Political Activism
A Dublin Protestant and the son of an ironmonger, Tandy went to the famous Quaker boarding school in Ballitore, south Kildare, also attended by Edmund Burke who was eight years older.
He started life as a small tradesman. Turning to politics, he became a member of Dublin Corporation, and was popular for his denunciation of municipal corruption and his proposal of a boycott of English goods in Ireland, in retaliation for the restrictions imposed by the government on Irish commerce.
In April 1780, Tandy was expelled from the Dublin Volunteers (see Henry Flood) for proposing the expulsion of the Duke of Leinster. He was one of the most conspicuous of the small revolutionary party, chiefly of the shopkeeper class, who formed a permanent committee in June 1784 to agitate for reform, and called a convention of delegates from all parts of Ireland which met in October 1784.
Tandy persuaded the corporation of Dublin to condemn by resolution Pitt's amended commercial resolutions in 1785. He became a member of the Whig club founded by Henry Grattan; and he actively co-operated with Theobald Wolfe Tone in founding the Society of the United Irishmen in 1791, of which he became the first secretary.
His opinions, strongly influenced by French revolutionary ideas, now brought Tandy to the notice of the British Government. In February 1792, an allusion in debate by Toler, the attorney general, to Tandy's personal ugliness, provoked him into sending a challenge. This was treated by the House of Commons as a breach of privilege, and a Speaker's warrant was issued for his arrest, which he managed to elude till its validity expired on the prorogation of parliament. Tandy then took proceedings against the lord lieutenant for issuing a proclamation for his arrest; although the action failed, it increased Tandy's popularity, and his expenses were paid by the Society of the United Irishmen.
Read more about this topic: James Napper Tandy
Famous quotes containing the word political:
“In bourgeois society, the French and the industrial revolution transformed the authorization of political space. The political revolution put an end to the formalized hierarchy of the ancien regimé.... Concurrently, the industrial revolution subverted the social hierarchy upon which the old political space was based. It transformed the experience of society from one of vertical hierarchy to one of horizontal class stratification.”
—Donald M. Lowe, U.S. historian, educator. History of Bourgeois Perception, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1982)