1799. OVERTURES TO CATHOLICS AND ORANGEMEN.

137

inveterate enemy of the Union, and was at once acknowledged the leader of the national party. Sir John Parnell, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, followed the Speaker. Mr. Fitzgerald, the Prime Serjeant, a law officer of the Crown, was on the same side. Ponsonby, the leader of the Whigs, was vehement against the scheme; so was Grattan; so was Curran. Great efforts were made, by the Government, to quiet the Protestants, and to engage the Catholics to support the Union. These efforts were so far successful that most of the Orange lodges were persuaded to refrain from expressing any opinion on the subject. The Catholic hierarchy were conciliated by the promise of a provision for the clergy, and of an adjustment of the Tithe question. Hopes were held out, if promises were not actually made, to the Catholic community, that their civil disabilities would be removed. The Catholics, as a body, therefore, were not indisposed to the project of the English Government; and even if no prospect had been held out to them, that their particular grievances would be redressed, it was not to be expected that the Catholic body should feel much interested in the maintenance of a constitution, from the benefits of which they were hopelessly excluded. The people of Ireland in general, so far as they entertained any opinion or feeling in the matter, regarded their native legislation with the contempt which it deserved. Nevertheless, the opposition with which the Government had to deal, was formidable enough to deter any Government from persisting in a measure, even of the first importance; for the Opposition combined all that was corrupt, with the little that was public-spirited, in this unhappy country. But Pitt had made up his mind to carry a measure which he considered important, if not essential, to the integrity of the Empire; a measure, too, which he had contemplated long before the recent disturbances,*

* In 1795.-Personal Recollections of Lord Cloncurry, p. 38.

138

RELUCTANCE OF IRISH PARLIAMENT. CH. XXXVIII.

and to which no time seemed so favourable as the present.

Address to the
Crown.

If the Union was to be accomplished by constitutional means, it could be effected only by a vote of the Irish Parliament, concurring with a vote of the English Parliament; and if the Irish assembly were to pronounce an unbiassed judgment on the question of its extinction, it is certain that a very small minority, possibly not a single vote, would be found to support the measure. All the influence of the Government had failed as yet to incline the House of Commons to listen to the proposal. The vote on the address was followed, in a few days, by an address to the Crown, in which the Commons pledged themselves to maintain the constitution of 1782. The majority in favour of national independence had already increased from five to twenty, the ministerial members remaining the same, and corresponding almost exactly with the placemen and pensioners in the House.

The votes of the Irish Commons had disposed of the question for the current session; but preparations were immediately made for its future passage through the Irish Houses. The foremost men in Irelandmen whose abilities would have raised them to eminence in any country, whose eloquence would have moved any assembly, ancient or modern, and whose patriotism was sincere had first been tempted, but had indignantly refused every offer to betray the independence of their country. Another class of leading persons was then tried, and from these, for the

*

*Those who are called principal persons here are men who have been raised into consequence only by having the entire disposal of the patronage of the Crown, in return for their undertaking the management of the country; because the Lord Lieutenants were too idle or too inca

pable to manage it themselves. They are detested by everybody but their immediate followers, and have no influence but what is founded on the grossest corruption.' Marquis Cornwallis to General Ross, Nov. 23, 1798.Cornwallis Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 442.

1799.

PITT'S PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.

139

The min

most part, evasive answers were received. ister understood the meaning of these dubious utterances. There was one mode of carrying the Union, and one mode only. Bribery of every kind must be employed without hesitation and without stint.

The plan of parliamentary reform which Mr. Pitt proposed at the outset of his administration was founded on a recognition of the claims of the borough owners, and contained provisions for the compensation of those claims. If such an arrangement was just and expedient with regard to the reform of the English Parliament, it was not less just and expedient with a view to the extinction of the Irish Parliament. But this mode of meeting the difficulties of the representation, though it might have been justified by necessity, could not for a moment stand the test of argument; and Pitt probably was in no mind to revive the crude idea of his youth. The force of public opinion in 1832 swept away the great obstacle to parliamentary reform; but the public opinion of Ireland in 1799 could not be appealed to for the abolition of the Irish legislature. Yet if it was considered unreasonable or hopeless to expect that the owners of Gatton and Old Sarum should relinquish their vested interests in the abuse and decay of the representative system without an equivalent, it was at least as unjust and unreasonable to expect that the owners of the Ballyshannons and the Banaghers should offer up their rotten boroughs, not for the purpose of restoring and invigorating the parliamentary system, but as sacrifices to the common ruin. There could be no comparison between the importance of a seat in the British House of Commons and a seat in a provincial assembly, which had more resemblance to a municipal council than to an Imperial Parliament; yet the value of borough property in Ireland was equal to that of the same description of property in England. There have always been men willing

140

FAULTY IRISH REPRESENTATION.

CH. XXXVIII.

to spend two or three thousand pounds for a seat, or even the attempt to obtain a seat, in the English House; and these candidates have been as often actuated by their estimate of the social position which a seat in Parliament confers as by the hope of advancing their fortunes. But when an Irish gentleman gave twenty thousand pounds for a borough, or when an Irish adventurer hired a seat for two thousand pounds, he invested his money in a speculation for which he had reason to expect a safe return. The commoner wanted a peerage; he had two votes at the service of the minister, and Irish peerages were held in higher estimation by Irish commoners than by the British minister. Pitt was always more willing to reward a political friend with a title than with a place, and he lavished Irish peerages with the profusion of contempt. He sometimes gave these titles to persons who would now be considered sufficiently honoured by knighthood, and on one occasion was only restrained by the indignant remonstrance of the Lord Lieutenant from making a London stock-jobber an Irish peer.* The offices and sinecures on the Irish establishment were a proverb and a scandal; but as every member of the Irish House of Commons who gave a vote to the Government expected to be paid for it, the offices and sinecures, numerous as they were, proved insufficient to satisfy the claims of members of Parliament, their families and followers; and a pension list of eight thousand pounds a-year afforded temporary relief to a parliamentary supporter until his services could be rewarded with a more adequate provision.

Such was the Parliament by whose vote the British minister was to effect the legislative union of the two countries. And, in the first place, he made it under

* Duke of Rutland to Mr. Pitt, 1786.--Bolton MSS.

1799.

DISMISSAL OF PUBLIC OFFICERS.

141

stood that while willing to traffic in votes after the fashion of the Walpoles, the Pelhams, and the Foxes, he would not tolerate the patriotism of persons already in the receipt of public money. Accordingly, Sir John Parnell, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Fitzgerald, the Prime Serjeant who had voted on the amendment to the address, were peremptorily dismissed. It was hoped that these examples might act as a warning to men like the Speaker, and Mr. John Claudius Beresford, whom the Government hardly ventured to attack, as well as to the numerous stipendiaries of the Crown, with respect to whom they were unwilling to pursue the relentless policy by which the elder Fox had terrified the opponents of the peace of Paris in 1763.*

Duke of

instructions.

The Duke of Portland, having officially instructed Lord Cornwallis to make known the fixed determination of, the Ministry to carry Portland's the measure of the Union, and that the conduct of individuals upon the subject would be considered as the test of their disposition to support the King's Government,† the Castle of Dublin soon became a mart for parliamentary traffic, more extensive than had hitherto been known in Ireland or in England during the most critical period of the Hanover succession. It was not merely a trade in votes, but the purchase of the fee simple of corruption which the Irish Government was to undertake. Cornwallis had seen too much of courts and camps to be shocked by the selfishness and baseness which a long experience of public life reveals. In America he had seen armies led to destruction by men of fashion, and an empire lost through the influence of the back stairs. In India, he must have seen enough

* Mr. Beresford resigned his sinecure place. The Speaker's son was subsequently deprived of his office by the express desire

of Mr. Pitt.-Cornwallis Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 55.

† Dec. 21, 1798.-Cornwallis Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 20.