These passages give a full and very authentic picture of the state of public opinion on the subject of the Union, at the critical period before the meeting of Parliament in 1799. Several of the most sagacious judges in Ireland warned the Government, that the reception which the scheme had met with was such, that it would be in the highest degree unwise to persist in it. Many of those who held this language, were men who considered the Union in the abstract exceedingly desirable, and who had no doubt that by borough influence and Government pressure it could be carried, but they contended that if it were carried contrary to the genuine and uninfluenced opinion of the country, and if such opinions as supported it were chiefly due to transient panic, to resentment, or to despair, it would not ultimately prove a success. Lord Pery and Lord Carleton were fully confirmed in their first misgivings, and now strongly condemned the project. 2 Lord Kilwarden, who was one of the best and ablest men in Ireland, and who had at first been very favourable, was so much impressed by the aspect of opinion, that he entreated the Ministers, as soon as Parliament met, frankly to withdraw the measure. 1 Parnell, after much confidential conversation with Cooke, declared that he must oppose it, for it was, in his judgment, ‘very dangerous and not necessary,’ and ‘a measure of the greatest danger can only be justified by necessity.’ 2

Lord Ely, the great borough owner, who had been ready in November, for a personal object, to support the Union, wrote from London to Castlereagh in January: ‘We have bad accounts here of the state of the malcontents in Ireland. God grant that this mad scheme may not go too far for all the projectors of it to appease. I have not conversed with a single person since I came here who has advanced a single argument in favour of it, and all the Irishmen I converse with, are pointedly and decidedly against the measure. I can scarcely give credit to their bringing it on now…. Its great and only advocates are men who do not belong to us, and absentees who never again intend to visit Ireland.’ 3 Lord Sheffield had been a strong partisan of the Union, but he now hoped that it would not be pressed if it were true, as he heard from Ireland, that the country was ‘universally ill prepared for it,’ and that it could be carried only by a small majority. He quoted the saying of an Irish judge, that an Union so carried would always leave behind it ‘a very angry party anxious to dissolve it, and that can only be done by sword and separation.’ 4 McNally, who watched the changing aspects of events with a keener eye than many greater men, and who had at least the merit of never flattering the Government which employed him, was equally discouraging. ‘The Orange and Green, he wrote, ‘are making rapid approaches towards each other. The respectable Catholics, however, are determined not to come forward on the question of Union in a body, though individually they are to a man against it. I speak of those in the city…. In my judgment, there will not be the slightest appearance of mob or riot. Every man is aware of the great military force in the capital, and of its daily increasing. I rather expect melancholy silence and depopulated streets while the Parliament is sitting. Lord Camden's character loses much with the Orange party. They say the Union was his object, that the rebellion was permitted to increase, and they are sacrificed dupes to their loyalty. Men in general speak loudly and boldly, and only want the power to act. I know Cork as well as I do Dublin. The acts of their Corporation have very little influence out of their own hall.’ 1

One other remarkable letter may be cited. Sir George Shee was, as we have seen, among the most active and most loyal of the Irish magistrates, and he was one of the few members of his class who were strongly in favour of the Union. He was intimate with Pelham, and on the first day of 1799 he wrote to him, that he was never more certain of any truth in his life, than that an Union would be advantageous to Ireland and highly so to the Empire at large, but he could not shut his eyes to the fact that the opposition to it was becoming more formidable every day, and he could not subscribe to the doctrine that the measure must be carried at all hazards. ‘I anxiously hope,’ he continued, ‘Government may not depend on the battle being fought and won in Parliament only…. If it should prove that we have lost one great party without gaining another, we shall be truly unfortunate…. If it should unfortunately appear that the enemy has gained possession of all the vantage ground in the cities and counties in general, I fear a vote of the House of Commons, passed by a small majority (which, I hear, is all that can be expected), will not be considered as expressing the sense of the people, and that, instead of proving the symbol of concord, it may prove to be the signal for battle. At all events, I trust no intention will be formed of supporting this vote by military force, and yet if it should pass I do not see how Government could retreat, let the opposition be what it may…. If the measure cannot be carried in the majority of the counties and towns, and all parties in general continue to decline expressing approbation of it, I really think that a moment should not be lost in relinquishing it for the present, and by that means quieting the ferment it has caused.’ 2

These words appear to me to bear the stamp of true states-manship; but the Government had firmly resolved to flinch from no obstacle. For carrying the measure through Parliament, they relied mainly on the borough interest. Lord Cornwallis said, indeed, that many of the borough owners were in their hearts strongly disinclined to it, but he had as little doubt about the course they would pursue. ‘If those who possess the borough interest believe that the British Government are determined to persevere in the measure of the Union, and that they will be ableS to carry it, they will afford them the most hearty support; but if they should entertain doubts on either of these points, they will contend for the merit of having been the first to desert.’ 1 Lord Shannon, the largest of the borough owners, was in favour of the Union. In the opinion of Cooke, if Lord Ely and Lord Downshire could be secured, the sixteen or eighteen votes which they could command in the House of Commons would turn the balance. 2

The Duke of Portland now authorised the Lord Lieutenant formally to assure all persons who had political influence, that the King's Government was determined to press on the Union, ‘as essential to the well-being of both countries, and particularly to the security and peace of Ireland as dependent on its connection with Great Britain;’ that they would support it with their utmost power; that even in the event of present failure, it would be ‘renewed on every occasion until it succeeds, and that the conduct of individuals upon this subject will be considered as the test of their disposition to support the King's Government.’ 3 Sir John Parnell, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was dismissed, and replaced by Isaac Corry, a staunch Unionist. The dismissal of the Prime Sergeant, James Fitzgerald, immediately followed, and he was replaced by St. George Daly, one of the minority who had supported the Union at the bar debate. George Knox, one of the Commissioners of Revenue, resigned his office. John Claudius Beresford soon after took the same course.

In the House of Lords the Government was secure, and in the House of Commons the number of men whom it was necessary to gain in order to obtain a majority was not large. The House consisted, it is true, of 300 members, but the well-understood rule, that the member of a nomination borough, if he had received his seat by favour and not purchase, must vote with his patron, and the immense number of boroughs that were concentrated in a very few hands, greatly simplified the task. A shameless traffic in votes began, and many men of great name and position in the world, were bought as literally as cattle in the cattle market. There were, however, a few honest men like Conolly, who had always desired an Union; a few like Yelverton, who probably believed that the recent convulsions in Ireland and the state of Europe had made it a necessity; a few like Sir George Shee, who would gladly have seen the question adjourned, but who, when it was raised, considered it in the public interest to support it. ‘The demands of our friends,’ wrote Cornwallis on the eve of the meeting of Parliament, ‘rise in proportion to the appearance of strength on the other side; and you, who know how I detest a job, will be sensible of the difficulties which I must often have to keep my temper; but still the object is great, and perhaps the salvation of the British Empire may depend upon it. I shall, therefore, as much as possible overcome my detestation of the work in which I am engaged, and march on steadily to my point. The South of Ireland are well disposed to Union, the North seem in a state of neutrality, or rather apathy, on the subject, which is to me incomprehensible; but all the counties in the middle of the island, from Dublin to Galway, are violent against it. The Catholics on the whole behave better than I expected, and I do not think that popular tumult is anywhere to be apprehended except in the metropolis.’ 1

In addition to attempts that were made to influence opinion through the Press, and to some attempts to obtain addresses both in the Catholic parts of the island and in the North, 2 the Government trusted much for the ultimate popularity of the measure, to the support of the Catholic bishops. A negotiation was officially opened with them. They were told that, in the present division of opinion, the political claims of the Catholics must remain for the consideration of the Imperial Parliament, but that the Government were strongly desirous of proposing without delay an independent provision for the Roman Catholic clergy, under such regulations and safeguards as the prelates would accept as compatible with their doctrines, discipline, and just influence. The expediency of such a step, Lord Castlereagh added, was generally recognised, even by those who objected to concessions of a political nature.

A large number of Catholic bishops were at this time in Dublin, about the affairs of the College of Maynooth, and on the 17th, 18th, and 19th of January, 1799, they deliberated at the invitation of the Government on this proposal, and arrived unanimously at some very important resolutions They agreed ‘that a provision through Government for the Roman Catholic clergy of the kingdom, competent and secured, ought to be thankfully accepted,’ and that such an interference of Government in the appointment of Catholic prelates ‘as may enable it to be satisfied of the loyalty of the person appointed, is just, and ought to be agreed to. They proceeded to explain how they desired this power of veto to be exercised. They desired that, on episcopal vacancies, the names of candidates to be transmitted to Rome, should be selected as at present by the priests and bishops, but that ‘the candidates so selected should be presented by the president of the election to Government; which, within one month after such presentation, will transmit the name of the said candidate, if no objection be made against him, for appointment to the Holy See, or return the said name to the president of the election for such transmission as may be agreed on.’ If Government have any proper objection against such candidates, the president of the election will be informed thereof within one month after presentation, who in that case will convene the electors to the election of another candidate.’ These regulations, the prelates explained, required the sanction of the Holy See, but they promised to endeavour to procure that sanction as speedily as possible. They agreed also ‘that the nomination of parish priests, with a certificate of their having taken the oath of allegiance, be certified to Government.’ 1

These resolutions were signed by the four archbishops and the six senior bishops of Ireland. They were accepted as the unanimous opinion of the Irish Roman Catholic prelacy, 1 and they were brought to Lord Castlereagh by Archbishop Troy and Bishop Moylan. 2 They form a curious and instructive contrast to the attitude of the Catholic bishops and laity, some years later, when the question of the veto was revived, but they in truth proposed to give the Government no power which had not been long exercised by the civil authority in other non-Catholic countries. In the schismatical empire of Russia, and in the Protestant kingdom of Prussia, every Catholic prelate held his see, not only with the direct sanction, but on the express nomination of the sovereign; and even in the British Empire, no Catholic bishop could be appointed in Canada, without the approval of the civil governor. 3 The provision for the Catholic clergy was intended to be analogous to the Regium Donum to the Presbyterian ministers, and some such assistance was at this time actually enjoyed by the Catholic priesthood in Scotland. Having very recently been reduced to great destitution by the confiscation of their property in France, the Scotch Catholic prelates had petitioned the English Government for assistance, and Pitt had conceded the request, and a formal letter had arrived from Rome, under the signature of Cardinal Borgia, thanking the English Government by the express command of Pius VI. for its munificence. 4

In England about the same time, Dr. Douglas, the bishop who presided over the London Catholics, and also some other prelates, expressed their strong desire to obtain a Government provision for the English priests, and such provision seems to have been seriously contemplated, and is even said to have been at one time promised. At this period, indeed, the Catholic bishops in the three kingdoms appear to have been unanimously in favour of a State endowment. 1

The immense advantage of the proposed arrangement in raising the character, status, independence, and loyalty of the Irish priests, and in saving their congregations from various burdensome and irritating dues, could hardly be exaggerated, and it was intended to complete the policy by some regulations, imitated from those in the Gallican Church, about the circulation of papal rescripts in Ireland, and for securing a somewhat better class of schoolmasters. 2 The scheme, however, was also intended as part of the plan of Union, as a means of securing the favour and influence of a class who had great power over their co-religionists. 2

We have a curious illustration of the manner in which these negotiations were conducted, in the fact that the Irish Government appear to have acted in this important matter entirely on their own responsibility, supported, indeed, by the expressed opinion of Pitt and Dundas in favour of the endowment of the priesthood, but without the sanction or knowledge of the Cabinet, or even of the Secretary of State who was especially connected with Irish affairs. Shortly after the resolutions had passed, Bishop Moylan wrote a letter to Pelham, enclosing a copy of them, and asking his opinion about them, and Pelham forwarded it with a similar request to Portland. In his reply Portland said, ‘Until I received yours, I did not know that any conversation had passed upon the subject between them [the Irish bishops] and Lord Castlereagh, I mean in so official a form as to have produced such a deliberation as you have sent me the result of, and consequently, without any knowledge of the sentiments of the Government and bishops of Ireland; and of course, as you see, in the same state of ignorance with regard to those of my colleagues in administration and the great lights in the English Church, it would not only be imprudent, but is really impossible for me to state anything upon this question, that ought to be considered as an opinion, or is really more than an outline of my own ideas, which, I must desire you to consider, are by no means settled.’ Subject to these wide qualifications, Portland gave his opinion, that the Gallican Church was the best model to follow, but that the Catholics could only be put, like the Protestant Dissenters, on the footing of a toleration, and that it was exceedingly expedient that, when they were endowed, measures should be taken to bring their clergy under the same common law as the Anglican clergy, and their judgments and sentences against lay Catholics, like those of the Anglican ecclesiastical courts, under the superintendence and control of the courts of law. Excommunications, Portland said, were employed in Ireland in a manner and for purposes that would never be tolerated in any well-ordered Catholic country. 1

With this exception, no fixed proposal appears to have been as yet made to the Catholics, though much informal negotiation was going on. ‘The Catholics,’ Cooke wrote a few days before the meeting of Parliament, ‘keep aloof, but apparently friendly. My politics are to admit them after an Union. If Mr. Pitt would undertake that, and we could reconcile it with friends here we might be sure of the point. The Catholics will carry the day. Lord Shannon would admit them; the Chancellor sturdy against them.’ 2 Wilberforce at this time was much with Pitt, and he wrote in his diary: ‘Pitt sanguine that after Union, Roman Catholics would soon acquire political rights; resolved to give up plan, rather than exclude them…. I hear the Roman Catholics more against it than they were. The bishops all against Pitt's tithe plan. The King said, “I am for it, if it is for the good of the Church, and against it if contra.’ “ ‘Pitt as usual,’ he wrote to a friend, ‘is more fair and open and well-intentioned, and even well-principled, than any other of his class. He is firmly persuaded that the Union will open the most promising way by which the Roman Catholics may obtain political power.’ 3

The Irish Parliament met on January 22, and the great question of the Union was at once raised by the King's Speech, which, without expressly mentioning it, recommended ‘some permanent adjustment, which may extend the advantages enjoyed by our sister kingdom to every part of this island,’ and would also, at a time when the King's enemies were conspiring to effect a separation, ‘provide the most effectual means of maintaining and improving the connection,’ and consolidating the British Empire. The Address was moved by Lord Tyrone, the eldest son of Lord Waterford, in a speech in which he carefully pointed out, that it pledged the House to nothing more than a discussion of the question. It was opposed, however, in limine by Sir John Parnell; and George Ponsonby, seconded by Sir Lawrence Parsons, moved an amendment, pledging the House to enter into a consideration of what measures might best strengthen the Empire; ‘maintaining, however, the undoubted birthright of the people of Ireland to have a resident and independent Legislature, such as it was recognised by the British Legislature in 1782, and was finally settled at the adjustment of all difficulties between the two countries.’

A long and striking debate, extending over more than twenty hours, followed, and it is one of the very few debates in the later sessions of the Irish Parliament which have been separately and fully reported. The immense preponderance of speakers, and I think of ability, was on the side of the Opposition; Lord Castlereagh, however, was supported with some skill by the Knight of Kerry and by Sir John Blaquiere, but especially by a hitherto undistinguished member named William Smith. He was the son of one of the Barons of the Exchequer, and was himself at a later period raised to the bench, and he now proved one of the best speakers and writers in defence of the Union. On the other side there was a brilliant array of talent. Sir Henry Parnell, George Ponsonby, Dobbs, Barrington, Parsons, Hardy, and the late Prime Sergeant Fitzgerald, greatly distinguished themselves, but above all, the eloquence of Plunket dazzled and astonished the House. According to an acute and hostile judge, it turned several votes, 1 and some of its passages of fierce invective are even now well known in Ireland.

The arguments on each side did not differ sensibly from those I have already stated, but the reader of the debate will notice how strenuously and how confidently the Opposition speakers asserted the hostility of the country, and especially of the loyal portion of the country, to the scheme. One speaker boldly said that nine out of ten men were against it, and that the only persons it would really gratify were the United Irishmen. Another acknowledged that if it were the wish of Parliament and of the people it ought to be carried, ‘but,’ he continued, ‘that sense should be fully ascertained, without compulsion or undue influence of any kind. So far as the voice of the people has been yet collected, it is decidedly against it; and nothing but force, actual or implied, with the aid of undue influence, could carry the measure.’ ‘Admitting,’ said a third speaker, ‘the right of the people to call for an Union, I ask who, except the Corporation of Cork, has asked for it? Has Parliament, or either House of Parliament, or any body of men whatever?’ Parsons, at the conclusion of the debate, said: ‘The sentiment of the nation was now so decidedly evinced by the sense of the independent gentlemen in the House against an Union, that he hoped the Minister would never give him an opportunity of speaking on the subject again;’ and Plunket declared that ‘within these six last weeks a system of black corruption had been carried on within the walls of the Castle, which would disgrace the annals of the worst period of the history of either country.’ 1

It is difficult to say how far these last words are exaggerated, but there is no doubt that they had a large foundation of truth. One member, near the close of the debate, after an ambiguous and hesitating speech, announced his intention of voting for the amendment of the Opposition. Shortly before the division, he rose again to say that he was convinced that he had been mistaken, and would now vote with the Ministers. Barrington states that it was well known in the House, that in the interval he had received from Lord Castlereagh the promise of the peerage he afterwards obtained. 2 Another supporter of the Government was said in the House, without contradiction, to have received his commission as colonel the day before the division. 3 The amendment was ultimately rejected by a majority of one, being supported by 105 votes and opposed by 106. The original Address was then carried by 107 to 105. Considering the enormous number of placemen in the House, and the over-whelming majorities which on all normal occasions the Government could command, these votes were equivalent to a severe defeat. George Ponsonby rose and asked the Minister if he intended to persist in the measure. Castlereagh hesitated, and Sir John Parnell interposed, saying that he did not think it fair to press for an immediate answer, but he took the liberty of advising him not to think of the measure, at least while ‘the sentiments both of people and Parliament appeared so decisively against it.’ Castlereagh said a few words which were construed into acquiescence, but added that he was so convinced of the wisdom of the measure, that ‘whenever the House and the nation appeared to understand its merits, he should think it his duty to bring it forward.’ A committee was appointed to draw up the Address, and the House then adjourned. 1

In the House of Lords, on the other hand, where the influence of Clare was supreme, the Government were easily triumphant. Lord Powerscourt and Lord Bellamont led the opposition to the Address, but they were defeated by fifty-two to sixteen, or seventeen including one proxy. The Duke of Leinster and Lord Pery were in the minority. Lord Ely did not vote. Lord Carleton not only voted, but spoke with the majority; but he immediately after wrote to Pelham, that ‘many of those who supported the motion for considering a proposition for incorporation, could not be depended on at a later stage.’ It would be impossible, he said, to estimate the evil consequences on the public mind of having brought the question on at so inauspicious a period, and he added, ‘In the present critical situation of affairs, I hope no idea may be entertained of continuing that ferment which I am heartily sorry was raised.’ 2

When the report of the Address came before the Commons, the struggle was renewed by a motion to omit the clause relating to the intended Union. The chief incidents in the debate appear to have been a bitter personal altercation between Lord Castlereagh and George Ponsonby; an elaborate and powerful speech against the Union by Sir Lawrence Parsons, who denied the necessity for it, and predicted that if it were pressed on, contrary to the wishes of the people, it might most seriously endanger the connection; and another comprehensive and thoughtful vindication of it by William Smith. He dwelt much upon the advantages the Catholics would obtain from a form of Government under which their claims might be recognised without danger to the Church Establishment, and which would at once relieve them from much sectarian oppression. He expatiated on the natural tendency to divergence which two independent Legislatures under the same Executive were certain to display, and he especially dwelt upon his favourite doctrine of the full competence of Parliament to pass the Union, even without any appeal to the people.

He discussed also a new argument which had been raised against his view. If Parliament, it was said, was absolutely unlimited in its competence, what security, or indeed what meaning, could there be in the compact which Ireland was asked to enter into with England? The Irish members were told, that by surrendering their legislative powers and consenting to an Union, they would secure for all future time, as by a treaty arrangement, their commercial privileges, their proportion of taxation, and their Established Church. But could the articles of Union restrict the power of an omnipotent Parliament? Was it not possible, that the day might come, when the descendants of the Irish Protestants who made the Union, would find themselves a small and unimportant minority in an Imperial Parliament, vainly struggling against the violation of its most fundamental articles? Smith was compelled to acknowledge that the obligation of the Articles of Union would be only an obligation of honour, and not an obligation of law, but he dwelt on the enormous improbability of their violation, and boldly declared that such an act would absolve the subject from all allegiance to the Government that was guilty of it. Among the less conspicuous speakers in this debate was Edgeworth, the father of the illustrious novelist. He said that he had at first believed the measure to be a wise and a good one, but he found it to be obnoxious to the majority of the people, and therefore thought it his duty to oppose it. In the division, 111 members voted for expunging the contested clause, while only 106 members supported it. 1

The Speaker Foster took no open part in these debates, but both sides attributed to his immense influence a large part in the defeat of the Government. Clare bitterly accused him of having on this occasion manifested great partiality in the chair, 2 and he had already, in the most public way, declared his implacable hostility to the Union. Just before the meeting of Parliament, the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, and citizens of Dublin presented him with an address against that measure. In his reply, he spoke of the unexampled rapidity with which Irish prosperity had grown under her Protestant Parliament, and added, ‘In my soul I think it [the Union] is fraught with possible consequences, certainly not foreseen by those who bring it forward, that will tend, if not to actual separation, to attempts at least to separate us from Great Britain, to our utter ruin and to the subversion of the British Empire.’ 3 It was now clearly seen that there was no chance of bribing him into acquiescence by honours or money. 4 There was no Irishman whose opinion was more important. He was one of the few men of eminent ability and high character, who had been for many years closely attached to the Irish Government. To his administration of the finances, and especially to his legislation about corn bounties, a great part of the recent prosperity of the country was ascribed; he presided over the House with conspicuous dignity and authority; and the strong part he had taken in opposition to the concession of political power to the Catholics, and his steady support of the most drastic measures of suppression during the rebellion, had made him the special representative of a powerful body of Protestant opinion through the nation. Ponsonby, who took the ostensible leadership of the Opposition, was also a man of great eloquence and great family and parliamentary influence, but he had been usually in opposition. He had won a brilliant victory, but he now tried to push it a step further, and proposed a substantive resolution pledging the House ever ‘to maintain the undoubted birthright of Irishmen, by preserving an independent Parliament of Lords and Commons resident in this kingdom.’ After some hesitation, however, Fortescue, the member for the county of Louth, expressed his dislike to a resolution which would bind the freedom of the House in future sessions, when the opinion of the country might possibly have changed. Three or four other members concurred, and the resolution was not pressed. Several country gentlemen declared that they wished it clearly to be understood that their hostility was entirely confined to the question of the Union, that they had no intention of joining the Ponsonby faction in systematic opposition, and that the Administration might still count upon their support for all measures that were really necessary for carrying on the government and strengthening the connection. The Address without the passage relating to the Union was agreed to by the House, and presented to the Lord Lieutenant, and the House adjourned for a week. 1

The exultation in Dublin at the defeat of the Government was fierce and tumultuous. The mob drew the Speaker to his house. Bonfires were kindled, and orders were sent out for a general illumination. Even the General Post Office, though a Government establishment, was a blaze of light. The windows of those who refused to illuminate were broken, and among them those of Lord Clare. His servants fired on the mob, and the Chancellor expressed his hope to Lord Auckland, that they had wounded some of them. Prominent men who had supported the Union were insulted in the streets, and the lawyers resolved to continue to give Fitzgerald the same precedence at the bar as when he was Prime Sergeant. 1

The refusal of a House of Commons, in which the Government had hitherto been almost omnipotent, to allow the question of a legislative Union to pass even its first parliamentary stage, would in a country governed on constitutional principles have been deemed decisive, and have secured the abandonment of the measure, at least for that Parliament. The composition of the majority greatly strengthened the case. The Government, it is true, attributed much of their misfortune to the ‘disinclination, or, at best, the lukewarm disposition,’ of Lord Downshire and Lord Ely. ‘Instead of bringing forward eighteen members, as these noble Lords might have done, but five appeared, and one of Lord Downshire's … voted against us the second night.’ But of all causes, Lord Castlereagh acknowledged that ‘what seemed to operate most unfavourably, was the warmth of the country gentlemen, who spoke in great numbers and with much energy against the question.’ 2 ‘The Opposition,’ he said, ‘exclusive of the Speaker, Sir J. Parnell and the Ponsonbys, is composed of country gentlemen.’ 3 No less than thirty-four county members voted against the Government, while only seventeen supported them. 4 It is no doubt true, as Castlereagh and Beresford said, that personal motives, and among others the prevailing belief that after the Union each county would only send one instead of two members to Parliament, greatly influenced them; but still the fact remains, that in the small section of the Irish Parliament which was really sound, independent, and representative, the preponderance against the Union was overwhelming, while an immense proportion of those who voted for it held offices under the Crown. It was a bold thing to persevere in the measure when, on its very introduction, it was condemned by the metropolis, and by a majority of two to one among the county members.

Great disappointment and irritation appear in the correspondence of its leading Irish supporters. Clare, Cooke, and Beresford united in vehemently blaming Lord Cornwallis. They said that he had not taken the gentlemen of the country into his confidence, and was governing entirely by two or three men; that by releasing dangerous rebels and repressing Orange zeal, he had discouraged the loyal and encouraged the disloyal; that he had affronted Foster, who of all men had most influence in the House of Commons, had driven the powerful influence of Lord Enniskillen into opposition by the censure he had passed on the court-martial over which that nobleman presided, and had in fine showed a total ignorance of the character of the people, the situation of the country, and the means by which it must be governed. Clare spoke with his usual violence of Ponsonby as ‘a malignant knave;’ ‘but,’ he said, ‘allowing for the villany and treachery which might have been expected, I always understood there was a certain majority of thirty in support of Government.’ Cooke wrote with even greater asperity. ‘We could not act,’ he wrote, ‘without a leader. Lord Cornwallis is nobody, worse than nobody, … his silly conduct, his total incapacity, selfishness, and mulishness has alone lost the question. Had Lord Camden continued, had any person succeeded who would have consulted with the gentlemen of the country and kept them in good humour, … who would not have let down the spirit of the loyal, who would not have degraded and discountenanced the yeomanry, who would not have turned against him the whole Protestant interest, the measure would have been carried…. You must laugh at me for the division in the Commons. In the first place, time was not given to form our numbers, but I was told to consider Lord Downshire and Lord Ely as firm, and Lord de Clifford; and with their full assistance, and of others who had promised, we ought to have divided 148 to 91.’ ‘Will it not be fair for me,’ he asked in another letter, ‘to ask that I may be allowed to change my situation into England? I am disgusted here. I feel that everything with respect to this country is managed by the English Ministry with so much ignorance, and so contrary to the representations of those who are acquainted with Irish subjects, that I am perfectly sick. Had any common sense been observed in this measure, or had common suggestions been attended to, the present measure would have succeeded.’ 1

Cornwallis, on the other hand, consoled himself by the belief that the proposed Union was not really disagreeable either to the Catholics or the Presbyterians, but he acknowledged that the late experiment showed the impossibility of carrying a measure which was opposed by strong private interests, and not supported by the general voice of the country. ‘If ever a second trial of the Union is to be made,’ he said, ‘the Catholics must be included.’ 1

From England the decision of the Government came in clear and unfaltering language. It was the unanimous opinion of the Ministers, Portland wrote, that nothing that has happened ought to make any change in their intentions or plans. The measure was evidently for the benefit of Ireland, and the good sense of the country would sooner or later recognise the fact. ‘I am authorised to assure you,’ he wrote, ‘that whatever may be the fate of the Address, our determination will remain unaltered and our exertions unabated; and that though discretion and good policy may require that the measure should be suspended by you during this session, I am to desire that you will take care that it shall be understood that it neither is nor ever will be abandoned, and that the support of it will be considered as a necessary and indispensable test of the attachment on the part of the Irish to their connection with this country.’ 2 It was accordingly announced that Pitt would at once proceed, as though nothing had happened in Ireland, to submit the intended resolutions on which the Union was to be based, to the British Parliament.

The question of the Union was already before it. On January 22—the same day on which the Irish Parliament was opened—a King's message had been sent down to the British Parliament, recommending, in terms very similar to those employed in the Irish Viceregal speech, a complete and final adjustment of the relations between England and Ireland, as the most effectual means of defeating the designs of the King's enemies to separate the two countries, and of securing, consolidating, and augmenting their resources. Sheridan—the most eminent Irishman in the British Parliament since the death of Burke—at once moved an amendment, condemning the introduction of such a measure ‘at the present crisis, and under the present circumstances of the Empire.’ In the course of a long and powerful speech, he predicted that ‘an Union at present, without the unequivocal sense of the Irish people in its favour, … would ultimately tend to endanger the connection between the two countries;’ that in the existing condition of Ireland, with martial law, and in the presence of 40,000 English troops, the sense of the nation could not be fairly taken; that the undoubted disaffection of Ireland would not be allayed, but aggravated, by the abolition of a loyalist Parliament, and the transfer of authority to the Parliament and nation of England, who, in the words of Lord Clare, ‘are more ignorant of the affairs of Ireland than they are of any country in the world.’ He spoke also of the finality of the arrangement of 1782, and of the injurious influence which Irish members might exercise on the Imperial Parliament. He found no supporters, and after speeches by Canning and by Pitt, the amendment was negatived without a division.

On January 31, shortly after the news had arrived of the refusal of the Irish House of Commons to take the question into consideration, Pitt rose to move the resolutions for an Union, in an exceedingly elaborate speech, which was one of the only three that he afterwards revised for publication. 1 It contains a most powerful, most authentic, and most comprehensive statement of the whole case for the Union; and although much of its argument had been anticipated in the pamphlet of Cooke and in the speeches of William Smith, it should be carefully considered by everyone who is studying the subject.

Pitt began by acknowledging, in a tone of dignified regret, that the circumstances under which he introduced his resolutions were discouraging. It was in the full right and competence of the Irish Parliament to accept or reject an Union; and while the Irish House of Lords had agreed by a large majority to discuss it, the Irish House of Commons had expressed a repugnance even to consider it, and had done this before the nature of the plan had been disclosed. Believing, however, that a legislative Union was transcendently important to the Empire at a time when foreign and domestic enemies were conspiring to break the connection, and that it would be eminently useful to every leading interest in Ireland, he considered it his duty to persevere. The question was one on which passion, and prejudice, and a mistaken national pride were at first peculiarly likely to operate, and some time might reasonably be expected to elapse before misconceptions were dispelled, and the advantages of the measure were fully understood. For his part, he said, he was confident that all that was necessary to secure its ultimate adoption was, ‘that it should be stated distinctly, temperately, and fully, and that it should be left to the dispassionate and sober judgment of the Parliament of Ireland.’

Starting from the assumption, which was admitted by all loyal men, that a perpetual connection between England and Ireland was essential to the interests of both countries, he contended that the settlement of 1782 was neither wise, safe, nor final. It destroyed the system of government that had before existed, but it substituted nothing in its place. It left two separate and independent Parliaments, ‘connected only by this tie, that the third Estate in both countries is the same—that the Executive Government is the same—that the Crown exercises its power of assenting to Irish Acts of Parliament under the Great Seal, and that with respect to the affairs of Ireland it acts by the advice of British Ministers.’ This was now the only bond of a connection which was essential to both countries, and it was wholly insufficient to consolidate their strength against a common enemy, to guard against local jealousies and disturbances, or to give Ireland the full commercial, political, and social advantages which she ought to derive from a close connection with Great Britain. He noticed how in 1782 the necessity of some future treaty connection to draw the nations more closely together, had been clearly suggested, and how the commercial propositions of 1785 were intended to effect such a treaty, and he laid great stress upon the language of Foster when, as, Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, he advocated those propositions. Foster then said that things could not remain as they were; that commercial jealousies must increase with independent Legislatures; that without united interests, a mere political Union would fail to secure the connection. But the propositions of 1785 had been rejected; a legislative compact had been tried and found impracticable, and it remained now only to try a legislative Union. He ‘believed there was hardly a man who ever asked himself the question, whether he believed there was a solid, permanent system of connection between the two countries, that ever answered it in the affirmative.’

Pitt then traversed with sonorous though very diffuse rhetoric, but with no real originality, the well-known topics of the Regency; of the dangers that might arise in time of war from a difference between the two Parliaments; of the embarrassment which two distinct Legislatures, independent in their discussions and possibly divergent in their bias, might cause to the foreign policy of the Empire. ‘In the general strength of the Empire,’ he said, ‘both kingdoms are more concerned, than in any particular interests which may belong to either.’ Every Court and statesman in Europe knows how greatly a consolidation of the two Legislatures would increase that general power. It would not only give it an increased unity and energy of will, but also diffuse over the feebler portion the vigour of the stronger. To ‘communicate to such a mighty limb of the Empire as Ireland is, all the commercial advantages which Great Britain possesses,’ to open to one country the markets of the other, and give both a common use of their capital, must immensely add to the resources, and therefore to the strength, of the Empire.

He dwelt much upon the dependence of Ireland on England, as shown during the late convulsions. The naval power of England alone saved Ireland from invasion. English militia, uncompelled by the law, had gone over to protect her. The English Exchequer had lent large sums to the Irish Exchequer. He did not, he said, desire to upbraid Ireland with these circumstances, but to remind her that similar dangers might recur when similar aid was impossible. What, then, is the remedy? ‘It is to make the Irish people part of the same community, by giving them a full share of those accumulated blessings which are diffused through Great Britain, a full participation of the wealth and power of the British Empire.’

He then touched—but in terms that were studiously vague and guarded—on the arguments for an Union derived from the anarchical and divided state of Ireland. He spoke of the rebellion, with the ‘dreadful and inexcusable cruelties’ on the one side, and the ‘lamentable severities’ on the other; of the animosities that divided the Catholics from the Protestants, the original inhabitants from the English settlers; of the low level of civilisation in a large part of the island; of the Established Church, opposed to the religion of the great majority of the people; of the land of the country in the hands of a small Protestant minority. For such a state of society, he said, there seemed no remedy ‘but in the formation of a general Imperial Legislature, removed from the dangers, and uninfluenced by the prejudices and passions, of that distracted country,’ and bringing in its train English capital and English industry. ‘No one 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, or shaking the Constitution of Ireland to its centre.’ How soon or how late these concessions might be properly discussed, depended on the conduct of the Catholics and on the temper of the time, but it was obvious that a question which ‘might endanger the security and shake the Government of Ireland in its separate state,’ might be much less dangerous with a United Parliament. He would not, he said, now enter into the detail of the means that might be found to alleviate the distresses of the lower order of Irish Catholics, by relieving them from the pressure of tithes, or by securing under proper regulations a provision for the clergy. He would only say that ‘a United legislative body promises a more effectual remedy for their grievances, than could be likely to result from any local arrangements.’

Coming to the more general interests of the country, Pitt maintained that the undoubted recent prosperity of Ireland depended mainly on the recent liberal commercial policy of England. Articles essential to the trade or subsistence of Ireland, and articles which serve as raw materials for her manufactures, are sent from England free of duty; while by the free admission of Irish linen into the English market, by the bounty granted by the British Parliament on Irish linen, and by the duty laid by the same Parliament on foreign linen, the linen manufacture of Ireland had obtained the monopoly in England, which chiefly raised it to its present height. A market had thus been opened to Irish linen, to the amount of three millions. But the power which conferred these advantages might withdraw them; a legislative Union alone could make that certain and permanent which is now contingent and precarious; and it would be followed by an equality of commercial advantages which would inevitably bring a flood of new prosperity into Ireland.

He replied, by the arguments I have already stated, to the contention that the Irish Legislature was incompetent to pass an Union. In this contention he saw the seeds of the Jacobin doctrine of the sovereignty of the people; a sovereignty always in abeyance, to be called forth as suits the purposes of a party. This doctrine, he said, he would oppose in whatever form and wherever he encountered it. There must in every Government reside somewhere a supreme, absolute, and unlimited authority. It is impossible that the sovereignty should be anywhere but in the supreme Legislature, nor is it otherwise in any system of human jurisprudence. Every law restraining the privileges or distinguishing the rights of electors, every law of enfranchisement and disfranchisement, implies this doctrine, and the Parliament of Ireland, which had very lately associated itself with a great body of Catholics in Ireland, was equally competent to associate itself with a Protestant Parliament in Great Britain.

Some eloquent sentences followed about the complete compatibility of an Union with every true feeling of national pride, and about the higher level of security and prosperity, of moral, political, and social life, which was likely to result to Ireland from an increased infusion of English influence. Does an Union, he asked, by free consent and on just and equal terms, deserve to be branded as a proposal for subjecting Ireland to a foreign yoke? Is it not rather the voluntary association of two great countries, which seek their common benefit in one empire, in which each will retain its proportionate weight and importance, under the security of equal laws, reciprocal affection, and inseparable interests, and in which each will acquire a strength that will render it invincible? Prophecy bore a large part in these discussions; and to those who view them in the light of later years, it is not the least instructive part. The predictions of Pitt were, that the Union would be of all measures the most likely to give Ireland security, quiet, and internal repose; that it would remove the chief bar to her internal advancement in wealth and civilisation; that it would vastly augment her material prosperity, and that it would tend powerfully to unite the higher and lower orders of her people, and to diffuse among all classes a healthy predilection for English habits.

Pitt concluded his speech by strenuously denying that the scheme was intended to bring Ireland under the burden of the English National Debt, or make her the subject of increased taxation, and he promised special provisions to guard against the danger. He then moved a series of resolutions affirming the expediency of the Union, and sketching—but in very wide and general terms—its leading provisions. The amount of the Irish representation in both Houses was still unfixed, but a few fundamental points were already affirmed. The succession to the Throne was to be the same. The Churches in England and Ireland were to be preserved as they are ‘now by law established.’ The subjects of his Majesty in the two countries were to be placed on the same footing in all matters of trade and navigation through the whole Empire, and in all treaties with foreign Powers. Articles of import and export now duty free between England and Ireland, were to remain so. On other articles moderate and equal duties were to be agreed to by the two Parliaments, and they were to be diminished equally with respect to both kingdoms, but in no case increased, and a similar equality was to be established in all questions relating to foreign goods and to internal duties. The debts of the two countries were to be kept separate. The ordinary expenses of the United Kingdom, in peace and war, were to be defrayed by the two countries in fixed proportions, which were to be settled at the Union. All laws in force and all courts established at the time of the Union, were to remain, subject to such changes as might be made by the Imperial Parliament.

These resolutions were for nearly three weeks under the discussion of the English House of Commons, before they were sent up to the Lords. The greater part of the small Opposition had at this time seceded, and Fox did not once appear upon the scene, though he wrote to Grattan expressing his unqualified hostility to the scheme. 1 Sheridan, however, fought a hopeless battle with conspicuous earnestness and courage, and he was supported by a few able men, and especially by Grey and Laurence. The minority sometimes sank as low as fifteen, and never at this time rose above twenty-four. In one of the debates, Dr. Laurence, who had been an intimate friend of Burke, mentioned the opinion of that great statesman. Burke, he said, did not approve of a legislative Union. He considered that the two countries had now grown up under circumstances which did not admit of such an incorporation,’ but he thought that the Constitution of 1782 ought to have included, or been accompanied by, a positive compact, which, while leaving Ireland ‘the entire and absolute power of local legislation,’ explicitly defined the terms of her connection with England, and bound her on all questions of peace or war to stand or fall with Great Britain. In times of tranquillity, Burke said, such a stipulation would be unnecessary; in times of extreme irritation and mutual animosity it would be liable to be disregarded; ‘but there are doubtful and tremulous moments in the fate of every empire, when he judged that it might be useful to have that, which is now the feeling of all, confirmed and fixed by the guarantee of the national faith,’ and Burke regretted that he had not opposed recognition of Irish independence without such a stipulation. 1

From the point of view of English interests, almost the only objection which appears to have been seriously felt, was the possible effect of the infusion of Irish members into the British Parliament. Many thought that it would add an overwhelming weight to the influence of the Crown, and Laurence acutely dwelt on the great danger to parliamentary Government, if the Irish members formed a distinct and separate body, acting in concert amid the play of party politics. ‘They were certainly,’ he said, ‘by no means deficient in the great popular talent of eloquence. But if they should hereafter exercise it within these walls in any degree corresponding with the example which they have lately given in their own proper theatre, where they continued a very animated debate for little less than the complete circle of a day and night, he was apprehensive that we might find the public business a little impeded in its progress.’ 1

On the whole the arguments of Sheridan and his small band of followers, were but little directed against the abstract merits of a legislative Union. Their main position was, that no such Union could strengthen the connection, if it was carried by corruption or intimidation, without the free consent and real approbation of the two Parliaments and nations. In the existing state of Ireland, they said, the opinion of the people could not be fairly taken. The most efficacious arguments of the Ministry were bribes to particular sections of the community, and scarcely veiled threats that, if the Union was rejected, Great Britain would withdraw her protection in time of war, and her assistance to the Irish linen trade, and would refuse her assent to necessary Irish reforms. The Irish House of Commons had condemned the scheme in its very first stage, and the majority against it included a most decisive majority of the representatives of the landed interest. If the members were uninfluenced by corrupt means, it never would pass there. Outside Parliament, Cork and Limerick alone had expressed anything like approbation of it, and Cork had been bribed by the hope of a great dockyard. ‘The Orange party,’ said one speaker, ‘had been the foremost and the loudest in the cry against the Union; while, on the other hand, no one considerable body of Catholics, or of any other description, had been gained to its support.’ The very proposal had exercised the worst influence, and Grey predicted that an Union so carried would not be acquiesced in, and that attempts would one day be made to undo it. It was added, too, that ‘all agreed that the rapid progress of the sister kingdom in trade, in manufactures, and in agriculture, and their concomitant opulence within the last twenty years, down to the breaking out of the late disastrous rebellion, had been unexampled in the history of that island, and perhaps only exceeded in Great Britain.’

Dundas, who was the warmest supporter in the Ministry, of the Irish Catholics, spoke very earnestly and very ably in favour of the measure. He read to the House the famous peroration of the speech of Lord Belhaven against the Scotch Union, and showed, point by point, how every prediction of evil from that measure had been falsified; how all the elements of Scotch prosperity had developed under its influence; how the feeling of hostility to it, which once undoubtedly existed, had completely subsided. He maintained that the root of the diseased condition of Ireland was, that there was no real confidence between the mass of the people and the ascendency Parliament, that ‘the whole power of the country was vested in one-fourth of the people, and that fourth was separated from the other three-fourths by religious distinctions, heightened and envenomed by ancient and hereditary animosities.’ For curing this state of things and allaying animosities, which were largely due to mutual jealousies and fears, an incorporating Union was the only safe and efficacious remedy, and it would give Ireland a power over the executive and general policy of the Empire, which would far more than compensate her for the loss of her separate Legislature. The Ministry, in introducing their resolutions in spite of the hostile vote of the Irish Commons, desired to place before the dispassionate judgment of the Parliament and people of Ireland, ‘what the English Parliament was willing to share with them, without attempting the smallest interference with their independence.’ As long as the present unnatural situation of Ireland continued, the Irish Catholics must inevitably labour under the disadvantages of strong prejudices, jealousies, and animosities, and Dundas very earnestly maintained that nothing could be so conducive to their interests as a legislative Union.

Sheridan at once replied, that this ascendency Parliament of Irish gentlemen, having already conceded the franchise to the Catholics, had been perfectly ready during Lord Fitzwilliam's Viceroyalty to admit them as members, and would have certainly done so if the Government of which Dundas was a member, had not suddenly recalled the Lord Lieutenant. ‘At any rate,’ added Laurence, ‘his recall was never ascribed to the apprehension of any difficulty in Parliament from his avowed support of the Catholics; there was no appearance of such difficulty in anv quarter; and no Lord Lieutenant ever brought back with him from that shore such cordial effusions of veneration and affection, both from the Parliament and the people.’ This was a true statement and a forcible argument; but it was also true, that Irish politics and Irish opinion had enormously changed since 1795. Canning, in one of his speeches, went farther than Dundas. He not only argued that Catholic emancipation could not take place in an Irish Parliament, but even hinted that if the Union was not carried, it might be necessary to refortify the Protestant ascendency, by reviving the old penal code against the Catholics. 1

In Ireland, meanwhile, the Government were not idle. It is stated that no less than 10,000 copies of Pitt's speech were gratuitously circulated at the public expense, 2 and other methods more effectual than appeals to popular reason were employed. Lord Castlereagh wrote that he would despair of the success of the Union at any future period, so weighty was the opposition of the country gentlemen in the House of Commons, if he had not been convinced that their repugnance was much more due to their personal interest, than to a fixed aversion to the principle of Union. He represented, therefore, that the proposed scheme of representation must be materially changed. It had at first been intended to restrict the representation of each Irish county in the Imperial Parliament to a single member. Castlereagh now argued that it should continue, as at present, to be two. By this means, he hoped the most powerful opposition to the Union might be disarmed, especially as a seat in the Imperial Parliament would be a higher object of ambition than a seat in the Parliament in Dublin. 3

The question of the borough representation was a very difficult one. The English Government laid it down as a fundamental condition, that the whole Irish representation should not exceed 100, and it was much desired that the principle of giving pecuniary compensation to the borough owners should, if possible, be avoided. It was agreed that the larger towns should send in a regular but diminished representation, and it was at first proposed, that the small boroughs should be grouped according to the Scotch system, and afterwards that 108 small boroughs should send in 54 members by a system of alternation, each borough returning a member to every second Parliament. This system, Lord Cornwallis said, would no doubt to a certain degree affect the value of borough property, and probably disincline the patrons to an Union, but he believed ‘that means might be found without resorting to the embarrassing principle of avowed compensation, so as to satisfy the private interests of at least a sufficient number of the individuals affected, to secure the measure against any risk arising from this consideration.’ 1 Castlereagh, however, was now convinced that the principle of granting pecuniary compensation for boroughs must be adopted. There were eighty-six boroughs, he said, which were so close as to be strictly private property. 2

Another important question was, how the measures which were likely to be taken by the Opposition in order to prevent an Union, were to be met. The Union had been proposed mainly on the principle that two independent Legislatures had a tendency to separate; that it was necessary to give an additional strength to the connection; and that this measure would offer great particular advantages to many important interests in Ireland. Cornwallis believed that it would be the policy of the Opposition, to take up these several points, and to endeavour to remedy them without an Union. The first question was the admission of Catholics to Parliament. There were already signs that the Opposition were making overtures to the Catholics, and it was probable that some who had hitherto been determined opponents of their emancipation would consent to it, if by doing so they could detach them from the Government, and avoid the abolition of the Parliament. The Catholics, on the other hand, were likely to prefer emancipation without an Union, to emancipation with one. In the one case, they would probably by degrees gain an ascendency; in the other, their position would always be an inferior one. ‘Were the Catholic question to be now carried, the great argument for an Union would be lost, at least as far as the Catholics are concerned.’

It was probable also, the Lord Lieutenant thought, that the party opposed to the Union would meet the argument drawn from the Regency dispute, by a Bill making the Regent of England ipso facto Regent of Ireland; that they would again urge their readiness to enter into a commercial arrangement with England; that they would call upon the Government to make at once the provision for the Catholic and Presbyterian clergy, which the Government writers and speakers now pronounced so desirable, and that finally they would take up the question of the regulation of tithes, ‘the most comprehensive cause of public discontent in Ireland.’ ‘Your Grace musb be aware,’ wrote Cornwallis, ‘that the party will carry the feeling of the country more with them upon the question of tithes, than any other. They will press Government to bring it forward, and impute their refusing to do so, to a determination to force the question of Union, by withholding from the people advantages which might be extended to them equally by the Irish Legislature.’ 1

This despatch was submitted to the deliberation of the Cabinet in England, and the Duke of Portland lost no time in communicating his instructions to the Irish Government. The ultimate enactment of the Union was now to be the supreme and steady object of all English policy in Ireland. If the question of Catholic emancipation was introduced, the Government must oppose it with all the resources at their disposal, and they must clearly state that they would never permit it to be carried, except on the condition of an Union, and by the means of an United Parliament. On the question of tithes, they must hold an equally decisive language. This question must be settled on the same principles in the two countries, and no plan of commutation must be entertained in Ireland, unless the British Legislature had previously seriously taken up the question. The proposed Regency Bill seemed free from objection, and England would gladly receive from Ireland any unconditional grant towards the general expenses of the Empire, but a commercial compact could only be made by the agreement of the two Parliaments. If the payment of priests and Presbyterian ministers was proposed, the Irish Government might give it a favourable reception, but they should call upon its promoters to produce a specific plan of their measures in detail. 1

The very violence of the resentment which was aroused in the Irish Parliament and in Dublin by the introduction of the Union, appeared to the Ministers an additional reason for pressing it on. ‘The language and conduct both within and without doors,’ wrote Castlereagh in a confidential letter to Wickham, ‘has been such on the late occasion, as to satisfy every thinking man that if the countries are not speedily incorporated, they will ere long be committed against each other.’ 2 There were signs, which were deemed extremely alarming, of attempts at coalition between the Orangemen and the Catholics, 3 and such a coalition in case of a French invasion might prove fatal.

There were also, however, slight but undoubted indications of an improvement in the prospects of the measure, especially after it became known that the principle of compensation would be largely adopted. The most encouraging of these signs appeared among the Catholics, and it is among the clerical and lay leaders of that body that the measure seems to have found its most sincere well-wishers. Both Lord Kenmare and Lord Fingall were among the number, and when George Ponsonby proposed to the former to introduce under certain conditions a motion for repealing the remaining Acts which imposed restrictions on the Catholics, the offer was declined. 1 Dr. Moylan, the Catholic Bishop of Cork, wrote expressing the deepest regret at the rejection of the Union. ‘It is impossible,’ he wrote, ‘to extinguish the feuds and animosities which disgrace this kingdom, and give it the advantages of its natural and local situation, without an Union with Great Britain…. The tranquillity and future welfare of this poor distracted country rest in a great degree thereon. The earlier it is accomplished, the better.’ 2 When Corry accepted the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, from which Parnell had been removed, he was obliged to go to his constituents at Newry for re-election, and an attempt was made to oppose him, but it was defeated mainly through the influence of Archbishop Troy and through the action of the Catholic portion of the electorate. ‘The Catholics stuck together like the Macedonian phalanx,’ wrote a Newry priest, ‘and with ease were able to turn the scale in favour of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.’ 3 Bishop Delany expressed a strong opinion in favour of the Union, and Dr. Bodkin, who was one of the most important priests in the West of Ireland, and who had for many years been the agent of the majority of the secular prelates at Rome, wrote from Galway, ‘My countrymen are very warm, violent, and easily roused, but they as soon fall back and return to a better sense. I am far from thinking the Union lost; a little time will rally and bring back the disheartened and disaffected. It is the only means left to save from ruin and destruction that poor, infatuated Ireland.’ 4

Archbishop Troy at the same time exerted himself earnestly and efficaciously to prevent any Catholic demands for emancipation which might embarrass the Ministers, and a considerable body of the Catholic prelates in Ireland were in close confidential communication, with them. The proposal for the payment of the Catholic clergy, being connected with the Union, was postponed by the adverse vote of the Irish House of Commons, but the prelates authorised the Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin and the Bishop of Meath to treat with Lord Castlereagh on the subject whenever he thought fit to resume it. 1 A proposal was for some time under discussion for conceding to the Catholics in the Act of Union the offices reserved in the Act of 1793, leaving the question of sitting in the Legislature to the decision of the United Parliament. 2 It was not. however, ultimately pressed, and Lord Castlereagh on the whole appears to have been unfavourable to it. ‘Any appearance of eagerness on the part of Government,’ he thought, ‘would argue weakness, and bear too much the appearance of a bargain, to serve the cause;’ and he added, ‘I conceive the true policy is, by a steady resistance of their claims, so long as the countries remain separate, to make them feel that they can be carried only with us, through an Union.’ 3

On the whole, Cornwallis was probably justified when he spoke of ‘a large proportion of the Catholics’ being in favour of the Union; 4 and in other quarters the measure, in the opinion of the Government, was making some way. One very important acquisition was Lord Ely, who now declared his determination to throw all his influence into its scale. 5 In the North the feeling was at least not strongly hostile, and Alexander wrote to Pelham that on the whole he even considered it favourable, ‘but luke-warmedly.’ The linen merchants and the great majority of the inhabitants of Londonderry, he said, were for it, but the question was looked on as one which chiefly concerned the gentlemen, and it did not arouse any strong popular interest. 6 ‘The public mind,’ wrote Cooke in the beginning of April, ‘is, I think, much suspended on the subject. There is little passion except among the bar and the few interested leaders in the Commons. The Protestants think it will dimmish their power, however it may secure their property. The Catholics think it will put an end to their ambitious hopes, however it may give them ease and equality. The rebels foresee in it their annihilation.’ 7 ‘The opinion of the loyal part of the public,’ wrote Cornwallis,’ is, from everything that I can learn, changing fast in favour of the Union; but I have good reason to believe that the United Irishmen, who form the great mass of the people, are more organised and more determined than ever in their purposes of separation, and their spirits are at this moment raised to the highest pitch in the confidence of soon seeing a French army in this country.’ 1

The open rebellion was over, and the military force of all kinds at this time in Ireland, is said to have exceeded 137,000 men, 2 yet the condition of great tracts of the country had hardly ever been worse. The old crime of houghing cattle had broken out with savage fury in Mayo and Galway. It does not appear on this occasion to have been due to any recent conversion of arable land into pasture, and it is impossible to say how far, or in what proportions, it was due to the resentment and misery produced by the military excesses that had followed the defeat of Humbert, to agrarian motives, or to deliberate political calculation. The pretexts chiefly put forward were a desire to lower rents, and abolish middlemen, but Cornwallis believed that there was some evidence that the United Irishmen were connected with the outburst, and that it was part of a plan to stop the usual supply of cattle to the Cork market, where the English fleet was provisioned. 3 The new Prime Sergeant, who was himself from Galway, gave the House of Commons a graphic account of the state of a great part of Connaught. ‘Hordes of armed ruffians, in number forty to fifty in a gang, traversed the country every night, over a tract of sixty miles, houghing the cattle of gentlemen and farmers, and murdering all who dare to oppose them. In this way, property to the amount of 100,000 l. has been destroyed, within the last two months, in the counties of Galway and Mayo. Every man whose cattle were thus houghed was forbidden, on pain of murder to himself and his family, to expose those beasts in any market; so that they had no alternative, but either to bury the flesh, or give it to the country people for little or nothing…. Against this infernal and destructive system no man dares appeal to public justice…. If any man prosecuted one of the offenders, he did it at the moral certainty of being almost immediately murdered.’ The same fate hung over every magistrate who sent a hougher to gaol, every witness who gave evidence against him, every juryman who convicted him. Well-dressed men led the parties, and at least one man who had played a conspicuous part in political rebellion in Connaught was shown to be a leader. A rich farmer, who had refused to take the United Irish oath, had no less than 250 bullocks houghed, and was reduced almost to beggary. 1 ‘The rabble,’ said the Attorney-General, ‘are told that by pursuing this practice, they will get land cheap; the leaders know that in distressing the British power, they will advance the interest of the French Directory.’ ‘Do not expect,’ the Attorney-General continued, ‘that the country gentlemen will dare to serve on juries if the forfeit of their property is to be the result of their verdicts, and if when that property has been already destroyed, their lives are to be the next sacrifice. Such is the situation of the most tranquil province of Ireland…. The gentry are obliged to abandon their estates, and driven into the towns; and to the honour of the Roman Catholic gentry of that country be it spoken, that they have been the most active to repress these outrages, and have been the most severe sufferers from their extent…. There are two counties of your kingdom in which the King's judges have not dared for one year past to carry their commission.’

A member named Ormsby mentioned, in the course of the debate, that he was present at Carrick-on-Shannon, when six traitors were acquitted in spite of the clearest evidence. The judge said that he must adjourn the assizes, as no justice could be obtained. One of the jurymen then stood up and freely acknowledged this, adding, ‘My Lord, what can we do? A coal of fire, set in our barn or the thatch of our house, destroys our property, possibly the lives of our wives and children. If you want verdicts of conviction, your juries must be summoned from garrison towns, where the individual may look for protection.’ Another member mentioned a case in the county of Limerick, in which a man ventured on his own part, and on that of eight other persons, to prosecute an offender who had plundered and destroyed their property. All nine were murdered in a single night.

No part of the country, however, was worse than the neighbourhood of Dublin itself, for the scattered fragments of the rebel forces that had haunted the Wicklow hills, were now converted into small bands of robbers and murderers. Every country gentleman who continued to live in his house, required an armed garrison. ‘Does a night pass,’ said the Attorney-General in Parliament, ‘without a murder in the county? Do gentlemen know that the amount of the deliberate and midnight murders in that small district of the county called Fingal, within a short time past, exceeds two hundred? … It may be said that this county, as indeed almost all Ireland, is proclaimed, but even so the military officers cannot act without a magistrate, and where are the magistrates to be found? … Are not your mail coaches plundered to an immense amount almost within view of the city?’ ‘It is a notorious fact,’ said the Prime Sergeant, ‘that no man could travel, even at noonday, six miles from the capital in any direction, without the moral certainty of being robbed or murdered by gangs of those banditti.’ 1

In the beginning of March, the houghing of cattle spread fiercely in Meath, and it was said to have also appeared in the South. 2 In the county of Cork, the tithe war was raging, accompanied with the cruel persecution of all employed in collecting tithes. Cornwallis believed that the whole of the South was prepared to rise the moment a French soldier set his foot on shore; in the middle of March he pronounced this part of Ireland to be by far the most agitated, and he inferred that it was the quarter where a French invasion was most likely to take place. Ulster was more quiet than the other provinces, but signs of disturbance had appeared in the county of Antrim, where the houses of some loyalists had been plundered. 3

The Government about this time obtained some additional secret information, and they appear to have discovered the existence of a United Irish executive in Dublin. 4 An eminent Dublin surgeon named Wright was arrested on a charge of high treason, and on finding, from the questions of Cooke, that his conduct was known, he burst into tears and made a confession, which Castlereagh sent to England. He told Cooke, that he believed that the danger from the United Irish conspiracy had vanished, since the men of property and ability connected with it had been killed, taken, or banished; but that the Defender system, which was purely Catholic, and was aiming at the establishment of popery, had taken its place, and was rapidly drawing within its circle the great body of the lower Catholics. Having dressed the wounds of more than 500 rebels, he had learnt to know their real feeling; he had found them to be inspired by a fierce religious fanaticism, and he believed that this spirit was steadily growing. The upper ranks of Catholics in general merely looked for consequence in the State; and if they were on an equal footing with the Protestants, they would be soon loyal monarchy men. But the lower ranks were entirely governed by their priests, and especially by the friars, who were ‘a very good-for-nothing set;’ and they never could be reformed, ‘but by their priests and by better education.’ Orange societies, and many acts of violence perpetrated by private irresponsible loyalists, fanned the flame. Among the young men in Dublin, especially among the merchant clerks and shopmen, there were many active rebels of the old type, and young Robert Emmet was their guiding spirit. ‘The whole country would rise if there were to be a French invasion.’ Other information pointed to the leading part Robert Emmet was beginning to take, and in May the Government gave orders for his arrest, but he succeeded in escaping to the Continent. Castlereagh himself, not long after, expressed his belief, that the United system was in general laid aside, ‘the Presbyterians having become Orangemen, and the Catholics Defenders.’ 1 But it was long before conspiracy of the United Irish description had wholly ceased, and it was feared that the near prospect of invasion might at any time revive it. 2

The speeches I have last quoted, took place at the introduction of one of the most severe of the many stringent coercion Bills carried by the Irish Parliament. The proclamation of May 24, which had been approved by both Houses of Parliament, had ordered the general officers to punish by death and otherwise, according to martial law, every person concerned in the rebellion; but now that the actual struggle was over, and the courts were open, martial law was plainly illegal. The impossibility of the two jurisdictions acting concurrently had been foreseen, and some months earlier, Lord Pery had recommended a Bill authorising the military authorities to try by court-martial persons engaged in the rebellion, alleging that without such law the exercise of martial law could only be justified by the strictest necessity, and that this necessity would be difficult to define. The Government, however, while believing military law to be indispensable in the unsettled state of the country, considered also that less violence was done to the Constitution by giving indemnity to those who had acted illegally for the preservation of the State, than by enacting a law formally authorising martial law when the courts were sitting. 1 The collision between Lord Kilwarden and the military authorities about the execution of Wolfe Tone, brought the difficulty into clear relief, and the multiplying outrages throughout the country seemed to require a new and very drastic remedy. Past transgressions of the law, which had taken place since October 6, 1798, for the purpose of suppressing the rebellion, preserving the public peace, and for the safety of the State, were condoned by the very comprehensive Indemnity Act which received the royal assent on March 25. 2 But, in addition to this measure, a new Act was carried, placing Ireland, at the will of the Lord Lieutenant, formally and legally under military law.

The preamble noticed that Lord Camden on March 30, 1798, had, with the advice of the Privy Council, directed the military commanders in Ireland to employ all their forces to suppress rebellion; that the order of May 24, commanding them to punish by death or otherwise, according to martial law, all persons assisting in the rebellion, had received the approbation of both Houses of Parliament; that, although this measure had proved so for efficacious as to permit the course of common law partially to take place, very considerable parts of the kingdom were still desolated by a rebellion, which took the form of acts of savage violence and outrage, and rendered the ordinary course of justice impossible; and that many persons who had been guilty of the worst acts during the rebellion, and had been taken by his Majesty's forces, had availed themselves of the partial restoration of the ordinary course of the common law, to evade the punishment of their crimes. The Bill accordingly empowered the Lord Lieutenant, as long as this rebellion continued, and notwithstanding the opening of the ordinary courts of justice, to authorise the punishment by death or otherwise, according to martial law, of all persons assisting in the rebellion, or maliciously attacking the persons or properties of the King's loyal subjects in furtherance of it; the detention of all persons suspected of such crimes, and their summary trial by court-martial. No act done in pursuance of such an order could be questioned, impeded, or punished by the courts of common law, and no person duly detained under the powers created by this Act, could be released by a writ of Habeas Corpus. 1

This Act, which invested the Lord Lieutenant with some of the extreme powers of a despotic ruler, has often been represented as a part of the Union campaign, intended to repress opposition to an unpopular measure. It was opposed partly on that ground in the House of Commons, and a few members made strenuous efforts to modify its provisions, and to restrict its area and its duration. 2 It was, however, the strong belief of the country members that some such Act was necessary, and their concurrence enabled it to pass without difficulty. Rightly or wrongly, indeed, the Irish Parliament was always ready to meet outbursts of anarchy by measures of repression, much prompter and much more drastic than English opinion would have tolerated; and one or two members in the course of the discussion, and a considerable body of excited opinion outside the House, ascribed the disastrous condition of the country chiefly to the excessive leniency of Lord Conrwallis, and to his departure from the system of Lord Camden. Representations to this effect had been persistently sent to England, and the English Ministers concurred with them, and were by no means satisfied with the moderation of the Lord Lieutenant; but Castlereagh loyally supported his chief, urging that a severity which was necessary while the rebellion was at its height, would be inexpedient after its repression, and that, in fact, the list of persons executed or transported under Lord Cornwallis had been very considerable. 1 The Bill for establishing martial law, was not altogether approved of in England, and some amendments were introduced into it, at the request of the English Ministry; 2 but there is, I believe, no real ground for supposing that it was intended for any other object than the ostensible ones, though supporters of the Government are accused of having sometimes employed the powers it gave them, to prevent meetings against the Union. It was, however, maintained with much reason, that a time when martial law was in force, was not one for pressing through a vast constitutional change, unasked for by the country, and violently opposed by a great section of its people.

The state of anarchy that prevailed had undoubtedly a great part in convincing many, both in England and Ireland, that a new system of government had become absolutely necessary. ‘The Union,’ Dundas wrote about this time, ‘will certainly not improve our Houses of Parliament. In all other respects it will answer, and without it, Ireland is a country in which it will be impossible for any civilised being to live, and it will be such a thorn in our side as to render us for ever uncomfortable, let our own affairs be conducted as well and prosperously as it is possible for the wisdom of man to do.’ 1 The Government speakers, in advocating the Bill for establishing martial law, painted the situation of the country in the darkest colours. Lord Clare told the House of Lords that, ‘in the western parts of this kingdom, it was impossible for any gentleman of property to be safe, even within his own habitation, unless every village throughout the country was garrisoned, and every gentleman's house a barrack,’ and that, ‘if there was no other cause, the enormous expense of keeping up such a military force must sink the country.’ ‘What is now the situation of the loyalists of this kingdom?’ asked the Prime Sergeant. ‘They are comparatively a small body of men, thinly scattered over the face of the island, surrounded on all sides by an innumerable, inveterate, irreclamable host of sworn enemies. What security have, then, the loyalists of Ireland for their safety at this moment, but in their own personal bravery, and the protection of a great military force?’ 2 ‘The United Irishmen,’ wrote Cornwallis, ‘are whetting their knives, to cut the throats of all the nobility and gentry of the island.’ 3

A few other parliamentary proceedings may be briefly mentioned. Dobbs—the honest, amiable, but eccentric member who has been so often mentioned—brought in a series of resolutions asserting the expediency of a reform of Parliament, the immediate admission of the six or eight Catholic peers into the House of Lords, the admission of Catholics into the House of Commons as soon as peace was restored, a commutation of tithes, and a moderate provision for the Dissenting ministers and the Catholic secular clergy. He appears, however, to have acted without any concert, and the previous question was moved, and carried by sixty-eight to one, the solitary supporter of Dobbs being Newen-ham. 4

Lord Corry, the son of Lord Belmore, made another attempt to close the door against the reintroduction of the Union during the existing Parliament. He moved that the House should at once resolve itself into a committee on the state of the nation, and he announced his intention to move an address to the King, declaring an inviolable attachment to the British connection, but representing a separate independent Parliament as essential to the interest and prosperity of Ireland. Lord Castlereagh opposed the motion as unnecessary, declaring that there was no present intention to press the Union. The temper of the House was described by Lord Cornwallis as ‘moderate;’ several country gentlemen took occasion to state explicitly, that they had every wish to support the Government on all questions except the Union, and some of them added, that even on that question they did not consider themselves irrevocably pledged, if the circumstances of the kingdom should materially alter. The Government defeated Lord Corry's motion by 123 votes against 103, but Lord Cornwallis warned the English Ministers that the debate turned so much on Lord Castlereagh's declaration that the question of the Union was for the present asleep, that they must not infer from the division that the probability of resuming this question with advantage in the present session was in the slightest degree increased. 1

Another and more important measure of the Opposition was a Regency Bill, intended to supply the omission in the law which had rendered possible the conflict of 1789, and thus to meet one of the most powerful arguments urged against the independent Parliament in Ireland. It was moved by Fitzgerald, the former Prime Sergeant, and it appears to have been debated at great length. The Government disliked it, as destroying part of their case for the Union, but it was difficult to find plausible grounds for opposing it. It asserted in the strongest terms the dependence of the Crown of Ireland on that of England, and the inseparable connection of the two countries; and it proceeded to enact, that the person who was ipso facto Regent of England should be always, with the same powers, Regent de jure in Ireland. Castlereagh somewhat captiously objected, that the Bill evaded the point of controversy, by not defining the authority by which the Regent of England was to be made, that it might apply to a person who had usurped the Regency in England on an assumed claim of rights, and that circumstances might arise when it would be expedient that the Regent of Ireland should be under different restrictions from the Regent of England. A few other objections of a very technical kind were suggested, and the Government demanded a distinct and formal recognition of the sole right of the British Parliament to appoint the Regent, and define his powers over the two countries. Fitzgerald replied by inserting in the Bill the words, ‘according to the laws and Constitution of Great Britain.’ The Bill passed successfully through its earlier stages and through the committee, but in the report Castlereagh moved its rejection, and it was ultimately postponed till the session had closed. 1

In the discussion upon it, the whole question of the Union appears to have been revived, and Castlereagh on this occasion delivered what was perhaps his ablest speech in favour of that measure. He observed that the Regency Bill, even if it were adequate, could only meet one of the many Imperial questions on which two independent Legislatures in the same Empire were likely to diverge. In questions of peace and war, of general trade and commerce, of treaties with foreign nations, of Admiralty jurisdiction, of the religious establishment—which, he observed, ought to be regulated on Imperial principles—such divergence was always to be feared. ‘How was it possible?’ he asked, ‘to conceive that the Empire could continue as at present, whilst all parts of it were to receive equal protection, and only one part of it is to suffer the burdens of that protection? Must we not of necessity, and in justice, look to some settlement of Imperial contribution? And so soon as a system of contribution should be established, was there any question as to peace and war, which would not agitate every part of the country? … Why have we not differed from Great Britain in former wars? It is because Great Britain supported the whole expense…. Wars have recently increased in their expense enormously. Ireland as a separate country, possessing all the advantages of the commerce, and all the advantages of the protection of England, will naturally be bound to contribute her just proportion for the continuance of these advantages. When that shall be the case, how can it be expected that she will tamely follow Great Britain with that submission and subserviency which has hitherto marked her conduct? … The feelings of the people must always be agitated in proportion to their interests; they would not easily be reconciled to have their contributions called forth to support measures which their representatives did not discuss…. It was against the principle of human nature, that one country should voluntarily and regularly follow the dictates of another; it was against the common principles of pride and independence, which must ever grow and increase with the importance of the kingdom.’ Hitherto the bond of connection had been the discretion of the Irish Parliament, which had acted with ‘prudence, liberality, and loyalty.’ But ‘in proportion to our wealth and strength, the principle of discretion would be weakened, and the sole security for the continuance of our connection would vanish.’ 1

These considerations had a great and undoubted weight. On the other hand, the Speaker, Foster, availed himself of the Regency debate to reply at length to the speech of Pitt, and to concentrate in a single most able and most elaborate argument the case against the Union. He began by a very full and conclusive argument to prove that, whatever may have been the opinions of individual statesmen, the legislation of 1782 and 1783 had been accepted by the Parliaments of both countries and announced by Ministers of the Crown in England, and by the representatives of the Crown in Ireland, as a ‘final adjustment’ of the constitutional questions between the two countries, though some questions of commercial relationship remained to be settled. He then proceeded to urge, that the constitutional connection, which was established in 1782 and 1783, was not the frail and precarious thread which Pitt represented. Pitt said that one system of connection had been destroyed, and that no other had been substituted for it; and he described the connection of the two countries as now depending merely on the existence of the King, and on the continued agreement of two entirely independent Parliaments, exposed to all the attacks of party and all the effects of accident. But in the amended Constitution of Ireland, no Bill could become a law of Ireland which had not been returned from England ‘under the great seal of Great Britain,’ and the very object of this provision was to prevent the connection from being ‘a bare junction of two kingdoms under one Sovereign,’ by ‘making the British Ministry answerable to the British nation, if any law should receive the royal assent in Ireland which could in any way injure the Empire, or tend to separate Ireland from it.’ ‘The English Council being responsible for every advice they give their Sovereign,’ this provision ‘gives to Britain an effectual pledge to retain in her own hands, that it never shall be in our power by any act of ours to weaken or impair the connection.’ On the other hand, under the Constitution of 1782, ‘Great Britain cannot throw us off. An Act of the British Parliament is inadequate to it. As an instance, no law of hers could repeal our Annexation Act of Henry VIII.’

That a Constitution of this kind, when in the hands of classes who were indisputably loyal, and attached to the connection by the strongest ties of interest, sentiment, and honour, was sufficient to consolidate the Empire, Foster strenuously maintained. It was said, that the Legislature of Ireland might differ from that of Great Britain on questions of peace or war? Had it ever in the long course of centuries done so, though its power to do so had been as unlimited before as after the Constitution of 1782? Had it ever, on any question of peace or war, or treaties, since we have any record of its proceedings, clogged the progress of the Empire? Had it not invariably, but most conspicuously since the recognition of its independence, shown the utmost zeal in supporting Great Britain? The period since 1782 had been peculiarly marked by great and trying events, but it had not produced a single instance of difference on an Imperial question, with the exception of the Regency, and if the Bill before the House were adopted, that difference could never recur.

In theory, no doubt, the two Legislatures might easily clash, just as the British Parliament might at any time disagree with the King in his declaration of peace or war; just as the two Houses of the British Legislature might always, by irreconcilable differences, bring the Government to a dead lock. Good sense and patriotism and manifest interest maintained in harmony the different parts of the British Constitution, and they would operate equally in preventing collisions between the two Parliaments.

Much use had been made by Pitt of the failure, in the Irish House of Commons, of the altered commercial propositions of 1785, and especially of the very powerful speech in which Foster had defended these propositions. Foster had then said, ‘that things could not remain as they were,’ that ‘without united interest of commerce in a commercial empire, political union will receive many shocks, and separation of interest must threaten separation of connection, which every honest Irishman must shudder to look at.’ In reply to this, the House was reminded, in the first place, that the original commercial propositions had been agreed to by the Irish Parliament in a division in which there were no Noes except the tellers', and that it was not the fault of the Irish Parliament if the negotiations for a treaty of commerce were not renewed; and, in the next place, that matters of commerce had in fact not remained as they were. The Irish Parliament had since 1785 passed, with the concurrence or at the suggestion of the Government, a series of Acts for the express purpose of placing the commercial systems of the two countries in harmony, and those measures had been perfectly efficacious. The English Navigation Act had been adopted. The monopoly of the Eastern trade by the East India Company had been confirmed. A number of regulations relating to the registry of shipping, to the increase of shipping, to the lighthouse duties, and to Greenwich Hospital, had been adopted. By the acknowledgment of the representatives of the English Government in Ireland, the commercial systems of the two countries were now working in perfect harmony. England had not a single reason to complain of any act of the Irish Parliament on this subject; 1 and that Parliament was both willing and eager to enter into a compact about the Channel trade. Although the altered treaty of 1785 had been rejected, ‘the good sense and mutual interest of each country had from time to time passed all laws necessary to prevent the operation and inconveniences of commercial jealousies.’

The true inference, Foster said, which the English Minister should have drawn from the rejection of the propositions of 1785, was very different from that which he had drawn. ‘When a suspicion that the operation of them might affect the independence of our Legislature, created such a general disapprobation as obliged him to abandon the measure, he should have learned wisdom thereby, and not have proposed at this day, to a nation so greatly attached to that independence, and the more so for her rising prosperity since its attainment, a measure which does not barely go to alter it, but avowedly and expressly to extinguish it. He should have recollected, that he now offers no one practical or even speculative advantage in commerce when the total extinction is required, and that a measure suspected only to infringe on that independence failed in his hands, though accompanied with offers of solid and substantial benefit to trade.’

It had been said, that the Union with England would tend to tranquillise the country, and to raise the tone of its civilisation. And this, said Foster, is to be the result of ‘transporting its Legislature, its men of fortune, and its men of talents'! ‘If a resident Parliament and resident gentry cannot soften manners, amend habits, or promote social intercourse, will no Parliament and fewer resident gentry do it?’ 1 The greatest misfortune of this kingdom, with respect to the tenantry, is the large class of middlemen who intervene between the owner and the actual occupier, ‘and these are mostly to be found on the estates of absentees.’ Whatever may be the case in other countries, in Ireland, at least, the example of the upper ranks is the most effectual means of promoting good morals and habits among the lower orders, and there is no country upon earth where the guiding, softening, and restraining influence of a loyal resident gentry, is of more vital importance. If every estate and every village possessed a wise, just, and moderate resident gentleman, the people would soon learn to obey and venerate the law. But the new English policy was to sweep out of the country a great portion of the very class on which its progress in civilisation and loyalty mainly depended; to diminish the power of those who remained, and to throw the country more and more into the hands of landjobbers and agents. Complaints of neglect of duty were often brought against the Church. Was the standard of duty likely to rise, when the bishops were withdrawn from their dioceses for eight months in the year? Was it credible, ‘that a Parliament, unacquainted with the local circumstances of a kingdom which it never sees, at too great a distance to receive communication or information for administering in time to the wants and wishes of the people, or to guard against excesses or discontents, can be more capable of acting beneficially than the one which, being on the spot, is acquainted with the habits, prejudices, and dispositions of the people?’

Foster then proceeded to dilate upon the importance of a resident Parliament in repressing disaffection and rebellion. In this, as in every part of his career, he assumed as a fundamental and essential condition of Irish self-government, that the power of Parliament should be retained in the hands of the classes that were unquestionably loyal, and who represented the property of the country; and he maintained that the moral weight, and the strong power of organisation and control, which an Irish Parliament gave them, were of the utmost importance. The volunteer movement was not a movement of disaffection, but there was a moment ‘when their great work was effected, and by the indiscreetness of a few leaders their zeal was misled, and they began to exercise the functions of Parliament. We spoke out firmly. They heard our voice with effect, and took our advice in instantly returning to cultivate the blessings of peace…. Personal character, respect to individuals, opinion of their attachment to one common country, all impressed an awe which was irresistible…. Would equal firmness in a Parliament composed five parts in six of strangers, sitting in another country, have had the same effect?’

Then came the great rebellion which had so lately desolated the country. Could a Parliament sitting in another land grapple with such a danger, like a loyal Parliament sitting in Dublin? Would it have the same knowledge of the conditions of the problem, or the same moral weight with the people, or the same promptitude in applying stern and drastic remedies? He reminded the members of the day when they had gone in solemn procession to the Castle to present their address of loyalty, and of the outburst of enthusiasm which their attitude had aroused. ‘It animated the loyal spirit which crushed the rebellion before a single soldier could arrive from England.’ Could any procession of a United Parliament through St. James's Park have had a similar moral effect in Ireland? ‘The extraordinary, but wise and necessary measure, of proclaiming martial law, required the concurrence of Parliament to support the Executive. The time would have passed by before that concurrence could have been asked for and received from London, and it would have given a faint support coming from strangers.’ No one had acknowledged more emphatically than Lord Camden, how largely the ‘peculiar promptitude, alacrity, and unanimity’ of the Irish House of Commons had contributed to crush the rebellion, and to save the State, and to place it in a condition to encounter a foreign as well as a domestic enemy.

The removal of the loyal Parliament which so effectually suppressed the rebellion, would undoubtedly give a new encouragement to disaffection. It would also almost certainly lead to an era of greatly increased taxation. One of the capital advantages of Ireland during the eighteenth century was, that it was one of the most lightly taxed countries in Europe. The speech of Lord Castlereagh clearly foreshadowed that this was now to change, and that a desire to make Ireland contribute in an increased proportion to the expenses of the Empire, was one of the chief motives to the Union. ‘He wants an Union in order to tax you, and take your money, when he fears your own representatives would deem it improper, and to force regulations on your trade which your own Parliament would consider injurious or partial.’

This was but a part of the probable effect of the Union on the material prosperity of Ireland, and Foster examined this subject with a fullness of detail and illustration to which it is wholly impossible in a brief sketch to do adequate justice. He dwelt in strong terms, but not in stronger ones than Clare and Cooke had already used, 1 or than Castlereagh afterwards employed, 2 on the great and manifest progress in material prosperity that had accompanied the latter days of the Irish Parliament. It had been its work ‘to raise this kingdom into prosperity, and keep it in a steady and rapid advance, even beyond the utmost hopes of its warmest advocates.’ He quoted the recent language of Parliament itself, declaring in an address to Lord Cornwallis, ‘that under his Majesty's benevolent auspices his kingdom of Ireland had risen to a height of prosperity unhoped for and unparalleled in any former era;’ and he proceeded to argue, with great ingenuity and knowledge, that the latter progress of Ireland with her separate Parliament had been more rapid than that of Scotland under the Union. And this progress was chiefly accomplished under the Constitution of 1782. ‘It has not only secured, but absolutely showered down upon you more blessings, more trade, more affluence, than ever fell to your lot in double the space of time which has elapsed since its attainment.’ ‘The general export rose in seventy-eight years to 1782 from one to five, and in fourteen years after 1782 from five to ten. The linen export in the seventy-eight years rose from one to thirty-two, and in the last fourteen years from thirty-two to eighty-eight, so that the general export rose as much in the last fourteen years as it had done not only during the preceding seventy-eight years, but during all time preceding; and the linen increased in the last fourteen years very nearly to treble the amount of what it had been before.’ He inferred from this, that the condition of Ireland was essentially sound, that if she were only wise enough to abstain from experiment, industry and wealth must increase, and civilisation and meliorated manners must follow in their train.

It was said that this material progress was either not due to political causes, or not due to the action of the Irish Parliament. That political causes had largely produced the depression that preceded it, Foster said, no one at least could doubt. No United Irishman indeed had ever described more severely the character and the effects of English commercial policy in Ireland, than William Pitt in his speeches on the commercial propositions of 1785. ‘Until these very few years,’ he had said, ‘the system had been that of debarring Ireland from the enjoyment and use of her own resources, to make the kingdom completely subservient to the interests and opulence of this country, without suffering her to share in the bounties of nature and the industry of her citizens,’ for Great Britain till very recently had ‘never looked upon her growth and prosperity as the growth and prosperity of the Empire at large.’ By simply repealing its own restricting laws, the English Parliament had no doubt given a great impulse to Irish progress, but the more liberal policy of the English Parliament was largely due to the vigour which the Octennial Act had infused into the Parliament of Ireland. And in other ways the action of that Parliament had been more direct. It gave the export bounties, which placed our linen trade on an equal footing with the British, ‘whereas till then our linen was exported from Britain … under a disadvantage of 5½ per cent.’ It supported powerfully and efficaciously the demands of the Executive on Portugal for the full participation of Ireland in the Methuen treaty. During forty years the victualling trade of Ireland had been harassed and restricted by twenty-four embargoes, one of which lasted three years, until ‘Parliament took up the subject. The embargo ceased, and none has appeared to oppress you from that day.’ 1 And finally it was Parliament which, by the bounties on corn, gave the first great impulse to Irish agriculture. All this was due to the Constitution of 1782, which ‘gave freedom to our Parliament, and with it the power of protection.’ Could the commercial interests of the country be equally trusted to a Parliament which was dependent, or to a Parliament in which the Irish members were hopelessly outnumbered?

It might be said, that ‘you would depend on the articles you may frame, to secure your trade and your purse.’ It was answered, that the very doctrine of the omnipotence of Parliament, which was now so constantly urged, and which was necessary to justify the Union, reduced its articles to mere waste paper. The United Parliament will have the power to alter or abrogate any article of the Union which it pleases, to abolish bounties, to amalgamate debts, or to raise the level of taxation as it desires, and a minority of a hundred Irish members will have no power to stay its decision.

Foster then proceeded at great length, and with great amplitude of illustration, to examine in succession the different industries that would be affected by the measure. The growth of English manufactures in Ireland, as a result of the Union, he believed to be wholly chimerical. He argued in much detail that neither the woollen, nor the iron, nor the cotton, nor the pottery manufactures of England, were likely to take any considerable root in Ireland, and he especially combated the prediction, which had much influence in Munster, that Cork would rise after the Union to unprecedented prosperity. He proceeded then to consider the contention of Pitt, that the Irish linen manufacture was wholly dependent on the encouragement of Great Britain, and that it was the policy of England, and not anything done by the Irish Parliament, that had produced the great and undoubted commercial prosperity of the last few years. This line of argument Foster very strongly deprecated. The two countries, he said, were so closely connected, that each could greatly assist or greatly injure the other, and nothing could be more detrimental to a true Union than to sow between them, by idle boasts or threats, a spirit of commercial jealousy or distrust. Ireland owed very much to England, but the benefit was reciprocal, for it was proved by official statistics, that in 1797 the export of English manufactures to Ireland alone was more than one-third of the value of the export of those manufactures to all the rest of Europe. Was it likely that Great Britain would quarrel with such a customer? Independently of the historical fact that the encouragement of the linen trade was intended as a compensation for the iniquitous suppression of the Irish wool trade, it was not true that Irish linen depended on English bounties and encouragement. At the time when he spoke, the linen trade was in a state of extraordinary prosperity. Irish linens had very recently risen thirty-five per cent. above their usual value, ‘and yet the British merchants are so anxious to purchase them, that they are even securing them on the greens before they can go to market.’ ‘Irish linens do not monopolise the British market by means of the duty [on foreign linen], and could at present find their way there, even if there was no duty on the foreign.’ ‘In no place are we protected against German linen except in Britain, and yet ours is finding its way almost everywhere.’ ‘Our linens beat the German and the Russian in the American markets. They are preferred even to the Scotch, and no nation can bring the fabric to the perfection we do, not so much perhaps from superior skill, as from the peculiar fitness of our climate for bleaching.’

Such a trade could certainly exist and flourish without the support of Great Britain. That England by a protective policy directed against Ireland, could inflict much injury on her, was no doubt true, but those who rashly counselled such a policy should learn to dread the consequences of changing the course of manufacture by forced measures, and should remember that four and a half millions of people will not remain idle. ‘England raised the woollen manufactory here by prohibiting the importation of Irish provisions, and she established the woollen manufactory afterwards in France by destroying the child of her own creation in Ireland. Should she attempt and prevail in prohibiting our linen to her ports, it is impossible to foresee what ports we may find, what returns we may get, and in those how much of what she now supplies us with, may be included.’

These words came with an especial weight from a statesman, who was the acknowledged master of all questions relating to the commercial condition of Ireland—a statesman whose life had been largely spent in harmonising the commercial systems of the two countries. Nor was there less weight in the language in which he dwelt upon the extreme danger of persisting in such a measure as the Union, in opposition to the genuine sentiment of the intelligent portion of the nation. ‘Let the silly attempt,’ he said, ‘to encourage its revival by getting resolutions privately signde for it, be abandoned. If you doubt the general execration in which it is held, call the counties. Take their sense at public meetings, instead of preventing those meetings lest the general sense should be known, and put an end to all the idle and silly tricks of circulating stories, that this gentleman or that gentleman has changed his mind.’ ‘The Union of Scotland was recommended to prevent separation—we oppose the proposed Union from the same motive.’

A mere sketch, such as I have given, can do little justice to a speech which took more than four hours in its delivery, and was afterwards published in a pamphlet of no less than 113 closely printed pages. It should be compared with the great speech of Pitt, which it was intended to answer, and it will not suffer by the comparison. It had a wide and serious influence on opinion, not only from its great intrinsic merits, but also from the high character and position of its author; from his evident disinterestedness; and from the confidential place he had for so many years held in the Government of the country.

There were but few other proceedings in the Parliament of 1799 that need delay our attention. The Indemnity Act, and the proceedings of the High Sheriff of Tipperary, which chiefly produced it, have been elsewhere considered. The Act was warmly recommended by Lord Castlereagh, and there is, I believe, no evidence that he seriously disapproved of the conduct of Fitzgerald. 1 A very remarkable and somewhat obscure episode, however, took place about this time in the House of Lords, which deserves some notice.

We have seen that the College of Maynooth, though built by a parliamentary grant, had not at first any fixed or recognised endowment from the State. The grant, however, of 8,000 l. , which had been voted in 1795, was followed in the three next years by additional grants amounting together to 27,000 l. 2 But in 1799, in consequence of negotiations entered into with Archbishop Troy, and some other leading members of the Catholic body, the Government determined to place the college on a firmer basis, by providing it with a permanent annual endowment of 8,000 l. which was to be devoted to the purpose of educating 200 students. 3 The measure, like most others at this time, was in reality taken mainly for the sake of winning support for the Union, 4 and the Government do not appear to have anticipated any serious resistance, or to have encountered any in the Commons; but when the Bill came before the Peers, it met with a most unexpected fate. Lord Clare, without having given the smallest hint of his intention either to Cornwallis or to Castlereagh, rose to oppose it. He appears from the beginning to have detested the institution, and he now maintained that its evils could only be palliated by introducing into the seminary a lay element of sons of Catholic gentry, who might liberalise the sacerdotal students by their contact and manners, and also by insisting on the students paying at least a portion of the expense of their education. Maynooth, he complained, was a purely sacerdotal institution; the education was gratuitous; the future priesthood of Ireland would in consequence be drawn from the dregs of the population, and he spoke in terms of bitter invective of the recent conduct of the Catholic clergy in dividing as much as possible the Catholics from the Protestants. In the House of Lords, the Chancellor was almost omnipotent, and on his motion the proposal that the Bill should go into committee was rejected by twenty-five to one.

This was a complete and most unwelcome surprise to the Government, and it threatened very seriously to disturb their negotiations with the Catholics. The belief was soon widely spread that it was intended to abolish Maynooth, but Castlereagh at once disavowed any such intention, and in the following year a grant, which the Government desired, was duly voted with a Bill slightly altering the administration of the College, and Clare took a leading part in supporting it. The cause of his very extraordinary conduct in 1799 must be a matter of conjecture. He himself wrote to Lord Castlereagh, that he was convinced that if Maynooth on its existing lines received a permanent legislative sanction, it would enable the popish prelates of Ireland to subvert its Government in ten years. 1 It appears, however, to have been believed by many that other motives influenced his decision. 2 Perhaps the most probable was a desire to show the Government that if they tried to carry the Union by making concessions to the Catholics, and sacrificing the party of the ascendency, they might encounter a most formidable and uncompromising opposition.

It is certain, however, that the attitude of the Catholic priesthood in Ireland, had at this time created a very real and widespread anxiety and irritation among men who were neither Orangemen nor sympathisers with Orangemen, and that these feelings were not solely or even mainly due to the part taken by some priests in the rebellion. The great clerical reaction throughout Europe, which followed the French Revolution, might be already discerned in Ireland in an increased stringency of ecclesiastical discipline, which was directly calculated to deepen the divisions of Irish life. Much irritation had been created on the eve of the rebellion by a pastoral of Dr. Hussey, commenting on some cases in which Catholic soldiers are stated to have been obliged to attend Protestant worship. The grievance appears to have been a real one, 1 but it was said that the time and manner in which it was denounced were eminently fitted to sow the seeds of disaffection and division in the army.

More serious complaints were made, that the priests were forcing Catholic parents, by threats of excommunication and deprivation of all the benefits and blessings of the Church, to withdraw their children from Protestant schools. It was obviously intended, it was said, to bring into the hands of the priests the education of all the lower orders throughout the kingdom, and the worst enemy of Ireland could not devise a more effectual scheme for keeping the Irish Catholics a distinct people, maintaining eternal enmity and hatred between them and the Protestant body, and counteracting that liberal intercourse which tolerant laws and tolerant manners had of late years established between them. ‘This,’ it was added, ‘was precisely the same tyranny of which the Catholics had themselves so long complained, as violating the first principles of nature, by denying the parent the right of educating his children as seemed best to himself,’ and the priests were far more inexorable in enforcing the spiritual penalties, than the Legislature had ever been in enforcing temporal ones. In the late rebellion there had been alarming signs that when fanaticism was aroused, Catholic servants in Protestant houses could not be trusted, and that they looked upon their masters as aliens and reprobates. Few things, it was said, had done so much to produce this feeling as the inexorable refusal of absolution and the sacraments, by which the priests now punished any Catholic servant who attended the family prayers of his Protestant master, even when it was perfectly notorious that those prayers contained nothing in the smallest degree hostile to the Catholic faith. In the English Church the power of excommunication had long been disused; and even when it was employed, it was exercised only under the strict superintendence of the ecclesiastical courts. In Ireland it was lavishly employed, and it was made the instrument of atrocious tyranny. It was especially made use of to punish all Roman Catholics who entered a Protestant church, assisted at a Protestant sermon, or received any kind of moral or religious instruction from a Protestant minister. ‘The excommunicated person,’ wrote a Protestant bishop of very moderate opinions, ‘is driven from society; no one converses with him; no one serves, no one employs him.’ The Bishop mentions one case, which had come under his personal notice, of a Catholic who in his family read the English Bible, and who sometimes went to hear a sermon in a Protestant church. He was publicly excommunicated, and the immediate consequence was, that he lost all his business as house-painter, and was reduced to poverty. He was often advised to bring an action for damages against the priest, but he knew that his life would be in imminent danger if he did so, and he was at last obliged to fly from the country.

It appeared to many Protestants, that a tyranny not less crushing or degrading than the old penal laws was growing up in Ireland, and that it might one day become a grave danger to the State. It was represented that with the home education of the priests, their numbers would certainly increase; that the bishops, not content with Maynooth, were establishing seminaries for priests in almost every diocese; that in the government of Maynooth the Protestant element was little more than formal, and had no real power. 1 A numerous priesthood, drawn chiefly from the peasant class; educated on a separate and monastic system; uncontrolled and unendowed by the State, and exercising an enormous influence over an ignorant and disaffected people, might hereafter play a formidable part in Irish politics. The attitude of the House of Lords in 1799 may have been largely influenced by such fears.

The other incident which must be noticed in this session, was of a very different kind. Colonel Cole, one of the members for Enniskillen, who was an opponent of the Union, had been ordered to join his regiment in Malta; he accordingly desired, in the usual way, to vacate his seat, and it was known that a prominent anti-Unionist would take his place. Seats in the Irish Parliament were vacated by the grant of a nominal office called the Escheatorship of Munster, which corresponded to the Chiltern Hundreds in England. In both countries the office was granted as a matter of course, though a single case was discovered in Ireland in which it had been refused. It was the main object, however, of the Government to pack the Parliament with supporters of the Union, and accordingly Cornwallis, who granted the Escheatorship invariably, and without question, in all cases in which an Unionist was likely to be returned, took the extraordinary course of refusing it to Colonel Cole, and to another member whose seat would be filled by an anti-Unionist. His act was defended on the ground that the bestowal of Crown offices was within the sole and unquestioned prerogative of the Crown; but an Opposition powerful in talent and character maintained, that such an exercise of the prerogative was a gross abuse, and a glaring violation of the spirit of the Constitution. The independent element in the House appears to have been strongly with them, and an address, requesting the Crown to grant a pension to Colonel Cole, which, by disqualifying him from sitting in the House, would vacate his seat, was moved by John Claudius Beresford. The Government succeeded in defeating it by a motion for adjournment, but their majority was only fifteen, and the Duke of Portland intimated that for the future it would be better to follow the rule adopted in England. 1

The conduct of the Government in this matter clearly showed their determination at all hazards to persevere. In April an address in favour of the Union passed through both of the British Houses of Parliament almost without opposition, after debates which added little to the weight of argument, but much to the weight of authority in its favour. The remarkable concurrence of opinion among those who had been personally responsible for the administration of Ireland, that a speedy Union was essential to the security and continuance of the connection, is the strongest argument in favour of the Government. In the English debates in this and the succeeding year, Carlisle, Westmorland, Portland, Camden, and Buckingham, who had all been Lords Lieutenant, and Hobart, Auckland, and Douglass, who had all been Chief Secretaries, spoke strongly in favour of an Union. Lord Fitzwilliam, however, and General Fitzpatrick, who had been Chief Secretary in the Administration of Portland, took the other side, the first dwelling chiefly on the inopportuneness of the moment for introducing so extensive a change, and the second maintaining the acknowledged finality of the constitutional compact of 1782.

Very few of the seceding Whigs thought it necessary to be present during these debates, and only three somewhat obscure peers signed the protest against the address. Lord Moira in one House, and Sir Francis Burdett in the other, denounced the whole recent Irish policy of the Government with great violence, and the former declared that the Union in Ireland was viewed ‘by the nation at large, with an abhorrence amounting almost to a degree of frenzy.’ A more temperate, and therefore a more impressive speech, was made by Lord Darnley, who was a great Irish proprietor. He believed that a legislative Union between the two countries was in itself desirable; but he warned the Ministers that they most seriously underrated the opposition to it in Ireland. ‘Englishmen,’ he said, ‘are disposed to measure everything by the standard of their own country, than which nothing can be more fallacious when applied to Ireland. I really believe that, in many respects, the inhabitants of no two countries on the face of the globe are so essentially different.’ English Ministers, he continued, were entirely mistaken in supposing that the opposition to the Union in Ireland represented merely a faction or a cabal. ‘Unless I am very much deceived, it speaks almost the united sense of the whole Irish nation—not indeed of the whole nation taken numerically, for unfortunately the majority of the population of Ireland is incapable of forming any adequate judgment on this or any other subject; and if they were, their minds are so tainted with the poison of French principles … that their opinion would be of but little value as applied to the question. I speak not therefore of them, but of the middle ranks of every description throughout the country, the country gentlemen, the yeomen, the merchants and manufacturers, the learned bodies … the strength and sinew of the country, the zealous friends of British connection … these, I fear, are your opponents…. Nothing which I have seen or heard, induces me to believe that this most respectable and important part of the Irish nation is not decidedly hostile to every idea of Union.’ 1

Very little was said in reply to these representations, but one speaker dilated on the many signs of unpopularity that had attended and followed the Scotch Union, and had not prevented that act from being a signal blessing to both countries. The addresses, however, of the two English Houses of Parliament in favour of the Union had a considerable moral effect, and the speech of the Lord Lieutenant, in closing the session of the Irish Parliament on June 1, clearly evinced the determination of the Government to push on the measure. The fact that the Irish House of Commons had emphatically condemned it in its very first stage was not even referred to, but the Lord Lieutenant stated that he had received his Majesty's particular commands to acquaint them with the addresses and resolutions of the two Houses in England. He added, that the King would receive the greatest satisfaction in witnessing the accomplishment of the Union, and that for his own part, if he were able ‘to contribute in the smallest degree to the success of this great measure,’ he would consider the labours and anxieties of a life devoted to the public service, amply repaid. 1

In addition to the Union, there were two other measures which the English Government was extremely anxious to carry. One of them was the imposition of an income tax on Ireland, like that of England. The other was a law similar to one which had just passed in England, enabling the King to take 10,000 men out of the Irish militia for the purpose of foreign service. 2 Castlereagh and Cornwallis warned them that it would be most dangerous to connect these measures with the Union, and the latter measure appeared to the Lord Lieutenant in the existing condition of Ireland altogether unsafe. It was, at one time, in contemplation to summon Parliament for an October session, for the purpose of imposing an income tax prior to an Union, 3 but this intention was ultimately abandoned. It was perceived that it would interrupt the measures which the Government were taking to create a parliamentary majority for the Union, and to this great end all their efforts and policies were now subordinated. Seven months and a half were accordingly allowed to pass before Parliament was again summoned, and in this interval the task of securing a majority was accomplished.

CHAPTER XXXII.: the union.

Part II.

The kind of negotiation into which Lord Cornwallis was at this time compelled to enter, was in the highest degree distasteful to his frank, honourable, soldier-like character, and his correspondence shows that he was under no illusion about the nature of his task, or about the real motives, opinions, and dispositions of his supporters. ‘The political jobbing of this country,’ he writes, ‘gets the better of me. It has ever been the wish of my life to avoid this dirty business, and I am now involved in it beyond all bearing…. How I long to kick those whom my public duty obliges me to court!’ ‘My occupation is now of the most unpleasant nature, negotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt people under heaven. I despise and hate myself every hour, for engaging in such dirty work, and am supported only by the reflection, that without an Union the British Empire must be dissolved.’ He recalled, as applicable to himself, the bitter lines in which Swift had painted the demon Viceroy, scattering in corruption the contributions of the damned, and then complaining that his budget was too small; 1 and he repeated once more, ‘Nothing but the conviction that an Union is absolutely necessary for the safety of the British Empire, could make me endure the shocking task which is imposed on me.’ That the majority which ultimately carried the Union, was not an honest majority expressing honest opinions, he most clearly saw. ‘The nearer the great event approaches,’ he wrote almost at the last stage of the discussion, ‘the more are the needy and interested senators alarmed at the effects it may possibly have on their interests and the provision for their families, and I believe that half of our majority would be at least as much delighted as any of our opponents, if the measure could be defeated.’ 1

In the face of such declarations, it appears to me idle to dispute the essentially corrupt character of the means by which the Union was carried, though it may be truly said that selfish motives, and even positive corruption, were by no means a monopoly of its supporters, and though there may be some difference of opinion about the necessity of the case, and some reasonable doubt about the particular forms of bribery that were employed. The most serious feature in the parliamentary debates of 1799, was the strenuous opposition to the measure by the county members, who represented the great majority of the free constituencies of Ireland, who on all normal occasions supported the Government, and who in many instances, while opposing the Union, disclaimed in the most emphatic terms any intention of going into systematic opposition. Lord Castlereagh, as I have said, attributed their attitude largely to the first intention of the Government to diminish by a half the county representation, and he hoped that the retention of the whole of that representation in his amended scheme, and the greatly enhanced dignity attaching to a seat in the Imperial Parliament, would put an end to their opposition. But in this expectation he was deceived. Though some conspicuous county members supported the Union, the large majority, as we shall see, remained to the end its opponents.

The main power in Parliament, however, rested with the great borough owners, and so many seats were in the hands of a few men, that the task of the Government was not a very formidable one. In truth, when we consider the enormous and overwhelming majorities the Government could on all ordinary occasions command, and the utter insignificance of the Opposition, especially after the secession of Grattan and the outbreak of the rebellion, the difficulty they encountered is more wonderful than their success. A few of the borough seats were attached to bishoprics, and were completely at their disposal. Others were in the hands of great English absentees. Most of them were in the control of men who held lucrative offices in the Government, or who had within the last few years been either ennobled, or promoted in the peerage as a price of their political support. Lord Shannon, who had long been the most powerful of the borough owners, had from the beginning supported them; Lord Waterford, Lord Ormond, Lord Clifden, Lord Longueville, and other peers with great influence in the House of Commons, were on the same side. In the constitution of the Irish Parliament, the purchase of a few men was sufficient to turn the scale and to secure a majority, and this purchase was now speedily and simply effected by promises of peerages.

Immediately after the Union had passed through the Irish House of Commons, but before it had received the royal assent, Lord Cornwallis sent over a list of sixteen new peerages, which had been promised on account of valuable services that had been rendered in carrying it. It appears from the correspondence that ensued, that the King and the English Government, though they had given a general authority to Cornwallis, had not been consulted in the details of the promotions, and they were anxious to strike out a few names and adjourn the creations till after the first election of representative peers for the Imperial Parliament. 1 Cornwallis and Castlereagh both declared that this course would involve a breach of faith which would make it impossible for them to continue in the Government of Ireland, and a few sentences from the letters of Castlereagh will throw a clear light on the nature of the transaction. ‘It appears to me,’ he wrote, ‘that Lord Cornwallis, having been directed to undertake and carry the measure of Union, and having been fully authorised by various despatches to make arrangements with individuals to which not only the faith of his own, but of the English Government, was understood to be pledged, will be very harshly treated if the wisdom of his arrangements, now the measure is secured, is to be canvassed…. I am fully aware of the responsibility to which the Irish Government has been subjected, in the exercise of the authority which I conceive to have been delegated to them at the outset of this measure. The importance of the object could have alone induced the King's Ministers to grant such powers, and I hope they will now, in deciding what remains to be done, advert to the nature of the struggle, as well as the authority which the Irish Government conceived itself in the possession of…. It certainly has been exercised successfully as far as the object is concerned, and not for any purposes personal either to Lord Cornwallis or myself…. In so long a struggle, in a certain period of which, after the defection of seven members in one division, the fate of the measure was in suspense, it is not wonderful that the scale of favours should have been somewhat deranged; if in two or three instances, and I do not believe it will appear in more, certain individuals, availing themselves of circumstances, obtained assurances of favours to which in strictness they are not entitled.’ ‘It appears that the Cabinet, after having carried the measure by the force of influence of which they were apprised in every despatch sent from hence for the last eighteen months, wish to forget all this; they turn short round, and say it would be a pity to tarnish all that has been so well done by giving any such shock to the public sentiment. If they imagine they can take up popular grounds by disappointing their supporters, and by disgracing the Irish Government, I think they will find themselves mistaken. It will be no secret what has been promised, and by what means the Union has been secured…. The only effect of such a proceeding on their part, will be to add the weight of their testimony to that of the anti-Unionists in proclaiming the profligacy of the means by which the measure has been accomplished…. The new peerages … are all granted either to persons actually members of, or connected with, the House of Commons.’ 1

The sixteen peerages, however, referred to in these letters, by no means comprise the whole of what in this department was done. In the short viceroyalty of Lord Cornwallis, no less than twenty-eight Irish peerages were created, six Irish peers obtained English peerages on account of Irish services, and twenty Irish peers obtained a higher rank in the peerage. 1

There was another form of bribe, which had probably not less influence. If the Union was carried, a new object of ambition of the first magnitude would be at once opened to the Irish peerage. No promotion in that peerage was likely to be so much coveted as the position of representative peer, which was to be enjoyed by twenty-eight members of the Irish peerage, and was to place them for life in the Imperial House of Lords. But the influence the Government exercised in the peerage was so great, that it was easy to foresee that, in the first election at least, it would prove absolutely decisive. The first representative peers, indeed, were virtually nominated by the Lord Lieutenant, and they consisted exclusively of supporters of the Union. 2

It was essentially by these means that the Union was carried, though there are some slight qualifications to be made. In the long list of creations and promotions, there are nine which were not connected with the Union, and among the new peers there were doubtless a few who claimed and received rewards for acting in accordance with their genuine convictions. Lord Clare, the great father of the Union, was made an English peer in September 1799. 3 Lord Altamount had from the first declared himself in its favour, and the tone of his whole correspondence with the Government indicates a man of real public spirit, yet he bargained for and obtained a marquisate. Lord Kenmare was the leading member of a small group of Catholic gentlemen who had long been in the close confidence of the Government, and who undoubtedly desired the Union, yet the earldom of Lord Kenmare was described by Lord Cornwallis as one of the titles which he was ‘obliged’ to promise in order to carry it. 1 Men, it is true, who valued honour more than honours, and who, in a period of extreme corruption, believed it to be their duty to take the invidious course of voting for the extinction of the Legislature of their country, would not have acted in this manner. They would rather have followed the example of Lord Gosford, who warmly supported the Union, but at the same time refused an earldom, in order that no imputation should rest upon the integrity of his motives. 2 But the Irish borough owners should be judged by no high standard, and it may be admitted, to their faint credit, that in some few instances their peerages did not determine their votes and their influence. In the majority of cases, however, these peerages were simple, palpable, open bribes, intended for no other purpose than to secure a majority in the House of Commons. The most important of the converts was Lord Ely, whose decision, after many fluctuations, appears to have been finally fixed by a letter from Pitt himself. He obtained a promise of an English peerage, and a well-founded expectation of a marquisate, and he brought to the Government at least eight borough seats, and also a vast amount of county influence which was very useful in procuring addresses in favour of the Union. 3

But although the weight of such a mass of creations and promotions must have been enormous in a Parliament constituted like that of Ireland, it would have been insufficient but for some supplementary measures. The first was, a provision that close boroughs should be treated as private property, and that the patrons should receive a liberal pecuniary compensation for their loss. This compensation removed an obstacle which must have been fatal to the Union, but being granted to opponents as well as supporters, it cannot, in my opinion, be justly regarded as strictly bribery, and it may be defended by serious arguments. Nomination boroughs were in fact, though not in law, undoubtedly private property, and the sale or purchase of seats was a perfectly open transaction, fully recognised by public opinion, and practised by honourable politicians. As we have already seen, Pitt, in his English Reform Bill of 1785, proposed to create a fund for the purchase of the English boroughs, and the United Irishmen included the compensation of Irish borough owners in their scheme of radical reform. The English Legislature always refused to recognise this traffic, but it does not appear to have been formally prohibited or made subject to legal penalties until 1809; 1 and even in 1832, Lord Eldon maintained that proprietary boroughs were strictly property. ‘Borough property,’ he said, ‘was a species of property which had been known in this country for centuries; it had been over and over again made the subject of purchase and sale in all parts of the kingdom, and they might as well extinguish the right of private individuals to their advowsons, as their right to exercise the privileges which they derived from the possession of burgage tenures;’ and he quoted the course which was taken when abolishing the hereditable jurisdictions in Scotland, and the nomination boroughs in Ireland, as binding precedents. 1 This view was not adopted by the Imperial Legislature, and an overwhelming wave of popular enthusiasm, which brought England almost to the verge of revolution, enabled the Whig Ministry to sweep away the small boroughs, and carry the Reform Bill of 1832. But in Ireland at the time of the Union there was certainly no such enthusiasm; the borough interest was stronger than in England, and it was idle to expect that those who possessed it would make this great pecuniary sacrifice without compensation. The opponents of the Union dilated with much force upon the enormity of treating the right of representation as private property; making the extinction of a national Legislature a matter of bargain between the Government and a few individuals, and then throwing the cost of that bargain upon the nation. But in truth the measure was necessary if the Union was to be carried, and its justification must stand or fall with the general policy of the Government.

Eighty boroughs, returning 160 members, were in this manner purchased at the cost of 1,260,000 l. , which was added to the Irish national debt, and thus made a perpetual charge upon the country. The sum of 15,000 l. which was given for each borough does not appear to have been unreasonable. ‘It is well known,’ Grattan wrote to the citizens of Dublin in 1797, ‘that the price of boroughs is from 14,000 l. to 16,000 l. , and has in the course of not many years increased one-third—a proof at once of the extravagance and audacity of this abuse.’ 2 The convulsions of the rebellion had, it is true, lowered the value of borough property, and produced an insecurity which no doubt greatly assisted the measure, but it was only equitable that the compensation should be calculated by the market value before the civil war began. It is remarkable that the largest sum given in compensation went to Lord Downshire, who was a vehement opponent of the Union. He received 52,500 l. as the owner of seven borough seats. The next largest sum was 45,000 l. , which went to Lord Ely. Of the whole sum, about a third part was paid to opponents of the Union. In some cases the compensation for a single borough was distributed among two or more persons, and the compensation paid for the Church boroughs was applied to ecclesiastical purposes. 1

These figures, however, only give an imperfect and approximate measure of the amount of borough interest in the Irish Parliament, and of the relative weight of that interest on the two sides of the question. Several of the close boroughs were allowed to send one member to the Imperial Parliament, and one member in the British House of Commons being considered equal to two in the Irish one, no compensation in these cases was given. Several seats were not reckoned strictly close, though a few great families exercised an overwhelming influence over them, and some borough owners were accustomed to purchase single nominations from others, and thus exercised in fact a much larger parliamentary influence than appears from the compensation they received. The same statute which provided for the compensation of the borough owners, provided also that full compensation should be granted to all persons whose offices were abolished or diminished in value by the Union. Rather more than 30,000 l. a year was granted in annuities to officers or attendants of the two Houses of Parliament, by a separate statute. 2

Another supplementary measure was a great remodelling of the House of Commons, through the operation of the Place Bill.

It was the firm resolution of the Government, that they would not dissolve Parliament, and submit the great question of the maintenance of the national Legislature to the free judgment of the constituencies. From such a step, wrote Cornwallis, ‘we could derive no possible benefit.’ 3 At the same time, they desired to change the composition of the House of Commons, which in 1799 had so decisively rejected the measure, and in this object they were eminently successful. In December, Castlereagh wrote that not less than twenty-two seats were vacant, which would be filled by their friends, 4 and in the few months that elapsed between the prorogation of Parliament in 1799, and the Union debates of 1800, no less than sixty-three seats became vacant. 1 In this manner, without a dissolution, more than a fifth part of the House was renewed. A few of the vacancies were due to deaths, and a few to changes of office arising from the dismissal of officials who opposed the Union. In other cases men who were not prepared to vote for the Union, were willing to accept the promise of some lucrative office and leave Parliament; 2 but the great majority of these changes were due to the conversion of the borough patrons. Members holding seats by their favour, who were unwilling to support the Union, considered themselves bound to accept nominal offices and vacate their seats, and other members were brought in for the express purpose of voting for the Union. Several of them were Englishmen, wholly unconnected with Ireland, and some were generals of the Staff. In the case of borough members who had purchased their seats, a different rule prevailed, and they were entitled to vote irrespective of their patrons. 3

At the same time, the whole force of Government patronage in all its branches was steadily employed. The formal and authoritative announcement, that the English Government were resolved to persevere until the Union was carried; that though it might be defeated session, after session, and Parliament after Parliament, it would always be reintroduced, and that support of it would be considered hereafter the main test by which all claims to Government favour would be determined, had an irresistible force. The dismissal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Sergeant, because they refused to support the Union, needs no defence, for no Administration could possibly continue if some of its leading members were opposed to the main objects of its policy. The dismissal of Lord Downshire from his regiment, from the Privy Council, and from the governorship of his county, was defended on the ground that he had been guilty of a grave breach of military discipline in sending down a petition against the Union to his regiment of militia to be signed; and in the opinion of Lord Cornwallis, this dismissal, by evincing the determination of the Government and by terrifying their opponents, did more than any other single step to carry the measure. 1 But in addition to these, a number of obscure men in non-political places were dismissed, because either they or their relatives declined to support it. In spite of the Place Bill of 1793, which had somewhat diminished the number of placeholders who might sit in Parliament. 2 there appear to have been in the last Irish House of Commons no less than seventy-two persons who either held civil places or pensions from the Crown, or were generals or staff officers. 3 All these men knew that their promotion, most of them knew that their retention of their emoluments, was in the power of the Government, and would be determined by the votes they were about to give. It was part of the Union scheme that not more than twenty additional placemen should be introduced by it into the Imperial Parliament. Plunket, in one of his speeches, declared with great force and eloquence, that if there had been only twenty placemen in the Irish House of Commons, or if the placemen who sat in it were allowed to vote by ballot or according to their real wishes, it would have been utterly impossible to have carried the Union.

Hope, however, was a more powerful agent of corruption than fear, and it is, I believe, scarcely an exaggeration to say that everything in the gift of the Crown in Ireland; in the Church, the army, the law, the revenue, was at this period uniformly and steadily devoted to the single object of carrying the Union. From the great noblemen who were bargaining for their marquisates and their ribbands; from the Archbishop of Cashel, who agreed to support the Union, on being promised the reversion of the see of Dublin, and a permanent seat in the Imperial House of Lords; 1 the virus of corruption extended and descended through every fibre and artery of the political system, including crowds of obscure men who had it in their power to assist or obstruct addresses on the question. No two facts are at this time more conspicuous, than the immense preponderance of legal ability that was arrayed in opposition to the Union, and the immense profusion of legal honours that were lavished on its supporters. Twenty-three practising barristers voted for the Union, in the House of Commons, in 1800. In 1803 six of them were upon the Bench, while eight others had received high honours under the Crown. 1 Thirty-two barristers voted for the Union at the bar debate in 1799. In 1803 not more than five of them were unrewarded. 2 Charles Kendal Bushe was then a young lawyer starting in his career, and overwhelmed with embarrassments from his efforts to pay the debts of his father, and he has left a touching account of the struggle he underwent from the dazzling promises that were made him by the Government, if he would only place his eloquence and his vote at the service of the Union. 3 Some shameful promises, however, were shamefully broken. In one of his last letters, written just before leaving Ireland, Cornwallis sent to England a list of fifty promises of places, pensions, legal appointments, and promotions in the peerage which he had formally made on the part of his Majesty's Government, acting by the direction and authority of the Ministers in England, but which, nevertheless, were still unfulfilled. With a single exception, they seem all to have been made for the purpose of carrying the Union. In the list of names, there are thirty-five members of the House of Commons who had voted for it, and three of the pensions which had not been promised by name to members of Parliament would actually have been received by them. Some of these acknowledged promises remained unfulfilled up to the change of Government in 1806, and were then repudiated by the new Ministers. 4

The details of these negotiations have for the most part been destroyed. 1 The Under Secretary Cooke, and Alexander Marsden, who was, at the time of the Union, Assistant Secretary in the Law Department, and who succeeded Cooke as Under Secretary, were chiefly entrusted with them, and Marsden appears to have been afterwards pursued with some rancour by disappointed claimants. 2 Enough, however, remains to show beyond all real doubt, the character of the transaction, and to justify the emphatic and often repeated statements of Grattan, Plunket, Bushe, Parsons, and Grey. As late as 1830, Lord Grey, while asserting in the strongest terms the fatal consequences that would arise from any attempt to tamper with the settlement of 1800, did not hesitate to avow his abiding conviction, that ‘there were never worse means resorted to for carrying any measure,’ than those by which the Union was accomplished, 1 and Grattan himself expressed his belief, that of those who voted for it, not more than seven were unbribed. 2

There is one form of corruption, however, about which there may be some controversy, and has probably been much exaggeration. It has been asserted by O'Connell, that immense sums were spent in direct bribes, and that as much as 8,000 l. was given for a vote in favour of the Union, and it was certainly the belief of the Opposition that direct bribery was extensively practised. It is scarcely probable that this can have been done with the knowledge of Lord Cornwallis. Some leaders of the Opposition appear to have attempted to meet corruption by corruption, and are accused of having subscribed a large sum for the purpose of purchasing votes. Lord Cornwallis, when writing about a bribe which he believed had been offered by the Opposition for a vote, added, ‘If we had the means, and were disposed to make such vile use of them, we dare not trust the credit of Government in the hands of such rascals.’ 3 It is certain that there was no Irish fund from which any great sum could have been drawn by the Government for the purpose of bribery. A secret service fund of 5,000 l. a year, which had been authorised in 1793, could have gone but a little way in purchasing a majority, even if it were applied to that object, and a small additional sum, which had been subsequently granted for pensions to informers in the rebellion, was altogether devoted to its ostensible purpose. 4 The 5,000 l. which had been sent over from England in the beginning of 1799, appears to have been chiefly, if not solely, employed in purchasing support outside the House. Wickham, in sending it, added, ‘The Duke of Portland has every reason to hope, that means will soon be found of placing a larger sum at the Lord Lieutenant's disposal.’ 1 Shortly before the meeting of Parliament in 1800, Castlereagh urgently demanded a similar and if possible a larger sum, and 5,000 l. more appears to have been transmitted, with a memorandum stating that ‘the fund was good security for a still further sum, though not immediately, if it could be well laid out and furnished on the spot.’ 2 Two months later, Cooke wrote to England for a fresh remittance, which he described as ‘absolutely essential’ for the increasing demands. A ‘considerable sum’ was raised by loan from a private individual, who soon pressed for repayment; and savings were made out of the Irish civil list, and applied as secret service money to meet many engagements that had been entered into. Before the session had closed, Portland and Pitt were again entreated to send over money; and Pitt, while expressing his regret that he could not send as much as was wanted, promised annual instalments of from 8,000 l. to 10,000 l. for five years, which were probably intended to liquidate Union engagements. 3 One supporter of the Government in the House of Commons appears to have been excused a debt of 3,000 l. 4 On the whole, I should gather from these facts, that direct money bribes were given, though not to the extent that has been alleged; but it is probable that the greater part of this expenditure went in buying seats from members who were willing to vacate them, and in that case the transaction did not differ sensibly from the purchase of boroughs by Administration, which up to a still later period was undoubtedly practised in England. 5 Several transactions of this kind were rumoured, although on no good authority, and we have the express statement of Edgeworth, that in 1800 he was offered 3,000 guineas for his seat during the few remaining weeks of the session. 1

The various forms of pressure and influence I have described, were steadily exerted through the whole period of the recess and through the decisive session that followed, and it is by no means surprising that they should have converted the minority of 1799 into the majority of 1800. ‘There is an opposition in Parliament to the measure of Union,’ wrote Cornwallis in May 1799, ‘formidable in character and talents. Their numbers, though they have not proved equal to shake the Government, have for the present rendered the prosecution of the measure in Parliament impracticable.’ But if the Governments in both countries pursued their end without flinching, he had great hope of success. ‘We reckon at present,’ he added, ‘on the Union, 148 certain with us, 98 against, and 54 whose line cannot yet be positively ascertained.’ ‘Your Grace will easily believe, that the usual importunity of political friends has risen upon the present occasion with the difficulties of Government and with the nature of the question itself, which appears to them in prudence to enjoin the most speedy accomplishment of their several objects, as the measure is considered by them as fatal to the usual mode of giving effect to their claims.’ 2 A month later, the Government strength in the Commons was believed to have risen to 165. In December it was calculated at 180, but Cornwallis placed little confidence in his supporters. ‘I entertain every day more doubt of our success in the great question of Union,’ he wrote at the very end of 1799; ‘we have a lukewarm, and, in some instances, an unwilling majority; the enemy have a bold and deeply interested minority, which will, I am afraid, even after our friends are reckoned, run us much nearer than most people expect.’ 3

Outside the House, however, the Government believed that the Union project was steadily and rapidly gaining ground, and, after making all due allowance for the natural bias of Lord Cornwallis, and for the partisan character of the sources from which he chiefly obtained his information, it remains tolerably certain that the measure was finding a real and increasing support. The opinions of Cornwallis varied from week to week, but his general belief appears to have been, that the great mass of the Irish people were thoroughly disaffected to the English rule, and would welcome with delight a French invasion, but that they were absolutely without attachment to their Parliament, and perfectly indifferent to the question of Union. In Dublin, he admitted, there was a fierce and passionate hostility to it. In the central counties of Leinster, the strong predominance of feeling was against it, but elsewhere the Lord Lieutenant believed that it was viewed, either with indifference or with favour. In April 1799, after describing the extreme disaffection and the extreme corruption around him, he said, ‘The great mass of the people neither think or care’ about the Union. 1 In July he repeated, ‘The mass of the people of Ireland do not care one farthing about the Union, and they equally hate both Government and Opposition.’ ‘It is in Dublin only where any popular clamour can possibly be excited.’ 2 ‘I am preparing,’ he wrote in the same month, ‘to set out to-morrow on a tour for three weeks to the South, for the purpose of obtaining declarations &c. in favour of the Union. On the whole, we certainly gain ground.’ 3

His tour proved exceedingly satisfactory, and in August he went much farther than he had yet done, and assured Portland of ‘the general good disposition’ of the people of Munster ‘towards the Government, and their cordial approbation of the measure of Union.’ ‘This sentiment,’ he continued, ‘is confined to no particular class or description of men, but equally pervades both the Catholic and Protestant bodies, and I was much gratified in observing that those feelings which originated with the higher orders, have in a great degree extended themselves to the body of the people. Were the Commons of Ireland as naturally connected with the people as they are in England, and as liable to receive their impressions, with the prospects we have out of doors, I should feel that the question was in a great degree carried.’ He believed that the real, or at the least the most formidable, opposition to be encountered, was an opposition of self-interest, arising from the fact that the proposed measure ‘goes to newmodel the public consequence of every man in Parliament, and to diminish most materially the authority of the most powerful.’ 1

In October he made a journey through Ulster, for the purpose of eliciting Union demonstrations in the province, and he wrote to Portland that, though it would be ‘unsafe to trust entirely to appearances,’ there was ‘reason to entertain very sanguine hopes of the good disposition of the people in that part of the kingdom towards the very important measure of a legislative Union.’ He had not ventured to enter the county of Down, where the influence of Lord Downshire was supreme, and he considered it too perilous to attempt to obtain addresses from the counties of Monaghan, Cavan, and Fermanagh, though the ‘corporation and principal inhabitants’ of the town of Monaghan had addressed him in favour of the Union; but in a large number of towns through which he passed, addresses were presented to him by the corporation and ‘principal inhabitants,’ and in two or three places he had unexpected encouragement. The priests and some leading Catholics came forward at Dundalk with an address in favour of the Union. At Belfast, though there was much anti-Union feeling, ‘150 of the principal merchants and inhabitants’ had met him at a dinner, which was understood to be exclusively composed of supporters of the Union. At Londonderry he had been received with genuine enthusiasm. The town was illuminated, and ‘Success to the Union resounded from every quarter.’ 2 ‘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.’ 3

He relied largely on this disposition to justify to his own mind the measures he was taking, and nothing was neglected that could foster it. Every pamphlet or speech of any merit in favour of the scheme was systematically, extensively, and gratuitously circulated. Great pains were taken to influence the press. McKenna, the well-known Catholic pamphleteer, had been often employed by the Government; he appears now to have rendered them material service, and he was recommended as a skilful and willing agent for superintending the Unionist literature. 1 Strenuous efforts were made to obtain declarations in favour of the Union, and many came in from bodies of men in different parts of Ireland. Their significance, however, may very easily be exaggerated. Except in Galway, the supporters of the measure had hitherto never ventured to convene county or popular meetings, 2 but the great borough owners and landlords, who had been won over, the sheriffs in the counties, and other important adherents of the Union, were busily employed, at the request of the Lord Lieutenant, in procuring signatures in favour of it. With so vast an amount of territorial influence and Government patronage at their disposal, they had little difficulty in doing so, and men who were sincerely in favour of the measure were undoubtedly scattered, though not very thickly scattered, over the whole island. It is remarkable, however, that, in spite of all the efforts of the Government, the signatures to these addresses did not number more than a small fraction—probably not more than a twelfth part—of those which were appended to the petitions to the House of Commons against the measure.

The support of the corporations of many important towns was obtained, and this may at first sight appear more significant, but these corporations were very small bodies, and frequently completely subservient to some one great nobleman. Thus, to give but a few examples: Lord Donegal could control the Corporation of Belfast, Lord Roden the Corporation of Dundalk, and the Primate that of Armagh, while the influence of Lord Waterford at Waterford, and that of Lord Ormond at Kilkenny, was little, if at all, less absolute. The Corporation of Cork appears to have been under the combined influence of Lord Longueville, Lord Donoughmore, and Lord Shannon, who were all supporters of the Union. 1 It is true, as Lord Cornwallis remarked, that the words ‘principal inhabitants’ were usually added to the corporation addresses; but, if the opponents of the measure may be believed, they were far from being warranted by the facts.

The task of measuring with accuracy the public opinion of a country on a political question which was never submitted to the test of a general election, is an impossible one, but a few extracts from confidential letters to the Government, and a few cross lights thrown on this obscure subject from various quarters and from different points of view, may assist our judgment. I have mentioned in the last chapter the extremely reluctant support which Lord Carleton had given to the measure, and have quoted the desponding letter he wrote to Pelham immediately after speaking in favour of it. In the March of 1799, he repeated his remonstrance in very earnest terms. He said that he had always looked to two objects, to obtain an Union and to preserve it, and that the Government seemed to him to have neglected the latter. ‘Were the French to obtain any footing in this kingdom,’ he continued, ‘I see the likelihood of their procuring a much more powerful support than that which a few months ago would have been afforded them.’ The Union, he complained, had been brought forward when the minds of the people were quite unprepared for it, and the result of this ‘precipitate obtrusion’ was ‘much hazard, not only to those individuals who have supported the measure of Union, but also to the safety of this kingdom, and to the permanence of its connection with Great Britain,’ ‘Those who are disposed to view the conduct of the British Government in an unfavourable light, are led to suspect that the rebellion has been suffered to continue, in order to forward the measure of an Union. Every exertion should be made to remove the suspicion, and to convince the people of this country that they are indebted for the restoration of tranquillity to … a British army, brought to this country for their preservation.’ ‘I agree with you in opinion, that, circumstanced as this country now is, the measure ought not to be forced or accelerated. The public mind is not yet prepared for it, and whatever irritates, will either impede attainment of the object, or if attained will render its continuance so precarious, as to make the measure noxious rather than beneficial.’ He speaks of the great social division the question had produced, and of the widespread fear that the real aim and object of the Union was equality of taxation, raising the taxation of Ireland to the much higher level of England. 1

Pelham's old correspondent, Alexander, was hardly more encouraging. He wrote shortly after listening to the great speech of Foster in April, and he was evidently profoundly under its impression. He describes its powerful effect on men of all classes, and added that the measure ‘will be most strenuously opposed and most hollowly supported.’ ‘Although parliamentary reform was the ground of rebellion, and its plausible pretence, men in disturbed times care so little as to the forms of vesting power, so that it be exercised by their own party, that now the populace willingly admit the Parliament to be the voice of the people and its free organ.’ ‘The very quiet produced by the energy and moderation of Government, and the aid of the military, is now attributed to the wisdom of Parliament.’ ‘Rely upon it,’ the writer continued, ‘the measure cannot be carried by force, nor by gross or open corruption. If carried, it will not hold. A permanent governor, an honest and effective administration, a combination of men of talent and labour, can alone give security to the measure. Such a system will govern our country quietly, and render it a noble ally to England.’ 2

From Connaught, Lord Altamount sent very favourable reports. In Mayo he thought there was ‘a more general concurrence than in most parts of Ireland’ in favour of the Union, though there was some opposition among the Catholics. ‘The county of Galway is brought over very fairly to the measure, the property completely with it, and the Catholics as forward as their neighbours.’ 3 He had succeeded in obtaining the signatures of most of the owners of property in Mayo. ‘If the Roman Catholics stand forward,’ he said, ‘it will be unwillingly; they are keeping back decidedly, but many will be influenced, and some few who connected themselves with the Protestants during the disturbance, will be zealously forward on the present occasion. The priests have all offered to sign; and though I am not proud of many of them as associates, I will take their signatures to prevent a possibility of a counter declaration. I hear the titular Archbishop has expressed himself inclined to the measure. This day I have sent round to all the Catholics of property in the country. I may be mistaken, but in my judgment the wish of most of them would be to stand neuter; or perhaps, if they had any countenance, to oppose it—that is the fact. Several will sign from influence, some from fear, but the majority, I believe, will pretend that they have given opinions already, and cannot decently retract them…. Every man applied to, of all persuasions, wants to make it a personal compliment.’ ‘I have found,’ he adds, ‘to my infinite surprise, that the county and the town of Sligo, without the slightest interference and against all their representatives, are decided friends to the Union. I know of no part of Ireland where the unbiassed mind of the public is so generally with it…. Roscommon is against it; but for that, the bulk, or indeed the entire of the province, might be considered as pledged to the measure, or ready to be so.’ 1

In Kerry, Lord Castlereagh was informed about this time, that ‘the entire property’ of the county was for the Union, and he was convinced that the measure was gaining friends, and was ‘in some parts of the kingdom decidedly popular.’ 2 Lord Waterford said that the opinion of the county and city of Waterford was nearly unanimous in favour of it. 3 Lord Landaff declared that almost all the considerable landlords in Tipperary, except Lord Mountcashel and Lord Lismore, took the same side, and Castlereagh had much hope that it would be possible to carry a county meeting in favour of the Union. 4 Long afterwards, in the British House of Lords, Lord Donoughmore declared that ‘the first favourable turn’ which the Union question experienced after its rejection in 1799, came from Tipperary, where an address in its favour was carried on his proposal, and he added that his success was largely due to the support of the Catholics, who believed that their emancipation would be a certain consequence of the Union. 5 It is probable, however, that the political forces in this county were somewhat miscalculated, for almost at the last stage of the debates the member for Tipperary with his two sons abandoned the Government, though he had engaged to give the Union an unqualified support, and though ‘the objects he solicited were promised,’ alleging that ‘the principal part of the respectable freeholders of the county of Tipperary had signed resolutions against the Union,’ though many of them had before instructed him to support it. 1 In Limerick, it was said, the corporation was hostile, but the bulk of the property of the county was decidedly favourable to the measure. 2 In Derry and Donegal, the gentry were ‘in general well disposed,’ and the linen merchants, though they took no active part, were supposed to be ‘on the whole rather favourable,’ under the expectation that it would secure their industry. 3 Londonderry, more than any other town in Ulster, appears to have desired the Union. 4

A few additional letters of a more general description may be noticed. Lord de Clifford appears to have been a retiring, honest, and unpolitical peer, and he had taken no part in the divisions of 1799, but no less than four members of the House of Commons were returned by his influence. 5 In reply to a letter strongly urging him to vote for the Union, he expressed his deep attachment to the present Administration, and his extreme reluctance to oppose any measure they brought forward; but the Union, he said, was so supremely important, that it was a question on which he must think for himself. If the great majority of the people were against it, the present seemed to him a peculiarly inopportune time for introducing it, and ‘even were the majority of the well-affected in favour of it,’ he did not believe that it would ultimately be likely to work for good. All who really knew Ireland, knew that the very great majority of the people looked on the present owners of land as a set of usurpers, and had been long waiting for an opportunity to rise and wrest their property from them. If the late terrible rebellion had been circumscribed in its area and successfully suppressed, this was much more due, he believed, to the personal influence exercised by the resident country gentlemen over their neighbours and tenants, than to the English troops. ‘If by forcing an Union upon this country, you disgust one half of these gentlemen, and convert the other half into absentees, you will leave the country a prey to the disaffected, and the consequence, I fear, would be fatal.’ The Scotch parallel was wholly misleading. In Scotland at the time of the Union a large portion of the proprietors of land were attached to another king, while the people did not care who was king, and blindly followed their chiefs. In Ireland ‘the great body of the people are against you,’ while the presence and the constant influence of a loyal gentry form the main support of the connection. 1

Luke Fox, a clever lawyer who was raised to the bench for his support of the Union, believed that Ireland was inhabited by three nations, which were utterly different in character, principles, and habits, and not less clearly divided by their opinions about the Union. The Protestants of the Established Church, ‘from every motive of a monopolising interest, are determined opponents of the scheme of Union,’ and it would be impossible to gain them, except by influence.

The Catholics, on the other hand, desired, above all things, to get rid of their present rulers, and to emerge from slavery into the class of British citizens, and they could be easily gained by concessions. Nor is it in the least probable that such concessions would alienate the Protestants. ‘Religion is a mere pretence. The true bone of contention is the monopoly of Irish power and patronage,’ and once the ascendant Protestant descends through the Union from the position of ruler, the question of religious disqualification would assume a wholly different aspect. At the same time, the concessions which Luke Fox deemed most necessary were not concessions of political power. A commutation of tithes, and a decent provision for the Catholic clergy, were measures which were urgently necessary, for which the country was fully ripe, and which ought to be carried without delay. Another scarcely less urgent measure was the foundation of a Catholic College connected with the Protestant University. The Catholic youth should be given ample facilities for obtaining the best education in the country, and in secular matters the Protestants and Catholics should be educated together, as they were in Holland and in many parts of Germany. In this manner durable friendships would be formed, and the next generation of Irishmen would be far more united than the present one. Ultimately, he believed the King should be invested with a patronage of popish bishoprics and other dignities, similar to that which the French king had always possessed, and the two religions should be placed on the same plane of dignity; but for this the time was not ripe.