The Ashtown Peerage

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 42, 17 October 1907, Page 10

The Ashtown Peerage

' In Ihe '.'account ol the, AsMowii peerage in -our- last issue, a. sfjp of the pen qr of \jbhes attention 'led to this' confused statement : that . Pp%onby's ame^idnient- in 1799 in favor of a resident and independent Irish Legislature 'was carried— the Unionists won by 106 Votes' t 0| 105 \ "The context, and historic accuracy, require'. ttie substitution of' the word.d efeated ' for the word .\car-.' ried' 7 . 'The defeat yra&\ as ,sfated ? secured by' .the purchase ot' the vote: of Trench (the first Lord .Ashtown) in the Chamber, in full view of the members,., just before the division took place. The bribe for which TrencK tKus sold his country in open market was tne Ashtown peerage. . The present Lord Ashtown's leadership of. the. Orange-Tory campaign of bogus or exaggerated" ' Irish .agrarian outrages.' has been the. means of focussing public attention, on, both sides of, the Channel, on the dark blot upon his 'scutcheon. We rather think that he will travel far afield in the region of genuine Irish agrarian crime before he comes across a meaner or more flagrant " outrage ' than that to which he owes his gilded title.