They had more reason to complain of the terms of an Act which was subsequently passed, depriving them of the right of returning, when banished, to the King's dominions, or going to any country at war with the King. The preamble described them as men ‘who, being conscious of their flagrant and enormous guilt, have expressed their contrition for the same, and have most humbly implored his Majesty's mercy … to grant his royal pardon to them on condition of their being transported, banished, or exiled.’ 3 It would be impossible to describe less felicitously or less truly their attitude, and Neilson wrote a letter indignantly denying that they had either acknowledged their guilt, retracted their opinions, or implored pardon. It is stated that he was only restrained from publishing his protest by the threat, that in that case the Government would consider the whole treaty as cancelled, and send all the prisoners to trial. 4

Another difficulty speedily followed. The first intention had been to send the State prisoners to America, but Portland considered that, by the law of nations, powers at amity have not a right to transport to each other, without permission, such of their subjects as had committed crimes, and it was soon found that the American Government had not the smallest intention of giving this permission. Rufus King, the American minister in London, officially announced that the President, under the powers given him by a recent Act, would not suffer any of the traitors from Ireland to land in America, and that if they set foot on shore, he would instantly have them sent back to Europe. 1

In a reply that King subsequently wrote to the remonstrances of an Irishman, there is a passage justifying this decision, which is so curious, as showing the part which Irish immigrants had already begun to play in American politics, that it is deserving of a full quotation. ‘In common with others,’ he wrote, ‘we have felt the influence of the changes that have successively taken place in France, and unfortunately a portion of our inhabitants have erroneously supposed that our civil and political institutions, as well as our national policy, might be improved by a close imitation of France. This opinion, the propagation of which was made the duty, and became the chief employment, of the French agents residing among us, created a more considerable division among our people, and required a greater watchfulness and activity from the Government, than could beforehand have been apprehended. I am sorry to make the remark … that a large proportion of the emigrants from Ireland, and especially in the Middle States, have, upon this occasion, arranged themselves on the side of the malcontents. I ought to except from this remark, most of the enlightened and well-educated Irishmen who reside among us, and, with a few exceptions, I might confine it to the indigent and illiterate, who, entertaining an attachment to freedom, are unable to appreciate those salutary restraints, without which it degenerates into anarchy. It would be injustice to say, that the Irish emigrants are more national than those of other countries, yet, being a numerous though very minor portion of our population, they are capable, from causes it is needless now to explain, of being generally brought to act in concert, and under artful leaders may be, as they have been, enlisted in mischievous combinations against our Government.’ 1

The result of the attitude of the American Government was, that the leading members of the conspiracy still remained in confinement for considerably more than three years. A proposal which they made to go to Germany was not accepted, 2 and the Duke of Portland peremptorily directed that they should be kept in strict custody. In the beginning of December, the determination of the Government was formally announced by a written message, which stated that fifteen of their number could not be liberated at present, though the other State prisoners named in the Banishment Bill would be permitted to retire to any neutral country on the Continent, on giving security not to pass into an enemy's country. The Lord Lieutenant expressed his regret ‘that a change of circumstances’ had rendered this precaution necessary, and his determination to extend a similar indulgence to the prisoners now excepted, as soon as it was consistent with the public safety.

It is not, I think, necessary to enter in detail into the long and angry controversy that ensued. O'Connor and his fellowprisoners contended, that their continued detention after they had fulfilled their part of the compact, was a breach of faith to men who were untried and unconvicted, and that the Government were bound in honour to permit them at once to emigrate to the Continent. Castlereagh, on the other hand, had from the beginning stated that the Government had reserved a full discretion of retaining the prisoners in custody, as long as the war should last, provided their liberation was deemed inconsistent with the public safety. 3 The excepted prisoners in Dublin, as well as a few from Belfast, were soon after removed to Fort St. George, in Inverness-shire in Scotland, where some of them remained till the middle of 1802. It is worthy of special notice, that of the twenty prisoners who were selected for confinement in this fortress on account of the prominent part they had taken in organising the conspiracy, ten were nominal members of the Established Church, six were Presbyterians, and only four were Catholics. 1

Few men can have had a loftier opinion of their own merits than O'Connor, Emmet, and McNevin, and they have written with burning indignation the account of their wrongs. At the same time, the fate of these leading conspirators, who endured a long, but by no means severe, imprisonment, and were afterwards exiled to the Continent or to America, was a very different one from that of multitudes of humbler men, who were probably far less guilty. A stream of Irish political prisoners was poured into the penal settlement of Botany Bay, and they played some part in the early history of the Australian colonies, and especially of Australian Catholicism. In November 1796, Governor Hunter wrote home complaining of the turbulent and seditious disposition of a large number of Irish Defenders who had been sent out in the two preceding years; but he acknowledged that they had one very real grievance, for neither the date of their conviction nor the length of their sentence was known in Australia. In September 1800, Governor King announced that the seditious spirit among the Irish political convicts had risen to ‘a very great height,’ and had been much fostered by a priest who was among them. He adds, that the number of rebels who had been sent from Ireland since the late disturbances in that country, was 235, exclusive of the Defenders sent out in 1794; that there were now about 450 Irish convicts in the colony, but that some of them were ordinary felons. In the spring of 1801, attempts at insurrection were made; pikes were discovered, and the governor complained that 135 new convicts had just arrived from Cork, ‘of the most desperate and diabolical characters that could be selected throughout that kingdom, together with a Catholic priest of most notorious seditious and rebellious principles.’ There were now, he said, not less than 600 avowed and unrepentant United Irishmen among the convicts. A year later he repeated his complaint, urging that if seditious republicans continued to be sent, the colony would soon be composed of few other characters; and, in May 1803, he writes that ‘the list of fourteen men condemned lately to die was caused by one of those unhappy events that happen more or less on the importation of each cargo of Irish convicts.’ In 1804, his warnings were justified by a serious Irish rebellion in New South Wales, which was not suppressed without some bloodshed. It is curious to notice how beneath the Southern Cross, as in every disturbance at home, the familiar figure of the Irish informer at once appeared. An old Irish rebel, who declared that he had suffered so much by rebellion that he would never again be implicated in it, gave the first information of the designs of the conspirators. 1

The political prisoners in New South Wales were usually men who had been convicted under the Insurrection Act or by courts-martial, and many of them were men who had been condemned to death, but whose sentences had been commuted. Other prisoners were permitted to serve in the army and navy. It was intended that these forced recruits should serve only in the dangerous climates of the West Indies, but they gradually percolated all branches of the service, and their possible influence was a cause of some anxiety, both to the civil and military authorities. 2 It appears that, at the end of October 1798, about 300 political prisoners were in confinement in the different gaols of Ireland, in addition to the eighty who were banished by Act of Parliament. 3 The Government was soon afterwards relieved of the embarrassment, in a somewhat unexpected way. A message came in January 1799 from the King of Prussia, offering to take able-bodied Irish rebels who were fit and willing to serve as privates in the Prussian army. The offer was gladly accepted. A Prussian officer, named Schonler, came over to Ireland to select the recruits, and on September 8 of that year a transport sailed from Waterford for Emden, bearing 318 Irishmen to the Continent. 1

When Cornwallis first came to Ireland, Bishop Percy described him as very civil and pleasant, but added, ‘he will not be a favourite here, for he is very sober himself, and does not push the bottle. They also think him too merciful to the rebels.’ 2 The prediction was fully verified, and the outcries against ‘the ruinous system of lenity’ of the Lord Lieutenant, were long and loud among the supporters of the Government. Clare, who had at first taken a different course, very soon subscribed to the condemnation. He maintained that Cornwallis had ‘much mistaken the nature of the people, in supposing that they were to be brought back to submission by a system nearly of indiscriminate impunity for the most enormous offences,’ that he had exasperated the loyal, and encouraged the rebels, and that nothing but a severe and terrible lesson would ever put a stop to rebellion and outrage in Ireland. He quoted with some felicity a passage from General Tarleton's History of the American campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in which Cornwallis was represented as having pursued a similar policy in South Carolina, in hopes of giving offence to neither party, and having by his mistaken lenity greatly encouraged and strengthened, without in any degree conciliating, the disloyal, while he at once discouraged and exasperated those who had been ruined by their attachment to the Crown. 3

It is true that the system of government under Lord Cornwallis was less sanguinary than under Lord Camden; but an extract from a private letter of Castlereagh to Wickham, in the March of 1799, will probably be, to most persons, quite sufficient to acquit it of any excess in lenity. Nearly 400 persons, Castlereagh says, had been already tried under Lord Cornwallis. Of these, 131 were condemned to death, and 81 were executed. ‘This forms but a proportion of the number of victims to public justice, for acts of treason and rebellion in the disturbed districts. Numbers were tried and executed by order of the general officers, whose cases never came before the Lord Lieutenant, and it appears by the inclosed return from the Clerk of the Crown, that 418 persons were banished or transported by sentences of courts-martial…. Since Lord Cornwallis's arrival, exclusive of the infliction of punishment by military tribunals, great numbers were convicted at the autumn assizes.’ 1

Of the total loss of life during the rebellion, it is impossible to speak with any kind of certainty. The estimates on the subject are widely different, and almost wholly conjectural. Madden, the most learned of the apologists of the United Irishmen, pretends that not less than 70,000 persons must have perished in Ireland, during the two months’ struggle; 2 but Newenham, who was a contemporary writer, singularly free from party passion and prejudice, and much accustomed to careful statistical investigations, formed a far more moderate estimate. He calculated that the direct loss during the rebellion was about 15,000. About 1,600, he says, of the King's troops, and about 11,000 of the rebels, fell in the field. About 400 loyal persons were massacred or assassinated, and 2,000 rebels were exiled or hanged. 3 The most horrible feature was the great number of helpless, unarmed men, who were either deliberately murdered by the rebels, or shot down by the troops. ‘For several months,’ writes Mary Leadbeater, ‘there was no sale for bacon cured in Ireland, from the well-founded dread of the hogs having fed upon the flesh of men.’ 1

Of the loss of property, it is equally difficult to speak with accuracy. The claims sent in by the suffering loyalists amounted to 823,517 l. ; ‘but who,’ writes Gordon, ‘will pretend to compute the damages of the croppies, whose houses were burned, and effects pillaged and destroyed, and who, barred from compensation, sent in no estimate to the commissioners?’ And, in addition to this, we must remember the enormously increased military expenditure, which was imposed upon the country, and the terrible shock that was given, both to industry and to credit. 2

The double burden, indeed, of foreign war, and of internal convulsion, was fast weighing down the finances of Ireland, which had, a few years before, been so sound and prosperous; and although the increase of debt seemed small compared with that of England, and was much exceeded in Ireland in the years that followed the Union, it was sufficiently rapid to justify very grave apprehensions. When the war broke out, the Irish national debt was 2,344,314 l. 3 At the end of 1797, the funded debt had risen to 9,485,756 l. , of which 6,196,316 l. was owed to England, and it was computed that the expenditure of the country exceeded its income by about 2,700,000 l. 4 The terrible months that followed, greatly aggravated the situation. Between December 1797 and August 1798, Ireland borrowed no less than 4,966,666 l. , nearly all of it at more than 6 per cent., and a large proportion at more than 7 per cent. 5

This was a grievous evil, but, at the same time, the great spring of national prosperity was not yet seriously impaired. A country which is essentially agricultural, will flourish when agriculture is prosperous, even in spite of very serious and sanguinary convulsions. In the height of the struggle, Beresford wrote that it was ‘most strange and extraordinary,’ that the revenue every week was rising in a degree that had been hitherto unknown. 1 The moral scars left by the rebellion were deep and indelible, and it changed the whole character of Irish life, but the material devastation rapidly disappeared. There were large districts, it is true, where, owing to the destruction of houses, and the neglect or ruin of agriculture, extreme misery prevailed, but the harvest of 1798 was a very good one, and this fact did more than any measures of politicians to appease the country. In August, Clare noticed the rich corn crops that were ripening over the rebel districts through which he passed, and he observed that the common people were everywhere returning to their ordinary occupations. 2

There was one ignoble task, in which the Government and many of those who blamed the Government for its lenity, were fully agreed. It was in doing all that lay in their power to blacken the character of the man who, since the death of Burke, was by far the greatest of living Irishmen. The savage assaults that, in the last half of 1798, were directed against the character of Grattan, form one of the most shameful incidents of this shameful time. In some respects, indeed, they had the motive of self-defence. The Fitzwilliam episode had so visibly and so largely contributed to the calamities of the last few years, that it was very necessary for those who had brought about the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam and the reversal of his policy, if they desired to exculpate themselves from a terrible weight of responsibility, to represent his appointment and policy as the main source of the evil. Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform had been the first avowed objects of the United Irishmen, and long before the United Irish conspiracy had arisen, Grattan had been their most powerful advocate. He had opposed some parts of the coercive legislation of the Government; he had constantly denounced the acts of military and Orange violence which had been so largely practised with their approval or connivance, and he had committed the still more deadly offence of predicting only too faithfully the consequences that would follow from them. It is true, that he had exerted all his eloquence and influence in opposition to French democracy; that he had never failed to urge that democracy of any kind would be ruinous to Ireland; that he had shown in every possible way, and on every occasion, the depth of his conviction that Great Britain and Ireland must stand or fall together; that he had uniformly taught the people, that no reform was likely to do them good which was not constitutionally effected with the support of their gentry and through the medium of their Parliament; that the United Irish movement was essentially a revolt against his teaching and authority, and that it had brought about the almost total destruction of his influence. All this was incontestably true, but in the fierce reaction against Liberal ideas, it is perhaps not wonderful that the tide should have run furiously against the man who had been for many years their greatest representative in Ireland.

A long and extremely scurrilous attack upon Grattan, and his whole life and policy, had been written by Dr. Duigenan in 1797, in reply to the address which Grattan had published when he seceded from Parliament. It had been sent over to London, and refused by a publisher, but it appeared in Dublin immediately after the suppression of the rebellion. In general the writings and speeches of Duigenan, though they contained a good deal of curious learning, neither received, nor deserved, much attention, but this work so exactly fell in with the dominant spirit of the moment, that it speedily ran through at least five editions. A reader who is exempt from the passions of that time, would find it difficult to conceive a grosser or more impudent travesty of history. The calamities that had befallen Ireland, in the opinion of Duigenan, were mainly due to two men, Burke and Grattan. Burke was essentially a Romanist, and passionately devoted to the interests of popery, and the main object of all his later policy had been to overturn the Protestant Establishment in Ireland, and to substitute popery in its room. ‘Whether Mr. Burke had, at the time he formed his project of establishing popery in Ireland, entertained it only as a step towards the separation of Ireland from the British Empire, is not quite clear, though his strong attachment to republican principles during the American war gives good ground for suspecting him of such a design.’ In the earlier part of his career, Burke had contributed as much as any man in England to the separation of America from the mother country, and it was very probably the success of the American rebellion that encouraged him to undertake his Irish enterprise. It is true that he afterwards ‘changed, or affected to change, all his former opinions in favour of republicanism,’ but the explanation was very evident. It was because the French Revolution had proved hostile to popery.

But if there was some ambiguity about the motives of Burke, those of Grattan were abundantly clear. According to this veracious chronicler, the steady object which inspired all his acts and all his speeches ever since the American War, was the separation of Ireland from the British Empire. Ambition and avarice were his guiding motives; coalitions between republican infidels and popish bigots were his chosen means. All this was developed in a strain of the coarsest invective. A passage from the Psalms was selected as the motto, and it was the keynote of the whole book. ‘Thy tongue imagineth wickedness, and with lies thou cuttest like a sharp razor. Thou hast loved unrighteousness more than goodness, and to talk of lies more than righteousness. Thou hast loved to speak all words that may do hurt, oh thou false tongue!'

Such was the book which suddenly rose to popularity in Ireland, which was spoken of with delight in ministerial circles, and was eulogised in unqualified terms by Canning in the English House of Commons. 1 The cry against Grattan was very violent, and members in the close confidence of the Government were extremely anxious, if possible, to connect him with the United Irish conspiracy. It was perfectly true that some of its members had at one time been his followers, and it was true also that in his capacity of leader in Parliament of the party which took charge of the questions of Catholic emancipation and reform, Grattan had come in contact with, and had occasionally seen at Tinnehinch, conspicuous reformers or advocates of Catholic emancipation from Ulster, who were in fact United Irishmen. It appears, indeed, to have been a common thing for active politicians to go down unsolicited to the county of Wicklow for the purpose of asking his advice, or of bringing him information or complaints. We have already had an example of such a conference, and we have seen the earnestness with which Grattan availed himself of the occasion, to impress upon his guests how great a calamity to Ireland, a French invasion must inevitably prove. 1 It is also true that, at the trial of Arthur O'Connor, Grattan, like the leading members of the English Opposition, had been called as a witness for the defence; but the published account of the trial clearly shows that, unlike the English witnesses, he confined his evidence to a bare statement of the good private character of O'Connor, and to denying that he had ever heard him express an opinion favourable to invasion.

In truth, the attitude of Grattan towards the French Revolution had, from the beginning, profoundly separated him from its admirers. There was on both sides much coldness and distrust, and Grattan appears to have had only a slight and superficial acquaintance even with Arthur O'Connor and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who sat with him in Parliament, and who belonged to the same sphere of social life. We have seen how he had warned the Catholic Committee against Tone, and how contemptuously he had spoken of the abilities of Emmet. He can hardly, however, have failed to suspect that some of those with whom he came into occasional contact were steeped in treason, and at the time when there was a strong desire on the part of the Government to implicate Grattan, a Government informer called Hughes came forward, and told on oath before the Secret Commission of Parliament the following story, which was all the more dangerous because some parts of it were undoubtedly true.

He said that about April 28, 1798, he had accompanied Neilson to breakfast with Sweetman, one of the most prominent of the Catholic United Irishmen, who was then in confinement, and that he afterwards, with Neilson, proceeded in Sweetman's carriage to Tinnehinch. He was present, he said, when Grattan asked Neilson many questions about the state of Ulster. He inquired how many families had been driven out, how many houses had been burned by the Government or by the Orangemen, and what was the probable strength of the United Irishmen and of the Orangemen in Ulster. Hughes added that in the course of the conversation Grattan said he supposed Neilson was a United Irishman, and that Neilson answered that he was; that Neilson and Grattan were for some time alone together; that on their return to Dublin, Neilson told him that his object in going to Tinnehinch had been ‘to ask Grattan whether he would come forward, and that he had sworn him.’ Hughes added also, that he saw a printed constitution of the United Irishmen in Grattan's library; that he heard Grattan tell Neilson that he would be in town about the following Tuesday; and that he understood from Neilson that Grattan had visited him in prison. 1

The great improbability of this story must be obvious to anyone who considers the uniform attitude of Grattan towards the United Irishmen, and the horror which he had always both in public and private expressed of a French invasion, which it was the main object of the United Irishmen to effect. At the time when he was represented as having at the request of a man immensely his inferior, and with whom he was but slightly acquainted, reversed by one decisive step the whole of his past life, he was in fact withdrawn from all active politics, and living chiefly in England in order that he should be in no way mixed with them. The Government, too, which possessed from so many sources such minute and confidential information about the plans, proceedings, and negotiations of the conspirators, both in Ireland and on the Continent, must have been perfectly aware, that if a person of Grattan's importance had joined the conspiracy, this fact could not possibly have escaped their notice. Neilson was examined before the committee, and he at once declared upon oath that he had never sworn in Grattan; that he had never said he had done so; that Grattan was never a United Irishman, and had no concern in their transactions. He acknowledged, however, that he had been more than once at Tinnehinch, and that he had on one occasion unsuccessfully urged Grattan to ‘come forward.’ 2

Grattan, whose word appears to me of much more weight than the oath of either Hughes or Neilson, has given two accounts of the matter, one in a letter to Erskine, asking for his legal advice, and another in a paper which at a later period he drew up for his son. In the former paper he says: ‘The three persons, Bond, Neilson, and Sweetman, in the spring of 1798, rode to the country to breakfast with me once, and once only, without invitation or appointment, and at that visit of personal acquaintance which is most improperly called an interview , made no proposal to me, held no conversation with me, and never discoursed on their own subject. A considerable time after, Mr. Neilson, with a man named Hughes, whom I did not know, without appointment called on me to breakfast, which visit has been very improperly called an interview , when he held no consultation with me whatever, but only entered on a general conversation; with what specific view or application I cannot affirm; but I can say it was not attended with any effect; and further that he showed me the United Irishmen's published and printed constitution, and explained it, but did not show me or explain their plans. I must observe that the said constitution was only the organisation of their committees, such as appeared in the published report of the House of Commons a year and a half ago…. As far as Mr. Hughes’ testimony relates to me, save only as above, it is without foundation. It is not true that Mr. Neilson ever swore me. It is not true that I ever went to see him in Newgate, and it is impossible Mr. Neilson ever said it.’ 1

In the paper which Grattan afterwards drew up for his son, there is a fuller account of the interview on which the charge was based. ‘The conversation and interview with Neilson was nothing—it was quite accidental. I was in my study, and Neilson was shown up along with a Mr. Hughes whom I did not know. They complained very much of the excesses in the North of Ireland, and of the murders of the Catholics; and I remember Hughes saying that the phrase used by the anti-Catholics was, ‘To Connaught or to hell with you.’ They stated their numbers to be very great, and I then asked, ‘How does it come, then, that they are always beaten?’ I did not ask the question with a view to learn their force, as the examination would lead one to believe, but in consequence of these two individuals boasting of the numbers of these men who could not protect themselves. Hughes then went downstairs, and Neilson asked me to become a United Irishman. I declined. He produced the constitution, and left it in the room. This was nothing new. I had seen it long before, and it was generally printed and published. Hughes then returned, and they both went away. This is the entire of the transaction to which so much importance was attached.’ 1

This statement is, I have no doubt, the literal, unexaggerated truth. The Government, however, had found in the evidence of Hughes a formidable weapon for discrediting an opponent whom they greatly feared, and for gratifying a large section of their supporters. It is remarkable that in the report of the House of Commons, all notice of this matter was suppressed. The Speaker Foster is said to have urged that the statement of Hughes relating to Grattan was utterly untrustworthy, and that no notice ought to be taken of it. The House of Lords, probably under the influence of Lord Clare, published to the world the statement of Hughes, but accompanied it by a somewhat abbreviated version of the evidence of Neilson.

It does not appear that the Government ever really believed that Grattan had been a United Irishman; but Portland at once wrote to Cornwallis, urging that a criminal prosecution should be directed against him, on the much more plausible ground of ‘misprision,’ or concealment of treason. Cornwallis would have been perfectly willing to take this step, if there had been any chance of succeeding. ‘I have consulted the best law opinions in the country,’ he writes, ‘on the expediency of a prosecution against Mr. Grattan for misprision of treason, according to your Grace's recommendation in your letter dated the 15th inst., and have found that all of them think that there would be no prospect of our succeeding in such an attempt, and that no jury would convict him on the evidence of Hughes, contradicted as he already has been in parts of his evidence by Neilson, and as he certainly would be by Sweetman.’ He considered, however, that a great object had been attained by the publication of the evidence. ‘Enough has already appeared to convince every unprejudiced person of Mr. Grattan's guilt, and so far to tarnish his character as to prevent his becoming again a man of consequence, and Mr. Pollock, who is busily employed in the North, has been directed to use his best endeavours to discover evidence that would establish a criminal charge against him; but if these means should fail, we must be satisfied with dismissing him from the Privy Council. 1

They did most signally fail. Pollock, with his utmost endeavours, was unable to discover any of the evidence he sought for. 2 The story of Grattan's visit to Neilson in prison, which must have been established if true, was never substantiated; and Sweetman, as the Lord Lieutenant anticipated, was prepared to give strong evidence against the charge. In a letter written to Curran, he stated that in the one visit which he had paid to Grattan, in company with Neilson and-Bond, not only had nothing passed relating to the United Irishmen, but the three United Irishmen had specially agreed not even to touch on the subject, in order that nothing like implication in treason could be imputed to Grattan; and having a very intimate knowledge of the inner working of the conspiracy, he avowed most solemnly that Mr. Grattan was totally unconnected with the United system. 3

No attempt was made to bring the case before a law court; but the publication of the evidence of Hughes, and the admitted fact that some leading members of the conspiracy had visited Grattan in his house, were sufficient, in the excited state of public opinion, to make many of Grattan's countrymen treat the charge as if it were both formally advanced and legally proved. The ministerial papers were full of denunciations of the ‘companion of conspirators.’ The King struck the name of Grattan from the list of privy councillors, as sixteen years before he had struck off the name of Grattan's great rival, Flood. The authorities of Trinity College, who in the golden days of 1782 had hung his portrait in their examination hall, now removed it to a lumber room, and replaced it by that of Lord Clare. The Corporation of Dublin, while conferring the freedom of the city on several persons who had taken a conspicuous part in suppressing the rebellion, unanimously disfranchised their most illustrious representative. The Corporation of Londonderry took the same course, though some names that were conspicuous in granting the freedom, are not to be found in the resolution withdrawing it. The Guild of Dublin merchants, who had specially honoured Grattan as the man who had done most to emancipate Irish trade, now struck off his name from their roll. The Corporation of Cork changed the name of Grattan Street, calling it Duncan Street, after the victor of Camperdown.

It was not the first, nor was it the last, time that Grattan experienced the ingratitude and the inconstancy of his countrymen. His health was at this time very bad, and he was suffering from a nervous disorder which preyed greatly on his spirits. After the publication of the book of Duigenan he appeared for a short time in Dublin, and, according to the bad custom of the time, published an advertisement in the papers which was equivalent to a challenge, but it remained unnoticed by his assailant. Grattan found that he could scarcely appear without insult in the streets, and soon returned to England, where he remained for many months. In a letter published in the ‘Courier’ newspaper he challenged investigation of the charge that had been made against him, and at the same time, in strong and vehement language, attributed to the corruption and tyranny of the governing faction in Ireland the chief blame of the crimes and the calamities that had occurred.

A great question, however, was rapidly coming to maturity, which was destined to call him from his retirement, and to make him once more a central figure in Irish political life. The English Ministers had now determined that the time had come when the governing system in Ireland must at all hazards be changed; and the last wave of the rebellion of 1798 had not yet subsided, when the project of a legislative Union was announced.

CHAPTER XXXI.: the union.

Part I.

The reader who has followed with any care the long course of Irish history related in the present work, will have observed how often, and from how many different points of view, and at what long intervals, the possibility of a legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland had been discussed or suggested. It is difficult, however, without some repetition, to form a clear, connected conception of the history of the question, and I shall, therefore, make no apology for devoting a few pages to recapitulating its earlier stages.

For a short time during the Commonwealth, such an Union had actually existed. The great scheme of parliamentary reform which had been devised by the Long Parliament was carried into effect by Cromwell, and thirty Irish and thirty Scotch members were summoned to the Reformed Parliament which met at Westminster in 1654, and to the succeeding Parliaments of the Commonwealth. With the Restoration the old constituencies and the old separate constitutions were revived, but the expediency of a legislative Union was soon after strongly advocated by Sir William Petty in that most remarkable work, the ‘Political Anatomy of Ireland,’ which was written about 1672, but published, after the death of the author, in 1691.

It was composed in the short interval of returning prosperity which followed the convulsions and confiscations of the Civil War. Reviewing the past connection between England and Ireland, Petty declared that Ireland had been for 500 years, only a loss and charge to England; that the suppression of the late rebellion had cost England ‘three times more, in men and money, than the substance of the whole country when reduced was worth;’ and that ‘at this day, when Ireland was never so rich and splendid, it was the advantage of the English to abandon their whole interest in that country, and fatal to any other nation to take it.’ Nothing, he believed, could ever put an end to this evil but a measure that should ‘tend to the transmuting one people into the other, and the thorough union of interests upon natural and lasting principles.’ Much, he thought, might be done by transplanting, for a few years, an English population into Ireland, and an Irish population into England, but the most efficacious remedy would be a complete legislative Union. It was absurd that Englishmen, settled in Ireland for the King's interests and in the King's service, should be treated as aliens; that the King's subjects should pay custom when passing from one part of his dominions to another; that two distinct Parliaments should exercise legislative powers in Ireland; that every ship carrying West Indian goods to Ireland should be forced to unload in England. He contrasted the condition of Ireland with that of Wales, which had been completely united with England, and therefore completely pacified, and he concluded, ‘that if both kingdoms, now two, were put into one, and under one legislative power and Parliament, the numbers whereof should be in the same proportion that the power and wealth of each nation are, there would be no danger such a Parliament should do anything to the prejudice of the English interest in Ireland; nor could the Irish ever complain of partiality when they shall be freely and proportionably represented in all Legislatures.’ ‘If it be just that men of English birth and estates living in Ireland should be represented in the legislative power, and that the Irish should not be judged by those whom they pretend do usurp their estates, it seems just and convenient that both kingdoms should be united and governed by one legislative power. Nor is it hard to show how this may be made practicable.’ 1

A new and very important influence affecting the question had now come into play. Petty had complained of the laws which in his time prohibited the export of Irish cattle to England, and fettered the Irish trade with the colonies; but with the Revolution and the ascendency of the commercial class that followed it, an era of far more terrible commercial restrictions began. It was not a purely Irish policy, for it extended also to the American colonies and to Scotland; but, as we have seen, the geographical position of Ireland and the complete dependence of its Legislature made the effects of this policy in that country peculiarly disastrous. The utter ruin by English law of the woollen manufactures of Ireland, the restrictions by which the Irish were prohibited from exporting them, not only to England and to the English dominions, but also to all other countries whatsoever, added greatly to the poverty of the nation, drove a multitude of the best and most energetic settlers out of the country, kindled a fierce resentment among those who remained, and inspired Molyneux to publish in 1698 his famous treatise, asserting the rightful independence of the Irish Parliament. There is a passage in the work of this great champion of Irish independence which is peculiarly significant. He observes that there are traces of Irish members having under Edward III. been summoned to a Parliament in England, and he adds that if from these records ‘it be concluded that the Parliament of England may bind Ireland, it must also be allowed that the people of Ireland ought to have their representatives in the Parliament of England; and this, I believe, we should be willing enough to embrace, but this is a happiness we can hardly hope for.’ 1

The history of the Scotch Union has been already related, and we have seen how closely it was connected with the history of the commercial disabilities. The exclusion of Scotch goods from the English colonies, and the severe restrictions on Scotch trade with England, had proved a fatal barrier to the progress of a poor and struggling country, and it had become a main object of the more intelligent Scotch politicians to procure their abolition. The English, on the other hand, were extremely unwilling to grant it, but they desired to secure and consolidate the connection of the two countries, which after the Revolution was in great danger. The violently hostile attitude towards England adopted by the Scotch Parliament during the war; the positive refusal of that Parliament to adopt the succession of the Crown in the House of Hanover; the Scotch Bill of security providing that, on the death of Queen Anne without issue, the crown of Scotland should be completely severed from that of England, unless the religion and freedom of trade of Scotland had been previously secured, and the strong retaliatory measures taken by the English Parliament, together forced on the bargain of the Union. England, with extreme reluctance, conceded the commercial privileges which Scotland so ardently desired; Scotland, with extreme reluctance, surrendered her legislative independence as the only price by which industrial prosperity could be purchased. The measure was carried probably largely by corruption. It was certainly for more than a generation bitterly unpopular in the weaker country, but it bound the two nations together by an indissoluble tie, and the immense commercial benefits which it conferred on Scotland, proved one of the chief causes of her subsequent prosperity. 1

The drama was watched with natural interest in Ireland. In 1703, four years before the Scotch Union was completed, both Houses of Parliament in Ireland concurred in a representation to the Queen in favour of a legislative Union between England and Ireland, and in 1707 the Irish House of Commons, while congratulating the Queen on the consummation of the Scotch measure, expressed a hope that God might put it into her heart to add greater strength and lustre to her crown by a yet more comprehensive union. Several of the ablest men in Ireland, such as Archbishop King, Sir W. Cox, and Bishop Nicholson, clearly saw the transcendent importance of such a measure, 2 and it is tolerably certain that, if England had desired it, it could then have been carried without difficulty and without discontent. Ireland had much more to gain by such a measure than Scotland, and the national feeling, which was so powerful in Scotland, and which at the close of the century became so powerful in Ireland, did not as yet exist. The Catholic population were sunk in poverty and degradation. Those who would have been their natural leaders in any political struggle had been completely broken by the events of the last sixty-six years, and were for the most part scattered as exiles over the Continent. All the best contemporary accounts represent the Catholics in Ireland as perfectly passive and perfectly indifferent to political questions, and they had assuredly no affection for a Legislature which consisted mainly of the victors in two recent Civil Wars, and which was animated by such sentiments as inspired the penal laws under Anne. The dominant portion of the Protestants, on the other hand, were new English settlers in possession of recently confiscated land, and they had not, and could not have had, any of the strong Irish feeling which was abundantly developed among their successors. In the pliant, plastic condition to which Ireland was then reduced, a slight touch of sagacious statesmanship might have changed the whole course of its future development. But in this as in so many other periods of Irish history, the favourable moment was suffered to pass. The spirit of commercial monopoly triumphed. The petition of the Irish Parliament was treated with contempt, and a long period of commercial restrictions, and penal laws, and complete parliamentary servitude, ensued.

Several writers during the next fifty or sixty years, both in England and Ireland, when reviewing the condition of Ireland or the state of English trade, advocated a legislative Union accompanied with free trade. Madden and Dobbs in Ireland, Postlethwayt, Decker, Sir Francis Brewster, and Child in England, were among them, 1 and they were soon followed by a writer of far wider fame. Adam Smith devoted nearly the last words of the ‘Wealth of Nations’ to the subject. He desired that Ireland as well as America should share the burden of the English national debt, but he contended that the increase of taxation which would follow a legislative Union would be more than compensated by the freedom of trade that would accompany it, and that it would confer upon Ireland the still greater benefit of softening the antagonism of class and creed, and delivering the nation from an aristocracy founded not on birth or fortune, but on religious and political prejudices. ‘Without an Union with Great Britain,’ he said, ‘the inhabitants of Ireland are not likely, for many ages, to consider themselves one people.’ 2

At the time of the American War the possibility of an Union was widely discussed, and many pamphlets pointing to such a measure appeared. 1 This war brought into vivid relief the dangers that might arise from the collision of distinct Legislatures in the same Empire, and it was probably remembered that, long before, Franklin had foreseen the danger, and had pointed out a legislative Union as the best means of lessening the chances of future separation. 2 Arthur Young more than once touched upon the subject, but with considerable hesitation. In one portion of his work he appeared to advocate it, but on the whole he inclined to the opinion that an arrangement by which England granted free trade and relaxed the restrictions on the Irish Legislature, while Ireland gave the British Government a complete control over her military resources, would prove more advantageous to both parties than an incorporating Union. 3 Montesquieu, as we have seen, expressed to Lord Charlemont a strong opinion in favour of a legislative Union.

These opinions were not confined to mere speculative writers. Franklin mentions, in a letter from London in September 1773, that it was reported that Lord Harcourt was about to introduce a legislative Union at the next meeting of the Irish Parliament. He added, that the idea of an Union was unpopular on the Eastern side of Ireland, through the belief that Dublin would decline, and that the Western and Southern parts would flourish on its ruins, but that for that very reason it was popular in the South and West. 4 It appears certain, that the expediency of a legislative Union had been the subject of consideration and confidential discussion among English statesmen during the Administration of the elder Pitt. No public steps, indeed, relating to it were taken, and the sentiments of that great statesman on the question are not easy to ascertain. The Irish policy which was disclosed in his despatches and speeches consisted mainly of three parts. He desired to respect most jealously and scrupulously the exclusive right of the Irish Parliament to tax Ireland. He viewed with great dislike the power of controlling the Executive in the disposal of the Irish army, which the Irish Parliament possessed in the law providing that 12,000 out of the 15,000 men supported from Irish resources must remain in Ireland, unless the Parliament gave its consent to their removal; and he believed that it ought to be a great end of English policy to consolidate the Protestant interest by conciliating as much as possible the Dissenters in the North. A conspicuous writer against the Union, however, who was intimately acquainted with some of the leading statesmen of his time, stated in 1799 that he believed there were men still living who well remembered ‘that this very measure of an incorporating Union was a favourite object of the late Earl of Chatham, and that particularly in the year 1763 he often mentioned it as a matter of great benefit and importance to Great Britain, and that he formed to himself the hope of carrying the measure by means of the Catholics, and that his avowed object was an object of taxation.’ 1 If, however, Chatham at one time really formed the idea, he appears to have afterwards abandoned it, for Lord Shelburne, who probably enjoyed more of his confidence than any other public man, assured Arthur Young that Chatham had repeatedly declared himself against the policy of a legislative Union, alleging among other reasons the bad effects it would exercise on the composition of the English Parliament. 2

It is stated by Dalrymple that in 1776, at the close of the Administration of Lord Harcourt, there was some question of Lord Rochford succeeding him as Viceroy, and that he made it a condition that he should be authorised to attempt to carry two great measures—a repeal of the penal laws against the Catholics, and a legislative Union. Lord Harcourt was consulted on these proposals, and his advice appears to have been singularly sagacious. He said that there would not be much difficulty in repealing the penal laws; ‘that the Roman Catholics were all on the side of England and of the King of England in the American War, and that very good use might be made of them in the course of it,’ and he added, that this was the opinion of some of the principal persons in Ireland, both in Church and State. On the subject of an Union, however, he thought there were ‘great though perhaps not insurmountable difficulties.’ ‘To attempt it,’ he said, ‘in time of war would be insanity.’ ‘The minds of the Irish must be long prepared:’ ‘Government should take the assistance of the best writers on both sides of the water, to point out the advantages of the Union in different lights to different men.’ ‘No Union should be attempted unless the wish for it came from the side of Ireland, and even then not unless there was a strong body of troops there to keep the madmen in order, and these troops Irish and not English. In consequence of this opinion, Dalrymple says that Lord Rochford relinquished the idea of accepting the Viceroyalty. 1

By the time of the American War the condition of Ireland and the wishes of the Irish people had profoundly changed. A long period of internal peace had greatly assuaged the divisions and animosities of Irish life, and the Irish Parliament, though a very restricted and a very corrupt body, contained several men of eminent abilities and of wide and liberal judgments. A strong national spirit had grown up among the Irish gentry, and there seemed every prospect that they would successfully lead and unite the divided sections of their people. The penal laws against the Catholics remained on the statute-book, but most of them had been allowed to fall into desuetude. There was a republican spirit among the Presbyterians of the North, but the Catholics for more than three-quarters of a century had shown no seditious disposition, and a large trading interest had arisen among them. The country was plainly improving. With increasing power, increasing patriotism, and increasing unity, the resentment against both the commercial disabilities and the legislative restrictions had strengthened, and the American War and the volunteer movement kindled the smouldering fire into a blaze. Two measures of the widest importance were conceded. The whole code of commercial restraint which excluded Irish commerce from the British plantations and from continental Europe was abolished, and the full legislative independence of the Irish Parliament was recognised.

The bearing of these measures on the question of an Union was very obvious. A few slight commercial restrictions remained, and trade with England was still regulated by separate acts of the two Parliaments, but Ireland obtained a field of commercial development which was fully adequate to her real requirements and capacities, and in her case, therefore, the main inducement which led Scotland to accept the Union no longer existed. The newly acquired independence of the Irish Parliament, on the other hand, greatly increased both the sacrifice involved in an Union and the national spirit opposed to it. I have already described at length the nature of the Constitution of 1782, the dangers that attended it, and the two great conflicts which, in the first seven years of its existence, brought the enfranchised Parliament into opposition to the Parliament of England. These conflicts have, I think, often been greatly misrepresented; they should be carefully examined by every student of Irish history, but I can here only refer to what I have already written on the subject. One very evident result of them was to strengthen greatly in the minds of English statesmen the conviction, that the tie that bound the two countries had become exceedingly precarious, and that some form of Union was necessary to secure and consolidate the Empire.

It is remarkable that George III. already looked with favour on the idea. In a letter written to North at the time of Lord Townshend's contest with the undertakers, he complained of the open profligacy of public men in Ireland, and predicted that it ‘must sooner or later oblige this country seriously to consider whether the uniting it to this crown would not be the only means of making both islands flourishing.’ 1 During the American War, and at the time when the great commercial concessions were made to Ireland, Lord Hillsborough, who was North's Secretary of State, was known to be warmly in favour of a legislative Union upon the Scotch model; Lord North shared his opinion, 1 and after the surrender of all legislative control over Ireland, that opinion appears to have become common among English statesmen of all parties, and especially among those who were directly responsible for the government of Ireland. Even Fox, who introduced and carried the Act of Renunciation, afterwards acknowledged that it was only with extreme reluctance that he had consented to leave the Empire without any general superintending authority over its commercial and external legislation, and he ardently desired that some supplemental treaty should be carried, binding the two countries more closely together. 2 The Duke of Richmond in 1783 openly declared in the House of Lords, that nothing short of an incorporating Union could avert the danger of the Irish Parliament, in some future war, throwing the weight of its influence in opposition to England. 3 The Duke of Portland, who was Lord Lieutenant when the legislative independence was conceded, acknowledged that it was only with ‘the strongest and most poignant reluctance,’ and under the stress of an overwhelming necessity, that he consented to recommend that measure, and he told his Government confidentially, that unless the Irish Parliament would consent to enter into some treaty placing the regulation of trade, the consideration to be granted by Ireland for the protection of the British navy, and the share which Ireland should contribute to the general support of the Empire, above the fluctuating moods of successive Parliaments, it was very questionable whether it might not be good policy to abandon Ireland altogether. 4 Temple, who succeeded Portland as Viceroy, predicted that the concession which had been made, was ‘but the beginning of a scene which will close for ever the account between the two kingdoms.’ 5 Even the Duke of Rutland, whose Viceroyalty covers the most prosperous period of the independent existence of the Irish Parliament, was, in private, strongly in favour of a legislative Union, and believed that, without such a measure, Ireland would not remain for twenty years connected with Great Britain. 1

The failure of the commercial propositions of 1785 was very unfortunate. The original scheme of Pitt was, as we have seen, gladly accepted by the Irish Parliament. It would have regulated permanently both the commercial intercourse between the two countries and the contribution of Ireland to the defence of the Empire; and a reform of Parliament upon a Protestant basis, such as Pitt then contemplated, would have been sufficient to include in the parliamentary system by far the greater part of the energy, intelligence, and property of the nation.

In the debates on this question, the open advocacy of a legislative Union by Wilberforce, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Sackville, 2 showed clearly the current of English political thought. Lord Camden, the favourite colleague of Chatham, and the representative of the most liberal section of English politics, supported the commercial propositions in a speech in which he represented the existing condition of Ireland as threatening civil war, and he was understood to argue in favour of them on the ground that they would draw the two peoples ‘into a legislative Union, which was the object ultimately to be desired.’ Lord Stormont, the old colleague of North, on the other hand, opposed the propositions, arguing that if the proposed settlement proved permanent and final, ‘there was of course an end of all hope that the two kingdoms would ever be under one Legislature;’ and that even if it were not final, it would still be fatal to an Union, ‘because, every possible advantage being held out by England to the Irish by the present propositions, she could have nothing reserved by which she might afterwards induce them to consent to an Union—she could have burdens only to offer to Ireland, a very bad inducement to an union of Legislatures.’ 3 In the House of Commons, Lord North spoke powerfully in the same sense. ‘He would most gladly,’ he said, ‘admit Ireland to a participation of every advantage of trade, provided she was so connected with us as to form one people with us, under one Government, one Legislature…. Until the happy day should come that would make the two kingdoms one, he did not conceive it just that one should be enriched at the expense of the other.’ 1 Dean Tucker at this time drew up a series of answers to the popular arguments against an Union, which was published near the close of the century, and was made much use of in the discussions on the Union. 2

The failure of this negotiation, and the subsequent difference on the Regency question, probably greatly strengthened the desire of English statesmen to effect an Union, and it certainly strengthened their indisposition to any measures of reform which would weaken their control over the Irish Legislature. A letter of the first Lord Camden is preserved, in which he avows his decided opinion that the corruption and consequent subservience of the Irish Parliament was, under the new Constitution of Ireland, the only means by which the connection could be maintained, and that sooner or later that Constitution, if it continued, must lead to a civil war. 3 It is a significant fact, too, that from this time the overtures of the Irish Parliament, for a commercial union with England on the lines of Pitt's original scheme, were uniformly declined.

If we now turn from the opinions of English statesmen to the public opinion in Ireland, we shall find a remarkable contrast. No single fact is more apparent in the Irish history of the last half of the century, than the strong and vehement dread of an Union in Ireland. It does not date from the establishment of Irish legislative independence. I have already mentioned the furious riots that convulsed Dublin as early as 1759, on account of an unfounded rumour that such a measure was in contemplation. 4 In 1776 Arthur Young collected opinions on the subject of an Union with Great Britain, and was informed, ‘that nothing was so unpopular in Ireland as such an idea.’ 5 In 1780 Lord Hillsborough, having in his confidential correspondence with the Lord Lieutenant thrown out a hint that some such measure was desirable, Buckinghamshire answered, ‘Let me earnestly recommend to you not to utter the word Union in a whisper, or to drop it from your pen. The present temper will not bear it.’ 1 In 1785, when Bishop Watson pressed upon the Duke of Rutland the policy of a legislative Union, the Lord Lieutenant answered that he fully agreed with him, but that anyone who proposed such a measure in Ireland would be tarred and feathered. 2 On most subjects the Irish Parliament was exceedingly subservient, but on the subject of its own exclusive legislative competence it was even feverishly jealous, and the suspicion that the English Government was conspiring against the settlement which had been so formally and so solemnly guaranteed in 1782 and 1783, never failed to kindle a fierce resentment in the nation. In the violent opposition which Grattan led to the amended commercial propositions in 1785, the irritation excited by this suspicion, and by the language used in England on the subject, is very apparent. Grattan saw in the amended proposals, ‘an intolerance of the parliamentary Constitution of Ireland, a declaration that the full and free external legislation of the Irish Parliament is incompatible with the British Empire.’ He described them as ‘an incipient and a creeping Union.’ He declared, that in opposing them he considered himself as opposing ‘an Union in limine ,’ and already in this debate he fully elaborated the doctrine of the incompetence of the Irish Parliament to carry a legislative Union, which fourteen years later became so prominent in the discussions on the measure. 3

This strong feeling on the part of the political classes in Ireland was certainly not due to any disloyal or anti-English feeling. At the risk of wearying my readers by repetition, I must again remind them, that the Irish Parliament of 1782 was a body utterly unlike any Parliament that could be set up by modern politicians. It was essentially an assembly of the leading members of the landed gentry of the country; of the section of the community which was bound to the English connection by the strongest ties of sympathy and interest; of the chief representatives of property; of the classes from which, since the Union, the magistracy and the grand juries have been principally formed. It had uniformly and readily followed the lead of the English Parliament in all questions of foreign policy. It had contributed largely and ungrudgingly, both in soldiers and in money, to the support of the Empire in every war that had arisen, and it was perfectly ready to enter into a treaty for a permanent contribution to the British navy, provided such a treaty could be framed without impairing its legislative supremacy. Viceroy after viceroy had emphatically acknowledged its unmixed loyalty, and they made no complaint of its present dispositions; but at the same time the most experienced English statesmen and a succession of English viceroys were convinced that the permanent concurrence of two independent Parliaments under the Constitution of 1782 was impossible, and that a collision between the two Parliaments in time of peace would be dangerous, and in time of war might very easily be fatal to the connection.

In Ireland, on the other hand, the independence of the Parliament was supported by the strong pride and passion of Nationality—a sentiment which may be the source both of good and of evil, but which, whether it be wise or unwise, must always be a most powerful element in political calculations. Irish statesmen, too, reviewing English legislation since the Restoration, and perceiving the still prevailing spirit of commercial monopoly, contended that the material interests of Ireland could not be safely entrusted to a British Parliament. They foresaw that an identification of Legislatures would ultimately lead to an assimilation of taxation, raising Irish contributions to the English level. They perceived that Ireland was rapidly developing into a considerable nation, with its own type of character and its own conditions of prosperity; and they especially dreaded the moral effects of an Union in promoting absenteeism, weakening the power of the landed gentry, and thus destroying a guiding influence, which in the peculiar conditions of Ireland was transcendently important. Sir Robert Peel, many years later, spoke of ‘the severance of the connection between the constituent body of Ireland and the natural aristocracy of the country,’ as perhaps the greatest and most irreparable calamity that could befall Ireland, and on this point Grattan and Peel were entirely agreed. Adam Smith believed that the great work of uniting into one people the severed elements of Irish life, could be only speedily accomplished if the legislative power was transferred to a larger and impartial assembly unswayed by local tyrannies, factions, and corruptions. Grattan believed that it could only be attained by the strong guidance of the loyal gentry of both religions, acting together in a national Legislature and appealing to a national sentiment, and he dreaded, with an intense but by no means exaggerated fear, the consequence to Ireland if the guidance of her people passed into the hands of dishonest, disreputable, and disloyal adventurers. The rapid and indisputable progress of national prosperity in the last decades of the century, though in truth it was largely due to causes that had very little relation to politics, strengthened the feeling in support of the local Legislature, and strong selfish as well as unselfish considerations tended in the same direction. Dublin was furious at the thought of a measure which would transfer the aristocracy and leading gentry of Ireland to London. The Irish bar had an enormous influence, both in the Parliament and in the country, and it would be a fatal blow to it if the Parliament no longer sat in the neighbourhood of the Law Courts; the great borough owners perceived that a legislative Union must take the virtual government of Ireland out of their hands, and a crowd of needy legislators saw in it the extinction of the system under which they could always, by judicious voting, obtain places for themselves or their relatives.

It is not surprising that from all these sources a body of opinion hostile to a legislative Union should have arisen in Ireland which appeared wholly irresistible. For about ten years after the declaration of independence it was unbroken, and it is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that during that period not a single Irish politician or writer of real eminence was in favour of such a measure. At this time it was wholly impracticable, for no corruption and no intimidation would have induced the Irish Parliament to consent to it.

The disastrous events of the last years of the century, however, gradually produced some change. The danger of foreign invasion, the terrible rapidity with which conspiracy and anarchy spread through the masses of the people, and the menacing aspects which the Catholic question assumed, began to shake the security of property, and to spread vague and growing alarms among all classes. The concession of the franchise in 1793 to a vast, semi-barbarous Catholic democracy, portended, in the eyes of many, the downfall of the Protestant Establishment, and perhaps of the existing settlement of property. From this time a few men began, through fear or through resentment, to look with more favour on the idea of an Union, and Lord Clare steadily, though as yet secretly, urged its necessity.

I have shown how the notion of a legislative Union began to dawn on many minds in connection with the Catholic question; how some men thought that the Protestants, alarmed or exasperated by Catholic progress, would be inclined to take shelter in such a measure; how other men foresaw that the concession of Catholic emancipation might play the same part in the Irish Union which trade privileges had played in the union with Scotland; and how Pitt himself evidently shared the idea. The remarkable letter, written by him in the November of 1792, which I have cited from the Westmorland Correspondence, speaks of an Union as a vague, doubtful, distant prospect, but as a measure which had been for some time largely occupying his thoughts, and which he believed to be the one real solution of the difficulties of Ireland. It would offer to the Protestants full security for their property and their Church, and it would, at the same time, remove the chief argument against Catholic suffrage. The language of Charlemont, Grattan, and Curran proves that the intentions and wishes of the English Government were clearly perceived, and that they were exciting in the independent section of Irish politicians great disquietude and determined hostility. 1

There are periods, both in private and public life, when the ablest men experience what gamblers call a run of ill luck. At such times the steadiest hand seems to lose its cunning, and the strongest judgment its balance, and mistake follows mistake. Some fatality of this kind seems to have hung over Irish legislation in those critical years which are chiefly marked by the Relief Act of 1793, and by the Fitzwilliam episode. I have done all that lies in my power to unravel with care and impartiality, the maze of conflicting motives and impulses that governed the strangely wayward and uncertain course of English government of Ireland during those anxious years. I have endeavoured to show that Pitt and Dundas were animated by a spirit of real and genuine liberality to the Catholics, and were convinced as a matter of policy that the United Irish conspiracy could only be checked by conciliating them, but that they were hampered by the opposition of the Irish Government, by the opposition of the King, by their own ignorance of the state of Ireland, and by their desire to reserve some great Catholic concession as an inducement to the Union. I have endeavoured also to show how motives of a different kind—jealousy of Whig ascendency in the remodelled Government; a misunderstanding with Fitz-william about the extent of his powers; a question of patronage which was treated as a question of honour—acted upon their conduct, and how the whole was aggravated by a natural luke-warmness and indecision of purpose in dealing with great questions of public policy, which appears to me to have been a constitutional infirmity of Pitt. But whatever opinion the reader may form about this explanation, he will hardly, I think, question that the net results of the policy of this period were extremely calamitous. The Relief Act of 1793 settled nothing, and promised to add enormously both to the difficulty and the danger of the government of Ireland. The sudden recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, after the hopes that had been raised, gave a decisive impulse to Catholic disloyalty. The appeal by the Government to Protestant support against Catholic emancipation, stimulated most fatally that spirit of religious dissension which was again rising rapidly in Ireland.

The situation was made much worse when Lord Fitzwilliam published the passage from a confidential letter of the Duke of Portland, declaring that the postponement of the Catholic Relief Bill would be ‘the means of doing a greater service to the British Empire than it has been capable of receiving since the Revolution, or at least since the Union.’ The meaning which was at once attached to this passage was, that the Government desired to delay the concession in order to obtain an Union, and the question was thus forced prominently on public attention. Its reception was exceedingly unfavourable, and the resolution of the great Catholic Assembly in Francis Street Chapel showed that, whatever support the measure might receive from some Catholics, it was certain to meet from the Catholic Committee, who led the active politics of that body, an implacable opposition. 1 Grattan, on his side, predicted that if the old taskmasters returned to power, ‘they would extinguish Ireland, or Ireland must remove them.’ 1

The horrible years of growing crime, anarchy, and dissension which followed, convinced many that a great change of system was required, The Parliament remained, indeed, a zealously loyal body, and Arthur O'Connor and Lord Edward Fitzgerald were probably the only members in it whose sympathies were with France. But outside its walls the doctrine was openly professed, that Ireland ought not to support England in the French war; and at the same time the prospects of an invasion; the imminent fear of rebellion; the violent religious war which had broken out in Ulster, and the rumours that were spread among the panic-stricken Catholics of Orange conspiracies to massacre them, had all tended to aggravate enormously the difficulties of local government in Ireland. The capacity of any portion of an empire for extended and popular self-government is not a mere question of constitutional machinery or of abstract reasoning. It depends essentially upon the character and dispositions of the people for whom that self-government is intended. A constitutional arrangement which in one country will be harmless or beneficent, in another country will infallibly lead to civil war, to confiscation of property, to utter anarchy and ruin. Loyalty and moderation; a respect for law, for property, and for authority; a sentiment of common patriotism uniting the different sections of the community; a healthy disposition of classes, under which trustworthy and honourable men rise naturally to leadership—these are the conditions upon which all successful self-government must depend. The events of Irish history had made the soil of Ireland peculiarly unfavourable to it, but for a long period before the outbreak of the French Revolution there had been a great and rapid improvement. The country was not, and never has been, fit for a democratic Government, but many of the best Irishmen believed that healthy elements of self-government had grown up, which would make it possible for the management of affairs to pass safely and most beneficially out of the hands of the corrupt aristocracy of borough owners. But this prospect was now visibly receding, as the old fissures that divided Irish life reopened, and as fear and hatred began to separate classes which had for many years been approximating. The opinion so powerfully expressed by General Knox about the necessity of an Union, was no doubt held by other intelligent observers. 1 It was, however, still that of isolated and scattered individuals, and up to the outbreak of the rebellion there was no party in Ireland which desired such a measure, no party which would even tolerate its proposal.

The language of Gordon on this subject is very remarkable. That temperate and truthful historian was himself a supporter of the Union, and he had therefore no disposition to overrate the feeling against it. Yet he declares that it could not possibly have been carried, but for the horrors of the rebellion. ‘So odious,’ he says, ‘was the measure to multitudes whose pride or private interest, real or imaginary, was engaged, that it could not with the smallest probability of success be proposed, until prejudice was in some degree overcome by the calamities and dangers of the rebellion.’ 2

From this fact a charge of the most tremendous kind has been elaborated against the English Government, which will be found repeated again and again by popular writers in Ireland, and which has sunk deeply into the popular belief. It is that the English Government, desiring an Union and perceiving that it could not be effected without a convulsion, deliberately forced on the rebellion as a means of effecting it. In a memoir written by Dr. McNevin shortly after the Union, this charge is drawn up with the utmost confidence. McNevin observes that Lord Clare acknowledged that, for many years before the Union, the destruction of the Irish Parliament had been a main object of his policy. ‘Joined with him,’ he says, ‘in this conspiracy were some others, and in the number Lord Castlereagh, all of whom, with cold-blooded artifice, stirred up an insurrection, that was to supply the necessary pretext for effecting their nefarious design. In former times resort was had to similar acts of outrage, for the purpose of driving the natives into a resistance that should be followed by a forfeiture of their estates. Now a rebellion was intentionally produced by the chief agents of the British Ministry, in order to give an opportunity for confiscating the whole political power and the independent character of the country by an Act of Union.’ McNevin acknowledges that the conspirators, among whom he was himself a leader, were aiming at a separation, though he contends that they contemplated it only in the case of a refusal of reform, and that they wished to obtain it only ‘through the co-operation of a respectable French force, to exclude the barbarity of a purely civil war.’ ‘But for the systematic atrocities,’ he continues,’ of the conspirators against the legislative independence of Ireland, no civil war would have occurred there to the present moment. We have the authority of the American Congress that the colonies were driven designedly into resistance, for the purpose of giving an opportunity to impose on them a standing army, illegal taxes, and to establish among them a system of despotism. This arbitrary project, after miscarrying in America, was transferred by the same monarch to Ireland, and unhappily succeeded there. Before assistance could be obtained against his schemes from the natural ally of his persecuted subjects, an enlarged scope was given to the intolerable practice of house burnings, free quarters, tortures, and summary executions, which, as the Ministry intended, exploded in rebellion. After this manner they facilitated the Union.’

Nor was even this the full extent of the perfidy attributed to them. ‘Lord Cornwallis,’ writes McNevin, ‘declared himself inclined to justice and conciliation. He was violently opposed by the Orange faction in the Cabinet, and from a motive which he did not then disclose, but which subsequent events have shown to be the projected union of the two countries, he wished to make a merit with those who had suffered most from the British Government, by teaching them to throw the severity of their sufferings on their own villanous Parliament and merciless countrymen.’ 1

O'Connell and his followers have more than once repeated this charge, and accused the English Government of having deliberately promoted the rebellion for the purpose of carrying the Union. O'Connell explained on this hypothesis the whole Fitzwilliam episode. He dwelt upon the fact that the Government, for many months before the outbreak of the rebellion, had secret information pointing out its most active leaders, and that, in spite of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, those leaders were suffered to remain at large, and he insisted upon the passage from the report of the Secret Committee in which Lord Castlereagh spoke of the measures that had been taken to cause the rebellion to explode.

Such an accusation will probably appear to most readers too wildly extravagant to require a lengthened refutation. Very few Englishmen will believe that Pitt was capable either of the extreme wickedness of deliberately kindling a great rebellion for the purpose of carrying his favourite measure, or of the extreme folly of doing this at a time when all the resources of England were strained to the utmost in a desperate and most doubtful contest with the mighty power of Napoleon. In the Irish Government no one supported more strongly both the anti-Catholic policy, and the military severities to which the rebellion has been attributed, than the Speaker Foster, who was the most powerful of all the opponents of the Union; while the perfectly simple and honourable motives that inspired the humaner policy of Cornwallis appear with transparent clearness in his confidential letters. The reasons which long withheld the Government from arresting United Irish leaders when they had not sufficient evidence to put them on their trial, have been already explained; and if martial law forced the conspiracy into a premature explosion, it did so only when the country had been already organised for rebellion, and when it was an object of the first importance to disarm it before the expected arrival of the French. At the same time, fluctuating and unskilful policy has often the effects of calculated malevolence, and the mistakes of the Government both in England andlreland undoubtedly contributed very largely to the hideous scenes of social and political anarchy, to the religious hatreds and religious panics, which alone rendered possible the legislative Union. Nor can it, I think, be denied that it is in a high degree probable, that a desire to carry a legislative Union had a considerable influence in dictating the policy which in fact produced the rebellion, and that there were politicians who were prepared to pursue that policy even at the risk of a rebellion, and who were eager to make use of the rebellion when it broke out, for the purpose of accomplishing their design. The following striking passage from a work which I have often quoted, shows the extreme severity with which the situation was judged by a perfectly loyal writer, who was in general one of the most temperate and most competent then living in Ireland. ‘To affirm,’ writes Newenham, ‘that the Government of Ireland facilitated the growth of rebellion, for the purpose of effecting the Union, would be to hold language not perhaps sufficiently warranted by facts. But to affirm that the rebellion was kept alive for that purpose, seems perfectly warrantable. The charge was boldly made in the writer's hearing, during one of the debates on the Union by an honourable gentleman, who held a profitable place under the Crown. And to affirm that that measure never would have been carried into effect without the occurrence of a rebellion, similar in respect of its attendant and previous circumstances to that of 1798, is to advance what nineteen in twenty men who were acquainted with the political sentiments of the Irish people at that time, will feel little difficulty in assenting to.’ 1

A careful examination of the confidential correspondence of this time, appears to show that, although the expediency of a legislative Union had long been present in the minds of Pitt and of several leading English statesmen, and although it had been persistently urged by Clare since 1793, no settled and definite project of introducing such a measure was formed in England, before the outbreak of the rebellion. 1 Pitt, according to his usual custom, discussed it at length in a very small circle, for some time before it was even suggested to his Cabinet. Perhaps the earliest notice of it, is a letter of June 4,1798, in which Pitt writes to Auckland that he had lately been discussing with Lord Grenville, the expediency of taking steps for carrying an Union immediately after the suppression of the rebellion. They had been studying the Scotch Act of Union, and they especially desired the assistance of Auckland in framing its trade and finance clauses. Auckland appears to have communicated with Clare, for a few days later he received a letter from that statesman containing the following passage: ‘As to the subject of an Union with the British Parliament, I have long been of opinion that nothing short of it can save this country. I stated the opinion very strongly to Mr. Pitt in the year 1793, immediately after that fatal mistake, into which he was betrayed by Mr. Burke and Mr. Dundas, in receiving an appeal from the Irish Parliament by a popish democracy. I again stated the same opinion to him last winter; and if this were a time for it, I think I could make it clear and plain to every dispassionate man in the British Empire, that it is utterly impossible to preserve this country to the British Crown, if we are to depend upon the precarious bond of union which now subsists between Great Britain and Ireland. It makes me almost mad, when I look back at the madness, folly, and corruption in both countries, which have brought us to the verge of destruction.’ 2

When Lord Cornwallis arrived in Ireland on June 20, he does not appear to have known anything about an intention to carry an Union, or, at least, to have received any fixed instructions relating to it. 3 A few weeks later, however, a small number of persons, who were closely connected with the Government of Ireland, were sounded on the subject. Lord Camden appears to have been much consulted, and he wrote about this time to Lord Castlereagh, ‘The King and every one of his Ministers are inclined to an Union, and it will certainly be taken into consideration here, and you will probably hear from the Duke of Portland upon it.’ 1 Pelham was still Chief Secretary, though ill health compelled him to remain in England; and it appears from a letter written to him by William Elliot, on July 28, that at that date Cornwallis leaned decidedly towards an Union, but that both Pelham and Elliot were extremely reluctant to undertake such a measure, and extremely doubtful whether’ the advantages resulting from it would answer the expectation.’ 2 Shortly after, Sylvester Douglas, who had been the Irish Chief Secretary in 1794, wrote to Pelham advocating the measure, and his letter is especially interesting, as it was written from Dover, immediately after a consultation with Pitt at Walmer Castle. Douglas fully agreed with Pelham that there were great difficulties attending an Union, but he maintained that the safety of the Empire required it, and that if the measure was desirable, the present was a very favourable moment for carrying it. It would not be desirable unless it was to the advantage of both countries, but great authorities, such as Petty, Adam Smith, and Bacon (in his advocacy of the Scotch Union), were in favour of it, and there was one consideration which now dominated all others. Can Ireland, he asked, hang much longer to England by the present slender thread, ‘when some of their ablest men treat the interference of the Executive of the Empire in those very affairs of Ireland, which most concern the general interests of the Empire, as the usurped tyranny of a foreign Cabinet?’ and when ‘a few Irish enthusiasts’ have been able to engage nearly 200,000 men to break the connection? The century was fast drawing to a close, but Douglas believed that, even before its end, the frail tie that bound the two countries would probably be severed unless an Union were carried. Who could believe, after the confessions of Tone, Emmet, McNevin, and O'Connor, that Catholic emancipation would postpone the evil? It would probably accelerate it. For his own part, Douglas said, he could not resist the force of a question put by the United Irishmen in one of their earliest publications. ‘Is there any middle state between the extremes of Union with Great Britain and total separation?’ 1

Castlereagh, who already discharged most of the duties of Chief Secretary, appears to have been from the first a decided advocate of the Union. His views will be exhibited in detail in the course of this narrative, but a significant passage may be here cited from one of his earliest letters about it. Writing on September 7, he expresses his deep gratification at the somewhat tardy resolution of the Government to send over a large English force, for the complete suppression of the rebellion and the protection of the country against invasion.’ I consider it peculiarly advantageous,’ he writes, ‘that we shall owe our security so entirely to the interposition of Great Britain. I have always been apprehensive of that false confidence which might arise from an impression that security had been obtained by our own exertions. Nothing would tend so much to make the public mind impracticable with a view to that future settlement, without which we can never hope for any permanent tranquillity.’ 2

The opinions of Cornwallis were gradually unfolded, and they must be carefully followed. Though the Union is not named, it is evidently referred to in a letter of July 20, in which Cornwallis, having mentioned that the rebellion was almost subdued, adds, ‘How or when to bring forward, or even to broach, the great point of ultimate settlement, is a matter in which I cannot see the most distant encouragement. The two or three people whom I have ventured in the most cautious manner to sound, say that it must not be mentioned now; that this is a time of too much danger to agitate such a question; but if a period of safety should come when boroughs will be considered as a sure property, and all good jobs again appear within our grasp, that moment will not, I am afraid, be found propitious for expecting those sacrifices which must be required. Convinced as I am that it is the only measure which can long preserve this country, I will never lose sight of it; and happy shall I be if that fortunate opportunity should ever arrive, when we may neither think ourselves in too much danger nor in too much security to suffer its production.’ 1

In September, he recurs to the subject, and still in a desponding tone. The great question, he says, of Irish administration is, ‘how this country can be governed and preserved, and rendered a source of strength and power, instead of remaining an useless and almost intolerable burden to Great Britain. ‘A perseverance in the system which has hitherto been pursued can only lead us from bad to worse, and after exhausting the resources of Britain, must end in the total separation of the two countries.’ ‘With regard to future plans, I can only say that some mode must be adopted to soften the hatred of the Catholics to our Government. Whether this can be done by advantages held out to them from an Union with Great Britain; by some provision for their clergy, or by some modification of tithe, which is the grievance of which they complain, I will not presume to determine. The first of these propositions is undoubtedly the most desirable, if the dangers with which we are surrounded will admit of our making the attempt; but the dispositions of the people at large, and especially of the North, must be previously felt.’ 2

A few days later he notices the rise of a fatal division, which affected profoundly the whole future of the question. ‘The principal people here are so frightened that they would, I believe, readily consent to an Union, but then it must be a Protestant Union; and even the Chancellor, who is the most right-headed politician in this country, will not hear of the Roman Catholics sitting in the United Parliament.’ ‘This country is daily becoming more disturbed. Religious animosities increase, and, I am sorry to say, are encouraged by the foolish violence of all the principal persons who have been in the habit of governing this land…. The great measure, from which I looked for so much good, will, if carried, fall far short of my expectations, as all the eading persons here, not excepting the Chancellor are determined to resist the extension of its operation to the Catholics. He feel the measure of so much importance, that it is worth carrying anyhow, but I am determined not to submit to the insertion of any clause that shall make the exclusion of the Catholics a fundamental part of the Union, as I am fully convinced that, until the Catholics are admitted into a general participation of rights (which when incorporated with the British Government they cannot abuse), there will be no peace or safety in Ireland.’ 1

These first impressions were hardly encouraging. Auckland at this time, after returning from a visit to Pitt, at which Irish questions were much discussed, appears to have come to the conclusion that, while the system of government in Ireland must be changed, it would be better to be content with humbler measures than a legislative Union. ‘The whole system of needy and illiterate, and disaffected papist priests,’ he said, ‘ought to be put down;’ a respectable and responsible priesthood should be endowed from the public purse; and something might perhaps be done to relieve the Catholics from their tithe grievances, but a legislative Union was a matter ‘of great difficulty in the irrangement, of greater difficulty in the execution, and after all precarious in its consequences,’ and it is plain that Auckland would at this time have gladly relinquished the idea. George Rose, who was one of the few men intimately consulted by Pitt, was decidedly of opinion, that although a new arrangement between England and Ireland would be in itself desirable, the difficulties of carrying it in the existing circumstances were insuperable. Lord Carlisle, who had been Lord Lieutenant when the now ebbing flood of Irish nationality was rising to a spring tide height in 1782, wrote to Auckland a curious, anxious, hesitating letter on the subject. This he thought was a moment when much might be done, as, for the first time, a conviction had grown up in Ireland that their old Government was insufficient for their own safety and protection. ‘Dare you,’ he continued, in this agitated sea of public affairs, turn towards the bold expedient of Union? It seems the most unfit hour for any business ness that requires so much new thought and addition of labour, and yet it is perhaps the only hour that Ireland could be found practicable on the subject.’ He speaks of the terrible evils that had grown up through the faults of English administration in Ireland; through the jobbing and corruption of the chief people in that country; through the neglect of duty by the absentees, and through the extreme poverty of some of the lower orders, which made them ready to promote the most desperate schemes. ‘Something new,’ he said, ‘must be attempted. I know no hand or head more equal to a bold experiment than Mr. Pitt's. Ireland in its present state will pull down England. She is a ship on fire, and must either be cast off or extinguished.’ 1

A strong will and intellect, however, was now applied to the wavering councils of the Government. On October 8, Lord Clare sailed for England to visit Pitt at Holwood, and to discuss with him the future government of Ireland. He went, Lord Cornwallis writes, ‘with the thorough conviction that unless an Union between Great Britain and Ireland can be effected, there remains but little hope that the connection between the two countries will long subsist;' 2 but he went also with the firm resolve that a measure of Catholic emancipation should form no part of the scheme.

Cornwallis reluctantly acquiesced, but he deplored deeply the course which the question seemed likely to take. He wrote earnestly to Pitt, that it would be a desperate measure to make an irrevocable alliance with the small ascendency party in Ireland; but assuming that this was not to be done, and that the question of Catholic emancipation was merely postponed until after the Union, he implored him to consider ‘whether an Union with the Protestants will afford a temporary respite from the spirit of faction and rebellion which so universally pervades this island, and whether the Catholics will patiently wait for what is called their emancipation, from the justice of the United Parliament.’ ‘If we are to reason,’ he continues, ‘on the future from the past, I should think that most people would answer these questions in the negative; … if it is in contemplation ever to extend the privileges of the Union to the Roman Catholics, the present appears to be the only opportunity which the British Ministry can have of obtaining any credit from the boon, which must otherwise in a short time be extorted from them.’ 1 In a confidential letter to Pelham, which has never been published, he went still further, and his language is exceedingly remarkable. ‘I am apprehensive,’ he said, ‘that an Union between Great Britain and the Protestants in Ireland is not likely to do us much good. I am sensible that it is the easiest point to carry, but I begin to have great doubts whether it will not prove an insuperable bar, instead of being a step, towards the admission of Catholics, which is the only measure that can give permanent tranquillity to this wretched country.’ 2

It must be observed, that during all this period there is not the smallest trace of Corawallis being aware of the conscientious objections which the King entertained to the admission of Catholics even into an Imperial Legislature, nor does it appear that the King knew anything of the conferences that were going on. Lord Clare, in the short period which he spent with Pitt, fully attained his double object of confirming Pitt's opinion in favour of the Union, and of convincing him that it must be unaccompanied with emancipation. He found the Ministry, he said, ‘full of popish projects,’ but he trusted that he had fully determined them ‘to bring the measure forward unencumbered with the doctrines of emancipation.’ ‘Mr. Pitt,’ he said, ‘is decided upon it, and I think he will keep his colleagues steady.’ 3

Dundas appears at this time, as in 1793, to have been much more warmly in favour of the Catholics than Pitt, and there is a very significant allusion to this in one of the letters of Cornwallis. ‘Had Mr. Dundas been in town,’ he writes, ‘before the Chancellor went over, he might perhaps have been able to carry the point of establishing the Union on a broad and comprehensive line; but things have now gone too far to admit of a change, and the principal persons in this country have received assurances from the English Ministers, which cannot be retracted.’ 1

These words were written in the middle of November, and it was early in that month that the intended scheme was first cautiously revealed to a few leading persons in Ireland. Cornwallis said, that as much opposition must be expected to it in the Irish Parliament whatever shape it might assume, it was necessary, as soon as the main principles were agreed on, to communicate them to the chief friends of Government, and he added, that he had himself so carefully avoided giving offence, that he believed that no person of much political consequence was hostile to his Government except the Speaker. 2 Most of the canvassing in this month naturally took place in Ireland, but three conspicuous Irishmen were in England, and with them Pitt personally communicated. Of these, Foster, the Speaker, was by far the ablest. Pitt found him ‘perfectly cordial and communicative;’ ‘strongly against the measure of an Union (particularly at the present moment), yet perfectly ready to discuss the point fairly.’ Pitt hoped—as the event showed, without reason—that Foster might be bribed, and he was prepared to offer him an English peerage with, if possible, some ostensible situation, as well as the life provision to which he would be entitled on vacating the chair. Beresford and Parnell he had also seen. Neither spoke very explicitly, but both appeared to dislike the measure, though Pitt hoped that both would acquiesce in it if it were fully resolved on. All three deprecated any authoritative announcement of the scheme until the leading individuals in Ireland had been consulted, and until steps had been taken for disposing the public mind. The success of the measure Pitt thought would depend altogether on the conduct of a few individuals in Ireland, and the Lord Lieutenant must do all in his power to win them over. Elliot had arrived in England to support the arguments of Lord Cornwallis in favour of admitting the Catholics to Parliament and office, but Pitt believed that such a measure at this time was completely impracticable. ‘With respect to a provision,’ he added, ‘for the Catholic clergy, and some arrangement respecting tithes, I am happy to find a uniform opinion in favour of the proposal among all the Irish I have seen; and I am more and more convinced that these measures, with some effectual mode to enforce the residence of all ranks of the Protestant clergy, offer the best chance of gradually putting an end to the evils most felt in Ireland.’ 1

Cornwallis and Castlereagh communicated, as they were directed, confidentially, with several leading Irish politicians, and they were much encouraged by the result. Lord Shannon and Lord Ely, who were two of the greatest borough owners in Ireland, gave very favourable replies. The first was ‘impressed in the strongest manner with the difficulties and disadvantages of the present system,’ and ‘disposed to entertain the measure favourably,’ though he refused at this stage openly to declare himself. The second, ‘relying on the favour of the Crown in an object personal to himself,’ 2 ‘was prepared to give it his utmost support.’ Lord Pery, who had for fourteen years been Speaker, strongly doubted the wisdom of the measure in itself, and not less strongly the wisdom of bringing it forward in a time like the present, but he said he would not hastily pledge himself against it, and that if he found the measure to be really desired by Parliament and the country, ‘he would feel it his duty to surrender his own opinion, and give it his best assistance in the detail.’ Lord Yelverton, who had played such a great part in the emancipation of the Irish Parliament, was fully in favour of the Union. Conolly, a member of great influence, who represented the county of Derry, and who was one of the few Irishmen who had at the same time a seat in the Irish and in the English House of Commons, declared that he had always desired a legislative Union. The Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General were quite prepared to give their services. Lord Kil-warden and Lord Carleton doubted and hesitated, but did not decidedly oppose. The Duke of Leinster, who since the attainder of his brother was naturally altogether alienated from the Government, was consulted, but refused to give any opinion. Corry was very favourable; Sir John Blaquiere was ‘disposed to be practicable.’ The Speaker was very adverse, and his ‘weight will be prodigious,’ but, at the same time, both Cornwallis and Castlereagh believed that the measure could be carried through Parliament, with no great difficulty. ‘I have great apprehensions,’ added Cornwallis, ‘of the inefficacy of it after it is carried, and I do not think it would have been much more difficult to have included the Catholics.’ 1

A few opinions from active magistrates and from other men who had always been warm supporters of the Government, about the same time came in. Sir George Hill writes from Derry, ‘People have not yet spoken much out on the subject’ [of an Union], ‘but they are evidently inimical to the measure, and with the slightest encouragement would violently express themselves.’ ‘A mischievous person could with ease excite a universal and dangerous clamour, by descanting on the supposed disadvantages of it. It is high time, if such a measure be determined upon, that the most confidential friends of Government were instructed to prepare the public mind for the adoption of it, for be assured, if it is suddenly proposed and forced , it will be the foundation of endless calamity.’ For his own part, Sir George Hill said, his leaning was strongly against it. Some considerable change he admitted was required, but he believed that the settlement of the Catholic question, the Regency, the commercial regulations, and perhaps an increase in the proportion paid by Ireland for the protection of the Empire, might all be accomplished without an Union. 2 Sir George Shee writes that he was himself in favour of an Union, but he found that people were in general opposed to it. 1 Colonel Crawford considered it absolutely necessary to the security and prosperity of Ireland. It would bring English capital largely into the country, and it would render possible the great measure of Catholic emancipation, which could never be safely granted with a separate Parliament, for ‘the influence of property could not stand against the enthusiasm and ambitious aims of Catholics and Democrats.’ ‘The people of this country,’ he added, ‘never will and never can be contented until some means are devised of lessening the tithes, nor will they cease to be urged on to opposition by their priests, until some measures are adopted to attach the priests and Catholic clergy ( sic ) to the present order of things, by giving them an interest in its preservation.’ 2 Cooke writes to Pelham very despondingly: ‘The sectaries are very rancorous against each other, and amongst the lower classes much malignant revenge prevails, and the humour in the upper classes is as bad…. I do not think the idea of Union popular with the Protestants. There is some inclination to it among the Catholics, possibly because the Protestants are adverse…. The Parliament at present is extremely loose.’ 3

The disposition of Parliament and the disposition of the country were two very different things. The influence of the Government in the former was so overwhelming that, for many years, opposition had almost wholly disappeared, and the support of a very small number of great borough owners was at all times sufficient to outweigh the free constituencies. The Government, however, were anxious not to introduce their measure without obtaining some real popular support, and one of the most difficult and most delicate tasks of the historian of the Union is to estimate the amount of their success.

It is remarkable that their intention was first intimated in newspapers that were opposed to them. On October 16, the following paragraph appeared in the principal Dublin newspaper, supporting them. ‘A most insidious and unadvised rumour of an intended Union with Great Britain has been set afloat by the Jacobin prints of this city, in order to do the little mischief which remains in their power to achieve…. Perilous and perplexed would be the discussion of so momentous a question at any period; but at this time of convulsion, the dangers with which it would be attended are too fearful for contemplation.’ A month later the same newspaper again expressed its entire disbelief in the rumours of an Union which English and Irish newspapers (‘chiefly those of Jacobinical complexion') had for some time past been disseminating, but ten days afterwards it inserted a notice which had appeared in the English ‘Times’ of November 22, stating that an Union would be brought forward, and added that it had reason to believe this paragraph to be true. 1

If the judgment I have formed be correct, the public opinion of Ireland up to the beginning of the French war was practically unanimous in opposition to any scheme of Union, and it ran so strongly that no such proposal could have been made without the most imminent danger. In the period between 1793 and the outbreak of the rebellion, the Irish Parliament had been much discredited, and the alarms and dangers of the time had shaken many, but still there was no Irish party which would have ventured openly to support an Union. But the scenes of horror which were comprised in the six weeks of the rebellion had produced a great change in the political aspect of Ireland, and the Government calculated that if they pressed on the Union without delay, they would find two strong, broad currents of genuine opinion in its favour.

One of these sprang from the alarm of the Protestants for their Church, their property, and even their lives; from their conviction that their safety depended wholly upon the presence of a great English force, and that it was therefore their most vital interest to bind themselves as closely as possible to their protector. The other grew out of the resentment, the panic, and the hopes of the Catholics, who found an insulting and lawless spirit of Orange ascendency spreading on all sides, and the bitterest enemies of the Catholic cause supreme in the Parliament. The hope of passing under a more tolerant rule, the gratification of humiliating those who had humiliated them, the anger which was naturally produced by the burning of chapels and houses, and by the Orange badges that were flaunted on every side, and the prospect of obtaining from the Imperial Parliament the emancipation which appeared more and more remote in the Parliament of Ireland, had given many Catholic minds an undoubted bias in favour of the Union.

Of these two currents of opinion, the former was by far the weaker, and there are many indications that all classes of Irish Protestants were greatly irritated by a kind of argument which was at this time much used. English Ministers were extremely desirous of impressing upon them, that the power and the troops of England alone stood between them and destruction. ‘Is this a time,’ writes Sir George Shee, ‘to talk of national pride, when we have not the means within ourselves of repelling any attack deserving the name of invasion; when our revenue is scarcely equal to two months’ expenses on a war establishment; when fifteen out of twenty of our countrymen in general are sworn rebels; when the fidelity of a part of our army is at least doubtful; when the higher classes have lost the sway which ought to attach to their rank and station; when even the Legislature is held in disesteem; when experience has just proved that a rebellion of three counties only, can with great difficulty be put down; when we have such an enemy as the French Republic to contend with?’ 1 Such arguments were not soothing to the national pride. Castlereagh, as we have seen, urgently desired that the Irish Protestants should be brought to attribute the suppression of the rebellion mainly to English aid, but Cornwallis complained that even Lord Clare ‘did not appear to feel sufficiently how absolutely dependent the Protestants at present are on the support of Britain.’ 2

The aspect in which this question presented itself to the members of the ascendant creed can be easily understood. Ireland, it must be remembered, had never been like the American colonies, which refused to support an army for their own protection, and for the general assistance of the Empire. Twelve thousand and afterwards fifteen thousand men had been regularly maintained by the Irish Parliament. During the whole of the eighteenth century before the war of 1793 Ireland had contributed largely, and liberally, and much beyond the stipulated proportion, to the support of English wars undertaken for objects of English policy, while crowds of Irish recruits had filled the British army and the British fleet. For the very first time in the course of the century, the parts had been reversed. The Irish loyalists had been compelled to ask for English assistance upon land, and this obligation was at once pressed upon them with a most ungracious insistence as an argument for demanding the surrender of their Legislature.

And had the obligations of the Irish Protestants to English assistance been in truth so very great? In 1779, while multitudes of Irishmen were fighting English battles in other lands, and when the dangers of a French invasion were extreme, Ireland found herself almost denuded of troops, and compelled to rely for her security on the great volunteer movement which had been hastily organised by the Protestant gentry. In 1796 the boasted protection of the British fleet had not prevented a French fleet from lying for a week unmolested in an Irish bay, and nothing but the accident of the weather saved Ireland from a most formidable invasion. Even during the recent rebellion, had the part played by England been so transcendent? During all the earlier and more dangerous period, in spite of the pressing and repeated entreaties and the bitter complaints of the Irish Government, the loyalists of Ireland had been left entirely unaided. The few English regiments which were then in Ireland, were there in exchange for Irish regiments. Until after the battle of New Ross, no succour had arrived, and the suppression of the rebellion had been left to Irish resources, and mainly to the Irish yeomanry and militia. It is true that after that time an overwhelming stream of English troops had poured in, but they arrived only when the crisis had passed, and the rebellion had been effectually broken. 1

It was asked, too, what were the causes which had made the state of Ireland so perilous, that those who administered its affairs were obliged for the first time in the eighteenth century to call for English assistance on land. Every foreign danger to which Ireland was exposed was confessedly due to English quarrels; and Irish Protestants, who differed utterly in their own principles, agreed in attributing a great part of the internal anarchy, which had lately become so formidable, to English policy. The old champions of Protestant ascendency, whether they held the opinions of Clare or the more liberal opinions of Flood and Charlemont, pointed to the success of a purely Protestant Government. Whatever might have been its faults, it had at least this incontestable merit, that for about eighty years of the century, English statesmen might have almost wholly dismissed Ireland and Irish concerns from their thoughts. Ireland had scarcely been more troublesome than if it had been an island in the Pacific, and it had been as free from active sedition and rebellion as Cornwall or Devonshire. Great changes had afterwards occurred, but the Protestant party attributed the anarchy that now prevailed mainly to the Catholic Act of 1793, which had broken the power of the ruling class and thrown open the door to revolutionary innovations. But the concession of the Catholic suffrage had been an English measure, forced by English intervention on a reluctant Administration, and carried in spite of the earnest protests and the repeated warnings of Foster and Clare.

From the opposite quarter of the political compass, the Protestants who followed Grattan had come to a very similar conclusion. They attributed the present condition of Ireland to the obstinacy with which a Government appointed by England had resisted parliamentary reform, and Catholic emancipation, and the commutation of tithes; to the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam after he had been suffered to raise the hopes of the Catholics to the utmost; to the stimulus given to religious dissension when the Government deliberately evoked the Protestant spirit in opposition to the Catholic claims; to the intolerable violence and outrage that had accompanied the process of disarming. These things did not, they admitted, introduce the first seeds of sedition into Ireland, but they had prepared the soil for the portentous rapidity of its growth, and they were the chief causes of the desperate condition to which the country had been reduced.

Under these circumstances, there was a very sullen and resentful spirit among the Irish Protestants when the intended Union was announced. The great preponderance of Protestant feeling appears at this time to have been clearly against the scheme, and if war had not been raging and invasion probable, the preponderance would have been overwhelming. The extreme danger of the situation, however, had undoubtedly converted some, and shaken the opposition of many.

Among the Catholics, the first impressions were much more favourable. The deposition of a governing and now a hostile sect was not without its charm, and the Union promised the speedy accomplishment of cherished objects. Some of the Catholic prelates, and especially Dr. Troy, the Archbishop of Dublin, from the beginning declared themselves warmly in favour of the scheme. They would no doubt gladly have seen Catholic emancipation incorporated in the Union, but, ‘from what I learn,’ writes Cornwallis, ‘the present measure is not likely to be opposed by the Catholics. They consider any change better than the present system.’ 1 ‘There appears no indisposition on the part of the leading Catholics,’ writes Castlereagh in November; ‘on the contrary, I believe they will consider any transfer of power from their opponents as a boon. I should hope the proposed arrangement for the Catholic clergy will reconcile that body. Dr. Troy is perfectly well inclined.’ 2 There seems to have been some question of inserting in the Act of Union, a clause maintaining the exclusively Protestant character of the Legislature, but both Cornwallis and the English Ministers declared that the competence of the Imperial Legislature to alter the oath must be expressly reserved, and it was agreed that it was essential to the peace of Ireland that tithes should be commuted and reduced, and that a competent provision should be assigned from the State to the Catholic clergy. 1 It was from the Catholic province of Munster, and especially from the city of Cork, that the Government expected most support. Cork was at this time the second city in Ireland, and it was long and widely believed that a legislative Union would be as favourable to its progress as the Scotch Union had proved to the development of Glasgow. 2

The Government were anxious not to rely solely on borough votes, and they did all in their power to influence the dispositions of the people. ‘The principal provincial newspapers,’ writes Castlereagh in November, ‘have been secured, and every attention will be paid to the press generally,’ 3 ‘Already,’ he writes a little later, ‘we feel the want, and, indeed, the absolute necessity of the primum mobile . We cannot give that activity to the press which is requisite.’ ‘I cannot help most earnestly requesting to receive 5,000 l. in bank notes by the first messenger.’ 4 As the payment of the Catholic priests was intended to purchase the assistance of that body, so it was hoped that the promise of some additional provision would disarm the opposition, if it did not secure the support of the Presbyterian ministers. 5 Slight augmentations had already taken place in 1784 and 1792, and about this time the negotiations began which resulted in the considerable enlargement and rearrangement of the Regium Donum in 1803. 6 The attitude of Ulster was regarded with extreme apprehension, but also with some hope. The United Irish movement, which had its chief seat in this province, was essentially a revolt against the Irish Parliament. But Ulster republicanism had been suddenly checked when the horrors of the Wexford rebellion showed what an independent and popish Ireland was likely to be, and Castlereagh thought it possible that many of the Republican party would now accept an Union as a compromise. 1 Wolfe Tone had from the first devoted all the resources of his powerful rhetoric to expressing his detestation of the Irish Parliament; he had taught consistently that the only real and final alternative for Ireland was Separation or Union, 2 and although it does not appear that many of the United Irishmen took the turn for which Castlereagh hoped, it is remarkable that Hamilton Rowan, who was one of the most important of them, was not only decidedly but enthusiastically in favour of the Union. ‘In that measure,’ he writes, ‘I see the downfall of one of the most corrupt assemblies I believe ever existed, and instead of an empty title, a source of industrious enterprise for the people, and the wreck of feudal aristocracy.’ ‘It takes a feather out of the great man's cap; but it will, I think, put many a guinea in the poor man's pocket.’ 3 Neilson also, though he never appears to have given up his wish for a complete separation of the two countries, expressed his gratification at the Union as a measure which must benefit Ireland commercially, and could not injure her politically. 1

There were two other motives operating in Ulster which were favourable to the Union. The free trade with England, which was expected to follow it, was certain to give a great impulse to the linen manufactures of Ulster, and Bishop Percy has noticed that among these manufacturers there was from the beginning a party devoted to the Union. In the Presbyterian North, too, even more than in the other provinces, tithe legislation was imperatively demanded. ‘As a measure connected with the Union,’ writes Castlereagh, ‘nothing would engage the great body of the people of all persuasions so certainly in its support, as coupling it with a regulation of tithes, which in this country has always been the first substantive object to which all reformers looked.’ 2 It was ultimately decided not to connect a tithe Bill with the Union, but one of the most effectual arguments used by its partisans was the certainty that a tithe Bill would immediately follow it.

The Government were now extremely desirous that a full statement of the case for the Union should be laid before the Irish public. The task of drawing it up was assigned to the Under Secretary, Cooke. His pamphlet seems to have been revised before publication by some leading public men; 3 and although it appeared anonymously, 4 it was at once recognised as the official statement of the case, and it passed speedily through many editions. Part of it consists of somewhat general reasonings on the advantages of political Union. He dwelt upon the benefits which had resulted from the union of Wales and Scotland with England; upon the necessity the American colonies found of drawing themselves together more closely by the Constitution of 1787; upon the immense and dangerous preponderance France had acquired in Europe through the complete fusion of the many states which originally composed it; upon the strong arguments in favour of Union derived from the present almost desperate condition of Europe. France had succeeded in incorporating, subduing, or influencing all the small countries about her. Geneva, Savoy, the Austrian provinces of Flanders, the German States on the left bank of the Rhine, had been incorporated with her. Spain only moved at her dictation. Holland, Switzerland, Sardinia, and the new Republic of Italy were occupied by her armies. England was now the last solid barrier of the liberties of Europe. Was it probable that she could have so long resisted the concentrated power of France, if Scotland had still been a half-separated kingdom, exposed as she had once been to incessant French intrigues? Was it likely that she would long be able to resist, if the constantly increasing power of France were met by no corresponding increase and consolidation of the British Empire?

If the Union of independent countries was a source of strength and prosperity, much more so would such an Union be as that which was now proposed. What, it was asked, is now the boasted independence of Ireland? The crown of Ireland depends on that of England, and the King of Ireland necessarily resides in England. The counsels of the Government of Ireland are framed in the British Cabinet. The Government of Ireland is administered by a British Lord Lieutenant and Secretary, appointed by the Ministry in England, acting under their instructions and distributing the patronage of the Crown. No measure of the Irish Parliament can become law without the licence of a British minister, for it must receive the royal sanction, attested by the Great Seal of Britain, which is in his custody. In all questions which concern alliances, the declaration and conduct of war or the negotiations for peace, Ireland is a completely subject State. She has no communication with foreign Powers except through British diplomatists. Her Parliament is supposed to be in a great measure subservient to British influence. 1 Such a situation naturally produces constant jealousies, and furnishes a perpetual topic of complaint and invective to the newspapers and the parliamentary Opposition. But how, under its present Constitution, could it be avoided? ‘So long as we form part of the British Empire, we must acknowledge one executive power, one presiding Cabinet, and it is of indispensable necessity for that Cabinet to induce every part of the Empire to pursue the same principles of action, and to adopt the same system of measures, as far as possible; and as the interests of England must ever preponderate, a preference will always be given to her, or supposed to be given.’ If the two Parliaments act together, that of Ireland will always be said to be meanly and corruptly subservient to the British Cabinet. If they diverge, they may most seriously weaken the strength of the Empire. The Parliament of Ireland may exhort the King to make war when the views of England are pacific. It may oppose wars in which England is engaged, declare against treaties which England has made, and refuse to ratify commercial articles. It has actually asserted a right to choose a Regent of its own appointment, distinct from the Regent of England.

‘Add to this the melancholy reflection, that the Irish Parliament has been long made the theatre for British faction. When at a loss for subjects of grievance in Great Britain, they ever turn their eyes to this kingdom, in the kind hope that any seed of discontent may be nourished by their fostering attention into strength and maturity…. We have seen the leaders of the British Opposition come forward to support the character of Irish rebels, to palliate and to justify Irish treason, and almost to vindicate Irish rebellion.’

All this, in the opinion of the writer, would end with a legislative Union. It is true that absenteeism might somewhat increase, and London might be somewhat more than at present the centre of Irish affairs; but ‘the British Cabinet would receive a mixture of Irishmen, and the counsels of the British Parliament would be much influenced by the weight and ability of the Irish members. All our party contests would be transferred to Great Britain. British faction would cease to operate here…. France could no longer speculate on the nature of our distinct Government and Parliament, and hope to separate the kingdom from Great Britain.’ Ireland would be placed for ever on an equality with Great Britain. All danger of her subjection, all danger of partial laws by the British Parliament, would be at an end. ‘We shall have full security that the British United Parliament will never injure Ireland, because it must at the same time injure Great Britain.’ The development of the material resources of Ireland would become a special object of Imperial policy, and increasing loyalty would naturally follow increasing prosperity.

That such an increase of prosperity would follow the Union, appeared to Cooke hardly doubtful. When two countries differing widely in their industrial, commercial, agricultural, and moral development are identified in government, policy, and interests, they will inevitably tend to the same level. English capital will naturally find its employment in the undeveloped resources of Ireland. Cork is already the emporium of provisions for the British navy, and the refuge for all homeward-bound convoys in time of war when the Channel is unsafe. If the Union be carried, there is little doubt that it will be converted into a great maritime station, with dockyards like those of Plymouth and Portsmouth. Landed property, which in England sells in time of peace at from thirty to forty years’ purchase, in Ireland seldom exceeds twenty years’ purchase; but with the increased security and order which the Union would produce, the value of Irish estates will gradually rise to the English level. Ulster will gain complete security for her staple manufacture of linen. Already, it is true, that manufacture is encouraged by English laws, but these laws might at any time be repealed or changed. By an Union they will be fixed for ever.

The most important advantages, however, to be expected from the Union, were moral and political ones. In a remarkable page, to which I have already referred, Cooke acknowledged the immense progress that in the last twenty years Ireland had been making in population, agriculture, manufactures, and wealth. ‘It is universally admitted, that no country in the world ever made such rapid advances as Ireland has done in these respects; yet all her accession of prosperity has been of no avail; discontent has kept pace with improvement; discord has grown up with our wealth; conspiracy and rebellion have shot up with our prosperity.’ 1 The truth is, that the condition of Ireland is essentially unnatural and precarious. Nine-tenths of the property of the country are in the possession of descendants of British Protestant settlers, very many of whom owe their position to the fortunes of civil war. The government of the country, the parliamentary representation, and the Church revenues are all in the hands of a small Protestant minority. As long as the Catholics were restrained by severe penal laws the kingdom was tranquil, and the tranquillity continued for nearly a century. But with the repeal of these restrictions the old rivalry reappeared; the Catholics soon demanded a change in the Constitution, which would have the effect of transferring to them all the powers of the State; and the doctrine was rapidly spreading throughout Europe, that in every country the religious establishment should be the Church of the majority.

As long as the Catholics were to the Protestants as three to one, this state of things was essentially anomalous; but in order to change it, the Acts of Supremacy and of Uniformity must be repealed, ‘for nothing could be so absurd as to make men who deny the supremacy of the King, and the competency of the Parliament in ecclesiastical concerns, members of the supreme power, viz. the Legislature; and at the same time to subject these very men to the penalties of præmunire and treason for denying that supremacy and competency.’ But if the Catholics are admitted into the Legislature, and the Test Oaths and the Act of Supremacy are repealed, the Protestant Establishment at once becomes a public wrong. At present this Establishment is defensible, ‘because on principles of reason, and from the nature of a free Constitution, no religious sect can claim a right to be established or supported by the State which denies the competency of the State to regulate their conduct; but when that principle is abandoned, the defence of the Protestant Church Establishment is abandoned also.’

Nor would this be the only consequence. ‘Admitting the Catholics to seats in the Legislature, and retaining the present parliamentary Constitution, would be like inviting a man to dinner, and on his acceptance of the invitation, shutting the door in his face.’ Reform would necessarily follow emancipation, and it must end by taking the whole political power of the country from those who are the chief possessors of its landed property. Could the security of property survive such a revolution of power?

The only real safeguard against this danger lay in an Union. It would at once save the Empire from the great evil of an ‘Imperium in imperio,’ by giving it one Legislature, one supreme organ of the public will. It would place Ireland ‘in a natural situation, for all the Protestants of the Empire being united, she would have the proportion of fourteen to three in favour of her Establishment, whereas at present there is a proportion of three to one against it.’ ‘If Ireland was once united to Great Britain by a legislative Union, and the maintenance of the Protestant Establishment was made a fundamental article of that Union, then the whole power of the Empire would be pledged to the Church Establishment of Ireland, and the property of the whole Empire would be pledged in support of the property of every part.’

These last arguments were addressed especially to the class who still constituted the Irish Parliament, and were the chief governing body in Ireland. Some of the other advantages, however, that have been enumerated applied in a very large measure to the Dissenters and to the Catholics, and special inducements were held out to each sect. The Catholics were told that all the privileges they had obtained from the Irish Parliament would be secured by the Union; that ‘it may be advisable to connect with an Union a proper support for their clergy, and some system of regulation for their Church not inconsistent with their ecclesiastical principles;’ and that ‘an opening may be left in any plan of Union for the future admission of Catholics to additional privileges.’ It will be observed, that no distinct prospect of their admission into the Legislature is held out in this pamphlet, but it was urged that the position of Catholics, both socially and politically, would be greatly improved when they were no longer legislated for under the influence of local prejudices, jealousies, or antipathies, and with that ‘necessary State partiality towards Protestants’ which the present dangerous condition of Ireland produced. The Catholic South and West, were also the parts of Ireland which were likely to benefit most largely by the agricultural and commercial advantages of the Union. The Protestant Dissenters were told that their political importance would be increased when they were united with the Dissenting interests of Great Britain; 1 that further provision would be made for their ministers, and that a modus of tithes by which Dissenters and Catholics would be essentially relieved, would probably accompany an Union.

Such were the principal arguments and promises of this very important pamphlet, which first brought the question of the Union fully before the Irish public, and furnished most of its advocates with the substance of their speeches. The subject at once absorbed public attention almost to the exclusion of all others, and it is stated that before the end of the year 1798, no less than twenty-four pamphlets relating to it had already appeared. 2 In the interval before the meeting of the Irish Parliament, parties on each side were rapidly forming. The resignation which the Chief Secretary Pelham had long been pressing on the Government was at last accepted, and this important post was placed in the strong hands of Lord Castlereagh. The appointment had long been in consideration, and was strenuously supported by Cornwallis; but it encountered much opposition, chiefly, it appears, on the part of the King, who clung to the old rule that this office should always be held by an Englishman. Cornwallis acknowledged ‘the propriety of the general rule,’ but he said that Castlereagh was ‘so very unlike an Irishman,’ that he had a just claim to an exception in his favour. 3 The King gave his consent in the beginning of November. It is a somewhat remarkable fact that the first Irishman who was Chancellor, and the first Irishman who was Chief Secretary since the Revolution, were the two leading instruments in destroying the Irish Parliament.

The warning of Lord Harcourt, that a legislative Union ought never to be attempted unless the minds of the Irish had been long prepared, and unless the wish for it had come from them, had been completely neglected. The measure of Pitt was flashed suddenly upon the Irish public, on the eve of its introduction, and, if we except the confidential overtures from Clare, the whole initiative and idea of it came from England. The letters from the chief persons about the Government in the weeks between the disclosure of the scheme and its introduction into Parliament, are full of misgivings about the state of public opinion, and some of them of much complaint about Lord Cornwallis. Clare complained of his coldness and his reserve, and expressed grave fears about the House of Commons. ‘Foster is impracticable, and Parnell now joins with him. If this should continue to be the case, and nothing effectual is done here to counteract it, I fear we shall have great difficulties to encounter.’ ‘In the House of Commons there is certainly no man who will be a match for Foster, if he chooses to persist in strong opposition to the measure.’ 1 Camden thought that it would have been wiser ‘to have received the voice and the conversation and the influence of some leading characters’ in Ireland before starting the scheme as a Government measure, but that it was now too late to recede. 2 Near the end of November, however, it appeared to Elliot, who was one of the best and ablest officials of the Government, that the difficulties of the question had become so great, that it was not improbable that the project would be abandoned. 3

Perhaps the best way of studying the public opinion on the subject, is to look separately at different classes. The first and in some respects the most important opposition, came from the bar. A great meeting was summoned on December 9, by Saurin, who was one of its most distinguished and most esteemed members. He belonged to an old Huguenot family, and was himself a man of strong Protestant principles and prejudices, and he was in after years, when Attorney-General, one of the most formidable opponents of O'Connell. The meeting appears to have included all that was eminent at the Irish bar, and after a very able debate, in which Saurin, Plunket, and Peter Burrowes displayed especial ability, a resolution was carried by 166 to 32, condemning the Union as ‘an innovation which it would be highly dangerous and improper to propose at the present juncture.’ The debate was at once published, and had much influence upon opinion; it was followed by many other pamphlets, chiefly written by lawyers, among which those of Goold, Jebb, and Bushe were probably the most remarkable, and they supplied the principal arguments in the subsequent debates.

For the most part, the opponents of the measure at this stage abstained from committing themselves to any general assertion that a legislative Union could at no time be expedient. They dilated especially upon the inexpediency of pressing it forward when the country was still torn by the convulsions of civil war; when it was impossible to take the full sense of the people; when the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and in the presence of an enormous English army.

Was this a time, they asked, when Ireland should be called upon to surrender the parliamentary Constitution under which, with all its imperfections, she had subsisted for 500 years; to hand over the government of the people to a Legislature in which the whole Irish representation would form only a small fraction, to extinguish for ever the Irish name and nationality? What were the inducements that were offered for such a step? Some of them were evidently of the nature of bribes, and were measures which were perfectly compatible with the existing system. What was there in the maintenance of an Irish Parliament to prevent the payment of the priests; or the additional payment of Dissenting ministers, or a commutation of tithes? Others were sure to be largely deceptive. The commercial advantages were especially insisted on. But it was acknowledged that Irish commerce and manufactures during the preceding twenty years had been advancing with a rapidity unexampled in their history, unsurpassed in any part of Europe. A Legislature, it was said, can assist commerce and manufactures chiefly in two ways. It may do so by protecting laws, granting bounties and monopolies, or it may do so by measures extending the sphere of commercial enterprise. The first right Ireland by the Union would absolutely surrender, and she would surrender it into the hands of a Legislature in which her most formidable rivals in the fields of commerce and manufactures are supreme. As a general rule, the principle of protecting duties is a false one, ‘but in our particular situation, contending with a small capital and an infant establishment against an old establishment and enormous capital, it is by protecting duties only that we can ever hope to gain that strength which may enable us, at length, to place our manufactures on equal terms.’ Could anyone believe that such protection would be granted by an Imperial Parliament?

There remained, then, the new spheres of industry that might be opened by the Union. But that measure could give Ireland no greater liberty than she already possessed, of trading with the whole world outside the British Empire, and with the whole British Empire outside Great Britain. In the trade with Great Britain, it is true, Ireland suffered several disabilities, from which it had long been an object of Irish statesmen by fair negotiation to relieve her., But the two chief products of Ireland were already freely admitted. England might, no doubt, withdraw the encouragement she granted to Irish linens, but she would hardly do so as long as she could obtain her linens more cheaply from Ireland than from any other country, and she would certainly not shut her ports against Irish corn, for the importation of corn was necessary to her increased population, and Ireland was the one great granary which lay open at her door. On the other hand, sooner or later, the Union must bring a vast increase of taxation. A country with a debt of twelve millions, was asked to unite with a country with a debt of 500 millions. Provisions were, no doubt, promised for keeping separate exchequers, but was it not probable that the day would come, when these debts would be blended? Had not Adam Smith, the greatest of all the advocates of a legislative Union, expressly argued that the debts of the two countries should be amalgamated, and their taxation equalised? Was it not also certain that the master evil, Absenteeism, would be enormously increased? It was an evil which would not only diminish the material resources of Ireland, but would also in a large measure deprive her of the very class who could do most to ‘command, reclaim, and soothe a wretched peasantry.’ Yet there was no country in which, from its social and political circumstances, the constant guidance of a loyal, respectable, and intelligent class was more supremely important.

The opponents of the measure then proceeded to deal with the contention of Cooke, that a legislative Union was necessary to strengthen the connection, to guard against the dangers of invasion and separation. What, they asked, was the Irish Parliament which it was proposed to abolish? Was it not a governing body of tried, ardent, devoted loyalists, intimately acquainted with the circumstances of the country? With the single exception of the Regency question, it had never differed on a question of Imperial policy from the British Parliament, and a simple enactment would prevent the recurrence of a difficulty, which had only arisen from an omission in the law. Not one disaffected man of any real power or influence, had ever appeared in the Irish Parliament. Not one instance could be cited, in which the Irish Parliament had refused to support England in times of difficulty and danger. ‘Never was any Parliament so zealous, so vigilant, so anxious, so scrutinising as the Irish Parliament on the occasion of the late rebellion. Not a breath or murmur of opposition was uttered against the strongest measures the Administration wished to adopt. Every additional weapon that the executive magistrate demanded, every guinea that he could require, was voted, not merely with cheerfulness, but with anticipating alacrity and without a single dissenting voice.’ In the British Parliament, there was an active faction opposing the war, extenuating the rebellion, and censuring the measures by which it was repressed. In the Irish Parliament, not a man was found ‘to palliate its crimes, or to refuse the necessary aid to the executive power.’ Who, it was more than once asked, were the men who had put down the late most dangerous rebellion? Were they not the loyal gentlemen of Ireland, who had organised and led the yeomanry and the militia? And was it not this very class, which the Union was most likely to withdraw from Ireland, whose influence in Ireland it was most certain to diminish? If there is a danger of a separation from England, ‘it is not at least from any disposition manifested by the gentry, by the property, by the Parliament of Ireland. If any such tendency prevail, it is among the lower classes of the people, corrupted by the empirics of the French school, whose poison can be best and perhaps solely counteracted by a resident gentry and a resident Parliament, who are unalterably and without exception, and from the most unequivocal motives of self-interest, if there were nothing else to operate, bound to maintain the connection to the last extremity.’

The danger of invasion to which Ireland is exposed, it was said, springs in reality from two sources. The one is a geographical position, which no political measure can affect; the other is the disaffection which such a measure as was now contemplated would most seriously increase. ‘Formed in the British Cabinet, unsolicited by the Irish nation,’ ‘passed in the middle of war, in the centre of a tremendous military force, under the influence of immediate personal danger,’ this Union was not likely to be ‘salutary in its nature or permanent in its duration.’ It was said, ‘that advantage should be taken of the passions that agitate and distract the minds of men at the close of a widely extended rebellion; that the intolerance of the Orangemen, the resentment of the excluded Catholics, the humiliation of the rebel, and the despairing apathy of the reformer, afford an opportunity not to be lost of effecting a revolution’ which under normal circumstances would be impossible. Such a policy might for a time succeed, but it could not fail to be followed by the bitterest recriminations. It would ‘multiply and invigorate the friends of the French connection; dishearten, alienate, and disgust the friends to the British interest,’ and most materially weaken their hold upon their countrymen. ‘Who are they,’ it was asked, ‘whose pride and consequence will be most humbled? The loyal and spirited yeomen and gentry who have fought and bled in support of our Constitution as it now stands.’ ‘The United Irishmen, I am told,’ said Peter Burrowes, ‘hold a jubilee of joy at this measure. They are its warmest advocates. They well know that their numbers will be increased;’ and Plunket declared that ‘he opposed the Union principally, because he was convinced that it would accelerate a total separation of the two countries.’

The parallel that was established between the Scotch Union and that which it was now desired to form, was strenuously disputed. The Scotch Parliament had legislated in such a manner that, without an Union, England and Scotland must have been legally and absolutely separated on the death of Queen Anne, and English statesmen had therefore an urgent motive for pressing on the Scotch Union, which was wholly wanting in the case of Ireland. No two Parliaments indeed could be more dissimilar in their relations to England than the Scotch Parliament, which passed the Bill of Security, and the Irish Parliament, which suppressed the rebellion of 1798. Scotland, too, at the time of the Union had a population which was probably less than two millions. She was sunk in abject poverty. She had no considerable manufactures. She was excluded from the English colonies, and the cattle which were her only superfluity, were excluded from the English market. Her exports to the whole world on a four years’ average scarcely exceeded 800,000 l. The whole population of Edinburgh was little more than 30,000. Ireland at the close of the eighteenth century had 4,500,000, some writers say 5,000,000 inhabitants. She had the widest liberty of commerce. Her annual exports to England alone were at least 2,500,000 l. Her capital, according to the best estimate, 1 contained more than 170,000 inhabitants, and she was advancing with acknowledged and gigantic strides on the path of material prosperity. It was added, too, that Scotland and England formed but a single island; that the progress of Scotland, which was attributed so exclusively to her Union, was not very marked till after the abolition of the hereditary jurisdictions in 1746, and that two Scotch rebellions were at least strengthened by the Union.

The doctrine which Grattan had maintained in 1785, of the incompetence of the Irish Parliament to carry a legislative Union, was now fully formulated, and it occupied a great part in the discussions on the measure. Sometimes it was stated as an absolute incompetence. The more cautious, however, of the disputants contented themselves with denying the right of the Parliament of Ireland to destroy its own existence, and transfer its powers to another Legislature, without the consent of the constituencies attested by a dissolution. This doctrine was supported by the express statement of Locke, the most recognised and authoritative exponent of the British Constitution as established and reformed at the Revolution. ‘The Legislative,’ he wrote, ‘cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands. For it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others. The people alone can appoint the form of the Commonwealth, which is by constituting the Legislative, and appointing in whose hands that shall be…. The power of the Legislative being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws and not legislators, the Legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands…. The Legislative neither must nor can transfer the power of making laws to anybody else, or place it anywhere but where the people have.’ ‘Governments are dissolved from within when the Legislative is altered…. The Constitution of the Legislative is the first and fundamental act of the Society; whereby provision is made for the continuation of their Union, under the direction of persons and bonds of laws made by persons authorised thereunto by the consent and appointment of the people, without which no one man or number of men amongst them can have authority of making laws that shall be binding to the rest. When any one or more shall take upon them to make laws whom the people have not appointed so to do, they make laws without authority, and the people are not therefore bound to obey.’ 1 The conduct of the British Parliament of 1716, which, having been elected by its constituents for three years, not only exercised its legitimate power by making future Parliaments septennial, but also by its own authority prolonged its own term of office for four years beyond the time for which it had been elected, was described as essentially and grossly unconstitutional. On the other hand, the conduct of American statesmen was appealed to as an example. When Constitution of the United States was remodelled in 1787, and a large share of power transferred from the State Legislatures to the Congress, a convention was specially elected by the people to accomplish this change by their direct authority.

On the strength of such a doctrine, language of the most serious and menacing character was employed. ‘I hold it to be indisputably certain,’ said Peter Burrowes, ‘that the ancient established Constitution of a nation like this cannot be justifiably annihilated without the previous consent of the nation, founded upon the freest and fullest discussion of the subject.’ ‘If an Union should be effected with England,’ said another distinguished lawyer, ‘in pursuance of the consent of the majority of the thinking part of the nation fairly taken when the nation can think, I shall hold it to be my bounden duty to submit and to act under it. But if the separate right of legislation shall be annihilated, and transferred or incorporated with that of any other country without such consent of the nation, I cannot consider myself justly bound by the transaction.’ ‘Either this Union is against the consent of the people, or it is not,’ said a third lawyer. ‘If it is, the accomplishment of it is tyranny. If it is not, where is the harm or danger of having the constitutional sanction of the people?’ The yeomen were significantly reminded that they had taken arms and had sworn to defend the Constitution of their country, and that this Constitution might have other enemies besides Father Murphy and the United Irishmen.

This short summary, condensed from the Anti-Union literature of 1798, will, I hope, show clearly the case of the opponents of the measure. The reader who will compare the rival arguments, will observe that there are several points in the pamphlet of Cooke which were untouched, and also that on both sides, but especially on that of the Anti-Unionists, there was a great reticence about the Catholic question. It was not due to indifference, for it is probable that no other part of the subject so largely affected the judgments of men, but rather to the fact that on each side, strenuous friends and enemies of the Catholic claims were united. It will be observed, too, that the opponents of the Union evaded one most formidable consideration. There was much force, or at least much plausibility, in the contention that a system which placed the government of Ireland directly in the hands of men of property, who were strongly and indisputably attached to the Empire, and whose influence with their people depended largely upon their political position, was conducive both to the well-being of Ireland, and to its attachment to the Empire. But if, in the constitutional changes that were manifestly impending, the disloyal element, which undoubtedly existed in the country, and which the events of the last few years had greatly intensified, invaded the Legislature, the problem would wholly change. No political madness could be greater than to put the legislative machinery of an integral and essential portion of the Empire into the hands of men who were largely or mainly disaffected to that Empire; and who, in times of difficulty, danger, and disaster, were likely to betray it. Nor did the opponents of the Union adequately recognise how enormously the revived religious and social antagonism produced by the late convulsions, had aggravated the difficulty of self-government in Ireland.

On the question of the constitutional capacity of the Legislature to carry an Union, a few words must be said. The doctrine that a Legislature can under no circumstances surrender its separate existence and transfer its legislative powers, though it may be supported by some authority and by some argument, may, I think, be lightly dismissed. Every nation must have some power of contracting an Union with another nation if it desires it, and in the theory and tradition of the British Constitution the Legislature is the supreme and perfect organ of the national will. The British Constitution in this respect differs essentially from the Constitution of the United States. In America the powers of Congress are defined and limited; a tribunal exists which can pronounce authoritatively upon the validity of its acts; and in accordance with the principles of Locke and of Rousseau, Conventions are formed to carry out constitutional changes by express authority of the people. But the enactment of the Scotch Union is a clear precedent, establishing the capacity of the Legislature of the British Empire, and its validity has not been seriously denied. If indeed the Scotch Union had been invalid, the whole legislation of the United Parliament would be vitiated, and the title of the monarch to his Scotch throne would be destroyed, for that title does not rest upon the Act of Settlement, which applied only to England, but solely upon a clause in the Act of Union. Blackstone and a long succession of great English lawyers have declared, in the most emphatic terms, that the power of the Legislature within the realm knows no limits except the laws of nature. Its acts may be iniquitous, tyrannical, subversive of the most ancient liberties of the people; they may be the result of corruption, intimidation, or fraud, but no Act of Parliament can be invalid, for the simple reason that no tribunal exists which is competent to annul it.

From a lawyer's point of view, this position is unassailable. An Act is a valid law which every tribunal must acknowledge to be such, and which no existing authority has a legal right to resist. But though an Act of Parliament cannot be invalid, it may be unconstitutional, that is to say, opposed to the purposes for which the Constitution was constructed, to the main principles which were intended to govern its action. 1 Such Acts have occurred in English history, and they can only be justified by the plea of some overwhelming State necessity or expediency. The Act of the Parliament of 1716 in prolonging its own existence beyond the period for which it was elected belongs, I think, to this class, 2 and its best defence was that an election in 1717 would have endangered the whole settlement of the Revolution. The Irish Union appears to me to have been another and a graver example of the same kind. A Parliament which was elected when there was no question of an Union, transferred its own rights and the rights of its constituents to another Legislature, and the act was accomplished without any appeal to the electors by a dissolution.

The precedent of the Scotch Union has here also been adduced, but it is not altogether applicable. At the time of that Union the objection was raised, that the members had no right to subvert the old Constitution of Scotland without the consent of their constituents. It was answered partly by the precedent of 1688, when the two Houses meeting in Convention transferred the crown, altered the succession, and settled the Revolution without consulting the constituencies, but partly also by the allegation that the last Scotch Parliament was summoned by a proclamation intimating that it was to treat of an Union, and that, ‘being sent up for that declared purpose by their constituents, there remained no occasion to demand any other instructions from them.’ 1 No such statement could be made in the case of the Irish Union. It may indeed be truly said that the dissolution of a Parliament consisting mainly of nomination boroughs could have had but little effect, but it would at least have elicited the opinion of the free constituencies, and without their sanction such a measure as the Union ought not, in my opinion, without the most urgent necessity, to have been pressed.

To complete the sketch of the Anti-Union literature of 1798, I must add that one of the most popular and most important of these writers was prepared to advocate great changes in the existing Constitution as an alternative to an Union. In the very remarkable pamphlet of Jebb, while the arguments against an incorporating Union are stated with much force, a series of concessions was proposed which would have gone far to transform the relation between the two countries. It was said that, ‘in order to set at rest every Imperial question that can suggest itself as likely to occur to the most jealous and the most speculative politician,’ it might be enacted that when the King had declared war, and the British Parliament had sanctioned it, the Irish Parliament should be bound to follow. It was suggested also, that all questions of trade between the two countries should be settled on the basis of reciprocity by a final and irrevocable treaty; that the religious establishment should be guaranteed by a provision forbidding its alteration without the concurrence of the two Parliaments, and finally that, ‘to accomplish what is perhaps the Ministers’ grand object in the Union,’ the debts of England and Ireland should be consolidated, and an arrangement made by which Ireland should pay some proportion to the general debt charge of the Empire. By such measures, Jebb maintained, every real object expected from the Union could be attained. 1

The opposition which was led by the Irish bar was strenuously supported. A large and thoroughly representative meeting of the bankers and merchants of all religious opinions was held in Dublin on December 18, and resolutions were unanimously passed acknowledging the great increase of Irish commerce and prosperity since 1782, expressing the strongest sentiments of loyalty to the King and the connection, but at the same time condemning in emphatic terms, as highly dangerous and impolitic, any attempt to deprive the Irish people of their Parliament. The resolutions were introduced by William Digges Latouche, the first banker, and one of the most respected men, in Ireland; and they were seconded by John Claudius Beresford, who had hitherto been a strenuous supporter of the Government, who was a warm partisan of the Protestant ascendency, and who had lately shown great zeal, and also great violence, in putting down rebellion in Dublin. If opinions were to be weighed as well as counted, the significance of this meeting could hardly be overrated. ‘When I warn you,’ wrote Beresford to Lord Castlereagh, ‘of the universal disgust, nay, horror, that Dublin, and even all the lower part of the North, have at the idea of the Union, I do not do it with any idea that my opinion would have weight in turning Government from their design, but from a wish that they should know what they have to contend with; for I confess to you, that I fear more the effect the measure will have on the minds of the people (particularly those that were the best affected) than I do the measure itself…. The conversations on this subject have given the almost annihilated body of United Irishmen new spirits, and the society is again rising like a phoenix from its ashes.’ 1 The Corporation of Dublin, and a meeting of the county, denounced the measure in even stronger terms. Foster, whose opinion was perhaps as valuable as that of anyone in Ireland, solemnly warned the Government, that the public mind was against them, and that under such circumstances it would be dangerous, if not disastrous, to persist. 2 ‘The inflammation in Dublin,’ wrote Lord Castlereagh in the beginning of 1799, ‘is extreme,’ but he added that it was ‘as yet confined to the middling and higher classes.’ 2

There were, however, other classes and other parts of Ireland in which opinion at this time was much more doubtful and divided. Among the opponents of Catholic emancipation, there was a profound difference. Foster and Clare, who were by far the ablest men in that party, took opposite sides. John Beresford, who had borne so great a part in the recall of Lord Fitz-william, appears from his letters to have been completely panicstricken by the danger to which property and the Establishment had recently been exposed; and he was as favourable to an Union as his son, John Claudius Beresford, was opposed to it. Duigenan, as was usual with him, followed Clare. Saurin was one of the most extreme opponents. Alderman James, a former Lord Mayor of Dublin, who had great influence among the Dublin Orangemen, was eager for the Union, under the belief that the Prince of Wales and the Opposition were pledged to the Catholics; and that ‘an Union was the only means of preserving the Protestant State against the Irish papists and their English supporters.’ 1 The Government hoped that such representations would make many converts among the Orangemen, but it soon appeared that their dominant sentiment was decidedly adverse to the Union, and it was considered a great triumph when some of its leading supporters succeeded in inducing the chief Orange lodges, both in Dublin and the North, to come to an agreement that they would not as a society take any part in the discussion, but would leave each Orangeman in his individual capacity free to adopt what line he pleased. ‘This,’ Duigenan said, ‘is the utmost service the friends of the Union have been able to effect.’ 2 Complaints were made to the Grand Lodge, that some of the younger members of the body, in their hostility to the Union, were even making overtures to the United Irishmen, 3 and some yeomen declared that they would not retain their arms or continue their services if the measure was persisted in. 4

The attitude of Ulster, and especially of that great Presbyterian population of Ulster which was so deeply imbued with republicanism, was on the whole more encouraging. A few years before, the fiercest opposition would have probably come from this quarter. But Ulster and Ulster politics had in the last months strangely altered. ‘The measure,’ wrote Castlereagh at the end of November, ‘as yet has made no sensation in the North. Some time since, the Presbyterians would have been found most energetic opponents, but they have been long disinclined to the existing system; of late they are rather tired of the treason in which they had very deeply embarked; perhaps they may be inclined to compromise with the Union;’ and he expressed, as we have seen, a hope that an augmentation of the Regium Donum would secure their ministers. 1 Three weeks later, Castlereagh's father wrote from Mount Stewart, that he had heard no one ‘argue with any keenness either for or against’ the Union, but that there were reports that two popular politicians were in favour of it. ‘I infer,’ he continued, ‘the popular current will not be very strong in this corner of the North against the measure. I conclude most of those who were actuated with a strong reforming spirit, entertain such a dislike and antipathy to the present subsisting Parliament of the country, that they will not be very adverse to any change that will rid them of what they deem so very corrupt a Legislature.’ There was a hope among some Belfast merchants, that an Union would greatly develop Belfast trade. ‘The lower order of manufacturers and farmers,’ Lord Londonderry said, ‘unless set going by the upper ranks, will concern themselves little about the matter.’ 2

Cornwallis was very dubious on the subject. On December 15, he writes, ‘Our reports of the reception of the measure in the North are not favourable, especially about Belfast;’ but only a fortnight later he reported that, although there were some signs of renewed disaffection in the North, he did not believe them to be connected with the Union, and that on that question, ‘the appearances in the North are by no means discouraging. Belfast has shown no disinclination, at which some of the violent party in Dublin are not less surprised than indignant. In Derry the most respectable merchants are decidedly for the measure, and I have understood from several persons lately returned from the North, whose information deserves credit, that the linen trade, looking to secure for ever the protection they now enjoy in the British market, are friendly to the principle. Newry is quiet on the question, and disposed to consider it fairly.’ 3 ‘The general disposition of the North,’ Lord Castlereagh wrote a little later, ‘is favourable to the measure, particularly the linen trade.’ 4 Lord Charlemont, who hated the Union, acknowledged that Ulster on this question showed none of the fire which it had displayed in the days of the volunteers, and more recently when the yeomanry were enrolled. ‘The silence of the country,’ he wrote to an intimate friend,‘is the only argument Administration can bring forward against us, a silence principally occasioned by the torpor which their own measures, perhaps cunningly, have produced.’ He tried to organise a movement against the Union at Armagh, and found ‘the freeholders indeed willing, but many of the gentlemen supine, and the sheriff is absent.’ 1 Bishop Percy, who supported the projected Union with much warmth, believed at this time that there was much real opinion in its favour. Dublin, he admitted, was fiercely and dangerously opposed to it, and the Irish bar was exerting all its energies against it, but he believed also that in Cork, Waterford, and even Belfast, mercantile opinion was favourable to the measure; that the very expectation of it had already given a great spur to the linen manufacture; and that in the South many landed gentry, who had hitherto been strenuous advocates of the legislative independence of Ireland, were so terrified by the scenes of carnage in Wexford, and by the dangers to which their lives and properties were exposed, that they would gladly and even eagerly accept protection under the shelter of an Union. Such a measure, in the opinion of Bishop Percy, would be of the greatest advantage to Ireland; ‘but after all,’ he wrote, ‘I fear we are not sufficiently enlightened to resist the narrow, bigoted outcries of the ignorant and the interested, and the lawyers are overwhelming the world with publications, and the Dublin mob are rending the skies with shouts against it, which probably may prevent its passing, or even being mentioned at all in Parliament.’ 2

The Protestants formed but a small minority of the population of Ireland, but they included the great preponderance of its energy, intelligence, and property. They were the political and governing class, the class who chiefly created that strong, intelligent, independent, and uninfluenced public opinion, which in every country it is the duty of a wise statesman especially to consult. It seems plain that the bulk of Protestant opinion on the question oscillated, at this time, between violent opposition and a languid or at best a favourable acquiescence, and that there was very little real, earnest or spontaneous desire for the measure. Two facts, which appear prominently in the correspondence of this period, attest most eloquently the disposition of the people. The one was the acknowledged necessity of keeping an immense English force in Ireland, for the purpose of guarding, not merely against a foreign enemy, but also against the dangers to be apprehended in carrying the Union. 1 The other was the confession of Lord Castlereagh, that ‘nothing but an established conviction that the English Government will never lose sight of the Union till it is carried, could give the measure a chance of success.’ 2

On the Catholic side, however, it obtained a real though a fluctuating, uncertain, and somewhat conditional support, and there can be little doubt that if Catholic emancipation had formed a part of the scheme, the support would have been very considerable. Pitt at first desired to take this course; 3 but Clare, as we have seen, convinced him that it was impracticable, and Pitt then strongly inclined to an Union on a Protestant basis. 4 Lord Grenville agreed with him, though before the rebellion he said he would have thought differently. 5 Cornwallis, as we have seen, doubted and fluctuated, while Dundas was prepared to favour the wider scheme if Cornwallis considered it feasible. 1 Among those who most regretted the change was William Elliot, who was one of the ablest and most esteemed of the English officials in Ireland. He had been thought of as Chief Secretary when Lord Camden was appointed, and some years after the Union he returned to Ireland in that position, but he was now Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant for the Military Department, and was employed very confidentially in the communications between the English and Irish Governments which preceded the Union. He was so fully convinced that the Government were making a profound mistake in dissociating the two measures, that when the decision was finally taken, he desired to resign his office and his seat in the Irish Parliament. ‘Since the measure is embarked in,’ he wrote to Castlereagh, ‘I feel anxious for its success. Even on its present narrow and contracted basis, I believe it will be productive of advantage to the Empire. If the Catholics are wise, they will acquiesce in it; but I am afraid we have left them ground of complaint. I cannot be easily persuaded that if more firmness had been displayed here at first, an Union might not have been accomplished including the admission of the Catholic claims; but Mr. Pitt has with a lamentable facility yielded this point to prejudice, without, I suspect, acquiring support in any degree equivalent to the sacrifice.’ 2

The Catholic leaders, however, themselves do not appear to have agreed with Elliot. From the very first disclosure of the scheme, it became evident that they looked on it with favour, and Lord Fingall, Lord Kenmare, and Archbishop Troy at this time entirely approved of the omission of the Catholic question from the measure. They considered that it would be ‘injurious to the Catholic claims to have them discussed in the present temper of the Irish Parliament;’ that to do so ‘would hazard the success of the Union without serving the Catholics;’ that it would be ‘much more for their interest that the question should rest till it could be submitted in quieter times to the unprejudiced decision of the United Parliament, relying on their receiving hereafter every indulgence which could be extended to them without endangering the Protestant Establishment.’ Lord Kenmare and Lord Fingall were especially anxious to see a State endowment of the priests, which would make them less dependent on the most ignorant and turbulent classes, and Archbishop Troy promised that he would use all his influence in favour of the Union on the sole condition that it contained no clause barring future concessions. ‘Upon the whole,’ Lord Castlereagh wrote in the beginning of December, ‘it appears to me, as far as the dispositions of the Catholics have yet disclosed themselves, that there is every reason to expect from them a preference for the measure. An active support from that body would not perhaps be advantageous to the success of the Union. It would particularly increase the jealousy of the Protestants, and render them less inclined to the question.’ 1

The opinion of the Catholics outside the small circle of their leading prelates and gentry was less decided, but at first the Government considered it clearly favourable. At the discussion at the meeting of the bar, a Protestant gentleman named Grady, when advocating the Union, declared that the Catholics, who formed the bulk of the people of Ireland, desired it. He was met by loud cries of dissent, and he explained that he spoke from an intimate knowledge of the South of Ireland; that the great Catholic trading interest there was entirely in its favour, and that the most respectable Catholics of his acquaintance considered the Union to be not only of great general advantage to the State, but also the only way of allaying the religious hatred and intolerance which the last few months had revived. In the course of the debate, a prominent Catholic lawyer named Bellew denied these assertions, but he contented himself with stating that the Catholics had as yet formed no decided opinion on the question, and had not begun seriously to consider it. 2 In the Government letters, however, of November and the beginning of December, the province of Munster, and especially the towns of Limerick and Cork, are continually spoken of as decidedly favourable to the Union. 3 The first resolutions in its favour came from the Corporation of Cork; they were passed unanimously, and Lord Castlereagh states that a great number of principal inhabitants expressed their approbation of them, and that Colonel Fitzgerald, one of the members for the county, who was ‘inferior to no man in personal respectability,’ as well as Lord Shannon, the great nobleman of the county, were strongly in favour of the Union. 1 Lord Shannon, Lord Longueville, and Lord Donoughmore, who were strong partisans of the Union, had great influence in Cork and its neighbourhood, but they only, Lord Cornwallis said, ‘gave full effect to the natural sentiments of the place, which are warmly in favour of the Union.’ A petition, it is true, signed by 1,800 inhabitants of Cork was afterwards presented against the Union, but it was strenuously asserted that it did not represent the opinion of the majority of the traders or freemen of that great Catholic town. 2 It was believed that Cork would gain as much by it as Dublin would lose, and that her magnificent harbour would become one of the chief centres of the commerce of the Empire. 3 One of the first Irish pamphlets in favour of the Union was written by Theobald McKenna, who had been for many years the principal pamphleteer of the Catholic body. It contained, however, one passage which was somewhat ominous. ‘Unless the servants of the Crown mean, among other internal regulations, to include a settlement under the head of religious difference completely coextensive with the grievance, then will an incorporation of the Legislatures be found a measure bad for Ireland, but, if possible, worse for Britain.’ 4

Before the meeting of Parliament, the Ministers had become much less hopeful about the disposition of the Catholics. Early in December, Cornwallis wrote to General Ross, ‘The opposition to the Union increases daily in and about Dublin, and I am afraid, from conversations which I have had with persons much connected with them, that I was too sanguine when I hoped for the good inclinations of the Catholics. Their disposition is so completely alienated from the British Government, that I believe they would even be tempted to join with their bitterest enemies, the Protestants of Ireland, if they thought that measure would lead to a total separation of the two countries.’ 1 ‘The principal Catholics about Dublin,’ he wrote a few days later, ‘begin to hold a much less sanguine language about the probable conduct of their brethren, and are disposed to think that, in this part of the kingdom at least, the greater number of them will join in opposition to the Union.’ 2

Cooke still thought the great body friendly and well inclined, but he observed that they held aloof, and that their leaders hesitated. It was now argued that the Union could be no real union without emancipation; ‘that the Catholics, being the excluded caste, will ever be discontented; that they will be called the Irish; that they will still have a distinct interest.’ 3 There were two important meetings of Catholic leaders at Lord Fingall's, and, to the great disappointment of the Government, no resolution was arrived at. 4 Lord Kenmare was not present at the first meeting, but wrote strongly in favour of the Union; Lord Fingall seemed for a time somewhat doubtful; Bellew was with difficulty prevented from moving a hostile resolution. He said to Lord Cornwallis, that the Catholics could not be expected to favour a measure from which they not only would derive no advantage, but would find themselves in a worse situation than at present. If they were excluded from Parliament at the Union, he saw no prospect of their afterwards entering it, for when incorporated into the mass of British subjects they would be a small minority, and the British Test Act would be a strong barrier to their claims. Cornwallis acknowledged that in his own opinion this argument had much force. 5

‘The Catholics as a body,’ wrote Cornwallis in the beginning of January, ‘still adhere to their reserve on the measure of Union. The very temperate and liberal sentiments at first entertained and expressed by some of that body, were by no means adopted by the Catholics who met at Lord Fingall's and professed to speak for the party at large. Whether it was their original sentiment to oppose the Union unless their objects were comprehended in it, or whether this disposition was taken up when they observed Government to be either weakly supported or opposed by the Protestants, it is difficult to determine. Certain it is, they now hold off…. What line of conduct they will ultimately adopt when decidedly convinced that the measure will be persevered in on Protestant principles, I am incapable of judging. I shall endeavour to give them the most favourable impressions without holding out to them hopes of any relaxation on the part of Government, and shall leave no effort untried to prevent an opposition to the Union being made the measure of that party; as I should much fear, should it be made a Catholic principle to resist the Union, that the favourable sentiments entertained by individuals would give way to the party feeling, and deprive us of our principal strength in the South and West, which could not fail, at least for the present, to prove fatal to the measure.’ 1