="[65]
But, great and splendid as was Grattan's victory, there were two points
of weakness in the settlement of 1782, soon to be revealed by
experience. One was that although the Irish Parliament obtained the
right of legislation, the appointment of the Government and the
Executive was still placed in the hands of the Irish Privy Council, and
therefore of the British Central Government. That meant, in the end,
that the British Government still possessed the leverage for recovering
the powers of legislative initiative and legislative veto.
As far as Ireland possessed separate executive powers, she used them
with loyalty and patriotism. Take, for instance, her finance. Ireland
possessed, under the settlement, a separate Irish Exchequer, and the
British Government could levy no war taxes in Ireland, except with the
consent of the Irish Parliament. That gave to the Irish Parliament an
immense power of checking and hampering England in her struggle against
Napoleon. If we were to judge from some of the talk heard at the
present moment, one would take for granted that Ireland must have
refused all help to England in that struggle.
On the contrary, the Irish Parliament voted sums freely to Pitt for the
wars against France.
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