Historical Sketch of the College Historical Society (1770-2020)

The Forerunners The College Historical Society sprang from two associations of a similar character which were founded in the middle of the eighteenth century: Burke’s Club and the Historical Club. The Club founded by Edmund Burke and a few of his fellow students is the earliest debating society composed of students of the University of which any definite record remains. The minute book of this club, a treasured possession of the College Historical Society, relates that the first meeting took place on Tuesday, April 21st, 1747, in a house in George’s Lane, now South Great George’s Street, the members present being Edmund Burke, Matthew Mohun, William Dennis, Andrew Buck, Richard Shackelton and Richard Ardesoif. Mohun, for his ill conduct and neglect was later “formally expelled the Society for ever.” The preamble to the Club’s laws stated its intention to provide “fair opportunities of correcting our taste, regulating and enriching our judgement, brightening our wit, and enlarging our knowledge, and of being serviceable to others in the same things. The business of the Club was to be “speeching, reading, writing and arguing, in Morality, History, Criticism, Politics and all the useful branches of philosophy”; the first law related to the conduct of members and ordained that ‘decency and good manners, virtue and religion, must guide their whole behaviour, and no word, gesture or action, contrary thereto, pass uncensured.’ Burke, who sat ssix times as President and twice as Censor, was the moving spirit and was never once absent from the meetings. The last record in the minute book is of the meeting held on Friday, Jul 10th, 1747. The Historical Club was instituted on October 24, 1753. It was founded to cultivate historical knowledge, but soon began to hold monthly debates. It met, as had Burke’s Club outside College, through composed entirely of students. He last quarter of the eighteenth century was the golden age of Irish eloquence, and among the great orator of this period the names of Burke, and of Grattan, Flood, Yelverton, Hussey- Burgh and other member so the Historical Club held an honoured place. The Early years of the College Historical Society: March 1770-80 The College Historical Society sprang from “the embers of another Institution”- this Historical Club. The new Society met for the first time on Wednesday, March 31st, 1770, when thirteen students ‘who first united into a body and obtained the use of the Common Room from the Provost and Senior Fellows’ were present. The Society had codified laws, and its meetings, which began at si o’clock, included a history examination, a debate and the submission of essay and poems. The office of Auditors is original to the College Historical Society, and the title has been adopted by many other societies in College and elsewhere. The Society soon established itself, furnishing comfortable rooms, awarding medals and collecting ‘subscriptions for the relief of the poor at this period of distress and misery.’ John Hely Hutchinson, the controversial Provost elected in 1774, who opened the University to Roman Catholics, was a good friend to the Society. As the Patriot Party of the Volunteers gather strength, the Society took an increasing interest in Irish politics. At its first Irish debate, held in January 1779, it rejected the proposal of a Union between Great Britain and Ireland, and in the following months supported the Volunteers and unanimously approved of the ‘secessions of America.’ To the Rebellion of 1798 On November 19th, 1783, Theobald Wolfe Tone was elected a member of the Society and pursued an outstanding career in it. As the political atmosphere in Ireland grew more exciting, this was reflected in the Society, which Tone once took to task for being ‘a theatre of War and Tumult.’ Tone was a contemporary in the Society of Thomas Addis Emmet, who helped to establish the Societ;s reciprocal membership (still in existence) with the Speculative Society of Edinburgh. In 1798, however, the Society went too far in its independene. It refused to exclude from its meetings a sometime member who had been banned by the Board from the College and the Board retaliated by expelling the Society from College. The Society contrived to meet outside College, in William Street, but by the end of 1794 some members had decided to accept the Bord’s stringent conditions for readmission, which included as one of the fundamental regulations the stricture that ‘No question of modern politics shall be debated,’ but the spirit of this law was frequently infringed. The reconstituted Society flourished. In 1795 the enthusiasm of the Trinity students for the patriots led to their losing the privilege of watching the proceedings of the Irish House of Commons from a gallery of their own, because after a speech by Grattan against the recall of the popular viceroy Lord Fitzwilliam, the students, recalled Lord Edward Walsh, ‘rose as one man shouting and cheering with the boisterous tumult of a public meeting… We were pushed out in a heap without the slightest ceremony, and were never again gain suffered to enter as privileged persons.’ In 1797 two members who subsequently distinguished themselves joined the Society, Thomas Moore and Robert Emmet, and the two became firm friends. In 1798, Lord Clare, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Vice-Chancellor of the University, held a General Visitation, during which it was discovered that there were four committees of the United Irishmen and some Orange Societies within College. Nineteen students (eight of them members of the College Historical Society) were expelled, including Robert Emmet. So when the ’98 Rebellion began on May 23, the Society took a stance opoosed to that of its ex-Auditor, Wolfe Tone. At a meeting of only ten members they resolved to enter ‘with the warmest feeling into the common cause of their country, and … to join heart and hand in defence of their liberties and laws.’ The Society then adjourned until the rising ended. To the Second Expulsion, 1815 An echo of Emmet’s insurrection appears in the Journals for November 16th, 1803, when a medal, open to all members of the University, was offered for the best elegy on the death of Lord Kilwarden, who had been killed during the insurrection. The years which followed were turbulent ones for the Society, and relations with the Board deteriorated. There were many disorderly meetings. During the 1809-10 Session a debate on universal toleration led to the Auditor being summoned before the Provost, and being questioned ‘as to certain inflammatory expressions said to have been used.’ In 1812 the Provost, Dr Thomas Elrington, objected to some of the subjects chosen for debate, including universal suffrage and capital punishment. He even objected to the motion ‘Was Brutus justifiable in putting Julius Caesar to death?’ on the grounds that ‘to admit a defence to be made for assassination must be injurious to morality.’ The Board imposed more restrictive regulations in 1813, and many experienced members were excluded from the Society. Meetings became even less orderly, and the following year the Provost intervened in a Society dispute to strike two participants off the list of members. The Society protested against ever- increasing Board severity, and eventually in 1815 came to the conclusion that the Board was determined to extinguish it. In a dramatic final debate on February 15th, 1815, a committee of seven was set up, ‘for the purpose of resigning for the present into the custody of the Provost and the Board the rooms hitherto appropriated to the use of the Historical Society, the late regulations of the Board being in the opinion of the Society inconsistent with the successful prosecution of the objects for which it was instituted…’ and then the Society adjourned sine die. Provost Elrington’s notebook for December 10th, 1815, reads: ‘An application having been made by some of the students for the re-institution of the Historical Society, it was refused’. One of Elrington’s pupils. Lord Cloncurry. Later wrote of him as: “A learned man, but stupid and blockish, and thoroughly imbued with the narrowest views of his class and profession. It was he who accomplished the suppression of the Historical Society, then obnoxious to all who dreaded progression, as a nursery of genius and patriotism, and as opening a common field whereon the rising generation of Irishmen were learning mutual respect of each other…’ The Extern Society 1815-43 After 1815 the Society held its meetings outside College, and continued as a vigorous debating society. Among its members during this period were Isaac Butt, an outstanding orator, who in 1932 attempted unsuccessfully to have the Society readmitted to College, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, novelist and poet, Thomas Davis and John Black Dillon. Early in 1841 Davis and Dillon were among several members of the Society who joined O’onnell’s Repeal Association, and later helped largely to form the Young Ireland party. Dillon’s address to the Society as an ex-President in November 1841 was entitled ‘Patriotism’. The Nation newspaper was founded in 1842 by Davis, Dillon and Gavan Duffy. In 1843 Davis was elected a Honorary Member of the Society. 1843 also saw the foundation within College of an Intern College Historical Society, at the request of many students. Several member of the Extern Society, led by William Connor Magee, later Archbishop of York, brought about ht euniting of the two Societies, and in May 1843 they held their first joint meeting in College, with the Provost in the chair. MacDonnell (in the ‘Life of Archbishop Magee’) writes of it: ‘The meeting was crowded… It was a long series of oratorical triumphs. From that day the success of the Society was complete.’ To the Society’s Cetenary, 1870 The remainder of the nineteenth century was a good time for the Society. It was a period of stability enlivened by the occasional riotous meeting or clash with the Board. In 1846 reciprocal honorary membership with the Oxford and Cambridge Union Societies was confirmed. In 1852 the Board helped the Society out of financial difficulties with a grant of £20. One of the outstanding debates of this time took place on June 10th, 1857, on the motion ‘That the Reform Bill of Lord Grey was not framed in accordance with the wants of the country.’ Isaac Butt spoke in the affirmative, and was opposed by David Plunket (afterwards Lord Rathmore) and Edward Gibson (afterwards Lord Ashbourne), and the motion was carried. Among the new members this Session were W.E.H. Lecky and J.P. Mahaffy, to be joned the following Session by Anthony Traill (afterwards Provost) and Gerald Fitzgibbon. The buoyant mood of the Society at this time can be gauged by the ton eof Plunket’s Auditorial Address for the 1859-60 Session: “There is, indeed, but one responsibility I know of that you incur on entering our guild, it is to be patriotic Irishmen. This Society is now in its ninetieth ear. Called into being at first at the moment when the spirit of an awakening freedom and a new-born nationality began to breathe upon this land, it has watched that feedoms progress-tenderly nursed that nationality. For ninety yar it has sent forth the best and greatest Irishmen… If you are cold to patriotism, I have no wish that you should become on of us…” In 1864, when the movement began for the erection of statues to the memory of Edmund Burke an Oliver Goldsmith, which resulted in Foley’s two masterpieces which still stand to either side of the entrance gate to College, the Society collected subscriptions from its members and donated £30. The centenary Session of 1869-70 was celebrated with a banquet in Dining Hall, at which Isaac Butt in his speech referred to the Society’s existence outside the walls between 1815 and 1843. To the Burke Centenary, 1897 The Society’s second century had a stormy first decade. The Auditor for 1873-74, Cecil Robert Roche, chose ‘Federalism’ as the subject for his Opening Address, and the Board’s refusal to allow the meeting led to his resignation. Oscar Wilde and Edward Carson joined the Society during this Session. The inaugural Meeting of the following year, 1874-75, was perhaps the most tumultuous in the Society’s history. The trouble arose out of the students’ hostility to one of the speakers, Mr Miller, Q.C., a parliamentary candidate for the University. Contemporary accounts give graphics glimpses of the evening: “The undergraduate element was conspicuous, collarless, stick-bearing, uproarious, and spilling for a fight… There was a wild scene of tumult, uproar and riot, which raged for two long hours… Whistles and bugles added to the din, while on all sides were heard the sharp cracks of the explosive fireworks known as Ashanter bombs. The undergraduates yelled, screamed, roared, rayed. The seats were broken in the body of the hall…. The meeting was adjourned’ Further disturbances during the next Session’s Inaugural led to stricter security regulations, and the meetings became more orderly. In 1883 Douglas Hyde began to speak in the Society’s debates. The Society debated most of the burning issues of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and also began to press for fuller recognition of its own unique status in College. The centenary of Burke’s death was commemorated in 1897 with a banquet in the Dining Hall, at which Lecky delivered a memorial speech, in which he said: ‘We claim him as the founder of our Historical Society, and it was certainly here that he first practised the art of debating, of which he became so great a master.’ To 1920 The first decade of the twenties century was a lively and important one for the Society, although several outstanding men associated with it died during this period: John Kells Ingram, Lecky, Lucius Gwynn, Provost Salmon and Lord Justice Fitzgibbon, to be followed in the next decade by Lord Ashbourne, Mahaffy, Lord Rathmore and Chief Baron Palles. In 1902, the Graduates’ Memorial Building, intended to provide ‘Union’ facilities for students, was opened. The Society had for many years been making representations to be granted rooms in the new building. When it was opened, a petition signed by thirty-eight distinguished former members, including archbishops, judges and members of parliament, was presented to the board, requesting that the special position be safeguarded in the new building. The Society was later, and is still, entrusted with the running of the building jointly with the University Philosophical Society. At this time the Board began to relax its control of discussion in the Society, and among the issues of the day to be debated were ‘That the Gaelic League is deserving of the support of every Irishman’ (carried in 1905 and 1906). Members included Oliver St. John Gogarty and T. S. C. Dagg, who wrote the authoritative history of the Society until 1920. In his Inaugural Address as Auditor, Dagg urged the authorities to consult with the students and said that ‘despite the fact that these (students) may not be in a position to regard College life through the lengthy telescope of half a century, their opinion on the subject might be of some value.’ In 1909 the Society contributed £5 to the cost of erecting the Wolfe Tone Memorial. H next decade was overshadowed by the 1914-18 War, in which over 700 of the Society’s members and past members fought, 136 being killed. During the war years, the Society had therefore very few active members and after the 1915-116 Session, as Mr Justice T.C. Kingsmill-Moore himself, who served in the Royal Flying Corps, was largely responsible as Records Secretary (1915-18) and Auditor (1918-20) for preserving continuity. During the Easter Rising of 1916, the College was not attacked, but was garrisoned first by the staff and members of the Officers’ Training Corps, and later by regular troops. The following term Kingsmill0Moore wrote in TCD Magazine, ‘Whatever the party in power, we believe that they will regard our College as one of Ireland’s greatest possessions.’ In June 1920 the Society celebrated its one-hundredth-and-fiftieth anniversary with a debate against its corresponding Societies, the Edinburgh Speculative and the Oxford, Cambridge and Durham Unions, and a banquet the following night. The 1920s and 1930s The Hon Mr Justice Budd wrote: ‘ The early twenties were a flourishing time for the CHS. Although the membership was much smaller than now, the Society had a wealth of first class speakers and the standard of debate was high… Revolutionary ideas were freely advocated and were not any the less effective in the absence of demonstration to support them. ‘ Among the members prominent at this time were F. H. Boland (later President of the United Nations General Assembly and of the Society, and Chancellor of the University), W.D.L. Greer and Mark Wilson (later Chief Justice of the West African Court of Appeal). The late ‘twenties and early ‘thirties were one of the most lively and controversial eras in the Society’s history, culminating in the 1930-31 Auditorship of Eoin O’Mahony. W.B. Stanford, C.B. McKenna, Terence d Vere White, Garret Gill, Gerard Sweetman and Owen Sheehy Skeffington all played actives parts. The latter was the chief champion of O’Mahony when he faced impeachments lasting several months, arising out of his substituting the toast of ‘Ireland’ of the traditional ‘The Kind’ at the dinner following his Inaugural Meeting. Douglas Hyde was elected President of the Society in 1931. The later ‘thirties saw R B McDowell, James Auchmuty and Conor Cruise O’Brien pass through the Society, which as at this period, according to Dr O’Brien, ‘an institution of almost preternatural decorum- at least during public business… However distasteful their opinions, or-much worse-however horing their style, speakers were heard patiently, with at least apparent respect.’ To The Society’s Bicentenary The Society continued decorously during the war years, and the post-war influx of mature ex-servicemen added to its decorum and stability. There tended to be as much on the ‘club’ aspect of the Society as on its debating. An interesting feature of the last ’forties and the ‘fifties was the participation of a large number of African students, and the election of an African Audior. When in 1957 the College societies’ levy was introduced, out of which societies were supported on condition that their membership subscription was no greater than five shillings, an era of expansion of the Society began, and membership climb steadily. The ‘Sixties was a decade of success in all fields. In competitive debates the Society had a record unequalled in the British Isles, the attendance at debates and private business increased, and closed-circuit television was needed to relay Inaugurals; more services were provided for members; and there was a constant stream of distinguished guests to address the Society. The final Session before the Bicentenary was one of the liveliest in the Society’s history, and during it many years of agitation culminated in the admission of women students to full membership of the Society. On January 22, 1969, Miss Rosaleen Mills rose before a packed house and television cameras to propose the motion ‘That this house reveres the memory of Mrs Pankhurst’, and thus became the first woman to address the Society. The Society’s bicentenary saw a series of prestigious meetings, including the Bicentenary Address by Senator Edward Kennedy, and an exhibition entitled ‘Art and Oratory’ in the National Gallery of Ireland. The 1970s to 2000s As Trinity grew and an ever wider range of concern (not least of them academic) press upon students’ energies, the Society remained the largest in College. The Society had an unequalled record in the Irish Times debating competition, continuing to hold that title to this day. The Society was represented in intervarsity debates both in Ireland and the United Kingdom and in the annual World Debating Championship. This competition was hosted in Trinity in 1992 as part of the Society’s contribution to the Quatercentenary.