Melbourne’s Second
Ministry I
(April 1835 to June 1841)
Summary.
This period was often regarded as a golden age in Ireland. Agrarian crime had
died down, and there was a reforming ministry which tried to remove ancient
grievances and to introduce reforms. There were no great popular movements like
that for Emancipation in the previous decade or that for Repeal in the following
decade which raised tensions and produced strong reactions from Protestants.
Railway construction was progressing and steam ships helped the economy. The
population was growing rapidly and potato blight had never been heard of. A
popular your princess became a popular young queen. The period was not without
its problems. Stricter adhesion to religious duties in all the Christian
denominations brought religious tensions.
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The New Ministry
The Tory Opposition
Reform Programme
The Irish Poor Law
Education Again
The Clergy and
Politics
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The New Ministry
[April 1835] The period of
Melbourne's second ministry
when Lieutenant Thomas Drummond was Under-Secretary has often been viewed as a
brief halcyon period in modern Irish history. This view was strongly endorsed by the almost
hagiographic entry about Drummond in the Dictionary
of National Biography where, in the usual fashion, conditions when he first
arrived were painted in darkest colours and real improvements made with others
were attributed to him alone. In some ways the tranquillity of the period was
an illusion caused by the fact that O'Connell stopped agitating for a while,
and the Ribbonmen also ceased overt activities following the enforcement of the
Coercion Act (1833). It was also the heyday of the Catholic Whigs. These were
Catholics of a conciliatory rather than confrontationist disposition, and often
they had supported the Vetoists for this reason. With regard to commercial
prosperity and economic development the period between about 1817 and 1850, the
Great Famine notwithstanding, was a period of almost uninterrupted growth.
This chapter deals
with the major points in the Government’s programme: tithes and Church reform,
the police, the Poor Law, the reform of the Irish corporations of towns and
cities, and education, and with the powerful and well-organised opposition of
the High Tories to all the Government’s proposals. The hard-fought battles were
intermingled with each other, and were spread over several years, and involved
two appeals by Catholics to Rome, one regarding education, and the other
regarding political activities of Catholic priests.
Melbourne resumed the office of Prime Minister
on 11 April 1835, and the first session of Parliament opened on 12
May. In a re-shuffle, Russell became Home Secretary and Lord Duncannon became
Lord Privy Seal. Spring Rice became Chancellor of the Exchequer and Sir Henry
Parnell Treasurer of the Navy. Richard More O'Ferrall became a Junior Lord of
the Treasury, the first Irish Catholic to hold a post in Westminster. The Earl of Mulgrave became Lord
Lieutenant, Viscount Morpeth Irish Secretary, and Thomas Drummond
Under-Secretary. Plunket again became Lord Chancellor. In this position he took
a lesser role in politics but now had the duty of selecting Catholics for the
office of sheriff, appointing or removing magistrates, and advising the Lord
Lieutenant on other appointments in Church and State. Louis Perrin, who for a long
time had refused official appointments, became Attorney General, Blackburne
having resigned with Peel. O’Loghlen was again appointed Solicitor General,
having held the office very briefly the preceding year. When Perrin accepted a
judgeship O’Loghlen became Attorney General, and was knighted, and was
succeeded by Stephen Woulfe and Nicholas Ball in turn. Richard Lalor Sheil and
Thomas Wyse who had
had a higher political profile in the Catholic Association did not immediately
get office, but within a few years both were offered and accepted posts. As the
Repeal agitation receded, even O'Connell's immediate family accepted various
public offices. O'Connell himself never did, though he certainly wished to be
offered a suitable post. Perhaps if the sympathetic Lord Duncannon had become
Lord Lieutenant a decade earlier Irish history would have been different.
Sir
Michael O’Loghlen (baronet in coronation honours 1838) had made his name as
O'Connell's junior at the bar and gradually taken over O'Connell's practice. He
was the first Catholic to be a law officer and judge since the reign of James
II. Along With Sheil, he was in the first batch of Catholic barristers to be
called within the bar in 1830. In 1831 he was appointed Third Serjeant, in 1834
Solicitor General for Ireland, in 1836 a baron of the Court of
Exchequer, and in 1837 Master of the Rolls. He died in 1842 at the age of fifty
three.
Stephen Woulfe was
born in county Clare, and was educated by the English
Jesuits (still more or less suppressed) at their new college at Stoneyhurst in Lancashire. With him were Sheil, Ball, and Wyse,
who also went with him to Trinity College. Though a very young man he took part
on the 'Vetoist' side and learned an early lesson in how O'Connell overwhelmed
public meetings. He spent days preparing a speech, to which O'Connell listened
politely. O'Connell rose to reply and said 'Here we have a wolf in sheep's
clothing'. After gales of laughter convulsed the meeting there was no
possibility of Woulfe winning the vote. He was noticed
by Lord Plunket who made him Crown Counsel for Munster in 1830. He was appointed Solicitor
General in 1836, Attorney General in 1837 and Chief Baron of the Exchequer in
1838. His health gave way and he died at Baden-Baden in 1840.
Nicholas Ball was
also educated in Stoneyhurst and Trinity College. He was called to the bar in 1814 and
after the War spent two winters in Rome with Thomas Wyse. Both supported the
'Vetoist' party and explained their viewpoint to Cardinal Consalvi in person.
He became Attorney General and a privy councillor in 1838,
and in 1839 accepted a judgeship in the Court of Common Pleas. He died in 1865.
His sister was Teresa Ball who established the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland. Purcell O'Gorman, former Catholic
Secretary, was made an assistant barrister.
Richard Lalor Sheil was born in Kilkenny,
received his first education in London from an émigré clergyman and then at
Stoneyhurst and Trinity College, Dublin. He then kept the necessary terms at
Lincoln's Inn in order to qualify for the bar. He had no
independent income to support him in the early days before he would obtain
sufficient briefs so he began writing plays. He had some success but his plays
were never afterwards revived. He returned to Ireland and drew attention to himself by
refusing to give up the struggle for Emancipation when O'Connell wished to. He
and O'Connell were brought together and from the meeting the Catholic
Association emerged. He always intended becoming a full citizen of the Empire
after Emancipation, and after entering Parliament
devoted himself to foreign rather than to Irish affairs. Like Castlereagh or
Wellington, he preferred the larger scene. Though
he was returned more than once for Tipperary he was not sufficiently populist to be happy there. On questions like Repeal and the
Coercion Bill had had to phrase what he said very carefully. In 1841, he
preferred to contest Dungarvan instead. He ended his career as minister at the
court of Tuscany that was the normal channel of communication between the United Kingdom and the Holy See.
Sir Thomas Wyse was born in Waterford, and educated in Stoneyhurst and
Trinity College. In 1821, he married Letitia
Bonaparte, Napoleon's niece. As many had expected, the life of a country lady
in Waterford was not to her liking and she left him
after some years. He came to the fore in the Catholic Association by organising
the election in Waterford in 1826. He was returned for Tipperary in 1830 and devoted his parliamentary
career to the improvement of education in Ireland. He was in general at first in favour
of Repeal but did not join the Repeal Movement in the 1840's, preferring to
work with the Whigs. (His grandson Andrew Nicholas Wyse spent
much of his life working for the National Board of Education and transferred to
the Ministry of Education in Northern Ireland in 1922 and became Permanent
Secretary in 1927.)
Judges and law officers were political
appointees. No particular legal knowledge or expertise was expected, only a bit
of common sense and some knowledge of the law. None of the Catholic barristers
in the first half of the century were particularly learned. O'Connell had vast
experience and a retentive memory for what he heard in court. He was a
marvellous tactical lawyer but otherwise not a student of law. If an Irish
Catholic barrister were appointed Attorney General or a judge, it was over the
heads of at least twenty better-qualified Protestants.
The Earls of Bessborough (the Ponsonby's), with the Duke of
Leinster and Archbishop Whately, continued to lead the Irish Whigs. Sir
Henry Parnell, Sir John Newport, and Thomas Spring Rice were the most important
Irish Whigs in the Commons. In the Lords, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord
Palmerston, the Marquis of Anglesey, and the Marquis Wellesley were either
connected with Ireland or had Irish estates. They were
usually very knowledgeable about Irish affairs.
Constantine Henry
Phipps, second Earl of Mulgrave, arrived in Dublin on 11 May (he was created Marquis of
Normanby in June 1838). The principal concern of Mulgrave still was to tranquillise
the old ascendancy faction, while at the same time promoting Catholics, and to
try to bring them to a more constructive attitude towards the new order. (This
was also the prime concern of Peel.) If one counted only numbers, the Catholics
were an overwhelming majority. But if one looked at the social position of and
skills of Protestants, education, and skills in commerce, manufacturing,
agriculture and land improvement, administration, law, medicine, newspapers,
banking, and all the needs of a developing society, then the Protestants were
overwhelmingly predominant. Such persons in every country are vulnerable to the
denunciations of 'populist orators'. (Populists espouse popular local
grievances against big business, or the better off, or outsiders OED). The ascendancy Protestants were
wealthier, were better armed, and formed a socially more cohesive and united
group than their opponents. The Government felt confident that it could deal
with any Catholic insurrection but armed opposition by the Protestants was a
different matter. Between 1906 and 1914 the Liberal Government was prepared for
a contest to the end with both the House of Lords and with the Protestants. But
between 1830 and 1840 it preferred not to push matters to extremes. The two Tory
leaders, Peel and Wellington, no matter how hard they might fight,
also felt it necessary to hold their followers back from extremes.
Wellington in particular was averse to an
outright confrontation between the hereditary House and the elected House.
[Top]
The Tory Opposition
The General
Election at the beginning of 1835 confirmed the optimistic views of the Orange faction. They had not won in the
country as a whole, and in Ireland they had scarcely more than thirty
seats. But the feeling was there that O'Connell had been tamed and public
opinion was swinging behind them. But had Peel won a comfortable majority
following the Tamworth Manifesto the Irish High Tories would have felt
defeated. A Central Protestant Registration Society was set up to ensure that
Tory voters were registered. A different body, the Protestant Association of
Ireland, was established to disseminate Protestant literature, to register
(along with the Registration Society) Protestant voters, to establish a loan
fund to assist Protestant tradesmen or Protestant tenants who needed to stock
their farms.
No
particular figures emerged as leaders of the High Tories, or Orange faction. John Foster had died and
Leslie Foster, his close relative, accepted a judgeship. William Saurin did not
die until 1839, but his public life was over. William Gregory too was no longer
in a position of influence. John George Beresford, a son of the first Marquis
of Waterford, was archbishop of Armagh and Lord Primate from 1822 until 1862. He spent
£30,000 of his own money on the restoration of Armagh cathedral, and ensured that Armagh
Observatory was properly funded. The Irish aristocracy, mostly of creations in
the reign of George III, was very conservative and invariably elected a nobleman
of their own views whenever a vacancy occurred in the Irish representative
peerage. The Earl of Roden was better
known for his strong evangelical leanings and his attempts to advance the
Second Reformation. A young clergyman named the Rev. Mortimer O'Sullivan was
the most notable anti-popery preacher. But as most of the High Tories did not
accept office under Peel their names never came prominently before the public.
The High Tories gained a very important addition to their cause from the
Presbyterians in Ulster under Henry Cooke. Traditionally, the
Presbyterians had sided with their fellow-sufferers under the Penal Laws, the
Catholics. But Cooke, the leader of the Subscribers formed a political alliance
with the Established Church to combat popery, and was backed by the Synod of
Ulster (Cooke DNB).
These
Tories were a majority of the Irish Protestants. The character of the High
Tories was devout, increasingly so as the century progressed. They saw to the
reform of their own Churches in practical ways by attendance at church,
bible-reading, temperance, and general uprightness of life, paying their
tithes, contributing to the support of their ministers, and of bible,
missionary, and anti-slavery societies. In business they were sober,
industrious, and above all, enterprising. On the farms they developed
agriculture. The Tory landlords were often resident gentlemen who tried to
improve their estates. They acted as magistrates and jurymen trying to bring
about an orderly and peaceful society with the rule of law. Those parts of Ireland in which the Protestants were in the
majority were peaceful, industrious, and prosperous. (And
doubtless very dull.) The saw the Catholics as lazy, shiftless, dirty,
clad in rags, beggars, ignorant, steeped in superstition, untrustworthy and
dishonest, members of illegal organisations, under the thumbs of their priests
and a foreign ruler the Pope whom they regarded as the Antichrist. They also
saw it as their duty to rescue them from these evils by teaching them to read the
Bible.
It is an essential
part of Catholic nationalist mythology that Catholics belonged to the ancient
Celtic race, the rightful owners of the soil of Ireland, while Protestants were newcomers and
invaders of the Anglo-Saxon race. There were also many Protestants who believed
this mythology. The truth is that those of the higher classes,
and those living in towns, and those speaking English, were more likely to
become Protestants. Those of the lower classes, especially those in rural areas
who spoke only Gaelic, tended to stick with the old religion. Beyond that one
cannot be more precise. After the Reformation almost all immigrants, and these
were fairly numerous in parts of Ireland, were Protestants. Those who received
grants of confiscated lands were relatively few in numbers.
Their
enemies often alleged that they did not do justice to Catholics. Even if the
allegations were true, and certainly most of them are unproven, they were only
a fraction of the ordinary cases that came before magistrates or jurymen. Lord
Plunket did not find much to censure in the conduct of the Orange magistrates. Carleton mentions that
when even the most ruffianly Ribbonmen were hanged there were some that
referred to them as 'the poor martyrs'.
The
zeal of various Protestant groups to complete the Reformation continued
unabated. Many accounts have been given of the Catholic agitation regarding
emancipation and tithes, but very little attention has been paid to the equal
and opposite reactions they provoked among various Protestant groups. Nor did
the Protestant groups gain much sympathy, though anyone who studied the later
history of Catholic politics in America would appreciate what they were
facing. They were like the strange beast in the proverb that defended itself
when attacked. Though Irish Catholic historians tended to view the efforts of
the Protestant proselytisers in isolation, they were in fact only a tiny part
of a world-wide movement in all countries where English was spoken or was being
introduced. The movement was especially strong in the United States. Perhaps its
most famous production was The Awful
Revelations of Maria Monk, being
an account of the supposed depravities of French Canadian priests and nuns
written by a former nun. Needless to say her supposed revelations were never
checked for truth (see SNL 24
Sept. 1836).
The anti-popery meetings in Exeter Hall in London continued. A clergyman named the Rev.
Robert M’Ghee claimed that Catholic priests were organising the anti-tithe
campaign under the cover of supposed theological conference. They were supposed
to be discussing the duties of soldiers, of judges, and jurymen (SNL 27 Jan. 1836) Of course such regular
theological conferences were a normal feature of Catholic practice, and dealt
with points priests might be asked to give practical guidance on.
Archbishop
Murray on 5 October 1836 wrote a letter to his clergy about the continuing
virulent assaults on them. He expressed his distress at the attempts being made
to sow discord between Catholics and Protestants. He noted that there was a
maddening sense of insult and wrong in the country restrained only by a
confidence in the goodwill of the Government. He then dealt with the personal
attacks on himself (SNL 7 Oct 1836).
The High Tories now
deemed that the situation was ripe for a counter-attack with regard to tithes.
A number of laymen calling themselves the 'Lay
Association for Defending the Property of the Established Church' found a way
to collect tithes. They applied to the Court of Exchequer in Dublin, which had among its functions the
collection of debts, for 'Commissions of Rebellion'. These commissions were
writs of the Court calling on all the king's liege subjects to assist in the
carrying out of the writ and bringing the defendant to the said court in
Dublin to hear the case against him.
The
police, backed by the Government, declined to be bound by these writs, claiming that their own Regulations forbade acting under any
orders but those of their own officers. It was ironic that Henry Joy, who as Solicitor
General had helped to draw up the police regulations, was now as Chief Baron of
the Exchequer brought into direct conflict with the police over those
regulations. The executive and the judiciary found themselves locked in a
conflict, which neither side wanted, but from which neither side could back
away. To allow exemption to the police meant a lessening of the Court's own
authority. The Government, on the other hand, had no intention of putting the
direction of the police into the hands of every tithe-proctor who had obtained
a Commission of Rebellion. The dispute dragged on for some years. When Stephen
Woulfe became Chief Baron he refused to allow costs in tithe cases to the
plaintiffs. They could still bring their cases in Dublin instead of in the local courts, but
only at their own expense. Plunket, in the Court of Chancery, declined to hear
any case for which there was a remedy in a Common Law court. The Protestant Lay
Association defended its practice of bringing the cases before the
Dublin courts on the grounds that
tithe-collectors were liable to be attacked if they brought the cases locally.
Most people regarded Commissions of Rebellion as obsolete,
and inappropriate in a country which possessed an adequate system of policing,
and courts in every county, as well as duly appointed sheriffs with bailiffs
and posses. But the Court of Exchequer was not willing to see a diminution of
its powers.
There
were four royal courts in Dublin, and the building that housed them is
still called the Four Courts. The senior court was that of the King’s Bench
where the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench acted in place of the king. The
Chief Justice could call a case from another court to hear in his own
court. The Court of Common Pleas had
only civil jurisdiction, not criminal. It was presided over by the Chief
Justice of Common Pleas. The Court of Exchequer originally dealt with financial
cases, such as taxes due to the crown, and the presiding judge was called Chief
Baron of the Exchequer. The Court of Chancery and its subsidiary the
Rolls Court, were equity courts where the Lord
Chancellor was empowered by the king to settle cases in an equitable manner
here the law provided no remedy. The Lord Chancellor presided in this court and
the Master of the Rolls in the Rolls Court. However the boundaries
between the jurisdictions was not strict, as lawyers in each court over
the centuries strove to extend the limits of what could be heard in their own
court. There was also Ecclesiastical Courts with extensive civil jurisdiction,
and an Admiralty Court where Roman Law, not
Common Law applied. (The functions of the Irish Courts were
rationalised in 1877.) In the Four Courts building were also the Offices
of the various courts, the Rolls, Hanaper, Queen’s Bench, Remembrancer, and
Exchequer. There were also major courts in the counties and cities, but most
serious crimes in these were tried at the assizes, where the judges from the
courts in Dublin tried the cases. The Government could
also try cases in the county courts at any time by sending the judges with
‘Special Commissions’.
[Top]
Reform Programme
The Whig Government
had a good working majority in the Commons but the Tories controlled the Lords.
When the parliamentary session commenced on 12 May 1835 it pressed on with its own programme
of legislation in the face of the fiercest and often successful opposition from
the Tories. George Howard, Lord Morpeth (later seventh Earl of Carlisle, and
Lord Lieutenant) as Irish Secretary had the duty of introducing the Irish
legislation. He had to complete the reform of tithes, reform of the police,
introduce an Irish Poor Law, and reform the medieval corporations of towns in
line with the contemporary legislation in Britain. Thomas Drummond of the Royal
Engineers, Colby’s assistant in the Ordnance Survey, got the position of
Under-Secretary long held by William Gregory. The practical administration of
affairs in Ireland still came under the Under-Secretary.
The powers of the Secretary, undefined at the time of the Union were still undefined, and were more
concerned with political policy and with affairs in Parliament. With the
departure of Gregory, the position of the Under-Secretary as the head of the
Civil Department came to an end, and the Irish Secretary got control of the
Civil and Military Departments. The anomalous situation arose in the eighteenth
century when the office of Irish Secretary had become a sinecure. The
understanding between Morpeth and Drummond was excellent. Drummond arrived in Ireland in July 1835.
A Tithe Bill or
Irish Church Bill (1835) had yet to be passed, so Morpeth introduced his Bill
on 26 June. The Whigs clung to an appropriation clause rather, it would seem,
to establish the principle that Parliament could dispose of Church revenues
than from any desire to get extra funding for education or charity. Many Tories
defended the rights and privileges of the Established Churches, but had no wish
to precipitate a head-on collision between the Commons and the Lords on the
issue, especially as it was a money Bill, the special preserve of the Commons.
Peel, in a speech on the Bill, noted that many Whigs, including Dr. Doyle, had
strange ideas about the actual size and wealth of the
Irish Church. Doyle had thought that there were
only 200,000 members in the Irish Church when actually there were 800,000, and
put the annual revenue of the Established Church at several millions when
actually it was no more than £130,000 (SNL
25 July 1835). The Lords rejected the Bill. The Lords also rejected a Bill to
reform the Irish constabulary, a Bill regarding Irish Catholic marriages, and
the Irish Corporations Bill as well as other Bills dealing with English
affairs. The Marriage Bill was intended to legalise mixed marriages before a
Catholic priest, in effect rescinding an Act passed in the reign of George II
to make them invalid. Peel in particular was unhappy with the attitude the
Tories in the Upper House were taking towards the proposals of the elected
House. But the Lords were dominated by the Earl of Winchesea, Wellington’s duelling opponent, and a leading
light in Exeter Hall.
The Irish Church
Bill (1838), without the appropriation clause, was finally introduced in 1838
on terms that Peel would have conceded three years earlier. It passed both
Houses. The appropriation clause was abandoned. The tithe was to be converted
to a fixed rent-charge. The landlord was made responsible for paying the tithe.
The value of the tithe payable to the clergyman was reduced by 25%. The rent
payable to the landlord was adjusted upward accordingly. Some attempts were
made to collect for the Government the sums due from the first advance of
£60,000 and under the Million Act but only about a third of what was due was
collected. Resistance to tithe-paying collapsed as suddenly as it had begun.
The terms of the Act were in practice only slightly better than what were
available in 1830. As often in Ireland, emotional tempests blew up over
matters that were disregarded a few years later. Ireland was a fertile ground for opportunist
populists. Parliament was prorogued on 10 September 1835 and re-assembled on 4
February 1836.
[1836] In 1836 the Police Bill,
the Church Bill, and the Corporations Bill were re-introduced. The Grand Jury
Act (1836) was passed, regulating the Grand Juries. It was intended to codify,
clarify, and harmonise existing procedures rather than to change them. One its
clauses provided that damages to various classes of people could be assessed on
the barony or county and paid to them. For example, it could be paid for the
murder or maiming of a witness, magistrate or peace officer. Compensation to
the dependants and relatives of the two constables murdered by the IRA at
Soloheadbeg in 1919 was paid under this Act (Irish Law Times 1920). It remained in force until superseded by the
Irish Local Government Act (1898) which established elected county councils.
But the powers of county Grand Juries were progressively encroached upon in
the second half of the century by various acts largely dealing with public health,
and by legislation dealing with the policing of towns.
The
further reform of the police had been discussed for several years, and the
Dublin Metropolitan Police especially was in need of reorganisation. One defect
of Wellesley's Police Act (1808) was a failure to
provide for the removal of aged or incapable constables. Another was the right
of aldermen to interfere, a right that had been taken away from the sheriffs in
the counties in 1822. The process begun in 1822 of placing control of the police
directly under the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was extended, with the Government
gradually taking over the costs. The Revenue Police was suppressed and merged
with the Irish Constabulary (later the Royal Irish Constabulary), but the
Dublin Metropolitan Police was retained. The training of the Irish Constabulary
was entrusted to General Sir James Shaw Kennedy, a veteran of the Peninsular
War. The establishment was continued at 7000 men with an average of 220 per
county. The principal point in the reorganisation was to increase the control
of the Lord Lieutenant. The Bill was introduced in February 1836. In
Dublin, the Metropolitan Police, now composed
of around 400 aged men, was totally reformed, useless members being dismissed,
and one thousand new men recruited and trained. The new organisation was based
on that of Peel’s London Metropolitan Police. Each constable was given a beat
to patrol. Both police forces became independent professional bodies under
their own officers who were responsible for recruitment, training, and
discipline. Gradually, particularly after 1847, the Government paid most of the
costs, but local authorities still made some contributions. The form of
organisation of the Royal Irish Constabulary was widely adopted throughout the
Empire. Though not adopted in England, officers from the RIC were often sent
to England when the County Constabulary was reformed to instruct the local
police (Weekly Irish Times 19 May
1900). Henry Sirr, usually called Major Sirr because he had been the Town Major
in Dublin in 1798, was still an active
magistrate and took a particular interest in police activities regarding the
sale of alcohol in unlicensed premises (Weekly
Irish Times 9, 30 Mar 1901).
Next
for reform, following an English Act in 1835, were the Irish Municipal
Corporations. Peel, in the Emancipation Act (1829), had not altered the
franchise in the boroughs deliberately, feeling that if the Catholics were to
dominate the counties the Protestants should be left strongholds in the towns.
Such a policy might not please egalitarians, but it was perhaps wise at the
time. Some Irish boroughs were 'opened' by the Irish Reform Act (1832) so that
freeholders could now vote in parliamentary elections. But they could not
become members of the ruling bodies of cities or towns as these were
established by the city or town charters. It was proposed, following the
English Municipal Reform Act, to abolish all the old charters and to establish
city or town councils, or corporations, directly elected by all adult male
ratepayers. This would place the towns, which historically, since the
Reformation, had been strongholds of Protestantism in Ireland, also largely under the Catholics.
Peel noted that in 1800 there had been 95 corporations in Ireland but now there were only 60. Eighty of
the charters dated from the reign of James I or later, i.e. after 1603. The
later charters were intended as a means to sustain the Protestant interest (DEP 3 Mar 1836)
A Bill was duly
introduced in February 1836 by O’Loghlen, Morpeth, and Lord John Russell. The Orange faction was determined to defeat the
Bill, and if this were not possible, to ensure that as few powers as possible
were transferred to the new councils, or as few urban councils as possible
would be allowed. They ensured the rejection of the Act in five successive
sessions, and finally, in 1840, an innocuous Act, the Irish Municipal Reform
Act (1840) was passed.
When
at long last the Irish Municipal Reform Act (1840) finally reached the statute
book it removed all powers from the corporations or guilds to regulate trade,
fix wages or regulate the number of apprentices. They could only make
regulations for their own markets. Labour was no longer regulated, so anybody
was free to open a shop or business. (Relations between masters
and servants was not changed until 1875 when all the medieval rules were swept
away.) In theory, there were 68 cities or towns in Ireland, but some were very decayed. Many had
lost their parliamentary seats at the time of the Union, and by the Irish Parliamentary Reform
Act (1832), the number of voters in parliamentary
elections was increased to include all £10 freeholders. By the 1840 Act no less
than 58 of the corporations were suppressed. But the Commissioners elected
annually under the Irish Towns Policing Act (1828) or other recent private Acts
were retained, or could now be chosen. (Policing at that time meant much the
same as policy or government of a town polis)
They were now to be elected by the ratepayers, (as were the MPs in boroughs
that sent a burgess to Westminster) and they continued to set a town rate
for the purposes mentioned in the 1828 Act. Property belonging to the old
corporations was transferred to the Commissioners. The qualification under the
new Act was set at £10. The Tory party held out for keeping the franchise at
this figure, rather than £5. Without it, the Lords would have blocked the Bill.
Marmion noted that Dundalk now had 205 householders eligible to
be elected Commissioners and 634 qualified to vote. The town rate levied in
1851 was £641, for salaries of the municipal officers, lighting, paving, etc.
In 1824, the number of voters who were appointed by Lord Clanbrassil and Lord
Roden had numbered 5 burgesses and 3 freemen. In Coleraine, the number eligible
to be elected was 69, and those who could vote for them numbered 239.
Ten
corporations were retained, but in these, the power of appointing sheriffs was
transferred to the Lord Lieutenant as in the case of the counties. With regard
to police forces or watches, the Government preferred to allow only two forces,
the Irish Constabulary (later the Royal Irish Constabulary) and the Dublin
Metropolitan Police. The corporations also lost the power to appoint recorders,
or town judges. The reforms introduced were in line with the various reforms
introduced by both Tory and Whig Governments over the previous thirty years.
O'Connell professed himself disappointed. Whether this
was because he wished to take over the old corporations, lock stock and barrel,
to use them for his own corrupt purposes, or whether he genuinely felt that Ireland was getting less favourable treatment
than England, is, as usual with him, very difficult to decide.
Neither Russell nor Peel intended to take power from the Orangemen just to hand
it to O'Connell. Without O’Connell, Catholics would probably have got the same
law as in England. Tory resistance to Bill ended when
many of them concluded that the corporations were no longer worth saving. The
Repealers were correspondingly disappointed at what they had gained. O'Connell
became first Lord Mayor of Dublin under the new Act but the office was
chiefly ceremonial. Dublin Corporation, which did not adopt the 1828 Act, was
deprived of most of its powers. Marmion noted that Dublin was larger than
Berlin, Madrid, Lisbon, Rome, Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, and Turin, all capital cities. According to
Duffy, its powers now consisted of managing the water supply, making
regulations for markets, managing old debts, and paying the old officers. (Another Act in 1850 enlarged the powers of
Dublin Corporation giving it genuine powers of local government, but no further
major changes in local government were made until 1898. For much of the
century, the Poor Law Boards of Guardians were more important as vehicles for
local democracy.)
[Top]
The Irish Poor Law
The
Government deferred bringing in a measure on Poor Laws until the Commission it
had appointed had reported. But its own views were inclining more towards a
system of 'workhouses' such as had been created in England. The architect of the English Poor Law
reform was a magistrate called Sir George Nicholls, who had seen at first hand
all the drawbacks of the 'Speenhamland system'. (Those like O'Connell and
Spring Rice who opposed an Irish Poor Law had similar criticisms in mind.)
Under this system, the magistrates in a county could allow the very low
agricultural wages to be topped up by a rate or cess on the parish. The people
who paid this rate were mostly the farmers who employed the labourers, but
there were also ratepayers who owned some land without employing many workers.
The employers accordingly would lower wages knowing that they would be made up
through the rates. Those whose income was being made up through the rates
hardly bothered to work, knowing that they would be given a family income in
any case (Nicholls DNB).
The
Commissioners of Poor Law Inquiry (1835) completed their first Report in 1835
and noted that they were inundated with theories about the causes of Irish
poverty. Among the commissioners were Archbishops Whately and Murray, the Rev.
James Carlile, Lord Killeen, and A.R. Blake. Blake drafted the Report.
Commenting on this Report, Conway, in the Post noted that the theory of absentee landlords as a cause of
poverty could not be sustained because in Mayo, in regions of the greatest
poverty, landlords were resident. Many of the very poorest were not beggars,
nor agricultural labourers, but tenants holding tiny sub-divided patches.
The
Third Report of the Commissioners of Poor Law Inquiry (1835) noted the attempts
to reclaim bogland and the meagre results so far, but considered that further
legislation on the subject could be useful. Agricultural wages were extremely
low, but could only be raised if half the population were encouraged to
emigrate. In the barony of Upper Dundalk, it considered that if the present agricultural population was
reduced to half, agricultural wages would rise to 10 pence a day, which would
be sufficient. (This calculation seems to assume that most agricultural workers
were only employed seasonally. If they worked six days a week for fifty two
weeks they would earn £13 a year which would be rather high by contemporary
standards.) It noted too that there were several categories for which public
assistance would be needed or to whom existing provisions should be extended.
Such were widows, orphans, lunatics, the deaf and dumb, and the aged. The care
of these should be taken from the counties and given to Boards of Guardians in
Poor Law Unions, and the Unions should be funded by a national rate. (Rates
within Unions would be too unequal.) The availability of alcoholic drink should
be limited. Its main proposal was that the main system of poor relief should be
private and public works. Public funds should be made available to undertake
works of development such as the reclaiming of bogs, while landlords should be
given assistance to improve their estates and so provide work.
The Commission had been warned more than once
that such a Report stood no chance of being accepted. A national rate was a
recipe for profligacy as everyone threw the costs onto everyone else. Public
works funded by Government grants or county cesses had a notorious reputation
in Ireland as a means of milking the public purse. Private enterprise
would ensure that only such works of improvement as would actually give a
return on capital invested would be undertaken. The evils of public works
envisaged were manifested during the Famine. Works were then undertaken without
any obvious benefit or any intention to repay loans, and with no attempt to
make those employed work hard. On other occasions, such as with regard to
Tenant Right or Loan Fund Societies that they helped to manage, benevolent
clergymen were accused of lacking sound commercial sense. So the Report of
Whately and his associates was rejected and another was commissioned from Sir
George Nicholls.
Nicholls' Report was more candid that
diplomatic. It stressed, among other things, the laziness of the Irish poorer
classes, how the women were too lazy to sweep the floor and the men too lazy to
clean the yard. (These remarks were commonplace among travellers, and doubtless
Nicholls drew heavily on such second-hand accounts.) Existing charges on the
rates for the support of sick or physically handicapped were to be maintained.
The able-bodied destitute, widows and orphans without means of support, and the
aged were to be maintained in workhouses where work suitable to their condition
would be provided. The sexes were to be segregated and no alcohol permitted, as
in existing Irish penitentiaries or Houses of Industry. The object of these
conditions was to make the workhouse in Ireland, as in England, absolutely the last resort of the
destitute. This was not due to hard-heartedness. If money available in the
county was spent on gratuitous assistance to the very poor - at least a quarter
of the population - it could not be spent on works of development. Poor Law
unions of parishes, each with its workhouse, were to be established all over Ireland. Their boundaries were to be so drawn
that no poor person should have to walk more than ten miles to get relief.
Richer and poorer districts were to be included in a Union. The typical Poor Law Union contained
a town, some fertile farmland, and some stretches of mountain or bog. No
religious test of any kind was to be applied or enforced attendance at any
religious service.
[1838] The Irish Poor Law Act (1838) passed the Second
Reading in the Commons without a division, and passed the Lords without trouble.
The two main parties were satisfied with its general provisions that were in
accordance with Nicholls’ recommendations. A Board of Poor Law Commissioners
had been established in England to bring the Act into operation and
supervise it’s working and Nicholls was appointed to
the Board. Its duties were extended to Ireland. (In 1847 a separate
Irish Board was formed.) The country was divided into Poor Law Unions
under the direction of Poor Law Guardians elected by the ratepayers and the
justices of the peace. The Commissioners requested one million pounds for
building the workhouses of which there were to be 130 in total. They were
empowered to set their own poor rate independent of the Grand Jury rates and to
make their own Poor Law valuations of property. Not only possible profits from
land but also from easements, rights of way, navigations, and so on, were
subject to the assessment, and the value of any property came to be expressed
in terms of its Poor Law Valuation, or P.L.V. (Two later developments
transformed the Poor Law Board. By one, outdoor relief, i.e. financial
assistance to people in their own homes, was permitted, and by another public dispensaries of medicines for the poor were
transferred from the counties to the Poor Law Unions. It was renamed the Board
of Local Government in 1872 and numerous other responsibilities were assigned
to it (Lyons).)
Public works were not
absolutely rejected unless they were merely 'make-work' schemes. The Board of
Works indeed for the rest of the century remained an important vehicle for poor
relief in Ireland. Large sums of money were still to be
poured out for schemes of public benefit. Indirectly, the Ordnance Survey
facilitated land-drainage and railway construction. An immense scheme to
develop the whole of central Ireland by improving the drainage and
navigation of the Shannon was undertaken. Legislation was passed
to facilitate private drainage schemes. Though not intended as measures of poor
relief the funding of education and the police from the central exchequer had
that effect. Nor were the rights and duties of the county and barony Grand
Juries affected. It was always open to the county gentlemen to tax themselves
in order to provide useful public works. But such county schemes were naturally
unattractive to those liable to be taxed with no hope of personal return. For
this reason the Government hoped that most of the county gentlemen would spend
their money on improving their own estates, and thus giving local employment.
Nor was the amount that both absentee and resident gentlemen spent on improving
their estates and providing amenities for their tenants negligible. O'Connell
made himself rather conspicuous by his neglect of his
own estates. Criticism of improving landlords like Lansdowne or Palmerston came
ill from a man whose income from the Rent was at times enormous, yet who did
not help by improving his own estates. He was however personally generous to
those on his estates in need. (Sharman Crawford was the only person to argue at
this time that there was need to give incentives to the tenants to improve
their holdings, but his Tenant Right Bills attracted exiguous support.)
There was a
fundamental flaw in the Poor Law legislation that was not discovered until the
onset of the Great Famine, and this was divided responsibility. The Boards of
Guardians were responsible for feeding the poor once they were inside the doors
of the workhouses. They were not responsible for, and legally not allowed to
undertake, outdoor relief works, which continued to be the responsibility of
the Grand Juries. Where Boards of Guardians and Grand Juries worked
hand-in-hand in Ireland relief proved no problem. But where a
Grand Jury tried to shift the whole responsibility onto the Board of Guardians
in the neighbouring town or vice versa, the whole system was liable to
collapse. And collapse it did.
Ireland was a country that took the Christian
obligation of alms-giving very seriously. The Poor Law was not intended as a
substitute for this spontaneous charity. Neither was it intended as a socialist
measure of universal provision for the poor. It was intended merely to provide
a safety net for those whose relatives could not support them, or who were not
assisted by private charities, or who could not find work on the land, or were
unable to emigrate to England or America where work could be found. It was one
more in a series of measures to relieve Irish poverty, such as Acts to
facilitate the drainage of bogs, or allow the construction of railways, or to
give legal protection to loan societies for tradesmen. In the nineteenth
century, the emphasis was on relief of the poor through the creation of further
wealth; in the twentieth century on the redistribution of existing wealth.
Contemporary critics of the Poor Laws like Charles Dickens never faced the
question of removing poverty without some means of population control.
Nicholls' solution was to force growth of the economy ahead of growth in
population and in this he succeeded.
In
a speech in the House of Commons in 1843, it was reported that about £200,000
was collected annually from taxation, county rates, and private subscriptions
to public institutions to help the sick. In Ireland there were for the
gratuitous relief of the sick poor 41 general infirmaries, (i.e. about one for
each county or city), 88 fever hospitals, 626 dispensaries, 11 lunatic asylums
supported largely by the county rates, and 9 institutions in Dublin supported
by parliamentary grants. In addition, there were many private institutions,
notably parish orphanages, which subsisted entirely on private donations (SNL 9,10 Feb
1843). In 1843, Peter Purcell in an open letter to Lord Elliot claimed that
collecting the poor rate from the cottier class cost more than was obtained.
Also, he claimed, the hope that local ratepayers would try to keep down the
rates by providing work on their land was not realised. Rather, when the
workhouse was there employers felt there was less need to make employment (SNL 5 Jan 1843).
It was often felt
that programmes of public works should be undertaken in addition to the
provision of workhouses, but the two objections mentioned in Nicholls' Report
remained unanswered. The first was that Irish county Grand Juries had a bad reputation for squandering
public money. The other was that the Irish counties felt it unnecessary to tax themselves if money was made easily available from the
Treasury. One would claim that five million pounds would suffice, another ten,
another twenty, and so on. The Government, as already noted, always made money
available for worthwhile and potentially profitable schemes where advances from
the Government could be repaid from profits resulting from the improvements. It
was noted that even Nimmo's roads did not always achieve their aim. The roads
into Mayo, to which the Government had contributed nine tenths of the cost, did
not result in the development of commercial agriculture. On the other hand, the
road into Iveragh in Kerry had proved a great success.
There were various contributory causes to the
Great Famine and among them must be listed the failure of the Mayo county Grand
Jury and other Grand Juries to maintain and further develop the roads begun by
Nimmo. (Also in Mayo, there were difficulties about collecting the Poor Rate.
If, as seems likely, Mayo was the chief focal point for the disaster of the
Famine, the reasons for that go back a long time.) The brown, or unbleached,
linen industry was strong in north Connaught in the eighteenth century, but it
died out as demand for brown linen fell. The great linen industry in Ulster in the nineteenth century was in white
linen. Alternative cash crops like the production of butter, eggs, feathers,
and salt fish, would have eased the scarcity when the potato failed, as would a
whole-hearted co-operation between the clergy of all the Churches and to local
landowners and merchants to provide roads, jobs, credit, markets, and other
assistance. The fishermen found it impossible to get credit to buy salt for
salting, but no co-operatives were started. One can think of many things
Archbishop MacHale could have done with his money instead of spending it on
diocesan schools.
[Top]
Education Again
Disputes over
education continued. In the 1820's the Government had engaged directly in consultations
with the three main Church bodies with regard to education. At first the
Catholic clergy accepted, if not exactly welcomed, the National Education Act
(1831) and submitted proposals for parish schools which would be eligible for
financial support. One Irish religious teaching Order, the Irish Christian
Brothers, refused to have anything to do with the national system, but
Archbishop Murray persuaded most of the others, especially teaching Sisters, to
avail themselves of the benefits of the Act. The Christian Brothers always ran
large schools in the towns, never in country parishes. However by 1837 open
opposition to the Act was being voiced by Archbishop MacHale, who went so far
as to report the affair to Rome for its judgement on whether it was
lawful for a Catholic bishop to participate in the scheme. (It has been
observed, it would seem correctly, that MacHale
objected to the authority the Act seemed to give another bishop - Murray - to
decide what books could be read in MacHale's diocese. This was stretching both
the Act and Canon Law to an extreme degree.) Under MacHale, the bishops of
Connaught made the following demands: - in mixed schools the Catholic priest
should be able to block appointments and dismiss teachers; all books containing
religious and moral instruction must be approved by all four Catholic
archbishops; in schools where there were no Protestants, the Catholic priest
should appoint and dismiss teachers, be free to enter the school at all times,
and all books for religious or moral instruction should be written or selected
by the Catholic bishop of the diocese; two Catholic laymen and one Catholic
bishop from each province should sit on the National Board; instructors of
Catholic trainee teachers in religion, morals and history, should be Catholics
with a certificate of character from his bishop; the should be a model School
in each Province for training teachers (DEP
10 March 1840. Note what was said above about the influence the Catholic
clergy were seeking). Mulgrave replied courteously, but was unable to accept
their requests. MacHale’s representations had considerable force in
Rome for it was decided to condemn the
system, and Archbishop Murray was privately advised to withdraw from the Board
in advance of the condemnation. He refused to do so and wrote a strong reply to
Rome in March 1839 (Meagher 59). The
letters between Murray and MacHale on the subject were published in the daily
papers at the time. (DEP March 1840)
The Pope then judged it better to leave each Irish bishop to decide for
himself. The Rescript was received by the Irish Bishops on 2
February 1841,
and assented to, MacHale drafting the reply. MacHale withdrew from the scheme
and attempted to provide Catholic schools in his entire diocese by means of a
teaching Order of Brothers. His successor, forty years later, reversed his
strange and educationally disastrous decision that can be explained only by
blind bigotry. Not only was his diocese in one of the poorest regions of Ireland, it was also an area where the Bible Societies
had many schools.
The most formidable
and long-lasting objections to the National Board came from the clergy of the
Established Church. Without the support of Archbishop Murray and the moderate
Catholic bishops the Board might have collapsed. The opponents of the Board in
all denominations believed that the Government would then be forced to support
denominational schools. The objection of the former group was based on the
removal of their right to supervise all education. That they had de facto control because the principal
Commissioner was archbishop of Dublin did not satisfy them. By the end of
the decade, various diocesan education societies had been established to
promote schools under the direction of the Protestant clergy. Anglican parish schools
in England had been the chief beneficiaries of the money
voted by Parliament for education, and the clergy hoped for a similar Act in Ireland. They were very disappointed when
Peel, the betrayer, betrayed them again and said that he supported the National
Board. In 1838, the diocesan societies were merged into an Irish Church
Education Society and it continued, in conjunction with the Kildare Place
Society, to refuse assistance from the Board for the next twenty years. In the
larger towns and in Ulster the Society was moderately successful.
But in many parts of the West, it had to depend on the Bible and Missionary
Societies to provide schools in which the Bible was taught as a textbook.
For
some years, the Presbyterian Synod of Ulster refused to apply to the Board of
National Education for support for such schools as they might found, for they
believed that it was not allowed to teach the Bible. A motion at a General
Synod demanding that Dr Carlile should resign from the Board was defeated, and
he continued to act as go-between with the Board. In 1840, the Synod agreed to
apply to the Board for assistance and to abide by its rules. Each side claimed
that it had not backed down and had made no concessions. It may be that a
practical solution was arrived at, even if not openly acknowledged, that the
Bible could be read in periods of common instruction if Catholic parents did
not object. (In those parts of Ulster they were not likely to object.) The
submission of the Presbyterians disappointed the Evening Mail which pronounced that now there was no possibility of
securing state support for denominational education.
In
1838, the National Board opened a training college for teachers in
Marlborough Street, Dublin. The original staff,
strangely, were all Presbyterians, including the Rev. James Carlile. The
original course, open to those with some experience of teaching was five
months, but this was quickly regarded as insufficient. Later a more elaborate
system of training extending over several years was adopted. There was no
objection to Catholics, and Patrick Keenan was made headmaster of the
Central Model School in Dublin. He was later Resident Commissioner
and knighted. He was the most famous of all the Resident Commissioners. Model
Schools were established in various parts of Ireland to give preliminary training before
candidates went to the training college. They were intended to exemplify best
teaching practice. Most were in Ulster after the Presbyterians embraced the
national system. After 1850, the Catholic bishops, led by Cardinal Cullen,
forbade the employment of any teacher who had been trained in
Marlborough Street. (As the ban was not repeated in the
decrees of the Plenary Synod of 1927 it was deemed to have lapsed (Irish School Weekly 18
Jan 1930). In
1838, the Board set about implementing a vast scheme of agricultural
instruction. A college for teaching masters the elements of agriculture was set
up with a model farm at Glasnevin, whose most famous pupil was Vere Foster, who
was to become a noted educationalist. It was re-named the
Albert College after the Prince Consort.
Unfortunately, this scheme had later to be abandoned when the Treasury,
following objections by the Liverpool Reform Association, decreed it to be in
competition with commercial colleges. Of the colleges, only the
Albert College and the Munster Institute survived.
Though in some places gardens attached to local schools survived. It is
significant that the Munster Institute was the only one that received local
support. It specialised in teaching hygiene to dairymaids.
The
Bible Societies went their own way with regard to education. Their sole purpose
was to teach the illiterate people, especially those who principal or sole
language was Gaelic to read the Bible in their own language. The Irish Society
was now nearly twenty years old when it held its 18th meeting in the
Rotunda in Dublin on 17 March 1836. The Report to the meeting claimed it
had 637 schools with over 18,000 pupils, 13,000 of which were adults. Of these
50 were in Connaught, with 1540 pupils, 850 of whom were
adults. The schools were particularly numerous in Cavan and neighbouring
counties. The Report claimed that the Irish Society filled the roles of a
Sunday School Society, an Adult School Society, a Scriptural Readers Society,
and a Bible Society. They had few school buildings, no desks, forms or tables,
they did not teach writing, arithmetic, or geography, but only the word of God.
Teachers could be farmers, labourers, teachers, or tradesmen of good character.
The only requirement was that they be able and willing to teach reading of the
Bible. They taught in any cabin available, or even in the open air. They taught
on Sundays, holidays, or after working hours. Payment was by result, and
inspectors examined the numbers taught, and the progress made before paying the
teacher. The Report noted that the resident clergyman might not be aware of the
existence of a school in his parish. It also noted the persecution of those who
attended their schools, some being beaten up and even forced to emigrate (SNL 13 Mar. 1836).
[Top]
The Clergy and Politics
On the question of
a Poor Law Archbishop Murray was appointed to the Commission of Inquiry now
almost as a matter of course. There were Catholic MPs to represent their
constituents, and the long-serving Anthony Blake, the Catholic Chief
Remembrancer, was well placed to convey the views of the Catholic hierarchy to
any administration in office. Several leading Catholics were appointed to
office, both with the Government and in the counties. Many Catholics felt that
the political priests could safely withdraw from politics knowing that the
Government would consult them on any major issue. In Parliament, one or more
Catholic MP's were automatically appointed to any Committees dealing with Irish
affairs.
But some Catholic
priests were beginning to feel that they should participate directly in the
democratic process, invariably on the Repealing or nationalist side. For them
an independent Irish Parliament meant a Catholic Parliament, whose members
would accept instruction and guidance from the Catholic clergy. In the event, that did nor occur, but it was what the Catholic political
priests were seeking. Closely connected with the dispute
among the Catholic bishops regarding education were the related disputes about
Repeal and the political priests. These were not logically but
practically connected inasmuch that those who supported MacHale on one point
were likely to support him on the other as well. In 1834, the bishops had
agreed that Catholic priests should take no active part in secular politics,
but it soon became clear that those bishops, like Dr MacHale or Dr. Michael
Blake of Dromore, who supported O'Connell and Repeal, were prepared to
interpret the decision with some latitude. Neither saw any objection to priests
or bishops displaying their political convictions publicly, for example by
attending a Repeal dinner, or one in honour of O'Connell. Nor, like Dr. Edward
Nolan of Kildare and Leighlin, did they object to a priest doing more in cases
of crisis, with his bishop's consent of course. Neither
MacHale or Blake in fact attended many public meetings, but complaints
were made to Rome (apparently by some English Catholics) that
MacHale was actively engaged in politics. A letter was sent to MacHale by
Rome warning him not to take an active part
in politics and he replied that he did not do so. This letter was not
published, nor was O'Connell, who was asking MacHale for open and active
support, aware of it. Between 1835 and 1841 there seems not to have been much
actual political activity by Catholic priests.
The Presbyterian
ministers did not in this decade involve themselves in political agitation, but
in the following decade many of them joined in the campaign for Tenant Right
which could be regarded as a social rather than a political issue. As with the
Catholic priests the Government normally tried to include Presbyterian
clergymen in any public inquiries. Unusually, Dissenting clergymen could be
elected to Parliament. Among the Presbyterians the Non-Subscribers had left the
Synod of Ulster and formed the Remonstrant Synod. But the other main body,
those Presbyterians belonging to the Secession Synod, began to grow closer to
the Synod of Ulster. The Secession Synod arose from a dispute over matters of
discipline in the Scottish Kirk a century before, but the original causes of
dispute had largely disappeared. The Synod of Ulster and the Secession Synod
came together again in 1840 to form what was called the General Assembly of
Irish Presbyterians. The Rev. Henry Cook became the dominant figure in the new
body. When Peel came to deal with Irish education it was the General Assembly
principally he had to consult with regard to Presbyterian interests.
The political position of the Protestant
clergy of the Established Church, as far as politics was concerned, was
unchanged. They could not be elected to Parliament, but they could become
magistrates and also take an active part in politics within their own counties.
Several bishops took their seats in turn in Parliament each year. The
archbishop of Dublin was almost ex
officio a member of any Government to the extent that he was a privy
councillor (and therefore consulted before any proclamation was made), had direct
access to the Lord Lieutenant, and could, as was traditional, be appointed to
the Commission of State which exercised power as a Lord Justice when the Lord
Lieutenant was out of the country. But the majority of the clergy did not
co-operate either with the Whigs or with Peel. The Established clergymen were
therefore closely involved in opposition politics. (These clergymen seem to
have been commonly referred to as ministers, like the Dissenting clergymen, and
not as parsons, vicars, rectors, or priests.)
Archbishop
Whately was probably the most able clergyman in Ireland in the nineteenth century, but the
Whig Governments (or Tory for that matter) could do little to help him. The
Government continued to appoint Tories to the various bishoprics. Some of
Whately's assistants were made bishops, but he had very few supporters.
Whately's work included reforming the Church, implementing the Church Reform
Act (1833), acting as Chief Commissioner for National Education, and
Commissioner for Poor Law Inquiry. He established a theological course for
ordinands and tried to have a period of study in a theological college a
condition for ordination. The other bishops did not agree with him on the last
point, but his ideas were adopted in practice. He developed the curriculum of
Trinity College, introducing the study of statistics
and engineering. Some of his clergy suspected him of heresy or even of
infidelity to the Christian faith. Presumably, this was because he questioned
the literal truth of the whole Bible.
A
more typical Irish Protestant bishop was Dr Richard Mant of Down and Connor. He
was an Englishman, sent to Ireland to try to introduce a more
professional spirit among the Irish clergy. He insisted on the exact observance
of canon law, and civil law in so far as it applied to the Church. He tolerated
no departures from the Book of Common Prayer, nor did he allow non-ordained
preachers into the pulpits of his diocese for any reason. Many people at the
time, even clergymen, saw little difference between the clergy of the
Established Church, Dissenting ministers, and Methodist preachers. His views on
the nature of the Church seem to have been largely pragmatic, and he opposed
the Oxford Movement that sought to clarify the nature
of the Church which everyone was busy defending. But it is symptomatic of the
times and the place that his enforcement of the Book of Common Prayer was
regarded by some as Popery!
The
general attitudes of the Protestant clergy of the Established Church were well
described by Mant's biographer:
‘The
pretending prelates of the Roman schism, encouraged by the Act of 1829, were
increasing their numbers and usurping the titles of Irish sees. The Church of
Ireland was mutilated by the forcible suspension or abolition of ten out of
twenty two bishoprics, the revenues whereof were confiscated to form part of
the required fund [for general Church purposes]; and the incomes of the
parochial clergy, already impoverished by the successful agitation against
tithes, and by a forced composition on disadvantageous terms, were rendered
prospectively liable to an oppressive tax’ (Mant)
Others might not have seen them like
that but that is how they saw themselves.
The
High Tories in Ireland and the clergy of the Established
Church may have been in a minority in Ireland but they were allied with and defended
by the Tories in England. These latter had a large majority in
the House of Lords and so could reject any Bill sent up from the Lower House.
Peel and Wellington realised the impropriety of the Lords
rejecting every proposal of the popularly elected chamber, and exercised what
control they could over their supporters.
