紀要論文

政治的独立と便宜性:1780-82年アイルランドのイデオロギー的局面

Political Independence and Expediency : Ideological Aspects of Ireland in 1780-82

jpn

00229741

https://doi.org/10.15002/00002963

法政大学経済学部学会

69

4

1

32

2002-03-28

Version of Record

A significant source of political controversy in eighteenth-century Ireland can be found in the conflict between two paradigms: on the one hand, the paradigm of civil jurisprudence, which, on the other, confronts the paradigm of political economy. While the former stresses the vocabulary of rights, the latter is keyed to expediency. In addition to these, there was also a further civic-humanist paradigm that employed the vocabulary of civic virtue, and combined with the civil-jurisprudential paradigm to form the basis of Irish constitutionalism. In this paper, with the aim of demonstrating the process and development of the conflict between the two major paradigms, an analysis of contemporary political pamphleteering has been employed. For this purpose, the controversies on the establishment of an Irish national bank provided particularly useful material. When, in 1721, the national bank bill was introduced in the Irish parliament for the first time, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) and his party opposed it, and attempted to influence the public through their pamphlets. They claimed that the national bank would benefit only self-interested money-mongers and strengthen both the domestic monopoly and British influence, seen by Swift as the constitutional weakness of Ireland. Their arguments based on the civil-jurisprudential and civic-humanist paradigms had an immediate effect on public opinion, and in the end, the bill was rejected. For the next halfcentury, the bank project remained suspended. At the beginning of l780's, Ireland faced a grave financial crisis. As a possible remedy, the dormant national bank bill was again introduced. This time, welcomed by public opinion, it passed by a large majority in l782. The difference in public attitudes towards the bank proposal in l721 and l782 demonstrates the transformation in the main paradigm from civil jurisprudence to political economy. At the same time, however, Ireland possessed its own indigenous constitutionalism, which traces its origins from Swift and his Anglo-Irish circle. Patriotic MPs adopted it to support their claims for national independence. As a result of the defeat in the American Revolution, the British administration was obliged to alter the constitutional relationship between Ireland and Great Britain in accordance with its new imperial policy: the free trade doctrine. The administration sought to reunite both kingdoms with a solid relationship based on commerce. 'Expediency' became a key term in justification of policy. Nonetheless, it was not compatible with Irish constitutionalism. This incompatibility, which was in itself a paradigm difference, gave rise to frequent conflicts between the administration and patriotic Irish MPs．

Article

AN00071028