Shaw, whose father was Member for Dublin, 1804-26, was mostly educated in England and practised at the Irish bar from 1822. Through his wife’s cousin the 3rd earl of Roden, he gained legal office in Dundalk (his father-in-law’s former parliamentary seat) in 1826, and the following year he was briefly secretary to his uncle Sir William MacMahon, the Irish master of the rolls, whose right to appoint to this office was disputed by the lord chancellor.
I have indeed had a great triumph, with 12 opponents, George Moore [the sitting Tory Member] among them, and all having for a full week the circumstance to work upon of my being certain to come down first from the board of aldermen; with all their united efforts, the cry of party to aid them, they were only able to procure in the Commons 36 votes against me out of 120; in addition a great jealousy was excited there by the support of government.Add. 40397, f. 423; PRO NI, Anglesey mss D619/31F, pp. 15-23, 27-30; PRO NI, Foster mss T2519/4/2167.
Although criticisms were still levelled against him and it was rumoured in 1829 that a bill would be introduced to redefine his status within the corporation, he quickly proved himself efficient in the execution of his judicial duties and dignified in his more ceremonial ones. According to Richard Sheil*, who thought him ‘a most discreet and emphatic orator’, he cut an imposing figure with ‘his solemnity of aspect; his full, large black and brilliant eye; his handsome countenance, overspread with an air of Evangelical as well as judicial solemnity; his grave judicial walk and his recorder emphasis on every word’.
On the eve of the general election of 1830 Lord Francis Leveson Gower, the Irish secretary, was wary of being seen to endorse his candidacy for Dublin, although he of course preferred him to the sitting Whig Henry Grattan. The Wellington administration considered his being in Parliament incompatible with his tenure of the recordership and thought that the law might have to be altered to prevent his receiving an official salary. At the same time, some of his speeches were considered hostile to ministers and Leveson Gower privately contradicted his public claim that he had had no hand in a recent unpopular attempt to reform the corporation.
As Lord Ellenborough recorded, Shaw made a speech before reading the Dublin corporation’s loyal address to William IV, 27 Oct. 1830, ‘a thing quite unprecedented and which might be inconvenient’.
Shaw, who, as he made clear in his address, had been travelling back to London when he learnt of the sudden dissolution, offered as an anti-reformer at the general election of 1831. His having missed the crucial division on Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment (on 19 Apr.) was useful ammunition for those who opposed his sitting while serving as recorder, on which subject he was again forced on to the defensive, not least because those who had originally secured him the post, Lord Anglesey and William Lamb* (Lord Melbourne), were now key members of the Grey ministry.
On 5 Sept. 1831, when an ultimately unsuccessful petition was entered against his return, Shaw took his seat and voted in the majority for John Benett’s amendment to the motion to issue the Liverpool writ alleging gross bribery at the previous election there. He brought up the first of a large number of Galway petitions relating to its franchise, 7 Sept., when he stated his opposition to reform and the disarming of the Irish yeomanry. He clashed with Henry Grattan, now Member for Meath, that day and again on the 9th, when he intervened against the ministerial plan for national education in Ireland. He divided for inquiry into how far the Sugar Refinery Act could be renewed with due regard to the interests of the West Indies and against going into committee on the truck bill, 12 Sept. He conceded the case for disfranchising government officials who held their posts during pleasure, 14 Sept., when he was brought up short by the Speaker on trying to justify his friends’ conduct at the Dublin by-election, but he reiterated that police magistrates were independent of the Castle, which provoked another quarrel with Grattan, 21 Sept. He described his own involvement with the Irish master of the rolls in his dispute with the Irish chancellor over judicial patronage, which became the subject of parliamentary investigation, 16 Sept. He voted against the third reading, 19 Sept., and passage of the reintroduced reform bill, 21 Sept. 1831.
Shaw spoke in defence of the Protestant establishment on the address, 6 Dec., and, blaming the Irish government for yielding to the prevailing clamour over tithes as over much else, 15 Dec. 1831, he forecast that Ireland was ‘fast approaching some calamitous convulsion’. He objected to the loss of the freeman franchise, including in Dublin, 12 Dec., and voted against the second, 17 Dec. 1831, and third readings of the revised reform bill, 22 Mar. 1832. He was in the minorities for Hunt’s amendment to exempt Preston from the £10 householder qualification, 3 Feb., and Waldo Sibthorp’s relative to Lincoln freeholders, 23 Mar. In addition to numerous short contributions to debate and continuous activity on Dublin affairs, from early February he spoke frequently to attack the intimidation used to prevent the collection of Irish tithes, voting against government on the arrears bill on 9 Apr., and repeated ad nauseam his criticism of the national education plan, against which he presented innumerable petitions. He urged the inclusion of the reference to Providence in the preamble to the cholera bill, 15 Feb., and called for the adjournment of the House, 20 Mar., so as not to continue proceedings into the national fast day on the 21st. He supported the bill to give the Irish master of the rolls the power to appoint his own secretary, 22 Feb., and introduced the Irish court of chancery bill, 13 Apr., but both measures were put off that session. He was a minority teller against the Catholic marriages bill, 2 Apr., and the recommittal of the Irish registry of deeds bill, 9 Apr. Having praised Wellington’s attempt to form an administration, 18 May, he voiced fears about potential unrest in Ireland that day and on the 23rd. He spoke and voted against the second reading of the Irish reform bill, 25 May, when his prediction that revived Catholic fortunes under the reformed system would swiftly lead to the end of the Irish church and the Union plainly revealed him as an alarmist. (That he was not an extreme authoritarian was demonstrated by his support for restricting the use of the death penalty, 30 May, and showing leniency in a newspaper libel case, 31 May.) He clashed with the Grattans over the level of reform sentiment in Dublin, 1, 5 June, and brought up the corporation’s hostile petition, 25 June, when he opposed the idea of doubling the city’s representation since it would only give O’Connell the nomination of two more Members. He voted for Alexander Baring’s bill to exclude insolvent debtors from Parliament, 27 June. His attempt to make rent the basis of the £10 qualification was much criticized, 29 June, and his defence of the rights of Irish freemen brought him close to endorsing calls for repeal of the Union, 2 July, when he was teller for his own unsuccessful motion to preserve the rights of Irish freemen admitted since 30 Mar. the previous year (defeated 128-39). He intervened several more times on the details of the Irish bill, 2, 6 July, and again defended the existing freeman franchise, 3 Aug. 1832.
Denying that he was himself an Orangeman, he damned the Irish party processions bill as a flagrant injustice since it outlawed Protestant but not Catholic ceremonials, 14, 25 June 1832. He warned that he would oppose it clause by clause, 27, 28 June, and on the 29th Smith Stanley, the Irish secretary, postponed it, conceding that it could not be passed in time for the Protestant marches in July. Shaw ruled out the introduction of poor laws as a means of dealing with distress in Ireland, 3 July. He was granted three weeks’ leave on urgent business, 9 July, and so was presumably absent during the debates on Hume’s failed bid to disqualify the recorder of Dublin from sitting in Parliament, 18, 24, 31 July. He spoke and voted against Sir John Burke’s amendment to the Irish tithes bill, 1 Aug., and for Thomas Lefroy’s against the retrospective character of the ecclesiastical courts bill, 3 Aug., and divided against going into committee on the Greek loan, 6 Aug. Furious to find the party processions bill revived when he was almost the only Irish Member still attending that session, he forced divisions against all its clauses, 8 Aug., when his constant apologies for having to abide by his self-imposed promise to obstruct its passage at every opportunity kept the chamber in fits of laughter. According to the junior minister Tom Macaulay*, who described Shaw as ‘an honest man enough, but a great fool and a bitter Protestant fanatic’:
We were all heartily pleased with these events. For the truth was that these 17 divisions occupied less time than a real hard debate on the bill would have occupied and were infinitely more amusing. The oddest part of the business is that Shaw’s frank good natured way of proceeding, absurd as it was, has made him popular. He was never so great a favourite with the House as after harassing it for two or three hours with the most frivolous and vexatious opposition. This is a curious trait of the character of the House of Commons.Macaulay Letters, ii. 173-4.
Justifying his conduct as a response to ministers’ apparent breach of faith about the bill, he announced he would give government no further trouble over it, 9 Aug. 1832.
Shaw was fully expected to stand for Dublin as a Conservative at the following general election, but he feared the popularity of the repealers; had he been able to pledge himself to vote against the Union, O’Connell would have been delighted to bring him in with a radical.