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to lower his estimate of public virtue; but the experience of Asia and America had not prepared the able statesman and soldier for the universal dishonesty and the clamorous corruption which he encountered in Ireland. Lord Cornwallis's correspondence, both official and private, during the whole period of his viceroyalty, describes Ireland as a land of jobs, the upper classes hopelessly corrupt, and the lower orders of people animated with an impartial hatred to the English Government and their native rulers. The only class of which he speaks in terms of qualified commendation were the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and the noblemen and gentlemen of that persuasion. Long schooled in political adversity, these persons had learned to be moderate in their demands; and, excluded from all share in the public pillage, they were necessarily free from personal corruption.

Lord Cornwallis, therefore, addressed himself with a dogged disgust to the odious duties which the determination of the English Government had imposed upon him. His business lay chiefly among the political leaders, who were to be gained over by peerages and the higher description of patronage. But there was other work of a lower kind, to which the Lord Lieutenant neither could nor would put his hand. Members of the House of Commons were to be privately convinced by arguments more conclusive than those of the ministerial orators; persons of influence out of doors were to be treated with; the press was to be bought. This business, to be done effectually, must be under the immediate superintendence and direction of a person of sufficient power and station to have credit and authority, but not so highly placed as to be inaccessible to the meaner agents of corruption. In those days, there would have been little difficulty in finding among the holders of subordinate offices, in either island,

1799. LORD CASTLEREAGH CHIEF SECRETARY.

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an able and ambitious man, who would consider it a high responsibility, and a certain step towards advancement, to be charged with a secret service of this description. The Lord Lieutenant was so fortunate as to find in a young nobleman who had recently been appointed to the principal office in his Government a person eminently qualified for the peculiar duties which, at this juncture, the Chief Secretary was required to perform. Viscount Castlereagh was the son of an Irish gentleman who had been recently ennobled; he had been educated in Ireland, and had taken his seat in the Irish House of Commons when he became of age. Lord Castlereagh, during the earlier years of his parliamentary life, had acted with the Opposition; but during the administration of Lord Camden, to whom he was related by a family connection, he accepted a small office, and during the absence of Mr. Pelham, the Chief Secretary, Castlereagh was appointed to perform the duties of the office. The rebellion which soon after broke out afforded full scope for his energy and ability. The harsh measures which were adopted by the Lord Lieutenant were attributed to the advice of his young kinsman; and when Camden quitted Ireland, his successor continued the temporary arrangement of the Secretary's office. When Pelham finally resigned, in November, 1798, Lord Cornwallis endeavoured to obtain the services of Mr. Thomas Grenville,* who had declined the office when it had been pressed upon him by Lord Fitzwilliam, in 1794. Grenville still persisting in his refusal to connect himself with a branch of administration so little coveted as that of Ireland, several other names were mentioned, and ultimately, though not without misgiving on the part of the Home Government as to his capacity for an office which had now become

* Lord Grenville to Marquis of Buckingham. - Courts and

Cabinets of George the Third, vol. ii. p. 410.

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so arduous, Castlereagh was appointed. At this time he was in his thirtieth year.

It was a traditional rule of the Home Government that no Irishman should be appointed Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant; and Cornwallis had sought to remove this objection which had been urged against Castlereagh, by assuring the Duke of Portland that his young friend was so unlike an Irishman, that an exception ought to be made in his favour. It is not easy to understand the policy which pronounced an Irishman disqualified for the principal office of business in the Irish Government. The invariable practice of sending over an Englishman to act as minister for Ireland, and to take the lead of the Irish House of Commons, always ranked among the principal grievances of the country; and as the English Secretary was usually a second-rate politician and an indifferent speaker, his position in the Irish House, which generally included men of great oratorical power, was often humiliating, and sometimes ridiculous. In the succession of secretaries to the Lord Lieutenant since Addison had gone over with Wharton, there had been none superior to Castlereagh in political ability and aptitude for affairs. Independently of his personal qualifications, it cannot be questioned that his position as an Irishman of rank and fortune, together with the knowledge of his countrymen, which he had acquired by having lived among them from his earliest years, gave him advantages in negotiating a local question of unprecedented magnitude and difficulty, which no Englishman could have possessed.

One of the earliest acts of Lord Castlereagh was to draw upon the secret service fund for five thousand pounds. This instalment, which was readily furnished from the Secretary of State's office, was em

* Lord Castlereagh to Mr. Wickham, Under-Secretary for the Home Department. Jan. 2,

1799. Cornwallis Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 27.

1799.

*

IRISH CHIEF SECRETARY.

145

ployed principally in engaging young barristers of the Four Courts to write for the Union. After the failure of the measure in the House of Commons, Lord Castlereagh was convinced that it could be carried only by bribery administered on a large and systematic scale; and this view of the question was kept before the English Government in every despatch sent from the Castle from the beginning of 1799 until the bill was passed in June, 1800. Accordingly, the Chief Secretary drew up a scheme by which, under the name of compensation, a million and a half of money was to be distributed among borough proprietors, part owners of counties, lessees of seats, and barristers who had entered the House of Commons to advance their professional fortunes. This latter class consisted of fifty members. The plan also included an arrangement by which occupiers and owners of houses in Dublin, where hostility to the Union was most prevalent, should receive an equivalent for the estimated depreciation of their property.† The English Government were at first startled by the proposal to carry the Union by the simple expedient of buying up the House of Commons. But the recognition of property in the close boroughs having formed the basis of the parliamentary reform originally proposed by Pitt, no objection was raised on principle to that part of Castlereagh's plan. It was determined that the county representation should not be curtailed; and thus the difficulty of adjusting compensation in the numerous cases in which the two county seats were divided between two or more predominant interests was avoided. The claims of lawyers and other adventurers who speculated in seats were peremptorily rejected. The tradesmen and householders of the capital were to be conciliated as much as possible:

* Castlereagh Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 330.

VOL. IV.

L

Memoirs of Viscount Castlereagh, vol. ii. p. 149.

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but, at the same time, to be distinctly informed that their particular interests would not be suffered to impede the progress of the Union. Dublin was, however, to return two members to the Imperial Parliament.

Resolutions moved by Pitt.

A week after the Irish House had refused to entertain the question, the English minister moved a series of resolutions, embodying the principal provisions of the intended Union. In opening this, the greatest and most enduring measure of his administration, Pitt delivered one of those complete arguments which, in the judgment of men of sense and candour, determine the merits of a question. There were, probably, few members of the British Parliament who cared more for the proceedings of the Irish Parliament than for those of a provincial vestry, or whose information about Irish manners and politics was much more accurate than that of an ordinary Frenchman about his country at the present day. That Ireland was very like a froward child, over which the parent country must hold a strict hand; that the Irish House of Commons was a mere debating club, capable only of cultivating flowery oratory; that the Irish gentry were a race of spendthrifts and fortune-hunters; and that the Irish people were hardly a remove from savages, were common articles of belief throughout the mass of English society. The promulgation of a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland excited an interest among the British public less lively than the announcement of legislative institutions for a new colony, or the annexation of an Indian province, would cause at the present day. Pitt's speech, though ten thousand copies of it were circulated by authority throughout Ireland, was, in fact, much more calculated to satisfy the English nation, that the Union would be advantageous to them, than to reconcile the Irish people to the loss of their native legislature.