tution, and such as his royal highness, to whom he should then move an address, must necessarily approve. He hoped they would be unanimous on the occasion. He therefore moved the following resolution: "Resolved, That it is the opinion of this committee, that a humble address be presented to his royal highness to take upon himself the government of this realm, during the continuation of his majesty's present indisposition, and no longer, and under the style and title of Prince Regent of Ireland, in the name of his majesty to exercise and administer, according to the laws and constitution of this kingdom, all regal powers, jurisdiction, and prerogatives to the crown and government thereof belonging."

The motion was seconded by Mr. George Ponsonby.

Several of the former friends of the Castle supported the address, when Mr. Fitzgibbon (who was still attorney-general, afterwards Earl of Clare) rose to oppose it. He made this question, as he made every question, an occasion to inculcate the idea of a legislative union, which was even then his great political aim, and continued to be so until he attained it.

pass the two Houses in Ireland, should be certified into England, and returned under the great seal of England, without any addition, diminution, or alteration whatsoever, should pass into law, and no other. By this they made the great seal of England essentially and indispensably necessary on the passing of laws in Ireland: they could pass no act without first certifying it into England, and having it returned under the great seal in that kingdom, insomuch that were the King of England and Ireland to come in person, and to reside in Ireland, he could not pass a bill without its being first certified to his regent in England, who must return it under the seal of that kingdom before his majesty could even in person assent to it. That if the House should by force of an address, upon the instant, and without any com munication with England, invest a regent with powers undefined, when the moment of reflection came, it would startle the boldest adventurers in England; and then he reminded gentlemen of the language they held with England in the day they asserted their freedom: "Perpetual connection; common fortune; we will rise or fall with England; we will share her liberty, and we will share her fate." Did gentlemen recollect the arguments used in England to justify the fourth proposition of the commercial treaty? Ireland, said they, having a Parliament of her own, may think fit to carry on a commerce, and The first position was their security; regulate her trade by laws different from, the second was their freedom; and when perhaps contradictory to, the laws of gentlemen talked any other language than Great Britain. How well founded that that, they either tended to the separation observation was, they would prove, if of the crowns, or to the subjugation of they seized the first opportunity that their Parliament; they invaded either offered of differing from Great Britain on their security or their liberty; in fact, a great imperial question; certainly if it the only security of their liberty was their be the scheme to differ on all imperial connection with Great Britain, and gen-questions, and if that be abetted by men tlemen who risked breaking the connection, must make up their minds to a union. God forbid he should ever see that day; but if ever the day on which a separation should be attempted should come, he should not hesitate to embrace a union rather than a separation.

He maintained that the crown of Ireland and the crown of England were inseparably and indissolubly united; and that the Irish Parliament was perfectly and totally independent of the British Parliament.

of great authority, they meant to drive them to a union, and the method they took was 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 was certain nothing less than the alterUnder the Duke of Portland's govern-native of separation could ever force a ment the grievances of Ireland were stated to be:

The alarming usurpation of the British Parliament;

A perpetual mutiny bill;

And the powers assumed by the privy council.

union.

Suppose the prince did not accept the regency in England; suppose their address should reach him before he was actually invested with royal powers in England, in what situation would you put him? They would call on him, in defiThese grievances were redressed, and in ance of two acts of Parliament, which redressing them they passed a law repeal-made the crowns inseparable, to dethrone ing part of Poynings'. By their new law the king his father. They would call they enacted, that all bills, which should upon him to do an act now, at which

hereafter his nature would revolt. They the Irish crown were advocates for its were false friends of the Prince of Wales, separation from England. who should advise him to receive an ad- They should agree with England in dress, that might give him cause to curse three points-one king, one law, one rethe hand which presented it. He knew ligion; they should keep these great that liberties indecent in the extreme had objects steadily in view, and act like been taken with the name of that august wise men. If they made the Prince of personage. He knew it had been whis- Wales their regent, and granted him the pered that every man who should vote plenitude of power, in God's name let it against the address would be considered be done by bill, otherwise be saw such as voting against him and treating him | danger that he deprecated the measure with disrespect; but if any man had had proposed. He called upon the country the guilt and folly to poison his mind with gentlemen of Ireland, that that was not such an insinuation, he trusted to his good a time to think of every twopenny grievsense to distinguish his friends; he would ance, every paltry disappointment sustrust to his good sense to determine tained at the Castle of Dublin; if any whether they were his friends who wished man had been aggrieved by the viceroy, to guard the imperial rights of the British and chose to compose a philippic on the crown, or they who would stake them occasion, let him give it on the debate of upon the momentary and impotent tri-a turnpike bill, where it would not be so umph of an English party. What matter disgraceful to the man who uttered it, and to the prince whether he received royal to those who would not listen to him, as authority by bill or by address? Was it would be on the present occasion. there a man who would presume to libel On the 17th the address was agreed him, and to assert that the success of that upon by both Houses. Its principal measure would be a triumph to him? clause was in these words:

There was a feature in the proceeding which, independent of every other objection to it, did in his mind make it highly reprehensible, and that was, that he considered it as a formal appeal from the Parliament of England to that of Ireland. Respecting the parties who made that appeal, he should say nothing; but although there might be much dignity on their part in receiving the appeal, he could not see any strong symptoms of wisdom in it, because by so doing he should conceive we must inevitably sow the seeds of jealousy and disunion between the Parliaments of the two countries; and though he did not by any means desire of the Parliament of that country implicitly to follow the Parliament of England, he should suppose it rather a wise maxim for Ireland always to concur with the Parliament of Great Britain, unless for very strong reasons indeed they were obliged to differ from it. If it were to be a point of Irish dignity to differ with the Parliament of England to show their independence, he very much feared that sober men in that country who had estates to lose would soon become sick of independence. The fact was that, constituted as it was, the Government of that country never could go on unless they followed Great Britain implicitly in all regulations of imperial policy. The independence of their Parliament was their freedom; their dependence on the crown of England was their security for their freedom; and gentlemen who professed themselves that night advocates for the independence of

We therefore beg leave humbly to request that your royal highness will be pleased to take upon you the government of this realm during the continuation of his majesty's present indisposition, and no longer; and under the style and title of Prince Regent of Ireland, in the name and on behalf of his majesty, to exercise and administer, according to the laws and constitution of this kingdom, all regal powers, jurisdiction, and prerogatives to the crown and government thereof belonging."

On the 19th both Houses waited on the lord-lieutenant, requesting him to transmit it to the prince. He refused to do so. On the day following, Mr. Grattan moved in the House, "that his excellency the lord-lieutenant having thought proper to decline to transmit to his Royal Highness George, Prince of Wales, the address of both Houses of Parliament, a competent number of members be appointed by this House to present the said address to his royal highness."

This was carried by a large majority, was sent up to the Lords, who concurred, and named the Duke of Leinster and the Earl of Charlemont to accompany the members of the other House who should be appointed to join them in presenting the address.

Mr. Grattan then moved, "that it be Resolved, That his excellency the lordlieutenant's answer to both Houses of Parliament, requesting him to transmit their address to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, is ill advised, contains

an unwarrantable and unconstitutional ham; but scarcely one so intensely uncensure on the proceedings of both Houses popular. He was parsimonious and exof Parliament, and attempts to question travagant—that is, he saved pennies, and the undoubted rights and privileges of the Lords spiritual and temporal and Commons of Ireland."

squandered thousands of pounds; yet did not squander them on the right persons. He talked economy and practised the most reckless profusion, yet in an underhand, indirect manner, which made him no friends and many enemies. In manner he was extremely reserved, whether from pride or from a natural coldness of disposition. In short, he was in every way unsuited to the Irish temperament: for there had lately been formed gradually a marked Irish character, even amongst the Protestant colonists before the era of Independence, and still more notably since that time. Gentlemen born in this country, and all whose interests and associations were here, no longer called themselves Englishmen born in Ireland, as Swift had done. The same powerful assimilating influence which had formerly

On the 25th of February, the committee of the two Houses of Parliament having arrived in London, proceeded to Carlton House and presented the address. They were most graciously received, but two days before the king had recovered from his malady. It was thus unnecessary for the prince either to accept or reject the offer made to him by the Irish Parliament. He congratulated them on the happy change in his majesty's health, and assured them of the "gratitude and affecto the loyal and generous people of Ireland which he felt indelibly imprinted on his heart." This dangerous dispute was thus ended for that time. Its dangers were twofold. First, the prince might have refused the regency with limited made the Norman settlers, Geraldines powers; in that case the English Parliament would certainly have made the queen regent, and the prince might have accepted the Irish regency with unlimited powers; there would then have been two regents, and two separate kingdoms. Secondly, the prince might have accepted the regency precisely on the terms offered him in each country; he would then have been a regent with limited powers in England, and with full royal prerogative in Ireland, unable to create a peer in England, but with power to swamp the House with new peerages in Ireland; unable to reward his friends with certain grants, pensions, and offices in England, but able to quarter them all upon the revenue of Ireland. The peril of such a condition of things was fully appreciated, both by Mr. Pitt and by his able coadjutor in Ireland, Mr. Fitzgibbon. They drew from it an argument for the total annihilation of Ireland by a legislative union. Others who watched events with equal attention, found in it a still sounder argument for total separa-ever since the time of Elizabeth; and of tion.

CHAPTER XXIV.

1789.

Unpopularity of Buckingham.-Formation of an Irish character.-Efforts of Patriots in Parliament.-All in vain.-Purchasing votes.-Corruption.-Whig Club.-Lord Clare on Whig Club. Buckingham leaves Ireland.-Pension List.-Peepof-Day Boys and Defenders. Westmoreland, Viceroy. Unavailing efforts against corruption. -Material prosperity.-King William's Birthday. -French Revolution.

IRELAND may possibly have had worse viceroys than the Marquis of Bucking

M

and De Burghs "more Irish than the Irish" after two or three generations, had now also acted more or less upon the very Cromwellians and Williamites; and there was recognisable in the whole character and bearing even of the Protestants a certain dash of that generosity, levity, impetuosity, and recklessness which have marked the Celtic race since the beginning. They were capable of the most outrageous depravity and of the highest honour and rectitude; of the most insolent, ostentatious venality and corruption, as well as of the noblest, proudest independence. The formation of this modern composite Irish character is of course attributable to the gradual amalgamation of the privileged Protestant colonists with the converted Irish, who had from time to time conformed to the established church, to save their estates, or to possess themselves of the property of non-conforming neighbours. This was a large and increasing element in the Protestant colony

such families came the Currans, Dalys, Doyles, Conollys, as well as the higher names O'Neil, O'Brien, Burke, Roche, Fitzpatrick. The ancesters of these families, in abandoning their Catholic faith, could not let out all their Celtic blood, and that blood permeated the whole mass of the population, and often broke out and showed its origin, even in men partly of English descent, or at least of English names. Grattan, for example, in the character of his intellect and temperament, was as purely Celtic as Curran himself. In truth it had become very difficult to determine the ethnological distinction

store to the officers in barracks their wonted allowance of firing which, in a former fit of subaltern economy, he had stopped from them. This pitiful stoppage had been laid on to the great discontent of the army, and being very ungraciously removed, the alleviation was received without gratitude." Mr Grattan, in a debate on this administration, says

between the inhabitants of this island; "his excellency found it necessary to reand surnames had long ceased to be a safe guide: because ever since the "Statutes of Kilkenny" in the 15th century, thousands of Irish families, especially of those residing near or in the English Pale, had changed their names in obedience to those statutes, that they might have the benefit of the English law in their dealings with the people of the Pale. They had assumed surnames, as prescribed by the statute, either from some trade or calling, as Miller, Taylor, Smith,-or from some place, as Trim, Slane, Galway,-or from some colour, as Gray, Green, White, Brown. Gradually their original clannames were lost; and it soon became their interest to keep up no tradition even of their Irish descent. Of one of the families in this category, undoubtedly came Oliver Goldsmith, whose intersely Irish nature is a much surer guide to his origin than the trade-surname of Goldsmith adopted under the statute.

"His great objection to the Marquis of Buckingham was not merely that he had been a jobber, but a jobber in a mask. His objection was not merely that his administration had been expensive, but that his expenses were accompanied with hypocrisy; it was the affectation of economy, attended with a great deal of good, comfortable, substantial jobbing for himself and his friends. That led to another measure of the Marquis of Buckingham which was the least ceremonious, and the most sordid and scandalous act of self-interest, attended with the sacrifice It has been said that surnames were no of all public decorum; he meant the dissure guide to origin; but in one direction posal of the reversion of the place of the surnames were, and are, nearly infallible: chief remembrancer to his brother, one of -a Celtic surname is a sure indication of the best, if not the very best, office in the Celtic blood, because nobody ever had any kingdom, given in reversion to an abinterest in assuming or retaining such a sentee with a great patronage, and a compatronymic, all the interests and tempta-pensation annexed. That most sordid tions being the other way. But an English surname is no indication at all of English descent, because for several centuries-first under the Statutes of Kilkenny, afterwards under the more grievous pressure of the Penal Code, all possible worldly inducements were held out to Irishmen to take English names, and forget their own.*

From so large a mingling of the Celtic element, even in the exclusive Protestant colony, had resulted the very marked Irish character which was noticed, though not with complacency, by English writers of that period; and to this character the cold, dry, and narrow Marquis of Buckingham was altogether abhorrent. During the agitation of the regency question, he had succeeded in creating two new offices of great emolument-one by the separation of the excise and revenue board, which provided a place for a Beresford; another by appointing an additional commissioner to the Stamp-Office. "About this time also," as Mr. Plowden says maliciously,

It would be a curious study to trace the history of Irish family names. For the first three centuries after the Norman invasion under Henry II., the movement was quite in an opposite direction, and De Burghs became Mac Williams, De Berminghams, Mac Feorais, the Fitzurses, Mac Mahons; and Norman barons became chiefs of clans, forgot both French and English, rode without stirrups, and kept the upper lip unshaven.

and shameless act was committed exactly about the time when the kingdom was charged with great pensions for the bringing home, as it was termed, absentee employments. That bringing home absentee employments was a monstrous job; the kingdom paid the value of the employment, and perhaps more; she paid the value of the tax also. The pensioner so paid was then suffered to sell both to a resident who was free from the tax; he was then permitted to substitute new and young lives in the place of his own, and then permitted to make a new account against the country, and to receive a further compensation, which he was suffered in the same manner to dispose of."

It was undoubtedly in part owing to the excessive unpopularity of this viceroy that the short remainder of his government was so little satisfactory to himself and his employers in London, and that the Patriots were able to gain some trifling advantages; not indeed to such an extent as to accomplish a single reform or abate a single abuse, but at least to shake the regular venal parliamentary majorities and alarm the Government. As the lat gloomy prospect of a change in the Irish administration had driven many gentlemen to the opposition benches, Mr. Grattan was willing to avail himself of the earliest fruits of their conversion; accord

ingly, on the 3rd of March, 1789, he offered Buckingham. To get rid of the question, to the House a resolution which he thought an adjournment was moved and carried absolutely necessary from a transaction by a majority of. 115 against 106. Thus which had lately taken place. He thought early had the old majority began to fall it necessary to call the attention of the into their former ranks. Still the supeHouse to certain principles which the riority of votes bore no proportion to 200 gentlemen, with whom he had generally and upwards, of which the former full the honour to coincide, considered as the majorities consisted. Mr. Grattan, acindispensable condition without which no cordingly, on the following day (4th of government could expect their support, March) moved for leave to bring in a bill and which the present Government had for the better securing the freedom of election resisted. for members to serve in Parliament, by disabling certain officers employed in the collection or management of his majesty's revenue from giving their votes at such election.

The first was a reform of the police. At present the institution could only be considered as a scheme of patronage to the Castle, and corruption to the city-a scheme which had failed to answer the end of preserving public peace, but had fully succeeded in extending the influence of the Castle.

Another principle much desired, was to restrain the abuse of pensions by a bill similar to that of Great Britain. That principle, he said, Lord Buckingham had resisted, and his resistance to it was one great cause of his opposing his Government. To this he would add another principle, the restraining revenue officers from voting at elections: this, he observed, was a principle of the British Parliament, and it was certainly more necessary in Ireland, from what had lately taken place, where, by a certain union of family interests, counties had become boroughs, and those boroughs had become private property.

But none of the measures proposed by Mr. Grattan could be carried in that House. In fact the deserting members of the majority were soon whipped back into their ranks: for on the 14th of March the lord-lieutenant made a speech to both Houses, officially informing them of the full recovery of the king. It was immediately apparent that Mr. Pitt was agair supreme; and it was even intimated very plainly that the members of either House who had concurred in the address to the prince, or who had voted for a censure on the conduct of the marquis, should be made to repent of their votes.

The House having by this time been nearly marshalled into their former ranks, Mr. Grattan thought it useless to divide them on the second reading of the place bill, on the 30th of April; it was negatived without a division. The only subBut the principle to which he begged to ject particularly interesting to the history call the immediate attention of the House of Ireland which came before Parliament was, that of preventing the great offices during the remainder of that session, was of the state from being given to absen- the subject of tithes ; Mr. Grattan having tees: that was a principle admitted by all presented to the House, according to to be founded in national right, purchased order, a bill to appoint commissioners for by liberal compensation, and every de- the purpose of inquiring into the state of parture from it must be considered as a tithes in the different provinces of that slight to the nobility and gentry of Ire-kingdom, and to report a plan for ascerland, who certainly were better entitled to the places of honour and trust in their own country, than any absentee could possibly be; but besides the slight shown to the nobility and gentry of Ireland, by bestowing places of honour, of profit, and of trust on absentees, the draft of money from this country, the institution of depuies (a second establishment unnecessary, were the principals to reside), the double influence arising from this raised the abuse into an enormous grievance. Mr. Grattan concluded with a motion to condemn this last practice.

taining the same: he followed up his motion with a very elaborate, instructive, and eloquent speech upon this important national object. The House adjourned from the 8th to the 25th of May, on which day the lord-lieutenant prorogued the Parliament, and made a speech of a general nature, without a word of reference to any of the extraordinary circumstances of the session.

The administration, alarmed by the late symptoms of disaffection, and by the renewed combination of the powerful aristocratic houses, as exhibited in the A very warm debate ensued, in which proceedings on that regency question, Mr. Corry and some other gentlemen now set itself deliberately to purchase admitted the principle of the resolution, back votes in detail, and again to although they opposed its passing, because check the Irish oligarchical influence. it was a censure on the Marquis of It has been already mentioned, in the