People, Place and Power – The Grand Jury System in Ireland

30 In most counties, control of the grand jury rested with a handful of the most influential landholders. Wakefield gives a damning account of events within the jury room: ‘The grand jury have the power of raising and expending immense sums of county money … A man of large property stands at the head of the list, and each succeeding member has a station assigned by the political barometer, according to his weight. At the bottom of the list comes those who hold qualifications under the great man; and, if their patron be desirous to have a new road made for his private accommodation … they must vote as their patron and instructor directs. If a sufficiency of voices can be collected to form a majority, to shew his impartiality, he never votes at all, leaving the whole to the decision of these independent country gentlemen; so that, in this manner, the most partial acts are passed, and the most flagrant abuses sanctioned, while the people are obliged to sustain these heavy burdens, and often without the hope of receiving any benefit from the proposed undertakings.’ 31 Catholics were rarely power players on grand juries even after the bar on Catholic involvement was lifted in 1793. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, for example, ‘no Catholics … are ever on the grand jury’ in Donegal. In County Down ‘Mr Byrne, a merchant of Dublin, has an estate here of £3,000 per annum, which is the only one in the county belonging to a Catholic, sufficient to give a qualification for being on the grand jury’. Even in counties where Protestant numbers were small Catholics jurors were few. In Longford ‘two Catholic gentlemen have property which qualifies them to be on the grand jury’ and in Tipperary ‘seven Roman Catholic gentlemen were formerly called on the grand jury, but since the power of nominating the sheriff has fallen into the hands of the Protestant party not one has been selected’. Even in Kerry, where the largest landowner was a Catholic, Lord Kenmare, and ‘other large estates belong to Catholics … there are never fewer than five or six of these people [Catholics] on the grand jury’. 32 Grand jury reforms were introduced during the nineteenth century, most notably by statutes passed in 1817 and 1836, which regulated laws relating to public works and the raising and spending of public money, but accusations of corruption and excess remained. 33 The virtual exclusion of Catholics from Irish grand jury rooms persisted into the 1890s when it was acknowledged that the system ‘has become inadequate – it is no longer in harmony with the spirit of the age, and it cannot be very much longer maintained’. 34 A new approach to local government in Ireland was urgently required which would align with the Conservative government’s approach of ‘killing Home Rule with kindness’ and which would bring Ireland into line with earlier reforms in Britain. 35