William Pitt and the Great War

by J. Holland Rose

THE UNION

I am determined not to submit to the insertion of any clause that shall make the exclusion of the Catholics a fundamental part of the Union, as I am fully convinced that, until the Catholics are admitted into a general participation of rights (which, when incorporated with the British Government, they cannot abuse) there will be no peace or safety in Ireland.—Cornwallis to Ross, 30th September 1798.

The fairest method of dealing with the Act of Union of the British and Irish Parliaments seems to be, firstly, to trace the development of Pitt's thoughts on that subject; secondly, to survey the state of affairs in Ireland after the Rebellion of 1798; and thirdly, to trace the course of the negotiations whereby the new Lord Lieutenant, Cornwallis, succeeded in carrying through the measure itself.

Firstly, it is clear that Pitt had long felt the need of closer commercial ties between the two islands. As was shown in Chapter XI of the former part of this work, he sought to prepare the way for such a measure in the session of 1785. The importance which he attached to the freeing of inter-insular trade appears in a phrase of his letter of 6th January 1785 to the Duke of Rutland as to Great Britain and Ireland becoming "one country in effect, though for local concerns under distinct legislatures," This represents his first thoughts on the subject. Obviously they were then limited to a commercial union. If the two Parliaments and the two nations could have shaken off their commercial jealousies, Pitt would probably have been satisfied with fostering the prosperity of both islands, while leaving their legislative machinery intact. But, being thwarted by the stupidity of British traders and the nagging tactics adopted at Dublin, he wrote to Rutland that his plan was not discredited by failure and they must "await times and seasons for carrying it into effect."

Times and seasons brought, not peace and quiet, but the French Revolution. With it there came an increase of racial and religious feuds, which, however, did but strengthen his conviction of the need of a closer connection between the two islands; witness his letter of 18th November 1792 to the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Westmorland:

The idea of the present fermentation gradually bringing both parties to think of an Union with this country has long been in my mind. I hardly dare flatter myself with the hope of its taking place; but I believe it, tho' itself not easy to be accomplished, to be the only solution for other and greater difficulties. The admission of Catholics to a share of suffrage could not then be dangerous. The Protestant interest, in point of power, property and Church Establishment, would be secure because the decided majority of the supreme Legislature would necessarily be Protestant; and the great ground of argument on the part of the Catholics would be done away, as, compared with the rest of the Empire, they would become a minority. You will judge when and to whom this idea can be confided. It must certainly require great delicacy and management; but I am heartily glad that it is at least in your thoughts.[530]

These words show why Pitt allowed proposals so imperfect as the Franchise Bill of 1793 to become law. It enfranchised most of the Irish peasantry, the great majority of whom were Catholics, though men of their creed were excluded from Parliament. But he hoped in the future to supplement it by a far greater measure which would render the admission of Catholics to Parliament innocuous, namely, by the formation of a united Parliament in which they would command only a small minority of votes. Pitt's words open up a vista which receded far away amidst the smoke of war and the mirage of bigotry, and did not come into sight until the second decade of the period of peace, when Canning, Pitt's disciple, was the chief champion of the measure here first clearly outlined. Pitt, then, desired a Union as the sole means of ending commercial disputes, otherwise as insoluble as those between England and Scotland previous to the year 1707; but also for an even weightier reason, because only so could the religious discords of Irishmen be ended; only so could the chafing of the majority against the rule of a cramping caste cease. By the formation of an Imperial Parliament, the Irish Protestants would have solid guarantees against the subversion of all that they held most dear.

The full realization of these aims was impossible. Early in 1793 came war with France, with its sequel, the heating of nationalist and religious feeling in Ireland; and while the officials of Dublin Castle embarked on a policy of repression, the United Irishmen looked for help to Paris. The results appeared in the Rebellion of 1798. The oft-repeated assertion that Pitt and Camden brought about the revolt in order to force on the Union is at variance with all the available evidence. They sought by all possible means to prevent a rising, which, with a reasonable amount of help from France, must have shaken the British Empire to its base. When the rebellion came and developed into a bloody religious feud, they saw that the time for a Union had come.

The best means of checking hasty generalizations is to peruse letters written at the time, before ingenious theories could be spun. Now, the definite proposal of a Union very rarely occurs before the month of June 1798. One of the first references is in a letter of the Lord Chancellor, Loughborough, to Pitt, dated 13th June 1798. After approving the appointment of Cornwallis as the best means of quelling the revolt in Ireland, he adds: "Every reasonable man in that country must feel that their preservation depends on their connection with England, and it ought [to] be their first wish to make it more entire. It would be very rash to make any such suggestion from hence: but we should be prepared to receive it and to impose the idea whenever it begins to appear in Ireland."[531]