228 Chapter X
The Reform Bills and Their Failure
The extra- parliamentary pressure, quasi- military in Ireland, civilian in England,
built up to force action upon the two Parliaments, was “revolutionary” only in a
certain sense. Only insofar as the Parliaments were constitutionally independent,
and clamor out of doors, or even orderly public opinion, was a phenomenon on
which Parliament was free to act, or not to act, according to its own unforced judg-
ment of the national interests, can outside pressures be described by so strong a
word. In another sense the most advanced ideas of reformers were not revolutionary
in the least. None went beyond the idea of a more equal representation in the House
of Commons. None attacked the Lords or the crown in any basic way, and none
anticipated the actual workings of cabinet government, which was a conception,
rather, promoted by the parliamentary Rockingham Whigs. Reformers dwelt on the
majesty of the people. But the British and Irish reformers never really took up the
theory developed in the American Revolution, the theory of the people as constitu-
ent power. None thought that any General Association, or what Sir George Savile
called a “National Assembly,” should actually create government. All venerated the
British constitution, properly understood, and free from “abuses”; none thought of
replacing the existing constitution by another or a newly authorized one. None de-
manded a written document drafted by a constituent convention. At most, reform-
ers wanted the people to “constitute” the Commons, that is, to make it up by their
free votes and turn it into a body of delegates. There was no idea that the people
should explicitly “constitute” the whole apparatus of government.
These observations may be kept in mind as we survey the reform bills and the
conservative arguments against them.
In Ireland, after the winning of legislative independence, the Volunteers not
only refused to disband, but rapidly grew in numbers, even admitting and arming
Catholics as recruits. Grattan and the Irish Whigs, who had so recently praised
them as armed patriots willing to fight for their country, now regarded them as an
anarchic menace to lawful authority. The Volunteers, who for some time had met
in regional conventions, decided to hold a Grand National Convention at Dublin
in November 1783. It was the first body calling itself a national convention in a
world that was to know many such in the next fifteen years. Uniformed and armed
delegates from all parts of the island marched through Dublin amid the cheers of
the population. They deliberated under the chairmanship of the Earl of Char-
lemont, who had consented to come in the hope of moderating the proceedings.
There was much disagreement on the enfranchisement of Catholics, which was
finally decided against, so that the proposals automatically excluded two- thirds of
the population. The reform program resolved upon has been thought moderate
enough by later historians. It demanded that Parliament be elected every three
years, that no life pensioners be allowed to sit unless specifically reelected, that all
Protestant freeholders and holders of long leases of at least £10 a year be given the
vote, if actually resident, and that decayed constituencies, having less than two
hundred voters, should no longer be represented in the House of Commons.^14
14 There is a narrative account of the convention in T. Wright, History of Ireland (London and New
York, n.d.), II, 469–74. For other details, including the resolutions of the convention and provisions of