Mr. O ' Connell has issued the following manifesto against Lord Eliot ' s
new Irish Registration Bill.
" At a meeting of the Committee of the Loyal National Repeal Associa- tion of Ireland, held at the Corn Exchange Rooms, Thursday 4th April 1844, the following resolutions were agreed to— I. That although an unnecessary delay has taken place in the production and order for printing of the Irish Registration Bill, yet sufficient appears, from the statements in the public papers, to disclose the oppressive principles on which that bill is founded ; the purport and object of it being manifestly to hand over the representation of the counties in Ireland to the landed oligarchy, and totally to suppress in our counties the popular voice. " 2. That the legislative sanction to the measure of substituting for benefi- cial interest the solvent tenant-test, will, even by the avowal of the authors of this nefarious bill, annihilate two-thirds of the present ten-pound constituency it and thus, the authors of this measure unblushingly proclaim the deliberate In- tention to lessen by two-thirds the county constituency. " 3. That the franchise offered by the present bill, as a substitution for the present, and for that more enlarged constituency which Ireland has been loudly, and, indeed, vociferously demanding for years past, are twofold—namely, first, the 5/. perpetual freehold franchise, which, not requiring, as it ought to do, re- sidence in order to qualify the owner to vote, will afford an ample opportunity for creating fictitious votes ; while the second, namely the 30/. rating clause, will exceedingly restrict the number of those who can possess that franchise— a class that, in fact, will probably be found not to exceed 30,000 at the utmost; and as these persons may be, and almost universally will be tenants-at-will, it is manifest that their votes will be under the entire control of their landlords.
" 4. That the tenancy-at-will clause in the English Reform Bill, commonly called the Chandos clause, has been found by experience to work most mis- chievously, and, in fact, to destroy the independence of the English county voters. It is the worst species ot franchise known in England - and therefore it is brought forward as the principal franchise to be given tolreland ; while the low rates of franchise existing in England have been most unjustly taken away from the people of Ireland, and are, with similar injustice, still retained from them.
5. Another objection to the present bill is, that it makes no provision for an increase of the representation of the Irish nation.
"6 The admitted facts upon the discussiou in bringing in the bill, demon- strate how completely justifiable the call for the repeal of the Legislative Union by the Irish people was and is, and how little they have to expect from any other save an Irish Legislature.
"7. That we respectfully call upon the Irish Members to attend the progress of this most afflicting measure, and to give the bill the most decided opposition by all means known to the constitution of Parliament, however vexatious these means may be called. "DANIEL O'CONNELL, Chairman of the Committee."
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