right|thumb|A map of the [[Kingdom of Ireland dating from the period of legislative independence (1782–1800)]]

The Constitution of 1782 refers to government of the Kingdom of Ireland following concessions to its legislative and judicial independence by the British Crown and Parliament. Constrained by the revolt of the American colonies and confronted in Ireland by a patriot militia, the Irish Volunteers, the British government abandoned the previously asserted right of the Kingdom of Great Britain to legislate for Ireland and to hear appeal from its courts. The Parliament of Ireland used its new won independence sparingly, disappointing hopes of holding the Vice-Regal administration in Dublin Castle to account, and of broadening representation through Catholic emancipation and reform. Following the suppression of the United Irish rebellion in 1798, the Constitution of 1782 was overturned. The Acts of Union 1800, abolished the legislature in Dublin and incorporated Ireland with Great Britain in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Background

Under the terms of Poynings' Law of 1495, no law could be passed by the Parliament of Ireland that was not first approved by the Privy Council of England. In 1719, the Parliament of Great Britain passed an "act for the better securing the dependency of the kingdom of Ireland upon the crown of Great Britain" (6 George 1 c.5: Irish Dependency Act). This "Declaratory Act" further restricted Irish legal independence by declaring that the British Parliament could directly pass laws in Ireland and that the British House of Lords was the highest court of appeal for Ireland.

Reinforcing his extensive powers of patronage, including his ability through the control of pocket boroughs to gift up to a third of the seats in the Irish House of Commons, the legislation gave the Lord Lieutenant and the Dublin Castle administration effective control over the agenda of the Irish Parliament and authority to restrict its ability to legislate in any manner conceived as contrary to the British interest.

The "Revolution of 1782"

left|thumb|The Irish House of Commons: Henry Grattan urging the Claims of Irish Right, 8 June 1780 (by [[Francis Wheatley (painter)|Francis Wheatley, 1780)]]

From 1775, these were arrangements challenged by the American war for independence. The struggle with the colonists and with their French allies drew down the Crown's regular forces in Ireland. In their absence, Volunteer companies were formed among enfranchised Protestants, ostensibly for home defence, but soon, like their kinsmen in the colonies, protesting British trade monopolies and asserting "constitutional rights". Popular tracts, these had tied Ireland's poverty to the country being bound by acts of parliament in England.

In November 1779, Volunteers paraded before the Parliament in Dublin, promised "50,000 joined together, ready to die for their fatherland," invoked the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and protested the inequities of the British Navigation Acts. "Free Trade" (by which was intended the right of the Irish Parliament to set its own tariff and trade policy) was saluted with volleys of shot "heard with startling effect at the Castle." Contending with a war further enlarged by the entry of Spain, London lifted its ban on the Irish export of wool, glass and other goods competitive with British products, and opened the Crown colonies to Irish trade.

The Volunteers pressed forward. In February 1782, delegates from 147 Volunteer corps in Ulster gathered in Dungannon (seat of the ancient Ó Néills and a site for Presbyterian Synods). Taking on "the substance of a national assembly" they resolved that "the claim of any body of men, other than the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, to make laws to bind this kingdom, is unconstitutional, illegal and a grievance".

In April 1782, with Volunteer cavalry, infantry, and artillery posted on all approaches to the Parliament in Dublin, Henry Grattan, leader of the "patriot" opposition, had a "Declaration of Irish Rights" carried by acclaim in the Commons. Declaring that "the spirit of Molyneux" had triumphed, he proposed that "Ireland is now a nation". In June 1782, the Westminster Parliament repealed the Declaratory Act

thumb|The Lisburn and Lambeg Volunteers firing a [[feu de joie in honour of the Dungannon Convention, 1782.]]

Pressed by Grattan's Patriot rival, Henry Flood, and by renewed Volunteer agitation led from Belfast, Westminster followed this up in April 1783 with an act to remove and prevent "all doubts which have arisen, or might arise, concerning the exclusive rights of the parliament and courts of Ireland" (23 George 3 c.28: Irish Appeals Act). Commonly known as the Renunciation Act, in order to "to secure to the people of Ireland the rights claimed by them to be bound only by laws enacted by his Majesty and the parliament of that kingdom" it declared that no appeal from the decision of any court in Ireland could be heard in any court in Great Britain.

This had been a cause in which powerful borough-owning families in Parliament had been content to present themselves as patriots. Legislative independence cost them nothing, and might in time increase the value, and therefore the price, of the votes they controlled in the Commons. They were to take a different view of parliamentary reform.

Rejection of parliamentary reform

In November 1783, Volunteers again converged upon Dublin proposing to correct "certain manifest perversions of parliamentary representation". A bill, which Flood presented to the Commons dressed in his Volunteer uniform, would have enlarged the boundaries of "decayed boroughs", modestly extending a still exclusively Protestant freehold franchise, excluded government office-holders from the Commons, and introduced three, as opposed to eight, year parliaments. Conscious that, having accepted defeat in America, Britain could again spare troops for Ireland and extend its outlays for Crown patronage, Flood's parliamentary colleagues were not intimidated. Under the "Constitution of 1782", the Ancien régime of Protestant ascendancy and Vice-regal administration adapted and survived.

In 1791, the new formed Society of United Irishmen in Belfast published An Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland. With an eventual print-run of 16,000, in Ireland only Thomas Paine's Rights of Man surpassed it in circulation. The author, the Protestant secretary of the Catholic Committee in Dublin, Wolfe Tone, argued the "Revolution of 1782" had proved "imaginary" because at the crucial juncture the Volunteer movement had split on the question of Catholic emancipation. Only by rallying the Catholics to the national cause, would they have had the strength to force through more substantial constitutional reform. The choice was clear: either "Reform, the Catholics, justice and liberty" or "an unconditional submission to the present, and every future administration".

In 1793, the Patriot leader was able to carry the re-admission of Catholics to the unreformed franchise, and to civil and military offices. But this had been possible only following the Catholic Committee's unprecedented success in convening an elected Catholic Convention (the "Back Lane Parliament") in Dublin and in having a delegation received by the King and his ministers in London. In advance of war with the French Republic, the priority of the British government was domestic tranquility. For a measure that could have little appreciable impact on the conduct of government, the price for overriding Ascendancy opposition in the Irish Parliament was the dissolution of the Catholic Committee, a new government militia that conscripted Catholic and Protestant by lot, and a Convention Act that, outlawing "the election or appointment of assemblies purporting to represent the people", suppressed extra-parliamentary opposition. A result was the formation of the United Irishmen and, under growing government repression, a republican conspiracy that, in hopes of French assistance, broke into open rebellion in 1798.

The British government, which had had to deploy its own forces to suppress the rebellion and to turn back and defeat French intervention, determined upon a union with Great Britain. With effect from 1 January 1801, Acts of Union abolished the Irish legislature and transferred Ireland's still exclusively Protestant representation to the Parliament at Westminster.

See also

  • Irish House of Commons
  • Irish House of Lords

References

  • "The Constitution of 1782" in Bartlett, Thomas. Ireland: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.