acts do not come before the House of Commons on Committee of Supply as
do those of the Chief Secretary on the occasion of the annual vote for
his salary.

As early as 1823 Joseph Hume ventilated the question of the abolition of
the Lord Lieutenancy, and a motion introduced by him to that effect in
1830 received a considerable measure of support. Lord Clarendon, who in
1847 succeeded Lord Bessborough as Viceroy, accepted the office on the
express condition that the Government should take the first opportunity
of removing the anomaly. In pursuance of this agreement Lord John
Russell, in 1850, introduced a Bill, which was supported by Peel, with
the abolition of the office for its object. On its second reading it was
passed by the House of Commons by 295 votes to 70. In spite of this
enormous majority in its favour the Bill was dropped in an unprecedented
manner, and never reached the Committee stage owing, it is said, to the
opposition of Wellington, who objected to the fact that it would deprive
the Crown of its direct control over the forces in Ireland and to the
fact that it would leave the Lord Mayor of Dublin, a person who was
elected by a more or less popular vote, as the chief authority in that
city.

In 1857 the question was mooted once more, but no action ensued; and
again, on the resignation of Lord Londonderry in 1889, a number of Irish
Unionists, headed by the Marquis of Waterford, urged Lord Salisbury to
consider the advisability of abolishing the office, together with the
Viceregal Court, which a recent French observer has stigmatised as
"peuplé de snobs, de parasites et de parvenus."[1] In the event Lord
Salisbury, so far from acceding to the request, nominated the Marquis of
Zetland to the vacant post, and the proposal to abolish it has not since
been raised in public. Men like Archbishop Whately, in the middle of the