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the country on their own indulgences, had driven the Protestant farmers into a league against "landlordism," with the result that they were compelled to throw up their farms. The farms were taken by Roman Catholics, who were only too ready to get back upon the land at any price; and the sturdy yeoman, who had been cast upon the world, took refuge in the New England colonies.

Royal commissions were issued to inquire into the causes of the disturbances both of the Oakboys, the Hearts-of-steel boys, and the Whiteboys; and the difference in the results which followed is a striking illustration of the way in which party feeling and class interests has always been the first consideration in Ireland. No help was forthcoming for the Steelboys, whose grievances were against their landlords. There was no hope for them but in emigration. Lord Donegal was, however, subsequently made a marquis, and Mr. Upton a viscount. In the case of the Protestant Oakboys, the old Act relating to highways was repealed, and provision was made for the future repair of roads by a rate levied on rich and poor alike in every barony.* In the case of the Roman Catholic Whiteboys, whose grievances were also against the landlords, not only was no step taken to prevent excessive enclosures, or to strengthen and enforce the Tillage Acts; but a bill was passed which made it felony for more than six persons to assemble at night and to level fences and dig up pastures, and gave damages to the injured parties, to be assessed on the barony in which the offence had been 5 Geo. III., c. 14.

committed. The grievances of the peasantry and the farmers were refused a hearing, and the policy of coercion was carried out, with the natural result that the mischief of discontent was driven in upon the system to grow into disaffection and rebellion. The half-serious sneer of Lord Chesterfield was sadly too near the truth: that "if the military force had killed half as many landlords as it had Whiteboys, it would have contributed more effectually to restore quiet." "For," he adds, "the poor people in Ireland are worse used than negroes by their masters, and deputies of deputies of deputies."

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CHAPTER V.

THE BEGINNING OF CORRUPTION.

A.D. 1767-1775.

THE Government had bought the venal portion of the Patriot party, but the residue, led by Lucas, and Pery the member for Limerick, who had now found a powerful ally in young Henry Flood, continued their assaults on the pension-list. The annual charge of this scandal in 1763 was no less than £72,000; while the private revenue of the Crown, on which alone it could with decency be charged, was but £30,000. One of the latest jobs was a pension of £1000 a year in the name of George Charles to M. de Verois, the Sardinian ambassador, for having negotiated the peace of Paris. Besides this £72,000, the number of regiments had been raised from thirty-two to forty-two without adding to the number of men, with the sole object of increasing the Court patronage by means of the Gazette; and this had entailed the expenditure of an additional £75,000 per annum in the pay of general officers alone.

The imports and exports were taxed as heavily as they would bear. The revenue was annually falling short of the expenditure. The national debt, after

having been liquidated in 1754, had rapidly grown up again in consequence of the cost of the Seven Years' War, and, taking the annual deficits into account, was calculated in 1765 to amount to about £1,000,000.

After repeated motions relating to the pension list, which were defeated by considerable majorities, and after the rejection of a bill "to prevent the buying and selling of offices which concern the administration of justice, or of the collecting of his majesty's revenue," the Patriots felt that the self-interested Court party were too strong for them on this point, and turned their attention to obtaining an instalment of Parliamentary reform.

There was no limit to the existence of an Irish Parliament but the demise of the Crown or a dissolution. That which had been elected at the commencement of George II.'s reign expired only with his death, having sat for no less than thirty-three years. The duration of the English Parliament was limited by the Septennial Act; and the question which was now beginning to excite general interest, and which had drawn the pledges of a considerable proportion of the candidates at the last general election, was that of a Septennial Act for Ireland.

The Government, now that it held in its pay the leaders of the Commons, whose united dependants could at any time insure a majority of the House, was beginning to find that the monopoly of votes which they had secured was anything but a satisfactory purchase. The rapacity of the placemen was insatiable, and if they did not obtain all their desires, they did not scruple to revenge

themselves by going into the Opposition lobby. The wire-pullers of the Privy Council, the Boyle and Ponsonby oligarchy, who monopolized the office of lord justice, were in the habit of bargaining with each new lord-lieutenant as to the terms upon which they would "undertake" to "carry on the king's business." For as all the loaves and fishes, places, pensions, and preferments, passed through their hands, they could command an enormous majority, and had it in their power to bring matters to a dead lock. If the lord-lieutenant was refractory, they joined with the Opposition and withheld the supplies, with their band of mercenaries behind them. If the lord-lieutenant was compliant, the Opposition were left in a minority, and the Government measures carried.

Lord Chatham's Government, hoping to break up the junto which had been unwittingly created, sent over Lord Townshend in 1767 as lord-lieutenant to reduce the Irish House of Commons to obedience. It was determined that thenceforward the lord-lieutenant should reside permanently in Ireland, the consequence of which necessarily was that all the patronage would be conferred directly from the viceroy in each case, instead of passing through the hands of the lords-justices who had absorbed it in his absence. To strengthen himself against the "undertakers," and to strike at their monopoly of the constituencies, he encouraged the Patriots to bring in a Septennial Bill. Three times under Lord Hertford's lieutenant-governorship had the Patriots, with the support of many members who dreaded the measure from the

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