The Constitutional History of England from 1760 to 1860 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 614 pages of information about The Constitutional History of England from 1760 to 1860.

The Constitutional History of England from 1760 to 1860 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 614 pages of information about The Constitutional History of England from 1760 to 1860.
besides the removal of the purely political grievances, a surrender of the right of appeal from the Irish to the English courts of law.  But their new masters were inclined to grant everything which seemed requisite to the establishment of complete equality between the two kingdoms; and though the new ministry was dissolved in a few months by the premature death of its chief, he lived long enough to carry the repeal of Poynings’ Act, the retention of which was now admitted to be not only senseless but mischievous, since the existence of a body invested with nominal dignity, but practically powerless, was calculated not only to provoke discontent, but to furnish a lever for agitation.

The repeal was, however, nothing less than the establishment of an entirely new constitution in Ireland.  The Irish Parliament, the meetings of which had hitherto been a mere form and farce, was installed in a position of absolute independence, to grant money or to make laws, subject to no other condition than that their legislation should be of a character to entitle it to the royal assent, a condition to which every act of the British Parliament was likewise and equally liable.  “Unhappily, as an Irish patriotic writer exclaims on this occasion, it was written in the book of fate that the felicity of Ireland should be short-lived."[129] And a similar shortness of existence was to be the lot of the separate independence of her Parliament.  Even while framing instructions for the Lord-lieutenant, in his honest desire to inaugurate a system of just government for Ireland, George III. had warned him on no account to “summon a Parliament without his special command."[130] And, regarded by the light of subsequent events, it can hardly be denied that the prohibition displayed an accurate insight into the real difficulties of the country, and also into the character of the people themselves as the source of at least some of those difficulties.  We ought not to judge its leaders too severely.  A nation which has been long kept in bondage, and is suddenly presented with liberty, is hardly more able to bear the change than a man immured for years in a dark dungeon can at once endure the unveiled light of the sun; and independence had been granted to the Irish too suddenly for it to be probable that they would at once and in every instance exercise it wisely.

All parties were to blame in different degrees.  The first danger came from the Volunteers, who, flushed with self-importance, from the belief that it was the imposing show of their strength which had enabled the Parliament to extort Lord Rockingham’s concession from the English Houses, now claimed to be masters of the Parliament itself.  With the termination of the American war, and the consequent return of the English army to Europe, the reason for their existence had passed away.  But they refused to be disbanded, and established a convention of armed delegates, to sit in Dublin during the session of Parliament, and

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The Constitutional History of England from 1760 to 1860 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.