BILL FOR THE DISFRANCHISEMENT OF THE FORTY-SHILLING FREEHOLDERS.
GEORGE IV. 1829—1830
Emancipation having thus been gained, Mr. Peel brought in a bill for the disfranchisement of the Irish forty-shilling freeholders, and for raising the qualification to ten pounds. This was part and parcel of the general measure, and it met with no serious opposition even in Ireland. The very Whigs supported it, hostile as it was to popular rights and destructive of vested political franchises, as an essential part of a whole; the other and better part of which they were unwilling to lose. Mr. Brougham said, he consented to it as the price, the almost extravagant price, of the inestimable good which would result from emancipation; and it was described by Sir James Mackintosh as one of those tough morsels which he had scarcely been able to swallow. It was opposed by Mr. Huskisson and others as a measure uncalled for by any necessity, and not fitted to gain that object which alone was held out as justifying it. It was absurd, it was said, to allege as a pretext for it, the influence and conduct of the Catholic priesthood; for all who knew anything of that influence, knew that it was chiefly felt when it ran with the current of popular feeling; and that it was even exercised with a view to maintain submission to the laws. If the forty-shilling freeholders had been corrupt, like those of Penryn, their disfranchisement might be defended; but the only offence of the persons against whom this bill was directed, had been that they exercised their privilege honestly and independently, according to the dictates of their own consciences. In reply to this, Mr. Peel mentioned an instance of the power of the priests as having occurred at the Clare election. At the commencement of that election a landlord of the county had promised his interest to Mr. V. Fitzgerald. The landlord had a voter on his estate who was under great personal obligations to him; and previous to the commencement of the contest, he said to this voter, “I shall vote for Mr. Fitzgerald; I suppose you mean to do the same.” The man declared his determination to imitate the example of his patron; but as the struggle drew nearer, a degree of excitement was produced to which it was only necessary to allude: and the freeholder did not escape its effects. He came to his landlord with sixty pounds in his hands, and addressed him thus:—“I have saved this sum while your tenant, and upon your property. I cannot redeem the promise which I gave you. There, take the sixty pounds, make use of it to promote the interests of Mr. Fitzgerald; but my vote I must give to Mr. O’Connell.” “Could anything,” he asked, “be so painful as the situation of him who was obliged to perform such a part, to observe such a doubtful contest between his religion and his conscience?” On a division only seventeen members voted against the bill; and it passed into a law. Mr. O’Connell had publicly bound himself to reject even emancipation if accompanied by such a condition, and to perish in the field, or on the scaffold, if necessary, in defence of his “forties;” but he forgot his vows, and became silent and acquiescent.