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Resolutions moved by Pitt.

SCHEME OF THE UNION.

up the House of Commons. But the recognition of
property in the close boroughs having formed the
basis of the Parliamentary Reform originally pro-
posed by Pitt, no objection was raised on principle
to that part of Castlereagh's plan. It was deter-
mined 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: but,
at the same time, to be distinctly informed that
their particular interests would not be suffered to
impede the progress of the Union.
of the Union. Dublin was,
however, to return two members to the Imperial
Parliament.

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, certainly 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 great 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

PITT'S SPEECH ON THE UNION RESOLUTIONS.

information about Irish manners and politics was much more accurate than that of an ordinary Frenchman about this 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. The minister proved, from recent events, what, indeed, was almost demonstrable, from the physical relation of the two islands, that their close connection was essential to the welfare of both; in other words, that the control of Great Britain over Ireland was necessary to the independence of the more powerful kingdom. He shewed that this connection could be secured only by means of a common

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PITT'S SPEECH

legislature; and he was aided by a willing
audience, when he proceeded to argue, that the
final settlement of 1782, by which the legislative
independence of Ireland was recognised, was not
inconsistent with a plan for absorbing the Irish
legislature into the Imperial Parliament. Such a
proposition was, indeed, wholly untenable; but
the great orator relied, with more security, on the
illustrations by which he supported his main
argument, that there could be no real or safe con-
nection between the two countries, on a footing
of equality and independence. The remarkable
case of the Regency, in 1788, when the two
legislatures differed as to powers conferred upon
the Regent, was, of course, cited. Suppose the
independent Parliaments to have
farther, and to have differed as to the person who
should exercise the power of the sovereign ?
Suppose the Commons of England supporting the
Crown in a just, and necessary war, and the Com-
mons of Ireland disapproving of the war, and
refusing supplies? Was such a state of things to
be tolerated? Ought the possibility of a collision,
tending to anarchy, to exist? Could there be one
executive in England and another executive in
Ireland? Was England to be at war, and Ireland
to be at peace? The settlement of 1782, so far
from being final, was in its very nature finite.
Ireland might have a vestry, but she could not
have a Parliament. If the two kingdoms were to
remain united under one Crown, they must be.

gone a step

ON THE UNION RESOLUTIONS.

united under one legislature. Not content with establishing the necessity of Union on such high constitutional ground, Mr. Pitt went on to shew, what might have been more debateable, the incompetency of an Irish Parliament to deal with Irish questions. The Catholic question, the tithe question, he maintained, were more likely to attain a satisfactory settlement in a united Parliament than in an assembly distracted by local jealousies and provincial faction. The Catholics, he said, could not receive the full measure of their political claims under a separate legislature. Such a concession could not be granted to a body, which formed the great majority of the inhabitants, without transferring to that class a preponderating influence, which would shake the constitution of Ireland to its centre.

• Mr. Pitt should have thought of this before he suffered Lord Fitzwilliam to amuse the Irish Catholics with the hope of emancipation. Lord Fitzwilliam fancied that he was recalled for having dismissed Mr. Beresford; but he was recalled when it became apparent that his intention was to turn out all the old Protestant party, and to fill their places with the friends of Catholic emancipation. See a letter from Pitt to Lord Westmorland, 19th November, 1794, in Lord STANHOPE's recently published Miscellanies,' p. 14. Lord Clare, as well as Beresford, went over to England, for the purpose of procuring the removal of Fitzwilliam; and it was probably owing to the representations of Clare, rather than to those of Beresford, that the Cabinet as well as the King took the alarm. Clare was by far the ablest of the old ruling party in Ireland, and the only Irish minister to whom Pitt listened. It will be recollected that the one point upon which Pitt was inflexible when Fitzwilliam went to Ireland was that the Great Seal should not be disturbed. It was Lord Clare who,

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Mr. Pitt then disposed of another point which had been lightly touched by the English opposition, but had been gravely insisted upon as an insuperable obstacle by the lawyers and patriots of the Irish Parliament. This was the incompetency of that Parliament to annihilate itself, and to transfer its functions to a foreign legislature. Pitt contented himself with meeting the more limited objection which had been raised in the debate on the King's message, recommending the Union. On that occasion, Sheridan, who took the leading part, questioned only the competency of the Irish Parliament to entertain the question without a special appeal to their constituents. This was the proper place for one of those rhetorical invectives against democracy, from which hardly any of Pitt's great orations, for the last ten years, had been free, but which the House was never weary of applauding. He denounced the doctrine that the representative body could not entertain a new question without returning to its constituents as a dangerous innovation, sprung from the theory of the sovereignty of the people, the favourite delusion by which Jacobites and Revolutionists misled the understandings, and inflamed the

through the medium of the English Chancellor, Loughborough, possessed the King's mind with the idea of the coronation oath; and it is remarkable, that when important concessions were first made to the Catholics of Ireland, in 1793, Fitzgibbon used substantially the same language, as to the danger of Catholic supremacy, which Pitt uttered in the speech on the Union Resolutions.