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THREE:

THREE:[320]

THREE:The king's speech, at the opening of this Session, recommended a consideration of the trade and general condition of Ireland; and indeed it was time, for the concessions which had been made by the Rockingham Ministry had only created a momentary tranquillity. The Volunteers retaining their arms in their hands after the close of the American war, were evidently bent on imitating the proceedings of the Americans, and the direction of the movement passed from Grattan to Flood. In September, 1785, delegates from all the Volunteer corps in Ireland met at Dungannon, representing one hundred thousand men, who passed resolutions declaring their independence of the legislature of Great Britain. The delegates at Dungannon claimed the right to reform the national Parliament, and appointed a Convention to meet in Dublin in the month of November, consisting of delegates from the whole Volunteer army in Ireland. Accordingly, on the 10th of November, the great Convention met in Dublin, and held their meetings in the Royal Exchange. They demanded a thorough remodelling of the Irish Constitution. They declared that as matters stood the Irish House of Commons was wholly independent of the people; that its term of duration was equally unconstitutional; and they passed zealous votes of thanks to their friends in England. These friends were the ultra-Reformers of England, who had freely tendered the Irish Reformers their advice and sympathy. The Irish people were ready to hail the delegates as their true Parliament, and the regular Parliament as pretenders. Within Parliament House itself the most violent contentions were exhibited between the partisans of the Volunteer Parliament and the more orthodox reformers. Henry Flood was the prominent advocate of the extreme movement, and Grattan, who regarded this agitation as certain to end only in fresh coercion, instead of augmented liberty for Ireland, vehemently opposed it.

THREE:

THREE:A third Bill yet remained to be carried, in order to complete the Ministerial scheme of Emancipation, and supply the security necessary for its satisfactory working. This was the Bill for disfranchising the forty-shilling freeholders, by whose instrumentality, it may be said, Emancipation was effected. It was they that returned Mr. O'Connell for Clare; it was they that would have returned the members for twenty-three other counties, pledged to support his policy. It is true that this class of voters was generally dependent upon the landlords, unless under the influence of violent excitement, when they were wrested like weapons from their hands by the priests, and used with a vengeance for the punishment of those by whom they had been created. In neither case did they exercise the franchise in fulfilment of the purpose for which it was given. In both cases those voters were the instruments of a power which availed itself of the forms of the Constitution, but was directly opposed to its spirit. Disfranchisement, however, in any circumstances, was distasteful to both Conservative and Liberal statesmen. Mr. Brougham said he consented to it in this case "as the price—almost the extravagant price"—of Emancipation; and Sir James Mackintosh remarked that it was one of those "tough morsels" which he had been scarcely able to swallow. The measure was opposed by Mr. Huskisson, Lord Palmerston, and Lord Duncannon, as not requisite, and not calculated to accomplish its object. But although Mr. O'Connell had repeatedly declared that he would not accept Emancipation if the faithful "forties" were to be sacrificed, that he would rather die on the scaffold than submit to any such measure, though Mr. Sheil had denounced it in language the most vehement, yet the measure was allowed to pass through both Houses of Parliament without any opposition worth naming; only seventeen members voting against the second reading in the Commons, and there being no division against it in the Lords. Ireland beheld the sacrifice in silence. Mr. O'Connell forgot his solemn vows, so recently registered, and, what was more strange, the priests did not remind him of his obligation. Perhaps they were not sorry to witness the annihilation of a power which landlords might use against them[302] and which agitators might wield in a way that they could not at all times control. There had been always an uneasy feeling among the prelates and the higher clergy at the influence which Mr. O'Connell and the other lay agitators had acquired, because it tended to raise in the people a spirit of independence which rendered them sometimes refractory as members of the Church, and suggested the idea of combination against their own pastors, if they declined to become their leaders in any popular movement. The popular leaders in Ireland, however, consoling themselves with the assurance that many of the class of "bold peasantry" which they had glorified would still enjoy the franchise as ten-pound freeholders, consented, reluctantly of course, to the extinction of 300,000 "forties." They considered the danger of delay, and the probability that if this opportunity were missed, another might not occur for years of striking off the shackles which the upper classes of Roman Catholics especially felt to be so galling.But the Government had to receive another lesson this year on the folly of endeavouring, in the nineteenth century, to crush the liberties of Britons. There was an organ called the Press, which, partaking neither of the Governmental fears of a natural complaint by the public of the evils which preyed upon it, nor the Governmental hopes of silencing the sufferers without any attempt to mitigate their calamities, reported freely the mingled folly and cruelty of Ministers, and called for the only remedy of the country's misfortunes—Reform. On moving the second reading of the Bill for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, Lord Sidmouth observed that some noble lords had complained that the authors and publishers of infamous libels on the Government were not prosecuted. He assured them that the Government were quite as anxious as these noble lords to punish the offenders, but that the law officers of the Crown were greatly puzzled in their attempts to deal with them; that authors had now become so skilful from experience, that the difficulties of convicting them immeasurably exceeded those of any former time.