Henry Grattan - "Grattan's Parliament"

"Grattan's Parliament"

One of the first acts of Grattan's parliament was to prove its loyalty to the Constitution by passing a vote for the support of 20,000 sailors for the Royal Navy. Grattan was loyal to the crown and the English connection. He was, however, anxious for moderate parliamentary reform, and, unlike Flood, he favoured 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 of Ireland 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 at a time when democracy was rare in Europe. The majority were excluded either as Roman Catholics or as Presbyterians; 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 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 British mercantile classes. Grattan supported the government for a time after 1782, and spoke and voted for the repressive legislation that followed the Whiteboy violence 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 1790 Grattan stood for Dublin City, a seat he held until 1798.

In 1792-93 he succeeded in carrying a Roman Catholic Relief Act conferring the franchise on 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. At the same time he wished to open membership of the House of Commons to Catholic men of property, a proposal that was the logical corollary of the Relief Act of 1793.

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 come to the fore, 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 for further Catholic relief were raised. That may have been Pitt's intention, but it is not clear how far Lord Fitzwilliam had been authorised to pledge the government. Fitzwilliam privately asked Grattan to propose a Bill for Catholic emancipation, promising government support. But finally it appeared that the viceroy had either misunderstood or exceeded his instructions; and on 19 February 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 British cabinet.

That cabinet, however, doubtless influenced by the wishes of the king, was now determined to firmly resist the Catholic demands, with the result that Ireland 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 40 followers in the House of Commons, and his words were unheeded. In protest 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.