METHODS OF LEGISLATION

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1719 not only asserted the right of the English Parliament to legislate for Ireland, but also deprived the Irish House of Lords of its old appellate jurisdiction.

rejecting or accepting the Gradually and by steps to enumerate, and by

But, apart from this occasional exercise of a much resented power, the English Government had an almost overwhelming influence over the Irish Parliament, owing to the extraordinary powers that were vested in the Privy Councils of England and of Ireland. By a law passed under Henry VII., and called Poynings' Act, it had been enacted that the Irish Parliament should not be summoned till the measures it was called upon to pass had been approved under the Great Seal of England; that Parliament could neither originate nor amend any Bills, and that its sole power was that of measures thus submitted to it. which it is not here necessary some legal decisions which have been largely disputed, the Irish Parliament regained in a great measure the right of originating Bills, and it claimed, though for a long time unsuccessfully, the right of controlling the national purse. Lord Mountmorres has described the prevailing practice in Irish legislation as it existed before 1782. Before a Parliament is summoned, he tells us, it was the custom that the Lord Lieutenant and Irish Council should send over an important Bill as the reason for summoning that Assembly. By custom this Bill was always a Money Bill, and it was constantly rejected, as a Money Bill which originated in the Council was contrary to a known maxim that the Commons hold the purse of the nation. . . . Propositions for laws, or heads of Bills as they are called, originated indifferently in either House. After two readings and a committal they were sent by the Council to England, and were submitted, usually by the English Privy Council, to the Attorney and Solicitor General; and from thence they

were returned to the Council of Ireland, from whence they were sent to the Commons if they originated there (if not to the Lords), and after three readings they were sent up to the House of Lords where they went through the same stages; and then the Lord Lieutenant gave the royal assent in the same form which is observed in Great Britain. In all these stages in England and Ireland, it is to be remembered that any Bill was liable to be rejected, amended or altered, but that when they had passed the Great Seal of England no alteration could be made by the Irish Parliament.' 1

1

The ultimate form, therefore, which every Irish measure assumed was given to it by the authorities in England. They had full power either of altering or rejecting the measures of the Irish Parliament, and that Parliament, though it might reject Bills which were returned to it from England in an amended form, had no power of altering them.

In addition to this constitutional subordination, the subservience of the Irish Parliament was secured by the nature of its constituencies. The representation of the counties appears to have been at all times tolerably sound, but the borough system had been developed to an enormous extent under the Stuarts, and chiefly with the object of securing a complete ascendency to the Crown. Out of the 300 members who constituted the House of Commons, no less than 216 sat for boroughs or manors. An immense proportion of these were treasury boroughs or boroughs at the disposal of persons connected with the Government, and they gave the administration an overwhelming power. In the course of time, however, a large proportion of these small boroughs fell into the hands of great resident Irish noblemen or commoners, and this fact speedily modified Irish politics.

Lord Montmorres' History of the Irish Parliament, i. 58–59.

ENGLISH AND IRISH PARTIES

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A system such as I have described had little claim to be regarded as representative government, especially as it was only at very long intervals that even the more independent members came into contact with their constituents, and as they had no connection with the Catholics who formed the great majority of the Irish people. It is probable, however, that the Irish Parliament, even in its worst time, contained men of knowledge and ability who were well acquainted with the wants and circumstances of Ireland, and like all legislative bodies it had a natural tendency to extend the sphere of its authority. In the later years of George II. the influence of Boyle, who was Speaker of the House of Commons and who afterwards became the first Lord Shannon, began to be set up in opposition to that of Primate Stone, who for many years had directed affairs in Ireland. Boyle was the largest borough owner in Ireland, and he grouped around him what was called the Irish, as distinguished from the English, interest. The questions that divided these parties were in the main questions of patronage and power, but there was some real national significance in the efforts of a group of great Irish noblemen to put an end to a system under which the most important and most lucrative places in Ireland were bestowed on men of another country, who were often habitual absentees, and in which Irish interests were systematically subordinated to English ones.

The disputes on financial questions to which I have already referred took a more acute form. In the preceding years a small national debt had grown up in Ireland. It had risen between 1715 and 1729 from 50,000l. to rather more than 220,000l., and for some years it continued slowly to increase. After the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, however, a considerable wave of prosperity passed over the country, and in 1751 there was a large surplus in the Exchequer,

and a violent dispute arose between the Crown and the Parliament about its disposal. The Crown maintained that it should be considered as a part of the hereditary revenue, and that the Commons had no right even to discuss the disposition of it without the previous consent of the King. In order to establish this position the Lord Lieutenant opened the session of 1751 by a speech signifying the royal consent to the appropriation of a portion of the surplus to the liquidation of the National Debt. The House passed a Bill with that object, but omitted all notice of the royal assent. In England the Privy Council inserted in the preamble of the Bill an alteration signifying that such an assent had been given, and the House shrank from rejecting the Bill and passed it in its altered form. In 1753 a similar dispute arose, but the opposition had grown stronger and the indignation against the conduct of the English Government was very intense. When the Bill was returned from England with the same alteration as in 1751, it was fiercely resisted, and at last by a majority of five rejected on account of the alteration. The Government, however, dealt with the question in a very peremptory manner. All the servants of the Crown who had voted in the majority were dismissed, and a portion of the surplus was applied by royal authority and without parliamentary sanction to the liquidation of the debt.

These things had a very considerable influence upon Irish parliamentary history and this influence was by no means entirely good. For the first time since the Revolution there was an organised opposition in the Irish House of Commons, and it was supported by a really popular movement throughout the country. The price of boroughs trebled in a few years and the interest in parliamentary proceedings immensely increased. On the other hand there was much more parliamentary corruption and the national

PARLIAMENTARY CORRUPTION

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expenditure rapidly rose. The House of Commons having failed to obtain the control of the surplus in the Exchequer, resolved that no such surplus should again exist; it began systematically to vote large bounties and grants for manufactures and public works, and it was its special object to throw the additional expenditure on the hereditary revenue so as to make it impossible for the King again to govern without the assistance of Parliament. It effected this object by voting bounties and other charges without imposing any specific taxes for paying them, thus placing the burden on the revenue at large. A curious law for the encouragement of tillage was voted and accepted by the Viceroy, granting a bounty in perpetuity on the carriage of corn to the Dublin market, and in a few years this bounty amounted to an annual charge of more than 50,000l. upon the hereditary revenue. The bounty system was by no means wholly evil, for in a country so backward and so torpid much artificial stimulus to industry was required, and a large number of the enterprises and institutions assisted by the Irish Parliament were of incontestable utility. But the new policy was a great source of jobbery and extravagance.

The Government at the same time found it necessary to bestow much more attention than in former years on the management of the Irish Parliament, and large sums were expended for this purpose. Boyle succeeded in obtaining the ascendency he desired, but he was bought by a peerage, and pensions and honours and places were now habitually bestowed with a sole view to political services. Power had passed to a great extent into Irish hands, but it was chiefly the hands of a few great Irish borough owners who obtained the name of 'undertakers' because they undertook, in consideration of obtaining a large share of the patronage of the Crown, to carry on the King's business