clusively to large borough owners, and it was stated in the latter half of the century that fifty-three peers nominated 123 Members of the Lower House. It has always seemed to me one of the most striking instances on record of the facility with which the most defective Parliament yields to popular impulses and acquires an instinct of independence that a legislature such as I have described should have ever defeated a ministry, or constituted itself on any single subject a faithful organ of public opinion. The state of the administration was not less deplorable than that of the Parliament. The Irish establishments were out of all proportion to the wealth and to the needs of the people, and they formed a great field of lucrative patronage, paid for from the Irish revenues, at the full disposal of the English ministers, and almost wholly beyond the cognisance of the British Parliament. How such patronage would be administered in the days of Newcastle and Walpole may be easily imagined. Until Lord Townshend's administration the Viceroys were always absent from the country from which they derived their official incomes for more than half, usually for about four-fifths, of their term of office. Swift, in one of his 'Drapier's Letters,' written in 1724, has given a curious catalogue of the great Irish offices, some of them perfect sinecures, which were then distributed among English politicians. Lord Berkeley held the great office of Master of the Rolls; Lord Palmerston that of First Remembrancer, at a salary of nearly 2,000l. a year; Doddington was Clerk of the Pells, with a salary of 2,500l. a year; Southwell was Secretary of State; Lord Burlington was Hereditary High Treasurer, Mr. Arden was Under-Treasurer, with Primate of Ireland, on the ground that, although he had made him Bishop of Kildare, he refused 'to give his interest in a borough belonging to his former bishopric, 3 an income of 9,000l. a year; Addison had a sinecure as Keeper of the Records in Birmingham Tower; and four of the Commissioners of Revenue lived generally in England. The Viceroy, the Chief Secretary, and several other leading political officers were always English. In the legal profession every Chancellor till Fitzgibbon was an Englishman,2 and in the first years of the eighteenth century, every chief of the three law courts. In the Church every primate during the eighteenth century was English, as were also ten out of the eighteen archbishops of Dublin and Cashel, and a large proportion of the other bishops. Swift said with perfect truth that those who have the misfortune to be born here have the least title to any considerable employment, to which they are seldom preferred but upon a political consideration,' and he compared Ireland to a hospital where all the household officers grow rich, while the poor, for whose sake it was built, are almost starving. The habit of quartering on Ireland persons who could not be safely or largely provided for in England was inveterate. The Duke of St. Albans, the bastard son of Charles II., enjoyed an Irish pension of 800l. a year; Catherine Sedley, the mistress of James II., had another of 5,000l. a year. William bestowed confiscated lands exceeding an English county in extent, on his Dutch favourites, Portland and Albemarle, and a considerable estate on his former mistress, Elizabeth Villiers. The Duchess of Kendal 1 Letter iv. See, too, a very remarkable letter on the state of Ireland, written from Dublin, 1702, by Lord B. of J., in the Southwell Correspondence. The writer complains of all employments being in deputation. The Government, Chancery, Master of the Rolls, Clerk of the Council, Registrar of the Chancery, both Protonotaries, Remem brancers, &c., by which the subject is oppressed and the money sent away.'-British Museum MSS., Bibl. Egert. 917, p. 186. 2 See O'Flanagan's Hist. of Irish Chancellors, ii. 201. 3 Perry's Hist. of the Church of England, iii. 539. 4 Short View of the State of Ireland. and the Countess of Darlington, the two mistresses of George I., had pensions of the united annual value of 5,000l. Lady Walsingham, the daughter of the Duchess of Kendal, had an Irish pension of 1,500l. Lady Howe, the daughter of Lady Darlington, had a pension of 500l. Madame de Walmoden, one of the mistresses of George II., had an Irish pension of 3,000l. The Queen Dowager of Prussia, sister of George II., Count Bernsdorf, who was a prominent German politician under George I., and a number of other less noted German names, may be found on the Irish pension list. Towards the close of the century, as the increased authority of the Irish Parliament and the appearance of an independent party within its walls made the necessities of corruption more imperious, the pension list assumed a somewhat different character and much more considerable dimensions, but in the first half of the eighteenth century the pensions. exceeded 30,000l. a year.2 The The manner in which the Church patronage was administered had such important effects that it may be advisable to dwell upon it at a little more length. possibility of converting the Irish to Protestantism had indeed, before the Revolution, wholly ceased. What faint chances there had before been, had been destroyed by Cromwell, whose savage rule had planted in the Irish Thus See the numerous letters relating to these pensions in the Irish State Paper Office, especially the list in the Lord Lieutenant and Lords Justices' Letters, vol. xvii. Some of the pensions stood under other names. we find the Duke of Devonshire, when Lord Lieutenant (Aug. 5, 1738), transmitting to the Lords Justices a warrant granting an annuity of 3,000l. for thirtyone years to the Earl of Chol mondeley and Lord Walpole for the sole use of Sophie Marianne de Walmoden. 2 See e.g. Commons Journals, vi. 477. In the latter years of George II. the number of pensions was considerably increased. In 1757 the Duke of Bedford, who was then Lord Lieutenant, stated in a confidential letter that the pension list then amounted to 55,253l. 15s. Bedford Correspondence, i. 273. mind a hatred of Protestantism and a hatred of England which is even now far from extinguished. But the Church might at least have exercised a great civilising influence in a country where the presence of a class of resident gentry and the example of a faithful and decorous performance of public duty were peculiarly needed, and its prizes might have greatly stimulated Irish education. It is popularly supposed that the Irish Catholics and the Irish Protestant Dissenters were all sacrificed to the members of the Established Church, and that these at least were the pampered children of the State. But a more careful examination will much alter this impression. The wealth of the Church had for a long time been diminishing. Many churches had been destroyed during the civil war, and had never been rebuilt. The revenues of many parishes had been appropriated by laymen, and never been restored. The tithe war had not yet begun, but the poverty of the Catholics, the minute subdivision of land, the difficulty and expense of collecting numerous small dues, and, it must be added, the hostility, not only of Catholics and Presbyterians, but also of Protestant Episcopalian landlords, made the real income of the clergymen much less than was supposed.1 In 1710, indeed, chiefly through the intercession of Swift, the Irish Church obtained from the Queen the remission of the twentieth parts, and the application of the first-fruits to the purposes of purchasing glebes, building houses, and buying impropriations for the clergy, but these benefits were very inconsiderable. The twentieth parts, which had hitherto been paid to the Crown, were a tax of 12d. in the pound, paid annually out of all ecclesiastical benefices as they were valued at the Reformation, and their whole value was estimated 1 Several passages illustrating these difficulties from the writings of Swift and Boulter are collected in Mant's Hist. of the Church, ii. 570-575. at 500l. a year. The first-fruits, which were paid by incumbents upon their promotion, are said not to have amounted to more than 450l. a year.1 But this small advantage was much more than counterbalanced in 1735. A bitter feud had for many years been raging between the clergy and the landlords about the tithe of agistment, the technical name for the tithe of pasturage for dry and barren cattle. In the North this description of tithe appears to have been regularly paid, but over a great part of the country it had fallen into desuetude. The claim, though often resisted, was established by the law courts in 1707, in 1722, and in several later suits, but the whole landlord class were violently opposed to it. It would have been impossible to carry a Bill abolishing it through the House of Lords, but the House of Commons, which consisted chiefly of landowners, acted with a high hand. It passed a series of resolutions describing the tithe of agistment as new, grievous, and burdensome to the landlords and tenants, and likely, by the conflicts it produced between the laity and the clergy, to encourage Popery and infidelity, and to drive many useful hands out of the kingdom. It asserted that the allotments, glebes, and known tithes, with other ecclesiastical emoluments ascertained before this new demand,' were 'an honourable and plentiful provision for the clergy of the kingdom,' and it recommended that ‘all legal ways and means should be made use of' to resist the claims of the clergy. These resolutions, though they had no legal validity, had practically the effect of law. Supported by the House of Commons, the landlords all over Ireland formed into associations for the purpose of resisting the tithes; a common purse was provided, and a treasurer chosen for the purpose of maintaining all lawsuits against the clergy; and the 6 See the Memorial of Dr. Swift to Mr. Harley, presented Oct. 7, 1710. |