An Orgy Of Self-Interest & Corruption
So, who benefited most from having new roads were built, and ensuring that existing roads were kept in good repair? Why, the self-same large landowners who sat on the grand juries, of course!
The better connected their tenants were to the road system, the more productive they could be, and the higher the rents they could be charged.
And who paid the county cess, which funded all of this? Not the landowners but the tenants; they had no say in determining how much cess was levied, and they had no say in how it was spent. The cry ‘No taxation without representation’, heard during the American revolutionary wars of the 1770s, was a pipedream in Ireland.
Herring states:
“Roadmaking was almost a preserve of the Gentry. Though there was no stipulation as to the status of the individual applying to the grand jury, the builders of presentment roads were invariably landowners, clergy, and big tenants. Some almost revolutionised the communications in their districts or became the driving personalities behind works of more than local importance, men like…Lord Downshire who brought enthusiasm to the construction of a revised line between Loughbrickland and Banbridge in the years 1794-7.”
So, from the late 1700s, for many decades, the landlord class presided over an orgy of roadbuilding, fuelled by mutual back-scratching. Most presentments were nodded through rather than being minutely scrutinised; why would one habitual grand juror object to a presentment from another habitual grand juror, when he might need that individual’s support for one of his own presentments at the next, or even the same assizes? The system had become thoroughly corrupt.
One commentator wrote:
“…expensive bridges have been thrown over rivers, at places most unfrequented, merely to embellish the view from the windows of a neighbouring palace.”
County Maps
In theory, a good county map would show whether a presentment for a new road was necessary and useful. But few presentments were rejected for such a ‘superficial’ reason, and the county map was not much more than somewhere to record them.
A proposal that landlords should be made to pay the county cess instead of their tenants was never enacted, on the basis that landlords would just raise rents at the first opportunity, to compensate them for their loss of income, and nothing would change; the poor would still pay for the rich.
Too Many Little Roads
As already noted, the system was very successful in creating a dense network of local roads – in fact, too successful. A report in Saunders’ News-Letter in July 1818 records Baron McClelland’s opening address to the grand jury at Armagh Summer Assizes.
“He next averted to the state of the roads in the county and requested that they would use economy in the expenditure of the public money – for in his opinion, there were already too many roads. The cross roads were so numerous that it was difficult for the stranger to find the road he wanted to go. He directed their attention to the great line of communications from the North to the South, and also to the roads leading to sea-ports.”
How easy it was for strangers to navigate the local road network was probably of absolutely no concern to those behind the presentments; new roads were all about self-interest.
A Perfect Target For Satire
The presentment system was ruthlessly satirised in William Carleton[1]’s snappily-titled 1848 novel ‘Valentine McClutchy, the Irish Agent. Or, the Chronicles of Castle Cumber; Together With the Pious Aspirations, Permissions, Vouchsafements and Other Sanctified Privileges of Solomon McSlime, a Religious Attorney’.
In one passage, grand jurors discuss each other’s presentments:
“But”, replied Val, “who ever heard of a bridge without water; and I know there’s not a stream within three miles of you.” “Never mind that” replied McSmall “let me have the bridge first and we’ll see what can be done about the water afterwards. If God in his mercy would send a wet winter next season, who knows but we might present for a new river at January assizes.”
“You must have it” said Deaker, “give McSmall the bridge and, as he says, we’ll afterwards see what can be done for a river for it.” The bridge was not only passed but built, and actually stands to this day, an undeniable monument of the frugality and honesty of grand jurors, and the affection with which they were then capable of bearing to each other when their interests happened to be at stake.”
Even The Government Is Appalled!
Multiple attempts were made to curb the worst excesses of Irish grand jury road presentments by the passage of no fewer than 12 separate acts between 1804 and 1819!
But nothing much changed; root-and-branch reform was needed; the system remained fundamentally corrupt. In February 1833, Edward Stanley, Secretary For Ireland, addressed Parliament:
“The present system of Grand Jury presentments presses most heavy on the industry of the people; there have been more complaints on that subject than on any other. There is, perhaps, none on which all classes of men are so united as to the evil to which it subjects the country.
“…They exercised a control which was not subject to public opinion…their deliberations were carried on in private…their presentments were in like manner secrets and no check whatever could be placed upon them. Without any intention of being corrupt…this necessarily lead to corruption. It was impossible it should not be so. It was the essence of the thing that it must.”
Harsh words, especially coming from the government of the day rather than an Irish opposition politician!
Something had to change – and the main catalyst was finally managing to appoint County Surveyors for the whole of Ireland in May 1834.
Next: County Surveyors
[1] In 1862, Carleton also published the historical novel Redmond Count O’Hanlon, the Irish rapparee.