Introduction: Ireland in the Eighteenth Century: The Case for Improvement

Summary

In June of 1746 the earl of Chesterfield, then the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, wrote a letter to Thomas Prior, the founder of the Royal Dublin Society. Chesterfield praised Prior for the work of the Royal Dublin Society and congratulated him on being awarded a £500 annual bounty from the king to support the work of the society. He urged Prior to ‘think of your manufactures about as much as your militia, and be as much upon your guard against poverty as against popery, take my word for it, you are in more danger of the former then of the latter’. Chesterfield was one of many commentators who recognized that the greatest threat to English rule in Ireland in the eighteenth century was not the danger of Catholic rebellion but instead the social and economic problems which plagued the country. By 1746 it was rampant poverty and not Jacobitism that most concerned the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. In response to this newly recognized threat a wave of reform movements and voluntary societies, of which the Royal Dublin Society was only one, sought to address the social ills plaguing Ireland. These charity movements differed from earlier forms of benevolence in organization, method, and aims. Anglo-Irish philanthropists sought to serve and protect their national interests by developing uniquely Irish adaptations of Enlightened philanthropic models. Through voluntary societies that combined a religious and an Enlightenment agenda they attempted to eliminate destabilizing social issues that beleaguered Ireland and threatened their position.

This book examines those Protestant-led reform movements and voluntary societies that gained prominence in Ireland in the eighteenth century. Movements for reform and improvement existed before the Treaty of Limerick in 1691 and continued to exist after the Rebellion of 1798. However, between these years of relative political stability, these societies were at their most prominent and influential. Following the victory of William III over James II, Protestants had once again firmly established control over Ireland. The Protestant ruling elite of Ireland, more commonly known as the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, worked to protect themselves from further Catholic insurgence and to solidify their own monopoly over political power.