political phenomenon-an independent Irish nationality. This feeling of Protestant Irish nationality gave early indications of its existence. When Molyneux, one of the members for Dublin University, published his celebrated treatise, "The Case of Ireland's being Bound by Acts of Parliament in England, Stated" (1698), the doctrine of Irish independence found willing and eager listeners, both in parliament and out of it; and though the book was formally condemned by a vote of the English Commons, and ordered to be burned by the hangman, yet not the less did this first assertion, by an Irish Protestant, of Irish nationality and independence, sink deep into the heart of his country. It efficiently aided, as it significantly prognosticated, the great national struggle of 1782, when the English interest in Ireland openly proclaimed itself an Irish interest, and refused, sword-in-hand, to be any longer "bound by acts of parliament in England."

The first political occurrence which developed powerfully and with effect, though transiently, a national and anti-English feeling in Ireland, was the business of Wood's halfpence; a small matter-as Mr. Croall's mail-coach contract is a small matter-though leading, like that, to important results. About the middle of the reign of George I. one Wood got a patent from the English government for coining copper halfpence and farthings for Irish circulation, to the amount of 108,0007.; which coinage he made of such base material, that the whole mass together was not worth the odd 8,000l. All Ireland rose up against the insulting cheat. Parliament-houses, magistrates, corporations, grand juries-all protested and agitated together against the English government and its thievish patentee; the powers of the press were, for the first time in Irish history, evoked into action; Dean Swift's famous Drapier letters were cried about the streets for a penny each, and pasted up in cottages and ale-houses all over the country; and the matter ended in the rescinding of the patent, the calling-in of the halfpence, and the triumph of the Irish people over the British government. The business in itself seems trivial enough, but it was no trifle in the eyes of the English cabinet and its adherents. Primate Boulter, the wily and dexterous manager of what was called the English interest in Ireland, wrote, in 1724, to the government at home

"We are at present in a very bad state, and the people so poisoned with apprehensions of Wood's halfpence, that I do not see there can be any hopes of justice against any person for seditious writings, if he does but mix somewhat about Wood in them. * * * Our pamphlets, and the discourses of some people of weight, run very much upon the independency of this kingdom; and, in our present state, that is a very popular notion. * I find, by my own and others' inquiries, that the people of every religion, country, and party here, are alike set against Wood's halfpence, and that their agreement in this has had a very unhappy influence on the state of this nation, by bringing on intimacies between Papists and Jacobites, and the Whigs, who before had no correspondence with them."

* *

A most ingenious confession of the divide-and-govern policy, and a most apt illustration of what was meant by "the English interest in Ireland." The agreement of all sects and classes of Irishmen in a common Irish interest, was a 66 most unhappy influence on the state of

* "Letters written by his Excellency Hugh Boulter, D.D., Lord Primate of all Ireland," vol. i., pp. 3-8.

this nation." Altogether, this affair of Wood's halfpence, trivial-looking as it is at this distance of time, is not without its significance for us, and is well entitled to its place in our introduction to the History of the Rebellion of 1798. It denoted the birth of that new power-an IRISH PEOPLE which produced the events of 1782 and of 1798. In fact, this popular opposition to the Englishman's spurious copper was the first Association of United Irishmen.

And truly Ireland wanted something to rouse her from political torpor, and spirit her up to do battle with the incubus of the English interest. Anything more corrupt, more anti-national, more utterly sordid and vile than the Anglo-Irish government of that time, this world has not often seen. The system is thus described in the general, by Lord Clare, in his speech on the Union:

"The executive government was committed nominally to a Viceroy, but essentially to Lords Justices, selected from the principal state officers of the country, who were entrusted with the conduct of what was called the "King's business,' but might, with more propriety, have been called the business of the Lords Justices. The Viceroy came to Ireland for a few months only in two years, and returned to England perfectly satisfied with his mission, if he did not leave the affairs of the English government worse than he found them; and the Lords Justices, in his absence, were entrusted implicitly with the means of consolidating an aristocratic influence, which made them the necessary instruments of the English government."

And the legislative was like the executive; the instrument was worthy of the hands that used it. That the Irish parliament of that time was a rotten parliament-representative, neither directly nor indirectly, of any popular principle or power, but only of the money power and the aristocratic power-is a fact which we need scarcely be at the pains of putting on record. But the specific character of its rottenness, and the nature of the means by which it was managed, are perhaps less generally known. Dr. Thomas Campbell, writing in the year 1777, of a system which by that time had been pretty well broken up, but which, during the first half of the century, had reigned with little disturbance, says—

"In this nation are three or four grandees, who have such an influence in the House of Commons that their coalition would at any time give them a clear majority upon any question. It has therefore always been a maxim of government to disunite these factious chiefs. And, still further to disable opposition, it has been thought expedient to disengage, as much as possible, the followers from their leaders. This was attempted by Lord Chesterfield so early as the year 1745; but his stay was too short to effect it. Formerly these principals used to stipulate with each new Lord Lieutenant, whose office was biennial and residence but for six months, upon what terms they would carry the King's business through the house, so that they might not improperly be called Undertakers. They provided that the disposal of all court favours, whether places, pensions, or preferments, should pass through their hands, in order to keep their suite in an absolute state of dependence upon themselves. All applications were made by the leader, who claimed as a right the privilege of gratifying his friends in proportion to their numbers. Whenever such demands were not complied with, then the measures of government were sure to be crossed and obstructed; and the session of parliament became a constant struggle for power, between the heads of parties who used to force themselves into the office of Lord Justice, according to the prevalence of their interest."*

Can it surprise us that the same writer who records this of the government of Ireland, tells us of its people, that he found them "either moping under the sullen gloom of inactive indigence, or blindly asserting

* " Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland," p. 56.

C

the rights of nature in nocturnal insurrections, attended with circumstances of ruinous devastation and savage cruelty."

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These Undertakers, who, as Lord Charlemont says, were certainly well fitted to preside at the funeral of the common weal," constituted the aristocratic influence spoken of by Lord Clare. The system was eventually found to be too difficult and uncertain of management, and it was broken up by whom, and how, we shall learn presently.

Meanwhile, a public national spirit continued to work and grow in the Protestant section of the population of Ireland, and from time to time gave signs of life. The merit of organising a regular and progressively powerful popular and parliamentary opposition to the anti-national government of the Undertakers and the English cabinet belongs to the once-celebrated, but now nearly forgotten, Dr. Charles Lucas. Dr. Lucas, originally a Dublin apothecary, afterwards member of parliament for Dublin, and for nearly thirty years leader of the Irish opposition to the English interest, was a man of limited knowledge, narrow and poorlycultivated intellect, and violent temper--but bold, ardent, active and, for anything that appears to the contrary, thoroughly honest and unselfish. He began his political career about the year 1745, with a vehement and, no doubt, excellently well-merited attack, on certain civic abuses in the corporation of Dublin, in the course of which he wrote and spoke much "sedition," both against the Dublin corporation in particular and the British government in general. The Castle was frightened, and determined to crush him. Passages were selected from his writings, for the perusal of the Attorney-General; and the House of Commons, whose privileges he had defended, voted him (according to a certain short and sharp way they had of dealing with men and things they did not like) an enemy to his country. To avoid the storm, Lucas escaped to England, and there he remained till the accession of George III., when he returned to Ireland, and was sent to agitate in parliament as member for the city of Dublin.

From about this period, Irish politics assume a tone of higher and more sustained importance. For some years previously, the English interest had been progressively becoming more and more an independent Irish interest. Within the walls of the Irish House of Commons an occasional and incipient opposition had made its appearance, which, on some questions of parliamentary privilege, could now and then obtain a majority, to the infinite perplexity of the King's friends and hinderance of the King's business. In 1749 the Commons commenced a war of votes and resolutions with the British cabinet, in defence of their constitutional right to direct the appropriation of surplus revenue without the previous consent of the crown. But so little. store was set on Irish Commons' votes and resolutions, that the question was cut short by a King's letter, quietly drawing the money in dispute out of the treasury; in revenge for which affront the Commons speedily asserted their dignity (1751) by the bold stroke of expelling from their house one Mr. Arthur Jones Nevil, a functionary of government, for peculation, embezzlement and fraud. This appropriation question continued to be a subject of conflict, and a test of strength, between the new Irish interest and the English cabinet. It was re-opened in 1753, by the Lord Lieutenant (the Duke of Dorset) informing the Commons on their meeting, that his Majesty would "graciously con

sent "to the surplus revenue being appropriated-as they, in fact, intended to appropriate it—in reduction of the public debt. The Commons passed heads of a bill to that effect, without mentioning the gracious consent of Majesty, and afterwards rejected the bill, in consequence of the ministry having altered it by insertion of the consent. The parliamentary opposition found vigorous coadjutors out of doors. The Viceroy was obliged, in consequence of the mooting of this unpopular topic, to make his escape out of the country, under escort of the military and of a mob hired and made drunk for the occasion.

This appropriation question of the reign of George II. was something more, in its results, than a mere dispute of parliamentary form and privilege. It powerfully aided and quickened the growth of a spirit of nationality and independence, both in parliament and out of it. It communicated life and heat to the House of Commons of Ireland;-so rapid was the importance which it gave to that assembly, that a borough sold in 1754 for three times as much as was given in 1750."* The illustration places in rather an equivocal light the practical worth of the new parliamentary opposition, with regard to the real interests of the country. Still, it was better thus than not at all. It serves to show the rising power and spirit of the Opposition, that a few years later (1757) we find them overhauling the pension list, and bandying sharp resolutions and messages thereupon with their Lord Lieutenant.t

The death of George II., and the consequent summoning of a new parliament, gave fresh strength to the Opposition. The first years of the new reign were occupied with discussion and agitation on the question of limiting the duration of parliaments. Hitherto, the Irish House of Commons had continued undisturbed, unless dissolved by prerogative, during the sovereign's life-time. The parliament of George II. had sat through the entire reign of that king-a period of thirty-three years; in which time the most retentive memory must have grown superannuated, and outlived all recollection of constituents (if any), responsibility, and popular control. The Irish member's tenure of his seat was, in fact, as against the people, a life estate-as against the crown, a tenancy at will, of which prerogative might at any moment dispossess him. The jobbery, venality, rapacity, oppression and corruption, of every kind and degree, resulting from such a state of things, made this life-tenancy of seats in parliament a glaring, first-class grievance-among the earliest which the new Irish interest set itself to redress. For the first eight years of George III.'s reign, accordingly, the grand measure of the patriots was a Septennial Bill. The history of this business is instructively and curiously illustrative, both of the character of the Irish parliament and of its constitutional relations to the British Government. Of course it was not in human nature that a measure for abridging their own tenure of power should be especially acceptable to a majority of the new

*Hardy's "Life of the Earl of Charlemont," vol. i., p. 81.

†The iniquities of an Irish pension list in the middle of the eighteenth century, are of that sort of things which may be "more easily imagined than described." In 1763, a member of the House of Commons pithily observes:-"It is written, that the wages of sin is death: but whoever will look into our list of pensions will have reason to say that the wages of sin is-Ireland!'"-Debates Relative to the Affairs of Ireland, in the years 1763 and 1764.

House of Commons. Yet the pressure from without, and the resolute pertinacity of the minority within, made it not altogether safe or pleasant to reject that measure; seeing that Dublin mobs could, upon occasion, subject unpopular representatives to a description of "individual and personal responsibility," more stringent and summary than constitutional. The operation of Poyning's Law suggested to the embarrassed legislators an easy and fair-seeming solution of the difficulty, by which they fondly hoped to earn a cheap popularity, without seriously imperilling the happy constitution of their honourable house; and that was, to pass the heads of the hated Septennial Bill, trusting to the Lord Lieutenant and his council-or, in their default, to the English ministry and council, to stop the further progress of a measure so distasteful and inconvenient to all parties.

This ingenious policy was successfully adopted in two successive sessions. Once and again did a number of the Undertakers and their adherents, sufficient to make a majority, coalesce with the patriots in passing the heads of a Septennial Bill, which they were well assured would pass on to an early grave in the waste-paper stores of the privy council, and trouble them no more. But this was not a game to be played on for ever. Metropolitan and county meetings and petitions disclosed a fast-growing popular determination not to be, longer trifled with by Undertaking chicanery and ministerial obstruction. In the session of 1767-8, the people petitioned and agitated once more; and

"Once more the House of Commons sent the bill to their good friends the privy council, enjoying in public the applause of the nation for having passed it, and in secret the notable triumph that it would be so soon destroyed. But here matters assumed a different aspect; the privy council began to feel that this scene of deception had been long enough played by the Commons; and being, with some reason, very much out of humour that the plaudits of the nation should be bestowed on its representatives, whilst his Majesty's privy council, by the artifice of some leaders, was rendered odious to the country, resolved to drop the curtain at once, and certified the bill to the English privy council satisfied that it would encounter a much more chilling reception there than it had met with even from themselves. The aspect of affairs was again changed. The Irish privy council had disappointed the Commons, and the English cabinet now resolved to disappoint and punish both. Enraged with the House of Commons for its dissimulation, with the aristocracy for not crushing the bill at once; and, amid all this confusion and resentment, not a little elated to have it at length in their power completely to humiliate that aristocracy, which, in the true spirit of useful, obsequious servitude, not only galled the people, but sometimes mortified and controlled the English cabinet itself; afraid of popular commotions in Ireland; feeling, as English gentlemen, that the Irish public was in the right, as statesmen, that it would be wise to relinquish at once what, in fact, could be but little longer tenable; they sacrificed political leaders, privy councillors, and parliament, to their fears, their hatred, their adoption of a new policy; and, though last, not the least motive, it is to be hoped, their just sense of the English constitution. They returned the bill, and gave orders for the calling of a new parliament."*

* Hardy's "Life of the Earl of Charlemont," vol. i., p. 252.

The context of the above deserves quotation, as a most characteristic piece of private political history ·

"It is impossible not to mention, in this place, an anecdote which I heard from Lord Charlemont, as well as others. He happened at this time to dine with one of the great parliamentary leaders; a large company, much drink, and much good humour. In the midst of this festivity, the papers of the last English packet, which had just come in, were brought into the room, and given to the master of the house. Scarcely had he read