he would never arouse the Catholic question again, though he had avowed that he considered it of the most pressing importance. In the absence of any other possibility, George was forced reluctantly to accept the Talents Ministry on the death of Pitt (1806), and even to consent to the inclusion of his pet aversion, Mr. Fox, but he obliged them as the price of their victory to find places for Lord Sidmouth and many others of the King's Friends, and he dismissed them at once when they ventured to revive the Catholic question (1807). Their successors, the Ministries of Portland and Perceval, were essentially his own creation; they possessed neither ability, oratory, nor voting power; the royal influence was the one mainspring of their existence.

Perhaps, however, no single event more clearly testified the strength of the royal influence than the perfect readiness with which, on the outbreak of the king's malady in 1810, the Opposition, headed by Lord Grey and Lord Grenville, agreed to accept the task of governing the country in the face of a hostile majority in both Houses, relying solely on the support of the Prince Regent. The personal opposition of the Crown was the principal cause of the delay of the settlement of the Catholic Relief Question till 1829, and the postponement of many other useful and necessary reforms. The death of George IV. (1830) was regarded as decidedly favourable to the progress of Parliamentary Reform, because the Duke of Clarence (William IV.) was not so deeply pledged against the movement, nor had he ever received pledges on the subject from any of the leading statesmen who had bound themselves to his father and brother, or considered themselves bound by the promises of others. It is, moreover, a remarkable fact that the opposition of the Lords to the Reform Bill of 1831-2 was eventually overcome by an effort of royal influence very similar to that which had overthrown the coalition of 1783-the personal order of the king to the Lords with regard to the exercise of their votes on the question.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE IRISH PARLIAMENT AND THE UNION.

AN

N Irish Parliament was, at the outset, merely a wider form of the Ordinary Feudal Council of the Lord Deputy, the latter consisting of those barons who lived in the vicinity of the vice-regal whereabouts, the former including in addition others from more distant provinces, who were summoned only on important occasions. In 1295, however, the Lord Deputy Wogan issued directions to the sheriffs of every county and liberty to return two knights to Parliament. The date of the admission of

the burgesses cannot be fixed with anything like accuracy; but it is improbable that it was earlier than the reign of Edward III. They appear for certain in 1341, and they are mentioned as an essential part of Parliament in an ordinance of 1359.

In 1495, the famous statute of Drogheda, known as Poyning's Law, produced an essential change not only in the parliamentary constitution of Ireland, but also in its jurisprudence. It enacted that no Parliament should, for the future, be held in Ireland, until the king's lieutenant has certified to the king, under the great seal, "the causes and considerations, and all such acts as it seems to them ought to be passed thereon," and until the assent of the king and Council, and permission to hold a Parliament, be obtained. It further enacted that all statutes made lately in England should be deemed good and effectual in Ireland. The result of the first clause was to secure the initiative of all Acts of Parliament to the English Council. The second was construed to mean that Acts of the English Parliament passed after the eighteenth year of Henry VII., had no operation in Ireland unless specially adopted by the Irish Parliament.

The Irish representative system was manipulated with even greater facility than the English, for not only were boroughs created or suppressed at will, but writs were issued or denied to

The first trace of oppo

particular counties for no better reason. sition to the Crown appears in a Parliament summoned by Sir Henry Sidney in 1569, in which a strong country party ranged itself against the Government, denounced the illegalities committed with regard to the elections and returns, and proceeded further to discuss general business, including taxation. By the reign of James I. the number of counties had reached thirty-two; and during the same reign the boroughs were augmented by forty new creations. The number of the Commons was at this time 232; it gradually increased until it amounted to 300, which in 1692 became the final limit. Two hundred and sixteen of these represented nomination boroughs. The numbers of peers in 1613 was 122, of which 66 were present at the Parliament of that year. They had the privilege not only of voting by proxy, but also of protesting in the same vicarious fashion, and there are instances of the infliction of fines on those who omitted to send their proxies to Parliament. Their numbers became enormously enlarged under the Hanoverians, Irish peerages being lavished right and left as a cheap and easy mode of corruption, or reward for doubtful political service. They were also used in many cases as a step towards an English peerage for military services which were regarded as worth more than a baronetcy, but not quite up to an English barony. The Catholics appear to have been at all times hopelessly excluded from the Irish Parliament by prevailing custom, though not directly by law till after the Revolution, in spite of one or two attempts, at different intervals, to procure the legislative adoption of the oaths of supremacy as a qualification for membership. The Act of the 2nd of Anne, 1704, required voters to take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration, but the elective franchise was not taken away from Roman Catholics in Ireland till the 1st of George I., 1715.

For a long time it was doubtful whether the English Parliament had power to bind Ireland by laws, without the subsequent assent of the Irish Parliament. The former always maintained the right, the latter denied it. Before the Revolution, however, it was only in very rare instances that the English Parliament extended the operation of its statutes to Ireland. After that date, however, several laws of great importance passed in England were

made binding on Ireland as well. There was no opposition to this practice till 1719, when the Irish Lords resolved that no appeal lay from the Irish Court of Exchequer to the king in the Parliament of Great Britain. In consequence, a bill was brought in (6 Geo. I.) for the better securing the dependence of Ireland upon the Crown of Great Britain. It declared that the king and the Parliament of England could make laws which should be binding on Ireland, without any necessity for the consent of the Irish Parliament.

The parliamentary history of Ireland begins in the year 1753, when, for the first time, the Ministry were opposed by the House of Commons on a question of finance; the former claiming to dispose of a surplus, the Commons maintaining their right to appropriate it to whatever purpose they pleased. The Ministry triumphed, but from this date begins a "period of splendid eloquence, and of ardent though not always uncompromising patriotism, which lasted down to the Union." The rise of a national party naturally led to the rise of national feeling, and a desire for independence from the yoke which had so long galled the necks of the Irish. The magnificent oratory of Grattan was the strongest impulse to this Home Rule movement. He became the leader of the popular party, the soul of the opposition to England. The American war, and the reverses of England, gave the Irish at last the opportunity they so eagerly panted for, and the demand for legislative independence was unwillingly conceded in 1782. Poyning's Law, and 6 Geo. I., were repealed, and Ireland started on a chequered period of Home Rule, which was as illustrious for the splendid eloquence of the many brilliant orators who adorned it, as despicable for the deep-rooted corruption and low party spirit of the governing class. The parliamentary system naturally became more and more corrupt; all attempts at reform were rejected by the aristocratic clique who monopolised the places and profits of the Administration; the English Government could only carry any measures in Parliament by direct bribery; there was always the danger that the latter might, on its own initiative, decree something utterly incompatible with the continued connection with England. The necessity for restoring legislative union gradually forced itself on the understanding of

most responsible statesmen, and the blunders and cruelties of the Irish Rebellion only precipitated the event.

Legislative union, however, could only be effected with the consent of the Irish Parliament, and as both the Catholic and Protestant sections of the Opposition steadily declined the idea, there was nothing left but to buy up a majority. Borough-mongers must be compensated; influential men given peerages and pensions; many prominent people bribed directly with hard cash. Nearly a million and a half of money was spent in this laudable cause; and when a new Parliament met in 1800, the Government was confident of success. The first night, however, was the scene of a tremendous contest and a striking coup de théatre. An amendment was moved to the Address, pledging the House to uphold legislative independence. Orator after orator, in true Hibernian fashion, hurled forth denunciations, promises, warnings, like torrents of molten lava on the heads of the cowards, the traitors, the renegades who would betray their country to the invader. The Ministry defended themselves with equal spirit. And so the long watches of the night dragged slowly out, till fifteen hours had been spent in wordy warfare, and through the tall windows the gray dawn peeped curiously in on the angry Then at seven o'clock in the morning Grattan, weak, ill, almost dying, the shadow of his former self, was suddenly led into the House, dressed in the old patriotic garb of the volunteer army of 1782, which had won Home Rule for Ireland. He had been hastily elected after midnight for Wicklow, that he might come like a ghost from the grave of patriotism to speak against the Union. His speech was worthy of him—a splendid piece of eloquence-but its results were zero. The amendment was thrown out, and on the 18th of February the resolutions for the Union were carried by a majority of forty-six. They were confirmed by act of the English Parliament, which received the royal assent August 2, 1800. By the bill it was provided that four bishops 1 sitting in annual rotation, and twenty-eight representative peers chosen for life by the whole peerage of Ireland, should represent that country in the English House of Lords. The

scene.

'The Irish Church Act, 1869, removed the Irish bishops from the Lords.