into electoral districts, and each district made chargeable with the support of its poor, in order that every parish should bear its own burdens. This amendment, the only one of any importance, having been accepted, the Bill was passed and received the Royal assent on July 31, 1838.

By the 25th of March, 1839, twenty-two unions were declared, and in eighteen of these guardians were appointed; whilst in the course of the following year, 127 unions were declared, three only remaining to be formed, whilst fourteen workhouses were already opened for the reception of paupers. In 1843, it being found that whatever resistance was offered to the new system proceeded principally from occupiers rented at or under £4, an Amended Poor Relief Act was passed, which provided for the exemption of such occupiers from the payment of poor rates. The Act also contained a settlement clause, by which it was necessary that a pauper should have occupied some tenement in a given electoral division for twelve out of eighteen calendar months previous to his application for relief, in order that such electoral district might be rated for his support. In 1847 another Amended Poor Relief Bill, described more fully under the section which treats of the Great Famine, was carried through by Russell. It authorized the granting of out-door relief to permanently infirm poor, and increased the number of ex officio guardians from one-third to one-half of the whole body of guardians in each union. The "quarter-acre clause" was also made part of the

measure, and caused more trouble than the evil it was meant to cure.

In the same year that witnessed this legislative experiment, Morgan John O'Connell moved a resolution in the House of Commons to remedy the state of affairs which had arisen as a result of the acceptance of Wellington's amendment to the Poor Law Bill of 1838. The Duke, as we have seen, had proposed the substitution of electoral for union rating, with the view of decentralizing the areas of responsibility and inducing the landlords in self-defence to interest themselves in the welfare of their

But the landlords had ingeniously proceeded to clear the tenants off the rates in the rural electoral divisions by evicting them when they became destitute. The outcasts thereupon flocked to the towns, where, stripped of the ordinary means of subsistence, they soon were thrown upon the rates. Thus the landlords escaped from the responsibility which would have lain upon them, shaking off not only the burden of their poor but the detestable fardel of the country poor rates. Morgan John O'Connell's remedial motion for the substitution of electoral for union rating was rejected by a majority of ninety-nine; but the question was not allowed to drop, and between 1861 and 1871 it

was on several occasions brought before the notice of the House of Commons.

In 1850 the Government consented to issue an additional £300,000 to the most embarrassed Irish unions, thus raising the whole nominal debt due from Ireland to £4,783,000, and at the same time to extend the period of repayment of the advance to forty years. In 1862 a further Poor Law Act was passed in accordance with the recommendations of a committee, appointed in 1861 to inquire into the Poor Law system. The most important alteration made in the existing law consisted in a modification of the "quarter-acre clause." The Bill, as originally framed, provided for the simple repeal of the clause, but the House of Lords decided that the clause should be maintained as far as out-door relief was concerned. In 1871 a committee of the Lower House was appointed to inquire into the matter of rating, and it declared in favour of union rating by a majority of one. In 1873 Lord Hartington, who had presided over this committee, gave it as his opinion in the House of Commons, that the system of union rating ought to be adopted, since that of electoral rating had "placed undue pressure on the urban divisions, encouraging the destruction of labourers' houses, and discouraging their erection." This suggestion was embodied in a Bill introduced by O'Shaughnessy the year after, but the proposal did not commend itself to the House, and on the motion of Mr. Kavanagh,1 member for Carlow, it was rejected.2

1 Arthur Macmorrough Kavanagh (1831-1889). Born with only the rudiments of arms and legs.

2 Appendix XXXVIIA, further history of the unions.

CHAPTER VII

MUNICIPAL REFORM ACT, 1840

THE history of the reform of municipal procedure in Ireland is one more proof, were any other required, of the unequal treatment meted out as between Protestants and Catholics in that country at the beginning of last century, and the spirit of intolerance that was abroad in the land.

In 1172 Henry II granted two charters to the citizens of Bristol. By the first they became possessed of the City of Dublin, "with all the liberties and free customs which the men of Bristol had at Bristol and throughout the King's territory," and by the second they were freed from "all imposts throughout England, Normandy, Wales, France, and Ireland." In the reign of John two more charters were obtained. By the first, in 1192, the boundaries of Dublin were defined, and the citizens given the right to distrain their debtors by their chattels in Dublin, and to hold pleas, according to the custom of the city, of debts lent in the city and pledges given there. They were also to have all their reasonable guilds as the burgesses of Bristol had, and to possess and dispose at their pleasure of all the tenures within and without the walls up to the boundaries. By the second charter, in 1215, which confirmed all the former ones granted by Henry and John, the payment of an annual rent was substituted for the irregular contribution previously levied on the citizens under that name. In 1229 Dublin obtained the privilege of a mayor. In 1327 the profits and management of the markets, which had been established in the reign of John, were vested in the mayor and citizens. In 1538, the King, in consideration of their services in defending the city against the rebellion of Thomas Fitzgerald,1 granted to the mayor, bailiffs, citizens, and commons the site and estates of the dissolved priory of All Saints, in the counties of Dublin, Meath, Kildare, Louth, Tipperary, and Kilkenny, and elsewhere in Ireland at the nominal yearly rent of £4 4s. old. Finally, in the reign of Charles I the principal officer of the city of Dublin was permitted to assume the title of "lord mayor."

1 Thomas Fitzgerald, Lord Offaly, tenth Earl of Kildare, born 1513; executed at Tyburn 3rd February, 1537.

From the reign of Elizabeth to 1793, Catholics were excluded from the Corporation of Dublin by law, and from 1793 to 1840 they were excluded from it by custom. In the latter year the corporation consisted of a lord mayor, two sheriffs, twenty-four aldermen, and 144 common councilmen ; and such was the state of municipal government in that city that none of the respectable traders or merchants of the city were members of the common council. In addition to Dublin, thirty-nine municipalities were created in Ireland previous to the reign of James I. When James I came to the throne, he created forty-six Irish boroughs with a stroke of the pen, and gave them parliamentary representation and municipal rights. His successor created one such, and Charles II fifteen; that is to say, altogether sixty-two municipalities were begot by the Stuarts. The whole object of the creation of these mushroom bodies was that they might support "the English interest" in the Irish House of Commons, and municipal officers who conscientiously shrank from compelling Protestant modes of worship in their respective towns were unceremoniously bundled out, and more subservient creatures of the Government set in their place.1

Meanwhile the new parasitic holders of office surrendered the rights and privileges of their townsmen into the royal hands, and accepted fresh charters from the Sovereign, which allowed scarcely any powers to the local residents, and invested the nomination of all important offices in the Government. In 1672 some relaxation of the Protestant monopoly took place in virtue of the "new rules" issued by the Irish Government; but the Revolution of 1688 deprived the rules of all their virtue, and the whole of the social and other advantages derivable from municipal institutions were once more monopolized by the ravenous disciples of the Protestant faith. Besides Dublin and the larger towns of Ireland, there were in the eighteenth century about a hundred of these petty municipalities and Parliamentary boroughs, but they were mere appanages of the neighbouring leading families without any municipal feeling whatsoever, and, as stated above, were exclusively exploited in the interest of the members of the Established Church.2

Between the reign of Charles II and the consummation of the Union there were 112 municipalities in Ireland. A large majority of these boroughs were deprived of their Parliamentary representation at the Union; but they retained their nominal municipal rights, and continued, under the control of the chief 1 Henry Hallam wrote

"These grants of the elective franchise were made, not indeed improvidently, but with very sinister intents towards the freedom of Parliament; two-thirds of an Irish House of Commons, as it stood in the eighteenth century, being returned with the mere farce of election by wretched tenants of the aristocracy."

2 Appendix XXXVIII, quotations from Edward Wakefield, etc.

landed gentry, to swarm with the grossest excesses of undisguised corruption, secret peculation, and scandalous maladministration. Between the Union and 1835, thirty of these disreputable bodies became extinct. Their exclusive character prior to 1840 was what might have been expected. Maryborough had a population of 5,000, but only possessed nine corporators; Thomastown one of 2,871, and only nine corporators; Londonderry one of 19,620, and only thirty-eight corporators; Pelturbet one of 2,026, and only nine corporators; Cavan one of 2,931, and only six corporators; Belfast one of 53,287, and only twenty-one corporators; and Newtownards one of 4,442, and only eight corporators. Thus the reform of the Irish municipal system was clearly imperative. The corporations embraced a population of 900,000, of whom only 13,000 were corporators. Since 1792 the corporations had, in law, been open to Catholics, but up to 1835 only 200 Catholics had been admitted to them in all Ireland. Tuam was the only town in Ireland in which there was a majority of Roman Catholics on the governing council. Limerick had a population of 66,000, but only possess 271 corporators. The people of Cashel were suffering from a want of water. There was not the smallest difficulty in providing the town with an adequate supply at a cost of £2,000 or £3,000, and the Corporation owned property in the neighbourhood which was worth at least £2,000 a year. But it was unwilling to waste its substance for so trivial and unremunerative a cause, and the town had consequently to go without one of the requisites of life.

At length, on the 31st of July, 1835, Louis Perrin, at that time Irish Attorney-General, introduced a Bill on behalf of the Whig Government for the reform of Irish municipal corporations. It aimed at restoring to the citizens of Irish corporate towns the privileges originally granted to them, and proposed with this end in view to convert the governing bodies of every municipality into councils elected by popular suffrage. In seven of the largest towns the electors were to consist of £10 householders, and of £5 householders in the smaller ones, the qualification of a councilman in the larger towns being the possession of £1,000, and in the smaller ones of £500. The councillors who received the greatest number of votes were to be aldermen, one-half of the aldermen withdrawing triennially, and one-third of the councillors retiring from office once a year. The measure was carried successfully through the Commons, but on account of the advanced state of the session, and the difficulties which it was anticipated would be met with in the Lords, was abandoned by the Government before entering the Upper House. In the speech from the Throne on the 14th of February, 1836, a hope was expressed that a remedy might be applied to the defects and evils in Irish municipal institutions, founded on the same prin