Before that day came Lord North's government had ceased to exist, and had been replaced by Lord Rockingham's, one most influential member of which was the most distinguished of living Irishmen, Mr. Burke, who, while in opposition, had always shown himself a warm supporter of the claims of his countrymen, and was not likely to have his ardor in the cause damped by being placed in a situation where he could procure a friendly hearing to his counsels. Once more they had increased their demands, requiring, besides the removal of the purely political grievances, a surrender of the right of appeal from the Irish to the English courts of law. But their new masters were inclined to grant everything which seemed requisite to the establishment of complete equality between the two kingdoms; and though the new ministry was dissolved in a few months by the premature death of its chief, he lived long enough to carry the repeal of Poynings' Act, the retention of which was now admitted to be not only senseless but mischievous, since the existence of a body invested with nominal dignity, but practically powerless, was calculated not only to provoke discontent, but to furnish a lever for agitation.
The repeal was, however, nothing less than the establishment of an entirely new constitution in Ireland. The Irish Parliament, the meetings of which had hitherto been a mere form and farce, was installed in a position of absolute independence, to grant money or to make laws, subject to no other condition than that their legislation should be of a character to entitle it to the royal assent, a condition to which every act of the British Parliament was likewise and equally liable. "Unhappily, as an Irish patriotic writer exclaims on this occasion, it was written in the book of fate that the felicity of Ireland should be short-lived."[129] And a similar shortness of existence was to be the lot of the separate independence of her Parliament. Even while framing instructions for the Lord-lieutenant, in his honest desire to inaugurate a system of just government for Ireland, George III. had warned him on no account to "summon a Parliament without his special command."[130] And, regarded by the light of subsequent events, it can hardly be denied that the prohibition displayed an accurate insight into the real difficulties of the country, and also into the character of the people themselves as the source of at least some of those difficulties. We ought not to judge its leaders too severely. A nation which has been long kept in bondage, and is suddenly presented with liberty, is hardly more able to bear the change than a man immured for years in a dark dungeon can at once endure the unveiled light of the sun; and independence had been granted to the Irish too suddenly for it to be probable that they would at once and in every instance exercise it wisely.
All parties were to blame in different degrees. The first danger came from the Volunteers, who, flushed with self-importance, from the belief that it was the imposing show of their strength which had enabled the Parliament to extort Lord Rockingham's concession from the English Houses, now claimed to be masters of the Parliament itself. With the termination of the American war, and the consequent return of the English army to Europe, the reason for their existence had passed away. But they refused to be disbanded, and established a convention of armed delegates, to sit in Dublin during the session of Parliament, and to overawe the Houses into passing a series of measures which they prescribed, and which included a Parliamentary Reform Bill of a most sweeping character. On this occasion, however, the House of Commons acted with laudable firmness. Led by Mr. Fitzgibbon, a man of great powers, and above all suspicion of corruptibility, it spurned the dictation of an unauthorized body, and rejected the Reform Bill, avowedly on the ground of its being presented to it "under the mandate of a military congress;" and the Convention, finding itself powerless to enforce its mandates, dissolved.
But the difficulties of the government were not over with the suppression of the Volunteer Convention. The Lord-lieutenant had a harder, because a more enduring, contest to encounter with the Parliament and the patrons of the boroughs. A single act of Parliament may substitute a new law for an old one; but no one resolution or bill has a magical power to extinguish long habits of jobbery and corruption. Members and patrons alike seemed to regard the late concessions as chiefly valuable on account of the increased value which it enabled them to place on their services to the government; and one cannot read without a feeling of shame that one or two of the bishops who were wont to be regarded as the proprietors of the seats for their diocesan cities, were not behind the most nameless lay boroughmongers in the resolution they evinced make a market of their support of the government. The consequence was that the government was unable to feel confident of its power to carry any measure except at a price that it was degrading to pay; while of those few members who were above all suspicion of personal corruption, many were so utterly wrong-headed, and had their minds so filled with unreasonable jealousy for what they called the honor and dignity of Ireland, and with a consequent distrust of England and of all Englishmen, that their honest folly was even a greater obstacle to wise and good government than the mean cunning of the others. There can hardly be a more striking proof of the difficulties to be overcome by a minister than is furnished by a speech made by a gentleman of the highest character, and of deservedly wide influence in the Northern counties, Mr. Brownlow, of Lurgan, one of the members for Armagh, which is quoted by Mr. Froude.[131]
Pitt was painfully conscious of the commercial injustice with which hitherto Ireland had always been treated, and in the very first year of his administration he applied himself to the removal of the most mischievous of the grievances of which the Irish merchants complained, adopting to a great extent a scheme which had been put before him by one of the most considerable gentlemen of that body, which was based on the principle of equalization of duties in both countries. It is unnecessary here to enter into the details of the measure which he introduced into the House of Commons. He avowed it to be the commencement of a new system of government for Ireland, "a system of a participation and community of benefits, a system of equality and fairness, which, without tending to aggrandize one portion of the empire or to depress the other, should seek the aggregate interest of the whole; it was a substitute for the system which had hitherto been adopted of making the smaller country completely subordinate to and subservient to the greater, of making the smaller and poorer country a mere instrument for the advantage of the greater and wealthier one. He, therefore, proposed now to create a situation of perfect commercial equality, in which there was to be a community of benefits, and also to some extent a community of burdens." And he urged the House to "adopt that system of trade with Ireland that would tend to enrich one part of the empire without impoverishing the other, while it would give strength to both; that, like mercy, the favorite attribute of Heaven,