A number of schemes and plans were mooted to make ministers responsible to parliament, and a so-called Responsibility Act was passed in the early s which brought the issue and expenditure of public money under the control of a Treasury Board responsible to Parliament Again, the legislative achievements of the 1 s especially in the fields of social reform Jeremiah Fitzpatrick was a commanding force here , prison provision, and the maintenance of law and order at the local level, have not been sufficiently stressed.
Admittedly, the record is much more unfavourable in that tumultuous decade of revolution, the s, when repressive legislation — an Arms Act, a Convention Act, and an Insurrection Act — filled the statute book : none the less, a case can be made for arguing that, against received opinion, the Act of Union did not strike down a diseased institution, floundering functionlessly in a power vacuum, and beyond redemption. On the contrary, it could be argued that British ministers and their Irish supporters took advantage of a momentary weakness to overturn a vibrant polity, one that had after all weathered the grave crisis of the late s ; and one that might, perhaps, given time have arrived at a settlement of the Catholic claims.
Notoriously, the Irish State of the eighteenth century was a Protestant state for a Protestant people : a state whose institutions, from the highest Crown post to the lowest revenue job, were restricted not just to Protestants, but to members of the Church of Ireland or England.
Presbyterians from an early date were awarded an annual Indemnity Act but Catholics, the mass of the people, were excluded by law from all public offices, and from political life, until the s and hence they could not legally participate in the state. Deprived of their assistance, the Protestant state of the eighteenth century, predicated as it was on Catholic exclusion, lacked legitimacy It is precisely in this area, however, that the state showed some capacity for change and absorption.
In the last three decades of the century, through the various legislative instruments repealing key items of the Penal Code, what might be called a strategy for accommodation can be seen developing and emerging, one that was abruptly terminated by the recall of Fitzwilliam in It can of course be argued that concessions to Catholics were pushed through the Irish Parliament in the teeth of furious opposition from within that institution.
At each stage in the process, the members of the Irish House of Commons required a good deal of persuasion or bullying before conceding that repeal of the Penal Laws was in their interest, and usually their consent was given in a grudging manner. But why did Irish M. Ps give their consent at all to the provision of an oath which Catholics could. Why did they agree to undo the major restrictions on Catholic landowning and on the exercise of the Catholic religion?
Most dramatically, why did they allow Irish Catholics to vote in county elections on the same terms as Irish Protestants?
We have a fairly good idea as to why British ministers wanted these concessions, but why did Irish politicians go along with them? Bullying, after all, can explain only so much ; the bewilderment of Irish M.
At bottom, it may be suggested that there was a dim perception abroad in Ireland that such concessions were in fact the way forward. Of course, it was also generally recognised that such measures ran a high risk of alienating Protestant opinion as well as fuelling further Catholic demands.
None the less, despite the risks, it was widely accepted that there was greater danger in allowing the British government to take the credit for every Penal Law repealed, with the blame for every one retained being laid at the door of the Irish Parliament. In retrospect, it is the acquiescence of Irish Protestant opinion in the repeal of the Penal Laws, and the ending of Catholic exclusion, that is striking in the final decades of the century.
Almost certainly if Fitzwilliam had been given his head, 'Catholic Emancipation' — the right of Catholics, if elected, to take their seat in the legislature — would have passed through the Irish Parliament in Even John Foster, a firm opponent of the measure — though not a diehard in his resistance — conceded as much.
However, the recall of Fitzwilliam, the failure to enact emancipation, and the arrival of a new Lord Lieutenant with orders to 'rally the Protestants' marked the end of the policy of enlarging, and thus strengthening, the eighteenth-century Irish state. This is not to say that the Irish state at the end of the eighteenth century totally lacked legitimacy.
Catholics may not have been able to take their seat in Parliament if elected, but the Catholic forty-shilling freeholder had the vote and was thus, in theory, within the constitution. It was noticeable too that large numbers of Catholics continued to take the oath of loyalty drawn up in in order to qualify for the benefits accruing from the repeal of the Penal Laws.
Moreover, Catholic lay-people were unremitting in their professions of loyalty and Catholic ecclesiastics in their sermons were tireless in enjoining obedience on their flocks, and offering prayers and fasts for the success of British arms Catholic loyalty in the late eighteenth century has generally been ignored by historians, while Protestant or Orange loyalism has been highlighted Catholic loyalty did exist, however; and the strength of that loyalty and its widespread nature was instrumental in enabling the Irish state to survive the crisis posed by the rebellion of But Catholic loyalty, like Protestant loyalty, was conditional, and as the Catholic population reeled under the impact of post-rebellion repression, and as the.
Ireland may have been frequently a war-zone or theatre of operations, at least in the seventeenth century, but she could not be a belligerent in her own right. As Wolfe Tone put it in his pamphlet, Spanish War! We are compelled to skulk under the protection of England'. He concluded that while Irishmen fought everywhere, 'the name of Ireland is never heard ; for England not our country we fight and we die' However, if Ireland was excluded from independent war-making that did not mean, contrary to what Tone maintained, that 'we' lacked a capacity to 'take care of ourselves' ; and in fact questions of war and defence, and the maintenance of armies played a major role in the development of the Irish state.
In discussing the development of the British state in the eighteenth century, Brewer has argued that the urgent need to mobilise the necessary money and manpower to fight the numerous wars of the period forced the state to expand its role, size, powers and its bureaucratic efficiency.
Britain became perforce a 'military-fiscal' state, a society organised to wage war abroad and able to do so because of its fiscal 'bottom'. A sharp increase in the commitment of resources to military activities, a radical increase in taxation, the growth of the national debt and the development of a sizeable civilian administration devoted to organising the fiscal and administrative activities of the state In Ireland a similar process can be observed.
Indeed, already in the mid- sixteenth century, the demands of the Irish standing army had put pressure on the Tudor administration in Ireland to devise appropriate new fiscal and administrative procedures to keep a comparatively small force in existence And in the seventeenth century, recent work has pointed to the role of armies in state-building Similarly in the eighteenth century, servicing a relatively large Irish military establishment 12, troops up to the late s, around 15, thereafter in peacetime meant inevitably the creation of an appropriate adminstrative machinery.
A Barrack Office, a Muster Office and an Ordnance Office, all staffed by civilians, looked after the needs of the army. It must be stated at once that the inefficiency of these departments noted above — and we may add, the rumoured near-chaos. None the less, the fact remains that despite their inefficiency, and occasional charges of corruption, these offices did manage to feed, clothe and equip some thirty regiments in peacetime, move them around the country and ship them abroad in accordance with accepted rotation procedure In addition, the money needed to pay for these soldiers was raised without recourse to a Land Tax, and it was not until the very end of the century that the Irish fiscal system proved unable to fund the huge addition to troop levels attendant on the war with revolutionary France.
In so far is self-defence as concerned — for Froude, a key attribute of statehood — the Irish state in the eighteenth century proved adept at mobilising the resources available to it.
There was provision for an extensive militia for home defence and though this had fallen into disuse by mid- century, a structure of sorts had been established that could be built on At the time of the American War, a Volunteer Army had emerged, determined to protect Ireland against French invaders and American privateers. This body, initially wholly Protestant but soon numbering individual Catholics, and even a Catholic corps, within its ranks constituted a genuine Irish army and in so far as it was independent of Dublin Castle demonstrated that the state did not wholly depend for protection on 'foreign' troops, that it could command loyalty from both Catholics and Protestants.
Service in the Volunteers no doubt also helped inculcate that loyalty to the state which was to be very evident in the s The s saw the crisis of the Irish state. Invasion from France was threatened ; rural insurgency was endemic ; and a political conspiracy to subvert the Irish state culminated in rebellion in And yet, the Irish state survived, at least until ; and in this respect, in weathering what one pamphleteer called 'those rough republican storms' blowing from France, Ireland showed herself to be quite different to those 'lesser states' of Europe — Switzerland, the United Provinces, Sardinia, Modena and Venice — whose fate it was to be 'torn The reason for the survival of the Irish state in the s cannot be attributed to the weakness of the threats posed to it.
At one time the United Irishmen were portrayed as naive idealists, self-deluders and incompetents However, the burden of recent scholarship into the movement has been to stress their commitment to revolution and the seriousness of the threat that they posed They made a firm attempt to infiltrate the Royal Navy and sow disaffection amongst the sailors.
Similarly, they made strenuous efforts to suborn key elements in the armed forces in Ireland. They were unremitting in their endeavour to propagate their cause, winning tens of thousands of oathbound individuals to their. They made some progress in establishing contact with disaffected English and Scottish republicans. Most seriously, they successfully directed French attention to Ireland, thereby prompting several attempts at invasion.
Finally, despite widespread disruption caused by government repression and a series of key arrests, they managed to stage a rebellion in the summer of As Castlereagh, the Chief Secretary, tersely stated the matter in a letter to his predecessor, Thomas Pelham : 'I understand Rely upon it, there never was in any country so formidable an effort on the part of the people' The resilience of the Irish state was revealed by the vigour with which it pursued its counter-insurgency policy.
New laws were enacted, reinforcements were brought in from England and Scotland, a spy network was established, new forces were mobilised, a thoroughgoing purge was carried out among the Irish armed forces and civilian subversives were harried mercilessly.
Again, officials were willing to countenance, and indeed encourage, military action that went well beyond what the law would permit. In addition, a blind eye was turned to Orange depredations ; and a Yeomanry was recruited that, as was freely admitted, could be seen as little more than 'arming the Protestants who can be depended on'.
But it should not be inferred from this catalogue of counter-insurgency measures that Dublin Castle's only resources were English troops, armed Orange Men, and an unflinching determination not to succumb to the forces of the Irish Jacobins or the Irish Jacobites.
The concept of Irish home rule was seen as a major constitutional experiment and the United Kingdom had little experience of devolution or federal settlements. This article will examine the model that was finally selected for this constitutional experiment which was inspired by the constitution of the Dominion of Canada.
The article will also examine the relationship between Irish home rule and other constitutional experiments. The conclusion will assess the significance of these constitutional experiments in influencing the campaign for Irish home rule.
Gladstone committed himself and his ruling Liberal party in to Irish home rule, a form of autonomy for Ireland while remaining an integral part of the United Kingdom, he was embarking on an unprecedented constitutional experiment. The origins of this proposal can be traced back to when Isaac Butt, an Irish lawyer, called a public meeting in which he proposed the creation of an autonomous parliament for Ireland within the United Kingdom that would pass laws on local matters.
It came to inspire a political movement in Ireland that would, in turn, lead to the emergence of a political party known as the Irish parliamentary party or sometimes as simply the home rule party. This party won 59 parliamentary seats in the general election and would win more under charismatic leaders that succeeded Isaac Butt, in particular Charles Stewart Parnell. Gladstone, who had once had little interest in home rule, publicly changed his position to one of outright support. Gladstone took it upon himself to draft the bill that many hoped would turn this dream into reality.
Many Irish nationalists in this period still wanted to restore the old Irish parliament that had existed since the Middle Ages and had been brought to an end in by the Irish Act of Union. These failings included a history of corruption and a complete ban on Catholic membership. In Gladstone examined federal models in Europe and North America in the hope of discovering a suitable model for Irish autonomy within the United Kingdom. He also examined the federal union of the states within the United States of America.
The model that finally captured his attention was one that was reassuringly British, or at least lay within the embrace of the British Empire. This was the confederation of the provinces of Canada that was brought into being by a statute passed at Westminster known as the British North America Act Gladstone made extensive use of the Act during the drafting of the first Irish home rule bill, known officially as the Government of Ireland Bill, that was presented to parliament in It was argued that Canada had been a restless part of the British Empire in the middle of the 19 th century but the granting of greater autonomy and self-government had pacified it and even turned rebels into loyalists.
A third attempt proved to be successful and the Government of Ireland Act was duly enacted by the parliament at Westminster but was suspended with the outbreak of the First World War.
Both types of Dominion enjoyed identical status in their relationship to the United Kingdom and in their position within the Empire. Newfoundland was recognised as a separate Dominion in the early 20 th century although it was often assumed that its destiny lay in eventually becoming a province of the federated Dominion of Canada, a prediction that finally came true in When the concept of Irish home rule was first proposed the only Dominion in existence was Canada.
The use of the Canadian model was evident from the earliest days of the Irish campaign for home rule and grew with the passage of time. For example, the anticipated Irish parliament under all the proposals for home rule would not have had the equivalent autonomy enjoyed by the Dominions in the important spheres of defence, taxation, currency and trade.
Canada has full fiscal liberty, she has the right to raise a navy, she has practically complete self-government. She sends representatives to other Powers to make treaties.
Under no system of Home Rule that has ever been proposed by an Irish leader have we even thought of anything approaching these powers. The Dominions were given ambiguous recognition in textbooks on international law in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries whereas Ireland under a home rule settlement would not have merited any recognition in such a text.
In fact, a few scholars and politicians did propose Dominion status for Ireland in this period but the absence of support from a significant political or intellectual movement ensured that their words had limited impact. I wish we could get it, but I know we cannot — not in my time, at any rate.
In Butt proposed Irish home rule in the wider context of a federal United Kingdom with autonomous parliaments in England, Ireland and Scotland while maintaining a parliament for the United Kingdom as a whole in London.
Brassey was one of the founders of the Federal Union Committee in which was dedicated to promoting the constitutional experiment of home rule all round. Unlike Isaac Butt, Brassey was prepared to include Wales, in addition to England, Ireland and Scotland, in his proposed federal schemes. However, the main purpose of this committee was not to win over British public opinion but to convince other members of the Liberal party of the merits of home rule all round.
Yet, even this limited objective proved to be out of reach. One barrier was deciding what to do with England whose population far surpassed the combined total of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Should England be kept as a single unit or split into smaller parts with each enjoying a form of home rule? Similar questions were asked of Ireland itself. For example, in Winston Churchill proposed a scheme for a federal United Kingdom that included autonomous parliaments in both Dublin and Belfast.
Dicey believed that the political situation of his day offered a straight choice between maintaining the status quo or constructing a path towards a fully sovereign Irish state. Proposals for home rule all round remained the preserve of academics and a few enthusiastic politicians and never came close to capturing the imagination of the British electorate in this period. An example of the close relationship between these two constitutional projects can be found in the views of Earl Brassey who, in addition to being one of the foremost supports of home rule all round, was also an Imperial federalist.
The emergence of the Dominions as new centres of power in the late 19th century resulted in ideas for a new form of Imperial governance by means of consensus in place of the previous position of total dominance by the United Kingdom. Although the United Kingdom remained by far the largest entity in the Commonwealth in terms of population and industrial production it was recognised that the rapid growth of the Dominions ensured that this would not always be so.
This led to calls in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries for the recognition of the Dominions as equal partners in the Commonwealth in a much closer association than existed in that period. The alternative was presented as a future of increased divergence of interests between the United Kingdom and the Dominions which would lead to the end of any form of special relationship between them.
Over these centuries, Ireland also served as laboratory both for imperial rule and for resistance to that rule. Structures, policies and ethnocentric ideologies were first formulated in colonial Ireland and later transferred to other parts of the British empire. This included modes and structures of governance; policies and practices associated with Anglicisation, especially the promotion of English culture, language, religion, and education; the law, particularly as it related to the use of land and other natural resources; and, finally, knowledge collection.
White supremacists in the USA, for instance, misleadingly suggest that Irish indentured servitude in the 17th-century Caribbean equated to white chattel slavery and thereby distort the true meaning and misery of black slavery. In Ireland, over the last decade, we have marked a number of very significant centenaries, including the first World War , the most imperial of conflicts; the Rebellion, which helped to trigger the unravelling of the British empire; and the partition of Ireland , which served as the template for the later partitions of India and Pakistan, and Israel and Palestine.
This period of commemoration, combined with the recent campaigns associated with Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall, are forcing a fundamental re-examination of our history, how we remember, and how we forget. Over the past years most of the imperial statues have been removed or destroyed but the legacy of empire lives on in our street names, our built heritage plantation towns, big houses, government buildings , our universities and their curriculums, in the collections in our libraries and museums, in our language, fashions, folklore, and foodstuffs spices, tea, coffee, chocolate, and the potato are the most obvious.
The fact that the great Irish philosopher George Berkeley owned slaves on his plantation in Rhode Island in the s made national headlines over the summer, as did the revelation that John Mitchel, a revered 19th-century Irish patriot, supported slavery. Our imperial legacy is complex. Burke thought that empire was morally indefensible; yet he had interests in sugar and slaves in the Caribbean. Wider discussions of engagement in empire by Irish men and women are, however, muted.
A single example highlights this. On April 13th, , up to 1, Indian men, women and children were butchered at what is now known as the Amritsar Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh in the Punjab. Stories like this challenge the master narrative of the Irish as victims of empire, not active perpetrators of it. Today in Ireland some celebrate and some excoriate connections with the British Empire.
However, the decade of commemorations and the rise of English nationalism has kindled a greater awareness of the importance of revisiting the history of empire, if only to better understand its legacy and how it has formed the present. How we, as a proud nation of Murphys and Varadkars, can best engage with our nearest neighbour in the post-Brexit world.
The UK must learn that there is a hefty price to pay for reneging on treaties. Please update your payment details to keep enjoying your Irish Times subscription. Ireland has yet to come to terms with its imperial past Some celebrate and some excoriate connections with the British Empire Tue, Dec 29, , Jane Ohlmeyer. File photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons. Over the past years most of the imperial statues have been removed or destroyed but the legacy of empire lives on in our street names, our built heritage Over these centuries, Ireland also served as laboratory both for imperial rule and for resistance to that rule.
0コメント