The Affairs of Ireland.--Condition of the Irish Parliament.--The
Octennial Bill.--The Penal Laws.--Non-residence of the Lord-
lieutenant.--Influence of the American War on Ireland.--Enrolment of the
Volunteers.--Concession of all the Demands of Ireland.--Violence of the
Volunteers.--Their Convention.--Violence of the Opposition in
Parliament: Mr. Brownlow, Mr. Grattan, Mr. Flood.--Pitt's Propositions
Fail.--Fitzgibbon's Conspiracy Bill.--Regency Question.--Recovery of the
King.--Question of a Legislative Union.--Establishment of Maynooth
College.--Lord Edward Fitzgerald.--Arguments for and against the
Union.--It passes the Irish Parliament.--Details of the Measure.--
General Character of the Union.--Circumstances which Prevented
its Completeness.
In describing the condition of Ireland and the feelings of its people,
in the latter years of the reign of George II., Mr. Hallam has fixed on
the year 1753 as that in which the Irish Parliament first began to give
vent to aspirations for equality with the English Parliament in audible
complaints; and the Irish House of Commons, finding the kingdom in the
almost unprecedented condition of having "a surplus revenue after the
payment of all charges," took steps to vindicate that equality by a sort
of appropriation bill.
There were, however, three fundamental differences between the
Parliaments of the two countries, which, above all others, stood in the
way of such equality as the Irish patriots desired: the first, that by a
law as old as the time of Henry VII., and called sometimes the Statute
of Drogheda, from the name of the town in which it was first
promulgated, and sometimes Poynings' Act, from the name of Sir Henry
Poynings, the Lord-deputy at the time, no bill could be introduced into
the Irish Parliament till it had received the sanction of the King and
Privy Council in England; the second, that the Parliament lasted for the
entire life of the King who had summoned it--a regulation which caused a
seat in the House of Commons to be regarded almost as a possession for
life, and consequently enormously increased the influence of the patrons
of boroughs, some of whom could return a number of members such as the
mightiest borough monger in England could never aspire to equal.[125]
The third difference, of scarcely inferior importance, was, that the
Parliament only sat in alternate years. But, though these arrangements
suited the patrons and the members of the House of Commons, it was not
strange that the constituencies, whose power over their representatives
was almost extinguished by them, regarded them with less complacency,
and, at the general election which was the consequence of the accession
of George III., pledges were very generally exacted from the candidates
that, if elected, they would endeavor to procure the passing of a
septennial act like that which had been the law in England ever since
the early years of George I. A bill with that object was introduced in
1761, and reported on not unfavorably as to its principle by the English
law advisers to whom the Privy Council referred it. But, as if it had
been designed to exemplify in the strongest possible manner the national
propensity for making blunders, it contained one clause which rendered
it not only impracticable but ridiculous. The clause provided that no
member should take his seat or vote till his qualification had been
proved before the Speaker in a full house. But the Speaker could not be
chosen till the members had established their right of voting, so that
the whole was brought to a dead-lock, and the bill, if passed, could
never have been carried out.
In the ministry of 1767, however--that of the Duke of Grafton and Lord
Chatham--Lord Halifax was replaced at Dublin Castle by Lord Townsend,
who, among his other good qualities, deserves specially honorable
mention as the first Lord-lieutenant who made residence in Dublin his
rule on principle; for till very lately non-residence had been the rule
and residence the exception, a fact which is of itself a melancholy but
all-sufficient proof of the absolute indifference to Irish interests
shown by all classes of English statesmen. And under his government a
bill for shortening Parliaments was passed, though it fixed the possible
duration of each Parliament at eight years instead of seven, the
variation being made to prevent a general election from being held at
the same time in both countries, but, according to common belief, solely
in order to keep up a mark of difference between the Irish and English
Parliaments. And those who entertained this suspicion fancied they saw a
confirmation of it in the retention of the regulation that the Irish
Parliament should only sit in alternate years, a practice wholly
inconsistent with any proper idea of the duties and privileges of a
Parliament such as prevailed on this side of the Channel; since a
Parliament whose sessions were thus intermittent could not possibly
exercise that degree of supervision over the revenue, either in its
collection or its expenditure, which is among its most important duties.
And the continued maintenance of this practice must be regarded farther
as a proof that the English legislators had not yet learned to consider
Ireland as an integral part of the kingdom, entitled in every particular
to equal rights with England and Scotland. Indeed, it is impossible for
any Englishman to contemplate the history of the treatment of Ireland by
the English legislators, whether Kings, ministers, or Parliaments, for
more than a century and a half, without equal feelings of shame at the
injustice and wonder at the folly of their conduct. Not only was Ireland
denied freedom of trade with England (a denial as inconsistent not only
with equity but also with common-sense as if Windsor had been refused
free trade with London),[126] but Irish manufactures were deliberately
checked and suppressed to gratify the jealous selfishness of the English
manufacturers. Macaulay, in his zeal for the memory of William III., has
not scrupled to apologize for, if not to justify, the measures
deliberately sanctioned by that sovereign for the extinction of the
Irish woollen manufactures, on the ground that Ireland was not a sister
kingdom, but a colony; that "the general rule is, that the English
Parliament is competent to legislate for all colonies planted by English
subjects, and that no reason existed for considering the case of the
colony in Ireland as an exception."[127] There is, perhaps, no passage
in his whole work less to his credit. But, if such was the spirit in
which an English historian could write of Ireland in the latter half of
this present century, it may, perhaps, diminish our wonder at the
conduct of our legislators in an earlier generation.
The penal laws on the subject of religion were also conceived and
carried out in a spirit of extraordinary rigor and injustice. By far the
larger portion of the Irish population still adhered to the Roman
Catholic faith; but, as far as the negative punishment of restrictions
and disabilities could go, its profession was visited as one of the most
unpardonable of offences. No Roman Catholic could hold a commission in
the army, nor be called to the Bar, nor practise as an attorney; and
when it was found that a desire to devote themselves to the study of the
law had led many gentlemen to acknowledge a conversion to Protestantism,
a statute was actually passed to require them to prove their sincerity
by five years' adherence to their new form of religion before they could
be regarded as having washed off the defilement of their old heresy
sufficiently to be thought worthy to wear a gown in the Four Courts. No
Roman Catholic might keep a school; while a strange refinement of
intolerance had added a statute prohibiting parents from sending their
children to Roman Catholic Schools in a foreign country.
And the manner in which the government was carried on was, if possible,
worse even than the principle. The almost continual absence of the
Lord-lieutenant inevitably left the chief management of the details in
the hands of underlings, and the favor of the Castle was only to be
acquired by the lowest time-serving, of which those who could influence
elections, wealthy and high-born as they for the most part were, were
not more innocent than the representatives. No support to government
could be looked for from either peer or commoner unless it were
purchased by bribes more or less open, which it was equally
discreditable to ask and to grant; for one of the worst fruits of the
system which had so long reigned throughout the island was the general
demoralization of all classes. Mr. Fronde gives George III. himself the
credit of being the first person who resolutely desired to see a change
of the system, and to "try the experiment whether Ireland might not be
managed by open rectitude and real integrity."[128] But his first
efforts were baffled by the carelessness or incompetency of the
Viceroys, since it was difficult to find any man of ability who would
undertake the office. And for some years things went on with very little
change, great lords of different ranks having equally no object but that
of controlling the Castle and engrossing the patronage of the
government, and in not a few instances of also procuring large grants or
pensions for themselves, each seeking to build up an individual
influence which no Viceroy could ever have withstood, had they been
united instead of being separated by mutual jealousies, which enabled
him from time to time to play off one against the other.
But the war with the North American Colonies, which broke out in 1774,
by some of its indirect consequences brought about a great change in the
affairs of Ireland. The demand for re-enforcements to the armies engaged
in America could only be met by denuding the British islands themselves
of their necessary garrisons. No part of them was left so undefended as
the Irish coast; and, after a time, the captains of some of the American
privateers, learning how little resistance they had to fear, ventured
into St. George's Channel, penetrated even into the inland waters, and
threatened Carrickfergus and Belfast. In matters of domestic policy it
was possible to procrastinate, to defer deciding on relaxations of the
penal laws or the removal of trade restrictions, but to delay putting
the country into a state of defence against an armed enemy for a single
moment was not to be thought of; yet the government was powerless. Of
the regular army almost every available man was in, or on his way to,
America, and the most absolute necessity, therefore, compelled the Irish
to consider themselves as left to their own resources for defence. It
was as impossible to levy a force of militia as one of regular troops,
for the militia could not be embodied without great expense; and the
finances of the whole kingdom had been so mismanaged that money was as
hard to procure as men. In this emergency several gentlemen proposed to
the Lord-lieutenant to raise bodies of volunteers. The government,
though reluctant to sanction the movement, could see no alternative,
since the presence of an armed force of some kind was indispensable for
the safety of the island. The movement grew rapidly; by the summer of
1779 several thousand men were not only under arms, but were being
rapidly drilled into a state of efficiency, and had even established
such a reputation for strength, that, when in the autumn the same
privateers that had been so bold in Belfast Lough the year before
reached the Irish coast, in the hope of plundering Limerick or Galway,
they found the inhabitants of the district well prepared to receive
them, and did not venture to attempt a descent on any part of the
island. And, when the Parliament met in October, some of the members,
who saw in the success that could not be denied to have attended their
exertions an irresistible means of strengthening the rising pretensions
of Ireland to an equality of laws and freedom with England, moved votes
of thanks in both Houses to the whole body of Volunteers. They were
carried by acclamation, and the Volunteers of the metropolis lined the
streets between the Parliament House and the Castle when, according to
custom, the members of the two Houses marched in procession to present
their addresses to the Lord-lieutenant. Such a recognition of the power
of this new force stimulated those members who claimed in a special
degree the title of Friends of Ireland to greater exertion. A wiser
government than that of Lord North would have avoided giving occasion
for the existence of a force which the utter absence of any other had
made masters of the situation. The Volunteers even boasted that they had
been called into existence by English misgovernment. In the words of one
of their most eloquent advocates, "England had sown her laws like
dragons' teeth, and they had sprung up as armed men."
Ireland began to feel that she was strong, and, not unnaturally desired
to avail herself of that strength, which England now could not question,
to put forward demands for concessions which in common fairness could
not well be denied. In 1778, when Lord North, in the hope of recovering
the allegiance of the North American Colonies, brought forward what he
termed his conciliatory propositions, the Irish members began to press
their demand that the advantages thus offered to the Americans should be
extended to their own countrymen also; that the fact of the Irish not
having rebelled should not be made a plea for treating them worse than
those who had; and in the front of all their requests was one for the
abolition of those unjust and vexatious duties which shackled their
trade and manufactures. But the jealousy of the English and Scotch
manufacturers was still as bitter, and, unhappily, still as influential,
as it had proved in the time of William III. And, to humor the grasping
selfishness of Manchester and Glasgow, Lord North met the demands of the
Irish with a refusal of which every word of his speech on the
propositions to America was the severest condemnation, and which he
sought to mitigate by some new regulations in favor of the linen trade,
to which the English and Scotch manufacturers made no objection, since
they had no linen factories. The Irish, in despair, had recourse to
non-importation agreements, of which the Americans had set the example,
binding themselves not to import nor to use any articles of English or
Scotch manufacture with which they could possibly dispense. And the
result was, that Lord North yielded to fear what he had refused to
justice, and the next year brought in bills to grant the Irish the
commercial equality which they demanded. Some of the most oppressive and
vexatious of the penal laws were also relaxed; and some restrictions
which the Navigation Act imposed on commerce with the West Indies were
repealed. But, strange to say, the English ministers still clung to one
grievance of monstrous injustice, and steadily refused to allow judicial
appointments to be placed on the same footing as in England, and to make
the seat of a judge on the bench depend on his own good conduct, instead
of on the caprice of a king or a minister.
But the manifest reluctance with which the English government had
granted this partial relief encouraged the demand for farther
concessions. The Irish members, rarely deficient in eloquence or
fertility of resource, had been lately re-enforced by a recruit of
pre-eminent powers, whom Lord Charlemont had returned for his borough of
Moy, Henry Grattan; and, led by him, began to insist that the remaining
grievances, to the removal of which the nation had a right, would never
be extinguished so long as the supreme power of legislation for the
country rested with the English and Scotch Parliament; and that the true
remedy was only to be found in the restoration to the Irish Parliament
of that independence of which it had been deprived ever since the time
of Henry VII. They were encouraged by the visibly increasing weakness of
Lord North's administration. Throughout the year 1781 it was evidently
tottering to its fall. And on the 22d of February, 1782, Grattan brought
forward in the Irish House of Commons a resolution, intended, if
carried, to lay the foundation of a bill, "that a claim of any body of
men other than the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland to bind this
kingdom is unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance." This resolution
aimed at the abolition of Poynings' Act. Other resolutions demanded the
abolition of the "powers exercised by the Privy Council under color of
Poynings' Act," and a farther relaxation of the penal laws. So helpless
did the government by this time feel itself, that the Attorney-general,
who was its spokesman on this occasion, could not venture to resist the
principle of these resolutions, but was contented to elude them for the
time by objections taken to some of the details; and Grattan gave notice
of another motion to bring the question to a more definite decision,
which he fixed for the 16th of April.
Before that day came Lord North's government had ceased to exist, and
had been replaced by Lord Rockingham's, one most influential member of
which was the most distinguished of living Irishmen, Mr. Burke, who,
while in opposition, had always shown himself a warm supporter of the
claims of his countrymen, and was not likely to have his ardor in the
cause damped by being placed in a situation where he could procure a
friendly hearing to his counsels. Once more they had increased their
demands, requiring, besides the removal of the purely political
grievances, a surrender of the right of appeal from the Irish to the
English courts of law. But their new masters were inclined to grant
everything which seemed requisite to the establishment of complete
equality between the two kingdoms; and though the new ministry was
dissolved in a few months by the premature death of its chief, he lived
long enough to carry the repeal of Poynings' Act, the retention of which
was now admitted to be not only senseless but mischievous, since the
existence of a body invested with nominal dignity, but practically
powerless, was calculated not only to provoke discontent, but to furnish
a lever for agitation.
The repeal was, however, nothing less than the establishment of an
entirely new constitution in Ireland. The Irish Parliament, the meetings
of which had hitherto been a mere form and farce, was installed in a
position of absolute independence, to grant money or to make laws,
subject to no other condition than that their legislation should be of a
character to entitle it to the royal assent, a condition to which every
act of the British Parliament was likewise and equally liable.
"Unhappily, as an Irish patriotic writer exclaims on this occasion, it
was written in the book of fate that the felicity of Ireland should be
short-lived."[129] And a similar shortness of existence was to be the
lot of the separate independence of her Parliament. Even while framing
instructions for the Lord-lieutenant, in his honest desire to inaugurate
a system of just government for Ireland, George III. had warned him on
no account to "summon a Parliament without his special command."[130]
And, regarded by the light of subsequent events, it can hardly be denied
that the prohibition displayed an accurate insight into the real
difficulties of the country, and also into the character of the people
themselves as the source of at least some of those difficulties. We
ought not to judge its leaders too severely. A nation which has been
long kept in bondage, and is suddenly presented with liberty, is hardly
more able to bear the change than a man immured for years in a dark
dungeon can at once endure the unveiled light of the sun; and
independence had been granted to the Irish too suddenly for it to be
probable that they would at once and in every instance exercise it
wisely.
All parties were to blame in different degrees. The first danger came
from the Volunteers, who, flushed with self-importance, from the belief
that it was the imposing show of their strength which had enabled the
Parliament to extort Lord Rockingham's concession from the English
Houses, now claimed to be masters of the Parliament itself. With the
termination of the American war, and the consequent return of the
English army to Europe, the reason for their existence had passed away.
But they refused to be disbanded, and established a convention of armed
delegates, to sit in Dublin during the session of Parliament, and to
overawe the Houses into passing a series of measures which they
prescribed, and which included a Parliamentary Reform Bill of a most
sweeping character. On this occasion, however, the House of Commons
acted with laudable firmness. Led by Mr. Fitzgibbon, a man of great
powers, and above all suspicion of corruptibility, it spurned the
dictation of an unauthorized body, and rejected the Reform Bill,
avowedly on the ground of its being presented to it "under the mandate
of a military congress;" and the Convention, finding itself powerless to
enforce its mandates, dissolved.
But the difficulties of the government were not over with the
suppression of the Volunteer Convention. The Lord-lieutenant had a
harder, because a more enduring, contest to encounter with the
Parliament and the patrons of the boroughs. A single act of Parliament
may substitute a new law for an old one; but no one resolution or bill
has a magical power to extinguish long habits of jobbery and corruption.
Members and patrons alike seemed to regard the late concessions as
chiefly valuable on account of the increased value which it enabled them
to place on their services to the government; and one cannot read
without a feeling of shame that one or two of the bishops who were wont
to be regarded as the proprietors of the seats for their diocesan
cities, were not behind the most nameless lay boroughmongers in the
resolution they evinced make a market of their support of the
government. The consequence was that the government was unable to feel
confident of its power to carry any measure except at a price that it
was degrading to pay; while of those few members who were above all
suspicion of personal corruption, many were so utterly wrong-headed, and
had their minds so filled with unreasonable jealousy for what they
called the honor and dignity of Ireland, and with a consequent distrust
of England and of all Englishmen, that their honest folly was even a
greater obstacle to wise and good government than the mean cunning of
the others. There can hardly be a more striking proof of the
difficulties to be overcome by a minister than is furnished by a speech
made by a gentleman of the highest character, and of deservedly wide
influence in the Northern counties, Mr. Brownlow, of Lurgan, one of the
members for Armagh, which is quoted by Mr. Froude.[131]
Pitt was painfully conscious of the commercial injustice with which
hitherto Ireland had always been treated, and in the very first year of
his administration he applied himself to the removal of the most
mischievous of the grievances of which the Irish merchants complained,
adopting to a great extent a scheme which had been put before him by one
of the most considerable gentlemen of that body, which was based on the
principle of equalization of duties in both countries. It is unnecessary
here to enter into the details of the measure which he introduced into
the House of Commons. He avowed it to be the commencement of a new
system of government for Ireland, "a system of a participation and
community of benefits, a system of equality and fairness, which, without
tending to aggrandize one portion of the empire or to depress the other,
should seek the aggregate interest of the whole; it was a substitute for
the system which had hitherto been adopted of making the smaller country
completely subordinate to and subservient to the greater, of making the
smaller and poorer country a mere instrument for the advantage of the
greater and wealthier one. He, therefore, proposed now to create a
situation of perfect commercial equality, in which there was to be a
community of benefits, and also to some extent a community of burdens."
And he urged the House to "adopt that system of trade with Ireland that
would tend to enrich one part of the empire without impoverishing the
other, while it would give strength to both; that, like mercy, the
favorite attribute of Heaven,
"'Is twice blessed--
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.'"
It might, he said, be regarded as "a treaty with Ireland by which that
country would be put on a fair, equal, and impartial footing with Great
Britain, in point of commerce, with respect to foreign countries and our
colonies." The community of burdens which his measure would impose on
Ireland was this: that whenever the gross hereditary revenue of Ireland
should exceed £650,000 (an amount considerably in excess of anything it
had ever yet reached), the excess should be applied to the support of
the fleet of the United Kingdom. It was, in fact, a burden that could
have no existence at all until the Irish trade had become far more
flourishing and productive than as yet it had ever been. Yet a measure
conceived in such a spirit of liberality, and framed with such careful
attention to the minutest interests of Irish trade, Mr. Brownlow did not
hesitate to denounce as one "tending to make Ireland a tributary nation
to Great Britain. The same terms," he declared, "had been held out to
America, and Ireland had equal spirit with America to reject them." He
even declared that "it was happy for Mr. Orde" (the Chief Secretary, who
had introduced the measure into the Irish House of Commons) "that he was
in a country remarkable for humanity. Had he proposed such a measure in
a Polish Diet, he would not have lived to carry back an answer to his
master. If," he concluded, "the gifts of Britain are to be accompanied
with the slavery of Ireland, I will never be a slave to pay tribute; I
will hurl back her gifts with scorn." Baffled by such frantic and
senseless opposition, Pitt condescended to remodel his measure. In its
new form it was not so greatly for the advantage of Ireland. He had been
constrained to admit some limitation of his original liberality by the
opposition which, it had met with in England also where Fox, at all
times an avowed enemy of freedom of trade, had made himself the
mouth-piece of the London and Liverpool merchants, who could not see,
without the most narrow-minded apprehension, the monopoly of the trade
with India and the West Indies, which they had hitherto enjoyed,
threatened by the admission of Ireland to its benefits. And now a clause
in the second bill, binding the Irish Parliament to reenact the
Navigation Laws existing in England, called up an opposition from
Grattan[132] as furious as that with which Mr. Brownlow had denounced
the original measure. To demand the enactment of the English Navigation
Law, he declared, was "a revocation of the constitution;" and his rival,
Flood, in his zeal to emulate his popularity with the mob, surpassing
him in vehemence, inveighed against the clause, as one intended to make
the Irish Parliament a mere register of the English Parliament, "which
it should never become". All the arguments brought forward in favor of
the measure by the supporters of the government--arguments which,
probably, no one would now be found to deny to have been
unanswerable--failed to make the slightest impression on a House in
which the chief object of each opponent of the ministry seemed to be to
outrun his fellows in violence; and eventually the measure fell to the
ground, and for fifteen years more Ireland was deprived of the
advantages which had been intended for her.
And even yet the danger from the Volunteers was not wholly extinguished.
Though their Convention had been suppressed, its leaders had only
changed their tactics. Under the guidance of a Dublin ironmonger, named
Napper Tandy, they now proposed to convene a Congress, to consist, not,
as before, of delegates from the Volunteer body, but of persons who
should be representatives of the entire nation; and Tandy had even the
audacity to issue circulars to the sheriffs of the different counties,
to require them, in their official capacity, to summon the people to
return representatives to this Congress. The Sheriff of Dublin, a man of
the name of O'Reilly, obeyed the requisition; but Fitzgibbon, who,
luckily, was now Attorney-general, instantly prosecuted him for abuse of
his office. He was convicted, fined, and imprisoned, and his punishment
deterred others from following his example. And a rigorous example had
become indispensable, since it was known to the government that Tandy
and some of his followers were acting in connection with French
emissaries, and that their object was the separation of Ireland from
England, and, in the minds of some of them, certainly the annexation of
the country to France; indeed, on one occasion Fitzgibbon asserted in
the House of Commons that he had seen resolutions inviting the French
into the country. The government would gladly have established a militia
to supersede the Volunteers, but the temper of the Irish Parliament, in
its newly-acquired independence, rendered any such attempt hopeless; and
Mr. Grattan, with a perversity of judgment which his warmest admirers
must find it difficult to reconcile with statesmanship, if not with
patriotism, even opposed with extreme bitterness a bill for the
establishment of a police for Dublin, though he could not deny that
there existed in the city an organized body of ruffians, who made not
only the streets but even the dwelling-houses of the more orderly
citizens unsafe, by outrages of the worst kind, committed on the largest
scale--assaults, plunderings, ravishments, and murders. In the rural
districts of the South the disturbances were so criminally violent, and
so incessant, that the Lord-lieutenant was compelled to request the
presence of some additional regiments from England, as the sole means of
preserving any kind of respect for the law; and more than once the mobs
of rioters showed themselves so bold and formidable, that the soldiers
were compelled to fire in self-defence, and order was not restored but
at the cost of many lives.
Presently a Conspiracy Bill was passed, and gradually the firmness of
the government re-established a certain amount of internal tranquillity.
But shortly afterward a crisis arose which, more than the debates on the
commercial propositions, or on the Volunteers, or on the police, showed
how over-liberal had been the confidence of the English minister who had
repealed Poynings' Act, and had bestowed independent authority on the
Irish Parliament before the members had learned how to use it. We have
seen how keen a contest was excited in the English Parliament by the
deranged condition of the King's health in 1788, and the necessity which
consequently arose for the appointment of a Regency. Grattan was in
London at the time, where he had contracted a personal intimacy with
Fox, and had been presented by him to the Prince of Wales, whose
graciousness of manner, and profession of adherence to the Whig system
of politics, secured his attachment to that party. Grattan was easily
indoctrinated by Fox with his theory of the indefeasible claim of the
Prince to the Regency as his birthright, and is understood to have
promised that the Irish Parliament should adopt that view. The case was
one which seemed unprovided for. There was no question but that the law
enacted that the sovereign of England should also be the sovereign of
Ireland. But no express law of either country contained any such
stipulation respecting a Regent; and Grattan conceived that, in the
absence of any pre-existing ordinance, it would be easy to contend that
the Irish Parliament was the sole judge who the Regent should be, and on
what terms he should exercise the royal authority.
The Irish Parliament had been prorogued in 1787 to the 5th of February,
1789, the same day on which, after numerous examinations of the
physicians in attendance on the royal patient, and after the passing of
a series of resolutions enunciating the principles on which the
government was proceeding, Pitt introduced the Regency Bill into the
English House of Commons, being prepared to conduct it through both
Houses with all the despatch that might be consistent with a due
observance of all the forms of deliberation. Grattan's object was to
anticipate the decision of the English Parliament, so as to avoid every
appearance that the Irish Parliament was only following it; and he
therefore proposed that the House of Commons should instantly vote an
address to the Prince, requesting him to take upon himself the Regency
of the kingdom of Ireland, by his own natural right as the heir of the
crown; making sure not only that his advice would be taken by those whom
he was addressing, but that the House of Lords would not venture to
dissent from it.
Fitzgibbon, as Attorney-general and spokesman of the government in the
Commons, as a matter of course opposed such precipitate action, not only
warning his hearers of the folly and danger of taking a step "which
might dissolve the single tie which now connected Ireland with Great
Britain," but explaining also the whole principle of the constitution of
the two kingdoms, so far as it was a joint constitution, in terms which
give his speech a permanent value as a summary of its principle and its
character. He recalled to the recollection of the House the act of
William and Mary, which declares "the kingdom of Ireland to be annexed
to the imperial crown of England, and the sovereign of England to be by
undoubted right sovereign of Ireland also;" and argued from this that
Mr. Grattan's proposal was contrary to the laws of the realm and
criminal in the extreme. "The crown of Ireland," as he told his hearers,
"and the crown of England are inseparably united, and the Irish
Parliament is totally independent of the British Parliament. The first
of these positions is your security, the second your freedom, and any
other language tends to the separation of the crowns or the subjection
of your Parliament. The only security of your liberty is the connection
with Great Britain; and gentlemen who risk breaking the connection must
make up their minds to a union. God forbid I should ever see that day;
but, if the day comes on which a separation shall be attempted, I shall
not hesitate to embrace a union rather than a separation."
He proceeded to show that, as the Irish Parliament had itself enacted
that all bills which passed their two Houses should require the sanction
of the Great Seal of England, they actually had no legal power to confer
on the Prince of Wales such authority as Grattan advised his being
invested with, whatever might be the form of words in which their
resolution was couched. He pointed out, also, that if the Irish
Parliament should insist on appointing the Prince of Wales Regent before
it was known whether he would accept the Regency of England, it was
manifestly not impossible "that they might be appointing a Regent for
Ireland being a different person from the Regent of England; and in that
case the moment a Regent was appointed in Great Britain, he might send a
commission under the Great Seal appointing a Lord-lieutenant of Ireland,
and to that commission the Regent of Ireland would be bound to pay
obedience. Another objection of great force to his mind was, that the
course recommended by Grattan would be a formal appeal from the
Parliament of England to that of Ireland. It would sow the seeds of
dissension between the Parliaments of the two countries. And, indeed,
those who were professing themselves advocates for the independence of
the Irish crown were advocates for its separation from England."
But the House was too entirely under the influence of Grattan's
impassioned eloquence for Fitzgibbon's more sober arguments to be
listened to. The address proposed by Grattan was carried by acclamation;
and the peers were scarcely less unanimous in its favor, one of the
archbishops even dilating on "the duty of availing themselves of the
opportunity of asserting the total independence of Ireland." Even when,
on a second discussion as to the mode in which the address was to be
presented to the Prince, Fitzgibbon reported that he had consulted the
Chancellor and all the judges, and that they were unanimously of opinion
that, till the Regency Bill should be passed in England, the address was
not only improper but treasonable, he found his warning equally
disregarded. And when the Lord-lieutenant refused to transmit the
address to England, on the avowed ground of its illegality, Grattan
proposed and carried three resolutions: the first, that the address was
not illegal, but that, in addressing the Prince to take on himself the
Regency, the Parliament of Ireland had exercised an undoubted right; the
second, that the Lord-lieutenant's refusal to transmit the address to
his Royal Highness was ill-advised and unconstitutional; the third, that
a deputation from the two Houses should go to London, to present the
address to the Prince. Mr. Fronde affirms that the deputation, even when
preparing to sail for England, was very irresolute and undecided whether
to present the address or not, from a reasonable fear of incurring the
penalties of treason, to which the lawyers pronounced those who should
present it liable. But their courage was not put to the test. As has
been already seen, before the end of the month the King's recovery was
announced, and the question of a Regency did not occur again till the
Irish Parliament had been united to the English.
Since Lord Rockingham's concessions, in 1782, the project of a
legislative union between the two countries, resembling that which
united Scotland to England, had more than once been broached. We have
seen it alluded to by Fitzgibbon in the course of these discussions, and
it was no new idea. It had been discussed even before the union with
Scotland was completed, and had then been regarded in Ireland with
feelings very different from those which prevailed at a later period.
Ten years after the time of which we are speaking, Grattan denounced the
scheme with almost frantic violence. Fitzgibbon (though after the
Rebellion he recommended it as indispensable) as yet regarded it only as
an alternative which, though he might eventually embrace it, he should
not accept without extreme reluctance. But at the beginning of the
century all parties among the Protestant Irish had been eager for it,
and even the leading Roman Catholics had been not unwilling to acquiesce
in it. Unluckily, the English ministers were unable to shake off the
influence of the English manufacturers; and they, in another development
of the selfish and wicked jealousy which had led them in William's reign
to require the suppression of the Irish woollen manufacture, now, in
Anne's, rose against the proposal of a legislative union.[133] In
blindness which was not only fatal but suicidal also, "they persuaded
themselves that the union would make Ireland rich, and that England's
interest was to keep her poor;" as if it had been possible for one
portion of the kingdom to increase in prosperity without every other
portion benefiting also by the improvement.
However, in the reign of Anne the union was a question only of
expediency or of wisdom. The wide divergence of the two Parliaments on
this question of the Regency transformed it into a question of
necessity. The King might have a relapse; the Irish Parliament, on a
recurrence of the crisis, might re-affirm its late resolutions; might
frame another address to the Prince of Wales; and there might be no
alternative between seeing two different persons Regents of England and
Ireland, or, what would be nearly the same thing, seeing the same person
Regent of the two countries on different grounds, and exercising a
different authority.
And if these proceedings of the Irish Parliament had wrought in the mind
of the great English minister a conviction of the absolute necessity of
preventing a recurrence of such dangers by the only practicable means
open to him--the fusion of it into one body with the English Parliament
by a legislative union--the occurrences of the ensuing ten years
enforced that conviction with a weight still more irresistible. It has
been seen how stirring an influence the revolutionary fever engendered
by the overthrow of the French monarchy for a time exerted even over the
calmer temper of Englishmen. In Ireland, where, ever since Sarsfield and
his brave garrison enlisted under the banner of Louis XIV., a connection
more or less intimate with France had been constantly kept up, the
events in Paris had produced a far deeper and wider effect. More than
one demagogue among the Volunteers had avowed a desire to see the whole
country transfer its allegiance from the English to the French
sovereign; and this preference was more pronounced after the triumph of
democracy in the French capital. For the leaders of the movement,
themselves nearly all men of the lowest degree, denounced the Irish
nobles with almost as much vehemence as the English connection.
Yet Pitt's policy, dictated partly by a spirit of conciliation, and
still more by feelings of justice, was gradually removing many of the
grievances of which the Irish had real reason to complain. Next to the
restrictions on trade, nothing had made such an impression on his mind
as the iniquity of the penal laws; and those he proceeded to repeal,
encouraging the introduction of bills to throw open the profession of
the law to Roman Catholics, to allow them seats on the magistrates'
bench and commissions in the army, and to grant them the electoral
franchise, a concession which he himself would willingly have extended
by admitting them to Parliament itself. But these relaxations of the old
Penal Code, important as they were, only conciliated the higher classes
of the Roman Catholics. Most of the Roman Catholic prelates, and most of
the Roman Catholic lay nobles, proclaimed their satisfaction at what had
been done, and their good-will toward the minister who had done it; but
the professional agitators were exasperated rather than conciliated at
finding so much of the ground on which they had rested cut from beneath
their feet. So desirous was Pitt to carry conciliation to the greatest
length that could be consistent with safety, that he held more than one
conference with Grattan himself; but he found that great orator not very
manageable, partly, as it may seem from some of Mr. Windham's letters,
through jealousy of Fitzgibbon, who was now the Irish Chancellor,[134]
and still more from a desire to propitiate the Roman Catholics, for whom
he demanded complete and immediate Emancipation; while Pitt, who was,
probably, already resolved on accomplishing a legislative Union,
thought, as far as we can judge, that Emancipation should follow, not
precede, the Union, lest, if it should precede it, it might prove rather
a stumbling-block in the way than a stepping-stone to the still more
important measure.
It is not very easy to determine what influence the "Emancipation," as
it was rather absurdly called,[135] if it had been granted at that time,
might have had in quieting the prevailing discontent. With one large
party it would probably have increased it, for there was quite as great
an inclination to insurrection in Ulster as in Leinster or Munster; and
with the Northern Presbyterians animosity to Popery was at least as
powerful a feeling as sympathy with the French Republicans. A subsequent
chapter, however, will afford a more fitting opportunity for discussing
the arguments in favor of or against Emancipation. What seems certain
is, that a large party among the Roman Catholics of the lower class
valued Emancipation itself principally as a measure to another end--a
separation from England. Pitt, meanwhile, hopeless of reconciling the
leaders of the different parties--the impulsive enthusiasm of Grattan
with the sober, practical wisdom of Fitzgibbon--pursued his own policy
of conciliation united with vigor; and one of the measures which he now
carried subsists, unaltered in its principle, to the present day.
There was no part of the penal laws of which the folly and iniquity were
more intolerable than the restrictions which they imposed on education.
To a certain extent, they defeated themselves. The clause which
subjected to severe penalties a Roman Catholic parent who sent his child
abroad to enjoy the benefits of an education which he was not allowed to
receive at home, was manifestly almost incapable of enforcement, and the
youths designed for orders in the Romish Church had been invariably sent
to foreign colleges--some to Douai or St. Omer, in France; some to the
renowned Spanish University of Salamanca. But the French colleges had
been swept away by the Revolution, which also made a passage to Spain
(the greater expense of which had at all times confined that resource to
a small number of students) more difficult; and the consequence was,
that in 1794 the Roman Catholic Primate, Dr. Troy, petitioned the
government to grant a royal license for the endowment of a college in
Ireland. Justice and policy were equally in favor of the grant of such a
request. For the sake of the whole kingdom, and even for that of
Protestantism itself, it was better that the Roman Catholic priesthood
should be an educated rather than an ignorant body of men; and, in the
temper which at that time prevailed over the western countries of the
Continent, it was at least equally desirable that the rising generation
should be preserved from the contagion of the revolutionary principles
which the present rulers of France were so industrious to propagate.
Pitt at once embraced the idea, and in the spring of the next year a
bill was introduced into the Irish Parliament by the Chief Secretary,
authorizing the foundation and endowment of a college at Maynooth, in
the neighborhood of Dublin, for the education of Roman Catholics
generally, whether destined for the Church or for lay professions. It is
a singular circumstance that the only opposition to the measure came
from Grattan and his party, who urged that, as the Roman Catholics had
recently been allowed to matriculate and take degrees at Trinity
College, though not to share in the endowments of that wealthy
institution, the endowment of another college, to be exclusively
confined to Roman Catholics, would be a retrograde step, undoing the
benefits of the recent concession of the authorities of Trinity; would
be "a revival and re-enactment of the principles of separation and
exclusion," and an injury to the whole community. For, as he wisely
contended, nothing was so important to the well-doing of the entire
people as the extinction of the religious animosities which had hitherto
embittered the feelings of each Church toward the other, and nothing
could so surely tend to that extinction as the uniting the members of
both from their earliest youth, in the pursuit both of knowledge and
amusement, as school-fellows and playmates. If Mr. Froude's
interpretation of the motives of those who influenced Grattan on this
occasion be correct, he was unconsciously made a tool of by those whose
real object was a separation from England, of the attainment of which
they despaired, unless they could unite Protestants and Roman Catholics
in its prosecution. The bill, however, was passed by a very large
majority, and £9000 a year was appropriated to the endowment of the
college. Half a century afterward, as will be seen, that endowment was
enlarged, and placed on a more solid and permanent footing, by one of
the ablest of Pitt's successors. It was a wise and just measure; and if
its success has not entirely answered the expectations of the minister
who granted it, its comparative failure has been owing to circumstances
which the acutest judgment could not have foreseen.
But it seems certain that neither the concession nor the refusal of any
demands put forward by any party in Ireland could have prevented the
insurrection which broke out shortly afterward. There were two parties
among the disaffected Irish--or it should, perhaps, rather be said that
two different objects were kept in view by them--one of which, the
establishment of a republic, was dearer to one section of the
malcontents; separation from England, with the contingency of annexation
to France, was the more immediate aim of the other, though the present
existence of a republican form of government in France to a great extent
united the two. As has been mentioned before, the original movers in the
conspiracy were of low extraction, Dublin tradesmen in a small way of
business. Napper Tandy was an ironmonger, Wolfe Tone was the son of a
coach-maker. But they had obtained a recruit of a very different class,
a younger son of the Duke of Leinster, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a man of
very slender capacity, who, at his first entrance into Parliament, when
scarcely more than of age, had made himself remarkable by a furious
denunciation of Pitt's Irish propositions; had married a natural
daughter of the Duke of Orleans, a prince, in spite of his royal birth,
one of the most profligate and ferocious of the French Jacobins; and had
caught the revolutionary mania to such a degree that he abjured his
nobility, and substituted for the appellation which marked his rank the
title of "Citizen Fitzgerald." He had enrolled himself in a society
known as the United Irishmen, and had gone to France, as its
plenipotentiary, to arrange with Hoche, one of the most brilliant and
popular of the French generals, a scheme for the invasion of Ireland, in
which he promised him that, on his landing, he should be joined by tens
of thousands of armed Irishmen. Hoche entered warmly into the plan, was
furnished with a splendid army by the Directors, and in December, 1796,
set sail for Ireland; but the fleet which carried him was dispersed in a
storm; many of the ships were wrecked, others were captured by the
British cruisers, and the remnant of the fleet, sadly crippled, was glad
to regain its harbors. Two years afterward another invading expedition
had still worse fortune. General Humbert, who in 1796 had been one of
Hoche's officers, did succeed in effecting a landing at Killala Bay, in
Mayo; but he and the whole of his force was speedily surrounded, and
compelled to surrender; and a month afterward a large squadron, with a
more powerful division of troops, under General Hardy, on board, found
itself unable to effect a landing, but fell in with a squadron under Sir
John Warren, who captured every ship but two; Wolfe Tone, who was on
board one of them, being taken prisoner, and only escaping the gallows
by suicide.
This happened in October, 1798. But it is difficult to conceive with
what object these last expeditions had been despatched from France at
all; for in the preceding summer the rebellion of the Irish had broken
out, and had been totally crushed in a few weeks;[136] not without
terrible loss of life on both sides, nor without the insurgent
leaders--though many of them were gentlemen of good birth, fortune, and
education, and still more were clergy--showing a ferocity and ingenuity
in cruelty which the worst of the French Jacobins had scarcely exceeded;
one of the saddest circumstances of the whole rebellion being, that the
insurgents, who had burnt men, women, and children alive, who had
deliberately hacked others to pieces against whom they did not profess
to have a single ground of complaint beyond the fact that they were
English and Protestant, found advocates in both Houses of the English
Parliament, who declared that the rebellion was owing to the severity of
the Irish Viceroy and his chief councillors, who denied that the rebels
had solicited French aid, and who even voted against granting to the
government the re-enforcements necessary to prevent a revival of the
treason.
The rebellion was crushed with such celerity as might have convinced the
most disaffected of the insanity of defying the power of Great Britain;
but it was certain that the spirit which prompted the rebellion was not
extinguished, and that, as it had been fed before, so it would continue
to be fed by the factious spirit of members of the Irish House of
Commons, and of those who could return members,[137] so long as Ireland
had a separate Parliament. Not, indeed, that Pitt required the argument
in favor of a Union which was thus furnished. The course adopted by the
Irish Parliament on the Regency question was quite sufficient to show
how great a mistake had been made by the repeal of Poynings' Act. But
what the rebellion proved was, that the Union would not admit of an
instant's delay; and Pitt at once applied himself to the task of framing
a measure which, while it should strengthen England, by the removal of
the necessity for a constant watchfulness over every transaction and
movement in Ireland, should at the same time confer on and secure to
Ireland substantial advantages, such as, without a Union, the English
Parliament could scarcely be induced to contemplate.
Mr. Hallam, in one of the last chapters of his work,[138] while showing
by unanswerable arguments the advantages which Scotland has derived from
her Union with England, has also enumerated some of the causes which
impeded the minister of the day in his endeavors to render it acceptable
to the Scotch members to whom it was proposed. The most apparently
substantial of these was the unprecedented character of the measure. No
past "experience of history was favorable to the absorption of a lesser
state, at least where the government partook so much of the republican
form, in one of superior power and ancient rivalry." But, in the case of
the present measure, what had thus been a difficulty in the Scotch Union
might have been expected to be regarded as an argument in its favor,
since the keenest patriots among the Scotch had long been convinced that
the Union had brought a vast increase of prosperity and importance to
their country, and what was now confessed to have proved advantageous to
Scotland might naturally be expected to be equally beneficial to
Ireland. Another obstacle had been the fear of the danger to which the
Presbyterian Church might be "exposed, when brought thus within the
power of a Legislature so frequently influenced by one which held her,
not as a sister, but rather a bastard usurper to a sister's
inheritance." But here again experience might give her testimony in
favor of an Irish Union, since it was incontestable that those
apprehensions--which, no doubt, many earnest Scotchmen had sincerely
entertained--had not been realized, but that since the Union the
Presbyterian Church had enjoyed as great security, as complete
independence, and as absolute an authority over its members as in the
preceding century; that the Parliament had never attempted the slightest
interference with its exercise of its privileges, and that the Church of
England had been equally free from the exhibition of any desire to
stimulate the Parliament to such action; while the Roman Catholic
Church, which had many more adherents in England than the Presbyterian
Church had ever had, was quite powerful enough to exact for itself the
maintenance of its rights, and the minister was quite willing to grant
equal securities to those which, at the beginning of the century, had
been thought sufficient for the Church of Scotland. A third reason which
our great historical critic puts forward for the disfavor with which the
Union was at the time regarded by many high-minded Scotchmen, he finds
in "the gross prostitution with which a majority sold themselves to the
surrender of their own legislative existence." That similar means were
to some extent employed to win over opponents of the government in
Ireland cannot, it must be confessed, be denied, though the temptations
held out to converts oftener took the shape of titles, promotions,
appointments, and court favors than of actual money. The most recent
historian of this period--who, to say the least, is not biassed in favor
of either the English or Irish government of the period--pronounces as
his opinion, formed after the most careful research, that the bribery
was on the other side. "Cornwallis and Castlereagh" (the Lord-lieutenant
and the Chief Secretary) "both declared it to be within their knowledge
that the Opposition offered four thousand pounds, ready money, for a
vote. But they name only one man who was purchased, and his vote was
obtained for four thousand pounds. From the language of Lord Cornwallis,
it is certain that if money was spent by the government in this way it
was without his knowledge; but many things may have been done by the
inferior agents of the government, and possibly by Castlereagh himself,
which they would not venture to lay before the Lord-lieutenant. It
appears, however, from the papers which have recently come to light,
that the prevalent belief of the Union having been mainly effected by a
lavish expenditure of money is not well-founded; still it is certain
that some money was expended in this way." Besides actual payment for
votes, he adds that a very large sum--a hundred thousand pounds--is said
to have been expended in the purchase of seats, the holders of which
were, of course, to vote against the measure; and names Lord Downshire
as subscribing £5000, Lord Lismore and Mr. White £3000 each, while the
government funds were chiefly expended "in engaging[139] young
barristers of the Four Courts to write for the Union." But, even if it
were true that corruption was employed to the very utmost extent that
was ever alleged by the most vehement opponent of the measure and of the
government, it may be feared that very few of the last century Irishmen
would have been so shocked at it as to consider that fact an objection
to the Union, especially, it is sad and shameful to say, among the upper
classes. The poorer classes, those who could render no political service
to a minister, as being consequently beneath official notice, were
unassailed by his temptations; but the demoralization of the men of rank
and property was almost universal, and few seats were disposed of, few
votes were given, except in return for favors granted, or out of
discontent at favors refused. And it cannot be denied that the tendency
to political jobbery had not been diminished by the concessions of 1782,
if, indeed, it may not be said that the increased importance which those
concessions had given to the Irish Parliament had led the members of
both Houses to place an increased value on their services. Certainly no
previous Lord-lieutenant had given such descriptions of the universality
of the demands made on him as were forwarded to the English government
by those who held that office in the sixteen years preceding the
outbreak of the Rebellion.
It is remarkable that the transaction which, as has been said before,
may be conceived to have first forced on Pitt's mind the conviction of
the absolute necessity of the Union--namely, the course pursued by the
Irish Parliament on the Regency Bill--bore a close resemblance to that
which, above all other considerations, had made the Scotch Union
indispensable, namely, the Act of Security passed by the Scottish
Estates in 1703, which actually provided that, on the decease of Queen
Anne without issue, the Estates "should name her successor, but should
be debarred from choosing the admitted successor to the crown of
England, unless such forms of government were settled as should fully
secure the religion, freedom, and trade of the Scottish nation."[140]
The Scotch Estates, therefore, had absolutely regarded the possible
separation of the two kingdoms as a contingency which might become not
undesirable; and, though it was too ticklish an argument to bring
forward, it may very possibly have occurred to Pitt that a similar vote
of the Irish Parliament was not impossible. The claim which Grattan,
following Fox, had set up on behalf of the Prince of Wales, was one of
an indefeasible right to the Regency; and, as far as right by
inheritance went, his claim to the crown, if, or whenever, a vacancy
should occur, was far less disputable. But, as has been mentioned in the
last chapter, a question had already been raised whether his Royal
Highness had not forfeited his right to the succession, and it was quite
possible that that question might be renewed. The fact of the Prince's
marriage to a Roman Catholic was by this time generally accepted as
certain; the birth of the Princess Charlotte gave greater importance to
the circumstance than it seemed to have while the Prince remained
childless; and, if the performance of the marriage ceremony should be
legally proved, and the English law courts should pronounce that the
legal invalidity of the marriage did not protect the Prince from the
penalty of forfeiture, it was highly probable that the Irish Parliament
would take a different view--would refuse, in spite of the Bill of
Rights, to regard marriage with a Roman Catholic as a disqualification,
but would recognize the Prince of Wales as King of Ireland.
Several minor considerations, such as the desirableness of uniformity in
the proceedings of the two countries with respect to Money Bills, the
Mutiny Act, and other arrangements of parliamentary detail, all pointed
the same way; and, on the whole, it may be said that scarcely any of the
opponents of the government measure were found to deny its expediency,
especially as regarded the interests of Great Britain. The objections
which were made were urged on different grounds. In the Irish House of
Commons, a member who, though a young man, had already established a
very high reputation for professional skill as a barrister, for
eloquence equally suited to the Bar and to the Senate, and for sincere
and incorruptible patriotism, Mr. Plunkett, took upon himself to deny
the competency of the Irish Parliament to pass a bill not only to
extinguish its own existence, but to prevent the birth of any future
Parliament, and to declare that the act, if it "should be passed," would
be a mere nullity, and that no man in "Ireland would be bound to obey
it." And, in the English House of Commons, Mr. Grey may be thought to
have adopted something of the same view, when he proposed an amendment
"to suspend all proceedings on the subject till the sentiments of the
people of Ireland respecting that measure could be ascertained." He did
not, of course, deny (he was speaking on the 21st of April, 1800) that
the bill had been passed by both Houses of the Irish Parliament by
considerable majorities.[141] But he contended that that Parliament did
not speak the sentiments of the people; and, that being the case, that
its voice was of no authority. It is evident that all arguments founded
on a denial of the omnipotence of a Parliament, whether English or
Irish, are invalid. The question of that omnipotence, as has been seen
in a former chapter, had been fully discussed when Mr. Pitt's father
denied the power of Parliament to tax the American Colonies; and that
question may fairly be regarded as having been settled at that time. It
is equally clear that the denial that, on any question whatever, the
House of Commons must be taken to speak the sentiments of the
constituencies, whether the proposal of such question had been
contemplated at the time of their election or not, is the advancement of
a doctrine wholly inconsistent with our parliamentary constitution, and
one which would practically be the parent of endless agitation and
mischief. To expect that the members could pronounce on no new question
without a fresh reference to their constituents, would be to reduce them
from the position of representatives to that of delegates; such as that
of the members of the old States-general, in France, whose early decay
is attributed by the ablest political writers in no small degree to the
dependence of the members on their constituents for precise
instructions. Another argument on which Mr. Grey insisted with great
earnestness is worth preserving, though subsequent inventions have
destroyed its force; he contended that the example of the Scotch Union
did not, when properly considered, afford any argument in favor of an
Irish Union, from the difference of situation of the two countries.
Scotland was a part of the same island as England; "there was no
physical impediment to rapid and constant communication; the relative
situation of the two countries was such that the King himself could
administer the executive government in both, and there was no occasion
for a separate establishment being kept up in each." But the sea lay
between England and Ireland, and the delays and sometimes difficulties
which were thus interposed rendered it "necessary that Ireland should
have a separate government;" and he affirmed that "this was an
insuperable bar to a beneficial Union," quoting a saying of Lord Somers,
that "if it were necessary to preserve a separate executive government
at Edinburgh after the Union, he would abandon the measure." Mr. Grey
even denied that the prosperity of Scotland since the Union was mainly
attributable to that measure. "It was not the Union; it was the adoption
of a liberal policy, the application of a proper remedy to the
particular evils under which the country labored, that removed the
causes which had impeded the prosperity of Scotland." But this argument
was clearly open to the reply that the adoption of that liberal policy
had been a direct effect of the Union, and would have been impracticable
without it, and was, therefore, a strong inducement to the adoption of a
similar Union with Ireland, where the existing evils were at least as
great as those which, a century before, had kept down Scotland. Another
of his arguments has been remarkably falsified by the event. With a
boldness in putting forward what was manifestly, indeed avowedly, a
party objection, and which, as such, must be looked upon as somewhat
singular, he found a reason for resisting the addition of a hundred
Irish members to the British House of Commons in the probability that
they would, as a general rule, be subservient to the minister. He
instanced "the uniform support which the members for Scotland had given
to every act of ministers," and saw in that example "reason to apprehend
that the Irish members would become a no less regular band of
ministerial adherents." It would be superfluous to point out how
entirely contrary the result has been to the prediction.
It is, however, beside the purpose of this work to dwell on the
arguments by which the minister supported his proposal, or on those with
which the Opposition resisted it, whether apparently founded on
practical considerations, such as those brought forward by Mr. Grey, or
those of a more sentimental character, which rested on the loss of
national "dignity and honor," which, it was assumed, would be the
consequence of the measure. It seems desirable rather to explain the
principal conditions on which the Union was to be effected, as Pitt
explained it to the House of Commons in April, 1800. In the preceding
year he had confined himself to moving a series of resolutions in favor
of the principle, which, though they were adopted by both Houses in
England, he did not at that time endeavor to carry farther, since in the
Irish House of Commons the utmost exertions of the government could only
prevail by a single vote;[142] and he naturally thought such a majority
far too slender to justify his relying on it so far as to proceed
farther with a measure of such vast importance. But, during the recess,
he had introduced some modifications into his original draft of the
measure, which, though slight, were sufficient to conciliate much
additional support; and the consequence was, that in February of this
year both the Irish Houses accepted it by sufficient majorities;[143]
and, therefore, he now felt able to lay the details of the measure
before the English Parliament. To take them in the order in which he
enumerated them, that which had appeared to the Irish Parliament "the
first and most important, was the share which the Irish constituencies
ought to have in the representation of the House of Commons." On this
point, "the Parliament of Ireland was of opinion that the number of
representatives for Ireland ought to be one hundred." And he was not
disposed to differ from the conclusion to which it had come. He regarded
it, indeed, as "a matter of but small importance whether the number of
representatives from one part of the united empire were greater or less.
If they were enough to make known the local wants, to state the
interests and convey the sentiments of the part of the empire they
represented, it would produce that degree of general security which
would be wanting in any vain attempt to obtain that degree of
theoretical perfection about which in modern times they had heard so
much." He approved of "the principle which had been laid down upon this
part of the subject in the Parliament of Ireland--a reference to the
supposed population of the two countries, and to the proposed rate of
contribution. The proportion of contribution proposed to be established
was seven and a half for Great Britain, and one for Ireland; while in
the proportion of population Great Britain was to Ireland as two and a
half or three to one;[144] so that the result, on a combination of these
two calculations, would be something more than five to one in favor of
Great Britain, which was about the proportion which it was proposed to
establish between the representation of the two countries." The
principle of selection of the constituencies which had been adopted he
likewise considered most "equitable and satisfactory for Ireland. The
plan proposed was, that the members of the counties and the principal
commercial cities should remain entire.... The remaining members were to
be selected from those places which were the most considerable in point
of population and wealth.... This was the only plan which could be
adopted without trenching on the constitution; it introduced no
theoretical reforms in the constitution or in the representation of this
country; it made no distinction between different parliamentary rights,
nor any alteration, even the slightest, in the internal forms of
Parliament."
Another consideration which he had kept in mind in framing this measure
was this: "By the laws of England care had been taken to prevent the
influence of the crown from becoming too great by too many offices being
held by members of Parliament." And Pitt had no doubt that there would
be a general feeling "that some provision ought to be made on this
subject" in the arrangements for the new Parliament. At present, among
the representatives of the counties and great commercial towns, whose
seats were to be preserved in the new united Parliament, there were not
above five or six who held offices; and, though it was impossible to
estimate the possible number of place-holders with precision, he thought
what would he most fair for him to propose would be, that "no more than
twenty of the Irish members should hold places, and that if it should
happen that a greater number did hold places during pleasure, then those
who had last accepted them should vacate their seats."
In the House of Peers he proposed that twenty-eight lords temporal of
Ireland should have seats in the united Parliament, who should be
elected for life by the Peers of Ireland--an arrangement which differed
from that which, at the beginning of the century, had been adopted for
the representative Peers of Scotland; but he argued, and surely with
great reason, that "the choice of Peers to represent the Irish nobility
for life was a mode that was more congenial to the general spirit and
system of a Peerage than that of their being septennially elected, as
the nobility of Scotland were." Of the spiritual Peers, four were to sit
in rotation; to the lay Peers a farther privilege was given, which the
minister regarded as of considerable, and even constitutional
importance. By the articles of the Scotch Union, a Peer, if not chosen
as a representative of the Peerage, was not eligible as a candidate for
the House of Commons in either England or Scotland. But this bill
"reserved a right to the Peers of Ireland who should not be elected to
represent their own Peerage, to be elected members of the House of
Commons of the united Parliament of Great Britain;" and Pitt urged that
this was "a far better mode of treatment than had been adopted for the
nobility of Scotland; so that a nobleman of Ireland, if not representing
his own order, might be chosen as a legislator by a class of inferior
rank, which he was so far from regarding as improper, that he deemed it
in a high degree advantageous to the empire, analogous to the practice
as well as friendly to the spirit of the British constitution." And he
enforced his argument by pointing out with honest pride the advantage
which in that respect the spirit and practice of our constitution gave
to our nobility over the nobles of other countries. "We know full well,"
he continued, "the advantage we have experienced from having in this
House those who, in the course of descent, as well as in hopes of merit,
have had a prospect of sitting in our House of Peers. Those, therefore,
who object to this part of the arrangement" (for, as he had previously
mentioned, it had been made a subject not only of objection, but of
ridicule) "can only do so from the want of due attention to the true
character of our constitution, one of the great leading advantages of
which is, that a person may for a long time be a member of one branch of
the Legislature, and have it in view to become a member of another
branch of it. This it is which constitutes the leading difference
between the nobility of Great Britain and those of other countries. With
us they are permitted to have legislative power before they arrive at
their higher stations; and as they are, like all the rest of mankind, to
be improved by experience in the science of legislation as well as in
every other science, our constitution affords them that opportunity by
their being eligible to seats in this House from the time of their
majority. This is one of those circumstances which arise frequently in
practice, but the advantages of which do not appear in theory till
chance happens to cast them before us, and makes them subjects of
discussion. These are the shades of the British constitution in which
its latent beauties consist;" and he affirmed his conviction that this
privilege would prove "an advantage to the nobility of Ireland, and an
improvement in the system of representation in the House."
It will hardly be denied that the arrangement that the representative
Peers of Ireland should enjoy their seats for life did make it desirable
that those who were not so elected to the Upper House should be eligible
as candidates for a place in the Lower House. Otherwise, those who were
not chosen as representatives of the peerage would have been placed in
the anomalous and unfair position of being the only persons in the
kingdom possessed of the requisite property qualification, and not
disqualified by sex or profession, who were absolutely excluded from the
opportunity of distinguishing themselves and serving their country in
Parliament. How great the practical benefit to the House of Commons and
the country the clause he was recommending was calculated to confer, was
shown in a remarkable manner the very year of his death, when an Irish
Peer was returned to the House of Commons, who, retaining his seat for
nearly sixty years as the representative of different constituencies,
the University of Cambridge being among the number, during the course of
that period rose through a variety of offices to that of Prime-minister,
and, as is admitted even by those who dissented most widely from some of
his opinions and actions, earned for himself an honorable reputation, as
one who had rendered faithful services to the crown, and on more than
one occasion had conferred substantial benefits on the country.
The arrangements proposed with respect to the Peers were not opposed.
But Mr. Grey--generally acting as the spokesman of the Opposition on
this question--raised an objection to making so large an addition as
that of one hundred new members to the British House of Commons. He
repeated his prophecy, made on a previous occasion, of the subserviency
to the minister which the Irish members might be expected to exhibit,
and therefore moved an amendment to reduce the number of Irish
representatives to eighty-five; but, to obviate the discontent which
such a reduction might be expected to excite in Ireland, he proposed to
diminish the number of English members also, by disfranchising forty "of
the most decayed boroughs," a step which would leave the number of
members in the new united Parliament as nearly as possible the same as
it was before. He found, however, very few to agree with him; his
amendment was rejected by 176 to 34; and the minister's proposal was
adopted in all its details.
Mr. Pitt touched lightly on the next article, which limited the royal
prerogative of creating Peers by a provision that the King should never
confer any fresh Irish peerage till three peerages should have become
extinct. This, again, was a point of difference between the conditions
of the Scotch and Irish Unions; since by the terms of the Scotch Union
the King was forever debarred from creating any new Scotch peerages. But
it was pointed out that the greater antiquity of the Scotch peerages,
and the circumstance that in Scotland the titles descended to collateral
branches, were calculated to make the extinction of a Scotch peerage an
event of very rare occurrence; while the comparative newness (with very
few exceptions) of Irish peerages, and the rule by which they are
"confined to immediate male descendants," rendered the entire extinction
of the Irish peerage probable, "if the power of adding to or making up
the number were not given to the crown."
Recent legislation has given such importance to the next resolution,
that it will be well to quote his precise words:
"5. That it would be fit to propose, as the fifth article of union, that
the Churches of that part of Great Britain called England and of Ireland
shall be united into one Church; and that when his Majesty shall summon
a Convocation, the archbishops, bishops, and clergy of the several
provinces in Ireland shall be respectively summoned to and sit in the
Convocation of the united Church, in the like manner and subject to the
same regulations as to election and qualification as are at present by
law established with respect to the like orders of the Church of
England; and that the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of
the said united Church shall be preserved as now by law established for
the Church of England, saving to the Church of Ireland all the rights,
privileges, and jurisdictions now thereunto belonging; and that the
doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the Church of Scotland
shall likewise be preserved as now by law, and by the Act of Union
established for the Church of Scotland; and that the continuance and
preservation forever of the said united Church, as the Established
Church, of that part of the said United Kingdom called England and
Ireland, shall be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental
article and condition of the Union."
Pitt's comment on this article was so brief as to show that he regarded
its justice as well as its importance too obvious to need any elaborate
justification. He pointed out that that portion of it which related to
Convocation had been added by the Irish Parliament, and "would only say
on so interesting a subject that the prosperity of the Irish Church
could never be permanent, unless it were a part of the Union, to leave
as a guard a power to the United Parliament to make some provision in
this respect as a fence beyond any act of their own that could at
present be agreed on." But, while he thus showed his conviction that the
permanent prosperity of the Irish Church was essential to the welfare of
the kingdom, he was by no means insensible to the claims of the Roman
Catholic Church (as founded not more in policy than in justice) to be
placed in some degree on a footing of equality with it; not only by a
recognition of the dignity of its ministers, but also by an endowment
which should be proportioned to their requirements, and should place
them in a position of worldly competence and comfort for which hitherto
they had been dependent on their flocks.[145] To use the expression of a
modern statesman, he contemplated "levelling up," not "levelling down."
Perhaps it may be said that he contemplated levelling up, as the surest
and most permanent obstacle to any proposal of levelling down.
At the same time it is fair to remark, that the argument which on a
recent occasion was so strongly pressed by the champions of the Church,
that it was beyond the power of Parliament to repeal what was here
declared to be "an essential and fundamental article and condition of
the Union," is untenable, on every consideration of the power of
Parliament, and, indeed, of common-sense; since it would be an
intolerable evil, and one productive of the worst consequences, if the
doctrine were admitted that any Parliament could make an unchangeable
law and bind its successors forever; and, moreover, since the very words
of this article do clearly imply the power of Parliament over the
Church, the power asserted, to "make some provision for the permanence
of its prosperity," clearly involving a power to make provisions of an
opposite character. The expediency or impolicy, the propriety or
unrighteousness, of a measure must always depend on the merits of the
question itself at the time, and not on the judgment or intentions of
legislators of an earlier generation. And advocates weaken instead of
strengthening their case when they put forward arguments which, however
plausible or acceptable to their own partisans, are, nevertheless,
capable of refutation.
The next article related to a question of paramount practical
importance, and of special interest, since, as has been seen before,
there was no subject on which the past legislation of the English
Parliament had been so discreditable. But the jealousy of English
manufacturers, though it had prevailed over the indifference of William
III., who reserved all his solicitude for matters of foreign diplomacy,
could find no echo in the large mind and sound commercial and financial
knowledge of the modern statesman. He laid it down as the principle of
his legislation on this subject--a principle which "he was sure that
every gentleman in the House was ready to admit--that the consequence of
the Union ought to be a perfect freedom of trade, whether of produce or
manufacture, without exception, if possible; that a deviation from that
principle ought to be made only when adhering to it might possibly shake
some large capital, or materially diminish the effect of the labor of
the inhabitants, or suddenly and violently shock the received opinion or
popular prejudices of a large portion of the people; but that, on the
whole, the communication between the two kingdoms should in spirit be
free; that no jealousy should be attempted to be created between the
manufacturers of one place or the other upon the subject of 'raw
materials' or any other article; for it would surely be considered very
narrow policy, and as such would be treated with derision, were an
attempt made to create a jealousy between Devonshire and Cornwall,
between Lancashire and Durham.... He said, then, that the principle of
the Union on this head should be liberal and free, and that no departure
from it should ever take place but upon some point of present
unavoidable necessity." He was even able to add (and he must have felt
peculiar satisfaction in making the statement, since the change in the
feelings of the English manufacturers on the subject must have been
mainly the fruit of his own teaching, and was a practical recognition of
the benefits which they had derived from his commercial policy taken as
a whole), that "the English manufacturers did not wish for any
protective duties; all they desired was free intercourse with all the
world; and, though the want of protective duties might occasion them
partial loss, they thought it amply compensated by the general
advantage." He even thought the arrangements now to be made "would
encourage the growth of wool in Ireland, and that England would be able
to draw supplies of it from thence; and he did not fear that there would
be trade enough for both countries in the markets of the world, and in
the market which each country would afford to the other." The English
manufacturers did not, however, acquiesce very cheerfully in every part
of his commercial arrangements. On the contrary, against the clause
which repealed all prohibitions of or bounties on exportation of
different articles grown or manufactured in either country, they
petitioned, and even set up a claim, which was granted, to be heard by
counsel and to produce witnesses. But Pitt steadily refused the least
modification of this part of his measure, not merely on account of its
intrinsic reasonableness and justice, but because there was scarcely any
condition to which the Irish themselves attached greater importance.
An equally important and more difficult matter to adjust to the
satisfaction of both Parliaments was the apportionment of the financial
burdens between the two nations. It would be tiresome as well as
superfluous to enter into minute details; the more so as the arrangement
proposed was of a temporary character. After a long and minute
discussion, Pitt's appraisement was admitted to come as near to strict
fairness and equity as any that could be made; the separate discharge of
its public debt already incurred was left to each kingdom; and it was
farther settled that for twenty years fifteen parts of the expense of
the nation out of seventeen should be borne by Great Britain and two by
Ireland.
Other articles provided that the laws and courts of both kingdoms, civil
and ecclesiastical, should remain in their existing condition, subject,
of course, to such alterations as the united Legislature might hereafter
deem desirable.
The resolutions, when adopted--as they speedily were--were embodied in a
bill, which passed through the last stage by receiving the royal assent
at the beginning of July. The state of public feeling in Ireland was not
yet sufficiently calmed down after the Rebellion for it to be prudent to
venture on a general election, and it was, consequently, ordained that
the members for the Irish counties and for those Irish boroughs which
had been selected for the retention of representation should take their
seats in the united Parliament on its next meeting. On the 22d of
January, 1801, the united, or, to give it its more proper designation,
the Imperial Parliament held its first meeting, being, although in its
sixth session, so far regarded as a new Parliament, that the King
directed a fresh election of a Speaker.
The Union, as thus effected, was so far a vital change in the
constitution of both Great Britain and Ireland, that it greatly altered
the situation in which each kingdom had previously stood to the other.
Till 1782 the position of Ireland toward England had been one of entire
political subordination; and, though that had in appearance been
modified by the repeal of Poynings' Act, yet no one doubted or could
doubt that, whenever the resolutions of the two Parliaments came into
conflict, the Irish Parliament would find submission unavoidable. But by
the Union that subordination was terminated forever. The character of
the Union--of the conditions, that is, on which the two countries were
united--was one of perfect and complete equality on all important
points, indeed, in all matters whatever, except one or two of minor
consequence, where some irremovable difference between them compelled
some trifling variations. It was not a connection of domination on the
one side and subordination on the other, where every concomitant
circumstance might tempt the one to overbearing arrogance, while the
other could not escape a feeling of humiliation. It was rather--to quote
the eloquent peroration of Pitt, when, in the preceding year, he first
introduced the subject to the consideration of the House of Commons--"a
free and voluntary association of two great countries, joining for their
common benefit in one empire, where each retained its proportionate
weight and importance, under the security of equal laws, reciprocal
affection, and inseparable interests; and which wanted nothing but that
indissoluble connection to render both invincible."
On that occasion Pitt had argued, from the great subsequent increase in
the population and wealth of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and in the
prosperity of the whole country of Scotland, that a similar result might
be looked for in Ireland. And the general trade of Ireland, and
especially the linen manufacture, within a very few years began to
realize his prediction. So that it is strange to find Fox, on the great
minister's death, five years afterward, reiterating his disapproval of
the Union as a plea for refusing him the appellation of a great
statesman.[146] In one point alone the intrigues of a colleague
prevented Pitt from carrying out to the full his liberal and enlightened
views, and compelled him to leave the Union incomplete in a matter of
such pre-eminent importance, that it may be said that all the subsequent
disquietudes which have prevented Ireland from reaping the full benefit
he desired from the Union are traceable to his disappointment on that
subject.[147] We have seen that he contemplated, as a natural and
necessary consequence or even part of the Union, an extensive reform of
the laws affecting the Roman Catholics. Indeed, the understanding that
he was prepared to introduce a measure with that object had no small
weight in conciliating in some quarters support to the Act of Union.
Accordingly, when describing the arrangements which he had in view for
the Church of Ireland, he indicated his intention with sufficient
plainness by the statement, that "it might be proper to leave to
Parliament an opportunity of considering what might be fit to be done
for his Majesty's Catholic subjects;" words which were generally
understood to express his feeling, that both justice and policy required
the removal of the restrictions which debarred the Roman Catholics from
the complete enjoyment of political privileges. But the history and
different bearings of that question it will be more convenient to
discuss in a subsequent chapter, when we shall have arrived at the time
when it was partially dealt with by the ministry of the Duke of
Wellington.
Notes:
[Footnote 125: Mr. Froude says four great families--the Fitzgeralds of
Kildare, the Boyles, the Ponsonbys, and the Beresfords--returned a
majority of the House of Commons ("English in Ireland," ii., 5); and
besides those peers, the arrangement for the Union proved that the
influence of the Loftuses and the Hills fell little short of them.]
[Footnote 126: Such a system actually had existed in France, where
articles of ordinary trade could not be transported from one province to
another without payment of a heavy duty; but Colbert had abolished that
system in France above one hundred years before the time of which we are
speaking.]
[Footnote 127: "History of England," vol. v., c. xxiii., p. 57.]
[Footnote 128: "The English in Ireland," ii., 39.]
[Footnote 129: Fronde's "English in Ireland," ii., 345. He does not name
the author whom he quotes.]
[Footnote 130: _Ibid_., ii, 42.]
[Footnote 131: See p. 164.]
[Footnote 132: Mr. Froude imputes to Grattan a singularly base object.
"Far from Grattan was a desire to heal the real sores of the country for
which he was so zealous. These wild, disordered elements suited better
for the campaign in which he engaged of renovating an Irish
nationality."--_English in Ireland_, ii., 448. But, however on many
points we may see reason to agree with Mr. Froude's estimate of the
superior wisdom of Fitzgibbon, we conceive that this opinion is quite
consistent with our acquittal of the other of the meanness of
deliberately aiming at a continuance of evils, in order to find in them
food for a continuance of agitation.]
[Footnote 133: Froude, "English in Ireland," i., 304.]
[Footnote 134: See especially a letter of Mr. Windham's. quoted by Lord
Stanhope ("Life of Pitt," ii., 288).]
[Footnote 135: Mr. Archdall, in his place in Parliament, denounced the
term as utterly inapplicable. "Emancipation meant that a slave was set
free. The Catholics were not slaves. Nothing more absurd had ever been
said since language was first abused for the delusion of mankind."]
[Footnote 136: The first beginning of the insurrection was at
Prosperous, County Kildare, May 24. General Lake dealt it the final blow
on Vinegar Hill, June 21.]
[Footnote 137: Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Tierney, and Lord William Russell led
the denunciations of the government in the English House of Commons. A
protest against Pitt's refusal to dismiss the Lord-lieutenant, Lord
Camden, the Chancellor Fitzgibbon, and the Commander-in-chief, Lord
Carhampton, was signed by the Dukes of Norfolk, Devonshire, and
Leinster; Lords Fitzwilliam, Moira, and Ponsonby, "two of them Irish
absentees, who were discharging thus their duties to the poor country
which supported their idle magnificence."--_The English in Ireland_,
iii., 454.]
[Footnote 138: "Constitutional History," iii., 451 seq.]
[Footnote 139: Massey's "History of England," iv., 397 (quoting the
Cornwallis correspondence).]
[Footnote 140: Lord Stanhope's "Reign of Queen Anne," p. 89.]
[Footnote 141: In the House of Commons by 158 to 115; in the House of
Lords, February 10, by 75 to 26.]
[Footnote 142: An amendment pledging the House to maintain "an
independent Legislature, as established in 1782," was only defeated by
106 to 105.]
[Footnote 143: In the House of Commons the majority was 158 to 115; in
the House of Lords, 75 to 26.]
[Footnote 144: This estimate, which was but a guess, proved very
inaccurate. The first census for the United Kingdom, which was taken the
next year (1801), showed that Ireland was considerably more populous
than its own representatives had imagined. The numbers returned (as
given by Alison, "History of Europe," ii., 335, c. ix., sec. 8) were:
England..................................... 8,382,484
Wales....................................... 547,346
Scotland.................................... 1,599,068
Army, Navy, etc............................. 470,586
----------
Total...................................10,999,434
Ireland..................................... 5,396,436
So that the proportion of population in Great Britain, as compared with
that of Ireland, only exceeded two to one by an insignificant fraction.]
[Footnote 145: See his letter to the King, dated January 31, 1801,
quoted by Lord Stanhope in the appendix to vol. iii. of his "Life of
Pitt," p. 25.]
[Footnote 146: Mr. Fox, called on by Mr. Alexander to explain his
expressions (in the debate relative to Mr. Pitt's funeral), by which he
had declared his disapprobation of the Union, and his concurrence in
opinion with Mr. O'Hara that it ought to be rescinded. Mr. Fox repeated
his disapprobation, but disclaimed ever having expressed an opinion or
entertained a thought of proposing its repeal, that being now
impracticable, though he regretted its ever having been
effected.--_Diary of Lord Colchester_, February 17, 1806, ii., 39.]
[Footnote 147: It may be remarked that in another respect also political
critics have pronounced the Union defective. Archbishop Whately, whose
long tenure of office in Ireland, as well as the acuteness and candor
which he brought to bear on every subject he discussed, entitle his
opinions to most respectful consideration, held this view very strongly.
In several conversations which he held with Mr. W.N. Senior, in 1858 and
1862, he condemned the retention of the Lord-lieutenancy as "a half
measure," which, however unavoidable at the time when "no ship could be
certain of getting from Holyhead to Dublin in less than three weeks," he
pronounced "inconsistent with the fusion of the two peoples, which was
the object of the Union," and wholly indefeasible "in an age of
steam-vessels and telegraphs." And, besides its theoretical
inconsistency, he insisted that it produced many great and practical
mischiefs, among which he placed in the front "the keeping up in
people's minds the notion of a separate kingdom; the affording a hotbed
of faction and intrigue; the presenting an image of Majesty so faint and
so feeble as to be laughed at and scorned. Disaffection to the English
Lieutenancy is cheaply shown, and it paves the way toward disaffection
to the English crown." And he imputed its continued retention to "the
ignorance which prevails in England of the state of feeling in
Ireland."--_Journals and Conversations Relating to Ireland_, by W.N.
Senior, ii., 130, 251, and _passim_. And it is worthy of observation
that a similar view is expressed by a Scotch writer of great ability,
who, contrasting the mode in which Scotland is governed with that which
prevails In Ireland, farther denounces the Viceroyalty "as a distinct
mark that Ireland is not directly under the sovereignty of Great
Britain, but rather a dependency, like India or the Isle of
Man."--_Ireland_, by J.B. Kinnear, quoted in the _Fortnightly Review_,
April 1, 1881. It is remarkable that in 1850 a bill for the abolition of
the office was passed in the House of Commons by a large majority (295
to 70), but was dropped in the House of Lords, chiefly on account of the
opposition of the Duke of Wellington. But it is, at all events, plain
that the reasons, arising from the difficulty and uncertainty of
communication, which made its abolition impossible at the beginning of
the century, have passed away with the introduction of steam-vessels and
telegraphs. Communication of London with Dublin is now as rapid as
communication with Edinburgh, and, that being the case, it is not easy
to see how an establishment which has never been thought of for Scotland
can be desirable for Ireland.]