BOOK V. 1769. coercive method was now to be fallen back upon at increased disadvantage. Much of the revenue had been wasted on public works or jobs. This might be saved at once. If, by good management and a more careful collection of the fixed customs and excise, the expenditure could be brought within the hereditary revenue, the Cabinet directed Townshend to dissolve the Parliament, and terminate the childish farce by governing without one. It appeared on examination, that if the expenses were pared down to the limits of what was barely necessary, there would remain an annual deficiency of no more than 34,000l. When the additional duties were no longer voted, prices would fall, consumption would increase, smuggling and private distilling would cease to be profitable, and the hereditary revenue would probably rise. Even if the establishment were carried on upon the present scale, with the Pension List included, the yearly excess need not be more than 260,000l. The experiment might at least be carried as far as to show the agitators that England was not at their mercy. Townshend summoned the Council, in which Ponsonby, Shannon, and the Prime Sergeant continued to sit; and he told them that after the last vote of the House of Commons, he should so far follow the precedent of Lord Sydney as to protest, and to insist on the entry of his protest in the journals.' 1 'The wrong which Ireland conceived itself to suffer about its Money Bills was only appreciable by the Nationalist imagination. The patriots did not deny that the Privy Council had a right to originate a Money Bill. They denied only that it fell within the provisions of Poynings' Act, and that the Council had the exclusive right. They claimed that the House of Commons had a right of origination also; and they professed to mean no more than that, of two methods equally By skilful diplomacy, by social attentions, by the brilliant hospitality of the Castle, by the combined powers of integrity of general purpose, and flexibility of scruple, on the means by which that purpose was to be obtained, the adroit Lord-Lieutenant had in some degree overcome the opposition in the Council itself. Hely Hutchinson had been bought at a lower price than he had set upon his services, for his wife had still to wait for her peerage. Tisdall, the Attorney-General, had been gained over. Anthony legal, they preferred their own. Their real aspiration probably was to be rid of Poynings' Act altogether; but this they could not venture to avow except under a veil of satire. In the height of the tumult there appeared in the Freeman's Journal "The Hibernian Courtier's Creed," signed by Athanasius Secundus: "Whosoever would be an Hibernian Courtier, it is necessary, before all mental endowments, that he expound rightly the law of Poynings, as explained by the 4th and 5th chapters of Philip and Mary. "Which law, unless he keeps pure and unmixed with any rational interpretation, he cannot enjoy place or pension, neither shall he receive concordatum in this kingdom. "Now, the true construction of Poynings' Act is that four different branches of the Legislature are always acknowledged in our Irish Privy Council, continually subsisting. For in the enacting of every law the King hath a deliberative voice; the Lords have a deliberative, the Commons have a deliberative; and the Privy Council have a deliberative. "The King hath a negative voice, the Lords have a negative, VOL. II. G the Commons have a negative, and ""And yet there are not four de- "Further, it is essential to the preservation of his present place, and to his further hopes of preferment, that he conceive just ideas of the origination of Money Bills. "His interest will thus ever oblige him to confess that all benevolences are free gifts from the people; constitutionally take their rise in an assembly neither made, nor created by, nor proceeding from the people. "This is the Hibernian Courtier's political faith, to which whosoever inviolably adheres shall be rewarded with a masked pension for himself, and a fancy ball, without masks, for his wives and daughters. "And for all those who reject the foregoing liberal explanation, there shall be protests, prorogations, partial sheriffs, packed juries, and influenced electors to their lives' end."'-Baratariana, p. 99. CHAP. II. 1769. BOOK V. 1769. Malone had taken the Viceroy's side from the first. That an attempt might be made to govern without a Parliament the House of Commons had already anticipated. That it was deliberately in contemplation, being acknowledged in Council, was of course whispered about. Public feeling caught alarm. Dublin fell into a fever fit of patriotic enthusiasm ; the House of Commons was the idol of the hour, the defender of Ireland's liberties; the emotions may be conceived, therefore, with which at this crisis a paragraph was received which had just appeared in the 'London Daily Advertiser,' telling the patriots how they were regarded in that malignant country which was the cause of all their woes. On the 18th of December a motion was made in the House of Commons that a paragraph be read from Mr. Woodfall's Paper of the 9th, relating to the votes on the Money Bill. The Paper was produced. The clerk rose and read II. 1769, idol which is worshipped at the London Tavern. CHAP. Insolence assumed from an opinion of impunity usurps the place which boldness against real injuries ought to hold. The refusal of the late Bill of Supply because it was not brought in contrary to the practice of ages, in violation of the constitution and to the certain ruin of the dependence of Ireland on Great Britain, is a kind of behaviour more suiting to an army of Whiteboys than the grave representatives of a nation. This is the most daring insult that has been hitherto offered to Government. It must be counteracted with firmness, or else the State is ruined. Let the refractory House be dissolved. If the same spirit of seditious obstinacy should continue, I know no remedy but The Parliament of Great Britain is supreme over its conquests as well as its colonies, and the service of the nation must not be left undone on account of the factious obstinacy of a Provincial Assembly. Let our Legislature, for they have the undoubted right, vote the Irish supplies, and save a nation that their own obstinate representatives endeavour to ruin.' one. It was come to this then. Not only were they to be governed without a Parliament, by the hereditary revenue, but taxes were to be imposed on them at the will and pleasure of the Legislature of Great Britain. Already from across the Atlantic were coming sounds of the approaching battle for colonial freedom. The wrongs of which America had to complain were but mosquito bites by the side of the enormous injuries which had been inflicted by English selfishness on the trade and manufactures of Ireland. Why was Ireland to submit when America was winning admiration by resistance? Why, indeed? save that America was in earnest. The Irish were not. America meant BOOK V. 1769. to fight. The Irish meant only to clamour and to threaten to fight. The American leaders, rightly or wrongly, were working for the benefit of the whole population of the colonies. The Irish leaders were using the wrongs of their country as a means of forcing England to bribe them into connivance. Had the Irish at any period of their history aspired to any noble freedom, they would have fought for it as the Scotch fought at far greater disadvantage. They expected to obtain the privileges which are the only prize of the brave and noble by eloquence and chicanery. They desired those privileges only to convert them into personal profit; and when the hard truth was spoken to them, they screamed like hysterical girls. A resolution was carried instantly without a dissentient voice, that the paragraph which they had heard was a daring invasion of the rights of Parliament,' and 'was calculated to create groundless jealousy between the subjects of the two kingdoms.' The offending paper was burnt on College Green before the doors of the House by the hangman, the sheriff and javelin-men attending in state at the execution. Flood and Pery moved that the Viceroy be questioned on his intentions. The House agreed, and their temper was not mended by Townshend's answer. 'He did not think himself authorised, he said, to disclose his majesty's instructions till he had received his majesty's commands for so doing.'1 A middle course was now impossible; at all risks the servants of the Crown, who were the real instigators of the action of the House, must be taught that 1 Commons' Journals, December 21. |