CHAPTER XI. Representation of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament ;-Extent of Irish Business in Parliament ;-Municipal Corporations ;-Absenteeism investigated ;-Irish Constabulary;-Improved Prison Discipline. PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION. Among other alleged grievances, the assertion that " the representation of Ireland is most unjustly and unfairly disproportioned to the population and resources of Ireland" stands prominent; and it is contended "she ought to have got by the Reform Bill at least from 70 to 100 additional members." This "political injury" as it is termed, (see Preface, page iv.) is set forth with a minuteness of detail in which the actual truth is carefully suppressed, and the principle of Universal Suffrage set forth, as if population constituted the sole qualification for Parliamentary representation. Previous to the Legislative Union, Parliamentary reform had been frequently discussed in the British Legislature, and in Ireland, where it took precedence of Catholic Emancipation; indeed, in England it formed the annual topic of the Session until on the 18th April, 1784, Mr. Pitt, then Prime Minister, after a speech of considerable length, moved "that leave be given to bring in a bill to amend the representation of the people of England in Parliament." By this bill Mr. Pitt proposed, 1st, To transfer the right of choosing representatives from 36 of such boroughs, as had already or were falling into decay, to the counties, and to such chief towns and cities as were then unrepresented. 2nd, That a fund should be provided for the purpose of giving to the owners and holders of such boroughs disfranchised an appreciated compensation for their property. The motion was lost by 248 to 174. When the measure of a Legislative Union was proposed between Great Britain and Ireland, Mr. Pitt deemed that period a good opportunity to effect the long-desired reform in the Parliamentary representation of Ireland, particularly as, out of 300 members in the Irish House of Commons, 200 were stated by Mr. Grattan, in 1793, to be the nominees of private individuals; and from 40 to 50 members were returned, it is said, by constituencies of not more than ten electors. It was therefore resolved, and agreed to by the Irish Parliament, to abolish eighty-three nomination boroughs, and to pay the proprietor of each borough 15,000l., for which purpose the sum of 1,245,000l. was voted and paid by the Irish parliament. (See names of boroughs in Appendix.) This was in unison with Mr. Pitt's proposition for Parliamentary reform in England, and which the French revolution, by alarming the minds of many persons, alone prevented being adopted for Great Britain. This fact, it may be here remarked, is the grand charge against Mr. Pitt and his ministry, of having carried the Union with Ireland by fraud and corruption. When Parliamentary reform took place in England in 1832, fifty-five boroughs, returning two members each, were totally disfranchised; and thirty boroughs were half disfranchised, i. e. they were only to return one member instead of two. Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, and other large towns were empowered to return representatives to the Imperial Parliament; and the changes in the number of members of Parliament are thus shown : : Thus it appears that by the Reform Bill of 1832, England lost thirteen members, and Ireland gained five; and yet we are told by the Repealers of "the complicated enormity of this injustice !” We come now to consider the second part of the assertion, namely, that Ireland ought to have obtained the power to return one hundred additional members in the Imperial Parliament at the time of the Reform Bill. No person who understood or appreciated the British Constitution, could honestly make such a proposition. Ireland was neither by population, trade, wealth, or intelligence, entitled by right to send one hundred members to the Imperial Legislature in 1801. Neither in England, Ireland, or Scotland, has mere population ever been the test of Parliamentary representation ;* and simple justice at the period of the Union would have proportioned the representation of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament in the same ratio as the Revenue, namely, "in the proportion of fifteen parts for Great Britain, and two parts for Ireland." Thus, the utmost number of representatives that Ireland was entitled to at the time of the Union was seventyfour in addition to this twenty-six more members were added, yet this is called "an iniquity without a single ingredient of reciprocity." [See Preface, p. vi.] : How stands the proportion of Parliamentary representation now to the revenue contributed by Ireland? Taking the annual revenue of Great Britain as ten times greater than that of Ireland, [see page 231], namely, as forty millions sterling to four millions,† * The following abstract shows the total number of members sent to the House of Commons by the several counties, cities, towns, and boroughs, in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland respectively; with the amount of population, according to the census of 1841; together with the proportion of the number of members returned in respect to the population of the three parts of the United Kingdom : Thus the "Gross payments of ordinary revenues into the Exchequer" were for Net. £43,066,592 3,767,204 Total Population. One Member to each. Ireland would only be entitled to send fifty-five members to the Imperial Legislature, as the one-tenth proportion of 553 representatives from Great Britain. The facts, therefore, stand thus: at the period of the Union, Ireland obtained in the Imperial Legislature twenty-six representatives more than she ought in justice to have received; and at this moment she has fifty representatives in the Imperial Parliament more than she is entitled to by her contributions to the Imperial revenue to send to Parliament. In the words of the address of the Repealers, see Preface, p. ii. "We leave these facts to fester as they are!” Scotland contributes more largely to the Imperial revenue than Ireland, and yet Scotland has but fifty-three, while Ireland has 105 representatives in the Imperial Legislature. It is alleged that Wales, "with a population of 800,000 has 36,000 voters; while Cork county, with 720,000 inhabitants, has only 2,000 voters." But this proves, if true, that Wales is wealthier, and its property not subdivided into one-acre farms.—The same franchise exists in Ireland as in Great Britain; there is no inequality; and the only point to be regretted on this head is, that the franchise is too low in Ireland; that persons little, if at all, removed above the condition of day-labourers, are vested with a high political trust which they are incapable of estimating, and who are unable, by their very position, to understand the great and complex questions which ought to decide an elector in the all-important choice of a representative. The small number of persons really entitled to the elective franchise for Parliamentary representation, is seen by a return to the House of Commons, of April 27, 1843, No. 235, showing the valuation of every Union in Ireland, including every County. The total number of persons rated in the last rate, in 108 Unions, was 997,434; of these, the number whose valuation was not greater than one pound sterling, was 149,962; under 21., 138,143; 398,2201.; 47., 75,572; 51., 63,818. Thus the number of persons whose valuations were not greater than 57. was 525,713, out of a Great Britain more than eleven times the amount of those of Ireland; in such proportion should have been the Parliamentary representation at the period of the Union, and in 1832. (See Revenue Payments.) total of 997,434, showing more than one-half of the valuations less than 57. per annum. How utterly unfit is such a constituency to decide on the great questions of Imperial Legislation! Democracy has had a most baneful sway, especially for the last few years, in Ireland. A mass of ignorant and excited people have been led or driven to the hustings by a few artful leaders and ambitious demagogues; thus rendering popular representation a curse instead of a blessing, and endangering the constitutional equipoise, so necessary for the preservation of a mixed or Monarchical Government. The conferring of the elective franchise, by the Irish Parliament, on the forty-shilling freeholders in Ireland, has been the fruitful source of many and dire ills; and every effort should be made to expunge from the registry in Ireland all who are not most clearly entitled to a vote. Under the present state of things, those who are the enemies of the Union (and they may also be justly termed the enemies of Ireland), are enabled to sit in Parliament to obstruct all useful legislation—but to lend an active hand for the dismemberment of the Empire - the destruction of the Protestant church-and the establishment of Republican principles. A continuance of the present agitation must inevitably tend to an agrarian war-to a contest between property and population -to a servile strife, which must end in general ruin and desolation. And yet what are the means proposed to arrest this terrible result, by the "Loyal Repeal Association"?—A separation of Ireland from England; an "independent" Irish Parliament; universal suffrage, i. e., "to every male adult, 21 years of age, who has not been convicted of crime or afflicted with mental derangement," vote by ballot; shortening the duration of Parliament; the "equalisation of electoral districts;" and the "abolition of the absurd property qualification." This, together with what is termed "fixity of tenure ”—which means converting the tenant into the landlord, the abolition of any support for the Established Church, and the confiscation of the property of the absentees, is the foundation of the political constitution proposed for Ireland by the "Loyal National Repeal |