The Commercial Restraints of Ireland

by John Hely-Hutchinson

In this aspect the work possesses a great biographical value, inasmuch as it serves to complete the likeness of the Provost, and the complement which it supplies falls in line with the best features of the original. Although his sentences are often slovenly and sometimes ungrammatical, he could write forcibly and clearly, as well as speak persuasively and rhetorically; he could make facts and figures deliver their lesson; he could summon up the ghost of the past to illustrate and enforce the duties of the present; he could enwrap a message of peace in a mantle of warning; and when no selfish interest intervened he could fling his sword into the scale that was freighted with his country’s welfare.

During Hutchinson’s Provostship His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Buckinghamshire, went in state to the University, and was received at the entrance of the Old Hall by the Provost and Fellows. At his entrance, Dr. Kearney made an eloquent oration; at the printing office, where H. E. was entertained with a view of the artists, another oration was delivered by Mr. Hutchinson, youngest (?) son of the Provost; at the Anatomy and Philosophical Rooms addresses were delivered by the Hon. Dr. Decourcy, son of Lord Kinsale, and the Hon. Mr. Jones, son of Lord Ranelagh. Thence he went to the Library, where an excellent oration was made by Dr. Leland, the Librarian, Orator, and Professor. H. E. afterwards dined in the New Hall with the Provost and Fellows, and numbers of the nobility and gentry. The elegance of the entertainment cannot be described, and is imagined to stand the College in no less than £700.[85]

In 1791 a Visitation by Lord Chancellor Lord Clare as Vice-Chancellor, and Dr. Fowler, Archbishop of Dublin, was held in the New Theatre, at the instance of the Provost, in reference to the complaint of Mr. Allen of having been unjustly kept out of Fellowship in 1790. The Visitors ruled that the question was not open to discussion, in consequence of the length of time which had elapsed. The Provost then brought forward his claim to the negative power over the proceedings of the Board, and was replied to by Drs. Kearney and Brown. The Provost argued from the Statutes and especially from the Unâ cum Præposito clauses, and spoke for three hours and a half with great ability. Mr. Miller spoke on behalf of the Junior Fellows, touching their right to retain the emoluments of their pupils when they went out on livings. Miller was rebuked by the Chancellor for accusing the Provost of wanting to turn the disposal of pupils into a matter of patronage. The Rev. Mr. Burrowes and Mr. Magee spoke on the same side. Magee was personal, and on the Provost’s protest the Chancellor stopped him. The Visitors declined to decide whether the Provost has an arbitrary election negative at the election of Fellows and Scholars; they ruled that the Provost has the power of disposing of pupils; and that he is bound by the majority of the Board. The Lord Chancellor bewailed the internal dissensions, alluded to his “own education in the College, and declared that there was not another University in Europe better calculated for the great purposes of promoting virtue and learning.” The Visitation lasted three days.

In 1792, Hutchinson saw the Gardiner-Hobart Catholic Relief Bill carried, and three days after, the 26th of February, he saw the House of Parliament burned. On the 1st of March following Sir John Blacquiere repaid the University for its honorary degree by moving the thanks of the house to the College students for their spirited exertions in extinguishing the fire; and by suggesting that in acknowledgment of the daring bravery of the youths their old privilege of right of admission to the gallery should be restored to them. Mr. Hutchinson, the Member for the University, acknowledged the compliment with becoming pride and dignity. The Provost’s last reported appearance in parliament was on the 6th of July, 1793, when he spoke in support of the Bill for the Charitable Musical Society. In the previous month, on one of the Militia Bills, he defended his son Francis from a rebuke of Mr. Secretary Hobart, though he voted against the son.

In that his last session, he saw carried—and along with Grattan, Forbes, Yelverton, Gardiner, and the other Liberals helped to carry—the Place, Pensions, Barren Land, and India Trade Acts. He introduced the bills for the Parliament grant of £1,300 to establish the College Botanical Gardens, and he earnestly supported Knox’s Bill for admitting Catholics to Parliament.

He presided at the Board of Trinity College for the last time on the 25th of August this same year. His health was giving way, and his old enemy, the gout, was prevailing against him.

In the political side of his career Hutchinson saw a wondrous change in the meaning and method of Irish parliamentary life. When he began (1759) to take part in public affairs, the Irish parliament was at about its lowest level of degradation. Having been abolished by Cromwell and re-created by Charles II., it had become from the time of the Restoration little else than an office for registering and levying the English orders for pensions and salaries, and for passing the Money Bills. Poyning’s Act and the 6th of George I. were in such active operation that the Government asserted the power of originating and altering the Money Bills, and that Anthony Malone was dismissed first from the Prime Serjeancy and later from the Exchequer Chancellorship for denying his right. A few years later, Lord Lieutenant Townshend, came over here for the express purpose of smashing the Irish Junto, and he smashed it by the simple process of taking the bribery into his own hands,[87] and making it, what Sir Arthur Wellesley[88] forty years after found it, an English state department.[89] He was so indignant with the Commons for rejecting an altered Money Bill that he entered a protest on the Lords’ Journal and prorogued the Parliament.[90] Down to Hutchinson’s time the Lord Lieutenants were absentees, and the Lords Justices were the centre of the Junto of “Undertakers” who undertook to the English Government to manage business here—i.e. “their own business”—on their own conditions. In the National Senate there was no national or intellectual life, and scarcely a name has survived in history.

There are no Reports of debates until the year 1781; for over 50 years scarcely a single important measure was passed;[91] place holders in parliament were multiplied, and the pension and salary lists increased in proportion.[92] To lessen the balance available for this bribery, the surplus revenue was expended in local and private jobs.[93] The Mutiny Act was perpetual; parliaments ran for the monarch’s life, judges held at pleasure, Catholics were debarred the franchise and education; Anglican State Protestantism was built up by cruelty and crime, complaints of grievances were met by commendations of the Charter Schools, and the trade and industries of the country were suffered, without remonstrance, to lie strangled under the jealous and grasping commercial restraints imposed by the English Parliament.

All these things Hely Hutchinson saw when he first looked out on the field of Irish administration; and before he died he saw most of these reproaches swept away by the operation of the courage, and intellect, and vigour which, contemporaneously with himself, found their way into the Commons House. Sexten Pery was a few years before him, and “Sexten Pery,” says Grattan, “was the original fountain of all the good that befell Ireland.” Flood entered parliament the same year as Hutchinson, Hussey Burgh, and Gardiner a few years later, and then came Yelverton and Grattan, and by the power of these resolute anti-Englishers the face of the country was changed. They found Ireland a child, and they watched her growth from infancy to arms, and from arms to liberty. They led the Volunteers to victory, and wrung back a portion of the people’s rights from the frightened oppressor.[94]

To this change Hutchinson directly, and still more indirectly, contributed. He quickened the parliamentary tone, and lifted its level. He was the father of the cultivated style of oratory which henceforward characterised the debates; he was the best debater in the house, and, after Grattan, the finest speaker. He could patriotise, and he could philippise; and whether he patriotised or philippised, he did it formidably and efficiently. He was venal, but he feared no man’s face; he was a ready-money voter, but he could go out in all weathers. He trafficked, without satiety, in patents and sinecures for himself and his sons, but he insisted on Free Trade for Ireland.[95]