Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
would be possible for any government to act more leniently towards
Ireland as regards taxation? She is exempt from her proportion of the
nine millions levied from the other portions of the United Kingdom;
and many of the local assessments to which her inhabitants are
subject, were, by special enactments, removed from the shoulders of
the occupiers of the soil, and placed on those of the proprietors.
Thus, then, under the head of taxation, no injustice can be said to be
committed.
The extent of the Irish representation, and the laws regulating the
elective franchise, both in the cities and counties, form a prominent
portion of Irish grievances; yet if the efficiency of the
representation is to be judged by the influence which it exercises on
the councils of the empire, or the registration laws be tested by the
results which they have produced, the Irish have little reason to
complain of either. The very exemption from taxation to the amount we
have already stated, proves one of two things--either that the British
minister and British representation are peculiarly partial to the
interests of Ireland, (which would destroy the favourite doctrine of
"English hatred and Saxon oppression;") or that the Irish
representation is powerful enough not only to protect their
constituents from injustice, but to secure them peculiar advantages.
That the amount of representation already enjoyed by Ireland is _at
least_ sufficient for all constitutional purposes, cannot be doubted;
for every one knows that by the Radical portion of it alone, an
administration odious to the people of Great Britain, and rejected by
their representatives, was for years kept in office, and that through
its instrumentality both Whig and Tory ministers have been compelled
to abandon measures which they believed to be beneficial, and which
they brought forward in a spirit of good feeling, and with a desire
to promote the best interests of the country.
In the first Parliament elected under the Reform Bill, and after the
system of registration now complained of came into operation, the
Irish representation consisted of
Liberals, 74
Conservatives, 31
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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