REMINISCENCES OF GRATTAN’S PARLIAMENT AND THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. BY O. C. DALHOUSIE ROSS, M.I.C.E., M. ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. “ There lies beneath the whole of the Irish question that fearful Land .question, “ which has troubled all Administrations in Ireland during the last 100 years, and which “ will not be settled by settling the question of the National Government. How “ do Mr. Morley and the enthusiastic advocates of Home Rule think they can settle “ these Irish land difficulties which have so long been at the root of the Irish question? “ Irish laws could not multiply the number of Irish acres to be distributed among the “ Irish people ; Irish laws could not increase the fertility of the soil. While you may “ attempt to gratify what you may call the political or national aspirations of Ireland, “ you will leave the land still in question—Me land difficulties which arc insoluble by “ any methods which arc at present proposed."—Speech at Newcastle, June 22nd, 1886, of the Right Honourable Georgia G o s c h e n , M .P . Reprinted from “ Fair-Trade ♦ PUBLISHED BY GEORGE REVEIRS, GRAYSTOKE PLACE, FETTER LANE, LONDON, E.C. PRICE TWOPENCE. SKETCH MAP OF IRELAND, Showing the only districts which were represented previous to the X V IItli Century in the Irish Parliament, viz., Dublin and Drogheda, Wexford, Waterford, and Cork. REMINISCENCES OF GRATTAN’S PARLIAMENT AND THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. ------M------ I n the “ Personal Sketches of his Own Time,” published some sixty years ago by a certain learned knight and Irish judge, a lively account is given of some of the most distinguished members of Grattan’s Parlia­ ment, and of the social condition of Ireland in the days immediately preceding the Union with Great Britain in the year 1800; and some gleanings from that now forgotten publication may be of interest at this moment, whilst serving as a plea for a few observations on the Irish land question. The author was born in the year 1767, and called to the bar in 1788, was elected a member of the Irish Parliament in 1790, voted against the Union in 1799, and in 1803 became a popular candidate for the representation of Dublin in the Imperial Parliament, the first four votes recorded in his favour being those of Grattan, Curran, Ponsonby, and Plunkett, but after a severe and very close contest he was defeated. This ended his political career. Shortly afterwards he was appointed a •judge of the High Court of Admiralty in Ireland, and about a quarter of a century later published his amusing memoirs. He was a Protestant, and until the Union a supporter of the Govern­ ment. The political creed of his family was fixed, he says, by an incident which occurred to his great grandfather, Colonel B------ . It will be remembered that on the landing of William of Orange in England in 1688, James II. escaped to France, and from thence in the following year took ship to Ireland, where Lord Tyrconnell had gathered 50,000 Catholic soldiers to his standard, and was engaged in the memorable siege of Londonderry. With the assistance of 7000 French troops under the Count de Lauzun, the King maintained his power in Ireland until the battle of the Boyne, July 1st, 1690, at which he looked help­ lessly on, and then once more fled to France. “ Change Kings with us,” an Irish officer replied to an Englishman wrho taunted him with the panic of the Boyne, “ change Kings with us and we will fight you again.” During that short reign of James II. in Ireland those who were not for him were considered to be against him, and were subject to the severities and confiscations usual in civil wars. Among the rest, the ( 4 ) above-mentioned Colonel B ------, being a Protestant and no lover of King James, was ousted from his mansion and estates by one O’Fagan, a Jacobite wig maker and violent partisan, from Ballynakill. The colonel was to be allowed ^ 4 0 a year so long as he behaved himself. However, this worthy only behaved himself for a couple of months, at the end of which time, with a party of his faithful tenants, he surprised the wig-maker, turned him out of the house, and repossessed himself of his mansion and estates. The wig-maker laid his complaint before the authorities, and soon reappeared with a party of soldiers, who demanded entrance to the house, but were refused. Some firing from the windows of the mansion ensued, but it was successfully stormed. Colonel B. was taken prisoner, and conveyed to the drumhead at Raheenduff, tried as a rebel by a certain Cornet McMahon, and in due form ordered to be hanged in an hour. The soldiers had already tied him to the cross bar of his own gate, but just at the moment when the first haul was being given to the rope, a tenant of the estate, Ned Doran, who was a trooper in King James’ army, galloped up, shouting, “ Cut down the colonel, cut down the colonel ! or ye’ll be all hanged yourselves ! I am straight from the Boyne Water; Jammy’s scampered, bad luck to him, and we’re all cut up and kilt altogither ! ” So Cornet McMahon and the soldiers lost no time in getting off, leaving Colonel B. slung fast by the neck to the gate-posts ; but Doran soon cut him down, and the victory of King William at the Boyne Water was ever afterwards celebrated by the tenants, though to a man Papists, with hearty and boisterous rejoicings. On the i st of July the orange lily was sure to garnish every window in the mansion. E n g l a n d ’s T r o u b l e s, t h e I r i s h m a n ’s O p p o r t u n i t y . In 1782 England was engaged in a life-and-death struggle. She was at war with France and Spain, both in alliance with America ; Holland and the Northern Courts were banded together in an armed neutrality against her; Hyder Ali in the South and the Mahrattas in the West' threatened to destroy her power in India ; and, above all, the disasters in America which a few months before had culminated in the surrender of the army of Cornwallis at York Town, followed by losses in the West Indies and of the Island of Minorca, made it appear as if England were on the brink of ruin. It was then that Ireland turned on her. As Lord Clare explained a few years afterwards, it was “ the received maxim in Ireland not to forego the opportunity of foreign war to press forward Irish claims, and ripen every difference and discontent with the British Government into a ground of permanent and rancorous national hostility.” ■ The Irish took action accordingly. T h e “ P a r l i a m e n t o f t h e P a l e ”— F i r s t P arliamentary I n s t i t u t i o n i n I r e l a n d . The Irish Parliament, as it existed before 1782, was a subordinate body in the hands of the Protestant gentry, whose power was qualified and controlled by the British Government through the possession of a number of “ nomination boroughs,” originally created by James I. when ( s ) he gave to Ireland the first Assembly which can with any truth be regarded as a national Parliament ; for the “ seven centuries ” of Irish Parliaments, of which Mr. Gladstone spoke in his recent speeches in the House of Commons, refer to a very limited body called the “ Parlia­ ment of the Pale.” The native kings of Ireland had no Parliaments, and previous to the colonisation of Ulster ( a . d . 1610), only that portion of the island which had been conquered by Strongbow in the 12th century, and subsequently consolidated under settled Government by Henry V II. and Henry V III. (who was the first to assume the title of King of Ireland in the place of the older title of Lord), and which portion comprised little beyond the coast districts of Dublin, Drogheda, Wexford and Waterford, known as the English Colony, or “ English Pale ”—was governed by the Parliament of the Pale under English law. But it was only occasionally summoned, and such was the contempt in which this assembly was held, that even the colonists of the Pale considered it an insult to be summoned to attend its sessions. The complete reduction of the island was effected under Elizabeth, after a difficult and bloody war of seven years, but she died before this reduction was completed, and the capi­ tulation with O’Neill was not signed until after her death by her successor, James I. The whole of the Province of Ulster having then fallen to the conquerors, was confiscated and colonised, and the King— by no means as a limitation, but as an extension of the rights of the population of the island—created new counties, and incorporated as boroughs some of the principal towns occupied by the new settlers, giving them the franchise, or privilege of sending representatives to the Parliament of which he extended the previous limits. This was the origin of the aforesaid “ nomination boroughs.” In the province of Connaught there is not the trace of a claim or any exercise of any Par­ liamentary franchise till late in the reign of Elizabeth ; and in Ulster none till the reign of James I.