The Constitutional History of England from 1760 to 1860 Part 6

[Footnote 84: November 22 he writes to the Duke of Rutland: "The bill ... is, I really think, the boldest and most unconst.i.tutional measure ever attempted, transferring at one stroke, in spite of all charters and compacts, the immense patronage and influence of the East to Charles Fox, in or out of office."--Stanhope's _Life of Pitt_, i., 140.]

[Footnote 85: The whole paper is given by the Duke of Buckingham, "Courts and Cabinets of George III," i., 288, and quoted by Lord Russell in his "Memorials and Correspondence of C. J. Fox," ii., 251. It is endorsed, "Delivered by Lord Thurlow, December 1, 1783. Nugent Temple."]

[Footnote 86: "Life of Pitt," i., 148. Lord Stanhope does not pledge himself to these being "the exact words of this commission, but as to its purport and meaning there is no doubt." They are, however, the exact words quoted by Fox in his speech in support of Mr. Baker's resolutions on the 17th.--_Parliamentary History_, xxiv., 207.]

[Footnote 87: "Parliamentary History," xxiv., 151-154.]

[Footnote 88: 95 to 76. "Strange to say, one of the cabinet ministers, Lord Stormont, president of the council, formed part of the final majority against the bill."--_Life of Pitt_, ii., 154.]

[Footnote 89: "Life of Pitt," i., 155.]

[Footnote 90: "Lives of the Chancellors," c. clix. Lord Thurlow.]

[Footnote 91: "The Grenville Papers," iii., 374. It may, however, be remarked, as tending to throw some doubt on Mr. Grenville's statement, that Lord Campbell a.s.serts that "Lord Mansfield, without entering into systematic opposition, had been much alienated from the court during Lord Rockingham's first administration."--_Lives of the Chief-justices_, ii., 468.]

[Footnote 92: Vol. ii., pp. 229-232.]

[Footnote 93: It will be seen hereafter that this doctrine was admitted in the fullest degree by Sir Robert Peel in the winter of 1884, when he admitted that his acceptance of office made him alone responsible for the dismissal of Lord Melbourne, though, in fact, he was taken entirely by surprise by the King's act, being in Italy at the time.]

[Footnote 94: Lord John Russell, in his "Memorials of Fox" (ii., 253), affirms that "Lord Temple's act was probably known to Pitt;" but Lord Macaulay, in his "Essay on Pitt" (p. 326), fully acquits Pitt of such knowledge, saying that "he could declare, with perfect truth, that, if unconst.i.tutional machinations had been employed, he was no party to them."]

[Footnote 95: On Lord Effingham's motion, in condemnation of some of the proceedings of the Commons, which was carried February 4, 1784, by 100 to 53.]

[Footnote 96: "Parliamentary History," xxiv., 383-385--debate of January 20, 1784.]

[Footnote 97: _Ibid_, p. 283--January 12.]

[Footnote 98: _Ibid_., pp. 251-257.]

[Footnote 99: "Parliamentary History," xxiv., 478--February 2.]

[Footnote 100: _Ibid_., p. 663.]

[Footnote 101: "Parliamentary History," xxiv., 687, 695, 699.]

[Footnote 102: The numbers were 201 to 189. The week before, on Mr.

Powys's motion for a united and efficient administration, the majority had been 20--197 to 177. On a motion made by Mr. c.o.ke, February 3, the majority had been 24--211 to 187. At the beginning of the struggle the majorities had been far larger--232 to 143 on Fox's motion for a committee on the state of the nation, January 12.]

[Footnote 103: 191 to 190.]

[Footnote 104: From December 19, when Pitt accepted office, to March 24, when the Parliament was dissolved.]

[Footnote 105: "Memorials and Correspondence of C.J. Fox," by Earl Russell, ii., 229, 248.]

[Footnote 106: _Ibid_., p. 280.]

[Footnote 107: That of April, 1831, after the defeat of the Government on General Gascoyne's amendment]

[Footnote 108: Lord Macaulay, "Miscellaneous Essays," ii., 330.]

[Footnote 109: Lord Macaulay, essay on William Pitt.]

[Footnote 110: Alison ("History of Europe," xiii., 971) states the English force in the Netherlands in 1794 at 85,000 men. Lord Stanhope calls the English at Minden 10,000 or 12,000.]

[Footnote 111: An eminent living writer (Mr. Leeky, "History of England," ii., 474) quotes with apparent approval another comparison between the father and son, made by Grattan, in the following words: "The father was not, perhaps, so good a debater as his son, but was a much better orator, a greater scholar, and a far greater man." The first two phrases in this eulogy may, perhaps, balance one another; though, when Mr. Lecky admits that "Lord Chatham's taste was far from pure, and that there was much in his speeches that was florid and meretricious, and not a little that would have appeared absurd bombast but for the amazing power of his delivery," he makes a serious deduction from his claim to the best style of eloquence which no one ever made from the speeches of his son. But Grattan's a.s.sertion that the man who, as his sister said of him, knew but two books, the "aeneid" and the "Faerie Queene," was superior in scholarship to one who, with the exception of his rival, Fox, had probably no equal for knowledge of the great authors of antiquity in either House of Parliament, is little short of a palpable absurdity. We may, however, suspect that Grattan's estimate of the two men was in some degree colored by his personal feelings. With Lord Chatham he had never been in antagonism. On one great subject, the dispute with America, he had been his follower and ally, advocating in the Irish House of Commons the same course which Chatham upheld in the English House of Peers. But to Pitt he had been almost constantly opposed. By Pitt he and his party, whether in the English, or, so long as it lasted, in the Irish Parliament, had been repeatedly defeated. The Union, of which he had been the indefatigable opponent, and to which he was never entirely reconciled, had been carried in his despite; and it was hardly unnatural that the recollection of his long and unsuccessful warfare should in some degree bias his judgment, and prompt him to an undeserved disparagement of the minister by whose wisdom and firmness he had been so often overborne.]

[Footnote 112: Ma.s.sey's "History of England," iii., 447; _confer_ also Green's "History of the English People," vol. iv.]

[Footnote 113: Hallam ("Middle Ages," ii., 386, 481), extolling the condition of "the free socage tenants, or English yeomanry, as the cla.s.s whose independence has stamped with peculiar features both our const.i.tution and our national character," gives two derivations for the name; one "the Saxon _soe_, which signifies a franchise, especially one of jurisdiction;" and the other, that adopted by Bracton, and which he himself prefers, "the French word _soc_, a ploughshare."]

[Footnote 114: Lord Colchester's "Diary," i., 68, mentions that the officiating clergyman was Mr. Burt, of Twickenham, who received 500 for his services. Lord John Russell ("Memorials and Correspondence of Fox,"

ii., 284-389) agrees in stating that the marriage was performed in the manner prescribed by the Common Prayer-book. Mr. Jesse, in his "Life of George III.," ii., 506, gathering, as the present writer can say from personal knowledge, his information from some papers left behind him by the late J.W. Croker, says: "The ceremony was performed by a Protestant clergyman, though in part, apparently, according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church." Lord John Russell avoids discussing the question whether the marriage involved the forfeiture of the inheritance of the crown, an avoidance which many will interpret as a proof that in his opinion it did. Mr. Ma.s.sey's language ("History of England," iii., 327) clearly intimates that he holds the same opinion.]

[Footnote 115: Russell's "Life of Fox," ii., 187.]

[Footnote 116: Fox's private correspondence is full of antic.i.p.ations that the Regent's first act will be to dismiss Pitt, and to make him minister. In a letter of December 15 he even fixes a fortnight as the time by which he expects to be installed; while Lord Loughborough, who was eager to possess himself of the Great Seal--an expectation in which, though well-founded, he would, as it proved, have found himself disappointed--was led by his hopes to give the Prince counsel of so extraordinary a nature that it is said that the ministers, to whose knowledge it had come, were prepared, if any attempt had been made to act upon it, or even openly to avow it, to send the learned lord to the Tower. ("Diary of Lord Colchester," i., 28.) In an elaborate paper which he drew up and read to the Prince at Windsor, he a.s.sured his Royal Highness, speaking as a lawyer, that "the administration of government devolved to him of right. He was bound by every duty to a.s.sume it, and his character would be lessened in the public estimation, if he took it on any other ground but right, or on any sort of compromise. The authority of Parliament, as the great council of the nation, would be interposed, not to confer but to declare the right. The mode of proceeding should be that in a short time his Royal Highness should signify his intention to act by directing a meeting of the Privy Council, when he should declare his intention to take upon himself the care of the state, and should at the same time signify his desire to have the advice of Parliament, and order it by proclamation to meet early for the despatch of business.... It is of vast importance in the outset that he should appear to act entirely of himself, and, in the conferences he must necessarily have, not to consult, but to listen and direct." The entire paper is given by Lord Campbell ("Lives of the Chancellors," c. clxx.).]

[Footnote 117: Hume's account of this transaction is, that the Duke "desired that it might be recorded in Parliament that this authority was conferred on him from their own free motion, without any application on his part; ... and he required that all the powers of his office should be specified and defined by Parliament."]

[Footnote 118: "Parliamentary History," xxvii., 803--speech of Mr.

Hardinge, one of the Welsh judges, and M.P. for Old Sarum.]

[Footnote 119: I take this report, or abstract, of Lord Camden's speech from the "Lives of the Chancellors," c. cxlvii.]

[Footnote 120: "Memorials of Fox," ii., 292.]

[Footnote 121: The proceedings of the Irish Parliament on this occasion will be mentioned in the next chapter.]

[Footnote 122: Mr. Hallam (iii., 144, ed. 1832) gives a definition of the term "unconst.i.tutional" which seems rather singular: "By unconst.i.tutional, as distinguished from 'illegal,' I mean a novelty of much importance, tending to endanger the established laws." May not the term rather be regarded as referring to a distinct cla.s.s of acts--to those at variance with the recognized _spirit_ of the const.i.tution or principles of government, with the preservation of the liberties of the people, as expressed or implied in the various charters, etc., but not forbidden by the express terms of any statute?]

[Footnote 123: The entry in the "Parliamentary History," November 20, 1788, is: "Both Houses met pursuant to the last prorogation. Later meetings were in consequence of successive adjournments."]

[Footnote 124: In the Commons by 183 to 33; in the Lords by 119 to 11.]

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 pa.s.ses the Irish Parliament.--Details of the Measure.-- General Character of the Union.--Circ.u.mstances 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 const.i.tuencies, 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed, 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 cla.s.ses of English statesmen. And under his government a bill for shortening Parliaments was pa.s.sed, though it fixed the possible duration of each Parliament at eight years instead of seven, the variation being made to prevent a general election from being held at the same time in both countries, but, according to common belief, solely in order to keep up a mark of difference between the Irish and English Parliaments. And those who entertained this suspicion fancied they saw a confirmation of it in the retention of the regulation that the Irish Parliament should only sit in alternate years, a practice wholly inconsistent with any proper idea of the duties and privileges of a Parliament such as prevailed on this side of the Channel; since a Parliament whose sessions were thus intermittent could not possibly exercise that degree of supervision over the revenue, either in its collection or its expenditure, which is among its most important duties.