"during pleasure"; persons, that is, who held some appointment from the Crown or were in receipt of a State pension, which appointment or pension they would at once lose if they ventured to oppose the Government. Members thus restricted constituted ordinarily at least a third of the House; sometimes a half. The Government generally bought over a few of the chief borough owners, who engaged to throw all the weight of their following in favour of any Bill of which the passing was desired by the English Ministry. These men were generally, though unofficially, known as "Undertakers."

The Upper House.-In the Upper House sat the Spiritual Peers, the Archbishops and Bishops of the Established Church, and the Temporal Lords, whose number varied but tended to increase; peerages being a favourite form of bribery. The Government majority was always larger in the Upper than in the Lower House. Until 1719, when the "Appellate Jurisdiction was, by an Act of the British Parliament, transferred to the English Upper House, the Irish House of Lords served usually as the Supreme Court of Appeal for law cases in Ireland. Its power in this respect was restored in 1782.

Effect of Poynings' Act.-The action of the Irish Parliament was fettered, until the gaining of Legislative Independence in 1782, by "Poynings' Act" (1494-see Chapter X, Book 1).

According to Poynings' Act, all Irish Bills originated in the Irish Privy Council, and all Bills which it was desired to pass should be submitted to the King and the Privy Council of England. A custom gradually grew up of permitting suggestions as to proposed Bills to be made to the Irish Privy Council by one or other of the Houses of Parliament. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, this custom had become so well established as to be regarded as a right. The power of the Irish Privy Council had declined, and it no longer ventured to suppress any " Heads of Bills" so suggested, and rarely to originate any itself, except the single one which Poynings' Act required to be transmitted to England as a formal reason for the holding of a Parliament.

The ordinary process of legislation, prior to 1782, was briefly as follows: The suggested Act as "Heads of a Bill" was introduced into either the Upper or the Lower House. It was debated, passed through its readings, and was then sent to the Lord Lieutenant for transmission to England. In form it was exactly similar to a "Bill," save that the words" we pray that it be enacted" were substituted for "be it enacted." In England it was submitted to the King and the English Privy Council, The Heads of a Bill were read only twice and in the House in which they originated. On the return of the Bill from England it was read three times and in both Houses.

who could, if they pleased, alter or entirely reject it. If not rejected, it was returned to Ireland, and, as a Bill, placed before the two Irish Houses, who could only accept or refuse it as a whole, not being allowed to make any alteration.

Not infrequently the changes which it had undergone in England were so radical that they rejected it. If it were accepted, it was once more sent to the Lord Lieutenant, who received permission from the King to give the Royal Assent. By this the process was completed and the Act became law.

Faults and Advantages of the Irish Parliament.-The foregoing account will have made it clear that almost every fault that a legislative assembly could have was present in the Irish Parliament of the eighteenth century. It was unrepresentative even of the minority of the population which it professed to represent. It was corrupt, through the methods of election, the nature of the constituencies, and the facilities afforded by its constitution for the bribery, direct and indirect, of its members. It was weak, owing to the restrictions imposed upon it by Poynings' Act. Still, with all its faults, it was an Irish Parliament of a kind. Its members, however narrow and prejudiced were the majority of them, however dishonest a large number, were still Irishmen living in Ireland. They could not fail to understand, in some measure, the needs of the country, for they were eye-witnesses of its sufferings or its prosperity; nor could they wholly disregard the public opinion of the community which surrounded them; an opinion often conveyed to them by such rough and ready methods as broken windows or "chairings," the hisses and brickbats or the cheers and bonfires of the mob.

CHAPTER VI

GENERAL STATE OF THE COUNTRY IN THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

HAVING now briefly explained the system by which Ireland was governed in the eighteenth century, it is time to consider the general condition of the country, due largely to this system, and to note some of the features of the ordinary life of the people.

The Officials: Social Life.-The administration of the Government was in the hands of the authorities of Dublin Castle. For the most part they were men of English birth, and a great many had resided but a short time in Ireland. The Lord Lieutenant himself, in the earlier part of the century, remained but six months in each two years-the period, that is, of the Parliamentary Session-in the country which he was supposed to govern. For the remaining eighteen months the Lord Justices took his place. Of these there were generally three-an ecclesiastic, namely the Archbishop of either Dublin or Armagh, and two of the highest of the lay officials. These always resided in Dublin, and returned most commonly to office again and again.

Of the social life of the period, too, the Castle was the centre. During the time of the Lord Lieutenant's residence there the country gentry and their families flocked to Dublin.

Landlords, Middlemen and Tenants.-For the greater part of the year the Irish landlord-unless he was an absentee, and in that case he usually lived in London-dwelt in his country house, amusing himself, according to the season, with hunting or shooting as outdoor occupations, and within doors with drinking and card-playing; with now and then a duel as an extra excitement. To the condition of his tenantry or the improvement of his estate he generally, though there were, fortunately, many exceptions to this, paid little attention. In most cases business was transacted by the agent. Hard as was often the lot of the tenantat-will, who held his land from a despotic estate owner, it was happiness compared with that of the miserable being who depended on a middleman. This class, one of the greatest curses of rural Ireland, owed its origin to the indolence of the landlord, very often an absentee, who, desirous

of avoiding the trouble of collecting the rents of a number of small holdings, leased out his estate in large portions to persons who sublet the lands to poor tenants, a few acres to each.

Sometimes as many as three middlemen intervened between the estate owner and the actual tiller of the soil, who, ground down by the exactions of each, for ultimately it was on him that the burden of all was imposed, could barely succeed, by the hardest toil, in providing his family with the merest necessities of life, when circumstances were most favourable. When they were not, when a bad season came, or his one or two cows perished by disease or accident, he too often saw his wife and children suffering the pangs of hunger, or, the rent having fallen into arrears, he and they were flung out together on the roadside, to perish or to wander away as beggars. Meanwhile, the improvements which he had made; the fences which he had built with his own hands; the drains which he had dug; the increased fertility of the land which was due to his toil, were extra sources of profit to the landlord, enabling him to exact from the next tenant a higher rent. Multitudes lived almost entirely on potatoes of the poorest kind with water only as a beverage, or sometimes a little milk. In the wretched huts there was no chimney, and it was through a hole in the roof that the smoke was supposed to escape.

It must not be forgotten, however, that this dark picture does not fairly represent the whole of Ireland. Where the landlord was just and humane, and was satisfied with fair profits, the power for good which he exercised was immense. Under such a master the tenants were happy and contented. Food was extraordinarily cheap, so that the lowness of agricultural wages was not a great hardship. Clothes were made at home, and the cabin was built by the peasant's own hands. For fuel the turf of the neighbouring bog was used; if there were no bog near, the cost of transport rendered it, of course, much dearer. Life was not dull or destitute of amusement. The boys and girls danced to the music of the bag-pipe; in summer at the cross-roads; in winter within doors. The elders gathered round the fire, and songs were sung and old tales were told in the old Gaelic tongue. Except in the towns English was little spoken.

Education.--In spite of all the efforts made to prevent "Popish education," there were, even at the very worst period of the Penal Laws, many small Catholic schools scattered here and there over the country, and also many wandering schoolmasters who remained a while in each district. Often the teachers did not limit themselves to elementary instruction, for amongst them there were some fine classical scholars, and it was not uncommon to find ploughmen, blacksmiths and fishermen who could recite, in the original, long passages from Homer or from Virgil;

and this at a time when, amongst the richer classes, the level of education was lower than it had been for generations, and when, over in England, seventy per cent. of the population could not read their own language.

Over even the most fortunate Catholic tenants there hung the dread of eviction. Their present landlord might be well disposed towards them, but who could tell what his successor might prove? They were only tenants-at-will, or at best holders of short leases of under 31 years; no longer lease was permitted to a Catholic.

Secret Societies.-It is not to be wondered at that numbers of the smaller peasant farmers, filled with this terror of losing their hold on the little patch of land which they loved, and filled, too, with the belief, handed down from the days of the Brehon Laws, that he who tills the soil has in it certain unalienable rights, finding that the law would not protect them, sought protection outside the law. Hence arose those secret societies which form so marked a feature of the Ireland of the eighteenth century. All were, at least partly, agrarian in aim, though religious animosities had much to do with the formation of some. In the south the Whiteboys were the most prominent and most widespread organisation. They owed their name to a habit of wearing white shirts over their clothes when engaged in their night expeditions. The movement originated in County Limerick about 1760, owing, it is said, to the action of certain landlords who, sometimes in violation of actual contracts, had begun to enclose the commons on which the poorer tenants had always been permitted to graze their few cows or sheep free of charge. The Whiteboys interested themselves in other grievances besides that of enclosures; forbade the payment of tithes which they regarded as excessive, or the taking of farms from which the former tenant had been evicted. Disobedience to their decrees was followed by the most savage punishments. Not only were houses burned and live-stock destroyed, but human beings were tortured with terrible ingenuity, by being flung naked into pits filled with thorns, having their ears cut off, and so forth. Nor was actual murder unknown. The Government passed Act after Act against the Whiteboys, and many who were convicted of taking part in their outrages were severely punished; several even executed. But, though repressed, the society was not entirely crushed. The fact that it was to a large extent favoured by a public opinion, which had lost confidence in the ordinary law, rendered its suppression extremely difficult. The Ribbonmen, who came into great prominence in the early nineteenth century, were a later development of the Whiteboys.

In Ulster the chief secret societies were the Hearts of Steel, the Oak Boys and the Peep o' Day Boys, whose members were Protestants, and