Parliament of Ireland

“ The answer of the Irish Parliament to this demand met with no opposition on the question of its adoption, though it declared emphatically “that there is no body of men competent to make laws to bind this nation except the king, lords, and commons of Ireland; nor any other parliament which hath any authority or power of any sort whatever in this country save only the Parliament of Ireland.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lord Temple entered upon the Government of Ireland at a crisis of serious agitation. A short time before, under the Duke of Portland's Administration, a Bill had passed the Imperial Parliament, recognizing in full and in the most explicit manner the sole and exclusive right of the Parliament of Ireland to make laws for Ireland—establishing and affirming, in fact, the perfect independence of Ireland, legislative, judicial and commercial. This Bill had given complete satisfaction to the popular leaders. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After having heard and written so much of the wrongs of Ireland under the domination of the English Parliament, he found that Ireland actually and practically formed a part of that Parliament,—the legislature being, not English, but Imperial. He must have known this before; but he had never felt it. He now saw that Ireland was as well represented as England or Scotland; that political offices were held in fair proportion by Irishmen; and that the Irish members engrossed much more than a fair share of the national time in debate and projects of legislation. ”

“ The Irish Parliament is to be, not a sovereign legislature, but a subordinate legislature created by statute, and a legislature of such restricted and inferior authority as to be unworthy of the name of a parliament. The Imperial Parliament, with its vast majority of British members, asserts its absolute supremacy in Ireland, and the right at its discretion to legislate for Ireland on any matter whatever ”

“ There is no impartial person who does not clearly recognise that to constitute a separate Parliament for Ireland (to say nothing of England, Wales, and Scotland) must necessarily result, not in the more efficient despatch of legislative and administrative business, but in perpetual friction, clogging the mechanism alike of the subordinate and the predominate body. Ireland enjoyed—or endured—an independent Parliament during eighteen years, from 1782 to 1800 ”

“ A hundred years ago, when she had to grant Ireland a free Parliament, the position of England was not so perilous as it is now, nor had the Irish people then one tenth of their present strength.
One magnanimous statesman in England, one leader with the courage and wisdom of genius, would solidify the British Empire to-day with a master stroke of politics. He would abolish the Union, and leave Ireland as she stood eighty-five years ago, a happy, free, confederated part of the Empire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In England where the ruling power was vested first in the sovereign and later in the Parliament, the landowners, however large their possessions, rarely attained to more than a local importance, save of course when one of them chanced to rise to eminence as a soldier or a statesman. In Ireland the parliament, throughout nearly the whole of its separate existence, was little more than a name, irregularly summoned, and until the middle of the sixteenth century, representing only one small corner of the country. ”

“ They cannot stand still. They have already discovered that one act of repression leads to another, and they will find ere long that they have no alternative except Home Rule or the suppression of Parliamentary Government in Ireland. Men may talk lightly of the ease with which eighty-six Irish members may be kept in order in Parliament. They forget that the Irish people are behind the Irish members. How is Ireland to be governed on Parliamentary principles if the voice of her representatives is to be forcibly silenced or disregarded? ”

“ The evils are increased because the Irish members are turned into a delegation from the Irish State, and their action ceases to be influenced, as it now is, by the consideration—a very important one—that the Imperial Parliament not only in theory but in fact legislates for Ireland, and that the English Cabinet controls the Irish administration and directs the course of political promotion in Ireland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The Irish parliament, then still existing, was a great cause of disorder in the unity of the British government, until the illustrious Pitt placed every thing under the common law of the triple crown. There is something strange and perfectly inconsistent in the pretensions of Ireland. The people profess to respect the Union without ever wishing to depart from it; and then they claim a parliament for themselves, and desire something resembling a republic independent of England. Let them exult in their Catholic emancipation; they have a right to do so, and cannot value it too highly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These two measures, subsequently known as ‘Poynings's Law,’ or ‘The Statutes of Drogheda,’ rendered the Irish parliament completely subordinate to that of England. A slight modification of them was introduced in Mary's reign, and during the rebellion of 1641 Charles promised their repeal; but their principle was extended by a statute passed in 1719, empowering the English parliament to legislate for Ireland, and it was not till 1782 that they were repealed, and the Irish parliament once more became independent. ”

“ Even while the blaze of those glories is at this moment throwing its splendor over the memory of us all, I believe in my soul that the parliament of regenerated Ireland will achieve triumphs more glorious, more lasting, more sanctified and holy, than any by which her old parliament illumined the annals of our country and our race. ”

“ The establishment of this separate Parliament is necessary, because we must give Ireland the opportunity of doing what we ourselves are unable to do, to find the best machinery they can to carry on the business of government. But, when this machinery is once found and invested with the resources and influence of a Government, we cannot suppose that our troubles will be at an end. If disputes arise in the working out of the new Irish Constitution, the popular majority will not be slow to call in the aid of the American Irish who have founded the National League. ”

“ The next blow was on the feeble and factious Parliament. The Irish Legislature was extinguished at a blow; and its fall was as ignominious as it was judicial. Its national pride and acknowledged talent gave way without a struggle, and with scarcely a remonstrance. It had already lost the respect of the nation. The mind of Ireland disdained the deliberations which had suffered the dictation of a mob. Parliament, existing without national honour, perished without national sympathy. ”

“ The Protestant Irish Parliament existed in its day in Ireland like a hostile garrison in a conquered country. It was a body of absolute rulers, governing and oppressing in the name of a foreign power; any attempt at opposition on the part of its members was at once put a stop to either by bribery or force. The Irish Protestant was not in reality in a better position than his Catholic fellow-countryman; he could purchase the favour of his masters only by sacrificing the interests of his country, and enjoyed only the one pitiful privilege of being at the same time vassal and master. ”

“ But the principal measure provided that no parliament should be summoned in Ireland except under the great seal of England, or without due notice to the English privy council, and that no acts of the Irish parliament should be valid unless previously submitted to the same body. Another act declared all laws ‘late made’ in England to be of force in Ireland, and it was subsequently decided that this provision applied to all laws passed in England before 1494. ”

“ We do not merely admit it in special laws against Ireland like the Coercion Acts, or special laws in favour of Ireland like the Land Acts; it is admitted even more by specially exempting Ireland than by specially studying Ireland. In other words, whatever else the Unionists want, they do not want to unite; they are not quite so mad as that. I cannot myself conceive any purpose in having one parliament except to pass one law; and one law for England and Ireland is simply something that becomes more insanely impossible every day. ”

“ Should she be left out, the argument that she is being treated unequally and unfairly, as compared with England, would gain immense force; because the present local government of Ireland is admittedly less popular, less efficient, altogether less defensible, than even that of England which we are going to reform. If, therefore, the theory that the Imperial Parliament is both anxious and able to do its duty by Ireland is to be maintained, Ireland, too, must have her scheme of local government. ”

“ But if we are to consider what ought to be, as well as what is, why should Ireland have the greatest possible subordinate legislature? Is Ireland more numerous and more important to what is called the British empire than America? Subordinate as the Irish legislature is said to be, and a conquered country, as undoubtedly it is, the parliament of Great Britain, although they claim a power to bind Ireland by statutes, have never laid one farthing of tax upon it. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”