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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
There is a well-established notion among Irish and British historians that local self-government began in Ireland in 1898, when the Local Government Act created the system of elective county councils to replace the old grand jury system in the government of the counties. The grand juries, it is well-known, were instruments of the Irish “landed interest”—the gentry and aristocracy—whose dominance over these bodies was protected by a rigid system of property qualifications and appointing procedures that admitted only trustworthy landowners to the jury seats. Since only the juries were empowered to levy and expend the county tax known as the “cess,” they were therefore also able to dominate the lesser county authorities, the county and baronial presentment sessions, through control of the purse. When the 1898 act abolished this aristocratic system and replaced it with a new system of representative county and district councils, the result was a de facto transfer of power in local government from the old landowning class to the peasantry. This view, which was first promoted by the founders of the 1898 act, has been repeated by numerous historians since then, and for lack of evidence to the contrary it prevails today.
Willian O'Brien, the nationalist M.P. and editor of the Parnellite newspaper United Ireland, might well have disputed this view if he were alive today. As a practicing politician who understood well the ways in which power can be exercised, he was more inclined to look at the practical operations of public bodies rather than their constitutions to determine which party held the real power. In his Recollections, which were published in 1905, O'Brien reminisced about the turbulent years of the great “land war” of 1879-1882 and recalled how, in 1882, that historic struggle between Irish landlord and tenant for control of the soil focused for a time in a struggle for control of the Irish boards of guardians, the 163 bodies which administered the Irish poor law in the localities.
This article is based on the author's doctoral dissertation, “The Irish Boards of Poor Law Guardians, 1872-1886: A Revolution in Local Government,” University of Chicago, 1974. A different version of the article was presented to the Midwest Conference on British Studies, University of Minnesota, October 26-27, 1974. Maps by David M. Thorndike, Department of Geography, Bellevue College, Nebraska.
1 A good brief description of the constitution and functions of the grand juries, boards of guardians, and other local government bodies in Ireland toward the end of the nineteenth century may be found in Bailey, William F., Local and Centralised Government in Ireland, (London, 1888).Google Scholar
2 For the classic statement see Barker, Ernest, Ireland in the Last Fifty Years, 1866-1916, (Oxford, 1917), p. 22.Google Scholar
3 O'Brien, William, Recollections, (New York, 1905), p. 413.Google Scholar
4 Great Britain. Parliamentary Papers (Commons), 1874, vol. 56 (Accounts and Papers, no. 253). “Return from each Poor Law Union in Ireland, of the number of persons entitled to vote in each such union for Poor Law Guardians…,” p. 927.
5 For the social composition of the boards in the 1870s see chapters 1 and 2 of the author's dissertation, Supra.
6 Clark, Sam, “The Social Composition of the Land League,” Irish Historical Studies, 17 (September 1971), pp. 451–57.Google Scholar
7 O'Brien, William, Recollections, p. 413.Google Scholar
8 An excellent short discussion of the boards of guardians history and functions to about 1880 may be found in O'Shaughnessy, Richard, “Local Government and Taxation in Ireland,” in Probyn, J. W., ed., Local Government and Taxation in the United Kingdom, (London, 1882).Google Scholar
9 Grimshaw, T.W., Facts and Figures about Ireland (Dublin, 1893), p. 49.Google Scholar
10 Great Britain. Parliamentary Papers (Commons), 1884. vol. 68 (Accounts and Papers, no. 335). “Return of the number of attendances of Poor Law Guardians at the board meetings of each Poor Law Union in Ireland, in the year ended 25th March 1884, pp. 55-59.
11 O'Brien, Conor Cruise, Parnell and His Party, 1880-1890, (Oxford, 1957), pp. 127–132.Google Scholar
12 See, for example, Freeman's Journal, April 12, 1880.
13 Roscommon Journal, May 25, 1872; Limerick Chronicle, April 6, 1972.
14 Nation, August 15, 1874.
15 Freeman's Journal, March 1, 1881.
16 These elections are discussed extensively for each year in the author's dissertation, Supra, Prologue-Chap. 5.
17 First published under the title of Thoms's Irish Almanac and Official Directory (Dublin, 1844-).Google Scholar
18 Great Britain. Parliamentary Papers (Commons), 1876, vol. 80 (Accounts and Papers). C. 1492. “Return of Owners of Land, of one acre and upwards in the several counties, counties of cities, and counties of towns in Ireland.…”
19 Valuation Records, General Valuation Office, Dublin.
20 After 1886 the land act of 1881 and the Land Purchase “Ashbourne” Act of 1885 began to have an increasing effect on land tenure relationships, as large numbers of tenant-occupiers began to take over the title to their holdings and themselves became owners. Thus the distinction between owner and tenant, which was useful for the earlier years as a way of distinguishing between the two groups politically, became less useful. In other words, the fact that a man was a landowner did not necessarily signify that he was also a member of the old landed interest. For this reason, I thought it best to terminate the survey in 1886, rather than run the risk of distorting the data by the introduction of a new variable.
