'Connell at the Clare election, were disfranchised to the
number of 200,000, and in this way was gilded the pill for the purpose
of placating the English governing classes. The same principle was
followed in 1841, when the Corporations of Ireland were thrown open to
Catholics, for out of some sixty-five all except ten or eleven were
abolished. The results of the disfranchising clauses of the Act of 1829
are to be seen in the fact that in 1850, while in England the electors
were twenty-eight per cent. of the adult male population, in Ireland
they were only two per cent. A Bill introduced in that year would, if it
had passed into law, have raised the percentage in Ireland to fifteen.
The Lords amendments altered the percentage to eight, and in its final
form it was left at about ten. Instead of imposing an L8 rental
qualification one of L12 was imposed, and by this means were excluded
900,000 voters who would have secured the suffrage under the lower
qualification. Speaking of the Franchise, Mr. Lecky, in "Democracy and
Liberty," declared that--"The elements of good government must be sought
for in Ireland, on a higher electoral plane than in England." This is a
matter of opinion, and I find it interesting to reflect that the ablest
Conservative of my acquaintance--a Tory of the school of Lord Eldon--has
on several occasions expressed to me a deliberate opinion in exact
contradiction of this, to the effect that owing to the relative mental
calibres of the races there is need of a higher franchise qualification
in England than in either Ireland or Scotland. Speculations of this
kind, however, are unprofitable, seeing that the competency of the Irish
peasants as citizens has been acknowledged by the grant of a wide
household suffrage safeguarded by a careful system of ballot.

When the last great extension of the franchise to householders in the
country was made in 1884 there were those who asserted that its
application to Ireland would be folly. Mr. W.H. Smith, the leader of the
Conservatives in the House of Commons, declared that any extension of
the suffrage in Ireland would lead to "confiscation of property, ruin of
industry, withdrawal of capital, misery, wretchedness, and war"; the
leading Whig statesman said the concession to Ireland of equal electoral
privileges with those of England would be folly, but in spite of these
gloomy prognostications the omission of Ireland from the scope of the
Act was not proposed by Con