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it was urged that the perpetual maintenance of the Established Church might be made a matter of distinct treaty obligation; placing, as Irish Churchmen fondly believed, its destruction beyond the competence even of the Imperial Parliament; making its maintenance an essential and fundamental portion of the compact under which the Irish Protestant Parliament resigned into the hands of the Imperial Parliament the legislative power of Ireland. The 5th Article of the Act of Union appears to have been drawn up through the influence of Archbishop Agar and Bishop O'Beirne. It laid down that the Church of England and Ireland, as now by law established, be united into one Protestant Episcopal Church, to be called the United Church of England and Ireland; that the doctrine, worship, discipline and government of the said United Church shall be and shall remain in full force for ever, as the same are now by law established for the Church of England; and that the continuance and preservation of the said United Church as the Established Church of England and Ireland shall be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the Union; and that in like manner the doctrine, worship, discipline and government of the Church of Scotland shall remain and be preserved as the same are now established by law and by the Acts for the Union of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland.'

There can be no doubt that this article had a considerable effect in securing the support of the Protestant episcopacy, and although there is no evidence that the Protestant clergy in general took any active part in favour of the Union, this clause in it cannot have been unacceptable to them. For more than a generation it was regarded by English politicians as of binding force. In the Bill for Catholic Emancipation which was brought forward by Grattan in 1813, the permanent and inviolable

Establishment of the Protestant Episcopal Church of England and Ireland was asserted in the preamble to be an essential part of our free Constitution, and the abolition of religious disqualifications was recommended, as tending by destroying religious animosities to promote its interests. When Plunket devoted his splendid gifts to pleading the cause of Catholic Emancipation in the Imperial Parliament, he at the same time declared that to uproot the Protestant Establishment in Ireland would be to shake the foundations of the Empire, and that the two countries must be separated before the Establishment could be abandoned.' When the Catholics were at last admitted into Parliament, it was on the condition of taking an oath binding them to use no privilege the Act gave them to disturb or weaken the Protestant religion or Protestant government of the United Kingdom,' and Sir Robert Peel has left an emphatic testimony of the intentions of the authors of this oath to treat Catholic Emancipation as a compact by which the Catholics obtained seats in Parliament on the condition of abdicating for ever all intention of impairing the Protestant character of the Establishment. The King's Coronation Oath also bound him to maintain and preserve inviolably the Settlement of the United Church of England and Ireland as by

1 Plunket's Life, ii. 297. See, too, his most emphatic statements in his great speech on Catholic relief in 1821, ibid. pp. 20–67.

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2 In 1829 the civil disabilities of the Roman Catholics were removed by the legislature, and the measure by which that object was effected partook also of the nature of a compact as distinguished from an ordinary law. . . . By that Act the Protestants of Ireland were led to believe that all intention to subvert the present Church Establishment, as settled by law within these realms, was most solemnly disclaimed and utterly abandoned. They were assured, on the obligation of an oath, that no privilege which the Act confers would be exercised to disturb or weaken the Protestant religion or the Protestant Government within these realms. . . . They little thought that within five years from the passing of that Act, the powers which it conferred would be exercised to subvert the Church Establishment, so far as regards the property of the Church.' April 2,

1835.

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law established, and the full legal rights and privileges of its bishops and clergy, and many who were not fanatics contended that the plain and natural meaning of this oath was that the King should exercise the power the Constitution had given him of refusing his assent to any measure the direct and avowed object of which was to destroy that Settlement or abolish those privileges. The conviction that repeal would be followed by disestablishment was one of the reasons that arrayed the great majority of the Protestants in hostility to O'Connell, and the connection between the two measures was clearly recognised. When Lord John Russell in 1835 was endeavouring to apply a very small part of the Irish Church revenues to secular purposes, Gladstone, in a speech of consummate eloquence, denounced the policy of the Whig leader, and predicted the consequences that might flow from it. The noble lord invited them to invade the property of the Church in Ireland. He (Mr. Gladstone) considered that they had abundant reasons for maintaining that Church, and if it should be removed he believed that they would not be long able to resist the repeal of the Union.'1

I have elsewhere written in great detail the history of the Irish Union, of the methods by which it was carried and of the fluctuations of public opinion concerning it, and I cannot here repeat the story. That there were some honest and disinterested men among those who voted for it cannot reasonably be questioned. Conolly, who was one of the most conspicuous members of the Irish House of Commons, had long been in favour of such a measure. Lord Gosford, while supporting the Union, most honourably refused to accept an offer of promotion in the peerage lest his motives should be misconstrued, and there were no doubt cases in which those who obtained

Hansard, 3rd ser. xxvii. 512.

peerages and places as supporters of the measure were sincerely in its favour. It is probable, too, that some of those who opposed it, opposed it less on the ground of its abstract demerits than on account of the time and circumstances in which it was put forward. The father of Miss Edgeworth, who was a member of the Irish House of Commons and a man of great integrity and good sense, is an example of this class. I am an Unionist,' he wrote to his friend Erasmus Darwin, but I vote and speak against the Union now proposed to us. . . . It is intended to force this measure down the throats of the Irish though five-sixths of the nation are against it. Now, though I think such an Union as would identify the nations, so that Ireland should be as Yorkshire to Great Britain, would be an excellent thing; yet I also think that the good people of Ireland ought to be persuaded of this truth, and not be dragooned into submission. The minister avows that seventy-two boroughs are to be compensated--i.e. bought— by the people of Ireland with one million and a half of their own money; and he makes this legal by a small majority made up chiefly of these very borough members. When thirty-eight county members out of sixty-four are against the measure, and twenty-eight counties out of thirty-two have petitioned against it, this is such abominable corruption that it makes our parliamentary sanction worse than ridiculous.'

When, however, all deductions are made it is a patent and indisputable fact that the Union was carried through the Irish Parliament in opposition to the overwhelming majority of its unbribed members; of the representatives of the independent constituencies and of the vast preponderance of its best talent. It was carried by a majority largely composed of placemen and pensioners, and by an amount of corruption unsurpassed if not unequalled in the history

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of representative governments. Wholesale dismissals of all placemen who refused to support the measure or to induce their relatives to do so, the uniform and steady employment of all Government patronage in the Church, the army, the' law and the revenue with the sole object of carrying it, the systematic bribing of borough-owners or important members by peerages or promotions in the peerage, or promotions in the Church, or promotions to the Bench-these were the means by which the opposition was broken down. In a single list Cornwallis enumerated sixteen persons who were to be raised to the peerage on account of their services in carrying the Union-all of them members of or connected with the House of Commons. In the course of his short Viceroyalty twenty-eight Irish peerages were created, six Irish peers obtained English peerages on account of Irish services, twenty Irish peers obtained a higher rank in the peerage.

With the great concentration of borough patronage in a few hands, such methods were irresistible. In a single instance a peer who had declared himself hostile to the Union was induced, after long bargaining, and in consideration of an English peerage and a promised marquisate, to transfer no less than eight seats in the House of Commons. The ministers gave a positive assurance that they were resolved at all hazards to carry the Union, and that no defeat in the House of Commons would induce them to desist from their resolution. They cannot, it is true, be accused of having paid no attention to opinions outside the House. They had, as we have seen, offered large inducements to the different classes of the community; they made great efforts to procure addresses in favour of the Union, and they expended much money in subsidising the press. But when the Opposition urged that a measure of such a momentous character ought to be brought before the constituencies by a dissolution they