man, and not the Bishop of Derry. Lord Northington was viceroy. When the reconstructed cabinet after Rockingham's untimely death had given place to a coalition ministry, he had been sent to replace the Duke of Portland's successor Lord Temple. He succeeded by a questionable intrigue in setting the ultra-Protestants in the convention against the tolerationists, with the result that the majority of the delegates determined to exclude the Roman Catholics from the scheme of reform.

Flood and the bishop prepared a Reform Bill of a moderate and sensible character. It was well calculated to strike at the corruption of the House, but as a broad scheme of reform it was ridiculous, as it left wholly unenfranchised the Roman Catholics of whom the bulk of the population consisted, and its only effect on the franchise was to add some three hundred to the list of voters in the north of Ireland, and about one hundred in the south. The bill was submitted to and obtained the approval of the convention, and believing that he would be able to coerce the Parliament into accepting it, on November 29th, Flood carried the bill from the Rotunda to the House of Commons. The spirit of the House was aroused by the attempt of the convention to dictate its measures to them. Self-interest prompted many of the members who sat for the rotten boroughs to seize the opportunity of crushing out the spark of reform. The Government threw in all its influence against the agitators, and General Burgoyne held his troops ready to act in case violence was actually resorted to. There was a fierce debate. The bill was vigorously opposed by

Yelverton, Daly, and Fitzgibbon, on the text that Parliament was not a court to register the decrees of the volunteers, and that the existence of the legislature depended on a firm resistance to the demands of a rival body of men with arms in their hands. Late On the following Sunday morning, after a night of uproar, menace, and recrimination, the House divided, and leave to introduce the bill was rejected by 150 to 77. Parliament was triumphant; and the convention had two courses open. They could have launched the contest into an appeal to force, which meant neither more nor less than civil war; or they could take the determination of the House as final, and retire from the false position which they had assumed. The temperate counsels of Lord Charlemont prevailed over the mad recklessness of the Bishop of Derry, and to the honour of the volunteers be it said, two days after the fiat of the division list, they adjourned sine die, and retired peacefully to their respective counties.

Great popular excitement at the rejection of the reform scheme now broke out, especially in Dublin. Indignation at the collapse of the volunteers showed itself in the outbreak of unreasoning hostility to the regular troops; and brutal ruffians amongst the mob made a practice of hamstringing the soldiers who unguardedly walked about the streets. The general good order preserved throughout the country while the volunteers were actively employed, was interrupted. Whiteboy outrages recommenced in the south; faction fights took place in the north between the Roman Catholics and the Presby

terians; in Dublin the ignorant mob, under the belief that trade would be benefited by excluding the goods of other countries from the market, broke out into rioting, and tarred and feathered the unlucky merchants who were suspected of importing English merchandise.

The volunteer movement still lingered on, especially in the north, where it first came into being. The Bishop of Derry strove hard to raise fresh regiments. Napper Tandy, who had commanded the Dublin volunteer artillery, endeavoured to organize a fresh convention, and requested the sheriffs of counties to summon their bailiwicks for the election of delegates. But the Government, under the advice of Fitzgibbon who was now attorney-general, adopted strong measures, fining and imprisoning those who attempted to carry out the design : and though a few persons met at a hole-and-corner meeting in Dublin in the autumn of 1784, and Flood was there with a plan of reform, the " congress" expired after a sitting of three days. Many of the corps, however, especially at Belfast, continued to drill; and retained their arms. But the class of person which constituted the bulk of the members was very different from that of the original volunteers. The substantial people, the gentry and their tenantry, the merchants and their clerks, left the ranks and were replaced by men of more daring views and of less substance. "They had originally," complained Grattan, "been the armed property of Ireland, they were becoming the armed. beggary." As men of the stamp of Lord Charlemont broke away, the influence of the Protestant party grew

less and less. The narrow spirit of bigotry disappeared and Roman Catholics were freely enrolled. The stirring portion of the retiring members formed themselves into the Whig Club: the remnants of the corps held together as political associations whose aim and object were Parliamentary reform and emancipation of the Roman Catholics; and with sincere aspirations for purging the constitution, and without a shadow of disaffection towards England, formed the nucleus of the Society of the United Irishmen.

CHAPTER IX.

CONFLICTS WITH THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT.

A.D. 1783-1789.

THE coalition ministry had fallen by means of a discreditable intrigue between George III. and Lord Temple: and Pitt, at the age of twenty-three becoming first minister of the Crown, had commenced his long supremacy of eighteen years' duration. According to the wondrous theories respecting the position of our colonies and the fostering of trade prevalent in the last century, Ireland had no claim beyond what England pleased to give her in the colonial trade. The colonies belonged (unless by favour or compact it were made otherwise) exclusively to this country. The suffering Ireland to send anything to them, to bring anything directly thence, was itself a favour. England had given to Ireland liberty to import directly and re-export to all the world, except to Great Britain, the produce of the colonies; but no change had taken place in the intercourse between the two kingdoms themselves. The heavy import duties laid on in England against Irish goods had caused great irritation in Ireland. An attempt had been made to retaliate, by persons bind