230 Chapter X
now commanding the army in Ireland, and the Lord Lieutenant wrote to London
that there was nothing to worry about. They reassured Charles Fox, who had de-
clared in 1780 that he approved the Volunteers even though illegal, and who now,
in 1783, being in responsible office, was adjuring them to suppress the convention
and pay no attention whatsoever to its petitions. There was nothing to be afraid of,
reported the Lord Lieutenant, because the convention was hopelessly divided on
the Catholic question. He had himself, as Lord Lieutenant, through friends who
belonged to it, taken steps to divide and confuse it on the religious issue.^16
The Irish conservatives, relieved of real fears, launched the more easily into
broad statements of principle. The question, said Yelverton, was “whether this
house or the convention are the representatives of the people.” It was whether “we
are here to register the edicts of another assembly, or receive propositions at the
point of the bayonet.” It was whether Ireland, now a “free state,” should squander
its “inheritance” and its “blessings under our happy constitution.” Mr. George Pon-
sonby warned against the secret machinations of English radicals, and against “all
the system- mongers in Europe,” no two of whom, he alleged, ever agreed on any
plan of reform. (His father owned twenty- two seats in the Irish House.) Sir Her-
cules Langrishe thought the bill “subversive of the constitution,” of a constitution
that was “the admiration and envy of all nations and all ages.” In Ireland they were
privileged to enjoy “ancient charters that had taken root in the constitution and are
the growth of so many centuries.” One must dread the “perplexities, the dangers,
the difficulties presented by these sages of reform. Good God, is the mind of man
never to be satisfied!”^17
It must be admitted that the Anglo- Irish lost little time in appreciating their
“inheritance.”
In England, though the ardors of the Association movement were somewhat
abated, the Whigs allowed the young Pitt, newly in Parliament, to introduce a re-
form bill as early as May 1782. It failed by a vote of 161 to 141 in a House of 558.
Shelburne and the old Chathamite Whigs generally supported it, as did Fox, Sher-
idan, and the Duke of Richmond, but the bulk of the Rockingham Whigs, includ-
ing Burke, satisfied that Parliament would regain its freedom through economic
reform, voted against it. Pitt tried another bill in 1783, with the same lack of suc-
cess. In 1784 Alderman Sawbridge, a leader of the London reformers, introduced
another reform bill, against the advice of Pitt, who thought it inopportune, but
who spoke in its favor. In 1785 Pitt introduced still another bill, making it one of
his major proposals as head of the ministry. That is to say, parliamentary reform
was no longer a mere agitation carried on a wave of public opinion. It was a serious
measure offered in due parliamentary fashion by the government.
Pitt made his bill of 1785 as moderate as he thought possible in order to over-
come the opposition, such as that expressed by Burke. He proposed to abolish only
thirty- two of the most depopulated boroughs (in which the voters, if there were
any, would henceforth vote as residents of their counties), and to transfer the seats
thus made available either to the more populous counties or to the growing towns
16 Grattan, op.cit., III, 131.
17 Speeches are quoted at length in Wright, op.cit., II, 474–81.