CHAPTER V.
The Affairs of Ireland .-- Condition of the Irish Parliament .-- The Octennial Bill .-- The Penal Laws .-- Non-residence of the Lord- lieutenant .-- Influence of the American War on Ireland .-- Enrolment of the Volunteers .-- Concession of all the Demands of Ireland .-- Violence of the Volunteers .-- Their Convention .-- Violence of the Opposition in Parliament: Mr.Brownlow, Mr.Grattan, Mr.Flood .-- Pitt's Propositions Fail .-- Fitzgibbon's Conspiracy Bill .-- Regency Question .-- Recovery of the King .-- Question of a Legislative Union .-- Establishment of Maynooth College .-- Lord Edward Fitzgerald .-- Arguments for and against the Union .-- It passes the Irish Parliament .-- Details of the Measure .-- General Character of the Union .-- Circumstances which Prevented its Completeness.
In describing the condition of Ireland and the feelings of its people, in the latter years of the reign of George II., Mr.Hallam has fixed on the year 1753 as that in which the Irish Parliament first began to give vent to aspirations for equality with the English Parliament in audible complaints; and the Irish House of Commons, finding the kingdom in the almost unprecedented condition of having "a surplus revenue after the payment of all charges," took steps to vindicate that equality by a sort of appropriation bill.
There were, however, three fundamental differences between the Parliaments of the two countries, which, above all others, stood in the way of such equality as the Irish patriots desired: the first, that by a law as old as the time of Henry VII., and called sometimes the Statute of Drogheda, from the name of the town in which it was first promulgated, and sometimes Poynings' Act, from the name of Sir Henry Poynings, the Lord-deputy at the time, no bill could be introduced into the Irish Parliament till it had received the sanction of the King and Privy Council in England; the second, that the Parliament lasted for the entire life of the King who had summoned it--a regulation which caused a seat in the House of Commons to be regarded almost as a possession for life, and consequently enormously increased the influence of the patrons of boroughs, some of whom could return a number of members such as the mightiest borough monger in England could never aspire to equal.[125] The third difference, of scarcely inferior importance, was, that the Parliament only sat in alternate years.

But, though these arrangements suited the patrons and the members of the House of Commons, it was not strange that the constituencies, whose power over their representatives was almost extinguished by them, regarded them with less complacency, and, at the general election which was the consequence of the accession of George III., pledges were very generally exacted from the candidates that, if elected, they would endeavor to procure the passing of a septennial act like that which had been the law in England ever since the early years of George I.A bill with that object was introduced in 1761, and reported on not unfavorably as to its principle by the English law advisers to whom the Privy Council referred it.

But, as if it had been designed to exemplify in the strongest possible manner the national propensity for making blunders, it contained one clause which rendered it not only impracticable but ridiculous.

The clause provided that no member should take his seat or vote till his qualification had been proved before the Speaker in a full house.

But the Speaker could not be chosen till the members had established their right of voting, so that the whole was brought to a dead-lock, and the bill, if passed, could never have been carried out.
In the ministry of 1767, however--that of the Duke of Grafton and Lord Chatham--Lord Halifax was replaced at Dublin Castle by Lord Townsend, who, among his other good qualities, deserves specially honorable mention as the first Lord-lieutenant who made residence in Dublin his rule on principle; for till very lately non-residence had been the rule and residence the exception, a fact which is of itself a melancholy but all-sufficient proof of the absolute indifference to Irish interests shown by all classes of English statesmen.