As for the Presbyterians, they hated all monarchy, but Fox believed that they were perfectly indifferent to the Union, and would not quit their looms and bleach-greens for a single day either to support or to protest against it. ‘They are neutral, and not to be meddled with.’

On the whole, this writer considered that the Union would prove an inestimable benefit both to Ireland and the Empire, but only on condition of the conciliation of the Catholics. ‘Without comprehending the Catholics, in interest and principle, an Union between the two countries can be neither durable nor useful.’ 1

It is a great misfortune to the historian of this period of Irish history, that the almost entire disappearance of the correspondence of the Speaker Foster, makes it impossible for us to follow, in their confidential and unreserved expression, the opinions of the man who then played the most important part in the opposition to the Union. One remarkable letter, however, written in the December of 1799, may be found. The Government, resenting bitterly his attitude, had just deprived his son of an office, and it was reported that Pitt had been expressing loud dissatisfaction at the conduct of Foster. The Speaker heard of this, and he wrote with much dignity to Pelham. He observed that, in a parliamentary life of nearly forty years, he had almost always been a supporter of the Government; that he had never supported it more vigorously or more earnestly than in the late very dangerous times; that he was still fully resolved to do so on every question but one, and that the last time he saw Pitt, he had told him frankly, and with a full statement of his reasons, that it was wholly impossible for him to support the Union. Knowing what his sentiments were, Pitt had no right to complain of the active part he had taken. ‘I told him,’ he says, ‘that I was against the legislative Union, and that if the measure was doubtful, the time was, in my mind, particularly inexpedient, and that I must declare my sentiments when called on. I added also, that nothing could induce me to change this opinion; but that if the sense of the nation, contrary to my belief, was fairly and clearly for the measure, I should yield to it, and endeavour in the detail to make it as little injurious and as beneficial as I could, and I particularly explained that by the sense of the nation I did not mean a small or influenced majority in the House, but the real uninfluenced sense of the country in general. This was in December. The sense of the country soon after appeared against the measure, and it was rejected by the House in January…. The subject is now, I hear, in contemplation to be renewed. My belief was then right, and I am still stronger in belief that the measure is more disliked now even than it was then; and I am persuaded that if he [Pitt] is rightly informed of the means resorted to, of the nature and history of many of the late addresses, and of the general opinion of people uninfluenced by fear or expectation, he will be convinced it is so. Intimidation, and depriving gentlemen of office for giving a free opinion when that opinion was avowed to be desired, and when the nature of the question made it peculiarly necessary that it should be so; the offering office to others who possessed different political creeds, are not means to obtain the real sentiments of the nation, nor can any man consider sentiments expressed under such circumstances to be so…. If ever the real, uninfluenced sentiments of the kingdom shall call for the measure, I will act as I have said, but I honestly own I never can expect them to be so…. I lament the unfortunate circumstances which have arisen to make me differ from Government. No consideration but the clearest conviction could induce me to do so, and that conviction is my own, without any party junction or association whatever…. The withdrawing all confidence, and even the usual official attention; the circulating pamphlets and newspaper paragraphs to run me down, and the depriving my son of office, are not means of persuasion to operate on me either the one way or the other. I will act uniformly, and if future time shall show I am mistaken in my opinion of the Union, I will at least enjoy the satisfaction of having acted with integrity.’ 1

The Government, in endeavouring to influence Irish opinion, had the great advantage of the support of the heads of the two principal Churches in the country. The bishops of the Established Church were actuated partly by obvious motives of self-interest, and partly also by a belief that the Union would place their Church beyond all danger of attack, but their attitude during the struggle was not a very active one. Out of the twenty-two bishops, twelve only were present at the division on the Union in the House of Lords in 1799, and two of these—Dickson, the Bishop of Down and Connor, and Marlay, the Bishop of Waterford—both voted and protested against it. 1 The Protestant clergy do not appear to have taken any prominent part in procuring addresses for the Union, though there were some exceptions. Bishop Percy, who had been from the first a strong and very honest supporter of the measure, succeeeded in inducing all the beneficed clergy of his diocese, except four or five, to join with him in an address to the Lord Lieutenant in its favour, 2 and similar addresses were signed by the bishops and clergy of Cork and Limerick. 3 O'Beirne, the Bishop of Meath—a man of great energy and some ability, who had been converted from Catholicism—was much consulted by the Government during the whole arrangement, and it is curious to find among the supporters of the Union the once familiar name of Lord Bristol, the Bishop of Derry. The great question that was pending could not, it is true, draw him from his retreat upon the Continent, but he authorised Lord Abercorn to place his name on an address in favour of it. This seems to have been his last appearance in Irish politics. The Primate appears to have refused to sign this address, although he had previously voted for the Union. 4 Trinity College, the great centre of Protestant learning, though divided, was on the whole not favourable to the Union; and it is remarkable that Magee, who was afterwards a very able and very typical archbishop, was one of its opponents. 1 George Knox and Arthur Browne, who were the members for the University, both spoke and voted against the Union in 1799. In the following year Browne changed his side and supported it; but he acknowledged in the House of Commons that he was acting in opposition to the wishes of the majority of his constituents. He afterwards received some legal promotion, and he never again represented the University.

The Catholic bishops appear to have been unanimous in favour of the Union, and in the recess of 1799 they exerted themselves strenuously, persistently, and on the whole successfully, in supporting it. In July the Catholic Archbishop of Cashel wrote to Archbishop Troy, expressing his decided good wishes for the measure, and promising to exert his influence ‘discreetly’ in the counties of Tipperary and Waterford, to procure the signatures of respectable Catholics to an address in its favour. He complained, however, that the bishops had little political influence over this class, and feared that if he took a too prominent action, it might rather injure than serve the cause. 2 In the course of the summer, Lord Cornwallis received strong declarations in favour of the Union from bodies of Catholics, in both Waterford and Kilkenny, and he wrote that, ‘as the clergy of that Church, particularly the superiors, countenance the measure, it is likely to extend itself' 3

Archbishop Troy was indefatigable in procuring signatures to addresses, and in urging his brother prelates to depart from the neutrality which they appear at first to have desired to maintain. Dr. Moylan, the Bishop of Cork, was in the close confidence of the Government, and he spent some days with the Duke of Portland at Bulstrode. 4 ‘Nothing, in my opinion,’ he wrote in September, ‘will more effectually tend to lay those disgraceful and scandalous party feuds and dissensions, and restore peace and harmony amongst us, than the great measure in contemplation, of the legislative Union, and incorporation of this kingdom with Great Britain. I am happy to tell you it is working its way, and daily gaining ground on the public opinion. Several counties which appeared most averse to it have now declared for it, and I have no doubt but, with the blessing of God, it will be effected, notwithstanding the violent opposition of Mr. Foster and his party…. The Roman Catholics in general are avowedly for the measure. In the South, where they are the most numerous, they have declared in its favour, and I am sure they will do the same in the other parts of the kingdom, unless overawed (as I know they are in some counties) by the dread of the powerful faction that opposes it.’ He believed that all ‘seeds of disaffection’ would be removed, if the religious disabilities were repealed at or immediately after the Union, and if, in addition to the provision which was intended for the Catholic clergy, measures were taken to abolish the gross abuses which existed in the collection of tithes. 1

The Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, though in favour of the Union, at first shrank from taking an active part in a political movement, but the advice of Archbishop Troy and of the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh decided him. He signed an address, and soon after he wrote, ‘I feel myself each day less shy in declaring my sentiments and wishes relative to the Union. I have had an opportunity in the course of the parochial visitation of this diocese, which is nearly finished, of observing how little averse the public mind is to that measure; and I have also had an opportunity of acquiring the strongest conviction, that this measure alone can restore harmony and happiness to our unhappy country.’ 2 Bishop Caulfield, who had more experience than any other bishop of the horrors which had desolated Ireland during the last few months, presided over a great Catholic meeting in favour of the Union at Wexford, at which an address was prepared which received more than 3,000 signatures. 3 Through the instrumentality of the priests, several other purely Catholic addresses in favour of the Union were obtained, 4 and Lord Cornwallis firmly believed that, although the numerical majority of the Catholics might be indifferent or seditious, the preponderance of opinion in the guiding, educated, and respectable portion of that body was in favour of his policy. ‘The Union,’ he wrote in November, ‘is, I trust, making progress; the great body of the people in general, and of the Catholics in particular, are decidedly for it;’ and in begging the Government to permit the Catholic peers to vote for the representative peers, he urged that a refusal would be peculiarly ungracious ‘at a time when a respectable part of the Roman Catholic community in this kingdom is almost universally coming forward in favour of the Union.’ 1 Among the supporters of the Union was Arthur O'Leary, the most brilliant writer of the Irish Catholics. He boasted that he had reconciled many to it, and he predicted that it would put an end to all religious disqualifications and national jealousies, and would close for ever ‘the tumultuary scenes’ by which Ireland had been hitherto distracted. 2

In the strange irony of Irish history, few things are more curious than the fact that it was the English Government which persuaded the Catholic priests to take an active part in Irish politics, and to take part in them for the purpose of carrying the legislative Union. They were not in all places successful. Many Catholics, refusing to act as a separate body, signed addresses with the Protestants against the Union. Lord Castlereagh sent to the Catholic Bishop of Meath, as he probably did to the other bishops, a sketch of the address which he wished to be signed; but the Bishop answered that, though he himself fully approved of it, and though the whole body of his priesthood agreed with him, the lay Catholics of Meath were ‘too near Dublin, and too much accustomed to listen to the opinions of the Protestants of Meath, to be as yet willing to declare in favour of the Union;’ and that till this had ceased to be the case, a dependent priesthood did not dare to take an open or active part. 3

In Dublin, Cornwallis acknowledged that the utmost he could hope from the Catholics was neutrality, and it is tolerably certain that this neutrality was not obtained. It is said that here also the clergy and a proportion of respectable Catholics were in favour of the Union, but the bulk of the Dublin Catholics appear to have still adhered to the convictions so emphatically expressed by the great meeting in Francis Street in 1795. In a very important Catholic meeting which was now held in the Exchange, resolutions were unanimously passed, describing an Union as the extinction of the liberty of Ireland, attributing the unexampled rapidity of the improvement of Ireland during the last twenty years entirely to the Constitution of 1782, and denouncing, as a gross calumny on the Catholic body, the imputation that they could be induced, by either ‘pique or pretension,’ to sacrifice the independence of their country. It was on this occasion that Daniel O'Connell made his first appearance on a public platform. In a remarkable passage, which was probably elicited by Canning's threat that it might be necessary to re-enact the penal code if the Union were defeated, he declared that the Catholics of Ireland would rather accept that code, and throw themselves on the mercy of their Protestant brethren, than assent to the extinction of the Legislature of their country, and seek advantages as a sect, which would destroy them as a nation. 1

A few other distinctively Catholic addresses were drawn up in different parts of the country, protesting against the Union, and against the assertion that it was favoured by the Catholics. 2 Much indeed may be truly said to qualify the importance of the Catholic demonstrations in its support. Extreme want of moral courage, and extreme susceptibility to external influences, have always prevailed in Ireland, and the combined pressure of a Government which had so much to give in this world, and of a priesthood which was believed to have so much influence over the next, was enormously great. It is indeed surprising that, with such a weight of influence, the signatures in favour of the Union were so few. It appears also to be generally admitted, that the Catholics looked mainly, in their approval of the Union, to Catholic objects, or were actuated by very natural feelings of resentment or panic. If they could have obtained their emancipation in an Irish Parliament, they would have preferred it, but with the revival of a fierce Protestant spirit that had followed the rebellion, and with the formal assurance they had received, that the English Government were resolved, for all time, to exercise their overwhelming influence to prevent the introduction of Catholics into an Irish Legislature, the Union seemed the only path of hope. The hatred and the humiliation which recent events had produced, continued unabated, and large districts were still convulsed by all the violence, tyranny, and panic of military licence. Cornwallis wrote in November, that martial law in Ireland was only too likely to pass into a tyranny ‘more violent and intolerable’ than that of Robespierre: ‘that the vilest informers were hunted out from the prisons, to attack, by the most barefaced perjury, the lives of all who are suspected of being, or of having been disaffected,’ and that ‘every Roman Catholic of influence was in great danger.’ 1 The fact that the Lord Lieutenant, who was attempting to carry the Union, had steadily laboured to restrain this violence, and had incurred great unpopularity in doing so; the fact that the Orange party were in general vehement opponents of the Union, and the strong reason the Catholics already had to believe that their emancipation would be one of the first acts of the United Parliament, all influenced their judgments. Their priests had good grounds for expecting that a Government endowment would speedily be granted to them, and they were assured that the conduct of the Catholics in the crisis that had arisen would be decisive of their future advantages. 2

An approval which was so largely provisional, and which rested so much on transient and abnormal conditions, could not be greatly counted on, though if a wise and liberal statesmanship had followed the Union, it might perhaps have been rendered permanent. Still, it appears to me to be impossible to review with candour the facts that I have collected, in this and the preceding chapter, without arriving at the conclusion that the Union in 1800 was not in any of its stages positively distasteful to the great body of the Irish Catholics, and that a very important section of them, including their whole hierarchy, the vast majority of their landed gentry, and many if not most of their lower priests, decidedly and consistently favoured it. Contemporary historians on both sides support this conclusion. The Catholic historian Plowden was in favour of the Union, and he writes, that although the great body of Roman Catholics at first kept themselves back upon the question, and although some highly respectable members of the communion were warm anti-Unionists, yet ‘a very great preponderancy in favour of the Union existed in the Catholic body, particularly in their nobility, gentry, and clergy.’ 1 The Protestant historian Barrington was violently on the other side, and his judgment differs but little as to the fact. ‘Nothing,’ he writes, ‘could be more culpable than the conduct of a considerable portion of the Catholic clergy.’ Speaking of the Catholics as a whole, he says, ‘No body of men ever gave a more helping hand to their own degradation and misery.’ ‘The Bishops Troy, Lanigan, and others, deluded by the Viceroy, sold their country.’ He says, indeed, that ‘the great body of Catholics were true to their country,’ but he immediately adds, ‘the rebellion had terrified them from every overt act of opposition.’ 1

Even among the rebel party, delight at the humiliation of the triumphant loyalists was thought by many to be the strongest feeling. The overtures which some Orangemen made to the Catholics, to join with them in defence of the national Legislature, had little or no result. One of the leading United Irishmen is said to have been the author of a song which was at this time circulated, in which the rebels were represented as scornfully repudiating these overtures, reminding the Orangemen how lately their favourite tune had been ‘Croppies, lie down,’ and predicting, with evident gratification, that Orangeman and Croppy would now be reduced to the same insignificance. 2 A great Kilkenny landlord writes from that county in July 1799, ‘The rebels and papists—I am sorry to say the terms are almost synonymous—perceive there is no hope in rebellion, and that death and ruin pursue those who try it. They will continue, therefore, peaceable, I believe, and are now become great friends to Union; partly through malice, partly through fear; no matter, they everywhere come forward in favour of the measure; and I am happy to say several counties, Cork, Kerry, Mayo, Waterford, have declared strongly and almost unanimously in favour of it. 3

In the recess of 1799, Ireland lost a true patriot, who had for a short time played a leading and very honourable part in her history. The weak health of Lord Charlemont had of late been rapidly declining, and he died on August 4. He was a man, in his best days, more eminent for his accomplishments than for his abilities; and a politician who had no great strength of will, no power of debate, and a constitutional hatred of violence and extravagance, was not likely long to retain his ascendency in the wild and stormy element in which his lot was cast. A great property and position in the district where the volunteer movement was strongest, and the friendship of Flood and Grattan, placed him in the front rank of Irish politics, and the transparent disinterestedness of his public life, the soundness and moderation of his judgment, and the readiness with which he was always prepared to devote time, labour, and money to the public good, established his position. In one critical moment his services both to Ireland and to the Empire had been transcendently great, but his influence speedily waned, and Irish politics drifted far from the path which he had chosen. On the Catholic question, events appear to have somewhat modified his opinion. That ‘chord of wondrous potency’ which, like Flood, he had feared to wake, had been swept by no skilful hand, 1 and in his last years, Charlemont was convinced that the completion of the Act of 1793 by the admission of Catholics to Parliament, had become absolutely necessary. He had long predicted and dreaded the impending Union, and his hostility was not diminished as it approached. ‘It would, more than any other measure,’ he wrote, ‘contribute to the separation of two countries, the perpetual connection of which was one of the warmest wishes of my heart. 2

The probable effect of the measure was differently judged by Lewins, who, though bitterly attacked by many of his fellowconspirators, still represented the United Irishmen at Paris. Shortly after the Revolution of the 18th brumaire, he sent to the French Government a remarkable memoir, urging that if France allowed the Union to be accomplished, it would add enormously to the power of her great enemy. It would have a greater effect than the Scotch Union, for Ireland was much more valuable than Scotland. It would strengthen the Executive, for the Irish members would be mere creatures of the Government. It would increase the national credit, by adding Irish wealth to the security of the British national debt. It would place the military resources of Ireland without reserve at the disposal of the British Ministers, and it would induce the Irish to believe that they had been abandoned by France, and that their true interest was to identify themselves with England. 1 Lewins was hardly more disappointed at the failure of the rebellion, than at the religious spirit, so hostile to the original intentions of the United Irishmen, which had been aroused. He sent over an agent named O'Mealey to England, and with the intention of going to Ireland to communicate with the rebels; but, with the usual felicity of Irish conspirators, O'Mealey and another United Irishman who was engaged with him in the same mission, seem to have become bosom friends with a spy of the English Government, who reported all their proceedings. From these reports, and from some other sources, the Ministers received assurances that no rebellion was likely to occur uness a French invasion took place, but that such an invasion was eagerly looked forward to. 2

The disturbances in the country came and went, like the passing storms that sweep so rapidly over the inconstant Irish sky, but on the whole they appear to have been somewhat less than in the last few years. The measure imposing martial law, which has been noticed, was speedily carried; but in May, Castlereagh still speaks of the horrible houghing of cattle in Clare and Galway; of outrages of banditti due to some agrarian quarrel in Meath; of isolated but much exaggerated outrages in Armagh and Antrim. 3 At the end of June he writes, ‘The tranquillity of the country continues perfectly undisturbed, and the minds of the people appear more settled than I have known them for several years. They have suffered for their crimes. Industry never was so profitable, and the departure of the Brest fleet for the Mediterranean is considered by the disaffected such an abdication of their cause as leaves them no other choice but submission, at least for the present.’ The revenue was rising. ‘The quarter ending June 24, 1799, exceeds the corresponding quarter of the preceding year nearly 200,000 l. , and compared with the same period of 1797, has risen above 350,000 l. , an increase principally to be attributed to the superior productiveness of the old taxes, particularly the excise.’ 1 Two months later he writes, ‘Although no very serious symptoms appeared, yet in many parts of Ireland the approach of the enemy's fleet towards our coast has produced a movement among the lower orders.’ 2 Cornwallis, in his journey through the South of Ireland, had been much encouraged by the tranquil and prosperous aspect of the country through which he passed. In September he writes, ‘The southern part of this wretched island is again getting into a bad state, no doubt from encouragement received from France. The counties of Waterford and Tipperary are reported to be in a state of preparation for an immediate rising.’ He expressed his own astonishment at the suddenness of the change, but added that the spirit of disaffection was so deeply rooted in the minds of the people of Ireland, that it would require time and a total change in the system and constitution of the Government to eradicate it. 3 The Opposition declared that the attempt to force on the Union, had greatly contributed to these disturbances. The Government believed that it had little or nothing to do with them; that the mass of the people were perfectly indifferent to the Union, but that they hated England and their landlords, and waited eagerly for a French invasion. 4

The harvest of 1799 proved extremely bad, and this greatly aggravated the situation. The Government acted with much energy. They at once prohibited absolutely the exportation of corn and potatoes, accompanying the measure by a bounty on the importation of flour, and by proclamations forbidding the making of cakes, rolls, muffins, or anything but household bread. An Act of Parliament was soon after passed, forbidding for a certain time the consumption of barley or other corn in making malt, or distilling spirits. These measures prevented absolute famine, but there was much distress with its accompanying disturbances, and there were the usual complaints of frauds by millers and corn factors. 1

The period seemed a strangely inauspicious one for pressing on a great constitutional change, which Irish opinion had certainly not demanded. But in the eyes of the English Government, there is little doubt that the very tension and anarchy and panic that prevailed, formed the strongest ground for their policy. An elaborate paper of arguments for the Union, which may be found in the Castlereagh Correspondence, concentrates with great force and frankness reasons which we have already seen scattered or implied in many speeches and pamphlets. The writer recalls, in a melancholy historical retrospect, the past relations of the two countries. The earliest period had been well described by Sir John Davies. ‘Too weak to introduce order and obedience, the English authority was yet sufficient to check the growth of any enterprising genius amongst the natives; and though it could bestow no true form of civil government, it was able to prevent the rise of any such form.’ The conquests of Elizabeth introduced a long period of English supremacy, but also of persistent English jealousy of Irish progress. ‘Should we exert ourselves,’ said her councillors, ‘in reducing this country to order and civility, it must soon acquire power, consequence, and rule. The inhabitants will then be alienated from England. They will cast themselves into the arms of some foreign Power, and perhaps erect themselves into an independent State.’ 2 ‘Such,’ continued the writer, ‘were the counsels that then made their way into the British Cabinet, and we can entertain little doubt of their having operated to the present time.’ This was the policy which inspired the destruction of the Irish woollen manufactures under William, lest they should rival those of England, and it was shown equally in other ways. Without a navy, islands can neither secure their trade nor their liberty. ‘Above a hundred years ago, Ireland made a perpetual grant for the support of an Irish marine. This England never permitted to be applied, because she wished to have the monopoly of the navy herself.’

Nor was this surprising, for a half-separated Ireland always had been, and always would be, a danger to England. The writer recalled how it had aggravated the peril of English internal contests in the days of Perkin Warbeck, in the Great Rebellion and in the Revolution, and how often both France and Spain had seen in Ireland the best vantage ground for attacking England. A long period of peace and quiescence had followed the Revolution, but the experience of the independent Parliament which Ireland had at last won, all pointed to ultimate separation. ‘Both the Parliament and people of Ireland have, for the last seventeen years, been almost entirely engaged in lessening by degrees their dependence on Great Britain… It signifies nothing to say that their views were honourable and patriotic…. This may be readily acknowledged, and yet the effect of all these patriotic exertions be the same, viz. that the connection between the two countries is reduced by them almost to a single thread, the unity of the executive power and a negative on the laws passed in the Irish Parliament. Should this negative be exercised on any important occasion, the two countries are unavoidably committed…. I do not say that the present members of the Irish Legislature are at all inclined to come to these extremities. Their conduct has been in the highest degree loyal, and their attachment to England sincere. But who can answer for their successors?’ ‘A vast majority of the inhabitants of Ireland are either rebels or inclined to become so. A great majority, again, of these rebels are Catholics, inimical for the most part, on that score alone, to the existing Government…. A great many among the lower orders of the northern Dissenters are inclined to join with them in their attempt to overthrow the Constitution, or at least to introduce democratic reform…. The object of the disaffected, that is the great majority of the numbers at least of this island, is confessedly a separation from Great Britain.’ ‘The Catholic claims will soon be renewed with redoubled force.’ With the power and numbers and present disposition of the Catholics, the rejection of those claims ‘would be a measure attended with the greatest national danger.’ Their admission would be at least equally dangerous, and if, as was probable, it was followed by a democratic reform, making Parliament the true representative of a disaffected people, there could be no real doubt of the result. ‘Indeed, it can hardly be conceived how the Roman Catholics in this country could be admitted to a full participation in political power, and the two countries continue connected as they are at present. A Protestant country and a papist country united under a Protestant monarch, who by his coronation oath was bound to maintain the Protestant religion, would be a political monster whose life must indeed be of short duration.’ If the Catholic question is left to an Irish Parliament, however it may be treated, it must lead either to fresh insurrection or to a final separation from England.

It is on these grounds that the writer maintained that a legislative Union was the only means of averting an ultimate, and indeed a speedy, separation of the two islands, and he contended that the present was the only moment in which it could be carried. A little earlier, no possible inducement would have made an Irish Parliament accept it. A little later, it would be equally impossible. ‘The moment is now come, and it will never occur again, when an Union may be practicable. The leading men in Ireland, who were most unfriendly to it, find that neither their property nor the country is safe, and now wish for Union. The measure should be despatched while men's minds are impressed with the present horrid state of Ireland, and while the agitators are kept down by the discovery and failure of their plots.’ 1

These were, I believe, the true reasons that governed the conduct of the English Ministers. In the mind of Lord Cornwallis the advantage the Catholics were likely to obtain from the measure, occupied perhaps even a larger place. He was convinced that without an Union, Ireland would not long be a part of the Empire; but he was convinced also, that it could enjoy no internal peace or permanent content, unless the Government of the country was taken out of the hands of the men who had triumphed in the civil war. As we have already seen, he had been long since convinced that Catholic emancipation was the only solution of Irish troubles. He knew nothing of what Ireland had been during the tranquil period before 1795, and coming over to a country of which he was very ignorant, at the moment when it was convulsed by the agonies and the anarchy of a most ferocious civil war; when appalling dangers, and no less appalling barbarities, had revived and inflamed all the old hatred of creeds and classes and races, he believed that the existing system of government had hopelessly broken down, and that the very first condition of security, prosperity, and civilisation was to place the government of Ireland in the hands of an impartial and unimpassioned Legislature. Very reluctantly he yielded to the representations of the English Ministers, that it was impossible to carry Catholic emancipation concurrently with the Union, but he hoped that this measure would speedily follow, and he anticipated the best results from taking the government of the country out of the hands of a loyalist class, who were now deeply tinged with Orange passions. The Union, in his eyes, was carried against this class, for the benefit of the Catholics, with their approval, and in a large measure by their assistance.

We have seen how he hated the corruption which he was compelled to practise. Lord Castlereagh, on the other hand, pursued his course with a quiet, business-like composure; nor is there the slightest indication that it caused him a momentary uneasiness. He was convinced that it was the necessary means to a necessary measure, and he believed that he was corrupting to purify. He described his task and that of Lord Cornwallis as ‘to buy out, and secure to the Crown for ever, the fee simple of Irish corruption, which has so long enfeebled the powers of Government and endangered the connection.’ 1

He seems to have had no scruples about his proceedings, and if the approbation of men who, by their characters or their positions, might be deemed patterns of religious sanctity, could have encouraged him, this encouragement was not wanting. All the heads of the Catholic Church, and nearly all the heads of the Established Church in Ireland, approved of what he was doing. In England, Wilberforce expressed serious alarm at the effects the Union might have on the English woollen manufactures and on the composition of the British Parliament, but he does not appear to have expressed the smallest disapprobation of the manner in which it was carried. Alexander Knox was the private secretary of Castlereagh, and one of the warmest of his admirers, and it is a remarkable fact that Castlereagh afterwards asked this very distinguished religious writer to undertake a history of the Union. 1

In the mean time, most of the country was proclaimed, and English troops were streaming in. In July there were rather more than 45,000 effective soldiers in Ireland, in addition to artillery, but in the autumn the army was largely reinforced, and there was at one time a strange notion of sending over a large body of subsidised Russians. It was rejected because Cornwallis and Castlereagh represented the extremely bad effect it would have on public opinion during the Union crisis; 2 but the force that was in Ireland was soon so great, that unless a strong foreign army was landed, it seemed irresistible.

It was under these circumstances that the last session of the Irish Parliament was opened on January 15, 1800. The speech from the Throne was long and elaborate, but it did not contain the faintest allusion to the momentous question which now filled all thoughts, and which the Government had determined by all the means in their power to press on to an immediate solution. It seems a strange reticence, but it may be easily explained. The process of remodelling the borough representation by substituting supporters for opponents of the Union, had been undertaken, and in the first four days of the session, no less than thirty-nine writs were moved. 1 As the great majority of the vacant seats had been secured by the Government, Lord Castlereagh had an obvious reason for adjourning all discussion of the Union till they were filled, but the same reason impelled the Opposition to press it on without delay. Sir Lawrence Parsons, having first directed the Clerk to read the speeches in which Lord Cornwallis, in opening and closing the last session, had declared the firm resolution of the Government to carry the Union, moved an amendment to the Address, expressing the deep loyalty of the House of Commons to the Throne, to the connection, and to the free Constitution of 1782, and at the same time pledging it ‘at all times, and particularly at the present moment,’ to maintain an independent resident Parliament. Reminding the House that Pitt had repeatedly postponed the parliamentary reform which he had once advocated, on the plea that a period of war and disturbance was not one for introducing great constitutional changes, he accused the Government of endeavouring to destroy the independence of Ireland at a time when the spirit of the people was depressed by recent troubles, when the country was occupied by an enormous army, when martial law prevailed and a formidable invasion was threatened, and when apprehensions from without and from within made all free exercise of the public mind upon the question impossible. He urged that it was the duty of the members to deal with the question at once, and not to sit supinely there, while the Minister of the Crown was openly engaged in prostituting the prerogative of appointing to places, for the purpose of packing the Parliament. ‘A string of men who are against the Union are to go out, that a string of men who are for it may come in.

The debate which ensued extended through the whole night, and lasted for not less than eighteen hours. 2 It appears to have been one of the fiercest ever heard in a legislative assembly. Lord Castlereagh met the rising storm with great courage and composure. He acknowledged that, although there was no mention of the Union in the speech from the Throne, it was intended to be the chief measure of the session. It had been determined, he said, to make a separate communication on the subject, and when that communication was made, the time would have come for discussing it. Last year the measure had been withdrawn because it was not yet fully understood, ‘and it was stated that it would not again be proposed without full and fair notice, and until there was reason to believe that the Parliament and the country had changed their opinions upon the subject.’ That change had, he believed, taken place. He was fully satisfied, that the measure ‘was now approved by a great majority of the people.’ ‘Nineteen of the most considerable counties in Ireland, constituting above five-sevenths of the kingdom,’ had declared themselves in favour of it. The amendment of Parsons was not to reject the Union after mature investigation, but to extinguish the question by anticipation, refusing all information, and doing so at a time when a great number of the members of the House were indispensably absent. Could it be supposed that his Majesty would desist from the measure because the Parliament of Ireland, thus circumstanced, had declined to consider it? Was it, he asked, amid the derisive laughter of the Opposition, decent to press forward this discussion when there were so many gentlemen absent who had accepted places under Government? Was it, he repeated, constitutional or right to proceed to the determination of so important a subject, when so large a proportion of their body was absent—to refuse even to consider a measure of which so large a part of the kingdom had expressed their approbation?

On the other side, the language of Opposition soon passed into the fiercest invective. It was denied emphatically and repeatedly, that there was any truth in the statement that the sense of the nation was in favour of the Union, and it was asserted that what semblance of support the Minister had obtained, had been obtained by the basest means. ‘During the whole interval between the sessions, the most barefaced system of parliamentary corruption had been pursued—dismissals, promotions, threats, promises.’ Bribes had been promised to the Catholic and to the Presbyterian clergy. Irreconcilable and delusive hopes had been alternately held out to the Catholics and the Protestants. Agents of great absentee proprietors had gone among the tenantry, obtaining signatures by refusing leases to those who hesitated to sign; threatening to call in the rent to the hour; holding over them the terrors of an ejectment. Revenue officers had been employed to canvass the obscurest villages. Signatures had been sought in the very dregs of the population, it was said even in the gaols. The whole patronage of the Crown was employed to favour the measure; the powers of martial law were made use of to stifle opposition, and the Viceroy himself had gone from county to county seeking support. And the result of all this was, that out of a population of nearly five millions, the Government had obtained ‘about 5,000 signatures, three-quarters of whom affixed their names in surprise, terror, and total ignorance of the subject;' 1 that they had nowhere ventured to call on the sheriffs legally to convene the counties, and collect the unbiassed sense of the intelligent portion of the community; that their measure had so little genuine support, that they did not dare to announce it in the speech from the Throne.

Language of this kind, in the mouths of such orators as Plunket, Bushe, George Ponsonby, Fitzgerald, and Arthur Moore, was well fitted to inflame the country, whatever effect it might have upon the House, and speaker after speaker warned the Government, that if the Union was carried by such means and at such a time, it would not be acquiesced in, and would hereafter lead to generations of disloyalty, agitation, and strife.

This debate, among other things, was very memorable for the reappearance of Grattan on the scene of his ancient triumphs. For some time he had been prostrated by a severe nervous disorder, peculiarly fitted to incapacitate him from mixing in the agitations of public life, and all that had of late been taking place in Ireland had strengthened his wish to retire completely from it. He had returned from the Isle of Wight at the end of 1799, and had refused, on the ground of his shattered health, an invitation to stand for Parliament; but the crisis was now so acute, that his friends and family urged that it was his duty at all hazards to appear, and he at last with extreme reluctance consented. One of the members for the nomination borough of Wicklow had just died; the seat was purchased; the election was hurried through on the night of January 15, and early on the following morning, while the House was still sitting, Grattan entered. He wore the uniform of the volunteers. He was so weak, that he was supported to his seat by George Ponsonby and Arthur Moore, and when, having taken the oath, he rose to speak, he was obliged to ask the permission of the House to speak sitting. For a few moments it seemed as if it would be an idle display, for his voice was so feeble that it was almost inaudible; but the excitement of the occasion and of the scene, and the fire of a great orator, soon asserted their power, and the old eloquence which had so often dazzled the House, kindled into all its pristine splendour. His speech—the first of a series which are among the most memorable monuments of Irish eloquence-lasted for nearly two hours, and although it is not probable that it changed votes, it had a deep and lasting effect on the country. The members of the Administration, who hated and dreaded Grattan, described his entry into the House as theatrical; threw doubt upon his illness; believed that the unpopularity which during the last months had gathered round him had destroyed his influence; and when they found that this was not the case, hoped that Foster might be made jealous, and alienated from the Opposition. But the country judged more wisely and more generously. Men felt the deep pathos of the scene, and the patriotism and genius of the foremost of living Irishmen emerged gradually but steadily from the clouds of calumny that had obscured them.

It was soon, however, apparent that the work of the recess had been accomplished, and that in spite of the vacant seats the Government had an ample majority. At ten o'clock on the morning of the 16th, the amendment was rejected by 138 votes to 96. ‘I trust this first success,’ wrote Lord Cornwallis, ‘will cement our party; it is still composed of loose materials, much more intent on the personal than the public question.’ 1 ‘All depends on the tone of the country,’ wrote Cooke. ‘If we can keep that right, I believe all may do well.’ 2

A step was now taken by the Opposition, which was violently denounced by the partisans of the Government, but which, according to all modern notions, was so plainly right that it needs no defence. Castlereagh had asserted that the majority of the country was with him, and the Lord Lieutenant had gone through both the South and North of Ireland for the express purpose of obtaining addresses in favour of the Union. The Opposition now sent through the country a letter which Cornwallis and Clare somewhat absurdly described as a ‘consular edict,’ stating ‘that petitions to Parliament declaring the real sense of the freeholders of the kingdom on the subject of a legislative Union would, at this time, be highly expedient,’ and requesting those to whom the circular was sent, to use their influence to have petitions prepared in their several counties without delay. This circular was signed by Lord Downshire; by the new Lord Charlemont, and by W. Ponsonby, the leader of the regular Opposition, and they stated that it was drawn up with the consent, and by the authority, of no less than thirtyeight of the county members. 3

A hundred thousand pounds was, at the same time, subscribed, or, more probably, promised, by leading members of the party, and some desperate but manifestly hopeless attempts were made to combat the Government by their own weapons. Two seats, which the Government believed they had secured, were obtained by the Opposition, and Peter Burrowes and Thomas Goold—two able opponents of the Union—were introduced into the House. Saurin was soon after brought in for one of Lord Downshire's boroughs, and other measures of a more than dubious kind were taken. One venal member—a brother-in-law of Lord Clare—who had voted for the Union in 1799, was unquestionably bribed by a sum of 4,000l. to vote against it in 1800, 1 and it is stated by Grattan's biographer that another vote was only lost because the money was not forthcoming for another bribe. 2

In Dublin the feeling was so fierce, that it was impossible to mistake or to misrepresent it. An aggregate meeting, with the Sheriff at its head, presented addresses to both Grattan and Foster. The Guild of Merchants passed resolutions condemning the Union in the strongest terms, calling for a coalition of all sects against it, and offering warm thanks to their Roman Catholic fellow-citizens of Dublin for their manly and patriotic conduct. Cornwallis observed with much concern, that the influence of Grattan over the Dublin Catholics was very great, and that at the same time there were signs of a most alarming kind among the yeomen, who were chiefly Orangemen. Burrowes strongly urged that the Opposition, as a body, should make a formal appeal to them, reminding them that they had sworn to uphold the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, and calling on them in virtue of that oath to resist the impending Union. He proposed that this appeal, emanating, in the first place, from the lawyers’ corps, should be circulated through every corps in the kingdom. The responsible leaders of the Opposition declined to take a step which might lead to another rebellion, but unauthorised handbills of a most alarming kind appeared. One of them, Cornwallis says, called on the yeomanry, Orangemen, and Catholics, to form a solid and indissoluble bond of opposition to the Union. Another stated that no Government could wrest the Parliament from 60,000 armed and tried men. Should 60,000 Irishmen, it was asked, with arms in their hands, stand tamely by and see the Constitution of their country destroyed? 1 It was noticed that great numbers of yeomen accompanied the procession that went to present an address of thanks to Grattan. 2

In spite of the resolution in favour of neutrality passed by the Grand Lodge, the Orangemen over a great part of Ireland were straining fiercely, like hounds in the leash. Few things in the history of this period are more curious than the many Orange resolutions protesting against the Union. The Grand Lodge was accused of having betrayed the country, under the influence of a few great placeholders. Representatives of no less than thirty-six lodges assembled at Armagh, declared that it made no material difference whether the Constitution was robbed by open and avowed enemies, or by pretended friends, who were, in reality, the deadliest enemies of the country, and that it was the duty of all Orangemen to stand forward in opposition to the impending measure. The representatives of thirteen Orange lodges in the county of Fermanagh at once echoed this language, and very similar resolutions were passed by many other lodges in different parts of Ireland. 3 A large proportion of the lodges, it is true, obeyed the direction of the Grand Lodge, and kept silence on the subject, and some individual Orangemen were conspicuous supporters of the Union, but there is not, I believe, a single instance of an Orange resolution in its favour.

It is difficult to measure the extent and full significance of the provincial feeling against it. That there was, in large classes, and over large districts, a profound apathy on the subject, is, I believe, perfectly true, and it is not probable that the feeling ran anywhere as high as in Dublin and its neighbourhood, but, at the same time, the response to the circular of the Opposition was very considerable. A great meeting in the county of Down, convoked by Lord Downshire, led the way, and the example was speedily followed in Louth, Meath, Cavan, and many other counties. At Limerick and at Dundalk, there were distinctively Catholic meetings. In general, the meetings appear to have had no denominational character. In some cases, where the sheriff refused to convene them, private gentlemen undertook the task, and petitions against the Union soon poured in, signed by freeholders and other electors, from nearly all the counties, and from nearly all the principal towns of Ireland. In a confidential letter, dated March 5, Cooke stated that petitions against the Union had come in from twenty-six counties, and bearing 110,000 signatures. 1 There appear to have been, at this time, absolutely no counter demonstrations in favour of the measure.

It is, of course, not to be assumed that all these signatures represented honest, unbiassed, intelligent conviction. Great landlords had, no doubt, often selfish reasons for wishing that the Union should not pass, and they probably sometimes exercised undue pressure upon their tenants. 2 It is said, too, that a report was propagated that when the Parliament was abolished, Irish law would be at an end; that leases would accordingly be broken, and that the reason why so many gentlemen were for the Union was because they wished to relet their estates at advanced rents. 3 Many exaggerated or untrue reports were no doubt in the air, and neither corrupt motives nor sincere and strenuous convictions were exclusively on one side, though it is not, I think, very difficult to determine on which side there was the balance of each.

The letters of Lord Cornwallis, in the interval that elapsed between the division of January 16 and the formal introduction of the Union in the House of Commons, indicated a great and growing alarm. In letter after letter he urged, in the strongest terms, that more English troops must immediately be sent over, not now to guard against French invasion, or against the United Irishmen, or against a Catholic rising, but to make it possible to carry the Union without tumult and insurrection. The necessity appeared to him the greater, as a large number of Irish militiamen had been induced by high bounties to volunteer into English regiments. On January 18, he warned the Duke of Portland that dangerous tumults might arise before the Union had gone through all its stages. On the 20th and 21st, he described the inflammatory handbills that were circulating among the yeomen, the efforts of the Opposition to raise popular clamour to the highest pitch, and the urgent necessity for sending over regular troops at once. ‘I am not idle,’ he said, ‘on my part; but my Cabinet friends have shown so total a want of confidence in me, and have so eagerly seized every opportunity of reprobating my conduct in severe, if not acrimonious terms, that I am almost afraid to appeal to the general goodwill of the people at large, which I have the vanity to think I possess.’ On the 24th he wrote: ‘There can, I think, now be no doubt of our parliamentary success, although I believe that a great number of our friends are not sincere well-wishers to the measure of the Union…. In Dublin and its vicinity the people are all outrageous against Union; in the other parts of the kingdom the general sense is undoubtedly in its favour. It is, however, easy for men of influence to obtain resolutions and addresses on either side.’ In the last days of January, the situation had become manifestly worse. The county meetings had begun. ‘Every engine is at work to irritate the minds of the people, and to carry the opposition to the measure beyond constitutional bounds. ‘The ferment that exists amongst all descriptions of persons in this city is exceeding great.’ ‘The clamour against the Union is increasing rapidly, and every degree of violence is to be expected. As none of the English regiments have yet arrived, I have been under the necessity of ordering the Lancashire Volunteers from Youghal to Dublin…. The apprehensions of our friends rendered this measure absolutely necessary. The Roman Catholics, for whom I have not been able to obtain the smallest token of favour, are joining the standard of opposition.’ 1

This last sentence was very ominous. It was equally alarming that the pressure of public opinion had begun to tell upon some of the members of Parliament. Lord Oxmantown, who had just returned from the county of Longford, told Lord Cornwallis that he found the sense of the people so adverse to the Union, that the county member who had voted for it in 1799, would now be obliged to oppose it. I have already noticed the defection of one of the members for the county of Tipperary, and of his two sons, which was defended on the same grounds. ‘The indefatigable exertions, aided by the subscriptions of the anti-Unionists,’ wrote Cornwallis, ‘have raised a powerful clamour against the measure in many parts of the kingdom, and have put the capital quite in an uproar, and I am sorry to say some of our unwilling supporters in Parliament have taken advantage of these appearances to decline giving any further support. God only knows how the business will terminate.’ ‘Several members of the House of Commons have represented to me the ferment which now agitates the public mind, and their personal apprehensions.

… In the present temper of affairs, I am not prepared to say that dangerous tumults will not arise, … and it is with real concern that I express my fears that some defections may take place among those from whom we had a right to expect support.’ 2

There appears to have been for a short time serious fear that the great loyalist yeomanry, who had contributed so largely to the suppression of the rebellion, would resist the Union by arms. This fear, however, was probably exaggerated. Neither Lord Downshire, nor Foster, nor Grattan, gave any countenance to such a policy, and eloquent and ambitious lawyers are not the kind of men who are likely to be leaders in rebellion. The indignation of a great portion of the yeomanry was no doubt extreme, but even if they had drawn the sword, they could not have created a national rebellion. It was impossible on the morrow of a savage civil war, which had kindled the fiercest and most enduring religious hatreds, that the divided parties should have at once passed into new combinations, like the patterns of a kaleidoscope; and neither Catholic Ireland nor Presbyterian Ireland was likely to show much enthusiasm for the defence of the Irish Parliament. On the great question of Catholic emancipation, the opponents of the Union were profoundly divided, and they did not in consequence venture to take the only course that might have given the struggle a national character. If, however, at this critical moment, a French army had landed upon the coast, it may be questioned whether any considerable section of the Irish people would have resisted it.

The Government in the mean time were busily engaged in putting the finishing touches to the Union plan; but the only serious change that was now made, appears to have been in the article relating to the Established Church. It was a leading argument of the supporters of the Union, that by uniting the two Churches, it would secure the Irish Protestants for ever from all danger of the subversion of their establishment. The Archbishop of Cashel, however, insisted that a still further step should be taken; that the maintenance of the Established Church should be made an article of distinct treaty obligation, and should be guaranteed for ever in the most solemn terms as a fundamental portion of the compact under which the Irish Protestant Parliament resigned into the hands of an Imperial Parliament the legislative power of Ireland. The precedent for such a course was to be found in the Scotch Union, when the maintenance of the English and Scotch Churches in the existing forms was made a fundamental and essential condition of the treaty of Union, was declared to be permanent and unalterable, and was placed, as the authors of the Scotch Union believed, outside the sphere of the legislative competence of the United Parliament. It was in accordance with these views that the fifth article of the treaty of Union was drawn up. It laid down ‘that the Churches of England and Ireland, as now by law established, be united into one Protestant Episcopal Church, to be called the United Church of England and Ireland; that the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the said United Church shall be, and shall remain in full force for ever, as the same are now by law established for the Church of England; and that the continuance and preservation of the said United Church, as the Established Church of England and Ireland, shall be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the Union; and that, in like manner, the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the Church of Scotland shall remain and be preserved as the same are now established by law, and by the Acts for the union of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland.’ 1

It does not fall within the limits of the present work to trace the later history of opinion on this question. It is sufficient to say that, for at least a generation, the binding force of the Union guarantee was recognised by Parliament, that it was constantly appealed to by the most eminent statesmen, and that when the Catholics were admitted into the Imperial Parliament, a special oath was imposed upon them, binding them in the most solemn terms to disavow and abjure all intention of subverting the Established Church. It was intended, in the words of Sir Robert Peel, to assure the Protestants, ‘on the obligation of an oath, that no privilege which the Act confers, would be exercised to disturb or weaken the Protestant religion or the Protestant Government within these realms.’ 2 It was impossible, however, that a reservation of this kind could be maintained for ever, and those who watched with sagacity the course and character of party warfare in England, might have easily predicted that if a political leader ever found the destruction of the Irish Church a convenient cry for uniting a party or for displacing a rival, the moral obligation of the Act of Union was not likely to deter him.

On February 5, a message from the Lord Lieutenant was delivered to both Houses of Parliament, recommending on the part of the King in very strong terms a legislative Union, and stating that ‘his Majesty had observed with increasing satisfaction that the sentiments which have continued to be manifested in favour of this important and salutary measure by such numerous and respectable descriptions of his Irish subjects, confirm the hope he had expressed that its accomplishment will prove to be as much the joint wish, as it unquestionably is the common interest, of both his kingdoms.’ Immediately after the message had been read, Lord Castlereagh rose to move that it should be taken into consideration, and in a long and very able speech, unfolded and defended the whole scheme. He declared that the more the prospect of a legislative Union had been understood, the more it had gained in favour with those who were most interested in the welfare of the country; that among the members of the two Houses of Parliament, the preponderance of property in its favour was nearly as three to one; that the owners of a very large proportion of property in nineteen counties, including five-sevenths of Ireland, had come forward in its support, and that most of the great commercial towns were on the same side. He acknowledged that hostile dispositions had been exhibited in some counties, but this, he said, was not strange, as the last weeks had witnessed the ‘new political phenomenon’ of a parliamentary minority who, not content with exercising their deliberative powers within the House, had been employing all their agents ‘to bring the mass of the people to its bar as petitioners against the Union.’ Such a proceeding Castlereagh deemed both deplorable and reprehensible. Parliament should no doubt ‘consult in some measure, for the guidance of its councils, the great majority of those whose stake in the property and the interests of the country give them a fair claim to due consideration.’ It should never suffer ‘any temporary and artificial clamour’ to intimidate or divert it from deciding impartially on the interests of the country. For three months, during the discussions on the Scotch Union, the table of the Scotch Parliament had been daily covered with hostile petitions. But the Scotch Parliament had persevered, and by doing so it had earned the gratitude of both countries.

Passing from this branch of his subject, Castlereagh recapitulated at much length the well-known arguments in favour of the Union, and he then proceeded to explain its financial aspects. In the Scotch Union the principle had been adopted of at once subjecting Scotland to the English debt, and compensating her for this burden by an indemnity. The disproportion between the debts of England and Ireland was so great, that such a course was impossible. The debt charge of Great Britain was now 20,000,000l. a year. The debt charge of Ireland was 1,300,000l. a year. It was therefore determined that the two debts should be kept wholly separate, that the taxation of the two countries should be separate, but that a fixed proportion should be established in which each should contribute to the general expenses of the Empire. The first great task was to find a basis of calculation by which this proportion might be ascertained. A comparison of the average value of the imports and exports of the two countries during the last three years showed, Castlereagh said, that they bore to each other the proportion of nearly 7 to 1. A similar comparison of the value of the malt, beer, spirits, wine, tea, tobacco, and sugar consumed in the two countries, showed a proportion of 7⅛ to 1. The medium of these two calculations was 7½ to 1, and from these figures the Government inferred that Great Britain ought to contribute 15 parts, and Ireland 2, to the general expenses of the Empire.

This proportion was to continue unchanged for twenty years, in order that the Union system might acquire stability. After this period the Imperial Parliament was to have the power of revising it according to the increased or diminished relative ability of the two countries, but it was stipulated that this revision must be made upon the same basis of calculation as that on which the original proportion had been fixed. In this way Ireland would obtain a complete security that she could not be taxed beyond her comparative ability, and that the ratio of her contribution must ever correspond with her relative wealth and prosperity.

It was next proposed to establish that the revenues of Ireland should constitute a consolidated fund, which was to be charged in the first place with the interest and sinking fund of the Irish debt, and afterwards appropriated to its proportionate contribution; that the Imperial Parliament might impose on Ireland such taxes as were necessary for her contingent, but with the limitation that in no case should any article in Ireland be taxed higher than the same article in Great Britain; that if, at the end of any year, a surplus should accrue from the revenues of Ireland, it should be applied to purely Irish purposes; and that all future loans, for the interest and liquidation of which the two countries made provision in proportion to their respective contributions, should be considered as a joint debt. Parliament, however, might, if it thought fit, not make such corresponding provisions in the two countries, and in that case the respective quota of the loans borne by each country should remain as a separate charge, like the debts contracted before the Union.

During the last few years, Castlereagh observed, Great Britain had raised within the year a larger proportion of her supplies than Ireland was able in time of war to do. It was, therefore, certain that the proportion of the two debts would vary, and possible that it might some day so change that the system of a separate debt charge might become unnecessary. There were two cases in which this might occur. If the separate debts of the two countries should be extinguished, or if the increase of one debt and the diminution of the other should ever bring them to the same proportion as the respective contributions of the two countries, a system of indiscriminate taxation would become possible.

In his speech in the preceding year, Castlereagh had seemed to foreshadow clearly a period of increased taxation, and this had furnished Foster with some of his most powerful arguments. Castlereagh now boldly maintained that smaller expenditure and lighter taxation would follow the Union. He endeavoured, by somewhat intricate calculations, to prove, that if Ireland retained her separate Legislature, she would in every year of war pay about a million, and in every year of peace about 500,000l., more than if she were united to Great Britain, and that a great relief of taxation would accordingly be the consequence of the Union.

Passing to the commercial clauses of the Union, he said that he could have wished that the situation of the two countries could have been at once and completely assimilated, so that they might have become like two counties of the same kingdom. This was, however, for the present, for two reasons, impossible. The first reason was ‘the necessity of consulting the situation of particular manufactures, which may require to a certain degree a continuance of that guard and protection which they have received to shelter their infant state.’ The second reason was, the unequal burden of the two debts, which unavoidably created an inequality of internal taxation. As, therefore, it was proposed that the export to each country should be free, it was necessary that duties on importation should be imposed, ‘to balance and countervail the internal duties in either country.’ As freedom of trade was the object to be desired, it was hoped that the articles secured by protecting duties would be few, and that the exceptional duties would cease when they ceased to be necessary.

The commercial clauses of the Union were based on these general principles, and were modelled to a great extent upon the commercial propositions of 1785, which had been so powerfully defended by Foster, and which, in their commercial aspect, had received the approbation of the Irish House of Commons, though they had been rejected on a constitutional ground which was not now at issue. They were comprised in several sections. The first section provided that the subjects and the produce of either country should be placed upon an equal footing for ever as to all privileges, encouragements, and bounties. By this section, Castlereagh said, the perpetual continuance of the British and Irish bounties on the export of Irish linen would be secured, and Ireland would participate with England in the right to provide the British navy with sailcloth, from which she was at present excluded.

The second section repealed all prohibitions on the export of the produce of one country to the other, and provided that all articles should be exported duty free. This section secured to Ireland the raw materials which she received from Great Britain, including the staple commodity of English wool, and in two respects it went beyond the propositions of 1785; for in that year England had reserved a duty on coal exported to Ireland, and retained her complete prohibition of the export of British wool. The same section put an end to all bounties on articles of trade between the kingdoms, with the exception of malt, flour and grain, which were, for the present, continued under the existing regulations.

The third section enumerated the articles which were subject to duty in either country, and fixed the rate of the duty on each. The question what duty was adequate for the purpose of securing the manufactures of Ireland from being crushed and annihilated by those of England, was very important. The Government decided that 10 per cent. duty, in addition to the cost of freight, which was estimated at 5½ per cent., was amply sufficient. A higher duty would sacrifice the interests of the consumer, and encourage indolence in the manufacturer, and no manufacture deserved much encouragement which could not be maintained with an advantage of 15½ per cent. At the same time, Castlereagh anticipated a time when all such duties would be abolished; and a short additional period of the progress which Irish manufactures had exhibited in the latter days of the Irish Parliament would, he believed, place them beyond all fear of competition. ‘When I fix this rate of protection,’ he said, ‘I wish it should continue for such a period of years as will give security to the speculations of the manufacturers. At the same time, I wish to look forward to a period when duties of this kind may be gradually diminished, and ultimately cease. It must be evident to every man, that if our manufactures keep pace in advancement for the next twenty years with the progress they have made in the last twenty years, they may, at the expiration of it, be fully able to cope with the British; and that the two kingdoms may be safely left, like any two counties of the same kingdom, to a free competition.’ It was, therefore, provided that after twenty years the United Parliament might diminish the duties of protection in such ratio as may be expedient, and it was also provided that all articles which were not specially enumerated in the Act, should be duty free upon import. In this way, Castlereagh said, Ireland would be perpetually secured in the English market for her linen.

The remaining sections authorised such countervailing duties as might balance the internal duties growing out of the unequal taxation of the two countries; provided that the charges on the re-export of native, foreign, and colonial goods should be the same in both countries, and that no drawback should be retained upon any article exported from one country to the other; and finally provided that a sum equal to that which was now applied to the encouragement of manufactures and to charitable purposes, should continue to be so applied by the United Parliament.

The relations of the Union to religious questions were touched lightly. ‘One State, one Legislature, one Church—these are the leading features of the system, and without identity with Great Britain in these three great points of connection, we never can hope for any real and permanent security.’ ‘A firm Government and a steady system can never be hoped for, so long as the Constitution and Establishments of Ireland can be made a subject of separate question and experiment.’ The first great object was to place the Established Church on a natural basis by incorporating it with that of England, and identifying it with the population and property of the Empire, but its security would speedily react favourably on the position of the Catholics. Castlereagh did not promise Catholic emancipation, or a payment of priests. He said only that ‘strength and confidence would produce liberality;’ that the claims of the Catholics could be discussed and decided on with temper and impartiality in an Imperial Parliament, ‘divested of those local circumstances which produce irritation and jealousy, and prevent a fair and reasonable decision;’ that the accusation of having bribed the Catholic clergy was unjust, as ‘an arrangement, both for the Catholic and Dissenting clergy, had been long in the contemplation of his Majesty's Government.’

He then proceeded to explain and to defend the proposed system of representation. In the Upper House, Ireland was to be represented by four spiritual peers sitting in rotation, and by twenty-eight temporal peers elected for life. To the Lower House she was to send sixty-four county members, and thirtysix borough members representing the chief cities and towns, and the University of Dublin. 1 Patrons of the disfranchised boroughs were to be compensated. ‘If this be a measure of purchase, it will be the purchase of peace, and the expense of it will be redeemed by one year's saving of the Union.’ The Irish representation thus established, would be so popular in its nature and effects, that in a separate Parliament it would be highly dangerous, especially since the Relief Act of 1793 had introduced a new class of electors into the constituencies. But mixed with the representation of Great Britain, and forming part of a large and stable assembly, its danger would disappear, and it might be safely entrusted with the interests of Ireland.

Such, concluded Castlereagh, in a somewhat cumbrous but very instructive peroration, was the proposal made by Great Britain to Ireland. ‘It is one which will entirely remove those anomalies from the Executive which are the perpetual sources of discontent and jealousy. It is one which will relieve the apprehensions of those who fear that Ireland was, in consequence of an Union, to be burdened with the debt of Great Britain. It is one which, by establishing a fair principle of contribution, goes to release Ireland from an expense of 1,000,000l. in time of war, and of 500,000l. in time of peace. It is one which increases the resources of our commerce, protects our manufactures, secures to us the British market, and encourages all the products of our soil. It is one that, by uniting the Church Establishments and consolidating the Legislatures of the Empire, puts an end to religious jealousy, and removes the possibility of separation. It is one which places the great question which has so long agitated the country, upon the broad principles of Imperial policy, and divests it of all its local difficulties. It is one which establishes such a representation for the country as must lay asleep for ever the question of parliamentary reform, which, combined with our religious divisions, has produced all our distractions and calamities.’

It is unnecessary to follow at length the debate which ensued. Most of the arguments have been already given, and the resolutions containing the terms of the intended Bill, which were now laid before the House, were too fresh for much profitable criticism. Several speakers denied with great emphasis the assertion that the country, or the greater part of the property of the country, favoured the Union. They asserted, on the contrary, that the general voice was strongly and clearly adverse to it; that ‘the detestation of it was strikingly apparent in every quarter of the kingdom, and among all classes of people;’ and that this fact was proved by the contrast between the small number of signatures to addresses in favour of the Union, and the petitions against it from so many counties, which covered the table.

The Opposition justified also with great force their appeal to the country. They had only done, in a fairer and larger measure, what the Government itself had done, when it endeavoured, by addresses signed in many quarters, and by the personal influence exercised by the Lord Lieutenant in his journey through Ireland, to procure such a semblance of popular support as might counteract the effect of the hostile vote of the House of Commons in 1799. Was it very strange, they asked, that they should endeavour to procure the real sense of the country, when so many extraordinary means had been used to procure an apparent one? Was the question whether ‘the supreme power of the State should be transferred to a country divided from Ireland by boundaries which could not be removed, and by feelings which could not be extinguished,’ a question which should, in no sense, be submitted to the judgment of the people? Was it not peculiarly desirable at a time when a formidable rebellion was scarcely suppressed, and when martial law was in force, that men of rank, property, and respectability, should come forward to show the people the safety and propriety of expressing, in a constitutional manner, their sense of a measure that would deprive them of their Constitution? And did not this course become imperatively necessary when the means were considered by which this measure was being carried? ‘What a comprehensive system of corruption!’ exclaimed George Ponsonby; ‘the peers are to be purchased with a life privilege, the bishops are to be rotated that the Ministry may have all the influence of the Church, and two-thirds of the Commons are declared to be a mere purchasable commodity!'

The father of Miss Edgeworth made another of those curious, balanced, hesitating speeches, which are so unlike the general character of Irish oratory. Considered on its merits, and in the abstract merely, all the arguments, he thought, were in favour of the Union, but he was still resolved to oppose it. ‘He thought it improper to urge the scheme unless it should appear to be desired by the sober and impartial majority of the nation; and while seventy boroughs were allowed to be saleable commodities, for which the public money was to be given, he not only deemed it impossible to collect the genuine sense of the nation in that House, but could not conscientiously support a scheme attended with this avowed corruption.’

The debate lasted from four o'clock in the afternoon of the 5th, till one on the following afternoon. 1 The division is said to have been the largest ever known in the Irish House of Commons, 278 members, including the Speaker and the tellers, being present. The Government had 158 votes, and the Opposition 115. Eight members only were absent and unpaired, and it was understood that these had stayed away intentionally, wishing neither to support nor oppose the Government. It is a curious fact that Colonel Fitzgibbon, the son and successor of Lord Clare, was among the number. 2 Although the present majority of forty-three exceeded by one vote that of January 16, it in reality marked a serious retrogression, for on the former occasion a considerable number of seats at the disposal of the Government had been vacant. Twelve of their former supporters passed to the Opposition, one of them, as I have already mentioned, having been purchased by the sum of 4,000l. How far the others were influenced by genuine conviction, by the opinions of their constituents, or by corrupt motives, it is impossible to say. Cornwallis and Castlereagh stated that they had undoubted proofs, though not such as could be disclosed, that the Opposition were able to offer, and did offer, as much as 5,000l. for a single vote. ‘How it will end,’ wrote Cornwallis, ‘God only knows. I think there are not more than four or five of our people that can be either bought off or intimidated, but there is no answering for the courage or integrity of our senators.’ 3

In the House of Lords, the Government were much stronger. Lord Clare, himself, brought forward the first resolution approving of the Union. He had not yet taken any opportunity of stating his own arguments in favour of the measure of which he was, in a great degree, the author, and he now treated the subject in a memorable and most elaborate speech, which occupied four hours in its delivery, and which was immediately after published by authority. The greater portion of it consisted of a very skilful, but very partial, review of the past history of Ireland, with the object of showing that the possessors of the land and political power of the country were a mere English colony, who never had been, and who never could be, blended or reconciled with the native race. 1 ‘What was the situation of Ireland,’ he asked, ‘at the Revolution, and what is it at this day? The whole power and property of the country has been conferred by successive monarchs of England upon an English colony, composed of three sets of English adventurers who poured into this country at the termination of three successive rebellions. Confiscation is their common title; and from their first settlement they have been hemmed in on every side by the old inhabitants of the island, brooding over their discontents in sullen indignation. It is painful to me to go into this detail, but we have been for twenty years in a fever of intoxication, and must be stunned into sobriety. What was the security of the English settlers for their physical existence at the Revolution? And what is the security of their descendants at this day? The powerful and commanding protection of Great Britain. If, by any fatality, it fails, you are at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the island; and I should have hoped that the samples of mercy exhibited by them in the progress of the late rebellion, would have taught the gentlemen who call themselves the Irish nation, to reflect with sober attention on the dangers which surround them.’

He described the efforts that had been made by the Irish Parliament to obtain an Union in 1703 and 1707; how the Ministers of Queen Anne refused to grant it, and how, ‘in finding a substitute for it, there had been a race of impolicy between the countries. The Parliament of England seemed to have considered the permanent debility of Ireland as their best security for her connection with the British Crown, and the Irish Parliament to have rested the security of the colony upon maintaining a perpetual and impassable barrier against the ancient inhabitants of the country.’ This was the true meaning of the commercial disabilities and of the penal laws; and this system continued with little variation, till the American War and the volunteers led to the demand and the concession of free trade and a free Constitution. ‘On the old Irish volunteers,’ he said, ‘I desire to be understood not to convey anything like a censure. Their conduct will remain a problem in history; for without the shadow of military control, to their immortal honour it is known that, from their first levy till they disbanded themselves, no act of violence or outrage was charged against them; and they certainly did, on every occasion where their services were required, exert themselves with effect to maintain the internal peace of the country. The gentlemen of Ireland were all in their ranks, and maintained a decided influence upon them. But I shall never cease to think that the appeals made to that army by the angry politicians of that day, were dangerous and ill-judged in the extreme; and that they established a precedent for rebellion, which has since been followed up with full success.’

He dilated with extreme bitterness upon the defects of the Constitution of 1782, which he now represented as the root of all the subsequent evils of the country; upon the history of the commercial propositions, and the history of the Regency; upon the alliance that had grown up between the Oppositions in England and Ireland. He spoke of Grattan in language which was evidently inspired by deep personal hatred. He passed then to the Catholic question: ‘with respect to the old code of the popery laws,’ he said, ‘there cannot be a doubt that it ought to have been repealed. It was impossible that any country could continue to exist under a code by which a majority of its inhabitants were cut off from the rights of property. But in the relaxation of these laws there was a fatal error. It should have been taken up systematically by the Ministers of the Crown, and not left in the hands of every individual who chose to take possession of it, as an engine of power or popularity.’

He next told in his own fashion the history of the rise of the Catholic Committee, of the mission of Burke's son, of the fluctuating policy and the great concessions of 1792 and 1793, of the manner in which the Whigs, who had once been preeminently the anti-popish party in the State, took up, for party purposes, the Catholic cause; of the Government, the mistakes and the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam. For this Viceroy he now professed ‘a warm and unfeigned personal respect,’ which contrasts curiously with the language he had employed during his Vice-royalty and immediately after his recall. Under all these influences, he said, the question of Catholic emancipation had been fully launched. It had been originally started as a pretence for rebellion. It had been then made a powerful ‘engine of faction,’ wielded in both countries; it had already shaken Irish Government to its foundations, and without an Union it must soon level it to the dust. Ireland never can be at peace, ‘until this firebrand is extinguished,’ and it never can be extinguished as long as a separate Parliament remains. It forms an inexhaustible source of popular ferment; the common topic of discontent and irritation to rally the old inhabitants of the island. It is idle to suppose that in this direction any finality could be reached. If every political disqualification were abolished, there would still be the grievance of the Established Church. If that Church were swept away, the popish party would then demand a formal recognition of the laws of their own Church, and ‘when every other point has been yielded, an apostle of sedition will not be wanting, in the fullness of human arrogance and presumption, to propose a repeal of God's holy Commandment, and to proclaim the worship of graven images in your streets.’ If, as appeared evident, the Catholics, not satisfied with the indulgences they had already experienced, were determined to press their demands for the unqualified repeal of the Test Laws and Act of Supremacy; then, in God's name, let the question at least be discussed on its solid merits in a powerful Imperial Parliament, removed from fear and passion and prejudice. Let it there be ‘gravely and dispassionately considered, whether a repeal of these laws may be yielded with safety to the British monarchy; or whether, by adopting the French model in abolishing all religious distinctions as connected with the State, we shall lay the corner stone of Revolution and Democracy.’

For his own part, Clare left no doubt about his opinions or about the course he would take, and once more, as in 1793, he openly severed himself from his colleagues in the Government, who were doing all in their power to conciliate the Catholics, and to win their support by persuading them that emancipation must follow the Union. ‘My unaltered opinion,’ he said, ‘is that so long as human nature and the popish religion continue to be what I know they are, a conscientious popish ecclesiastic never will become a well-attached subject to a Protestant State, and that the popish clergy must always have a commanding influence on every member of that Communion…. In private life I never inquired into the religion of any man, … but when I am to frame laws for the safety of the State, I do not feel myself at liberty to act upon the virtues of individuals. Laws must be framed to meet and counteract the vicious propensities of human nature.’

He then argued that parliamentary reform, whether it was carried on the lines of the Whig opposition, or on those of the United Irishmen, could only throw the country into the hands of a Jacobin democracy, subversive alike of religion and monarchy, of property and the connection. Though two years before he had described the country as advancing in prosperity more rapidly than any other in Europe, he now painted its situation as absolutely desperate. He related the rapid rise of the national debt, and attributed it far less to the French war than to internal rebellion. ‘We have not three years of redemption,’ he said, ‘from bankruptcy or intolerable taxation, not one hour's security against the renewal of exterminating civil war…. Session after session you have been compelled to enact laws of unexampled rigour and novelty to repress the horrible excesses of the mass of your people; and the fury of murder and pillage and desolation have so outrun all legislative exertion, that you have at length been driven to the hard necessity of … putting your country under the ban of military government, and in every little circle of dignity and independence we hear whispers of discontent at the temperate discretion with which it is administered…. Look to your civil and religious dissensions, look to the fury of political faction, and the torrents of human blood that stain the face of your country;’ to the enormous expense necessary ‘to keep down the brutal fury of the mass of the Irish people, who have been goaded to madness by every wicked artifice that disappointed faction can devise.’ ‘Our present difficulties arise’ not from a foreign, but’ from an Irish war—a war of faction—a Whig war and a United Irishman's war…. If England were at peace at this hour with all the Powers of Europe … you would be compelled to maintain a war establishment for defence against your own people.’ The civil war of 1641 had been a war of extermination. The recent civil war would have been no less so, if it had not been for the ‘strong and merciful interposition of Great Britain,’ which saved (the besotted rebels of this day.’ But the scale of expense rendered necessary by the rebellion was ruinous. If it continued for three years 2,430,000 l. must be raised for the interest of the debt alone. 1

It was asked, Clare said, in what way these evils would be rectified by the Union. His first very confident prediction was one which we have already met in the pamphlet of Cooke, and which has been so glaringly and uniformly falsified by the event, that it now appears almost grotesque. ‘I answer first, ‘he said, ‘we are to be relieved from British and Irish faction, which is the prime source of all our calamities.’

Besides this, the army of the Empire would become one, and as it would be a matter of indifference where it was quartered, Ireland would thus be sufficiently garrisoned without additional expense; the resources of Ireland would be greatly augmented; English capital and manufactures, English industry and civilisation, would gradually cross the Channel, and the higher order of Irishmen would be withdrawn ‘from the narrow and corrupted sphere of Irish politics,’ and would direct their attention to objects of true national importance.

For all aspirations of Irish nationality and all appeals to national dignity, he expressed unbounded scorn. He declared that he would most gladly entrust the government of Ireland to the British Parliament, even though Ireland had not a single representative in it. ‘When I look,’ he said, ‘at the squalid misery, and profound ignorance, and barbarous manners and brutal ferocity of the mass of the Irish people, I am sickened with this rant of Irish dignity and independence. Is the dignity and independence of Ireland to consist in the continued depression and unredeemed barbarism of the great majority of the people, and the factious contentions of a puny and rapacious oligarchy, who consider the Irish nation as their political inheritance, and are ready to sacrifice the public peace and happiness to their insatiate love of patronage and power? … If we are to pursue the beaten course of faction and folly, I have no scruple to say, it were better for Great Britain that this island should sink into the sea, than continue connected with the British Crown on the terms of our present Union…. The British Islands are formed by nature for mutual security or mutual destruction, and if we are to pursue the course we have thought fit to run for the last twenty years, it may become a question of doubtful issue, whether at a crisis of difficulty and danger, Great Britain will be enabled to support us, or we shall sink Great Britain.’

There was much more in the same strain, and it was followed by a furious invective against those who had appealed to the people to express their opinions in hostility to the scheme. He spoke of these men as ‘the modern Revolutionary Government, of the Irish Consulate canvassing the dregs of that rebel democracy, for a renewal of popular ferment and outrage, to overawe the deliberations of Parliament.’ He said that, in the awful and perilous situation of the nation, the offer of England had been treated by gentlemen who called themselves friends of liberty and the Irish Constitution with ‘the fury of wild beasts;’ that the lawyers had set the example; that ‘appeals of the most virulent and inflammatory tendency were made by these same friends of liberty, to the deluded barbarians who had been so recently consigned by them to indiscriminate extirpation;’ that in Parliament the ‘Friends of Liberty and the Constitution’ at first would not suffer the Government measure to be discussed, and then, when it was relinquished, had tried to press it to a premature discussion in order to prevent its revival. But ‘when this first burst of noise and clamour had subsided,’ and the plan was calmly considered, ‘the sober and rational part of the Irish nation saw in the measure of an Union a fair prospect of peace and wealth and happiness for their country, and the bulk of the people, professing not to understand the subject, were perfectly indifferent to it. Such was the state of the public mind upon this question, when the late recess of Parliament took place; and to their eternal reproach and dishonour be it spoken, some persons of high rank and consequence in the kingdom availed themselves of that opportunity to become emissaries of sedition, and to canvass popular support against the measure by the most shameless impositions on the ignorance and credulity of every man who would listen to them…. But the active exertions of itinerant Lords and Commoners were not deemed sufficient for the occasion, and we have seen a consular authority assumed by two noble lords and a right honourable commoner, who have issued their letter missive to every part of the kingdom; commanding the people, in the name of a number of gentlemen of both Houses of Parliament, to come forward with petitions condemning in terms of violence and indignation the measure of Union prior to its discussion in Parliament…. Is there salvation for this country under her present Government and Constitution, when men of their rank and situation can stoop to so shabby and wicked an artifice, to excite popular outcry against the declared sense of both Houses of Parliament? But this is not all. If loud and confident report is to have credit, a consular exchequer has been opened for foul and undisguised bribery. I know that subscriptions are openly solicited in the streets of the metropolis to a fund for defeating the measure of Union…. I trust there is still sense and honour left in the Irish nation, to cut off the corrupted source of these vile abominations.’

These are the most material, or at least the most original passages in this powerful speech, for it is needless to follow it through its discussion of the old familiar topics of absenteeism, the position of Dublin, the benefits a poor country must receive from a partnership with a rich one, the history and effects of the Scotch Union. Clare must have been heard or read with very mingled feelings by many of the supporters of Government; by ‘the puny and rapacious oligarchy,’ on whose purchased borough votes the Ministers mainly relied to carry their measure; by those who held, with Cornwallis, that the special benefit of the Union would be, that it would render possible a complete and speedy abolition of religious disqualifications; by those who relied chiefly for its justification, on its approval by a great body of opinion in Ireland, and especially on the friendly disposition of the Catholics.

The speech was evidently more fitted to defy and to exasperate, than to conciliate public opinion, and it is easy to trace in it that burning hatred of Ireland, that disgust at its social and political conditions, which had of late become the dominant feeling of Clare. 1 This feeling was probably much intensified by disappointment, for the horrible scenes of anarchy and bloodshed, which he mainly traced to the concessions of 1782 and 1793, had only taken their acute form after his own triumph in 1795, and had been largely attributed to his own policy. That his picture, both of the social condition of the country and of the difficulties of its Government, during the preceding twenty years, was enormously exaggerated, few persons who have seriously studied that period will dispute, and still fewer will subscribe to his condemnation of the Irish county members for appealing to the opinion of the freeholders against a measure which had never been submitted to the constituencies, and which was being carried in manifest defiance of the wishes of the great majority of the independent members. Denunciations of corruption are in themselves always respectable, and in the conduct of the Opposition there was something to justify them, but they came with a strange audacity from a statesman who had boasted that half a million had been once, and might be again expended to break down an Opposition, and who was at this very time a leading member of a Government which was securing a majority by such means as I have described.

The division in the Lords gave seventy-five votes to the Government, and only twenty-six to the Opposition, and the Bill passed through its remaining stages in that House with little discussion. The debates are very imperfectly reported, and there seems to have been but little in them that need delay us. Lord Downshire, who was there the most important member of the Opposition, spoke, Lord Cornwallis says, apparently under great depression. He appears to have denied the existence of a ‘consular exchequer,’ or at least to have asserted that he had not subscribed to it, and he acknowledged that he had been no admirer of the Constitution of 1782, and that if an Union had been proposed in that year, or at the time of the Regency, he might have supported it. A time of distraction, however, and turbulence like the present, seemed to him peculiarly unsuitable for such a measure, and he feared that it would only inflame public discontent, and obstruct the return of tranquillity. Ireland had incontestably made great strides in wealth and commerce under her separate Parliament; when the late rebellion broke out, that Parliament had saved the country by its energy, and he could not consent to subvert it on mere speculation, or through visionary hopes of greater benefits. The causes of the rebellion he found chiefly in the divided counsels and inconsistent policy of the Ministers. He had himself, as a friend of Government, been requested to sign a strong declaration in support of the Protestant ascendency. A few months later he had been called upon by the same Government to vote for a most extensive measure of Catholic enfranchisement. He complained bitterly that, after a life spent in supporting the Government, after having been admitted into their close confidence, and having made for them great sacrifices in very evil times, he was denounced as if he were a seditious man, because he had signed the ‘letter missive.’ ‘He had acted as an independent gentleman of Ireland, as a man of large possessions, acquainted with the state of the country, and deeply interested in its welfare. As it had been confidently asserted that the Unionists had a greater extent of property than their opponents, it was incumbent on those who had a better knowledge of the opinion of the public, to call for a constitutional declaration of sentiment, not from the dregs of the people, but from the more respectable part of the community…. This was not the conduct of seditious or disloyal men.’ 1

One of the most memorable figures on the side of the Government in these debates was the Chief Baron, Lord Yelverton, who had borne so considerable a part in framing the Constitution of 1782, and who had once been in the closest alliance with Grattan. He was a great lawyer, an admirable speaker, a statesman of sound and moderate judgment, a man of eminent accomplishments, and of a singularly sweet, simple, and even childlike nature, but, like many distinguished Irishmen, his character had been broken down by extravagance and debt, and he gained too much by the Union for his authority to have much weight. 2 His opinion in its favour had, however, been expressed at a time when the chance of success was very doubtful, and he spoke more than once powerfully in its support, dwelling especially upon the full competence of Parliament to carry it, and upon the evidence which modern history supplied of the inadequacy of a federal connection, for defence in time of danger, or for securing a lasting and real Union. He recalled with pride his connection with the Constitution of 1782, stating that this Constitution had made it possible for Ireland to secure an Union of equality instead of an Union of subjection, but he declared that even in 1782 he had desired an Union, and would have readily accepted it if it had been proposed. He at the same time showed some courage by delivering, in the face of a great ministerial majority, an eloquent protest against the imputations that had been thrown upon Grattan. He well knew him, he said, ‘to be as incapable of engaging in any plot for separating this country from Great Britain, as the most strenuous advocate of the present measure. 1

The majority in the House of Lords greatly disliked the portion of the Union scheme which left the King an unlimited power of creating Irish peers after the Union, and they desired that the precedent of the Scotch Union should be followed, and the roll of the Irish peerage closed. The feeling was so strong, that the King's principal servants believed that the clause relating to the peerage could not pass, but a compromise was at last agreed to, leaving the Crown the power of creating one Irish peerage for every three that should become extinct, until the whole number was reduced to a hundred. 2 At the last stage a protest against the resolutions was signed by the Duke of Leinster, and nineteen other peers. They complained of the annihilation in a time of great danger and disturbance, and in opposition to the general voice of the nation, of the Constitution which had for many ages maintained the connection between the two countries, and been the best security for the liberty of Ireland. They argued in much detail, that the proportion of the expenditure of the Empire imposed on Ireland exceeded her capacity, and must lead her to speedy bankruptcy, and they appealed solemnly to posterity to acquit them of having had any part in a measure from which they anticipated the ruin and degradation of their country. 3

We must now revert briefly to the straggle in the Commons. The excitement in Dublin while the question was under debate was very great. A furious mob again attacked some of the supporters of the Union, and attempted to throw their carriages into the Liffey, and it was found necessary to guard the streets by patrols of cavalry as in a period of rebellion. 1 The Government, however, acted with great decision. It was at this time that Lord Downshire was deprived of all his posts, and the Duke of Portland wrote that the smallness of the last majority had in no degree shaken or discouraged the Cabinet in England. ‘No means,’ he added, ‘should be omitted, no exertion neglected, that can insure this measure, and there is no assistance of any kind which the Government of this country can afford your Excellency, that you may not depend upon, as it is the unanimous opinion of those concerned in the administration of it, that it is essentially necessary to the security, as well as to the prosperity of both kingdoms.’ ‘I must not omit,’ he wrote in another letter, ‘to authorise and instruct you to declare that no disappointment (which, however, the goodness of the cause and your exertions will not suffer me to apprehend), will ever induce his Majesty or his servants to recede from, or to suspend their endeavours; but that it is his Majesty's fixed and unalterable determination to direct, session after session, the proposition of Union to be renewed to Parliament, until it is adopted by the good sense of the nation.’ 2

The Government were extremely anxious that the question should be pressed on without delay, while the first object of the Opposition was to postpone it till the opinion of the country was fully taken. On February 14, there was a preliminary discussion on the necessity of delaying the question till some further papers were produced, and George Knox delivered a short, but very remarkable speech. He argued that, whatever were its defects, the Irish Parliament had at least represented ‘every variety of interest, property, talent, knowledge, wisdom and energy,’ in the community; that it had produced among the people, however imperfectly, some real feeling of identity with the State, and had afforded a natural and constitutional issue for the various sentiments and passions that agitated them. If, as he feared, an Imperial Parliament failed to fulfil this function, the result would prove most disastrous. He warned the House that content and loyalty do not always follow in the train of prosperity, and that nations act less from reason than from sentiment. It was quite possible, he believed, that a period was coming in Ireland, of better government, of augmented prosperity, and at the same time of steadily increasing discontent. He even predicted that a discontented and unguided Ireland might one day become, in the English-speaking world, as formidable a source and centre of aggressive Jacobinism as France had been on the Continent, and that the poison of its baneful influence might extend to the farthest limits of the civilised globe.

It was a bold, and, as many must have thought, a most extravagant prediction. Could there, it might be asked, be any real comparison, either for good or for ill, between a small remote island in the Atlantic, and the great nation which had for centuries exercised a dominant influence over the ideas and fortunes of Europe, and which had acquired in its recent transformation a volcanic fury that had shaken Christendom to its basis? Yet he who has traced the part which Irish Jacobinism has played during the last generations in those great English-speaking nations on which the future of the world most largely depends; who has examined the principles and precedents it has introduced into legislation; the influence it has exercised on public life and morals, and on the type and character of public men, may well doubt whether the prediction of Knox was even an exaggeration.

On the 17th, the Union passed into committee, and another long debate, extending over eighteen or twenty hours, took place. Among its incidents was a violent attack by Corry, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, upon Grattan, on account of his alleged complicity with Neilson and the United Irishmen, to which Grattan replied by one of those crushing and unmeasured invectives in which he sometimes indulged, and which are by no means among the most admirable specimens of his oratory. The excitement in the House was so great, that for several hours, Lord Cornwallis says, the debate went on without attention, and a duel followed, in which Corry was slightly wounded. Sir John Parnell attacked the whole scheme with much elaboration, and was answered by Lord Castlereagh, on whom almost the entire burden of the defence seems to have fallen; and the Speaker, availing himself of the fact that the House was in committee, delivered another long, most able, and most comprehensive speech.

He began by deprecating the train of reasoning recently adopted by Clare and other speakers, who painted the situation of Ireland as so desperate, its people so debased, and its feuds so rooted, that any change of Government mast be an improvement. (Can those who now hear me,’ he said, ‘deny that since the period of 1782 this country has risen in civilisation, wealth, and manufacture, until interrupted by the present war, in a greater proportion and with a more rapid progress than any other country in Europe, and much more than it ever did itself in a like period before? And to what has this improvement been owing, but the spirit, the content, and enterprise which a free Constitution inspired? To depress which spirit, and to take away which Constitution, are the objects of the present measure.’ He denied altogether that the independence of the Parliament was a mere name. It was true that the Great Seal of England, which was used through a British Minister, was essential to the validity of Irish legislation, but the royal assent had never been withheld to our injury since the Constitution of 1782, and it had become little more than a theoretic restraint. ‘As no Legislature but our own can make a law to bind us, we have only theoretic dependence, but practical independence; whereas, if we adopt the proposed Union and give up our Parliament, we shall reverse our situation, and have a theoretic independence with a practical and sure dependence.’ He then grappled at great length, and with a profusion of figures, with the argument that Ireland was on the verge of bankruptcy; that nothing but a legislative Union could prevent it; that the result of the Union would be an annual saving of a million in time of war, and of half a million in time of peace. The last two sessions had, he acknowledged, been the most expensive Ireland had ever seen; the House had measured its grants much less by its means than by its zeal to uphold Great Britain, and it had voted them at the express invitation of the very Minister who now made its liberality an argument for destroying it. But it was not true that Irish finances were desperate, and it was not true that the Union would improve them. In the first six years of the war, Great Britain had increased her debt by 186 millions, and Ireland by 14 millions, the proportionate increase being 12½ to 1. By a careful and intricate argument, to which it is impossible here to do justice, but which made a profound impression, though it was very seriously controverted, Foster maintained that if the proposed Union had existed from the beginning of the war, the debt of Ireland would have exceeded its present figure by nearly ten millions and a half, and that, instead of bringing reduced taxation, the Union would probably add not less than two and a half millions to the annual taxation.

He examined with great knowledge and detail, but with a strong protectionist bias, the commercial clauses, arguing that some parts would urove injurious to Ireland, and that others would confer advantages which might be equally attained with separate Legislatures, and he then discussed the constitutional provisions. He maintained that it was contrary to the now acknowledged principles of the Constitution, that peers who were elected as representatives should hold their seats for life; that it was absurd and mischievous that Irish peers who were not in the House of Lords might sit in the House of Commons for British seats, but not for the country with which they were naturally connected by property and residence; that such a provision would gradually dissociate the Irishmen of largest fortune from their native country; that the bulk of the Irish peerage, being deprived of the chief incentives and opportunities of political life, would sink into an idle, useless, enervated caste. He predicted that the removal of the legislative body to a capital which was several days’ journey from Ireland, would exclude Irish merchants and eminent lawyers from the representation, impede all local inquiries, and fatally retard acquisition of local information; and he complained that, while elaborate provision was made for securing in the future a settled proportion of contribution, there was no corresponding provision for securing a just proportion in representation. ‘A real union,’ he said, ‘is a full and entire union of two nations…. There can be no union of the nations while distinct interests exist, and almost every line of the plan declares the distinctness of interest…. Review the whole measure. It leaves us every appendage of a kingdom except what constitutes the essence of independence, a resident Parliament. Separate State, separate establishment, separate exchequer, separate debt, separate courts, separate laws, the Lord Lieutenant, and the Castle, all remain.’

He denied that any real benefits, either in trade or revenue, could be expected, and added that, were it otherwise, he would spurn them if they were the price of the surrender of the Parliament. ‘Neither revenue nor trade will remain where the spirit of liberty ceases to be their foundation, and nothing can prosper in a State which gives up its freedom. I declare most solemnly that if England could give us all her revenue and all her trade, I would not barter for them the free Constitution of my country. Our wealth, our properties, our personal exertions, are all devoted to her support. Our freedom is our inheritance, and with it we cannot barter.’

He denounced as a ‘monstrous and unconstitutional offer’ the proposal to compensate borough owners, making the public pay them for selling themselves, their constituents, and their country. ‘Do you publicly avow that borough representation is a private property, and do you confirm that avowal by the Government becoming the purchasers?’ This measure, he said, was notoriously taken for the purpose of acquiring in the small boroughs a majority which could not be obtained in the counties and considerable towns, and he believed that the precedent must necessarily be one day extended to England, and that it would prove far more dangerous to the British Constitution than all the East India Bills that were ever framed. By this and other kindred measures, he acknowledged that the Ministry had obtained a majority in favour of the Union, but he still believed, or pretended to believe, in the success of the minority. ‘It is impossible to suppose that Ministers can think of proceeding against the determined sense of the 120 members who compose it, two-thirds of the county members among them, and supported by the voice of the nation. Look on your table at the petitions from twenty-five counties, from eight principal cities and towns, and from Dublin. Twenty-three of the counties convened by legal notice have, from time to time, declared against the Bill, and twenty of them unanimously. The whole mercantile interest deprecate it. Wherever you go, whoever you talk with out of doors, you hear it reprobated universally. Every day brings new conviction of the abhorrence in which it is held throughout the kingdom.’

It is true, he said, that the promoters of the measure had endeavoured to alarm and divide the nation by joining the religious question with the question of Union, and exciting the strong and opposing hopes and fears that were involved in it. Foster emphatically refused to discuss Catholic emancipation in connection with the Union, or to admit that ‘a distant Parliament sitting in a distant land’ was more competent than the Irish Parliament to deal with this great Irish question, or more likely to give content by its decisions. ‘The Catholic is equally [with the Protestant] a native of Ireland; equally bound by duty, by inclination to his country. He sees with us the danger of the attack, and joins with the Protestant to prevent its approach, and save the Constitution. He is wise in doing so. All differences are lost, they are asleep in this common cause. He joins heart to heart with his fellow-subjects to oppose the common enemy.’

‘You talk,’ continued Foster, ‘of this measure restoring tranquillity. It is but talk. Will taking men of property out of the country do it? Will a plan full of the seeds of jealousy and discontent effect it? Will depriving a nation of the liberty which it has acquired, and to which it is devoted, insure content? If religious jealousies disturb its quiet, are they to be allayed by a British Parliament? … British, not Irish, councils roused them. British, not Irish, councils now propose this Union.’

Throughout this remarkable speech there is an evident reference to the arguments of Clare; and in his concluding passage, Foster dwelt with great power on Clare's attack on the county meetings, and on those who had convened them. ‘It is the fashion to say the country is agitated, and certain letters, written by three members of Parliament, have been held forth as unconstitutional and inflammatory. This is the first time I ever heard a wish in gentlemen, to know the real sentiment of the freeholders by legal meetings to be convened by the sheriffs, insulted by such appellations. The noble lord and his friends said, the sense of the nation was with the measure. We doubted the fact, and the legal and undoubted right of our constituents to tell us their sentiments could alone ascertain it. No, sir, that letter did not irritate, it was intended to appease. But I will tell you what has irritated—the reviving this ruinous measure after its rejection last year; the appeal nominal which the noble lord and his friends resorted to against the decision of Parliament; the refusing county meetings, which are the constitutional mode of collecting the sense of the freeholders, and sending papers directed to no man, neither address, nor petition, nor instructions, but a pledge of opinion, through all the chapels, the markets, the public-houses, and even the lowest cabins, for signatures, and setting those up against this House and the general voice of the kingdom…. I scarce need mention the unconstitutional use to which the Place Bill has been perverted, and the … monstrous proposal of applying the public money to purchase public rights from private individuals.’ These, he said, were the true causes of the agitation that was so greatly deplored, and that agitation would never cease till the measure was abandoned.

In this, as in the other speeches of Foster, the reader may find the case against the Union in its strongest form, and may learn to estimate the feelings with which that measure was regarded by a large section of the Protestant gentlemen of Ireland. The Government majority, however, was unbroken, and the resolution declaring that there shall be a legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland, was carried by a majority of forty-six.

From this division, the Opposition perceived that their cause was almost hopeless, and the measure now moved steadily, though slowly, through its remaining stages. Some of the resolutions passed with little discussion, and the difficult and delicate question of the relative contributions of the two countries was debated and agreed to in a single sitting on February 24. Lord Castlereagh took the occasion to reply, in a speech which appears to have been very able, to the calculation by which Foster had endeavoured to show that under the Union scheme the debt must increase much more rapidly than with a separate Parliament, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer predicted that ‘in the next five years, taken in the proportion of two of war to three of peace,’ Ireland under the Union would save nearly ten millions. Foster, Parnell, and others maintained that the proportion imposed on Ireland was beyond her capacities; but a test division on a question of adjournment gave the Government 150 votes to 108, and an amendment of John Claudius Beresford, that the contribution of Ireland should be only two-twentieths instead of two-seventeenths, was speedily negatived. Plunket declared that he and his friends were determined to confine their opposition to the principle of the measure, and that they would decline to give it even that degree of sanction which might be implied in attempts to mend it. The whole resolution ultimately passed without a division. 1

‘I see no prospect of converts,’ wrote Castlereagh at this time to the English Under Secretary of State. ‘The Opposition are steady to each other. I hope we shall be able to keep our friends true…. We require your assistance , and you must be prepared to enable us to fulfil the expectations which it was impossible to avoid creating at the moment of difficulty. You may be sure we have rather erred on the side of moderation.’ ‘When can you make the remittance promised?’ wrote Cooke to the same correspondent. ‘It is absolutely essential, for our demands increase.’ 2

The Opposition now made it their chief and almost their only object, to delay the measure until the opinion of the country had been deliberately and constitutionally taken. Lord Corry, one of their most respected and candid members, sent a proposal to Lord Castlereagh, that if the Government would postpone any proceedings on the Union till the following session, the Opposition would give them the fullest support, and that, ‘if the country should at that period appear to be in favour of an Union, they would give it a fair assistance.’ 3 The proposal was at once rejected; and on March 4, George Ponsonby introduced a series of resolutions stating that petitions had already been presented against the Union in the present session from twenty-six counties; from the cities of Dublin and Limerick; from Belfast, Drogheda, Newry, and several other towns, and begging that these resolutions should be transmitted to England and laid before the King. 110,000 persons, he said, had signed petitions against the Union, and it was the duty of the House to lay them before his Majesty, and to represent to him the true wishes of the people. He appealed to the message to Parliament on February 5, in which the Lord Lieutenant, while recommending a legislative Union, had relied on the general sentiment of the Irish people being in its favour, and he deduced from this that the concurrence of the will of the people was necessary to warrant Parliament in making a change which amounted to a transfer of the Constitution. Lord Castlereagh answered, that when the people were left to themselves, there was a general disposition among the loyal and well-informed classes to acquiesce in the Union; that the recent adverse expressions had been brought forward ‘by manœuvre and artifice;’ that seventy-four declarations in favour of the Union had been made by public bodies in the kingdom, nineteen of which had come from freeholders in the counties, and that in these declarations, rather than in the petitions to the House, the seuse of the propertied and loyal part of the community was to be found. He added, that if on former occasions the sense of the people had been taken against the sense of Parliament, neither the Revolution Settlement of the Crown, nor the Union with Scotland, could have been accomplished. The Government carried an adjournment by 155 to 107. 1

Another attempt of the same kind was made on the 13th by Sir John Parnell, who moved that an address should be presented to the King requesting him to dissolve Parliament, and take the sense of the constituencies before the legislative Union was concluded. Sir Lawrence Parsons, in supporting the motion, said that, well as he knew the immense influence exercised by the Crown in the choice of members, he was prepared to stake the issue on the result of an election; and Saurin, in a fiery speech, declared that a legislative Union, carried without having been brought constitutionally before the people, and in defiance of their known wishes, would not be morally binding, and that the right of resistance would remain. This doctrine was denounced as manifest Jacobinism, and as a direct incentive to rebellion. Grattan defended the motion in a short and moderate speech. He disclaimed all wish of submitting the question on the French principle to mere multitude; to primary assemblies; to universal suffrage. He desired only that it should be brought before the constituencies legally and constitutionally determined, before ‘the mixture of strength and property which forms the order of the country.’ The Lord Lieutenant had recommended the Union on the supposition of the concurrence of the people. The English Minister had defended it as a measure for identifying two nations. The Irish Minister had justified it by appealing to the addresses in its favour, and Parliament was acting in a perfectly proper manner in advising his Majesty to exercise his constitutional prerogative of dissolving the House of Commons, and ascertaining the true sense of the constituencies. In Scotland the sense of the electors upon the question of an Union had been taken at an election. Why should not the same course be adopted in Ireland? Whatever benefits might result from the Union if it were carried in concurrence with the opinion of the people, it was sure to prove disastrous if it was against it. A dissolution on the question would be ‘a sound and safe measure,’ and no disturbance was likely to follow from it. ‘Every act necessary to secure the public peace, and to arm the Executive Government with power to that effect, had passed the House. The supplies had been granted, the Mutiny Bill had passed, the Martial Law Bill was agreed to. Under these circumstances the measure was not dangerous; under every consideration it was just.’ The Government, however, succeeded in defeating the motion by 150 to 104. 1

Large classes of manufacturers were at this time seriously alarmed, and the arguments and great authority of Foster had profoundly affected them. Many petitions from them came in, and representatives of several manufactures were heard at the bar of the House. In England the delay caused by these proceedings seems to have excited some complaint, and Lord Castlereagh wrote that he had received letters intimating that the Irish Government were not pressing on the question with sufficient rapidity. He urged, however, that it was impossible, with any propriety or decency, to prevent persons whose private interests were really affected by the measure, from being heard at the bar; that the conduct of the Opposition could not as yet be fairly imputed to the mere object of delay, and that imprudent precipitation might have the worst effect. It must be considered, he said, ‘that we have a minority consisting of 120 members, well combined and united; that many of them are men of the first weight and talent in the House; that thirty-seven of them are members for counties; that great endeavours have been used to inflame the kingdom; that petitions from twenty-six counties have been procured; that the city of Dublin is almost unanimous against it; and with such an Opposition, so circumstanced and supported, it is evident much management must be used.’ 1

The cotton manufacturers were believed to be the most menaced, and their claims were pressed with much persistence, both from Belfast and Cork. This manufacture ranked in Ireland next to that of linen; the value annually manufactured was estimated at 600,000 l. or 700,000 l. , and from 30,000 to 40,000 persons were employed in it. About 130,000 l. worth of cotton, chiefly fustians, was imported from England, but the manufacture of calico and muslins was purely Irish, and was guarded by a prohibitory duty of from thirty to fifty per cent. It was believed that a sudden reduction of the duty to ten per cent. would lead to a complete displacement of the calicoes and muslins of Ireland by those of England. After some hesitation, the Government consented to postpone this reduction for seven years; and by this concession, it did much to mitigate the opposition. 2

The commercial clauses were now the only ones that were contested with much seriousness, for the leading members of the Opposition in the later stages of the discussion seldom took part in the debates, and made no efforts to amend a scheme which they found themselves unable to delay or reject. The debate on March 19, on the commercial clauses, however, was very thorough, the Government plans being powerfully defended by John Beresford and Castlereagh, and attacked with great elaboration by Grattan and Foster. Both of these Opposition speakers adopted a frankly protectionist line, maintaining that the diminution or abolition of protecting duties on some seventy articles, and the increased competition with England, that would follow the Union, must arrest the growth of native manufactures, which had been during the last years so remarkable, and must end by making England the almost exclusive manufacturing centre of the Empire. Much, however, of their very able speeches was devoted to pointing out the general demerits of the Union; the turpitude of the means by which it was being carried, and its opposition to the wishes of the people. The language of Foster was extremely virulent. In a skilful and bitterly sarcastic passage, he described the account of the transaction which a future historian, who ‘had not our means of information.’ was likely to give. He would say that when the scheme was first proposed, the nation revolted against it, and the Parliament rejected it, but that the Minister persevered; that without a dissolution, he changed, by the operation of the Place Bill, a great part of the House of Commons; that he set up the Protestant against the Catholic, and the Catholic against the Protestant; the people against the Parliament, and the Parliament against the people; that he used the influence of the absentee, to overpower the resident; that he bought the peerage, and made the liberality with which the House of Commons granted its supplies, an argument for its abolition; that at a time when the rebellion was wholly suppressed, and when only a few local disturbances remained, martial law was extended over the whole island, and the country occupied beyond all previous example with a great army; that dismissals took place to such an extent, that there was not a placeman in the minority, and all honours were concentrated in the majority; and finally that many sheriffs appointed by Government, refused to convene the counties to petition Parliament, lest the voice of the people should be fairly heard. ‘Such,’ said Foster, ‘might be the account of the historian who could judge from appearances only. We who live at the time would, to be sure, state it otherwise were we to write.’ 1

This was the language of a skilful rhetorician, and of a bitter opponent. It is interesting to compare it with that which was employed about the same time by a very honest and intelligent member of the House, who was himself, in principle, in favour of the Union. ‘I am an Unionist,’ wrote Edgeworth to his friend Erasmus Darwin, ‘but I vote and speak against the Union now proposed to us…. It is intended to force this measure down the throats of the Irish, though five-sixths of the nation are against it. Now, though I think such an Union as would identify the nations, so that Ireland should be as Yorkshire to Great Britain, would be an excellent thing; yet I also think that the good people of Ireland ought to be persuaded of this truth, and not be dragooned into submission. The Minister avows that seventy-two boroughs are to be compensated, i.e. bought by the people of Ireland with one million and a half of their own money; and he makes this legal by a small majority, made up chiefly of these very borough members. When thirty-eight county members out of sixty-four are against the measure, and twenty-eight counties out of thirty-two have petitioned against it, this is such abominable corruption, that it makes our parliamentary sanction worse than ridiculous.’ 1

The Government carried two divisions by majorities of 42 and 47. On the critical question of the compensation to borough owners, the Opposition abstained from taking the sense of the House, 2 though they dilated with much bitterness on the inconsistency of a Government which represented the country as staggering on the verge of bankruptcy, and then asked a vote of nearly a million and a half, in order to carry a measure which they did not dare to submit to the judgment of the constituencies.

Almost at the last moment, however, a new and considerable excitement was caused by Sir John Macartney, who unexpectedly revived, in connection with the Union, the old question of the tithe of agistment, which had slumbered peacefully since the days of George II. He reminded the House that the exemption of pasturage from tithes did not rest upon any law, but that the claim of the clergy had been abandoned in consequence of a resolution of the House of Commons in 1735, which pronounced it to be new and mischievous, and calculated to encourage popery, and which directed that all legal methods should be taken for resisting it. By the Union, Macartney said, the effect of this resolution would cease, and the clergy would be able, without obstruction, to claim additional tithes to the amount of one million a year. The alarm excited by this prospect among the graziers was so great, that the Government hastily introduced and carried a Bill making tithes of agistment illegal. 1

On March 28, the articles of the Union had passed through both Houses, and they were transmitted to England, accompanied by the resolutions in favour of the measure, and by a joint address of both Houses to the King, and the Irish Parliament then adjourned for nearly six weeks, in order to leave full time for them to be carried through the British Parliament, after which they were to be turned into a Bill. The recess passed in Ireland without serious disturbance. Cornwallis, in a passage which I have already quoted, expressed his belief that at least half of the majority who voted for the Union would have been delighted if it could still be defeated; he said that he was afraid of mentioning a proposal for amalgamating the two Ordnance establishments, lest the probable diminution of patronage should alarm his friends, but he had no doubt that if the Union plan came back from England unaltered, it would pass, and he did not believe that there was much strong feeling against it in the country. If there had been any change in public feeling, he thought it was rather favourable than the reverse, and Dublin, though very hostile, remained tranquil. ‘The word Union,’ he wrote, ‘will not cure the evils of this wretched country. It is a necessary preliminary, but a great deal more must be done.’ 2

In the English Parliament there was not much opposition to be feared. The power of the Government in both Houses was supreme, and there was little or nothing of novelty in the argument that were advanced. It has been justly remarked, as a conspicuous instance of the fallibility of political prescience, that the special danger to the Constitution which was feared from the influx of a considerable Irish element into the British Parliament, was an enormous increase of the power of the Crown and of each successive Administration. ‘It appears to me evident,’ said Grey, ‘that ultimately, at least, the Irish members will afford a certain accession of force to the party of every Administration,’ and ‘that their weight will be thrown into the increasing scale of the Crown.’ In order to guard against this danger, Grey proposed that the Irish representation should be reduced to eighty-five, and that the English representation should, at the same time, be rendered more popular by the disfranchisement of forty decayed boroughs. Wilberforce, though in general favourable to the Union, shared the fears of Grey, and acknowledged that the Irish element ‘could not fail to be a very considerable addition to the influence of the Crown;’ and although Pitt believed the danger to be exaggerated, he acknowledged it to be a real one, and attempted to meet it by a clause limiting to twenty the Irish placemen in the House of Commons. 1 It need scarcely be added, that the influence of the Irish representation has proved the exact opposite of what was predicted. A majority of Irish members turned the balance in favour of the great democratic Reform Bill of 1832, and from that day there has been scarcely a democratic measure which they have not powerfully assisted. When, indeed, we consider the votes that they have given, the principles they have been the means of introducing into English legislation, and the influence they have exercised on the tone and character of the House of Commons, it is probably not too much to say that their presence in the British Parliament has proved the most powerful of all agents in accelerating the democratic transformation of English politics.

On the side of the supporters of the Union, there was, at least, equal fallibility. Pitt himself, in discussing the amount of the Irish representation, expressed his hope and expectation that the two countries would be so completely identified by the measure, that it would be a matter of little importance in what proportion the representatives were assigned to one or other part of the United Empire. ‘Let this Union take place,’ said Lord Hawkesbury, ‘and all Irish party will be extinguished. There will then be no parties but the parties of the British Empire.’ 1

The most formidable attack was made by Grey, who moved an address to the King that proceedings on the Union should be suspended till the sentiments of the people of Ireland respecting it had been ascertained. He observed that it was a remarkable fact, that the great majority of the constituencies which were considered sufficiently important to send representatives to the Imperial Parliament, had shown a determined hostility to the Union, and he summed up with great power the arguments on this point, which had been abundantly employed in Ireland. The petitions in favour of the Union, he said, had been clandestinely obtained, chiefly by the direct influence of the Lord Lieutenant; they only bore about 3,000 signatures, and some of them merely prayed that the measure should be discussed. The petitions against it were not obtained by solicitation, but at public assemblies, of which legal notice had been given, and 107,000 2 persons signed them. Twenty-seven counties had petitioned against the measure. Dublin petitioned against it, under its great seal. Drogheda, and many other important towns, took the same course. In the county of Down, 17,000 respectable, independent men had petitioned against the Union, while there were only 415 signatures to the counter petition. The great majority against it consisted ‘not of fanatics, bigots, and Jacobins, but of the most respectable in every class of the community.’ There were 300 members in the Irish House of Commons. ‘120 of these strenuously opposed the measure, among whom were two-thirds of the county members, the representatives of the city of Dublin, and of almost all the towns which it is proposed shall send members to the Imperial Parliament. 162 voted in favour of the Union. Of these, 116 were placemen—some of them were English generals on the Staff, without a foot of ground in Ireland, and completely dependent upon Government…. All persons holding offices under Government, even the most intimate friends of the Minister, if they hesitated to vote as directed, were stripped of all their employments…. Other arts were had recourse to, which, though I cannot name in this place, all will easily conjecture. A Bill framed for preserving the purity of Parliament had been abused, and no less than sixty-three seats had been vacated by their holders having received nominal offices.’ Could it be doubted, he asked, in the face of such facts, that the legislative Union was being forced through, contrary to the plain wish of the Irish nation, contrary to the real wish even of the Irish Parliament? 1

Pitt's reply to these representations appears to have been exceedingly empty, consisting of little more than a denunciation of the Jacobinism, which would appeal from the deliberate judgment of Parliament to ‘primary assemblies,’ swayed by factious demagogues. The resolution of Grey was rejected by 236 votes to 30, but his case remained, in all essential points, unshaken, though something was said in the course of this and subsequent debates, and though something more might have been said to qualify it. His figures are not all perfectly accurate, and Pitt asserted that the number of members who held offices under Government in the Union majority, was enormously exaggerated, and was, in fact, not more than fifty-eight. 2 As we have clearly seen, corrupt and selfish motives were very far from being exclusively on the side of the Union, and opinion in Ireland was both more divided and more acquiescent than Grey represented. It was said, probably with truth, that the violence of the opposition in the country had greatly gone down, and in large districts, and among large classes, there was a silence and a torpor which indicated, at least, a complete absence of active and acute hostility. No one who reads the letters of the bishops can doubt that the measure had many Catholic well-wishers, and a much larger section of the Catholic population, as well as a great proportion of the Presbyterians, appear to have viewed it with perfect indifference. It was said, too, that the balance of landed property was in its favour, and if this estimate is based merely on the extent of property, the assertion is probably true. The Irish House of Lords comprised the largest landowners in the country, and Lord Castlereagh sent to England a computation, showing that in the two Irish Houses, the landed property possessed by the supporters of the Union was valued at 955,700 l . a year, and that of its opponents at only 329,500 l . 1 Considering, however, the attitude of the counties, it is not probable that any such proportion existed among the independent and uninfluenced landlords outside the Parliament.

The only serious danger to be encountered in England was from the jealousy of the commercial classes, and their opposition appears to have been almost exclusively directed against the clause which permitted the importation of English wool into Ireland. Cornwallis had, however, warned the Government that so much importance was attached to this provision in Ireland, that if it was rejected the whole Bill would probably fall through, 2 and Pitt exerted all his influence in its support. Wilberforce was on this question the leading representative of the English woollen manufacturers, but the clause was carried by 133 to 58; and the woollen manufacturers were equally unsuccessful in an attempt to obtain a prolongation of protection similar to that which had been granted to the calico manufacturers in Ireland. In the House of Lords the whole question was again debated at some length, but the minority never exceeded, and only once attained twelve. Lord Downshire, who sat in the British House of Lords as Earl of Hillsborough, spoke strongly in opposition. He said that before 1782 he had been favourable to a legislative Union, but that his opinion had wholly changed. Since 1782, ‘Ireland had flourished in a degree beyond all former precedent.’ The Irish Parliament had shown by abundant sacrifices its intense and undivided loyalty. He anticipated the worst consequences from the removal from Ireland of many of the most important men of influence and property, who had been resident among their people, and who were firm friends to the British connection. Even apart from these considerations, he said, he could not support the Union when twenty-six out of the thirty-two counties had petitioned against it, twelve of them being unanimous, and when ten great corporations had set their seals of office to similar petitions; nor could he be blind to the fact that ‘the members of the Irish House of Commons, who opposed this measure, were men of the first talents, respectability, and fortune, while those who supported it were men notoriously under the influence of the Crown.’ 1 Lord Moira, on the other hand, who in the preceding year had been one of the most vehement opponents, and who had voted by proxy against the Union in the Irish House of Lords, now withdrew his opposition. He could have wished, he said, that the opinion of the Irish people had been ascertained upon a broader basis, and that something more distinct had been held out to the Catholics, but the measure appeared to him liberal in nearly all its details, and the Irish Catholics had much to hope from the enlightened dispositions of an Imperial Parliament. 2

The resolutions agreed to by the English Houses, and their joint address to the King, arrived in Ireland on May 12, and the Irish Parliament speedily occupied itself with the final stages of the measure. Pitt in one of his last speeches had expressed his opinion, that no question had been ever so amply and so exhaustively discussed in any Legislature as the Irish Union; but the discussion now began to flag. There were still several points of complexity and difficulty, but both sides felt that the battle had been fought and won, and it was evident that there was no longer any serious opposition to be feared. The selection of the thirty-four boroughs which were to send representatives into the Imperial Parliament, was settled without dispute, on the principle of choosing those which paid the largest sums in hearth money and window tax; and it is a striking illustration of the state of the Irish representation, that only twelve of these boroughs were really open. 3 The countervailing duties were adjusted with equal facility, and a separate Bill was introduced and carried, settling the manner of the election to the Imperial Parliament. The representative peers were to be at once chosen by their brother peers, but with this exception no election was to take place at the Union, and the constituencies had therefore no immediate opportunity of expressing their judgment of their representatives. Where the representation was unchanged, the sitting members were to pass at once into the Imperial Parliament. Where the representation was curtailed, one of the two sitting members was to be selected by lot, and by the same Bill the order of the rotation of the spiritual peers was fixed./sp>. 1 The Union resolutions were cast into the form of a Bill, and on May 21, the House, by 160 votes to 100, gave leave for its introduction, and it was at once read a first time. George Ponsonby, who chiefly led the Opposition, acknowledged in a short, discouraged speech, that he had no hope of shaking the majority, but he said that he would fulfil his duty, and oppose the measure to the end. 2

On the 26th, the Bill was read a second time, and on the motion for its committal, Grattan made a long, eloquent, but most inflammatory speech. He asserted that ‘at a time of national debility and division,’ the Ministers were forcing a Bill for the destruction of Irish liberty and of the Irish Constitution, through Parliament in the teeth of the declared sense of the country, and ‘by the most avowed corruption, threats, and stratagems, accompanied by martial law.’ He enumerated the several grounds of his charge, and accused the majority of employing the power that had been entrusted to them to preserve the settled order of things, for the purpose of introducing a new order of things, making government a question of strength and not of opinion, and eradicating the great fundamental and ancient principles of public security, as effectually as the most unscrupulous Jacobins. He predicted that anarchy, and not order, would be the result; that Government in Ireland would be fatally discredited, and would lose all its moral force. He traversed with burning eloquence the old arguments against the revenue clauses and the commercial clauses, predicting that the Irish contribution would prove beyond the capacities of the country; that rapidly increasing debt, speedy bankruptcy, and full English taxation, were in store for Ireland; that Irish manufactures and commerce would wither with Irish liberty, and that military government would prevail. He accused the dominant faction in Ireland of having produced by their mis-government all the calamities of the late rebellion, and he denounced, in language of extreme and ungovernable violence, the assertion that, ‘after a mature consideration, the people had pronounced their judgment in favour of the Union.’ Of that assertion, he said, ‘not one single syllable has any existence in fact or in the appearance of fact. I appeal to the petitions of twenty-one counties publicly convened, and to the other petitions of other counties numerously signed, and to those of the great towns and cities. To affirm that the judgment of a nation is erroneous, may mortify, but to assert that she has said aye, when she has pronounced no … to make the falsification of her sentiments the foundation of her ruin, … to affirm that her Parliament, Constitution, liberty, honour, property, are taken away by her own authority,’ exhibits an effrontery that can only excite ‘astonishment and disgust,’ ‘whether the British Minister speaks in gross and total ignorance of the truth, or in shameless and supreme contempt for it.’

The concluding passages of the speech were in a different strain, and pointed clearly to the belief that, although the Union was inevitable, it would not be permanent. ‘The Constitution may, for a time , be so lost—the character of the country cannot be so lost. The Ministers of the Crown may, at length, find that it is not so easy to put down for ever an ancient and a respectable nation by abilities, however great, by power and corruption, however irresistible. Liberty may repair her golden beams, and with redoubled heart animate the country.’ Neither the cry of loyalty, nor the cry of the connection, nor the cry of disaffection will, in the end, avail against the principle of liberty. ‘I do not give up the country. I see her in a swoon, but she is not dead; though in her tomb she lies helpless and motionless, still there is on her lips a spirit of life, and on her cheek a glow of beauty.

  • Thou art not conquered; beauty's ensign yet
  • Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
  • And death's pale flag is not advanced there.’ 1

Such language was described by Lord Castlereagh as a direct appeal to rebellion, or at least as a kind of ‘prophetical treason,’ and it was a fair, and by no means an extreme specimen of the kind of language which was employed by the leaders of the Opposition. Goold, Plunket, Bushe, Saurin, Lord Corry, Ponsonby, Foster, were all men of high private character; and some of them were men of very eminent abilities and attainments, of great social position, of great parliamentary influence and experience. They all used the same kind of language as Grattan. They all described the Union as a measure which could never have been imposed on Ireland if the country had not been weakened and divided by the great recent rebellion, and occupied by a great English army. They all asserted that it was being carried contrary to the clearly expressed wishes of the constituencies, and by shameful and extensive corruption, and they all predicted the worst consequences from its enactment.

Such prophecies had a great tendency to fulfil themselves, and the language of the Opposition went far towards forming the later opinions of the country. In Parliament, however, it had no effect. The House was languid, and tired of the subject. Many of the members were absent, and in two divisions that were taken on the committal, the Government carried their points by 118 to 73, and by 124 to 87. Even in debate the remarkable ability, and still more remarkable dignity and self-control, displayed by Lord Castlereagh, enabled him to hold his own. 1 Beyond the limits of Parliament there were undoubtedly many men, chiefly of the Established Church, who still worshipped with a passionate enthusiasm the ideal of 1782, and who endured all the pangs of despairing patriotism as they watched the progress of its eclipse. But the great mass of the Irish people were animated by no such feelings. There was no movement, indeed, to support the Government. There is no real reason to believe, that if the free constituencies had been consulted by a dissolution, they would have reversed the judgment expressed by their representatives and by their petitions. But the movement of petitioning had wholly flagged. Demonstrations seem to have almost ceased, and there were absolutely none of the signs which are invariably found when a nation struggles passionately against what it deems an impending tyranny, or rallies around some institution which it really loves. The country had begun to look with indifference or with a languid curiosity to the opening of a new chapter of Irish history, and it was this indifference which made it possible to carry the Union. At one moment, it is true, there were grave fears that a movement for petitioning would spread through the militia and yeomanry, but the dismissal of Lord Downshire completely checked it, and in the last and most critical phases of the struggle the Opposition found themselves almost wholly unsupported by any strong feeling in the nation.

The letters of Cornwallis are full of evidence of this apathy. ‘The country,’ he writes, ‘is perfectly quiet, and cannot in general be said to be adverse to the Union.’ ‘The Opposition … admit the thing to be over, and that they have no chance either in or out of Parliament.’ ‘The city is perfectly quiet, and has shown no sensation on the subject of Union since the recommencement of business after the adjournment.’ ‘Notwithstanding all reports, you may be assured that the Union is not generally unpopular, and it is astonishing how little agitation it occasions even in Dublin, which is at present more quiet than it has been for many years.’ 1 ‘I hardly think,’ wrote Cooke to Lord Grenville, ‘we shall have any serious debate hereafter. Many of our opponents are on the wing. There is no sensation on the subject in town or country.’ 2 The Opposition were not unconscious of the fact, and at least one of their conspicuous members seems to have complained bitterly of the indifference of the nation. 3

Their leaders desired to place upon the journals of the House a full record of their case, and they accordingly drew up a long, skilful, and very elaborate address to the King, embodying in a clear and forcible form most of the arguments and facts which have been given in the foregoing pages. 1 A single paragraph may here be noticed, on account of the light that it throws on the spirit in which the opposition to the Union was conducted. Having pointed to the efficacy and rapidity with which the resident Parliament had exerted itself for the suppression of the recent rebellion, the writers argued that no non-resident Parliament would be likely to combat disaffection with equal promptitude and equal energy, and predicted that the Union would be followed by a removal or abasement of the men of property and respectability, which would ‘leave room for political agitators, and men of talents without principle or property, to disturb and irritate the public mind.’ This indeed appears to have been one of the guiding ideas of Grattan, who had before argued that a measure which took the government of the country out of the hands of the upper orders, and compelled them ‘to proclaim and register their own incapacity in the rolls of their own Parliament,’ would ultimately give a fatal impulse to the worst forms of Irish Jacobinism.

This address was moved in the House of Commons, by Lord Corry, on June 6, and defeated by 135 to 77, and the Bill then passed quickly through its remaining stages. In the last stage, Dobbs, in whom a religious enthusiasm amounting to monomania was strangely blended with a very genuine and reasonable patriotism, made a wild and frantic speech, declaring that ‘the independence of Ireland was written in the immutable records of Heaven;’ that the Messiah was about to appear on the holy hill of Armagh, and that although the Union might pass the House, it could never become operative, as it was impossible that a kingdom which Revelation showed to be under the special favour of Heaven, could be absorbed in one of the ten kingdoms typified in the image of Daniel. 2 After a bitter protest from Plunket, a great part of the Opposition seceded, to avoid witnessing the final scene, and the Union passed through the Irish Commons. ‘The greatest satisfaction,’ wrote Cornwallis, ‘is that it occasions no agitation, either in town or country, and indeed one of the violent anti-Union members complained last night in the House, that the people had deserted them.’ 1 The Compensation Bill speedily followed, and was but little resisted. In the Upper House, Lord Farnham and Lord Bellamont strongly urged the excessive amount of the contribution to be paid by Ireland under the Union arrangement, 2 and there were two divisions in which the Government had majorities of fifty-nine and fifty-two. The twenty peers who had before protested, placed on the journals of the House a second and somewhat fuller protest. The Bill was then sent to England, where it passed speedily through both Houses, and it received the royal sanction on the first of August, the anniversary of the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty to the British throne. The King, in proroguing the British Parliament, declared that the Union was a measure on which his wishes had long been earnestly bent, and he pronounced it to be the happiest event of his reign.

The other formalities connected with it, need not detain us. The Great Seal of Britain was delivered up and defaced, and a new Seal of the Empire was given to the Chancellor. A change was introduced into the royal titles, and into the royal arms, and the occasion was made use of to drop the idle and offensive title of ‘King of France,’ which the English sovereigns had hitherto maintained. A new standard, combining the three orders of St. George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick, was hoisted in the capitals of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The noble building in which the Irish Parliament had held its sessions, was soon after bought by the Bank of Ireland. It is a curious and significant fact, that the Government in consenting to this sale made a secret stipulation, that the purchasers should subdivide and alter the chambers in which the two Houses had met, so as to destroy as much as possible their old appearance. 1 It was feared that disquieting ghosts might still haunt the scenes that were consecrated by so many memories.

I have related with such fullness the history of this memorable conflict that the reader will, I trust, have no difficulty in estimating the full strength of the case on each side; the various arguments, motives, and influences that governed the event. A very few words of comment are all that need be added. If the Irish Parliament had consisted mainly, or to any appreciable extent, of men who were disloyal to the connection, and whose sympathies were on the side of rebellion or with the enemies of England, the English Ministers would, I think, have been amply justified in employing almost any means to abolish it. It is scarcely possible to over-estimate the danger that would arise if the vast moral, legislative, and even administrative powers which every separate Legislature must necessarily possess, were exercised in any near and vital part of the British Empire, by men who were disloyal to its interests. To place the government of a country by a voluntary and deliberate act in the hands of dishonest and disloyal men, is perhaps the greatest crime that a public man can commit; a crime which, in proportion to the strength and soundness of national morality, must consign those who are guilty of it to undying infamy. If, however, a Parliament which was once loyal has assumed a disloyal character, the case is a different one, and the course of a wise statesman will be determined by a comparison of conflicting dangers. But in a time of such national peril as England was passing through in the great Napoleon war, when the whole existence and future of the Empire were trembling most doubtfully in the balance, history would not, I think, condemn with severity any means that were required to withdraw the direction of Irish resources from disloyal hands. In such moments of agony and crisis, self-preservation becomes the supreme end, and the transcendent importance of saving the Empire from destruction suspends and eclipses all other rules. But it cannot be too clearly understood or too emphatically stated, that the legislative Union was not an act of this nature. The Parliament which was abolished was a Parliament of the most unqualified loyalists; it had shown itself ready to make every sacrifice in its power for the maintenance of the Empire, and from the time when Arthur O‘Connor and Lord Edward Fitzgerald passed beyond its walls, it probably did not contain a single man who was really disaffected. The dangers to be feared on this side were not imminent, but distant; and the war and the rebellion created not a necessity, but an opportunity.

It must be added, that it was becoming evident that the relation between the two countries, established by the Constitution of 1782, could not have continued unchanged. It is true, indeed, as I have already contended, that in judging such relations, too much stress is usually placed on the nature of the legislative machinery, and too little on the dispositions of the men who work it. But even with the best dispositions, the Constitution of 1782 involved many and grave probabilities of difference, and the system of a separate and independent Irish Parliament, with an Executive appointed and instructed by the English Cabinet, and depending on English party changes, was hopelessly anomalous, and could not fail some day to produce serious collision. It was impossible that the exact poise could have been permanently maintained, and it was doubtful whether the centripetal tendency in the direction of Union, or the centrifugal tendency in the direction of Separation, would ultimately prevail. Sooner or later the corrupt borough ascendency must have broken down, and it was a grave question what was to succeed it. Grattan indeed believed that in the Irish gentry and yeomanry, who formed and directed the volunteers, there would be found a strong body of loyal and independent political feeling, and that the government might pass out of the hands of a corrupt aristocracy, of whose demerits he was very sensible, 1 without falling into those of a democracy from which he expected nothing but confiscation and anarchy. 2 He relied upon the decadence of the sectarian spirit in Europe, and upon the tried loyalty of the Catholic gentry and bishops, to prevent a dangerous antagonism of Protestants and Catholics, and he imagined that an Irish Parliament, fired with the spirit of nationality, could accomplish or complete the great work of fusing into one the two nations which inhabited Ireland. But the United Irishmen had poisoned the springs of political life. The French Revolution had given popular feeling a new ply and new ideals; an enormous increase of disloyalty and religious animosity had taken place during the last years of the century, and it added immensely to the danger of the democratic Catholic suffrage, which the Act of 1793 had called into existence.

This was the strongest argument for hurrying on the Union; but when all due weight is assigned to it, it does not appear to me to have justified the policy of Pitt. On the morrow of the complete suppression of the rebellion, the danger of the Parliament being conquered by the party of disloyalty or anarchy cannot have been imminent; and if it had become so, there can be little doubt that the governing, the loyal, and the propertied classes in Ireland would have themselves called for an Union. It is quite certain that in 1799, it was not desired or asked for by the classes who were most vitally interested in the preservation of the existing order of property and law, and who had the best means of knowing the true condition of the country. The measure was an English one, introduced prematurely before it had been demanded by any section of Irish opinion, carried without a dissolution and by gross corruption, in opposition to the majority of the free constituencies and to the great preponderance of the unbribed intellect of Ireland. Under such conditions it was scarcely likely to prove successful.

It may, however, be truly said that there have been many instances of permanent and beneficial national consolidations effected with equal or greater violence to opinion. The history of every leading kingdom in Europe is in a large degree a history of successive forcible amalgamations. England herself is no exception, and there was probably more genuine and widespread repugnance to the new order of things in Wales at the time of her conquest, and in Scotland at the time of her Union, than existed in Ireland in 1800. A similar statement may be made of many of the changes that accompanied or followed the Napoleonic wars, and in a very eminent degree of the reunion of the subjugated Southern States to the great American republic. At a still later period the unification of Germany, which is probably the most important political achievement of our own generation, was certainly not accomplished in accordance with the genuine and spontaneous wishes of every kingdom that was absorbed. If the Union had few active partisans, it was at least received by great sections of the Irish people with an indifference and an acquiescence which prompt, skilful, and energetic legislation might have converted into cordial support. The moment, however, was critical in the extreme, and it was necessary that Irish politics should, for a time at least, take a foremost place in the decisions of the Government.

The evils to be remedied were many and glaring, and some of them had little or no connection with political controversy. There were the innumerable unlicensed whisky shops all over the country, which were everywhere the centres of crime, sedition, and conspiracy, and which many good judges considered the master curse of Ireland; the most powerful of all the influences that were sapping the morals of the nation. 1 There was the shameful non-residence of a great proportion of the beneficed clergy and bishops of the Established Church, an evil which, in the opinion of Dean Warburton, contributed, in the North at least, more than almost any other cause, to open the door to the seduction of revolutionary agents. It was due to the disturbed condition of the country; to the scantiness of the Protestant population in many districts; to the low standard of public duty that everywhere prevailed, and, perhaps still more, to the want of proper residences for the clergy. It was said that out of 2,400 parishes in Ireland, not more than 400 had glebe houses, and it was part of the plan of Grenville and Pitt, while granting new privileges to the Catholics, to strengthen the civilising influence of the Established Church by the erection of churches and glebes, by enforcing more strictly ecclesiastical discipline, and by augmenting the incomes of the poorest clergy. 1 After the Union this abuse was gradually remedied, partly through the operation of an Act enforcing residence, which was passed in 1808, 2 and partly through the higher standard of clerical duty which followed in the train of the Evangelical revival.

Another, and even graver evil, which was more slowly cured, was the gross and sordid ignorance of the largest part of the population—an ignorance which brought with it, as a necessary consequence, barbarous habits and tastes, miserable agriculture, improvident marriages, an inveterate proneness to anarchy and violence. The great work of national education had not yet been taken up on any extended scale by the State, but it was manifest that State education was far more needed in Ireland than in England, as it was impossible that a Protestant Church could discharge the task of educating a Catholic population. Statesmen in Ireland had not been insensible to this want, but nearly all their schemes had been vitiated by being restricted to Protestants, or connected with proselytism, or through the inveterate jobbing that pervaded all parts of Irish life. An Act of Henry VIII. had directed the establishment of an English school in every parish in Ireland. An Act of Elizabeth, which was reinforced or extended by several subsequent laws, instituted in every diocese a free diocesan school under the direction of a Protestant clergyman. Under James I. and his two successors seven important ‘royal schools’ were founded and endowed, as well as the first of the four blue-coat schools in Ireland. Shortly after the Act of Settlement, Erasmus Smith devoted a considerable property to the endowment of Protestant day schools and grammar schools, and they soon spread over a great part of Ireland. In 1733 the Irish Parliament instituted the Charter Schools, which were intended to bring up the poorest and most neglected Catholic children as Protestants, and at the same time to give them a sound industrial education. We have seen what large sums were lavished on these schools; how signally they failed in their object, and what scandalous abuses were connected with them; and we have also seen how Orde's later scheme of national education was abandoned.

Private enterprise had no doubt done much. A writer in 1796 mentions that, in Dublin alone, there were in that year not less than fifty-four charity schools, educating 7,416 children, 1 and an immense multiplication of unendowed Catholic schools had followed the repeal of those laws against Catholic education, which were, perhaps, the worst part of the penal code. 2 But the supply of education remained very deficient in quantity, and still more in quality. By the Act of 1792, any Catholic who took the prescribed oath might compel the magistrate to license him as a teacher, 3 and great numbers of men who were not only incompetent, but notoriously disaffected, availed themselves of the privilege, and they exercised a serious and most evil influence in the rebellion. Sectarian feeling, and especially the peculiar form of Protestant feeling which grew up with the Evangelical revival, added greatly to the difficulties of the case. It was not until thirty-one years after the Union that Parliament took up efficiently, and on a large scale, the task of educating the Irish people, and by that time the country was covered with a dense, improvident, impoverished, and anarchical population, already far exceeding its natural resources, and increasing with a rapidity which foreshadowed only too surely a great impending catastrophe. 1

There were other evils of a different kind. One of the worst results of the existence of a separate Irish Parliament, was the enormous jobbing in Government patronage, and in the dispensation of honours, that took place for the purpose of maintaining a parliamentary majority. The Irish Custom and Revenue Departments were full of highly paid offices, which naturally entailed laborious and important duties, corresponding to those which were discharged in England by hard-working secretaries and clerks. In Ireland such posts were commonly given to members of Parliament or their relatives, who treated them as sinecures, and devoted a fraction of their salaries to paying deputies to discharge their duties. I have mentioned how the great office of Master of the Rolls had long been treated as a political sinecure, and at the time of the Union it was jointly held by Lords Glandore and Carysfort, with an income estimated at 2,614 l. a year, part of which was derived from an open sale of offices in the Court of Chancery. 2 Even the military patronage of the Lord Lieutenant had been long, to the great indignation of the army, made use of to reward political services in Parliament. 3 With the abolition of the local Parliament, these great evils gradually came to an end; and although the Union was very far from altogether purifying Government patronage, it did undoubtedly greatly improve it. The existing holders of the Mastership of the Rolls were paid off with an annuity equal to the revenues they had received; the office was turned into an efficient judgeship, and bestowed, with a somewhat increased salary, on a capable lawyer, and various unnecessary offices were, in time, suppressed. The Administration of Lord Hardwicke appears to have been especially active in restraining jobbing, and in this department, perhaps more than in any other, were the anticipations of the more honest supporters of the Union realised.

Very little, however, was done for some years to repress anarchy, and provide for the steady enforcement of law.

An Act of 1822 somewhat enlarged and strengthened the scanty provisions for the establishment of constables in every barony which the Irish Parliament had made, but the first step of capital importance was the organisation by Drummond, in 1836, of that great constabulary force which has proved, perhaps, the most valuable boon conferred by Imperial legislation upon Ireland, and which has displayed in the highest perfection, and in many evil days, the nobler qualities of the Irish character.

It was evident, however, to all sound observers at the time, and it became still more evident in the light of succeeding events, that the success or failure of the Union was likely to depend mainly on the wise and speedy accomplishment of three great kindred measures, the emancipation of the Catholics, the commutation of tithes, and the payment of the priests. It was most necessary that a change which was certain for so many reasons to offend and irritate the national pride, should be accompanied by some great and striking benefit which would appeal powerfully to the nation; and England had no commercial advantages to offer to Ireland, that were at all equivalent to those which the Union of 1707 had conferred upon Scotland. The Catholic question had risen to the foremost place in Irish politics, and it had already been made the subject of two of the most fatal blunders in the whole history of English statesmanship. By the Relief Act of 1793 a vast and utterly ignorant Catholic democracy had been admitted into the constituencies, while the grievance of disqualification was still suffered to continue through the exclusion from Parliament of a loyal and eminently respectable Catholic gentry, whose guiding and restraining political influence had never been more necessary. In 1795 the hopes of the Catholics were raised to the point of certainty, and the Irish Parliament was quite ready to gratify them, when the English Ministry recalled Lord Fitzwilliam, and drove the most energetic section of the Catholics into the arms of the United Irishmen. After the terrible years that followed, no statesmanship could have speedily restored the relation of classes and creeds that existed in 1793 or even in 1795, but a great opportunity had once more arisen, and the Sibylline books were again presented.

We have seen that it had been the first wish of Pitt and Dundas in England, and of Cornwallis in Ireland, to make Catholic emancipation a part of the Union; and when this course was found to be impracticable, there is good reason to believe that Canning recommended Pitt to drop the Union, until a period arrived when it would be possible to carry the two measures concurrently. 1 Wiser advice was probably never given, but it was not followed, and a Protestant Union was carried, with an understanding that when it was accomplished, the Ministry would introduce the measure of Catholic emancipation into an Imperial Parliament. It was this persuasion or understanding that secured the neutrality and acquiescence of the greater part of the Irish Catholics, without which, in the opinion of the very best judges, the Union could never have been carried.

These negotiations have been made the subject of much controversy, and some of their details are complicated and doubtful; but there is not, I think, any real obscurity about the main facts, though the stress which has been laid on each set of them by historians, is apt to vary greatly with the political bias of the writer. It is in the first place quite clear that the English Ministers did not give any definite pledge or promise that they would carry Catholic emancipation in the Imperial Parliament, or make its triumph a matter of life and death to the Administration. On two points only did they expressly pledge themselves. The one was, that, as far as lay in their power, they would exert the whole force of Government influence to prevent the introduction of Catholics into a separate Irish Parliament. The other was, that they would not permit any clause in the Union Act which might bar the future entry of Catholics into the Imperial Parliament; and the fourth article of the Union accordingly stated, that the present oaths and declaration were retained only ‘until the Parliament of the United Kingdom shall otherwise provide.’

At the same time, from the beginning of the negotiations about the Union, Cornwallis, who was himself a strong advocate of Catholic emancipation, had been in close and confidential intercourse with the leading members of the Catholic body. He had discussed with them the possibility of connecting Catholic emancipation with the Union, and had reported to England that they were in favour of the Union, and that they fully approved of adjourning their own question till an Imperial Parliament had been created, on the ground that a different course would make the difficulties of carrying the Union in Ireland insuperable. They knew, however, that the disposition of Pitt and the disposition of Cornwallis were in favour of emancipation in an Imperial Parliament, and this knowledge was certainly a leading element in determining their course. In all the official arguments in favour of the Union in the early part of 1799, great stress was laid upon the fact, that the Union would make an extension of Catholic privileges possible without endangering the Irish Church and the stability of Irish property, but at the same time the utmost care was taken to avoid any language that could be construed into a pledge, or could offend the strong Protestant party in the Irish Parliament and Government.

Cooke, in the official pamphlet recommending the scheme, argued that Catholic emancipation in an Irish Parliament must ultimately prove incompatible with the maintenance of the Church Establishment, and with the security of Protestant property, but that ‘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,’ and he inferred that, as ‘the Catholics could not force their claims with hostility against the whole power of Great Britain and Ireland,’ there would be ‘no necessary State partiality towards Protestants,’ and ‘an opening might be left in any plan of Union for the future admission of Catholics to additional privileges.’ 1 Pitt, in his great speech in January 1799, said, ‘No man can say that in the present state of things, and while Ireland remains a separate kingdom, full concessions could be made to the Catholics without endangering the State, and shaking the Constitution of Ireland to its centre. On the other hand, without anticipating the discussion, or the propriety of agitating the question, or saying how soon or how late it may be fit to discuss it, two propositions are indisputable. First, when the conduct of the Catholics shall be such as to make it safe for the Government to admit them to the participation of the privileges granted to those of the established religion, and when the temper of the time shall be favourable to such a measure, … it is obvious that such a question may be agitated in an United Imperial Parliament with much greater safety than it could be in a separate Legislature. In the second place, I think it certain, that, even for whatever period it may be thought necessary, after the Union, to withhold from the Catholics the enjoyment of these advantages, many of the objections, which at present arise out of their situation, would be removed if a Protestant Legislature were no longer separate and local, but general and Imperial.’ 2 Dundas used very similar language. ‘An Union,’ he said, ‘is likely to prove advantageous to the Catholics of both countries…. Should it ever be found prudent wholly to improve the condition of the great majority of the Irish nation, the English Catholics might expect to be no longer under any restraints.’ 2

The extreme and calculated vagueness of this language is very evident, and there is no doubt that Cornwallis, in accordance with his instructions, at this time carefully abstained from giving any pledge to the Catholic leaders, though they can hardly have remained ignorant of his opinion, that their admission into the Imperial Parliament would be not only a safe measure, but one which was absolutely essential to the peace of Ireland. 3 When, however, the Union scheme was defeated in the session of 1799, and when it became evident that the great body of the county members and of the Irish Protestants were against it, the Government felt that the time had come for a more decided policy. Cornwallis had warned them, that it was very doubtful whether the Catholics would remain even passive, if they had 1 nothing to rely on but a mere unsupported calculation of the probable disposition of the Imperial Parliament. It was known that some leading members of the Opposition were making overtures to them, offering to support their emancipation, if they would help in defeating the Union, 1 and there was every reason to believe, that if the Catholics could be persuaded that Foster and his party had the will and the power to procure their admission into the Irish Parliament, they would declare themselves almost unanimously against the Government. 2 In the opinion both of Cornwallis and Castlereagh, it would, in that case, have been impossible to carry the Union.