“I thank the goodness and the grace
That on my birth have smiled,
And made me in these Christian days
A happy English Child.”[148]
In 1832 a worthless Irish Reform Act, under which the representation of the country became “virtually [pg 312] extinguished,”[149] was passed against the protest of the Irish members, all of whose amendments, aiming at making it a genuine measure for the extension of the franchise, were contemptuously rejected. Ignorance and prejudice, the absence of all sense of justice, an utter inability to understand the Irish case, a determination to trample on popular rights and to disregard public opinion—these were the characteristics of English statesmanship in Ireland between 1829 and 1835. Mr. Lecky's account of the manner in which Catholic Emancipation was carried out is worth quoting:
“In 1833—four years after Emancipation—there was not in Ireland a single Catholic judge or stipendiary magistrate. All the high sheriffs, the overwhelming majority of the unpaid magistrates and of the grand jurors, the five inspectors-general, and the thirty-two sub-inspectors of the police, were Protestants. The chief towns were in the hands of narrow, corrupt, and for the most part, intensely bigoted, corporations. For many years promotion had been steadily withheld from those who advocated Catholic Emancipation, and the majority of the people thus found their bitterest enemies in the foremost places.”
No wonder that, Lord Melbourne, in coming into office thirty-five years after the Union, should have found Ireland still a centre of disaffection and disturbance.
III
The Melbourne Ministry was kept in office from 1835 to 1841 by the Irish Vote. O'Connell made a compact—the historic Lichfield House compact—with Ministers. It came to this: They were to introduce remedial measures for Ireland, and he was, meanwhile, to suspend the demand for repeal of the Union. He said to the Irish people:
“I am trying an experiment, I want to see if an English Parliament can do justice to Ireland. I do not think it can, but I mean [pg 313] to give the present Government a chance, and see what they can do. And I will suspend the demand for repeal to give them a fair trial.”