|
- The state to be called the ‘United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’
- A new Union flag, incorporating St
Patrick’s cross [diagonal red on a white background]
- The succession of the Crown as in
the Union between England and Scotland
- At Westminster: in the Lords 28
temporal peers elected for life by the peers of Ireland, and 4 spiritual lords
sitting by rotation of sessions; in the Commons 100 Irish MPs [2 each county, 2
Dublin city, 2 Cork city, one each for 31 other boroughs, and one for Trinity
College Dublin]
- The Church of Ireland and
the Church of England united as the Established Church of England and
Ireland
- Free trade between the two
countries but a few duties kept for 20 years to protect some Irish manufactures
such as cotton
- The financial systems, including
coinage, of the two countries to remain distinct: Ireland to pay two-seventeenths
of UK expenditure [the systems were united in 1817]
- All laws and courts to be
as they were, subject to any changes as might be made by the parliament
of the United Kingdom
- Act of Union, passes in 1800, introduced on
1 January 1801
In December 1779 Sir George Macartney, an Ulsterman and a
former Irish Chief Secretary in the middle of a distinguished imperial career,
was sent to Ireland on a secret mission. The Prime Minister, Lord North, had
instructed him to ascertain what the reaction might be to a proposal to unite
the Dublin and Westminster parliaments. After giving the assurance that even
the Lord Lieutenant ‘has not the smallest suspicion of my real errand in this
kingdom’, Macartney reported bluntly: ‘The idea of a union at present would
excite a rebellion’.
Britain was at that time
fighting a war with its American colonists
who, with the assistance of France and Spain, inflicted damaging defeats
on the Crown forces. Stripped of troops who had been sent to fight on
the other side of the Atlantic, Ireland was defended by some 40,000 Volunteers
who feared invasion from France. The island was not invaded by the French
and the Volunteers, paying for their own equipment and uniforms and therefore
not under government control, forced a beleaguered and near-bankrupt administration
to grant concessions. Working closely together, the ‘Patriot’
opposition MPs and the Volunteers triumphed by gaining ‘legislative
independence’ in 1782.
'Ireland is now a nation',
the leader of the Patriots, Henry Grattan, declared. What had been won?
The Irish Parliament was nearly as venerable as its English counterpart:
its first clearly documented meeting had been as far back as 1264. For
most of its history the knights and burgesses of the Commons and the peers
in the Lords had overwhelmingly represented colonial Ireland and, after
the final defeat of the Jacobites at Aughrim and Limerick in 1691, Catholics
had been permanently excluded from Parliament. The legislative independence
won in 1782 involved the removal of restrictions. Under Poynings Law,
enacted in 1494 and subsequently modified, Irish Bills could be altered
or suppressed by the English Privy Council: now Irish legislation merely
required the consent of the monarch. The Declaratory Act of 1720, also
known as 'the Sixth of George I', was repealed - this 'act for the better
securing of the dependency of the Kingdom of Ireland upon the Crown of
Great Britain' had given Westminster the power to legislate for Ireland.
In the euphoria of victory
the Irish Parliament voted Grattan £50,000 to enable him to buy a country
estate. Actually ‘Grattan’s Parliament’ possessed a good deal less
independence than even contemporaries realised. The Irish executive
was still appointed not by the majority in the Commons but by the British
government of the day. The Lord Lieutenant (or viceroy), the Chief
Secretary, the Lord Chancellor, the Attorney-General and other members
of the administration in Dublin Castle all owed their positions to the
Prime Minister in London and they in turn controlled much of the patronage
when making public appointments. Legislative independence was gained
at a time of ministerial instability in London but stability returned
when William Pitt the Younger formed a government towards the close
of 1783. Pitt was to remain Prime Minister without a break until 1801
and he therefore had many years during which he could perfect his ability
to control the Irish Parliament.
Grattan’s Parliament
might have a better chance of surviving longer than eighteen years had
it worked harder to gain the affections of a majority of the Irish people.
Catholics, forming at least three-quarters of the population, could not
sit in parliament and, until 1793, they could not vote. No fewer than
234 out of 300 MPs sat for ‘close’ boroughs where representation
was controlled by a single patron. In Belfast, for example, two members
were elected solely by the thirteen members of the corporation, all of
whom had been appointed by Lord Donegall. Even in the thirty-two counties,
where forty-shilling freeholders elected two MPs for each county, contests
tended to be between aristocratic factions. In fairness it should be
pointed out that until 1789 most of the states in Europe were absolute
monarchies with no legislative assemblies. Holland, Britain and Ireland,
far from being democracies though they were, were unusual in possessing
representative institutions of any kind. Nevertheless Volunteers and
others who had supported the drive for legislative independence (nearly
all of them Protestants) were bitterly disappointed when their call for
parliamentary reform was brusquely rejected even by the majority of their
erstwhile allies, the Patriots. The Irish House of Commons remained the
equivalent of an exclusive gentlemen’s club dominated by leading
families of the Anglican élite known as the ‘Protestant Ascendancy’.
Legislative independence
had been conceded by the Whigs suddenly brought to power by the fall
of Lord North’s government. In opposition the Whigs had worked in close
alliance with the Irish Patriots but many of them feared that too much
unchecked power had been granted. The Tories had resisted the Patriot
demand and from late 1783 they were in power for the rest of the century.
Pitt’s view that the constitutional relationship between Great Britain
and Ireland was unsatisfactory was much strengthened by the failure
of his commercial propositions in 1784-5. Since Westminster could no
longer legislate for Ireland he proposed a treaty between the two parliaments
by which trade restrictions on both sides of the Irish Sea would be
mutually eased. Westminster MPs insisted that the treaty should include
an obligatory Irish contribution to the Royal Navy in certain circumstances
and for this reason the Irish Parliament raised such a storm of protest
that Pitt abandoned the project. Grattan, who had led the charge against
the propositions, argued that Britain and Ireland were equal states
united by a common allegiance to the Crown – a view repellent to Pitt,
the son of the great empire builder, Lord Chatham. Pitt may have agreed
with the opinion expressed to him by Lord Lieutenant Rutland on 16 June
1784: ‘I should say that without a union Ireland will not be
connected with Great Britain in twenty years time’.
Pitt was further irritated
when the Irish Parliament invited the Prince of Wales to become the Regent
of Ireland in 1789, while George III was ill and incapable, before Westminster
had made its own decision. Pitt responded by greatly increasing funds
available for government patronage in Ireland to ensure comfortable majorities
in the Irish Parliament for measures and policies he favoured. He depended
heavily on the ‘three Johns’ – John Fitzgibbon, John
Beresford and John Foster – to manage his affairs in Ireland. From
the perspective of London, however, this arrangement was cumbersome, expensive
and unsatisfactory. The shortcomings of the constitutional relationship
were alarmingly exposed to Pitt when Britain and Ireland were drawn into
a protracted European conflict.
The fall of the Bastille to
the Paris mob on 14 July 1789 marked the beginning of the first successful
revolution in modern European history. The shock waves soon swept beyond
the frontiers of France and a heady cocktail of democratic ideals was
enthusiastically imbibed by middle-class Irishmen disgusted by the selfish
exclusiveness of the Irish Parliament. In October 1791 the Society of
United Irishmen was formed in Belfast to seek radical reform of parliament,
the repeal of remaining penal laws against Catholics and independence
from British government control. Joining forces with the Catholic Committee,
the United Irishmen became a powerful lobby for change. Pitt’s
initial reaction was to make concessions.
Government by elected
representatives in France dissolved into turmoil and terror, and war
was declared on the Austrian Empire and its allies in 1792. Louis XVI
was executed in January 1793 and a few days later Britain declared war
on France. The French offered help to any people seeking to get rid
of kings and aristocrats and, fearful that some Irishmen would accept
the offer, Pitt used all his influence to get the Irish Parliament to
remove penal laws. In 1793 Catholics could become lawyers and vote
in parliamentary elections. Then in 1795 Pitt’s nerve failed him: he
refused to back his Lord Lieutenant, Earl Fitzwilliam, in using patronage
to remove the last major penal law, that which prevented Catholics from
sitting in parliament. For many United Irishmen this was the crucial
turning point and they prepared for insurrection with the aid of the
French.
Most Presbyterians in
Antrim and Down were avid supporters of the United Irishmen. In contrast,
Protestants of all sects west of the River Bann had a lively fear of
Catholic resurgence. A vicious decade-long sectarian war between Catholic
Defenders and Protestant Peep-o’-Day Boys in mid-Ulster climaxed with
a Protestant victory at the Diamond in County Armagh in September 1795.
Tens of thousands of Defenders were swept into the United Irishmen and
prepared for rebellion. A mortal threat to the British Empire was revealed
in December 1796: a French fleet carrying some 14,000 troops evaded
Royal Navy patrols to reach Bantry Bay only to be disbursed by storms.
Pitt had no choice but
to approve a sheaf of repressive measures passed through the Irish Parliament.
Britain’s position was fast becoming desperate. French troops were
triumphant everywhere and one by one Britain’s allies were forced
to make peace. The British Army was overwhelmed in Holland in 1795 and
it was only at sea that the French suffered reverses. Ireland had become
a dangerously vulnerable strategic liability. Ruthless military repression
did lead to major arms seizures but those ready to rise were being numbered
by Pitt’s spies at hundreds of thousands. On 23 May 1798 the rebellion
began. After a century of peace Ireland was plunged into the bloodiest
episode of modern times. After insurgents had captured Enniscorthy and
Wexford and won control of much of southern Leinster Pitt was forced to
divert scarce military resources to Ireland. Presbyterians rose in Antrim
and Down and, after some minor successes, were defeated in June at Antrim
town and Ballynahinch in County Down. The French landed in Mayo on 22
August and with a small force overwhelmed Crown forces at Castlebar.
Final victory came when the French and Irish were defeated at Ballinamuck,
County Longford in September and a French fleet was outgunned in Lough
Swilly in October. In just a few months some 30,000 are estimated to
have died violently in Ireland.
Pitt had been convinced of
the need for a union long before 1798 but the rebellion provided him with the
opportunity to make union government policy. He wrote first to the Irish
viceroy, Lord Camden, on 28 May to inform him of his decision. Pitt had the
enthusiastic support of the king who advised him on 13 July 1798 that the
rebellion should be used ‘for frightening the supporters of the Castle into a
Union’. The key members of the cabinet who helped Pitt put the union proposals
into shape were Henry Dundas, the war minister, and Lord Grenville, the foreign
secretary. Lord Cornwallis, one of most distinguished soldiers and diplomats
in the land, agreed to replace Lord Camden as Irish viceroy in June 1798 – he
accepted the post knowing that his main political task would be to convince
leading interest groups in Ireland of the benefits of union. The Protestant
Ascendancy, in the view of these men, had proved unequal to the task of
governing Ireland and they were convinced that a corrupt, dangerous and
inefficient system had to be swept away.
The appointment of Cornwallis
was an early indication that Pitt intended Catholic emancipation to
accompany the Union for the new Lord Lieutenant, unlike Camden, was
an enthusiastic advocate of permitting Catholics to sit in parliament.
Catholic emancipation, Pitt was convinced by now, alone could ensure
the stability of Ireland. The ascendancy not only had proved incapable
of running the country but had been too opposed to change. The Catholics
of Ireland had posed a deadly threat to Britain in the midst of a major
war and the security of the empire could be obtained only by enlisting
the support of moderate and propertied Catholics.
When Pitt’s plans were
revealed to the Irish cabinet two key ministers vehemently opposed them:
John Foster, the Speaker, and John Parnell, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The remainder supported them but they in turn were divided on the issue
of emancipation, with Cornwallis and Castlereagh in favour of emancipation
and Clare strongly against it. Clare, the Lord Chancellor, had for
long been Pitt’s most reliable fixer in Ireland and his opinion could
not be ignored, particularly as George III swiftly took the view that
he would be breaking his coronation oath if he made further concessions
to Catholics. With a heavy heart Pitt dropped the emancipation proposal
and Cornwallis ruefully observed: ‘I certainly wish that England could
now make a union with the Irish nation, instead of making it with a
party in Ireland’.
Edward Cooke, Under-Secretary
for the civil department, declared that if the government was serious about a
union it must be ‘written-up, spoken-up, intrigued-up, drunk-up, sung-up and
bribed-up’. So it proved. The union with Scotland in 1707 had been worked out
by commissioners representing both countries. Pitt rejected this approach
because he wanted more direct input into the drafting of the terms. The
measure, however, would have to be a treaty in all but name, passed separately
through both the Westminster and Dublin parliaments. Pitt was rightly
confident of comfortable backing at home but he greatly underestimated the
difficulty of convincing the Irish Parliament.
The first test came
when parliament met on 22 January 1799. In the Commons George Ponsonby
moved an amendment pledging the House to maintain ‘the undoubted birthright
of the people of Ireland to have a free and independent legislature’.
The debate, with eighty speeches, lasted for twenty-one uninterrupted
hours. William Plunket declared that he would resist a union ‘to the
last gasp of my existence and with the last drop of my blood’. ‘You
would have thought you were in a Polish Diet’, John Beresford observed
afterwards. ‘Direct treason spoken, resistance to the law declared,
encouraged, and recommended. I never heard such vulgarity and barbarism’.
When the motion was put in the afternoon of 23 January it was defeated
by 106 to 105 but a majority of one for the government was useless.
In any case another motion against a union was passed 111 to 106 the
following day.
For the remainder of
the year the government had to work unremittingly to build a decent
majority for the union. This task fell primarily to Lord Castlereagh,
appointed Chief Secretary in November 1798, and to the viceroy, Lord
Cornwallis. Parliamentary seats were bought and attention was concentrated
on major borough owners and particularly those who had abstained in
the January voting. Pensions, places (jobs for MPs and peers and their
relatives), promotions in the peerage, and other enticements were promised.
This lavish use of patronage was denounced in later times as ‘bribery
and corruption’ but it was legal and (just about) within the conventions
of the time. ‘My occupation is now of the most unpleasant nature’,
Cornwallis wrote, ‘negotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt people
under heaven’. What was illegal was Pitt’s diversion of secret
service funds, unknown even to members of the cabinet, to support newspapers
and pamphlets favourable to the union. The Bank of England notes were
cut in half for safety and sent by two separate messengers to Castlereagh,
who had to join them together again.
'The mass of the people do
not care one farthing about the Union', Cornwallis remarked and there was much
truth in this statement. The bad harvest of 1799 was of much greater concern.
The Presbyterians of Antrim and Down, who had been in rebellion in 1798, were
not going to lose sleep over the loss of a corrupt Ascendancy assembly. The
Orange Order grand lodge in Dublin attempted to be neutral on the issue but
thirty-six lodges, from Armagh and Louth alone, petitioned against the Union.
The fear was that Catholic emancipation would immediately follow the Union -
indeed that was Pitt's intention. Cornwallis came very close to promising
emancipation forthwith and, for that reason, most educated Catholics - with the
noted exception of the lawyer Daniel O'Connell - were in favour of the Union.
Merchants and artisans in Dublin feared the loss of business if there was no
longer a parliament in College Green. The fierce pamphlet warfare shows that
feelings ran high but only amongst a relatively confined circle of Protestants.
The level of passion
was revealed when the Irish Parliament opened on 15 January 1800. Sir
Laurence Parsons, in proposing an amendment pledging the House to maintain
a free and independent parliament accused Castlereagh of ‘prostituting
the prerogative of appointment to places in order to pack a parliament’.
Angry speeches were delivered on both sides through the night. At midnight
Henry Grattan (who had not been an MP for several years) bought Wicklow
borough for £1,200 and, dressed in his old blue Volunteer uniform, arrived
in the Commons at 7 a.m. Exhausted and ill, he was allowed to speak
sitting down. In his two-hour declamation Grattan pointed at Castlereagh
saying that the Chief Secretary proposed to ‘buy what cannot be sold
– liberty…Against such a proposition, were I expiring on the floor,
I should beg to utter my last breath and record my dying testimony’.
It was to no avail. The motion was defeated by 138 votes to 96 and
resolutions in favour of the Union obtained consistent majorities both
in the Commons and the Lords. To maintain its supporters’ morale lavish
dinners were held every day for twenty or thirty members until, as Sir
Jonah Barrington recalled, ‘every man became in a prosperous state of
official pregnancy…fully resolved to eat, drink, speak, and fight for
Lord Castlereagh’. More secret service money – in total £30,850 – crossed
the Irish Sea. The Bill for Union passed its third reading on 7 June
and received the royal assent on 2 July 1800. An identical Bill passed
with overwhelming support through Westminster.
Generous compensation
for boroughs which would no longer be represented helped to weaken opposition
to the Union. Compensation totalled £1,260,000 and was paid to supporters
and opponents alike – the Marquis of Downshire, against the Union, got
£57,000 for 7 seats he controlled. Examples of ‘Union engagements’
include: for Sir John Blaquiere (the promise to make him a peer was
not kept) £1,000 a year for his wife and daughter, £700 annual pension
for himself and another £300 a year from 1803; sinecures of between
£250 and £800 a year for 27 MPs; eleven MPs who were lawyers were promoted
or were given other judicial rewards; and £300 a year for Theobald McKenna,
a pamphleteer, for his literary services.
The Union came into force on 1 January 1801. It was to
last 120 years but during much of that time it failed to win the adherence of a
majority of the Irish people. The Union was in being only for a few weeks when
it received a body blow: George III flatly refused to consider Catholic
emancipation and declared: ‘I shall reckon any man my personal enemy who
proposes any such measure’. Pitt, who was convinced that emancipation was
essential to ensure the success of the Union, resigned on 3 February 1801.
Over the next couple of decades resolutions and bills in favour of emancipation
were debated at Westminster (where Grattan eloquently supported them) but
failed to gain sufficient support. In the end emancipation was not granted –
it was wrested from Britain in 1829 after a mass agitation brilliantly
co-ordinated by Daniel O’Connell. The opportunity to incorporate educated and
propertied Irish Catholics into the élite was lost. They formed their own alternative
élite and called for repeal of the Union.
Protestant parliamentarians
who had vehemently opposed the Union Bill were soon won over. One reason,
undoubtedly, was that the prospect of immediate Catholic emancipation
quickly faded. In another respect the sky did not fall in: a separate
Irish administration was retained in Dublin Castle and this meant that
coveted jobs, mainly in the civil department, could still be obtained
and monopolised by the Ascendancy. For many decades to come successive
Westminster governments depended heavily on the Protestant landed gentry
to maintain law and order and run local government. Later, when governments
began to undermine the power of the Ascendancy, the gentry remained
passionate supporters of the Union because the alternative would leave
them exposed and isolated in a Dublin parliament. Fear of growing Catholic
self-confidence persuaded the great majority of Protestants of all classes
– including descendants of Presbyterians who had fought in 1798 – to
become passionate supporters of the United Kingdom. A sprinkling of
Protestants could always be found in the nationalist camp, such as Robert
Emmet, Thomas Davis, John Mitchel, Isaac Butt and Charles Stewart Parnell.
They were all members of the intelligentsia, however, and the vast majority
of humbler Protestants became unwavering unionists.
The retention of a separate
Irish executive was an indication that Britain was not wholly committed
to the integration of Ireland into a kingdom that was supposed to be fully
united. In many respects Ireland was treated like a colony with a population
too potentially dangerous to be governed by laws prevailing in the rest
of the United Kingdom. During the first fifty years of the Union there
were only five years during which special coercive legislation (such as
the suspension of habeas corpus) was not in force. British governments,
in an attempt to create a more neutral and impartial state, steadily undermined
the Ascendancy by, for example, appointing stipendiary magistrates, creating
a national police force and allowing a Board of Works to take over some
functions of landlord-dominated county grand juries. Some legislation
specifically for Ireland was highly innovative: the island had a professional
and impartial police force, a national government-funded system of primary
education, rudimentary public health provision, state-supported hospitals
and judicial rent controls long before the rest of the United Kingdom.
All this, however, ensured that Ireland was governed differently, ruled
in a more centralised and interventionist way than England, Scotland and
Wales. This willingness to intervene was not enough to prevent around
a million deaths when potato blight struck repeatedly in the 1840s. For
many of those who survived, the Great Famine was proof that the Union
would have to be broken. On the other hand the rapid industrial and commercial
development of the north-east reinforced the view of most Protestants
that the Union was essential to maintain the prosperity and stability
of Ireland.
Top |
