GRATTAN

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVI, Issue 24, 20 October 1898, Page 2

GRATTAN

had won the right of the people to legislate for themselves iv 1782 but it was only when he was backed by the Irish volunteers with arms in their hauds (applause). No sooner, however, was the freedom of the Irish Parliament secured than British Ministers began to plot and intrigues for its destruction. Less than a month after (iiattan's Declaration of Right, the Lord-Lieutenant, the Duke of Portland, wrote to Lord Shdburne that he entertained the highest hopes of soon being able to secure the passing of a Bill to restore the former supremacy of the British Parliament in Ireland. English and Irish officials carried on the intrigue, The volunteers were to be disbanded and Grattan could no more stand forth as the mouthpiece of his armed countrymen. English Ministers and Irish officials succeeded in bribing and corrupting a majority of the members of the Irish Parliament, and, to use Mitchell's words, the political jobbery • swelled at last to that deluge of corruption, that perfect paroxysm of plunder, which bore down everything before it at the era of the Union.' No wonder, then, that revolutionary plans began to be agitated. Lt did not follow, paid the speaker, that the Irish nation was, like its Parliament, corrupt. Four jfifthsof the nation were disfranchise.. No 0 itholic could bo a member of Parliament. The Irish (Jo.nmon-i contained 300 members. Sixty-four of those were County member^!. As many more may have been returned for cities and towns. The remainder were close-borough members and nominees of the aristocracy. These invariably supported the British interest. Hence only one-third of the Irish House of Commons represented the ' people ' — and only