Eunan O’Halpin’s short paper, ‘The secret service vote and Ireland, 1868- 1922’, raises important questions about accountability for the payment of money for secret service work, a term not defined in any statute in nineteenth-century Ireland. What did ‘secret service work’ include and to what extent was the money properly authorised?
The purpose of this article is to examine some of the legal implications of the use of secret service money Accounts for 1833 in the Hatherton papers show the amount of money paid, to whom and for what purposes. Edward John Littleton, first Baron Hatherton (1791 – 1863), was chief secretary for Ireland in 1833 and 1834 during the second lord lieutenancy of Marquis Wellesley This article is based largely on evidence drawn from the Hatherton papers and raises questions about the impartiality of justice in Ireland.