a rather later date, which Wilberforce used to tell. "I was with Pitt in the House of Lords, when Lord Clare replied to a charge of cruel practices, approaching torture, for the discovery of concealed arms. 'Well, suppose it were so; but surely,' &c. I shall never forget Pitt's look. He turned round to me with that high indignant stare which sometimes marked his countenance, and stalked out of the House." 2 numerous and powerful, and a thousand times more ferocious. These men have saved the country, but they now take the lead in rapine and murder. The Irish militia, with few officers, and those chiefly of the worst kind, follow closely on the heels of the yeomanry in murder and every kind of atrocity; and the Fencibles take a share, tho' 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 on his Egyptian expedition, amendment. The conversation of the principal persons of the country all tends to encourage this system of blood; and the conversation even at my table, where you will suppose I do all I can to prevent it, always turns on hanging, shooting, burning, &c., &c.; and if a priest has been put to death, the greatest joy is expressed by the whole company. So much for Ireland and my wretched situation." 1 For this spirit of clemencythough accompanied by abundant firmness in his treatment of proved offenders-he, like Lord Canning afterwards, was fiercely attacked in England, and with still more violence in Ireland. He was, however, gallantly supported in his moderation by the British Cabinet, and especially by Mr Pitt, who, as Wilberforce tells us in his diary, "resented and spurned the bigoted fury of Irish Protestants." In Ireland the most moderate of the ruling classes were those who most receive the credit of severity, the Chancellor and Lord Castlereagh. Nevertheless, the Irish rebels would have been in bad case if they had been abandoned to the mercies of even the most moderate of their fellow-countrymen. The difference in the attitude of English statesmen, from even the best of the Irish, is shown by a story of A week before the rebellion broke out, Buonaparte had sailed and though Wolfe Tone was urging immediate action on the Directory, the chance was missed. Scarcely, however, had the rebellion been suppressed, when Ireland was alarmed by another French invasion, this time on a smaller scale. On the 22d of August, General Humbert, with 1100 men, landed at Killala Bay, in County Mayo. He was joined by many Irish, and a few days after defeated General Lake in a fight, which, from the conduct of the Irish militia, was called the Castlebar races. Cornwallis, however, speedily collected a large force, and in less than three weeks from the landing of the French, had defeated and taken prisoner the whole expedition. Small as was the scale of this invasion, it illustrates two thingsthe danger which would have arisen if the forces of the Crown had been in less competent hands than those of Cornwallis, and the worthlessness of the Irish militia. Writing to Pitt a few weeks after, Cornwallis describes them as 66 'a militia on which no dependence whatever can be placed, and which Abercromby too justly described by saying they were only formidable to their friends." 3 In a private letter written at 1 Marquis Cornwallis to Major-General Ross, Cornwallis Corr., ii. 368. the same time he says, "The Irish militia, from their repeated misbehaviour in the field, and their extreme licentiousness, are fallen into such universal contempt and abhorrence, that when applications are made for the protection of troops, it is often requested that Irish militia may not be sent." Language such as this proves the impossibility which Cornwallis felt of maintaining order in Ireland from Irish sources and with Irish force. Yet another small invasion took place the same autumn by a French squadron, which reached Lough Swilly, in County Donegal, on the 10th October. It was, however, attacked and defeated the next day, before any landing could be made, by a British squadron under Sir John Warren. Neither of these invasions were large enough to be formidable by themselves; either of them, if they had appeared a little earlier on the scene, would have multiplied tenfold the difficulty of suppressing the rebellion. the miraculous good fortune of Great Britain, and not to any fitness of Ireland for defence. Buonaparte would soon return from the East. Buonaparte might be relied on to see as clearly as the Directory the weak spot of his enemies, and chance could not be relied on for the sixth time. It was true that rebellion had been suppressed by the combined moderation and firmness of Cornwallis, but the causes of disaffection had not been removed. Passions were too deeply stirred to appeal to an Irish Parliament to remove them, or to trust to Irish statesmen to hold the balance with justice. The Chancellor and Lord Castlereagh, as Cornwallis often declared, were the most moderate of Irish statesmen; but as he emphatically stated a few months later— "If the British Government place; their confidence in any Irish faction. all will be ruined. The Chancellor and many of our most able friends are blinded by passion and prejudice, and would drive the country into reLord Castlebellion in six months. reagh is by far the best, but I doubt to control the violent representations whether he would yet have firmness of his countrymen; and I trust when I retire that some Englishman may be sent over who will be at the trouble of acting for himself, and will not submit to be governed."2 This then was the condition of Ireland. It was torn in pieces by the bitterest animosities. Its rival parties were only prevented from flying at each other's throats by the superior force of Great Britain. Its Parliament had formerly hindered and hampered the Government in their desires of reform and their Neither was there any other efforts to draw closer the bonds of party in Ireland to whom Corncommercial relationship, and now wallis could turn. Grattan had, encouraged and pressed them on to of course, been opposed to all severities and "vigour beyond the measures of violence; but Grattan, law." It was the vulnerable point with most of the parliamentary of the empire, exposed to continual opposition, imitating the example invasion. It required a huge of Fox at Westminster, had secedBritish garrison, since the native ed in consequence of the severities forces that should have defended which succeeded on the failure of it had proved themselves worse Hoche's invasion. The party had than useless. It was true that at no time been considerable in five threatened invasions had been numbers, but at the general elecaverted, but this was due to tion of 1797 Grattan declined re 1 Cornwallis, ii. 414. 2 Cornwallis to Ross, iii. 250. THE CAUSES OF THE UNION WITH IRELAND. THE task which I have undertaken in the present article is to describe the events which led up to the legislative union, on the first day of this century, between Great Britain and Ireland. These events form a part of the Unionist case, upon which Unionists have been too apt to let judgment go by default, while their opponents have been pressing the historical argument with all possible force. "I am amazed at the deadness of vulgar opinion to the blackguardism and baseness—no words are strong enough which befoul the whole history of the Union." So Mr Gladstone has written, in a phrase which he has since told was never meant for publi us cation. "Unspeakably criminal, I own, were the means by which the Union was brought about, and utterly insufficient were the reasons for its adoption." 1 This is the more decorus though scarcely less emphatic language of his latest manifesto. Now, Unionists have been unduly apt to take these views of history for granted. They have been for the most part content to reply (what is perfectly true), that the historical argument has very little to do with the matter. The case of the Union must be judged, not according to the motives or actions of the men who supported it nearly a century ago, but by the standard of the welfare of the British Empire to-day. This argument is cogent, but the position is not satisfactory to those who are proud of the honour and the history of their country, and who regard as a precious possession the good fame of the statesmen of previous generations, to whatever political party they may have belonged. But the Unionist case may be placed much higher than this. There is nothing in the conduct of Pitt and Cornwallis to be ashamed of. What blackguardism and baseness is to be found, lies not in the conduct of those who forced on the Union, but of those who extorted the highest possible price for falling in with it. The reasons that led to the Union were honourable and suffiend to a state of things that was cient. The Act of Union put an a disgrace and a peril to the empire. Its enactments must be read, as Professor Dicey in his recent admirable work declares, "in the lurid light cast upon them by the rebellion of 1798." They must be read also in view of the death-struggle with France that was absorbing all the strength of the country. As many frivolous and wicked motives have been ascribed to Mr Pitt as, in later times, to Mr Gladstone himself. But the memoirs and private correspondence of the time are now open to the world, and from these the truth shines out. Pitt and Cornwallis were guided by two motives-the necessity of securing the country against French invasion, and the desire to protect Irish Roman Catholics against the fury of Irish Protestants. These were the motives which they laid before the country; these, as we see from their most private utterances were the motives that actu 1 History of an Idea, p. 6. ated themselves. The course which they took appeared to the country to be right and necessary; and looking back from this distance of time, it is hard to see that the country was wrong. Such is the view that I wish to present in this article. In the first place, a short sketch of the salient features of the events which led up to the Union controversy will make the situation intelligible. During the first threequarters of the eighteenth century, Ireland lay under the weight of the severest penal laws against Catholics, and the heaviest commercial restriction on her industry. When we look back upon those laws, they appear altogether iniquitous. The marvel seems to be that Ireland remained as tranquil and peaceable under them as she did. But Ireland was not singular in regard to either of them. In England and Scotland there existed penal laws against Catholics even more savage than those of Ireland. It is true they were not enforced; but the furious Edinburgh and Glasgow riots of January 1779, and the more celebrated Gordon riots of 1780, caused by attempts to slighty relax them, showed how fully they had the sanction of the more ignorant public opinion. Again, the whole theory of the British Empire was, that the commercial interests of every part were to yield to those of Great Britain. Irishmen are apt to talk as if the prohibitions on wool and the other commercial restrictions on Irish trade were imposed out of some special hatred of Ireland; but Ireland was merely put in the same position as any of the Colonies or Dependencies. Scotland did not obtain commercial freedom till the Union; Ireland at the same price obtained similar freedom. Nowadays, such restrictions are seen to do harm to the subject country quite incommensurate with the advantage to the superior country; but a hundred and fifty years ago it was a new idea to the Dependencies themselves that any other relationship was possible, and nothing was more hopeless-as Burke experienced at Bristolthan to persuade a commercial audience that the freedom of Ireland could fail to be the ruin of England. But the revolt of the American Colonies against commercial restrictions of a similar nature roused Ireland from sleep. The Irish felt at once that the cause of the Continental was their own. The Presbyterians of the north, in particular, sympathised most strongly with them. Irish emigrants fought in the armies; and when the Continentals received hitherto unheardof commercial freedom, the Irish began to urge very strongly their case for similar remissions. In 1777 came that great British disaster, the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga, and in the next year followed the first considerable relaxation of the commercial restrictions and of the penal laws of Ireland. In the same year began the great Volunteer movement, the first symptoms and expression of independent vigour in the country. The city of Belfast was threatened with a visit from three or four privateers. British arms were so reduced, that the only defence which the Lord Lieutenant found himself able to offer consisted of "a troop or two of horse, or part of a company of invalids." Under these circumstances the inhabitants took up arms to defend themselves, and from this beginning sprang a great national movement, giving Ireland a unity and a conscious force which carried "On the old Irish volunteers I her far in the path of national life. the inscription, "Free Trade or Few bodies have been the subject this." In the winter of 1779-80 of more extravagant laudation; of this imperious and just demand few is it harder to form a just was conceded, and complete free opinion. Perhaps the fairest tes- trade was granted by Lord timony on the subject is that of North. In the autumn of 1781 Lord Clare, who, at any rate, had came the final blow of the Amerno undue bias in their favour. In ican war, in the surrender of his great speech in support of the Lord Cornwallis, the only efficient Union, he says :British general, with his army at York Town. This was followDungannon Convention of Febed up by the volunteers of the ruary 1782, formed by delegates from all the Ulster corps, and representing a force of 23,000 armed men. After grave and decorous debate, this assembly declared that other than the King, Lords, and "The claim of any body of men, Commons of Ireland, to make laws to bind this country, is unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance." After a series of resolutions upon all the burning questions of the day, they concluded, Protestant as they were, by affirming desire to be understood not to convey anything like censure. Their conduct will remain a problem in history; for without the shadow of military control, to their immortal honour it is known, that from their first levy till they disbanded themselves, no act of violence or outrage was charged against them; and they certainly did on every occasion where their services were required exert themselves with effect to maintain the internal peace of the country. The gentlemen of Ireland were all in their ranks, and maintained a decided influence upon them. But I shall never cease to think that the appeals made to that army by the angry politicians of that day were dangerous and ill-judged in the extreme; and that they established the precedent for rebellion, which has since been followed up with full success." 1 In 1779 this force had grown to very large dimensions, and was variously estimated at from 40,000 to 100,000 strong. They were a vehemently loyal and wholly Protestant body. They devoted their full strength to political agitation. Their aims were free trade in the first place, and constitutional liberty in the second. Their demands for free trade were couched in no measured terms. At the celebration in Dublin of the birthday of William III., among the most prominent features in the demonstration were two cannon It is to be observed in passing, that this resolution as to the Catholics is simply retrospective. It rejoices in the relation of the penal laws which had already taken place, but by no means implies a desire for the removal of all the remaining Catholic disawith bilities. Within a week Flood 1 Speech of Lord Clare in the Irish House of Lords, 10th Feb. 1800, p. 21— republished by the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union. 2 Mitchell, History of Ireland, vol. i. p. 138. |