DES KEENAN'S BOOKS ON IRISH HISTORY online version |
Pre-Famine Ireland LINKS TO INDIVIDUAL CHAPTERS CLICK PRE-FAMINE TO RETURN TO BOOK LIST; CLICK HOME PAGE TO RETURN TO HOME PAGE Pre-Famine
Crown and ParliamentSummary of chapter. This and the following chapters deal with the Government of Ireland as a whole. Though having no separate Parliament Ireland remained for many purposes a separate administrative unit. In 1800 all the Irish Government Offices remained in existence, but gradually their functions were transferred to the joint United Kingdom Offices. As the number of Offices declined, paradoxically the functions of the two principal executive officers, the Lord Lieutenant and his Secretary grew as the semi-independent fiefdoms of the Irish Offices were brought under central control. Though in theory Ireland was subject to the same laws as the rest of the United Kingdom, in practice special laws adapted to Irish conditions had to be passed. Normally only Irish MPs attended when Irish legislation was being passed, so Ireland had virtually an independent Parliament.
(i) The Flag
***************************************************************************************************** One
effect of the Act of Union was that The
national flag is properly the fighting emblem of the armed forces and should
not be used by private individual or institutions. By custom it is flown on
buildings connected with the crown (like a post office) or on other public
buildings like town halls. It is not clear if A harp was and remained the 'badge' or emblem
of As The
supreme governing body of the Though
there was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a certain tendency in the
English Parliament to treat Even
normally cautious historians like As
was customary in the Middle Ages each monarch ruled several territories under
different titles, as also did inferior nobles. Henry II was king of After the Act of Union that joined the
Parliaments of the two kingdoms most of the members of the Irish Government or
administration remained Irish, and remained responsible for Irish affairs. The
United Parliament passed such legislation as members of the Irish government or
Irish Members of Parliament proposed. Irishmen largely attended debates on
Irish affairs. The king rarely interfered in the affairs of his Irish kingdom,
but left the administration of The monarchy was popular in The
Act of Union (1800) was a union of Parliaments. Even this union was more
apparent than real for few British MP's bothered to
attend debates on Irish affairs.
Though
in theory the The
House of Lords in the Middle Ages was a committee or
jury of peers who sat as judges to consider petitions from the House of
Commons. All Bills sent by the Commons to the Lords began with a preamble
stating the reasons for the petition, but in course of time this preamble was
omitted from Bills introduced in the Commons by the Government itself, though
it was retained for private members' Bills. The Lords also heard appeals from
the king's courts, and indeed became the final court of appeal. The House of
Commons never had judicial powers. Financial matters were considered to be the
exclusive business of the Commons, and the Lords, by tradition never interfered
with them. The
Irish lords who had seats in the Irish House of Lords did not automatically get
a seat in the British House of Lords. They had to choose four spiritual lords
from among the bishops of the Established Church and twenty eight temporal
lords. The spiritual lords were selected according to a complicated rota to
serve each for a number of parliamentary terms. The temporal lords were chosen
by ballot of their own members to serve for life. At the death of each sitting
lord a new ballot was held for his replacement. Irish peers like Lord
Castlereagh (Marquis of Londonderry) or Lord Palmerston could sit in the House
of Commons. Alternatively, Irish peers could be given an additional British
title to allow them to sit in the House of Lords. Irish noblemen like the Earl
of Bessborough and the Marquis of Landsdowne kept themselves well informed
about Irish affairs and usually spoke on Irish affairs in the Lords. A majority
of the Irish lords were High Tories. The consequence of this was that each
representative peer elected in turn belonged to that party. As
300 MP’s had sat in the absurdly bloated Irish House of Commons the Act of
Union swept away the more dubious Irish seats, of the kind that survived in Until
1829 all the MP’s had to be Protestants but that did not mean that they had to
be opposed to Catholic Emancipation. On the contrary Members
from Catholic constituencies normally supported Catholic interests. By
far the greatest number of the Irish Members of Parliament in
the first half of the nineteenth century were either Whigs or Tories
indistinguishable from their British counterparts. Various attempts were made
from 1832 onwards to establish either a nationalist party or a Catholic party. Governments
could, and did, lose majorities in Parliament. (It
has long been a nationalist contention that the Act of Union (1800) was secured
only by bribery. They omit to point out that both sides were promising rewards
to their supporters if they won, and so were equally guilty of bribery. The
conclusion we must reach is that those who were willing to be bribed had to
decide which side had the majority and so was likely to win. Then they would
support the winning side. There is little doubt however that there was at that
time a majority in favour of the Union both inside and outside Parliament.)
[Top] When the king
summoned a Parliament to meet him at Westminster the Lord Chancellor through
the Hanaper Office in Dublin notified the sheriffs in the counties and the
provosts etc. in the parliamentary boroughs, requiring them to choose and send
the required number of 'knights of the shire' and 'burgesses of the town' to
his Majesty's councils. The sheriff or provost then appointed a time and a
place in which the election would be held. Elections
were fabulously costly, and so were only held in a county if the richest
landowners considered they had a chance of displacing one of the incumbents.
All Irish counties were regarded as 'independent' or 'open' because of the
large number of freeholders in them. So coalitions of
gentlemen of the rival parties made a preliminary canvass to determine the
strength of their following. If the canvass was unfavourable they did
not proceed. This first canvass was held only among the landlords, because
until 1828 it was expected that the tenants would vote as their landlord
directed, unless he allowed a free choice. If
the coalition decided to go ahead with the contest an election in a county
might cost £10,000 (£1,000,000?
in modern money), while even a borough could cost £2,000 unless (before 1832)
it voted as its owner directed. When O’Connell quarrelled with both Whigs and
Tories he relied on the Catholic clergy to a large extent for the canvassing.
At this stage of the contest it was expected that the canvassers would approach
each voter in turn to request his vote, even if his landlord had already
pledged it. Nobody could approach a tenant without the permission of the
landlord. If permission were not sought a challenge to fight a duel would be
sent. As priests could not be challenged to fight they were especially useful
to O’Connell. Priests like the Rev. James Maher canvassed with a following of
about a hundred men armed with sticks. This led to allegations of intimidation,
even if the large crowd was there chiefly for the free drink. Each
qualified voter had then to be transported to the town where the election was
being held, and lodged there for the duration of the election, with no stinting
on drink and food. All expenses at election time were inflated. A boy might be
given half a crown to run a message. An election meant a general licence to
fleece the candidates. Early
in the century the election was held only in the county town, the sheriff
usually appointing the courthouse as the place for the election. If there was
only one candidate he was declared elected. If there was more
than one their supporters fought each other to get in. The sheriff then asked the wishes of the
crowd. The losers in the subsequent shouting match demanded a ballot, whereupon
the sheriff ordered the construction of hustings and appointed the following
day for the voting to commence. The hustings (always in the plural) was a
raised platform out-of-doors on that was placed a table and some chairs. Almost
anyone with an interest in the election could claim a chair. Only
voters who were both qualified and registered could vote. In county elections
each had two votes. The sheriff had to attend at or near the hustings, for he
had to adjudicate on the spot on the validity of votes. The Clerk of the Peace
asked each voter in turn which candidate he was voting for and he replied in a
clear voice. The agent of the candidate could challenge the validity of the
vote, perhaps by asking to see the certificate of registration, or asking if he
had taken a bribe. An interesting
description of an Irish election is given in Samuel Lover's novel Handy Andy. In the novel the sheriff
declared the candidate with the fewer votes to have won, underlining the
crucial role of a sheriff at an election. The other party had then to appeal to
a committee of the House of Commons, thus doubling their expenses. All witness
had to be transported to In
the early years of the century elections were regulated by an Irish Act of
1795. There was no limit on the number of days an election might last. An
election lasted for 57 days in Mayo in 1815. Sir Henry Parnell was anxious to have Irish
elections better regulated. With the support of Peel and Castlereagh he
introduced his Irish Elections Reform Bill (1817). The act prescribed that the
sheriff must name the date of the election within two days of receipt of the
notification from the Lord Chancellor.
He was to provide one or more booths or hustings so that not more than
500 electors should attend a given booth. He was to attend the election to
adjudicate on disputed votes on the spot. The Clerk of the Peace was to attend
bringing the electoral register and the attestation of oaths. The election oath
was to be administered by the deputy sheriff only. The voter was to swear to
the following points: that he was over twenty one years old, that he had not
voted previously in that election, and that he would truthfully answer the
questions put to him by the sheriff. The sheriff was then to ask him to state
his name and address, that he was duly registered as a freeholder, where and
with what kind of occupancy, and that the value of his freehold exceeded forty
shillings in the year. (Catholics could also be asked under a different Act if
they had taken the oath of allegiance to the crown.) The sheriff then was to
ask him for whom he voted. If necessary the sheriff was to provide an
interpreter. An Act was passed in 1820 giving further regulations. Voting in a borough was somewhat different. In 18 of the boroughs the electors consisted of the 12 burgesses named in the town’s charter, whose members were filled by co-option. These always voted as the borough owner wished. Another 10 boroughs had sufficient electors to be regarded as 'open'. In the remaining six the owner had the right to appoint electors, so nobody ever opposed him. The boroughs naturally were the chief targets for each Government in turn trying to secure its re-election. There were always sufficient Irish boroughs and Scottish constituencies open to influence to secure a majority for the Government actually in office. Deals, as Peel admitted, had to be done. The Government had little or no money to spend on bribery so the deals had to consist in promising favours to borough owners or influential men in a county where a swing was possible. [Top] In
accordance with the views of the times Members of Parliament were regarded as
representing taxable property not individuals. It was because of this
representation that control of financial matters was conceded to the House of
Commons. Those who were expected to pay for public expenditures had a right to
say what the limits of those expenditures should be. For the same reason
landless men, or those not subject to taxation, were not allowed to vote for
representatives in Parliament. At its origins in the Middle
Ages the assembly of the Commons was like the All
voters had to be registered with the Clerk of the Peace beforehand. There seems
to have been no particular property qualification for electors in boroughs. In
the counties the qualification was the same as for jury service, the forty
shilling freehold. That the income amounted to 40/- clear was determined by the
voter's oath alone. The traditional interpretation of the oath, as Dr Doyle
recalled more than once was called the 'solvent tenant test'. This meant that the voter had to swear that
the income from his holding was such that, only income from the land being
counted, and after all charges on it for rent, rates, and tithes, had been
paid, the voter could still sub-let it at an extra forty shillings a year. The
sub-tenant would then be able to support himself and his family, pay all the
charges, and still remain solvent. Of the ten pound franchise Doyle warned the
Catholics against perjury explaining: that in your opinion, or to the best of
your belief, if you were to set it next March or Michaelmas, a good and solvent
tenant could afford to pay ten pounds for it more than you yourself now pay for
it (Carlow Morning Post 9 Aug 1830). An
alternative opinion was put forward that the freeholder was allowed to
calculate the 'beneficial interest' of the farm. To do this he calculated all
his farming costs, and then all his returns from the farm including the imputed
value of the food consumed on the farm. Because of a variation of the wording
in one of the Acts, this view was disputed before Assistant Barristers for
several years. The franchise was finally tied to the Poor Law valuation. The
forty-shilling franchise dated back to the Middle
Ages. It was established as a qualification in 1429 and was made the exclusive
qualification for counties by 33rd Henry VIII in 1524. The value of the
original quadraginta solidi was
estimated to be about £16 in 1824. It was therefore felt desirable by some that
the qualification should be restored to something like its old value. It was argued that raising the value of the
freehold would restore something of the ancient independence of the class, for
those tenants who had only a surplus of two pounds a year and who owed a
hanging gale at least, could not afford to defy their landlords. O’Connell
himself held this opinion, and preferred raising the franchise. He knew that
when he persuaded the forty-shilling freeholders to vote against their landlords’
instructions in 1828 he had won a Pyrrhic victory. The landlords it is true
immediately issued instructions that there was to be no victimisation, and no
doubt he had calculated on that. But it was clear to all that landlords
thereafter owed tenants, especially Catholic tenants, no favours. Nor would
leases with a 'life' in them be again granted. Nor were they likely again to
register them and pay the fees. According
to The Pilot the number of
forty-shilling freeholders was about 217,000 in 1829. By raising the
qualification to £10 the number of freeholders in the counties was cut to
40,000. It was estimated that 52,000
voters registered themselves during the general registry in 1832, but the
numbers on the register continued to fall thereafter, there being only 34,000
on the register in 1848. The Whigs had
always favoured a wider electorate, and by an Act in 1850 the county electorate
was raised to 135,000. Whig and Tory interests, Catholic and Protestant
interests, and Unionist and Repealer interests were kept balanced with the
Whigs stronger in the counties and the Tories in the boroughs until 1884. In
that year household franchise was allowed in the counties tipping the balance
in favour of the Catholics. A redistribution of seats in 1885 confirmed this
advantage. With new single-seat constituencies and a 'first-past-the-post'
system of voting the Catholic Repealers had unassailable majorities in every
part of Petitions
to Parliament protesting against the result of an election were fairly
frequent. The defeated candidate could allege bribery, false registration, or
intimidation, as reasons why some of the votes cast for his opponent should be
disallowed. The victorious candidate then disputed the votes cast for the
other. Parliament, when the petition was received, set up a committee to
examine the claim. All witnesses had to come in person before the committee and
be examined under oath. O’Connell, having been elected a Member for It
had been originally intended that all legislation should apply to the whole of
the Most
of the legislation concerning Legislation concerning After 1830 disputes in Parliament became more numerous and more
rancorous. This was partly due to a backlash following O’Connell's
tactics to gain Emancipation, for he was not a tactful man, and preferred
direct confrontation to conciliation. It was also due to stronger feelings in O’Connell
himself was a failure as a legislator, though he had sufficient ability both as
a lawyer and a speaker to have distinguished himself. With regard to
legislation |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright Desmond J. Keenan, B.S.Sc.; Ph.D. ;.London, U.K.
|