November 2012
History Selection |
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On this Day: November |
1st | 1883 - Mater
Infirmorm Hospital in Belfast took in its first patients. 1920 - 18-year-old Kevin Barry was executed for killing a British soldier. |
2nd | 1583 -
Earl of Desmond killed near Tralee by the O'Moriarty clan. Their chief
received 1000 pounds of silver from the English government. 1719 - The Toleration Act received Royal Assent. |
3rd | 1324 - Petronilla de
Meath became the first person to be burned at the stake for heresy. 1592 - Former Lord Deputy of Ireland Sir John Perrot died in the Tower of London. 1766 - The Parnell Baronetcy was created. |
4th | 1957 - Éamon
de Valera attended the coronation of Pope John Paul XXIII. 2001 - The Police Service of Northern Ireland was established. |
5th | 1705 - The Dublin Gazette, official newspaper of the British Government in Ireland, published its first edition. |
6th | 1981 - The Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald made an agreement with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to establish an Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Council . |
7th | 1580 - Siege of
Smerwick began. 1940 - Éamon de Valera let it be known that Irish ports would not be handed over to the British. |
8th | 1949 - Street
names in any language other than English were banned in Northern
Ireland. 1960 - Nine Irish soldiers serving with the United Nations were killed in the Congo. 1987 - The IRA killed eleven people at a Rememberance Service in Enniskillen. |
9th | 1907 - The
Irish International Exhibition ended after six months. 1919 - Labour leader James Larkin was arrested in New York for attempting to overthrow a government. |
10th | 1761 - The 'manifesto of intolerance' or 'Black Petition' against Catholics was signed in Galway. |
11th | 1583 - Earl of Desmond killed at Glenaginty. |
12th | 1957 - Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy was banned by censors. |
13th | 1579 - Youghall sacked by the Earl of Desmond. |
14th | 1866 - St
Peter's Cathedral in Belfast was dedicated. 1923 - William Butler Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. |
15th | 1985 - Taoiseach Charles Haughey and British PM Margaret Thatcher signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement. |
16th | 1994 - The Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition collapsed. |
17th | 1890 - Captain
Willie O'Shea divorced Kitty O'Shea, naming Charles Stewart Parnell as
co-respondent. 1926 - Following the killing of two gardaí, President W.T. Cosgrave introduced the Public Safety (Emergency Powers) Bill. 1948 - The Republic of Ireland Act 1948, aimed at repealing the External Relations Act of 1936, was introduced in Dáil Éireann. |
18th | 1688 - Irish immigrant Ann 'Goody' Glover became the last person to be hanged in Boston, America, as a witch. |
19th | 1798 - Death of
Theobald Wolfe Tone in Provost's Prison, Dublin. 1913 - The Irish Citizen Army was founded by James Connolly to protect workers in the general lockout. |
20th | 1936 - General Eoin O'Duffy led 600 men to fight for Franco in Spain. |
21st | 1920 - Bloody Sunday. Following the assassinations of 14 undercover British agents by Michael Collins' men, British forces killed 12 people at a GAA football match at Croke Park. |
22nd | 1932 - The Prince of Wales opened the new parliament building in Belfast. |
23rd | 1867 - William O'Mera Allen, Michael Larkin and William O'Brien were executed at Manchester. |
24th | 1922 - Erskine
Childers was executed for the possession of a gun which Michael Collins
had given him as a Christmas present. 1995 - A referendum in the Republic narrowly passed in favour of allowing divorce. |
25th | 1890 - Charles
Stewart Parnell was re-elected leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. 1892 - Douglas Hyde delivered a lecture to the Irish National Literary Society on 'the necessity of de-anglicising the Irish people'. 1913 - The Irish Volunteers were founded. 1948 - The Republic of Ireland Act was passed in Dáil Éireann. |
26th | 1998 - Tony Blair became the first British Prime Minister to address the Oireachtas. |
27th | 1977 - The co-founder of the Guinness Book of World Records, Ross McWhirter, was killed by the IRA. |
28th | 1783
- Henry Flood introduced a reform bill, after submitting it to the
Volunteer Convention. It would be rejected on the grounds that the
volunteers threatened the freedom of parliament. 1905 - Sinn Féin founded. 1913 - Andrew Bonar Law addressed a huge Unionist rally in the Theatre Royal in Dublin, encouraging Ulster to resist Home Rule. 1920 - A flying column led by Tom Barry killed 16 Auxiliaries at Kilmichael in County Cork. |
29th | 1641 - Battle of Julianstown. |
30th | 1947 - A
sixty day transport strike ended in Dublin. 1956 - Petrol rationing was introduced in response to the Suez Crisis. |
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MR. GRATTAN rose, and spoke as follows: I am now to address a free people: ages have passed away, and this is the first moment in which you could be distinguished by that appellation. I have spoken on the subject of your liberty so often, that I have nothing to add, and have only to admire by what Heaven-directed steps you have proceeded until the whole faculty of the nation is braced up to the act of her own deliverance. I found She is no longer a wretched colony, returning thanks to her governor for his rapine, and to her king for his oppression; nor is she now a squabbling, fretful sectary, perplexing her little wits, and firing her furious statutes with bigotry, sophistry, disabilities, and death, to transmit to posterity insignificance and war. |
![]() Henry Grattan |
Look to the rest of Your historians did not supply the want of monuments; on the contrary, these narrators of your misfortunes, who should have felt for your wrongs, and have punished your oppressors with oppressions, natural scourges, the moral indignation of history, compromised with public villainy and trembled; they excited your violence, they suppressed your provocation, and wrote in the chain which entrammelled their country. I am come to break that chain, and I congratulate my country, who, without any of the advantages I speak of, going forth as it were with nothing but a stone and a sling, and what oppression could not take away – the favour of Heaven, accomplished her own redemption, and left you nothing to add and everything to admire. You want no trophy now; the
records of Parliament are the
evidence of your glory: I beg to observe, that the deliverance of
Ireland has
proceeded from her own right hand; I rejoice at it, for had the great
requisition of your freedom proceeded from the bounty of England, that
great
work would have been defective both in renown and security: it was
necessary
that the soul of the country should have been exalted by the act of her
own
redemption, and that England should withdraw her claim by operation of
treaty, and
not of mere grace and condescension; a gratuitous act of Parliament,
however
express, would have been revocable; but the repeal of her claim under
operation
of treaty is not: in that case, the legislature is put in covenant, and
bound
by the law of nations – the only law that can legally bind
Parliament. Never
did this country stand so high. I rejoice that the people are a party to this treaty, because they are bound to preserve it. There is not a man of forty shillings freehold that is not associated in this our claim of right, and bound to die in its defence; cities, counties, associations, Protestants and Catholics; it seems as if the people had joined in one great national sacrament; a flame has descended from Heaven on the intellect of Ireland, plays round her head, and encompasses her understanding with a consecrated glory. There are some who think, and a
few who declare, that the
associations to which I refer are illegal: come, then, let us try the
charge,
and state the grievance. And first, I ask, What were the grievances? an
army
imposed on us by another country, that army rendered perpetual; the
privy-council of both countries made a part of our legislature; our
legislature
deprived of its originating and propounding power; another country
exercising
over us supreme legislative authority; that country disposing of our
property
by its judgments, and prohibiting our trade by its statutes; these were
not
grievances, but spoliations, which left you nothing. When you contended
against
them, you contended for the whole of your condition; when the minister
asked,
by what right? we refer him to our Maker: we sought our privileges by
the right
which we have to defend our property against a robber, our life against
a
murderer, our country against an invader, whether coming with civil or
military
force – a foreign army, or a foreign legislature. This is a
case that wants no
precedent; the revolution wanted
no
precedent; for such things arrive to reform a course of bad precedents,
and,
instead of being founded on precedent, become such: the gazing world,
whom they
come to save, begins by doubt and concludes by worship. Let other
nations be
deceived by the sophistry of courts: Ministers, we mean the
ministers who have gone out (I rely
on the good intentions of the present), former ministers, I say, have
put
questions to us; we beg to put questions to them. They desired to know
by what
authority this nation has acted. This nation desires to know by what
authority
they have acted. By what authority did Government enforce the articles
of war?
By what authority does Government establish the post-office? By what
authority
are our merchants bound by the charter of the East India Company? By
what
authority has I do not mean to say that there were not divers violent and unseemly resolutions; the immensity of the means was inseparable from the excess. Such are the great works of nature; such is the sea; but, like the sea, the waste and excess were lost in the advantage: and now, having given a parliament to the people, the volunteers will, I doubt not, leave the people to Parliament, and thus close, specifically and majestically, a great work, which will place them above censure and above panegyric. These associations, like other institutions, will perish: they will perish with the occasion that gave them being, and the gratitude of their country will write their epitaph, and say: “This phenomenon, the departed volunteer, justified only by the occasion, the birth of spirit and grievances, with some alloy of public evil, did more public good to Ireland than all her institutions; he restored the liberties of his country, and thus from the grave he answers his enemies”. Connected by freedom as well as by allegiance, the two nations, Great Britain and Ireland, form a constitutional confederacy as well as one empire; the crown is one link, the constitution another; and, in my mind, the latter link is the more powerful. You can get a king anywhere,
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As to the legislative powers of the Privy Councils, I conceive them to be utterly inadmissible, against the constitution, against the privileges of Parliament, and against the dignity of the realm. Do not imagine such power to be theoretical; it is in a very high degree a practical evil. I have here an inventory of bills altered and injured by the interference of Privy Councils; money bills originated by them, protests by the Crown in support of those money bills, prorogation following these protests. I have here a mutiny bill of 1780, altered by the Council, and made perpetual; a Catholic bill in 1778, where the Council struck out the clause repealing the test act; a militia bill, where the Council struck out the compulsory clause requiring the Crown to proceed to form a militia, and left in options with His Majesty’s minister whether there should be a militia in Ireland. I have the money bill of 1775, where the Council struck out the clause enabling His Majesty to take a part of our troops for general service, and left it to the minister to withdraw the forces against act of parliament. I have to state the altered money bill of 1771, the altered money bill of 1775, the altered money bill of 1780; the day would expire before I could recount their ill-doings. I will never consent to have men (God knows whom), ecclesiastics, etc., men unknown to the constitution of Parliament, and known only to the minister who has breathed into their nostrils an unconstitutional existence, steal to their dark divan to do mischief and make nonsense of bills, which their Lordships, the House of Lords, or we, the House of Commons, have thought good and fit for the people. No; those men have no legislative qualifications; they shall have no legislative power. |
![]() The Volunteers
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1st, The repeal of the perpetual mutiny bill, and the dependence of the Irish army on the Irish Parliament; 2nd, The abolition of the legislative power of the Council. 3rd,
The
abrogation of the claim of 4th, The exclusion of the English House of Peers, and of the English King’s Bench, from any judicial authority in this realm. 5th, The restoration of the Irish Peers to their final judicature. The independency of the Irish Parliament to its sole and exclusive legislature. These are my terms. I will take nothing from the Crown. Mr. Grattan then moved, by way of amendment: That an humble address be presented to His Majesty, to return His Majesty the thanks of this House for his most gracious message to this House, signified by His Grace the Lord-lieutenant. That, thus encouraged by his
royal interposition, we shall
beg leave, with all duty and affection, to lay before His Majesty the
causes of
our discontents and jealousies. To assure His Majesty that his subjects
of To assure His Majesty that we
have seen with concern certain
claims advanced by the Parliament of Great Britain, an act entitled
“An act for
the better securing the dependency of To assure His Majesty that His Majesty’s Commons of Ireland do most sincerely wish that all bills which become law in Ireland should receive the approbation of His Majesty under the seal of Great Britain; but that yet we do consider the practice of suppressing our bills in the council of Ireland, or altering the same anywhere, to be another just cause of discontent and jealousy. To assure His Majesty that an act entitled “An act for the better accommodation of His Majesty’s forces”, being unlimited in duration, and defective in other instances, but passed in that shape from the particular circumstances of the times, is another just cause of discontent and jealousy in this kingdom. That we have submitted these,
the principle causes of the
present discontent and jealousy of That we have the greatest reliance on His Majesty’s wisdom, the most sanguine expectations from his virtuous choice of a Chief Governor, and great confidence in the wise, auspicious, and constitutional councils which we see with satisfaction His Majesty has adopted. That we have, moreover, a high sense and veneration for the British character, and do therefore conceive that the proceedings of this country, founded as they were in right, and tempered by duty, must have excited the approbation and esteem, instead of wounding the pride, of the British nation. And we beg leave to assure His
Majesty, that we are the more
confirmed in this hope, inasmuch as the people of this kingdom have
never
expressed a desire to share the freedom of England, without declaring a
determination to share her fate likewise, standing and falling with the
British
nation. |
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