116 



IRELAND (HISTORY.) 



the subjects of this realm ; and that they would not 

 obey or give operation to any laws, save only those 

 enacted by the kiim . lords, and commons, of Ireland, 

 v*hose rights and privileges, jointly and separately, 

 they were determined to support with their liva :m<l 

 fortunes." The house of commons, which had 

 hitherto gone along with the sense of the nation at 

 large, seems now to have been placed under minis- 

 terial influence, or at least to have been of opinion 

 that the nation were proceeding too rapidly and too 

 far; for a motion made by Mr G rattan, that no 

 power on earth, save the king, lords, and commons, 

 of Ireland, had a right to make Jaws for Ireland, was 

 withdrawn; and the Irish parliament, acting in the 

 spirit which caused this motion to be withdrawn, 

 jvissed into laws two bills which had been altered by 

 the British cabinet. Hence the parliament became 

 very unpopular. 



In 1781, the force of the volunteers had been 

 augmented to 50,000 men. By forming commit- 

 tees of correspondence and a national committee, 

 they gave to their system a single animating spirit, 

 by which their power was wonderfully increased ; 

 and as the British government still obstinately re- 

 fused to comply with their requests, a crisis seemed 

 to be at hand. At this period, that administration 

 which had lost Britain her American colonies, re- 

 signed ; and they were succeeded, in March, 1782, 

 by a Whig administration, at the head of which was 

 the marquis of Rockingham. The duke of Portland 

 was immediately appointed lord-lieutenant. Mr 

 Grattan moved an address to the king, in the house 

 of commons, which was unanimously carried in both 

 houses, in which it was declared, that " the crown of 

 Ireland was an imperial crown, inseparably an- 

 nexed to the crown of Great Britain ; but that the 

 kingdom of Ireland was a distinct kingdom, with a 

 parliament of her own, the sole legislature thereof; 

 that in this right they conceived the very essence of 

 their liberty to exist ; that in behalf of all the people 

 in Ireland, they claimed this as their birthright, and 

 could not relinquish it but with their lives; that they 

 had a high veneration for the British character ; and 

 that their determination was in sharing the freedom 

 of England, to share also her fate, and to stand or 

 fall with tlie British nation. 1 ' The lord-lieutenant 

 assured parliament that the British legislature had 

 concurred in a resolution to remove the causes of 

 their discontents, and that his majesty was graciously 

 disposed to give his royal assent to acts calculated to 

 fulfil their wishes. As an earnest of the sincerity of 

 this declaration, a law was passed, by which all 

 interference of the British privy council to alter Irish 

 bills was abolished, and the parliament of Ireland 

 thus placed on the same footing as that of Britain. 

 Acts were also passed for the limitation of the law 

 against mutiny to two years ; for the right of habeas 

 corpus, and for the independence of the judges ; and 

 the act by which the Irish house of peers had been 

 deprived of their supreme judicial power in their 

 own country, was repealed. These concessions, how- 

 ever, were not deemed sufficient by some patriots, 

 particularly by Mr Flood, who brought in a bill, de- 

 claring the sole and exclusive right of the Irish parlia- 

 ment to make laws in all cases whatsoever, both inter- 

 nal and external, for the kingdom of Ireland : only 

 sir members voted for this motion. Mr Grattan 

 opposed it ; and the volunteers of Leinster, Ulster, 

 and Connaught, were likewise inimical to it. 



The volunteers having accomplished the objects 

 which they originally had in view, did not disband 

 themselves, but directed their views and exertions to 

 a reform in parliament. In order to act with vigour 

 and effect, they followed their former plan of a 

 national convention, which they appointed to be held 



in Dublin on the lOtn of November, 1783. On the 

 2'Jth of the same month, a motion was made in the 

 house of commons by Mr Flood, founded on the 

 resolutions of this convention, which, after a long 

 ami warm debate, was rejected by a very large 

 majority. This termination, instead of rousing the 

 volunteers to perseverance, as it would have done, 

 when they had their original object in view, seems 

 to have disconcerted and alarmed them ; for the 

 convention adjourned to an indefinite period, after 

 having passed a resolution to carry on individually, 

 their efforts for a parliamentary reform ; and having 

 agreed to address the king, expressing their loyalty, 

 and beseeching him not to ascribe their efforts to 

 restore, the constitution to its pure and pristine form, 

 to any love of innovation, or want of attachment to 

 his government or power. Soon after this the volun- 

 teer system declined, ministers hastening its decline 

 by raising fencible regiments, into which they drew 

 the officers of the volunteers by pecuniary induce- 

 ments. 



The cause of parliamentary reform, though no 

 longer supported by the volunteers in their associate 

 character, was not deserted by the people, or by its 

 advocates in parliament ; and their hopes were raised 

 by the circumstance, that Mr Pitt, who had been its 

 most strenuous supporter, was now prime minister. 

 It was soon found, however, that Mr Pitt was no 

 longer of the same opinion ; and Mr Flood's motion 

 for leave to bring in a bill to reform the Irish house 

 of commons, was negatived, though not till after a 

 long debate. The advocates for this measure, out of 

 doors, were not cast down ; the citizens of Dublin* 

 legally convened by the sheriff's, voted a series ot 

 resolutions in favour of this measure, and also 

 appointed a committee to prepare an address to the 

 people at large, and a petition to the king. The 

 people were invited to form a national congress, 

 composed of five persons from every county and large 

 town ; and the meeting of this congress actually took 

 place in Dublin, on the 25th of October, 1784, not- 

 withstanding the endeavours of government to pre- 

 vent it, which were carried, at least, as far as the 

 law warranted. 



The system of tithes has always been a source of 

 ill will, even where those who paid them were of the 

 established religion ; but it seemed very hard and 

 unjust to the Catholics, that they should pay towards 

 the support of a clergy whose services they did not 

 need, nor wish for. Besides, the tithes pressed hard 

 on the poor renters of a piece of ground, perhaps 

 scarcely large enough to support a man and his 

 family, even if he had received the whole produce. 

 From this feeling with regard to the oppression of 

 tithes, arose, in 1786, a species of insurrection in the 

 south of Ireland, carried on by persons who styled 

 themselves Right-boys. They administered oaths, 

 binding the people not to pay more as the tithe of an 

 acre, than a sum they fixed to permit no proctors 

 and not to allow the clergyman to take his tithes 

 in kind. Not being sufficiently opposed in this out- 

 rage, they proceeded farther ; to fix the rents of 

 land to raise the wages of labour and to oppose 

 the collection of the tax called hearth-money. This 

 called forth the attention of the legislature, and in 

 1787 an act was passed, to prevent tumultuous 

 assemblies and illegal combinations. 



At the breaking out of the French revolution it 

 was natural that those in Ireland, who had been so 

 long and so ardently endeavouring to gain for their 

 own country what they deemed its rights, and 

 essential to its prosperity, should rejoice at the event 

 when it began, and that they should feel, by it, 

 inspired to renew their attempts to obtain their 

 favourite objects of parliamentary reform and Catho- 



