Irish Parliament

“ The Powers of the Irish Parliament The Irish Parliament is given a general power to make laws for “the peace, order, and good government” of Ireland. The words are those usually employed in the grant of legislative power in colonial constitutions, and they have been interpreted as authorising “the utmost discretion of enactment for the attainment of the objects appointed to them.”21 No considerations of policy or equity or repugnancy to the common law would avail to challenge an Irish statute on the ground that it was ultra vires. ”

“ The conditions of Irish and English politics are so extremely different, and the reasons for preserving in Ireland a local centre of political life are so powerful, that it is probable a Federal Union would have been preferred. Under such a system the Irish Parliament would have continued to exist, but would have been restricted to purely local subjects, while an Imperial Parliament, in which Irish representatives sat, would have directed the policy of the empire. ”

“ How could they act as freemen, without appearing ungenerous to a refugee and benefactor king? How guard their nationality, without quarrelling with him or alienating England from him? How could they do that proprietal justice and grant that religious liberty for which the country had been struggling? How check civil war—how sustain a war by the resources of a distracted country? Yet all this the Irish parliament did, and more too; for they established the principal parts of a code needful for the permanent liberty and prosperity of Ireland. ”

“ Irish trade was being handicapped by English ministers anxious to gain the suffrages of the great trading towns of Bristol and London, and they attempted to impose restrictions on Ireland through the medium of the Dublin Parliament. But the descendants of the Elizabethan and Cromwellian 'undertakers' would have none of it. Their idea was that all Irish affairs should be under the control of the Irish Parliament because they were the Parliament. ”

“ The power which gave the planters their land could laugh at their constitutional pretensions. So the Dublin Parliament idly strove to emulate its exemplar at Westminster, and clamoured in vain for responsible government, for control of the [pg 263] Irish Executive. In spite of its Irish Parliament, Ireland has never been given the chance of governing itself. ”

“ Who can doubt that the Irish Legislature will, by an Irish Act, give itself the title of the Parliament of Ireland? I have therefore throughout these pages called the Irish Legislature the Irish Parliament. Few things are more absurd and more noteworthy than the deliberate refusal of English Gladstonians to call the Irish Parliament by its right name. They are willing to create an Irish Parliament; they are not willing to admit that they have created it. ”

“ If Home Rule was, after all, to be nothing more than a half-way house to independence, an Irish Parliament only a means of extorting a more complete emancipation from imperial control, was it not much better to keep things as they were, and go on enduring evils, the worst of which were known already? ”

“ American Revolution.—In 1775, Irishmen were found very active in the cause of the American Revolution. Shortly after, England granted Ireland an independent Parliament. This Parliament is known as "Grattan's Parliament." The progress of Ireland under her own Parliament surprised the world and immediately England set about for its destruction. In 1801, Ireland was again a bleeding nation—her Parliament was gone. Although an Irish Catholic could not sit in Irish Parliament, yet the people expected Catholic emancipation from it much sooner than from the British Parliament. ”

“ The desire for a separate Irish Parliament is certainly a national aspiration, it may even be called a right; for the people of the island can justly complain of being at the mercy of a rival nation, of which they are supposed to form a part, and are consequently heavily taxed for the support of it without any adequate return. ”

“ The creation of an independent Irish Parliament strikes the imagination; it is seen to be an innovation of primary importance. The creation of an independent Irish Cabinet or Ministry is taken as a matter of course, and neither Unionists nor Gladstonians see its full import. Yet in Ireland, as elsewhere, the character of the Executive is of more practical consequence than the character of the Legislature. A country may dispense, for a long time, with legislation; no country can dispense with good government. ”

“ Had Ireland a separate Parliament, no British Minister would have been mad enough to propose the extension of this act over that country, where it is certain to excite disaffection and disloyalty, arouse slumbering hatreds, and impede the march of National and Social improvement. An Irish Parliament, with specified powers and duties akin to those of an American State Legislature, would be a great relief to a British Parliament and Ministry, a great support to Irish loyalty and Irish improvement, and no harm to anybody. ”

“ As the first step it should be calmly settled what are the specific grievances under which Ireland labours, and which the Imperial legislature cannot, but an Irish Parliament could, remove. Historic wrongs are past remedy. Ireland has more than [Pg 215] her share of representation in Parliament. She has no established Church. If her priesthood would let her, she would have a complete system of national education. ”

“ The result might be attained without the necessity for passing any Act of Parliament, or of repealing a single section of the Irish Government Act, 1893. A strong Viceroy might be sent to Ireland; he might be instructed not to convoke the Irish Parliament at all; or, having convoked, at once to prorogue it. He might thereupon form any Ministry he chose out of the members of the Irish Privy Council. The Imperial Parliament would at once resume its present position and could pass laws for Ireland. This might be called revolution or reaction. ”

“ The Restrictions are one and all of them limits upon the powers of the Irish Parliament; they are none of them limits upon the powers of the Irish Executive. The new constitution does not contain—from its nature it hardly could contain—a single safeguard against abuse of power by the Irish Ministry or its servants. Yet in all countries there is far more reason to dread executive than parliamentary oppression, and this is emphatically true of Ireland. ”

“ Without a union with Great Britain the inhabitants of Ireland are not likely for many ages to consider themselves as one people." But, as we have seen, by the Act of 1782, the Irish Parliament had become independent-that is, it was placed in the same position as the Scotch Parliament had been; and by the Act of 1893, the bulk of the constituencies in the counties had become Roman Catholic. Except in the opinion of thoughtless optimists like Grattan, matters were approaching a deadlock; for sooner or later the Roman Catholic electors would demand representation in Parliament ”

“ The Irish Parliament nearly at the same time made great steps towards uniting the people by relieving the Presbyterians from the Test Act and from the restrictions on their marriages, and the Catholics from those parts of the penal code which chiefly restrained [79] their worship, their education, and their industry. At the same time the Protestant monopoly of political power and of the higher offices remained.
Ireland thus found herself in possession of a Parliament which was, in name at least, perfectly independent. ”

“ If this Bill granted to Ireland a free and independent Parliamentary Assembly with full powers over the Executive, as proposed by the Prime Minister, there would inevitably come a time when either the payment of the interest due, or some other cause, would bring the Irish Parliament into antagonism with the English. If they were to endeavour to demand what was necessary, whether payment of interest or what not, and to threaten to use force, could any one suppose that the great body of Irish Americans would stand by silently and see that done? ”

“ Great Britain reaches the Irish ideal by other means. Her departmental Ministers are directly responsible to a predominantly British House of Commons where a hostile vote can at any moment eject them from office. [51] There is no Irish Parliament, nor any kind of predominantly Irish body which is vested with the same power. ”

“ I say nothing of the tendency in an Irish government, awkwardly alternating with that to which I have just adverted, to look over the heads of the people of Ireland, and to consider mainly what will be thought by the ignorant public in England. But these sources of incessant perturbation must not be left out. The fault of Irish centralization is not that it is strong, but that it is weak. Weak it must remain until Parliament either approves of the permanent suspension of the Irish writs, or else devises constitutional means for making Irish administration responsible to Irish representatives. ”

“ The motive passions of the Irish agitation have all along been hatred toward England and a desire to make Ireland a nation, holding her independent place among the nations of the world. This design was proclaimed by the Young Irelanders of 1848 and by the Fenian rebels of 1866; it has been avowed, in intervals of candour, by the present Nationalists themselves. The grant of an Irish Parliament will stimulate rather than appease this thirst for separate national existence. The nearer complete independence seems, the more will it be desired. ”

“ Very early in the session, the English House of Commons, exercising its customary power of binding Ireland by acts passed in London, sent up to the House of Lords a bill providing that no person should sit in the Irish Parliament, nor should hold any Irish office, civil, military, or ecclesiastical, nor should practice law or medicine in Ireland, till he had first taken the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and subscribed to the declaration against transubstantiation. ”

“ The chief conflict of the session was fought over Pitt's scheme for establishing free-trade with Ireland. An agitation for parliamentary reform in Ireland brought into prominence a spirit of discontent. The Irish parliament did not represent even the protestant population; the house of lords was composed of a large number of bishops, generally subservient to the crown, and of lay lords, many of them lately ennobled for political service; the house of commons of 300 members, scarcely [Pg 289] a third of them elected by the people. ”

“ More recent English acts had further emphasized the complete dependence of the Irish parliament, and the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords had also been annulled. Moreover, the English Houses claimed and exercised the power to legislate directly for Ireland without even the nominal concurrence of the parliament in Dublin. This was the constitution which Molyneux and Swift had denounced, which Flood had attacked, and which Grattan was to destroy. ”

“ Our readers already know that, in our opinion, an Irish Parliament would not be a sure panacea for the evils of the country, particularly those of pauperism and ignorance, even though that Parliament sat in Dublin, and was composed of Irishmen bred and born. ”

“ After the General Election of 1874, some sixty Irish Members were returned who had stood before their constituencies as Home Rulers. The Home Rule demand is clear and simple enough; it asks for Ireland a separate Government, still allied with the Imperial Government, on the principles which regulate the alliance between the United States of America. The proposed Irish Parliament in College Green would bear just the same relation to the Parliament at Westminster that the Legislature and Senate of every American State bear to the head authority of the Congress in the Capitol at Washington. ”

“ It surely could not be your wish, nor would it be desirable, to attempt to pledge any Irishman one step beyond that general proposition, that whatever is done by the authority of the British Parliament as to England, must be done in Ireland by the authority of the Irish Parliament ”

“ Can any reflective person really suppose that the democracy of Great Britain will consent to refuse to share with the Irish people the boon of self-government which will be offered to themselves next year? Any attempt to exclude the Irish from the benefits of such a scheme, after all the promises of the last general election, would almost certainly wreck the government; for constituencies have ways and means of impressing their wills on their representatives in Parliament even without a dissolution. ”

“ The Irish Parliament met in 1715—elected, according to the then usage, for the lifetime of the King—commenced its career by an act of attainder against the Pretender, accompanied by a reward of 50,000 pounds for his apprehension. The Lords-Justices, the Duke of Grafton and the Earl of Galway, recommended in their speech to the Houses, that they should cultivate such unanimity among themselves as "at once to put an end to all other distinctions in Ireland, but that of Protestant and Papist." ”

“ The party which triumphed on that occasion was not the Irish party, or the Catholic party, but the Protestant aristocracy. The anti-national character and exclusive nature of the party in power was shown by the rejection of all Pitt's efforts at parliamentary reform. The independent Irish Parliament was indeed full of able speakers; men who carried the art of rhetoric and of clothing little thought in magnificent language to the highest pitch. ”