[Footnote 124: In the Commons by 183 to 33; in the Lords by 119 to 11.]

CHAPTER V.

The Affairs of Ireland.--Condition of the Irish Parliament.--The
Octennial Bill.--The Penal Laws.--Non-residence of the Lord-
lieutenant.--Influence of the American War on Ireland.--Enrolment of the
Volunteers.--Concession of all the Demands of Ireland.--Violence of the
Volunteers.--Their Convention.--Violence of the Opposition in
Parliament: Mr. Brownlow, Mr. Grattan, Mr. Flood.--Pitt's Propositions
Fail.--Fitzgibbon's Conspiracy Bill.--Regency Question.--Recovery of the
King.--Question of a Legislative Union.--Establishment of Maynooth
College.--Lord Edward Fitzgerald.--Arguments for and against the
Union.--It passes the Irish Parliament.--Details of the Measure.--
General Character of the Union.--Circumstances which Prevented
its Completeness.

In describing the condition of Ireland and the feelings of its people,
in the latter years of the reign of George II., Mr. Hallam has fixed on
the year 1753 as that in which the Irish Parliament first began to give
vent to aspirations for equality with the English Parliament in audible
complaints; and the Irish House of Commons, finding the kingdom in the
almost unprecedented condition of having "a surplus revenue after the
payment of all charges," took steps to vindicate that equality by a sort
of appropriation bill.

There were, however, three fundamental differences between the
Parliaments of the two countries, which, above all others, stood in the
way of such equality as the Irish patriots desired: the first, that by a
law as old as the time of Henry VII., and called sometimes the Statute
of Drogheda, from the name of the town in which it was first
promulgated, and sometimes Poynings' Act, from the name of Sir Henry
Poynings, the Lord-deputy at the time, no bill could be introduced into
the Irish Parliament till it had received the sanction of the King and
Privy Council in England; the second, that the Parliament lasted for the
entire life of the King who had summoned it--a regulation which caused a
seat in the House of Commons to be regarded almost as a possession for
life, and consequently enormously increased the influence of the patrons
of boroughs, some of whom could return a number of members such as the
mightiest borough monger in England could never aspire to equal.[125]
The third difference, of scarcely inferior importance, was, that the
Parliament only sat in alte