Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/338

 introduction of the absentee tax. Harcourt writing to North, 27 Nov. 1773, says: ‘Mr. Flood was violent and able in behalf of the bill in a degree almost surpassing everything he had ever uttered before’ (The Harcourt Papers, ix. 117). But in spite of his eloquence, and without any open hostility on the part of the government, the measure was defeated. After a long period of negotiation Flood in October 1775 accepted the post of vice-treasurer of Ireland, a sinecure worth 3,500l. a year. Flood contended that after Townshend's recall ‘the only way anything could be effected for the country was by going along with government and making their measures diverge towards public utility’ (, Life, i. 206); and he seems to have thought that by obtaining a seat in the Irish privy council he would be better able to influence the government for the good of the country. The history of his negotiations for office, as related in the letters of Harcourt and Blaquiere, is by no means creditable to him, and Harcourt, writing to North on 9 Oct. 1775, says: ‘Since I was born I never had to deal with so difficult a man, owing principally to his high-strained ideas of his own great importance and popularity. But the acquisition of such a man, however desirable at other times, may prove more than ordinarily valuable in the difficult times we may live to see, and which may afford him a very ample field for the display of his great abilities’ (The Harcourt Papers, ix. 361). After the general election in 1776 Flood was unseated for Callan, but was subsequently returned at a by-election for the borough of Enniskillen. During Harcourt's administration, and while Flood was in office, an embargo was placed on Irish exports for two years, and four thousand Irish troops, termed by Flood ‘armed negotiators,’ were sent to America. Both these measures were very unpopular, and to the latter Grattan afterwards referred when describing Flood as standing ‘with a metaphor in his mouth and a bribe in his pocket,’ and giving ‘a base suffrage against the liberty of America, the eventual liberty of Ireland, and the cause of mankind’ (, Life, iii. 94). When Buckingham became lord-lieutenant, Flood frequently absented himself from the meetings of the privy council, and rarely voted for the government in the House of Commons. He identified himself with the volunteer movement and became colonel of one of the regiments. In 1779, though still a minister, Flood spoke in support of the amendment to the address in favour of free trade. At length his attitude became so hostile to the government that at the request of the Earl of Carlisle, Buckingham's successor in office, he was in the autumn of 1781 removed from the post of vice-treasurer as well as from his seat in the privy council. When Flood once more took his seat on the opposition benches he found his popularity gone, and his place as leader of the popular party filled by Grattan. On 11 Dec. 1781, in a speech lasting three hours and a half, Flood maintained that the power of the Irish privy council to alter heads of bills before sending them to England rested solely on an erroneous decision of the judges in 1692, but the committee for inquiry for which he asked was refused by a considerable majority (Parl. Reg. i. 153–74). A few days afterwards he spoke in the debate on Yelverton's bill for the repeal of Poynings's law, and grievously complained that ‘after a service of twenty years in the study of a peculiar question it was taken out of his hands and entirely wrested from him.’ ‘The hon. gentleman (he added) was erecting a temple of liberty; he hoped therefore at least he should be allowed a niche in the fane.’ Whereupon Yelverton cleverly retorted that, as Flood seemed to think he had espoused this question, he would remind him that according to the law, ‘if any man married a wife and lives with her in constancy it was a crime to take her away from him; but if a man shall separate from his wife, desert and abandon her for seven years, another then might take her up and give her his protection’ (ib. p. 189). On 22 Feb. 1782 Flood supported Grattan's motion for an address to the king in favour of the independence of the Irish parliament, and in the same year an attempt was made by Montgomery in the House of Commons to obtain Flood's restoration to his old office of vice-treasurer. The Duke of Portland, who succeeded Carlisle as viceroy in April 1782, being anxious to enter into negotiations with Flood, asked for authority to offer him a seat in the Irish privy council, if he should deem it expedient. The nomination, which was intended to be at the option of the viceroy, was by some extraordinary mistake sent directly to the ‘Gazette,’ and Flood straightway refused to accept the nomination. Legislative independence having been obtained, Flood took up the subject of ‘simple repeal,’ and contended that the mere repeal of the Declaratory Act (6 Geo. I, c. 5) was not sufficient, but that an act of parliament expressly disclaiming the right to legislate for Ireland should be obtained without delay. In this view he was supported by the greater portion of the volunteers, and by this means Flood in some measure regained his old popularity. Grattan differed with him on the ques-