to the right of celebrating valid marriages between the members of their flock. About the same time, under Portland's Irish Administration, Eden's 1 Act was passed for the establishment of the national bank under the name of the Governor and Company of the Bank of Ireland. The subscribers to it were to pay in £600,000, either in cash or debentures at 4 per cent. which were to be taken at par and considered as money. This sum was to be the capital stock of the bank, and the debentures to that amount, when received, were to be cancelled by the vice-treasurers; an annuity of £24,000 being paid to the Company as equivalent to the interest payable upon them. The stock was to be redeemable at any time, upon twelve months' notice, after January 1st, 1794. Under the same administration the Sacramental Test, by which Protestant Dissenters had been excluded from offices of trust under the Crown, was repealed, and another Act was passed by which the Commission of Irish judges was made to continue quamdiu se bene gesserint; whilst a further measure enabled the King to draw from Ireland, at his pleasure, a force not exceeding 50,000 men.

In 1783 arose the question of what was known as "Simple Repeal." It was argued by Irish Parliamentarians, among whom Flood was conspicuous for his brilliant and conclusive reasoning, that the English Parliament should pass a "Renunciation Act" in addition to and sealing as it were the "simple repeal" of the Declaratory Act of George I. The proposal was agreed to, and a" Renunciation Act" was passed at Westminster confirming the Act of 1782, and abandoning the old pretensions of the English Parliament to legislate for Ireland. But the Irish required something more than a barren Act of Renunciation. Their system of Parliamentary government was rotten to the core, and they commenced soon afterwards to agitate for a radical reform of the Legislature, which was not only poisoned by the corrupt influence of the borough-mongers and the selfish ascendency of the English Ministers, but had through a long period of base subserviency to the Castle almost lost the desire for independent action. Its composition, indeed, was a farce of representation. One hundred and sixteen nomination seats were divided among some five-and-twenty proprietors. Lord Shannon returned no fewer than sixteen members, and the great family of Ponsonby fourteen; Lord Hilsborough had nine seats, the Duke of Leinster seven, and the Castle twelve. The whole rateable strength of Government in the Irish House of Commons amounted to one hundred and eighty-six votes, which were divided into five classes: (1) Eight-six proprietary seats, the owners of which had let them out in consideration of titles, offices, and pensions, in

1 William Eden, first Lord Auckland, Chief Secretary under the Earl of Carlisle's Vice-royalty.

possession or expectancy; (2) The twelve seats belonging to the Government; (3) Forty-four seats occupied by placemen; (4) Thirty-two votes of gentlemen who had promises, or who had avowed their expectations of favours and qualifications; and (5) Twelve members not registered in the secretary's book as demanding either peerages, places, or pensions, and, therefore, set down as supporting the Government on public grounds. Besides these there was a party of twenty-nine, who affected and sometimes asserted an independent position in the House. The regular Opposition was limited to eighty-two, and of these thirty were the nominees of Whig proprietors, and fifty-two represented the popular party. Lord Charlemont, the organizer of the Volunteer movement, favoured a constitutional agitation for the purpose of dragging these abuses into notice and obtaining a Parliamentary reform, and, in accordance with this policy, the Volunteer Convention met in the Rotunda in 1783 to discuss the matter. Soon afterwards Flood brought in his Reform Bill as a result of these consultations and, with an eloquence only surpassed by Grattan, unfolded his scheme of reconstruction in the Irish Lower House. He proposed to throw open the doors of the close boroughs by admitting to the franchise all Protestant fortyshilling freeholders and leaseholders of thirty-one years, of which thirteen were unexpired; whilst in the case of decayed boroughs the franchise was to be extended to the adjoining parishes. Pensioners during pleasure were to be excluded from Parliament, and persons accepting a pension for life or a Government post were to vacate their seats. Each member, moreover, was to take an oath that he had not been guilty of bribery at his election; and Parliaments were henceforth to be triennial. The chief flaw in the Bill was that whilst the franchise was considerably extended, no provisions were made for giving political power to the Catholics, and as the Catholics formed the vast majority of the population, the omission was a blot upon the whole measure. But in spite of this defect it was a long step in advance. Those, however, who had so long fed off the spoils of place were in no haste to abandon their offal, and the Bill was rejected by 159 votes to 85.

1

The Volunteer Convention was dissolved the same year. Flood had always been in favour of retaining the Volunteer force as a reserve for the support of the Irish patriots, so as to enable them to carry the necessary Parliamentary and other reforms; but Grattan had opposed him, and trusting to the magnanimity of the English Government, had generously

1 Henry Flood was born near Kilkenny in 1732, and entered Parliament in 1759 as member for Kilkenny in his twenty-seventh year. He married Lady Frances Maria Beresford, who brought a large dowry with her, and he died on December 2, 1791, on his estate at Farmley, near Kilkenny.

renounced this formidable weapon. There is very little doubt that Flood was strategically right and Grattan wrong upon this question, which formed the rock on which their friendship foundered after a voyage of many years.1

Temple had meanwhile succeeded Portland as LordLieutenant, and the former was in his turn followed after a few months in 1783 by Northington, and the latter again by Portland in February 1784. In that year Flood made another effort to carry a Reform Bill, but his proposals were again thrust back with contumely, and in face of this ingrained and selfish dishonesty that had infected the whole brood of official flunkeys, the conviction from this time sank deep into the minds of earnest Irishmen that the reform of Irish parliamentary institutions, and consequently of Ireland as a whole, could only be effected by the thunders of a revolution.

The Irish Parliament now proceeded to turn its attention to commerce. In spite of the restrictions upon Irish trade the country had made vast strides in industry and prosperity. The Irish name was respected by merchants all the world over, and the Irish fisheries were renowned for their excellence and the honesty with which they were carried on. Although the Irish herring-barrel only contained twenty-eight gallons whilst the Scotch barrel held thirty-two, the former sold at an equal or superior price. A Parliamentary Report of 1785 showed that the Irish name stood so high that their herrings sold at 14 per cent. dearer than the Scotch, whilst the Irish fisheries were never charged with the "fraud, perjury, and all the tricks which ingenuity could invent to rob the public," such as partly filling barrels with stones and rubbish, which had almost entirely destroyed the sale of British herrings in European markets. It is well to record such facts, which are historically certain, in view of that claim to commercial purity which was sometimes made by the rulers of Ireland in their attacks upon Irish character. In 1784 Foster's important Corn Bill was passed, which provided that large bounties should be given on the export of corn, and heavy duties imposed upon its importation. This measure, which alleviated Irish agriculture and gave 1 W. E. H. Lecky observes in this connection

"Had he (Flood) succeeded he would have placed the independence of Ireland on the broad basis of the people's will; he would have fortified and completed the glorious work that he had himself begun, and he would have averted a series of calamities which have not even yet spent their force. We should never have known the long night of corruption that overcast the splendour of Irish liberty. The blood of 1798 might never have flowed. The Legislative Union would never have been consummated or, if there had been a Union, it would have been effected by the will of the people, and not by the treachery of their representatives, and it would have been remembered only with gratitude or with content."

2 Robert Henley, second Earl of Northington (1747-1786).

3 John Foster, Lord Oriel (1740-1828), last speaker of the Irish House of Commons.

a great impulse to cultivation, may be said to have changed the face of the land, for it converted enormous tracts which had hitherto been pasture into tillage. The same year Foster carried another measure successfully through the Irish Parliament. By the terms of his Press Bill the true names of every newspaper proprietor had henceforth to be registered; the sale of unstamped papers in the streets was also forbidden, and the acceptance or the offer of any money for printing or forbearing to print libels was to be held a high misdemeanour. On the rejection of Flood's second Reform Bill a National Congress of delegates from the counties and cities of Ireland had met in October, 1784, to discuss the question of Parliamentary Reform. They then adjourned and met again at Dublin on the 2nd of January, 1785, when resolutions were passed in regard to the method in which the matter should be agitated in the Irish Legislature.

On February 22nd, 1785, Pitt introduced his Irish "Commercial Propositions" at Westminster. The terms of the proposed settlement had already been negotiated between Orde,1 the Chief Secretary, and certain Irish Commissioners. Ireland, already free to trade with Europe and the British Colonies in the West Indies, was now to have the American and African trade thrown open to her, and colonial produce which could already be conveyed in Irish bottoms to British ports, was henceforth to be allowed to be reshipped from Ireland to any part of Great Britain. In return for this concession the surplus of the Irish hereditary revenue was to be appropriated to the navy and general defence of the Empire. Now, the public revenue of Ireland was of two kinds, the one hereditary and the other temporary. The hereditary revenue itself was of two descriptions, that which had been established by ancient custom, and that granted by Act of Parliament to the Crown. Before the Revolution the hereditary revenue had sufficed for carrying on the government of the country; after the Revolution the expenses of a large army rendered an augmentation of revenue absolutely necessary. Thus there arose what was known as the temporary revenue, the Irish Parliament voting every session certain sums to make up the deficiency in the hereditary revenue. On Pitt's proposals being sent over to Ireland, the Irish Parliament passed a resolution modifying Pitt's plan by making the contribution of the surplus in time of peace contingent upon the establishment of a balance between revenue and expenditure, and his proposals thus amended were accepted and returned with the resolutions to England. But this spectre of reform unmanned

1 Thomas Orde, afterwards Orde-Powlett, first Lord Bolton, Chief Secretary under the Duke of Rutland's Viceroyalty from February 1784 to October 1787.

the tradesmen across the Channel, and sixty-four petitions were immediately drawn up and presented with every symptom of injured innocence against the measure, one signed by 80,000 persons being sent from Lancashire. A herd of bloated "Nabobs" also tramped to Westminster, and implored Ministers, for the love of God, to put a spoke in the Irish wheel and so earn a sharper's gratitude. Impressed by this clamour, and not at all reluctant to do itself a good turn, the Commercial Party at Westminster, with the same lust for gain and disregard of justice as in 1699, hereupon proceeded to modify the resolutions by nine other Articles, one of which excluded Ireland from the participation in the Indian trade on equal terms with Great Britain by stipulating that so long as the British Parliament wished to have commerce carried on beyond the Cape of Good Hope by an exclusive company, dealing through the Port of London, so long should Ireland be debarred from dealing direct with any country whatever beyond the Cape and the Straits of Magellan. It was also stipulated that all trade or navigation laws which had been or should be made by the English Parliament, should also be enacted by the Irish Parliament, and that nothing but colonial produce should be transhipped through Ireland into Great Britain. The measure thus amended was carried at Westminster; but Fox denounced these shopkeeping proclivities-"I will not barter English commerce for Irish slavery. This is not the price I would pay nor is this the thing I would purchase"; and the Irish Parliament, agreeing with that statesman, refused to accept this mutilation by a selfish and interested section; whereupon the Chief Secretary, Orde, foreseeing that he would have a majority against him, decided to drop the mangled Bill. In this manner arose the first of the two great differences between the English and Irish Parliaments, the second being occasioned, three years later, by the question of a Regency. Thus the fair hopes of Irish industry were dashed to the ground, for Pitt, with lightning discernment of personal advantage, scenting, as he did, the possibility of unpopularity should he stand by a measure which he knew to be just, dropped Irish Commercial Reform like a red-hot coal and never touched it again. He dropped it, as he afterwards dropped Catholic Emancipation, the endowment of the Catholic Clergy, the commutation of tithes, and Parliamentary Reform in his own country.1

The same year in which Pitt's commercial propositions fell through (1785) a petition bearing 117,000 signatures was presented by the City of Manchester praying for the prohibition of Irish linens. This selfishness, however, was too much 1 Appendix XIII, extract from speech by William Pitt, and quotations from Thomas Newenham, Richard Cobden, and Lord Dufferin,