AFFAIRS OF IRELAND.
After the Christinas recess, the first important measure of parliament related to Ireland. Addresses from America had been sent to the people of that country, and they soon produced their intended effects among them; especially among the people of Dublin, and the Protestant dissenters. This was first seen in the acts of the sheriffs and common-council of that city. After voting thanks to Lord Howard, on his resignation, and to those peers who had supported the constitution, and, in opposition to a weak and wicked administration, protested against the American restraining acts in imitation of the city of London, they sent over a strong petition and remonstrance to the king. This was opposed by the lord mayor and aldermen, and the common-council then resolved that whoever refused to consent to a dutiful petition, tending to undeceive the king, and by which the effusion of one drop of blood of the subjects of Great Britain might be prevented, was an enemy to the constitution. The Irish parliament was not behindhand with the common-council in exhibiting sympathy for the cause of the Americans. Soon after it assembled, which was on the 10th of October, the members rejected a money-bill transmitted from England, upon the plea that it had been altered in council. On the 23rd of November, still more unequivocal symptoms of a refractory spirit appeared in the Irish parliament. Lord Harcourt, the lord-lieutenant, having proposed to the commons to send out of the kingdom 4000 men, for the American service, and accept in their stead an equal number of foreign Protestant troops, to be maintained at the expense of the British crown, they reluctantly conceded to the first proposition, and absolutely refused to admit the foreign substitutes.
These embarrassing matters were brought before the English parliament. On the 15th of February, Mr. Thomas Townshend moved for a committee of inquiry, on the allegation that the lord-lieutenant had made an offer of the public money without consulting the British house of commons, and had thereby been guilty of a breach of privilege. Ministers were in a dilemma. Taken by surprise no two of them agreed in their modes of defence, or took the same ground in warding off the attack. Thus while one asserted that the Irish speaker had misunderstood the viceroy’s message, which only meant that his majesty would pay the 4000 foreigners, another contended that when the Irish establishment was increased, the king had engaged to pay 12,000 troops in that country, except in case of invasion or rebellion in England, and that the present demand not being within these exceptions, his majesty should, therefore, be absolved from his promise. But whatever ground ministers took it was clear that they or the viceroy of Ireland had been at fault, and had not Lord Harcourt been popular both with “the king’s friends” and the opposition, it is probable that he would have been censured by the house. The motion was, however, quashed by a large majority, and another motion on the same subject was equally unavailing.