The article discusses the various pamphlets, newspaper articles and poems published against Grattan during the period. At the forefront of the attacks was one of Grattan’s oldest rivals, Patrick Duigenan, who saw Grattan’s emancipation bill and the catholic cause as being directly linked with the United Irishmen, and who replied to Grattan’s Address with his anti-catholic Answer to the Address. Also discussed at length is T. J. Mathias’s The Shade of Pope. Mahony concludes that, however fervent the pamphlet campaign against Grattan was – and it was intended to change him from being seen as an Irish patriot to being seen as Ireland’s enemy — it did not seem to have had any lasting effect.