GCE AS & A Level Student Guidance History

A2 Unit 2: The Act of Union Options 3

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The Act of Union

Principal Promoters of the Union

William Pitt (Pitt the Younger)

Born in 1759, William Pitt was the intellectually precocious but physically delicate son of the 1st Earl of Chatham (Pitt the Elder). He was educated privately and at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. Called to the Bar in 1780, he entered the House of Commons, where he soon made his mark, the following year. Commenting on Pitt’s maiden speech Edmund Burke observed: ‘He was not merely a chip off the old block, but the old block itself.’ This perception helped shape his meteoric rise. At the age of 23 he became Chancellor of the Exchequer and, at 24, Britain’s youngest ever Prime Minister, a distinction of which he is unlikely to be ever deprived.

Pitt was a young man with unusually clear sight of what he wished to achieve in politics. Among his political goals were good relations with the newly independent American colonies, a reduction in the National Debt, parliamentary reform and the reorganisation of the East India Company. With respect to Ireland, he wished to effect a union.

Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquis Cornwallis

Cornwallis was a widower, not very rich and an extremely hard worker who succeeded Lord Camden as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on 20 June 1798. A keen professional soldier, he combined the office with that of Commander-in-Chief of the army in Ireland. The previous year when he was offered the latter position he declined because the government’s unwillingness to accede to his demand that concessions be made to Roman Catholics. Cornwallis’s appointment to both offices was clearly recognition that both an effective military response to the 1798 rebellion and a new political initiative were necessary.

Cornwallis’s career hitherto revealed him to be a competent soldier with a fairly shrewd political brain. Although he was personally opposed to taxing the American colonists, he had served in America between 1775 and 1783. At Camden, South Carolina, in 1780 he had defeated a much larger force than his own and at Guildford in 1781 he had acquitted himself well. Later in the same year he found himself besieged at Yorktown, Virginia, and ultimately forced to surrender, an event that may be regarded as the prelude to the overall British defeat. However, his career did not suffer unduly and between 1786 and 1793 he was both Governor-General of India and Commander-in-Chief, during which time he defeated Tippoo Sahib (or Tipu Sultan).

With respect to the 1798 rebellion, Cornwallis sought a speedy restoration of ‘complete and perfect tranquillity’ that was to be achieved by a policy combining ‘firmness and lenience’. In practice this meant the United Irish leaders should be punished and their followers pardoned.

Cornwallis was firmly committed to the Union and strongly in favour of ‘coupling’ the Union with Catholic Emancipation. He was most disappointed when Pitt decided to implement his Irish policy in stages and in early 1799 fought a rearguard action to have concessions to Roman Catholics included in the Union scheme.

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Cornwallis as Lord Lieutenant was viewed with distaste by some sections of Protestant opinion on account of his leniency towards the United Irish rank and file, his support for concessions to Roman Catholics and his view that 1798 was the result of Jacobinism rather than Roman Catholicism. Cornwallis resigned in 1801 after George III had vetoed further discussion of Catholic Emancipation.

Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh

If the Union was pre-eminently Pitt’s project and Cornwallis was the head of the Irish administration, Castlereagh, as Chief Secretary, was the man chiefly responsible for steering the Union through the Irish Parliament.

Of Presbyterian stock, Castlereagh was the son of Robert Stewart (subsequently the 1st Marquis of Londonderry), a Co Donegal landowner who purchased an estate in Co Down in 1744 and represented the latter county in the Irish Parliament from 1771 to 1783.

His son, also Robert Stewart, the future Lord Castlereagh, was born in Dublin on 18 June 1769. He was educated at the Royal School, Armagh, and at St John’s College, Cambridge. In a famous election he too became MP for Co Down. Although at that time he was viewed as the popular candidate – the avowed opponent of the Church of Ireland, Dublin Castle and the Marquis of Downshire, and on this basis secured the votes of the Presbyterian farmers and weavers – the young Robert Stewart had only limited sympathy for radical ideas.

Events at home and abroad persuaded Castlereagh that it was necessary to support Pitt’s government. The appointment of his uncle, Lord Camden, as Lord Lieutenant in 1795, brought him within the ambit of Dublin castle. In July 1797 he accepted office as Keeper of the Signet and in March 1798 he assumed the duties of the Chief Secretary, Thomas Pelham, the holder of that office, being in extremely poor health. Thus, he was acting Chief Secretary during the rebellion. Castlereagh’s view on the suppression of the insurrection was identical to those of Cornwallis: ‘firmness and leniency’. In November 1798 he became Chief Secretary in his own right.

As early as 1792 Castlereagh had contemplated the possibility of a union. Fearing the separation of Ireland from Great Britain, by 1798 he was absolutely convinced by the rebellion and the threat of French invasion that union was essential.

Initially Castlereagh would appear to have seriously underestimated the scale of the opposition to the Union, but with great skill and hard work he converted early parliamentary defeat into a substantial parliamentary majority for the measure. Like Cornwallis, he viewed the Union as the prelude to Catholic Emancipation. He also believed in the abolition of tithes and the state payment of Roman Catholic clergy. It was his conviction that this package of measures would bind the Roman Catholic population to the Union. Castlereagh, along with Pitt and Cornwallis, resigned when George III thwarted the introduction of Catholic Emancipation.

The Earl of Clare

The principal Irish advocate for the Union was John Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare. Whereas Pitt, Cornwallis and Castlereagh, initially at least, viewed the Union as a package including

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Catholic emancipitation, Clare was diametrically opposed to Catholic relief. He even claimed that his visit to England in the autumn of 1798 persuaded the Cabinet to abandon their ‘popish projects’ and bring forward a Union ‘unencumbered’ by Catholic emancipitation. Ironically this avowed opponent of Catholic claims was the son of a Roman Catholic who became a convert to Protestantism in order to practice law. Normally people of similar background tended to be sympathetic to Catholic claims – Edmund Burke being an obvious example – but Fitzgibbon chose to identify himself strongly with the Protestant interest.

Fitzgibbon was born near Donnybrook, Dublin, in 1749. Academically and intellectually distinguished, he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Christ College, Oxford. Called to the Irish bar in 1772, his brilliant courtroom performances helped him build up a large lucrative practice. In 1778 he entered the and rapidly established himself as an effective parliamentarian. His parliamentary success – like his success in court – was based upon his mental agility, his sharp tongue and his mental courage.

In 1783 he became Attorney General and six years later he became the first Irishman to be Lord Chancellor of Ireland for almost a century, being raised to the peerage as Baron Fitzgibbon. He received his earldom in 1795 and a British peerage in 1799. As early as 1788, during the Regency crisis, Fitzgibbon told the Irish House of Commons ‘the only security of your liberty is the connection with Great Britain, and the gentleman who risked breaking the connection must make up their minds to a union’. Lord Westmoreland, the Lord Lieutenant between 1790 and 1795, observed that Fitzgibbon had ‘no God but English government’.

His constant opposition to reform was a reflection of his strongly authoritarian nature and his conviction that any widening of the political nation to include Roman Catholics would endanger the British connection. Hence his opposition to the concession of the early 1790s.

In 1793 Fitzgibbon denounced the Catholic Relief Bill during the second reading in the Irish House of Lords as ‘an indiscreet and precipitate experiment’. In Fitzgibbon’s estimation Roman Catholics, if granted political rights, would instinctively strive for predominance. ‘The reign of James II, he alleged, demonstrated vividly how Roman Catholics behaved when they possessed political power. For Fitzgibbon the penal laws were ‘a code forced on the by harsh necessity’.

Donal McCartney, in The Dawning of Democracy: Ireland 1800–1870 (1987), commented on Fitzgibbon’s political creed and support for the Union:

Lord Clare, one of the leading Irish architects of the Union, had reminded his colleagues in the Irish House of Lords that, despite all rhetorical claims to the contrary, they were not the Irish nation. They were, instead colonials who owed all they held in Ireland to successive English monarchs. These monarchs had conferred the power and property of the land upon three sets of adventurers who had poured into the country at the end of three Irish rebellions. Confisication was their sole title, and they were ‘hemmed in on every side by the old inhabitants of the island brooding over their discontent in sullen indignation’. The Catholic natives were awaiting the opportunity to retake their lands, re-establish their persecuted religion and re-assert their political supremacy. Faced with the choice of a separate Catholic Ireland or an Ireland united with Britain which would defend the Protestant interest, Lord Clare and his colleagues chose the latter. To secure their ascendancy Irish Protestants accepted the union. They surrendered the privilege of

Version 1 3 CCEA GCE History from September 2009 having their own Parliament on order to provide themselves with a shield against Catholic democracy. The price they extracted was a guarantee of security for their Protestant religion, for the lands they had colonised, and for their continuing social domination. Fears of losing their supremacy had driven the Protestant ascendancy into the union. But Lord Clare and his Unionist colleagues could put a brave face on it, and convince themselves that what they had done in accepting the union was justified on the grounds that it was in the best interests of Ireland. Clare argued that Ireland, once a mercenary province under her own Parliament, would become, under the union, an integrated part of the most progressive and powerful nation in he world. Irishmen, he felt, could be proud to play a role on the world stage of the imperial Parliament at Westminster. England and Wales had been joined together in the sixteenth century. Scotland had been united with England and Wales at the beginning of the eighteenth century to form Great Britain. And now, at the end of the eighteenth century, Ireland was to be united with Great Britain in a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It could all be made to sound like the onward march of historical inevitability.

This was essentially the case which Clare presented to the Irish House of Lords on 10 February 1800 in a four-hour speech which McCartney manages simultaneously and somewhat inconsistently to describe as a ‘harangue’ and ‘the most clinical historical lecture ever delivered in the old Irish Parliament’. Clare’s Union was not as generous as Pitt’s, Cornwallis’s and Castlereagh’s. However, it was not entirely devoid of vision as this passage alluded to above and derived from the 10 February speech illustrates:

I hope I feel as becomes a true Irishman for the dignity and independence of my country. I would therefore elevate her to her proper station in the rank of civilised nations. I would advance her from the degraded post of a mercenary province to the proud station of an integral and governing member of the greatest empire in the world.

Nevertheless, the appeal to naked self-interest was very strong.

Clare never courted nor cared for popularity, which was just as well, for it was a commodity he never enjoyed.

In 1795, following the dismissal of Fitzwilliam, the Dublin mob attacked his home. In early 1799, following the early setbacks suffered by the pro-Union camp in the Irish Parliament, the Dublin mob smashed his windows. Tradition has it that crowds threw dead cats at his funeral cortege in 1802. Nicknamed ‘Black Jack’, even to this day this reputation does not stand high despite his great gifts, principally because his political outlook does not command sympathy with modern-day Irish nationalists but also because his name is not invoked by today’s Unionists.

He was not devoid of humanity: on the contrary, in May 1798 Lady Louisa Connolly wished to visit her mortally wounded nephew, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, as E. M. Johnston recounts in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (1974):

She appealed in vain to the viceroy, Lord Camden, and then turned to Fitzgibbon, now Lord Clare, who told her that he could not give her such permission, but that he would immediately go with her to Lord Edward.

Clare regarded the United Irishmen as ‘a deluded peasantry aided by a more intelligent treason’. In the aftermath of 1798 he and Castlereagh sought to exercise a restraining influence over the frightened and vengeful elements of the Ascendancy.

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Pitt and Idea of a Union

In August 1785 Pitt wrote to the Duke of Rutland (Viceroy, 1784–7)

I believe the time will yet come when we shall see all our views realised in both countries, and for the advantage of both. It may be sooner or later, as accident, or perhaps, (for some time), malice may direct, but it will be right at last. We must spare no human exertion to bring forward the moment as early as possible, but we must be prepared to wait for it on one uniform and resolute ground, be it ever so late.

In November 1792 Pitt wrote to the Earl of Westmoreland, the Lord Lieutenant, that,

The idea of the present fermentation, gradually bringing both parties to think of a union with this country, has long been in my mind. The admission of the Catholics to a share of the suffrage would not then be dangerous.

In August 1798 Pitt was ‘ruminating on some ideas’ on the subject of a union between Great Britain and Ireland and he wrote to Cornwallis emphasizing ‘the necessity of bringing forward the great work of union which can never be so well accomplished as now’.

Thus, for Pitt, a union had been a long-term goal. In 1792 Pitt had written to Westmoreland, ‘a union with this country has long been in my mind’. The question was one of timing. In 1785 Pitt had told Rutland: ‘We must await times and seasons’.

Drafting the Union

 Originally Pitt contemplated the appointment of commissioners drawn from both the British and Irish Parliaments to frame the detail.

 The strength of anti-Union sentiment in the Irish Parliament evident in January 1799 resulted in the abandonment of this idea.

 Instead the terms of the Union were drawn up by members of the British and Irish administrations (in practice Pitt and Portland with Cornwallis, Castlereagh, Cooke, Corry, Beresford and Auckland). Because there was broad agreement the task was accomplished without great difficulty.

 The detail was never subjected to close scrutiny in the Irish Parliament because as one anti-Unionist observed: ‘A consideration of the terms would be derogatory to the exalted situation in which the country has been placed.’

Precedents for the Union

 During the reign of Edward III Irish representatives had sat at Westminster. The Irish Parliament was abolished in Cromwellian Ireland; Ireland was merged in one Commonwealth with England and Scotland.

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 Ireland had 6 representatives in the short-lived Barebone’s Parliament (1653). The Instrument of Government (December 1653) gave Ireland 30 representatives. Irish members sat in the Parliaments of 1654, 1656 and 1659.  At the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century a variety of voices were raised in support of a union.

 William Molyneaux argued that if the English Parliament was to legislate for Ireland the people of Ireland ought to be represented in it; ‘but this is a happiness we can hardly hope for’.

 Henry Maxwell, an Ulster MP, argued in his Essay towards a Union of Ireland with England (1703) that a union would ‘greatly increase the manufactures, trade and supply of each nation ... and will be the common interest of manufacturer, merchant, landlord and of the monarchy’.

 Bishop King in a letter to Sir Robert Southwell in July 1697 contended that a union was the only way to make both countries ‘flourish effectively’.

 In October 1703 the Irish House of Commons had suggested to Queen Anne that ‘a more firm and strict union with your Majesty’s subjects in England’ was an appropriate remedy to Ireland’s ills.

 However, Queen Anne’s reply offered no comfort. A union offered both political and economic advantages, by making the Protestant community in Ireland less isolated and by including Ireland within the English economy. The latter was precisely the chief objection from the perspective of the English mercantile class.

 The Act of Union between England and Scotland in 1707 revived the idea. The Irish House of Lords presented an address to the British House of Lords expressing the hope that Irish union with England would follow the Scottish Union. The Viceroy replied that he had no directions from Queen Anne to comment on the matter. The Irish House of Commons made no reference to a union on this occasion.

 In December 1759 rumours that there was to be a parliamentary union with Great Britain resulted in a furious crowd invading the Irish House of Commons and compelling MPs to swear that they would oppose any such measure.

 Dublin Castle believed, rightly or wrongly, that some members of the opposition in the Irish House of Commons instigated the riot.

 In 1779 the Duke of Buckinghamshire revealed himself to be in favour of a union but aroused such opposition that he dropped the idea.

 Arthur Young in A Tour of Ireland (1780) remarked that in the event of a union between Great Britain and Ireland, Ireland would probably lose ‘an idle race of country gentlemen and in exchange their courts would fill with ships and commerce’.

 Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776) argued that a union might be the prelude to the removal of religious disabilities.

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The Union – A Chronology

1798

Mid October: Rumours in Dublin about a union.

3 November: Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, appointed Chief Secretary (until 21 May 1801).

1 December: Appearance of Arguments For and Against the Union in Dublin bookshops.

9 December: Meeting of lawyers called by William Saurin in Dublin resolves that a legislative union between Ireland and Great Britain would be ‘Highly dangerous and improper to propose at the present juncture’ (carried by 166 votes to 32).

18 December: Meeting of Dublin bankers and merchants condemns legislative union while affirming loyalty to the Crown.

27 December: First issue of the Anti-Union newspaper published.

1799

5 January: Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland passes resolution forbidding members to take sides on the legislative union.

17-19 January: Catholic bishops unanimously agree that they will accept government veto on episcopal appointments (response to an offer from Lord Castlereagh) and that "A provision through government for the Roman Catholic clergy of the kingdom, competent and secured, ought to be thankfully accepted."

22 January: Parliamentary session opens; Speech from the Throne introduces proposal for a legislative union.

31 January: Pitt puts the case for legislative union to the British House of Commons.

12 March: William Sampson of the United Irishmen arrested on suspicion of having written Arguments For and Against a Union Considered (actually by Under-Secretary Edward Cooke).

22 June: George Ponsonby’s resolution ‘that the House would be ready to enter into any measure short of surrendering their free, resident, and independent legislature as established in 1782’, passes by majority of two.

1800

13 January: Daniel O’Connell’s first public speech, in opposition to the Union.

15 January: Irish Parliament opens for its last session; 39 writs for new elections (to facilitate Union proposals) issued in the first four days; amendment to the address to the Crown to expunge paragraph on the Union (by 138 votes to 96).

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5–6 February: King’s message to the Irish Parliament recommending legislative Union carried in the largest division ever recorded in the Irish House of Commons (by 158 votes to 115).

24 February: Ireland’s contribution to UK Exchequer set at a ratio of 2 to 15.

1 March: 31 Orange Lodges meeting at the Maze, Co Down, resolve that ‘We consider a legislative Union with Great Britain as the inevitable ruin to peace, prosperity and happiness in this kingdom.’

8 March: Grand Orange Lodge of Co Antrim meeting in expresses regret at ‘the appearance of division and discord among Orangemen on the proposed Union’ and calls for adherence to the resolution issued by the Grand Lodge of Ireland that Orangemen should remain neutral on the question.

12 March: Meeting of 36 Orange lodges of Counties Armagh and Monaghan at the home of James McKean in Armagh adopts resolution protesting against the Union.

13 March: Sir John Parnell’s motion seeking dissolution of Parliament and advice of constituencies before commitment to legislative Union defeated (by 150 votes to 104).

28 March: Articles of Union agreed by Irish House of Commons; agreed by British Parliament on 12 May.

21 May: House of Commons votes to allow Castlereagh, the Chief Secretary, to introduce a bill for the Union (by 160 votes to 100).

26 May: Grattan makes his last speech against the Union in the House of Commons; denounces Castlereagh; retires to Tinnehinch, Co Wicklow.

7 June: Bill for Union passes Irish House of Commons by 65 votes; passes House of Lords by 69; Parliament thereby enacts its own dissolution.

1 August: Act of Union receives royal assent.

2 August: Last sitting of the Irish House of Commons.

1801

1 January: Act of Union comes into effect.

22 January: The United Parliament meets for the first time.

31 January: Pitt raises the issue of Catholic Emancipation with George III.

1 February: George III refuses to accept Catholic Emancipation.

3 February: Pitt announces his intention to resign.

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Support and Opposition for the Union: Politicians, Interests and Geography

Opposition to the Union

1. Politicians

Ascendancy

 John Foster (Speaker of Irish House of Commons)  Sir John Parnell (Chancellor of the Exchequer)  J C Beresford (Inspector-General of Imports & Exports)

It is reasonable to assume that they feared that their power and influence would be greatly diminished in a United Parliament. In the Irish Parliament they were big fish in a small pond and did not relish the prospect of becoming small fish in a bigger pond.

Opposition

 Henry Grattan  William Plunket  George Ponsonby  William Ponsonby

They were hostile to the destruction of the independence of` the Irish Parliament which they had helped to win in 1782.

2. Interests

 Much of the legal profession – the end of the Irish Parliament would deprive lawyers of a useful showcase for their skills of advocacy.

 Commerce and Banking – these interests feared the union would have a detrimental impact on trade.

– while officially neutral, in practice the Orange Order was hostile to the Union because members feared that the Union would be followed by Catholic Emancipation.

 Borough Owners – viewed the boroughs in which they controlled the election of MPs as valuable property of which they had no wish to be deprived.

3. Geography

 Dublin (city and county) – Dubliners believed that the removal of their Parliament would have an adverse effect on the city’s prosperity because the political class would abandon the city.

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 Counties nearest Dublin (Louth, Meath, Kildare, Wicklow & Wexford) – their hostility to the Union was largely the consequence of the ripple effect frorn Dublin.

 Frontier counties of Ulster (Fermanagh, Tyrone, Armagh, Cavan & Monaghan) – the hostility of these counties to the Union was largely the product of Orange sentiment and the fear that the Union would be followed by Catholic Emancipation.

Support for the Union

1. Politicians

 Lord Cornwallis (Lord Lieutenant)  Lord Castlereagh (Chief Secretary)

Both believed that the Union should be followed by Catholic Emancipation and that together they held out the prospect of a reduction in sectarian tensions, economic prosperity and greater political cohesion within the British Isles.

 John Fitzgibbon (Lord Chancellor)

Fitzgibbon believed the Union offered the only basis for security to the Protestant Ascendancy. He combined this belief with resolute opposition to Catholic Emancipation.

 A majority in the House of Lords

Presumably, in part, as a result of Fitzgibbon’ s advocacy and influence.

2. Interests

 Ulster linen manufacturers

Relished the prospect of free access to English markets and believed that the Union would result in the expansion of their industry.

 Roman Catholic hierarchy

No Roman Catholic bishop publicly opposed the Union and a number – Troy of Dublin, Bray of Cashel, Moylan of Cork, Caulfield of Ferns, Dillon of Tuam, O’Reilly of Armagh and Lanigan of Ossory – actively promoted the measure. They did so presumably with the expectation, if not immediate realisation, of Catholic Emancipation in mind.

 Roman Catholic peers (e.g. Fingall and Kenmare)

Believed that a United Parliament would be more liberal than the Dublin one and would be more likely to concede Catholic Emancipation in the near future.

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3. Geography

 Cork & Waterford

Hoped to benefit from the prospect of greater trade and commerce within the United Kingdom.

 (to a lesser extent) Limerick & Galway

Hoped to benefit from the prospect of greater trade and commerce within the United Kingdom.

 Munster

Probably swayed by the prospect of Catholic Emancipation.

 Connaught

Probably similarly swayed by the prospect of Catholic Emancipation

Arguments For and Against the Union:

The Unionist Case The Union would put an end to all danger of divergencies in policies between Great Britain and Ireland.

An important consideration in the middle of a war. It would make a great contribution to imperial strategy by enabling resources to be mobilized and deployed more effectively. Unionists contended that two independent legislatures ‘in one empire’ were ‘as absurd as two heads on one pair of shoulders’.

The Union would have beneficial economic effects.

It would transform Ireland from an economically retarded country into a happy and prosperous part of the United Kingdom. Before 1707 Glasgow was only a village and Edinburgh was known only for its palace. After the Union Scotland’s population increased and its commerce expanded.

The Union would eliminate or lessen sectarian animosities.

Roman Catholics, instead of being in the ratio of 3 to I in Ireland, would be in the ratio of 3 to 11 in the United Kingdom. Protestants, from a position of strength, might be prepared to make concessions. Castlereagh predicted ‘strength and confidence will produce liberality’. Some Unionists stressed only increased security and said nothing about concessions.

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The Anti-Unionist Case Ireland was clearly a separate country entitled to its own Parliament.

Our patent to be a state and not a shire comes direct from Heaven … the great creator of the world has given unto, our beloved country the gigantic outlines of a Kingdom and not the pygmy features of a province. God and Nature, I say, never intended to be a province, and by God she never shall.

Thomas Goold

Pitt attributed this view to ‘an erroneous and mistaken sense of national pride’.

The Irish Parliament was a great success.

Charles Kendal Bushe claimed that the Irish Parliament was ‘a municipal parliament’ which had procured ‘within the memory of all, municipal advantages which no foreign parliament can supply’. (Canals, growing prosperity, the flourishing of the arts, new buildings in Dublin.) George Knox and W. C. Plunket claimed the Irish Parliament had suppressed the 1798 rebellion.

The Union would result in Ireland being over-taxed.

John Foster told the Irish House of Commons that Pitt was ‘the greatest minister of finance that ever existed in any country’ and ‘he wanted a union, in order to tax you, to take your money’.

Two contrasting votes on the Union

22 January 1799 The speech from the throne recommended ‘some permanent adjustment, which may extend the advantages enjoyed by our sister kingdom to every part of this island’. Clause advocating the Union deleted by Irish House of Commons (111 votes to 106).

5/6 February 1800 Both Houses of (Irish) Parliament received from the Lord Lieutenant the King’s recommendation for a legislating Union, ‘as it is the common interest of both his kingdoms’. Carried by 158 votes to 115, a majority of 43.

How can this change be accounted for?

At the end of January 1799 Castlereagh conducted a post mortem into the government’s defeat. He concluded that MPs had opposed the Union ‘more upon points of personal interest than upon a fixed repugnance to the principle of the Union’.

E M Johnston in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (1974) wrote:

…Castlereagh was able and Pitt was determined while Cornwallis’ character and reputation commanded respect. During the ensuing year every stratagem of management and weapon of propaganda were applied with the utmost skill.

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How the Union was carried

 By having seats in Parliament purchased from the borough owners for supporters of the Union.

 By giving out promotions in the peerage to others.

 By holding out the prospect of the employment of government influence to ensure that others would be returned as representative Irish peers in the House of Lords.

 By compensating those, whether Unionist or anti-Unionist, who would lose by the abolition of Irish constituencies (the value of a borough was said to be £15,000, so that over £1 million was paid out in compensation alone).

 By the provision of ecclesiastical and legal jobs to the families of others who had voted for the Union.

Corruption or Parliamentary Management?

Many historians subscribe to the view that the Union was passed by the normal methods of parliamentary management in the eighteenth century.

J. H. Rose, an early twentieth-century biographer of Pitt, has argued that the methods employed could not be said to have amounted to wholesale corruption and did not much exceed those normally needed to carry any important bill through Parliament.

However, Hardwicke, Cornwallis’s successor as Lord Lieutenant, complained, when he arrived to take up office in 1801, that he found ‘a heavy mortgage on the patronage of the country’.

Thus, R. F. Foster in The Oxford Illustrated History of Leland (1989) has written:

The Act of Union had been managed through the Irish House of Commons in the accepted manner, through patronage and bribery were used more blatantly and more extravagantly than usual . . .

The Passage of the Union

When the session of 1800 began Castlereagh and Pitt knew they had secured a majority for the Union. The Irish Commons and Lords adopted resolutions embodying the scheme on 28 March and by the British Parliament on 12 May. On 6 June the Irish House of Commons received and approved its committee report of the Union bill by 153 votes to 88. The bill was laid before the British Parliament. After each Parliament had made final minor amendments which the other accepted, the terms were embodied in identical bills and given the Royal Assent on 2 July in the British Parliament and on 1 August in the Irish. The Parliament at College Green sat for the last time on 2 August. The Union came into effect on 1 January 1801.

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The Union: The Details

Castlereagh and others referred to the Union as a treaty. Thus, its terms were described as articles rather than clauses.

Political (Articles I–IV)

 Ireland to be merged with Great Britain in one Kingdom.

 Ireland to be represented in the House of Commons by 100 MPs (two per county; two each for Dublin and Cork; one each for 31 other boroughs; & one for the University of Dublin).

 In the House of Lords to be represented by 4 Spiritual Lords (i.e. one archbishop and three bishops sitting by rotation of sessions) and 28 Temporal Lords elected for life by the peers of Ireland.

Ecclesiastical (Article V)

 Church of England and Church of Ireland to be united.

 The maintenance of this united church as the established church of England and Ireland was to be ‘deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental’ part of the Union.

Commercial (Article VI)

 The King’s subjects in Great Britain and Ireland to be entitled to the same privileges in all matters of commerce.

 Free Trade between Great Britain and Ireland (save in two respects).

Financial (Article VII)

 For the time being each country was to retain its own exchequer and be responsible for its own national debt.

 Great Britain was to contribute 15/17 and Ireland 2/17 to the expenditure of the United Kingdom.

 This was to be reviewed after 20 years and periodically thereafter.

 Laid down the conditions for the merging of the two exchequers, etc.

Legal (Article VIII)

 All laws in force at the time of the Union and all courts, in either Kingdom, should remain as they were, subject only to such changes as might be made by the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

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 Cases pending at the time of the Union, in either the British or Irish House of Lords, were to be decided in the House of Lords of the United Kingdom.

How Fair were the Terms of the Union?

D. G. Boyce in Nineteenth Century Ireland: The Search for Stability (1990) offers the following commentary: When the details of the … union are examined, they reveal a remarkably fair treatment of the Irish: remarkable in that the terms were not only quite generous, but also in that they were drawn up solely by the British government and were not the subject of negotiation as the Anglo-Scottish union had been. The only major complaint – that Ireland’s share of responsibility for United Kingdom expenditure was too large – became a reality only because of the long-drawn-out and unforseen war with France.

The Paradox of the Union

The Act of Union abolished the medieval and semi-independent Irish Parliament and created a United Kingdom Parliament, with substantial Irish representation, at Westminster. But the Union was incomplete because many vestiges of the pre-Union administration remained. Throughout the nineteenth century, Ireland, though formally an integral part of the United Kingdom, was quite distinct. Ireland was imperfectly integrated into the United Kingdom. Ireland was governed in theory from London, but practice appeared different:

 A Lord Lieutenant (or Viceroy) in Dublin continued to be appointed by the Crown.

 Vestiges of an Irish executive continued.

 A separate Irish Privy Council survived.

 A largely separate Irish Judiciary survived, headed by Lord Chancellor of Ireland and a Lord Chief Justice.

 Ireland continued to have its own separate law officers.

 After 1899 something akin to a separate Irish Minister for Agriculture (i.e. the Vice- President of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction) was created.

Catholic Emancipation

The Union did not result in immediate Catholic Emancipation. Pitt and Castlereagh wished it to do so, hoping to dilute Irish Catholicism through the Union.

Opposition came from Fitzgibbon, the Ascendancy and King George III, who believed Catholic Emancipation was contrary to his coronation oath.

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