past, the public finances had been sinking into a more and more
scandalous condition. Taxation was by no means heavy, but pensions and
sinecures multiplied, and the debt swelled. Inevitably there grew up
within Parliament a small independent opposition which would not be
bribed into conniving at the ruin of Ireland, while even bought placemen
were stung into throwing their votes into the Irish rather than the
English scale. Frequent efforts were made to use the insufficiency of
the hereditary revenue as a lever for gaining control of finance and for
obtaining domestic reform. An Octennial Act, passed in 1768, went a
little way towards transforming Parliament from a permanent privileged
Committee, under the control of the Executive, into the semblance at
least of a free Assembly, and the first dissolution under this Act, in
1776, produced the famous Parliament which, though elected on the same
narrow and corrupt basis as before, in the space of six years first
admitted the principle of toleration for all creeds, and wrested from
English hands commercial and legislative autonomy. It came too late to
avert--if, indeed, it could ever have averted--the implication of
Ireland in the American War, its predecessor of 1775 having, in defiance
of Irish opinion, subscribed an Address to the Crown, expressing
"abhorrence" of the American revolt and "inviolable attachment to the
just rights" of the King's Government, and having obediently voted four
thousand Irish troops for the war.

Nor, for all the impassioned eloquence of Grattan and Hussey Burgh, did
the real driving-power of the new Parliament come from within its own
ranks, but from the unrepresented multitude outside. A clause removing
the test from Dissenters was struck out of the Catholic Relief Act of
1778, mainly owing to dictation from England, but partly from resentment
against Presbyterian sympathy with the American cause. It was only in
1780, when the Presbyterians were enrolled in that formidable