The Irish parliament was still constitutionally subordinate to the English privy council; it had practically no powers of independent legislation, and none of controlling the policy of the executive, which was nominated by the ministers in London.

Men like Anthony Malone and Hely-Hutchinson fully realised the necessity for far-reaching reforms; and it only needed the ability and eloquence of Flood in the Irish House of Commons to raise up an independent party in parliament, and to create in the country a public opinion with definite intelligible aims.

[1] It had become the practice to allow crown patronage in Ireland to be exercised by the owners of parliamentary boroughs in return for their undertaking to manage the House in the government interest.

The struggle was the occasion of a publication, famous in its day, called Baratariana, to which Flood contributed a series of powerful letters after the manner of Junius, one of his collaborators being Henry Grattan.

Under parliamentary conditions that were exceedingly unfavourable, and in an atmosphere charged with corruption, venality and subservience, he had created a party before which ministers had begun to quail, and had inoculated the Protestant constituencies with a genuine spirit of liberty and self-reliance."

A volunteer movement was then set on foot to meet the emergency; in a few weeks more than 40,000 men were under arms, officered by the country gentry, and controlled by Lord Charlemont.

[1] A Volunteer Convention, formed with all the regular organisation of a representative assembly, but wielding the power of an army, began menacingly to demand the removal of the commercial restrictions which were destroying Irish prosperity.

[1] When in a debate on the constitutional question in 1779 Flood complained of the small consideration shown him in relation to a subject which he had been the first to agitate, he was reminded that by the civil law if a man should separate from his wife and abandon her for seven years, another might then take her and give her his protection.

But though Flood had lost control of the movement for independence of the Irish parliament, the agitation, 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 important reforms.

The chief historical importance of this dispute is that it led to the memorable rupture of friendship between Flood and Grattan, each of whom assailed the other with unmeasured but magnificently eloquent invective in the House of Commons.

[4] The bill, which contained no provision for giving the franchise to Roman Catholics, which Flood always opposed, was rejected, ostensibly on the ground that the attitude of the volunteers threatened the freedom of parliament.

They carried an address to the king, moved by Flood, expressing the hope that their support of parliamentary reform might be imputed to nothing but a sober and laudable desire to uphold the constitution and to perpetuate the cordial union of both kingdoms.

[4] He and Frances, who survived until 1815, had no children, and his property passed to a cousin, John Flood; a large bequest to Trinity College Dublin was declared invalid.