The British Parliament 125
Irish Parliament. It was a blow at the entrenched Anglo- Irish oligarchy, since it
required election of the Irish Commons every eight years instead of only at the
death of the sovereign. In return, Townshend got the size of the British army
maintained by Ireland raised to 15,000 men, a measure to which the Irish reform-
ers consented reluctantly, since it was provided that 3,000 of these might be freely
sent out of Ireland, presumably, in 1767, for use in America. Further reforms, for
the next few years, met with obstruction. A proposal to tax the properties of absen-
tee landlords, of whom there were about a hundred in England, came to nothing.
One of the chief Irish absentees was the Marquis of Rockingham, who like others
of the higher aristocracy owned land in both islands. Burke advised against the
proposal; he thought it a good thing for Ireland that its magnates, who understood
Ireland and its needs, should reside abroad and have seats in the Parliament at
Westminster.
Many Irish were of the opinion, in 1775 and 1776, that if the British sub-
dued and taxed America they would begin to tax Ireland also. On the other hand,
the example of Ireland does not suggest that, if the Americans had not resisted,
their future under a triumphant British imperial system would have been very
inspiring.
In England dissatisfaction was confused, because shared in by men with differ-
ent aims. There were Whigs who, in their dislike for the King’s way of doing
things, meant to preserve the autonomy of Lords and Commons. And there were
emerging “radicals,” who believed that the House of Commons should be more
dependent on the voters. By “radicals,” a term not used until coined by the Ben-
thamites much later, are meant those who thought Parliament should afford a
more accurate representation of the people. They were “radical” because their basic
theory of representation differed from that enshrined in the constitution, or said to
be enshrined in it by conservatives. It is doubtful whether men of the thirteenth
century would have agreed with all that conservatives said on the subject five hun-
dred years later. Still, there was a difference between the surviving medieval and
the emerging modern ideas of who or what should be represented; the older the-
ory went in terms of estates or communities or corporate groups; the newer, in
terms of individual subjects or persons.
Discontent centered about the figure of John Wilkes. A man of unsavory pri-
vate habits, author of an “Essay on Woman” generally regarded as indecent, at least
until recent times, Wilkes was able, like Mirabeau, to build his public personality
on the espousal of liberal principles. He was no adventurer, but a member of Par-
liament in touch with Pitt and other Whigs displaced from office after the acces-
sion of George III. He founded a paper in 1762, the North Briton, to carry on a
verbal assault on the new government. The arguments were sometimes not on a
high level. Wilkes made good use of the fact that the Earl of Bute’s family name
was Stuart. In the North Briton No. 45, in April 1763, he denounced “ministerial
despotism,” “prostitution of the crown,” and vague lurking dangers of Stuart resto-
ration.^24 George III, personally offended, spurred on his willing ministers to sup-
press the North Briton. A general warrant, that is, one not specifying anyone by
24 See G. Nobbe, The North Briton: a Study in Political Propaganda (N.Y., 1939), 172–83, 202–24.