"At length, the expected moment arrived: the order of the day for the third reading of the bill for a 'legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland' was moved by Lord Castlereagh. Unvaried, tame, cold-blooded, the words seemed frozen as they issued from his lips; and, as if a simple citizen of the world, he seemed to have no sensation on the subject.
"At that moment he had no country, no God, but his ambition. He made his motion, and resumed his seat, with the utmost composure and indifference.
"Confused murmurs again ran through the House. It was visibly affected. Every character, in a moment, seemed involuntarily rushing to its index—some pale, some flushed, some agitated—there were few countenances to which the heart did not despatch some messenger. Several members withdrew before the question could be repeated, and an awful, momentary silence succeeded their departure. The Speaker rose slowly from that chair which had been the proud source of his honours and of his high character. For a moment he resumed his seat, but the strength of his mind sustained him in his duty, though his struggle was apparent. With that dignity which never failed to signalize his official actions, he held up the bill for a moment in silence. He looked steadily around him on the last agony of the expiring Parliament. He at length repeated, in an emphatic tone, 'As many as are of opinion that THIS BILL do pass, say ay! The affirmative was languid, but indisputable. Another momentary pause ensued. Again his lips seemed to decline their office. At length, with an eye averted from the object he hated, he proclaimed, with a subdued voice, 'The, AYES have it.' The fatal sentence was now pronounced. For an instant he stood statue-like; then indignantly, and with disgust, flung the bill upon the table, and sank into his chair with an exhausted spirit. An independent country was thus degraded into a province. Ireland, as a nation, was extinguished."
The final division in the Commons was 153 to 88, nearly 60 members absenting themselves, and in the Lords, 76 to 17. In England all the stages were passed in July, and on the 2nd of August, the anniversary of the King's accession, the royal assent was given to the twofold legislation, which declared the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland one and inseparable!
By the provisions of this statute, compact, or treaty, the Sovereignty of the United Kingdom was to follow the order of the Act of Succession; the Irish peerage was to be reduced by the filling of one vacancy for every three deaths, to the number of one hundred; from among these, twenty-eight representative Peers were to be elected for life, and four spiritual Lords to sit in succession. The number of Irish representatives in the Imperial Parliament was fixed at one hundred (increased to one hundred and five); the churches of England and Ireland were united like the kingdoms, and declared to be one in doctrine and discipline. The debt of Ireland, which was less than 4,000,000 pounds in 1797, increased to 14,000,000 pounds in '99, and had risen to nearly 17,000,000 pounds in 1801, was to be alone chargeable to Ireland, whose proportionate share of general taxation was then estimated at 2-17ths of that of the United Kingdom. The Courts of Law, the Privy Council, and the Viceroyalty, were to remain at Dublin, the cenotaph and the shadows of departed nationality.
On the 1st day of January, 1801, in accordance with this great Constitutional change, a new imperial standard was run up on London Tower, Edinburgh Castle, and Dublin Castle. It was formed of the three crosses of St. Patrick, Saint Andrew, and Saint George, and is that popularly known to us as "the Union Jack." The fleur de lis, and the word "France," were struck from the royal title, which was settled, by proclamation, to consist henceforth of the words Dei Gratia, Britanniarum Rex, Fidei Defensor.
The foul means by which this counter revolution was accomplished, have, perhaps, been already sufficiently indicated. It may be necessary, however, in order to account for the continued hostility of the Irish people to the measure, after more than sixty years' experience of its results, to recapitulate them very briefly. Of all who voted for the Union, in both Houses, it was said that only six or seven were known to have done so on conviction. Great borough proprietors, like Lord Ely and Lord Shannon, received as much as 45,000 pounds sterling in "compensation" for their loss of patronage; while proprietors of single seats received 15,000 pounds. That the majority was avowedly purchased, in both Houses, is no longer matter of inference, nay, that some of them were purchased twice over is now well known. Lord Carysfort, an active partisan of the measure, writing in February, 1800, to his friend the Marquis of Buckingham, frankly says: "The majority, which has been bought at an enormous price, must be bought over again, perhaps more than once, before all the details can be gone through." His lordship himself, and the order to which he belonged, and those who aspired to enter it, were, it must be added, among the most insatiable of these purchased supporters. The Dublin Gazette for July, 1800, announced not less than sixteen new peerages, and the same publication for the last week of the year, contained a fresh list of twenty-six others. Forty-two creations in six months was a stretch of prerogative far beyond the most arbitrary of the Stuarts or Tudors, and forms one, not of the least unanswerable evidences, of the utterly corrupt considerations which secured the support of the Irish majority in both Houses.
It was impossible that a people like the Irish, disinterested and unselfish to a fault, should ever come to respect a compact brought about by such means and influences as these. Had, however, the Union, vile as were the means by which it was accomplished, proved to the real benefit of the country—had equal civil and religious rights been freely and at once extended to the people of the lesser kingdom—there is no reason to doubt that the measure would have become popular in time, and the vices of the old system be better remembered than its benefits, real or imaginary. But the Union was never utilized for Ireland; it proved in reality what Samuel Johnson had predicted, when spoken of in his day: "Do not unite with us, sir," said the gruff old moralist to an Irish acquaintance; "it would be the union of the shark with his prey; we should unite with you only to destroy you."
In glancing backward over the long political connexion of Ireland and England, we mark four great epochs. The Anglo-Norman invasion in 1169; the statute of Kilkenny decreeing eternal separation between the races, "the English pale" and "the Irish enemy," 1367; the Union of the Crowns, in 1541, and the Legislative Union, in 1801. One more cardinal event remains to be recorded—the Emancipation of the Catholics, in 1829.