Lord Camden, the Lord Lieutenant, ordered that all arms in the hands of private persons should be immediately delivered up. In reply to an address of Lord Moira, in the English Parliament, Lord Clare, the Irish Chancellor, said that a revolutionary government was completely organized, in opposition to the legal power. "What," said he, "has been the result of all our concessions during the past twenty years? The formation of seditious associations, a system of violence, and midnight robbery. Orders given by the Jacobin clubs of Dublin and Belfast to raise regiments of national guards with French uniforms and French tactics; the league of the United Irishmen; the resolution, frankly avowed, of accepting no overtures from Parliament; and the desire, scarcely dissimulated, of separation from England."
A dangerous outbreak was imminent; many of the leaders were arrested. Arthur O'Connor, with the Irish priest Coigley, on their way to Paris to hasten the promised supplies, were of the number. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was captured. He resisted, and was so seriously wounded that he died shortly afterwards.
The most severe measures against the conspirators followed the arrest of their chiefs. Stores of arms were found in many places, and it was necessary to take them by force; this naturally led to cruel reprisals. With the exception of Connaught, all Ireland was roused, and shortly became the theatre of the most frightful scenes of disorder, cruelty and desolation. The county of Wexford, above all, was delivered over to pillage and flames. Lord Cornwallis was appointed Lord Lieutenant, much against his will. "It is my idea of torture," wrote he to one of his friends. He nevertheless accepted the position. Sagacious to employ, in turn, severity and clemency, he was actively seconded by the Chancellor, Lord Clare, and young Lord Castlereagh. The rebellion was crushed. A French invasion, under the order of General Humbert, gained a momentary success, in consequence of the weakness, or treachery, of the Irish militia; it was soon repulsed, and the ships of the Republic were captured by Commodore Warren. The famous Irish leader, Wolfe Tone, the instigator of all the intrigues in France, was taken with arms in his hands; and while in prison, committed suicide. Byrne, Coigley, and many others were tried, convicted, and sentenced to capital punishment; a certain number, however, were subsequently pardoned. The alien bill, authorizing the government to interdict English soil to foreigners, and the suspension of the habeas corpus act, were accorded by Parliament without difficulty.
Pitt now prepared an important measure, that he had been considering for many years. The growing disorders in Ireland convinced him of the necessity of a legislative and parliamentary union between the two countries. On the 31st of January, 1799, he proposed his bill; already badly received by the Irish Parliament. The royal prerogative for the creation of Irish peers was not limited, as it became in the definitive bill.
By a clever rotation of elections in the boroughs, none of them completely lost their franchise. The number of the Irish representatives in the House of Commons was fixed at one hundred. The speech of the prime minister was one of the most eloquent ever made. Three times only, in the course of his life, did he consent to revise his addresses; the speech on the union with Ireland, was one that had that honor. In it he declared that England was engaged in a struggle the most important and solemn that had ever been seen in the history of the world; in a struggle where Great Britain alone ought to resist resolutely and with success, the common enemy of civilized society. They saw, he said, the point upon which the enemy believed them assailable; and should not prudence compel them to fortify that vulnerable point, engaged, as they were, in the struggle of liberty against despotism, of property against rapine and pillage, of religion and order against impiety and anarchy? And, on the other hand, if a country should be unable to defend itself against the greatest of all dangers which might threaten its peace and security, without the assistance of another nation, and that nation should be a neighbor and an ally, if she spoke the same language, if her laws, her customs, and her habits were the same in principle; if the commerce of that nation was more extended, and its means of acquiring and spreading abroad riches were more numerous; if that nation possessed a government, whose stability and admirable constitution excited more than ever the admiration of Europe, while the country in question possessed only an incomplete and imperfect imitation of that constitution; what, in such a case, would be the conduct demanded by all motives of equity, interest, and honor? "I ask you," said he, in conclusion, "if this is not a faithful exposition of the motives which ought to lead Ireland to desire union? I ask you, if Great Britain is not precisely the nation to which a country in the situation of Ireland, ought to desire to unite itself? Could a union contracted under such circumstances, with a free consent, and under equitable conditions, merit to be stigmatized as the submission of Ireland to a foreign yoke?"
The Battle Of Aboukir.
The bill passed in the English Parliament by a large majority; but all the eloquence of its defenders, together with the clever maneuvres of Lords Cornwallis and Castlereagh, were not able to induce the Irish Parliament to pass similar resolutions, before the opening of the year 1800. Henry Grattan, long absent from the house, returned in order to oppose the union: "In all that he advances, the minister does not discuss—he predicts," said the Irish orator; "one cannot answer a prophet; all that one can do is not to believe. That which he wishes to buy of you, cannot be sold: it is liberty; in exchange he has nothing to offer you. All that possesses any value you have obtained under a free constitution; if you renounce it you are not only slaves, but madmen."