known they began to bestir themselves. At their instance Burke drew up a memorial to North, protesting against the English Privy Council letting the measure pass, should it be sent over,[1] and they asked Shelburne to join them in signing it. "When I wrote last," the latter says in writing to Chatham, "I mentioned nothing to your Lordship about Ireland, notwithstanding Lord Bessborough had written to me to Bowood, that he knew Administration had determined, in case a Bill came from Ireland taxing the estates of non-residents, to pass it here. The measure appearing incredibly unjust and impolitic, I own I wrote his Lordship a very civil answer, without giving the smallest credit in my own mind to his intelligence. It turns out, however, very true; and now the fact is ascertained, I profess to your Lordship I am entirely lost in endeavouring to account for the motives or consequences of it. I naturally distrust my own judgment, where I am so deeply interested; and, at any rate, I should be sorry to pay a greater regard to myself than becomes a liberal man, or may be likely to meet the public; who are not too apt to extend their feelings, even in cases of oppression, where the case does not exactly apply to the whole, or a majority of the whole."[2]
To the letter of the Whig Peers, North replied with an evasive answer. In 1767 a tax had been passed on the income of all places and pensions secured on the Irish revenue, but held by persons living out of Ireland, and it was difficult to draw any distinction in principle between this tax and that now proposed. But apart from this, any interference of the English Privy Council would at once have raised that already much-vexed question, viz.: whether or no Money Bills were or were not an exception to the powers it exercised over Irish legislation.[3] "I could not," writes Chatham in reply to Shelburne, "as a Peer of England advise the King, on principles of indirect accidental English policy, to reject a tax on absentees, sent over here as the genuine desire of the Commons of
- ↑ Memoirs of Rockingham, ii. 227.
- ↑ Shelburne to Chatham, October 17th, 1773.
- ↑ See Vol. I. Ch. IX. p. 340.
