that the owners of boroughs were compensated for the loss c their influence by a lavish distribution of places or titles, an thereupon the seats at the disposal of such owners were eithe vacated by their former representatives in favour of men nc pledged to oppose a Union; or, as happened in most cases, th occupants of those seats obediently followed the behests of thos who had placed them in Parliament. De Quincey, who was witness, it is strange to remember, of the final scene when th Grattan Parliament sat for the last time, has expressed hi astonishment that the senators of Ireland could so lightly pa with their rights and privileges. The explanation of the apathy is that they had always taken a purely pecuniary vie of the value of their seats, and, having obtained what the accepted as a fair equivalent for the loss, they could readil sacrifice the external dignity of their membership of a assembly which many of them had always despised as pr vincial. But apart from the circumstance that the illic influence exerted by the Irish Government to secure the passin of the Union was not applied towards sapping bona fu nationalism, it is incontestable that the opposition of many amon those who resisted the blandishments of administration wa based upon instincts and motives the reverse of patriotic in th modern Irish sense of that adjective. The most eminent amon the upholders of Irish nationality after the Grattan model wer men deeply imbued with those ideas of aristocratic privileg that still mark the Whig nobility of England. Charlemont next to Grattan's the most honoured name connected with th legislative independence of Ireland, viewed the Union with horror, because, rightly or wrongly, he believed it to be inimica to the interests of his order. He considered that the absenteeism which a Union would be certain to promote, the slackening o the close ties that ought to exist between the landed proprietor and their tenantry, would lead to the destruction of the in fluence of the former. This doubtless was not only, as afte events have too truly proved in many instances, a sound view but it was also a sincerely patriotic one. Yet patriotic as wa the attitude of Charlemont and his friends, it was patriotism o different sort from that which is conveyed by the word in the language of modern Irish patriots; and we have yet to meet with the Nationalist who regrets the Union for the reasons that caused Lord Charlemont to deplore it.

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Another influence strongly adverse to the Union was the attitude of the Irish bar. Its opposition was not unnatural, bu it was almost altogether dictated by selfish considerations The most brilliant parts in the drama of Irish independenc

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had been played by members of the legal profession. Next to those of Flood and Grattan, the names that have rendered the Grattan Parliament illustrious as a temple of Attic oratory are those of Irish lawyers. Yelverton, Burgh, Fitzgibbon, Curran, and Plunket, were men who would have added lustre to the deliberations of any assembly that ever existed. The members of the legal profession crowded the benches of the House of Commons, and found there a more rapid road to the celebrity and notoriety which are so great aids to legal eminence, than they could hope to traverse at the Four Courts. They could force their way, by virtue of their political influence, into numerous positions, which, once they were deprived of their seats, would be closed to them; and it is no imputation upon the honour of the Irish bar that its members should have desired to preserve an institution which so much enhanced their own dignity and importance. The desire, therefore, to resist a Union was fostered by a variety of causes which had no connection whatever with the desire for national independence. We are far from denying that such a desire was present in the breasts of a large section of the Irish people. But those in whom it was most strongly implanted looked forward to something very different from the ti constitutional liberty which Grattan and his friends might have been content with. Wolfe Tone had desired independence, so did Emmett, so had the brothers Sheares, so had the fanatics of Scullabogue; but the independence they looked for was a total emancipation from British rule, an absolute liberty to set up an independent Ireland, hostile to England and ready to co-operate with her enemies.

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For these reasons, then, the Grattan Parliament was opposed to a Union; but how came it that an assembly so largely representative of the most Conservative elements in the country was also an assembly which threatened, if permitted to remain, to destroy the Imperial unity of the Three Kingdoms? In dealing with this part of the story, it must never be forgotten that the Irish Parliament as it was constituted in 1782, and as it was in 1800, were two very different bodies. No doubt in the general character of those who sat in it, the Grattan Parliament was the same from beginning to end; but the body by whom those representatives were elected underwent a radical change in 1793. The admission to the franchise in that year of large numbers of the Catholic population produced a conflict of sentiment and policy between the electorate and its representatives which was highly dangerous and likely to lead to serious results. The Catholics, who were then accorded the right to vote, were imbued with ideas of national independence

very far in advance of those which actuated such men as Grattan and Charlemont. They were impregnated with the same spirit of militant nationalism which has been the motive force of every Irish movement that has ever attained any hold upon Ireland since that period. The spirit that fired O'Connell to achieve Catholic Emancipation, and attempt to obtain Repeal; the spirit that dominated the men of '48; the spirit that Smith O'Brien found himself unable to control, and that precipitated his Quixotic enterprise; the spirit that was rife again in '67; the spirit which, however its existence may be denied, has made Parnellism the power it has been in English politics for ten years-this spirit, altogether hostile as it is to English rule, dominated the newly-enfranchised electorate. But while the Catholics were thus admitted within the Constitution, their exercise of the franchise was barred by the most illogical limitations. The people were permitted to vote, but the limits within which that liberty was to be exercised were very narrowly defined. Their suffrages could only be cast in favour of the members of an alien race, and a superior class, of those who were determined to maintain privilege in every form, of men of a different religion from their own,-of men, in short, who had absolutely nothing in common with those to whom they were now to owe their election to sit in Parliament. Obviously, a system so artificial could not possibly be maintained. The people were certain to claim, and they did begin to claim, not only the right to vote, but their right to the unfettered choice of those to whom their votes should be given. They threatened to insist upon sweeping measures of Parliamentary Reform and of Catholic Emancipation far in excess of what English statesmen then, or for many years after, believed to be safe. When patriotic Irishmen raise the cry that the Rebellion was the provoked and premeditated precursor of the Union, they are beside the mark. The Union had its origin five years earlier, in the Relief Act of 1793.

Mr. Lecky, in quoting the speech of Clare which we have had occasion to refer to on an earlier page, expresses his wonder that so vehement an opponent of the Catholic claims should ever have assented even to the limited measure of concession to the Catholic demands which was carried in 1793. The explanation, to our mind, is that that sagacious statesman, who, however little he may have sympathized with Irish aspirations for independence, knew Ireland as few or none of her rulers have known it, foresaw the inevitable consequences of the legislation he denounced. He perceived that the friction between Parliament and the people must, if the exclusiveness of the former

1 former were maintained, lead to a popular storm which could not be withstood successfully, and that choice would have to be made between the concession in their entirety of the Catholic demands, and the absolute suppression of Ireland's parliamentary liberties. It is remarkable that from the year 1793, as he stated in his great speech on the Union, the Irish Chancellor had looked forward to the annihilation of the Grattan Parliament, and it is plain that in council he urged it vehemently upon successive Lords-Lieutenants. Westmorland, Fitzwilliam, and Camden, in turn report, in their correspondence with the members of the English Cabinet, how strenuously this opinion was pressed upon their attention by Clare;* and it is proved further that the idea was personally propounded to Pitt by his most trusted Irish adviser. Clare had never approved the policy which created the Grattan Parliament. He had, as a young member of the House of Commons, expressed his sentiments in this respect in the course of the celebrated debate on Grattan's momentous resolution of April 19, 1780, That the King's most excellent Majesty and the Lords and Commons of Ireland are the only power competent to bind or enact laws in this kingdom.'

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'England,' he said, on that occasion, 'is a proud and a high State, a nation not apt to crouch under any burdens. It is said that we are d. obtaining an act of justice through fear. Who will not be proud to resist such an idea? For my part I am so much an Irishman ice that I would not be even supposed to take advantage of fear. Let ed any man point out any advantage that can be gained by this resolution, and I will subscribe to this Declaration. But no one can do so. We are told that the people are at the Bar with petitions in one hand and arms in the other, and that they are become clamorous. Shall it be said that we are to be terrified by an armed people crowding to the Bar? I would rather be a slave to English laws than be ruled by a few factious men. The people are in a happy condition, if they did but know it. The intentions of the people have been perverted from their proper object. I wish they may be quieted. I love the people as much as any gentleman in this House, his and therefore I will oppose this motion, because I am satisfied it will not tend to the service of my country, for the passing of this

Even as early as 1784, the Duke of Rutland, who was then Lord-Lieutenant, had written to Pitt, Were I to indulge a distant speculation, I should say that without a union Ireland will not be connected with Great Britain in twenty years longer.' We avail ourselves of this opportunity of expressing our obligations to the present Duke of Rutland for his timely republication of the important correspondence between his grandfather and Mr. Pitt. The letters of the former, as the present Duke remarks, throw a vivid light on the conduct of the Irish Parliament, and on the prejudicial effect the factious and self-seeking spirit of its members had on the fortunes of the country.'

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resolution may be of most ruinous consequences to this kingdom, without any good to be obtained by it.'

Twenty years' experience of the working of an independent Legislature had not altered these opinions, which Clare steadily maintained throughout the whole period of its existence; and scarcely for a moment does he seem to have forgotten to promote these ideas. With the fundamental arguments upon

which he based his conclusions we are not here concerned. The reader will find them fully set forth in the extracts from his speech on the Catholic Relief Bill, which are given in the sixth volume of Mr. Lecky's work. But the distrust, which upon the highest grounds he entertained, of any extension of popular liberties in Ireland, was strengthened by a very important constitutional consideration.

Mr. Lecky has well pointed out* what he rightly calls a fatal fault' in the Constitution of 1782. The machinery of government in Ireland differed radically in design from the constitutional practice that has grown up in England with which we are all familiar. The officials of the Government in Ireland were not responsible to the Irish Parliament. The Minister, who introduced the Government measures to the House of Commons, was the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, who was always an Englishman, and who on his arrival in Ireland was invariably returned at once for some Government borough, to enable him to conduct Government business in the House of Commons. The Lord-Lieutenant and his Chief Secretary were the representatives, not of an Irish but of an English administration, and their tenure of office depended altogether upon the balance of parties in the English House of Commons. So long as the Irish Parliament was likely to remain a loyal body, it might be easy enough to manage it on this basis, though the reception accorded to Sir John Orde's twenty commercial resolutions in 1785 showed how difficult it might sometimes prove to secure Irish assent to the policy dictated from England. But it became plain, from the moment that the Catholics were admitted to the franchise, that their privileges could not be limited by that concession. If they had a right to vote for representatives in a Protestant Parliament, they had a right also to sit in Parliament themselves, they had a right to fill official positions, they were entitled to object to a Protestant Establishment. In short, there was no logical reason why Ireland with a native Parliament should not be governed