The Octennial Act (7 George III c.3; long title An act for limiting the duration of parliamentsILD No.2174) was a 1768The act was passed in the 1767–68 session; the year may be quoted as the Octennial Act 1767 (start of session) or Octennial Act 1768 (when royal assent received). act of the Parliament of Ireland which set a maximum duration of eight years for the Irish House of Commons. Before this, a dissolution of parliament was not required except on the demise of the Crown, and the previous three general elections were held in 1715, 1727, and 1761, on the respective deaths of Anne, George I, and George II.McGrath 2001, p.12 After the act, general elections were held in 1769, 76, 83, 90, and 98.
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This month, instituted according to Roman tradition by Numa Pompilius,Henry G Liddell, 1909, A History of Rome, John Murray, London, p. 29 was supposed to be inserted every two or three years to align the conventional 355-day Roman year with the solar year."The lunar year of 354 days fell short of the solar year by 11 days: in 8 years this amounted to 90 days or three months. These 90 days he divided into two months of 22 and two months of 23 days, and introduced them alternately every second year for two octennial periods: every third octennial period, however, Numa intercalated only [...] three months [...] because he adopted 355 days as the length of his lunar year". Daniel Spillan, Livy's History of Rome, Book I. 19. Footnote 24.
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In addition, the British Privy Council added a wrecking clause to the judicial tenure bill, which caused the Irish parliament to reject the bill once returned to Dublin.Bartlett 1981, p.548 The council also made three amendments to Lucas' bill: to the preamble, to extend the limit from seven to eight years (thus an Octennial Bill) and to bring forward the date of the next general election from 1774 to 1768.Bartlett 1981, p.
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Despite this, road signs around the borders used the term "The City of Perth", and directional signs within indicated "City Centre". In June 2007, Alex Salmond, the-then First Minister of Scotland, backed a campaign to confer city status on Perth, saying it should be granted "at the next commemorative opportunity". The local authority, Perth and Kinross, stated that the octennial anniversary of the city in 2009 should create "a foundation for Perth to bid for formal city status". Perth was one of the 26 bidders for city status to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012.
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555 According to Francis Plowden, the Privy Council insisted on the modification to eight years as a wrecking amendment, expecting that the Irish parliament would reject the bill on principle once any amendment had been made to it, and was disappointed when its amended bill was passed. W. E. H. Lecky calls this "without foundation", stating the actual reasons for eight years were that the Irish Parliament only met every second year, and to reduce the chance of Irish and British general elections coinciding. The Octennial Act reinvigorated the Commons, both with newly elected reformers and with MPs made more active by the prospect of imminent re-election. Changes included more assertiveness over supply bills and Poynings' Law,McGrath 2001, p.
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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. The chief objects for which Flood strove were the shortening of the duration of parliament which had then no legal limit in Ireland except that of the reigning sovereign's life, the reduction of the scandalously heavy pension list, the establishment of a national militia, and, above all, the complete legislative independence of the Irish parliament. For some years little was accomplished; but in 1768 the English ministry, which had special reasons at the moment for avoiding unpopularity in Ireland, allowed an octennial bill (limiting the term of parliament to eight years) to pass, which was the first step towards making the Irish House of Commons in some measure representative of public opinion. 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.
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