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The Irish Government IISummary of chapter. In this chapter the various policies of the Irish Government with regard to Ireland are described. Usually the policies were similar to those of the United Kingdom, but were adapted to Irish conditions. Some policies were copied from those in Britain, or on the other hand could have been adopted first in Ireland. It made little difference for all were agreed on the basic principles of government.
(iii) Fiscal Policy and the Budget
(iv) Extraordinary Legislation
(v) Statistics, Surveys, and Valuations ********************************************************************************************************* 'Peace, retrenchment, and reform' was said to
be the watchword of the Whigs in the Twenties, and indeed were specific Whig
policies. But taken in a more general sense they were the objectives of the
Tories as well. The Tories desired peace, but not at the price of concessions
to Napoleon. They too favoured retrenchment of public expenditure even if they
did not target royal patronage. The reforms they brought in were many, even if
they opposed Parliamentary Reform. It
was noted earlier that the Irish Government was composed almost entirely of
Irishmen. Any ideas, derived from nationalist propaganda, of a 'British'
Government holding A
major aim was to overhaul the Irish administration and to bring policies into
line with contemporary British practice, to introduce efficiency and probity.
At times, reforms were first initiated by the Irish Government, and later
adopted in One
of the chief aims of any group of politicians is to keep themselves in office,
and the Irish Whigs and Tories were no different from their English or Scottish
counterparts. A Government in office never lost an election, at least in the
immediate term. But it could not prevent independent MP’s from switching their
loyalties, which was a very important factor when political parties were not
tightly controlled. A very small sum of money was available for the secret
service, and this will be discussed in more detail in the section on the Press.
At elections the ministry in office had to exert itself
to win, and this seems to have been done by promising jobs or honours to
important gentlemen in crucial counties. Practice was the same in The
Irish Government was involved in supervising most aspects of Irish life, but
only indirectly, for example it kept itself informed about affairs which were
the proper responsibility of the counties, the towns and the cities. From time
to time, as described in earlier chapters it had laws passed for the better
regulation of these affairs. But there were other aspects of policy for which
the Government was directly responsible, for example monetary and fiscal
policy, and military affairs. There were other matters like the control of
agrarian crime which were strictly speaking the affairs of the counties. Yet
the Government from time to time was reluctantly compelled to seek special
legislation to deal with it. The great problem in To
a noticeably greater extent than in It
is almost inevitable that heavy borrowing by Governments in time of war should
lead to inflation as it provides a classic case of too much money chasing too
few goods. In
1797 the Bank of Ireland was ordered by the Government to discontinue the issue
of gold coins, and the Bank of Ireland was relieved of its obligation to pay
out in gold. Further restrictions were placed on the Bank of Ireland in 1804.
The object of this was to collect gold coins into the hands of the Government
as they were needed to pay foreign subsidies, and issue of banknotes by
British, Irish, and Scottish banks was sufficiently developed to make the
actual passing of gold from hand to hand unnecessary. Though gold was not
removed from circulation in The
problem was made worse by the virtual disappearance of sound coins as well.
Banks, shopkeepers, and the makers of false coin, rushed to supply the
deficiency by stamping coins or tokens. These were often accepted not at face
value but at whatever value a shopkeeper though fit to attribute to them. If
the value of silver in a coin is equal to or greater than the face value of the
coin, the coin will be melted down. If it is less than the face value, the
value of the coin will be discounted, except the person handling it is certain
to be able to pass it on. It was often observed that bad money drove out good,
i.e. when bad money (either falsely coined or poorly backed) was circulating
people hoarded good coins. As bullion was being shipped abroad there was no
possibility for the moment of returning to a properly minted coinage. In 1804 John Foster restricted the issue of
notes to banks which were registered with the Government and approved. Over
sixty private banks registered. The Government then ordered a new coinage from
Matthew Boulton's patent mint, but this issue nearly met the fate of Wood's
halfpence. (A patent was granted to William Wood an Englishman in 1722 to
manufacture good-quality copper halfpence and farthings for use in the In
1809 Sir Henry Parnell wished to see the two currencies assimilated as this
would allow Bank of England notes to circulate freely in The
first step was to re-mint the coinage, and this was done as soon as the War was
over, William Wellesley Pole then being the Master of the Mint. The entire
coinage was called in and re-minted as proper silver coins. A new gold coin,
the sovereign, was also minted, though the older guinea now valued at 21 shillings
was not withdrawn. These new coins were made legal tender in When
Peel became Home Secretary he took the question of currency seriously. The
issue of small, or silver, notes was stopped in With
the onset of the Famine silver coins disappeared briefly from (iii) Fiscal
Policy and the Budget By
the terms of the Act of Union Ireland was to contribute two seventeenths of the
total revenue of the The
proportion of revenue assigned as In
1801 William Pitt introduced his first budget in the new The
Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, Isaac Corry, then presented the Irish
budget. The Irish debt, he said, stood at £36 million on which £1.7 million was
paid in interest annually. The income tax was not to be applied to Corry
was not popular, nor very capable, and when the former Irish Chancellor of the
Exchequer John Foster finally took his seat in In
1808 about £2,200,000 was derived from Customs duties, £1,700,000 from excises,
£580,000 from stamps, £69,000 from the Post Office, and £124,000 from the
lottery. In 1826, the figures were Customs, £1,500,000, excises, £1,420,000,
stamps £425,000, and Post Office £74,000. The loans were at first raised in
In
1812 Wellesley Pole who had succeeded Foster was seeking £14 million, and in
1813 William Vesey Fitzgerald was seeking £16.5 million. By 1816 the Irish
National Debt stood at two seventeenths of the British debt, and a Bill was
introduced, which became effective the following year, to amalgamate the
exchequers. In
theory if uniform taxes were applied over the whole of the Nationalists
argued that (iv) Extraordinary Legislation This
was legislation passed by Parliament at the request of the Irish Government
giving it for short periods extraordinary powers to deal with outbreaks of
agrarian crime, or occasionally insurrection. Extraordinary legislation was not
confined to Ireland, for similar Acts were passed in England at the outbreak of
the French Revolution, and again in a series called the 'Six Acts' in the years
following the battle of Waterloo. In The
perennial problem with agrarian and related crimes was that witnesses and
jurors could be easily intimidated, and if unco-operative, murdered. The
Government only applied to Parliament for extra powers after repeated
assurances by the county gentlemen that ordinary measures were
ineffective. When the outbreak of crime
was suppressed the legislation was allowed to lapse, and the Government hoped
that increased prosperity, better education, and the influence of religion and
the clergy, would cause each outbreak to be the last. Only
three Acts were regarded as being permanently on the statute book. These were
the Whiteboy Act (1776), (first passed in 1766, revised and renewed in 1776,
and made permanent in 1800), the Convention Act (1793), and the Peace
Preservation or Police Act (1813),
though the introduction of the New Police in 1822 made the provisions of the
latter redundant. The Whiteboy Act applied to groups of five or more, beating,
burning, houghing, digging up fields, levelling hedges, etc., with capital
punishment for acts at night and transportation for acts during daylight. The
inhabitants of the adjoining townlands were obliged, by the Act, to apprehend
the malefactors under penalty if they failed to do so of having a sum for
compensation levied on the barony or county. Those attempting to rescue
prisoners were liable to the death penalty as were those imposing illegal
oaths. The savagery of the penalties reflects the weakness of the law-enforcing
agencies. The
Home Office in One has carefully to study the Acts, or the
summaries provided by the Irish Secretary to Parliament, to see what the
Government had in mind, for the name of the Act can be misleading. For example,
a Martial Law Act was passed in The
most severe measures involved the suspension of habeas corpus and the imposition
of martial law. This was normally done by two different acts, so that
Parliament could review the need for each separately. Habeas corpus was
suspended twice, from 1798 until 1806 and from 1848 until 1850. In both cases
civil disturbances accompanied the usual wave of agrarian crime. Suspension was
normally granted only for one year, and the following year the Government had
to come before Parliament to make a case for a renewal of the Act. Suspension
of habeas corpus meant that suspected persons could be interned without trial.
By suspected persons was meant those about whom information was sworn before a
magistrate, but against whom the witness was unwilling to testify in open
courts. (As noted earlier magistrates were usually remiss in cross-examining
those swearing affidavits. In 1808 Three
Acts were passed in 1803, a Suppression of Rebellion Act (1803), a Martial Law
Act (1803), and a Suspension of habeas corpus Act. Martial law never came into
force until a district, either a barony or a county, was proclaimed by the Lord
Lieutenant in Council. This was never done in the first half of the century but
the various proclamations in 1798 remained in force in some districts for a few
years. Martial
courts were not the same as courts martial, the military courts under the
Mutiny Act for members of the armed forces. They did not deal with civil cases
but only with the crimes associated with armed rebellion. No special procedure
was specified for them and they were not record courts. They could be
established ad hoc by the military
general officer commanding in the district. The
vast bulk of the legislation dealt with ordinary agrarian crime. Widespread
outbreaks attributed to the Whiteboys, Oakboys, Steelboys, etc began to occur
in the 1760's and the first Acts to try to deal with them were passed by the
Irish Parliament in 1775 and 1776. (Other names like Carders and Threshers were
used in the nineteenth century, but the most common name was Ribbonmen.) They
were the most severe ever passed by either the Irish or British Parliament. For
this reason successive Governments were reluctant to use them, and requested
their own Law Officers to draw up milder yet sufficient legislation to deal
with the problem. The Lord Lieutenant invoked the Whiteboy Act (1776) in 1811
at a time when the Insurrection Act (1807) had lapsed. The Solicitor General,
Kendall Bushe, explained that the Lord Lieutenant was very reluctant to invoke
the Act because of the extreme penalties it contained. For example, any
connection at all with conspirators was punishable with death (SNL 15 Feb 1811). In
their normal form, Insurrection or Coercion Acts were based on a draft made by
the constitutional lawyer Arthur Wolfe (Lord Kilwarden, later murdered by
Emmett's supporters) in 1796. He aimed at being effective without being harsh,
and without violating as far as possible the constitutional liberties of the king's
subjects. Subsequent Acts reduced further what he regarded as a minimum. One
problem to be tackled was how to search women's bedrooms at night when looking
for concealed arms. Waves of agrarian crime always began by widespread theft of
firearms, and if women's bedrooms were exempt from searching they would make
ideal depositories. Other minor Acts were often passed dealing
with firearms, which annoyed the county gentlemen intensely, though we take
them for granted nowadays. Such were Acts placing restrictions on the
importation or sale of gunpowder, and requiring licences for firearms. The
Whigs, when out of office, at various times attributed the outbreaks of
violence to an unwillingness of the Tories to enact necessary reforms. But they
invariably found that when they themselves took office they had to pass yet
another Coercion Act. The real problem the complacency with which the murder of
opponents was regarded in Ireland, and the readiness with which such murders
were excused if it were claimed that local interests were being protected.
Peel
hoped to end the series of extraordinary Acts by developing an efficient police
force, but it never proved possible to dispense with them, and they finally
were made permanent in both parts of There
was another series of Acts beginning with the Convention Act (1793) which
prohibited persons or societies from assembling for unlawful, i.e.
revolutionary purposes, to assemble in order to overthrow or intimidate
Parliament, or to set up a body to rival Parliament. There was nothing unusual
about this Act. A similar one had been passed in This
series of Acts would not have been at all important if O’Connell had not
devoted his entire career to trying to circumvent the Convention Act. There
never was any logical reason for this for political organisations were
perfectly legal so long as they assembled only to petition Parliament, or to
secure the return of a Member of Parliament, and did not attempt to organise on
a national scale. The wording of an Act against unlawful assemblies proved
difficult because there were all sorts of societies for useful or even
convivial purposes. The Government finally had an Act passed enabling the Lord
Lieutenant on the spot to decide what society or association was unlawful. The
Convention Act was a strange obsession of O’Connell's for at various times he
formed perfectly legal societies. Yet he was never satisfied with these. He hankered for a massive, nationally
organised, and well-funded body, which he felt could shake the Government. But
he always overlooked the fact that the Again, if his language had been moderate the
Government might have overlooked his societies. Yet he always persisted in
haranguing his followers in the most violent language. His favourite quotation
was from Byron Hereditary
bondsmen! know ye not He always maintained that this did not
refer to physical violence, though many doubted if that is how his followers
interpreted it. His Young Ireland
followers certainly at first believed that he would lead them into battle. .[Top] (v)
Statistics, Surveys, and Valuations By
statistics originally was meant information useful for governing the state. The
term was used by Sir John Sinclair to describe agricultural, industrial, and
commercial resources of The
Irish Government was anxious to promote agriculture, industry, and fishing and
wished to see surveys like Sinclair's carried out in The
Dublin Society, in addition, made an extensive survey of Irish coalfields and
also persuaded the Government to appoint Bog Commissioners to evaluate the
potential of bogs. The Board of Inland Navigation was charged with evaluating
the commercial possibilities of various new canals proposed to it. Lord
Cornwallis, when he was Lord Lieutenant, despite the troubled state of parts of
the country, had the Nymph Bank re-surveyed with a view to developing
fisheries. Sir
John Sinclair persuaded William Pitt to hold a census of In
the 1820's the Government undertook the twin massive tasks of surveying or
re-surveying the whole of A
rough hydrographic survey had been made of the Irish coasts at the request of
the Admiralty by Murdock Mackenzie at the time of the American War of
Independence. The new survey had no individual as capable and determined as
Major Colby at its head to push it through to a finish, even though the head of
the Hydrographic Department of the Admiralty was an Irishman, Francis Beaufort,
whose standards of surveying matched those of Colby. The whole survey of the
Irish coasts was eventually completed however to the now exacting Admiralty
standards. The
Ordnance Survey, though a mammoth task, was straightforward compared with the
valuation. Though he was not one of the original valuators appointed, the most
important was Richard Griffith. He made several attempts to produce a uniform
and satisfactory valuation, but each attempt was criticised in turn. He
employed for the purpose persons who had had previous experience in valuing for
landlords or their agents. He told them to take into account the nature of the
soil, and the sub-soil, and the local prices of farm produce. The various ' The
Poor Law Valuation (PLV)
marked a departure from the practice of making the townland the unit of
taxation. Not only the land in the townland, but also buildings, rights of way,
mines opened for more than seven years, commons, profits from lands, easements
on lands, tolls, navigations, indeed any species of real property from which a
revenue was or could be derived was subject to the Poor Law Valuation. The Poor
Law Commissioners carried out the valuations, and the Poor Law Board itself was
eventually to grow into the Department of Local Government, a catch-all department.
The letters PLV found a permanent place in Irish administration. After
the drainage of the The
civil survey is always called the Ordnance Survey because it was carried out
under the direct supervision of officers seconded to the civil duties by the
Board of Ordnance in Maps
of In
1822 the young and energetic MP for The
Committee reported in 1824 and recommended that the survey be entrusted to the
Board of Ordnance and not to local surveyors, that the survey be carried out to
the level of townlands, but that it should not be a cadastral survey of each
individual field, that the scale of mapping be six inches to the statute mile,
and that the Admiralty should conduct a hydrographic survey of the Irish
coasts. Major
Thomas Colby was placed in charge of the survey and his determination to accept
no standards but the very best attainable caused the survey to take vastly
longer and to be enormously more expensive that had been envisaged in 1822. But
in carrying out the survey he set standards that were emulated throughout most
of the world. He began by training a corps of civilian surveyors in The
primary triangulation was based on the Culcagh, Keeper, and Kippure mountains,
101, 93, and 86 miles apart. The story is often told how Lieutenant Drummond,
the future Under-secretary, used the 'lime light' to establish points across
the width of The
Committee of 1824 had allowed contouring and line shading, and also, more
importantly, the drawing up of 'terriers' or 'descriptive memoirs' of the
various parishes. Observations under this heading could include the times of
tides on various parts of the Irish coasts, the correct forms of placenames,
accounts of local antiquities, points of zoological, geological, botanical, or
economic interest, and the collection of botanical and other specimens. The
Survey accepted only four units of division, the county, the barony, the
parish, and the townland. Other traditional units like catrons
and tates, used in some places were discontinued. A tate was 60 Irish acres. For
other traditional units of measurement see ‘tate’ in OED and SNL By
the time the survey was completed every field in But
the actual mapping was completed and maps covering the whole of In
1836 Colby was sent to |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright Desmond J. Keenan, B.S.Sc.; Ph.D. ;.London, U.K.
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