successful opposition of the Government to reform made the United Irishmen for the first time disloyal. They began to be convinced that it would be as easy to obtain a revolution as a reform, so obstinately was the latter resisted; and, as this conviction impressed itself on their minds, they were inclined not to give up the struggle, but to extend their views. . . . Still,' they add, the whole body, we are convinced, would have rejoiced to stop short at reform.' They tried to avail themselves of French assistance because 'they perceived that their strength was not, and was not likely to become, equal to wresting from the English and the borough interests in Ireland even a reform.' They decided ultimately upon making separation rather than reform their ideal, because 'foreign assistance could only be hoped for in proportion as the object to which it would be applied was important to the party giving it. A reform in the Irish Parliament was no object to the French; a separation of Ireland from England was a mighty one indeed.'

Several secondary measures were, however, carried in this session, which fulfilled the wishes of the Whig Club and in some degree ameliorated the state of the Irish Parliament, though it left the ascendency of the nomination boroughs untouched. The Pension List was reduced to 80,000l. a year. Placemen and pensioners were in future obliged to vacate their seats and to be re-elected to Parliament, and some considerable classes of them were made ineligible. The King gave up his hereditary revenue for a fixed civil list. A measure which Grattan had long advocated for encouraging the cultivation of barren lands by exempting them for seven years from tithes was accepted. The Irish libel law was assimilated to that of Great Britain. Some slight relaxation was given in the East Indian trade from which Ireland had been

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largely excluded by the monopoly of the East India Company, and, what was perhaps more important than any of these measures, the hearth tax, which was the one tax that weighed heavily on the poor, was materially lightened by a complete exemption of cottages with only one hearth.

The military and police measures required by the war were voted, as was always the case under the Irish Parliament, with great unanimity and liberality. A militia force of 16,000 men, raised by conscription for four years, did much to supersede the volunteer movement, and a Convention Act was carried which made illegal those representative bodies elected like a Parliament by different denominations of Irishmen, which had recently become so popular. An intended convention of the United Irishmen at Athlone

appears to have been the immediate cause. The Bill was a declaratory one, and therefore involved a retrospective condemnation of the Volunteer Convention at Dungannon and of other conventions which had been considered perfectly legal. On this ground it was opposed by Grattan, but to the great indignation of the United Irishmen he declared that bodies of this kind outside Parliament had become a grave danger to the State, and that the Government was fully justified in taking measures to repress them. Grattan also entirely dissented from the policy of Fox who, with the English Whig party, opposed the war. On the whole, this long and memorable session of 1793 ended with a great approach to unanimity in Parliament, and the Irish Government for a time, at least, believed that the disaffection in the country had seriously abated. Ten new promotions in the peerage were made, and it was a significant fact that among the promoted peers was Fitzgibbon, who now became a viscount.

The part which Grattan had taken in supporting all

the military measures of the Government; his emphatic repudiation of that sympathy with the French Revolution which was so common among the English Whigs, and his denunciation of the scheme of democratic reform which had become popular in Ulster, severed him from a large proportion of the reform party which had once looked on him as their leader. His position was a very independent but also a very difficult one. He hated the Revolution and its principles almost as much as Burke, but unlike Burke, and unlike most English opponents of the Revolution, he continued to be an earnest though a temperate reformer. Although he had lost touch with the democracy of the north, he was still a great parliamentary power, and he carried with him the confidence of a large portion of the more moderate gentry throughout the country.

In a very confidential letter from Cooke, which was written during the session of 1794, there are some remarkable sentences, showing the part which Grattan had been playing and the effect it had upon at least one important member of the Government. You are doubtless extremely pleased,' he said, in England with the conduct of the Irish Parliament. ... What would have been the effect of a strong parliamentary Opposition which could add the discontent of the moderate to the plots of the factious is easy to be conjectured. But now the support of the moderate conjoined to the force of Government is able to extinguish sedition. . . . Much credit is due to Mr. Grattan. He told Sir J. Parnell last year privately that if the concessions in agitation were granted he would no longer give any vexatious opposition. He has more than made good his word, for he has given decided support. . . . My best opinion is that Grattan is the most important character in Ireland, and that attaching him to Mr. Pitt's Government would be essential. This is difficult. He is very

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high-minded, and resentful, and suspicious. He is, however, very steady and honourable, and will act up to his professions. He has great sway over the public mind, and he must play such a part as not to lose his authority. He wants not, perhaps would not take, situation; he would stipulate for measures. If any compliment were shown him, he would like it immediately from Mr. Pitt. In the uncertainty of events his conduct here might be decisive, and therefore he should be early thought of. Government is strong in numbers. They want not aristocratical addition. They want the chief of the people.'

Ponsonby's Reform Bill was brought forward again, though without success, in 1794, and Grattan took the occasion to give a distinct outline of his policy. He desired that Ireland should improve her Constitution, correct its abuses, and assimilate it as much as possible to that of Great Britain; that whenever administrations should attempt to act unconstitutionally, but, above all, whenever they should tamper with the independence of Parliament, they should be checked by all means that the Constitution justifies; but that these measures and this general plan should be pursued by Ireland with a fixed, steady, and unalterable resolution to stand or fall with Great Britain. Whenever Great Britain, therefore, should be clearly involved in war, Ireland should grant her a decided and unequivocal support, except that war should be carried on against her own liberty.'

In addition to reform and Catholic Emancipation, Grattan made a new effort to obtain a vote in favour of a definite and final commercial treaty with England on the basis of complete reciprocity, the manufactures of each country being received on the same terms in the ports of both. It was the policy which Pitt had endeavoured to carry out in 1785, and the absence of such

an arrangement was afterwards made one of the arguments for the Union and the concession of such an arrangement one of the great boons it offered. The Government received the scheme with much praise, but urged that the time was not fitting for raising the question, and at their urgent request the motion was withdrawn.

At last, however, it seemed as if the policy of Grattan were about to triumph. In July 1794 a powerful section of the Whig party, seceding on the ground of the policy of Fox upon the French war, joined the Government of Pitt, and a rearrangement of places took place. It was carried out with great difficulty and amid many misunderstandings, and there was an extreme and evident jealousy between the two sections of the new coalition. It was ultimately determined after long negotiations that Ireland was to be placed in the department of the Duke of Portland, who had been Lord Lieutenant when the independence of 1782 was conceded, and who was now made Secretary of State for the Home Department; that Lord Westmorland was to be recalled from the viceroyalty as soon as a considerable place could be found for him; that one of the great Whig peers should fill his place, and Lord Fitzwilliam was designated for it. It appears from a letter of the Duke of Chandos to Flood in 1783 that he had in that year been offered and had refused the post; and the Whigs had intended to send him to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant when the dispute on the Regency had made a change of government appear probable. He was a great Irish landlord, connected by marriage with the Ponsonbys, and well known to share Grattan's views on the Catholic question. He at first refused the post, and ultimately only accepted it with much reluctance, and on the understanding, which he shared with Portland, that the new ministers had been

1

1 Warden Flood's Life of Flood, p. 179.