Matters now came to a crisis. William Pitt, son of the late Earl of
Chatham (S550), was Prime Minister. He believed that the best
interests of both Ireland and England demanded their political union.
He devoted all his energies to accomplishing the work. The result was
that in the last year of the eighteenth century the English Government
succeeded, by the most unscrupulous use of money, in gaining the
desired end. Lord Cornwallis, acting as Pitt's agent, confessed with
shame that he bought up a sufficient number of members of the Irish
Parliament to secure a vote in favor of union with Great Britain. In
1800 the two countries were joined--in name at least--under the title
of the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."[3]
[3] The first Parliament of the United Kingdom met in 1801.
Pitt used all his powerful influence to obtain for Ireland a full and
fair representation in the united Parliament (1801). He urged that
Catholics as well as Protestants should be eligible for election to
that body. But the King positively refused to listen to his Prime
Minister. He even declared that it would be a violation of his
coronation oath for him to grant such a request. The consequence was
that not a single Catholic was admitted to the Imperial Parliament
until nearly thirty years later (S573).
Two years after the first Imperial Parliament met in London the Irish
patriot, Robert Emmet, made a desperate effort to free his country
(1803). To his mind the union of England with Ireland was simply "the
union of the shark with its prey." He staked his life on the cause of
independence; he lost, and paid the forfeit on the scaffold.
But notwithstanding Emmet's hatred of the union, it resulted
advantageously to Ireland in at least two respects. First, more
permanent peace was secured to that distracted and long-suffering
country. Secondly, the Irish people made decided gains commercially.
The duties on their farm products were removed, at least in large
degree, and the English ports hitherto closed against them were thrown
open. The duties on their manufactured goods seem to have been taken
off at that time only in part.[1] Later, absolute freedom of trade was
secured.
[1] See May's "Constitutional History of England," Lecky's "England in
the Eighteenth Century"; but compare O'Connor Morris's work on
"Ireland, from 1798 to 1898," p.58.
563. "The Industrial Revolution" of the Eighteenth Century; Material
Progress; Canals; the Steam Engine, 1785.
The reign of George III was in several directions one of marked
progress, especially in England. Just after the King's accession the
Duke of Bridgewater constructed a canal from his coal mine in Worsley
to Manchester, a distance of seven miles. Later, he extended it to
Liverpool; eventually it was widened and deepened and became the
"Manchester and Liverpool Ship Canal." The Duke of Bridgewater's work
was practically the commencement of a system which has since developed
to such a degree that the canals of England now extend nearly 5000
miles, and exceed in length its navigable rivers. The two form such a
complete network of water communication that it is said no place in
the realm is more than fifteen miles distant from this means of
transportation, which connects all the large towns with each other and
with the chief ports.
In the last half of the eighteenth century James Watt obtained the
first patent (1769) for his improved steam engine (S521), but did not
succeed in making it a business success until 1785. The story is
told[1] that he took a working model of it to show to the King. His
Majesty patronizingly asked him, "Well, my man, what have you to
sell?" The inventor promptly answered, "What kings covet, may it
please your Majesty,--POWER!" The story is perhaps too good to be
true, but the fact of the "power" could not be denied,--power, too,
not simply mechanical, but, in its results, moral and political as
well.
[1] This story is told also of Boulton, Watt's partner. See Smile's
"Lives of Boulton and Watt," p.1. Newcomen had invented a rude steam
engine in 1705, which in 1712 came into use to some extent for pumping
water out of coal mines. But his engine was too clumsy and too
wasteful of fuel to be used by manufacturers. Boulton and Watt built
the first steam-engine works in England at Soho, a suburb of
Birmingham, in 1775; but it was not until 1785 that they began to do
sufficient business to make it evident that they were on their way to
success.
Such was the increase of machinery driven by steam, and such were the
improvements made by Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton in machinery
for spinning and weaving cotton, that much distress arose among the
hand spinners and hand weavers. The price of bread was growing higher
and higher, while in many districts skilled operatives working at home
could not earn by their utmost efforts eight shillings a week. They
saw their hand labor supplanted by great cotton mills filled with
machinery driven by "monsters of iron and fire," which never grew
weary, which subsisted on water and coal, and never asked for wages.
Led by a man named Ludd (1811), the starving workmen attacked a number
of these mills, broke the machinery to pieces, and sometimes burned
the buildings. The riots were at length suppressed, and a number of
the leaders executed; but a great change for the better was at hand,
and improved machinery driven by steam was soon to remedy the evils it
had seemingly created. It led to an enormous demand for cotton. This
helped to stimulate cotton growing in the United States of America as
well as to encourage the manufacture of cotton in Great Britain.
Up to this period the north of England had remained the poorest part
of the country. The population was sparse, ignorant, and
unprosperous. It was in the south that improvements originated. In
the reign of Henry VIII, the North fought against the dissolution of
the monasteries (SS352, 357); in Elizabeth's reign it resisted
Protestantism; in that of George I it sided with the so-called
"Pretender" (S535).
But steam transformed an immense area. Factories were built,
population increased, cities sprang up, and wealth grew apace.
Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham, Leicester, Sheffield, and
Liverpool made the North a new country. (See Industrial Map of
England, p.10.) Lancashire is the busiest cotton-manufacturing
district in Great Britain, and the saying runs that "what Lancashire
thinks to-day, England will think to-morrow." So much for James Watt's
POWER and its results.