Over 200 years before The Troubles – part one.

Don't be silly, i don't expect you to read this, i just expect you to comment that this 'is a nice piece of work'...Enjoy!

Over 200 years before The Troubles – part one.

Preface.
This period saw a profound social, political and economic transformation of Ireland. In 1783 Ireland was controlled, as she had been since the Glorious Revolution*1 by Irish protestants and Anglican persuasion; and the Constitution of 1782*2 was essentially their constitution. It also excluded from power two important groups of Irishmen: Presbyterian dissenters (mainly in the North) and Roman Catholics (completely defeated and degraded) who were now about to take first steps towards asking the removal of political disabilities.

Secret societies
The 18th century was thick with outbound secret societies. The Whiteboy movement was directed against rents, tithes*3 and Roman Catholic fees. The Whiteboys were robbing, burning crops and houses, murdering*4. In Ulster, the Oakboys and Steelboys were equally fearsome. Religious feuds (Protestants and Presbyterians ) in the north (in Armagh, Tyrone and Down) found expression in such societies as Beep of day Boys and afterwards called Protestant boys and Wreckers, forerunners of the famous Orange Order of the Protestants. Decent Roman Catholics founded the Defenders, that late merged into The Society of United Irishmen. Roman Catholic priests lost former influence because of highly disapproving of secret oaths. All this had nothing to do with the battle of Dublin Parliament to shake free from Westminster.

Foreign influence
Just at that time America won its independence and the French revolution emerged, changing the state of affairs and bringing people’s movements closer to the parliamentary battle. In 1783 Irish troops who had served in the American war returned home under impression, because American grievances were like the Irish and America proved the possibility of success.

Henry Grattan
In 18th century oratory was nearly the greatest distinction; power of persuasion was a fatal gift. But all of them couldn’t stand their grounds for long, one persuader changed the other, and this only encouraged the instability and disunity. Until in 1775 an orator appeared in the House of Commons; his name was Henry Grattan. “His life bids Irish Protestants not to entertain harsh prejudices against their Catholic fellow-countrymen, to look on all with a loving heart, to be tolerant of their infirmities caused by their unhappy history, and, like Grattan, earnestly to sympathize with all that is brave and generous in their character. It reminds the Irish Catholic that the brightest age of Ireland was when Grattan, a steady Protestant, raised it to proud eminence; that in the hour of his triumph he did not forget the state of the Catholics, but labored through his virtuous life that all Catholics should enjoy unshackled liberty of conscience. He bids Irishmen of every creed to ponder upon the spirit and principles which governed the patriot's career in public and private,"-says Daniel Owen Madden.

Constitution. The Patriots
The Protestants, especially Grattan himself, knew that in Ireland liberty was controlled not by themselves but by ‘The Castle’ (the Government). Every good constitution has some safeguards. Firstly, no government can remove judges from office. Secondly, there must be an Act which protects a man from being imprisoned for a long time without trial (in England it was called an Act of Habeas Corpus). Irish constitution had none of the safeguards listed above. Grattan and his followers, known as The Patriots, fought for these safeguards successfully. Grattan wanted Ireland to be as free as England but still united to her.

First steps to Catholic emancipation
In 1779, with a sympathetic Whig Government at Westminster, Grattan secured removal of many of the dreadful custom duties. In 1793 he pressed the Roman Catholic franchise*5, though they were still denied full political freedom, for they could only vote, not sit in the Parliament. In the latter years of the century the worst of the Penal laws*6 were abolished or fallen into disuse. By 1782 the priest had no longer to register. It was now easier for Roman Catholics to own land and they had been admitted to university degrees. These measures had the support of George III, Pitt (prime minister), and the majority of Protestants in the Irish Parliament. Grattan believed that men of property were the best guardians of the law, so the electors and the elected had to have a property worth 40 shillings. This disqualified many more Catholics than Protestants.

Finally the Irish Parliament itself won the independence – it was the greatest victory of the Patriots. In 1782 they managed to persuade the Westminster to repeal Poynings’ Law*7 and the Declaratory Act*8 except as final royal veto. For 18 years Ireland had a free parliament.

The corrupt government body
The grant of independence did not suffice to check the corruption of Parliament. It was still formed of a purely Protestant oligarchy, whose boroughs were regarded as private property, generally of considerable money value, and who sold their interest, when it suited their convenience, to the Government. There was no real or open election; seats were purchased from their owners for large sums of money. In 1790, eight years after the grant of independence, Grattan, speaking in the Commons, had still to confess that "above two-thirds of the returns to the House are private property; of those returns, many actually are sold to the minister. The country is placed in a sort of interval between the cessation of a system of oppression and the formation of a system of corruption."
The Lord Lieutenant lived in at Dublin Castle for like half the year. During his absence in England, government was in the hands of his council (the executive) with its chief secretary, justices and other officials, all nominated by the British Cabinet. The method of controlling both the executive and parliament was through agents known as undertakers. They did it by filling them with a body of followers, called the junta. The undertakers’ duties included buying votes for junta.

The Volunteers
Meanwhile, England was too busy with France and America and her troupes were in such demand that there was no one to defend Ireland from possible French or pirates invaders. So Britain called on Ireland to form Volunteer companies. In the end there was no invasion, so the Volunteers used their energy to make political demands. They declared that Ireland would never be safe until she could make her own laws. Grattan met Volunteers at Dungannon and helped them to draft resolutions demanding an independent parliament; the demand was carried.

Views on parliamentary reform
Parliament was badly in need of reform. The executive was still appointed by the British Council, not by the Irish Parliament. Roman Catholics couldn’t sit in it. It only represented men of property. It had a share of ‘rotten boroughs’*9 and ‘pocket boroughs’*10. And of course the corruption.
Finally the parliament owed much of its independence to the Volunteers and it’s not wise for a parliament to depend on an army, even an unpaid one. Plus the Patriots had no common program and not much sense of party loyalty: Grattan had many rivals like Henry Flood, who saw the reform as giving the franchise to tenants. Grattan’s idea of reform was to keep the parliament to the owners of property but to end corruption.


Footnotes(*)

*1. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 or the Bloodless Revolution, was the overthrow of James II of England in 1688 by a union of Parliamentarians and William III of Orange. Never again would the monarch hold absolute power; the Bill of Rights became one of the most important documents for Britain. The deposition of the Roman Catholic James II ended any chance of Catholicism becoming re-established in England. It also led to toleration for nonconformist Protestants
*2. A series of concessions made by the British government which excluded the legislative independence of the Irish Parliament
*3. Church’s tenth
*4. Not so much of a good start…
*5. Right to vote
*6. The Penal laws in Ireland refers to a series of laws imposed under British rule that sought to discriminate against Roman Catholics and Protestant non-Conformists (those not conforming to the Anglican Church in Ireland in favour of the established Church of Ireland which recognized the English monarchy as its spiritual head.
*7. Poynings Law of 1494 made the Irish parliament subservient to the English one.
*8. The Declaratory Act asserted Britain's exclusive right to legislate for and tax its unrepresented colonies.
*9. Small places with few voters
*10.Places controlled by the landlord

Well, how was it? Seriously, i'm not jeering at you...