Page:The Irish Parliament; what it was, and what it did.djvu/35

 we have here to contend against the mass of another great executive power." It must be remembered too, as will be afterwards shown, that placemen and pensioners were not excluded from the Irish Parliament. No Place Bill was passed till 1793, and by its provisions members holding offices created since the date of its enactment were alone excluded. Nor was there till that year any appropriation of supplies. Pension and Place Bills, though frequently proposed, were strenuously resisted by the Government of the day for the purpose of corruption. "The number of placemen and pensioners sitting in this House," said Grattan in 1790, "equal near one-half of the whole efficient body." "I rise," said Curran, in the same debate, " in an assembly of three hundred persons, one hundred of whom have places and pensions."

From the very constitution of the Irish Parliament corruption was inevitable. "The Irish Parliament," says Mr. Lecky, "was in truth a body governed very constantly by corrupt motives, though probably not more so than the English Parliament in the time of Walpole." One of the most eloquent members of the Irish House of Commons traced, in the following words, the source of the corruption over which he mourned: "The gentlemen of this country," said Sir Laurence Parsons, from his place in Parliament in 1794, "if not poisoned by example and temptation,