Henry Grattan: Encyclopedia II - Henry Grattan - Grattan's Parliament

Henry Grattan - Grattan's Parliament

One of the first acts of Grattan's parliament was to prove its loyalty to England by passing a vote for the support of 20,000 sailors for the navy. Grattan was loyal to the crown and the English connection. He was, however, anxious for moderate parliamentary reform, and, unlike Flood, he favored Catholic emancipation. It was evident that without reform the Irish House of Commons would not be able to make much use of its newly-won independence. Though now free from constitutional control, it was still subject to the influence of corruption, which the English government had wielded through the Irish borough owners, known as the "undertakers", or more directly through the great executive officers. Grattan's parliament had no control over the Irish executive. The lord lieutenant and his chief secretary continued to be appointed by the English ministers; their tenure of office depended on the vicissitudes of English, not Irish, party politics; the royal prerogative was exercised in Ireland on the advice of English ministers. The House of Commons was unrepresentative of the Irish people. The great majority were excluded as Roman Catholics from the franchise; two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons were returned by small boroughs at the disposal of individual patrons, whose support was bought by the distribution of peerages and pensions. It was to give stability and true independence to the new constitution that Grattan pressed for reform. Having quarrelled with Flood over simple repeal, Grattan also differed from him on the question of maintaining the Volunteer Convention. He opposed the policy of protective duties, but supported Pitt's famous commercial propositions in 1785 for establishing free trade between Great Britain and Ireland, which, however, had to be abandoned owing to the hostility of the English mercantile classes. Grattan supported the government for a time after 1782, and spoke and voted for the stringent coercive legislation rendered necessary by the Whiteboy outrages in 1785; but as the years passed without Pitt's personal favour towards parliamentary reform resulting in legislation, he gravitated towards the opposition, agitated for commutation of tithes in Ireland, and supported the Whigs on the regency question in 1788. In 1792 he succeeded in carrying an Act conferring the franchise on the Roman Catholics; in 1794 in conjunction with William Ponsonby he introduced a reform bill which was even less democratic than Flood's bill of 1783. He was as anxious as Flood had been to retain the legislative power in the hands of men of property, for he had through the whole of his life a strong conviction that while Ireland could best be governed by Irish hands, democracy in Ireland would inevitably turn to plunder and anarchy. i At the same time he desired to admit the Roman Catholic gentry of property to membership of the House of Commons, a proposal that was the logical corollary of the Relief Act of 1792. The defeat of Grattan's mild proposals helped to promote more extreme opinions, which, under French revolutionary influence, were now becoming heard in Ireland.

The Catholic question had rapidly become of the first importance, and when a powerful section of the Whigs joined Pitt's ministry in 1794, and it became known that the lord-lieutenancy was to go to Lord Fitzwilliam, who shared Grattan's views, expectations were raised that the question was about to be settled in a manner satisfactory to the Irish Catholics. Such seems to have been Pitt's intention, though there has been much controversy as to how far Lord Fitzwilliam had been authorized to pledge the government. After taking. Grattan into his confidence, it was arranged that the latter should bring in a Roman Catholic emancipation bill, and that it should then receive government support. But finally it appeared that the viceroy had either misunderstood or exceeded his instructions; and on February 19, 1795 Fitzwilliam was recalled. In the outburst of indignation, followed by increasing disaffection in Ireland, which this event produced, Grattan acted with conspicuous moderation. and loyalty, which won for him warm acknowledgments from a member of the English cabinet. That cabinet, however, doubtless influenced by the wishes of the king, was now determined firmly to resist the Catholic demands, with the result that the country rapidly drifted towards rebellion. Grattan warned the government in a series of masterly speeches of the lawless condition to which Ireland had been driven. He could now count on no more than forty followers in the House of Commons, and his words were unheeded. He retired from parliament in May 1797, and departed from his customary moderation by attacking the government in an inflammatory Letter to the citizens of Dublin.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Grattan's Parliament", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki