wrote to Alexander Ross, Surveyor-General of the Ordnance, on May 20, 1799, that it was the wish of his life to "avoid all this dirty business," and on January 21 he wrote to the same man "My occupation is now of the most unpleasant naturenegotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt people under heaven. I despise and hate myself every hour for engaging in such dirty work. . . . These were the means the Government employed to force the union of the two Legislatures. They were not unversed in the art. A long succession of Ministers had been past-masters in corruption, and now their tool, up to his elbows in this shameful commerce, though loudly lamenting the dishonourable part he had to play, was still not ashamed to play it. An accommodating sense of duty and an easy political virtue led directly to riches and to place, and peerages and offices were lavished among the supporters of the Government with as much regard to personal merit as when a carcass is flung to a pack of wolves to keep them busy awhile. Provision was made in addition that compensation should be allowed to the holders of Irish nomination boroughs, and everything in the gift of the Crown in Ireland was devoted without stint to the single-minded object of buying placemen and bribing the owners of influence. The recalcitrant, on the other hand, were got out of the way, Sir John Parnell, one of the most stubborn of the opponents of a Union, being stripped of his office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Pitt was even huckstering for petitions in favour of the Union in order to put a decent colour on the jobbery, but, like some too prosperouslooking beggar, he returned almost empty handed. There was plenty of the article against the measure, but scarcely any for it. At all costs the Union must be pushed forward, for without it English Ministers believed that the disaffected Irish would succeed in effecting a separation between England and Ireland, and this fear was the real foundation of the policy they had set themselves to carry out. Meanwhile there was a wide-spread anxiety in Ireland lest a Union should bring with it equality of taxation in the two countries, that is to say, the raising of the taxation of Ireland to the much higher level of that of England. On January 15, 1800, commenced the memorable last session of the Irish Parliament, and Grattan, who was now but the shadow of his former self, made his re-appearance, wrapped in a blanket and supported by two members, in order to follow the corpse of the old assembly to the grave. Although weak with illness, he 1 Appendix XVIC, further extracts from letters of Cornwallis. was still full of the old fire, and poured forth his eloquence on Sir Lawrence Parsons' amendment to the Address in favour of maintaining an independent Parliament. But Parsons' amendment was rejected by a majority of forty-two. Meanwhile the Irish Government insisted that the maintenance of the Irish Established Church should be made an article of distinct treaty obligation, and guaranteed as a fundamental portion of the compact under which the Union was to take place. A message not long afterwards arrived from the King recommending a Union, which was delivered to the Parliament by the LordLieutenant; and Castlereagh in an elaborate speech brought forward his Union resolutions. Grattan opposed the committal of the Bill on May 26 with consummate eloquence, and crowned a noble oration with one of his noblest perorations.1 But it required more than eloquence to snatch the prize from the briber. It had not been without a deal of greasing that the Parliament had surrendered its independence, and was one man's probity to restore it? It was not likely. The Ministers had fouled their hands, and the Irish members were traitors, but they were not bad business men over a deal, and the money having changed pockets, the bargain was closed. Castlereagh's resolutions, therefore, were carried in the Irish Commons; whilst Clare's resolutions to the same effect passed with even less difficulty through the Irish House of Lords. Thus the die was cast in Ireland in spite of Grattan's patriot speeches and another eloquent oration by Foster as a last tribute to the cause. The Union had been smuggled out of Pitt's desk under a heap of titles and other patronage, and when sufficient bribes had been stuffed into the mouths of gaping Irish members, a passive and purchased senate had duly recorded its mercenary vote. The Articles of Union having passed both Houses of the Irish Parliament were sent to England for ratification, and after being agreed to were returned to the Irish Parliament for the final stages. It was at the deathbed of the Irish Parliament that William Conyngham Plunket, who afterwards became Lord Chancellor, made a celebrated speech denying the competency of Parliament to abolish the 1 Appendix XVIIA, extract from speech by Grattan. Grattan's speeches as literary efforts are not of the highest order. They are not profound, neither are they very polished. But as rhetorical masterpieces they are in the first rank. Poetical, graphic, ebullient as a mountain stream, by turns declamatory, pathetic, pleading, scornful, witty-they sweep almost every chord of the human passions, and there is no orator in the English tongue whose orations read aloud can impress an audience more with their vivid imagery than those of Grattan. When we have said this, we have said nearly everything. Their weakness is a surcharge of antithesis, an exaggeration of sentiment, a tenuity of fibre, an occasional shallowness of reasoning, and a judgment dominated by the orator's art. But Grattan's is a great name symbolic of tumultuous and patriotic eloquence, and as such is worthy of honour, Irish legislature.1 The arguments he used were unanswerable. The Act of Union was unconstitutional to the core. The Irish Parliament had been elected for certain purposes of government, and no other, and they could no more annihilate their own existence and the power of the people to elect them or any other representatives they might choose, without submitting such a policy for their country's consideration, than a landlord's agent would have the right to give away his property to a stranger. And did we hear that an agent had been so wanting in the knowledge of his craft and the principles of property as to commit such an act, we should expect to see the landlord summarily eject the adventurer and resume his land. He would have the right to do so, and would be a fool if he did not.2 The Irish Opposition now took the opportunity to present an address against the measure to the English Parliament, in order to place a record of their case upon the journals of that house. But the address was rejected, and was in truth but a half-hearted demonstration from the first. In fact, the growing apathy of the Irish nation was the only condition which made it at all possible for the Union to be carried, and this is one of the most curious features of the time. Clare once said that the Irish were "a people easily roused and casily appeased," and this trait was never more clearly shown than at the election which took place after the Union, when the question does not scem to have held any prominent position among the other 1 Appendix XVIIB, extract from speech by Plunket. 2 Fox said at the Whig Club during the debates on the Union"The whole scheme (the Union) goes upon that false and abominable presumption that we can legislate better for the Irish than they can do for themselves—a principle founded upon the most arrogant despotism and tyranny. There is no maxim more true in philosophy or politics than the great moral doctrine, 'Do as you would be done by.' What Englishman would submit to see his destiny regulated and his affairs conducted by persons chosen for Belfast or Limerick? We ought not to presume to legislate for a nation, in whose feelings and affections, wants and interests, opinions and prejudices, we have no sympathy. It can only be attempted on the principle of the most arrogant despotism.' Fox's speeches were so imperfectly reported and have been confided in so truncated a condition to the care of posterity, that little literary pleasure is now to be derived from them. But his oratorical style could never have been highly wrought. His ideas started from him like a torrent, issuing from his heart rather than from his reason, and whatever shape they may have assumed in the furnace of his passions was due more to nature than to study. He had no time to gild the statue of Liberty when its destroyers were battering the pedestal. His ardent soul and large humanity could not be riveted by formalism. They scorned the elaborate and vapid periods of a Pitt, and his enthusiasm, like a broad and swift river welling up from its deep source, gathered its forces as it flowed, and poured its impetuous volume in unconscious power and sublime prodigality in defence of the poor, the feeble, and the oppressed. Generosity, truth, courage, and hatred of injustice, under whatever form, were the chief characteristics of Fox's speeches. They were admirably adapted to the moment of their delivery, and for that very reason it is improbable that, could we even restore them in their original integrity, they would perceptibly add to his reputation. That reputation rests upon a more stable basis-the contemporary testimony of friend and foe. controversies, and it was stated that not a single member who had voted for the Union was for that reason deprived of his seat. But the riddle is explicable. The Catholics believed that emancipation was assured to them. They had kept their hands off the Bill of Union on the faith of a Minister's word, and it was not until some time after its consummation that they discovered their betrayal. The measure finally passed through its last stages in the Irish Parliament, and then the English one, and received the Royal Assent in 1800; the occasion being made use of to drop the gratifying but false title of "King of France." The Act of Union, in the shape in which it eventually became law, left, as before described, the expectations of Catholic Ireland out of its scope. It made no provision for the commutation of tithes, nor for the endowment of the Catholic priesthood, nor was the question of Catholic Emancipation even referred to. Bribery had done its work, and Pitt in order to insure the passage of the Bill had even gone so far as to let it be distinctly understood by the Catholics that no measure of relief would ever be permitted to become law in an Irish Parliament. Castlereagh had also been informed by his employers that the principle of Catholic Emancipation was approved by the Cabinet, and Cornwallis on the strength of these and similar assurances had not hesitated to call forth all available support on behalf of a Union. That is to say, the Catholic Irish were deluded into the belief that the Union was to be made the door to their liberty, and Pitt deliberately gained his end by the aid of shameless corruption and those promises which he knew perfectly well would never be fulfilled. But Pitt's hints and promises, on the faith of which the Irish Catholics had surrendered a Constitution, proved to be mere dust thrown in their eyes, a crutch thrown to a cripple to help him out of the way, and then broken across his shoulders when of no more use. It was not, therefore, to be expected that the Irish would regard with any particular affection the motherly features of the British Constitution, or be eager to implant in the breasts of their children a traditional respect for the august code of British honour. They would be more likely, unfortunate and mistaken creatures, to conjure their children to follow in the 1 This is clear from what Lord Clare wrote to Castlereagh before the measure was introduced-"I have seen Mr. Pitt, the Chancellor, and the Duke of Portland, who seem to feel very sensibly the critical situation of our damnable country and that the Union alone can save it. I should have hoped that what has passed would have opened the eyes of every man in England to the insanity of their present conduct with respect to the Papists of Ireland, but I can very plainly perceive that they were as full of their Popish projects as ever. I trust and hope I am not deceived that they are fairly inclined to give them up and to bring the measure forward unencumbered with the doctrines of emancipation. Lord Cornwallis has intimated his acquiescence on that point, and Mr. Pitt is decided on it.," steps of the gallant Volunteers; to regard the rulers of Ireland as a sort of syndicate, in which fraud was only considered dishonest and jobbery reprehensible when detrimental to the members in their corporate capacity, and where lust of money and contempt for any character different to their own was taken for prudence and a sure proof of patriotism-a syndicate, in fine, from whom concessions to justice and morality could never be extorted except under the influence of interest or fear.1 By the Act of Union, which was to take effect from the first of January 1801, the Irish House of Lords was abolished, but it was provided that Ireland was to be represented in the Imperial Upper House by twenty-eight Peers elected for life and by four Prelates of the Established Church; whilst the Irish Peers were to retain their titles. The Irish House of Commons was also extinguished, together with two hundred of the Irish seats; but the Irish counties were to return sixty-four, and the Irish boroughs and University thirty-six members, that is to say, a hundred members in all to the Imperial Parliament; the huge sum in compensation to the Irish borough-mongers on the loss of their seats being charged to the Irish National Debt. At the same time all prohibitions and bounties on the export of articles, the growth, produce, or manufacture of either country, were removed. The perpetual maintenance of the Established Church of Ireland was made a fundamental part of the Union. In regard to the future financial arrangements of the two countries, Pitt resolved to "assimilate Great Britain and Ireland ultimately in finance," and the Act accordingly provided that Ireland should contribute ths of the whole expenditure of the State, or about 12 per cent.; which thus left England and Scotland to contribute on their side about 88 per cent. The treaty also empowered Parliament, should the debts of Great Britain and Ireland be extinguished, or the contributions thus adjusted become to the debts in the same proportion, to change the present order of things, and bring Ireland under the existing fiscal system. This procedure, however, was to be expressly subject to the proviso that Ireland, and, indeed, Scotland, should have special" exemptions and abatements" of taxation, were the circumstances of the case to require it; that is to say, as Pitt and Castlereagh frequently stated, Ireland was not to be unfairly taxed out of proportion to her resources. In accordance with the bargain which had been struck with the Irish Parliament, a sum of £1,260,000 was distributed among the proprietors of 84 disfranchised boroughs, returning 168 members; £7,500 being the amount awarded for each seat. Every member who had paid for this seat had the purchase money returned by the 1 Appendix XVIIC, extract from speech by Charles Kendal Bushe, etc. |