FLOOD, HENRY (1732-1791), Irish statesman, son of Warden Flood, chief justice of the king's bench in Ireland, was educated at Trinity college, Dublin, and at Christ Church, Oxford. He entered the Irish parliament for Kilkenny in 1759, and im mediately began the creation of an opposition in that corrupt body and the education of public opinion in the country. The English government was driven by his efforts to pass the Octennial bill, limiting the duration of parliament to 8 years (there had been no legal limit except that of the reigning sovereign's life), and, during the viceroyalty of Lord Townshend to mitigate the practice of allowing crown patronage to be dispensed by the owners of parliamentary boroughs. The growth of an independent spirit in the Irish House was shown in 1769, when a money bill was sent over by the privy council in London for acceptance by the Irish House of Commons. It was rejected on the ground that the bill had not originated in the Irish House. Parliament was peremp torily prorogued, and a recess of 14 months was employed by the government in securing a majority by the most extensive corrup tion. Nevertheless when parliament met in Feb. 1771 another money bill was thrown out on the motion of Flood ; and the next year Lord Townshend, the lord-lieutenant whose policy had pro voked this conflict, was recalled. The struggle was the occasion of a publication, famous in its day, called Baratariana, to which Flood contributed a series of powerful letters of ter the manner of Junius, one of his collaborators being Henry Grattan.
Flood was now in a position such as no Irish politician had previously attained. Under parliamentary conditions that were exceedingly unfavourable, and in an atmosphere charged with cor ruption, venality and subservience, he had created a party before which ministers had begun to quail, and had inoculated the Prot estant constituencies with a genuine spirit of liberty and self reliance. Lord Harcourt, who succeeded Townshend as viceroy, saw that Flood must be conciliated at any price; accordingly, in he received a seat in the privy council and the office of vice-treasurer with a salary of £3,500 a year. Flood may reason ably have held that he had a better prospect of advancing his policy by the leverage of a ministerial position than by means of any opposition party he could hope to muster in an unreformed House of Commons. The result, however, was that the leader ship of the national party passed from Flood to Grattan, who entered the Irish parliament in the same session that Flood became a minister.
Flood continued in office for nearly seven years. During this long period he necessarily remained silent on the subject of the independence of the Irish parliament, and had to be content with advocating minor reforms as occasion offered. But in 1778 the creation of a volunteer force to defend Ireland against a possible invasion by France, which had become the ally of the revolted American colonies, changed the Irish situation. A Volunteer Con vention, formed with all the regular organization of a representa tive assembly, but wielding the power of an army, began men acingly to demand the removal of the commercial restrictions which were destroying Irish prosperity. Under this pressure the government gave way; the whole colonial trade was in 1779 thrown open to Ireland for the first time, and other concessions were also extorted. Flood, who had taken an active though not a leading part in this movement, now at last resigned his office to rejoin his old party. He found to his chagrin that he was eclipsed by Grattan. But though Flood had lost control of the movement for independence of the Irish parliament, the agita tion, backed as it now was by the Volunteer Convention and by increasing signs of popular disaffection, led at last in 1782 to the concession of the demand, together with a number of other impor tant reforms (see GRATTAN, HENRY).
No sooner, however, was this great success gained than a ques tion arose—known as the Simple Repeal controversy—as to whether England, in addition to the repeal of the Acts on which the subordination of the Irish parliament had been based, should not be required expressly to renounce for the future all claim to control Irish legislation. This dispute led to the rupture of friend ship between Flood and Grattan, each of whom assailed the other with unmeasured but magnificently eloquent invective in the House of Commons. Flood's view prevailed—for a Renunciation Act such as he advocated was ungrudgingly passed by the English parliament in I783—and for a time he regained popularity at the expense of his rival. Flood next (Nov. 28, 1783) introduced a reform bill, after first submitting it to the Volunteer Convention. The bill, which contained no provision for giving the franchise to Roman Catholics—a proposal which Flood always opposed—was rejected, ostensibly on the ground that the attitude of the volun teers threatened the freedom of parliament. The volunteers car ried a loyal address to the king, moved by Flood. The convention then dissolved, though Flood had desired, in opposition to Grattan, to continue it as a means of putting pressure on parliament for the purpose of obtaining reform.
In 1783 Flood purchased a seat for Winchester in the English House of Commons from the duke of Chandos, and for the next seven years he was a member at the same time of both the English and Irish parliaments. He reintroduced, but without success, his reform bill in the Irish House in 1784 ; supported the movement for protecting Irish industries ; but short-sightedly opposed Pitt's commercial propositions in 1785. He remained a firm opponent of Roman Catholic emancipation, even defending the penal laws on the ground that of ter the Revolution they "were not laws of persecution but of political necessity" ; but after 1786 he does not appear to have attended the parliament in Dublin. In the House at Westminster, where he refused to enrol himself as a member of either political party, he disappointed the expectations aroused by his achievements in Dublin. At the dissolution in' 1790 he lost his seat in both parliaments, and he then retired to Farmley, his residence in county Kilkenny, where he died on Dec. 2, 1791.
When Peter Burrowes, notwithstanding his close personal friendship with Grattan, declared that Flood was "perhaps the ablest man Ireland ever produced, indisputably the ablest man of his own times," he expressed what was probably the general opinion of Flood's contemporaries. Grattan never lost his respect for Flood and said that he was the best tempered and the most sensible man in the world. In his youth he was genial, frank, sociable and witty ; but in later years disappointment made him gloomy and taciturn. As an orator he was less polished, less epi grammatic than Grattan; but a closer reasoner and a greater mas ter of sarcasm and invective. Personal ambition often gov erned his actions, but his political judgment was usually sound; and it was the opinion of Bentham that Flood would have suc ceeded in carrying a reform bill which might have preserved Irish parliamentary independence if he had been supported by Grattan and the rest of his party in 1783. Though he never wavered in loyalty to the British crown and empire, Ireland never produced a more sincere patriot than Henry Flood.
See Warden Flood, Memoirs of Henry Flood (1838) ; Henry Grat tan, Memoirs of the Life and Times of the Right Hon. H. Grattan (5 vols., 1839-46) ; Charles Phillips, Recollections of Curran and some of his Contemporaries (1822) ; The Irish Parliament 1775, from an official and contemporary manuscript, edited by William Hunt (19(4) ; W. J. O'Neill Daunt, Ireland and her Agitators; Lord Mountmorres, History of the Irish Parliament (2 vols., 1792) ; W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century (8 vols., 1878-9o) ; and Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland (enlarged edition, 2 vols., 1903) ; F. Hardy, Memoirs of Lord Charlemont (1812) , especially for the volunteer movement.