6HUM0400: The Politics of Parliamentary Reform: Lecture 5 Ireland
Structure of the lecture Patriots and Liberty Key tropes - legislation Impact of the American Revolution – ideologies, Grattan’s Parliament of 1782 Impact of the French Revolution – ideologies, Irish Rebellion of 1798
Object of the week: James Gillray, ‘United Irishmen upon Duty’ (1798)
Key tropes of Irish patriot rhetoric Standing army Poynings’ law 1494 Declaratory Act 1720
Henry Grattan (1746-1820) You have not been a parliament, nor your country a people… liberty, the foundation of trade, the charters of the land, the independency of Parliament, the securing, crowning and the consummation of everything, are yet to come. Without them…trade is not free, Ireland is a colony without the benefit of a charter, and you are a provincial synod without the privileges of a parliament.’ Allegedly spoken in the Irish Parliament on 19 April 1780: Grattan, Speeches of Grattan, i: 39.
James Gillray, ‘Irish Gratitude’ (1782)
Henry Flood (1732-91)
Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-98) Resolutions of Belfast Society of United Irishmen, October 1791: 1. that the weight of English influence in the government of this country is so great as to require a cordial union among all the people of Ireland to maintain that balance which is essential to the preservation of our liberties and the extension of our commerce. 2. the sole constitutional mode by which this influence can be opposed is by the complete and radical reform of the representation of the people in parliament. 3. that no reform is practicable, efficacious, or just which shall not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion.
James Napper Tandy (1740-1803)