IRISH PEERAGES BILL, (Hansard, 12 February 1908)

§ MR. SWIFT MACNEILL

said he made no apology for asking leave to introduce a Bill to amend the Statutes in reference to the Irish Peerage, because everything in relation to the Irish Peerage had been rendered interesting by recent events. He would say in reference to the Bill that he would not have introduced it, and certainly not in that way, if he had not the support of Members of his own Party and of Members representing every section of Liberal opinion in the House; and for fear the Bill should be considered revolutionary in any way, he would state to the House that it was the exact Bill that was introduced and carried in all its stages in the House of Lords thirty-two years ago. It was carried by the Ministry of that day and brought down to this House under the care of Lord Ashbourne, then Mr. Edward Gibson, but somehow or other it was lost. It was a Bill in one clause and was simply this: to repeal the various statutes by which, and under statutory powers, Irish peerages were created. It had nothing to do with prerogative, because Irish peerages were not now created under the old power of prerogative, but under statute, with very fixed limitations. Perhaps he might be allowed to explain that. It had been frequently said that at the time of the Scottish Union the prerogative for creating Scottish peers was abolished, and that at the time of the Irish Union the prerogative for creating Irish peers was not abolished but was limited. That was not true. There was no prerogative abolished at the time of the Scottish Union. Scotland was a separate kingdom until the year 1707, and her king had the right of creating peerages, and when that kingdom was fused in England the Scottish peers became by statute peers of Great Britain. In the Scottish Union Bill, which he had carefully read, there was not one single word about any abolition of the prerogative, nor was there in the Irish Act of Union, which was exactly on the lines of the Scottish Union until this point, that a provision was made that when three Irish peerages extant at the time of the Union became extinct one Irish 55 peerage might be created, until the Irish peerage was reduced to the number of 100. By Irish peerages, he did not mean peers of Great Britain with Irish titles and peerages, but peers of Ireland, who had no hereditary seats in the House of Lords. When the number of Irish peerages was reduced to 100 the words of the statute were imperative that the number of peers should be filled up and kept on at that number. Sir John Coleridge gave that opinion in the House of Lords, and if he was right, to show the absurdity of the thing, eight Irish peerages should be filled up at this moment. He would only use the literal words that could be quoted out of the mouth of an Irish peer in reference to this position. In the Irish Parliament at the time of the Union, when this provision for having what they called a degraded Irish peerage was proposed by the Government, it was fiercely opposed. He had in his hands a copy of a private letter written by Lord Cornwallis, the Lord-Lieutenant of the Union, to the Duke of Portland, who was the medium of communication between the Irish Government and this country. In 1800, when the Union was well advanced, he said in that letter that— So violent a spirit had arisen amongst the Irish lords and amongst those who were the best friends of the Government, against the reservation of the power of creating Irish peers after the Union, that it was the general opinion of His Majesty's principal servants there that the clause could not be carried. The language amongst peers was that they could not abandon the interests of their posterity, that the persons who were thereafter to be created peers of Ireland would be men of weight and consequence in England, who would always succeed to the vacancies in the representative peerage, and that the families of the ancient peers would be reduced to a state of contempt and insignificance. They were for once good prophets, but when they made that prophecy they thought that an English gentleman without any peerage at all would be given an Irish peerage, that in due course of time, through some influence or other, he would be made an Irish representative peer, and they thought it was very horrible and degrading; but they never contemplated that an English gentleman would become an Irish peer thirty years after the last Irish peer was created, and that he should ask that the 56 Irish peers should elect him as a representative peer. They never considered that, although they were prescient enough. In 1874, on account of a Motion instituted in the House of Lords to prevent the creation of fresh Irish peers, a special Committee of the House of Lords was created under the Chairmanship of Lord Rosebery, and that Committee reported unanimously that the Irish peerage was an anomaly, and that any fresh creation of an Irish peerage was not right or necessary and was a highly unconstitutional act. After that the Bill of which he had made a copy passed the House of Lords unanimously, and what he asked leave to do was to produce now what passed the House of Lords thirty years ago and prevent for ever after such an anomaly as they had witnessed recently in the Irish peerage election. He asked leave to introduce the Bill.