Irish Patriot Party

Irish Patriot Party
Leader	Henry Flood (1760's-1775) Henry Grattan (1775-1801)
Founded	1760's
Dissolved	1801
Ideology	Irish nationalism Irish autonomy Classical liberalism Free Trade

The Irish Patriot Party was the name of a number of different political groupings in Ireland throughout the 18th century. They were primarily supportive of Whig concepts of personal liberty combined with an Irish identity that rejected full independence, but advocated strong self-government within the British Empire.

Due to the discriminatory penal laws, the Irish Parliament at the time was exclusively Anglican Protestant. Their main achievement was the Constitution of 1782, which gave Ireland legislative independence.

In 1689 a short-lived "Patriot Parliament" had sat in Dublin before James II, and briefly obtained de facto legislative independence, while ultimately subject to the English monarchy. The parliament's membership mostly consisted of land-owning Roman Catholic Jacobites who lost the ensuing War of the Grand Alliance in 1689–91.

The name was then used from the 1720s to describe Irish supporters of the British Whig party, specifically the Patriot faction within it. Swift's "Drapier's Letters" and earlier works by Domville, Molyneaux and Lucas are seen as precursors, deploring the undue control exercised by the British establishment over the Irish political system. In contrast with the 1689 parliament, this movement consisted of middle-class Protestants. The appointed senior political and church officials were usually English-born.

The "Money Bill dispute" of 1753–56 arose from the refusal of Henry Boyle, an MP and Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland, to allow an Irish revenue surplus to be paid over to London. Supported by the Earl of Kildare and Thomas Carter, Boyle was dismissed by the viceroy Dorset, and then appealed to public opinion as a defender of Irish interests. In 1755 the next viceroy arranged a favourable compromise, and Boyle was re-instated and created Earl of Shannon.

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