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II. Irish Parliamentary Elections and the Influence of the Catholic Vote, 1801–201

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2010

P. J. Jupp
P. J. Jupp
Affiliation:
The Queen's University, Belfast
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Extract

One generalization which can be made about politics in the reign of George III with a fair degree of certainty is that the vast majority of M.P.s did not consider their conduct in the House of Commons as predetermined by the wishes of their electors; they preferred to see themselves as elected as members of Parliament rather than as delegates to Parliament. Moreover, despite the recent concentration of some historians upon the history of Parliament, the discipline of psephology rarely engaged the attention of politicians after a general election. These two attitudes of mind, which together indicated a clear division between electoral and Parliamentary politics, were nowhere more prevalent than in constituencies where landed interests were predominant. These, which comprised the majority in Scotland and Wales, were, after 1801, also thought to predominate in Ireland. This, in fact, was part of the reason why the Whigs at Westminster so firmly opposed the Union during the debates in 1799 and 1800. They argued in effect that in Ireland, as in Scotland, there was little dependence upon electors and a great dependence upon patronage; that the union with Scotland had added a substantial proportion of the forty-five M.P.s to the ranks of the government of the day; and that the union with Ireland would add near a 100 more. In fact the traditional picture of Irish electoral politics between 1801–26 is that, notwithstanding the fact that in Ireland the economic and social position and above all the religious sentiments of the majority of the electors were nowhere more clearly opposed to those of their M.P.s, the constituencies remained firmly controlled by the leading landed, and therefore Protestant, interests, the majority of whom supported every administration. The purpose of this article, however, is to argue that the Catholic vote in Irish constituencies was an integral and important factor in elections before 1820; that it not only played its part at elections but that it also affected in some degree the conduct of Irish M.P.s in the House of Commons towards the question of Catholic emancipation.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , 1967 , pp. 183 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1967

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References

2 See, in particular, Charles (afterward Earl) Grey's speech, 21 April 1800, Parl. Hist., xxxv, 71.

3 C[ommons] J[ournals], LVIII, 1105. It is difficult to arrive at a figure for the total electorate as the Commons report only gives figures for registration; these totalled 163,000. As some of these were undoubtedly double, fictitious or re-registries the actual electorate was below this figure.

4 Ibid, LXX, 1058.

5 Parl. Reg. XIII, 203-19; quoted by , Lecky, Hist. Ireland (1898), 152–63Google Scholar.

6 Fortescue MSS. Lady Downshire to Lord Grenville, I Nov. 1812.

7 N[ational] L[ibrary] of Ifreland], Shannon MSS. Lady Shannon to Lord Boyle, 9 March (1802).

8 [B.M.] Add. [MSS.] 40279, fo. 15.

9 Ibid. 40295, fo. 138.

10 EHR, LXXV, no. 295, 239-44. J. H. Whyte, ‘The influence of the Catholic Clergy on elections in nineteenth-century Ireland’.

11 Apsley House MSS, Croker to Sir Arthur Wellesley, 9, 13, 18 May 1807.

12 Apsley House MSS. Cornelius Bolton to Wellesley, 8 June 1807; Add. 38568, fo. 150.

13 CJ. LXII, 686, 837.

14 S[tate] P[aper] O[fffice] D[ublin] 531/242/11/ Marquis of Ely to Wellesley, 25 May 1807.

15 Apsley House MSS. John Bagwell to Wellesley, 18, 20, 23, 29, 31 May 1897.

16 Add. 40218, fo. 282.

17 Ibid. 40279, fo. 120.

18 , Life, Times and Correspondence of Dr Doyle, ed. , Fitzpatrick (1880), 1, 86–89.Google Scholar

19 Add. 40278, fo. 311.

20 Ibid. fo. 116.

21 Add. 40271, fo. 392.

22 Apsley House MSS. William Monsell to John Foster, 26 May, 7 June 1807.

23 Add. 40280, fo. 54.

24 Dublin Correspondent, 22, 26 June 1818.

25 Add. 40218, fo. 274.

26 Apsley House MSS. Lord Clancarty to Wellesley, 19 May 1807.

27 Add. 40182, fo. 16.

28 Ibid. 40237, fo. 15.

29 Ibid. 40222, fo. 325.

30 H.M.C. Fortescue, IX, 175.

31 Add. 40266; 40271, Rev. Ball to Peel, 20 Oct. 1817; 4029s, fo. 114.

32 Apsley House MSS. Francis Nathaniel Burton to Wellesley, 12, 17, 20 May 1807.

33 W[ellington] S[upplementary] D[espatches], v, 53.

34 Add. 40273, fo. 171.

35 Gloucester Record Office, Redesdale MSS. James D'Arcy to Lord Redesdale, 22 Oct. 1803.

36 Add. 40222, fo. 208; 40223 fo. 295.

37 Ibid. 40207, fo. 58.

38 N[ational] L[ibrary] of I[reland], Richmond MSS (842).

39 Add. 40223, fo. 195; 40280, fo. 86. N. L. I. Grattan MSS. Henry Grattan Jnr, to James Grattan, 27 Jan. 1813.

40 Add. 35716, fo. 67.

41 Life, Letters and Speeches of Lord Plunket, ed. Plunket, Hon. David (1867), II, 106–7.Google Scholar

42 N. L. I. Richmond MSS. Duke of Richmond to Earl Bathurst, 14, 18 June 1812; also quoted H. M. C. Bathurst, pp. 180, 182.

43 N. L. I. Richmond MSS. (493, 1230a).

44 The following calculations are based upon the biographies of the Irish M.P.s compiled for the History of Parliament. The main sources for information of their political conduct are the Parliamentary Debates and in particular the seventy-eight recorded division lists between June 1807 and June 1812; the Apsley House MSS.; Richmond MSS.; and the analysis of Irish representation in Add. 40221, fos. 15–42. The constituencies which the thirty-four Irish M.P.s represented are those listed on pp. 186-7. The ten government supporters were Sir Edward O'Brien, Augustine Fitzgerald, Hans Hamilton, Henry A. Herbert, H. J. Clements, William Odell, Arthur French, Stephen Mahon, Robert Shaw, Thomas Bligh.

45 N. L. I. Richmond MSS. (531), (1849).

46 Apsley House MSS. James Crosbie to Wellesley, 29 May 1807.

47 N. L. I. Richmond MSS. (997).

48 Ibid. (1019).

49 The sources for these calculations are again the Parliamentary Debates together with the Peel Papers, Add. 40181-40298; in particular, 40292, fo. 83 and 40298, fos. 1-45.

50 Life, Letters and Speeches of Lord Plunket, see above; Redesdale MSS. Earl of Rosse to Lord Redesdale, 3 May 1822.