her Majefty had been pleafed to give them, had infpired them with hopes of an addition to the many bleffings they

enjoyed under her moft aufpicious reign; yet no real encouragement being given to their overtures on the subject, the matter was profecuted no farther. The whole of the answer to the addrefs of the Lords was in thefe formal, cold, and disheartening words: Her Majefty returns their Lordships her hearty thanks for their addrefs, and is very fenfible of their zeal for hers and the public fervice. Her Majefty is alfo very well pleafed with the fatisfaction their Lordships exprefs in her endeavours to unite all her fubjects t.'

The English Government and the Irish Parliament had one very natural fentiment in common, the apprehenfion of danger from the great number of Catholics in Ireland, who continued attached to a dethroned monarch of the fame religion with themfelves. But the Parliament feems to have looked to a legislative Union as the fureft protection against this danger. The Minifters in England preferred the establishment of a fyftem of fevere penalties and difqualifications against Papifts, reftrictive of the rights, as well civil as political, which, till then, they had enjoyed in that country equally with their Proteftant fellow-fubjects. And the attempt to engage the Queen in the measure they had recommended having failed, the Parliament, feeing no third courfe, thought themfelves compelled to co-operate with the Crown in adopting the other expedient. It has, accordingly, been truly remarked by a great authority in the fifter kingdom, That it was not till the propofition to unite the Le

31ft July 1797, Journals of Irish Commons, vol. iii. p. 421. Journals of the Irish Houfe of Lords, 4th August 17071 vol. ii. p. 180.

⚫ giflatures

giflatures of the two countries had proved abortive, that the great code of the popery laws of Ireland was • enacted ‡.'

I do not find the matter of Union to have been afterwards revived in the Irish Parliament, but it ftill continued to be a very general and frequent fubject of public difcuffion in both kingdoms.

In Cato's Letters, a work, I believe, of univerfal circulation about the middle of the enfuing reign, Mr. Trenchard, who was peculiarly verfed in the concerns of Ireland, recommended it in the following terms, which conclude one of the letters in that collection written by him, and entitled, On Plantations and Colonies:" • Ireland is too powerful to be treated only as a colony. If we defign to continue them friends, the best way to do it • is to imitate the example of merchants and shopkeepers; that is, when their apprentices are acquainted with their trade, and out of their time, to take them into partnership rather than let them fet up for themselves in the neighbourhood §.'

It is very clear that neither he nor any of the earlier writers I have quoted, ever imagined there could be any difficulty or objection raised on the part of Ireland.

In the reign of George the IId, about the year 1735, the excellent Berkeley, a moft impartial and enlightened patriot, published a book on the interefts of Ireland, called The Querift,' from many paffages in which he ˆ

↑ Lord Fitzgibbon's Speech in the Irish Houfe of Lords, 13th" March 1793, Irish edition, p. 16.

Cato's Letters, 3d edition, vol. iv. Letter I.

p.

12.

appears

appears to have had the expediency of a Union, for the advantage both of his native country and this, ftrongly impreffed on his mind. In the 90th query particularly, he thus expreffes himself: Qu. Whether if it be not the • true interest of both nations to become one people, and ⚫ whether either be fufficiently apprised of this?'

Dean Tucker's propofal for A Union with Ireland,' was first printed, I believe, in the year 1751, in his Essay on Trade * ;' a work as generally read and studied in Ireland as Great Britain.

In the year following (1752) a tract appeared under the title of A Propofal for uniting the Kingdoms of Great

Britain and Ireland,' which was generally underflood to be the production of a refpectable Nobleman of the fifter kingdom, to whom I have before alluded, the late Marquis of Downfhire; and if I am not much misinformed, this measure now under confideration, viz. a legislative incorporation, which it was the object of that publication to recommend, was, during the whole of his life, a favourite object with that experienced statesman, a frequent fubject of his converfation and difcuffion in both kingdoms, and ftrongly recommended by him at different times to the different perfons fucceffively at the head of Government.

Sir, I trust the selection I have made, which, though a fmall part of what might have been stated, may, I fear, have appeared tedious to the House, has fully proved my affertion, that this subject has not come on, the fudden, and by surprise, on the people and Parliament of Ireland.

*Propofal 3d and 4th.

Indeed Mr. Burke (whofe name I cannot pronounce without reverence and affection) tells us, in his Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, that he had heard a difcuffion concerning an Union amongst all forts of men ever fince he remembered any thing."

I wish I could have added that great man to the lift of thofe, both in Ireland and here, who have been decided advocates for the measure; but left he fhould be fupposed to have been decidedly of a contrary opinion, I will fubjoin the candid language in which he goes on in the fame paffage to exprefs himself concerning it:

For my own part,' fays he, I have never been able to bring my mind to any thing clear and decifive on the fubject; there cannot be a more arduous queftion. As far as I can form an opinion, it would not be for the mutual advantage of both kingdoms; but perfons more able than I am think otherwise. But whatever the merits of this Union may be, to make it a menace it must be fhown to be an evil, and an evil more particularly 6 to those who are threatened with it, than to those who throw it out as a terror. I really do not fee how this threat can operate, or that the Catholics are more likely to be lofers than the Churchment.'

It cannot have escaped the attention of the House, that none of those of whom I have made mention, neither Sir William Petty, the Irish Council of Trade, the two Houfes of that Parliament in 1703 and 1707, nor Mr. Trenchard, Bishop Berkeley, Dean Tucker, Lord Downfhire, or Mr. Burke, ever feemed to have entertained a

Second edition, p. 75.

U 4

† Ibid.

fufpicion

fufpicion of that new difcovery-the incompetency of the Irish Parliament.

What has been stated to show the long and continued attention which must have been given to the fubject in Ireland, goes a great way alfo to prove, that there must always have been a great number of perfons there, in that fphere of life in which alone men are to be found in any country capable of understanding and judging of such matters, who were strongly of opinion, that a legislative Union would be of the utmoft benefit to theirs.

It has, however, been very confidently averred, that the Irish in general have always been averfe to a Union; infomuch that whenever it has been an object there to render a new Lord Lieutenant unpopular, it has been customary to give out, as a watchword, that he had been fent over for the purpose of effecting that measure. I know, Sir, that the art of running down a Lord Lieutenant in former times has been carried to a great degree of perfection in that kingdom, and perhaps it may not yet have fallen into abfolute difufe. But is it thought that fuch a politic trick' (as De Foe expreffes himself on a fimilar fubject) furnishes a very serious proof of the difinclination of the majority of that nation to the measure? Will those who reafon in this way deny, that there have been times, and those not very remote, when a cry that the object of a Chief Governor's miffion was what is called Catholic emancipation,' would have been no ineffectual means of exciting the mob of Dublin against him, perhaps of embarraffing or overturning his government? Friends as they are to the admiffion of the Catholics to an equal participation of political rights, will they confent to a fimilar argument being built against that

favourite