The Sixth Of George I (1703 – 1727)
Above: Sixth of George I
The proceedings of the Irish parliament and the political history of the country during the eighteenth century have reference solely to the Protestant colony. The struggle’s of the Irish legislature for independence, culminating in Grattan’s parliament of 1782, were the struggles of the Protestants: the Catholics had no political existence, and had no part-could have no part-in any of these contests.
The Irish parliament, and the people of the colony in general, fearing further interference with their prosperity on account of the commercial jealousy of the English and despairing of being able to maintain then’ rights through their “own parliament, petitioned in 1703 for a parliamentary union with England. But the English government rejected the proposal.
The hostile attitude of the English government. towards Ireland produced the same result as in times of old (257)-a feeling of distrust and aversion among the colonists, in which the Irish parliament shared.
These feelings were intensified by what was called the Annesley case, which brought the English and Irish houses of lords into collision. A dispute about property arose in 1719 between two Irish persons, Hester Sherlock and Maurice Annesley, which the court of exchequer decided in favour of Annesley; but the Insli house of lords, on being appealed to, reversed this and gave Judgment in favour of Hester Sherlock. Annesley appealed to the English house of lords, who affirmed the exchequer decision, reversing that of the Irish lords; and they fined Burrowes the sheriff of Kildare for not putting Annesley in possession in obedience to their decree. But the Irish peers remitted the fine, and went farther by taking into custody the three barons of the court of exchequer.
The English parliament ended the dispute by passing, in 1719, a momentous act (known as “the Sixth of George I”) deciding that the English parliament had the right to make laws for Ireland; and depriving the Irish house of lords of the right to hear appeals.
Poynings’ act did not give the English parliament the power of legislating for Ireland (308), which was now for the first time asserted. The Sixth of George I quite took away the independence of the Irish parliament.
In 1719 the penal statutes against dissenters began to be relaxed. The penal laws had no effect whatever in suppressing the Catholic religion: we find the Irish parliament in 1723 complaining of the continued increase of Catholicity; and in this same year they proposed another bill of so extreme a character that it had to be suppressed on account of the indignation it caused in England.
