THE HISTORY OF THE IRISH UNION.*

AMONG all the•enormous forces which Mr. Gladstone personally brings to the aid of any cause which he espouses, which is the chiefeet and most important P For our own part, we have no doubt as to the answer. It is not that stupendous power of labour which we once heard described by one who knew him well as " a capacity for doing sixteen hours' work in each twenty-four, and doing in each of those hours more than any other man could do in three." It is not that unrivalled command of a most power- ful party which absolutely at his bidding changes the passionate beliefs of yesterday, so that to-day it rejects them with a passion as fierce. It is not that unrivalled experience of Parliament which he can wield with so dexterous a hand, that it may count to-night for service the very opposite of that in which it told yesterday. It is not even that marvellous felicity of diction which seems always, in each sentence, to prepare an audience for the next; and then in that next only not to provide the very words that seemed inevitable, because those that actually break upon the ear "so much more exquisitely fulfil anticipation, that they seem like the thought already awakened, given its apotheosis in language. No; nor is it that widespread and intense belief in his personal character which has survived all shocks. No; nor the tradition of his financial achievements and his financial genius. No; not all these, nor many other sources of power that might be named, count for so much as this,—that to an extent that men hardly realise, Mr. Gladstone determines, alike for his opponents and for his friends, what shall InErrIrr,t,T.f tulgrEtOlitZaZe Britain and Ireland. By T. Dunbar be the assumed fade on which discussion is carried on. The notion of his enormous power of research and the conviction of his integrity of purpose deter men from following him into his authorities, and for him alone that soundest of all sound rules, "Always verify quotations," is not applied. This temptation so placed in the way of any man enthusiastically espousing a cause on which he has set his heart, to see facts as they snit the purpose of his cause, it would be almost beyond human capacity to resist. For a consummate artist, absorbed as every such artist must be in his art,the tendency to catch at j net what will persuade an audience, merely because that perfects the artistic finish of the work, must he something that those of us who have never felt that magic sympathy with a great crowd swaying beneath our breath, cannot even imagine. George Eliot has, perhaps, better than any one else made conceivable what that feeling is. Let us realise what the temptation is, but let us clearly realise also that it is one of the terrible dangers of majestic oratory. The present writer's attention was first drawn to this matter in the reference, in the great speech on the Irish Compensation Bill of last autumn, to the Report of the Devon Commission. Actual verification by that not very accessible document showed conclusively that the fad' on which the whole speech turned was inverted by applying what had been said by that Commission, and conclusively established in evidence before it, of the sub-tenants of the tenant-farmers, to the tenants direct, of whom all that evidence went to show that it was not generally true. Since that time we have been most anxious that some one should undertake the tank of carefully searching the actual records of the history of the Irish Union to ascertain whether all this tremendous denuncia- tion that we have been listening to of all that England in the past has done, is bitter truth, which we mast bear to hear with bowed heads, in grieving silence, saying with Mr. Albert Dicey, " Very well ! let us grant all that, but then— ;" or whether, instead, the story be trae which has reached us from Ireland that there still exist numerous specimens of the manifestly genuine petitions which were addressed to the Crown by Protestants and Catholics alike, showing that the feeling of the people was all in favour of Union with England at the time, and that the only money that was paid was to prevent private and selfish interests from barring the way of a great popular movement.

With the greatest possible delight, therefore, we recognise that this task has been fairly undertaken by very competent hands, and that the result is, on the whole, in the highest degree satisfactory. We could have wished that Dr. Ingram had dealt rather more filly with the story of the Volunteers, with the circumstances of the actual concession of Grattan's Parliament, with the charges against Pitt of having purposely fomented the rebellion, and with a few other matters which would have rendered his narrative of the circumstances of the Union more complete. Furthermore, we think that, for most readers, it would have been a very great advantage if he had at the beginning of his work given a statement of the scope and purport of the argument as a whole, and had explained how its different parts were intended to toll upon one another. Nevertheless, the service which he has rendered to the country at the present time is very great ; and we cannot too strongly urge all those who care to be brought into contact with original authorities, and to have decisive evidence laid before them, to convince themselves how completely baseless most of the charges against Pitt and Castlereagh are.

The case which Dr. Ingram establishes is this :— 1. That the effective cause of the passing of the Act of Union was that the wish of the Irish people, Catholic more strongly than Protestant, but both in agreement, bad before the passing of the Act come to be strongly in favour of it.

2. That the evidence that this was the genuine and spon- taneous feeling of the great majority of the people is various and complete; that of the Catholic Bishops, we have all the four Archbishops, thirteen out of nineteen Bishops, and the agent of the secular Bishops " all declaring by words and deeds that the. Union was necessary to save Ireland." Of the inferior clergy, we have everywhere evidence of their being, except in Dublin, eager to head the seventy-four petitions and declarations made in all parts of Ireland in favour of Union. And this is evidenced further by the fury with which Grattan assailed the Catholic clergy as " a band of prostituted men engaged in the service of Government." The writer shows that evidence, as complete as to the general sentiments of the Catholic laity, still exists, and further, that the Catholic electors were in

-overwhelming majority in almost all constituencies that were not merely pocket-seats.

3. That the condition of representation was such at the time that, alike in England, Scotland, and Ireland, the value of a borough as an investment was a thoroughly understood thing ; so much so, that it was regularly the subject of settle- ment, will, public Bale, &c , and that the interest on the capital so invested was understood to be the purchase of a seat at each election from the proprietor, by those who wished thus to enter the House. Grattan both in 1784 and in 1800, purchased his seat from a borough proprietor.

4. That in 1785, when Pitt desired to introduce Parliamentary reform in England, he had declared that it "could only be brought about by two means, by an act of power, or by an adequate consideration which might induce bodies or individuals to part with rights which they considered as a species of valuable inheritance or of personal property," and that he thought the latter the only just mode of dealing with the question.

5. That, in accordance with this principle, precisely as sub- sequently the slave-holders were compensated for a vested interest which now seems at least as immoral as that of the borough-owners, a vote was publicly passed in the House of Commons granting £1,260,000 as compensation for the disturb- ance of vested interests ; but that it is absurd to speak of this as a bribe, because it was distributed with absolute impartiality by a public and independent Court, to those who resisted and opposed the measure to the last, as freely as to those who had voted for the Union.

6. That those who resisted and opposed the Union, and the motives which determined their conduct, are very clearly indicated by the circular which was sent round on January 20th, 1800, for supplying the form of petition which was to be signed against the Union. Besides Lord Charlemont, the son of the great Volunteer, the other two signatories are Lord Downshire and W. B. Ponsonby. Now, the Ponsonbys exercised paramount influence, direct or indirect, over the return of twenty-two Members to the Irish Parliament, and Lord Downshire over as many. The essence of their struggle was that of a dominant oligarchy unwilling to abandon a position of power, though it seemed abOut to crumble under their feet.

7. In the course of the very struggle itself, the orators who spoke for these oligarchs confessed, as they expressed it, that "the people had abandoned them."

8. That, loud as has been the talk about the recall of Lord Fitz-William, there never was an agent less likely than Lord Cornwallis to be selected by a Minister wishing to carry out an underhand intrigue ; that no breath of scandal has ever sullied his personal character; and that yet, throughout, whilst utterly disgusted with the low intrigues which he became aware of as practised by the oligarchic opponents of Union, he never expresses anything in his most private letters but absolute confidence and satisfaction with all that was done on the Government side.

9. That the bribery by the Opposition was undoubted and unblushing ; as Lord Cornwallis puts it :—" The enemy, to my certain knowledge, offer £5,000 ready money for a vote ; if we had the means, and were disposed to make such vile use of them, we dare not timid the credit of Government in the hands of such rascals." That this is proved to the hilt by their own admissions.

10. That the Opposition, with that recklessness of language which was characteristic of the time, flung about accusations of bribery against the Government which they were challenged again and again to substantiate, and were utterly unable to prove.

11. That the only letters out of all the correspondence between the Irish Government and Pitt which have given colour to the accusation of bribery manifestly refer to no such matter, but to the compensation paid to certain merchants who had no power of commanding votes ; and that that compensation was paid in consequence of their suffering by the intended change of tariff.

12. That the whole arrangements were only such as a prudent Ministry would necessarily adopt at a time when private interests were liable to suffer severely ; and that the object was not to sacrifice the public interest by private corruption, but to gain an end recognised by the whole nation as vital, by cutting the ground from under the feet of those who, on purely selfish grounds, were opposing it.

How vital that end was, Dr. Ingram has admirably shown by his short account of the history of Grattan's Parliament. We cannot follow him into that story ; but as a warning of the fatal

result which would certainly attend the setting-up of a rival Parliament in Dublin, we cannot imagine anything more decisive.

Of this at least we are sure, that, based as the whole of Dr. Ingram's narrative is upon the citation of original authorities, such as the actual petitions from all parts of the country, with their signatures, as they appear in the advertisement-sheets of contemporary newspapers, upon contemporary letters and the like, the burden of proof has been wholly transferred to the shoulders of those who have accused Pitt, Cornwallis, and Castle. reagh ; and that at the present moment they themselves stand at the bar on an accusation scarcely less serious,—that of having lightly taken up and bandied about accusations against honour- able men for which there was no other authority than the loose statements of reckless partisans. We heartily commend the book to the attention of all those who either care for the honour of English statesmen in the past, or who have been affected in the present controversy by the argument that her independence was in 1801 filched from Ireland by the influence of English gold poured into the lap of traitors.

We may notice that Dr. Ingram has happily accepted Mr. Gladstone's reference to Lord Stanhope's authority by putting on his title-page a quotation showing decisively that Lord. Stanhope was absolutely convinced that the accusations against Pitt and Castlereagh were malignant slanders.