Page:The Irish Parliament; what it was, and what it did.djvu/21

 peerage may be obtained by any ruffian who possesses borough interest?" Grattan accuses the ministers of the Crown of having " introduced a trade or commerce, or rather brokerage of honours, and thus establishing in the money arising from that sale a fund for corrupting representation." " The sale of peerages," says Curran, " is as notorious as the sale of cast-horses in the castle-yard; the publicity the same, the terms not very different, the horses not warranted sound, the other animals warranted rotten." " The Minister," says Mr. Grattan in another debate, "sells your Lords and he buys your Commons." "The Irish Minister has taken money for seats in the peers under contract that it should be applied to purchase seats in the Commons." "I have good reason to believe," says George Ponsonby, "that peerages have been sold for money, nay more, I have proof; give me a Committee, and if I do not establish my charge degrade me, let me no more enjoy the character of an honest man. I dare you to it, and I risk my reputation on establishing the fact." Edmund Burke, in a second letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, speaks of the sale of peerages as a matter of notoriety. "I like Parliamentary reforms," he remarks, " as little as any man who has boroughs to sell for money or for peerages in Ireland." The sale of peerages and the purchase with the pro-