much behind-hand with the others. The feeble outrages, burnings, and murders, which are still committed by the rebels, serve to keep up the sanguinary disposition on our side; and as long as they furnish a pretext for our parties going in quest of them, I see no prospect of amendment."

More than a year later, on November 6, 1799, Cornwallis again wrote to Ross, that

"The vilest informers are hunted out from the prisons to attack, by the most barefaced perjury, the lives of all who are suspected of being, or of having been, disaffected; and, indeed, every Roman Catholic of influence is in the greatest danger."

In two respects especially the conduct of the military compared unfavourably with that of the insurgents. It was acknowledged by friend and foe that the latter abstained to a remarkable degree from outrages on women, whilst the Protestant troops disgraced their religion as well as their humanity by their cowardly violations of female honour. The rebels, moreover, very rarely attacked any Protestant places of worship. They kept their hands from the symbols of the religion whose followers had blasted their country for a century. The church of Old Ross was probably the only one which they deliberately burnt, although in the general conflagration of a mass of meaner buildings others may have been unthinkingly destroyed or plundered. There were huge districts, however, over which not a single Catholic chapel was left standing by the Protestant troops. Not contented with rape, they glutted their cruelty with sacrilege; and Archbishop Troy drew up a list of thirty-six Catholic chapels that were destroyed in six counties of Leinster alone. Yet the Catholics were expected to reverse the human passions and fawn upon the power that so cruelly distressed them. And this was the work of the rulers of Ireland. This was the introduction to the nineteenth century, this the bloody prolusion to Emmett and O'Brien, to the Fenians and Phoenix Park, and the difficulties that were to follow them. Molyneux, Swift, Lucas, Flood, Burke, and Grattan-had they all lived in vain? It seemed so.1

Meanwhile Wolfe Tone had been in Paris urging the French Government to organize another expedition to Ireland. This third projected expedition under Kilmaine was frustrated by the impatience of General Humbert, who with a few frigates, 1,000 men, 1,000 muskets, and 1,000 guineas sailed prematurely from Rochelle. He effected a landing at Killala while the rebellion was still smouldering, on August 22, 1798, and, before his final defeat by the forces which were poured into the district every day, routed a British force overwhelmingly superior in

1 Appendix XV, extract from a speech by Sheridan.

numbers to himself. The soldiers under General Lake ran like hares before the veteran troops of France, and the "Race of Castlebar" is generally omitted from the expurgated annals of their military glory. On September 20, a fresh expedition left the shores of France. It set sail from the Bay of Camaret, and consisted of the Hoche, eight frigates, and one schooner under Commodore Bompart, and 3,000 men commanded by General Hardy. The fleet was dispersed by a storm, and on October 10 the Hoche, two frigates, and the schooner were signalled by Sir John Borlase Warren in the Bay of Lough Swilly. But before the troops were able to effect a landing they were attacked by an English squadron and defeated, Bompart fighting till the Hoche was a wreck. Several of the officers who were taken prisoners were brought to Lord .Cavan's house on Lough Swilly, and amongst them was Theobald Wolfe Tone. Sir George Hill, one of his old college friends, who was staying in the house, immediately recognized him and made him known; whereupon he was sent to Dublin to be tried for the crime of rebellion. John Philpot Curran, who pleaded his cause, moved for a writ of habeas corpus, and obtained it; but before it could reach its destination, Tone cut his own throat in prison in order to escape the disgrace of a public execution, and he died very soon afterwards from the effects. He was buried in the churchyard of Bodenstown, near the village of Sallins, about eighteen miles from Dublin. He was the ablest of the revolutionists, bold and enthusiastic; but there was a lamentable lack of judgment in his composition, and he measured the chances of success rather by the dash and recklessness of his temperament than by the unpopular rule of probabilities. His diary is so entertaining and so original, his lively humour so full of observation, that had he not been a rebel he might have been a Sterne. The fate of the other revolutionary leaders was as might have been expected. Bagenal Harvey, of Bargy Castle, and Anthony Perry, both of them Protestant gentlemen of large means and distinguished position, were publicly hanged. The two brothers Sheares, who had fallen into the trap so vilely laid for them by Captain Armstrong and Castlereagh, were also executed. M'Cann suffered the same fate. Oliver Bond died in Newgate, and Arthur O'Connor, Thomas Addis Emmet,3 and MacNevin were banished from the kingdom.

The rebellion was over. It had been all that could be desired, and Ireland's governors now sat down to the strains of "He's a jolly good fellow" to devise with the heartiest good-will a project for the happiness of the Irish people.

1 Appendix XVI, quotation from Jonah Barrington.

2 Some accounts say it was Sir George Hill's brother.

3 He was an able man, a brother of Robert Emmet, and afterwards became Attorney-General of the State of New York.

CHAPTER II

THE ACT OF UNION, 1801

"Such are the arguments that are used (against the Irish) both publicly and privately, in every discussion upon this point. They are generally full of passion and of error, and built upon facts which in themselves are most false. It cannot, I confess, be denied, that those miserable performances, which go about under the names of histories of Ireland, do indeed represent those events after this manner; and they would persuade us, contrary to the known order of nature, that indulgence and moderation in governors is the natural incitement in subjects to rebel. But there is an interior history of Ireland, the genuine voice of its records and monuments, which speaks a very different language from these histories, from Temple and from Clarendon; these restore nature to its just rights, and policy to its proper order. For they even now show to those who have been at the pains to examine them, and they may show one day to all the world, that these rebellions were not produced by toleration, but by persecution; that they arose not from just and mild government, but from the most unparalleled oppression."-EDMUND BURKE (Tracts on the Popery Laws).

DR. JOHNSON, discussing the subject of a Union between the English and Irish Legislatures, once said to an Irishman—

"Do not make an union with us, Sir. We should unite with you only to rob you; we should have robbed the Scotch, if they had had anything of which we could have robbed them."

The remark is noteworthy and forms a particularly appropriate introduction to a consideration of the Union. The learned lexicographer seems thus to have been of much the same opinion as "Junius," who wrote in the celebrated letter to the King

"The people of Ireland have been uniformly plundered and oppressed."

In 1703, and again in 1707, the Irish Parliament had advocated a Union of the Legislatures of Great Britain and Ireland, but their proposals had been rejected with contempt, and a long period of commercial restrictions, penal laws, and complete parliamentary servitude had followed. In 1759 a report was spread that a Union was in contemplation, but so unpopular was the idea, that some of the members of the Irish Parliament were seized by the mob in Dublin and compelled to swear that they would vote against any measure of the sort. The failure of the commercial propositions in 1785 was very unfortunate for the immediate prospect of a Union, as the Irish were embittered by the mutilation of their Bill by the English Parliament, and realized that a union would probably mean a

one-sided arrangement to the detriment of their commercial interests, and might also involve an assimilation of taxation and the growth of absenteeism. Grattan, the great paraclete of their enfranchisement, had also scented in the amended commercial propositions of 1785 an embryo Union which he shrank from. In fact, before 1785, and up to the rebellion of 1798, the Irish had disliked the idea of a measure of the kind and clearly shown their aversion by the way in which they greeted and afterwards cherished the Act of Independence of 1782. English statesmen, on the contrary, began soon after 1785 to desire such a consummation, for they felt, in view of the Act of Independence of 1782 and the Renunciation Act of 1783, that it would be hazardous for the integrity of the Empire to make too many concessions to Ireland without it; and this feeling was increased after 1793, when the Catholics were given the franchise and the large political power which it entailed. The Irish Parliament of 1782, however, was, notwithstanding its anti-Union proclivities, perfectly loyal to England as a whole, and essentially an assembly of the leading landed gentry; but it was determined to preserve its independence, and this resolution was intensified during the last decades of the eighteenth century.

The recall of Fitzwilliam in 1795 gave the final impulse to Catholic disloyalty. "The cup of concession," as Sheridan said, "was just presented to their lips, but, instead of permitting them to taste it, it was dashed in their faces," and this temper was aggravated by an unfortunate passage in one of Portland's 1 dispatches, in which he remarked that the postponement of the Catholic Relief Bill would be "the means of doing a greater service to the British Empire than it has been capable of receiving since the Revolution, or at least since the Union," an observation which reflected the attitude of Ireland's rulers towards her, and displayed the spirit of intolerance which she was doomed to combat. Then came the Rebellion of 1798, which was so cruelly suppressed, and which several writers of distinction accused Ireland's governors of having stirred up in the belief that they would never be able to secure a Union of the two countries without a national convulsion, which would shake the social fabric to its base and thus necessitate a readjustment of the whole form of government.2

The Rebellion of 1798 and the danger of foreign invasion brought about a change of feeling among a good many persons in Ireland; for many Catholics, and in a lesser degree Protestants, were forced into a favourable view of a Union, afraid,

1 William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, third Duke of Portland, twice Prime Minister, and at this time Home Secretary in Pitt's Ministry.

2 Appendix XVIA, quotation from Thomas Newenham: opinion of Miss Edgeworth.

as they were, one of the other. The germ of the idea of a Legislative Union in the mind of Pitt had already shown itself in a letter to Westmorland1 in November, 1792, in which he said

"The idea of the present fermentation gradually bringing both parties to think of a union with this country has long been in my mind. I hardly dare flatter myself with the hope of its taking place, but I believe it, though itself not easy to be accomplished, to be the only solution for other and greater difficulties."

But the first formal discussion by Pitt in favour of such a step did not take place until nearly six years later, in June 1798. In a letter to Auckland 2 in that year he said that he had lately been discussing with Lord Granville the expediency of taking steps for carrying a Union immediately after the suppression of the rebellion. However, Cornwallis, in view of the great ferment of men's minds, thought it dangerous to propose the question yet, and was of opinion that, when the time came for that measure, an act enfranchising the Catholics ought to accompany it. Clare, on the other hand, hard-grained, masterful, and ambitious, was in favour of an immediate Union, and crossed over to England in October 1798 to urge it upon the Prime Minister and his colleagues, but on the one condition that Catholic emancipation should not be concurrently conceded, and his view prevailed with Pitt. From this time forward Ireland was doggedly wooed to a Union and experienced a courtship which gave her a foretaste of her married life.

About the same period Edward Cooke, the Under-Secretary in Ireland, published a pamphlet, drawn up at the desire of the Government, advocating a union of the two countries for the following reasons. He argued that great benefits had resulted from the Union of Wales and Scotland; that the great power of France would find a counterpoise in a united empire; that the British Cabinet and the Parliament sitting in London would be strongly influenced by the opinions and the ability of Irish members; that partial laws and restrictions in favour of Great Britain alone would come to an end; that the value of Irish cstates would rise with the increase of security; that the Irish Protestants, being incorporated with those of Great Britain, would form a majority, and not as at present a minority; and that an opening would also be afforded to the Catholics for various

1 John Fane, tenth Earl of Westmorland, Lord-Lieutenant from January 1790 to January 1795.

2 William Eden, first Lord Auckland. At this time joint Postmaster-General in Pitt's Ministry.

Charles Cornwallis, first Marquis and second Earl Cornwallis: GovernorGeneral of India during the Third Mysore War.