was wrong with the burgesses ... was not that they were non-resident but that there were too few of them". Malcomson posits disadvantages of restricting the franchise to residents, including the exclusion of progressive gentry living near but outside the borough, and the difficulty of determining a prospective voter's residency in cases where a borough's boundaries were irregular or uncertain. The act's guarantee of the franchise to non-residents resulted in a transfer of power from the local gentry and bourgeois to the larger regional landholders. The latter were interested mainly in controlling the borough's MPs, and not in its municipal affairs, causing an "ossification" in town government that lasted until the Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act 1840. Amendment and repeal The Catholic Relief Act 1793 implicitly amended the Newtown Act, permitting Catholics to vote and specifying a different electoral oath. Clauses (sections) 1–7 of the Newtown Act were repealed by an act of 1795 (35 George III c.29). The Acts of Union 1800 disenfranchised most Irish boroughs, and the corporations of many of these became defunct; clause 8 of the Newtown Act continued to apply to the remainder. In 1826, Sir John Newport tried unsuccessfully to introduced a bill to repeal clause 8. The Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act 1840 abolished most corporations and reformed the remainder. This rendered the Newtown Act obsolete. Section 8 was repealed by the Statute Law Revision (Ireland) Act 1878. The entire act (only the title and preamble remained) was not formally repealed in the Republic of Ireland until the Statute Law Revision Act 2007. Footnotes Sources Primary Secondary References 1748 in Ireland Acts of the Parliament of Ireland (pre-1801) Election legislation History of local government in Ireland Newtownards 1748 in law