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THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
THE 
 
 fife stfo 5*ai{[ of % $risjj |)arlhient ' 
 
 A LECTUEE 
 
 BY 
 
 THE EIGHT HON. JAMES JFHITESIDE, 
 
 Q.C. LL.D. M.P. 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 DUBLIN YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION 
 
 IN CONNEXION WITH THE 
 
 UNITED CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND, 
 
 IN 
 
 THE METROPOLITAN HALL, JANUARY the 19th, 1863. 
 
 SIR THOMAS STAPLES, BART., 
 
 IN THE CHAIR. 
 PA&T I. 
 
TT/V 
 
 THE LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 OF 
 
 THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ORIGIN and Progress of the Parliament of Ireland The Public 
 Buildings of Dublin Rev. James Whitelaw and the Historians of 
 City of Dublin Popular View of the alleged Conquest of Henry 
 II. not correct Antiquity and Fame of Dublin Amusing Portrait 
 of Henry by Giraldus Cambrens is Object of Kings of England, 
 from the first, to establish one Law, one State, one Church 
 " Modus Teriendi Parliamentum " not enforced in Ireland for 140 
 years. 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN, 
 
 It affords me no common satisfaction to address you, 
 Sir, in that chair, not only on the score of respect for your 
 character and from private friendship, but because you prove in 
 your own person what a happy life that of a Member of the 
 Old Irish Parliament must have been. Wit, humour, elo- 
 quence, administered at suitable times and at reasonable inter- 
 vals, operate as medicine for the mind ; the consequent 
 exhilaration of the spirits acts on the bodily health, and 
 secures longevity and vigour. The " mens conscia recti" may 
 be the true cause of the enviable condition of our Chairman 
 
4 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 who is a living representative of the Parliament of Ireland, 
 and a pure specimen of her ancient gentry. 
 
 I may well be apprehensive in endeavouring to describe 
 what he has witnessed my words may sound feebly in his 
 ear, accustomed to the thrilling eloquence of the famous 
 orators of our country ; but his kindly nature will overlook 
 my deficiencies ; and my inadequacy to the task I have under- 
 taken will be regarded by a generous audience with indul- 
 gence. To repeat my congratulations to the promoters of 
 this Association, or to the Parochial Clergy by whom it is 
 mainly worked, for the success they have obtained, would be 
 needless ; one and all of us can only hope and pray that this 
 Society may prosper, and prove a blessing to our city. 
 
 The occupations of life engross so much of our time that 
 we rarely can abstract our attention from passing events 
 revert to the past compare our present with our former 
 condition, and consider what we have gained or what we 
 have lost as a nation. 
 
 That we should read the histories of other countries, and 
 know little of our own, would seem to be censurable, though 
 not surprising ; but the duty of investigating the constitution 
 and proceedings of the Parliament, by which we were so long 
 governed, would appear to be plain ; and it might not be 
 uninstructive to ascertain when and by whom the Irish Par- 
 liament was planted how it grew when it died. 
 
 It is, moreover, by comprehending what kind of Parliament 
 our forefathers obtained and enjoyed, that we can appreciate 
 our gain or loss by the incorporation of the Irish with an 
 Imperial Legislature. 
 
 The ancient Romans conquered what in their time was 
 called the World ; the victorious legions, encamped on the 
 banks of the Euphrates and the Ehine, preserving their dis- 
 cipline and their manners in the midst of various nations. 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. O 
 
 The Patrician Senate ruled with wisdom, as provinces of 
 the Empire, what are now splendid kingdoms. How did " the 
 Commonwealth of Kings " govern ? By incorporating in their 
 Empire the countries they subdued ; by imparting their laws 
 and customs to the people they vanquished ; and by con- 
 verting discontented enemies into cordial friends and fellow- 
 citizens. I ought to add, they not only established their 
 laws in the new country, but also their national sports and 
 amusements. 
 
 Thus, as we roam over Europe, we discover memorials 
 of the Roman people. We may read their policy in the 
 fragment of the arch, in the broken column, the ruined 
 aqueduct, or in the scattered remains of the amphitheatre 
 or the circus. At Nismes we may even now behold a 
 model of the once mighty Rome ; and we can comprehend 
 the wise and sagacious policy which multiplied and ramified, 
 while it secured and perpetuated, Roman civilization, autho- 
 rity, and power. 
 
 In our old law books it is prophesied that the Saxon race 
 are destined to overspread and christianize the earth ; and, 
 in partial fulfilment of the prophecy, we behold, in distant 
 regions, fresh settlements growing into kingdoms, and spread- 
 ing our laws, our language, our liberties, and our religion. 
 How are these mighty results obtained ? In the same 
 way as in the ancient Roman Empire by freely imparting 
 to the new country all the freedom possessed by the old, 
 and thus consolidating an union of hearts and affections. 
 
 We can, therefore, easily apprehend the principle of policy 
 upon which England would be likely to have acted had she 
 conquered Ireland namely, that of attaching the Irish 
 people to the English rulers, by establishing a community of 
 laws, and by bestowing upon the new acquisition all the 
 rights and liberties enjoyed by the older country. But, of 
 
6 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 all the rights possessed by Englishmen, that of Parliamen- 
 tary representation is the most precious. Therefore, it would 
 be natural to suppose they would not churlishly withhold from 
 our forefathers that which they themselves so highly prized. 
 
 Thus are we prepared for the fact that Ireland possessed a 
 Parliament ; and as we walk the streets of our beautiful city, 
 our senses teach us this was a capital and seat of the Parlia- 
 ment of a Kingdom. 
 
 The history of the city wherein we live is read even less 
 than the history of our country ; yet the stones we tread might 
 suggest reflections ; the public buildings we behold might 
 stimulate inquiry, and occupy or agitate busy thoughts. 
 
 We are not destitute of materials for this pleasing study. 
 The History of Dublin has been admirably written by the late 
 Eev. James Whitelaw, rector of St. Catherine's, one of the 
 best parish ministers who ever laboured in this city. His 
 name is to be mentioned by me with reverence, for he was 
 the intimate friend of my father (also a minister of the 
 Church), and, with pious friendship, inscribed the epitaph 
 which marks his tomb. Whitelaw's character was apostolical ; 
 his labours were as incessant as his benevolence was bound- 
 less. Death overtook him while engaged in his Master's work ; 
 his spirit fled to a kindred home. His example was a rich 
 legacy to the Church which he adorned aud served. 
 
 Whitelaw's History was left somewhat unfinished, but has 
 been completed ; and in its pages, as well as in the History 
 of Dublin by Gilbert, and in the biography of the architect 
 Gandon, by Mulvany, you may read the account of the erection 
 of our celebrated public edifices some of them designed by 
 native talent all of them executed through the liberality 
 and by the superintending taste of our native Parliament. 
 The study ought to teach you not to decry the labours, or 
 to depreciate the genius of your countrymen. 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 7 
 
 When you have studied the style and proportions of that 
 beautiful edifice, the Custom House ; when you have criti- 
 cally examined the interior and exterior of the Exchange ; 
 when you have leisurely scanned the Temple of Justice, 
 surmounted by a dome flung into the air ; when you have 
 visited all the public buildings which adorn our city ; when 
 you gaze with admiration on the palaces erected by our nobles, 
 now changed into offices or board-rooms ; when you have vi- 
 sited the last of these (I allude to Charlemont House), 
 which still continues in the possession of an Irish nobleman, 
 who, except our Chairman, is the only surviving member 
 of the Irish Parliament ; then you may stand before the 
 majestic building wherein the Parliament of Ireland was wont 
 to sit. You may, perhaps, entertain yourselves with the 
 narrative of its original design and happy completion ; you 
 may, with a critical eye, discern, as you stand before the 
 splendid portico which faces and frowns upon the statue of 
 Moore, the mixtures of styles the rich Corinthian added 
 to the more simple Ionic. But, whether you gaze upon the 
 noble structure when gilded by the rays of a summer sun, 
 or when the trembling moonbeam has shed a softer light over 
 its fine proportions when criticism has been exhausted, 
 unfeigned admiration of the stately edifice succeeds. The 
 vast and grand proportions of the entire building fill the 
 mind with delight, and you conclude your survey by com- 
 mending the skill, the taste, the genius, the liberality which 
 combined to produce so magnificent a result. While we 
 pause to admire the building, we may exclaim Could these 
 walls speak, what might we not expect to hear ? But the 
 passions, the hatreds, the ambitions, the sallies of wit, the 
 flashes of humour, the flights of eloquence, the eager 
 conflict of intellects contending for fame and power, the 
 fervid orators, the sagacious statesmen slumber in the dust. 
 
8 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 Within those walls, the voice of eloquence is hushed for 
 ever. 
 
 We are assembled to inquire when the Parliament was 
 born, how it lived, when and from what causes it died. 
 
 According to our theory, we should only inquire when it 
 was that the Saxons invaded, or conquered, or settled in Ireland, 
 and then conclude we had found the date of the birth of our 
 Parliament. But even here a question might be made ; for 
 whereas it is commonly believed that the English came over 
 in the reign of Henry II., yet we have the great authority of 
 Lord Coke (I mean Coke upon Littleton), in the case of 
 Calvin, in the 7th Part of his Reports, and in the preface to 
 the 4th Part, that Ireland was in part subject to the crown of 
 England long before the reign of Henry. He writes : 
 " Next followeth Ireland, which originally came to the king 
 of England by conquest; but who was the first conqueror 
 thereof, hath been a question. I have seen a charter, an 
 excellent record, worthy to be made known to all, made by 
 King Edgar, king of England in the tenth century, in these 
 words : " Altitonantis Dei largiflusi dementi^,, qui est Rex 
 regum et Dominus dominantium I, Edgar, king of Eng- 
 land, give thanks to the omnipotent God, my King, who 
 hath enlarged and exalted my empire over the kingdom of 
 my fathers." 
 
 He then specifies the various additions to his territories, 
 adding: "Maximamque part em Hiberniae, cum sua nobilissima" 
 civitate de Dublina." Wherefore, concludes the king, "I 
 am devoutly disposed to exalt the glory of Christ in my king- 
 dom, and to extend his worship and praise." So did the 
 good kings of England express themselves in the olden time ; 
 and thus we learn that, centuries before the Conquest, or rather 
 the visit of Henry, a great part of Ireland had been annexed 
 to England, and with it the most famous City of Dublin. In 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 9 
 
 the old charter we have good testimony to the antiquity and 
 fame of our metropolis. 
 
 It may be strongly argued that Henry's use of the title of 
 6 Conqueror' was a palpable misnomer, on the ground that con- 
 quest means the acquisition of a kingdom by force of arms, 
 to which force likewise has been opposed. Whereas Henry's 
 invasion was only a polite visit no violence used ; all being 
 conducted with the utmost tranquillity and courtesy. Or, to 
 use the words of Molyneux in his celebrated pamphlet of the 
 " Case of Ireland Stated," there was " an entire and voluntary 
 Submission of all the ecclesiastical and civil states of Ireland 
 to King Henry II., without the least hostile strike on any 
 side ; we hear not in any of the chronicles of any violence on 
 either part ; all was transacted with the greatest quiet, tran- 
 quillity, and freedom imaginable. . . . England may be 
 said much more properly to have been conquered by Wil- 
 liam I. than Ireland by Henry II. ... Henry received 
 not the least opposition in Ireland ; all came in peaceably, 
 and had large concessions made them of the like laws and 
 liberties with the people of England, which they gladly- 
 accepted." 
 
 It may be well to give a portrait of King Henry II. (as 
 painted by Giraldus Cambrensis), he being the person to 
 whom we are chiefly indebted for our parliamentary and 
 political, if not our physical constitution : " Henry II., 
 King of England, was of a very good colour, but somewhat 
 red ; his head great and round ; his eyes were fiery, red, 
 and grim, and his face very high-coloured ; his voice or 
 speech was shaking, quivering, or trembling ; his neck 
 short, his breast broad and big; strong-armed; his body 
 was gross, and his belly somewhat big, which came to him 
 rather by nature than by any gross feeding or surfeiting, for 
 his diet was very temperate, and to say the truth, thought to 
 
10 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 be more spare than comely, or for the state of a prince ; and 
 yet, to abate his grossness, and to remedy this fault of nature, 
 he did, as it were, punish his body with continual exercise, 
 and did, as it were, keep a continual war with himself. . . . 
 In the evening, when he came home, he would never, or 
 very seldom, sit either before or after supper, for though he 
 were never so weary, yet still would he be walking and going. 
 If he were in a good mood, and not angry, then would he 
 be very pleasant and eloquent. He was also (which was 
 a thing very rare in those days) very well learned ; he was 
 also very affable, gentle, and courteous ; besides, so pitiful, 
 that when he had overcome his enemy, yet would he be over- 
 come with pity towards him." 
 
 If Henry II. could be considered a conqueror, he was a 
 very courteous one, for he gave the Irish chieftains the title 
 of kings ; and this still continued to be used by his successors 
 so late as eighty years afterwards, if not later. The following 
 expressions are to be found in a letter sent by Henry III. to 
 one of these Irish chieftains " The King to King Thomond, 
 greeting." 
 
 Henry II. remained five months, and departed, highly 
 pleased with Ireland, as her chiefs appeared to be with him, 
 although I have little . doubt they were glad to get rid of 
 their kingly guest. He settled his English followers and 
 subjects in districts along the eastern coast, and in Dublin, 
 and adjoining counties, afterwards called the English Pale. 
 
 It seems a well authenticated fact, that Henry II., 
 before he quitted Ireland, in a Council held at Lismore, did 
 cause the Irish to receive and swear to be governed by the 
 laws of England ; and in ecclesiastical matters, a General 
 Council of the Clergy was held in Cashel, wherein the King 
 rectified many abuses in the Church, and established sundry 
 ecclesiastical laws agreeable to those in the Church of Eng- 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 11 
 
 land labouring by all means to reduce the state of that 
 Church to the form of the English, to which the Irish clergy 
 promised conformity. 
 
 Thus, from the very beginning, was it the object and aim 
 of the English sovereigns, and of the wisest of their coun- 
 sellors, that between England and Ireland there should be 
 but one Law, one State, one Church. The Church of Ireland, 
 thus referred to, was an ancient and a free Church, and held 
 its synods, of which the records remain. Lord Coke expressly 
 states, in his chapter on Ireland, in the Fourth Institute, that 
 at a synod " holden in Ireland by St. Patrick, their Apostle, 
 it was unanimously agreed that Irish priests should have 
 wives.'* Thus we are assured by the practice of the ancient 
 Church in Ireland, as by the practice of St. Peter, and per- 
 haps of St. Patrick, that the Scripture was not contradicted 
 by the ancient Catholic Church in Ireland, and that the 
 clergy were, and wisely, married men. 
 
 Ireland, if she was fitted to enjoy them, had now received 
 certain of the fundamental laws of England as they existed 
 at that time. But the point of our inquiry is, when did she 
 get the right of holding Parliaments, and when, in fact, was 
 a Parliament held ; for we must have regard to the birth, as 
 well as to the life and death, of our Senate. 
 
 It is to be observed, that after John succeeded to the 
 crown of England, having been for thirty-three years Lord 
 of Ireland (and which he would have continued to be had not 
 his elder brother died), and when he met the Barons of England 
 to grant Magna Charta^ it would appear that the Church of 
 England and Ireland was united ; for it is expressly stated 
 in the text of the famous Charter, that it was granted by the 
 advice of " Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury ; Henry, 
 Archbishop of Dublin." What brought the Archbishop of 
 Dublin to Runnymede if it were not that he was a dignitary 
 
12 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 of the National Church ? Why did he otherwise advise the 
 granting of the great Charter by King John ? 
 
 The register of the birth is imperfect. The probability 
 is, that the right of holding a Parliament was granted to 
 Ireland at an early period ; and accordingly, we find Lord 
 Coke expressly declares the modus tenendi Parliamentum (that 
 is, a writ expounding the method of holding a Parliament) 
 was imported to Ireland in the time of Henry II. In the 
 Fourth Institutes, page 12, title "The High Court of Par- 
 liament," we read : " After King Henry II. had conquered 
 Ireland, he fitted and transcribed this modus into Ireland in a 
 parchment roll, for the holding of Parliaments there ; which, 
 no doubt, Henry II. did by advice of his Judges, being a mat- 
 ter of so great weight. This modus in the parchment roll, 
 transcribed as aforesaid by Henry II., remained in Ireland ; 
 and in anno 6 Henry IV., was in the custody of Sir Christo- 
 pher Preston, knight, a man of great wisdom and learning ; 
 which roll, King Henry IV., in the same year, ' De assensu 
 Johannes Talbot, Chivalier, his Lieutenant there, and of his 
 Council of Ireland/ exemplified, for the better holding of the 
 Parliaments there ; and in the exemplification it expressly 
 appeareth that Henry II. did transcribe this modus, as is 
 aforesaid." 
 
 Other writers of deep learning deny this assertion, dis- 
 puting with Lord Coke the authenticity of the modus, or that 
 a Parliament could be held in a country where the land was 
 not divided into counties, where there were no towns, no 
 burgage tenure, no sheriffs, and, I may add, few freeholders. 
 The lawyers thus disputing, the Church, curiously enough, 
 comes to our rescue ; and the fact that this ancient modus 
 was dispatched into Ireland was established, and its authen- 
 ticity (said to be) demonstrated, in a publication by Dr. Dop- 
 ping, a learned Bishop of Meath, who wrote a preface to 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 13 
 
 prove it to be the very record referred to by Lord Coke. 
 The Bishop prints the entire of the modus in the original 
 Latin, and explains how he found the legal curiosity amongst 
 the papers of Sir W. Domville, his uncle, Attorney- General 
 in former times. 
 
 But, assuming with Coke, and Molyneux, and the learned 
 Bishop, that Ireland obtained the right, where or when did 
 she first exercise that right ? 
 
 The English Pale originally extended over a territory 
 twenty miles square. For this fact we have the authority of 
 an Act of Parliament so late as 13th Henry VIII., cap. 3 ; 
 and the proof in these words " There are only four shires 
 where the king's laws are occupied in this land, namely, 
 Dublin, Kildare, Meath, and Uriel or Lowth." And even 
 if we could include the other eight counties named by 
 Leland, yet, as there were few towns, and no burgage tenure 
 in Ireland, a Parliament, if summoned from these districts, 
 would not have approached in dignity and importance the 
 Dublin Corporation. 
 
 The next inquiry would be, Where did the Irish Parlia- 
 ment, be it small or great, sit in these early tunes? To 
 which I reply For a period of forty years, Nowhere. There 
 is no trace of any such phenomenon appearing in the poli- 
 tical firmament for nigh a century and a half ; and if a gen- 
 tleman was chosen to take his seat in the Irish Senate once 
 in a hundred and fifty years, I can only say his parliamen- 
 tary labours must have been light. 
 
 We may next inquire, How did our forefathers get on in 
 those days with so few laws and so few lawyers ? To which 
 very proper question I can only reply As well as they 
 could. They were not oppressed by the multiplicity and 
 complexity of their laws. The Irish chieftains had no laws 
 which they obeyed, save their own free will; and for the 
 
14 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 English settlers, it was better to have a few good laws than 
 many bad ones. 
 
 The patient ability of Mr. Morrin, in his interesting pre- 
 face to the Calendar of the Patent and Close Eolls of Chan- 
 cery in Ireland, from the 18th to the 45th of Queen Elizabeth, 
 points out the as yet unexplored sources whence much 
 additional light might be cast on the Irish Parliaments of 
 the Pale. The fact I believe to be, as Sir John Davis states 
 in his historical tract upon the Causes why no permanent 
 impression was produced in Ireland by the invasion of 
 Henry II. , that King Henry, although possessed of abilities, 
 had not time to accomplish his great undertaking. Sir J. 
 Davis says : " But let us see the success of King Henry II. 
 Doubtless his expedition was such as he might have said, with 
 Caesar, Veni, vidij vici ; for upon his first arrival, his very pre- 
 sence, without drawing his sword, prevailed so much, as all the 
 petty kings or great lords, within Leinster, Connaught, and 
 Munster, submitted themselves unto him, promised to pay 
 him tribute, and acknowledged him their sovereign lord." 
 And so well pleased was he with this title of the lordship of 
 Ireland, ' That he placed it, in his royal style, before the 
 duchies of Normandy and Aquitaine ; and so, being adver- 
 tised of some stirs raised by his unnatural sons in England, 
 within five months after his first arrival he departed out of 
 Ireland, without striking one blow, or building one castle, or 
 planting one garrison among the Irish.' And this is that 
 conquest of King Henry II., so much spoken of by so many 
 writers, which, though it was in no other manner than before 
 expressed, yet is the < entire conquest of Ireland attributed 
 unto him.' " 
 
 This criticism reduces our ideas of the grandeur of the 
 conquest of Ireland to a low estimate. The Norman king 
 bestowed upon Ireland the common law of England. The 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 15 
 
 great charter of King John was in the most formal manner 
 confirmed to Ireland, by our Magna Charta, in the time of 
 King Henry III. A king's letter accompanied this charter 
 to Ireland, a copy of which is still preserved in the Record 
 Office of the Tower of London. It runs thus : 
 
 " The King to the Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Earls, Barons, 
 Knights, and to all his faithful subjects throughout Ireland, 
 
 " Commending your faith in the Lord, which ye have 
 always shown unto the lord our father, and are this day 
 exhibiting unto us and ours, we will give, in token of your 
 fidelity, so manifest and so famous, to our kingdom of Ire- 
 land, the liberties of our kingdom of England, granted by 
 our father and ourself out of our grace, that you and your 
 heirs may perpetually rejoice: which liberties, distinctly 
 reduced to writing by the Common Council of all our realm, 
 we send to you, our faithful subjects. 
 
 " c Nullus liber homo capiatur, vel imprisonetur, aut dis- 
 saisiatur, aut utla getur, aut exuleter, aut aliquo modo des- 
 truetur, nee super eum ibimus, nee super eum mittemus, nisi 
 per legale judicium parium suorum, vel per legem terras.' 
 
 " ' No freeman shall be seized, or imprisoned, or outlawed, 
 or banished, or in any way destroyed ; nor will we condemn 
 him, nor will we imprison him, excepting by the legal judg- 
 ment of his peers, or by the laws of the land.' " 
 
 Thus we have proof conclusive of the spirit of liberty 
 which breathed through the laws of England personal free- 
 dom was secured arbitrary punishments prevented public 
 tribunals of justice and trial by jury were established, in 
 conformity with a well-known and even then ancient common 
 law. 
 
 As we had no Parliament for one hundred and forty years 
 
16 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 in Ireland, in what manner were our forefathers governed ? 
 That may be answered by a sentence from the famous speech 
 of Sir John Davis, Speaker in the Parliament of Ireland, in 
 the reign of James I. (p. 292) : " And as there is now but 
 one common law, so for the space of one hundred and forty 
 years after King Henry II. had taken possession of the lord- 
 ship of Ireland, there was but one Parliament for both kingdoms. 
 But the laws made in the Parliaments of England were, from 
 time to time, transmitted hither under the great seal of that 
 kingdom, to be proclaimed, enrolled, and executed as laws of 
 this realm." 
 
 We see this opinion practically shown to be correct by 
 Lord Coke in his chapter on Ireland, in the Fourth Institutes, 
 where he states, p. 350 " Sometimes the king of England 
 called his nobles of Ireland to come to his Parliament of 
 England, and by special words the Parliament cf England 
 may bind the subjects of Ireland ;" and then, with charac- 
 teristic precision, sets out the entry on the Parliament roll, 
 reciting the writ in form by which the Irish nobles were sum- 
 moned to Westminster : " 10 Octobris. Eex affectans paci- 
 ficum statum terrse Hiberniae, mandavit Ricardo de Burgo, 
 Com. Ulton., et aliis Nobilibus terras prasdietae, quod sint ad 
 Parliamentum suum quod summoneri fecit apud West 1 in 
 Octobris Hillarii prox., ad tractand. ibid, cum Proceribus, 
 &c., regni sui super statu terrce prcedictce." 
 
 This is exceedingly curious ; for it shows how well our fore- 
 fathers understood that legislation should depend on repre- 
 sentation, and that if England made laws for Ireland, it 
 should be with her assent ; and, above all, it proves that for 
 a considerable period at the beginning of their connexion, 
 the two kingdoms were practically ruled by one and the same 
 Parliament. 
 
 These unquestionable facts tend to disturb the theory of 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 17 
 
 parliamentary representation in Ireland from the beginning, 
 and to prove that we began with Union securing identity of 
 laws by identity of legislation in a single Parliament, in which 
 Ireland was represented. And further, that when we got the 
 local Parliament, we verged towards separation, from which 
 we were preserved by the enactment of a stringent law in 
 the reign of Henry VII., hereafter to be noticed. 
 
 The first Parliament held in Ireland was in the ninth year 
 of the reign of Edward II. , summoned in consequence of the 
 invasion of Edward Bruce, and in order to redress the griev- 
 ances under which the people laboured as tenants and vassals. 
 Five Acts of Parliament appear in the record of this session, 
 three of which relate to provisions against those exactions, 
 and two to the establishment of proper remedies in the king's 
 courts of law. Sir John Davis states that Parliaments were 
 held in the succeeding reign, and probably in those of Richard 
 II. , and of Henry IV. and V.; yet there are no laws cited by 
 him, nor do we find any Acts of Parliament passed in those 
 sessions upon the statute book printed in 1762 under the 
 authority of the Lord Chancellor and Judges ; before which 
 time the Irish statutes were collected, as the statutes have 
 been in England, by private lawyers, the first Irish collec- 
 tion being made in 1621, by Sir Richard Bolton, afterwards 
 Lord Chancellor. From the reign of Edward II. till the 
 reign of Henry VI., there are no Acts of Parliament recorded 
 in the statute-book. But it appears from those books that 
 Parliaments were held in the seventh, eighth, tenth, and 
 twenty-fifth years of his reign, under three different chief 
 governors; and from the twenty-eighth year of his reign 
 they were summoned almost every year under the Duke of 
 York, who was for ten years, and more, Lord Lieutenant ; 
 and eight Parliaments were summoned during the reign of 
 Edward .IV., which would be nearly one for every second 
 
 C 
 
18 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 year during that period. Of the Acts which passed during 
 these last periods, that law which enjoins the residence of 
 the clergy under the penalty of forfeiture of their benefices 
 for a year's absence, and takes away the benefit of the king's 
 license, and an Act which prohibits appeals to England, seem 
 to be the most remarkable. And this, it is to be supposed, 
 gave rise to that famous law of Sir Edward Poynings, in the 
 tenth year of King Henry VII., and to which we must pay 
 particular attention. 
 
 That able sovereign, Henry VII., despatched to Ireland, as 
 his deputy, Sir E. Poynings, a vigorous and efficient Lieutenant 
 who proceeded to fix the parliamentary constitution in the 
 manner we shall now explain. The 10th of Henry VII. is to 
 be noted as a constitutional epoch in the history of Ireland. 
 And here we ought to pause to review the former history of 
 our Parliament ; to estimate and ascertain what were to be the 
 powers of that Parliament in future. We may observe, that the 
 first Acts in the English language were passed in this Parlia- 
 ment, and amongst them the celebrated law, 10 Henry VII. 
 " Whereby it is enacted that all statutes late made within the 
 realm of England, concerning or belonging to the common or 
 public weal of the same, from henceforth be deemed good 
 and effectual in the law, and over that be accepted, used, and 
 executed within the land of Ireland, in all points, at all times 
 requisite according to the tenor of the same. And if any 
 statute or statutes have been made within the said land here- 
 tofore to the contrary, that they and every of them be made 
 void and of none effect in the law." 
 
 Now it will be observed that by this comprehensive and 
 summary enactment, all the general fundamental laws pre- 
 viously in existence in England, and which had been ob- 
 tained in that country at such cost and difficulty, were 
 transferred, without argument or opposition, exactly as they 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 19 
 
 stood, into Ireland. This great provision identified our laws 
 as to the past ; so that the inquiry of the historian, the anti- 
 quary, or the lawyer, thereafter to ascertain what up to this 
 period had been the statute law of Ireland, must be directed 
 simply to find out what was the statute law of England. 
 This is described by Lord Coke as " a right profitable Act of 
 Parliament ;" and the Deputy, Sir Edward Poynings, is de- 
 scribed by Sir John Davis as having shown a large heart and 
 a great desire for a general reformation in Ireland, by sum- 
 moning and holding this famous Parliament. If we might 
 venture at this distance of time to criticise the conduct of a 
 great statesman and of a wise sovereign, it may appear to us 
 surprising that they did not perfect their work, by adding to 
 the union of laws a union of Parliament and a union of 
 States. But, singular enough, while they secured identity of 
 law* for the past, they provided a means, by the maintenance 
 of separate Parliaments, for a divergence in legislation in 
 future. However, they appeared themselves conscious of 
 their inconsistency ; and endeavoured to guard against the 
 consequences, by subjugating the Parliament of Ireland to the 
 authority of the Government in England, and by enacting, 
 that " no Parliament be holden hereafter in the said land, 
 but at such season as the King's Lieutenant and Counsaile 
 there first do certifie the King, under the Great Seale of that 
 land, the causes and consideration, and all such acts as there 
 seemeth should pass in the same Parliament ; and such causes, 
 considerations, and acts affirmed by the King and his Coun- 
 saile to be good and expedient for that land, and his license 
 thereupon, as well in affirmation of the said causes and acts, 
 as to summon the said Parliament under his Great Seale of 
 England had and obtained ; that done, a Parliament to be 
 had and holden after the form and effect afore rehearsed : 
 and if any Parliament be holden in that land here'after, con- 
 
20 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 trary to the form and provision aforesaid, it be deemed void 
 and of none effect in law." The effect of this clause was to 
 place a bridle in the mouth of the Irish Parliament, and 
 subjugate alike the Lord Deputy, the nobles, and the com- 
 moners to the will of the King's Council in Dublin and in 
 London. 
 
 We ought also to remember, that England claimed and 
 exercised the right of binding Ireland, by an Act of Parlia- 
 ment passed in England, whenever Ireland should be speci- 
 fically named in such an Act. By a consideration of the 
 above arrangements, we can form a judgment upon the degree 
 of independence and authority in the Irish Parliament from 
 the time of Henry VII. No Parliament could be called in 
 Ireland until the very measures to be introduced were first 
 approved in England ; and if Ireland was named in an English 
 statute, she was to be bound, although her Parliament was 
 silent upon the subject matter of the English law. 
 
 The study of the statute-law is neglected, because it 
 is regarded as uninteresting and repulsive ; and yet, if we 
 reflect for a moment, we would perceive that the study of the 
 social state of a country ought to be as interesting as the 
 study of its political state, its wars and conquests. A law 
 passed in a free state must be the expression of the feelings, 
 prejudices, passions, knowledge of the people at the time of 
 its enactment. It would require a great fund of knowledge 
 and of critical observation to note the statute-book from age 
 to age, and present to the minds of the present generation a 
 picture of the social state of generations long passed away, 
 which led to the particular law under inquiry. This has 
 been done partially by one writer, named Barrington, whose 
 work, entitled " Observations on the Ancient Statutes from 
 Magna Charta to James I.," is full of entertainment and in- 
 struction, tor example.: his commentary upon an English 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 21 
 
 statute framed in the reign of Edward I. (A.D. 1288), called 
 " Ordinatio pro Statu Hibernice" proves that the king of Eng- 
 land could at that time introduce by his sole authority an 
 English law into Ireland that the kings of England did so is 
 certain ; and he (Harrington) argues that that authority could 
 not be lessened by the concurrence of his two Houses of Par- 
 liament. Thus, during the one hundred and forty years that 
 no Parliament sat in Ireland, a law passed in England would 
 be simply proclaimed in Ireland. He also quotes an order of 
 Charles I., in the third year of his reign, to the Treasurers 
 and Chancellors of the Exchequer, both of England and 
 Ireland, by which they are directed to increase the duties 
 upon Irish exports, which shows that it was then imagined 
 that the king could tax Ireland, as a colony, by his preroga- 
 tive, without the intervention of Parliament a very dangerous 
 prerogative. 
 
 Barrington, in his Observations on the Habits and Customs 
 of our Ancient Irish Kings, refers to one Dr. Bastide, " in his 
 youth a retainer of an Earl of Ormond, who, by a fall from 
 his horse, on an attack of the wild Irish, was taken prisoner 
 by them, and who continued seven years in captivity, and 
 married a daughter of one of their chieftains. By this means 
 he spoke the Irish as fluently as he did English, and was 
 pitched upon by Richard II. to attend four Irish kings who 
 came to do homage to him whilst he was in Dublin. The 
 whole account of their reception and entertainment very much 
 resembles that which we have shown lately to the Cherokees 
 and Mohawks ; and he observes that everything was in com- 
 mon between the kings and their servants." So much for 
 Irish kings and their dignity in the reign of Richard II. 
 
 At a later period than this (1446) a Parliament was held 
 at Trim, in which the Irish were directed not to suffer their 
 beards to grow upon their upper lips, not to wear shirts 
 
22 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 stained with saffron ; and still later, Spenser, in his Dialogue 
 upon the State of Ireland, says, that in the time of Queen 
 Elizabeth they let their hair hang so far over their faces, that 
 it was difficult to distinguish one from another ; and this 
 difficulty greatly favoured their thefts and rapines on the 
 English. The third chapter of the first statute of Henry VI. 
 directs, that on account of the murders, robberies, and other 
 felonies committed in different counties of England by Irish- 
 men resorting to the University of Oxford, all natives of that 
 country shall be obliged to leave England within a month, 
 under pain of forfeitures and imprisonment, except graduates 
 in the University, beneficed clergymen, and lawyers. Bar- 
 rington remarks upon the injustice of banishing a whole 
 nation, which was now incorporated with England, merely 
 because some riots had occurred in the neighbourhood of 
 Oxford, at which some Irishmen had assisted, possibly with 
 the intention of restoring peace and tranquillity ! (a quiet joke 
 of the clever commentator). The statute of the 1st of 
 Heniy V., which likewise directs the Irish to return to their 
 homes, gives a more humane reason for the injunction 
 viz., " That their own country was depopulated by the 
 great resort of the Irish to England." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 INSTRUCTION derived from our Ancient Statutes Sumptuary Laws 
 Reign of Henry VII. an Era in European History. 
 
 THE chapters in Macaulay's History, on the Social Condition 
 of England, are by some esteemed the most interesting in his 
 book. Let us see if our own statutes, unnoticed by him, 
 would not illustrate the social condition of the people in 
 former ages of our history. 
 
 To show what was our social state in former times, Bar- 
 rington quotes the 4th chapter of an ancient Act of Par- 
 liament, relating to the forest laws (about the date of the 
 fourteenth century), whereby it is ordered : " If any of the 
 deer of the forest are found dead or wounded, it is hu- 
 manely directed, that they shall be sent to the next house 
 of lepers" " We hear little of this leprosy in our histories 
 or chronicles ; and this is, perhaps, the only instance of 
 its being mentioned in any law, though there are several of 
 the ancient Scotch statutes which relate to it. Kentzner, 
 indeed, who was in England during the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth (and, perhaps, the first travelling tutor to a young 
 nobleman in the tour of Europe), says that the English 
 were at that time much subject to the leprosy. I should 
 doubt much whether this supposed leprosy was more than 
 the scurvy; and if we ever had this horrible distemper 
 amongst us, it is not impossible that greater cleanliness, by 
 change of linen, as also the use of tea having abolished the 
 more solid and substantial breakfast of meat, may have much 
 
24 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 abated its rigour. After all, perhaps, the leprosy here 
 alluded to by the statute may not be elephantiasis ', but only 
 a kind of itch, which the inhabitants of poor and moun- 
 tainous countries are subject to, from a poverty of blood, 
 occasioned by poverty of diet." This seems to be a question 
 for the doctors. 
 
 The 10th statute of Edward III., a sumptuary law, recites 
 great inconvenience to the more opulent by excess in eating, 
 to which " Les gentz du royaime sont usez plus que nul part 
 ailleurs ;" and likewise the ruin to those of less affluent 
 fortunes, from an absurd endeavour to imitate this extrava- 
 gance. It therefore ordains, that no one should be allowed, 
 either for his dinner or supper, above three dishes in each 
 course, and not above two courses ; and it is likewise ex- 
 pressly declared, that soused meat is to count as one of these 
 dishes ; certain feasts and company days are, however, ex- 
 cepted, in which three courses may be allowed. 
 
 The llth statute of Edward III., in the 4th chapter, 
 amusingly regulates the quality of the apparel by the state 
 of the pocket. It directs, that neither man nor woman who 
 cannot afford to spend 100 a year should wear furs, under 
 penalty of forfeiting the furs, and they are likewise made 
 liable to an indictment. It w^ould appear from ancient 
 portraits, that before the manufacture of gold and silver 
 and lace, furs constituted the greatest finery in dress. 
 
 STATUTE OF PROVISOES. 
 
 25 Edward III., stat. 1 : A.D. 1351. Sir Henry Spelman 
 gives this account of the meaning of the word provisors, as 
 used in this statute, the general signification of the word being 
 synonymous with a purveyor a Looker-out : " Provisores 
 etiam dicuntur, qui vel episcopatum, vel dignitatem aliam 
 ecclesiasticam in Romana curia sibi ambiebant de futuro. 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 25 
 
 quod ex gratia expectativa nuncuparunt, quia usque clum 
 vacaret expectandum esset." As this statute is to be 
 considered as a sort of manifesto against the Court of Rome, 
 the preamble is more full and laboured than that of any other 
 law which hath yet occurred. 
 
 36 Edward III.: A.D. 1362. In his summary on this 
 statute and the various statutes enacted in the reign of 
 Edward III., Barrington observes of this monarch : " He 
 will for ever deserve to be venerated by posterity for the 
 statute of proviso, by which the seeds were sown of that 
 freedom and independency in the Church of England, which 
 prepared the minds of men for the Reformation. Whatever 
 may have first contributed to this, may justly claim our 
 warmest gratitude ; though the dread of the Papal anathemas 
 is now happily so far removed, that we can scarce credit any 
 free people could have submitted to such encroachments and 
 national indignities." Thus have we had an imperfect pic- 
 ture of the old Statute Book of England. Next we shall 
 make a brief reference to Ireland. 
 
 In reverting to the reign of Henry VII., we find many 
 statutes passed in the Irish Parliament descriptive of the 
 manners of the time, and of the state of social life in this 
 city and kingdom. For example, an Act was passed to 
 restrain the carrying of hawks out of this kingdom, by which 
 it was enacted, " that whatsoever merchant should take or 
 carry any hawk out of the said land of Ireland, should pay, 
 for every Goshawke, 13s. 4d. ; for a Tiercel, 6s. 8d. ; for a 
 Falcon, 10s." 
 
 We have then an Act passed on the supplication of the 
 Dean and Chapter of St. Patrick's, stating, " That the church 
 and close were situated in a low valley, and that the Dean 
 and Chapter, fearing the violence of the waters and fioods, 
 to their great charge and cost, for the safeguard of the 
 
26 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 church, had made divers issues for the free avoidance of all 
 such sudden floods ; also there was of old time, and now 
 there are, two rivers or passages of waters, one upon every 
 side of St. Patrick's- street, called the Podell, through which 
 all such waters had a lawful course, and large passage, 
 without any impediment ; until now of late that the said 
 rivers and podells be filled and stopped ; so that within a 
 few years and late dayes, the said church and colledge have 
 been surrounded with great superfluities and abundance of 
 waters, to the great hurt and damage of the said Dean and 
 Chapiter and colledge : the premises considered, it is 
 enacted, established, and adjudged, by authority of this 
 present Parliament, that every man which doth dwell, or 
 inhabit, or hath a house, upon the said Podell, shall cleanse 
 and scour the said precinct, as it was of old time, within 
 two months after this present Act passed, upon pain of 
 twenty shillings, to be levied by the Proctor of the Church 
 of St. Patrick aforesaid." 
 
 We next find a valuable Act against Provisors to Rome, 
 reciting that " many strifes had prevailed betwixt the Prelates 
 and other of the Church of Ireland, by reason of divers 
 Provisors suing, by false suggestions made to the Court of 
 Rome, for to deprive of possession the said Prelates, and 
 other Beneficers, from their livelihood and benefices." It was 
 enacted " that all manner of statutes made within the realm, 
 of England, as well as within the land of Ireland, against 
 Provisors, by this present Parliament, be authorised and 
 confirmed, and be henceforth straightly executed in all points 
 within the said land, according to the effect of the same." 
 A memorable instance of the assertion of the independence 
 of the Church, by Catholics, against the usurpations of 
 Rome. 
 
 We have likewise an Act for the confirmation of the Sta- 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 27 
 
 tutes of Kilkenny with the exception of the enactment that 
 every subject shall ride in a saddle. To have asked an 
 Irishman to use a saddle, must have been to put him to 
 torture. The Act also excepts those clauses which speak of 
 the Irish language, upon which the criticism of Barrington 
 thus runs : 
 
 "There was indeed a statute made at Kilkenny, in the 
 fortieth year of Edward III., (whilst the Duke of Clarence 
 was Lord Deputy), to abolish the Brehon and introduce the 
 English laws ; but this law was certainly never carried into 
 execution beyond the English Pale, any more than another, 
 made in the tenth of Henry VII., by which the use of the 
 Irish language was forbidden under penalties. The first 
 statute which thoroughly established the dependence of the Irish 
 was the famous law of Sir Edward Poynings, who was Lord 
 Deputy of Ireland in the reign of Henry VII." Here we 
 have a true character of Poynings' law. 
 
 We may observe the philosophical advice given by a con- 
 temporary of Sir John Davis. Lord Bacon, in a letter to 
 Secretary Cecil, in 1601, recommends the reforming the bar- 
 barous laws, customs, habits of apparel of the Irish, as also 
 their poets and heralds, who enchant them in savage manners, 
 and sundry other such dregs of barbarism. 
 
 We find another statute "That every subject having 
 goods and chattels to the value of 10, shall have an English 
 bow, and a sheafe of arrows." 
 
 We have also an Act " That no person or persons, of 
 whatsoever estate, condition, or degree, he or they be of, take 
 part with any lord or gentleman, or uphold any such variances 
 or comparisons in word or deed, as in using these words, 
 Cromabo, Butlerabo, or other words like, or otherwise con- 
 trary to the King's lawes, his crown, and dignity, and peace, 
 but to call only on St. George, or the name of his Sovereign 
 Lord, the King of England for the time being." 
 
28 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 King Henry has been praised by Lord Bacon for his ability 
 and his policy. I prefer, however, the commentary of Bar- 
 rington, where he says : " Henry had, however, the merit, 
 either from reasons of policy, or perhaps, more humane 
 motives, to render the lower class of people more independent 
 and free from the oppression of the rich and powerful, of 
 which a statute of the eleventh year of his reign, entitled, ' A 
 mean to help and speed poor persons in their suits,' and 
 commonly known by the name of the Pauper Act, is a very 
 sufficient proof. He therefore deserves the honourable title 
 which James I. says his grandfather had obtained, viz. : the 
 poor man's king, a title which deserves to last to the remotest 
 ages, when his elegant and expensive monument in Westmin- 
 ster Abbey is not to be found in its place." 
 
 From the time of Henry VII. we have arrived at a great 
 era in the history of England, and of the world. The union 
 of the Roses had terminated the civil war in England. Her 
 power was no longer broken by revolution and civil war ; 
 and she became, under the government of Henry VII., one 
 of the great states of the civilized world. That world was 
 about to be revolutionized in politics, in learning, in com- 
 merce, in religion. The discovery of America by Columbus, 
 whom Henry meant to have aided, the discovery of the new 
 passage round the Cape to the East Indies, by Vasco de 
 Gama, produced consequences of moment to all the states of 
 Europe. In that same age, the conquest of Constantinople, 
 by the Turks, introduced into Italy, through the expulsion of 
 the Greeks, their refined taste in poetry, and eloquence ; 
 while the use of printing and the invention of gunpowder 
 changed at once the arts of peace and the arts of war, and 
 prepared the human mind for the great events which were 
 speedily to happen. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Statute Book teaches Social History Sketch of King Harry VIII. 
 Characteristics of The Ormondes and of The Geraldines Credulity 
 of English Statesmen Secret of Irish Disturbances found out 
 Kildare impeached Figures on the Field of the Cloth of Gold The 
 Son of King Harry becomes Lord Deputy Kildare again im- 
 peached Enjoins Silken Thomas to throw off the Mask Silken 
 Thomas murders the Archbishop of Dublin, and is beheaded at 
 Tyburn with his Uncles five King Harry hangs the Lord Lieu- 
 tenant Terrifies Rebellious Chieftains Pacifies Ireland Compels 
 Absentees to reside Passes a Peculiar Poor Law Boils to Death 
 a Cook who poisons the family of his master. 
 
 I HAVE said that the history of the statute-book, rightly 
 studied, would open up the social and political condition of 
 our country. It may be replied, If this be so, illustrate your 
 argument : take a statute for your text, and discourse upon its 
 meaning. We open the statute-book of Hemy VIII., and 
 read the Act for the attainder of the Earl of Kildare. 
 
 King Henry VIII. reached the throne of England in the 
 vigour of his youth, animated with lofty hopes, and regarded 
 by his subjects with fond expectation. He was rich, magni- 
 ficent, intellectual, and intolerant. With Francis L, the gay 
 and chivalrous monarch of France and with that profound 
 dissembler, Charles V., he bravely played the game of the 
 world. He was every inch a king possessed of learning and 
 of talents ; but, like his race, haughty and passionate, and 
 when he became intoxicated by power, and swollen by vanity, 
 was intractable, cruel, and overbearing. Of Ireland he pro- 
 claimed himself king, and resolved to govern it in a kingly 
 
30 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 fashion. How he began, how he conducted, and how he 
 concluded his attempt, the history of the attainder of the 
 Earl of Kildare will best exemplify. He had great diffi- 
 culties to contend with ; for the wars of the Koses had 
 diminished English influence in Ireland, by attracting to 
 England a number of the English nobles who were most 
 loyal to the crown, in whose absence the native chiefs had 
 re-occupied, if they did not re-conquer, the lands of their 
 forefathers. The O'Neales, the O'Donnels, the O'Carrols, the 
 O'Briens, the O'Byrnes, the O'Tooles, false and fickle, rushed 
 forth and displayed all their ancient dispositions. The two 
 leading families of the kingdom were the Geraldines of Kil- 
 dare, and the Ormonds of Kilkenny. The Ormonds, renowned 
 by a nobility of nature more than by their rank, were ever 
 loyal, ever faithful, ever true to their engagements, their 
 honour, and their king. The policy of the Geraldines was 
 simple and selfish, yet profound a policy often acted upon in 
 the history of Ireland from that time to the present day, 
 namely, to secure the government for themselves, by making 
 it impossible for others to govern. Leland publishes a letter 
 from an Earl of Kildare to O'Carroll, an Irish chief, avowing 
 this policy. They had played their part as rebels and as 
 rulers with admirable success. 
 
 In the time of Henry VII. it suited the purpose of Thomas, 
 the eighth Earl, to dispute the title of Henry VII. to his 
 crown. He accordingly crowned Lambert Simnel, the im- 
 postor, with his own hand. When that impostor fell, the 
 Earl took up Perkin Warbeck ; and while supporting this 
 competitor to the crown of his sovereign, spread fire and 
 slaughter throughout the land. The Sir Edward Poynings of 
 whom we have before spoken, an able and a resolute man, 
 grappled with the proud and perfidious chief, overpowered 
 him in the field, and carried him to England, where he was 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 31 
 
 charged with murder and with treason. He was told by the 
 king that he must choose his advocate. He answered, "I 
 will choose the ablest in the realm. Your Highness I take 
 for my counsel against these false knaves," seizing, according 
 to the historian, the hand of Henry with an uncourtly fami- 
 liarity. Among other accusations, it was urged that the Earl, 
 in one of his lawless excursions, had burned the cathedral of 
 Cashel to the ground, and the Archbishop was present as 
 prosecutor. " Spare your evidence," said the Earl : " I did 
 burn the church, but I should not have done it, if I had not 
 been told that my Lord Archbishop was inside." The inso- 
 lence of his wit, and the audacity of his behaviour, proved 
 his best defence. Amidst laughter, one of the council ex- 
 claimed, " All Ireland cannot govern this Earl." " Then let 
 this Earl govern all Ireland," was the reply of Henry. He 
 was sent over to England an impeached traitor : he was 
 restored to his estates and honours, and returned to Ireland a 
 Knight of the Garter, and Lord Deputy of Ireland. Thus 
 did the haughty Earl glory in his crime, and profit by his 
 rebellion. 
 
 " What, thou fool," said Sir Gerald Shaneson to a younger 
 son of this nobleman, thirty years later, when he found him 
 slow to join the rebellion against Henry VIII., " what, thou 
 fool, thou shalt be the more esteemed for it ; for what hadst 
 thou if thy father had not done so ? What was he until he 
 crowned a king here ; took Garth, the King's captain, pri- 
 soner ; hanged his son ; resisted Poynings and aU deputies ; 
 killed them of Dublin upon Oxmantown Green ; would suffer 
 no man to rule here for the King but himself? Then the 
 King regarded him, and made him Deputy, and married thy 
 mother to him, or else thou shouldst never have had a foot 
 of land, where now thou mayest dispend four hundred marks 
 by the year." We are thus let into the secret of Irish poli- 
 
32 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 tical disturbance in former days. There were qualities also in 
 the Kildare family which gave them peculiar influence, not in 
 Ireland only, but at the English court. Living like wild 
 Irish in their castle at Maynooth, they appeared in London 
 with the address of polished courtiers, when the complaints 
 against them becoming too serious to be neglected, they were 
 summoned by the Crown to give account of their conduct. 
 They had only to present themselves before the Council, and it 
 was at once impossible to believe that the frank, humorous, 
 high-minded gentlemen at the bar, could be the monsters who 
 were charged with fearful crimes. Their ever-ready wit and 
 fluent words, their show of bluntness and pretence of simplicity, 
 disarmed anger and dispersed calumny, and they returned on 
 all such occasions to Ireland more trusted than ever, to laugh 
 at the folly which they had duped. So lived Thomas, Earl of 
 Kildare, and so he died, leaving his son Gerald, ninth earl, to 
 follow his father's bright example. Gerald became Lord 
 Deputy, and did as his father had done before him. King 
 Harry at last awoke to a sense of his condition, and acted 
 upon the reports of his faithful councillors, removed the false 
 Lieutenant from his office, and summoned him to his royal 
 presence. Like a dutiful subject, before his departure for Eng- 
 land, he conveyed out of the King's Castle of Dublin " all his 
 Grace's guns, powder, shot, bows, arrows, caltrops, bills, and 
 all other the King's artilleri.e and munitions of war, garnishing 
 and furnishing his own castles and fortresses with the same, and 
 delivering part thereof to wild Irishmen, the King's mortal 
 enemies." Lord Surrey, who was a brave soldier and a vir- 
 tuous ruler, was directed by King Harry, in a wise letter 
 under his own hand, to summon before him the Irish chief- 
 tains and discourse them on the principles of social order 
 and good government ; and especially the King commanded 
 his Deputy to explain to these chiefs that in his, King Harry's 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 33 
 
 opinion " of necessity it was requisite that every reasonable 
 creature be governed by a law." But I will add that King 
 Harry, when he wrote this sage advice, was young and inex- 
 perienced of life in Ireland, and the chiefs who heard it, 
 resolved to disbelieve and to disobey it. Surrey dealt out 
 justice, subdued the rebel chiefs, and told his sovereign truth. 
 
 Meanwhile the Earl of Kildare made all use of his oppor- 
 tunities in England. He was there the polite courtier and 
 gallant soldier. He captivated King Harry attended him 
 was one of his knights at the famous interview with Francis 
 on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. This was a scene of 
 unparalleled magnificence, in which the nobles of England 
 and France vied with each other in splendour and in folly. 
 The false Earl was now rewarded for his treasons. The King 
 allowed him to marry Lady Elizabeth Gray, daughter to the 
 Marquis of Dorset, and nearly related to the blood royal, and 
 in 1524, marvellous to mention, he was again Lord Deputy 
 of Ireland. 
 
 War having broken out between King Henry and King 
 Francis, the loyal Earl intrigues for the invasion of Ireland 
 with the worst enemies of England. But "Wolsey was still 
 in power, and detected the perfidy of Kildare, who was 
 again summoned to London to answer for his multiplied 
 treasons. Wolsey overwhelmed him with invectives, and 
 sent him to the Tower ; but he was not deserted by his 
 ancient cunning. He dispatched a fair messenger across the 
 channel. O'Connor instantly obeyed the message, rushed 
 forth with his clan, seized on the Vice-Deputy, and carried 
 him prisoner to his den. Had King Henry not been em- 
 barrassed by foreign politics, the day these tidings reached 
 him, the head of Kildare would have dropped on the scaffold. 
 But King Henry temporised, remonstrated with O'Connor, 
 who boasted that within one twelvemonth they would care 
 
 D 
 
34 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 no more in Ireland for the King of England than for the 
 King of Spain. 
 
 We read that King Henry VIII. had one illegitimate son, 
 to whom he was fondly attached, and whom he had ennobled 
 by the title of Duke of Richmond. He had heard that the 
 Irish had long desired to be ruled by royalty ; and he now 
 resolved to gratify the desire of his Irish subjects by making 
 his son their governor. Accordingly, selecting a brave old 
 officer, named Sir William Skeffington, for Vice-Deputy, he 
 made the Duke of Richmond Lord Deputy, and gave him, for 
 his confidential adviser, the twice-impeached Earl of Kildare. 
 Skeffington was soon got rid of; and the Earl of Kildare 
 again found himself sole Lord Deputy in the year 1552. 
 This proud and perfidious Earl seems then to have lost alike 
 fear and shame. He practised cruelty, avenged himself 
 on his opponents, and usurped despotic authority at home, 
 while, in concert with Desmond, he communicated with the 
 enemies of England abroad. His avowed purpose was to 
 overthrow the sovereign by whom he had been pardoned, 
 favoured, honoured. His designs were discovered and ex- 
 posed by Allen, Archbishop of Dublin a friend of Wolsey 
 and by his kinsman, Allen, Master of the Rolls ; and, while 
 rebellion was active in Ireland, the Earl of Kildare was, for 
 the third and last time, summoned to England to answer 
 for his offences ; and, strange to say, he had the hardihood 
 to obey the summons. On his arrival in London he was 
 instantly sent to the Tower. He may have muttered to him- 
 self Have they found me out at last, and will they believe 
 my lying tongue no longer ? The time for action has arrived ; 
 and, therefore, my eldest son, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, whom 
 I have left Vice-Deputy of Ireland, must now at once make 
 war upon the king. 
 
 Charles V. had at this time undertaken to execute the 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. * 3f> 
 
 papal sentence of excommunication upon King Harry ; and 
 his policy was to encourage an Irish rebellion. " Lord 
 Thomas Fitzgerald had now thrown off his allegiance, and 
 had committed infinite murders, burnings, and robbings in 
 the English Pale, making his account and boast that he was 
 of the Pope's sect and band ; and that him he would serve 
 against the king and all his partakers ; that the King of 
 England was accursed, and as many as took his part." But, 
 to do the young Earl justice, before unfolding the banner of 
 insurrection, he flung the sword of state, which, as Vice- 
 Deputy, he held, into the hands of the King's Council, and 
 bluntly exclaimed " This sword of state is yours, and not 
 mine ! Now I have need of mine own sword, which I dare 
 trust. I am none of the King's Deputy I am his foe ! I 
 have more mind to conquer than to govern !" 
 
 At first " Silken Thomas " was successful ; the country was 
 ravaged, the officials shut themselves up in the Castle, where 
 they awaited the aid which the faithful Ormond found it 
 difficult to supply. King Harry had sent his men-at-arms, 
 headed by gallant knights, to Chester, on their march to Ire- 
 land. Archbishop Allen proposed to steal on board a vessel 
 in the Liffey and sail for Chester, so as to hasten the arrival 
 of the brave knights of England. The Archbishop embarked 
 in safety, had a prosperous voyage down the Liffey, but 
 through the misadventure that fortune or design accorded in 
 giving him a Fitzgerald for a pilot, the following morning 
 found him on the historic sands of Clontarf. A visit from 
 the Earl of Kildare at daybreak decided the Archbishop's 
 fate : the short shrift, that even violence has often granted to 
 the victim, was denied. His skiill was cleft open as he knelt 
 in prayer in his shirt ; or, to quote from the act of attainder 
 of the twenty-sixth year of Harry VIII., " And the said 
 Archbishop, kneeling in his shirt barefooted and bareheaded 
 
36 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 before him, asking of him mercy, and immediately without 
 any respite, most shamefully and traitorously murdered and 
 killed out of hand, and also caused the said Archbishop's 
 servants, and as many other Englishmen as he could find 
 within the land, to be murdered." 
 
 The rage of King Harry was unbounded. The hand of 
 death rescued the old Earl in the Tower from the fury of his 
 master. 
 
 The knights of England were now commanded to strike 
 down the false Geraldines, and to spare not. They besieged 
 the castle at Maynooth ; and ere the rebellious clans friendly 
 to " Silken Thomas" could reach the scene of action, the walls 
 were burst through, the castle stormed, and twenty-five of the 
 followers of the perfidious Geraldines were hanged high upon 
 the battlements. 
 
 Back to their fastnesses fled the O'Connors, the MacMahons, 
 the O'Tooles ; they saw King Harry was in right earnest, 
 and that the power of England would bear down upon their 
 guilty heads. Fear, not loyalty, withheld the upraised arm. 
 " Silken Thomas," now deserted and forlorn, surrendered 
 himself a prisoner, and is dispatched to the Tower in London, 
 together with his uncles five, brave and noble-looking men, 
 who had been invited to a dinner as guests, while in reality 
 foredoomed and betrayed. King Harry spared them for a 
 time to repent and pray. 
 
 What mournful procession is this we behold stretching 
 towards Tyburn-hill ? Alas ! we behold, drawn slowly to 
 the horrid spot, the young, brilliant, courageous traitor, 
 who dared to fight for empire against King Harry Thomas, 
 Earl of Kildare, his eye still fiery, his spirit still erect, his 
 bearing proud, his apparel gay and there beside him stand 
 his uncles five^ all moving forward to their awful doom. 
 
 That was a black day for the Geraldines, that 3rd of 
 
1THE iRtSH PARLIAMENT. 37 
 
 February, 1537 ; the scaffold was reddened with their blood, 
 Not one of their race was to be allowed to defile the earth, 
 " And so," exclaimed King Harry, " will I deal with every 
 Irish traitor ; for I have been deceived by those whom I most 
 favoured and trusted." 
 
 One youth, Gerald, brother of Silken Thomas, escapes by 
 the zeal of a tutor, the affection of an aunt, and the fidelity 
 of his followers. Romantic adventures befal him. He is re- 
 ceived abroad with honoiirs almost royal he is to be wedded 
 to a Scotch princess, and unite Scotland with Ireland against 
 England's power. But King Harry dies; young Gerald is 
 pardoned, knighted, restored to his honours and estates, 
 wedded to a beautiful lady ; and through him a long line of 
 posterity distinguished has flourished in our land. The 
 Geraldines were taught a lesson which they required, and 
 Ireland during Harry's reign was tranquil. 
 
 An interesting record is now published of the Earls of 
 Kildare, by one of their amiable descendants, which truly 
 represents the lineage and the actions of a noble house. 
 The volumes published by our ingenious and learned coun- 
 tryman, Sir Bernard Burke, also illustrate the antiquities 
 and history of our country. 
 
 Thus did the great King Harry prove his power and show 
 his resolution, and thus did he prove to his amazed subjects 
 in Ireland that it was " necessary for every reasonable creature 
 to be governed by a law." The rebellious chiefs trembled, 
 and said, We must obey; for if Kildare be hanged, who can 
 escape ? 
 
 We have now, as Lord Deputy of Ireland, Lord Leonard 
 Gray, brother of the Marquis of Dorset, and brother-in-law 
 of the Earl of Kildare. He had the reputation of a soldier, 
 and seemed fitted for his office. He fought with the 
 rebels, stormed their castles, quarrelled with his Council, 
 
38 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 and could obtain no money from his Parliament. In his 
 anger he exclaimed, that " it was predestinate to that country 
 to bring forth sedition, invention, and lies." In his ungo- 
 vernable rage he questioned even the loyalty of an Ormond. 
 The King now issued a commission to discover, if it was dis- 
 coverable, the truth of affairs in Ireland. The Commissioners 
 reported to the King, who hesitated to act upon their report. 
 The Ormonds refused to act with the Lord Deputy, while 
 Desmond, with the Lady Fitzgerald, sister of the late Earl of 
 Kildare, formed a plot with the Pope and the Spaniards for 
 the overthrow of British power in Ireland and the establish- 
 ment of the Eomish ascendancy. The old enemies of King 
 Harry, the Emperor and King Francis, it was expected, 
 would attack England. The King of Scots was to cross 
 into Ulster, the Fitzgeralds were to rise and fall upon the 
 English within the Pale, and O'Neal was to proclaim himself 
 King of Ireland on Tara Hill. Of course, O'Neal and his 
 confederates broke out into rebellion. The Lord Deputy 
 Gray found himself betrayed by the very men to whom he 
 had trusted, and exclaiming, " that there was more falsehood 
 in the Irish than in all the devils in hell," drew his sword 
 and defeated the confederates, and disappointed O'Neal of his 
 coronation on Tara Hill. Then, with melancholy inconsis- 
 tency, he favoured the Geraldines, deceived and trampled on 
 the loyalists, and abandoned his duty. His Excellency was 
 arrested, clapped into the tower, impeached, pleaded guilty,, 
 found no pity from his sovereign, and, painful to relate, was 
 executed on the scaffold. The Irish chieftains by this time 
 understood the character of King Harry, and I have little 
 doubt exclaimed to each other, " If we do not make a prompt 
 submission, we shall all, like his Excellency the Lord Lieu- 
 tenant, be most assuredly hanged." They accordingly sub- 
 mitted. A Parliament was summoned by the Lord Deputy 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 39 
 
 in Dublin, at which the most turbulent of the Irish ehieftains 
 were present. An Act was passed by acclamation, whereby 
 it was declared, " That the King's Highness, his heirs and 
 successors, be always Kings of this land of Ireland, united 
 and knit to the imperial crown of England for ever." This 
 celebrated statute preserves the unity of the executive power 
 in England and in Ireland, and prescribes that whosoever 
 should be king de facto in the one, should be also sovereign 
 in the other. The power of the Pope was overthrown, so far 
 as by Act of Parliament it could be done. The Sovereign of 
 England was declared to be the head of the Church ; the 
 religious abbeys were suppressed, the lands were distributed 
 upon easy terms amongst the Eoman Catholic chieftains, who 
 did not blush to share the spoil ; and, thus enriched and 
 ennobled by King Harry, they undertook to conspire no 
 longer with France, the Pope, or Spain. The Irish chiefs 
 were feasted by the King in his palace at Greenwich ; but 
 while they feasted they trembled, because they felt that if 
 they misbehaved, they would all be hanged. So, after this 
 fashion King Henry reigned and ruled over his happy king- 
 dom of Ireland. 
 
 Although, during the long reign of Henry VIII., the 
 Parliaments held in Ireland were few ; and although the 
 number of members was small, not amounting to one 
 hundred, and, until the thirty-third year of Henry VIII., 
 limited to persons of English blood or birth ; and although 
 Sir John Davis speaks somewhat slightingly of the purposes 
 for which Parliaments in this reign were held ; yet many 
 useful English statutes were adopted by the Irish Parliaments, 
 and during this reign our laws were, in many respects, 
 improved and assimilated to those of England : and we must 
 in fairness admit, as we peruse the statute book and the his- 
 tory of this reign, that whatever may have been the vices or 
 
40 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 the crimes of King Harry, he meant to rule Ireland fairly, to 
 introduce the English laws, and to maintain tranquillity and 
 order. That he meant to enforce the residence of the 
 grantees of Crown lands is attested by that singular Act 
 called the Act of Absentees. The receiving of rents 
 through agents, though by unwilling absentees, was treated 
 as a crime by Harry VIII. ; and those English noblemen 
 who, by marriage or descent, acquired lands in Ireland 
 on which they were unable to reside, were expected to 
 grant those estates to persons who could and would reside. 
 The evils of absenteeism were recorded in the statute referred 
 to, and the "King's Majesty, intending the reformation of 
 the said land, to foresee that the like shall not ensue here- 
 after, with the consent of his Parliament, pronounces % /br- 
 feiled the estates of all absentee proprietors, and their right 
 and title gone." A construction was put on this singular 
 statute in the case of the Earl of Shrewsbury, also Earl of 
 Waterford, and reported in the 12th part of Lord Coke's 
 Reports " It was resolved by the Judges in England, to 
 whom the question was by the Privy Council referred, that 
 the Irish Act against absentees did not only take away from 
 the Earl of Waterford the possessions which were given to 
 him at the time of his creation, but also the dignity itself." 
 And the Judges said "It was with good reason to take 
 away such dignity by Act of Parliament ; and although the 
 said Earl of Shrewsbury be not only of great honour and 
 virtue, but also of great possessions in England, yet it was 
 not the intention of the Act to continue him Earl in Ireland, 
 when as his possessions were taken away from him ; but that 
 the King, at his pleasure, might confer as well the dignity as 
 the possessions to any other, for the defence of the said 
 realm." 
 
 I ought to mention that the propriety of this opinion of 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 41 
 
 Lord Coke and others came before the Lords in 1852, in the 
 case of the Earl of Shrewsbury claiming, as Earl of Water- 
 ford, to vote at the election of Representative Peers of 
 Ireland ; and it was held that the dignity of the peerage was 
 not taken away by the Irish Act against absentees ; and that 
 the opinion above cited was not binding upon the House of 
 Lords, or any other Court of Justice. 
 
 But the Act referred to, against absentees, is to be noted 
 and remembered, because it proves not only what was the 
 legislation in point of fact at the time, but also the policy 
 upon which large grants of land were made in Ireland, and 
 shows the expectation that thereby this country would be 
 tranquillized, enriched, and civilized. The principle of the 
 law against absentees has been derided by political economists 
 of our days ; but King Harry cared little for abstract theories 
 of political economy. Like the kings of his race, he wished 
 to behold a magnificent nobility, a resident gentry, and a 
 commonalty well fed, well housed, well clad industry 
 flourishing, and rogues somewhat roughly punished. King 
 Harry's theory of a poor-law was simple and practical 
 beggars were proscribed ; the destitute were provided with 
 work. If a sturdy vagabond would not work, and was caught 
 begging once, being neither aged nor infirm, he was whipped 
 at the cart's tail ; if caught a second time, his ear was slit, 
 or bored through with a hot iron ; if caught a third time, 
 being thereby proved to be of no use upon this earth, but to 
 live upon it only to his own hurt, and to that of others, he 
 suffered death as a felon. And this law was enacted, it is 
 said, " from a hatred of rascality," and was sanctioned by the 
 general sense of the people. 
 
 When a case of poisoning a family, by a cook, occurred in 
 the reign of King Harry, it filled England with horror and 
 amazement. A special act of Parliament was drawn, reciting 
 
4.2 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 the enormous and unheard-of crime, and "that man's life 
 was chiefly to be favoured, and voluntary murders to be 
 most detested and abhorred, and especially all kinds of 
 murders by poisoning, which in this realm, our Lord be 
 thanked, has been most seldom committed or practised." It 
 is further declared, " That the crime shall be high treason ;" 
 and it was enacted, " that the said Eichard Rous, the cook, 
 should be therefore boiled to death." 
 
 And boiled to death he was, in a huge cauldron, in Smith- 
 field Market, amidst the applauses of the people, "who," 
 saith the historian, " showed a temper that would keep no 
 terms with evil." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 QUEEN MARY Anecdote of Dean Cole Irish Laws passed in Mary's 
 Reign State of Ireland under Elizabeth Shakspeare's character 
 of Elizabeth Legislation during her Reign Creation of Free 
 Schools Description of First Day of Session Length of the 
 Sittings Payment of Knights and Burgesses History of the 
 Foundation and Library of the University of Dublin. 
 
 EDWARD VI. 
 
 IN the reign of Edward VI. no Parliament sat in Ireland. 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 The principal statute of a beneficial character, during the 
 reign of Mary, was for the settlement of the King and Queen's 
 County, the transferring of them into shires, and the founding 
 of Philipstown and Maryborough, called after the King and 
 Queen. An Act of Parliament was also passed, denning the 
 intent and meaning of Poynings' law, and effectually subju- 
 gating the Irish Parliament to the English Privy Council. 
 
 No Parliament had been held in Ireland for a period of 
 thirteen years, which sufficiently proves of how little impor- 
 tance that assembly was felt to be in the kingdom. 
 
 In the session held in the reign of this Queen, fifteen laws 
 were passed, nine of which have long since been repealed, 
 being laws passed in obedience to a Bull from the Pope, which 
 was publicly read to an obsequious Parliament, the members 
 
44 THE LlFE AND DEATH 0$ 
 
 of which showed themselves as ready to gratify the bigotry of 
 Queen Mary as they had been to yield to the caprices of 
 King Harry. But it is to be noted with satisfaction, that 
 the persecuting spirit of the Queen was limited to the passing 
 of those obnoxious statutes, and the restoring of Ireland to 
 the authority of the Pope. The fires which consumed the 
 martyrs burned in England alone ; and it is a pleasing fact 
 that many English families, friends to the Reformation, fled 
 into Ireland, and there enjoyed their opinions and worship 
 in privacy, without notice or molestation. 
 
 Leland, however, in his History of Ireland, gives a popular 
 story which was current in the subsequent reigns, by which 
 it would appear that this tranquillity had, upon a notable 
 occasion, been eminently menaced. The story is that Cole, 
 Dean of St. Paul's, was sent into Ireland with a commission 
 to the State, for proceeding against heretics with the utmost 
 severity. At Chester, he showed his commission with great 
 exultation in the presence of his hostess. The good woman, 
 who, it seems, was allied to some Protestants, who had retired 
 to Dublin, we are assured, was artful enough to steal the 
 commission from the box in which it had been deposited. 
 Cole proceeded on his voyage, appeared before the Irish 
 Council, explained the Queen's intention ; but, instead of his 
 commission, presented a pack of cards substituted in its place. 
 He retired in confusion ; and the death of Mary prevented 
 the renewal of his commission. 
 
 QUEEN ELIZABETH. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth is described by Mr. Froude as having 
 been a magnificent girl. Under the persecutions of Mary, she 
 was the hope of the English people. It had been intended 
 and contrived to relieve her at an early age of the trouble of 
 carrying her head upon her shoulders. The poetical prophecy 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 45 
 
 of Shakspeare over the cradle of the child was realised in 
 
 after-life : 
 
 " All princely graces 
 
 That mould up such a mighty piece as this is, 
 With all the virtues that attend the good, 
 Shall still be doubled on her. Truth shall nurse her, 
 Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her : 
 She shall be loved and feared. Her own shall bless her, 
 Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, 
 And hang their heads with sorrow : 
 Good grows with her. 
 In her days every man shall eat, in safety, 
 Under his own vine, what he plants ; and sing 
 The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours. 
 God shall be truly known, and those about her 
 From her shall read the perfect ways of honour, 
 And by these claim their greatness, not by blood." 
 
 Hen. VIII., Act v., Scene 3. 
 
 In Ireland, the instant the Irish chiefs felt no longer the firm 
 hand of Henry, and found a girl upon the throne, they revolted. 
 Plots, conspiracies, rebellions, wars, confiscations, followed 
 each other in regular succession. Ireland was convulsed 
 Elizabeth was distracted still she pursued fearlessly her 
 mission, to plant and spread the laws, language, faith, and 
 manners of England throughout this unhappy land. 
 
 The events of her illustrious reign are still felt in their 
 glorious results throughout the world. She was surrounded 
 by wise counsellors, brave captains, famous admirals, renowned 
 statesmen. She rescued England, and nourished the young 
 plant of the Kefonnation until it grew and bore fruit to 
 perfection in the land. In Ireland, the statutes of Queen 
 Mary were reversed ; the statutes of King Henry were 
 restored; the Protestant religion was established, and the 
 Protestant worship confirmed. She restored the Earl of 
 Kildare, his brother, and sister, to their blood ; while an Act 
 
46 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 was passed for the attainder of Shane O'Neil, entitling the 
 Crown to vast territories in Ulster. Some of her laws, as 
 those against fraudulent conveyances, were not extended to 
 Ireland till a subsequent reign. Barrington, upon the cha- 
 racter of her laws, says " I have perused her laws with 
 attention, and, except the statute against fraudulent con- 
 veyances, I do not find any other of very great importance." 
 Sir John Davis asks, as to her Irish Parliament " To 
 what purpose did the Earl of Sussex hold his second Par- 
 liament in Ireland, but to establish the Reformed religion in 
 this kingdom ?" 
 
 In the eleventh year of Elizabeth, (who reigned forty-five 
 years), four Sessions of Parliament were held in Ireland ; 
 two in the twelfth, one in the thirteenth, another in the 
 twenty-seventh, and the last in the twenty-eighth year of that 
 reign. From this period, Parliaments were not convened in 
 Ireland until the eleventh year of King James I. So that 
 our forefathers lived for twenty-six years without feeling the 
 power or the presence of a Parliament in Ireland. 
 
 Amongst the laws which the Parliament of Elizabeth 
 passed in Ireland, there was one for the punishment of per- 
 jury ; and another, more useful still, for the creation of free 
 schools in every diocese in Ireland. But in those troublous 
 times of our ancestors, it was not laws, but protection for 
 their lives, and property, and religion, they required. 
 
 We have from the pen of a Mr. Hooker, who represented 
 the important town of Athenry in the Parliament held by 
 Sir Henry Sidney, in the eleventh year of Queen Elizabeth, 
 a description of the method of proceeding at the opening of 
 Parliament in our city three hundred years ago. Mr. 
 Hooker (a member of the House, and whose interesting 
 memoir is given by Lord Mountmorris) says : 
 
 "On the first day of which Parliament, the Lord Deputy 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 47 
 
 was conducted and attended in a most honourable manner 
 unto Christ's Church, and from thence unto the Parliament 
 House, where he sat under the cloth of estate, being ap- 
 parelled in princely robes of crimson velvet, doubled or lined 
 with ermine. And then and there, the Lord Chancellor 
 made a very eloquent oration, declaring what the law was." 
 And then, concluding with an exhortation of obedience and 
 dutifulness, he ended, and the Court adjourned until Thurs- 
 day next, the 20th of January. 
 
 He mentions a circumstance that proves the regular hours 
 of past legislators, viz., " One of them rose up, and would 
 have answered the party, but the time and day were so far 
 spent above the ordinary hour, being well near two of the 
 clock in the afternoon, that the Speaker and the Court rose 
 up and departed." 
 
 At this happy time, every knight was entitled to receive 
 13s. 4d. per day; the citizen member at first got the same 
 pay; afterwards the city member was cut down to 10s., and 
 the burgess to 3s. 4d. ; the allowance to begin from the first 
 day of starting on the journey to Parliament. The House 
 met, and fell to fighting furiously amongst themselves 
 " the more words, the more choler ; the more speeches, the 
 greater broils :" hatred of English members the cause. The 
 Judges are called in to compose the confusion ; they failed. 
 At last business was allowed to proceed, and the English 
 Orders, and rules for summoning and regulating Parliaments 
 were presented and adopted. It is remarkable, that in this 
 collection of the English Orders, which were presented by 
 Mr. Hooker, and adopted by the Irish Parliament, there is 
 not any form of oath prescribed which would exclude Dis- 
 senters or Roman Catholics from sitting in Parliament. 
 
 The reign of Elizabeth was celebrated for an event in 
 which we all take the deepest interest the foundation of the 
 
48 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 University of Dublin. It was the glory of Alfred that he 
 framed a code of laws rational and consistent that he founded 
 and endowed the University of Oxford. It was the glory of 
 Elizabeth that she, a lady and a queen, amidst the din of 
 arms and the tumult of civil war, founded and endowed the 
 University of Dublin. If all the friendless men of genius 
 who since that hour have found a home within her walls 
 could be here assembled, what a famous company would we 
 not behold of wits scholars authors orators and states- 
 men ! Like our country, the University had her early 
 struggles her bitter mortifications her many disappoint- 
 ments ; but I hope I may live to say of that country as I can 
 say of her that if adversity has tried, it has strengthened 
 her that if difficulties have checked her onward inarch, 
 they have vanished if her course was retarded, she now 
 presses forward in her career of a noble utility. That vene- 
 rable pile which faces the ancient Senate House, has schooled 
 for the Senate the orator and patriot. From generation to 
 generation she has been the wise and gentle preceptress of 
 the youth of Ireland. From age to age she has been seen to 
 hold high the lamp of knowledge, to illuminate or dispel the 
 darkness of ignorance. Immortal truth has been taught by 
 her divines since the hour Elizabeth founded the institution. 
 The secrets of science have been by her inquisitive professors 
 explored discovered proclaimed. The intellectual trea- 
 sures of Greece and Eome have been unlocked and shared 
 many a thirsty aspirant has drank without exhausting her 
 Pierian spring. If she aspires to lead the mind of youth 
 in this ancient kingdom, it is by no mean or vulgar arts. She 
 invites all to study truth divine she coerces none. All her 
 influence is directed towards what is beautiful and good. 
 Her ambition is satisfied Avhen she beholds her sons practise 
 virtue, pursue truth, shine before the world, and serve their 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 49 
 
 country. No schemes of party no smiles of the great no 
 frowns of power no whisper of faction no false promise no 
 corrupt inducements, can there prevail to hide the genius which 
 is struggling to develop untried powers. 
 
 The republic of learned men levels all distinctions, and 
 only acknowledges the supremacy of intellect and worth. 
 Behold the infancy the growth the maturity of this great 
 national institution ! The intention, as expressed by Sir John 
 Perrott, the Deputy, in his letter to the Lord Treasurer of 
 England, is significant of the state of Dublin at that time : 
 " That whereas there is no place for the courts of law save 
 only an old hall in the Castle of Dublin, dangerously placed 
 over the munition of powder ; that the Cathedral of St. Patrick, 
 being spacious and large, would sufficiently serve for all the 
 several courts ; and there being a want of a storehouse for 
 grain and other provisions, and no fit place for it, whereby 
 the waste in victualling is the greater ; that the Canon's 
 house environing the church ought aptly serve for an inn of 
 court to bestoiv the judges and lawyers in, in exchange for 
 which their inns of court, lying commodiously over the river 
 and near the bridge for loading and unloading, might as aptly 
 serve for a storehouse and granary. That there being two 
 cathedrals in Dublin ; this being dedicated to St. Patrick, and 
 the other to the name of Christ ; that St. Patrick's was had in 
 more superstitious reputation than the other, and therefore 
 ought to be dissolved. That the revenues of St. Patrick 
 (4,000 marks per annum) would serve to begin the foundation 
 of two universities, and endow a couple of colleges in them, 
 with one hundred pound per annum a-piece, and the residue 
 may be employed in the reparation of said church and houses, 
 and be annexed unto Christ Church by way of augmentation 
 of the choir." 
 
 Finally, the Corporation of the city granted what was the 
 
50 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 ancient Monastery of All Souls, and the lands adjoining, for 
 the purpose of the foundation. In 1591 the letters patent 
 passed, by which, first, a college was appointed to be erected, 
 to be the mother of an university, in a certain place called 
 All Hallows, near Dublin, for the education, institution and 
 instruction of youth in the arts and faculties TO ENDURE FOR 
 EVER. Second, its name was given, and it was added " A 
 Serenissimd Regind Elizabeth a fundatum" 
 
 On the 13th March, 1591, the Lord Mayor laid the foun- 
 dation stone with great solemnity. On the 9th January, 
 1593, the first students were admitted. Elizabeth, by her 
 strong arm, saved the feeble institution from ruin. She left 
 her example to James I. He loved learning, and therefore 
 loved our College, and added largely to its endowments. 
 Subsequent sovereigns trod in their footsteps, and emulated 
 their example. The Parliament of Ireland frequently aided 
 munificently the University with grants of public money ; 
 learned men founded exhibitions and professorships ; and so 
 the seed, sown in storm and rain, felt the sunshine, and gre\v 
 up to flower and bear fruit. 
 
 There is written, I believe, by my late dear and lamented 
 friend, the Kev. Dr. Mortimer O'Sullivan, in the Dublin 
 University Magazine, a narrative of the foundation of the 
 Library in the University of Dublin. It is deserving your 
 perusal, as also is the history of the University itself, written 
 by Mr. Taylor. A beautiful episode in the history of san- 
 guinary wars, rebellions, and confiscations, is afforded by the 
 origin of the magnificent Library which you now behold, and 
 behold to admire. The army of Queen Elizabeth had sub- 
 dued every foe, expelled the Spaniards from Kinsale, and 
 reduced Ireland to obedience. That same army then re- 
 solved to leave behind them a memorial which might be 
 lasting, of their love and admiration for the kingdom they 
 had conquered. They practised war, but they preferred the 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 51 
 
 nobler arts of peace. These heroic men collected nigh 
 2,000 a vast sum in those days and placed it in the 
 hands of Ussher, to be applied towards the acquisition of a 
 Library for the University of Dublin. Ussher fell in with 
 Bodley, then in London, making purchases for that institu- 
 tion called the Bodleian Library of Oxford. These deep 
 scholars and enlightened men co-operated, and by their joint 
 labours a great work was accomplished, the result of which is 
 that Library of our beloved University which you now behold. 
 The British army have achieved many a gallant feat of arms ; 
 but such a feat as this no army I ever read of did before. 
 All honour to its memory. The library of Ussher, purchased 
 by Cromwell, was afterwards added by the Parliament of Ire- 
 land to the noble collection. 
 
 In 1614 the University obtained political rank. The pri- 
 vilege of returning two members was bestowed upon it. How 
 they exercised that privilege in times past, the country may 
 decide. Sir William Temple, Sir James Ware, Molyneux 
 the patriot, Sir Archibald Acheson, Tisdall, Laurence Par- 
 sons, W. H. Burgh, and others, upheld the fame of the 
 University and the rights of their country. Plunket was 
 named by Bushe, " The Wellington of the Senate," and 
 spoke on his peculiar subjects with matchless eloquence and 
 power Croker left a high name in the annals of literature 
 and politics. 
 
 The educated sons of our University are now in distant 
 quarters of the world, occupying high posts, which they have 
 won by their abilities against honourable competition ; and, 
 oh ! happy omen, she is now governed by a native nobleman, 
 who, like his race, unites a love of country with a zeal for 
 science, and thinks it not incompatible with his rank and 
 with his duty to prefer for himself and his descendants the 
 University of Dublin, to the grander, but more distant, estab- 
 lishments of Oxford and of Cambridge. 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 IRISH Parliament in reign of James I. Sir J. Davis's Speech on his 
 Election as Speaker His Testimony in favour of the Irish First 
 Assizes in Tyrone, &c. Policy and Success of the Great Planta- 
 tion of Ulster Public Characters who figured in this age. 
 
 JAMES I. 
 
 ELIZABETH'S work of conquest was complete ; the work of 
 reconciliation was now to commence. 
 
 The journals of the House of Commons of Ireland begin 
 on the 18th of May, 1613. A Parliament was summoned, 
 but, in comparison with former Irish Parliaments, how was it 
 constituted and strengthened ? I must allow Sir John Davis 
 to speak, from his honoured grave, the words of truth and 
 wisdom. On his appointment as Speaker of the Commons, 
 the 2nd May, 1613, in his speech to the Lord Deputy, he 
 says : 
 
 " And now, by way of comparison, it may easily appear 
 unto your lordship how much this first Parliament, now 
 begun under the blessed government of our most gracious 
 King James, is like to excel all former Parliaments, as well 
 in respect of the cause and time of calling it, as of the per- 
 sons that are called unto it. For this Parliament (God be 
 blessed) is not called to repel an invasion, or to suppress a 
 rebellion, or to reduce degenerate subjects to their obedience. 
 It is not summoned to pass private bills only, or to serve 
 private towns, or for any one special service for the Crown, 
 though such have been the occasions and causes of calling 
 
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 53 
 
 the most part of the former Parliaments. But now, since 
 God hath blessed the whole island with an universal peace 
 and obedience, together with plenty, civility, and other felici- 
 ties, more than it ever enjoyed in any former age, this general 
 Council of the whole realm is called now principally to con- 
 firm and establish these blessings unto us, and to make them 
 perpetual to our posterities." Again : " It is not called in 
 such a time as when the four shires of the Pale only did send 
 their barons, knights, and burgesses to the Parliament, when 
 they alone took upon them to make laws to bind the whole 
 kingdom, neglecting to call the subjects residing in other 
 parts of the realm unto them, as appeareth by that Parlia- 
 ment holden by Viscount of G-ormanston, which Sir Edward 
 Poynings, in the tenth year of King Henry VII., caused to 
 be utterly repealed, and the Acts thereof made void, chiefly 
 for that the summons of Parliament went forth to the four 
 shires of the Pale only, and not unto all the rest of the 
 counties. But it is called in such a time, when all Ulster and 
 Connaught, as well as Leinster and Munster, have voices in 
 Parliament by their knights and burgesses ; when all the inha- 
 bitants of the kingdom, English of birth, English of blood, 
 the new British colony and the old Irish natives, do all meet 
 together, to make laws for the common good of themselves 
 and their posterities. 
 
 " Lastly : this Parliament is called in such a time when all 
 the Lords Spiritual and Temporal do acknowledge the King 
 of England to be their undoubted patron. In a word, Sir 
 Edward Poynings, in the time of King Henry VII., and 
 Lionel, Duke of Clarence, in Edward III.'s time, if they 
 could have seen but half such an assembly in their Parlia- 
 ments, would have thought themselves happy and highly 
 honoured; and yet those Parliaments, holden by them, are 
 the most famous Parliaments that have been formerly holden 
 in this kingdom." 
 
54 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 All these good thoughts are in consonance with what our 
 author wrote in his Historical Tract on the Causes why Ireland 
 was not reduced to obedience till the present happy reign. 
 In that admirable Essay, he ransacks the records of antiquity 
 reveals the policy of ancient Eome -'of Agricola in Britain 
 of William the Norman and insists, if the like wise and 
 statesmanlike course had been originally pursued in Ireland ; 
 i.e., if the laws of England had been freely and fully commu- 
 nicated to the whole Irish people, these laws would have been 
 gladly embraced, and the two nations have been incorporated 
 and united ; in this noble method, Ireland would have been 
 entirely conquered, planted, and civilized. 
 
 Another profound observation was made by this just man ; 
 namely, that the grant of lands made to the first great settlers 
 created lords, was infinitely too large. "These men became 
 petty kings, and could not endure that any kings should reign 
 in Ireland but themselves ; nay, they could hardly endure 
 that the Crown of England itself should have any jurisdiction 
 or power over them." Davis is severe upon the pride, covet- 
 ousness, and ill-council of the English planted in Ireland; 
 then, as to the effect produced by Irish laws or customs, now 
 to be extirpated, nothing can be more convincing than the 
 argument by which the author traces the evil to its source. 
 
 Sir J. Davis quotes an extract from statute of the 18th of 
 Henry VII. : " The people of this land, both English and 
 Irish, out of a natural pride, did ever love and desire to be 
 governed by great persons.'* And he adds "Therefore I 
 may here justly take occasion to note, that first the absence 
 of the kings of England^ and next, the absence of those great 
 lords who ivere inheritors of those mighty seigniories of Lein- 
 ster, Ulster, Connaught, and Munster have been main causes 
 why this kingdom was not reduced in so many ages." 
 
 The principle of the Act against Absentees was considered 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. DO 
 
 wise by Sir John Davis ; and he recounts with satisfaction all 
 the seizures made of lands of great absentees under its enact- 
 ments. And it was insisted by this eminent man, after a 
 review of all which had been done before, that more was 
 accomplished in nine years of the reign of King James I., than 
 in four hundred years previously more especially by the 
 establishing of public justice in every part of the kingdom. 
 Sir J. Davis and Sir Edward Pelham were the first Justices of 
 Assize that ever sat in Tyrone and Tyrconnel, and the result 
 of their circuit is thus related by Sir J. Davis : 
 
 " If somewhat distasteful to the Irish lords, sweet and 
 most welcome to the common people, who, albeit they were 
 rude and barbarous, yet did they quickly apprehend the 
 difference between the tyranny and oppression under which 
 they lived before, and the just government and protection 
 which we promised unto them for the time to come." And 
 he adds " For the truth is, that in time of peace the Irish 
 are more fearful to offend the law than the English, or any 
 other nation whatsoever." The same opinion of the Irish is 
 expressed by Chancellor Allen to King Harry "If well 
 governed," he said, "the Irish would be found as civil, 
 politic, and active as any other nation." 
 
 The policy observed in the plantation of Ulster is narrated 
 by Sir J. Davis : 
 
 " Again : his Majesty did not utterly exclude the natives 
 out of this plantation, with a purpose to root them out, as the 
 Irish were excluded out of the first English colonies, but 
 made a mixed plantation of British and Irish, that they might 
 grow up together in one nation. And when this plantation 
 hath taken root, and been fixed and settled but a few years, 
 with the favour and blessing of God, it will secure the peace 
 of Ireland, assure it to the Crown of England for ever, and 
 finally make it a civil, and a rich, a mighty, and a flourishing 
 kingdom." 
 
56 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 Truly, the prophecy of the patriot has come to pass. 
 Ulster is civil, rich, mighty, and flourishing, equal in itself to 
 several continental kingdoms. It was in the reign of James 
 the famous work was begun, which continued prosperously, 
 and ended successfully. The towns enfranchised chiefly lay 
 in Ulster ; and the descendants of the brave and industrious 
 men, who changed the wilderness into a garden, continue to 
 hold, with a constancy never to be too highly praised, the 
 opinions, and to practise the virtues of their forefathers. 
 They are prosperous because they are industrious, and they 
 are powerful because they are united and brave. Our duty, 
 as Irishmen, is not merely to wish, but to labour, that an 
 equal degree of prosperity may pervade every corner of the 
 island, and that our countrymen of all classes, so highly 
 gifted by nature, may equal their neighbours in wealth, in 
 wisdom, in the manly virtues, and in the cultivation of the 
 useful arts of peace. It is a fact worthy our notice, that 
 in the time of Elizabeth and James, there were but few 
 Protestants amongst the old English settlers in Ireland, and 
 fewer still amongst the native Irish ; so that a reformation was 
 needed, no less in religion than in politics. There had been 
 no Parliament held for twenty-seven years before the fifth 
 year of the reign of James I., which year was the first in 
 which James called a Parliament. I suspect the advisers of 
 Elizabeth feared to call a Parliament, because the Protestant 
 party was so weak. James added strength to that party by 
 his colonization, and by his corporations, especially in Ulster. 
 
 On their assembling to choose a Speaker, it was found that 
 the numbers of the Roman Catholic party were 101, and 
 of those of the Protestant party, 125. There was an actual 
 scuffle in the chairing of the Speaker. We may observe that 
 about this time, the old distinction of native Irish, degenerate 
 English, English of blood, and English of the Pale 3 were 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 57 
 
 merged and forgotten in the general denomination of Catho- 
 lics ; while they regarded the new-comers as aggressors, and 
 did not like them better, because they feared their superior 
 intelligence, capacity for business, spirit of enterprise, and 
 courage. We may regret the fact, but it ought not to sur- 
 prise us. 
 
 This Parliament, of which Sir John Davis was appointed 
 Speaker, met the 18th May, 1613, and was continued to 
 llth October, 1614. 
 
 The laws actually passed by this Irish Parliament, and in 
 practical operation, are few. 
 
 A strong interest, however, must always attach itself to 
 the perusal of the first chapter of the Irish Statute Book of 
 this reign, denominated, " A most joyful and just recognition 
 of his Majesties' lawfull, undoubted, and absolute right and 
 title to the crown of Ireland." The language is unlike that 
 of our modern statutes ; the style is historical ; and when 
 read, it should be remembered, with solemn reflection that 
 it was followed in a few years by the most dreadful rebellions 
 or civil wars that ever desolated a kingdom. 
 
 Using the most fervid expressions of loyalty, the Lords 
 Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons, in the Parliament 
 assembled, declare, " And thereunto we most humbly and 
 faithfully doe submit and oblige us, our heyres, and posteri- 
 ties, for ever, untill the last drop of our blood be spent." 
 
 That was succeeded by the Act for the attainder of the 
 great Earl of Tyrone, Rory, late Earl of Tyrconnel, Sir Cahir 
 O'Dogherty, knight, and others. Then a number of old 
 statutes, offensive to the Irish, were repealed in the lump, 
 upon the ground, as recited, " That all the natives and inha- 
 bitants of this kingdom, without difference and distinction, 
 were taken into his Majesty's gracious protection, and do now 
 live under one law, as dutiful subjects of our sovereign lord 
 
58 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 and monarch ; by means whereof, a perfect agreement is and 
 ought to be settled between all his Maiesty's subjects in this 
 realm." 
 
 We have then an Act for the repeal of one statute made 
 against bringing Scots retaining of them marrying with 
 them. King James could do no less for his Scotch country- 
 men and countrywomen. I should state, the Act so obnoxious 
 to the Scotch was passed in the reign of Philip and Mary. 
 
 We have then an Act for a general and free pardon, 
 elaborately drawn, and comprehensive in spirit. 
 
 It is impossible for us to contemplate the reign and the 
 policy, the civil labours and successes, of James I. hi Ireland, 
 without admiration and gratitude. It was wise, benevolent, 
 far-seeing, and kingly. He was a very learned man, and 
 shows the truth of Bacon's maxim that learned princes rule 
 wisely. 
 
 Before we quit the reign of James I., we must notice our 
 old friend Poynings and his law. King James having settled 
 the constitution of Parliament in Ireland, and wishing to 
 conform to law, and at the same time to be advised as to the 
 manner by which, under Poynings' law, Parliaments were to 
 be holden and managed in Ireland, consulted his judges, and 
 was advised by them, as reported by Lord Coke in the 12th 
 part of his Reports, in a case entitled " Parliament of Ire- 
 land." It was resolved, " That the causes and acts transmitted 
 hither, under the great seal of Ireland, ought to be kept here 
 in the chancery of England, and not be remanded. Second, 
 If they be affirmed, they ought to be transcribed under the 
 great seal, and returned into Ireland ; and all that which 
 passes the great seal ought to be enrolled here in Chancery. 
 Third, If the Acts sent over be in any part altered or changed 
 here, the Act so altered or changed ought forthwith to be 
 returned under the great seal of England ; but the transcript 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 59 
 
 under the great seal of Ireland, which remains in the Chan- 
 cery here> shall not be amended, but the amendment shall 
 be under the great seal of England, so as returned into 
 Ireland without any signification or certification of their 
 allowance by that in Ireland ; so that the amendments and 
 alterations made here in England, and all the Acts which are 
 affirmed or altered, are returned under the great seal of 
 England." 
 
 Thus stood the Parliamentary Constitution of Ireland until 
 1782, being as unlike the free Parliamentary Constitution of 
 England as any two systems of government could well be 
 constructed. 
 
 We can only conjecture what was the eloquence of the 
 speakers and statesmen in the Irish Parliament from the early 
 part to the latter end of the seventeenth century, because no 
 debates could then be published. But, as we conclude from 
 his writings that Bolingbroke was the foremost orator of his 
 age, so we may judge of some of our own senators. Sir John 
 Davis was not a dry lawyer ; he was a sweet poet ; his poem 
 " Know thyself" is of a high order of merit ; his compositions 
 of an historical kind are inimitable ; his law reports invalu- 
 able ; his speech, when chosen Speaker, on the Origin of 
 Parliaments, never excelled. He was a statesman with large 
 views, and ever friendly to Ireland. After he quitted this 
 country, he figured in the English House of Commons, and 
 was only prevented by death from being Chief Justice of 
 England. Although he had much in his power, he took not 
 one acre of land in Ireland to himself. I need not speak of 
 Ussher or of the Duke of Ormond. Sir John Clotworthy, who 
 pursued Strafford to the death, was an able man ; and while 
 Lord Roscommon cultivated poetry with success, he did not 
 forget politics. Sir W. Petty came over as a physician had a 
 turn for calculations was placed at the head of the Court of 
 
60 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 Claims, and feathered his nest well while attending to his 
 duties. Scarcely any adventurer ever was more successful. 
 Sir James Ware will never be forgotten as a scholar and 
 antiquary. Sir John Temple, Master of the Rolls, was highly 
 distinguished in Parliament, but not to be compared with his 
 son Sir William, the ambassador, author, scholar, statesman, 
 patron of Swift, friend of King William, honoured throughout 
 Europe. 
 
 It is highly agreeable to us to ascertain that such charac- 
 ters adorned our Senate, and that in former times we had 
 men so well qualified to guide the affairs of our country. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 STATUTES and Parliamentary History in the Reign of Charles I. 
 Amazing Events of the Period The Earl of Strafford, Lord Deputy 
 of Ireland His vigorous Administration, Character, Impeachment, 
 and Execution List of Grievances compiled by order of the Irish 
 House of Commons, and laid before the Lords The Irish Judges 
 and Mr. Patrick Darcy Independence of the Irish Parliament 
 asserted The Irish Parliament under Cromwell Political Con- 
 sistency of Irish Protestants The Act of Settlement The Duke 
 of Ormond Character of his Government Hours of Sitting and 
 Place of Assembly of Irish Parliament Absurd Quarrels between 
 Lords and Commons about Etiquette Swift's Sarcasm on Sergeant 
 Bettesworth. 
 
 CHARLES I. 
 
 THE unfortunate King Charles I., who lost his head upon the 
 block, ascended the throne of England in 1625. 
 
 The first statute passed in Ireland was in 1634, in a session 
 which ended on the 14th of July, 1634. Thus we again per- 
 ceive how many years elapse without the assembling of a 
 Parliament in Ireland. 
 
 The statutes passed in this session were nearly all tran- 
 scripts of useful English statutes, which had been long pre- 
 viously law in England, and were tardily introduced into 
 Ireland. 
 
 But our attention is at once arrested and our amazement 
 excited by the astonishing events of our history which hap- 
 pened at this era, and which engaged the notice of the civi- 
 lized world. 
 
62 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 Charles I. succeeded to the crown when the ideas of men 
 touching the kingly prerogative had undergone a prodigious 
 change : of this he seems to have been insensible. Vexed 
 and offended by the resistance given to his proposals in the 
 English Parliament, he conceived a repugnance to these trou- 
 blesome assemblies, and tried to govern without them with 
 what result after an omission to call Parliament for sixteen 
 years we know full well. 
 
 Into the history of the memorable Long Parliament it is 
 not my business to enter. The greatest statesmen England 
 ever produced, amongst them Oliver Cromwell, figured in that 
 celebrated assembly. 
 
 . There was one Sir Thomas Wentworth, created Earl of 
 Strafford, of vast capacity, eloquence, and genius, to whom 
 Charles confided the government of Ireland. It has been 
 asserted by some that he ruled Ireland with a rod of iron, 
 the meaning of which seems to have been, that lords and 
 commoners trembled in his presence. The Lord Deputy was 
 at times insolent, offensive, overbearing, and despotic. But 
 his conduct in these respects chiefly affected individuals. 
 His capacity for government was of the highest order ; he 
 comprehended the condition of Ireland thoroughly, and over- 
 mastered difficulties which would have been to common minds 
 insuperable. Believing the great calamity of our country 
 was social disturbance and impunity to crime, he enforced 
 the law everywhere against all offenders, he terrified the 
 guilty gave assurance to industry protected peaceable 
 men and trampled out disaffection and rebellion. 
 
 Ireland, under the strong government of Strafford, was 
 tranquil and prosperous, as she was under Harry VIII. Her 
 commerce increased vastly her manufacture of linen, under 
 the auspices of Strafford, began, grew, and flourished her 
 revenue was large she paid her debts, and yet her exchequer 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 63 
 
 was full. We must admit, therefore, that as a ruler he was 
 suited to his time, and equal to his work, and that Ireland, 
 emerging from confusion and rebellion, could not have been 
 intrusted to firmer hands. 
 
 The Irish Parliament was complaisant to the great man 
 while he was powerful ; they heaped praises and panegyrics 
 upon his head ; but when the popular leaders in the Commons 
 of England impeached, and when the King deserted, his trusty 
 counsellor, an Irish party insulted and assailed him. 
 
 The behaviour of StraiFord in Ireland was charged, amidst 
 various accusations against him by Pym, in* the grand im- 
 peachment ; but never did mortal man speak for another as 
 did StrafFord for himself, for his dignities, his life. The 
 records of human eloquence contain no finer lesson. It is 
 impossible to read his immortal defence without being 
 touched even to tears. By the law of treason he was not 
 guilty : a special law of attainder was enacted for his ruin, 
 and a precedent set, too bad to follow. His enemies argued, 
 with some plausibility, that if an offender should be pro- 
 scribed who violated a particular law, ought not the great 
 offender to be punished who violated the spirit of all law ? 
 The peers of England, to their disgrace, convicted him. 
 The king deserted him at the last moment. He walked heroi- 
 cally to the scaffold placed his head composedly on the 
 block repeating, as he did so, " Put not your faith in princes.'' 9 
 Another chief governor of Ireland executed for his crimes as 
 Governor'! 
 
 How awful the retribution which overtook the King ! A 
 few years later another scene in a bloody drama opened, and 
 Charles laid his head on the block, stained by the blood of 
 StrafFord. What romance can approach in painful interest 
 the facts of our history ! 
 
 We cannot pause to investigate the prodigious consequences 
 
64 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 which resulted in England from the overthrow of Stratford 
 "We must limit our view to the effects produced in Ireland. 
 Grievances were multiplied : some of them were substan- 
 tial others were inventions. We have a curious record, 
 however, of the political, legal, and constitutional state of 
 Ireland in a tract not often read, but well deserving the notice 
 of the antiquarian and the lawyer. 
 
 The Irish Parliament, copying the example set by the 
 great Parliamentary agitators in England, prepared a list of 
 grievances ; and in order to ascertain whether the practices 
 which they asserted to prevail were in accordance with the 
 constitution, drew up twenty-one queries, which were, by 
 order of the Commons, and in their name, presented to the 
 House of Lords, with a request that they should be submitted 
 to the Irish Judges for their consideration and formal reply. 
 The Lords did as desired ; and the Irish Judges very reluc- 
 tantly, in May, 1641, sent in their cautious and elaborate 
 replies. The answers of the Judges were not relished : the 
 Commons desired a conference, and appointed a Mr. Patrick 
 Darcy, a lawyer, one of their body, to manage the conference 
 on their part : he did so with signal ability dissected the 
 Judges (or rather their arguments), exposed their logic, denied 
 their law, and proved, clearly enough, how imperfectly an 
 Irish Parliament had succeeded in fixing constitutional liberty 
 in this kingdom. I observed this curious tract amongst the 
 books of a celebrated Chief Justice offered for sale, and 
 secured it. The learned proprietor seems to have noted the 
 profound arguments of Mr. Patrick Darcy ; and I must 
 avow it excels in ability the more highly-praised discourse 
 of Molyneux in the " Case of Ireland Stated." 
 
 The whole of this proceeding, although very instructive, 
 was unusual and unconstitutional. The Judges now would 
 refuse to answer such questions propounded in such a man- 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 65 
 
 ner ; a pamphlet would be answered by a pamphlet; and 
 neither, perhaps, would be read. 
 
 Formerly a cleverly-written essay was received with great 
 indignation. We read that within two or three years after 
 the Darcy disputation, a treatise was written by one Sergeant 
 Mayart, in reply to a powerful argument by Bolton, the 
 Chancellor, asserting the independence of the Irish Parliament 
 and its laws. 
 
 " Harris ' HibernicaJ Part II., or, Two Treatises Relating to 
 Ireland. 
 
 Containing " 1. A declaration setting forth how, and by 
 what means, the laws and statutes of England, from time to 
 time, came to be of force in Ireland ; said to be written by 
 Sir Richard Bolton, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. 
 
 "2. The answer of Sir Samuel Mayart, Serjeant-at-Law, 
 and Second Judge of the Common Pleas in Ireland, to a book 
 entitled, ' A Declaration setting forth how, and by what 
 means, the laws and statutes of England, from time to time, 
 came to be of force in Ireland,' concludes thus : 
 
 " < It is again to be remembered, that which was formerly 
 touched in this answer, what a derogation and diminishing of 
 the King's authority and power, and what an alteration of his 
 government would happen to him, if the law were not so, as 
 is proved by this treatise ; for though the law be, that the 
 King and Parliament in England may make laws to bind 
 Ireland, yet his Majesty may summon Parliaments in Ireland, 
 and have such laws made there as he and his Councils of 
 England and Ireland may think fit, according to the statute 
 of the 10th of Henry VII., and the 3rd and 4th of Philip and 
 Mary, without relation to the Parliament of England, and 
 as, since the making of those statutes, have been usually done. 
 But if the Parliament in Ireland should be refractory, and 
 
 F 
 
66 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 would not pass such laws as his Majesty should think fit for 
 them, though they were never so profitable, honourable, and 
 just, both for the king and them, there were no means to 
 make them receive such laws, if the Parliament of England 
 had not power over them ; but they refuse and reject al] laws 
 proffered to them, though never so good and wholesome for 
 them. But the King and Parliament of England, having 
 power over them to give them laws, if they should be obsti- 
 nate, and refuse good laws, his Majesty hath thereby a lawful 
 means to make such laws for them as shall be thought fit by 
 him and his Parliament of England ; which power of his, by 
 the author's opinion and discourse, would be wholly taken 
 away from his Majesty, though, as by this treatise appears, 
 the kings of England have always enjoyed and used the 
 same.' " 
 
 In this controversy, we have it broadly asserted by a very 
 learned judge, that if the Irish Parliament should become 
 refractory, the King and English Parliament could, and often 
 did, overrule it. The argument made a noise, and attracted 
 the notice of Parliament. The argument of Bolton, after- 
 wards Lord Chancellor, on the opposite side, is very able. 
 Whoever will study the tract by Molyneux, the Judges' 
 answers to the queries, with Darcy's criticisms thereon, and 
 the very learned controversy between Bolton and Mayart in 
 Harris's Hibernica, will gain a fund of knowledge on this 
 subject. Touching the pamphlet of Molyneux, it enraged 
 the English Parliament. " The ponderous foxhunters" of the 
 Lower House were indignant with a treatise they could not 
 answer ; and, finding the Case of Ireland well stated, they 
 ordered the Essay to be burned by the hands of the com- 
 mon hangman ! A severer punishment awaits certain pam- 
 phleteers of the present day ; their essays are not burned, but 
 they are never read. 
 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 67 
 
 A Session of Parliament would, in Ireland, sometimes last 
 only for a few days 
 
 " Little said soon mended ; 
 A subsidy granted Parliament ended." 
 
 Charles I. succeeded to the Crown 1625 ; but no Parlia- 
 ment in Ireland was called by him till 1635 ; after that, not 
 till 1640. Some sessions were held subsequently before his 
 death. The massacre the civil war the horrid confusion 
 which well nigh dissolved society in Ireland during the contest 
 between King and Parliament do not belong to my sub- 
 ject. I would wish to say of those dreadful scenes Let 
 darkness hide them, oblivion bury them ; and may a bright 
 and happy future compensate for the gloom and misery of 
 the past. 
 
 Cromwell's government of Ireland deserves particular at- 
 tention ; it forms an epoch in the constitutional history of 
 our country. When he had waded through slaughter to a 
 throne, and trampled down all opposition in Ireland, he had 
 to consider how he was to rule the empire he had usurped. 
 His capacity for government was of the highest order : he 
 decided on having one Parliament, and one only, as he had 
 reduced the state to one commonwealth. He does not seem 
 to have comprehended the possibility of governing three 
 kingdoms by three independent Parliaments; therefore, as 
 his instrument of government, one Parliament was sum- 
 moned, in 1654, to meet in Westminster, for the three king- 
 doms ; the number of members allotted to Scotland being 
 twenty-one, and to Ireland thirty. I do not find any Eepre- 
 sentative Peers. Considering the ruined and depopulated 
 condition of Ireland at the period, it does not appear to have 
 been unfairly represented. We have, therefore, the indis- 
 putable fact that the three kingdoms were united in 1654, 
 
 
68 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 and that one Legislature represented them during a consi- 
 derable part of the two Protectorates of Oliver and Richard 
 Cromwell, in one Parliament, till near the Restoration a 
 curious and significant /act, quite overlooked in our Parlia- 
 mentary history, but consistent with, I believe, an early 
 practice. I found the list of names of the gentlemen who 
 represented Ireland in Cromwell's Imperial Parliament in the 
 Appendix to the second volume of the work so full of interest 
 by Lord Mountmorres ; and on searching for the member for 
 Fermanagh, discovered the name of my friend, John Cole, 
 then a Colonel. He has only this day changed from the County 
 to the ancient and loyal borough of Enniskillen. If it be 
 the same individual who has been sitting ever since, the 
 longevity of members of the Irish Parliament exceeds my 
 expectations. I apprehend, however, my friend is another 
 John Cole, of the same race, spirit, honour, and courage of 
 the best of his ancestors. The Irish Protestants are shown, 
 by such a fact as the one I have mentioned, to adhere to 
 old friends and old principles with more consistency and a 
 higher political morality than any other people on the face of 
 the earth. 
 
 The principle and policy of a union of the three kingdoms 
 were thus exemplified by Oliver Crom well's legislation. 
 
 After the Restoration, that is, in the year 1661, 8th May, 
 a Parliament was called by Charles II. in Ireland. The great 
 business of the Parliament and Government was to carry 
 the national measure called the Act of Settlement, essential 
 to the tranquillity of Ireland, and afterwards to maintain it 
 by the Act of Explanation. 
 
 I remark, that from the beginning of this delicate affair, it 
 was felt that the real pOAver lay in England, because, on the 30th 
 June, at a conference, the House of Commons made a propo- 
 sition for sending Commissioners to England, to represent the 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 69 
 
 desires of Parliament, and prevent private solicitations about 
 the Act of Settlement. This proposition was agreed to. 
 
 There was but little done during the first session of the 
 Irish Senate. Our legislators, however, expressed, in fitting 
 terms, their gratitude to the restored monarch for the re- 
 appointment of the Duke of Ormond as Lord Lieutenant. 
 The history of Ireland for nigh half a century may be read 
 in the life, actions, and adventures of this able, virtuous, and 
 illustrious man. His chivalrous courage, his unflinching 
 loyalty, his disinterested patriotism, mark him out as one of 
 the foremost men of his noble family, and as one of the finest 
 characters of his age. Ireland never produced a nobleman 
 to whom the Duke of Ormond was second ; and his varied, 
 strange, romantic adventures, as well as his famous actions, 
 are interwoven with the history of his country. 
 
 The Parliament which met in Dublin on the 17th April, 
 1662, sat till 13th April, 1663. The great work they had 
 to do was to confirm possessions, and settle the land question, 
 if they could. It was a difficult, painful, and laborious 
 undertaking, chiefly carried on by an able English lawyer, 
 Sir Heneage Finch, afterwards Chancellor, and Lord Notting- 
 ham. Carte, in his Life of the Duke of Ormond, states a 
 political fact of much importance, touching this great trans- 
 action of the Act of Settlement of the lands in Ireland 
 namely, that it was hotly debated, in the Council of England, 
 whether the settlement of Ireland should be transacted by 
 the English or by the Irish Parliament. Finch (father of 
 equity) was in favour of the Irish Parliament, assigning, as 
 his reason, that if they did the business in England, the laws 
 of the English Parliament would only be binding by suffer- 
 ance, and valid by adoption, in Ireland. He prevailed ; but 
 the fact that it was proposed by high officials, who stoutly 
 argued that the greatest business Ireland ever had to do should 
 
70 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 be transacted, not in Ireland, by the Irish Parliament, but in 
 England, and by the English Parliament proves the kind of 
 equivocal authority assigned to our provincial Senate. I 
 ought to add, that the Parliament of Ireland, in grateful 
 recollection of the labours of Sir Heneage Finch, voted him 
 the thanks of the House (no man ever deserved them better), 
 for " carrying on the great work of the kingdom ;" for so 
 the Act of Settlement was emphatically called. 
 
 The hours of sitting and the place of assembly of our Irish 
 Senate should be mentioned. The House preferred summer 
 to winter ; they met at nine in the morning, and sat till nigh 
 twelve, when they adjourned for dinner; and if business 
 required it, they met again in the afternoon. With regard 
 to the places of meeting the Parliaments of Elizabeth, 
 James I., and Charles I., assembled in rooms prepared for 
 the purpose in the Castle of Dublin. In 1641, our noble 
 senators sat in the Tholsel, with an occasional meeting in the 
 Custom House. We can reckon 276 members in 1666. 
 From the Kestoration to 1725, they sat in Chichester House, 
 which was on the site of the existing edifice. But while 
 the present noble fabric, now humbled into a Bank, was 
 erecting on the site of Chichester House, our erratic Par- 
 liament had to take refuge in the Blue-coat Hospital (a 
 fine building), and there, in two great rooms, they nestled 
 in 1731. I find it stated that one of the members of the 
 House, Sir Edward Piers, was the architect of the old Par- 
 liament House. I hope he was an Irishman, because there is 
 not a building superior to his work in Europe. There are 
 accounts which show that more than 100,000 was spent OR 
 the edifice. 
 
 Independently of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation, 
 we had some useful and fundamental English Acts introduced 
 and adopted here as the Act for Abolition of Feudal Tenures, 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 71 
 
 and the Act of Uniformity. During nearly thirty years no 
 new law was passed : for a sufficient reason there was no 
 Parliament to pass them. Parliament was dissolved by what 
 was called the fatal dissolution in 1666 ; and was never again 
 summoned till after the Revolution, in 1692. Parliamentary 
 government in Ireland, therefore, during this long interval, 
 was in nubibus, not in terris. 
 
 What respect could the Government have had for such an 
 institution ? What confidence could the public have reposed 
 in the members, or in their public spirit, when, for more than 
 a quarter of a century, they were unseen, unheard, unno- 
 ticed? The fact is, there was no investigation of public 
 accounts till after the Revolution, and the revenue was nearly 
 stationary. 
 
 The cause of this long Parliamentary slumber is something 
 so absurd as to make me blush to describe it. It arose from 
 a contemptible squabble between the two Houses on points of 
 idle etiquette and worthless ceremony. Conferences were 
 common between the two Houses, it appears, about heads of 
 Bills and other matters ; and the wiseacres in the Commons 
 fell to fighting with the wise heads in the Lords about sitting 
 down, standing up the place for the Commons to approach 
 whether the Peers should be allowed to sit covered, while the 
 Commons were to be obliged to stand uncovered. It is 
 astounding to read of such folly and vanity in grown men. 
 In the time of Lord Strafford, he got the stupid quarrel 
 adjusted, by inducing the members to submit to the usage of 
 the English Parliament, with which, as an old member of it 
 he was well acquainted. The great Duke of Ormond, in 
 1666, tried to compose the dispute, while he decided that 
 the Lords should sit covered, and the Commons stand unco- 
 vered. He besought them to agree and adopt the English 
 practice. But no ! agree they would not, nor yield, nor work ; 
 
72 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 so, on the 7th of August in that year, the wise Duke sent 
 them about their business by a formal dissolution ; and as 
 nobody cared to see the faces of such obstinate boobies again, 
 the nation which tolerated such representatives never got the 
 opportunity of re-electing them. 
 
 In the later disputes, a vulgar lawyer, one Sergeant Bettes- 
 worth, instigated the Commons to persist in the idle quarrel 
 about the empty dignity of the House of Peers. He was 
 afterwards extinguished by the sarcasm of Swift 
 
 " So at the bar the booby Bettesworth, 
 Whom half-a-crown overpays his sweat's worth, 
 Who knows in law nor text nor margent, 
 Calls Singleton his brother Sergeant*" 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE Parliament of James II. Archbishop King Contrast between 
 the Irish and Scotch, in their conduct towards the Stuarts Lord 
 Plunket's Character of William III. Letter from Archbishop King 
 upon the Union William's Legislation not favourable to the Com- 
 merce of Ireland Sketch of Swift's Influence on Irish Politics Sir 
 W. Scott's Opinion of the Political Condition of Ireland The 
 Drapier's Letters Lord Carteret Swift's Audacity Mock Execu- 
 tion of Wood Swift's Interview with Walpole The Legion Club 
 Character of Primate Boulter Bishop Berkeley His Character as 
 a Churchman and Scholar His Maxims Parnel, the Poet Learn- 
 ing of the Church Clergy Swift's Sermon on Patriotism Public 
 Spirit essential to the Prosperity of a Nation. 
 
 JAMES II. WILLIAM ANNE. 
 
 THE Parliament of James II. was an infamous assembly, 
 because it had no sense of justice. To fight for their king, 
 bad as he was, we can understand; but to fight for the 
 restoration of proscription and tyranny is incompatible with 
 the love of freedom. James called a Parliament ; and he 
 tind they acted in open violation of Poynings' law ; therefore, 
 unless sanctioned by success, all their acts were illegal. 
 Macaulay has described this odious assembly in terms not 
 severer than it deserves. The House of Lords, when sum- 
 moned by James, consisted of one hundred lay peers: of 
 these, fourteen only obeyed the summons, amongst whom 
 might be reckoned four Protestants. By various devices, 
 and by new creations, seventeen additional lay peers were 
 made up ; amongst them was not one Protestant. Four of the 
 
74 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 bishops attended. Tyrconnel packed the Commons with his 
 creatures to the number of two hundred and fifty, scarcely 
 any of the Protestant religion being amongst them. There 
 were no materials for debate, even had there been ability and 
 learning in the House, because there was little room for dif- 
 ference of opinion. The Parliament of James met in May, 
 1689, where the Four Courts now stand, on which then stood 
 a building devoted to the law, called the King's Inns. These 
 men were so insane as to repeal the Act of Settlement. Then 
 an Act of Attainder, affecting three thousand innocent per- 
 sons, was passed the iniquity of which could only be 
 exceeded by its folly. Their properties were confiscated, 
 and they were to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, unless 
 they appeared by a given day ; and it was made impossible 
 that they should so appear, because the sentence pronounced 
 upon them was concealed as well as their names. 
 
 This unjust Parliament, which King James packed through 
 Tyrconnell's arts, sat from 7th May till 20th June, and 
 during that period continued to perpetrate more acts of 
 injustice and oppression than had ever been committed in 
 the same space of time by any legislative assembly in the 
 world. The particulars of the proceedings of this prepos- 
 terous assembly are given more fully by Archbishop King, 
 in his book entitled, " The State of the Protestants of Ireland 
 under the late King James's Government," than in any his- 
 tory with which I am acquainted. We are thunderstruck in 
 reading the list of persons attainted and deprived of their 
 .estates, for no crime whatever, save that they were Pro- 
 testants. I agree in the words of King : " Perhaps it was 
 never equalled in any nation, since the time of the proscrip- 
 tions in Rome. And not then either, for here is more than 
 half as many condemned in the small kingdom of Ireland, 
 as was at that time proscribed in the greatest part of the 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 75 
 
 then known world. Yet that was esteemed an unparalleled 
 cruelty." A great body of instructive matter is collected in 
 the volume I have referred to; and especially worth reading 
 is the speech of Dr. Dopping, Bishop of Meath, in the appen- 
 dix, spoken manfully in the Lords, against the repeal of the 
 Act of Settlement. 
 
 The infamous manner in which the University was treated, 
 need not be mentioned. To the honour of that body, it 
 should be stated, that although their property was seized 
 and their College invaded, they could not be intimidated. 
 
 Nor was James just to his Roman Catholic subjects, who 
 had risked everything to restore him to the throne. He 
 even impeached their courage at the Boyne, and falsely ; 
 but he provoked the retort of Captain O'Regan, a brave Irish 
 officer, who had witnessed the heroism of William and the 
 poltroonery of James, and who answered, "Please your 
 Majesty, if we could exchange kings, we would fight the 
 battle over again." Surely, when you admit the gallantry 
 with which the followers of King James fought at Aughrim, 
 Limerick, and the Boyne, the heroism displayed at London- 
 donderry and Enniskillen will never be forgotten by the 
 Protestants of Ireland. No modern romance equals in 
 exciting interest the tale of the siege of Derry by Lord 
 Macaulay. We seem to behold the livid cheeks of the 
 besieged worn by famine and sickness, but undismayed. 
 We almost hear their hoarse shouts of joy when their brave 
 countryman, Micaiah Browning, burst the boom, and gave, 
 while he heroically perished, life and deliverance to his 
 exhausted but undaunted countrymen. 
 
 We may conceive what a Sabbath-day was the 6th July, 
 1690, when William rode in state to St. Patrick's, and, with 
 the crown on his head, returned public thanks to God for 
 victory. The magistrates attended. The Archbishop (King) 
 
76 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 preached, with fervid eloquence, on such a theme as preacher 
 seldom had before the deliverance of a nation. Had we 
 lived then, we too would have decked ourselves in holiday 
 attire, and swelled the choir with loud songs of praise and 
 thanksgiving. 
 
 It has been remarked how different the feeling with which 
 the conflict waged in Ireland and in Scotland, for the Stuarts, 
 has been regarded. The Scotch, to-day, boast that they 
 nearly won back the crown for " Charlie." They forgave the 
 despotic acts of James in the person of his descendant. The 
 Stuarts were their own : the House of Hanover they knew 
 not. Last autumn I witnessed the martial dances and games, 
 and heard the national music of the Highlanders, within a 
 few miles of the field of Culloden, where their forefathers 
 had fought in vain for Charlie ; and in the same district, this 
 day, many descendants of the old families boast how their 
 ancestors risked all for the Stuart. Sweet voices may still 
 be heard to sing 
 
 " Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling, 
 Charlie is my darling, the young Chevalier ; 
 And as he marched up the streets, 
 The pipes played loud and clear, 
 * Charlie is my darling, the young Chevalier/ " 
 
 So difficult is it in these islands to dethrone a king so 
 difficult to dispossess the hereditary monarch. The difference 
 of feeling arises from the different circumstances which, un- 
 happily for us, existed in the two countries. The national 
 element prevailed in Scotland ; the religious element pre- 
 vailed in Ireland. The efforts of the Scotch, in 1715 and 
 1745, to expel the family on the throne and restore the 
 Stuarts, sprung from their love of monarchy, and from 
 loyalty to the ancient race of their kings. The efforts of the 
 Irish were directed to establish the supremacy of their reli- 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT, 77 
 
 gion, and to recover the lands which had been wrested from 
 their forefathers. They cared little in the abstract for the 
 Stuarts. 
 
 Reason prevails at last over prejudice, and but one voice 
 can now be heard alike from the victor and the vanquished, 
 of loyalty to the throne, and devotion to the person of the 
 gracious Sovereign who adorns it. 
 
 The character of William has been painted by Macaulay 
 in colours almost too bright : it has been drawn by Miss 
 Strickland in colours too dark. The brilliant Whig worships 
 his hero : the fair advocate of despotic rulers looks coldly on 
 the ungracious and ungrateful little Dutchman, who gained a 
 crown, but who had " no regard for Christian civilization of 
 any kind." 
 
 According to the convictions of all that are good and wise 
 in the nation, the Revolution however to be regretted as a 
 Revolution established justice and imparted freedom. Ac- 
 cording to Miss Strickland, it effected neither of these things. 
 But no candid inquirer can well believe that William on the 
 throne, and Hale on the judgment-seat, can suffer by com- 
 parison with the tyrannic bigot, James, and his unjust judge, 
 the blood-stained Jeffreys. 
 
 In reading history, we should inquire, before we begin the 
 book, the bent of the writer's mind, and make allowance 
 accordingly for the author's prejudices. A character of 
 William was sketched by Lord Plunket, in the Bottle Con- 
 spiracy case, which seems to me to be drawn with a happy 
 impartiality : 
 
 " Perhaps, my lords, there is not to be f6und in the annals 
 of history, a character more truly great than that of William 
 the Third. Perhaps no person has ever appeared on the 
 theatre of the world who has conferred more essential or 
 more lasting benefits on mankind on these countries, cer- 
 
78 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 tainly none. When I look at the abstract merits of his 
 character, and contemplate him with admiration and reve- 
 rence, lord of a petty principality; destitute of all re- 
 sources but those with which nature had endowed him ; 
 regarded with jealousy and envy by those whose battles he 
 fought ; thwarted in all his counsels ; embarrassed in all 
 his movements ; deserted in his most critical enterprises 
 he continued to mould all those discordant materials to 
 govern all those warring interests ; and merely by the force 
 of his genius, the ascendancy of his integrity, and the un- 
 moveable firmness and constancy of his nature, to combine 
 them into an indissoluble alliance against the schemes of 
 despotism and universal domination of the most powerful 
 monarch in Europe, seconded by the ablest generals, at the 
 head of the bravest and best-disciplined armies in the world, 
 and wielding, without check or control, the unlimited re- 
 sources of his empire. He was not a consummate general ; 
 military men will point out his errors ; in that respect for- 
 tune did not favour him, save by throwing the lustre of ad- 
 versity over all his virtues. He sustained defeat after defeat, 
 but always rose adversis rerum immersabilis undis. Looking 
 merely at his shining qualities and achievements, I admire 
 him as I do a Scipio, a Regulus, a Fabius ; a model of tran- 
 quil courage, undeviating probity, and armed with a reso- 
 luteness and constancy in the cause of truth and freedom 
 which rendered him superior to the accidents that control the 
 fate of ordinary men." 
 
 It has been made matter of surprise, that when William 
 conquered King James, and had Ireland at his feet, he did 
 not imitate the policy of Cromwell, and incorporate the Par- 
 liaments of the two kingdoms into one. 
 
 That the idea of a union was then broached amongst poli- 
 tical men is certain. Amongst the MS. letters of the Arch- 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 7 ( J 
 
 bishop of Dublin, King, (then Bishop of Deny,) preserved in 
 the Library of our University, I found, by the kind assistance 
 of my friend Dr. Dixon, a letter from the Archbishop, dated 
 14th Nov., 1699, to Sir K. Southwell, who was Secretary 
 of State for Ireland at the time. The letter is curious, and I 
 select one passage relevant to this matter. It is highly pro- 
 bable that there was a copious correspondence upon the 
 same subject amongst the statesmen of the time. 
 
 " The Bishop of Derry to Sir Robert Southwell. 
 
 " L. Derry, Nov. 14, 1699. 
 " ET. HONBLE, 
 
 " As to the business of an union, I have thou't 
 much on it, and believe it is the interest of England much 
 more than of Ireland. Our business is to keep immediately 
 and solely under the King for many good reasons, particu- 
 larly those given by Malvezzion, Jactus, and by Sir Walter 
 Raleigh, b. v., ch. 2, sec. 2. And God forbid it should ever 
 be otherwise. But if it must be, that Ireland must be sub- 
 ject to a Parliament in England, certainly we ought to have 
 some that may speak for us and represent our case, when 
 there is occasion. This ought to be done by mutual consent, 
 and not by force ; and in order to it, the first thing to be 
 agreed on ought to be, what immunities Ireland should enjoy. 
 And these ou't to be fundamental. And the next, what pro- 
 portion of tax it shou'd bear. I suppose that merchandize 
 ought to bear the same in both ; and as to land taxes, a 
 certain rate ou't to be fixed, and not be altered, otherwise 
 one Act may ruin all the estates of Ireland. If these be set- 
 led as immutable, the number of representatives need not 
 make any great dispute ; for it is not so much for their votes 
 that they must sit there, as for their being necessary to 
 giving an account of affairs relating, to Ireland, on which 
 
80 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 head they always expect to be favourably heard, as every 
 member is when he speaks about his shire or burrow. His 
 Majesty and Ireland must both be losers by such an union ; 
 but considering how our laws and priviledges are crampt, and 
 how unable we are to obtain or pass our laws that are really 
 for our good, I believe many in Ireland would readily hearken 
 to such a proposal. 
 
 " W. D. 
 " To Sir Robert Southwell, London." 
 
 We must ever feel grateful to William, precisely on the 
 ground taken by Plunket, that he conquered Ireland into 
 freedom and happiness. We must also acknowledge that 
 several useful English statutes were, during his reign, adopted 
 by the Irish Parliament, and one or two useful original mea- 
 sures carried, peculiar to this country. 
 
 But it would not be true to assert, that the legislation of 
 King William's government was favourable to the commercial 
 or manufacturing interests of Ireland. On the contrary, it 
 was highly prejudicial to those interests. Nor is it a sufficient 
 excuse for intolerant and mischievous legislation, that the 
 science of political economy was not understood in those 
 days that a Whately had not arisen. The laws I refer to 
 were plainly passed to depress the manufacturing interests of 
 Ireland, in the hope of promoting those of England. Nor did 
 the ministers of William evince the least desire to enlarge the 
 powers of our Parliament, or render it influential. On the 
 contrary, they summoned our Parliament as seldom as possi- 
 ble, took the subsidy, repressed its feeble attempts to assert 
 privilege, and dismissed it when no longer required. The 
 idea seems to have been to provincialize Ireland thoroughly, 
 and the opportunity was favourable. 
 
 Men's thoughts were occupied with their late deliverance. 
 Indifferent poets composed songs in praise of William, when 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 81 
 
 they should rather have asserted their country's rights, and 
 checked legislation. Arbitrary and mischievous, the House 
 of Commons had not sufficient spirit to oppose the bill of a 
 Lord Deputy, and the depressed nation had to look elsewhere 
 for their deliverance. 
 
 To comprehend the real condition of Ireland from the 
 Revolution to the middle of the last century of her Church 
 and her Government her independent Parliament, and its 
 influence on her fortunes we must look into the writings 
 and the conduct of others than her Parliament men. The 
 legislation consequent upon the Revolution, whether from 
 ignorance of political economy or from prejudice, was highly 
 unfavourable to the commercial and manufacturing interests 
 of Ireland. Torn by civil dissensions, and ravaged by war, 
 Ireland lay, prostrate at the feet of England. A light dawned 
 on the land when Jonathan Swift was obliged to accept the 
 Deanery of St. Patrick's. Had three men like Swift appeared 
 in succession amongst us, the whole system of local misgovern- 
 ment must have ceased. England and Ireland, with mutual 
 respect, would have been linked together by the strong bonds 
 of interest and affection. Swift wrote politics; but where 
 had he learned the rare and difficult art ? Why was he so 
 successful why so powerful why so popular in Ireland 
 for he was without money, or lands, or rich preferment ? 
 Swift, by his original genius and admirable tact by his clear 
 style of composition by his unequalled sarcasm and by his 
 irony irresistible covered the enemies of Ireland with con- 
 fusion and dismay. He was neither to be frightened nor 
 corrupted. He had been secretary to Sir W. Temple, an 
 accomplished scholar and distinguished statesman. He had 
 conversed with all the wits of his age sat in the same 
 club with Pope. Gay, Arbuthnot, Tickell, and Addison, had 
 been his friends. The brilliant Bolingbroke loved him the 
 
82 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 sagacious Walpole admired and feared him Lord Oxford 
 felt towards him all the fervour of affection. 
 
 Swift had sat in closest conference with men who ruled the 
 kingdom had dined with William III. discovered how the 
 Dutchman eat asparagus tried to convince his Majesty that 
 a bill for triennial Parliaments should be carried ; and I 
 rejoice, for the memory of William, failed, but failed glo- 
 riously ; for William offered to make him a captain of dra- 
 goons on the spot. Had he accepted, he would not have 
 been Dean of St. Patrick's, but might have been a second 
 Cromwell. Acquainted thoroughly with politics, skilled in 
 composition, respected by all the distinguished men of his 
 time, Swift found himself, against his inclination, doomed to 
 be Dean of St. Patrick's, while many a quiet blockhead was 
 elevated to the episcopal bench. 
 
 When Swift arrived in Dublin he found the public spirit 
 of the nation quenched, the Parliament impotent, the people 
 prostrate and wretched, and Ireland ruled by a clique called 
 a Privy Council, which overruled alike the proposals of the 
 Parliament, and the wishes of the people. What says Sir 
 W. Scott, a high monarchy man, of the political condition of 
 Ireland at that gloomy time ? 
 
 " Within the last thirty years, repeated and oppressive 
 steps had been taken to reduce this ancient kingdom, though 
 still retaining the outward insignia of national legislation and 
 sovereignty, into the condition of a conquered province, 
 bound by the Acts of the British Parliament, where she had 
 neither friend, patron, nor representative. The aphorism 
 that Ireland was, and ought to be, dependent on Britain in 
 this servile sense, had not only been loudly pronounced with 
 a denunciation of vengeance against those who should dare to 
 deny it, but it had been already acted upon. Ireland was 
 subject to a commercial slavery, which left neither her credit, 
 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 83 
 
 her commodities, nor her havens, at her own disposal ; and 
 how long the civil and domestic freedom of her people might 
 be spared, was a question which seemed to depend on the 
 moderation of those who usurped the right of being her legis- 
 lators. Such was the condition of the kingdom when Wood's 
 Scheme was brought forward a measure, therefore, of far 
 less importance in its real merit, than as it necessarily in- 
 volved the grand question of the servitude or independence 
 of Ireland." 
 
 I agree in every word written by Scott. I thank him for 
 his honesty. Of course, in the Dublin clique there was 
 no match to be found for Swift in the great art of political 
 writing. He speedily found and seized his opportunity of 
 addressing and awakening the sense and spirit of his slum- 
 bering countrymen. A patent had been granted to one 
 Wood, a brazier in England, to coin copper coin to be intro- 
 duced into Ireland. This was managed without any reference 
 to the Parliament or authorities in Ireland, or without any 
 regard to the interests of the people. Swift published a 
 series of letters, under the signature of the "Drapier," in 
 which he attacked, with merciless ability, the patent of Wood, 
 and exhorted every man, woman, and child in the kingdom 
 to refuse Wood's halfpence. They did as the caustic Dean 
 desired. A flame of agitation was raised throughout the city 
 and kingdom, which the publication of each successive letter 
 increased and diffused. In vain the ministers declared that 
 the copper coin was good ; in vain they prosecuted the 
 printer and threatened Swift ; the national spirit was roused, 
 and it was irresistible. 
 
 The clique to whom the government of Ireland was in- 
 trusted, headed by Primate Boulter, were furious, but 
 impotent. 
 
 The fourth letter, with amazing tact, changed the contro- 
 
84 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 versy from the value of Wood's halfpence into an examina- 
 tion, bitterly conducted by the master of irony, of the way in 
 which the government of Ireland was carried on, as to her 
 social and political condition. This was very alarming, be- 
 cause, if permitted to be indulged further, the people, 
 awakened from sleep, might demand their rights. Accord- 
 ingly, a prosecution was resolved on. A proclamation offered 
 300 reward for the discovery of the author, whom every 
 body knew to be Swift. Chief Justice Whitshed (whom 
 Swift afterwards pursued to the death) was particularly in- 
 censed by the following passage, and it was sufficiently 
 provocative : " The remedy is wholly in your own hands, 
 and therefore I have digressed a little, in order to refresh and 
 continue that spirit so seasonably raised among you, and to 
 let you see that by the laws of God, of nature, of nations, 
 and of your country, you are, and ought to be, as free a people 
 as your brethren in England." When I said there was no 
 match for Swift in the Irish Council, I meant to have made 
 an exception in favour of the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Carteret. 
 This nobleman was polite, accomplished, witty, and quick, 
 an admirable scholar, and secretly an admirer of Swift. To 
 get Lord Carteret out of England as a troublesome rival, 
 Walpole, it is said, enjoyed the refined revenge of sending 
 him to Ireland, hoping to reduce his popularity by making 
 him the instrument of carrying unpopular measures, and chief 
 amongst thempthe scheme of Wood, and his copper coin. 
 One man of talent always respects another, and accordingly 
 Swift admired Carteret, and thought him above his work. 
 The audacity of Swift was equal to his ability. He went to 
 a levee at the Castle, pushed through the courtiers, stood 
 before the Lord Lieutenant unabashed, and in a firm voice 
 demanded why he persecuted a poor printer for publishing 
 letters which were calculated to do good to his country. Lord 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 85 
 
 Carteret, with ready wit and happy scholarship, replied 
 " Ees dura, et regni no vitas, me talia cogunt moliri." 
 
 Swift and the Lord Lieutenant became good friends, each 
 relishing the humour of the other. The State prosecution 
 proceeded, the Chief Justice was intemperate, and Swift 
 pommelled him into a legal mummy. With inimitable tact, 
 Swift addressed his " Seasonable Advice " to the Grand Jury, 
 exhorting them to remember the story of the bargain made 
 by the wolves with the sheep, on condition that they would 
 send away the mastiffs, after which the wolves ate the sheep ; 
 and as verse or prose were equally facile to the Dean, he fired 
 off a few pungent lines : 
 
 " If, then, oppression has not quite subdued 
 At once your prudence and your gratitude ; 
 If you yourselves conspire not your undoing, 
 And won't deserve, and won't draw down your ruin ; 
 If yet to virtue you have some pretence ; 
 If yet you are not lost to common sense, 
 Assist your patriot in your own defence. 
 That stupid cant he went too far despise, 
 And know, that to be brave, is to be wise : - 
 Think how he struggled for your liberty, 
 And give him freedom, whilst yourselves are free." 
 
 The Chief Justice did all his malignity could suggest. 
 The Grand Jury remembered what Swift said, and forgot all 
 the Chief Justice said, in which they showed great good 
 sense ; the bills were ignored, and Swift remained master of 
 the situation, and the most popular man in Ireland. The 
 first thing he did was to despatch the Chief Justice, which 
 lie did with all convenient speed. The next thing he got up 
 was a mock execution of Wood, so inimitable in point of 
 humour, and so likely to catch the people, that I must give 
 you a touch of its quality. 
 
86 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 A FULL AND TRUE ACCOUNT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SOLEMN PROCESSION TO THE GALLOWS, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 EXECUTION OF WILLIAM WOOD, ESQ., AND 
 
 HARDWAREMAN. 
 WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1724. 
 
 Some time ago, upon a report spread, that William Wood, hard- 
 wareman, was concealed in his brother-in-law's house here in Dnblin, 
 a great nnmber of people of different conditions, and of both sexes, 
 crowded about the door, determinately bent to take revenge upon 
 him as a coiner and a counterfeiter. 
 
 The people cried out to have him delivered into their hands. 
 
 Says the Cook . . I'll baste him. 
 
 Second Cook . . . I'll give him his belly full. 
 
 Third Cook . . . I'll give him a lick in the chops. 
 
 fourth Cook . . . I'll souse him. 
 
 Drunken Man . . I'll beat him as long as I can stand. 
 
 Bookseller . . . I'll turn over a new leaf with him. 
 
 Coiner .... Ill give him a rap. 
 
 Whig . . . . . Down with him. 
 
 Tory ..... Up with him. 
 
 Farmer .... I'll thrash him. 
 
 Tobacconist . . . I'll make him smoak. 
 
 Butcher .... I'll have a limb of him. 
 
 Second Butcher . . Let us blow him up. 
 
 Third Butcher . . My knife is in him. 
 
 But at last, the people having received assurances that William 
 Wood was neither in the house nor kingdom, appointed certain com- 
 missioners, to hang him in effigy 
 
 It was impossible to withstand humour like Swift's. But 
 it was not merely by his wit that Swift tried to save his 
 unfortunate country. He beheld her condition, felt indignant 
 at her treatment, and strove for her amelioration. The 
 people comprehended Swift, and adored him to the last. 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 87 
 
 We find the Dean in London ; he is asked to dinner by the 
 politic Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole ; after having 
 dined with him, Swift asks an interview with the Minister on 
 business. We have, in the faithful biography of the Dean 
 by Sir W. Scott, a true account of the memorable interview, 
 and its results : 
 
 " The Dean stated at length the grievances of Ireland, 
 being all that could contribute to render a nation poor and 
 despicable : the nation being controlled by laws to which her 
 Legislature did not consent [so much for the Parliament] ; their 
 manufactures interdicted, to favour those of England ; their 
 trade cramped and ruined by prohibitions ; the natives stu- 
 diously excluded from all places of honour, trust, or profit ; 
 while the conduct of those to whom the government was dele- 
 gated lay under no other check than might arise from their own 
 sense of justice. But Walpole was prepossessed Against any 
 statement of the affairs of Ireland that might come from Swift. 
 Ere the Dean had left the kingdom, the Primate Boulter, to 
 whom Walpole chiefly confided the efficient power in Irish 
 affairs, had written to warn him not to give credit to Swift's 
 ' endeavours to misrepresent his Majesty's friends in Ireland, 
 wherever he finds an opportunity.' Thus prepossessed against 
 all that might come from the author of the Drapier's Letters, 
 Walpole turned a deaf ear to the grievances of Ireland, saying 
 that the King derived little revenue from that kingdom, and 
 proceeded to enlarge upon the opinions he had adopted from 
 its governors, in a manner which did not agree with Swift's 
 notions of liberty, and he and the Minister parted with mutual 
 civility, neither having made the smallest impression on the 
 other." 
 
 The narrative is truthful, but depressing, for if Swift could 
 not convince a British Minister, who could hope to succeed ? 
 
 Lastly, our Irish Parliament provoked him by a direct 
 
88 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 attack upon the property of the Church, in abolishing agist- 
 ment tithe, while doing nothing useful to the country. He 
 satirized the whole House of Commons, in a poem entitled 
 the Legion Club : 
 
 LEGION CLUB. 1735. 
 
 As I stroll the city, oft I 
 
 See a building large and lofty, 
 
 Not a bowshot from the College, 
 
 Half the globe from sense and knowledge 
 
 Tell us what the pile contains : 
 
 Many a head that holds no brains. 
 
 These demoniacs let me dub 
 
 "With the name of Legion Club. 
 
 Such assemblies, you might swear, 
 
 Meet when butchers bait a bear ; 
 
 Such a noise, and such haranguing, 
 
 When a brother thief is hanging. 
 
 Come, assist me, Muse obedient ; 
 
 Let us try some new expedient ; 
 
 Shift the scene for half an hour 
 
 Time and place are in thy power : 
 
 Thither, gentle Muse, conduct me ; 
 
 I shall ask, and you instruct me. 
 
 See, the Muse unbars the gate : 
 
 Hark, the monkeys, how they prate ! 
 
 In the porch Briareus stands, 
 
 Shows a bribe in all his hands ; 
 Briareus, the Secretary, 
 But we mortals call him Carey. 
 When the rogues their country fleece, 
 They may hope for pence apiece. 
 
 It is plain Swift had a very poor opinion of this assembly ; 
 and it does not appear that his judgment was erroneous. 
 A public-spirited Parliament would never have tolerated the 
 commercial legislation imposed upon Ireland ; a patriotic 
 Parliament would never have submitted to the administration 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 89 
 
 of a Primate Boulter. Had there been a few in the Irish 
 Parliament possessed of the originality, energy, honesty, and 
 capacity of Swift, the management of political affairs, and the 
 true interests of the country, would have speedily been im- 
 proved, instead of being shamefully neglected. Swift created 
 a public opinion ; Swift inspired hope and courage, and a 
 spirit of justifiable resistance in the people ; Swift taught 
 Irishmen they had a country to love, to raise, and to cherish. 
 No man who recals the affectionate respect paid by his 
 countrymen to Swift while he lived to his memory when 
 dead can impute political ingratitude to be amongst the 
 vices of the Irish people. 
 
 I have spoken of Primate Boulter and his hatred of Swift. 
 Our survey of the state of Ireland, political and parliamen- 
 tary, at this period, would be incomplete without noticing the 
 chief person, for several years, in the local government of 
 Ireland. Two volumes have been published, entitled " Let- 
 ters written by his Excellency, Hugh Boulter, Lord Primate 
 of all Ireland ;" and in the preface it is stated " that these 
 letters are, and in all probability will ever remain, the most 
 authentic history of Ireland for that space of time in which 
 they were written." 
 
 The polite Chesterfield laid down a maxim, that it was 
 surprising with how little wisdom a nation could be governed. 
 It may be more surprising to find that a kingdom can be 
 governed without any wisdom whatever. Primate Boulter, 
 as the confidential agent of Walpole, ruled Ireland, not in 
 the spirit of a statesman, but in the spirit of a jobber, and of 
 the worst description, an ecclesiastical jobber. His candid 
 letters prove he had a narrow, illiberal mind, little learning, 
 less piety, no generosity, no love for the country he ruled and 
 abused, and no admiration for the genius of her most distin- 
 guished sons. He passed his time, not in study or content 
 
90 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 plation, but in watching the faces of his brethren on the 
 episcopal bench. If he heard a cough from the Archbishop 
 of Dublin, Dr. King, he immediately informed the Secretary 
 of State in London of the important fact, adding "There 
 may be occasion for speedily thinking of a successor for him. 
 If it please God to remove him, your Excellency shall have 
 my thoughts by the first opportunity." And what were these 
 precious thoughts ? Why, that no native should be allowed 
 to fill the place ! " My Lord Chancellor and I have been 
 computing that if some person be not now brought over from 
 England to the Bench, there will be thirteen Irish to nine 
 English bishops here, which we think will be a dangerous 
 situation." 
 
 Again : " We think it of great consequence that it should 
 be given to an Englishman. I am sorry the Lord Lieutenant 
 should insist so much for one who is as dangerous an Irish- 
 man as any on the Bench." 
 
 His Grace of Dublin does not die : another despatch to the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury. " His Grace of Dublin has been 
 very ill, but seems now to have got over the present shock. 
 I wish his place may be well filled, whenever it pleases God 
 to remove him." 
 
 Again : " I must acquaint your Lordship that the Bishop 
 of Elphin is an enterprising man, and I do not doubt, if pro- 
 moted, he would soon set himself at the head of the Irish 
 interest here." The same base policy is repeated over and 
 over again (usque ad nauseam) , from the beginning to the end 
 of the book. No disquisition on fitness, on the piety of the 
 candidate, on learning or eloquence, on the true interests of 
 the Church, or of the Christian religion. The only idea ex- 
 pressed is " If he drops, I request his place may be supplied 
 from England, to strengthen the English interest here. It is 
 absolutely necessary that the place should be bestoAved on a 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 91 
 
 native of England." As of the Church, so of the law. The 
 Chief Justice Whitshed drops Primate Boulter pronounces 
 a panegyric on his friend hints he was cut down by a storm 
 of malice ; i.e.. Swift's prosecution hopes his place, and the 
 place of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, may be filled 
 from England. This he relies on as a main point to be estab- 
 lished, and also that every other vacancy in the same post 
 should be so supplied from England. The Primate does not 
 conceal his aversion for Swift, and for Archbishop King, a 
 native. When the Primate touches on the Irish Parliament 
 and its powers, we are edified : 
 
 "It is possible some discontented people may endeavour to 
 bring the affair into Parliament, and make some reflecting 
 votes on the Council here, which, by our constitution, has a 
 power to check the proceedings of both Lords and Commons. 
 I think they will not be able to carry any vote on that point ; 
 but if they do, I am sure the only check here on their heat 
 at any time will be taken away, except his Majesty is pleased 
 to support the Council." 
 
 The Primate again shows up the Irish Parliament : 
 " I am afraid the weight and power of the Privy Council 
 is not sufficiently understood in England, which makes me 
 beg leave to acquaint your Grace, that the approving or re- 
 jecting of the magistrates of all the considerable towns in this 
 kingdom is in the Council here ; and that as the correcting 
 or rejecting of any bills from either House of Parliament is 
 in them, if they are increased much more, the Privy Council 
 of England may have more trouble from a Session of Parlia- 
 ment here than they have at present. I can assure your 
 Grace, the English interest was much stronger at the Board 
 four years ago than it is now. I must, at the least, beg the 
 favour that no addition be made to the Council here, till my 
 Lord Chancellor and I are acquainted who are designed to be 
 
92 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 added, and have time to give our sentiments about them ; 
 though it will be less invidious to make no addition at all." 
 
 It is no less painful than humiliating to the Irish inquirer 
 into the Parliamentary constitution of his country, to read 
 the above-mentioned letter so soon after the glorious Revo- 
 lution. Let it be recollected we are informed in the preface 
 these letters contain the true history of Ireland for the 
 period they cover. His view of the importance of Ireland 
 and its affairs to Englishmen and the rest of mankind, may 
 be gathered from a sentence in a letter to the Bishop of 
 London : 
 
 " Your Lordship is in the busy scene of life, and I in a 
 kingdom where little happens worth communicating to any 
 abroad : and I must own as nothing but a disturbance can 
 make room for affairs of consequence passing here, I most 
 heartily wish we may still continue of as little concern to 
 others as we are at present." 
 
 This may shock our national pride, but we must bear it. 
 
 In wading through these instructive epistles, I came upon 
 a reference to the appointment of Berkeley to the bishopric 
 of Cloyne. " As to a successor to the bishoprick of Cloyne, 
 my Lord Lieutenant looks upon it as settled in England that 
 Dean Berkeley is to be made Bishop here on the first occasion. 
 I have therefore nothing to say on that head, but that I wish 
 the Dean's promotion may answer the expectation of his friends 
 in England." 
 
 I collect from the above passage that the appointment of 
 Berkeley was effected against the Primate's wishes, Berkeley 
 being a native, and that it was managed in England. 
 
 Who was Berkeley, whose illustrious name I am thus com- 
 pelled to mention in conjunction with Boulter ? The acutest 
 of thinkers to be classed amongst the profoundest of philo- 
 sophers amongst the best of men. The additions Berkeley 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 93 
 
 made to the stock of human knowledge were brilliant and 
 important. His learning, fancy, and taste have been con- 
 fessed by all ; and the critics said he was well qualified to 
 promote the re-union of philosophy and of the fine arts, so 
 essential to both. Berkeley was admired by every man of 
 genius in England ; he was the intimate friend of Steele, of 
 Addison, of Swift. By Pope he was beloved : he, I fear a 
 sceptic, gave " to Berkeley every virtue under heaven. 91 Adam 
 Smith pronounced the " new theory of vision" to be one of 
 the finest examples of philosophic analysis that is to be found 
 in our own or any other language. There cannot be a doubt 
 that Burke stored his mind with the ideas of Berkeley, 
 and enriched his thoughts with the fine philosophy of our 
 distinguished countryman. 
 
 But it is not with his renown as a philosophical discoverer, 
 that I am now so much concerned, as with his political writings. 
 
 Berkeley held the same theory of government with Swift, 
 and, like him, laboured to raise and civilize the country of 
 his birth. Hear the words of the Christian patriot : 
 
 " Public spirit, that glorious principle of all that is great 
 and good, is so far from being cherished or encouraged, that 
 it is become ridiculous in this enlightened age, which is 
 taught to laugh at everything that is serious as well as 
 sacred." 
 
 On the eve of any session of Parliament, these words might 
 be addressed to every member of the Senate : 
 
 " Concord and union among ourselves is rather to be hoped 
 for as an effect of public spirit than proposed as a means to 
 promote it. Candid, generous men, who are true lovers of 
 their country, can never be enemies to one half of their coun- 
 trymen, or carry their resentments so far as to ruin the public 
 for the sake of a party. Now I have fallen upon the mention 
 
 our parties. I shall beg leave to insert a remark or two, 
 
94 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 for the service both of Whig and Tory, without entering into 
 their respective merits. First, it is impossible for either party 
 to rain the other, without involving themselves and their 
 posterity in the same ruin. Secondly, it is very feasible for 
 either party to get the better of the other, if they could first 
 get better of themselves ; and instead of indulging the little 
 womanish passions of obstinacy, resentment, and revenge, 
 steadily promote the true interest of their country, in those 
 great clear points of piety, industry, sobriety of manners, and 
 an honest regard for posterity, which, all men of sense agree, 
 are essential to public happiness. There would be something 
 so great and good in this conduct, as must necessarily over- 
 bear all calumny and opposition. But that men should act 
 reasonably, is rather to be wished than hoped. Before I 
 leave this subject, I cannot but take notice of that most 
 infamous practice of bribery, than which nothing can be more 
 opposite to public spirit, since every one who takes a bribe 
 plainly owns that he prefers his private interest to that of his 
 country. This corruption has become a national crime, hav- 
 ing infected the lowest as well as the highest amongst us, and 
 is so general and notorious, that as it cannot be matched in 
 former ages, so it is to be hoped it will not be imitated by 
 posterity." 
 
 We have then a sketch how fine of a nation like ours, 
 ruined by corruption. 
 
 " Whether it be in the order of things, that civil states 
 should have, like natural products, their several periods of 
 growth, perfection, and decay ; or whether it be an effect, as 
 seems more probable, of human folly, that as industry pro- 
 duces wealth, so wealth should produce vice, and vice ruin. 
 God grant the time be not near, when men shall say : c This 
 Island was once inhabited by a religious, brave, sincere peo- 
 ple, of plain uncorrupt manners, respecting inbred worth 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 95 
 
 rather than titles and appearances ; assertors of liberty, lovers 
 of their country, jealous of their own rights, and unwilling to 
 infringe on the rights of others ; improvers of learning and 
 useful arts, enemies to usury, tender of other men's lives, and 
 prodigal of their own ; inferior in nothing to the old Greeks 
 or Romans, and superior to each of those people in the per- 
 fections of the other. Such were our ancestors during their 
 rise and greatness ; but they degenerated ; grew servile flat- 
 terers of men in power ; adopted epicurean notions ; became 
 venal, corrupt, imperious ; which drew upon them the hatred 
 of God and man, and occasioned their final ruin.' " 
 
 His remedy for the evils he lamented was " a restoration of 
 public spirit." May these words be engraven on our hearts. 
 We give a few brief specimens of the maxims of Berkeley : 
 
 " A patriot will admit that there may be honest men, and 
 more, that honest men may differ." 
 
 " He that always blames or always praises is no patriot." 
 
 "Whether it is not the true interest of both nations to 
 become one people ? and whether either be sufficiently ap- 
 prised of this ?" 
 
 " Suppose the bulk of our inhabitants had shoes to their 
 feet, clothes to their backs, and beef in their bellies, might 
 not such a state be eligible for the public, even though the 
 squires were condemned to drink ale and cider ?" 
 
 " Whether there be upon the earth any Christian or civi- 
 lised people so beggarly, wretched, or destitute, as the com- 
 mon Irish ?" 
 
 " Whether, nevertheless, there is any other people whose 
 wants may be more easily supplied from home ?" 
 
 " What should hinder us from exerting ourselves, using 
 our hands and brains, doing something or other, man, woman, 
 and child, like the other inhabitants of God's earth ?" 
 
 " Whether, in imitation of the Jesuits at Paris, who admit 
 
96 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 Protestants to study in their colleges, it may not be right for 
 us also to admit Roman Catholics into our College, without 
 obliging them to attend chapel duties, or catechisms, or divi- 
 nity lectures ? and whether this might not keep money in the 
 kingdom, and prevent the prejudices of a foreign education ?" 
 
 " Whether a wise state hath any interest nearer heart than 
 the education of youth ?" 
 
 I have referred to the writings of Berkeley, not to praise 
 his philosophy, but to exhibit, as a great example to the 
 youth of our country, his system of politics, his patriotism, 
 his active benevolence, his public spirit. The contrast 
 is striking between Berkeley and Boulter. The one will be 
 remembered while the language lasts : the other, who held 
 the highest offices in the state, will be forgotten in the charity 
 of oblivion, or remembered to be despised. Berkeley adorned 
 the Church of Christ fulfilled his divine mission ; and while 
 he did his work faithfully at home, he comprehended the 
 world in his Christian sympathy and unbounded charity. 
 
 The portrait of this native scholar adorns the Examination- 
 hall of your venerable University. The nobleness of his 
 nature shines in his divine countenance : nor is the portrait 
 the less interesting, that it was drawn by the hand of his 
 wife. 
 
 We ought not to forget that we also possessed at this time 
 another prelate King, Archbishop of Dublin, who was an 
 ornament of the Church, and an honour to his country. 
 Like Swift, whose friend he was like Berkeley, he was 
 national and patriotic, and therefore was hated by Primate 
 Boulter, whose narrow understanding conceived, that who- 
 ever wished well to Ireland wished ill to England. Arch- 
 bishop King had been twice confined in the Tower by order 
 of James II. Upon the retreat of James from the Boyne, 
 King was appointed Bishop of Derry by our deliverer. 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 97 
 
 After lie became a bishop, he published " The State of the 
 Protestants of Ireland under the late King James' Govern- 
 ment" "a history," says Burnet, " as truly as it is finely 
 written." The " Origin of Evil," as a speculative and original 
 work, is commended and remembered. He resembled Swift 
 in his wit, of which an instance was afforded when visited by 
 the Primate, whose place King had every right to expect. 
 King received his visitor sitting, and observed, " Your grace 
 will excuse me, as I am unfit to rise." In the Irish Parlia- 
 ment, Archbishop King led the national party among the 
 Bishops, and, like Swift and Berkeley, showed that a good 
 churchman might be a good patriot. 
 
 History, from age to age, yields her useful lessons. She 
 teaches, if we will learn. 
 
 Sir Robert Walpole was one of the most sagacious states- 
 men that ever administered the affairs of England ; watch- 
 ful, wise, skilled in politics, full of resources, loyal to his 
 Sovereign, and attached to the Constitution as settled at the 
 Revolution. King George hardly comprehended England or 
 the English ; but he believed in Walpole : so did his clever 
 Queen, Caroline ; and when the Queen and Walpole packed 
 off King George to Hanover, to talk German and to review 
 his regiments, they governed England with admirable judg- 
 ment. Walpole baffled all the designs of the Stuarts, pene- 
 trated the schemes of their adherents, and kept the crown in 
 the house of Hanover. 
 
 His character as a minister has been finely drawn by 
 Burke. Nevertheless, this statesman, when he dealt with 
 the affairs of Ireland, put the government into the hands of 
 such a man as Primate Boulter, who had more power than 
 the Lord Lieutenant, then generally absent ; and having 
 chosen Boulter as his confidential minister, closed his ears 
 against the arguments and advice of the ablest men in Ire- 
 
 H 
 
98 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 land. Had Walpole resided in our island, I should have 
 said, with Mr. Froude, that the humidity of our climate had 
 damped his energy, and relaxed the vigour of his under- 
 standing. But that the keen Saxon intellect, in the keen 
 Saxon air, should have chosen such an instrument for 
 government as Primate Boulter, is surprising. I can only 
 account for the choice on the assumption that the strong- 
 minded statesman selected the little-minded prelate because 
 he could do no harm to England, and no good to Ireland, 
 and therefore was the right man in the right place. 
 
 A lesson of a different kind, but also instructive, may be 
 derived from the opposite opinions expressed by distin- 
 guished authors on the policy pursued and on the powers 
 asserted by the Parliament of England in opposition to the 
 Parliament of Ireland. I have read to you the passage from 
 the biography of Swift, by Sir "Walter Scott, in which the 
 practical grievances under which Ireland laboured are vividly 
 described, the policy which allowed such evils censured, the 
 arguments of Swift applauded, and the obstinacy of Walpole 
 condemned. Swift succeeded Molyneux, after an interval of 
 twenty years. Lord Macaulay, in his brilliant History, dis- 
 cusses the same policy at the same period expresses a con- 
 temptuous disdain for the Irish view of the question ; denies 
 that Molyneux was an Irishman, though he was born in Ire- 
 land, and represented the University of Dublin ; denies that 
 the Parliament of England was wrong in asserting the right to 
 bind Ireland by Statutes to which Ireland by her Parliament 
 never assented ; denies that Ireland had a right to have had an 
 independent Parliament ; asserts that she was in the same con- 
 dition as the other countries colonized by England that 
 over a colony the Parliament of the mother country exer- 
 cised authority, and in that manner did so over Ireland when 
 necessary, despite the remonstrances of her patriots or her 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT, 99. 
 
 Parliaments ; that, although it was impolitic, England had 
 a right to put down the woollen manufacture in Ireland ; 
 that it was all nonsense to say woollen manufactures would 
 spring up in the Bog of Allen ; that Ireland would have had 
 no woollen manufactures whether the obnoxious law had 
 passed or not ; that the Parliament of England was greatly 
 incensed with Molyneux for stating the Case of Ireland so 
 ably and so boldly, and that, had he not escaped by death, 
 he would have been impeached for his presumption. There is, 
 I am constrained to say, a singular want of generosity towards 
 Ireland in the sentiments expressed by this eminent Whig 
 writer ; at the same time, the conclusion Macaulay arrived 
 at upon the whole matter was sound, and is the moral of my 
 discourse, namely, that to conduct the affairs of an empire 
 with two independent Parliaments, would be impossible ; 
 and that one or other of two alternatives must be the result 
 of the attempt incorporation or separation. I am grateful, 
 as an Irishman, to the successor of Shakespeare, the Wizard 
 of the North Sir Walter Scott for his generous, kindly 
 reflections on our history and our wrongs. His writings will 
 be the delight of every nation, and of every age. I resent 
 the tone and spirit of Lord Macaulay towards Ireland in his 
 bewitching book, while I am obliged to adopt, or to yield to 
 his logical conclusions. 
 
 In our remembrances of the eminent men of our Church 
 who adorned the annals of literature, and lived when Boulter 
 ruled, we ought not to forget the poet Parnell, a friend of 
 Swift, and of Pope, and of all the wits of his age a 
 member of the Scribblers' Club, mentioned in the memoirs 
 of the literary men of fame, and whose life has been written 
 by Dr. Johnson and by Goldsmith. He was an admirable 
 scholar, is believed to have helped Pope largely in his poe- 
 tical translation of Homer, while he wrote the life of the 
 
100 , THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 great poet prefixed to the translation, or, as it was called by 
 some, the poem of Pope. Archbishop King was friendly to 
 the native who possessed genius, and appointed Parnell to 
 the vicarage of Finglas : in possession of that preferment, 
 he died of a rare disease grief for the loss of a beautiful 
 and intellectual wife. The name of Parnell is, in our day, 
 connected with a devotion to works of Christian charity, as 
 well deserving the respect of good men as his poetic fame. 
 It is also honourably distinguished in our political and par- 
 liamentary history. 
 
 Learning has ever been cultivated by the Clergy of our 
 Church, and it ever ought ; it is not incompatible with zeal 
 and piety, but sheds a lustre on both : and when we close 
 the volumes which contain the labours of King, of Parnell, 
 of Berkeley, of Swift, w r e may, with a just pride, also recol- 
 lect their virtues, their patriotism, their benevolence. When, 
 in later times, Magee wrote his fine work on the Atonement, 
 he strengthened belief and confirmed faith, which a thousand 
 conceited essays cannot disturb. When Archdeacon Eussell 
 collected the poetical remains of Wolfe, he did an act of pious 
 friendship, while he showed that within the breast of a labo- 
 rious, ill-paid curate of our Church, may lurk the genius 
 of a poet. When two English scholars published, in 
 Cambridge, the masterly writings of Archer Butler, now 
 gone to his rest (I speak only of the dead), they performed 
 their gracious task in order to preserve and diffuse amongst 
 Englishmen the knowledge of the labours of an Irish 
 Churchman, who cultivated letters while he expounded the 
 principles of our faith, with power of reasoning and splen- 
 dour of eloquence rarely displayed. Surely the talents 
 bestowed by the Creator cannot be directed to a nobler 
 purpose than in instructing his creatures, increasing the 
 spiritual treasures of the Church in expounding God's 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. . 101 
 
 Word, and proclaiming liis praise : and surely the Church" 
 man, as well as the Parliament man, may love his country, 
 and be a patriot. 
 
 We pause in our review of the parliamentary life of Ire- 
 land. You will examine carefully and closely the laws, the 
 policy, the principles of government, which prevailed at this 
 critical period of our history. You will see clearly in what 
 fashion the affairs of Ireland were then administered to 
 what condition she was reduced under the fostering care of 
 an Irish Parliament. You will perceive how England's 
 sagacious Minister preferred the shallow advice of the 
 narrow-minded Primate Boulter, to the wise and patriotic 
 counsels of Swift. The consequences were tremendous. 
 
 I agree with Burke, that no writer has assigned higher 
 motives or sounder reasons for patriotic conduct, than Swift 
 has done in his Sermon on " Doing Good to our Fellow-men." 
 
 I have read the sermon more than once, and it is none the 
 worse that it was preached by a patriot. There never was a 
 country in which the doctrine laid down by Swift was more 
 necessary to be taught than in Ireland. If it was essential 
 for your forefathers to hear it then, it is highly expedient for 
 their descendants to hear it now. 
 
 What was the text ? "As we have therefore oppor- 
 tunity, let us do good unto all men" (Galatians vi. 10.) 
 What was the discourse ? Listen 
 
 " This love of the public or of the commonwealth, or love 
 of our country, was in ancient times properly known by the 
 name of virtue, because it was the greatest of all virtues, and 
 was supposed to contain all virtues in it : and many great 
 examples of this virtue are left us on record scarcely to be 
 believed or even conceived in such a base, corrupted, wicked 
 age as this we live in. In those tunes it was common for 
 men to sacrifice their lives for the good of their country, 
 
102 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 although they had neither hope nor belief of future rewards ; 
 whereas in our days, very few make the least scruple of 
 sacrificing a whole nation, as well as their own souls, for a 
 little present gain, which often hath been known to end in 
 their own ruin in this world, as it certainly must in that to 
 come. Have we not seen men, for the sake of some petty 
 employment, give up the very natural rights and liberties of 
 their country and of mankind, in the ruin of which themselves 
 must at last be involved. Are not these corruptions gotten 
 among the meanest of our people, who, for a piece of money, 
 will give their votes at a venture for the disposal of their own 
 lives and fortunes, without considering whether it be to 
 those who are most likely to betray or to defend them. 
 But here I would not be misunderstood. By the love of 
 our country I do not mean loyalty to our king ; for that 
 is a duty of another nature : a man may be loyal in the 
 common sense of the word, without one grain of public good 
 at his heart. Witness this very kingdom we live in. I 
 verily believe that since the beginning of the world, no nation 
 upon earth ever showed (all circumstances considered) such 
 high constant marks of loyalty in all their actions and beha- 
 viour as we have done ; and at the same time, no people 
 appeared more utterly void of what is called public spirit. 
 I am certainly persuaded that all your misfortunes arise from 
 no other original cause than that general disregard among us 
 of the public welfare. Solomon tells us of a poor wise man, 
 who saved a city by his counsel. It hath often happened that 
 a private soldier, by some unexpected brave attempt, hath 
 been instrumental in obtaining a great victory. How many 
 obscure men have been authors of very useful inventions 
 whereof the world now reaps the benefits. Whoever is blessed 
 with a true public spirit, God will certainly put it into his 
 way to make use of that blessing, for the ends it was given 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 103 
 
 him, by some means or other ; and therefore it hath been 
 observed in most ages, that the greatest actions for the benefit 
 of the commonwealth have been performed by the wisdom or 
 courage, the contrivance or industry of particular men, and 
 not of numbers ; and that the safety of a kingdom hath often 
 been owing to those hands from whence it was least expected." 
 
 The moral of this discourse is plain. The expressions of 
 loyalty might be loud and insincere, or its existence might be 
 real and lasting, and yet be unaccompanied by that public 
 spirit essential to the preservation of freedom, which is, in 
 fact, loyalty to our country, and as much the duty of the 
 good Christian as loyalty to the throne. 
 
 The theory of Swift was worthy of a true patriot, that in 
 the combination of loyalty to the sovereign with the unshaken 
 love of country, lay the safety alike of the people and the 
 throne. I agree with Swift, and bless his memory for the 
 policy he has proclaimed the principle he asserted. They 
 maintain the tranquillity of a state in vindicating the liberty 
 of the people. 
 
 Be therefore prompt in your duty to your country ; and 
 when you wish to know how best to discharge that duty, 
 recal the maxims of Berkeley the sermons of Swift keep 
 alive within your breasts that public spirit from which all 
 great actions spring. Let it not be shown in silly speeches, 
 or vapid declamation, but in thought, in action, in conduct 
 throughout the business of your lives. Without public spirit, 
 you are a nation of walking dead men. Make head against 
 difficulty struggle to overcome evil with good never deride 
 the misfortunes of your country but strive to remedy or 
 relieve them. Be sincere in all things ; and when you speak, 
 speak like freemen. No country is worth living in where the 
 men of that country only look to self, and the selfish interests 
 of the fleeting hour. No country was ever permanently great 
 and prosperous without public spirit in her sons. 
 
104 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 What are the charters ? what are the statutes ? Avhat 
 are the laws we have been considering ? Lifeless things ? 
 They record, it is true, the wisdom of the senator the 
 triumphs of the patriot but it was by public spirit they 
 were born, and it is by public spirit they can be preserved. 
 
 Parliaments may live or die. Without virtue, no honied 
 words no cunning phrases no eloquent tongue no artful 
 schemes, could save them from their fall. Public spirit is the 
 breath of their life ; withdraw it, and they perish. 
 
 When corruption grew, when public spirit fled, Cicero 
 could not save the Senate. 
 
 " Quid leges sine moribus 
 Vana? proficiunt." 
 
 Therefore, young men, be admonished by the Church ; by 
 your conscience ; by Holy Writ to spurn the vices, the 
 corruptions, the temptations, which may beset you to culti- 
 vate the virtues which strengthen the character of the indivi- 
 dual, and to cherish the public spirit which alone can elevate 
 your country. 
 
THE 
 
 Jife aito gcatlj of % |ns| |jarlianwtt : 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 BY 
 
 THE EIGHT HON. JAMES WHITESIDE, 
 
 LL.D., M.P. 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 DUBLIN YOUNG MEN'S CHKISTIAN ASSOCIATION 
 
 IN CONNEXION WITH THE 
 
 UNITED CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND, 
 
 IN 
 
 THE METROPOLITAN HALL, JANUARY the 21st, 1863. 
 
 SIR THOMAS STAPLES, BART., 
 
 IN THE CHAIR. 
 
 PART II. 
 
THE LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 OF 
 
 THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ACCESSION of House of Hanover The Dispute touching Money Bills 
 not originating in the Irish House Declaratory Act of George I. 
 No independent power in the Irish Parliament Single-speech 
 Hamilton Montesquieu's View of an Union " Baratariana" 
 Inner Life of House of Commons in 1762, as described by a Mili- 
 tary Eeporter Heads of Bills, not Bills, discussed Examples of 
 Debates a century ago The Family of " Job." 
 
 THE curtain rises a new scene of the great political drama 
 opens and we behold the House of Hanover seated on 
 the throne of these realms. The triumphs of Elizabeth, 
 the glories of Queen Anne, will be eclipsed, we may well 
 believe, by the superior lustre of Victoria's reign. Thus 
 are we taught the profound truth, that women were born 
 to rule, and men to obey. We have passed in the review 
 of our parliamentary progress through many awful trials, 
 and have reached a platform of order and peace. Let 
 us survey our political position ere we advance further. 
 We got a Parliament fettered by laws, which made it im- 
 possible for it to use independent action, whilst it might have 
 
108 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 managed local matters safely and wisely. It was a Parliament 
 oddly constructed, for it was composed of members who might 
 sit all their lives without considering or facing their consti- 
 tuents, neither the Triennial nor the Septennial Bill touching 
 Ireland. The lucky member, once chosen, had a life estate in 
 his seat, subject only to a dissolution on the demise of the 
 Crown. The members might be affected by conscience, but 
 were wholly uninfluenced by popular control. Sometimes a 
 Parliament was not called in Ireland for twenty years. Of 
 course, there was no publication of debates there was no 
 Place Bill, no budgets, and no ministerial responsibility to 
 the Irish Parliament. It was strongly insisted that a Money 
 Bill need not take its rise in the Irish House of Commons; 
 and it was even asked, and only refused by a single vote and 
 that through a prodigious effort on the part of Colonel Tot- 
 tenham (commonly called Tottenham in his Boots) that the 
 supplies should be granted, not biennially, but for twenty-one 
 years at a time, so as to save trouble to all parties. When 
 we add to these startling anomalies the fact, that one Par- 
 liament would last sometimes for a whole reign it might 
 be for thirty years, without dissolution or change, save by the 
 death of an individual member we are constrained to confess, 
 that if the Parliament of Ireland was an image of the Parlia- 
 ment of England, the image was but faint and indistinct. 
 An amusing, yet conclusive, example of the imbecility of our 
 Senate, is furnished by the result of the memorable dispute 
 between the Irish House of Commons and Primate Stone, 
 another intriguing English Prelate, then a Minister, and 
 representing the Irish Executive, as to the disposal of an 
 unexpected surplus of 200,000 in the Irish Treasury, after all 
 charges on the public funds had been paid. The Irish House 
 of Commons insisted they had the right to appropriate the 
 money they had granted. The local Executive replied that 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 109 
 
 such doctrine had never before been heard of in Ireland. The 
 dispute waxed hot ; meanwhile, the money was drawn out 
 by a King's letter, and disposed of according to the pleasure 
 of the Crown, leaving the disputants to quarrel about the 
 shell when the oyster was gone. This fact throws ridicule 
 upon the Parliamentary constitution of Ireland, inasmuch as 
 the arbitrary conduct of the Crown was neither resisted nor 
 resented. 
 
 We have arrived at an epoch in our constitutional history; 
 and it becomes necessary to state briefly the circumstances 
 under which the Act of Parliament next to be referred to was 
 passed. In 1698, a petition was presented to the English 
 House of Lords, by the Governor and Company of the new 
 Plantation in Ulster, against a judgment given by the Lords 
 in Ireland, on the appeal of the Bishop of Derry against the 
 said Society. Whereupon a Committee was appointed to 
 examine precedents, and on their report, it was adjudged and 
 decreed, by the House of Lords in England, that the cause 
 heard before the Irish House of Lords was coram non judice, 
 and all proceedings thereupon NULL AND VOID. 
 
 Reasons against the foregoing order were drawn up by the 
 celebrated Molyneux, member for our University. They were 
 unanswerable, on his assumption that the Parliamentary con- 
 stitution of England was introduced into Ireland. He relied on 
 the modus tenendi Parliamentum in terminis the same with 
 that of England and on all the charters and statutes already 
 noticed. The Irish Lords protested manfully against the 
 extinction of their greatest privilege, and checked the aggres- 
 sion, which in 1717 was renewed. The Irish House of Lords 
 then drew up, with great ability, a representation to the King, 
 well fortified by precedents and arguments, asserting, " That 
 if the power of the judicature may, by a vote of the British 
 House of Lords, be taken away from the Parliament of Ire- 
 
110 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 land, no reason can be given why the same may not, in like 
 manner, deprive us of the benefits of our whole constitution." 
 A reasonable proposition. 
 
 The answer to all these appeals, remonstrances, and repre- 
 sentations, is to be found in "The Declaratory Act of 
 George I.," which was passed in consequence of these appeals. 
 The statute expressly enacts and declares : 
 
 " * That the kingdom of Ireland hath been, is, and of right 
 ought to be, subordinate unto and dependent upon the impe- 
 rial crown of Great Britain, as being inseparably united and 
 annexed thereunto ; and that the King, with the consent of 
 the Lords and Commons of Great Britain, in Parliament 
 assembled, hath power to make laws of sufficient force to 
 bind the kingdom and people of Ireland. 
 
 " ' And that the House of Lords of Ireland have not, nor 
 ought of right to have, any jurisdiction to judge of, affirm, 
 or reverse any judgment or decree made in any court within 
 the said kingdom ; and that all proceedings before the said 
 House of Lords, upon any such judgment or decree, are void.' " 
 
 This statute was a complete assertion of authority over the 
 Legislature and kingdom of Ireland, and a practical denial of 
 its parliamentary independence. 
 
 If the Lords were stripped of their supreme appellate juris- 
 diction, what were the powers of the Irish House of Commons 
 on the all-important point of originating Money Bills ? The 
 jealousy of the House of Commons in England at all periods, 
 in asserting the right to originate all grants of money and 
 Money Bills, and to pass them unaltered by the Lords or 
 Crown, is proverbial ; it has been carried to a ridiculous 
 extreme. The upshot of the business is, that the purse- 
 strings of the nation are pulled and opened by the House of 
 Commons. Some say, unfeelingly, that the purse is the 
 emblem of love : all admit it to be the emblem of power ! 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Under the operation of Poynings' law, the Bills to be intro- 
 duced into the Irish House of Commons must have been first 
 certified by the Privy Council in Ireland to the Council in 
 England. A great question was raised Did this include 
 Money Bills ? The House of Commons, at various periods, 
 contended that Money Bills, at least, should originate in their 
 House, although all other Bills must have been certified and 
 ticketed beforehand by their superiors in the Privy Councils. 
 . Here we have an infallible test whereby to ascertain the 
 real nature of our Irish Parliamentary Constitution. 
 
 We might suppose that, whatever bad practices prevailed be- 
 fore the Eevolution, after that glorious event the fundamental 
 principle of Money Bills originating in the Commons would 
 have been extended to Ireland. This could easily have been 
 managed by not parading them before the country under the 
 fiat of the Privy Council, but allowing such bills to be 
 brought in quietly while the House of Commons was sitting, 
 under the statute of Philip and Mary, expounding Poynings' 
 law, and rendering it applicable to such case. 
 
 A spurt of public spirit was made in the Irish House of 
 Commons immediately after the Eevolution, October, 1692, 
 (the first Parliament called). It appears that two Money Bills 
 were originated by the Privy Council, and certified to Par- 
 liament. The Irish House of Commons passed one, on 
 account of pressing emergencies, but followed it with a re- 
 solution that their proceedings should not be drawn into 
 precedent. They rejected the second Money Bill, because it 
 had not taken its rise in that House, and passed a resolution, 
 " That it was, and is, the undoubted right of the Commons 
 of Ireland, in Parliament assembled, to prepare and resolve 
 the ways and means of raising money." The brave Par- 
 liament, immediately after this escapade, was prorogued, and 
 soon after dissolved. The Lord Lieutenant (Lord Sydney), 
 
112 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 before he dismissed them, rated the Commons soundly for 
 their presumptuous behaviour in drawing up such unanswer- 
 able reasons for rejecting a Money Bill; and in order to 
 punish these sticklers for constitutional privilege, and to 
 warn all others in like case offending, bade them begone about 
 their business, and not presume to look his Excellency in the 
 face again. 
 
 In vain were the logic and patriotism of Molyneux, when 
 opposed to superior power in England ; but his weighty rea- 
 sonings, and the stirring appeals of Swift, produced ultimately 
 great results in Ireland. All that had been previously written 
 on constitutional subjects operated by degrees on the public 
 mind. Ireland was changed from its unsettled, weak, and 
 depopulated condition at the time of the Eevolution, and no 
 sensible man would advise a like policy to be pursued on 
 this delicate subject of originating Money Bills as formerly. 
 Accordingly, when a Parliament was about being sum- 
 moned, in 1760, these considerations seriously affected the 
 minds of the Lords Justices, and induced them to draw up 
 for the absent Lord Lieutenant a State Paper, worthy of the 
 best days of English statesmanship, setting before the Duke 
 of Bedford, in logical form and in solemn words, their rea- 
 sons for declining to certify a Money Bill from the Privy 
 Council, and for leaving to the Irish House of Commons the 
 exercise of the privilege of originating Money Bills them- 
 selves. A motto was prefixed to this remarkable publica- 
 tion, being words spoken by "Went worth before he was created 
 Lord Strafford : " This hath not been done by the King, but 
 by the projectors, who have extended his prerogative beyond 
 its just bounds. They have introduced a Privy Council, 
 ravishing at once the spheres of all antient government." 
 
 The remonstrance produced no effect ; which I have ob- 
 served to occur frequently when an unanswerable case is 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 113 
 
 brought before reluctant minds. The Money Bill was cer- 
 tified by the Privy Council; the Lords Justices manfully 
 resigned ; and we have, reported by himself, the speech 
 spoken in defence of the Government by the Secretary to the 
 Duke of Bedford, called " Single-speech Hamilton," in 1761. 
 This speech is very able and very instructive. He puts his 
 argument thus : " As to the analogy between this and the 
 British House of Commons, every argument must be incon- 
 clusive which means to assimilate things which are in their 
 very form and origin in their very first concoction not 
 only different, but opposite. The two constitutions were 
 once indeed upon the same model. The plan of Poynings* 
 Act was to remove the Irish Constitution from the ground on 
 which it stood to change the model of it, and to make it 
 not only different, but in some respects the very reverse of 
 the English House of Commons." He then relies on the 
 opinions given by the Judges to William III., the positive 
 words of the Statute, and the practice of three hundred 
 years. He states the result of the division; 37 patriots 
 voted for a fundamental privilege, dispossessed of which a 
 House of Commons is powerless ; 147 steady hacks voted for 
 the Money Bill which did not originate in the House of 
 Commons, and they could only have voted upon the safe 
 ground taken by Hamilton, that the constitution of the Irish 
 House of Commons was in some important respects " the very 
 reverse of the English House of Commons." 
 
 Thanks to " Single-speech Hamilton" for his clear and candid 
 exposition of the matter. This gentleman had Edmund 
 Burke for his Secretary, by whom he was afterwards cor- 
 dially hated. He held a seat in the English and Irish Par- 
 liaments ; and I believe he seldom, if at all, spoke in the 
 English Senate, whence it was reported, I think erroneously, 
 that his single speech was written by Burke. 
 
114 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 The 6th George I. furnishes a decisive proof that, whether 
 the Tudor, or the Stuart, or the Guelph, reigned, it was 
 equally the policy of England not to permit the existence of 
 an independent Parliament in Ireland. We cannot be blind 
 to this great fact. It was long perceived ; and at various 
 periods the idea of a legislative Union was discussed as the 
 remedy for the evils political, if not social under which 
 Ireland groaned. Some persons thought England would 
 not consent to such a measure ; others, that the terms which 
 might be imposed would be too severe upon Ireland The 
 precedent of the Union with Scotland was much referred to 
 and discussed. Hardy, in his Biography of Lord Charlemont, 
 recounts a remarkable conversation between the celebrated 
 Montesquieu and Lord Charlemont, then on his travels in 
 France. The passage is significant : " Were I an Irish- 
 man," said the great author, " I should certainly wish for a 
 union with England, and as a general lover of liberty I sin- 
 cerely desire it ; and for this plain reason that an inferior 
 country connected with one much her superior in force, can 
 never be certain of the permanent enjoyment of constitu- 
 tional freedom, unless she has, by her representatives, a 
 proportional share in the legislature of the superior king- 
 dom." This was uttered in June, 1754, and came from one 
 of the profoundest political philosophers the world ever pro- 
 duced. In 1756 a rumour prevailed, was generally credited, 
 and created mud* discontent, that a legislative Union of both 
 kingdoms was in contemplation. 
 
 In a book called " Baratariana," being a political satire con- 
 sisting of a series of letters resembling those published by 
 Junius, a despatch is feigned as having been addressed by 
 the then Lord Lieutenant, Townshend, to the then Prime 
 Minister of England, in which is the following passage, anti- 
 cipatory of an Union, and showing how the Viceroy laboured 
 to produce it : 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 115 
 
 " The characteristics of this country are gaiety, dissipation, 
 and expense. I have done my utmost to encourage them, 
 to render the gentry more necessitous, and, of course, the 
 more dependent ; by these means, my Lord, you must can- 
 didly confess I have done a great deal. I have disunited 
 families hitherto thought impregnable to seduction. I have 
 provided for the most worthless, to show that the single 
 criterion of merit is an implicit obedience to Government. 
 Have I not, my Lord, contracted such a debt, in enlarging 
 the military establishment, increasing the salaries of office, 
 and creating new ones, that the payment, even of the inte- 
 rest, will necessarily reduce the nation to a state of absolute 
 poverty and dependence ? And is it not thereby fitted for 
 an Union upon our own terms, or a land-tax at worst, 
 either of which fully answers the purposes of my appoint- 
 ment." 
 
 The labours of the House of Lords in this august assembly, 
 at this period, are described thus by one who was not a lover 
 of irony. The record runs "Prayers Ordered that the 
 Judges be covered Adjourned." 
 
 What was the inner life of the House of Commons a 
 century ago, prior to the outburst in 1782, and before debates 
 were printed ? We have a witness to give evidence upon 
 the subject, and cannot refuse him our belief. In the winter 
 of 1763, a military officer (his name was Caldwell) was 
 quartered in Dublin ; he had abilities, a strong memory, and 
 an invincible curiosity. He attended the House of Commons 
 daily, and listened to the debates of our forefathers with the 
 deepest interest : he was enchanted. " After I left the House" 
 (he declares) " the voice of the speaker was still in my ears, 
 and the sentiments I had heard excluded all others from my 
 mind. I was impelled, as it were, by an irresistible impulse 
 to commit to paper what was then forcibly retained by my 
 
116 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 memory, before it should be mixed with other ideas, or debi- 
 litated by them." 
 
 Practice made this martial listener perfect, just as Bos well 
 remembered and recorded volumes of the ponderous talk of 
 Doctor Johnson ; and what does the impartial critic say of 
 the Irish orators of the middle of the last century ? First, he 
 says : " I cannot but observe that there is scarce one native of 
 this country, in the Parliament of England, that is not a 
 speaker of some distinction." Then, with the courtesy and 
 frankness of a soldier, he writes " Let me add, that in my 
 travels through many nations, during an absence of seven 
 years from my country, I came into no kingdom where I did 
 not find natives of Ireland in every profession, and almost in 
 every art, who had been preferred to eminent stations merely 
 by their merit, having entered the country under all the dis- 
 advantages of aliens, without money and without friends." 
 
 We are so unaccustomed to such compliments that I could 
 not deny myself the pleasure of transcribing the polite say- 
 ings of a literary soldier. He then declares the debates he 
 heard in College-green would " do honour to any age or 
 nation." As Parliamentary debates were not, at that period, 
 allowed to be printed, one reporter gives an opening speech 
 to Mr. A., who is replied to by Mr. B., who is answered by 
 Mr. P., who is refuted by Mr. Q. An Appendix, however, 
 now 'enables the reader to discover the orator's name. The 
 friendly annalist records one hundred and one debates that 
 he heard in the same number of days. He reminds his 
 readers that " the Irish Parliament assembles but six months 
 in a revolution of two years ; that an indispensable attend- 
 ance in the courts of law prevents many members from 
 being constantly present, and that the whole number is com- 
 paratively few." 
 
 I read the two volumes of these forgotten debates with 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 117 
 
 interest. They deserved the praise bestowed upon them. 
 The country gentlemen of that time appear to me to have 
 been eloquent, cautious, judicious, and well-informed ; the 
 lawyers equal to their work, but their legislative labours 
 were light ; the minister, respectful to the House, and effective 
 in discussion. The general impression left on my mind was 
 pleasing ; and I came to the conclusion, that if the theatre 
 on which our predecessors figured had been wider, and the 
 subjects they were called upon to discuss grander, they would 
 have played their parts successfully with or against the fore- 
 most men of their age. But when we examine the questions 
 discussed, we are obliged to admit their general insignifi- 
 cance. A few national questions were dealt with, through a 
 device then practised by permission of the Privy Council 
 namely, a motion for leave to bring in, not a Bill, but Heads of 
 a Bill. A private member, I have already explained, could 
 not, under the operation of Poynings' law, move directly to 
 bring in a Bill, as any member in the English Parliament 
 could then and now do at pleasure ; so the Irish senator (his 
 superiors in the Privy Council winking at his folly) evaded 
 the positive law, by only asking leave to introduce heads of a 
 projected Bill. Then, if the House approved, the Minister 
 might prevail on the Privy Council of Ireland to take up the 
 measure, and to the heads add tails ; then to send the same 
 over to the Council of England, to be approved. Then, 
 having obtained permission from the Privy Council in London, 
 the very Bill, so allowed, might be presented by the Irish 
 Privy Council to the Irish Parliament. In their consideration 
 of national questions, the most important was that moved by 
 Lucas, namely, the long duration of Parliaments ; his speech 
 moving to limit the life of a Parliament to eight years is very 
 good. He certainly had truth on his side, when he contended 
 that an Octennial Bill was more necessary in Ireland than in 
 
118 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 England, because Ireland had no such barrier against minis- 
 terial influence as the Place Bill in England. There had 
 lately been a revolution (Lucas argued) : how absurd it was to 
 maintain that the people had a right to make and change a 
 king, and yet had no right to change their representatives, to 
 whom they delegated their power of keeping the King from 
 being independent of his people. I wonder how the Privy 
 Council would have answered that practical argument. It pre- 
 vailed, and the Octennial Bill was carried. There is an admi- 
 rable proposition to increase the salaries of curates, introduced 
 in an unanswerable speech ; but, unlike the Octennial Bill, it 
 was not carried. The evil, which exists now as it existed 
 then, however, may be abated by the promotion of every 
 man who deserves it. As an example of the kind of ques- 
 tions which occupied the attention of the Commons, I give 
 the following : 
 
 " The Honourable E. S. represented that great inconve- 
 niency and danger frequently rose to the subjects of this 
 kingdom from the neglect of the masters of ships trading to 
 England, who neither provided a proper number of hands to 
 navigate the vessel, nor a sufficient quantity of necessaries to 
 serve the purposes of life, if the ship happened to be a few 
 days longer on her voyage than usual, by bad weather, which 
 frequently drove her out of her course, particularly candles 
 and fresh water. He said he was himself a passenger very 
 lately on board the Lively, and that the terror they felt from 
 the danger of the storm was nothing in comparison with their 
 suffering for want of water, and their dread of perishing by 
 thirst. He therefore prayed that he might have leave to 
 bring in the heads of a Bill to prevent such evils for the 
 future." 
 
 We are initiated into the mental and bodily labours of 
 members by the speech of a right honourable gentleman, 
 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 119 
 
 upon the motion of a member that, in consequence of the 
 increase of business, Monday should no longer be kept a holi- 
 day. He said " That he thought it of more importance to 
 appoint the House to meet earlier, that it might not be 
 obliged to sit so late, for that the attendance of that House 
 till seven or eight o'clock at night was a very great fatigue, 
 and as long as this continued, he thought one day in the 
 week little enough for relaxation." I know not what that 
 oppressed senator would think of our present hours, and of 
 our imperial labours. A petition of Margaret Ashworth, 
 widow of Thomas Ashworth, late of Donnybrook, Linen, 
 Cotton, Calico and Paper Printer, deceased, praying aid to 
 enable her to carry on these manufactures, was presented and 
 read. Mr. J. M. moved it might be referred to a committee. 
 Then arises a discussion on the principle of political economy 
 involved in grants, for such purposes, of public money. A 
 sensible speech having been made by Sexton Perry, the 
 mover of the petition said he thought it was very hard he 
 should be the first that was refused, and that he did not see 
 why he should not have his job done as well as another. A 
 sharp discussion then arises on the use of the word "job," 
 and of the immorality of jobs in general whereupon, Mr. R. 
 F., (being either Mr. Robert French, M. P. for Carrick, or 
 Mr. Robert Fitzgerald, M. P. for Dinglecourt,) made a very 
 amusing speech, which affords a fair specimen of the talent 
 which abounded in the House of Commons at this time : 
 "This monosyllable is the name of a certain illegitimate 
 child of Public Spirit, whom the world has agreed to call Job. 
 He is well known in this House, and I am sorry to say has 
 not been ill received in it. Let me give an account of his 
 descent and family, character and qualifications. Self-interest 
 was the father by whom Public Spirit has a numerous issue, 
 distinguished by the name of Job. Many of them have come 
 
120 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 over hither from a neighbouring kingdom, and have with 
 great success played both upon our weakness and our virtues. 
 They very often assume their mother's name, and pretend 
 that their father was Integrity r , a gentleman of very honourable 
 descent, who, having of late ' times been much neglected by 
 persons of power and interest, has fallen into misfortune, and 
 having been long in obscurity, nobody knows where he is. 
 Of late, they (Jobs) have condescended to amuse themselves 
 with great guns, haubitzers, and mortars ; with powder, ball, 
 fire, and smoke ; with warlike peace and peaceful war. As to 
 the places where they are to be found they love good com- 
 pany, and associate much with those in whom you, gentlemen, 
 place great confidence. They are found at the Treasury 
 Board, the Linen Board, the Barrack Board, and, in short, at 
 every other board. Nor are they ever to be missed at Grand 
 Juries, or societies that have the disposal of money." 
 
 Having searched these volumes fairly, with gratitude to 
 the reporter, and admiration for our forefathers, I can pro- 
 nounce no other judgment upon the Irish House of Commons 
 of a century ago, than that, while it was composed of gentle- 
 men of ability, it resembled more a parish vestry, or 
 a corporation assembly, than a national Parliament. I may 
 add, that the Dublin Water Bill is a larger question than 
 nine-tenths of the subjects of those provincial debates. Yet 
 was the Parliament progressing towards independence. 
 
 Before separating from our gallant soldier, I ought to add, 
 that he subjoins to his reports an inquiry, how far the 
 restrictions laid upon the trade of Ireland by British Acts of 
 Parliament were a benefit or a disadvantage to the British do- 
 minions in general, and to England in particular, for whose 
 separate advantage they were intended. 
 
 If our hero wrote this essay, I can only say he had studied 
 more than the art of war. He selects and summarizes all 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 121 
 
 the mischievous statutes passed by the British Parliament ; 
 several of them, I regret to say, after the Revolution, in con- 
 tempt of the Irish Legislature, to repress or stifle the manu- 
 facture and exports of Ireland ; and, arguing very differently 
 from Lord Macaulay, proves them to be, every one, not only 
 unjust to Ireland, but mischievous to England. He quotes 
 what contains the pith of the matter: " England, in making 
 laws to make Ireland poor," says Sir F. Brewster, in his 
 Essay on Trade and Navigation, " acts just like a man who 
 should set his house on fire that he might burn his neigh- 
 bours ;" he argues, Ireland should be treated exactly like 
 Yorkshire. I may add, that it would have been difficult 
 so to do, except by an Imperial Parliament and an united 
 Legislature. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 POLITICAL Undertakers Dignity of Irish Peeresses vindicated in 
 England Lucas, his Expulsion and "Return Flood's Patriotism, 
 his Criticism on Political Men Volunteer Meeting at Dungannon, 
 Grattan's Opinion of it Grattan's Eeward Flood's Strictures 
 England's Renunciation of Right to legislate for Ireland The 
 Quarrel of Flood and Grattan The late Peter Burrowes The 
 alleged Failure of Flood in the English Parliament The Volun- 
 teer Convention The Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Deny, his Cha- 
 racter and absurd Conduct Condition of City of Dublin under 
 the Government of the Duke of Rutland Conduct of Fitzgibbon 
 (Lord Clare) Pitt's Commercial Scheme for the two Countries 
 Idea of an Union broached. 
 
 WE are approaching a stirring period of Irish history. It 
 has been said, that for a few years before 1780, parliamen- 
 tary speaking was confined to a few ; the Secretary, the 
 leading Commissioners of the Revenue, the Attorney-General, 
 and one or two grave Sergeant s-at-law " men of sterile and 
 almost interminable rhetoric." Tisdall, the Attorney-General, 
 an able man, represented the University of Dublin for nearly 
 forty years Flood, warmed by Single-speech Hamilton, was 
 opening those talents which afterwards ripened into excel- 
 lence. One of his rivals was said to have the finest face for a 
 grievance that was ever beheld. Primate Stone was artful, 
 intriguing, and jealous, affecting at times the lowly eccle- 
 siastic, whereas his true character was that of a restless poli- 
 tician and ambitious statesman. The official leaders were called 
 4 Undertakers,' and justly, it was said, because from education 
 
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. IZO 
 
 and habit they were well fitted to preside over the funeral of 
 the commonwealth. 
 
 The Irishmen had their grievances they complained and 
 agitated ; the Irish Peeresses also had their disappointments 
 and their triumph. When Charlotte of Mecldenburgh ar- 
 rived in London, to become Queen and wife to George III., 
 certain Irish Peeresses prepared themselves to walk in pro- 
 cession at the royal nuptials ; but they were informed they 
 had no rights, and might, walk home. Offended, and justly, 
 that their beauty and their dresses should not be seen to ad- 
 vantage, they applied to their noble lords, who took the 
 matter coldly, recollecting the reply which had been given on 
 a former occasion to their predecessors who wished to walk 
 in a royal procession, namely, that they could only be allowed 
 to walk at a funeral, because then, as Irishmen, they would 
 be in their proper station, and might howl as much as they 
 pleased. But the ladies of Ireland had too much spirit to 
 submit tamely to oppression. They found a knight in the 
 accomplished Charlemont ; he discovered precedents to satisfy 
 the young King ; the Council saw the fair beauties, were en- 
 chanted, and conquered, and the Peeresses of Ireland walked 
 triumphant in the brilliant throng according to their rank, 
 the joy and admiration of all beholders. Thus were the 
 Peers of Ireland taught how to conquer. 
 
 Lucas, an ardent apothecary, whose statue adorns the Ex- 
 change, had been persecuted and expelled the House, and 
 voted an enemy to his country for speaking truth. He went 
 to London, practised the medical profession, wrote an Essay 
 on waters, attracted the notice of Dr. Johnson, who wrote 
 him up, branding the Irish Parliament and Government for 
 their infamous behaviour. Thus thundered the Doctor : 
 " Let the man driven into exile for having been the friend of 
 his country, be received in every other place as a confessor of 
 
124 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 liberty, and let the tools of power be taught in time, that 
 they may rob, but cannot impoverish." Lucas got back, was 
 elected again for Dublin, and became a useful member of 
 Parliament in his day. 
 
 Flood now determined to be patriotic, and renewed the 
 old cry against absentees, by proposing a tax of two shillings 
 on the net rents of all landed property in Ireland, to be paid 
 by all persons who should not actually reside in the kingdom 
 for the space of six months in each year Christmas, 1773, 
 to Christmas, 1774. The Irish Government, wanting money, 
 favoured the scheme ; but it failed. The absentee Lords in 
 London, a numerous body, pressed Lord North to give it up ; 
 Burke, in his Correspondence, condemned the plan as im- 
 politic ; although it was liked by the multitude and fa- 
 voured by a party, it was lost. Flood now thought it was 
 high time to accept a place that of Vice-Treasurer a place 
 highly desirable. The rank it conferred was considerable, 
 the pay large, and the work small. Few patriots could 
 resist such inducements. When questioned by his friends, 
 he moralized on the corruption of the times, stating, " that 
 he had been betrayed oftener, when taking an active part in 
 the House of Commons of Ireland, than he thought it neces- 
 sary to state. Except some particular persons, men of scru- 
 pulous honour, every one to whom I intrusted a parliamen- 
 tary motion, or plan of conduct for the session, almost 
 uniformly betrayed me." Flood seemed surprised to find 
 that he was promoted, not to speak, but to hold his tongue. 
 He might have said, with a witty Irishman and brilliant 
 declaimer, whom we remember, " that he was better rewarded 
 for his silence than ever he had been for his eloquence." 
 Such is the blindness or perverseness of Ministers, who will 
 sometimes prefer a silent vote to a fiery oration, although the 
 orator might be Flood or Sheil. When Grattan, long after- 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 125 
 
 wards, charged Flood with having sunk his patriotism in 
 office, he cleverly replied, " A patriot in office is more the 
 patriot." 
 
 A great figure now appears upon the stage of public life 
 Henry Grattan who took his seat for Charlemont in De- 
 cember, 1775, and began his splendid, though chequered 
 career. The condition of Ireland at this epoch was deplo- 
 rable. Her industry was shackled, her trade was paralyzed, 
 her landed interest was depressed, her exchequer empty, her 
 pension list enormous, her shores undefended, her army with- 
 drawn. The policy and the maxims of Swift once more 
 revived a spirit of discontent and a spirit of indepen- 
 dence pervaded the nation. England was at war with 
 France at war with America ; the colonies had revolted, 
 republican theories were afloat in the world, and Ireland was 
 menaced with invasion. The Government, on being applied to 
 for troops, declared they had none to spare, and that Ireland 
 must protect herself. The Volunteer movement then com- 
 menced; and, to the amazement of Ministers, they soon stood 
 face to face with an armed nation. 
 
 On looking into the History of the Volunteer movement 
 compiled by Mr. Wilson, I found the names of those who 
 attended the celebrated meeting at Dungannon, and were 
 chosen as a permanent Committee of the Ulster Volunteers. 
 The first name was that of Lord Enniskillen borne now by 
 one I am proud to call a friend. The resolutions carried 
 were very distinct. They were in favour of the parliamen- 
 tary independence of Ireland of the independence of the 
 judges in condemnation of Poynings' law, as unconstitu- 
 tional and illegal in condemnation of the powers usurped 
 by the Privy Council of both kingdoms in favour of opening 
 the ports to all foreign countries and in favour of a Mutiny 
 Bill, limited from session to session. Parliament caught the 
 
126 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 infection, and became patriotic and independent. All these 
 rational and just propositions became, through the new-born 
 zeal of the Parliament, established law : down went Poynings' 
 law useful in its day; down went the Act of Philip and 
 Mary; down went the obnoxious Statute of George I.; the 
 Mutiny Bill was limited, restrictions on Irish trade vanished, 
 the ports were opened, the Judges were made irremovable 
 and independent. I cannot join in the usual exultation at 
 the proceedings of the Volunteers ; on the contrary, I regret 
 their occurrence. Not that I think the resolutions carried at 
 Dungannon were in themselves unjust ; not that I would 
 hesitate to claim for Ireland all the rights possessed by our 
 English fellow-subjects ; but because all these inestimable 
 advantages were not granted by the wisdom of the Govern- 
 ment, through the recognised channel of Parliament, and 
 were carried at the point of the bayonet. The precedent 
 was dangerous. Had Walpole been alive, he would have 
 repented his blunder in listening to Primate Boulter, and 
 refusing to be advised by the counsels of Swift. But the 
 deed was done. 
 
 Lord Mountmorres, in his valuable book on the Transac- 
 tions of the Irish Parliament, published in 1792, in referring 
 to the curious debate recorded by Carte, in his Life of the 
 Duke of Ormonde which debate took place in the Council of 
 England, in the reign of Charles II., on the question whether 
 the settlement of Ireland at that time should be transacted 
 by the English or by the Irish Parliament concludes his 
 observations with these words : " The assertion and declara- 
 tion of the Irish, and the final renunciation of the English 
 Parliament, in 1781, has established upon an eternal and 
 irrevocable foundation, the sole right of their own Parliament 
 to legislate for Ireland." The events which subsequently 
 happened are in remarkable contrast to this bold and confi- 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 127 
 
 dent statement, and refute the idea of a final renunciation, 
 or indeed, of finality in political subjects. 
 
 Our inquiry henceforth will be How the Parliament 
 secured how it preserved its independence and why, and 
 when it was lost. 
 
 It will be seen I have not misapprehended the true 
 character of the celebrated Dungannon meeting. Mr. Grattan 
 in the House of Commons thus refers to it : " Gentlemen 
 will perceive that I allude to the transaction at Dungannon. 
 Not long ago the meeting at Dungannon was considered a 
 very alarming measure, but I thought otherwise. I approved, 
 yet I considered the meeting at Dungannon as an original 
 transaction. As such only it was matter of surprise. What 
 more extraordinary transaction than the attainment of Magna 
 Charta? It was not attained in Parliament, but by the 
 Barons, armed in the field. A great original transaction is not 
 founded in precedent ; it contains in itself both reason and 
 precedent. The Eevolution had no precedent ; the Christian 
 religion had no precedent ; the Apostles had no precedent." 
 Apart from the singularity of the style and the very ques- 
 tionable analogies suggested by the orator, it is plain his 
 argument was, that the meeting at Dungannon was an 
 unprecedented revolutionary movement, owing its success 
 and its value to the fact that it sprang from an assembly, 
 and was backed by an association of armed men. The 
 gentlemen who signed and supported the resolutions at 
 Dungannon were not famous as orators ; but they and their 
 descendants would maintain their words by their actions ; 
 their pithy resolutions in the open air were as effective 
 as the fine speeches delivered within the walls of Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 Flood added fuel to the flame when he exclaimed, in his 
 place in the House of Commons, "A voice from America 
 
128 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 shouted to Liberty ; the echo of it caught your people as it 
 passed along the Atlantic, and they renewed the voice till it 
 reverberated here ! " Ominous words when spoken ! If the 
 speaker were now alive, would he repeat his words, and say it 
 was from America the voice should come which was to awake 
 a lethargic nation to happiness and freedom ? 
 
 On the night that the message was delivered from the 
 Crown, in the Duke of Portland's administration, to the 
 effect that all the demands of the Irish nation, that is, those 
 made by the Parliament and the Volunteers, would be yielded, 
 and that, amongst other concessions, the obnoxious Sta- 
 tute of 6th George I. was to be repealed, Mr. Grattan, 
 in the exuberance of his joy at what he considered the tri- 
 umphant result of his labors, declared, " That there will no 
 longer exist any constitutional question between the two na- 
 tions that can disturb their mutual tranquillity." These words 
 produced a corresponding impression upon the minds of the 
 delighted hearers. Mr. Bagenal declaring that our exist- 
 ence as a nation now began, comparing Grattan to Marlbo- 
 rough, and reminding the House that a grateful nation had 
 voted Blenheim and an estate to the victor in twenty great 
 battles proposed that a similar course should be pursued 
 with regard to Grattan, and that a sum of 100,000 should 
 be applied to the purchase of an estate to be settled on him 
 and his heirs for ever, as a token of the national gratitude 
 for his illustrious services. The proposal was grateful to the 
 House; the amount, however, was reduced to 50,000, and the 
 estate was settled on the favouiite. It might fairly be ar- 
 gued, that a place-hunter should be rewarded by a place a 
 patriot by the people. " He had crowned his work." These 
 words were hardly spoken, and the Parliament had scarce 
 recovered from the intoxication of its joy, when it was coolly, 
 ably, and I think unanswerably argued, especially by a Mr. 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 129 
 
 Walshe and by Flood, that the work was not crowned 
 that poor Ireland was not rescued from English thraldom. 
 " What !" said Mr. Grattan, " is not the 6th George I. to be 
 repealed ?" " Yes," said Mr. Flood ; " and may it not be re- 
 enacted may not the British Parliament hereafter, if it 
 pleases, repeat its original offence ? a simple repeal will not 
 suffice ; there should be a renunciation of the right on the part 
 of England so to legislate in regard to Ireland." The 
 gauntlet flung down by Flood was gallantly taken up by 
 Grattan, and the tournament was fought by knights who 
 tilted each other in the House with the pen, and tried to tilt 
 at each other out of the House with sword and pistol. The 
 debates on the question, whether simple repeal of the hated 
 statute implied a renunciation of the right to pass such a law, 
 occupy half a volume. Flood reasoned his point with mas- 
 terly ability, and Mr. Walshe argued almost as well. I think 
 they proved that England always claimed the right to legis- 
 late for Ireland by naming Ireland in the Act, and not only 
 claimed, but exercised that right repeatedly, as I have shown. 
 They further proved, that the Act of George I. was a decla- 
 ratory law only ; and therefore, they insisted, that by the 
 simple repeal of the Declaratory Law, the right to pass such 
 a law remained just as it had been before, for that there was 
 no renunciation of the right. 
 
 It is considered that Grattan was defeated in the argu- 
 ment, and that Flood argued the law of the matter better 
 than most of the lawyers who spoke on the vexed ques- 
 tion. I invite the student to read the argumentative and 
 closely reasoned speeches of this distinguished Irishman. 
 He was a county member and a country gentleman, but 
 how educated ? His father, who was Chief Justice of the 
 Queen's Bench, sent him to our University, then to Ox- 
 ford, then to the Temple to acquire the general principles of 
 
130 THE LIFE AND DEATH. OF 
 
 law and of the Constitution, then to write odes and to travel; 
 then the County of Kilkenny returned him to Parliament, 
 where he worried the Attorney-General, puzzled the lawyers, 
 irritated the patriots, and convinced the Volunteers. 
 
 While Flood said he was opposed to the principle of an 
 Union with England, he yet, inconsistently enough, asked for 
 the same legal, fundamental, unalterable security for Ireland 
 as England granted to Scotland, when the Union with that 
 country was effected. He likewise insisted that England had 
 only given up internal legislation, but not external legislation, 
 as to Ireland. This should be noted carefully ; for under 
 the words external legislation was to be included commercial, 
 colonial, and marine legislation. Flood maintained that unless 
 England expressly renounced all right of external legislation, 
 she would still have it, and exercise it over or against Ireland 
 when it suited her ; and he did not believe England intended 
 to renounce that power. His language was pure and lofty ; 
 he concluded an able speech thus "Were the voice with 
 which I utter this, the last effort of an expiring nature were 
 the accent which conveys it to you, the breath that was to 
 waft me to that grave to which we all tend, and to which my 
 footsteps rapidly accelerate I would go on ; I would make 
 my exit by a loud demand of your rights ; and I call upon 
 the God of truth and liberty, who has so often favoured you, 
 and who has, of late, looked down upon you with such pecu- 
 liar grace and glory of protection, to continue to you his 
 inspiring s, to crown you with the spirit of his completion, 
 and to assist you against the errors of those that are honest, 
 as well as against the machinations of all that are not so." 
 
 Flood failed for the time, Grattan for the time triumphed. 
 
 I turn to the Summary of the Parliamentary History of Eng- 
 land at this period, supposed to have been written by Burke 
 Dodsley's Register and I find it there said, "the mode of 
 
TUP: IRISH FAEL1AMEMT. 131 
 
 procedure adopted by Mr. Fox was simply to repeal the 
 6th George I., because it was apprehended Parliament could 
 not be induced to a renunciation of the legal right to legislate 
 as she had done." The writer maintains the view of Flood, 
 that an act of renunciation was necessary a mere repeal of 
 a declaratory law insufficient. 
 
 The session of Parliament ended, the Volunteers and the 
 public generally differed from Grattan, and agreed with 
 Flood there must be an act of renunciation of right on the 
 part of England. The rival orators tried to fight a duel with 
 the pistol, were arrested, and failed, and returned to Parlia- 
 ment to fight a duel with the tongue. There was a great 
 disparity in years between them. Flood had been twenty 
 years in Parliament when Grattan was only seven. Their 
 feelings were excited I think Grattan's most ; and when, 
 upon a motion for retrenchment by Sir H. Cavendish, Flood, 
 in October, 1783, spoke in favour of it, alluding to his bodily 
 infirmity, Grattan said he would not occupy the time of the 
 House by apologising for infirmity, or the affectation of infir- 
 mity, "! shall not speak of myself, having never aposta- 
 tized." He then twitted Flood, amongst other misdeeds, with 
 having voted 4,000 men to butcher our brethren in America. 
 He " thought the motion for retrenching ill-timed." 
 
 Flood arose instantly, and delivered his celebrated reply, 
 summing up all Grattan's shortcomings in the most bitter man- 
 ner : "I do not come here, dressed in a rich wardrobe of words, 
 to delude the people. I am not the gentleman who subsists 
 on your accounts. I am not the mendicant patriot who was 
 bought by my country for a sum of money, and then sold rny 
 country for prompt payment. I never was bought by the 
 people, nor ever sold them. I object to no man for being 
 in office : a patriot in office is more the patriot for being 
 there. There was a time when the glories of the great Duke 
 
132 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 of Marlborough shrank and withered before the right honour- 
 able gentleman when palaces superior to Blenheim were to 
 be built for his reception when pillars and pyramids were to 
 be raised and adorned with emblazoned inscriptions sacred to 
 his virtue ; but the pillars and pyramids are now sunk r 
 though then the great Earl of Chatham was held inferior 
 to him. However, he is still so great that the Queen of 
 France, I dare say, will have a song made on the name of 
 Grattan." 
 
 The satire of Grattan, I fear, would not to-day be con- 
 sidered as delicate or courteous : 
 
 " But it is not the slander of the bad tongue of a bad cha- 
 racter that can defame me. I maintain my reputation in pub- 
 lic and in private life ; no man who has not a bad character 
 can say I ever deceived him ; no country has ever called me 
 cheat. I will suppose a public character, a man not now in 
 this House, but who formerly might have been here. I will 
 suppose it was his constant practice to abuse every man who 
 differed from him, and to betray every man who trusted him. 
 I will suppose him active ; I will begin from his cradle, and 
 divide his life into three stages : in the first he was intempe- 
 rate, in the second corrupt, and in the third seditious. Sup- 
 pose him a great egotist, his honour equal to his oath, and 
 I will stop him and say, ' Sir, your talents are not so great 
 as your life is infamous ; you were silent for years, and you 
 were silent for money. When affairs of consequence to the 
 nation were debating, you might be seen passing by these 
 doors like a guilty spirit, just waiting for the moment of 
 putting the question, that you might hop in and give your 
 venal vote ; or at times, with a vulgar brogue, apeing the 
 manners and affecting the infirmities of Lord Chatham ; or, 
 like a kettledrummer, lather yourself into popularity to catch 
 the vulgar ; or you might be seen hovering over the dome, 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 133 
 
 like an ill-omened bird of night, with sepulchral notes, a 
 cadaverous aspect, and broken beak, ready to stoop and 
 pounce upon your prey. You can be trusted by no man ; 
 the people cannot trust you the ministers cannot trust you ; 
 you deal out the most impartial treachery to both. You tell 
 the nation it is ruined by other men, while it is sold by you. 
 You fled from the embargo you fled from the Mutiny Bill 
 you fled from the Sugar Bill. I, therefore, tell you, in the 
 face of your country, before all the world, and to your 
 beard, you are not an honest man !' " 
 
 If all this invective was unpremeditated, the politicians of 
 that time had a wonderful talent for abusing each other. 
 The abuse is too gross, too personal, too offensive to please ; 
 and it was quite proper to send the police after the right 
 honourable gentlemen to overtake them before one or other 
 lay dead in the Fifteen Acres. Flood was caught by Alder- 
 man Exshaw ; Grattan escaped, and was ready for the fray. 
 A few days subsequently, Flood claimed to be heard in his 
 vindication. There was a natural indisposition to allow a 
 renewal of the quarrel. He exclaimed : " The meanest 
 criminal in the land is entitled to be heard in his defence ; 
 refuse me, if you dare." He was then allowed to proceed, 
 and delivered a dignified and masterly defence of his past 
 conduct, with an account of his life. It is even now worth 
 perusing, because it presents a picture, not only of the man, 
 but of the Irish House of Commons and of the time. Imme- 
 diately after Flood sat down, Grattan rose ; but the ad- 
 journment was carried, and nothing more was heard of this 
 memorable dispute. 
 
 When I was a student in the University, I had the honour 
 of being acquainted with the late Peter Burro we s then a 
 fine, hearty old gentleman, who was full of genial humour 
 and kindness, especially to young men. He had made a 
 
134 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 noble figure himself in the Irish Parliament, and had after- 
 wards at the Bar distinguished himself on great occasions. I 
 heard him tell of young Emmett, whom he had defended, and 
 of his dying speech, with tears in his eyes. Burrowes had 
 been an early friend and admirer of Flood, whom he described 
 as a very dignified and stately speaker, with an impressive 
 manner and lofty air. He said Flood had a false palate, 
 which he was obliged to introduce into his mouth before he 
 rose to speak, and this may have affected his voice, and 
 caused what Grattan described as " a sepulchral note." His 
 nose seems to have been short : this his rival called " his 
 broken beak ;" his face pale, which made " the cadaverous 
 aspect." There is a portrait of Flood in the dining-hall of 
 our University ; it answers the description we have of his 
 person. Grattan' s portrait adorns, in volunteer uniform, the 
 same honourable place. The statues of Pitt and Fox are 
 not far asunder in Westminster Abbey. As we behold these 
 perishable memorials of the great dead men of our country, 
 we may exclaim, how deplorable that talents so vast, elo- 
 quence so splendid, genius so transcendent, were not em- 
 ployed in the cause of a common country, instead of being 
 perverted to personal quarrels and party disputes ! To differ 
 in opinion is the right of freemen ; but life is too short and 
 too precious a trust to be wasted in personal recriminations 
 and passionate invective. If in the exciting discussions of 
 the age, I incline to Pitt, it is not because I do not admire 
 Fox ; and if I am rather disposed to side with Flood, it 
 is not that I fail in my homage to the genius of Grattan. 
 May their patriotism inspire the youth of our land to love 
 and serve their country may the improved temper of the 
 times, a better education, and a more Christian spirit, teach 
 our youth to avoid what was mischievous in their grand 
 example ! 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 135 
 
 A biography of Flood was written by a relative, Mr. Warden 
 Flood. An admirable sketch was drawn of him in the Uni- 
 versity Magazine by the late Rev. Samuel O'Sullivan. Peter 
 Burrowes wrote : "I had indulged the vanity of myself record- 
 ing to posterity the history and personal qualities of perhaps 
 the ablest man Ireland ever produced indisputably the ablest 
 man of his own time." I regret we have not such a biography ; 
 for no one can write worthily of a great character but one who 
 has in himself elements of greatness, and such there were in 
 Burrowes. You may be aware that Flood, while he was 
 a Member of the Irish House of Commons, was elected also 
 into the British Senate. In a recent valuable publication, I 
 mean " The Life of Pitt, by Lord Stanhope," it is said that 
 Flood tried his powers with indifferent success in the debates 
 upon Fox's India Bill. The speech on Parliamentary Reform 
 is also unfavourably mentioned. There is, hoAvever, a speech 
 of Flood's not noticed by Lord Stanhope, which, spoken in 
 reply to Pitt's plan for a commercial treaty with France, 
 possesses, apart from its very questionable policy, a high 
 order of merit. Lord Stanhope details the anecdote in which 
 Grattan is made to account for the comparative failure of 
 Flood in the British Senate. " He misjudged," said Grattan ; 
 " when he transplanted himself to the English Parliament ; he 
 forgot that he was a tree of the forest, too old to be trans- 
 planted at fifty." I thought the words were, " He was an oak 
 of the forest, too old to be transplanted." Lord Stanhope 
 adds, with the severity of an English critic : " Of this truth, 
 which Grattan states in so solemn a strain, Grattan himself, 
 at a still later period, was to be a conspicuous example." I 
 have read the orations of these two celebrated orators of my 
 country I have heard the foremost orators of the Imperial 
 Senate, and I venture to think Grattan and Flood could not 
 have failed in that assembly, although their success would 
 
136 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 have been more brilliant had they commenced their career in 
 England with their rivals. It remains to add, that Flood 
 devised a noble estate to the University of Dublin, the rents 
 to be chiefly applied to collecting and publishing manuscripts 
 and matter which lay hid in the Irish language, and which 
 might illustrate the antiquities, the literature, and history, 
 so ancient and illustrious. The devise to our venerable Uni- 
 versity was successfully disputed in a court of law. 
 
 If I were asked what was the conduct of the gentlemen in 
 the Irish House of Commons, apart from the violent party and 
 personal disputes to which I have referred, I would answer 
 admirable. They applied their minds, after 1782, to mea- 
 sures of high value and importance, which a sensible Govern- 
 ment would long before have undertaken. The independence 
 of the Judges was secured ; the office of Master of the Kolls 
 was reformed ; he was no longer permitted to be an absentee 
 and pensioner, but converted into what the present Master of 
 the Eolls is one of the most useful, learned, and indefati- 
 gable of our working judges ; the criminal law was attacked for 
 its severity in inflicting so generally the punishment of death ; 
 the prisons were criticised ; freedom of election was secured ; 
 revenue officers and placemen excluded from voting ; the 
 public accounts laid open and referred for scrutiny to a 
 well-chosen committee ; the Mutiny Bill assimilated to the 
 English law; the absentee Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 was warned he must come home, or be abolished; and, 
 lastly, the Recorder and members for the city had the glory 
 of introducing a measure for conferring upon Ireland the 
 blessings of the Habeas Corpus Act, in order to preserve 
 public liberty against the attacks of arbitrary power. The 
 Secretary said, " by usage the Irish Judges had acted on the 
 doctrine of the Habeas Corpus Law," but admitted fairly it was 
 essential to establish that fundamental right by positive law, 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 137 
 
 when it only depended on the force of custom. I mention 
 these results with satisfaction, for it is more agreeable to 
 praise than to censure. The conduct of the Parliament, then, 
 after 1782, was praiseworthy. 
 
 Public events of a startling nature now succeeded. The 
 Volunteers elected a Parliament of their own, and called it a 
 Convention. They sat in state in the Rotunda (while the 
 other Parliament sat in College Green) ; passed their resolu- 
 tions in favour of parliamentary reform ; and a number of 
 their body marched down in red coats to the House, to 
 carry the measures, as before, at the point of the bayonet. 
 There was an uproar in the House, when the Attorney- 
 General proposed that the House should refuse to receive 
 or listen to the Bill, on the ground that it came from an 
 armed Convention, saying : " When the Volunteers turn aside 
 from their honourable conduct when they form themselves 
 into a debating society, and with that rude instrument, the 
 bayonet, probe and explore a constitution which requires the 
 nicest hand to touch I own my respect and veneration for 
 them is departed." The House sustained its dignity, and 
 refused to submit to the insult put upon them ; and the 
 Convention, having no root in the popular mind, speedily 
 dissolved. This tumult occurred shortly after the constitu- 
 tion of Ireland had been, according to Mr. Grattan, firmly 
 established, but before it was a twelvemonth old. A ring- 
 leader in the political disturbance was a bishop Eari of 
 Bristol, the vain, eccentric, and restless Bishop of Derry. 
 He resembled, in his political ambition, Boulter and Stone, 
 but wanted their craft to conceal his designs. Of course, he 
 was the opposite of our apostolic Berkeley. He would be 
 Secretary of State or Lord Lieutenant anything but what 
 he ought to have been, from the sacred character he assumed. 
 He disputed with Lord Charlemont for the leadership of the 
 
138 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 Volunteers. Of course, he was an English Bishop, imported 
 into the kingdom by the political undertakers who cared 
 nothing for religion everything for their faction. He spent 
 most of his time in Italy pursuing pleasure returned to 
 Ireland when he required political excitement, or wished 
 to create political disturbance. He published treasonable 
 pamphlets, for which he narrowly escaped prosecution. Mr. 
 Hardy thus describes the progress of this prelate through the 
 country: "He seemed to court, and was received, with all 
 warlike honours ; and I remember seeing him pass the Par- 
 liament House in Dublin (Lords and Commons were then 
 both sitting) escorted by a body of dragoons, full of spirits 
 and talk, apparently enjoying the eager gaze of the sur- 
 rounding multitude, and displaying altogether the self- 
 complacency of a favourite Marshal of France, on his way 
 to Versailles, rather than the grave deportment of a Prelate 
 of the Church of England." That any rational assembly 
 would allow itself to be dictated to by such a nighty Prelate, 
 was out of the question. It was curious, if not comical, the 
 Bishop was for admitting the Eoman Catholics to all the 
 privileges of the Constitution, to which the layman, Lord 
 Charlemont, a decorous Whig, was strongly opposed. 
 
 There was a second motion in favour of Parliamentary 
 Reform, which, being rejected, led to a serious tumult, when 
 some rioters broke into the House of Commons, and were 
 apprehended by the sergeant-at-arms. The mania for reform 
 subsided; it had never been felt by the Eoman Catholics, 
 who, according to the plans of the most vehement reformers, 
 were to be excluded. The pressure of distress was now 
 trying amongst the manufacturers and traders of the king- 
 dom. This distress was aggravated by the effects of the 
 non-importation agreement which had been most absurdly 
 taken up against England, and which now punished its 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 139 
 
 authors. There was also a well-founded complaint on the 
 part of the Irish traders, upon the score of the high duties 
 which England imposed upon the traffic between the two 
 countries, and which the political revolution had only relieved 
 in the smallest degree. The result was disturbance and 
 confusion over the kingdom. Politics, depressed trade, reform, 
 consumption of home-made articles, Whiteboys, Lord Bristol, 
 and Napper Tandy, made up a scene described partially by 
 the Duke of Rutland to Mr. Pitt, in August, 1785 : 
 
 " This City of Dublin is in a great measure under the do- 
 minion and tyranny of the mob. Persons are daily marked 
 for the operation of tarring and feathering ; the magistrates 
 neglect their duty, and none of the rioters till to-day, when 
 one man was seized in the fact have been taken, while the 
 corps of Volunteers in the neighbourhood, seemed, as it were, 
 to countenance these outrages. In short, the state of Dublin 
 calls loudly for an immediate and vigorous interposition of 
 Government." The writer of the above letter was the Duke 
 of Rutland, Viceroy of Ireland brilliant, gay, chivalrous 
 whose court was celebrated for hospitality and splendour. 
 His despatches or letters to Mr. Pitt, and the replies of the 
 great statesman, throw much light on the Parliamentary life 
 of Ireland at that epoch. During the period covered by 
 these unconstitutional proceedings, a question arose of con- 
 siderable importance, and even now deserving notice and in- 
 vestigation. A bustling, presuming dabbler in sedition, 
 named Napper Tandy, thrust himself forward as a political 
 reformer ; his great soul was touched by the oppression of 
 his country (according to Mr. Grattan and the patriots, just 
 set free by two revolutions) and his big understanding and 
 profound learning suggested or approved the holding of a 
 National Congress in Dublin, in order to unsettle the old 
 Constitution and settle a new one, contrived, fashioned, and 
 
140 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 polished by Napper Tandy and his fellow-townsmen. The 
 Sheriff of the County of Dublin, one Reilly, misled by this 
 vain pretender, while his duty was to hold an election for 
 members of Parliament only, thought it convenient to issue 
 his own writ of summons to the county to choose members to 
 sit in a Congress, which was, to despatch the old Parliament, 
 and coin a new one out of the mint of Napper Tandy's brain. 
 On this occasion, I am happy to say, Mr. Grattan took the 
 wise and constitutional course of disapproving of the move- 
 ment towards a National Congress, as irreconcilable with 
 any settled form of government whatever. Meanwhile, the 
 Attorney-General, a vigorous man, Fitzgibbon, afterwards 
 Lord Clare, walked into the Queen's Bench, and upon an 
 authenticated statement of Mr. Sheriff Eeilly's pranks, had 
 him at once attached for gross breach of duty in his office. 
 The attachment was not only issued against Reilly, but the 
 Attorney-General threatened to attach every Sheriff in Ire- 
 land who would presume to issue a summons, or to convene a 
 county to choose members to sit in a National Congress, in 
 order to overawe Parliament, and overthrow the Constitution. 
 The disaffected and seditious always complain of the law 
 which they intend to upset being put into force against them. 
 Accordingly, a loud complaint was made of the unconstitu- 
 tional conduct of the Attorney- General, for his very suc- 
 cessful and summary assertion of the law against Keilly, who 
 contended he should have been tried by a jury to be re- 
 turned by himself. The subject was brought before the 
 House of Commons, and debated with great ability and 
 learning, both by the country gentlemen and the lawyers. 
 Many sensible men did not relish this mode of setting aside 
 trial by jury, and one eminent individual, Mr. Michael Smith, 
 afterwards Master of the Rolls, and from whom our present 
 distinguished judge is descended, argued ably and learnedly 
 against this use of the process of attachment. 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 141 
 
 The debates on the constitutional question occupy a con- 
 siderable portion of the volume recording the Irish Parlia- 
 mentary discussions for 1785. The Attorney- General met 
 the matter boldly ; said the proceeding was wholly by his 
 authority ; that he would allow no minister to tell him how 
 he was to bring a criminal to justice, and declared that Mr. 
 Eeilly's crime was little less than misprision of treason ; that 
 he had resisted the Parliament, traduced the Government, 
 betrayed his trust, and presumed to avow that he, with 
 Napper Tandy and Co., their lives and fortunes, would sup- 
 port whatever plan the Convention should devise for reform- 
 ing Parliament. He, the Attorney- General, had attached 
 Eeilly, " and although another quibbling, prevaricating Sheriff 
 had escaped by shuffling and skirmishing behind the duplicity 
 of equivocation, if he could catch any other official offending 
 in like manner, he would meet them with a like punishment." 
 The House backed the resolute law officer by a considerable 
 majority ; the Congress was dissolved, and Napper Tandy had 
 to devise another method for his treason. 
 
 Mr. Pitt determined to investigate for himself the state 
 and condition of the trade and commerce between the two 
 kingdoms, and especially the restrictions which fettered the 
 trade of Ireland with England. The history of this important 
 transaction puts in a striking point of view the difficulty, 
 nay, the impossibility, of managing two Parliaments, or of 
 conducting the affairs of a common empire when two great 
 parts of that empire were governed by different political 
 bodies, and supposed to be suited for the application of 
 different political and commercial legislation. 
 
 Unassisted reason would seem to suggest that Ireland as 
 she was, and is, should have been regarded as a part of 
 Lancashire or Yorkshire. Instead of this simple method of 
 viewing a question of trade, we have the Prime Minister 
 
142 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 of England applying for months the powers of his vast 
 intellect to the subject of a treaty of commerce between the 
 two kingdoms, to be submitted first to the English Parlia- 
 ment, and then to the Irish Parliament, in the hope that the 
 treaty would be ultimately agreed to by the opposing 
 independent states. Pitt laboured at his task incessantly ; 
 summoned to England the heads of departments corres- 
 ponded, consulted, and systematized the plan which he 
 fondly hoped might lead to a final adjustment of a difficult, 
 though practical subject between the two kingdoms. One 
 letter from Mr. Pitt to the Duke of Eutland, upon this 
 question, fills eighteen pages of print ; Lord Stanhope 
 says it is the longest letter he ever saw of Pitt's ; and I 
 would fondly hope it is the longest letter ever seen in the 
 world. The design of Pitt was statesmanlike his exposition 
 of policy luminous ; while the language he employed towards 
 Ireland was kind, cordial, affectionate. Eleven propositions 
 were sent over to the Duke of Eutland, as the foundation of 
 the proposed treaty. They were eminently favourable to 
 Ireland. It was proposed to allow the importation of the 
 produce of all other countries, through Great Britain into 
 Ireland, or through Ireland into Great Britain, without any 
 increase of duty on that account. It was proposed, as to any 
 article produced or manufactured in Ireland, or in England, 
 where the duties were then different, on importation into 
 either country, to reduce those duties in the kingdom where 
 they were highest, down to the lower scale. And it was asked 
 from Ireland, that where the gross hereditary revenue should 
 rise above a fixed sum, the surplus should be appropriated 
 towards the support of the naval force of the empire. These 
 propositions passed through both branches of the Irish Legis- v 
 lature, were remitted to England, and by Pitt laid before the 
 British House of Commons. He was immediately attacked 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 143 
 
 by Fox and the Whigs, aided by Lord North, who one and 
 all declared themselves the uncompromising enemies of free 
 trade. And these factious men declared that in the interests of 
 the British manufacturers they could not allow Irish fustians 
 to be brought into England, to ruin English manufacturers. 
 The fustian they affected to fear, was nothing to be compared 
 to the fustian of their speeches. The enlightened views of the 
 great Conservative minister were, in a measure, baffled by the 
 shameful opposition of Fox, and of his friends in Parliament, 
 and of the thick-headed cotton manufacturers out of the 
 House. The result was, that Pitt was coerced to introduce 
 exceptions and limitations. The eleven propositions grew up 
 to twenty; the additional propositions relating to various 
 subjects : patents, copyrights, fisheries, colonial produce, 
 navigation laws the enactment as to which was, that what- 
 ever navigation laws were then, or should thereafter be 
 enacted by the Legislature of Great Britain, should also be 
 enacted by the Legislature of Ireland ; and, in favour of the 
 old East India Company monopoly, Ireland was debarred 
 from all trade beyond the Cape of Good Hope, to the Straits 
 of Magellan. It will be perceived by men of business that 
 this was a commercial affair, touching the trade and manu- 
 factures and commerce of the two kingdoms with each other 
 and with the colonies of England, for Ireland had already 
 obtained free trade with other countries. 
 
 There seemed to be nothing hurtful to the pride of Ireland 
 in the affair. But when Fox found that his great rival defeated 
 him on the commercial part of the question, he artfully, as 
 Lord Stanhope shows, changed his ground of attack, and, 
 availing himself of the limitations which Pitt had been com- 
 -pelled to introduce into his original scheme, Fox cried out 
 that this was a breach of Ireland's newly granted indepen- 
 dence. " I will not," said Fox (I say, with incredible hypo- 
 
144 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 crisy, or with incredible folly) " 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." 
 
 I have in my possession a thick book of pamphlets, 
 speeches, and comments on these once celebrated resolutions. 
 In the collection is the speech of Sheridan in the English 
 House of Commons in support of Fox. Our brilliant, but 
 not very scrupulous countryman, seizes on the fourth amended 
 resolution of Pitt, namely, that the law for regulating trade 
 and navigation should be the same in Great Britain and Ire- 
 land ; and therefore, that all laws which should be made in 
 Great Britain for regulating the trade of the British colonies 
 and plantations such laws, conferring the same benefits and 
 imposing the same restrictions on the subjects of both king- 
 doms, should be in force in Ireland, by laws to be passed by 
 the Parliament of that kingdom, for the same time and in 
 the same manner as in Great Britain. Sheridan, I say, 
 with infinite art, seized on this resolution, and insisted that 
 here was a resumption on the part of England of the 
 right of external legislation over Ireland, which had been so 
 lately renounced for ever. He repeated the word ' external/ 
 and mischievously and erroneously asserted, if Ireland con- 
 tracted to have the same laws in matters of trade and naviga- 
 tion with England, she, Ireland, was for ever enslaved. His 
 amusing illustration was well contrived to touch the pride of 
 his countrymen : 
 
 " Ireland, newly escaped from harsh trammels and severe 
 discipline, is treated like a high -mettled horse, hard to catch ; 
 and the Irish Secretary is to return to the field, soothing and 
 caressing him, with a sieve of provender in one hand, but 
 with a bridle in the other, ready to slip over his head while 
 he is snuffling at the food. But this political jockey ship (he 
 was convinced) would not succeed ; Ireland would spurn at 
 any offer to which such a condition was to be annexed." 
 
THE 1KISH PARLIAMENT, 145 
 
 bis was exactly the style of discourse to excite the anger 
 and inflame the pride of the Irish people. When the twenty 
 propositions of Mr. Pitt were returned to the Irish' Parlia- 
 ment, they encountered a fierce and protracted opposition. 
 Mr. Grattan's speech has been extolled as one of his ablest ; 
 it is not intemperate. His chief objection was to the fourth 
 resolution, by which, he said, " We are 'to agree to subscribe 
 whatever laws the Parliament shall prescribe respecting navi- 
 gation ; we are to have no legislative power. Here there is 
 an end of your free trade and your free Constitution." He 
 also curiously objected, that the measure was " an Union an 
 incipient and a creeping union a virtual union, establishing 
 one will in the general concerns of commerce and navigation, 
 and reposing that will in the Parliament of Great Britain." 
 A fair objection ; for it is true that an uniformity of laws 
 might lead to similarity of sentiment, and to an Union. In 
 vain it was answered Ireland might stipulate to accept the 
 terms for a limited time, reserving a right to her Parliament 
 to get rid of the treaty, and the condition of uniform legis- 
 lation in matters of trade and commerce, whenever it should 
 appear that England gave cause for such a course, by violating 
 the letter or spirit of her agreement. Dublin was illuminated ; 
 the people exulted in the abandonment of the scheme. Pitt's 
 failure in carrying the Irish commercial measures was a deep 
 disappointment a bitter mortification ; so writes his biogra- 
 pher. Fox, as the champion of high protective duties, and 
 as the inflexible opponent of free trade, enjoyed in many 
 quarters the gleam of returning popularity. 
 
 The great minister was defeated by a combination of igno- 
 rance, prejudice, and faction. But assuming that the oppo- 
 sition to a project, the preparation of which cost Pitt a 
 twelvemonth of labour and preparation, was sincere and 
 well-founded, how overwhelming the argument for one Par- 
 
146 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE HUSH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 liament one State when it was impossible, by the talents 
 and application of all the able men of the two kingdoms, to 
 arrange a treaty which should regulate the trade and com- 
 merce of the two nations. I remark, in a letter from Lord 
 Charlemont, November, 1786, to Flood, after this transac- 
 tion, that he writes " The English papers have lately been 
 infested with the idea of a Union, but, except from them, I 
 know nothing of it." In my judgment, it was natural such 
 an idea should take root in the public mind ; for if it 
 appeared to be impossible, even for Pitt, to carry measures 
 of the utmost importance to the business of daily life, 
 through his Parliament, it must have suggested to his mind, 
 and to the minds of others, that the remedy lay in com- 
 pounding the two conflicting bodies into one manageable 
 body. It is not a little remarkable, that at the very moment 
 that orators and politicians were haranguing on the blessing 
 of an independent Parliament, the idea of a Union appears 
 to haunt their imagination ; and the possibility of it seems 
 to have been contemplated from the very conduct they 
 adopted. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 PECULIARITIES of George III. His unexpected Illness William Pitt 
 the Younger His Character and brilliant Career Lord Chancellor 
 Thurlow His Duplicity detected by his Hat Schemes of the Ad- 
 visers of the Prince of Wales Lord Loughborough's treasonable 
 Designs Debates in England on the Regency Question The same 
 Question in the Irish House Eatal Error committed by Mr. Grattan 
 and his Friends Lord Clare's Speech Mr. Wellesley Pole An 
 unconstitutional Address carried Refusal of the Lord Lieutenant 
 to transmit the Address to the Prince of Wales Delegates ap- 
 pointed by the two Houses to offer the Regency to the Prince Their 
 Reception Irish Whigs the real Authors of the Union. 
 
 I MUST transport you, in mind, from Ireland and its Parlia- 
 ment, to England, her minister, her monarchy, and her vicis- 
 situdes, in the year 1788. 
 
 William Pitt the younger, son of the great Chatham, had 
 been bred to the Bar held a few briefs was diligent, and 
 capable of excelling in law or in any other pursuit in which 
 mental excellence could be displayed. He entered Parlia- 
 ment a youth, stood by his sovereign in an hour of diffi- 
 culty and trial, won the confidence of the House by the 
 soundness of his judgment, and swayed it by the majesty of 
 his eloquence. Disinterested, patriotic, resolute, and wise, 
 he gained daily on the nation defeated all his opponents, 
 however gifted, however eloquent, however artful ; and be- 
 came, at an early age, the most popular Prime Minister 
 except his father, England had ever seen. While he enjoyed 
 the confidence of his sovereign and favour of the people, he 
 
148 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 was opposed by the "Whigs, who were led by chiefs of won- 
 derful ability, but of slender judgment : these chiefs had, for 
 a time, rendered themselves more powerful by an astounding 
 coalition with Lord North, whom they had long and acrimo- 
 niously opposed. In addition to these advantages, the Prince 
 of Wales, heir-apparent to the crown, had attached himself 
 to the leaders of the Whig party, in whom he appeared to 
 repose implicit confidence. King George III. respected and 
 trusted Pitt ; but King George walked too far before break- 
 fast, rode too much, worked too hard at public business, 
 lived too sparingly, got bilious, and eventually suffered from 
 temporary derangement. It surprises me that the King 
 did not bury all his ministers, because he stood or walked 
 all the time they were with him on business, whether from 
 a desire of exercise or in assertion of prerogative, I know 
 not ; but after a three hours' conference on foot, his Majesty 
 must have left his peripatetic ministers wearied enough by 
 their labours. However, with gouty monarch s the practice 
 should conduce to brevity of speech. In the Life of Mack- 
 intosh, by his son, there is a wonderful letter from the cele- 
 brated Robert Hall to Sir James, reasoning, in a calm way, 
 on what he felt to be an approaching attack of insanity. 
 We may now read a note, sensibly composed, from the King 
 to Mr. Pitt, in which he seems to prepare for this sad event. 
 He felt it, and exclaimed pathetically to the Duke of York, 
 " I wish to God I may die, for I am going to be mad." The 
 malady grew worse, the disease appeared to be confirmed, 
 and the position of Mr. Pitt became no less critical than the 
 condition of the government of two kingdoms. 
 
 Pitt was assisted by an able, unscrupulous colleague, Lord 
 Thurlow, his Chancellor, whose true character was that of a 
 grasping, selfish, arrogant, ambitious, able man, looking 
 to his own interests chiefly, and in all things the opposite 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. Ml) 
 
 of Pitt, who looked to the interests of the monarchy and 
 of the country. The Prince of Wales naturally expected 
 to be Regent during the illness of the King, but feared Pitt 
 would propose to limit the exercise of the royal power in a 
 manner which might be distasteful to one who naturally 
 wished to do what he liked. The Prince had a follower 
 named Payne, and a confidential adviser in Richard Brinsley 
 Sheridan, our celebrated but not very sensitive country- 
 man. Sheridan guessed at the character of Thurlow, the 
 Chancellor, and thought he might be bribed by the pro- 
 mise of the Chancellorship from the Prince, to undertake 
 to defeat in the Lords whatever his colleague, Pitt, might 
 propose in the Commons, by way of limitation on the powers 
 of the prospective Regent. Sheridan was the undignified ne- 
 gotiator ; the Lord High Chancellor of England took the 
 bribe, and promised to be as perfidious to Pitt as the Prince 
 could desire. It appears that Thurlow, against all good faith 
 and notions of honour, used to steal round to the Prince's 
 apartments in Windsor, either before or after the Cabinet 
 Councils then held in the Palace, and there communicate 
 with the Prince as to their future plans and schemes. Pitt, for 
 a time, was deceived. Eventually, according to Lord Stanhope, 
 in his " Life of Pitt," and to Lord Campbell in his " Lives 
 of the Chancellors," the old fox, Thurlow, was detected by 
 his hat. On the occasion of a Cabinet Council at Windsor, 
 the Ministers were assembled to depart, but Thurlow was 
 detained for want of his hat. A brisk search was made. 
 At last, a page came running with the hat of the Chancellor 
 in his hand, saying aloud, " My Lord, I found your hat in 
 the closet of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales." The 
 brazen-faced Chancellor was confounded. The Ministers 
 heard what was said, and the hat so found opened the mind 
 of Pitt to the treachery of his colleague. Honesty is gene- 
 
150 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 rally an overmatch for roguery, as the result proved. Fox 
 was recalled from Italy, and was obliged to swallow the pill 
 Sheridan had ready for him respecting the Lord Chancellor. 
 " I do not remember," wrote Fox, " ever feeling so uneasy 
 about any political thing I did in my life." But he did it. 
 He saw what was right and approved, but he followed what 
 was wrong. " Video meliora probroque deteriora sequor" 
 Another lawyer, fully equal to Lord Thurlow in morals, 
 then appeared on the scene Lord Loughborough. He was 
 adviser of the Prince, and wished to be Chancellor. Disap- 
 pointed in that expectation by Thurlow's treachery, he was 
 ready to clutch the next best thing to be got. We have his 
 precious Life, written by the late Chancellor of England, 
 Lord Campbell, who has taken infinite pains to expose the 
 frailties of his predecessors (his own Life has not yet been 
 written) ; and the fact appears, astonishing though it be, that 
 this man, Lord Loughborough, drew up a paper, in his own 
 handwriting, suggesting that the Prince of Wales, as next 
 heir, might and ought to seize the Regency, without any 
 authority from Parliament whatever. Fox would not listen 
 to this device, or at least would not act on it ; though he 
 would argue that the right of the Prince was indefeasible, and 
 not to be fettered by Parliament. So Lord Loughborough's 
 treason did not take. His design, somehow, was discovered 
 by Pitt's Ministry. I suppose the treasonable scheme was 
 found out by the smell of the paper on which it was written ; 
 for I have remarked treasonable documents have an unplea- 
 sant smell. The Ministers were resolved, if Lord Lough- 
 borough's project was propounded, immediately to arrest him 
 for high treason, and consign him to the Tower, a resolution 
 of which I heartily approve ; because I think a Lord Chan- 
 cellor should be hanged as readily as any other criminal, if 
 he deserved it. His wig ought not to save his head, if 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 151 
 
 guilty ; and if this noble and learned Lord really harboured 
 the guilty design imputed to him, and had dared to execute 
 it, the Parliament would have shrunk from its duty, if it had 
 not impeached him. 
 
 The English Parliament, at this strange and eventful 
 crisis, was to meet on the 4th December, 1788. Its pro- 
 ceedings must be studied with attention by any one who 
 desires to comprehend the policy of the Irish Parliament, 
 and the behaviour of Irish statesmen. When we trace the 
 life and death of a remarkable personage, we naturally desire 
 to ascertain when he caught his mortal disease, how long he 
 lingered, and when he died. We behold the Irish Parlia- 
 ment, at this memorable epoch, apparently in full possession 
 of life and health. We are engaged on a close inquiry into 
 the causes from which it caught the consumption of which it 
 painfully lingered, and after long suffering and severe con- 
 vulsions, died in the year 1800, receiving a high character 
 and respectable interment. 
 
 A great constitutional question arose when the unsound- 
 ness of mind of the King was ascertained. The throne 
 was not vacant ; the King was living ; and his political 
 capacity was complete ; but his bodily health affected his 
 mind, and in consequence he was incapacitated from the 
 active discharge of the duties belonging to the Sovereign 
 of England. He had not abdicated he was not civilly 
 dead, but might fairly be expected to recover his reason, 
 and resume his royal power. In the interval, who was to 
 exercise the sovereign authority, discharge the functions 
 of royalty, and govern the kingdom? In the next place, 
 with what limitations, restrictions, and subject to what con- 
 ditions, was the individual who was to be substitute for a 
 king, to be appointed? The Prince of Wales, afterwards 
 George IV., it should be remembered, was of full age, and 
 
152 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 - heir apparent to the crown. The precise case had not before 
 arisen in our history. There was an instance, in the reign of 
 Henry VI., where the exercise of royalty had been inter- 
 rupted by severe illness ; but the heir apparent was not of 
 full age. Parliament, in that instance, decided upon the 
 person and power of the Regent ; and even when looking 
 forward to the majority of the heir apparent, and to his then 
 becoming Regent, they did not grant to him, as such, the full 
 power of sovereignty; proving, by the limitations they im- 
 posed, that they did not allow he had any absolute right to 
 be deputy king. The theory of Mr. Pitt was, that the Prince 
 of Wales had no absolute right, while his father lived the 
 crown being entire and the monarchy full to be appointed 
 Regent at all ; that it was for the wisdom of Parliament, 
 which at the Revolution had called William to the throne, 
 when James II. had abdicated, to decide what person was to 
 be Regent, and with what power and limitations he was, in 
 the meanwhile, to exercise the royal functions which func- 
 tions were to be resumed by the rightful monarch, upon the 
 recovery of his bodily and mental health. The Prince of 
 Wales had flung himself into the arms of the Whig chiefs ; 
 he disliked Pitt cherished Fox, Sheridan, Burke, and their 
 friends; and a brilliant Council they formed around the 
 Prince, through whom they naturally looked forward to rule 
 the empire. Their object was to have the Prince made 
 Regent, as if the King were dead, and to have everything 
 their own way. Pitt was for his King, for the laws, the 
 constitution, and the liberties of England. The memorable 
 debate began. Fox, unluckily for his fame as a statesman, 
 and his common sense as an Englishman, contended that the 
 Prince of Wales had as clear a right to assume the reins of 
 government (as a daring lawyer had proposed), and exercise 
 the powers of sovereignty, during the illness and incapacity 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 153 
 
 of the King, as if his Majesty had undergone a natural 
 demise. I may venture to remark, that doctrine more 
 unfounded in principle, and more practically mischievous, was 
 never advanced by a public man. The well-known anecdote 
 has been often repeated, that when Pitt heard the Whig 
 Chief propounding these unconstitutional, and indeed slavish 
 doctrines, he slapped his thigh, and exclaimed to the friend 
 next him, u I'll unwhig the gentleman for the rest of his 
 life." 
 
 I have read the debate which ensued, with the liveliest 
 interest ; and although I am naturally prejudiced in favour 
 of my distinguished countrymen, Burke and Sheridan, and 
 although full of admiration for the eloquence of Fox ; yet I 
 am bound to declare, that never were public men so defeated 
 in argument, so overthrown in debate, so utterly routed, as 
 they were by the masterly sense and the majestic eloquence 
 of Pitt. His boldness also was consummate. He said, " To 
 assert a right in the Prince of Wales, or any one else, inde- 
 pendent of the two Houses of Parliament, was little less than 
 treason to the constitution." 
 
 The zeal of the Prince's friends to make him king before 
 his time, ruined his cause with the Parliament and the pub- 
 lic. Pitt got his committee investigated the precedents 
 examined doctors prepared his resolutions out-argued and 
 out-voted his opponents, although not a few of his followers 
 were willing to worship the rising sun. The resolutions were 
 framed on the rational principle that the Parliament was not 
 placing a king upon the throne, as the throne was full, but 
 providing for the temporary exercise of the supreme executive 
 power, guarding against any embarrassment in the resiimp- 
 tion of the regal authority, when God, in his providence, 
 should permit the rightful holder again to exercise it. By 
 one humane resolution, Queen Charlotte was to have exclu- 
 
 M 
 
154 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 sively the guardianship of the King's person ; and the whole 
 household of the King was put under her authority. By 
 another resolution, the Eegent was to exercise no power over 
 the personal property of the King. By another resolution, 
 the Eegent was to be prevented from granting patent places, 
 reversions, or annuities for life, except to judges and others ; 
 and then we have the most important resolution of all, 
 restraining the Regent from the power inherent in the crown 
 of granting peerages, except to any son of his Majesty being 
 twenty-one years of age. All these admirable resolutions 
 were debated in succession, with signal ability on the part of 
 Pitt, and opposed with misdirected energy and perverse logic 
 by Fox. Burke was vehement personal I am forced to say, 
 at times absurd, passionate, and wrong. Sheridan did every- 
 thing on the wrong side for a royal patron, who w r as never- 
 theless unmindful, in the hour of poverty, of his genius or 
 services. The result was, that Pitt carried all his resolutions 
 with triumphant majorities, and amidst the acclamations of 
 the people. It is a fact particularly to be remembered, that 
 Mr. Grattan had crossed over to England, and sat under the 
 gallery during these debates on the Regency. He heard and 
 saw everything, and was, no doubt, in constant correspondence 
 with Fox and his friends. There is printed, in the edition of 
 Pitt's Speeches the correspondence between the Prince of 
 Wales and Pitt, touching the foregoing resolutions. When 
 Pitt resolved upon his course, he submitted the intended 
 resolutions, with a respectful letter, to the Prince. The 
 Prince consigned the delicate task of replying to Pitt into 
 the hands of Burke. The paper drawn up by our coun- 
 tryman is a masterpiece of dignified composition. This 
 document should be carefully studied by the young men 
 who make the history of our politics a part of their educa- 
 tion. It was said of Oliver Cromwell, that he was found 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 155 
 
 equal to every station he was called on to fill in life. When 
 young, he looked carefully after his father's brewery ; when 
 elected a Member of Parliament, he sat on a committee with 
 Sir Mathew Hale, to amend the laws ; when he became a 
 captain, no officer drilled his men so well ; when he be- 
 came a general, he showed the genius of a great com- 
 mander ; and when he became a king, he proved that 
 he had kingly qualities. Now, when Burke was re- 
 quired to think, and to reason, and to write like a king, 
 and to such a statesman as Pitt, he found himself equal to 
 the task ; and had he never written another line of politics, 
 this admirable composition would have placed him amongst 
 the foremost of political writers, if not of public men. I 
 am glad to perceive Lord Stanhope does full justice to our 
 countryman on this point, pronouncing the Prince's reply 
 " to be one of the best state papers in the English language, 
 and which should enhance our admiration of the transcendent 
 powers of Burke." This, however, was Burke with the pen, 
 not Burke with the tongue. A glorious constitution that must 
 be, which could secure to the son of a respectable attorney 
 on Arran-quay, the lofty position of confidential adviser and 
 friend of the heir to the proud monarchy of England ! 
 
 Now, for a moment open the biography of Lord Thurlow, 
 composed by the late Chancellor, Lord Campbell. Thurlow 
 saw Pitt was likely to win, and from reading secret reports 
 of Dr. Willis, guessed that the King might recover; he, 
 therefore, felt he ought to lose no time in breaking his bar- 
 gain with Fox, and that he ought not to betray Pitt till he 
 could do it with advantage. But Thurlow felt he was under 
 an obligation to see Fox, and to beg of that eminent Whig to 
 let him off the bargain he had made, in his absence, with Jack 
 Payne and Sheridan. Fox afterwards described the scene 
 between himself and Thurlow as being highly amusing. The 
 
156 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 Chancellor got rid of the unpleasant part of the business 
 quickly was very candid and explicit ; then, having re- 
 lieved his mind, and clutched the Great Seal, as Pitt's col- 
 league, he changed the conversation ; and Fox, laughing, said 
 he never heard the old rogue talk better of France, of Spain, 
 of Warren Hastings, and tempora, mores! of Demos- 
 thenes and Cicero. I ought to mention, the Chancellor had one 
 useful quality possessed by Oliver Cromwell he could cry 
 whenever he liked. Accordingly, he resolved to cry in the 
 House of Lords, and to amaze the nation. When the King was 
 likely to recover, and the Regency question was under debate, 
 he spoke ; his affection for his sovereign overcame his nice and 
 tender feelings, and he burst into tears ; then exclaimed, that 
 their first duty was to preserve the rights of their sovereign 
 entire, so that when God should permit him to recover, he 
 would not be in a worse situation than before his illness; 
 then, in a fit of weeping enthusiasm, he ejaculated, " When 
 I forget my King, may my God forget me !" 
 
 Two remarkable, though very different, men were standing 
 at the bar, and looking at Thurlow, while he uttered these 
 words Wilkes, the demagogue, but a man of wit, and 
 Burke. Pitt, the Prime Minister, was on the steps of the 
 throne, as he was a Privy Councillor. Each of these three 
 knew the Chancellor to be a hypocrite, and two of the three 
 knew him to be a traitor to his sovereign, selfish and perfi- 
 dious. What Wilkes said, I cannot here repeat ; but when 
 Thurlow uttered the words, " When I forget my King, may 
 my God forget me," Burke was heard to say, " The very best 
 thing that could happen to you." Pitt could not endure the 
 hoary hypocrite, and quitted the House, exclaiming several 
 times, " Oh ! what a rascal !" 
 
 The English part of the drama was just finished ; every one 
 knew, that the moment the Prince became Regent, that is, 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 157 
 
 when the Bill founded upon the resolutions passed both 
 Houses, Pitt would be dismissed from his high office, and 
 Fox made Prime Minister. The merchants in the city pro- 
 posed a subscription, in order to evince their respect for Pitt, 
 who was known to be a poor man. Very speedily 100,000 
 was subscribed. Pitt announced, that no earthly inducement 
 would prevail on him to touch one shilling ; he instantly 
 gave orders to look out for his old law chambers ; he had, he 
 said, formerly got a few briefs ; he had not lost his taste for 
 the law, and his capacity was trained to perfection. At the 
 age of twenty-nine years, he was ready to lay down the 
 government of an empire, preserve his personal indepen- 
 dence, and try if he could not earn 300 a-year at the bar. 
 We have not many examples of the like lofty independence 
 of character. 
 
 We now turn our attention to Ireland. The English pro- 
 ceedings in Parliament were read and understood by the 
 leaders and members of the Irish Parliament. What was 
 their behaviour ? I have already reminded you, that by an 
 Act of King Henry VIII., whoever was King of England 
 must be King of Ireland ; that safe principle was confirmed 
 by subsequent statutes, and especially asserted at the Eevolu- 
 tion. But it is obvious, that the effect of this legislation, 
 designed to bind Ireland and England by the strong link 
 of the Crown, applied to a regency as well as to a monarchy. 
 The only bond of union between the two kingdoms, with se- 
 parate Parliaments, was a common Executive that the kingly 
 authority should be exactly the same in the two islands, and 
 lodged, with the same powers, in the same hands. Already 
 had the Irish Parliament differed with the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment on matters of marine and commercial law. Eeason, 
 policy, respect for the Statute Law, and for the Constitution, 
 and for their own political existence, all combined to impress 
 
158 THE LIFE AND 'DEATH OF 
 
 upon the minds of the Irish senators, that now their plain 
 course was, when the monarchy was at stake, to follow closely 
 the wise example of the British Legislature. I have read 
 the proceedings of the Irish Parliament in the published 
 debates, and the accounts given of the motives which influ- 
 enced the various members at that period, and I arise from 
 the perusal humiliated and disappointed. In the memoirs of 
 eminent individuals of the time, it is broadly asserted, that 
 many of our senators wished to recommend themselves to 
 the new King, believing that the Prince would not only soon 
 be Kegent, with great patronage at his disposal, but that in a 
 little time after, he would be King, with even more patronage 
 to share amongst craving patriots. No doubt, there may be 
 some truth in this statement ; but it would not explain the 
 conduct of such men as Lord Charlemont and Mr. Grattan, 
 and would have no application to them. They erred, I am 
 sure, honestly, but they mistook the law deserted their duty 
 to that Constitution which they boasted they had obtained 
 with efforts so vast provoked a quarrel with a powerful and 
 just minister defied the English Parliament, and proved to 
 all reasoning men, by their perverse policy, that there was no 
 middle course of government for Ireland under the British 
 Crown ; that there must, eventually, be either separation or 
 incorporation ; that Ireland must be either united to France 
 or united to England. 
 
 A meeting of Peers and others was held at Lord Charle- 
 mont's, 3rd February, 1789, when it was resolved to 
 offer the Eegency of Ireland to the Prince of Wales, uncon- 
 ditionally, as his right, as if his royal father were dead. 
 In the House of Commons it was sensibly asked by the 
 Ministers that a short postponement should be granted ; that 
 the English proceedings should be adhered to ; and that, 
 above all, they ought to wait until the Regency was formally 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 150 
 
 offered to the Prince of Wales in England, and by him for- 
 mally accepted, in order that, in obedience to the law and 
 Constitution, they might be sure the royal executive power 
 should be lodged in the hands of the same person to whom 
 they offered the Eegency of Ireland. To this reasonable 
 appeal, Mr. Grattan said, if they waited for a Report from 
 his Excellency, of the transactions which had occurred in 
 England, it would appear " as if the measure of another 
 assembly was to be the rule of their conduct." He had a 
 high veneration for such a respectable authority, but he 
 spurned the idea of dictation. " Ireland waits not for a 
 lesson from Britain, nor for a model whereby to frame her 
 proceedings." On the llth February, Mr. Grattan took the 
 matter wholly out of the hands of the Government, saying, 
 " We are clear that his Royal Highness must be Regent, but we 
 are also clear that he should be invested with the full regal 
 power plenitude of royal power." Now, the Irish orator must 
 have thus spoken in order directly to contradict and affront the 
 British Legislature. Mr. Fitzherbert observed, "That no 
 doubt his Royal Highness would be appointed Regent ; but, 
 in so doing, both nations should make as little difference as 
 possible in their proceedings, so as, above all things, to 
 preserve the unity of the Executive GoverrAnent." Of the like 
 sensible opinion was Mr. Parsons; but these men were not lis- 
 tened to. Mr. Grattan insisted that the idea of limitations was 
 an attack upon the King of Ireland. He would have no Bill, 
 but a simple address from the two Houses of Parliament, 
 which (he forgot to prove how or why) was to have all the 
 force and operation of law ; he would after obtaining by the 
 address a deputy King, with kingly powers put a stamp 
 upon his work, by a Bill to be passed, which was to declare 
 that the Regent, created by address, had " full royal autho- 
 rity." Mr. Grattan then proclaims his method is in all 
 
160 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 respects different from that pursued by the English Par- 
 liament, and boasts of his independence, and declares this to 
 be a proud day for Ireland. " I object to a declaration of 
 right in the Parliament, as a bad husbandry of popular 
 artillery. I object to it also as attempting to convey to 
 posterity historic evidence against the constitutional prin- 
 ciples of the second person in his Majesty's dominions, 
 without any ground or pretence whatever." Thus the 
 triumph of Mr. Grattan was complete, he having succeeded 
 in persuading the King-loving Parliament of Ireland to take 
 an exactly opposite course to that taken in England ; espe- 
 cially in rejecting the declaration of right in the Parliament 
 to supply the defect in the exercise of royalty, and in 
 rejecting the mode of procedure by Bill, founded on reso- 
 lutions asserting that right. 
 
 Mr. Connolly, a country gentleman of large possessions, 
 misled by Grattan, had proposed a long address to the 
 Prince, requesting him to accept the Eegency of Ireland, 
 with all royal power and authority of a king. Mr. Sheridan 
 approved, and declared that if they followed the advice of the 
 Attorney-General, they would adopt the despicable expedient 
 " of putting their understandings into the keeping of other 
 men," meaning th Parliament of England. The Attorney- 
 General, afterwards Lord Clare, delivered an unanswerable 
 argument to prove that the proposed mode of conferring the 
 Regency was equally contrary to the common and statute 
 law of the realm, and criminal in the extreme. He then 
 argued on the statute that the Crown of England and the 
 Crown of Ireland were indissolubly united, and said 
 " Gentlemen who risk breaking the connexion must make up 
 their minds to an union. God forbid I should ever see that 
 day." [He afterwards argued for the Union strongly.] " But, 
 if ever the day on which a separation shall be attempted 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 161 
 
 may come, I shall not hesitate to embrace a union, rather 
 than a separation." Words ominous of a union, and which 
 rose up in judgment ten years after, against the mistaken 
 politicians who ran tilt against the Parliament of England! 
 The Attorney- General read the Act repealing Poynings' Law, 
 which rendered it imperative that all Bills which passed in 
 Ireland should be certified into England, and should be 
 returned under the Great Seal of England. By this Act, the 
 Great Seal of England was rendered essentially necessary on 
 the passing of a law in Ireland. " It was nonsense to say, that 
 it is as King of Ireland he affixes the Great Seal of England 
 to Irish Acts." 
 
 " Let me now, for a moment suppose, that we, in the 
 dignity of our independence, appoint a Regent for Ireland, 
 he being a different person from the Regent of England a 
 case not impossible, if the gentlemen insist on our appointing 
 the Prince of Wales before it shall be known whether he will 
 accept the Regency of England ; and suppose we should go 
 farther, and desire our Regent of Ireland to give the Royal 
 assent to Bills, he would say * My good people of Ireland, 
 you have by your own law made the Great Seal of England 
 absolutely necessary to be affixed to each Bill before it 
 passes in Ireland. That Seal is in the hands of the 
 Chancellor of England, who is a very sturdy fellow. That 
 Chancellor is an officer under the Regent of England, and I 
 have no manner of control over him ; and so, my very good 
 people of Ireland, you had better apply to the Regent of 
 England, and request that he will order the Chancellor of 
 England to affix the Great Seal of England to your Bills ; 
 otherwise, my very good people of Ireland, I cannot pass 
 them.' " 
 
 Fitzgibbon further said " If the House shall, by force of a 
 mere address, upon the instant, and without any communica- 
 
162 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 tion with England, invest a Regent with powers undefined, 
 I do say, that when the moment of reflection comes, it will 
 startle the boldest adventurers in England." Then followed 
 words of wisdom and truth. " Certainly, if it be the scheme 
 to differ, in all imperial questions, from England, and if this 
 be abetted by men of great authority, they mean to drive us 
 to an union, and the method they take is certainly more 
 effectual to sweep away opposition, than if all the sluices of 
 corruption were opened together, and deluged the country's 
 representatives ; for it is certain, nothing less than the alter- 
 native of separation could ever force an union. The existence 
 of this country depended on the union which we are now about 
 to dissolve." Then this curious illustration was offered, to 
 show the peril of the procedure : " Suppose you chose a 
 Regent in the manner suggested, and that by any fatality a 
 different Regent should be appointed for Great Britain, he 
 may send a commission, under the Great Seal of England, 
 appointing a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and to that com- 
 mission your Regent is bound to pay obedience : if he 
 refuse, he stakes his head on the experiment." A pleasant 
 predicament for the Irish Regent to be placed in ! "I will 
 not," said the future Chancellor, " insult the Prince of Wales 
 by an address, which cannot confer on him the shadow of 
 royal power. What, then, are we to do? As soon as we 
 shall be certified that the Prince of Wales is invested with 
 the authority of Regent in England, pass an Act to invest 
 him with that authority in Ireland ; send this Act to the 
 Prince Regent in England ; he will then have the command 
 of the Great Seal in England, and return our Act, authentica- 
 ted according to law. The Lord Lieutenant may then, by 
 his command, give the Royal assent to it, and who shall say 
 that it is not the law of the land ? But suppose your address 
 should reach him before he is actually invested with the 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 163 
 
 royal power in England, in what situation do you put him ? 
 You call upon him, in defiance of two Acts of Parliament, 
 which make the Crowns inseparable, to dethrone his father." 
 I have seldom read in parliamentary history more judi- 
 cious reflections than the following : " There is a feature in 
 this proceeding which, independent of every other objection 
 to it, does, in my mind, make it highly reprehensible ; and 
 that is, that I consider it as a general appeal from the Par- 
 liament of England to thart of Ireland. If it is to be a point 
 of Irish dignity to differ with the Parliament of England, to 
 show our independence, I very much fear that sober men 
 in this country, who have estates to lose, will soon become 
 sick of independence. The fact is, that, constituted as it is, 
 the government of this country never can go on, unless we 
 follow Great Britain implicitly in all regulations of imperial 
 policy. Gentlemen who this night profess themselves advo- 
 cates for the independence of the Irish Crown, are advocates 
 of separation." Curran said : " The Attorney- General was 
 a solitary and unprevailing preacher ; that his language was 
 more like that of an Attorney -Particular, than an Attorney- 
 General; it was that kind of silly fatuity that, on any other 
 subject, he would leave to be answered by silence and con- 
 tempt." Mr. Grattan bravely said: "The connexion between 
 the countries in danger by our proceeding ! Vile common- 
 place antiquated cant folly presumption ! The Attorney- 
 General has, by the juggle of a Crown lawyer, restored the 
 supremacy of the British Parliament over this kingdom. He 
 has done this by playing tricks with signs and seals, and 
 confounding the stamp of authority with authority itself." 
 The celebrated orator was furious at the bare idea of his 
 Majesty legislating in Ireland as King of Great Britain ; and 
 the assent must be given, according to this gentleman, by 
 another person, the King of Ireland. He then said : " The 
 
164 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 perverse and desperate explanation would destroy the Irish 
 monarchy;" and appealed to the country gentlemen to be 
 roused and inflamed to indignation, in order to maintain the 
 rights of the King of Ireland, and the imperial authority 
 of the Irish Crown." 
 
 There is nothing more remarkable than the absence of all 
 argument against the Attorney-General's positions. They 
 abused him roundly, but did not confute him. Mr. Smith, 
 afterwards Master of the Rolls, cannot be excused for his 
 behaviour ; he was, on this occasion, for everything that 
 was wrong : he differed with England's Parliament was 
 for a mere address.. No Act of Parliament needed here 
 no restriction whatever on the young Prince ? He would 
 make a Regent of Ireland on the spot. True, he said, the 
 Attorney- General had proved that the Great Seal of England 
 must be affixed to every Bill transmitted from this country, 
 and returned thereto ? " But by whom is the Great Seal so 
 to be affixed?" asked this eminent individual. Why, "by 
 the King of Ireland, and by him alone." After this explo- 
 sion, they went instantly to work, and appointed a Committee 
 to draw up an address, offering Ireland to the Prince of 
 Wales on the spot " in the name of his Majesty, to admi- 
 nister all regal powers, jurisdictions, and prerogatives, to the 
 Crown and Government thereunto belonging." Now, it will 
 be observed by the candid inquirer, that no plausible answer 
 was suggested to the sense of the argument for acting on the 
 English precedent namely, that w T hen in the Acts of Henry 
 VIII. and of William and Mary, it was enacted that the 
 Crown of Ireland was knit to the Crown of England, by 
 " Crown" was meant the supreme executive power ; and as 
 the Crown of England must be the Crown of Ireland, so 
 must the supreme executive power, in the hands of a Regent, 
 be the very same also. But if there was a different measure 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 1G5 
 
 of power in the two kingdoms, there would be a different 
 power : the same person would not make the same power. 
 After the Committee had been appointed, a message comes 
 from the Lord Lieutenant, to acquaint the House that he 
 had received the resolutions agreed to by the British Parlia- 
 ment, on the subject of the Kegency, with the reply of his 
 Eoyal Highness thereto. The House seemed vexed at the 
 intrusion, and were about to refuse receiving them, at least 
 till they could contradict their effect, by getting forward their 
 fanciful address. However, the Speaker thought a message 
 from the Crown should be received, and the important docu- 
 ments were presented. Mr. Conolly then read the address to 
 the Prince ; whereupon Mr. W. Wellesley Pole (an honoured 
 name) said, he would give his decided dissent from this address. 
 He said, that by appointing the Prince of Wales Eegent of 
 Ireland without limitation, " pensions might be granted, 
 peerages might be bestowed, and places given in reversion in 
 this country, to designing men, who have wormed themselves 
 into the confidence of his Royal Highness." If this was not 
 eloquence, it was truth. The Irish measure was hastened, 
 according to Mr. W. Pole, for the express purpose of getting 
 hold of peerages, pensions, and places, then and since dearly 
 loved in Ireland. 
 
 Wellesley Pole knew his men ; and I am of opinion 
 he hit the nail on the head. In England, through the 
 virtue of the English Parliament, advised by Pitt, the 
 Eegent, chosen for a time, could grant no peerages, confer 
 no pensions, create no places ; in Ireland, the Parliament, 
 led by Grattan, proclaimed that to restrict the Eegent, in 
 conferring peerages, places, and pensions, would be a daring 
 attack upon their ancient rights and privileges. The Speaker, 
 at this crisis, put the question, that this address do stand as 
 the address of the House to his Eoyal Highness the Prince 
 
166 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 of Wales. Whereupon we have a parting word from the 
 Attorney- General. He said " he should, to the latest hour of 
 his life, consider this address as tending to dethrone the good 
 old King. He further said, that the Lord Chancellor, the 
 Chief Justice, several of the Judges, and the most eminent 
 lawyers, considered the address, as an instrument for con- 
 ferring regal power, to be of a treasonable nature." 
 
 The finale of this remarkable transaction is now to be nar- 
 rated. When the unconstitutional and rash address was 
 presented to the Lord Lieutenant, to be transmitted to the 
 Crown, he answered " Under the impressions that I feel of 
 my official duty, and of the oath which I have taken as Chief 
 Governor of Ireland, I am obliged to decline transmitting 
 this address into Great Britain." 
 
 The Commons, being staggered with this answer, adjourned 
 till next day, when Mr. Grattan moved that a competent 
 number of members, on behalf of the Irish Commons, be 
 appointed to present the said address to his Royal Highness. 
 Then the House (re-asserting their address), answered by a 
 resolution the reply of the Lord Lieutenant ; and then the 
 whole subject was debated over again. I invite the student 
 of constitutional history to read the elaborate speech of the 
 Attorney-General on this last occasion. It is drawn up with 
 great care. " If an address," he argued, " could transfer 
 royal powers to the Prince, so might it to Louis XVI., to the 
 Pope, or to the right honourable mover of this resolution. 
 Is there a man in England will tell the Prince this address 
 confers upon him a shadow of authority ? What shadow of 
 authority had the Irish Parliament to grant original regal 
 power by their address ? None. No English Minister, after 
 the decision of the British Parliament, would advise the 
 Prince to accept the rash proposal." 
 
 The Lords named as their Delegates the Duke of Leinster 
 and the Earl of Charlemont. 
 
THE HUSH PARLIAMENT. 1G7 
 
 The Commons named as their Delegates Mr. Conolly, the 
 Right Hon. John O'Neill, the Right Hon. W. B. Ponsonby, 
 and Mr. James Stewart. 
 
 Mr. Grattan then moved and carried a vote of censure on 
 the Lord Lieutenant, for having performed what he believed 
 to be his duty, in refusing to transmit the address to the 
 Prince of Wales, not yet Regent of England. 
 
 We have next the trip of pleasure to the Prince. His 
 urbanity was conspicuous ; his attentions to the Delegates 
 flattering. They were fascinated by the manners of such a 
 Prince as was rarely ever seen in England before, and he was 
 enraptured with the Delegates, the Parliament, and people of 
 Ireland. 
 
 The conduct of the Irish Parliament on this memorable 
 occasion never was forgotten by Pitt ; and I agree with the 
 biographer of Lord Charlemont, that the resolutions carried 
 on this occasion were a main cause of its annihilation. 
 
 The Irish Whigs of that day not the British Government, 
 not the corrupt influence of the Crown carried the Union; 
 for, instead of promoting concord, they rashly differed with 
 the Parliament of England on the most delicate and critical 
 matter the government of the empire and showed the 
 danger of trusting the Irish Parliament with independent 
 power, which they would not safely use. 
 
 The reflections of Lord Stanhope on this transaction are 
 just and temperate. He proves that the Regency in the two 
 countries was to be held by wholly different powers a result 
 no less inconvenient than ridiculous. From these calami- 
 ties we were providentially rescued by the recovery of the 
 King. The day he proceeded to St. Paul's, to return thanks to 
 God for his recovery, he was received by the acclamations of a 
 delighted people. We may learn, in the painful lesson thus 
 taught us by the "Regency debate, that brilliant talents do 
 
168 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 not insure political wisdom that splendid eloquence may 
 mislead, unless guided by discretion and informed by know- 
 ledge. The science of government is difficult of attainment. 
 The history of our Constitution and of our laws must be 
 deeply studied to be understood. The very best men may 
 go astray from lack of information, as well as from lack of 
 discretion. The leaders of the Irish House of Commons on 
 this memorable occasion did not reflect on the consequences 
 of their conduct. They were rash, hasty, obstinate, and 
 wrong ; yet, I have no doubt, they erred innocently. Had 
 they been asked, were they in favour of a Legislative Union 
 with England, they would have answered indignantly No. 
 They would have been surprised, had they been told that 
 their measures and their conduct would afford the best and 
 strongest argument for that Union which they abhorred. 
 
 In tracing the remaining portion of the life of the Irish 
 Parliament, we should never forget that the seeds of its dis- 
 solution were sown in the proceedings of Parliament touching 
 the appointment of Regent. It may be instructive to notice, 
 that a principal reason which animated the great Lord Somers, 
 in pressing the Union with Scotland, was, lest the Parliament 
 of Scotland should differ from the Parliament of England as 
 to the succession of the House of Hanover a fatality not 
 unlikely to happen. So vital, therefore, to the safety of the 
 empire is the question of the unity of the executive power. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 RECOVERY of George III. Its Effect upon Irish Politics State of 
 Irish Ministry, as described by Grattan Whig Club A corrupt 
 Minister Specimens of Parliamentary Oratory Curran Sir Boyle 
 Roche Bushe The Duke of Wellington Barrington Grattan 
 on the Gentry of Ireland, the Law, and the Church Panegyric 
 on Rev. Dr. Kirwan The Catholic Question History of the 
 Working of the Irish Parliament Debate on Education. 
 
 THE recovery of King George III. seems to have quieted, 
 in a degree, party animosities ; and the members of the Irish 
 Senate turned their attention for a time to questions of prac- 
 tical importance and utility. We may regret to find Coercion 
 Bills introduced in 1787, to put down tumultuous risings in. 
 the South ; and we may rejoice to read, in the same volume 
 of Irish Debates, a very interesting statement and proposition 
 from the Secretary Orde, upon Education in Ireland. One of 
 his proposals was to establish two great academies, imme- 
 diately preparatory to the University. He also conceived, 
 that the foundation of one other college might be beneficial. 
 He recommended that the parish schools mainly should be 
 improved and strengthened ; this has been mischievously de- 
 nied in modern times. The Session continued from 18th 
 January to 28th May. 
 
 The Session of 1788 was even shorter, lasting from 
 January to April. Thus, the spring, the summer, the 
 autumn were holidays for our fatigued senators. In 
 this year a Water Bill for Dublin was carried, and the 
 
 N 
 
170 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 thirsty citizens satisfied. Other useful measures were per- 
 fected. Disappointed and vexed, it is supposed, at their 
 failure to obtain a change of administration by the Re- 
 gency Bill, the system of managing Parliament by influence 
 was attacked by Mr. Grattan and his friends ; and I find, in 
 February, 1790, Mr. Grattan, fresh from his triumphs on the 
 Eegency affair, upon a motion to reduce the number of 
 Revenue Commissioners from nine to seven, thus describing 
 the state of Ireland it is a curious passage : 
 
 " Here you will stop to consider, and demand, why all 
 this why this attack on Ireland ? The minister will tell you 
 what caused, but I will tell you what contributed ; it was 
 impunity ! impunity ! You have no adequate responsibility 
 in Ireland, and politicians laugh at the sword of justice which 
 falls short of their heads, and only precipitates on their repu- 
 tation. Sir, this country has never yet exercised herself in 
 the way of vindictive justice. In the case of StraiFord, she 
 was but an humble assistant ; and yet, in this country, we 
 have had victims. The . aristocracy, at different times, has 
 been a victim ; the whole people of Ireland, for almost an 
 entire century, were a victim ; but ministers, in all the crimi- 
 nal successions, .... here is a chasm, a blank in your history. 
 Sir, you have in Ireland no axe; therefore, no good minister." 
 
 The remedy suggested for these evils was a sharp one, such 
 as cured all the complaints of the great Lord Straffbrd. 
 
 The formation of a Whig Club, to direct Parliamentary 
 action, was thus defended : 
 
 " Sir, had I any doubt before of the propriety of such an 
 institution, which I had not, the doubt, certainly, would have 
 vanished now ; for when a principle is openly advanced in 
 Parliament, justifying a project of corrupting the Legislature, 
 it remains, that all not yet caught by the pollution should 
 form a constitutional intercourse, for general protection, to 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 171 
 
 defend the Treasury against plunder the Legislature against 
 prostitution the liberty of the subject against dissolution 
 and the political morality of the island against a general pol 
 lution." 
 
 The flood of corruption must have poured somewhat sud- 
 denly upon the land since the Regency escapade. The 
 patriots wanted a Pension Bill, Place Bill, a Responsibility 
 Bill, &c. ; and on llth February, the necessity for stemming 
 the awful corruption of the times is put, by describing the 
 blackness of guilt which a corrupt minister causes. Grattan 
 said : " A corrupt minister issues forth from his cabinet like 
 Sin and Death ; and senates first wither from his footsteps ; 
 then he consumes the treasury; and then he corrupts the 
 capital, the different forms of constitutional life, and the 
 moral system ; and at last, the whole island is involved in 
 one capacious curse from shore to shore from the nadir to 
 the zenith." 
 
 The Parliament, if that statement be true, was not worth 
 preserving. Now, the charge against the Government, made 
 by Mr. Grattan, was very shocking : " We charge them 
 publicly, in face of this country, with making corrupt agree- 
 ments for the sale of peerages; for doing which we say 
 they are impeachable. We charge them with corrupt agree- 
 ments for the disposal of the money arising from the sale, 
 to purchase, for the servants at the Castle, seats in the as- 
 sembly of the people ; for doing which we say they are im- 
 peachable. We pronounce them to be public criminals." 
 
 The idea of soothing members, broached by the Attorney- 
 General, was cheering. In answer to Mr. Grattan, who, on 
 another occasion, complained that the great offices of the 
 state were given to absentees, he (the Attorney- General) 
 said, " that he should be extremely glad to see the whole pa- 
 tronage of the Crown in Ireland bestowed upon the members 
 
172 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 of both Houses of Parliament ; and he had no doubt, if 
 things went on a little longer in the train in which for some 
 time they had been, that object would be obtained." 
 
 There was a Mr. Johnston, who sat in Parliament at that 
 time, and who ventured to make a remark: "The public good 
 is every man's profession ; it is a common thread-bare cloak, 
 ready for the accommodation of every political traveller, and 
 is worn, with equal advatage, for the disguise or for the pro- 
 tection of the assassin of the Constitution, or the saviour of 
 the country." He then administered a bitter rebuke to Mr. 
 Grattan, who, on the Eegency Bill, had attacked the British 
 Parliament, and praised the Irish ; and now attacked the 
 Irish, and praised the British ; and certainly, the inconsis- 
 tency appears difficult to be reconciled. 
 
 A specimen of parliamentary debating in our Irish Senate 
 may be given from one of the many lively speeches of the 
 celebrated Curran, made on a motion for information why 
 the Boards of Stamps and Accounts had been divided. We 
 might be disposed to inquire whether the Senate deserved 
 the character it got ; if so, it must have been as versatile as 
 corrupt. Mr. Curran said he rose " with that deep concern, 
 and melancholy hesitation, which a man must feel who does 
 not know whether he is addressing an independent Parlia- 
 ment, the representatives of the people of Ireland, or whether 
 he is addressing the representatives of corruption !" 
 
 It was a charge against Government for opening the bat- 
 teries of corruption against the liberties of the people. 
 
 . " Sir," said he, " I bring forward an act of the meanest 
 administration that ever disgraced this country ; I bring it 
 forward as one of the threads by which, united by many 
 others of similar texture, the vermin of the meanest kind 
 
 have been able to tie down a body of strength and impor- 
 tance ; and let me not be supposed to rest it here when the 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 173 
 
 murderer left the mark of his bloody finger-hand upon the 
 wall, it was not the trace of one finger, but the whole im- 
 pression which convicted him. 
 
 " No man could imagine, no man would have suspected, 
 that a minister without talents could have worked your ruin ! 
 There is a pride in a great nation which fears not its destruc- 
 tion from a reptile ; yet there is more than fable in what we 
 are told of the Romans, that they guarded the Palladium of 
 their liberties, rather against the subtlety of a thief, than the 
 force of an invader. 
 
 " I rise in an assembly of three hundred persons, one hun- 
 dred of whom have places or pensions ; I rise in an assembly, 
 one-third of whom have their ears sealed against the com- 
 plaints of the people, and their eyes intently turned to their 
 own interest ; I rise before the whisperers of the Treasury 
 the bargainers and the runners of the Castle." 
 
 Sir Boyle Roche, who held a good place under the Govern- 
 ment, a man of wit, as he was called in that day, replied to 
 Curran in this fashion : 
 
 " If I had the advantage of being bred to the learned pro- 
 fession of the law, I should be the better enabled to follow 
 the honourable gentleman through the long windings of his 
 declamation ; by such means I should be blessed with the 
 gift of the gab, and could declaim for an hour or two on the 
 turning of a straw I could stamp and stare, and rend and 
 tear, and then look up to the gods and goddesses for approba- 
 tion. Then, in the violence of such declamation, I should 
 suppose myself standing at the head of my shop, at the Bar 
 of King's Bench, dealing out my scurrilities by the yard to 
 the highest bidder, my shop being well stored with all sorts 
 of masquerade dresses to suit all descriptions of men. The 
 Newgate criminal (if I was well paid for it) I would dress up 
 in the flowing robes of innocence. The innocent man (being 
 also well paid for it) I could cover up in a cloak of infamy, 
 
174 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 that should stick to him as close as his regimentals. If, 
 indeed, I was bred a pettifogger, or a Newgate solicitor, I 
 should be the better enabled to follow the honourable gentle- 
 man through the variety of matter which he has introduced 
 to the House." 
 
 We find that brilliant Irishman, the late Chief Justice 
 Bushe, amusingly ridicule the method pursued by Curran, 
 of condemning, before any trial, or even inquiry, public 
 men of corrupt practices; and this Mr. Bushe did by an 
 anecdote of the patriots of France and their use of the guil- 
 lotine. He said " The patriots of that country were highly 
 deserving of praise ; for they had discovered a most summary 
 method of getting rid of any offensive man : it was nothing 
 more than to accuse him of being an enemy to liberty. If the 
 man, conscious of his innocence, desired to be brought to 
 his trial, the answer was ready ' II est Jugef and he was 
 immediately carried a la Lanterne" He said, that one day, 
 hearing a great noise in the street, he ran down stairs to the 
 door, when he saw the largest number of patriots he had ever 
 seen assembled. A Frenchman, who had just come up, 
 asked another what was the matter. " Rien, Monsieur" 
 replied he, " mais un Marquis <on va pendre" " Bon, bon" 
 said the other, " but what has he done ?" " Je ne sais pas" 
 said the patriot. " This would be exactly our case were we 
 to condemn the acts of the Marquis of Buckingham without 
 any manner of evidence. Should any one demand of a mem- 
 ber of this House why he had done so, his answer must be 
 ' Je ne sais pas f "* 
 
 Mr. Michael Smith expressed, sarcastically, a hope which 
 he anticipated would, if realized, save further trouble " If 
 the present system continued to prevail, as the increase of 
 our trade had now made about one hundred places for mem- 
 
 * See Appendix A. 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 175 
 
 bers of Parliament, whenever it should come to increase in a 
 threefold degree, which he hoped was not impossible, there 
 would then be places conferred on three hundred members, 
 in which case there would be an end of all difference or even 
 debate in the House." 
 
 This motion failed, as did those of a similar nature, all 
 imputing corruption to the Government of the grossest kind. 
 Mr. Grattan now moved for a select committee to inquire into 
 the sale of peerages, for money to be laid out on procuring 
 the return of members to the House of Commons. In 
 his speech supporting this motion he asserted, " that the 
 only principle of government was the manufacture of cor- 
 ruption." He called the ministers " public malefactors." 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer replied, all this was " frothy 
 vanity," assertion without proof. It failed also. 
 
 The Parliament for 1791 sat from January to 5th May 
 only. On the 14th February, a committee was struck to try 
 the merits of the College election. One of the members 
 I find nominated was the Hon. Arthur Wellesley, afterwards 
 better known as the Duke of Wellington. Here we find the 
 great man member for Trim, quietly, like Cromwell, fulfilling 
 his ordinary duties ; but unlike Cromwell in after-life, inas- 
 much as he devoted his military genius to save an empire, not 
 to destroy a monarchy. I have no doubt that Sir Arthur 
 Wellesley decided the law points with the same sense of duty 
 which directed his conduct on every subsequent occasion 
 through a glorious career. 
 
 I find Mr. Curran complaining, on another occasion, when 
 he impeached members with corruption, that, though the 
 galleries were full, the House was thin. 
 
 Mr. Barrington gave the following amusing description of 
 Curran and his motions : 
 
 " It gives me pleasure to see the honourable mover of the 
 
17C THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 resolution exert his talents ; and, with all the singularity, all 
 the oddity, all the celebrity of the parent bird, step into the 
 pit, a gallant little phoenix, ready for action. It cheers me to 
 see his spirit to see him whet his spurs, and peck, and peck, 
 and peck, and bristle up his plumage, and nutter and take his 
 flight, and crow out < victory !' before the battle is begun. 
 But strip the little phoenix of his borrowed plumage pluck 
 away the covering of affected virtue which adorns his breast 
 and plain, honest, intelligent little Speculation stands con- 
 fessed before you. But, alas ! Sir, with his feathers he 
 would lose his fire, become feeble, totter : get a golden 
 perch for little Phoenix he must be supported. No more 
 will he whet his spurs, peck, or bristle up his plumage no ! 
 the golden perch will end the argument 1" 
 
 On the motion of Mr. Forbes, for reading his Bill for 
 effecting responsibility in the servants of the Crown a second 
 time, Grattan's description of the condition of the gentry of 
 Ireland, destitute of all control over the public money, is 
 highly figurative and beautiful whether strictly accurate, I 
 am not prepared to say. I give it as a choice specimen of 
 his style of oratory : 
 
 " What is their situation ? A set of men excluded in their 
 native land from power and control, privileged only to submit 
 their objections, without any authority to stop the crime they 
 complain of. This exclusion from all control in the disburse- 
 ments of money makes them a cypher. That control, exclu- 
 sively placed in the Lord Lieutenant's Secretary, his Excel- 
 lency, and certain English officers, makes them your masters, 
 and the Secretary on that bench your idol : it is no longer 
 control it is command. It is this command that makes him 
 more forcible than Demosthenes, and more persuasive than 
 Tally ; or, if the name of Solomon delight him more, Solomon 
 in all his glory, sitting among his state concubines. See at 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 177 
 
 the feet of a young lad the tributes of a degraded Court ; 
 see prostrate at his feet the wisdom of age and the flame of 
 youth the grey head of experience the country gentleman's 
 shattered mask, and the veteran Crown lawyer's prostituted 
 conscience and howling remorse. Even the virtues which this 
 man does not entirely destroy, he disgraces. He humbles 
 the energies of your mind, and contracts the exertions of 
 your talents. He not only humbles your virtues, he degrades 
 your vices, and gives them a poorer cast : so you lose the 
 high mettle which sometimes mixes with human infirmity, 
 dignifies the nature of vice, and makes ambition virtue. You 
 do not make this man a Colossus, but he makes you pigmies ; 
 and both lose your natural proportion ; he, his natural infe- 
 riority, and you, your natural superiority in your native land. 
 Thus you stand on your own hills, blasted by a shrub which 
 scalds your growth, and diminishes and dwarfs what else 
 might become a tree of the forest, and make the realm illus- 
 trious." 
 
 In 1792 we have two subjects prominently before our 
 eyes the state of Ireland the state of Europe. We find 
 Mr. Grattan beginning the Session (which commenced 19th 
 January, and ended 18th April) with a vehement denuncia- 
 tion of the system of Parliamentary corruption, by which the 
 country was governed : " A trade iu Parliament, whereby 
 the King's will is absolute ; his will is dignified by both 
 Houses of Parliament, who are as much an instrument in 
 his hands, as a bayonet in the hands of a regiment." For a 
 gross affront to the members of the Irish House of Commons, 
 nothing comparable to the succeeding sentence was ever 
 uttered : " Suppose General Washington to ring his bell, 
 and order his servants out of livery to take their seats in 
 Congress you can supply this instance" 
 
 We have then brought before us, in words calculated 
 
178 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 to create admiration, terror, and disgust, the state of the 
 Law and of the Church : 
 
 " A respect for the Constitution is fatal to the pretensions 
 of a lawyer : a disregard for liberty is a qualification suffi- 
 cient for him. The barrister is brought from his studies in 
 the Hall, to his compliances in the Senate. In vain shall 
 the Minister assume a regard for the common law, to apolo- 
 gize for his contempt for the Constitution, when he under- 
 mines the law as well as that Constitution, by making a 
 corrupt political traffic of both, and mortgages the seats of 
 justice, to reward Parliamentary compliance. It is worse 
 than an illegal opinion, or an attack on corporate rights ; it 
 is sowing the seeds of illegality in the very bed of justice." 
 
 So much for the Law : now for the Church. The invective 
 had a peculiar reference to a high dignitary of our Church : 
 
 " What is the case of Doctor Kirwan ? That man pre- 
 ferred this country and our religion, and brought to both a 
 genius superior to what he found in either. He called forth 
 the latent virtues of the human heait, and taught men to 
 discover in themselves a mine of charity, of which the pro- 
 prietors had been unconscious. In feeding the lamp of 
 charity, he had almost exhausted the lamp of life. He 
 comes to interrupt the repose of the pulpit, and shakes one 
 world with the thunder of the other. The preacher's desk 
 becomes a throne of light : around him a train, not such as 
 crouch and swagger at the levees of princes (horse, foot, and 
 dragoons), but that wherewith a great genius peoples his 
 own state charity in action, and vice in humiliation 
 vanity, arrogance, and pride, appalled by the rebuke of the 
 preacher, and cheated for a moment of their native improbity. 
 What reward ? St. Nicholas Within or St. Nicholas Without. 
 The curse of Swift is upon him to have been born an Irish- 
 mail to have possessed a genius and to have used his 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 179 
 
 talents for tlie good of his country. Had this man, instead 
 .of being the brightest of preachers, been the dullest of 
 lawyers had he added to dulness, venality had he aggra- 
 vated the crime of venality, and sold his vote, he had been 
 a Judge or, had he been born a blockhead, bred a slave, 
 and trained up in a great English family, and handed over 
 as a household circumstance to the Irish Viceroy, he would 
 have been an Irish Bishop and an Irish Peer, with a great 
 patronage, perhaps a borough, and had returned members to 
 vote against Ireland ; and the Irish parochial clergy must 
 have adored his stupidity, and deified his dulness. But 
 under the present system, Ireland is not the element in 
 which a native genius can rise, unless he sells that genius to 
 the Court, and atones, by the apostacy of his conduct, for 
 the crime of his nativity. Unde derivata hcec clades ? In 
 five words I will tell you the trade of Parliament." 
 
 The invective is splendid, but awful. If an Irish Parlia- 
 ment could not prevent such detestable corruption, of what 
 avail was it in the country? The statement of facts, how- 
 ever, was denied, and it was asserted these general accusations 
 were but repetitions of old stories, calculated to poison the 
 public mind. Nothing resulted from the grand oration. 
 
 We have now the Catholic Question beginning to appear 
 prominently in Parliament. 
 
 Two documents will put the reader in possession of the 
 views then entertained by public men on this agitating 
 subject : the speech of Sir Hercules Langrishe, on 26th 
 January, 1702, proposing certain just and reasonable con- 
 cessions ; and the paper drawn up by the famous Edmund 
 Burke, on the Condition of the Roman Catholics, published iii 
 the 4th volume of his Correspondence, by Earl Fitzwilliam. 
 paper is partly historical, partly political. The first 
 proposition laid down is, that as it would be difficult for the 
 
180 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 Irish to induce Pitt and the English to assent to a Union, it 
 would be wise in them, by moderate concessions, to reconcile 
 the Roman Catholics to the State. 
 
 The Bill of Langrishe, opening up the professions, giving 
 freedom of education, and allowing marriages with Protest- 
 ants, and containing other concessions, was favourably 
 received. But soon after, a petition having been presented 
 by Mr. O'Neill, from Belfast, in favour of removing all penal 
 laws on the Roman Catholics, a debate arose as to whether 
 the petition should be received, when Sir Boyle Roche said 
 " Now the question is, whether we will receive the insidious 
 petition of a turbulent, disorderly set of people, whom no 
 king can govern, or no god please or whether we shall 
 treat it with its merited contempt ? For my part, I call upon 
 you to dispose of it as it deserves, by tossing it over the bar, 
 and kicking it into the lobby ; and I am determined to 
 divide the House upon it, even if I should stand alone in so 
 just a cause." The petition, however, was received. The 
 subsequent debates on this delicate subject, are highly credit- 
 able to the good feeling and wisdom of the Protestants who 
 alone formed the assembly. Laws, severe in their spirit, were 
 justified, on the only ground on which they could be justified 
 on the right of self-defence. It was admitted they should 
 be relaxed according as the necessity for their enactment 
 ceased. The interesting question, of the right of Roman 
 Catholics to the franchise, was debated, and Mr. Grattan 
 gave an historical account of the possession of it, which may 
 be useful to study. 
 
 The subject of Education, next touched on, draws attention 
 to the manner in which the Irish Parliament dealt with this 
 momentous subject. Touching education, Mr. Ponsonby 
 thought it might be advisable to found another college, anu 
 to annex it to the University of Dublin, in order that the 
 
THE HUSH PARLIAMENT. 181 
 
 laity and clergy of the Roman Catholic community might 
 receive a liberal education in common. All agreed in the 
 wisdom of opening the Dublin University, for the purpose of 
 education, to Roman Catholics. There was published, at the 
 end of 1792, a curious paper, by the son of Edmund Burke, 
 Richard Burke, who acted as agent to the Roman Catholics, 
 and which paper is contained in the published correspondence 
 of his father. Richard Burke writes : 
 
 " The Government of Ireland conducted itself on the 
 falsest principles, and particularly acted towards the Catho- 
 lics with perfidiousness, injustice, and rancour." The motive 
 he charges to be a vile one, namely, " to get up a Protestant 
 party, and make themselves political undertakers for the 
 government of the country." 
 
 The Parliament of 1793 sat from January to August, 
 1793. The Duke of Wellington spoke briefly, but suitably, 
 in seconding the address. The disturbers of the peace were 
 to be repressed. The loyal Roman Catholics were to be 
 conciliated. Accordingly, the Emancipation Bill of 1793 was 
 carried, which, amongst many large concessions, conferred 
 the right of voting on the forty- shilling freeholders of the 
 Roman Catholic persuasion. This transaction has been often 
 canvassed and questioned. If the object proposed was to 
 conciliate loyalty, property, and intelligence, why not begin 
 when there were most of these valuable qualities to be found, 
 and not when there was least ? This was complete emanci- 
 pation to the lowest class, for they could not expect to sit in 
 Parliament ; but it was not emancipation to the nobility and 
 landed gentry of the Roman Catholic persuasion. The 
 grievance on them was now, that whilst the least intelligent 
 of their class (thousands of whom could not speak the 
 "^English language, and had not a shirt to their backs) could 
 elect, the most intelligent could not be elected. Why not 
 
182 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 begin at the very opposite end of the social scale ; admit the 
 few nobles ; then the next class, and so attach property and 
 intelligence to the State, before numbers alone were admitted ? 
 But why admit such a number of forty- shilling freeholders, as 
 to exceed all other classes of voters ? I shrewdly suspect, one 
 reason was, because the landlords thought they could easily 
 control them, and make the ignorant masses subservient to 
 their ambition, not foreseeing that the day might come, when 
 another and superior influence might turn the forty-shilling 
 voters against the very power by whom they were created. 
 Again : how absurd the analogy attempted between these 
 voters and the old forty- shilling electors of the time of Henry 
 VI. The latter had an estate of the value of forty shillings 
 a year of their time, which was nearer to 30 or 40 of the 
 money of our day, than forty shillings. 
 
 The principle of our Constitution never had been demo- 
 cracy, but that none should vote who had not capacity and suf- 
 ficient property to enable them to exercise an independent will. 
 The political problem always must be, how to find a sufficiently 
 large class of electors possessing those essential qualities. 
 
 Never in the well-ordered, constitutional monarchy of 
 England was it allowed that ignorance should rule over 
 knoAvledge poverty over wealth idleness over industry : 
 therefore, on every ground of policy, and principle, and 
 expediency, the decision of the Irish Parliament was unwise ; 
 and, it will be speedily seen, although large in its operation, 
 did not give contentment, nor produce peace. 
 
 I remark, in a statesmanlike speech of Sir L. Parsons, 
 wherein he revises the past history of our country with im- 
 partiality and candour, he argues that the elective franchise 
 ought not to be imparted to any Roman Catholic who hath not 
 a freehold property of 20 per annum. His review of the ' 
 state of the lower classes is instructive ; and, having stated their 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 183 
 
 numbers, ignorance, and intense prejudices, he says " They 
 would be the majority of the electors, controlling you, over- 
 whelming you, resisting, and irresistible. I cannot conceive 
 a frenzy much greater than this : allow them every virtue 
 that elevates man, still this is a trial that no body of men, 
 that are or ever were, should be put to. I think as well of 
 the Catholics as I do of any body of men in this country or 
 any other ; but still I would not trust so much to any body 
 of men in such circumstances. I consider the Catholics as 
 men ; and they must be more than men, if, in such a situa- 
 tion, they could be safely intrusted. 
 
 "In this case nothing should be left to uncertainty ; because 
 upon this everything depends. Suppose you gave the infe- 
 rior Catholics the franchise, and that they should meet in all 
 their parishes to determine on the exercise of it as they 
 likely did to determine on the attainment of it and that 
 they should nominate, in their chapel, their representatives to 
 the Parliament, as they lately did their delegates to the Con- 
 vention, what would there be to stop them ? The power of 
 their landlords might do much ; but the power of religion 
 might do much more. How easily might they be persuaded 
 that their temporal as well as their eternal felicity depended 
 upon their uniting together in the exercise of the franchise. 
 I do not say that all this would follow ; but I say, that all 
 this, and more, might follow ; and therefore, that we should 
 not wantonly trifle with it." 
 
 This clear-headed senator then argues, if parliamentary 
 reform be superadded to this franchise, and the borough 
 representatives be thrown into the counties, the great majority 
 of the House of Commons must be Catholics ; and " all this, 
 assuming the Catholics not to be a jot more prejudiced 
 *mgaiiist you, than you must admit the Protestants to be 
 against them." He proves, with logic irresistible, that they 
 
184 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 would naturally combine to remove all remaining restrictions; 
 that it would be no security to say they could control Roman 
 Catholics, because they would easily find nominal Protestants 
 to elect, equally fit for their purpose. The temperate reason- 
 ing of Sir L. Parsons made a deep impression on my mind, 
 although it appears to have made little on " the ponderous 
 fox-hunters" he addressed. 
 
 " I do not," said he, " expect of the Irish House of Com- 
 mons that it should be wiser than any assembly in the world ; 
 but I only implore it, that it may not immortalize itself for its 
 folly." 
 
 Our wise senator was himself in favour of gaining over all 
 the intelligent Roman Catholics of property by liberal con- 
 cessions ; but he argued, the misfortune was, that the Chief 
 Secretary, who framed the Bill, did not understand the inter- 
 nal state of the country, and was ignorant of its interests. 
 Sir Lawrence would admit the first class of Catholics to Par- 
 liament, the middle class to vote, and would not admit to the 
 franchise what he called " a multitudinous rabble." " Never 
 was a measure, pretending to be a great one, more narrowly 
 conceived than the present Bill. It courts the Catholic 
 rabble, and insults the Catholic gentry. It gives power to 
 those who are ignorant, and therefore dangerous ; and with- 
 holds it from those who are enlightened, and therefore safe." 
 
 This is judicious advice : 
 
 " I would, therefore, begin by giving but a limited fran- 
 chise to the Catholics, and by making but a moderate reform, 
 and would have these measures united. A sudden communi- 
 cation of power to a great body of people is never wise ; 
 changes in an ancient constitution ought to be gradual." 
 
 I have seldom read or heard a more convincing speech 
 than this, delivered by an Irish country gentleman, tlv; 
 ancestor of the distinguished man who is now Chancellor ot 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 185 
 
 the University. The Bill, however, as introduced, passed 
 separate from the moderate Reform Bill which was left open 
 for future agitation. I may observe, that the Speaker said 
 Mr. Grattan was mistaken in asserting that the Roman 
 Catholics had voted in the reign of George II. ; for, he con- 
 tended, after every search he could make, they had never 
 exercised the right of voting since the Revolution. Mr. 
 Grattan replied, that their exclusion was only by a resolution 
 of the House of Commons, and that there was no law ex- 
 cluding them till 19th George II. 
 
 Touching the actual composition of the Irish House of Com- 
 mons, Mr. Grattan stated, that of three hundred members, 
 above two hundred were returned by individuals ; from forty 
 to forty-five, by ten persons ; that several of the boroughs had 
 no resident electors at all ; some of them had but one ; and 
 that, on the whole, two-thirds of the representatives of the 
 House of Commons were returned by less than one hundred 
 persons. 
 
 In dismissing the Parliamentary history of that year, I 
 should add, that the Government introduced a Bill, placing 
 the money voted entirely under the control of the Parliament ; 
 an Appropriation Bill ; also a Bill excluding a list of place- 
 men from sitting in the House, vacating the seat of any 
 member who got a place, and reducing the Irish pension list 
 to what was then thought the moderate figure of 80,000 
 a year. This was declared to be done to complete the Irish 
 Constitution, and to assimilate it perfectly to that of Great 
 Britain : and so, having passed these and many other good 
 laws, and with general exultation at all the popular conces- 
 sions granted, the Irish Parliament in August suspended their 
 labours, and left the nation to enjoy its newly acquired 
 "liberty. 
 
 The Parliamentary debates of the years 1794, 1795, and 
 
 o 
 
186 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 1796, may be briefly disposed of. In truth, Parliamentary 
 proceedings had lost their interest, in presence of the dis- 
 turbances which agitated Ireland and convulsed Europe. 
 
 In 1794, the Parliament met on January 21st, and ended 
 on 25th March a Session of two months. It may be 
 noticed for a Eeform Bill, introduced by Mr. Ponsonby, 
 which proposed to add a member to each county and large 
 city, and extend the limit of boroughs to a line of twenty-four 
 miles, within which the 10 freeholders were to vote. One 
 Member said, as they had nothing to do, they might as well 
 debate Reform ; another said, the very difficult problem was, 
 " how you were most likely to extract out of the mass of the 
 people three hundred honest and capable representatives, 
 who shall know what is best for the people, and will do it." 
 
 I remark, that sensible man, Sir L. Parsons, said : u A 
 majority of this House never go back to their constituents ; 
 they do not know them ; they do not live amongst them ; 
 many of them never saw them no, not even the places they 
 represent. What a mockery is this of representation ! Do 
 you think, that in this enlightened age, such an imposture 
 can long continue? Impossible." I quite agree with the 
 worthy baronet, and I am only surprised it continued so 
 long. 
 
 Mr. Grattan, for his purposes, gave the following history 
 of the working of our noble old Parliament : " Of the last 
 century, nearly thirty-five years, at different intervals, passed 
 without a Parliament; from 1585 to 1612 that is, twenty- 
 seven years no Parliament ; from 1615 to 1634 nineteen 
 y ears no- Parliament ; from 1648 to 1661 thirteen years 
 no Parliament; from 1666 to 1692 that is, twenty-six years 
 no Parliament, Before the Revolution, it thus appears, that 
 with the rights and the name, Ireland had not the possessism 
 of a Parliamentary Constitution ; and it will appear, since the 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 187 
 
 Revolution, she had no constitutional Parliament. From 1629 
 to 1763 nearly seventy years almost two-thirds of a century 
 the tenure was during the life of the King. Since the time 
 of limitation of the term, there have been two reforms in the 
 essence of Parliament, but reforms which I shall distinguish 
 from the constitutional reform desired in the Bill, by the 
 appellation of 4 Anti-reforms.' " 
 
 It appears, from this candid but curious statement, that 
 the more diligently our Irish senators laboured to improve 
 our line old Irish Parliament, the worse they made it. 
 
 An account of the state of the country as given by the 
 Attorney-General, in moving for leave to introduce a Bill to 
 enlarge the powers of the magistrates, is dreadful. It does 
 not appear that the extension of the franchise, or the Place 
 Bill, or Pension Bill, or Emancipation Bill, had done theii 
 work. The chief business of this brief session was to 
 strengthen the executive ; to repress outrage and insurrec- 
 tion*; to improve the Quarter Sessions and Civil Bill Juris- 
 diction a measure of real practical utility. 
 
 The session for 1795 began 22nd January, and ended 5th 
 June. It was the administration of Lord Fitzwilliam, which 
 was brief and exciting. 
 
 The session for 1796 began 21st January, and ended 15th 
 April. Upon a Bill to indemnify magistrates for acting in 
 the repression of disturbances, it was said by Mr. Maxwell 
 " That since exertion on the part of the magistrates of the 
 country, in putting down defenderism, had ceased, nothing 
 was heard of then but conspiracy, burglary, plunder, and 
 massacre." 
 
 The most interesting discussion in the volume is that upon 
 Education. A committee had sat upon that subject for three 
 years, and produced a lengthy report. On the 29th April, 
 1795, Mr. Grattan presented a petition of his Majesty's 
 
188 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 Catholic subjects of Ireland, with regard to the education 
 of those professing the Koman Catholic religion. It is elabo- 
 rately drawn, wisely framed, temperately expressed. I can- 
 not conceive a more instructive public document, because the 
 subject of education is as prominent now as it was then ; and 
 what, let us inquire, were then the opinions of the Koman 
 Catholic laity on the subject of the better education of the 
 members of their religion and Church ? 
 
 " That as the general end of education is the full and free 
 development of the human faculties, and the formation of a 
 virtuous character, the management of it should be as little 
 shackled as possible, inasmuch as experience has ascertained 
 that, as well in the Universities of Great Britain and Ireland 
 as of other countries, the improvement of the mind and the 
 extension of science are great only in proportion to their 
 exemption from any influence or restraint. 
 
 " That the Petitioners having, in common with the rest of 
 their brethren, the Catholics of Ireland, received, as one of 
 the most important and acceptable benefits bestowed on them 
 by his Majesty and the Legislature, the permission of having 
 their youth educated along with the Protestant youth of the 
 kingdom in the University of Dublin ; and experience having 
 fully demonstrated the wisdom and utility of that permission, 
 Petitioners see, with deep concern, the principles of separa- 
 tion and exclusion, they hoped removed for ever, now likely 
 to be re-enacted and revived." 
 
 This was pointed at the foundation of a separate college 
 for the education of their communion, lay or clerical. The 
 Parliament failed in their apprehension of the conclusive rea- 
 soning put forward in this admirable petition. Mr. Grattan 
 himself moved for a grant to establish a Eoman Catholic 
 College, and succeeded in his object. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 How the Irish Parliament died The Crown Solicitor's Office con- 
 tains facts for history Period of the Eebellion of 1798 Dr. Dren- 
 nan and Archibald H. Rowan Case of Rev. Wm. Jackson His 
 Trial, and suicidal Death Arthur O'Connor and O'Coigly Scene 
 at O'Connor's Trial Wolfe Tone Object of the Conspirators 
 State of Ireland immediately before the Union Report of Secret 
 Committee The Last Night of the Irish Parliament Separation 
 or Incorporation the Alternatives Opinion of George IV., that the 
 Irish Parliament should have secured better terms Grattan's final 
 Oration in the Irish House Burro wes' Vindication of Grattan 
 Subsequent Career of Irish Senators Ned Lysaght's Satire on 
 condition to which Dublin would be reduced by the Union 
 Duty of Good Statesmen and True Citizens Conclusion. 
 
 THE startling events occurring in the world at this period 
 deprived the later proceedings of the Irish Parliament of much 
 of their interest. We have endeavoured to trace its birth, 
 life, and subsequent existence ; and now we invite you to 
 consider how it happened that it died. If a political writer 
 were to ask me, where shall I go for facts I mean real 
 facts on which to write the history of Ireland at this epoch, 
 to whom would I send him ? to what apostle of truth ? 
 to what repertory of curious matter ? I would send him to 
 the late Crown Solicitor, Mr. Kemmis ; and I will undertake 
 to say, if he examined all the records treasured up in his 
 official storehouse, he would find a mass of political informa- 
 tion as instructive as was ever laid before the eyes of an in- 
 q\4rer after truth, and as much slumbring treason as, if igni- 
 ted, would blow up fifty Parliaments and fifty Constitutions. 
 
190 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 You must, if you would s udy history, open the books of the 
 State Trials. While the gentlemen of the House of Commons 
 were talking to each other innocently of emancipation and of 
 reform, and such trifles, Archibald Hamilton Rowan and Dr. 
 Drennan, the poet, from Belfast, were plotting treason. You 
 will find that these two Protestant gentlemen were early 
 engaged in the revolutionary schemes of those times. It is 
 a mistake to suppose that treason and sedition were practised 
 by one religious class exclusively. Why, some of the most 
 determined Irish traitors have been Protestants, and those 
 were the men who were nearest doing the business. When 
 I say ; doing the business,' I mean separating Ireland from 
 England, and setting up for themselves. Archibald Hamilton 
 Rowan and Dr. Drennan, at the time of the Convention, 
 when the Attorney-General was saying, " You ought not to 
 come down to the House of Commons as an armed body/' 
 boldly issued their proclamation, beginning thus " Citizens, 
 to arms." Accordingly, they were laid hold of by the Attor- 
 ney-General. Rowan was lodged in Newgate. Drennan was 
 acquitted honourably acquitted on a point of law. Rowan 
 got a very high character at the time that he contrived the 
 overthrow of the King, the Parliament, and the Constitution. 
 I have now to notice the only instance that I can find 
 of a Protestant clergyman of the Church of England being a 
 traitor, and he was one of the genuine stamp ; but I am not 
 sure he was a believer in the Christian religion. I allude to 
 the celebrated Jackson. Jackson was sent over to this 
 country, in 1796, from France, for the purpose of planning 
 an invasion of this 1 country by the French, and accomplishing 
 the overthrow of the English Government in Ireland. Un- 
 fortunately for himself, when he got to London he fell in 
 with an artful attorney, whose name was Cockayne. It was 
 a great mistake to commit himself to a comparative stranger. 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 191 
 
 Jackson brought his letters to Cockayne, to address to 
 numerous correspondents. Cockayne found his neck getting 
 a little uncomfortable, and said, " I don't comprehend this 
 man ; he writes to persons in Germany, in France, in Ire- 
 land, and seems afraid to direct his letters in his own hand- 
 writing. I must take care." So he watched, and suspected 
 Jackson was dabbling in treason. Now Cockayne was a 
 man of business ; so he waited on Mr. Pitt, and informed 
 him that he had in his keeping a gentleman whom he 
 suspected was an emissary of the French Directory, and 
 engaged in revolutionary designs. Pitt told him to 
 watch, and to continue the companion and fellow-traveller 
 of Jackson, until he could be disposed of. Jackson and 
 Cockayne came to Dublin. A hospitable Irishman in- 
 vited them to dinner ; a gentleman who was in the plot, but 
 did not wish to be found out, being of the party. This gen- 
 tleman was cautious in the presence of strangers. After din- 
 ner Cockayne seemed to be drowsy, retired to an arm-chair, 
 and affected to fall asleep. But the servant was a smart 
 Irishman ; and looking closely at the man in the arm-chair, 
 he saw Cockayne's eyes glistening through his fingers ; so he 
 touched his master, who followed him to the door he, having 
 heard the unpleasant fact, whispered it to his friend. The 
 subject of conversation was instantly changed to the weather ; 
 the wary gentleman retired soon after, and Cockayne lost his 
 prey. Jackson, of course betrayed by his attentive friend, 
 was soon afterwards arrested, and on his person was found a 
 most important paper upon the state of Ireland, written for 
 the information of the Directory in France. In this remark- 
 able document, the inhabitants were divided into three 
 classes : the Church Protestants, who were described to be in 
 favour of England ; the Dissenters, who were said to be 
 enlightened Republicans ; the bulk of the population, the 
 
192 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 Catholics, were stated to be in the lowest state of ignorance, 
 and ready for any change, because no change could make 
 them worse. The relative numbers of the different sects were 
 wholly misstated or misunderstood ; or else the condition of 
 things in this respect is much changed for the better. The 
 Dissenters were stated to be more numerous than the Church- 
 men, whereas now the Churchmen exceed in number all these 
 denominations of Irish Protestants. Jackson was tried, found 
 guilty of treason, but not sentenced to be executed. His 
 wife, on the morning that he was brought down to court to 
 receive sentence, visited him in prison, and gave him some 
 tea. While proceeding in a carriage, he was observed to put 
 his head out of the window, to be ghastly pale, and very sick. 
 Arrived in court, and in the dock, he beckoned to his counsel, 
 Curran, to whom he whispered, " We have deceived the 
 Senate." When required by the officer of the Court, he held 
 up his hand, but it fell feebly in a moment. The doctor was 
 sent for, and the Judge inquired, " Is the prisoner competent 
 to hear the judgment of the Court ?" The doctor replied, 
 " My Lord, he is dead !" Jackson had swallowed poison in 
 his tea : the Judge could not sentence him ; so his property 
 was saved for his family. The Sheriff did not know what to 
 do with the body of Jackson, and asked the distinguished 
 Judge what he would do with it ; but the Judge did not 
 know more than the Sheriff, and therefore said, with infinite 
 gravity, " Mr. Sheriff, you will do as in such cases is usual." 
 I ought next to notice Arthur O'Connor. He was a tall, 
 handsome, determined, and clever man. He proclaimed his 
 daring opinions in the House of Commons, and retired. Some 
 time afterwards, while travelling (I will not say for the 
 benefit of his health) in England, accompanied by a resolute 
 priest called O'Coigly, or Quoigley, he and his friend were 
 arrested at Margate, on a charge of high treason, and sent 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 193 
 
 for trial to Maidstone. At that trial O'Connor was defended 
 by the most eminent men at the English bar. On the trial 
 were exhibited, in perfection, generosity of disposition and 
 kindness of heart, and also good-nature and credulity, in Mr. 
 Fox, Mr. Sheridan, and the Eight Hon. Henry Grattan, who 
 testified and declared, that they never conversed with a man 
 whose constitutional principles were of such an orthodox 
 character as those of Arthur O'Connor. Arthur O'Connor 
 would have swept away Church, Crown, and State of Eng- 
 land without a moment's hesitation ; but his disposition was 
 peaceable, and character excellent ! He was, marvellous to 
 tell, acquitted. I heard the late Mr. Justice Torrens, who 
 was then a student at the Temple, and present at the trial, 
 describe the scene which ensued. Arthur O'Connor had a 
 numerous assembly of friends in the court-house; and they, 
 being apprehensive he would be arrested again, made ar- 
 rangements to hustle him out of court, in order that he 
 might escape. Being an athletic, supple man, after the 
 verdict of not guilty, he bounded over the dock ; the lights 
 were extinguished, and in the darkness and confusion there 
 was a scuffle and conflict. The officers of the law, how- 
 ever, prevailed, pommelled Lord Thanet, crushed the tumult, 
 and O'Connor was again thrust into the dock. The Judges, 
 who had left the Bench, returned, and asked composedly 
 what was the matter. The Sheriff said that the gentle- 
 man was from Ireland, and that he supposed it was the 
 custom there for prisoners, when acquitted, to behave in 
 this strange fashion. The Judges assured Mr. O'Connor 
 he had acted improperly, and that he could not dis- 
 charge himself, but must be discharged by the Court. 
 Quigley was then tried, convicted, and sentenced to be 
 hanged. He had few friends in England, and got no cha- 
 racter from eminent statesmen. It is believed that he was 
 
194 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 offered his life if he would inform upon his friends ; but he 
 refused the offer, and was executed on Penenden heath, 
 maintaining his composure to the last. 
 
 Next you must study the memoirs of Tone, and his con- 
 versations with Carnot and Hoche, and the officials of France, 
 in order to understand clearly what was the object of the 
 revolutionary party in Ireland. It was not the reform of the 
 Irish House of Commons they wanted, but the expulsion of 
 the English, and possession of the country. Tone told Hoche : 
 " When we get to Ireland, the aristocracy and gentry are 
 so odious, that I am afraid we shall not be able to save 
 them from a general massacre." Tone said he was a man of 
 honor, but that is more than doubtful. He was the author 
 of the paper that was found in Jackson's pocket. He was 
 allowed, by the lenity of the Government, to emigrate to 
 America ; and because he was not put under express terms 
 not to return, he thought it honourable to leave America, 
 proceed to France, and organize an expedition consisting of 
 20,000 troops, led by Hoche, for the invasion of Ireland. 
 Had that French army landed on our shores, Ireland might 
 have been deluged with blood, and even for a time separated 
 from England. Tone asserted, to Carnot, that the militia 
 could not be depended on by the Government that they 
 would not fight against the French. This assertion was par- 
 tially verified at Killala ; for, in the battle with the French, 
 Lord Ormonde's militia would not fight. 
 
 When you have read the trials for treason, the political 
 tracts, and memoirs of the time, you will then be enabled to . 
 understand what the state of Ireland was during the five or 
 six years prior to the Union. You must next take up the 
 Eeport of the Secret Committee of the House of Commons, 
 and the history of the United Irishmen, and you will perceive 
 that the only real object in .view was revolution. If, there- 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 195 
 
 fore, you find the principle of revolution asserted and main- 
 tained; if you afterwards find a rebellion in 1798, which, 
 though unsupported by French arms, was yet fostered and 
 matured by French policy, it is not wonderful to come to 
 the conclusion which I observe Mr. Wyse, in his History of 
 the Catholic Association, has avowed, that under such cir- 
 cumstances the Union was inevitable. 
 
 The last night of the Irish Parliament approached under 
 appalling circumstances, Those who opposed the Union 
 complained fairly that the question was brought forward at 
 an unfavourable time for discussion, because the country was 
 torn by intestine dissensions, and had been lately distracted 
 by civil war ; and that the people of the kingdom had not a 
 fair opportunity of giving an unbiassed judgment on the sub- 
 ject. Upon the other hand, it was said by Mr. Pitt, " What 
 can I do with you ? Eleven years ago you rejected my com- 
 mercial propositions ; afterwards you contradicted the British 
 Parliament on the question of the Eegency ; you have been 
 on the brink of revolution : it has become a necessity to 
 attempt a new scheme of government even for your own 
 safety." In the words of Lord Castlereagh, we were assured, 
 that we should hereafter " have one Law, one State, and 
 one Church." Now, I think, with deference to my gifted 
 countrymen who opposed the Act of Union, that they did 
 not act wisely in directing all their energies to oppose the 
 principle of the measure. Never were men I believe some 
 of them, at least animated by higher motives of honour and 
 patriotism ; and never did orators speak with more splendid 
 ability for the maintenance, under difficult circumstances, of 
 the ancient Constitution of their country. I often ask myself, 
 If I had been alive then, what would I have done ? I do not 
 know how exactly to answer that question ; but if I could 
 make myse]f live before I was born, I think I might answer 
 
196 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 ray question by saying, that it is not unlikely that, misled by 
 the gravity of Saurin's argument enchanted by the eloquence 
 of Bushe convinced by Plunket inflamed by Grattan, and 
 impressed by a reverential feeling for the edifice in which I 
 stood, and a lingering desire to preserve the ancient Parlia- 
 ment of Ireland that, mistaken or misguided, I would have 
 been found in the same lobby with the honourable member 
 for Enniskillen. 
 
 After sixty-three years' experience we can now review, 
 patiently and calmly, the whole question ; and I think that 
 no man, who will investigate that question impartially or 
 fairly, can come to any other conclusion than this, that it 
 was impossible to avoid one or other of two alternatives 
 separation or incorporation. I think that a great mistake 
 was committed by those who represented us in the Irish Par- 
 liament, in directing all their energies to stop the progress of 
 a measure that was inevitable, and in not getting better terms 
 for the country they represented. We have proof of this 
 opinion from the lips of a king. Mr. Curran has reported a 
 conversation that Bushe, when Solicitor-General, had with 
 his Majesty King George IV., at Slane Castle, on the occasion 
 of his visit to this country. During the conversation at din- 
 ner, the King was very condescending, and said, " I think 
 you all committed a great mistake. Instead of direct opposL 
 tion, you should have made terms, as the Scotch did, and you 
 would have got good terms." A very sensible observation 
 from a king who was partial to the Irish ; and very profitable 
 for us to recollect, because it does not answer in great trans- 
 actions of this kind to be always in a passion ! A Parlia- 
 ment man may do the best he can to stop the progress of 
 a measure brought forward unwisely or at the wrong period ; 
 but, at the same time, he ought to devote his talents, indus- 
 try, and attention to get as much as he can for his country. 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 197 
 
 We read, with extraordinary interest, the words of the 
 great orator, Grattan, in his concluding speech upon the 
 Union in the Irish Parliament. Now an orator has a very 
 wide range for his illustrations. All nature, art, history, 
 and poetry may furnish him with analogies ; but I venture to 
 say that few persons could imagine where Grattan would 
 find his illustration of the expiring Parliament of his country. ' 
 There is not, in all Shakspeare's writings, a more exquisitely 
 beautiful performance than that of Romeo and Juliet, nor 
 did the surprising genius of the poet ever shine forth in 
 brighter perfection, than when he wrote the imperishable 
 poetry, in which he has enshrined that tale. You recollect, 
 when Eomeo descends into the tomb to search for the object 
 of his love, he persists in believing that still she lives, and 
 that, although prostrate in apparent death, she would be 
 re-animated with the bloom of life. When Grattan uttered, 
 in tones of touching eloquence, his last words against the 
 Union, he said " Yet, I do not give up my country. I see 
 her in a swoon, but she is not dead. Although in her tomb 
 she lies helpless and motionless, still there is on her lips a 
 spirit of life, and on her cheek a glow of beauty 
 
 1 Thou art not conquered ; beauty's ensign still 
 Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks, 
 And death's pale flag is not advanced there.* " 
 
 I confess I am almost sorry that he did not conclude with that 
 tender, expressive, and beautiful illustration ; but, figurative 
 and impassioned to the last, he finished, I must say, in the 
 words of a patriot " While a plank of the vessel sticks to- 
 gether, I will not leave her. Let the courtier present his flimsy 
 sail, and carry the light bark of his faith with every breeze ; I 
 will remain anchored here I will adhere with fidelity to 
 the fortunes of my country, faithful to her freedom and 
 faithful to her fall." 
 
198 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 The lawyers, in the main, opposed the Union. The great- 
 ness of the Bar, as a profession, in this country, was in a 
 measure that night extinguished. They felt it, and therefore 
 Curran and Bushe, Saurin and Plunket, Ball and Burrowes, all 
 spoke against the Union with indignant eloquence. The vin- 
 dication of Grattan by his friend Burrowes is magnificent : 
 
 " I feel but little, any portion of the noble lord's* obloquy, 
 which may attach to me or my humble efforts ; but I own 
 I cannot repress my indignation at the audacious boldness 
 of the calumny, which would asperse one of the most exalted 
 characters which any nation ever produced, and that in a 
 country which owes its liberties and its greatness to the 
 energy of his exertions, and in the very House which has so 
 often been the theatre of his glorious labours and splendid 
 achievements. I remember that man being the theme of 
 universal panegyric the wonder and the boast of Ireland, for 
 his genius and his virtue. His name silenced the sceptic 
 upon the reality of genuine patriotism. To doubt the purity 
 of his motives was a heresy which no tongue dared to utter 
 envy was lost in admiration, and even they whose crimes 
 he scourged, blended extorted praises with the murmurs of 
 resentment. He covered our then unfledged constitution 
 with the ample wings of his talents as the eagle covers her 
 young ; like her he soared, and like her he could behold the 
 rays, whether of royal favour or of royal anger, Avith un- 
 dazzled, unintimidated eye. If, according to Demosthenes, 
 to grow with the growth, and to decay with the decline of our 
 country, be the true criterion of a good citizen, how infinitely 
 did this man, even in the moment of his lowest depression, 
 surpass those upstart patriots, who only become visible w T hen 
 their country vanishes. 
 
 " Sir, there is something most singularly curious, and, 
 according to my estimation of things, enviable, in the fate of 
 * Castlereagh. 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 199 
 
 this great man ; his character and his consequence are, as it 
 were, vitally interwoven with the greatness of his country 
 the one cannot be high, and the other low the one cannot 
 stand, and the other perish. This was so well understood by 
 those who have so long meditated to put down the constitu- 
 tion of Ireland, that, feeling that they could not seduce, they 
 have incessantly laboured to calumniate her most vigilant 
 sentinel and ablest champion they appealed to every un- 
 guarded prejudice, to every assailable weakness of a gene- 
 rous but credulous people they watched every favourable 
 moment of irritation or of terror, to pour in the detested poison 
 of calumny. Sir, it will be found, on a retrospect of Ireland 
 since 1782, that her liberties never received a wound, that a 
 corresponding stab was not levelled at his character; and 
 when it was vainly hoped that his imperishable fame was 
 laid in the dust, the times were deemed ripe for the extinc- 
 tion of our constitution. Sir, these impious labours cannot 
 finally succeed, glory and liberty are not easily effaced 
 GRATTAN and the constitution will survive the storm." 
 
 It was absurd to talk of the Parliament not being com- 
 petent to agree to a Union, because, after Scotland and 
 England had agreed to a Union, and Scotland had prospered 
 by that Union, it was absurd to argue that the same thing 
 could not be done between England and Ireland. But the 
 Irish Bar naturally remembered the fame 'and dignity which 
 they enjoyed here, and which in a great degree would 
 be eclipsed by the transfer of the Parliament to another 
 country. But it has been said, by some cavillers, that these 
 men were not qualified to excel in a higher sphere. Let me 
 ask what was the subsequent career of many of the members 
 of the Irish Senate. What was the subsequent career of 
 Lord Castlereagh, a statesman unjustly criticised ? He be- . 
 came afterwards Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and 
 
200 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 disposed of kingdoms. He waged a gigantic war against 
 Napoleon Bonaparte ; he showed great courage, efficiency, 
 and vigour of capacity ; some of his state papers are 
 as able and as comprehensive as any that were ever written 
 by a statesman. What became of Plunket ? In his pe- 
 culiar subjects he was excelled by none in the British Par- 
 liament. What became of Ponsonby ? He led the Whigs in 
 the English Parliament, having led them in the Irish. I need 
 not ask what became of Wellesley, who filled the world with 
 his fame. What became of his distinguished family ? All grew 
 famous in the annals of English history ; therefore the same 
 individuals who were distinguished in their native country, 
 were more distinguished when they were obliged to leave 
 that country, and enter into competition with the foremost 
 men of the age. Dublin suffered by that Union, and I am 
 reminded that we were warned of what the fate of our city 
 would be, in amusing verse, written by Ned Lysaght, while 
 the Union was in progress. We had not only orators, but 
 poets, and accordingly, the witty satirist admonished the 
 citizens of Dublin, in rhyme, of what would be the con- 
 sequence if the Union were carried. If I can remember 
 the lines, I will recite them: 
 
 " How justly alarm'd is each Dublin cit, 
 
 That he'll soon be transform'd to a clown, Sir ! 
 By a magical move of that conjuror, Pitt, 
 
 The country is coming to town, Sir ! 
 Give Pitt, and Dundas, and Jenky a glass, 
 Who'd ride on John Bull, and make Paddy an ass. 
 
 " Thro' Capel-street soon as you'll rurally range, 
 
 You'll scarce recognise it the same street ; 
 Choice turnips shall grow in the Royal Exchange, 
 Fine cabbages down along Dame-street. 
 Give Pitt, &c. 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 201 
 
 " Wild oats in the College won't want to be till'd, 
 
 And hemp in the Four Courts may thrive, Sir ! 
 Your markets again shall with muttons be fill'd - 
 By St. Patrick ! they'll graze there alive, Sir ! 
 Give Pitt, &c. 
 
 " In the Parliament House, quite alive, shall there be 
 
 All the vermin the island e'er gathers ; 
 Full of rooks, as before, Daly's Club-house you'll see, 
 But the pigeons won't have any feathers. 
 Give Pitt, &c. 
 
 " Our Custom House quay full of weeds, oh ! rare sport ! 
 
 But the minister's minions, kind elves, Sir ! 
 Will give us free leave all our goods to export, 
 When we have got none at home for ourselves, Sir ! 
 Give Pitt, &c. 
 
 <; Says an Alderman' Corn will grow in your shops, 
 
 This Union will work our enslavement !' 
 * That's true,' says the Sheriff, ' for plenty of crops 
 Already IVe seen on the pavement.' 
 Give Pitt, &c. 
 
 " Ye brave loyal Yeomen, dressed gaily in red, 
 
 This minister's plan must elate us ; 
 And well may John Bull, when he's robbed us of bread, 
 Call poor Ireland ' The Land of Potatoes !' 
 Give Pitt, &c." 
 
 No doubt the influence employed to carry the Union was 
 overwhelming ; the Cornwallis Correspondence proves the 
 fact conclusively. Perhaps the frank reply of the Irish 
 Senator to questions innocently put to him by a constituent 
 may exemplify the morality of the time : " Are you, sir, 
 about to vote for the Union?" "I am." "What, sir, 
 would you sell your country ?" " Yes, sir, and very happy 
 am I to have a country to sell." 
 
 p 
 
202 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 
 But, my friends, you perceive that neither eloquence nor 
 poetry, prose nor verse, could avert that great measure which 
 the social and political state of Ireland, the state of Europe, 
 and of the world, made almost inevitable. And now we may 
 fairly ask ourselves, if we have lost something, have we not 
 gained much ? Look around upon the nations of the earth. 
 France, swept by revolution, and held down by military 
 power ; Italy, torn by civil war ; America, deluged with blood; 
 while the free and glorious monarchy of England proudly 
 rests in security and peace upon that which is the sure 
 foundation of strength, the affections of a free people. We 
 have gamed that with which, in a measure, we ought to be 
 content, provided we use the opportunities which are left 
 open to us. It is a vain thing to complain of the past. 
 Wise men do not busy themselves about that which cannot 
 be remedied or changed, but rather look forward to that 
 which they can mould for their own benefit, and for the good 
 of their country. The business of the virtuous citizen, the 
 business of the true patriot, each in his own walk, is to per- 
 form the duty assigned to him according to the order of 
 Providence ; not to mourn for that which cannot be undone, 
 but rather to use the power which remains in this country, 
 and it is vast political, moral, and social for the purpose of 
 securing whatever is most beneficial, whatever is most useful, 
 whatever is best calculated to raise and elevate (I will not 
 say to civilize) the people of this country. They possess all 
 the virtues, all the talents, all those natural gifts which, if 
 well used, are calculated to make this old and famous king- 
 dom more famous in connexion with the free kingdom of 
 England than it would be if separated from it a victim of 
 social confusion, intestine war, political anarchy, ending in 
 connexion with some foreign power, which would only use its 
 superiority to crush the liberty which it hypocritically would 
 
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 203 
 
 profess to grant. Therefore, our duty is to be thankful to 
 Almighty God for the great blessings we enjoy; to rejoice 
 that we live under a sovereign whose every thought is fa- 
 vourable to the happiness and liberty of her people ; to 
 rejoice that we have a Constitution which establishes free- 
 dom of opinion, freedom of religious belief, freedom in the 
 unrestricted use of the Scriptures, in the assertion of our 
 opinions, whatever they may be ; and which, at the same 
 time, secures to us those political rights for the purpose of our 
 using them not abusing them ; using them in combination 
 with every good man in the kingdom, who will unite in the 
 promotion of the welfare, prosperity, and happiness of our 
 beloved country.* 
 
 * See Appendix B. 
 
APPENDICES. 
 
 APPENDIX A (PAGE 174). 
 
 BUSHE'S WIT. Another specimen of Bushe's wit has been 
 given me* by a friend, who preserved the story from oblivion. 
 During the debates upon the Union, Mr. Duquerry, K.C., 
 took a very desponding view of the prospects of the country, 
 in the event of the Union being carried. He was a very 
 eloquent man, and had a voice superior in sweetness even to 
 Bushe or Blackburne. On one occasion, having made a speech 
 of the above character, Toler stood up to reply to him, upon 
 which Duquerry immediately quitted the House, and Toler 
 exclaimed " He is gone, 
 
 ' Most musical, most melancholy !' " 
 
 Bushe, who replied to Toler, said, he had not done justice to 
 himself or Duquerry, in not quoting the first line of the dis- 
 tich 
 
 " Sweet bird, that shuns the voice of folly." 
 
 APPENDIX B (PAGE 203). 
 
 I have been reminded by Sir B. Burke, that the Mace of 
 the Irish House of Commons is now at Antrim Castle, an 
 honoured heir-loom. The last Speaker, Mr. Foster, a deter- 
 mined anti-Unionist, refused to surrender "the bauble" to 
 any but the constituted authority, by whom it had been 
 intrusted to his keeping ; and consequently it has descended 
 to Mr. Foster's grandson and heir, the present Viscount 
 Massereene and Ferrard, K.P. 
 

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