STE
business-like manner, without compunc- tions of any kind. Yet the former was sixty-one years of age, and the latter only thirty. Some members of Parliament were brought over by fair argument. The country was overawed by the presence of a large army. The Catholics were buoyed up with promises of Emancipation after the Union ; and a State provision for their clergy was planned. Protestants were told that a union was the only means of preserving the Protestant establishment, and were terrified by the possible results of Catholic ascendency in an Irish Parlia- ment. Bribery was openly resorted to ; and promises of place and peerages, or elevations in the peerage (" refined species of seduction," as Alison calls them), were freely made. All legitimate reforms, such as might render a union less likely to be called for, were opposed in Parliament. The wavering were brought over by declar- ations that the Government would never lose sight of the measure until it was carried. Opponents were dismissed from office. Oflicers in the army, who held seats in Parliament, and were likely to vote against the measure, were refused permis- sion to return home. Means were resorted to, but with little success, to get up petitions in favour of the Union ; and every eflfort was made to discourage adverse petitions. No stronger admission can be cited as to the means it was found necessary to em- ploy to carry the measure, than a passage in Lord Castlereagh's memoirs (vol. ii. p. 13), where he endorses Cornwallis's opin- ion, that the event of the question of Union was altogether dependent on the continu- ance of the English militia in Ireland. The difficulties these statesmen had to wade through were complicated by the necessity of concealing from Lord Clare and others of their colleagues, the prospects of speedy emancipation and possible en- dowmeuu that were privately held out to the Catholics as the price of their tacit concurrence. After another year of un- wearied and unflinching labour on the part of the Irish executive, the preliminary motion in favour of the Union was carried in the Commons, about one o'clock on the morning of 6th February 1 800, by a vote of 158 to 115 ; and thenceforward all was easy work for Castlereagh and his friends. The Irish House of Lords was from the first largely in favour of the measure. The only matter of surprise is that, in view of threats and arguments, lavish pro- mises of place and title, and boundless resources for "compensation " and bribery, in the face of the recent insurrection, and of the revolutionary troubles in France, so
498
STE
many members of the Irish House of Commons stood out to the last, and refused to make terms with those who sought the extinction of the autonomy of their country. Thomas De Quincey,who was present, thus concludes, in his Autobiographic Sketches, a vivid account of the last act in the drama : " The Bill received the royal assent without a muttering, or a whispering, or the pro- testing echo of a sigh. . . One person only I remarked whose features were suddenly illuminated by a smile, a sarcastic smile, as I read it ; which, however, might be all a fancy. It was Lord Castlereagh, who, at the moment when the irrevocable words were pronounced, looked with a penetrating glance amongst a party of ladies. His own wife was one of that party ; but I did not discover the particular object on whom his smile had settled. After this I had no leisure to be interested in anything which followed. ' You are all,' thought I to my- self, 'a pack of vagabonds henceforward, and interlopers, with actually no more right to be here than myself. I am an in- truder, so are you.' " The last Act of the Irish Parliament was 40 George III. cap. 100, " For the better regulation of the Butter Trade of Cork." The A ct of Union is 40 George III. c. 38 (ist August 1800) of the Irish Statutes, and 39 & 40 George III. c. 67 (2nd July 1800) of British Statutes. It came into operation on ist January 1801. Its chief provisions were: (i) That the two islands should be united as " The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland ;" that the aflfairs of the Empire should in future be carried on in that name, as they had been under that of " England " before the union with Scotland in 1 707, and under that of "Great Britain" subsequently. By royal procla- mation the red "saltier" cross of St. Patrick was added to the Union Jack, "interfused" with the white cross of St. Andrew, which had been added after the Scotch union. (2) The Parliaments of the Kingdoms were to be united ; Ireland sending 100 members to the Commons, and 4 spiritual and 28 temporal peers to the Lords. (3) The Churches of England and Ireland were united, and "the continuance and pre- servation" of the Established Church of England and Ireland was " deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the Union." (4) The subjects of both countries were placed on the same footing regarding foreign trade. (5) The public debts of the two countries were to be kept separate, and for twenty years the relative contributions for imperial pur- poses were to be two shares by Ireland to fifteen by Great Britain. AJter twenty
