THE IRISH PARLIAMENT HOUSE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2152, 24 April 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE IRISH PARLIAMENT HOUSE.

At a time when an Innh Parliament is so much talked about, many would like to know something about tho House in which it will probably sit. The hou*e which goes by the namo of " GruttanV Parliament Houm " is located in Dublin. The portion which wu resorted for the House of Lord* (which is not likely to be wanted) remains to the present duy unaltered, but debased to the pecuniary purposes of tho Bank of Ireland, still adorned, however, we beliero, with the tapestries of tho battle of the Boyne and the seige of Derry. which gratified the Protestants and Peer* a century ngo The Commons room was originally built in an octagonal form. It wat fifty-five feet in diameter and was inscribed in a square ; the seats were disposed round the centre of the room in concentric circles rising one above the other ; n dome above Corinthian columns crowned the whole ; there wag a gallery five feet broad for strangers. It wag to this dome that Grattan alluded in. his of arms with Flood, when looking hard at his predecessor io the leadership of the then Home Rulers, rery much as we may imagine Mr Davitt a few yearn hence may be looking at Mr Secretary Parnell, he likened him to "an illomened bird of night hovering over the dome with sepulchral note, a cadaverous aspect and a broken beak, ready to stoop and pounc* upon his prey." From all which it will be seen that the dimensions were, according -to modern ideas, extremely minute, and that thtre can scarcely have been room to seat the three hundred members of whom the House was composed. It was this octagonal building which, ou February 27, 1792, while the House was witting, about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, accidentally caught fire and was entirely consumed. Ie was, however, speedily rebuilt in a circular form, and if a building is wanted for a new Home Rule Parliament there will be no difficulty in reconstructing it out of the offices and counting-houses into which it hns been sacreligiously converted. Though the interior has been so much altered, the external appearance of the Bank of Ireland remains very much the same as it was when first erected for the use of the Parliament at an expense of £40,000 in the reign of George 11. The only differences noticeable are in the figures which surmount the pediment—on the original building were seen statues of u Hibernia " with a spear and harp, " Liberty " with her cap, and "Justice" with her scales, which are not to be found on the present edifice, and had already disappeared in 1793, possibly because those goddesses left Ireland in despair— an event which might have occurred at any period in the last century. Indeed, when the question arises of choosing a site for the new Parliament House perhaps it will be well to seek another position. The associations connected with Gratttn's Parliament are in many ways far from agreeable. This is the building which Swift describes as Not a bowshot from the college, Half tho world from tense and knowledge, and which, when it was fully converted, after the Union, from a Parliament House into a national bank, produced the following contemptuous epigram :—: — If, a% it is by some assarted, This House be to a bank converted, What most we want will then be there, Instead of what we best can spare. _PaUM*UGw«ttfl, j