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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 806: MEETING OF PARLIAMENT.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

MEETING OF PARLIAMENT.

A.D. 1822

On the meeting of parliament in January, one of the first subjects taken into consideration was the state of Ireland. For some years that country had been comparatively peaceable, but distress and outrage were again walking hand in hand in every part. To repress the spirit of lawless outrage, the Marquess of Londonderry—Lord Castlereagh, who had succeeded to that title at his father’s death—introduced and carried two bills for arming the administration with additional powers, the insurrection act, and the suspension of the habeas corpus. Several members wished the state of Ireland to be thoroughly investigated; but this did not accord with the views of ministers. At length a famine, from the failure of the potatoe-crop in 1821, spread over the country, and disease waited in its train. A fever, of the typhus kind, swept off its thousands, while starvation carried off its thousands more. Government, on discovering this, placed £500,000 at the disposal of Lord Wellesley, the lord-lieutenant, to be dispensed in charitable relief, or in employing the poor on works of public utility, and private charity afforded even more effectual aid; but still the people of Ireland could not be wholly rescued from the calamity which had overtaken them. Many were snatched from the jaws of death by this timely relief, but many more perished.